"Love you!" I called as I came through the door one Wednesday evening. My wife, Jeanette, came in from the kitchen. She had something in her hand as she hugged me. The welcome- home kiss was wet and warm, even though I couldn't really feel her shape through my rain coat.

Jeanette handed me the letter from my dissertation adviser as soon as I'd shed that coat and my sports jacket. "You could have opened it," I told her.

She shook her head 'no.' Her aversion to opening other people's mail stems from an incident several years before our marriage. She was perfectly willing to read over my shoulder, though.

Prof. Macleod wrote that the last draft of my dissertation was "not only acceptable, but exceptional." This, of course, he followed with a page and a half of objections to words and formatting.

"Your work is done, at least," she said.

"It's all your work, anyway," I said. "I'm just along for the ride."

That was an exaggeration: I'm not ashamed of the background and interpretation which I put into my dissertation. But Jeanette had contributed much more than her skill as a typist.

I have long been fascinated by the diplomatic square dance that took place between the time of the Drei Kaiser Bund and 1914. That Germany would end up opposed to France might seem fated. But the opposition of England to Russia and of Turkey to Austria, let alone Bulgaria, was as self-evident, beforehand; and these didn't occur. Almost everybody danced with almost everybody else. I had been in the process of choosing a dissertation subject, torn between two aspects of this dance when France released a trove of foreign-office documents covering the period of the Fashoda incident. (The French are not precipitous in declassifying documents.)

Alone, I couldn't have done anything with the trove. I passed the French test for the doctorate, but that doesn't mean that I'm really literate in that language. And the test doesn't even pretend to measure your ability to speak the language.

Jeanette, however, had been studying French on her own for several years by then. She and I flew to Paris to pick which documents were relevant and to get copies of them. We stayed in une pension for the two weeks that our funds permitted. (The air fare was on credit cards, and those were repaid with loans from my folks; but it was worth it.)

She read the typed documents, learned to read the handwriting, and gave me a precis of each document. I chose which to copy, and we returned with an extraordinary amount of paper. Her translation of the new information, properly credited, will grace my dissertation. That credit doesn't begin to tell, however, what it meant to have those summaries when I was hurriedly selecting documents to copy.

I dropped the letter on an end table. Then I picked her up in my arms, whirled us around, and gave her a celebratory kiss. "We've won," I said. "I love you, and we've won."

"I love you, too, Dr. Brennan." She gave me a nice kiss. Actually, when I'm holding her like that, the kisses are her decision. Our lips met, then parted. Her tongue touched mine. I couldn't say how much I loved her; if I'd have given her another celebratory spin, she would have leaned back. I squeezed her butt and cooperated in the kiss.

When she leaned back to look at me, she was grinning. "We did it," she said. "You did it."

"We did it. Celebration?"

"Lamb chops!" She had obviously gambled on the contents based on the return address. If Macleod had wanted the entire dissertation rewritten, the celebratory dinner would have gone to waste. (Although, knowing Jeanette, I figure that the lamb chops would have been a consolation, instead.)

"After dinner?"

"We'll see." After all, she isn't only my research assistant and translator. She works full time as a secretary to the president of a family-owned firm, and she carries much more than half the responsibility for our housework. She has her own agenda.

"I will never," I said, "ever, be able to tell you how much I love you." But after her delicious dinner (and after our various tasks preparing for the next day) I tried.

I began with a slow kiss while we were both standing. I explored her lovely mouth with my tongue. I took off her office dress, hung it carefully in the closet, and kissed the skin that had been under it. I proceeded that way until she wore just panties.

Tearing the clothes from her and dropping them on the floor might sound more romantic, but that doesn't impress Jeanette. Maybe dropping clothes on the floor is too much like my usual behavior. Anyway, when I want to turn Jeanette on, neatness counts. Besides, I had lots of time for once; the alarm wouldn't ring for ten hours.

I eased her down on the bed while I continued the kisses. Her spine tasted of salt, and Jeanette. Just before I reached her neck, I stopped to ditch my last piece of clothing, my undershirt.

Her thighs, pressed together near her knees, were an inch or two apart where they joined her hips. I lay down full length over her, holding my weight on knees and elbows. That placed my phallus just in that crack between her thighs. When I nibbled the special spot on her neck, she shivered -- she always does. I could feel the motion of her back against my chest and of her legs between mine. Most especially, those shivers surrounded my shaft.

I rose and pulled the tops of her panties down over her butt. She turned to let me pull them off. First her hair appeared, then her mound, and then the lips which would part for me. The aroma struck me and hardened me just as I could see her fully. "Oh love," I said. I stripped the panties down her legs without any ceremony.

It had deserved the ceremony I neglected, though, for she spread those legs as soon as they weren't encumbered. I knelt between them and lay over her for another kiss on the lips. Then I hurried a line of kisses down to her knee before slowing for the upward path. I kissed the inside of one leg all the way until I felt her hair on my cheek. Then I repeated that path on her other leg.

I gave one kiss to her mound before I parted those lovely lips. The aroma was maddeningly arousing. When I lapped up a drop of her nectar, more came out. Finally, although she hadn't complained, I reminded myself that this phase was about pleasing her.

"You okay?" I asked. It would have been one hell of a time to break if she hadn't already inserted her contraceptive, and Jeanette was totally reliable about that insertion. Still, it was our joint responsibility. My asking acknowledged my part of the responsibility.

"Yep."

Then I licked up a little more juice before tasting the delicate nubbin at the top of that beauty. She shivered. I licked first one of her inner lips and then the other.

I reached under her legs and up over her abdomen to her breasts. My fingers played with her nipples as my lips and tongue teased her vulva. When her areolae were puffy against my questing fingers and her belly turned hard under my forearms, I sucked on her clit.

"Oh?" she said. It wasn't really a question.

"Ihm hmmm." It wasn't really an answer. Since I hadn't removed my mouth from her vulva, she felt that as much as she heard it. I sucked again, even more gently.

She shuddered three times. I could feel that her vagina was contracting an inch from my chin. It contracted twice more. "Ohhh!" she said, then went limp.

I immediately abandoned all contact on the erotic zones. I slithered up in the bed until I was beside her where I could give her a reassuring hug. "Lovely girl," I said, "sweet bride, wonderful wife, sexy woman." I meant every word to apply right then, but it was also a historical list. The girl I had married had been afraid of many things, orgasms among them. The wife I had now enjoyed many things, orgasms among them; but it didn't hurt to give her praise and reassurance every time she lost control in my arms.

I must say that I meant all those things I called her. A Jeanette orgasm is a marvelous thing, and I had been right next to the epicenter. I felt a bit proud, too. My touches and kisses had brought about that beauty.

I lay there, and hugged her, and kissed her shoulder in the intermission of the words of praise. When she seemed recovered, I kissed all over her face -- avoiding the mouth which was still busy breathing. "I do love you," I finished up.

"Love you too." She took another breath. "Kiss!" Giving her time for one more breath, I kissed her mouth thoroughly, invading it with my tongue in the process.

When she broke that kiss to breathe again, I moved on to her breasts. And, while my lips were busy with her nipples, my fingers played with her labia. Finally, I inserted two of them to rub the bump on the top of her tunnel.

"You!" she said.

I already had an erection, and that single word tightened it so much that I hurt. "You okay?" I asked as I climbed between her thighs. Hardly waiting for her nod, I spread her lips with my fingers and placed Junior at her portal.

My slow entry there was maddeningly delightful. I felt her tunnel widen around my invading head. All those nerve endings in the sensitive tip felt every micron of ingress. Then her lubricated tunnel smoothly clasped the shaft as it slipped inside. Finally, her most feminine part held all of me in that most intimate of hugs.

With the physical sensations of that tender friction came the messages that she enjoyed my entry almost as much as I did. As I slid into her, she inhaled through her teeth with a barely audible hiss. At the same time, she spread her legs a little bit more to welcome me.

When I had gone as far into her as I could go, when I straightened my torso and adjusted my elbows so I could fondle her breasts while they still supported my weight, she rolled her hips to thrust herself up around me. It didn't add much more physical contact, but it did add her participation. This was something we were doing.

When our bodies were adjusted, when we had savored that contact for a moment, when -- to be honest -- I had kept still about as long as I could bear to, I began to move out of her and to reenter in the rhythm as old as the race. Here too, she participated. She followed my lead as faithfully as she had followed my lead in dances decades before.

"You!" she said, moments before I exploded. As I poured all the product of that long erotic night into her, her last thrust upward lifted me above the bed. Then I felt her tunnel grasp me convulsively again and again.

"Love you!" I gasped when I finally had breath enough. Minutes later, I was able to move off her and participate in mopping up the mess.

We moved off it and spooned together in preparation for sleep. Junior, who doesn't know the meaning of the word, "enough," stirred slightly at being pressed against Jeanette's firm butt.

"Y'know," I said, "this is really iffy. But if Grand Valley keeps me on, and if the pay raise for a doctorate is enough, we might consider your going back to school full time. We might not have much saved, but we are putting some away each month. I could teach again this summer, and you could take your vacation as the first bit of school. It would be tight. We would have to clear it with Mom and Dad, of course, but they've been hinting. And they've been paying only a single tuition this last couple of years."

Jeanette stiffened. She lay silent in my arms, but I could feel her stiffness. Thoughts were running through that head pressed against my chin, maybe she was redoing the budget; maybe she was casting her mind back like I was.

I had married Jeanette at the end of my sophomore and her freshman year. Economic circumstances had forced us to put her education on hold. While I took two more years of college and four years of graduate classwork, Jeanette had been our breadwinner. My folks had picked up tuition, I had worked summers, but she had provided everything else. On top of that, she had done more than half of the housework. My studies, of course, had been hard work; but they also had been intellectual adventures.

The only taste of intellectual stimulation that she had received for six long years was her study of French, and she had to conduct this mostly on her own. I had encouraged this as best I could, and so had my family. My father, in particular, had kicked in with an airmail subscription to a different magazine every Christmas, and Le Petit Larousse, a short-wave radio, and similar gifts on her birthdays. Jeanette's response had been to worry that she was being pampered. Some days I had wanted to shake her and say, "Look, can't you see that these people" [especially your husband] "are exploiting you?"

That would have been wrong as well. We hadn't really been exploiting her. The situation, as she had pointed out herself, had called for her sacrifice. Since I hadn't been able to offer relief from that situation, clarifying why she should be resentful would hardly have been an act of love.

Once I got to Grand Valley, she was entitled to one tuition- free course a quarter. An evening course in Jeanette's case, since she worked days, and usually the same schedule as the evening course I -- being a lowly instructor -- usually taught. Still, the schedule of evening courses wasn't set up with people like her in mind. The advanced French courses were sparse. When she didn't respect the accent of the teacher or both courses offered were ones she had already taken, she found herself taking distribution instead of French courses. This quarter, she was taking sociology.

Still, maybe it would come to an end next year. And, while her independent studies wouldn't reduce the amount of classwork that she had to take, it could well get her into more interesting classes.

I couldn't tell what of that Jeanette was considering, but I could tell that she was thinking hard. Then she pushed herself out of my arms and onto her back.

"We don't have to decide tonight," I said. "Indeed, we can't do anything until the Admin asks me back."

"Bob?" she said. I waited, but nothing else came out. This didn't sound good.

"Yes?" What question did she want to raise that she couldn't raise lying in my arms?

"What about children?" she asked. I waited. "We said we would start a family when we could afford to. I'm getting awfully old. If I start school in September, I'll be twenty- eight then, and thirty before I'll graduate. I know you want this..."

I wanted her to get her degree, but I had thought that she wanted it too.

"Well," I said, "we can't do either one until I have a future here ... or a future somewhere. Why don't you think on it? Run a budget both ways." Was I trying to delay this discussion? Not consciously.

"I'll do that," she said. After a bit she turned again and pressed back against me. We drifted off to sleep, and I left the question of college for her until we had more concrete data. (And until we had more concrete need of a decision.)

On Friday, I sat down front in the audience to hear my department chairman give one of the lectures faculty present to majors, grad students, and other faculty. Dan was talking about the humanity of the founding fathers. He spent a lot of time on Franklin's honorary degree.

"You weren't pleased," he said when I came up after the lecture.

"I might have a reference for you. Anyway, I have to talk about next year." We set an appointment for a week from that day, since we didn't have a lot of non-class time in common.

The next night, I called home on weekend rates. First, I asked Dad: "One of those books which are compiled Scientific American articles. These are biographies. The article was a biography of Ben Franklin centering on his work on electricity. I need the name of Franklin's book from somewhere in the bibliography. I think the author of the article produced a more modern edition."

While he was searching, Mom talked to me a little and to Jeanette a lot. My parents definitely approve of my choice of spouse. Finally Dad came back on the phone. He gave me the reference.

"Thanks, Dad. Would you guys be able to swing another full- time tuition payment?"

"It's about time that we did something for Jeanette. As you know, your sister has another couple of years to go in med school, but there is a lot of equity in the house now. You can't use us as an excuse."

Actually, I wanted to use their willingness in the opposite way. "Well, I'm counting several chickens before they're hatched. We'll let you know."

Sunday evening, having done all my history prep, I alphabetized vocabulary cards in prep for teaching French. Jeanette thinks I've overdone this joke, but -- considering how much better her French is than mine -- it is funny how often I test hers.

She memorizes ten words both French-to-English and English- to-French 'every day' most of the time. When the words aren't from the books and magazines she read or from the programs she listened to on Radio France Internationale, they used to come from a French-English pocket dictionary we bought (used) specifically because it was so small. Even so, it took her forever to get through that.

When she has learned the word, the card comes to me. I put the cards in English alphabetical order, as I was doing that evening. Then, somewhat later, I test her knowledge English-to- French. I actually give her three tests. The first is maybe fifteen cards which she has filled out in the last quarter. The few she gets wrong go back in her to-learn pack for the next time. The many she gets right, I store to go into one of her boxes of known words.

I test her on those, as well. We are now on the words beginning with "R," but I really doubt we'd ever get through them if I added the new cards to the stack in the boxes. Even though I try to go through 25 words every day, there are still thousands of cards left in the boxes ahead of me.

Last is the English-to-French section of the pocket dictionary. I question her on that until she has enough new words to learn.

"Hoarse." I said finally.

"Cheval. Le cheval."

I laughed and spelled the English word.

"I haven't the faintest."

"Enroue'," I said. "Ee, en, ar, oh, you, ee-acute." I made no attempt to give the French pronunciation for letters. "Have enough words to learn for next week?"

"More than enough," she said. "Though it seems to take forever for your system to admit that I have memorized the word at all. It's mid-May, and how many March words did you drill me on this evening?"

"There are a few more than 800 cards in the pack." (I keep track of that.) If you'd learned 300 in March, you'd have a chance of six of those words. As it is, five is more likely." Immediately, I regretted saying that. I couldn't have sustained her level of effort for half as long as she has.

"Well, I skip far fewer days memorizing than you do drilling me." Which is certainly true, or I would drill her on ten words when I do, rather than fifteen.

"Now, dear," I said, "I'm always willing to drill you. It's only vocabulary drill I'm lax on."

"He says!"

"Come here," I said, "and I'll show you." But she skipped away to the bathroom instead. Later, however, she waited in bed for me.

"Ihm hmm," I said when I noticed her nakedness. I kissed her, licking her lips before seeking her tongue. I caressed the length of her body, from her breasts to her thighs. Every inch was responsive. Her hand toyed with my nipples as mine had toyed with hers. "I love you," I said as I climbed over her near leg.

Kneeling between her calves, I kissed her firm, upthrust breasts. Then I scattered kisses over her lovely, tight, abdomen. "You okay?" I asked. I crawled upward and stopped with Junior just outside her entrance. We shared a lovely kiss with tongue playing with tongue.

She broke the kiss. "What if I wasn't, Bob?" she asked. "What if I were lying here fertile waiting for you to plant your seed in me."

Somewhere in my head, I screamed 'No!' Junior, however, jumped at the suggestion. She felt him; when we're like that, she could hardly miss. She grinned at me.

"One vote for," she said. "Oh, come on inside. I wouldn't do that to you." I slid into the warm smoothness. She wrapped her legs around mine. Like this, I find her forehead easier to kiss than her lips.

But she'd brought up fertility.

I loved the spread of her legs which clasped me in this position, but there was no denying that the spread was really intended to let a baby out rather than to welcome a husband in.

I loved that taut belly that I could feel below mine, the sexy belly I'd kissed moments before. She put effort into keeping that tautness while working as a secretary. Would she recover it after pregnancy? Many women didn't.

I shifted so that my hands could cup her firm breasts while my elbows still sustained most of my weight. She enjoyed my hands on them, but I enjoyed her breasts more. The smooth warmth that I stroked, her firm conical shape thrusting the nipples into my palms, this had been the ultimate that I could touch of Jeanette for more than a year. It still was a wonderfully sexy experience. What would filling them for a future child who would drain them do to that firmness?

And the smooth tightness I drove through. Her tunnel was an exquisite clasp around me. It had been a tighter clasp the first few times, almost painful; but it had stretched to accommodate me. It would even stretch to accommodate a child. What of the tightness then, what of the elasticity which clasped me so warmly.

Even so, the idea of her fertility was sexy. The idea of her last openness to me, the openness of her womb to my seed, undeniably excited me. I should have been thinking of Jeanette at this time, making sure that I brought her along with me. Instead I was picturing her a tiny bit more naked, her uterus without it's bit of latex.

That idea combined with all the sensations I had been enjoying. Suddenly, my orgasm was moments away and inescapable. "Oh love," I warned her, "I can't..."

"Yes," she said. She tightened around me and clasped my butt with both hands. All I could do was move my hands to her shoulders. Then I was driving into her and shooting my essence into her.

"You all right?" I asked some time later, maybe a minute, maybe a year.

"Could you move?" I managed to move off her and on to my side. A couple of minutes later, I managed to extract the blankets and top sheet from beneath me.

Finally covered, she nestled against me. She took my right arm, which is the only part she can hug in the spoon position, and placed it against her breasts. She had both hands on it.

"You really all right?" she hadn't answered that question.

"Oh yes!" she said. "And I know what turned you on that time."

Well, she could turn me on any time. She'd told me that she enjoyed my orgasms, sometimes to the point of not wanting one of her own. Why not? I certainly enjoyed hers, if not quite to that point. Still, I know my wife after all these years, and the ease with which she sank into sleep signaled a quite recently satisfied Jeanette.

If I didn't follow her into sleep, it wasn't that my body was unsatisfied. My mind was churning inside a totally sated body. Was I pursuing the education option because I loved her mind? Or was I avoiding the child option because I loved her body?

I really did love her mind; I wanted it to experience a college education the way that the best of the majors in my courses did. I wanted her to wrestle with whatever questions the students of French literature struggled with in their classes.

On the other hand, I did love her tight body. I had never denied that, even to her; and holding it like I was then would mark one hell of a time to start. I cupped the neat, firm, breast -- avoiding the nipple which would disturb her sleep -- and committed the worries to my subconscious, and -- of course -- to the Lord.

The next day on my way home from campus, though, I did worry about it. (In a full-length rain coat, I needn't fear thinking about Jeanette's sexiness in public.) Sure, she had priorities which came before me even now. If I tried to hold those firm breasts or those sexy buttocks while she was cooking, she would chase me away. It was sweet agony to watch her dress on holidays for the university which her company didn't take. Sure, a full- time student would behave worse. I remembered writing papers while she fell asleep alone; I knew I would get that back with interest when she was the student.

But motherhood, much less pregnancy, was full-time in the way that neither of these was. Lamb chops took a few minutes to grill, even a cake was baked in a few hours. A bun spent nine months in the oven. And it would occupy the parts of her that I loved most. For that matter, Jeanette was already committed to breast-feeding. Since that would give my son the healthiest start in life, I wasn't about to argue.

On the other hand, that would give our son priority in what had been my playground for the last decade.

On still yet another hand, the wife of a colleague was quite visibly pregnant. I love my wife, don't get me wrong; and I'm certainly not about to break the seventh commandment. But Sarah Thorsen was so sleekly sexy with her swelling belly, that I'd already broken the tenth.

Whatever hand I'd gotten to by the time I came in sight of my outer door, all that was irrelevant. The decision was about what was good for Jeanette. That lively mind was entitled to all the pleasures that I had enjoyed first. Would she really prefer the pleasures of parenthood to that?

That evening, however, she didn't raise the issue. Neither did she Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thursday morning, I was mentally preparing myself for the first class while the two of us were eating breakfast. She isn't a morning person, and our breakfast conversations tend to be short and practical. "I'm going to be a total mess tomorrow night." She said out of the blue.

"That's too bad." Jeanette doesn't usually complain about her periods. But if she wanted sympathy, she would get it.

"Could I have games tonight?" This surprised me.

Once upon a time, I had instituted the idea of 'games' to diversify our sexual encounters. On alternate Friday nights, I would get to pick something adventurous; on the other Fridays, Jeanette would get to pick what she wanted, seldom what I would call 'adventurous.' As we experienced some of that diversity, the category of 'normal' sex grew. Both from that, and from the failure of some of my proposals, the category of 'adventurous' sex shrank. My games became less frequent, hers almost disappeared. Still, unless something else intervened, we went to bed earlier on Friday nights and went to sleep later.

But! She could have control any time she asked, and she knew that. And we didn't get adventurous during her period, anyway -- barring her occasional oral ministrations. Besides, Tuesday and Thursday were our nights for evening classes.

Anyway, I heeded that warning. I spent my office time making sure that I was ready for the Friday lectures. I came straight home from my evening class, but Jeanette -- who had the car -- beat me home and to the bathroom. I made my preparations in there, including another shave. She was in bed and naked when I got there. I greeted her with a deep kiss.

When she broke the kiss, she said, "I thought that this was my game."

"Anything you want."

"Remember that 'T' thing you liked."

I remembered it well. She would lie down on her back; I would lie down on my side across the bed; I would fit into her that way. I also remembered that she hadn't liked it. I could pet her like that, but only our groins touched naturally. She preferred much more body contact.

I reached down to caress her groove. "Do you want me like that?"

"Please!"

I fitted myself to her and pressed inward. She was a little drier than I liked, but she -- as she had asked -- was in charge. She passed me the KY; with that lubrication, I was soon within her. The rest of my groin was pressed into her seat.

"You asked for this," I reminded her. It is a better position when I'm doing a lot more petting.

"Bob, are you really ashamed of me?" she asked.

"Ashamed of you? No! I think that we have better positions, but you put up with my experiments."

"Ashamed of my education -- my lack of education. Your friends have doctorates, or almost. Your family..." My sister is in her second year of medical school after taking all the psychology she could as a chem major; my father has an MBA after getting a good bachelor's in economics; my mother took courses after getting an MAT in art history.

"Does my family snub you?" I knew the answer to that.

"They are all very sweet." To her. My sister has said that she can't understand what Jeanette sees in me, and Dad isn't above asking whether I'm treating her well enough. But they never snub her.

"Does the department?" There I'm totally without leverage. Instructors don't get their way on anything.

"Not really."

Having softened a little, I moved out and in twice. If I had continued much longer, I wouldn't have been able to stop. "Do you want my hands on you?" There is very little else I could do in that position.