Chapter 4

Art signed off his computer and walked downstairs. Lillian and Paul were out on the patio.

“Isn’t it Miller time?” Art asked, cheerfully.

Lillian glanced her watch. “It is!” she replied.

“What can I get everyone?” Art said.

“Oh, honey, I’ll get it. You’ve been working all day. Sit down with Paul. What would you like?”

“Scotch, I think,” Art said.

“Okay. How about you, Paul?”

“Uh, maybe a beer.”

“Coming right up.”

As Lillian walked back toward the patio with the drinks, she picked up snippets of their conversation. They were talking about Jennifer.

“Well, we both want to wait,” Paul was saying as Lillian put down their drinks next to them.

Lillian’s heart sank. Paul could only be referring to one thing. She glanced at Art, but he was keeping his face impassive.

“Oh, wait for what?” Art asked.

“Till we’re both done with university.”

“I thought Jennifer was just taking classes at the community college,” Lillian said.

“Yeah, she is, but that’s just till she starts four-year college.”

“Oh,” Art said, surprised. “Where is she planning to go?”

“University of Chicago.”

“University of Chicago?” Art said in surprise. “Has she been admitted?”

“Yeah, but she deferred her admission for one year. She wanted to get rid of some of the lower division prerequisites so she doesn’t have to sit in Chem 1A with six hundred students. Like I will be!”

“Oh,” Art said. Both he and Lillian were reeling slightly from this unexpected revelation. “She must’ve gotten very good grades.”

“Uh-huh,” said Paul. “She’s really smart. She never seemed to study much, but she aced all her classes.”

Jennifer is really smart? Lillian thought. Boy, didn’t see that coming! But then she realized she’d never actually had a substantive conversation with Jennifer.

“Does Jennifer have a particular career in mind?” Lillian asked.

“Yeah, she’s gonna go to medical school. She wants to be a dermatologist.”

Hours later, in Lillian’s bedroom, they were both naked, ready for sex, but their minds were on the surprising revelations about Jennifer.

“Did you have any idea about Jennifer and college and medical school?” Lillian asked as Art nuzzled her neck.

Art raised his head. “It came as a complete surprise to me, I always thought of her as ... kind of a lightweight.”

“Well, that’s certainly what she projects,” Lillian said. “I hate to say it, but ‘bimbo’ was the category I thought was most apt.”

Art laughed. “Well, the only thing that really fits is that she wants to be a dermatologist,” he said.

“Yeah, and there we were thinking ‘cosmetologist’” Lillian said.

Art laughed again.

“Well, the silver lining may be that they’re planning to wait,” he said. “And it’s awfully hard to maintain a relationship over four years in different schools, plus medical school if she ends up doing that.”

“We can only hope,” said Lillian.

Art resumed his neck nibbling, then moved up to lock her in a deep, sensual kiss. He moved down and attended to her sensitized nipples, sucking and gently nipping them as his hand slid down her belly, fingers working between her aroused labia. She was ready for him. But instead of moving up to enter her, his lips moved down, toward her belly, lingering at her belly button, moving lower...

“No, Art. Don’t.” Lillian said. “You know I don’t like that sort of thing.”

Art lifted his head. “Babe, how can you say you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?” he said, leaning down again.

“No, please don’t,” Lillian insisted, shrinking away from him and turning onto her side. She had known from an early age that oral sex was wrong, even for married couples, with the church describing it as an “unnatural, impure, and unholy practice.” Although she was no longer deeply religious, the idea of submitting to this debasing act, parting her legs, allowing him to kiss her vagina, to lick her there, still filled her with instinctive revulsion.

“Please, honey. Please let me try this one time. If you don’t like it, I promise never to do it again.”

Lillian shook her head.

“Well can I at least kiss you near there?” Art said, playfully.

Lillian gave him a look. “Okay, but only near, not on!”

“Deal!” Art said.

Lillian turned onto her back again, but kept her legs closed. Art smiled. He leaned down and kissed the top of her pubis. The sudden wet contact sent a chill of undesired excitement through her. She felt him gently press the insides of her knees. She resisted.

“Only near,” Art said. “I promise.”

Reluctantly, she opened her legs.

Art began kissing her lightly along the inside of one thigh, beginning at the knee. The sensation of his warm lips brushing the sensitive skin sent little pinwheels of pleasure racing up the length of her spine, growing stronger as his kisses approached her labia. As he had promised, he stopped just short and moved to her other thigh, repeating the delicate march back toward her center, reveling in the scent of her arousal. As he placed the last kiss an inch shy of her labial wall, she wriggled in shame as his warm breath sent unwanted stirs from her open, wet vagina.

Art placed his thumbs on either side of her labia and, with slow, deliberate motions, drew the moistened petals apart, exposing her coral flesh. He lowered his face to within inches of her center and blew lightly on her clitoris. Lillian involuntarily shivered with delight at the novel sensation. Art began gently to massage the areas on either side of her outer labia, rolling the plump mounds against each other, causing her inner lips to rub deliciously against each other and her clitoris. As he did, he continued the light gusts of warm air on her erect bud.

Lillian became aware that the arcs of pleasure were mixed with something else: a sense of frustrated anticipation, a yearning for direct contact. As Art continued his ministrations, her feelings of thwarted expectation intensified and her body began moving, autonomously, closer and closer to the source of its stimulation, her hips swiveling, sliding downward on the bed. Then, as if under the influence of some external power, her core lifted upwards and her clitoris made sudden, delicious contact with Art’s warm lips.

“Ohhhhh,” she moaned as thousands of neurons fired simultaneously in the pleasure centers of her brain.

Art lifted his head, looking up at her questioningly. She gazed back at him, her face flushed, breathless with desire. The unseen force took hold of her again and she felt her head nodding.

Then, riddled with apprehension, she watched as Art’s head dropped again and his tongue slid between her swollen labia.

“Ahhhh!” she moaned at the cascade of sensations radiating from her vulva, Her lush body began to react automatically, her pelvis grinding against the bed to the motions of his probing tongue. She felt his tongue find and start to slowly move back and forth over her swollen, hypersensitive bud, sending a shudder of excitement through her body.