"Well, Howie, my boy," Ralph Taylor said jovially, "you about ready to see how those pictures worked?"
Howard had been in his office for the better part of three hours now, having come back from his dinner hour still disturbed over what he'd done. All the way home and all during the time he was with his wife he kept telling himself he wouldn't leave the corrupting manila envelope of photos and paper… but he had! He didn't feel right about it, not right at all… but the damage had been done. He was here, waiting for some customer to walk on the lot and take his mind away from what he'd done. He had resolved that when midnight came and he could go home, he would straightaway take that packet and burn it if his wife hadn't opened it yet. More than once he'd thought about calling her, telling her under no circumstances should she open it… but every time his hand went to the phone, he stopped. To tell her would be tantamount to confessing that he knew what was in it; Cindy wasn't dumb and she'd figure that she'd been set up.
Instead of a customer, in had walked Ralph. There hadn't been a customer all the while he had been back at Auto Circus, nothing to relieve the time-heavy wait. And of all the people he didn't want to see at the moment was his boss, the very man who had turned his head and suggested the whole stupid idea.
But, like the professional salesman that he was, Howard swallowed his inner feelings and smiled heartily. "Oh, hello, Ralph. I didn't see you. Aren't you supposed to be home now?"
"Hah, hah, home is where the heart is," came the answer, "and tonight I felt that I should see how my friend is doing. And you are my friend, you know, as well as my star salesman." He chuckled again. "Besides, Norma's got a bridge club meeting going on at the house. My heart is certainly not out for any of her friends."
"Oh." Howard shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Not much going on tonight, I'm afraid."
"Can't expect much, not on a weekday night in between paydays. I sometimes wonder whether it's worth staying open." He sighed, looking out the window at the rows of gleaming cars and then beyond, at the all but deserted main street. "Everybody's home in bed or at my house, playing cards."
"Uh-huh." Howard tried to think of some work to do; anything so he could look busy and have an excuse not to talk. There was nothing; he'd finished the paper, and all he could do was sit.
"Like I said, boy, how do you think it will go?"
Howard felt his face color. "I… I don't know."
"What? After three years you can't figure on how your wife will react?"
"It isn't that, Ralph." Here we go again, back in the same embarrassed, defensive position I was earlier. God, I must look stupid to him… "It's just that Cindy's not all that experienced. I mean, there's a lot of difference between three years and ten." Good… throw it back on him…
Ralph laughed. "Got a point there. Norma was the same way, just like I told you. Shy as the dickens. That's why I'm telling you how to work it, my boy, because I found out the hard way." He leaned over, his breath heavy of cigar and bourbon. "Tell you what. Why don't you close up the lot and we'll go have a drink. We can talk man-to-man, and I'll give you a few more pointers."
The last thing I need now is a few pointers from him, Howard thought, but he knew it would be useless to argue. "All right," he said, feigning joviality. "Take me just a minute."
"Good, good."
A few minutes later the two of them were in Ralph's car, a one-year old Cadillac recently put on the lot and which he'd taken a liking to. Until it was sold, that is, and then he'd pick another big, pretentious car. Howard stared out the window. He thought that they would have walked up to the corner and the little neighborhood tavern, but instead Ralph had "suggested" (the suggestion a command in this instance) that they go downtown to a cocktail lounge in Morriston's fancy and plush hotel, the Constantinople. He felt acutely uncomfortable, as though again he was getting into more than he bargained for, but there wasn't any way he could see of getting out of it. But one drink or two wouldn't make any difference, could it? Besides, he could use it, he told himself; he had a bad case of the jitters at the thought of what he'd done and the storm that might be waiting for him when he got home.
A very irate and indignant wife, that's what. He shut his eyes, trying to blot out the thought.
Ralph found a parking place near the hotel. "Here we are, my boy." There seemed to be a wicked gleam in his eye, thought his salesman, and the way he's rubbing his hands together! The only time Howard had seen his boss do that was after the closing of a deal, when a customer had been badly overcharged or loaded with a lemon. Again, the nagging doubts as to "stopping for a drink" entered Howard's thoughts, but he went along, through the revolving door, into the deep-carpeted lobby.
The hotel's lounge was called The Arabian Knight, and was decorated in a mock Byzantine opulence not at all like Constantinople or Arabia in their most wicked days, but more like a Hollywood dream sequence of what life should have been back then. A pert waitress passed among the quite large crowd, dressed in a harem costume of spangled bra and pantaloons. The pantaloons were see-through gossamer, a wide triangle of gold coins woven together acting as the covering of her pubic area. She had long hair, similar to Cindy's long black, and an exciting, provocative wiggle which in spite of himself made Howard look.
Ralph's eyes were fastened on her, drawn to the rotating buttocks like air to a broken vacuum. "Hot damn!" the manager exclaimed. "She gets better looking every time I come in here!"
The waitress came over to the table where they were sitting. She smiled perfunctorily at Howard, and grinned at Ralph; she was obviously acquainted with him. Howard had the odd thought pass through him of how well? Ralph said: "Double bourbons."
"Ralph, I…" Howard started to protest.
"Come on, my boy. The night's young, and the drinks are on me." He winked at the waitress. "She looks damned tempting, doesn't she, Howie?"
The girl stuck her tongue out in mock pique, then took her tray and walked off, her rear end twitching provocatively. Ralph laughed, as much at her as at Howard's embarrassment. Howard knew now he was right; he was over his head again, and Ralph was an over-powering force, a person he couldn't hope to cope with.
The drinks appeared quickly and again the waitress swished her thighs and jiggled her full, barely contained breasts. This time Ralph leaned over and patted her buttocks lightly. The scent of sex was suddenly strong in the air, and trembling, Howard picked up his drink and downed it before he realized how strong and how full it was. He exploded with the burning heat in his throat and stomach, reaching for the water back.
"Another!" crowed Ralph, laughing loudly at Howard's coughing. "And one for me!" He gulped his drink as though it was lemonade.
Another round appeared beside Howard before he'd fully recovered from the last. He vowed to keep it there on the table, but somehow he was sipping it every time Ralph raised his glass to his lips, and that was often. Got to watch it… can't get drunk… not with Ralph… not with Cindy waiting at home for me…
"Here's a toast, Howie," Ralph said on the third double. "To the only man I've known in the car business who I can trust. Yes sir, you're interested in getting ahead, but by sticking with me, not stabbing me in the back."
Howard was stunned. He realized that the bourbon was getting to Ralph – was getting to him, too, by the way the room was starting to lose its clarity – but he never bargained on hearing such strong praise. It made him feel important and proud. He vowed that he would never go against Ralph, that his manager could always count on him. He raised his glass. "That's right," he said, his tongue rolling around the words. "I'm for you one hunn'er'pershent." He blinked. "Hundred percent," he repeated.
"Heh, heh," Ralph chortled at nothing in particular and clinked glasses. "Here's to us, the swinger and the prude!"
Howard suddenly froze. "Wh… what? Me, a prude?"
"No offense, my boy," Ralph beamed. "I'm a live'r, and you? Well, let's just say that you're a little too much of a stuffed shirt at times."
The waitress appeared with another double shot. It was over-full, the bartender knowing good customers when he saw them and wanting them to stay. What the hell is this bourbon? Howard thought, his head swimming, high octane aviation fuel? Then he saw Ralph stroke the waitress's thigh with loving fingers.
"Got to hand it to you," he admitted in a sudden pang of realization that what Ralph was saying was all too true. "Got to be honest and admit it. I am conservative." He had trouble with the word, instead pronouncing it, "coservative".
"Don't let it worry you, Howie, my boy," Ralph said. "In time you'll loosen up a bit." He leaned forward, almost hitting the glasses of bourbon, and said conspiratorially to Howard, "Now, for instance, tonight, if I were you, I would go home and have nothing to do with the little woman."
"I… I don't follow."
"You're worried about how Cindy will react to those pictures, right?" Ralph didn't wait for an answer but went on. "Well, do what I did. Don't touch her. Don't fuck her for three days. Hell, make it four!" he said expansively. "She'll want it then, and all the time those pictures will be on her mind, and she won't be able to get them out of her thoughts, seeing all those wild couples doing it and not her. Got me?"
"Yes, but…"
"Now that doesn't mean you have to go without a little ass. I'm not, that's for sure. We're going to get some fun, that's what we're going to do."
"No!" Howard cried, jerking backwards. He suddenly caught on to what his boss had in mind. Another woman! To be unfaithful to Cindy! The whole idea was ridiculous! Unthinkable! "No! I couldn't do that!"
"Damnit, sure you can! You're a man, aren't you?" Ralph's sudden snarl turned into a tone of conciliation. "The trouble with you is that you were raised as a Puritan, my boy, where sex is considered a sin unless for making kids. It's not, and never has been. Sex is good, clean fun and a hot experience whenever and wherever it can be had. And it can't take away any of your love for your wife. I love Norma; love her very much, but we're not exclusive possessions of one another. I…"
Ralph suddenly stopped his talk, and was looking over across the still crowded cocktail lounge. "Ah," he said. "Here they come."
"Who?" Howard asked, afraid he knew already.
"Our fun for tonight," Ralph said with a wink. Howard's mind tumbled crazily from Ralph's strong words of wisdom, his explicitly stated faith in his salesman, and the strong drink. He stared over his shoulder at the two women who were approaching the table. He wanted to get up… to run home and bury his head in his wife's breasts and forget what was happening… but it was as if he had grown roots to the chair.
"Now don't let me down, my boy," Ralph whispered. "I'm counting on you."
Counting oil you… counting on you… the words burned home. The women were now at the table, and Ralph made room for one, a short, highly developed brunette in a thin sheath. Howard suddenly found a tall, lithe blond haired girl beside him, her luminous green eyes sparkling and her tightly encased buttocks against his. "Hi," she said musically, "I'm Bonnie."
"He… hello," Howard replied. "My name's Howard."
"Call him Howie," Ralph said. "And this here's Linda."
"Pleased to meet you, Howie," Linda said, smiling. "Where's my 'laughing widow', Ralph?"
Ralph snapped his fingers and gave the waitress an order for two more double bourbons and two "laughing widows". Howard asked what the hell a laughing widow was and Bonnie giggled, explaining that it was three dashes of bitters, one part gin, two parts vodka, and a pearl onion. Howard grimaced, which caused more laughter.
They fell into easy conversation, far easier than Howard had thought possible. Both girls were witty, intelligent people, both divorced, and both had jobs as "models". Neither girl was anything except vague about their work, preferring to talk about what the men did. This, in spite of the fact it was obvious that Ralph was on intimate terms with Linda. Howard had an awful suspicion just how intimate, too. The drinks came, Howard sampled the "laughing widow" and promptly handed it back, and then there was another round… and another…
"Gee," Linda said at one point, "I'm sure glad you could take care of my friend Bonnie, tonight, Ralph. Like I said, since she's new in town, we had to come together or not at all. Sure nice you had a dream-boat of a friend like Howie-baby."
Howard reacted with pure horror. Even in his now liquor fogged mind he was able to see clearly that this had all been a trap, a gigantic plot by Ralph right from the very first to suck him down here, get him drunk, and palm off this Bonnie so that he could make time with Linda. Yet, as he looked at the flashing eyes and enticing young all-woman next to him, he suddenly wasn't mad at his boss. What the hell; everybody was having a good time, weren't they? No harm done…
There was another round, and then Linda said, "Well, let's get the show on the road, fellows. We've got to get our beauty sleep."
At first Howard thought that was the signal to break up the evening and say good-night to the girls. But he was wrong. Oh, so wrong. He found himself linked arm-in-arm with Bonnie, walking out of The Arabian Knight, across the lobby and into the elevator. He looked around confusedly. "What?" he said when Bonnie said something to him.
"I said, the party's going to move to my room now, Howie-baby. Just a private party, for us two!"
"But… but what about Ralph?"
She giggled. "They'll be right next door if Howie-baby needs help. I heard that this was your first time, but…" and here she paused, breathing hotly and wetly into his ear,"… but I don't think that you're going to need any help at all. I can tell you want me."
Wild-eyed he looked at Ralph for help, but Ralph was pressing Linda against the otherwise deserted elevator car, kissing her hotly… and Linda was kissing back with the same ardor! Numb, he staggered from the car and down the hall, his mind screaming for him to stop, but his will to resist was eroded beyond comprehension. As Bonnie put her key in the door lock, he cried out hoarsely, "Ralph! I-I I…!"
"Remember what I said downstairs, my boy," came the dark almost ominous reply. "Remember about sticking with me and going places, and about the fun which can be had. I paid for both of them, my boy… now don't let me down. Show her – and me – that you're a real man!"
With that, Howard was propelled inside the room and the door shut by Bonnie. He was alone… in a strange hotel room with… with a whore! But as he sat on the bed, staring weakly up at this beautiful prostitute, Howard had to admit that she was one hell of a woman, bought for or not. She exuded pure animal sex, and he had to admit it would be sort of tempting to take her in his arms and kiss her, love her up a bit… oh, nothing more. He wouldn't fuck her or anything, but Lord, it would be nice to kiss those cherry-red lips, caress her breasts to hardness…
He felt his cock jerk into instant rigidity as if it were alive and independent of him. He tried to will it limp again, to banish the lewd thoughts swirling in his bourbon-filled head, but it remained throbbingly swollen. Guiltily, he looked away.
Bonnie chuckled. "Howie-baby's got a hardon." She was smiling at his bulging pants. "Howie-baby's got a great big hard-on because he knows he's going to fuck me…"
Howard had never heard a woman talk in such lascivious language. "Bonnie… cut it out, for Christ's sake!"
"You're going to fuck me, fuck me, fuck me…" She came to him, and her breath was like a white-hot firebrand on his cheek. She touched his knee lightly, her fingers almost searing the cloth, and then she reached higher, higher… and touched the throbbing protuberance down between his legs!
"Ohhh God!" he managed to breathe, almost leaping off the bed in a convulsing reaction. He could feel his testicles ache with a sudden pressure of sperm, and will as he may, he couldn't pull away from her caresses. Her tongue trailed over his cheek, searching for his mouth, and her hand continued to rub his uncomfortably swollen penis.
"It's purely physical," she droned on, mesmerically, hypnotically. "You want to get your big cock into my wet pussy, and I want it, too…"
"I… I love my wife," he protested weakly.
"Sure you do, Howie-baby. All of them do. But that doesn't have anything to do with us, with here and now, with fucking."
This is wrong! his tortured mind screamed. I'm a married man… what would Cindy say? I can't go through with it…! He wrenched himself off the bed, his heart hammering, and he was aware that his prick was still granite-hard and seeping hot droplets of excited lubrication. He had to compose himself! To somehow make an excuse and leave, Ralph or no Ralph…
Bonnie's husky voice whispered, "Howie-baby…"
He turned, gathering the courage to reject her, but then the words froze in his throat. His mouth hinged open and his eyes bulged.
She stood before him, stripped completely naked!
The lovely prostitute had unhooked the one article of clothing, her dress, and it lay puddled at her feet. Neither panties or bra were evident, and as he gazed transfixed at her white sculpted body, he could see she didn't need any artificial supports. She smiled at him, the tip of her wet, pink tongue showing. The hair-lined lips of her cuntal valley were displayed for him like an Aztec sacrifice, the golden down glistening lusciously in the pale glow of the hotel light. Her high, perfectly rounded breasts, startlingly alabaster white against the tan of her other parts, jutted out like ruby-crested mountains, and her long, slender legs seemingly trembled with her desires.
"Well, lover? You like what you see? Would you like to kiss me? Here?" Her hands had moved to her golden triangle, and when she said "here", her fingers blazed a trail down through the soft, pink lips of her vagina and spread them slowly, slowly apart, revealing the tiny trembling bud of her erect clitoris. She began to stroke it back and forth, round and round.
It was a lust maddening sight to Howard. The thought of kissing, of licking her sweet young pussy set his prick into a wild dance. "Bonnie… please," he moaned, his breath all but stopped.
"And I'll kiss your cock, Howie-baby. I want to kiss and suck your cock… I love to suck cock, did you know that?" On and on she went, and the one sure way of building Howard to a point where he couldn't say no, couldn't leave this whore, had been used. He'd been denied oral love by his wife… and he had wanted to feel the soft down of a woman's pussy as it opened to his mouth with lusting desire… if only his wife understood that, wanted his kisses, his tongue, his cock in her mouth… oh, God! He could feel his swollen penis palpitate wildly.
He had to have her! He suddenly didn't care about his Cindy, about his adulterousness with a whore, about anything! The only important thing was the billowing heat in his genitals, and the desire to suck and be sucked! Yes, he had to have her! Yes! Yes!
As if somehow spirit-free from his body he watched himself unfasten his belt and remove his clothing, dumping them wherever they happened to fall. He stood before her as she stood before him, his thick, bursting shaft standing out at right angles.
"Oh, it's lovely," Bonnie crooned in ecstasy. "Just as I knew it would be." She walked to the bed, the very motion a sensual experience and lay down on the cover. "Come here, Howie-baby," the voluptuous young whore purred, "let me suck you off!"
Howard came to her, and the next thing he knew he was writhing beside her, feet-to-head, and Bonnie's fingers scratching lightly over his cock, her expert lips kissing his legs, belly, and inner thighs, building him to still higher a fever pitch.
"God! Hurry!" Howard groaned, not sure he could keep the boiling semen inside his testicles another moment. "Hurry!"
As if in obeyance, Bonnie plunged her head forward and Howard felt the incredible hot moistness of her lips close butter-like over the sensitive head of his cock, felt her searing tongue licking tiny circles of fire around it. Sighing, completely enraptured in the exquisite manipulations, Howard moved toward her, and buried his face in her cunt. There was a sudden jerk of contracted muscles in the excited prostitute, and she pressed closer to his mouth. The very abandonment, the complete capitulation to sensuality by this whore overwhelmed him and blotted out all thoughts except the delicious debauchery of which he was a willing partner.
Bonnie, the practiced professional that she was, tasted the piquancy of his fevered secretions hungrily, twirling her tongue faster and faster. Then she began to suck him rhythmically, with full expertise of a woman in love with her work. Howard looked up once and watched her convoluted, lipstick rimmed lips ripple up and down his hardened shaft, watched the soft skin of her mouth pucker outward and then back in as she sawed the full entirety of his penis. Never had he envisioned such an erotic sight! And he was aroused still more and his loins tensed and jerked upwards into her face all the fleshy expanse disappearing with each hard forward thrust so that only a small stretch of it showed white and glistening with the saliva between her lips.
He returned to her soft, hair fringed cunt and drew her firm rounded buttocks down over his mouth so that he was sunk nose-deep in the soft-rimmed vagina. He held her tightly with both hands on her buttocks, thrusting his own tongue up teasingly between the tender fleshy folds. He heard her gasp and renew her nibblings with frenzied motion. Her pussy contracted and opened around his mouth, and then he moved his hands down and opened her still wider and began to curl and flick his tongue at the smoothness of her pearl-white back-side. He sucked and licked while she swayed above him, completely out of control, her built flowering open wider and her secretions mingling with his saliva and rivuleting down his cheeks.
He could feel her muscles cord as he worked slave-like, and then he plunged to her clitoris, sucking and biting it tenderly, his tongue reaming the sensuous little button while she churned and writhed in a lewd dance of desire above him. Howard sensed she was straining to cum, her mouth and cheeks sucking wildly at his penis as she bucked and arched both her back and head in an uncontrollable quaking of body. Her breasts danced as she sucked voraciously, her pumping mouth making the pressure spiraling to a final, huge release of his building semen.
And then…
"UUUUMMMMMMMMM!" came the irrefutable cry of her climax and the warm, pungent milk of her softly pulsating pussy spread hotly across his face. She screamed out her orgasm, though her mouth was still sucking hungrily at his deep-thrusted cock, and she snaked her heels against his shoulders and rubbed her fervently heaving cunt in an uncontrolled, tormented surge.
Then…
All at once he too felt the eruption of fire leap along his penis. He gasped as though in agony, and then his cock began a wild, convulsive jerking that flooded without advance warning the vivacious whore's maddenly bobbing mouth with rush after rush of boiling sperm, bloating her cheeks and forcing her to swallow wildly to keep from choking. Then as quickly as it had started, there was one final spurt and he lay back, half unconscious over the power of his release.
Still the girl sucked ravenously at his lust juices, milking every last drop of the hot gushing male ambrosia until at last, his penis jerked softly and slowly deflated in the warm, sperm-filled cavern of her mouth. She slid her lips from his cock with one last swallow, and cradled her face to his still throbbing groin.
"How was that, lover?" she murmured appreciatively.
He could only sigh in contentment for an answer. He knew that he should feel guilty now, but the stirrings of remorse and shame were not forthcoming. He only felt like a satisfied, virile male, one who had satisfied a woman as well. He felt a certain power, a certain pride in the fact that here, now, he had proven that his desire for oral sex had been right, and not something darkly evil as his wife seemed to think.
His wife. The thought of Cindy echoed in his mind, and a small part of his brain tried to make the self-depredation come; but he fought the thoughts away and he simply lay there, taking in the musk of the young prostitute's body perfume and the permeating odor of their consummated lust.
He felt Bonnie stir then, and suddenly she was on all fours and beside him, smiling down in his face. She said, "I'm going to teach you things you never knew existed, Howie-baby." She leaned down and kissed him tenderly, the taste of his semen still on her mouth. "Would you like that?"
He ran his tongue across his lips. Already there were faint stirrings in his limp penis, displacing any fears of not being able to get another erection. "Yes… yes I'd like that!"
"Good." She stretched out and snuggled in the protection of his arms. "It'll be wonderful, Howie-baby. I promise!"
Howard had the strong, erotic sensation that she was good at keeping her word. He wasn't wrong…
Howard slipped his house key into the door lock and quietly stepped into his living room. All the lights were out; good. He had taken his shoes off on the porch and now he padded in his stocking feet across the room and into the hall… no sound came from the bedroom; good. He stopped, waiting in the still, black silence of his home, but there was only the faint and regular pattern of heavy breathing, and Howard took this to mean his wife was asleep.
He didn't know that she was feigning slumber, that actually she was very much awake, lost in a troubled, agonizing hell of self-loathing. She lay shivering under the covers, hoping that her husband wouldn't want to make love to her tonight – which was the reason behind the act, for that way Howard wouldn't wake her up – for she felt horribly ashamed, and disgusted at her inability to control her own carnal instincts.
No, Howard was unaware of his wife's true condition, but in his own way he was glad that she was "asleep" and hadn't waited up for him, perhaps to have sexual relations, or worse – to berate him for the lewd pictures and paper he'd left behind. Not now, not after three hours of wild, abandoned sexual games with that nymphomaniac whore, Bonnie. He was satiated completely, in a state of absolute contentment, and in no mood either to argue heatedly with a distraught wife nor try and explain why he couldn't get another erection. Christ! After that Bonnie, he'd be lucky to raise another hard-on in a week!
He went into the bathroom to undress, closing the door so that the light wouldn't bother Cindy in the bedroom. Quickly he stripped his clothes off, not as fast as he had done for Bonnie and this time hanging them on hooks.
He stepped into the shower and let the needle spray wash off the fragrant, tell-tale perfume of his indiscretions, the odors of mutual lovemaking which would be readily identified by his wife. He thought about Bonnie, the lovely, enticing whore, and although the light-headed joy of his repast with her didn't fade, the act of cleansing himself seemed to also add some sense of regret.
Howard stepped from the shower, mixed of emotion. No longer was he "Howie the Innocent"; no, he was "Howie the Swinger" now, and he vowed that he was going to continue to play the modern role – like Ralph. Yet, there but a few feet from him was his loving, faithful wife, whom he loved very deeply. He sighed. If only she was more open, more abandoned like Bonnie had been. Well, there was only one thing to do about it. Make her understand too that there was more to sex than just climbing on and climbing off!
He toweled himself briskly, his mind made up. Yes, the acquiescent Howard was in the past, and he was going to show her a more forceful, more worldly husband from hereon in. At first she might not like it, he had to admit, but she would soon see that he was right. And Howard knew just how he was going to accomplish this "education" of his lovely, innocent wife – by following Ralph's advice!
He was going to go ahead with the pictures! He was going to use the Polaroid again to take more shots! Wilder ones! Ones with him in them, too, perhaps even showing his cock fucking her! His penis trembled anew and he moaned lightly as he dreamed of all the combinations he was going to do with his wife. But he knew in order to accomplish this task, he would have to handle things diplomatically, to use all of the tricks of his salesmen's trade.
Yes, that was it. To wait and bide his time… no more sudden confrontations like last night when he'd lost his cool… he would broach the subject just as if he was selling a car on the lot, only this sale would be far more important!
He walked into the bedroom and slid under the sheets. He turned over and placed his arm over his wife's back. Tenderly, with all the emotion of his devotion for her, he vowed to turn her into a completely sexually emancipated woman… like the people in the photos were… like Ralph and his wife, Norma, and all the others of the Polaroid Club were.