Chapter 5

Now it was morning - afternoon - and Sara shivered, thinking of the incredible night she had spent. She began to take stock of herself, now that it was over.

She felt well. She wasn't particularly sore or injured in any way. Physically, she really felt better than usual. In fact, she felt great.

She threw the covers off and went naked, first to the kitchen, starting coffee, and then to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face, framed by the ferns and plants she grew in the moistness, looked relaxed, and when she smiled inadvertently, she really looked terrific by her standards. To anyone else, she would have appeared radiant.

No marks on her body, although her breasts looked a little red around the nipples. She turned, but could see no marks on her back or on her buttocks. Finally, she spread her legs in front of the mirror, looking carefully between her thighs. No signs remained of what had passed through, although she clearly needed a shower. She reeked of sex. It made her nipples rise, remembering how it came to be so. She turned on the water.

After her shower, she took coffee into the living room, sitting on the couch to think. She was still naked, sitting before the open window. She rarely wore clothes at home, even though she knew there were men across the way who watched her. That knowledge had always turned her on a little, and once in a while she would stand in front of the window, or pose in the doorway to the balcony, thinking how they must enjoy it. And to achieve her seamless tan, she was nearly always naked on the sun-drenched balcony.

The hot, strong coffee brought her around to the problem of the day. She had gone out with Steve and screwed him - no big deal, even though he was sort of forbidden fruit by company standards. That didn't bother her. At least it was consistent with her normal sexual behavior. She had learned to accept that it was normal - at least for her. Not that she was certain it was Right. But, at least she had to realize that she couldn't do much about it, even if she wanted to.

What bothered her was that she had willingly screwed two more men in the same room at the same time and enjoyed it. No. She had loved it, every moment. She also knew it was Wrong.

Perhaps she was entering a new stage of her struggle with sex. Maybe she was becoming a nympho or something.

Her stomach reminded her that breakfast was necessary, so she ate. Thinking about her excessive sex drive, however, wasn't really on the agenda for today. She simply felt too good to worry. She cleaned the apartment, did a cursory dusting of the bookcases that covered the walls. They were filled with books she treasured and frequently re-read. She did the laundry. She even washed the windows, knowing as she worked that someone was watching her bouncing, naked breasts and her bare ass as she stretched and moved her body to wipe the panes.

Somehow she didn't feel Wrong. She felt Great.

The afternoon passed quickly, and she found sunset approaching before she knew it. The phone rang, and she threw herself in the easy chair, one leg over the arm, reaching to answer.

"Hi, Sara, it's Ralph. You haven't forgotten our date tonight, have you?"

"Of course not, Ralph." She had. "But I'm glad you called. What do you want to do?" She ran her hand along the inside of her thigh, watching the sunshine and shadow that lay along it. Her hand ended up cupping her sex, feeling her own warmth and liking what she felt.

"Well, that's why I called," said Ralph. "I wanted to see if there were anything special you had in mind - a movie?"

"That's sweet of you, Ralph, let me think a minute." Sara paused and looked out at what promised to be a beautiful sunset. "Ralph," Sara said to him, "I slept late today. I've cleaned the house. I'm sitting here bare ass in the sunshine, and I don't feel much like moving, never mind getting dressed. It's nearly five. Why don't you get some Chinese food and come over. We can screw for a while, then we'll nuke some supper and screw some more. How's that for a plan?"

"Well, I don't know, Sara." Ralph sounded hesitant. "I mean, why bother to eat?"

Sara laughed at him and hung up. They had been lovers ever since she had first moved to town. It would take a lot to surprise Ralph.

When the doorbell rang, Sara had organized drinks. She met Ralph at the door naked and handed him his drink, taking the bag of Chinese food from him She stepped up for a kiss and a feel and went to put the food in the kitchen. When she returned, Ralph was naked, too, Already hard. They went into the bedroom. Sara made him lie on his back and mounted him. She watched herself in the mirror as she began to rise and fall.

In the morning, after Ralph left, Sara lay on the bed in the sunshine until her pulses calmed and the wetness between her thighs and on her belly began to dry. Rising, she put the breakfast dishes in the machine and took a shower. Then gathering the Sunday paper and a book, she went out on the balcony to spend the day in the sun. She stood there for a while, looking across the city, then took her bottle of sun oil and began greasing her body for the day. She thought some of her neighbors might be watching, so she took special care to oil her breasts and the insides of her thighs in a way that would please her imagined audience. Then she lay down to read and bake.

She read the paper and finished her book. It was still only early afternoon. She got up and watered the flowers and plants that edged the balcony. On the lounge again, she turned on her stomach to toast her back, only after having spread more suntan oil on what she could reach. Her tan was good enough that she wouldn't burn, but the oil kept her skin from getting hard and tough. And putting more on would give her neighbors something to think about.

With her head on the pillow, Sara closed her eyes, thinking to doze a little - but her thoughts returned to the episode of Friday night. She clenched her buttocks as she recalled it and realized that she still had a sense of pleasure left over from it.

Sara felt a little horny most of the time. She always woke up horny in the morning, which was why she had formed the habit of masturbating before she got up, if for some reason she was alone. By the end of the day, she was almost always ready for sex. Yesterday, she had hardly felt the tingle of desire until late in the afternoon. Even today, after screwing Ralph before and after breakfast, she still felt calmer than usual.

'Not that I'm a sex fiend, ' she thought. Often, she went several days without sex, particularly if no one she liked was available. She didn't like it and it made her edgy and irritable. But, she could do it.

She asked her mother once, "Do you like sex?" At some length, she was told that sex was something you did to satisfy a man, or to get babies. It was necessary.

"Do you have orgasms, Mom?" Sara had asked. It seemed that her mother had not really thought about it, but presumed she had, once or twice.

And once again Sara asked, now already sure of the answer, "Do you like sex?" No, her mother did not like sex, and she saw no reason why anyone else should. In the long run, after all, sex was dirty.

It occurred to Sara to ask how often her mother had sex, but she dismissed the idea, unspoken. Since her father had left, her mother had never dated, seldom had a man been in the house for any reason. Frequency didn't seem to be an issue for Mom.

Long before Sara had this conversation, she had learned to compare her mother's pronouncements with her own experience. She knew that sex felt better than practically anything else she did. More important, Sara knew that she liked sex and seemed to need a lot of it. She knew that she could use sex to get things she wanted, but had also discovered that there was a price to pay if you used it that way.