Oh, God, I'm sorry, Cindy's mind cried, I'm sorry. But I don't care, I can't stand it I can't!
And in one swift motion, the beautiful young wife rolled onto her back, still holding the salacious, full-color photo close to her eyes, and with her free hand drew open the hostess gown. Beneath it she wore only a thin pair of flimsy panty briefs. As if a separate entity, ungoverned by her will, the hand drew the panties down, slowly, slowly, as she raised her quivering buttocks high off the bed.
Her liquor-fogged, passion-fogged brain blotted out all the evils she had been led to believe came from masturbation. There was only her urgency now, her need for release from the intense arousal of her body by the lustful activities in the photos.
She massaged the smooth flat whiteness of her stomach with the palm of her hand, around and around, raising up to pass over her breasts with their swollen nipples, causing whirlpools of passion to seethe within her. Then her hand with a will of its own moved lower and she arched her back, raising her hips high off the bed, her fingers passing through the downy-soft fleece of her golden pubic hair and intensifying further the rising crescendo of sexual frenzy.
A groan of desire and total abandonment escaped her lips, and the young helplessly impassioned wife moved her hand downward between her now-widespread thighs, wet with the secretion of her passion. She gentled her finger into the moist flesh, and the feeling generated by her own fevered fingers was so very, very good. She manipulated the soft hair-lined inner lips until she could feel them swelling with the rush of blood, and her clitoris was rigid and tingling. Her index finger came in contact with the trembling flesh, and she began to gasp with delight as she felt release imminent. Her hips thrashed the bed and the air, her eyes never once leaving the photo and the lewd oralism depicted there — lips on penis, lips on vulva, lips on penis, lips on vulva…
Faster, faster, faster her finger rubbed across the sensitive clit, blanking her mind of all thoughts, all sanity; nothing existed for her in that moment except the delirious coming of her impending climax.
And then she was there!
Oh, God, she was cumming!
Her hips flailed frantically at the bed as wave after wave of intense, bursting release seized her. It was pleasure so acute that it approximated pure pain. Then, as her orgasm began to ebb, her buttocks sank back to the spread and her hand stilled but did not leave her cunt. She lay there, not moving, her eyes squeezed tightly shut now and her chest rising and falling spasmodically.
And then sanity returned to her brain. With it came abject mortification, a feeling of self-loathing that was almost as great as the delight of her still ebbing orgasm. She moaned aloud in despair, sitting up, brushing the photos from the bed and flinging them to the floor around it as if they were vermin of the foulest type. Then she threw herself face down on the bed, crying out her torment, sick with the knowledge of the act of carnal self-abuse that she had just performed on herself.
Those damnable photos! They were the cause of it all, the cause of her rising excitement into the throes of lust, her loss of self-control. Those filthy photos! Oh, damn Ralph Taylor for giving them to Howard, damn him, damn him! Why did he have to interfere in hers and Howard's heretofore placid existence; why did he have to give them that Polaroid camera, anyway? What was the matter with him? Was he as sick as the people who subscribed to that Polaroid Club News?
The questions spun and rotated in Cindy's tortured, liquor fogged mind. She felt sick to her stomach, and… impure, as if her body were harboring disease-ridden microbes. She needed the cleansing release of sleep; she couldn't be this upset when Howard came home. He must never know what she'd done tonight; no, he must never know.
After a long moment, she stood from the bed and gathered the photos and the newspaper from the floor, holding them again as if they were excrement laden. She put them back in the manila envelope, returned the envelope to the nightstand. Then she took off her gown and lay back down on the bed, slipping between the sheets, praying for the respite of sleep to ease her tortured mind.
But restful sleep, for the confused young Cindy Jamison, was not forthcoming on this night.
CHAPTER THREE
"Well, Howie, my boy," Ralph Taylor said jovially, "you about ready to see how those pictures worked?"
Howard had been in his office for the better part of three hours now, having come back from his dinner hour still disturbed over what he'd done. All the way home and all during the time he was with his wife he kept telling himself he wouldn't leave the corrupting manila envelope of photos and paper… but he had! He didn't feel right about it, not right at all… but the damage had been done. He was here, waiting for some customer to walk on the lot and take his mind away from what he'd done. He had resolved that when midnight came and he could go home, he would straightaway take that packet and burn it if his wife hadn't opened it yet. More than once he'd thought about calling her, telling her under no circumstances should she open it… but every time his hand went to the phone, he stopped. To tell her would be tantamount to confessing that he knew what was in it; Cindy wasn't dumb and she'd figure that she'd been set up.
Instead of a customer, in had walked Ralph. There hadn't been a customer all the while he had been back at Auto Circus, nothing to relieve the time-heavy wait. And of all the people he didn't want to see at the moment was his boss, the very man who had turned his head and suggested the whole stupid idea.
But, like the professional salesman that he was, Howard swallowed his inner feelings and smiled heartily. "Oh, hello, Ralph. I didn't see you. Aren't you supposed to be home now?"
"Hah, hah, home is where the heart is," came the answer, "and tonight I felt that I should see how my friend is doing. And you are my friend, you know, as well as my star salesman." He chuckled again. "Besides, Norma's got a bridge club meeting going on at the house. My heart is certainly not out for any of her friends."
"Oh." Howard shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Not much going on tonight, I'm afraid."
"Can't expect much, not on a weekday night in between paydays. I sometimes wonder whether it's worth staying open." He sighed, looking out the window at the rows of gleaming cars and then beyond, at the all but deserted main street. "Everybody's home in bed or at my house, playing cards."
"Uh-huh." Howard tried to think of some work to do; anything so he could look busy and have an excuse not to talk. There was nothing; he'd finished the paper, and all he could do was sit.
"Like I said, boy, how do you think it will go?"
Howard felt his face color. "I… I don't know."
"What? After three years you can't figure on how your wife will react?"
"It isn't that, Ralph." Here we go again, back in the same embarrassed, defensive position I was earlier. God, I must look stupid to him… "It's just that Cindy's not all that experienced. I mean, there's a lot of difference between three years and ten." Good… throw it back on him…
Ralph laughed. "Got a point there. Norma was the same way, just like I told you. Shy as the dickens. That's why I'm telling you how to work it, my boy, because I found out the hard way." He leaned over, his breath heavy of cigar and bourbon. "Tell you what. Why don't you close up the lot and we'll go have a drink. We can talk man-to-man, and I'll give you a few more pointers."