Chapter 1

Leaning forward on the rear seat of the taxicab, the tall statuesque blonde woman kneaded her handbag with nervous fingers and stared out at the familiar and yet strange streets and buildings of Westridge--a town in which she had been born thirty--six years before, and which she had not seen in five years.

Her name was Bette Clark, and she was a beautiful poised woman with the ripe figure of a young girl: her breasts high and proud and perfectly rounded, showed no sign of sagging, and her thighs, visible where the hem of her short, ice-blue dress hiked up, were firm and tanned, tapering into dimpled knees and slender ankles. Her hips, small and boyish and yet curved provocatively, moved involuntarily on the seat in her agitated state, and she kept moistening full, naturally pink lips with the tip of her small, wet tongue. Her face was soft and lovely, free of age lines, and yet it contained a certain gaunt quality, a haunted quality that was mirrored by her large, expressive blue eyes; once filled with laughter and gaiety, those eyes now contained a hidden pain and torment that was deeply rooted.

As the taxi sped through the downtown streets of Westridge, Bette wondered again--as she had done for perhaps the hundredth time in the past week--if she wasn't making another mistake, an even bigger mistake than the one she had made five years ago, in coming home again. Maybe it would have been better if she had remained in Chicago, if she had simply abandoned all hope for a return to normalcy and spent the rest of her life living alone with her guilt and her shame. But that was not the answer, she knew that--any more than suicide, of which she had thought on more than one occasion, was an answer. No, she owed it to Tony and to the memory of David, as well as to herself, to try to make amends for what she had done, for her weakness.

Bette's mind wandered back those five years as it had during so many waking hours recently, to the night she first met suave, sophisticated Hale Bixby. She had been at a party alone--David had been out of town on one of his business trips--and she had been drinking champagne, a beverage which invariably put her in a gay, light mood. She had felt like dancing, and Hale Bixby had been there, a smile on his handsome face, saying the right words and making the right gestures, and she had been drawn to him. At first the attraction was no more than one of immediate fun--dancing, laughing and mild flirting. But then as the evening progressed and she spent more and more time dancing in Bixby's arms, felt his warm, hard male body close to hers, the attraction had subtly changed into a physical craving. It wasn't that she had been love-starved--David was a competent if unexciting and unimaginative bed-partner, and even though he was away three and four days a week on his sales route, he was always hungry for her body when they were together. She couldn't really, even now, explain what had been the cause of her growing desire for Hale Bixby: the champagne, the magic atmosphere of a warm summer night and a party, the charm and handsomeness of Bixby himself, were all a part of it, she supposed. And yet, it was more than that. It was as if she had been slowly changing, becoming something other than a faithful wife and a good mother to their thirteen year old son Tony; it was as if there had always been a wild streak in her, a lusting for excitement and adventure, repressed over the years but now breaking through.

When Bixby casually suggested Bette go for a ride in his convertible out by the lake north of town, her heart had pounded wildly in her breast, and even though she knew it was wrong, she had said a breathless yes to his proposal. She didn't want to go, and yet she did, desperately. They slipped away from the party--discreetly, Bette had thought at the time in her light-headed state--and drove in Hale's brand new Dodge through the warm night. They stopped on a promontory overlooking the lake, a lonely and deserted spot, and the moon had been big and gold in the sky, and the crickets had sung, and when Hale pulled her into his arms, she had no will to resist.

His lips and tongue had sent passion spiraling in demanding waves through her body, causing her nipples to swell into rigid arousal, her vagina to secrete droplets of her building excitement, and her arms had clung to him as if she never wanted to let him go. Then he was drawing her down on the seat, his hands caressing her breasts, her thighs, further intensifying her arousal, and she had known with a dim part of her mind that there could be no denying Hale Bixby--that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

They tore at one another's clothes, and then they were naked, moaning and writhing on the seat of the car, and his penis was in her hand, a huge throbbing shaft, much bigger than David's, filling her with wild delight at its touch, and the prospect of it buried deep up inside her hungrily needing belly. Bixby had kissed her breasts, nuzzling each nipple, and his right middle finger had teased her clitoris then slid lower and into the hot wet cavern of her womanhood. Bette had been half out of her mind with desire as she fondled his thick hard cock, cupped and caressed his sperm-filled testicles, and finally she had drawn him on top of her, holding tightly to his cock, guiding the palpitating shaft to the thin beardedly aching mouth of love between her trembling thighs.

Then he was sliding into her, filling her, the head of his burgeoning penis slamming hard off her cervix, and she went wild with the sensations coursing through her flesh. The only man she had ever had was David; she had been a virgin when they were married at the age of eighteen, and while she enjoyed sex with her husband, it had become a commonplace occurrence-- same position, same foreplay, same and well-known penis filling her vagina. And now she had a lover, another man inside her, a real man with a monstrous strange to her, cock that drove into her in dizzying strokes that filled the very core of her with ecstasy. Never had it been this good, never, never! Bette locked her thighs to Bixby's sweating mid- section, began to pound her heels on his driving buttocks as her orgasm spiraled higher and higher as she moaned out her delight and urged him on to greater strokes into the hot moist cavern that was her clasping, secreting cunt.

And then she was there.

She was cumming!

She had cum before with David, but never in such spiraling dizzying waves of bliss as those which washed over her now. She mewled and clutched Hale tighter to her, her right hand sliding around his thigh to locate the swinging sac of his balls. She tickled the bloated testicles in mindless passion as her climax soared through her body, and finally her manipulations triggered Hale's own cumming. His pistoning cock began to ejaculate great hot creamy spurts of cum, wetly inundating her cervix and splashing heatedly against the walls of her churning pussy, and she could feel every molten stream shooting forth into her, prolonging her orgasm until she thought she would go insane with rapture.

Then finally, it was over, and their driving bodies were still. Hale's penis pulled from her reluctant passage with a soft wet withdrawing sound, and she could feel the deflating member leave a thin trail of thick, hot moisture along the nakedness of her thigh and belly as he rolled off her, pulled her close to him as they lay now on their sides.

"Oh Hale!" she whispered. "Oh darling, that was wonderful! I never knew it could be like that!"

He kissed her neck then chuckled. "It's always like that with me, Bette honey."

"Is it? Is it really?"

"I've never had any complaints yet--and no refusals of an encore."

Bette moistened her lips. then, before she could think, she was saying, "You won't have any refusals from me either, darling. When can we meet again? Just tell me and I'll be there, I'll be there in a minute, darling "

Their affair had gone on for two blissful weeks, and Bette had never known such happiness, such rapture. Bixby was true to his word; each time she made love with him it was better than the last, and she was not disappointed on a single occasion. A part of her knew that their adulterous affair couldn't go on forever, that she would one day soon have to make a choice between Hale Bixby and David and Tony, but she was so giddyingly caught up in the ecstasy and excitement of her secret love affair that she was unable to think rationally. She snapped at Tony, denied David his marital rights when he came home and snuck out every opportunity to meet Bixby. Nothing else mattered, not her home, not her family--nothing except Hale Bixby deep inside her, his monstrous penis ejaculating his hot seed deep into her belly again and again and again

David found out about the affair at the beginning of the third week.

Bette had not been nearly as discreet as she had thought the night of the party--which had been given by a good friend of both hers and David's- -and her nocturnal meetings with Bixby had for the most part taken place in his hotel in downtown Westridge. Word had gotten around, and David had heard it; shocked and disbelieving, he had confronted Bette with the knowledge in their bedroom as she was slipping on her coat preparatory to leaving "to go for a little walk."

At first she hadn't known what to do. Admit her guilt or deny it. Confusion reigned in her. But then even though she did not want to hurt David or Tony, ignoring the pain in his eyes, she had become defiant. Nothing else in this world seemed at that moment to mean as much to her as keeping Hale Bixby, as prolonging their blissful affair. Yes, she was having a lewdly illicit affair, she had shouted at David. Yes, yes, yes! And it was with a man who was twice the lover, twice the man, that he was! She loved him, yes loved him, loved him as she could never love David Clark

David had slapped her, his face contorted with pain and rage, and called her a slut and a whore and a dozen other names. She had begun to cry, but the defiance remained strong within her, for she had finally admitted to herself as well as to her husband a fact that she had known was true each of the previous fourteen days; she was in love, madly, crazily, blindly in love with Hale Bixby.

Bette had run out of the house, gotten into her car and raced to Bixby's hotel. She told him everything, about David finding out, how much she loved him, how much she wanted to be with him and the rest of the world be damned. Bixby had taken her into his arms, holding her close, calming her, and then he had said, "Don't worry, Bette, we won't have to be apart. I love you too, honey, and I want you with me always. I'll take you away to Chicago."

Bette could hardly believe her ears. "Oh Hale! When? When darling?"

"At the end of this week," he said. "I've just about wrapped up my surveyor's report on the new highway, and I should have everything ready by Saturday. I was going to tell you to come away with me."

"Hale, is it true? Is it really true?"

"It's really true," he'd laughed. "Now you go home and pack your things and tell your husband you're leaving him. Then you come back here. You can stay with me until we leave."

Bette had obeyed, a deep glow of happiness within her that far overshadowed the wrongness of what she was doing to David and to Tony. David had been drunk when she entered the house and told him she was going away with Hale Bixby, and he had been maudlin, crying in an unmanly way, pleading with her to stay. She had been oblivious to his entreaties, thinking of Hale, only of Hale, a real man, and she had packed everything she wanted to take with her into three suitcases. When she was ready to go, David was so drunk that he had passed out on the couch.

And then Tony had come home from his Boy Scout meeting and seen her packed bags and his father lying there, and his young face had clouded with confusion. "Mom," he had said, "Mom, where are you going? You're not going away, are you? Oh Mom!"

Her heart had gone out to him. In spite of her feelings for Hale, she still loved her son, the product of her flesh, and she had taken him into her arms and held him tightly, trying to explain to him that she was in love with another man, that it was impossible for her to stay there feeling as she did. But he had been so young then, and he hadn't understood. Anger had flared in him, and he had cursed his mother and then run sobbing from the room. Bette had taken several steps toward his bedroom, crying a little herself, wanting to go to him, to explain further, but then she remembered Hale Bixby waiting for her, wonderful, loving, passionate Hale, and she had pivoted abruply, picked up her bags and left the home she had helped to create for the last time.

Hale took her to Chicago at the end of that week, just as he had promised, and her first three months in the huge metropolis had been a merry-go-round of expensive nightclubs and restaurants, parties, trips to New York and Bermuda, wild lovemaking, delirious happiness. She had thought of David and Tony often in the very beginning, but as her blissful existence with Hale continued, she thought less of her former life, blotting it out of her mind. When she received the notification from David's lawyer that he had filed for divorce, she experienced a mild pang of regret and guilt, then nothing. The past was behind her; there was only the future now, exhilarating and exciting, the adventure she had always craved and now was embracing completely.

When the divorce was final, she married Hale in a lavish ceremony, attended by dozens of his friends, and they bought a house in Oak Park there. Time seemed to fly by, and Bette had never been happier, more effulgent, in her life. Hale had inherited a considerable amount of money when he was younger, and that, coupled with his huge salary as a surveyor with the State Highway Commission, enabled them to live in monumental luxury--to take an extended trip to Europe, to rub elbows with movie stars and starlets, to become an integral part of the hectic social whirl of metropolitan Chicago. It was a dream come true for Bette, a Cinderella story.

And then suddenly, it had become instead a nightmare.

The beginning of the end, a little less than a year ago, had come in the form of a telegram and two letters from David's brother, Ken Clark, which she had received three weeks late upon returning from a Mexican cruise with Hale. Her hands trembled when she read them and tears spilled from her eyes. David was dead. He had been killed in an automobile accident on the outskirts of Westridge.

She had called Ken immediately, and though his voice had been cold, he had talked to her, listening to her explanation of why she hadn't come to the funeral. He told her that Tony had moved in with him--Ken was a widower who lived alone in the wealthy section of Westridge as a result of his successful commercial artist's talent--and that the old house was in the process of being sold. Bette had asked to speak to Tony, but her son had refused to talk to her, saying loudly so that she could hear over the long-distance phone wires that he never wanted to see his mother again. Ken had quietly urged Bette to come home anyway to see Tony, and she had said that she would. But she had never gone because of guilt and her son's stinging words--and because of what happened in her marriage to Hale Bixby.

She had sensed a cooling of Hale's ardor for her in recent months, but she had attributed this to, simply, the passage of time; after all, they had been together for four years, and the honeymoon couldn't be expected to last forever. She was soon to discover, however, that there was far more to it than that.