Chapter 3

Ron Fleming woke the next morning to the familiar sound of dishes clattering and the smell of cooked bacon. He opened his eyes slowly, saw the late morning sun patterned on the wall opposite the bed, and stretched his sleep stiffened limbs under the rumpled sheets. He yawned his body awake, and then lay still, listening to Sharon's movements in the kitchen.

The memories of the night before grated in his mind along with the pain of a slight hangover, and he groaned. What had possessed him? He had tried to make it up to his upset young wife, but nothing had seemed to work, and Sharon had steadfastly refused his attempts to make love any further. She had said he was forgiven, but somehow he doubted it. They had fallen asleep on opposite sides of their large double bed, with an uncomfortable silence separating them like a wall.

Ron got up and made his way to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror, frowned, and reached for the aspirin in the medicine cabinet. He took two, pulled his bathrobe from the hook behind the door, and wrapped it around his powerful body. With a look at himself he then made his way out of the bathroom towards the kitchen, determined to talk to his wife about the night before, and about the reasons he had acted the way he had. It was time she knew how he felt about what he considered her coolness toward love making, otherwise he knew that, sometime in the future, last night's scene would undoubtedly repeat itself.

Sharon turned her lush, fully clothed body to him as he came into the kitchen, and then moved quickly over to the stove where two large eggs were popping and crackling in a hot frying pan.

"Good morning, darling. Did you sleep well?" she asked with her back to him.

"Yeah, like a log. I must have been more tired than I thought," he answered her, moving to the small breakfast table.

"Well, it was silly to go out to a party right after you'd stepped off the plane. We should have told the Lewis' we couldn't make it." She scooped up the fried eggs on two inexpensive china plates, added the bacon from where it lay drying on the double folds of paper towel, and brought it to the table with a forced smile on her face. "Like some coffee?"

"Please... no cream."

"Head bothering you?', Sharon asked solicitously. Ron nodded, passing a hand in front of his bloodshot eyes, then looked up to where his wife was busying herself pouring coffee and orange juice. Her face was scrubbed and shining, her dress neat and freshly ironed.

"You got dressed early this morning," he said simply.

"Yes, I did. I've got a lot of things to do this morning, and I thought I'd get an early start." She smiled again as she brought the tray with the glasses and set it on the table, seating herself like she was in some restaurant rather than at home. Ron noticed she wasn't letting her eyes rest on his for very long at a time.

"I want to talk about last night, Sharon. I think we both ought to..."

"Oh, darling, not now. I've really got to gobble this and run. I made an appointment at the hairdressers for 9:30. It was the only time he could fit me in."

Ron remained silent momentarily, watching his beautiful young wife eat her eggs and bacon with studied precision, using her napkin and sipping her coffee as though she were on stage.

"Aren't you hungry, dear? Would you like something else?" she asked him, obviously a little uncomfortable under his gaze.

"I'd like us to talk about last night, Sharon. I think it's important... for both of us."

"I think so too. I really do! But it's happened now, and it's over and done with... and it's useless..."

"But it's not over and done with just an apology, you know that."

"It is for me. Really." She smiled at him momentarily, and returned to her rapidly disappearing eggs.

Ron paused, then picked up a piece of bacon between two fingers, and bit off one end listlessly. This was no good! She was just trying to cover up, pretend it never happened hoping it might go away. But it wouldn't go away, he knew that.

"Sharon, you've got to listen. It's no good being an ostrich about this and sticking our heads in the sand, we've got to find out why last night happened, what the reasons were, so that it won't happen again."

"Oh, dear, we know what the reasons were," she smiled, still maintaining her casual, carefree front, "You were tired from your trip, and we both probably had too much to drink... and it happened, that's all. And it won't happen again because, I love you and you love me, and we won't let it happen again."

"Sharon..."

"And there is nothing to apologize for. Really and truly. I've forgotten about it already and if you insist on talking about it you'll only make it worse. There's no sense making a mountain out of a molehill."

"What happened last night was no molehill!"

"I've got to run! It's already 9:00. I've got to stop by the cleaners on my way." Sharon jumped up from the table, and reached for her purse on the drain board by the refrigerator. Then she came back to where her dejected husband was slumped in his chair, his fork playing frustrated games with his uneaten egg. She leaned down and kissed him long and hard.

"Now look, great big beautiful husband of mine, I love you. You made a mistake, and it wasn't such a big one, and I've already forgotten it." She reached down to cup his unshaven face in her softly cool hands. "Why don't you clean up the breakfast things, and then go back to bed for the morning and rest, and see if you can't forget it. Truly! I am not upset with you."

She pressed her lips against his a second time, ran one hand soothingly along his cheek as she turned and then stepped toward the door.

"Sharon?"

"Yes, darling?" she answered, stopping.

"When did you make your hair appointment?"

"This morning. Why?"

"Oh, no reason... I just wondered. I'll see you this afternoon?"

"Yes, about 3:00." She paused. "Why did you ask about the hair appointment?"

Ron didn't look up from his plate. "I was just curious, that's all," he said.

Dick and Myra Green got up late that morning. They were in good spirits, as they always were after a night as orgiastic as the one before, and as they ate breakfast they solidified their plans for enticing Ron and Sharon Fleming into the trap they had laid for them. Dick didn't leave for the bank until almost 10:30, but that was his prerogative as vice-president, and he made use of it liberally.

After he'd gone, Myra cleared up the breakfast dishes, and moved lazily around the house, straightening up, putting fresh sheets on their oversized double bed, gathering flowers from the garden outside and placing them around the house at strategic points. When the scene finally met her approval, she went into the kitchen, lit herself a cigarette, found Ron Fleming's name in the telephone book, and dialed his number carefully. The phone rang only twice.

"Hello."

"Hello. Is this Ron Fleming?" Myra's voice was even more sultry than usual.

"Yes, it is. Who's this?"

"Myra Green. We shared a very bad steak last night after the Lewis' very bad party."

There was no hesitation on the other end of the line.

"Of course! How are you? Say, I was going to call and thank you for making something out of an otherwise disastrous evening."

"Dick and I felt the same way, Ron. I'm not keeping you from working or anything, am I?"

"No, no, not at all. I'm taking the day off."

"Well, lucky you." Myra smiled to herself. This was going to be easy. "You're a man after my own heart."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Dick laughed at his end.

Myra laughed as well, and then breathed into the phone, "Well, we'll leave that up in the air for now, what do you say?"

"Agreed. How's the painting coming?"

"Oh, it comes and goes, you know. I get discouraged fairly easily, though, and it's hard to keep my mind on it."

"From what Dick said last night, you don't have any reason to be discouraged. Sounds to me like you're suffering from a case of the artist's dumps." Ron laughed.

"Well, that may be. By the way, are you really going to come over and say comforting things about my paintings? You did promise to say nothing but good things last night, didn't you?"

"I did indeed. And I will... nothing but sweetness and honey."

"Well listen, Ron, if you've got the day off... I mean I don't want to be pushy or anything... but what about today? I'll be home all afternoon, and if you don't have anything else to do, I'd like to hear what you think of me."

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"I don't know, Myra..."

"Well, if you've got something else cooking we'll plan it another time."

"No, I don't have anything planned, it's just that Sharon is out, and..." There was another pause, and Myra waited with excitement.

"Oh well..." she said, gilding her voice with just the right amount of disappointment.

"I'm sorry, it's just that... oh, what the hell! Of course, I'll come over. My wife won't be back for a while anyway, I'm sure."

"I don't want to pressure you, now, Ron..." Myra licked her full, luscious lips in anticipation.

"No, you're not, believe me. I'd love to come. Really! What time would be best for you?"

"That's great! Let's see... well as soon as you can is all right with me. I can even feed you a sandwich if you'd like."

"How can I turn down an offer like that? How do I get to your place?"

Myra breathed a triumphant sigh, gave Ron the instructions on how to find their home, said good-bye, and hung up the receiver. She finished one last pull on her cigarette, put it out in the ashtray beside her, and sat staring at the phone with a cool, almost calculating smile on her seductive face. She'd thought it would be harder!

She picked up the phone again and dialed another number. There was a pause as she waited for the other end to be picked up.

"Hello, Dick?... It's your lovely, irresistible wife... Ummm, you're sweet too, lover. I just called Ron Fleming... Ummm? Of course, dear, who could turn down such a delectable creature as yours truly? It's set for this afternoon... Yes, well I move fast, dear. Do you think you'll be able to put your part of the plan into action?... Sweetheart, do you doubt me? I'll keep him busy 'til next week if I have to, and you know I can... All right, I'll expect you about cocktail hour. But don't interrupt if it looks like we're enjoying ourselves, all right dear... Righto, see you then, lover."

Myra hung up the phone and quickly went into her bedroom, changed clothes, put on the kind of perfume she knew from experience turned men wild with its musky scent, checked herself in the mirror, and then went around the house checking out all the little details one last time. She was smoking a cigarette in the living room, with a drink in her hand, when she heard the doorbell ring thirty minutes later. She got up, composed her voluptuously ripe body into its most languid, enticing posture, and glided towards the front door.

"Hi!" she greeted Ron cheerily as she opened the door, "Come on into the artist's lair."

"Sounds very inviting, Myra. How are you?" He took her proffered hand, and felt a tingle race up his arm at its delicious coolness. He allowed himself to be led into the living room.

Christ, but she was a beautiful woman! Ron's eyes were glued to his hostess' sensually built body as he followed her, not even trying to remove his hand from hers. She had been provocative last night at the party, but now, this way, she was even sexier. She wore short-shorts of bright orange so tight they clearly outlined her protruding pubic mound and its wide cleft through the fabric between her soft, ivory thighs. Her long tapering legs, bronzed even more than Sharon's, were bare and beautiful, and her naked belly was just as tanned between the tight shorts and the orange halter, which barely concealed the nipples of her deliciously mounded breasts from his gaze. Her dark hair fell invitingly over her shoulders, adding to the vivacious effect her sparkling green eyes gave forth. Suddenly, he became aware of the fact that she was looking at him as he devoured her with his eyes, and he smiled weakly. She took a slow sip from her drink.

"What's the matter, Ron? You look... scared." her voice was coy. "I'm not going to eat you."

She laughed, and didn't add the word she was thinking: "Yet."

The young art critic grinned, a little self-consciously, at her as she stood looking up at him with a sultry smile on her face. He could smell a faint, musky perfume, and the heady of the odor made him slightly lightheaded; images of candlelight and soft music flashed briefly through his mind, but he shook them off. Hell, next thing I know I'll be getting romantic notions and a hardon, which won't do me any good since Sharon was fifteen miles away and probably unwilling, anyway... and this hot raffle number is strictly out of bounds. Still, he couldn't help entertaining a few lewd thoughts about the beautifully seductive Mrs. Green. Christ, she would probably be a holy terror in bed, the way she walked, and smiled, that husky voice, everything about her was irrefutable proof that she was a woman unfettered by most of the sexual restraints that plagued his own wife.

"Did you have any trouble finding the place?" Her sensual voice snapped him out of his erotic reverie.

"What?... oh no, not at all. Your instructions were right on the dot."

"Good. Well, would you like the tour now, or later?"

"Right now! I can't wait to get a peek at the work of the greatest new talent this side of the Mississippi."

"Oh, you're a tease," Myra said breathily, and reached out to take his arm and guide him towards her workroom in the back of the house. Her cool, scantilyclad body brushed against him repeatedly as she did so, and he was having difficulty keeping his mind on the reason he'd come.

They spent almost a half hour in the studio looking at the paintings, Ron clearly impressed by the quality of Myra's work. It all had a common color, a thread of excitement and, yes, undeniable overtones of sensuality that ran like a thread through every picture. She painted mostly people, and every study contained in it the hints of an unquenchable passion, a thirst that was almost sexual in nature, which burst forth from the eyes and bodies of every subject. Ron saw Myra clearly in her work, and knew, without a doubt, that the same passion expressed in her paintings gave the dark, fiery woman standing so close beside him the incredibly sensual nature that was exciting him at that very moment. He realized instinctively that that passion, in the artist as well as the painting, was a hungry, and yet insatiable sexuality. That intuitive thought made Myra's every touch, every sultry word as she led him around her studio, arouse in him his own sexual frustrations, until they almost begged for release. Ron felt a hard knot slowly forming in his chest, and sensed the early stirrings of his warmly tingling cock underneath his smooth slacks.

"Well, that's it," Myra said as they came to her last painting. "What do you think?"

"I think it's good. It's very good," Ron managed to say, without too much of a catch in his throat.

"Oh, you're just saying that," Myra teased, leaning against him. "But I'll give you a drink anyway, if you like."

Ron felt the maddening caress of her full, luscious breasts as they brushed against his thin short-sleeve shirt. His rapidly awakening penis gave another undeniable jerk, and he turned his body from her so that she wouldn't see it.

"That sounds like the best idea I've heard all morning," he said gratefully.

"Follow me." She reached out and took his hand once again.

He allowed her to lead him back into the living room. The touch of her fingers had further erotic effect on his already semi-aroused state; it was as if there were tiny, hidden electrodes beneath her skin, vibrating through to his flesh. He felt a certain dryness in his throat, and his eyes were on the seductively undulating rhythm of her smooth rounded buttocks through the tight shorts. Damn, but she was one hell of a sensual woman! If he wasn't married, and she wasn't married... well, there was no use stinking about it, getting himself all worked up over nothing.

"What can I get you?"

"I'll put myself in your capable hands."

"That's what I like to hear," Myra laughed, a teasing and inscrutable smile playing tag with him behind her eyes. "I've got a special treat for you. Ever had any Pastis?"

"No, what is it? Sounds oily."

"Well, it does seem to oil the parts that need oiling, that's true enough," Myra laughed again. "I think you'll like it. It tastes like licorice."

"Well..." Ron said dubiously. "How do you mix it?"

"With water," Myra answered. "Serve it over ice. I'll get some from the refrigerator."

She moved away, returning moments later with a tray of ice. Ron had put two glasses on the bar face, and she dropped two cubes into each one. He uncapped the bottle and poured some of the clear liquid into a glass and added a bit of water; almost immediately, its consistency changed to an opaque, almost milky one. "Hey I" said. "I thought only Pernod did that."

"No, Pastis does too." she lifted her glass, waited until he followed suit and then said, "A toast. To my brilliant work, and its ultimate success."

"Hear, hear." Ron sipped the drink, found that it did taste a little like licorice and that it wasn't at all bad; in fact, it went down quite smoothly.

"Like?"

"Hmmmmm!"

"Shall we sit down on the couch?"

"All right."

They sat down. It seemed to Ron that she sat rather close to him. She crossed one slim, tanned leg over the other, which tightened the material of her shorts into the sharply-defined slit up between her long legs, making the outline folds of her vagina bulge out the brilliant orange of the material. She leaned forward slightly, holding her drink in one hand, so that a good deal of the creamy white mounds of her full, globular breasts were exposed to him and just a hint of the ruby hardness of her nipples. He felt a slight flush start on the base of his neck, but he wasn't able to take his eyes from her provocative lushness. His quickly thickening penis spasmed beneath his trousers and, feeling a little ashamed, he took a long pull at his glass, draining the contents.

"I'll make us another one," Myra said, taking a healthy sip of her own drink. Before he could protest, she slid off the settee, took his glass, and went to the bar. She was smiling quietly to herself as she refilled their glasses from the green bottle of Pastis. She'd been drinking it for a number of years, and knew the effect it had on the masculine libido after only three or four ounces. It increased her own sexual fervor, too, though she could control herself if she felt like it; not that she was going to feel like it, of course. Yes, Ron Fleming was hers now, no mistake. She felt initial droplets of lustheated fluid begin to flow from the softly sensitive walls of her vagina, as she thought about what would be taking place within the next hour.

She carried the filled glasses back to the unsuspecting art critic and handed him one. She was aware of his hot eyes locked hungrily on her, and she glanced every now and then at the front of his pants. She could see his long, erected cock pulsing there, jumping spasmodically from time to time, pushing his trouser material out briefly, and her wetly throbbing cunt began to flow faster with increased anticipation. The second drink disappeared even more rapidly than the first, as she knew it would, and she quickly poured him another one. He didn't protest at all but drank thirstily from it when she gave him the glass.

Ron felt a warm, relaxed lethargy begin to flow over him. The Pastis was beginning to have an effect on him, he knew that, but the feeling was so pleasant that he really didn't care. It wasn't every day that a man had the opportunity of getting mildly looped with a woman as beautiful, as wildly provocative, as Myra Green.

She was really something, he thought admiringly. She exuded pure animal sex, like a kind of aura encompassing her invisibly as she walked, moved, spoke. What I'd like to do, really like to do, would be to reach out and take her In my arms, kiss her, love her up a little. Oh, not anything more than that, I wouldn't try to fuck her or anything, but Lord it would be nice to kiss those warm red lips and caress those big pillow soft tits and tweak those nipples into rock hardness... to take each one in my mouth and roll it around and around my tongue while I sucked a little...

Ron felt his angrily pulsating cock jerk into instant rigidity, as if it were alive or as if it were a tightly coiled spring held down by a fragile safety latch, straining to whip out with a sudden "twang".

He tried to will it limp again, to banish the obscene thoughts swirling in his mind, but it remained throbbingly blood swollen. Guiltily, his eyes went to Myra's face.

She was looking at the bulge in his pants.

And she was smiling with wetly parted lips and fervid eyes.

"Why, Ron!" she said in mock surprise, mock reproof. "Whatever were you thinking about to have that happen now?"

"I... well, I..." he stuttered, his face a flaming red.

She laughed deep in her throat.

"Myra, I... I'm sorry, it's just that I..." he faltered.

"I know what it is," she whispered. "I know why you have a hard on."

His breath quickened at her lewd words. "You... you do?"

"You have a hard-on because you want to fuck me," she said. "That's right, isn't it, Ron? You do want to fuck me, don't you? You want to stick your nice hard prick into me?"

"Oh God!" he managed to breathe. His massively pulsing pelvis seemed to be about to explode in his pants now, and his brain reeled. Had he heard correctly? Yes, yes, of course he had. But why was she talking to him like that? What was the matter with her? Oh Christ, he could feel his suddenly churning balls begin to ache from the pressure of his gathering sperm; he really needed it, he really did, and Myra talking to him like that wasn't helping matters any. Didn't she know what might happen, mouthing obscene words like that to a man? Didn't she know? He took another long swallow of his Pastis and found that his hand was trembling slightly.

The seductive brunette leaned close to him, and he could feel her breath on his cheek, like the scorching heat of a white hot firebrand. She touched his knee, lightly, but her fingers seemed to sear right through the cloth.

"Well?" she asked. "Wouldn't you like to fuck me? Wouldn't you really?"

"Myra... Christ, Myra, cut it out! I'm... only human... !"

"And so am I, lover, so am I," she purred on. "My cunt is on fire right now. And the only thing that can put out that fire is a big, hard cock. You have a big, hard cock, Ron. I can tell you do."

And she reached out and lightly stroked her fingers across the throbbing bulge.

He almost leapt off the couch in a convulsive reaction to the electrical shock of her touch on his painfully throbbing penis, encased within his pants though it was. Myra stroked it gently, tantalizingly, sliding closer to him as he tried to pull back, increasing the rhythm of her caresses. Her firmly ripe breasts pressed softly against his arm, and her moist warm lips found his jaw line, traced a pattern upward along his cheek and then over to search for his open mouth. Her tongue trailed a path of fire along the skin Of his face as her hand continued to rub the massively swollen hardness between his legs.