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For the hungry mouth descended directly to her clit The thin lips closed softly around it. And the hungry, rasping tongue went to work on it with a wildness that shocked her to the core. The mouth hardened; the tongue flicked rapidly up and down the length of the little tube of flesh; the lips closed in a thousand wet, purposeful kisses on the very head of it. Nan's body shook in a dozen wild convulsions; screams shattered the air, from an unrecognizable voice she yet knew to be her own; and her bare heels drummed on the girl's back.

Now, in response to her own body's ecstasy, the girl stepped up her attack. Now she abandoned herself to the thrill of her domination of Nan Mikell's body, and used her own pink hands, tipped with clear nail polish, to open Nan wide. And her head bobbed awkwardly np and down as the licks grew longer and more avid.

The wet, slightly rough tongue flattened, and dipped all the way down her wildly aroused body to lap at the tightly clenched buttocks, tickling the flesh around her spasming anus, before licking slowly and with abandon all the whole length of Nan Mikell's wide-open vagina and rasping deliciously along the hard little head of her clit. And the action was repeated. Again and again. And the motion of the voracious mouth and tongue grew faster and more fervid, and the sound of it grew wetly audible, and Nan's body shook with spasm after spasm…until…

"Oh, God!" she said. "Oh, no…no…NOOOoo!"

Her body relaxed; her brown feet fell softly on the girl's back. Her arms fell akimbo. Helga kissed her softly on the lips of her closing slit, once, twice, and, smiling softly, looked up at her. The strange, regretful smile played across her lips again. "Now…she said, "now I go."

She sat back on her heels and looked at Nan Mikell who, exhausted, unable to move, regarded her with mixed feelings. The girl's lips and chin were smeared wetly with the musky-smelling juices of Nan Mikell's own body; she wiped her face with the back of one hand. How lovely she was! How delicately beautiful the curve of her chin, the sweet bow of her thin lips.

How could she not have noticed earlier? "H-Helga, she found herself saying hoarsely.

"I go now," said the girl. She stood up, not ungracefully, the strange smile still on her face.

"No," Nan Mikell said weakly. "No, don't…" But her hands did not rise to stop her, her voice carried no conviction. She lay, still passive, looking at the girl. She felt as limp, as emptied of volition to move, to affect the world about her in any way, as a puppet whose strings had been cut. Very well, she thought-this new half of her who coldly watched the after effects of what had just happened, disclaiming all responsibility for what had happened. Very well, let the girl go back to her duties. We will call her when we want her…

And all the time Nan Mikell, the one who lived and breathed and felt, and whose heart went out to the girl, sat and watched, unable to move a muscle.

"I will leave an address for Mrs. Johnson," Helga said, looking down at her (did her eyes sweep lustily across her still-naked body? Lingering on her crotch again?) with that wistful and enigmatic smile. "Where she can send the check."

"Check?" said Nan Mikell.

"Yes," said Helga, a firmer note in her voice. "I not work here any more." There was a wryly understanding twist to the corners of her pretty mouth. "I not whore."

"You…"

"I am servant, yes. Or I am lover, yes. Not both together, you see. You pay servant. You love lover. See? You choose. Not both." There was a sadly disappointed look in the blue eyes. "You agree? You understand?"

Nan Mikell looked at her. She still had not made any move to sit up. It was as if something were stopping her. "N-no, I don't understand," she said. "Won't you…stay?"

"Why I stay?" the girl said. "You make love to me? You want make love to me? No. You not want to give self to me. You not want to give serf to any person, man or woman. I stay, you pay me, I become whore." The smile was sad; perhaps a little hurt

Yet Nan Mikell still made no move to stop her. "You not want to love anyone. You want be loved, not love back." She sighed. "Goodbye, Frau Mikell." And she wheeled and walked with a certain admirable dignity out of the room.

Nan Mikell watched her departing steps, seeing the long, strong, firm legs under the white stockings, watching the fine muscular bulge of the taut buttocks move under the pink livery. God, she was a handsome woman! She was…

…She was gone. Nan Mikell knew she'd never see her again.

And the thought was a pang of regret that burned inside her now as she lay back, nude and exhausted, on the couch, hardly able to move a muscle. Yet she did absolutely nothing to stop her; and she had know all along that it would be this way.

Why?

What was there in her that kept shrinking away from the giving of herself? Had something in her changed? Hadn't she been a giving person before…before Ed?

The thought was sobering. She sat up now, her feet flat on the floor, looking at herself dispassionately in the mirror. Had she given in to Ed! Really?

Or had she been a disappointment to him, too?

She'd always been so slow to respond. That had been a problem. Ed could rouse her; he could…he could fuck her (yes, yes, use the word now) for quite a long while, and would take a great deal of pleasure in her growing arousal…but then he'd come, and she wouldn't, and she'd know, even as she held him and made nice little bed sounds at him afterwards while his passion subsided, that his failure (he always saw it that way: his failure, not hers; Ed was a gallant man in his way) to bring her all the way down the road to orgasm had been a thing that hung heavily on his heart.

Could she have helped him, now?

The question was another small shock to her. But it was time for the shocking question, the straight answer-as straight as she could make it

After all, she'd always kept that lovely body she now saw before her, nude but somehow sexless in the mirror, now that passion was gone…she'd always kept it in the best of shape. She'd always wanted to look pretty for Ed. He had always been quick to compliment her on her trim figure, and nights, naked and alone with him, she'd felt little chills run up and down her spine sometimes at the thought of his appreciative eyes on her body; her nipples would tingle and grow long and hard at the thought of it, and she'd feel little tinges down below.

But pretty, she knew now, staring at her own naked body in the mirror, wasn't enough. She'd failed him, again and again, leaving him to come off alone.

No! her mind said now, rebelling. She'd tried! She'd tried!

But had she?

Had she, for instance, asked him for all the things he could do for her that might have turned her on all the way for him? Or had she…dear God, she'd gone shy on him when it came to "other" ways of doing it! She remembered now. And with the first memory, all the flood of pent-up memories she'd been refusing to acknowledge since his death started coming back. And the face in the mirror became a horror-struck mask, the lovely nude body a starveling skeleton. God! Memories! What he'd wanted, she'd held back from him…even when she'd given him what he wanted, or let him do what he wanted to her, she'd given in with a bad grace, destroying his pleasure in it. How could she? How could she?

She looked at the stranger in the mirror, that strange, thin, brown naked woman with the disheveled hair and the haggard expression, and relived the past with the new, more understanding eyes her experience had given her…

Flash:

She was big and heavy and pregnant with Mickey. There came the night when she definitively decided he couldn't get on top any more, he'd hurt the baby. And she couldn't get her legs up any more. And she really wasn't in the mood tonight, she didn't really-you know?-need it tonight