Chapter 7: New York

Marianne wasn't the slimmest woman Gareth had ever made love with. In fact, as she unclasped her bra to let her heavy bosom fall loose, Gareth studied her full stomach with some hesitation. She wasn't fat exactly, not even plump, but by no measurement could she be described as slim.

It wasn't as if Gareth could complain. Despite those few hours a week he found to attend the gym, he had definitely lost the slim figure he still sometimes imagined was just a temporary loss. He pulled down his boxers. His penis, not yet fully erect, never would be unless he lost his self-consciousness about the stomach that had forced him to accept a fifty inch waist-size on his discarded suit trousers.

Outside the window, Gareth could hear the roar of the Manhattan traffic some twenty or so stories below. He fancied he could hear more sirens than usual, but this caused him no concern. New York was a busy city. There was always something happening somewhere or other. It was best never to worry too much about it.

After the last month or so since touching down at JFK, he had only gradually got back into stride. The long meetings, the overflowing mailbox, the documents he had to prepare only now seemed the natural routine of his working life. Besides the projects whose looming deadlines justified his handsome salary, and generous annual bonus, there was at least one project that he had at last brought to closure. And this was, of course, his pursuit of Marianne.

Finally, those evenings in the bar after work, sitting with her and other colleagues, and those sometimes not especially subtle hints, had come to this. Something he was sure justified making up the excuse of having to take one of his estranged wife's daughters to the clinic and thereby take the Tuesday morning off. But, of course, instead of driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, he steered his BMW over to the Upper East Side to fulfil his rendezvous with Marianne.

Marianne lay down on her back on the huge bed she normally shared with her husband. She supported her back on her shoulders. Her breasts flopped down onto her belly. Her dyed-blonde hair was immaculate as always. Her round face was the only part of her in any sense dressed with light purple lipstick, subtly applied highlighter, and the equally subtle application of mascara around her wide blue eyes.

Those eyes were so fucking sexy Gareth reflected, his penis stirring in joyful anticipation, especially now that Marianne was so obviously looking forward to unrestrained sex.

Gareth had a routine he followed with any new conquest. He would start at the feet and work his way, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, up the length of the leg. Although this progress was slow and steady, he knew that by the time he reached Marianne's vagina, it would be moist and welcoming.

As his puckering mouth ascended the calves, gently sucked and licked the round knees, and then slobbered along the expanse of thigh, he could hear that familiar chorus of gasps as Marianne became increasingly aroused. He gazed up at her face, his nose now only inches away from the full, untrimmed mass of her light brown pubic hair. She arched her head back, her hair falling back onto the pillow, while from the corner of his eye he could see a picture of Marianne and her husband smiling contentedly from a photograph by the bedside table lamp.

This was the first time Gareth had ever seen an image of Simon. There really wasn't the time to study it properly. Far more urgent business was on hand. Just as Gareth normally would, Simon was at this moment almost certainly wearing an expensive suit in keeping with the luxury of his apartment and his status in the Lower Manhattan brokerage where he worked. In the photograph he was wearing a polo shirt and slacks, his confident assured smile matching that of his wife around whose waist he wrapped a bare arm.

One thing Gareth was certain of, although he was spared the embarrassment of actually seeing it in the photograph, was that unlike him, Simon would have a circumcised penis. That much was obvious from the surname he shared with his wife.

Marianne's vagina had a rich, welcoming smell when Gareth buried his nose into it, his hands supporting his weight on her outstretched thighs. The taste was equally arousing as his tongue guided itself around the folds and creases of her vulva. His tongue discovered her clitoris before his eyes did, a hard knob of arousal buried under the most complicated of all her complex contours. His forefinger pushed into the vagina, easily engulfed by its moistness. One by one, two, three and then four fingers, thrust backwards and forwards, and orchestrated a series of gasps from Marianne above.

The progress of Gareth's mouth from the vagina, over the navel, around the crenulations of her nipples and finally to her mouth and its expertly capped teeth was just as leisurely and steady as his earlier progress from the ankle. All the while, he kept a finger or two inside the warm cavern of her vagina, twitching her clitoris and pushing his fingers back and forth. Marianne gasped and panted with growing passion, her polished fingernails digging into Gareth's broad back. And just as Marianne was clearly ready for action, so too was Gareth, his penis throbbing and pulsing and ready for the plunge.

At last, he was inside, and the two of them thrust their crotches up against each other in a steadily growing curve of passion, one that after many partners and many similar encounters, Gareth knew he could delay from the final moment of release for many minutes more.

And then the phone rang.

"Shit!" Marianne cried. "Who the fuck can that be?"

"Ignore it!" hissed Gareth.

Whatever it was, there was more urgent business to attend to.

The phone rang all six times and then Gareth heard Marianne's voice crackle from the answer-phone explaining that she and Simon were not able to take the call at the moment, but if the caller left a number...

And then her voice stopped abruptly as the respondent hung up.

Despite the interruption, Gareth was too expert to let this deflate his prowess and within a minute, he and Marianne were fucking again, more energetically than ever. Gareth now learnt something about Marianne he would never have suspected and that was the extent of her vocal passion. Her gasps became shrieks that ascended in volume and pitch with each of Gareth's thrusts.

She was a screamer.

It was a good thing, after all, that they had arranged to meet in Marianne's apartment rather than retreat back to the office after a glass or two of wine, as Gareth once contemplated.

Then Gareth heard another sound, quite piercing but definitely melodic. It wasn't from outside, though he was conscious of the echoes of sirens and automobile horns rising from the streets below. Rather noisier than below his own apartment, that was for sure. And it was too high-pitched to be the sound of a stereo blasting from an adjoining apartment.

"Fuck!" Marianne gasped, stretching her arm over to the bedside table, Gareth's penis still deep inside her. "Now it's the cell phone. I should've just turned it off!"

"Just ignore it!" Gareth snarled.

He was just about losing patience with these interruptions.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Marianne cried agitatedly. "Get your dick out of me! It's fucking Simon!"

Gareth hated doing that. It was almost physically painful to snatch his penis out from where it was so fully embedded, his erection as stiff as it could ever be. Clearly, it wasn't that pleasant for Marianne either, who gasped with a painful grimace, snatched the cell phone from the table, and pressed it to her ear.

Gareth sat back on the mattress, cross-legged, his penis twitching in attendance, while Marianne sat on the side of the bed nodding her head and occasionally shaking it, making occasional monosyllabic utterances.

"So, you'll be back early then!" she confirmed, just before turning off the cell phone and replacing it on the table.

"Your husband's coming home, is he?" Gareth asked, wondering whether he should now just leave. He had, after all, achieved almost everything he'd intended to do. Not absolutely everything, of course, but almost.

"He doesn't know," said Marianne, looking startled. "He doesn't really know what's happening. There's been a kind of explosion in the other tower. Not the one he works in, but the North Tower. No one knows what's happened. Apparently there's smoke coming out of it. He's been told to stay at his desk. They think it's the best place to stay. Apparently, it's safer than outside if there's something like that explosion they had a few years ago in the underground car park."

"So, he'll be staying at work then?" wondered Gareth hopefully.

"Who knows," Marianne remarked. "No one knows what to do. Simon's been phoning emergency services for advice, but they're always engaged. The management advise staying at their desks. After all, what's happened in the other tower can't be happening in both of them, can it?"

"I guess not!"

Marianne put the cell phone down and bit her lip. She looked up at Gareth and noticed his erect penis protruding almost incongruously between his crossed knees.

She giggled.

"Well, he won't be back for an hour or so, even if they do evacuate the building," she remarked. "What can we do while we're waiting?"

"I know exactly what I want to do!" said Gareth determinedly, with a wicked smile on his face.

Re-entry was not as smooth as had been the original entry. Marianne was obviously quite tense, though there was enough residual moistness for the feat to be achieved with no pain to either of them. He thrust back and forth, only gradually building up the rhythm, mindful of what it was sometimes like when the fucking was interrupted in mid-stroke and remembering too well the times it had killed all the passion.

Then Marianne said, whilst not responding at all with her body as Gareth had hoped, "It'll be on the box, won't it?"

"What?" Gareth answered, barely able to disguise his annoyance.

"Something like that, an explosion in the World Trade Center, it'll be on television, won't it?"