Della said, ‘Now? You want to do it now?’
He kicked aside his discarded clothes with his feet. He was naked now – a vast bulky Buddha – pale and hairy and imposing. He stood with his thighs apart, his fists on his hips, and the erection that rose from between his legs was dark crimson and challengingly thick. Unlike many fat men, whose sexual functions declined as their weight increased, Shearson Jones had kept up a greedy interest in women, and the size of his penis was renowned amongst more than a few Washington hostesses whose husbands occasionally found themselves posted abroad on State Department business.
Mrs Gene Bolsover had called it ‘the only pole I’d salute whether they ran a flag up it or not.’
Shearson took hold of Della’s arm, and pulled her towards him. Her wrap was hanging around her waist now, and he tugged it right off, so that she, too, was naked, except for her panties. He kissed her mouth, and pressed her close to his big pillowy belly, and squeezed her breasts until they hurt.
‘You’re a bitch, you see,’ he panted. His face was laced with shining sweat. ‘You’re a bitch who has to be taught to be appreciative.’
She had seen him in this mood before, but never so fiercely. He had never actually hurt her before, despite his bulk, but now it seemed as if he was going to try to force her to do whatever he wanted, both in bed and at work. She arched her back to get away from his thick-lipped kisses, but he wrapped his arms around her in a massive, spine-cracking bear-hug from which she just couldn’t break herself free. Apart from being huge, Shearson was also overwhelmingly strong.
‘I’m offering you everything a woman could want,’ he whispered, close to her ear. It was a harsh, uncompromising whisper that frightened her. ‘Everything you ever desired. Money, fur coats, pleasure, popularity. You can’t tell me that you’re going to say no.’
‘Shearson—’ she said, but he gripped her even tighter. Her lumbar vertebrae felt as if they were being compressed in a vice.
‘Come on, Della, you can’t say no! A million dollars, maybe more than a million dollars, and me, too!’
‘Shearson – I can’t—’ she gasped. ‘Shearson – I can’t – breathe properly—’
Shearson suddenly released her, and raised his arms, like a boxer showing the referee that he’s broken completely free from a clinch. His eyes were giving nothing away at all. They were bland and bulbous and they didn’t even blink. He backed away, his thighs wobbling, his hands still raised.
‘Well, then, Della,’ he said, softly, ‘you can do whatever you choose. But if you decide you want to stay with that newspaper of yours, you’d better get yourself dressed and leave this house right now, and there’s something else you’d better consider, too. You’d better consider my friendly association with Mr Wendell Oliver, and how that might adversely affect your career. What’s more, you’d better think about all those confidences to which you’ve accidentally become a party, and how dangerous those kind of confidences can be. Why, I’ve known people with information like that get themselves into all kinds of trouble.’ In the dim Moroccan room there was no sound at all, save for Shearson’s laboured breathing. Then, the senator reached out behind him for the ottoman, and sat down on it, still breathing heavily, and still watching Della with those intense, vacant eyes of his.
‘If you decide you want to take up a new career in my employment, of course, your whole life’s going to be different,’ he said. There was no expression on his face at all. ‘You’re going to discover a whole new world of diamonds, and mink, and Cadillacs. That part of life which my good friend Alan Hedges calls “The Gravy”.’
He lay back, his belly spreading wide, his thighs crowding underneath its fleshy overlap like the carcasses of two white whales being towed along by a factory ship. But between them, his erection rose as strong as ever, and his balls were as tight as a fist.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked her.
She stayed where she was while an unseen clock ticked away another minute in her life. A brass-and-ebony clock which had ticked away the lives of unknown Moroccans in Tangier, and which Shearson had brought back with him from North Africa on one of his regular antique-plundering trips.
During this minute, she didn’t look pretty, even though her hair was shining bright red, and the shadows which fell across her nearly-naked body were soft and flattering. But then she approached the ottoman, and looked down at Shearson’s massive body, and smiled. The smile of a sensual woman, possibly – even the smile of a hooker. But she knew what she had to do and the smile went with it.
While Shearson lay on his back, she climbed on to him, straddling his thighs first, and then leaning forward, so that his erection was touching her stomach. She held it in her small fist, her small fist with the thin gold rings on every finger, and she slowly rubbed it up and down, until the head swelled purple and glossy, and the slit in it began to gape the same way that Shearson’s mouth was gaping.
‘Good girl,’ breathed Shearson. ‘Good girl.’
She lifted herself up a little, and from where he was lying Shearson could see the gingery pattern of pubic hair through the transparent nylon of her panties. But then she reached down between her legs, and pulled the nylon aside, exposing the glistening pink flesh of her vulva. And with an easy, rhythmic motion like a rider settling herself in a saddle, she couched the head of Shearson’s erection between her open lips, and sat down on him, quickly and easily, and right up to the hilt. He let out an odd chuffing sound, like the air brakes on a large truck.
‘You big pig,’ Della told him, with that same hooker’s smile. ‘You great gross hog of a man.’
Shearson didn’t make love like other men: he was too fat for that. Instead, he expected his lovers to gallop on top of him, while he responded with a kind of wallowing undulation. But he was big enough to go very deep, and to stretch his women to their utmost, and while his body may not have been agile, he had hands that could twist and squeeze, or could just as arousingly touch and tickle and tease. While Della moved up and down on him, sliding up and down with ever-increasing excitement and tension, he gripped the round soft cheeks of her bottom and parted them like a diner breaking a soft bread-roll, and then sent his middle finger on a dark and erotic exploration of the doughy interior. Della, in spite of herself, in spite of everything she felt, found herself pushing her hips harder and deeper on to Shearson’s cushioned thighs, and it was only on the very brink of orgasm that she had a vivid and uncompromising insight into what she was actually doing, and that she saw Shearson’s fatness for what it was.
Then – it was too late. Her body was already quaking; her breasts were already shuddering; and Shearson was ejaculating inside her in measured, laconic spurts of sperm.
She climbed off him too quickly. He sensed her distaste. But he stayed where he was on the ottoman and watched her with dispassion as she stepped across the room and picked up her wrap. She found it easier to face him once she had covered herself up, although he had left her with a slimy reminder of his appetites which was sliding down her thigh.
‘Well,’ he said, easing himself up into a sitting position. ‘I suppose that means yes. What you did, I mean. I suppose that amounts to acceptance.’
She nodded, her head jerking like a marionette. ‘Yes,’ she said, in her briskest liberated-female-reporter manner. ‘Yes, it does. I’ll send in my resignation to the Kansas City Herald-Examiner as soon as your fund raising committee is ready to roll.’