"Art! Art, baby!" Helen crooned, abandoning herself to her most sensuous longings. Her clitoris rode on the rocky base of her husband's cock and drove her into spasms of delight. She tightened her butt-cheeks convulsively when she felt his finger plunge into her asshole, and then the new wave of thrills forced her thighs to their widest angle and brought a deep groan of pleasure from her throat.
"This is where it's at, baby," Art muttered between grunts. "You being all woman and me all man."
"Art, baby," she said with a hiss. "Fuck me!" She said it reverently, using the words to seal a bond between them she hadn't been able to accept before. With it, she promised him the hidden Helen.
He pounded her on his cock, his hips driving in opposition to her motion until the convulsions of orgasm swept her and the heat of his cum seethed in her belly.
"Ahhh!" She clenched her teeth, then opened her jaws wide. "Aghhh! Nnnh! Yes, yes, YES!"
Her tension exploded and she writhed with the force of her contractions. And even while she sobbed her pleasure to Art, the awesome sensations faded and she began to go limp. She collapsed, muscle by muscle, lying quietly on her husband with the fullness of her cunt and her ass still the only firm realities in her universe.
"I love you, darling," she whispered.
"Yeah, sugar. I love you, too."
They clung to each other, Art reeking satisfaction and she trying to keep the memory of her great pleasure uppermost in her mind. His breathing quieted and grew increasingly regular, until a faint snore told Helen he slept. She squirmed cautiously off his cock and pulled the covers over them. After a long time, Art stirred, and when he turned, she slipped off him and settled onto the mattress. She stared at the ceiling, not caring that the light was still burning, and let the night's events filter through her mind.
In trying to change her husband, she'd changed herself. Not changed, though, she insisted silently. I can't pretend I don't know myself I'm what I was before Grandma died. She faced the fact bleakly. That's the me I've been trying to hide – no, to kill – all this time. That was the lustful, physical self, she decided, and she stripped away her old defenses to weigh her discovery. I can't be both. There can only be one me, either the modest, spiritual one or the lustful, wicked one. And Art wants me lustful.
She watched a speck on the ceiling – an insect too small to identify – make its way across the featureless surface, neither digressing nor wandering from its straight line. It only goes one direction at a time, she reflected. It knows where it's going – instinct, maybe – and it goes. All right! I know I want Art! I know what he wants me to be. So that's the me I'm going to be.
She slept, dreaming of her new role and waking often in panic at the nature of her dreams. When light came and she gave up further effort to sleep, she wasted little time on introspection. She reiterated her decision and conceded the change would be difficult. She knew herself; every influence in her background had contributed to make her abhor halfway measures or attitudes. Her entire mental foundation consisted of blocks that were platitudes and truisms.
"There's no such thing as half-right."
"If you start to do something, do it all the way."
"You can't live on both sides of the fence."
She missed Dan at breakfast. Art's exuberance was the only thing that salvaged the meal. She thought she'd not seen him as enthusiastic and warm since before their marriage. After he'd left the house, she turned to her never-ending vacuuming and dusting with a glow of satisfaction in her decision. Despite that crutch to her morale, however, there were times during the day when she felt she was experiencing a bleakness even worse than she'd suffered when she became pregnant with Dan. And she felt sharp pangs of guilt over having shunted Dan off the night before. As a gesture of restitution, she baked bread and cookies in the afternoon.
Dan appeared to have felt the situation as strongly as she. He was early. "Shortcuts," he offered when she remarked on the fact. And he was effusive, hugging her affectionately before letting her see the way his nose wriggled at the scents that floated from the kitchen. She kissed him again, then watched his broad shoulders sway as he hurried towards the smells, his black hair swishing on his neck. The day was a good one after all.
With her tensions dissolving, she sighed and remembered she hadn't had her bath. She called to Dan that she'd be in her room for a while and went back to draw water in the sunken tub. She poured a double portion of bubble-bath and began to undress. As an afterthought, while she was knotting the belt of her dressing gown, she loosened the knot, slipped out of the severe garment, and laid it aside.
Not me, she thought. That's the old modesty. She went to the radio on the dresser, tuned it to an FM station with a program of the older, romantic music, and went back to the bathroom, shivering at her nakedness, and leaving the doors open so she could relax to the music. She slipped gratefully into the water and sank into the mounds of bubbles. It was a fine day, she decided, and it would be even better when she had her man at home.
"Mom! Mom!" Dan's voice came from the other end of the house.
"Yes?" she called.
It appeared he hadn't heard her. He continued to shout, no urgency in his tone, as he roamed the house looking for her. She smiled. Always, she thought. Always the same. And it doesn't matter what he wants to tell me. It's just being able to when he wants to.
"Mom!"
"Yes, Danny!"
"Oh. Mom?"
"What?"
He could tell her from the bedroom, calling through the open doors. It would never do to wait, she reflected. Not for Danny.
"I'm in here," she called.
"Oh. Okay." He'd reached the bedroom, she decided. "Hey, Mom. I wondered if…"
She gasped. Danny loomed in the doorway, his eyes getting round as he realized she was in the tub. He appeared to be paralyzed, his gaze fixed on her suds-flecked tits and his mouth still open.
"Mom! I…"
She realized suddenly she'd been paralyzed, too. With a burst of motion, she slid down until only her head remained exposed. "Danny!"
"Gee, Mom! I didn't know… I mean, the door's…"
"It's… it's all right, Danny. Never mind. What was it?"
He shuffled from one foot to the other, his face flushed.
He doesn't know what to do, she realized. He can't sink through the floor, and turning around and running would be too undignified at his age. He's trying to figure out how to appear casual-how to look blas? about it all.
Dan drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Crossing to the toilet, he seated himself on the closed lid and leaned against the tank. "I get it, I guess," he said.
"Hm?"
"It's like they said in school. You know, in Social Adjustments. About us getting to the age when it's time to start learning the facts of life."
"Oh," she replied weakly. "What was it you wanted?"
"Huh? Oh! I wanted you to come look at Smokey. He was doing a new trick… bowing." Danny grinned. "Sure looked funny with his rump in the air and his knees on the ground."
She giggled. Her mental image of the tiny donkey, his ears as big as he was, bowing to Danny provided a trigger to release the tension in the situation. "I wish I could. See it, I mean."
"He'll do it whenever I tell him, now," said Danny airily. He gazed thoughtfully at her. "Mom, sometimes I just can't get over how complicated you and Dad are."
"How?"
"Well, I mean you're too complicated for me to figure out yet. Like I think I know exactly what you think – I figure a rule is because something's just right or wrong – and then all of a sudden I find out it was just because you didn't think I was old enough. Like not talking about Dad's salary. I used to think that was some kind of big secret no one ever knew. And then I got old enough you knew I wouldn't go around talking about it. Or like knowing what I was… about not knowing I was half-Indian until last year. Same thing. And I always figured people seeing other people without their clothes on was something you and Dad had a hang-up about. I was wondering how a guy learned all the stuff they were talking about in Social Adjustments – except the theoretical junk, I mean. And all of a sudden it turns out I was just too young for that, too." He grinned sheepishly. "Should'ah known better."