Chapter 1

Ken Carlson was worried. Instead of studying his law books, he was going over the family finances and he didn't like what he was seeing. He was attending law school as a veteran, and was receiving veterans' education benefits. In addition he had a small scholarship, a number of student loans and was using his savings to help pay for his education. It was not working. Unfortunately, he thought, the budget can't handle two people. It's just not working! Try as he might, he couldn't make it come out.

Turning in his chair, he looked at his wife, Kathy. Curled up on the sofa, she was watching one of her daytime soap operas. Ken had met his wife, the former Katherine Hughes, at the state university they both attended near their homes in northern California close to the Oregon border. When they first met, she had been a freshman while he was a just-commissioned second lieutenant. He had been assigned temporarily to the school's ROTC detachment while awaiting his orders to Ranger school.

Thinking about it, he guessed theirs had been a comfortable meeting. They were both from very small towns in the nation's most populous state. Both were uncomfortable in crowds and even more uncomfortable with the slickness of urban living. Now they were married and had a small apartment in Los Angeles while Ken attended UCLA Law School.

His admission to UCLA was a stroke of luck, he admitted to himself. By merest coincidence, the dean of the law school was a college classmate of Ken's division commander and an Army veteran himself. When his commanding officer wrote a personal letter of recommendation, and the school leaned hard on his veteran's preference, Ken was admitted by the skin of his teeth. Of course, the other side of the coin was that his first year at law school had been an academic disaster: He had just barely managed to stay in school, holding on by his fingernails. That was probably why he and Kathy had gotten married that summer. He had been feeling so lonely and so lost in the big city and at school.

While Ken was going over their finances, Kathy was sitting across the room pretending to watch soap operas. In fact, she was trying to cope with that strange sensation in her groin again. It had been occurring with increasing frequency whenever she looked at Ken. Now it happens almost every time. What's wrong with me? she wondered. It's as if ... as if ... as if I want him inside me! In my cunt! She reddened at the very thought.

She never used words like that and didn't want even to think them. She used to think about asking her doctor about the strange sensation, but the subject was much too embarrassing for her even to mention. Like so many girls, she had picked up her knowledge of sex from listening to other girls talk. From them she had long ago concluded that women were depositories for men's sexual fluids — that's all. She had heard whispers about people doing other things in bed — and even having sex in places other than a bed. Although she wasn't exactly sure what the other things were, she did know that nice girls never did them. Nevertheless, as she looked at Ken, she desperately wanted to go to him and comfort him. It was apparent that he was very upset and it could only be about money.

Because money was so tight, Kathy spent her days in the apartment while Ken took their old car to school. To pass her time alone she watched game shows and soap operas on television — the entertainment was free. Surreptitiously, she studied Ken and again realized how lucky she was. She had been a young freshman and he had already graduated when they first met. Perhaps it was their innate shyness that paradoxically drew them together. When Ken left to report for Ranger training, she had written to him. Her letters continued through Ranger school and then when he went overseas.

She reddened again thinking how school-girlish her letters had been, but nevertheless Ken still saved them and refused to allow her to throw them out. She remembered vividly the awful fear and sense of loss she felt when she received his first letter from the hospital after he had been wounded in action. He was evacuated to an Army hospital in the Philippines, later back to Hawaii, and finally to Hanneman Army Hospital in San Francisco. Since she lived in the little town of Enterprise just below the redwood country, San Francisco was a long way away. Nevertheless, she finally persuaded her parents to let her take the car and drive down to see him.

When she arrived at the hospital, she didn't know what to do. First, both the city and the medical center were enormous. Telling herself that she was in love with a hero who would have nothing to do with a coward, she had screwed up her courage and entered the hospital. After that it wasn't so bad. But then, when finally she saw Ken for the first time, she lost control. In spite of knowing what a man thinks of a woman who throws herself at him, she had no choice. Running into his arms, she just buried her face in his chest while she cried uncontrollably.

He had wrapped his right arm around her and just held her as she cried. Finally regaining control, she lifted her face and he kissed her. That kiss was so wonderful she still remembered it. She could still feel the electricity and hear the bells. Flustered, she had taken out her tiny handkerchief and tried to dry her tears from his bathrobe, while at the same time trying to apologize for her behavior. Ken had just smiled at her warmly and told her she was cute.

At any rate, that was the time when Kathy became convinced that Ken was the man for her. He is so brave and tall and handsome, she thought. Ken was six feet three and weighed 215. He was very muscular with very broad shoulders over a slim waist and hips. He had brown hair and warm brown eyes.

Thinking of his brown hair, she frowned because her hair and eyes were brown, too. Although her hair had body and a natural wave, she thought it was terribly ordinary. Kathy was a tall girl at five feet eight and she weighed 125. Her skin was clear and unblemished but her figure was very ordinary. Her breasts, although rather large, were nicely shaped with tiny little up-thrusting pink nipples.

Because they were so soft and white, though, she needed the support of a good bra. In fact, from long before she married Ken, she had been embarrassed by the size of her chest. Moreover, ever since adolescence she had also been embarrassed about her height. As a result, she had adopted a posture of slumping her shoulders forward, causing her breasts to sag, and thus minimizing their apparent size as well as her height. Ken claimed to like her breasts, although he called them tits once. She had slapped him when he did.

Just thinking about Ken, she felt that strange sensation in her groin again. Actually, she was terrified of sex. Oddly, it wasn't the pain — except for the very first time, when he had taken her virginity, there had been none. Rather, she was afraid of her reactions. Can I be a ... a ... nymphomaniac? she wondered. Although she knew how married women were supposed to behave with their husbands, she had a terrible time.

After nearly a year of marriage, Kathy had finally developed a process that seemed to work — at least it enabled her to survive. First, since she couldn't really trust herself, she had to minimize her number of exposures to sex. This she did by restricting it to Saturday night. At any other time, she used what was apparently the standard feminine excuse, a headache. She grinned to herself because she had managed to get a pharmacist to give her a bottle of placebos the size of aspirin tablets. Since Ken always brought her two aspirin when she complained of a headache, she had hidden the real aspirin and substituted the placebos in the aspirin bottle.

The second element was to make herself as ugly as possible. This she handled by putting on face cream and putting her hair up in rollers before getting into bed on Saturday night. This was something she had been doing almost from the first time they arrived at their apartment. It seemed to control Ken's passion somewhat.

Their honeymoon had consisted of the drive down to Los Angeles from Enterprise. Kathy lost her virginity at an inexpensive motel where they stopped the first night. Ever since, to further her plan she usually wore a ratty nightgown to bed and just pulled it up to her groin. That was easy, because there had never been the money to afford sexy nightgowns anyway.