He sat inside for a time, his heart beating rapidly in his chest, a curious fluttering sensation in his lower belly. He glanced over the paper, marveling at some of the ads there, growing excited by them; it was as if he couldn't get enough air in his chest. Jesus, but I'd like to send away for some of the photos mentioned in here. If they're half as good as they claim, they ought to really be something…
With trembling fingers, he took the manila envelope of pictures from his coat pocket and glanced through them again. His prick seemed to jerk spasmodically in his pants as he once again saw the lewd, tremendously stimulating acts being performed in the full-color splendor of the Polaroid snaps. The ones that really turned him on the most were those depicting oral love: soft feminine mouths closed eagerly, hungrily over the lust-hardened cocks of their husbands; masculine lips and tongues paying devoted homage to the warm, secret, tender cuntal valleys of their wives. These he would put on top, so that they would be the first ones Cindy would see when she opened the envelope; maybe they would convince her of the beauty, of the rightness, of oral love…
He started to fold the newspaper around the photos when a sudden frown creased his forehead and he stopped. Some of the other photos, besides those depicting oral by-play, were pretty raw for the uninitiated eyes of his naive young wife; instead of being turned on, being interested and excited by the newspaper and snaps as he intended, mightn't she become repulsed and sickened by viewing such blatantly carnal acts as sodomy and seance a trots and bestiality? Yes, yes, of course she would! He couldn't include those pictures, not now, not at this early date just the milder ones, the ones showing a man and his wife making love in all the possible ways…
Quickly, Howard sorted out the photos, putting those he deemed too blatant for Cindy's eyes into the glove compartment; the rest he inserted inside the folded Polaroid Club News and put into the manila envelope, sealing it. Then he started the car and, with hot blood pounding in his temples, he drove directly home.
Cindy met him at the door, wearing a thin hostess gown and holding a freshly made martini in her right hand; her hair was carefully combed, as it always was when he came home. Even after three years of marriage, she never failed to greet him with a drink and a kiss and an alluring outfit, as if they were still honeymooners. This was one of the reasons Howard loved his beautiful young wife so much, one of the reasons he had always felt himself to be very lucky…
Cindy kissed him warmly, handing him his martini. "You're late, Howie," she chided in a mock pout.
"I… had to stop off on an errand for Ralph," he told her.
"Well, dinner's in the oven. A casserole. Okay?"
"Fine, honey."
She kissed him again, and then her eyes fell on the manila envelope which he carried in his right hand. "What have you got there?" she asked. "Something for me?"
Howard was momentarily tongue-tied. Of all the stupid things! He had come into the house carrying the envelope out in the open, instead of under his coat where Cindy couldn't see it; what was the matter with him? He just wasn't used to this kind of thing, he supposed, not used to it at all…
He took a long swallow of his drink, and that seemed to oil his throat muscles so that they worked again. He said, "Well, uh, they're pictures, honey — pictures Ralph gave me. He says they, uh, are ones some friends of his took with their Polaroid and he wanted us to, uh, see what could be done with ours."
"Oh! Well, let's look at them, Howie. I'm kind of anxious to see them, after that buildup."
"Uh, I'd rather not, if you don't mind, honey," Howard said lamely. He was fouling things up, fouling them all up and he knew it and he kept getting himself in deeper; Christ, why couldn't he be as blase as Ralph was about these things? He laughed nervously. "They're not, uh, my kind of pictures — or yours."
Cindy frowned slightly. "What do you mean, Howie?"
"Well, they're sort of… sort of like the ones I took of you last night." Howard's face flushed. "You know, daring and… and like that."
"Have you seen them?"
"No, but Ralph explained them to me," he lied.
"Why in the world would Ralph give you photos like that, Howie? Dirty ones, I mean?"
"Oh, they're not dirty," Howard said quickly. "Just… just daring, that's all."
Cindy frowned again. She felt a small sense of foreboding, as if there were something Howard was not telling her, as if there was some motive behind his boss having given him these "daring" photographs. She thought back to the previous evening, and to the snapshots Howard had taken of her — with her skirt hiked up and her panties showing; thought back to how excited he had been, how obviously aroused by the sight of her posing so provocatively before the eye of the camera and in its sixty-second lasting capture of it. A small involuntary tremor coursed through her soft young body. She must never let Howard do that again, take pictures of her like that; it was wrong and it was wicked, and it had no place in a happy, fully consummated marriage such as theirs.
She said, "Well, if they're that kind of pictures, you take them right back to Ralph. You tell him we don't want anything like that. I don't understand him at all, giving them to you in the first place."
"He, uh, was just trying to be friendly, I guess," said Howard, wanting to end the discussion as quickly as possible. "But I'll take them back, don't worry."
"I won't honey," his young wife said. She put her arm around him, softening. "Come on. Let's eat before the casserole gets cold."
They ate a leisurely dinner, and Howard managed to steer the conversation to many things of little consequence, so that Cindy would forget about the manila envelope. He had slipped it into their bedroom as she was setting the table, putting it on the nightstand by their bed. Now, if only she wouldn't remember it and make him take it with him when he went back to Auto Circus tonight…
She didn't remember. Howard fixed them each another martini after dinner, gulped his down, and told her he had better get back to work — to relax and enjoy her drink. Then he kissed her, and she whispered, "Come home early and love me tonight, Howie darling." He said that he would, kissed her again, said good-bye, and left quickly, feeling once more that odd mixture of guilt and mounting excitement as he backed the car out of their driveway.
Cindy, smiling happily and with a warm glow spreading through her from the martinis, sat back on the divan in the living room and sipped the remaining liquid from her glass. She stretched languidly, thinking, I feel so good tonight, so warm and loved and happy. I'm a lucky woman, a very lucky woman, to have a wonderful husband like Howie, who has a very good job and is a good provider and is a very, very, very good lover.
She giggled softly, and a warm, pleasant ache began between her tender young thighs. She sighed then, squeezing her legs tightly together, wishing Howie hadn't had to go back to work tonight. They could have had another drink together, and then gone to bed, as they did sometimes, and made love for hours and hours, slow and sweet and good. That was the kind of mood she was in tonight, the mood to make love very, very slowly for a long, long time…
Well, Howard would be home at midnight or so and they could make love then. She would have to content herself with waiting, maybe watching a little television and, yes why not, having another drink. She was feeling a little audacious tonight, and even though she knew her absolute limit without getting drunk was two martinis in one evening, she decided that, by golly, she was going to make herself a third!
She mixed the drink in the kitchen, humming softly and a little intoxicatedly, and then decided that she would watch television in the bedroom. She carried the drink in there, switched on the old portable set on its coaster stand by the dresser (now that Howie had gotten a raise at Auto Circus, maybe they could afford the color set they'd wanted for so long), and lay down on the bed.