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 “Playful, aren’t you?” he said.

 “Uh-huh.” She bit him again.

 “Well, two can play.” He reached around the swell of her breasts and tickled her ribs.

 “Oh, don’t,” she squealed.

 “Or what?”

 “Or I’ll tickle you back.”

 “I’m not ticklish,” he told her.

 “We’ll see about that!” She slid her hand around his chest and ran her fingers lightly over his rib cage.

 He didn’t respond. “I told you I wasn’t ticklish,” he said.

 “Nonsense! Everybody’s ticklish. I just have to find the right spot.” She forced her fingers under his belt and tried to tickle his belly.

 Still he didn’t respond. “See?” he said.

 Determined, Glory pushed her hand lower. Suddenly Don gave a little jump. “Aha!” she said. “So that’s the spot!” She squeezed his erect and burning penis.

 “It has nothing to do with being ticklish,” he told her. “That’s just damn sexy, that’s all. Anybody would react to being touched there.”

 “Not me!”

 Don reached under Glory’s dress and ran his fingers up the length of her thigh all the way to the quivering flesh above the top of her stocking. “Oh, no?” he said as the muscle of her thigh clenched at his touch.

 “No,” she murmured. But her hand was on top of his then and suddenly it wasn’t a game anymore. Her legs were arching to his touch and her mouth was hungry against his, His hand went higher, brushing aside the flimsy panties she wore. Glory’s naked breasts and naked thighs gleamed their invitation in the moonlight coming through the window of the cab. He plunged his hand into the open, damp, warm well between her legs.

 They were both beyond thinking then. Glory’s fingers were as eager as Don’s in tearing away his clothing. She gasped at the size of his hard-on—she’d learned more of the language of sex by now—bared to the moonlight. He pulled her astride him, his fingers digging into the plumpness of her buttocks. There was a moment’s sharp pain, and then Glory found herself rising and falling gently as though in tempo with the bouncing of the hansom. Don’s lips brushed her breasts and she felt the fullness of his movements beneath her. He pulled her closer to bury his face between her breasts, and she began to move more frantically at the sudden, perfect pressure against the deep fount of her passion. They moved together. Cock and cunt. Locked. Faster and faster. . .Their bodies attuned, their flesh alive to the pleasure. . . And then there was the rocketing sensation of mutually reached ecstasy, and the love they felt for each other broke over them in waves. Don shot a steady stream of hot cream all the way up, deep into her womb. Glory gasped and came with him, forcing a mixture of his jizzum and her honey out and over both their thighs. And still their orgasms continued. Finally they broke apart to lie together side by side, happily exhausted yet conscious that they must hurry and rearrange their clothing, for the hansom ride was coming to an end.

 That night—or, rather, early in the morning -- Glory drifted off to sleep reliving the joy she and Don had found. Don lay awake, happy, but a little troubled in his conscience, and making plans. He put those plans into effect the very next day.

 “Mr. Dawes,” he said at the first opportunity, “I want to marry your daughter.”

 “Does she want to marry you?”

 “I believe so, sir.”

 “Well, let’s find out for sure.”

 That night Don asked Glory to marry him and Glory accepted. The pair then rejoined Preston B. Dawes in the living room and told him their decision. “I’m delighted,” he told them, meaning it. “When were you thinking of having the nuptials?”

 “Right away!” they answered in chorus.

 Dawes smiled. “Eager, aren’t you? But not very practical I’m afraid. After all, there are preparations to be made. Invitations to be sent out, that sort of thing. And there’s something else which has come up that I’m afraid will make it necessary for you to wait at least until autumn.”

 Their disappointment showed. Don rallied from it enough to ask, “What’s that, sir?”

 “The Continental setup. You’re familiar with it, Don?”

 ‘Yes, sir, I worked out the original prospectus for expansion.”

 “Well, I’m not familiar with it and I don’t see what it has to do with our getting married.” Glory pouted.

 “There’s been a hitch,” Preston B. Dawes explained patiently. “Don, you explain the set up to Glory and then I’ll tell you both what the problem is.”

 It s like this, honey,” Don explained. “The Continental Ball Bearing Company is an important subsidiary of Universal Enterprises. It’s a large plant operation in the southern part of the Midwest. We started it about three years ago because it was obvious that if we could manufacture our own ball bearings, we could cut down on purchasing costs. You see, every single item manufactured by Universal utilizes ball bearings—as a matter of fact, all machinery, TV sets, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, stereo sets, you name it, contain them. So you see why we’d rather make our own than buy them elsewhere.

 “Anyway, at first the Continental plant was an experiment. We continued to purchase ball bearings from other manufacturers while we tested the feasibility of making our own. Recently, we’ve been buying less and less on the outside, though. It’s become apparent that the idea behind Continental is sound. The trouble is that the plant isn’t large enough to supply all our ball bearing needs. So, with the saving so obvious, it was recently decided to draw up plans for expansion. I was assigned to do this about three months ago."

 “And you did a good job, Don,” Dawes assured him. However, with a subsidiary like Continental, subject as it is to all the problems of absentee ownership and even absentee management above a certain level there’s many a slip twixt planning and doing. Your plans, through no fault of your own, couldn’t take the human elements and community relations aspects of the situation into consideration. I’ll show you why in a minute. First, tell Glory roughly what it was that you proposed.”

 Don took a pencil and paper and drew a rough map. “This is the county of Glenville, honey.” He pointed. “And this is the town of Glenville. Here, on the eastern outskirts of the town in the Continental Ball Bearing Company plant. Now, the problem was just how, physically I mean, to expand. The town itself lies directly to the west, so that was out. Local ordinances cover the land to the north, zoning it off for residential areas only, so if we wanted to expand in that direction, we’d have to get involved in local politics. A stream cuts through the property to the east, presenting all kinds of construction problems, so I ruled that out. That left only a tract of farmland here, to the south, owned, if I recall correctly by a Mr. Ben Malden. It was my recommendation that we have this land surveyed and if it really was suitable to our purposes, we offer Mr. Malden ten percent over the going rate to sell his farm to us. That’s about it, isn’t it, sir?”

 “Right,” Dawes agreed. “But what happened is that while his land is just what we need, Mr. Malden refuses to sell. Now we’ve upped our price twice, to almost one-and-a-half times our original offer, but he’s adamant. He may be holding out for more, or it may be that he just plain isn’t selling. If it’s the latter, we may have to reconsider trying to convince the town of Glenville to rezone so that we can expand to the north. This could be very costly, for then we’d be dealing with perhaps a dozen individual owners, rather than one, and each of them might try to outsit the others in order to get the highest price. Mr. Malden’s our best bet, but the situation requires someone at the management level to go to Glenville and appraise it from all angles realistically. I’m leaving for there next week, Glory, and I’d hoped you’d come with me.”