San Mateo, California, was suffocating under a coat of brownish-purple smog. On the Bayshore Freeway, traffic crawled, stopped, then crawled slowly forward another fifty feet before stopping again. Horns honked. Tempers were short.
Grace Hope was aware of neither the sweltering heat nor the traffic delay. She barely listened to Judi Sprague's monologue; besides, she already knew it by heart. Judi's favorite topic was men. As far as that went, that was all Judi lived for: men!
"Well," Judi was saying in her Bronx accent as she fluffed up her hair and gazed coquettishly at the young man in the Mustang next to her car, "I told him it was no go. I mean… who did he think he was? What did he think I was? Some common street girl? So I told him, 'See here, Bill Hill. I don't care if you are the Sales Manager. I'll thank you to keep your sweaty little hands to yourself.' So he started simpering and playing Mister Nice Guy and says I have him all wrong, that he didn't mean to imply I would go to bed with him. 'All I want,' says he, 'is a female companion for the weekend at Tahoe… someone to dance with, gamble with, walk along the beach with.' So I says right back, 'Well, why didn't you say so. Ah… where is it that you plan to stay at Tahoe?' He mentions some cheap cruddy flea-trap motel, and I says 'You'd never catch me dead in that cruddy dump. How about King's Castle. He kinda goes white around the gills and I can see him thinking it's going to cost him thirty bucks a day. Finally he says he'll get reservations. So… the weekend isn't shot anyway." Judi braked suddenly, viciously honked her horn, and swore at a woman who had abruptly switched lanes in front of her. She turned to Grace and asked, "What you doing this weekend, honey?"
"Oh, I plan to wash my hair, write a few letters, and do my laundry. And I thought I'd bake some cookies for Stan."
Judi chewed her gum silently and looked sympathetic. "You heard from him lately? I mean, he's okay and everything? That cruddy Vietnam." She brightened, blinked her eyes, and dimpled as she saw the Cadillac convertible driver in the far right lane staring at them in speculation and open admiration.
Grace seemed unaware that Judi had switched her attention from Stan to the other driver. She felt her eyes misting as she thought again about Stan and what he must be going through over there. Finally she cleared her throat and said, "He's okay. Or at least he was two weeks ago. They were getting ready to go out on patrol and he said he wouldn't be able to write for a while. I haven't had a letter for five days now. Maybe," she crossed her fingers, "there'll be one tonight."
"Gee… I hope so, for your sake. It's bad enough being alone, but when you don't get any letters either, I just don't know how you stand it, honey. Why, I'd be climbing the wall within a week if I didn't have an occasional fella to talk to."
In spite of her sorrow, Grace had to fight back a grin. "Talk to," indeed! Her apartment was right next to Judi's. They shared a common balcony, and it was difficult not to overhear what went on in the next apartment. Not much talking went on when Judi had one of her boy-friends over. A lot of grunting and panting and moaning, maybe, but not much talk.
Grace knew she probably should move out of the apartment complex; to stay there was to imply that Judi's promiscuousness was acceptable. To move, though, was out of the question. The apartment had been Stan's and her only home; true, they had been married less than three months when Stan went overseas, but still it was his bed she slept in, his television she secretly shared with him during the lonely nights, his clothes in the closet. That made it bearable, that made life livable, even during those hot summer nights when the sound of hot sexual love making came from the apartment next door.
Too, Judi was truly her only friend. Grace hadn't been around San Mateo long enough to make friends with other people. Married men she avoided… like the plague! And single men? The ones she knew who were still single were either homosexuals or always on the make. No, thank you; Stan had only nine more months in Vietnam. She'd spend it alone – maybe having coffee in the mornings and an occasional beer in the later afternoons with Judi. She kept busy, that was the main thing. And best of all, she had her self-respect, her love untarnished, her memories unblemished. Topping it all off was her unexpected promotion to Office Manager of Austin Motor Sales. Not bad for a twenty-three-year-old girl just recently from Butte, Montana. All she needed to make life complete now was Stan to come back to her.
Traffic suddenly lessened at the 280 Interchange, and Judi's Volkswagen picked up speed. Five minutes later, the little bug darted under the carport of the San Mateo Polynesian Gardens apartment complex. Although they were now parked in the shade, the heat was more intense than ever.
Judi slammed the car door and made no effort to pull down her mini-skirt which had slid up to the point where her powder blue bikini panties were plainly visible. She fanned herself with a newspaper and grimaced. "God, it's hot. I'm going for a swim. How about you?"
Grace nodded. The pool would be heavenly. Best of all, the running, screaming kids who usually flocked like wild birds around it during the late afternoons, would all be in having dinner.
Judi disappeared, heading upstairs to her apartment. Grace lost no time in going around front to the column after column of bronze mail boxes shining dully in the sun. The heat was forgotten as the key was inserted. "Please… please!" she silently prayed, "let there be a letter from Stan."
The metal door fell open to reveal three white envelopes hiding in the cubicle. She didn't need to look at the addresses; she knew from the shape of the envelope that all three were from Stan. She hugged them to her breast as though she were protecting gold nuggets and ran upstairs. It seemed to take an eternity to open the door, but then the refreshing wave of coolness rushed out of the apartment and engulfed her. Kicking the door shut behind her, Grace headed for the bedroom, tossing her purse on the couch as she passed. Then, unmindful of her dress, she threw herself across the bed and picked up the first letter. With impatient fingers she ripped open the first envelope and read:
Darling,
Today we returned from patrol and now I have three days to do nothing but think of you. (And do all the paper work that has accumulated, and sit in on a court martial of a kid in the 101st who was caught smoking pot on guard duty, and lecture the men on keeping their weapons clean, and make sure none of my men get caught in off-limits places, and… so on.) But mainly, through it all, I'll think of you.
It was the oddest thing. Last night I called a halt to our activities and we settled down for the evening on the banks of the Mekong. It was horribly hot, the bugs were really chewing away on us, and the humidity was high enough to take a shower in it. The moon came up and then, through the trees, I saw the light dancing on the waters. All of a sudden I wasn't in Vietnam any longer. I was on the banks of the Spence, and you and I were lying there watching the moon come up. Do you remember? That was the night…
It was as though Grace had unexpectedly taken a ride on a flying carpet. Suddenly she was back in Montana. It all came back to her. She wasn't lying on her bed, but on the white sandy banks of the Spence River. The river made soft sucking sounds as it nuzzled the tree roots hanging over the bank. Frogs and crickets croaked and chirped their love songs in the blackness of the night. Overhead, the stars gazed down in approval at Grace and Stan's nude bodies.
Grace had known instinctively that Stan was going to ask her to be intimate that night. She had fought him off long enough, she decided. Now she no longer cared or had the strength to fight. She wanted it as much as he did. And, after all, the marriage was scheduled for the following weekend. They had come so close so many times. There had been nights when they had actually lain completely nude together in the back seat of his father's Chrysler station wagon, their hands and fingers running all over each other's body. She had stroked him to fulfillment several times with her hand curled warmly around his hardened penis, and minded not that his hot impatient love liquid had spurted all over her. Always though, she had resisted any penetration, wanting to save it until their wedding night. Stan wasn't a virgin, and that didn't matter to her. What Stan had done before he met her was his business; what he did after their engagement was announced was all that mattered to her.
Lying there with him that night, their nude bodies rapidly drying in the warm air, Grace knew that tonight she would not resist if he insisted again. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly that she actually hurt inside with a pain that was intractable.
With a low moan, Stan rolled over on his side and propped himself up on his elbow staring at her in the dimness of the Montana night.
"What's wrong?" Grace asked, knowing exactly what was troubling him.
Stan didn't answer for a second, then in reply he merely took her hand and placed it on his erect and throbbing penis.
"That's what is wrong," he said, his voice hoarse with desire.
Beneath her fingers, Grace marveled once again at the feeling of his hardened penis in her hand. There was an awesome power there, a living viable thing that seemed to have a heart and mind of its own. She could feel the hard fleshy ridges of its length, the soft rubbery hardness of its head. Tentatively, her hand enclosed the trunk and she began gentle little movements – feeling the flesh move but not the instrument itself. It was as though the flesh covered a warm flexible steel rod. Stan moaned with the touch of her hand, then his mouth found hers. Their tongues fought a heated battle for supremacy before he, with a strength and near viciousness that she had never experienced in him before, jammed his tongue half way down her throat. He kept it there, and it seemed to her that his body had tensed as though he were trying to say something to her. He moved closer to her and now she found it difficult to continue the stroking movements because of the proximity of their two bodies.
After a moment, though, Stan seemed to relax somewhat. He pulled his mouth away and began kissing her neck, her shoulders, her ears. Breathlessly, she waited for his mouth to find her breasts. She liked that almost best of all. It was a terribly sensual thing when his lips enclosed her nipples, when his teeth bit into her breast… not painfully, but gently. Tonight, though, for the first time, Stan did not stop at her breasts. His tongue continued its excursion over the virginal flatlands of her abdomen. She was so lost in the wonder of his tongue, the fabulous trail of pure feeling it was leaving behind, that she didn't realize for a moment that he had reached the softly curling strands of her pubic hair.
Abruptly, Grace became aware of his intentions. All of her moral upbringing suddenly was screaming at her. She knew what Stan was about to do; after all, it was mentioned in most of the marriage manuals. And, in spite of the approval voiced in a couple of the books, there were several other authorities who referred to the act as "perverted".
"No, darling… you mustn't," she said, rolling away from him.
"Why not?" he groaned, his voice guttural with desire.
"Because."
"I'd like to do that to you with my tongue… just once."
"No!" She couldn't be more emphatic. She felt his hands on her shoulders, gently pulling her over to face him again. He gazed down at her and she saw the puzzled expression on his face. Wordlessly then, because she didn't want to discuss it, she reached up and pulled his lips down to hers. Again there was that savage kiss… so unlike him… almost brutal in its intensity and force. She felt his hands moving freely over her abdomen, then his finger slipping along her moistened cuntal slit, bringing with it something akin to rapture – exciting, pleasurable, sensual. Grace splayed out her legs wider, giving him freer access to her now open vagina, and after a moment realized that Stan had put both knees between her wide-spread thighs and was forcing them even further apart. He pulled his mouth away from hers and croaked, "I want to fuck you."
The lewd phrase instead of repelling her only brought additional wanton excitement to her body – already aflame with desire. And, from what seemed to be a great distance, she heard her own voice responding, "Yes, darling. Do it to me! Fuck me!"
Stan looked in astonishment at her. She had always stopped him before. Then, quickly before she could change her mind, he dropped one hand down between their bodies and guided his hard, throbbing cock toward the fur lined, coral-pink pussy lips.
Grace's eyes widened as she felt, for the first time in her life, the spongy thick head of a male cock beginning to part the fleshy, desire-dampened layers of her love-starved vagina. She could feel the cock throbbing powerfully as it began sensuously stretching the hungrily quivering little outer lips.
She tensed with the first electric contact between his prick and the sensitive edges of her fevered cunt; the sensation was so powerful that she was immediately shocked out of wanton excitement and back to a realization of the awful thing she was permitting him to do. This was detestable weakness on her part. Ever since she had known Stan, she had been firm in her unswerving resolution to retain the priceless gift of her virginity until her marriage night. She didn't care what other girls did or said. It was a gift that could be given to only one man and then one time only. Her entire body stiffened, and she reached up, pushing against his chest. "No, darling," she moaned. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to now."
"Wha… what?" Stan acted as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Please, darling. No. I want to wait."
Now she could tell that he was really angry. A look of stern determination crossed his face. "You can't do that to me, besides, it's too late," he said, and pushed forward.
Grace groaned and cried out as she felt the first really harsh pressure against the tightly resisting virginal opening between her thighs, the lewd pressure grew and grew, building up to a point where it was almost intolerable.
"No… ooooohhhh, no!" she moaned loudly, trying to twist away from him. Now there was actually pain there. She felt as if someone were ripping apart her thighs, shoving a burning axe handle up into her tiny little vaginal orifice.
"Stop, Stan! You're hurting… me. Oh God, please stop," she wailed.
Stan's eyes were glazed, dimmed with lust. They stared, unfocused, at her. Suddenly, he shoved his hips forward in one vicious jerk; then with a hoarse groan, he fell forward with his powerful hairy chest crushing the softness of her ripe young breasts back into her own. At the same moment that his hips shot forward, the thick hot shaft of his implacably hardened cock slammed into the virginal pussy with all the force of a heavy lance dropped from great heights. The soft warm flesh of her vaginal walls was no match for this barbarous intruder; they were forced to give way before it, and the cock rammed into and ripped through the thin membrane of her hymen as though it were not there at all.
"Aaaaaggghhh," she screamed. She was being gored to death! His cock was stronger, sharper, more brutal than the horn of a maddened bull. Down there she was being ripped apart; she knew he had irreparably injured her… she would never be the same again! And still he continued to grind his way deeper, ever deeper into the previously secret, untouched caverns of her cunt until suddenly, with a loud groan of rapture, his scrotum clanged with all the force of a wrecking ball against the white defenselessly upturned cheeks of her tightly clenched buttocks.
"You're killing meee-eeee!" she shrieked, but Stan acted as if he had suddenly become not only blind but deaf as well.
Deep within the well of her pussy, his cock jerked once… twice.
"Aaaggghh. Don't move, darling! Please don't move!" she whimpered piteously, unable to stop the flow of tears streaming down both sides of her face. Never before in her life had she experienced such pressure, such pain anywhere in her body. She felt almost as if someone had shoved the roughness of a corn cob deep into her vagina. She was positive that he had not only ripped her hymen, but had split her entire vaginal area all the way from pelvis to anus as well. She could feel every rigid little muscle of his throbbing penis pressing, beating against her tortured cuntal walls. His mammoth cock's head seemed so far inside her that she was positive it was past her navel, and must be lodged somewhere up in the area of her breasts.
Stan lay atop her, and she could tell that he was beginning to regain some of his sanity. There was a look almost of despair on his face, as though he realized what he had just done to her. Then he groaned, "I'm sorry."
Grace stifled her sobs. It was now too late to be sorry, she thought unhappily. The deed had been done. It was as much her fault as it was his. She hurt. She hurt worse than she had ever hurt before in her life. And yet, that was part of the game, she supposed, part of the ordeal a woman must go through. She loved him, nonetheless, in spite of what he had done to her, but she had learned something new and hitherto unknown about him – he could be brutal, selfish.
"I'm sorry, Grace," he repeated, looking down in a mute appeal for forgiveness.
She loved him. She loved him. That was all that mattered. What difference did one or two nights make. She closed her eyes and nodded, then said quietly, "It's all right, darling."
Stan made his prick jerk inside her rapidly two or three times. She bore it submissively, shutting off the tortured nerve endings down there, trying to ignore the pain, wanting happiness, wanting it to feel as beautiful and as wonderful as she had heard it would be.
Slowly, gently now, he began stroking in and out of her. It was painful, but not as much as before. It seemed to take an eternity, but then within seconds she felt his pace increase and his breathing becoming rapid and ragged. She forced herself to grind her pelvis up and to meet his powerful thrusts, falsifying an enthusiasm she did not feel. And abruptly she felt the pressure increase in her already stretched beyond capacity vagina as the mushroom head of his hardened prick ballooned in size. "I'm cumming," he groaned. "Oh, Jesus… I'm cumming."
"Yes darling," she crooned seductively, wanting it to end as soon as possible. "Cum, cum up in me now."
She felt the first hot impatient spurts of his semen wildly spewing out into her womb. Then he collapsed atop her. Moments later, he had lifted his head and asked, "Did you… too?"
She lied and nodded her head. Then, weeping again, put her arms around his chest, pulled his sperm drained body back down against hers, and stared up at the black limbs of the trees gently moving back and forth in the soft night sky…
The memory evaporated and she abruptly became aware, as she gazed down at Stan's letter, that she was crying again. She read the last phrase over and over again, "My body needs yours, just as yours must need mine. Our sex life has been so great, beginning with that first night by the Spence…"
She sat up upright, feeling shame overwhelming her. She had never told him – never wanted him to know – but she never, not even once, had come close to achieving a climax. In her mind she knew positively she was one of those women who are frigid, unfeeling. And she knew, with an unshakable certainty that she would never never tell him the truth… that, instead of being "great", sex was strongly abhorrent to her…