But: "Nan, I started thinking about you in the car on the way home from the office. I got so hot I would have whacked it if the chauffeur hadn't been there. I've been dying for you all day. I've got to, you understand, honey..
"But Ed. Couldn't we just…cuddle."
"Nan, Nan. I love you, I want you."
"Yes, but… "
Here, dummy. You damned fool, her mind told her. Right here. Any woman who was a whole woman would have been so flattered, so excited, by the thought of her husband still getting hot about her when she was big and fat and ungainly, that she'd do anything, anything, to please him.
But you?
"Here. Feel this." His hand had guided her fingers to that big rod of his, pulsing, hard. And she'd blushed! Actually blushed! And she'd even tried to pull her hand away, for God's sake!
(Nan, thinking about it sobbed once and caught herself. Dear Ed! How she'd love to have him back right now! She'd do anything-anything-to please him!)
(…And the cold-eyed devil within her, cutting through her veil of hypocrisy, said back, Sure you would.)
"Nan, do something for me, darling."
"Sure I will, Ed."
"Take me in your mouth, please. Please. Now."
"In my…my mouth?"
"Yes. Suck me off. Please, Nan. I need you."
"But Ed, I…oh, you darling. All right" (See? She'd loved him; she'd done it!)
"Oh, yes…that's right…your lips around the head of it Right…now, yet please, touch my balls, now…softly, lightly…now, please, lick the bottom side of it…Oh, God, that's good…yes…yes…now take it all in, as far as you can…yes…now…" Now he was on his knees before her on the bed; her fingers guided his erect and straining rod into her mouth; his hard belly was taut before her, flat and muscular; she could feel his dear hands in her hair, caressing softly, guiding; and now his buttocks started a slow, purposeful, back-and-forth rhythm, driving the long hard rod, with the lovely big rigid head of it bulging and pulsing, in and out of her mouth like…go ahead and say it like fucking her mouth…and she'd felt her own loins getting hotter, and at the same time she'd heard the drab Polack voice inside her saying no, no, you shouldn't do it and if you should do it, you shouldn't enjoy it you got to make him pay for asking for it the dirty man. "Now…now," Ed was saying, beside himself, "now, darling, please take me, all of me, in there, and when it comes, don't spit me out don't please, just take it in and swallow me, all of me, oh God, you'll make me so happy…" And it'd grown bigger and harder in her mouth and the back-and-forth motion had grown steadier and more powerful and-
God, that was it, he was fucking her in the mouth, that was it, and it was dirty, dirty, and God would punish her, and she wasn't supposed to like it, and it was supposed to make you go crazy, swallowing that awful stuff, if you got even any of it in you it would make you sick and nuts in die head, and here he was, getting ready, and he was going to come, and he was-he was-coming in her mouth…
…And at the last split-second she'd pulled her mouth away, gagging, and it hadn't been quite in time and a big gob of the heavy stuff had gone into her mouth, and she'd gagged, and vomited all over the bed, and been sick as a dog, and she'd gone out, hating him, and slept on the bed in the guest room and not let him close to her. But she hadn't slept at all well, and she'd had dreams about it later in the night, and they'd made her so hot she'd gone back in to him and cuddled with him and said she was sorry. But she hadn't made him feel all right about it And he'd never tried it again…
Flash:
"…No, Ed, please, don't you don't want to kiss me there…I mean, please, Ed, darling, I love you, but… "
Flash:
"Ed! No! Please! Not back there. That…Oh, its stretching me, oh, it hurts, it hurts, Ed…
(But it had hurt good-it had, indeed, and when she thought it all out later, it made her hot thinking about it. His-his…dick…up her ass-hole…Oh, God.
Oh, God, don't punish me for wanting it, for wanting him to do that thing even if it's bad and dirty…)
But had she ever brought it up again? Had she ever let him know it'd be all right if he tried it again?
(Filthy! Dirty! Exciting…)
And, now, sitting here alone in a post-coital gloom, looking, flat-eyed, unhappy, at the naked body that suddenly seemed not so pretty, not so inviting, she knew precisely what she thought about Ed and his "other ways" of doing it. She'd give a million dollars to have him right there beside her now, making her own flesh glow with his bright, warm, lusty thoughts about her undeserving body, and she knew she'd give him anything he wanted with a glad heart, and she'd learn to love all of it and to let everything he wanted, no matter how freaky, turn her on-all the way-and she'd make him feel happy about the way he felt about her. She would! She would…
…Oh, God, she'd eat that big dick of his now. Dick. Cock. Prick. Lovely, filthy, shit words, dirty words. They're words of love, you damned fool! Enjoy them. Savor them. Lovely dirtiness. Dirtiness that makes you feel good, dirtiness that makes love.
God, she'd suck him off! She'd tease that big cock of his until he couldn't stand it, and when he started fucking her in the mouth she'd open up her throat and take him all the way down until she had hair in her teeth, and when he came she'd swallow it all down gladly, hungrily, and thank God she had a good man's mouthful of come to swallow…
But Ed was dead, and it was too late. She sat there, letting the awful truth sink in again, looking at her naked body, this whole year unwanted, unused…until today…
Nan Mikell sat up straight, looking herself in the eye. "Better get it together, sister," she said. "I'm about to take you for the ride of your life."
Chapter 4
There was a strange inconsistency in Nan Mikell's actions the next few days; it thoroughly rattled her staff and those of her husband's business associates who dropped by from time to time to ask her opinion on matters of interest, and by the end of the week her secretary, Mills-inherited, like everything else, from Ed and still more attuned to the dead man's ways than to his widow's-was seriously considering giving notice.
Under the mask of bravado she wore so determinedly, though, Nan understood their confusion thoroughly, and sympathized with it. The experience was unsettling to her, too-perhaps to her most of all. After all half of her was still the timid soul, used to passively going along with Whatever Was Expected and swallowing her reservations about the strange and the new. This was hard to reconcile with the egotistical new creature inside her which kept goading her onward, insisting: Try it! Experience! Throw caution to the winds! And the two halves of her fought each other bitterly for control. Well into the next week, Nan sat at her desk with a seat pile of bills before her, signing checks. And, as suddenly as ever, she felt the goad.
What does a man want? She asked herself. In bed?
Was it all the…the kinky things? The mouth stuff? (No, no! the voice inside her said. Use the words! The right words!)
All right, she said. Would it please a man better to have her…suck him off? To put his cock in her mouth and…and fuck her that way?
Wouldn't it be more fun for him if she learned to do it right? To make a delicious teasing game out of it at first-the way Helga had with her (and here she felt a sharp pang of regret, coupled with an eager sensation between her thighs)? And then increase the intensity of the experience, perhaps, a Utile at a time? Again, as Helga had done. (Oh, God! her hand went to her crotch, remembering. It was wet and sticky.) And then…and then…
(Well, why not find out, dummy?)
She reversed the pen and drummed lightly on the desk top, her eyes staring unfocusedly at the wall. Yes, she thought Why not? But…but not around here. Not with all the ghosts this place held for her. With the giant domineering, and certainly disapproving presence of Ed haunting the place for her so that every experience she had referred, inevitably, back to Ed and what he might think, just as her childhood experiences had always referred back to the rigidly Catholic household she'd been born to, with its fiercely inhibiting web of shibboleths and taboos… No. She'd have to get away.