It was when she reached over to set down the martini glass on the nightstand that she noticed the manila envelope lying there.
She frowned mightily. Oh, damn! Now why hadn't Howie taken that back with him to give to Ralph like she'd asked him? Why had he brought it in here to the bedroom, for heaven's sake?
She propped herself up on one elbow and took another sip of her drink. She kept looking at the envelope, lying there sealed, and she began to wonder, disinterestedly at first and then with increasing attraction, what the pictures inside were like. Howard had said they were similar to the ones he had taken of her last night, daring and naughty probably, like those were. Some friends of Ralph's, he had said. Did other wives allow their husbands to take pictures of them, as she had allowed Howard last night? Did they — would they dare even go farther than she had, actually undressing to bra and panties or even to… well, to the buff?
Cindy sipped again of her martini. The liquor was beginning to affect her now, in several different ways. Her ardor of a few minutes earlier, instead of waning, seemed to have gained intensity, so that she felt a moistening down between her legs, flowing out to dampen her inner thighs; and she felt, toes a boldness that she had never experienced before, an irrational desire to do something she shouldn't do — something like opening that manila envelope and looking at the pictures inside.
I wonder just how naughty those photos are, she thought. I'll bet they're very naughty, and if they are, I should have Howie speak to Ralph about giving them to us. But I can't do that until I know for myself what they're like.
Impulsively, then, stifling another slightly tipsy giggle, Cindy reached out and grasped the manila envelope. Her fingers fumbled at the sealed flap, finally got it open; and then she was drawing out the newspaper wrapped photos and holding them on her lap. She let them lie there, on the warm silken mound of her lower abdomen, as she drained the last of the martini. Then she opened the newspaper, saw the photos, and held them up to her slightly blurred eyes, squinting at them very close.
Her first reaction was one of shocked horror. She blinked rapidly several times, her eyes seemingly held transfixed by the full-color carnality which she held in her hands. Her brain was spinning with the combined forces of startlement and undiluted gin.
My… my God! she thought. This is… it's filthy! It's pornography, that's what it is, plain and simple pornography!
She wanted to cast the offending photos from her, but a curious perversity made her grip them more tightly between her fingers, made her eyes remain fastened to their glossy detail. The top snapshot showed a sweet-looking brunette straddling a dark-haired man; both of them were nude, with their privates fully exposed to the camera, and his… his penis was pushed halfway up into her open vagina!
Cindy swallowed hard, looking at the expression on the young woman's face. It wax one of sheer, unadulterated ecstasy, lids drooped, mouth parted and moist, with the tip of her wet pink tongue showing; she seemed to be oblivious to the camera, caught up in the sexual frenzy of the moment, of the feeling of the man's hardened shaft imbedded deep within her cuntal passage. And she was manipulating her own breast, squeezing it passionately in her ardor…
Staring at the angelic young girl's obvious enjoyment, Cindy felt a quickening of her breath, a fluttering in her lower belly. The inside of her mouth was dry, and she ran her pink tongue over her lips several times, trying to dispel the arid, cottony taste.
Her now-trembling fingers pulled the first photo aside and the second came into view. She gasped, and a little spiral of unwanted heat wended its way upward through her warmly secreting loins, into her stomach and chest, hardening the firm, ruby crests of her snowy breasts. A man, distinguished and older, crouched between the widespread thighs of a small, well-proportioned blonde, his long wet, seemingly hard, tongue curled out to flick over the swollen naked pubic area and the erect clitoris of the passion-tensed girl!
A wave of Puritan revulsion took hold of Cindy, and again she wanted to cast the offending photos from her. But again, she did not; again, she stared at the photo, at the man, at his tongue touching the innermost secret of the blonde girl. Oral sex! Perversion! cried the half-intoxicated mind of the young wife. The very same terrible thing Howie wanted to do to me so many times! Oh, God, and I'll bet that if I flip over to another photo it win show the disgusting sight of some woman with her mouth around a man's penis…
A cascade of shame flowed through her, causing her to flush a violent crimson. She was no better than the… the lascivious people in the photos! Thinking filthy thoughts, working herself into an impossible froth… Suddenly, she wished again that her husband were home. She was aroused now, aroused by the gin and the thought of lovemaking and yes, aroused by the perversity of the Polaroid snapshots which she held in her quaking hands.
"No! No!" she moaned aloud, but even as the words left her lips she was pulling aside the top photo, revealing the one which lay beneath…
And there it was! Just as she had feared — a girl, a young-raven-haired teen-age girl, with her lips firmly ovaled around the lust-hardened penis of a thin muscular man! And she was enjoying it, yes reveling in the taste of the man's huge penis! She was actually groveling in the very thing Howard had for so long wanted her to do to him.
A low cry of despair tore from Cindy's throat, and she was finally able to push the photos away from her, to fan out in disarray on the bed beside her. She lay there, trembling, opening and closing her legs in a vain effort to dispel the tingling, flowing excitement which the lewd pictures had built to a fanning inferno between her soft, pulsating thighs.
Howie, she thought confusedly, Howie, I need you, I wish you were here right now! Howie, I want you, I want you to love me, Howie…
Her hands went out on either side of her to clutch the spread, and her fingers encountered the rough newsprint of the paper around which the photos had been wrapped. Something to take her mind off her mounting desire, her confusion and repulsion at the sight of the pictures which that… that lecher Ralph Taylor had given to Howard… Yes, she would read the paper, that was it; read the paper and calm herself that way…
She lifted the paper, unfolded it before her eyes. The masthead struck her with the force of a sharp blow: the Polaroid Club News. What was this? Her eyes traveled down the front page, over the four columns there. It wasn't an ordinary newspaper, it was… oh, God, it was some kind of newspaper of the same kind of people who were in those photos she had just looked at… advertisements for the exchange of lewd pictures, placed by people from all over the country, sick people like Ralph Taylor must be sick, oh, God…
Man and wife will exchange erotic poses with similarly motivated couple. Nothing conventional. Oralism preferred. Box — , Cleveland, Ohio…
Couple with German Shepherd would like to swap snaps with dog owners everywhere. These are the wildest ever! If you don't believe us, query Box — , Atlanta, Ga…
The tormented young wife crumpled the paper and flung it to the floor, rolling over onto her stomach. Her lower belly was on fire now, in spite of herself; it was almost as if… as if the sickness she was seeing here tonight had aroused her passions to the desperation point. Tears flowed from her eyes, and her body involuntarily squirmed on the bed. She wiped away the wetness which was obscuring her vision — and her gaze fell on one of the photos, the nearest one.
It showed a couple performing simultaneous oral love in the classic sixty-nine position.
Her hand swept it up as if with a will of its own, and her eyes grew glazed. Breath spewed raggedly from between her open, saliva moistened lips. She stared at the picture, at the auburn-haired woman in the process of running her wetly glistening tongue upward over the man's sperm-swollen testicles to the ridged underside of his hardened penis; as the man's lips pressed tightly to the gaping, pink-red softness of the girl's wide opened pussy, his nose gently tickling the tiny puckered ring of her anus.