She tossed the dowdy hat and veil on the bed. A few seconds later she had slipped out of the black dress. Then she kicked off the low-heeled black shoes and removed the unappealing thick black stockings. Her slip was black, too, and she removed it. Black bra and panties followed. For a time at least, Llona wanted nothing black covering her body, nothing black to remind her of her widowhood.
Naked now, she flung herself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling stared back blankly, without vision. Too bad for the ceiling. It didn't know what it was missing. Llona's hair spread out like dark golden bronze over the white pillow, and the smoldering of her deep brown eyes testified to the fires making her breasts swell like soft rockets poised for the end of the countdown and rocking her buttocks so that her flesh shimmered in the light from the ceiling.
At first Llona tried to blot out the message her body-was transmitting. She tried to summon up some feeling of sorrow for George; she tried to envision his face. But it was a blank in her mind. And each time she tried to fill it, it wasn't George's face, but another, clearly etched and compelling, that she saw. It was Archer's face which insisted on etching itself so vividly across the screen of her mind.
She saw it peering from behind the closed closet door facing her bed. Helpless to stop it, her mind seized upon the memory and enlarged it to recreate the scene which had taken place in that very closet on her wedding day. She heard his voice, felt his breath in her ear and his hands on her body, tasted once again the beginnings of the nourishment he'd provided her hungry body.
Llona closed her eyes tightly. Her hand fell to her breast and caressed it. In her mind it was Archer's hand stroking the panting flesh, tantalizing the sensitive nipples until their redness deepened and the roseates widened and the tips swelled to little quivering fingers of lust.
Her tongue flicked at her lips now, moistening their burning dryness. It moved quickly, matching the cadence of the long fingernail strumming the erect tip of her breast. The movement traveled to her hips. They moved spasmodically at first, then settled into a drawn-out, grinding motion. Every so often, however, the rhythm was broken by a sudden tensing of her buttock muscles which thrust the pink nether-cheeks upward and clear of the sheets. Llona moaned low in her throat.
Her smooth belly was undulating now. Each rippling palpitation had the effect of making her navel seem to be opening and closing. The triangle of golden brown curls beneath it seemed also to move-like a wheatfield stirred by a sudden breeze. One long, slender leg bent at the knee and moved in small circles. Both inner thigh muscles stood out like tensed arrows of flesh pointing to the moist passage of her womanhood.
One hand traveled down the length of her body, the middle finger coming to rest to duel with the taut scarlet sentinel standing at attention and guarding the tunnel of forbidden delights. The duel went on a long time with Llona bouncing slowly and then more frenziedly on top of the bed. By the time the sentinel had been bypassed, the bouncing had changed to a wild thrashing about, furious testimony to the complete abandonment now possessing her body.
In her mind, Archer was once again rending her, providing the brutal ecstasy she'd known so very briefly. Too, too briefly. The two fingers of her hand no longer in sight substituted for the mighty weapon with which he had assailed her. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper they plunged. Her breathing was an audible sob as she mounted higher and higher on the crest of oncoming fulfillment. Finally, mindlessly, she screamed aloud, and- CRASH!
The loudness of the sound made mourners' eyes look ceilingward in the living room directly beneath Llona's bedroom. Llona's parents were the first to react vocally. "That was Llona screaming!" her mother said, panic in her voice.
"That noise-!" Llona's father looked fearful. "Do you think that she-?" He moved quickly toward the stairs, his wife following behind.
As they disappeared, the consternation of the mourners broke into words:
"Do you think that she-?" "Widowed like that on her wedding night, perhaps her mind snapped and-"
"Grief too heavy to bear-"
"A young girl not wanting to face life alone-".
"That sound? Could it have been a pistol shot, or-"
"It sounded more like a chair being kicked out from underneath like when a person hangs themselves, or-"
"A body hitting the floor-"
"The poor girl! She never should have been left alone at a time like this!"
Speculation mounted on the floor beneath them as Llona's parents reached her bedroom door and, with much trepidation, opened it. Instant relief, as they saw that their daughter was still alive. Seeing her father, Llona hastily pulled the bedspread around her.
"What happened?" Her father stared at the wreckage of the bed crumpled to the floor.
"The slats broke and it collapsed," Llona explained helplessly.
"How the hell-?" Llona's father started to ask.
"Don't badger the poor girl with questions," his wife interrupted. "She must have thrown herself on it in her grief. My poor baby. There's no telling what a person's likely to do under the weight of such a loss. Grief can drive a girl to do all kinds of things. Isn't that right, sweetheart?"
"That's right, Mother," Llona agreed. "Grief is a peculiar thing. You're right."
Llona's reaction to her grief persisted during the time which followed the funeral. Indeed, it became more pronounced. So much so that by the time she finally fell asleep at night, her arms and wrists felt heavy as lead from the activity which obsessed her. And always, her reminiscent fantasies of that one time with Archer accompanied her body's writhing quest. His face and his body were as clear in her mind as they had been the day he deflowered her.
Increasingly, however, her solitary sublimation of the memory of Archer's lovemaking became less and less satisfying. Her body ached for the reality of him. Her mind dwelt constantly on ways and means of locating him. Her fantasies of what it would be like to lie in his arms once again became more and more elaborate.
Along with them, though, there was an increasing despair and certainty that she would never see Archer again. All she knew was his name. She guessed that he didn't even live in Birchville. She thought of and discarded all sorts of wild plans for tracking him down. In the end she had to admit to herself that it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Still, Llona was becoming desperate for some companion-any companion-to help relieve the solitude of her seemingly ever-yearning libido. The trouble was that her status as a recent widow made even the slightest social contact with males difficult. Protocol in Birchville called for her to mourn George for at least a year. She willingly would have broken that protocol, but the young men who might have cooperated were themselves bound by it, and it probably never occurred to any of them that she might even consider herself available. Under the small-town mores, even a movie date was out.
The weight of those strictures had Llona feeling truly desperate by the time, about a month after George's death, that she made her first public appearance. It was a lunch date at the town's one half-decent restaurant with an old school chum, Betty Bradshaw. When Betty called, Llona leaped at the opportunity for any sort of companionship, even female. For the first time, she discarded her widow's weeds for the occasion. The dark green dress Llona wore was a compromise between convention and the bright red way she was really feeling.
The way Betty complimented her on it was a compromise, too. Her tone said that Llona really did look pretty but she wondered if the color was appropriate under the circumstances. Llona didn't mind. On the contrary, she was flattered at the implication of grudging admiration.