Chapter 4

"It's quarter to three. My husband will be home in less than ten minutes," the naked woman on the bed said lazily.

Abby Farrington's new lover jumped quickly from the bed and began to dress in the dark with the hurried precision of a man who has known many close calls with faceless husbands.

"Why did you tell me you were divorced?" the young man asked hurriedly.

"Never trust a woman," Abby laughed and turned her sensuous back to him as he quickly left the room, checking all his belongings as he ran down the stairs to his parked car in the driveway. Abby didn't know his name. She hadn't even bothered to ask. Four hours ago she had been enjoying a party in Peter Lessing's elegant home and the young man had sat beside her and showed a definite interest. Abby had given him some small talk and a wild hour in her bed, but she was still excited and not completely satisfied. No matter how hard she tried with so many other men, only her husband, George, satisfied her the way she wanted. The adulterous act of sleeping with men other than her own husband usually only increased the excitement of making love with him, and she used her other lovers only as preparation for each night's orgiastic romp with George.

"That was a pretty wild getaway that guy made. He nearly knocked over the garbage cans!" George laughed as he came into the bedroom.

"He decided rather hurriedly to leave," Abby said, smiling. "How did it go with you?"

George crossed the room like a man who had just won an election, and the sureness of his step showed Abby that she need not have asked. He slid open the closet and began undressing.

"It was easier than I thought," he said carelessly. "She was hornier than I expected. We only spent an hour at the club, and by the time the dancers had finished, she was ready to go right then and there.

"Well, don't be so damn smug," Abby laughed, sliding over on the bed to make room for him. "And come and tell Mama how you did it."

George related the evening's events to his wife, exaggerating a little. Abby was only slightly jealous, as she always was when he told her of his affairs, but she was also excited by his story and imagined herself writhing in the front seat of their car under her husband's familiarly powerful thrusts.

"And what happened afterward?" she asked when he'd finished. "Is she going to tell Bill? Did you use the embezzlement?"

"Don't worry about a thing, sweetheart," George reassured her. "I've done this so many times to so many sniveling little wives that it's a repeat performance. We'll have no trouble from her and soon you'll be able to try Bill Wilson on for size. You'll like that, won't you?"

Abby turned her head into the pillow with mock embarrassment, not looking at her husband as he sat on the bed beside her.

"George, please," she pleaded almost theatrically, "You always make it sound so dirty. Why is it that I'm always at fault when I'm with another man and you... you're such a saint. There's never anything wrong with your activities. Why am I always nothing but a whore?"

She faked a heart-rending sob, but no tears came to her eyes. Whenever the two of them had found other lovers for the night, they always repeated the same scene afterward. Neither was ever serious, but George enjoyed tormenting her and calling her names as much as she enjoyed the suffering at his hands. He played the roll of injured husband and she the role of the unfaithful wife: he would shout at her, call her names and she would respond to the whip of his tongue, each painful word a delightful slap at her buttocks. Even now, she could feel herself beginning to moisten between her nakedly splayed legs in obscene anticipation. Her golden brown nipples were already tautly erect, awaiting his touch and the kiss that she knew would come soon.

They had been married fifteen years and for nine of those years they had been taking other lovers and swapping partners with couples they met. Most of the couples would soon fall out of the arrangement and more than a few couples had ruined their married lives by contact with the Farringtons, but other people's fate was not their concern. George and she were holding their own, Abby thought, and her body shifted on the bed as he changed positions.

"Whore," he said quietly. "You're just a whore with a gold band on your finger. You'll never be anything but a whore. You've always been one and nothing you can do will change that."

Abby loved the words. She had had many lovers before George, and scores since they had been married. But one thing kept them together: no man could please her as he did. No man was cruel enough, hard enough or could give her enough of what she needed.

Most of her one-shot lovers were only preludes to what George offered her. They were only tools to excite and stimulate her before she knew she would be taken by her husband when they finally got together. He would torment her and curse her, and when he finished with the insults, he would take her and give her what no other man could.

"Whore," George said again, a lewd expression of mock anger and real humor on his face. "You'd take any man, any time, anywhere! How can you live with yourself!" His voice was stern, but Abby could detect the note of falseness in it. They were both good actors in this scene that took place at least three times a week, but never good enough to fool the other completely.

She braced herself for what she knew would come next. His slap was hard. A red mark rose on her buttocks where he hit her, and her whole bottom tingled from the sting.

"Oh, don't," she cried, knowing that he would do it again and excite her even further. The soft flesh of her silky smooth buttocks quivered like flaccid jello as he struck her again.

"You'd even go to bed with that brute, Jackson, if he came at you," George said, his voice feigning a threat. Jackson was the personal valet of Peter Lessing, the man at whose house Abby had been earlier in the evening. Lessing was the most active member of Oak Park's social register, and maintained around him some of the more obvious trappings of gentility: trappings which he felt were necessary to his social status. Jackson, his valet, had a hulking six-foot five inch frame that held two hundred sixty pounds of solid muscle, and very little brains. He was, the Farringtons had long ago concluded, nothing more than an animal.

"No, George, never him," Abby squealed with pleasure. "He's too big, he'd kill me!"

"Do you mean to say I'm not as big as he is? Haven't I ever split you? Haven't I hurt you like you think he would?"

"Oh, yes, my darling. But him, he's a monster. I couldn't take his hairy body on me."

"What about Laura Wilson? Do you think she could take him?" George asked his wife, increasing her torment as he slapped her bottom again.

"Yes, yes, Laura. He could take Laura and we could watch. Oh, George, I'd like to watch that brute screw her until she screamed for mercy."

"You would like to see her hurt, wouldn't you?" Abby's husband said quietly. "You would like her to beg him for mercy, just like you beg me - right?"

"Yes, please, oh, yes," Abby cried as he slapped her reddened buttocks again.

"Then we will, you wait and see," he said, and pulled at her body, turning her roughly on her back.

They stared at each other for a moment, Abby's tear-filled eyes not once leaving her husband's sadistic smile. They both would enjoy seeing the innocent Laura Wilson taken by that brute, Jackson, and Abby would get her revenge against this young girl, the kind of girl she had always had the fear might possibly take her husband away from her.

Abby had always feared that one of George's partners might take him away from her, for she knew that if George ever found a woman that could please him more than she could, then their life together would be over. There was no hope that she herself could ever find a man who could do for her what he did. It was always the other girl's fault, never George's. His weakness was beautiful women, and Laura Wilson qualified as a temptress by being born beautiful. But she would pay and pay dearly, Abby thought with relish. She was sure Peter Lessing wouldn't mind lending her the services of his huge, dim-witted valet.

George looked down at his naked wife, knowing without a doubt what she was thinking. He knew what he could conjure up in her jealous mind by mentioning the women that he had just finished with, and he knew as well that Abby always seemed to need revenge to reassure her position. As George gazed down into his wife's eyes, she suddenly focused on him and realized that he knew what she was thinking. She laughed with some embarrassment.

"You're looking at me very knowingly, darling," she said.

"I was just wondering what evil schemes you have all cooked up for poor Laura Wilson, my little angel. She isn't really a witch, you know. In fact, I think you might even like her."

"I doubt it," Abby said flatly.

"Hmm. Nobody who lays your husband escapes alive, is that it?" George laughed.

Abby lowered her eyes momentarily, trying to conceal her thoughts, and then realized it was useless. She and her husband knew each other, after their fifteen years of marriage, with almost frightening intimacy.

"Do you think we can get Peter... to let us use Jackson?" she said coyly.

"Well, I don't know why not," her husband answered her. "But I don't know if that would be a very good idea. I mean, that Jackson really is a monster, you know. He could hurt her."

"No, I don't think anything like that could ever happen. Besides, I've never seen Jackson in action, have you?"

"No," her husband said, "Peter always keeps him pretty well under wraps, so to speak."

"Then let's do it!" Abby said excitedly.

George looked at the almost childishly enthusiastic face of his wife, and laughed out loud. What the hell, if she wanted it. He certainly didn't have any loyalties to Laura Wilson.

"All right, you can ask Peter about it. But don't you think we ought to break the Wilsons in? I mean, you don't take somebody to a party at the Lessings unless... you know."

"Well, we already know Laura can be persuaded," Abby said, "all we've got to do is make sure about Bill, and I can do that."