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A Tale of Two Love Affairs

By: LeeScarlet



Stella took a deep breath and poured herself a generous glass of white wine. She had done her duty, talked to most of the people at the party, and now had a moment to herself. 

Roland was off in the other room, probably still getting his ear talked off by that guy who owned a sailboat. She thought about going in there and throw him a lifeline but she didn't bother. Her husband was a big boy. He could take care of himself.

Stella was more concerned about Alan. Their son never did well at parties. In fact, he never did well with people at all. Especially girls. He was twenty-one and she was sure that he had never had a girlfriend. Never even had a date. Stella doubted that he had ever kissed a girl. 

It's hard for a young man to get a kiss from a young lady when he's too shy to talk to her.

When Alan had been in high school, Stella had told herself that he was still young; he had plenty of time to sow his wild oats; he would come out of his shell when he matured a little more.

When he continued to avoid girls in college, Stella had a harder time convincing herself that it was only a matter of time before her son blossomed. He'd stayed in his room and studied hard, earned the highest grade point average in his graduating class, and had been selected as class valedictorian. She was proud of that accomplishment, but she would rather have seen him go out and party on Saturday nights. He could have asked a girl to a movie at least once in four years.

If a boy couldn't pick up a single girl from the estrogen-laden smorgasbord presented by a college campus, what hope did he have out in the real world?

For a time, Stella wondered if her son was gay. Then, when he was in his second year at university, she found the girlie magazines that he kept hidden under his mattress. Not an ounce of beefcake in the pile. After that, she began noting how avidly he looked at girls in short skirts and tank tops walking down hot summer streets. He stared at them with such desperate desire that it almost broke her heart.

He wanted a girl, no question. His problem was that he had no idea how to get one.

Stella had a mother's love but that didn't stop her from looking at her son objectively. He was average looking, not handsome but no uglier than most other boys, especially after the post-pubescent acne that had raged his teenage face had finally given up the fight and the residual damage faded to barely noticeable scars.

His faults were more subtle than simple homeliness.

He was too skinny to be athletic, but he was heavy on his feet for lack of muscle tone. His awkwardness made him gauche without the saving grace of disarming innocence. A decent exercise would fix that.

A more difficult problem was that he was too shy to look anyone in the face so he kept his eyes averted. That gave him the air of someone who always had something more interesting to do somewhere else.

His voice was soft and that made him easily ignored. No matter how clever his remarks, they were wasted if they were not heard. Worse, he spoke in a soporific monotone that scuttled any emotional impact that his words might have conveyed.

His strengths would have outweighed his deficits if any girl made the effort to notice them. He was smart, ambitious, and worked like the devil himself. And he could write like an angel. Google had hired him right out of college as a junior technical writer but he wouldn't have to stay in that cubicle for long. Once his managers had a chance to discover and appreciate his talents, they would find more profitable ways to exploit him. 

He would never be fast-tracked, but, given time, he would go far in corporate America.

If he had the right woman in his corner – someone who could make him care about what people thought about him – he would go farther, faster.

As she drained her wineglass, she decided that the time had come for her to stop waiting for nature to take its course and grab the helm with both hands. She loved her son dearly and would do anything to steer him on the right course.

Anything.

She refilled her glass, took another heavy sip of her chardonnay, and drifted toward the family room where the younger people, including Alan, had congregated. Standing a few steps outside the open doorway, she could watch him covertly. He was sitting in the circle like the other young people but, somehow, even when surrounded by exuberant youth, he managed to be alone.

Nobody was consciously trying to exclude him. The banter simply slipped past him because he made no attempt to respond. The smiles and laughter rolled off him without leaving a trace.

When he did smile, he was never synchronized with the others. When someone made a subtle joke, his quick mind caught it before anyone else and his smile came too early; or when someone made a simple jibe, he failed to find humor and he smiled only when he heard the others' laughter, too late to be anything but an observer.

"They're having a good time," a masculine voice said near her ear.

Stella turned to see a man smiling at her. What was his name? Peter something. The host had introduced him when he'd first arrived. Him and his wife and their daughter Candace. She remembered Candace because she had been so pretty. Not beautiful like a model but cute as a button. A pixie in a short plaid skirt and soft red sweater. A lively contrast to Alan's wooden manner.

When they had been introduced, Stella had seen her capture her son's heart with a carefree laugh and casual wave. He'd barely been able to force a soft, "Hello," from his lips before she'd skipped off to find the heart of the party somewhere else.

"Your daughter seems to enjoy herself," Stella replied. "I envy someone who is so at ease in a crowd."

"She does like people," Peter said.

"Is she in school?"

"She was studying history at the university but she dropped out last spring. She was smart enough to do the work but didn't find the academic life as interesting as she'd expected. Now she's working for a year while she decides what to do next. Once she's had a chance to think about it, I think she's going to settle on nursing. It's a practical profession and she has a caring nature. I think she'd be a great pediatric nurse."

Stella looked back into the room where the young people were laughing and flirting. Candace was at the center of the action – the pretty maypole around which the others danced. "I can see that," Stella replied. "She relates well to people."

"You have a daughter in there, too?" Peter asked.

"A son. Alan. He's sitting two over from Candace. In the blue shirt."

"Oh, right. I remember."

She could tell that he was lying. It had been over two hours since he'd been introduced to Alan. Undoubtedly he had forgotten her son as soon as he'd heard the name. Alan never made a first impression on anyone. Not a good impression or a bad impression – no impression at all.

Alan was looking wistfully at Candace but, when she turned in his direction, her glance passed through him as though he were made of the purest crystal.

"I guess Candace has a lot of boyfriends," Stella said.

"She has a lot of dates. I don't think that she's ever had a real boyfriend," Peter replied. "She's not ready to settle down with a boy any more than she could settle down with her studies."

"Maybe she hasn't found the right boy yet."

Peter laughed. "There's no maybe about it. She found a lot of the wrong boys but not a single right one. The only saving grace is that she figures out that they're the wrong boys soon enough and dumps them before she gets hurt. She's smart that way."

Stella smiled. "We all had to kiss a few toads before we found our princes. Or princesses."

"Yeah," Peter replied but his tone sounded unconvinced. "We do find our princess, don't we?"

Stella could hear a bitter tone in his voice that some men reserved for discussing their wives with other women. "Come, now," she said. "Your wife... I'm sorry, I forgot her name¬–"

"Jane."

"Right. Jane. She's lovely. She looks at you like a princess looking at her Prince Charming."

Peter laughed. "Oh, yeah. She's a princess, all right. And it's not just the way she looks. She's a princess to her core." He looked at the drink in his hand. 

Stella couldn't tell what it was. Something clear. Gin or vodka, maybe. Might even be white rum. 

"Sorry," he said. "I've had a bit more to drink than I should have and I'll bore you do tears if I get started telling you about the princess." He paused, then said, "Jane's not so bad. She's a good mother and she loves me as much as she can in her own way. And she's a terrific designated driver. Let's just leave it at that. Why don't you tell me a little about yourself? That'll be more interesting for both of us."

"I'm not so sure about that." Stella paused to assess the man, then screwed up her courage and said, "I think I need a little air. Would you be a gentleman and escort me outside for a few minutes?"

Peter looked interested. "Sure. You smoke?"

"No." Stella said, and then laughed at the memory that bloomed in her mind. Once when she was a teenager, she'd been on a date and they'd seen another girl smoking in a doorway and her date had said, If she smokes, she fucks. That was her last date with that boy but she remembered what he said every time she saw a woman smoking. If she smokes, she fucks. Of course, that boy had been too young to know that the negative was also true. If she doesn't smoke she still fucks. Every woman, smoking or not, fucks someone sometime. But not every woman fucks every man. Women like Stella, for example, don't fuck men who say, If she smokes, she fucks. 

"Do you smoke?" she asked him in return, then thought, If he smokes, he fucks. She laughed again.

"No," Peter said, unsure what Stella was laughing about.

"Good," she said. "Let's go outside and breathe some good clean air."

It was not cold enough to require coats but was cold enough to become uncomfortable after a certain length of time. Stella didn't intend to be out here for that long.

When she was certain that they were out of earshot of the other guests, Stella got right down to business. "I have a proposition for you."

"Oh?" Peter looked interested.

His expression encouraged her. This might be easier than she feared. "Let me be absolutely clear about a couple of things. First. I don't want to break up your marriage. Or my own marriage for that matter. Remember that."

"Okay." Now he looked more than interested. He looked hopeful. It was almost pathetic.

"You can reject my proposition if you want. I won't be offended or hold a grudge or anything like that."

"Of course not," he agreed. It sounded like she was getting close to proposing something wicked.

She took a deep breath. "I think that you can do a service for me. In exchange I'm sure that there's some service that you'll want me to do for you."

"Okay."

She paused again. Despite the glasses of wine that she had drunk to free her inhibitions, she was suddenly shy about actually saying the words to a strange man.

As the pause stretched, it appeared that she was going to chicken out and withdraw whatever proposition she had in mind without ever saying it. He hastened to reassure her. "It's okay," he said. "You can propose anything you want. I'll agree or not. It's that simple. If I don't agree, I'll just pretend that I never heard it. It'll be no problem."

"You can't ever tell anybody," she said. "Agree or not. You'll never tell. Nobody, never."

"Of course not."

Actually, she had already assumed that there would be some gossip, but she'd handle that when the time came. She didn't know if her husband would have to find out everything that she was doing, but if he did, she'd work it out with him somehow.

She screwed up her courage to the breaking point and said, "Here it is. I want your daughter to start dating my son, Alan. Alan's real shy. He's never had a girlfriend, not even a date, so she's going to have to take the initiative. If she asks him to take her out, then he'll do it. He'll be too shy to refuse. But she's going to have to ask him directly. He won't take a hint. He's a nice guy. And he's really focused on his work and being successful. He's a great catch. Candace'll like him once she gets to know him. And if she doesn't like him, then she can drop him. Gently, I hope. When she drops him, he won't be weird or stalk her or anything like that. I can guarantee it. I just want him to have a real date. That's all. Just have at least one normal date with a girl."

"Is he gay? Are you saying that you think my daughter can make him straight?"

"No. No, it's nothing like that. Not at all. He's interested in girls, he's just too shy to do anything about it. That's all." 

"Then what is it? You want me to ask my daughter to screw your son?" Peter looked offended.

"No. I mean, she can if she wants. If she likes him enough. That would be okay. But that's between her and Alan. It's not part of the deal between you and me. I'm just asking for her to date him a little. Just go to dinner and a movie. See a concert. Whatever she'd like to do with him. She can tell him where she wants him to take her and he will. Or she can tell you and you can tell me and I'll make sure that he does it. All I want is for him to take her out and they both have a good time. That's all. I'm hoping that they'll go out a few times so that she can get to know him. See what a good guy he is. But if she only wants to go out with him once, that's better than nothing. All I'm asking is for you to get her to go on one date with him."

She paused and waited so see what he would say.

His reaction was predictable.

"My daughter goes out with who she wants. I can't tell her who to date."

"You said that you wanted her to find a better man. That's my Alan. He was at the top of his college class. He was class valedictorian. He works hard and he's ambitious. He was hired as a technical writer for Google as soon as he graduated and he's already got his first promotion. He gets a good salary. He's got a lot of potential."

"I'm sure that he's a great guy but, like I said, I can't tell Candace who she can date."

"I'll make it worth your while." 

"You're going to pay me?" he looked puzzled.

"Not money." Stella took a step closer, reached out and stroked Peter's arm lightly. "I have a different deal in mind. As long as your Candace is dating my Alan, I'll have sex with you. That's my offer. Your daughter doesn't have to have sex with my son, but I will have sex with you. I'm not as young or pretty as some other women, but I'm attractive enough and I'm good in bed. Enthusiastic. Having sex with me won't be a big, emotional deal, just good physical fun. I'm not going to be a home wrecker. I'll just be a great piece of ass on the side." She slid her hand down his arm and pulled his hand around to press it against her soft buttock.

He looked at her in shock and she grinned up at him like a child raiding a cookie jar. "I'm going to give you a great time. Convince Candace to start dating Alan and neither one of you is ever going to be sorry. I promise."

Peter felt more than a stirring in his pants. He felt painfully constricted down there. He knew that if he looked, he'd see his fly tented by the rigid pole in his shorts.

He hadn't felt like this since Candace was born. Two decades was a long time to wait for decent sex. Making love to Princess Jane was only one step up from jerking himself off. Not even one step up. Most of the time he had more fun getting himself off than he had when he was making love to her. Jane didn't know the meaning of the word, fun. Not in any context and definitely not between the sheets.

Stella released his hand and he pulled it away from her rear, hoping that no one had happened to glance out the window and had seen what had happened.

What if Jane had seen? What if he had an affair with this woman and Jane found out? There'd be hell to pay. But what the hell? He felt like he was already living in hell. In the devil's icy, frigid dis.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "I can't promise anything, but I'll talk to Candace tomorrow and see what she thinks about your son. What was his name?"

"Alan," Stella replied.

"Right. Alan. I'm going to have to remember that."

Stella pulled a pen and piece of paper from a pocket and wrote on it for a minute. "This is my email. Tell me what's happening. Even if nothing is happening, send an email and let me know."

He read the paper. "This email. AASBD? Is that a school board email address?"

"That's right. I teach seventh and eighth grade English. I have a spare last period so I get off work at two this semester." She grinned. "I have plenty of free time in the afternoons."

Peter felt himself get harder than he had been in years. Teenager hard. So hard that he feared that something might break from the strain. Too hard to go back in to the party.

"I'd better get back and listen to a man talk about a boat," Stella said. "Send me an email and I'll tell you how Candace can get in touch with Alan."

As she turned away, she let her hand brush across Peter's swollen crotch. He almost creamed himself right there on the Anderson's front porch. Her touch might have been accidental but nothing would ever convince him of that.

It was a half hour before he had subsided enough to appear in civilized company again. It was chilly on the front porch and, by the time he could return, he was shivering despite the heat below his belt.

The party had seemed like fun before hearing Stella's proposal. Now it dragged on and on. Peter wanted to talk to Candace about this Alan lad but had to spend the next two hours making small talk with friends of friends.

It was a huge relief when he could finally drag his wife and daughter away from their conversations and bid their hosts goodnight.

Jane, sober as a judge, drove.

He took the opportunity to ask Candace if she had had a good time.

"Sure. It was a great party."

"Did you meet anyone new?" he asked.

"Of course. I knew Derrick and Allison and a couple of others but most of the people were new."

"What about that boy, Alan?"

"Who?" He couldn't see her face in the dark but he could hear the puzzlement in her voice. 

"Alan. He was the boy about your age who was sitting one person away from you on your left."

"Oh, yeah. The one in the purple shirt. He was cute."

"No. The one beside him. The one wearing the green shirt."

"Green shirt? No. I don't remember anyone wearing a green shirt."

"I'm pretty sure that he remembers you."

"Well, I don't remember him."

"Sure you do. He was there in the room with all the rest of you."

"For God's sake, Peter, give it a rest," Jane snapped. "She said that she doesn't remember the boy so that's good enough. She doesn't remember him. Maybe you're remembering wrong. Maybe he wasn't at the party at all. Just drop it already."

Peter wanted to defend himself. Wanted to tell her that he knew the boy was there because Stella had pointed him out. But he couldn't bring himself to mention Stella to Jane. She'd touched his rock-hard dick through his pants. No other woman had touched him so intimately since he had married Jane almost twenty-five years ago. He felt like he was already having a secret affair.

He felt deliciously wicked.

His dick twitched again and he glanced across at his wife. She was staring resolutely at the road ahead, anxious to get home and into bed.

But she didn't want to go to bed for the same reason that Peter did.

That was a foolish thought. He already knew that if he touched his wife's shoulder tonight, she would roll away from him; if he tried to kiss her, she would avert her head; if he asked to make love to her, she would say that she was too tired and he was too drunk.


A Tale of Two Love Affairs



The routines were as familiar to him as old jeans grown two sizes too small.

If sex wasn't Jane's idea, then it didn't happen. And it was her idea only two or three times a month. He was lucky if he got laid every ten days.

The only relief that his aching balls would get tonight was what he could give himself in the bathroom after she fell asleep.

The shortest and surest route for him to get to sex with a woman would be to convince Candace to ask Alan for a date and pray that Stella would keep her promise.

The phrase, a great piece of ass on the side, blazed circles around his brain like a lighthouse beacon. The piece of paper with Stella's email address written on it was the magic key to that great piece of ass. It felt like a sheet of red-hot steel burning in his pocket.

When he undressed, he tucked the email address into the innermost pocket of his wallet. The pocket that zipped closed. The one that he never used.

In the morning, he knocked on Candace's bedroom door.

He interpreted her sleepy grumble as permission to enter, so he poked his head in and asked her if she was working today.

She said that her shift started at four. She liked the evening shifts because dinner tips were a lot better than the lunch crowd's. Even on a Monday.

"How about I take you to lunch, then?"

"Don't you work?" she said.

"I get a lunch break. I'll pick you up at eleven-thirty."

"What about Mom?"

"She's working. It'll just be you and me. A little father-daughter time. How about it?"

"Okay."

"Eleven-thirty."

"Okay. I heard you. I'll be ready. Just let me get back to sleep."

He got little work accomplished that morning. He spent his time trying to figure out how to convince Candace to ask a boy for a date when she couldn't even remember meeting him.

When lunchtime rolled around, he still didn't know what he was going to say. He would have to wing it.

The one thing that he did accomplish was to send an email to Stella telling her that he was going to ask Candace to go on a date with Alan. He got a woody while he was typing the message. Hardwood.

She emailed a phone number back to him within a few minutes. She was so quick that he still had his wood on.

When he walked into the house at eleven-twenty-five, Candace was coming down the stairs, still in her nightgown. "You're early," she said.

Her smile was so disarming that he said only, "I'll wait for you to get dressed."

It was after twelve before she was ready.

"Dim sum?" he asked, knowing that his daughter had an affinity for strange Asian food.

"Sushi," she countered.

Sushi it was.

Half an hour later, as he picked over a plate of seaweed-wrapped rice stuffed with various species of raw fish and difficult-to-identify vegetables, he began nibbling around the edges of the subject that dominated his thoughts. "I haven't seen you going out with any boys recently."

"No, I guess you haven't," she replied, the twinkle in her eye telling him that she was deliberately giving him nothing.

He watched her smear a thick green paste onto a piece of sushi, then pop it into her mouth. He did the same and took an experimental bite.

Horseradish. Killer green horseradish. His mouth surged with pain and his scalp tried to crawl right off his skull. Then his sinuses emptied themselves into the back of his throat like emergency fire extinguishers. Ineffective fire extinguishers.

He grabbed a glass of water and downed the entire contents.

"Wasabi," she said. "Japanese mustard. It's pretty hot. You might want to be careful with it until you get used to it."

"Gaahh," he replied.

"Yeah," she said. "I went out to a Green Day concert with a guy named Paul a couple of weeks ago but he was pretty much out of it. He thought that Green Day was still cool. That's what I get for going out with an old guy like him. He must have been almost thirty. He didn't call back so I guess that's not going anywhere."

"Have you ever thought about going out with a different kind of guy," Peter tried to say, but, coming from his burning throat, it sounded more like, "Gah gu ha aught agut gaging gu..." He emptied Candace's water glass and tried to speak again but had no more success.

"Have a piece of California roll without the wasabi," Candace suggested. "The rice will absorb some of the heat."

He scarfed two pieces of the roll in quick order and finally managed to utter an intelligible sentence. "I was saying that you might think about going out with a different kind of guy." It hurt to talk and he sounded like he'd had a botched larygectomy but he forced the words out anyway. Getting a chance at a great piece of ass on the side was worth a little pain. "You should sample the variety of life while you're still young and free."

Candace frowned. She had a pretty frown. "I've already dated a lot of different guys. I mean, not a lot of guys. I'm not like that. But I've dated enough to have some idea about what's what."

"I know. But most of the guys that you've told me about have been kind of..." He searched for the right word; he didn't want to say that she dated assholes. "Kind of the same in some ways. You've never dated any guy who's shy or introverted, for example."

"You mean a total bore?"

"Yeah. That's exactly what I mean."

She laughed. "You're funny, dad."

"I try," he said. "But I'm being a little bit serious about this. You might think that men who work hard and can hold a job are boring but there're some real advantages to going out with a man who doesn't need you to pick up the check every time. He can be more interested in you than in your wallet."

"You think that I've been dating men who aren't all that into in me?"

"Haven't you?"

Candace lowered a piece of spider roll from her mouth and looked thoughtful for a minute. Peter could see her conducting a mental inventory of the guys that she had dated.

Finally she said, "Adam." You remember Adam, don't you? He took me to my high school prom.

Peter nodded. "He was a nice guy. Whatever happened to him?"

"Two weeks after the prom, he came out of the closet. He said that he couldn't tell anyone that he was gay while he was still in high school so he waited until the day after graduation." Candace laughed. "He told me that he couldn't go out with me any more. Then he said that it wasn't me, it was him. Guys always tell that lie when they dump you, but when Adam said it, I had no trouble believing it. The problem really was with him."

"Is that what put you off nice guys? You're afraid that they'll turn out to be gay?"

"No. I'm afraid that they'll turn out to be boring. Adam was the only nice guy I ever met who wasn't boring. I guess he was interesting because he was hiding a big secret. Big secrets make guys interesting."

"Secrets make guys untrustworthy."

"But interesting."

Before this conversation could get any further sidetracked. Peter decided to get right to the heart of the matter. "If you're not dating anyone at the moment, there's someone that I'd like you to try. That boy, Alan, from the party last night. I'd like you to go on a date with him."

There was a long pause while Peter waited for his daughter to answer. She stared at him with the strangest expression. Waves of puzzlement, anger, and amusement swept across her features in random order, sometimes co-existing and sometimes fighting for dominance. Finally she settled on amusement.

"Daddy, dearest," she said, "are you trying to play matchmaker? With me?"

He wanted to be honest and say, No, daughter dearest, I'm trying to pimp you out so that I can get a great piece of ass on the side for myself, but he kept the ugly truth to himself and simply said, "Yes."

"Why?"

"It's an experiment. Aren't you curious to find out what will happen if you go out with a different kind of boy? A kind that you've never considered before?"

"And then what?" she asked.

"And then nothing. If you don't like him, don't go out with him again. All I ask is that if you drop him, drop him gently." Peter smiled at his daughter. "He seems fragile."

She smiled back. "Do you think that I'd want to be responsible for a fragile boy?"

"You're only going to be responsible for yourself."

"Okay," she said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. I'll go out with him. When he asks, I'll say, 'Yes.'"

Peter paused. It was his turn to show a strange expression. "Well, about that. There's a slight hitch there."

"What hitch?" she asked with a frown.

Peter took a deep breath. "He's shy. He's not going to call and ask you out."

"Well," she said, laughing, "that solves that problem, doesn't it?"

"I'd like you to call him and ask him to take you out." Peter pushed a piece of paper with a name and phone number across the table.

She looked at it without touching it. "What's that?" She could see what it was but she wanted to hear her father say it out loud.

"It's the boy's name and phone number."

"I don't ask boys for dates. They ask me. I've never asked a boy for a date in my life."

"Then it'll be a new experience for you."

"It would be humiliating for me."

" No, just for him. He should find it humiliating that this is the only way that he can get a date. You're being an angel of mercy."

"I won't do it."

"Please."

"Go on a mercy date? Give the poor loser dork a good time for once in his life because he such a pitiful case?"

Peter didn't know what the right answer to that so he avoided the question and attacked the underlying premise. "Alan's not a loser. He was his class valedictorian and he's got a full-time job with Google. He'll be the most successful young man that you've ever dated. His only problem is that he's shy about women."

Candace sighed and picked up the paper, dangling it from two fingers like it was contaminated with the plague. She turned it around to peer cautiously at the far side, as though she should be afraid of what might be lurking there. 

"You'll call him, then?" Peter asked.

"I don't even know him."

"You met him at the party last night."

"That's what you keep saying. I still say that I don't know him."

"But you'll call him?"

"Yes," Candace said. "I'll call him."

She had never seen her father look so happy as he did at that moment. She couldn't figure out why he would want so badly that she let some dork take her out for dinner.

But, if that was what made him happy, it was the least that she could do for him.

After all, it was just a date. No big commitment or anything.

Later, though, as she was dressing for her evening shift at the Pig's Tie Pub, she began to wonder if she was supposed to plan the date before she called the boy. Usually, she had only to answer the phone, listen to the boy's suggestion, and then say yes or no in more or less polite terms, depending on how sincere he sounded. This time, because she was calling the boy to ask him out, she would have to have something to say if he asked, Where?

Never before had she realized that it took effort to ask someone for a date.

Then she chided herself for worrying about it. She liked the Roxy Shox Club. If this Alan creature didn't have a suggestion then he could take her dining and dancing at the Roxy Shox. Her call, her choice. That was the way the world worked. If he didn't like dancing to a techno beat, then he better be ready to suggest an acceptable alternative.

She dialed the number, expecting to leave a message, but a man answered on the first ring. "Alan."

"Hi, Alan. This is Candace. We met at that party last night? I don't know if you remember me."

"Oh." Pause. "Sure." Pause. "I was sitting almost next to you for most of the evening."

If you say so, but I'll have to take your word for that, she thought but said, "Yeah. That was me all right. Anyway, we didn't get a chance to talk much so I thought that it might be nice to go out to dinner and chat one-on-one a little."

There was a long pause.

"Alan?" she said. "Are you still there?"

"God, yes. Yes. I'm still here. Sure. Sure."

There was another pause.

"Sure, you're still on the phone or sure, you'd like to go out for dinner?" she said.

"Sure both. I'd love to take you out to dinner. You mean like on Saturday?"

"Oh. No. Sorry. I work on Saturday nights. Friday nights, too. My next free evening is tomorrow night. Wednesday. How does that sound?"

"That sounds great. I'll make a reservation somewhere?" He turned his statement into a question.

"Sure. You want to make it early?"

"Um. Can't be too early. I work during the day. I don't get off until five-thirty. Can I pick you up at six-thirty?"

"Okay. You have a car?"

"I will by tomorrow night. Even if I have to go out and buy one tomorrow afternoon."

She laughed. She wouldn't have guessed that he could be funny. Maybe he wasn't going to turn out to be as weird as she had feared. "Okay."

"Okay."

He hung up.

Not thirty seconds later, her phone rang. It was Alan again. "I forgot to ask where you live."

She gave him her address.

"Okay. Great. I'll be there at six-thirty tomorrow."

"In a car?"

"In a car for sure."

He hung up again.

Maybe he was going to be weird after all.

She forgot about her date almost as soon as she hung up the phone. She was out shopping on Wednesday afternoon and saw an adorable dress at American Eagle. It was casual enough to look comfortable so she tried it on. When she saw how good she looked in it, her first thought was that she should wear it on her next date. Too bad that she didn't have any dates coming up. Then, with a start, she remembered that she did. She glanced at her watch. That boy from the party last Sunday – what was his name? Oh, yeah, Alan – would be coming to pick her up for dinner in less than two hours.

She had to get home and get cleaned up. It was never a good idea to stand a man up on the first date. Some of them tend to get discouraged easily. Even some of the self-centered jerks that she usually dated could be uncertain on a first date. Unfortunately, they tended to hide their uncertainty behind a façade of macho posturing. She hoped that Alan wouldn't try that dodge.

Alan was on time. In fact, he was weirdly punctual. When the doorbell rang, Candace glanced at the clock on the cable box and it said that it was exactly six-thirty. Not six twenty-nine or six thirty-one but exactly six three zero.

By the time she came out to the living room, her father had already opened the door and was stepping back to admit the young man.

Candace searched his face, expecting to find something familiar in his features. After all, everyone claimed that he had been sitting in the same room, practically next to her, for more than two hours.

She didn't register the slightest glimmer of recognition. She felt like she was looking at a stranger.

Alan was not particularly good looking. There was nothing seriously wrong with him, just a collection of little flaws – a nose too big, eyes too close together, lips too thin, a slight droop on one side. If you didn't look at him too closely, he was all right.

Most of the guys that she dated were more handsome than him. She didn't think of herself as choosing men for their looks, it just worked out that way. She was exceptionally good looking so ordinary looking men were less likely to ask her for a date. They were afraid that she would turn them down and nobody likes that.

She didn't realize that, even though she tried to be equally friendly to everyone, unconsciously, she did choose men by their looks. She automatically made herself appear more accessible to handsome men. She give them more eye contact, stood closer to them, smiled more readily when they spoke.

A homely man would have to badly misread her body language to think that she welcomed his attention in any way other than as a casual acquaintance. And, if an ugly one did give her the wrong kind of attention, she would not hesitate to set him straight, gently but firmly.

"You remember Alan," her father said, gesturing to the young man.

"Of course," she replied, stepping forward, taking his hand and brushing her lips against his cheek. She always did that at the beginning of a first date because a little light physical contact did wonders to help break the ice. "Let's go," she said, leading him back out the door.

She was in a hurry to leave with Alan because there was something a little bit strange about the way her father was looking at the two of them. It was a bit creepy.

It was not until they had almost reached the street that she realized that Alan had not yet spoken to her; had not even looked at her. She hoped that he liked her new dress. Maybe he planned to take her somewhere that was too formal for American Eagle. It wasn't too late for her to go back and change.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I know this pub that's pretty good," he said. "I eat there a lot."

A pub was good. Her dress would be completely appropriate.

Then he added, "It's called the Pig's Tie."

God no! She spent forty hours a week there; she wasn't going to spend her evening off there as well. "The Pig's Tie is a good pub," she said, "but, if you don't mind, I'd rather go somewhere else."

"What's wrong with it?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'm just not in the mood for it tonight."

"Umm. Okay. How about Chili's?"

"Okay. Let's go to Chili's." Chili's wasn't her favorite place by a wide margin – it was too middle-of-the-road – but anything was more acceptable than the Pig's Tie.

He said little as they drove across town. 

She tried to remember serving him at the Pig's Tie but drew a blank. She wanted to ask him if he recognized her from there, but didn't want to tell him that she was a waitress. She didn't think that there was anything wrong with being a waitress and, most of the time, wasn't shy about telling people what she did for a living. But that conversation always included saying that she was taking a break from college and intended to go back after working for a year or two. Knowing that this guy had been his class valedictorian made her worry that she would sound lame. Like she was making up the going-back-to-college-soon story because she was afraid that she wasn't as smart or as accomplished as him. 

She'd talk about her circumstances when he asked but she didn't want to volunteer that information this early in the date. Instead she was happy to ride to Chili's in silence.

Once they had settled into their seats, read the menu, and decided on food, there was nothing left but to actually talk to each other.

"I heard that you work for Google," she said to kick things off.

"Yes. I'm one of their technical writers. I'm documenting the API for a new mobile app. I'm afraid that I can't tell you much about it because it's all covered by NDAs."

That was a dead end. "So you work in the city?" she said, trying to kick the conversation in a new direction.

"Yes, but I report to a group back in Mountain View. Google has some offices here so I can work remotely but I fly back to California every month or so for one meeting or another. Sorry that I can't explain more about that but there's those darned NDAs to worry about."

"Okay." Another dead end. "So, how did you come to be at the Anderson's party on Sunday? Do you know Polly?"

"Polly?"

"Polly Anderson? Her parents hosted the party? It was her birthday?"

"Oh. No. I just met her that night. My dad knew Mr. Anderson from a long time ago. They used to work together."

Oops. This violated Candace's first rule of dating – no talking about parents. Nothing killed the mood on a date so quickly as parents on the mind. She scrambled to get the conversation back to something fun. "So tell me about your love life." She smiled angelically at him. "Broken many hearts lately?"

For a moment, he stared at her like she was speaking Vulcan. Then his ears turned bright red and he looked down at the tablecloth. "I don't have one," he mumbled.




A Tale of Two Love Affairs



"You don't have a broken heart?" she said, deliberately misinterpreting his statement. "You poor fellow. Every man should have a broken heart. It makes him seem deep and tragic."

He stared at her in shock. Then he began to laugh lightly. "I guess you're right about that. Look at Rick in Casablanca."

She laughed with him. "Or the Dude in The Big Lebowski."

"Or Shrek."

"So it's settled. You have to get your heart broken ASAP. I guess if you haven't had yours broken yet, I'll have to break it for you."

"I'd appreciate that. I need all the tragic depth that I can get."

"I'll get right to work on it, then."

"Don't worry. It won't take much work at all."

"You'll thank me when I'm done."

"I'm already thanking you."

She smiled. He'd be the first man who thanked her for breaking his heart. "So you like movies?"

"I watch a lot of movies." 

They talked about movies for the next half hour. He wasn't exaggerating. Candace thought that she'd seen a lot of movies, but Alan had seen every movie that she had and a lot more.

When the discussion about movies began winding down, she asked about his writing. "Do you like writing technical stuff?" She was curious because his discussion about movies had been surprisingly insightful.

"It's a living. It's not my passion."

"What's your passion?"

He blushed again, the first time since she had asked about his love life, and said something almost inaudible.

"I beg your pardon? Did you say poetry?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Poetry," he said more loudly. "I write poetry."

"That's too bad," she said. "Your poems can't be any good."

"Why not?" he said, again staring at her with wide, shocked eyes.

"Because you've never had your heart broken. A man can't write good poetry unless his heart has been ripped right out of his chest and stomped on by a cruel woman."

He smiled. "I think you are confusing poetry with the lyrics to country western songs. I don't have to lose my job, my dog doesn't have to die, and my pickup truck doesn't have to run over my best friend's wife in a blizzard. Writing poetry just takes a little work."

"I won't believe it until I see it. Prove it. Write me a poem."

"Right here?"

"Right here. Right now." She began rooting through her purse. "Here you go. Here's a pen and a piece of paper."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Here you go." He bent over the paper and began writing.

She looked at the top of his bent head. His dark, curly hair was his best feature. It helped that it was badly combed. It made him look like a poet.

She sipped her beer and relaxed. As dates went, this one wasn't so bad. She'd endured far worse in her young life.

"I'll have it in a minute," he said. "I just have to make a clean copy."

He needed it. His working draft was a mad scramble of crossings out and arrows and words written edgewise in the margins. He seemed to have re-written most lines a half dozen times.

Finally he slid the paper across the table. "It's pretty simple and awfully rough, but I blame you for that," he said. "I don't normally write impromptu poetry."

She read the paper in puzzlement. The poem was not long, seven lines, but the words made no sense to her. They were simple English words, nouns and verbs, but did not convey any coherent idea.

She decided that there was no reason to try bluffing him, so she said, "I don't get it."

He smiled. "I'm not surprised. It's quite technical. But I'd love to explain it to you."

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

He took that as eager assent. He stood and pulled his chair around the table to sit back down beside her. Then he began explaining the structure of the poem, pointing out his clever use of a half-dozen obscure tropes, piled one on top of the other. He was thrilled to point out where he had used a synecdoche to create a paraprosdokian clause. Exalted in a deliberate catachresis. Bragged about a clever dysphemism. 

He sounded brilliant, but after a few minutes of listening to him blather on, she stopped him and said, "But what's it about?"

He looked back at her, stunned. "What's it about?" he repeated blankly. "It's about you, of course."

She grinned in delight. "About me? You wrote a poem about me?"

"I didn't have any choice. Tonight, you're the only thing that I can think about. My mind is completely filled with you."

"How is it about me?"

He began talking about it, trying to explain how he had described her golden hair without using either the word golden or hair; how he had described her perfect lips without using the word lips; and so forth.

As he spoke, his poem began to make sense. It was about her. Each of the seven lines described an aspect of her face – hair, eyes, nose, lips, teeth, cheeks, chin – but each was also a metaphor for a different aspect of her intellect and personality.

"It's a lovely poem," she said.

"It's yours," he replied.

She wanted to jump out of her chair, drag him back to her bedroom and make love to him for the rest of the night.

Instead, she said, "You told me that you have no love life." Her tone was accusatory.

He blushed bright red again. "I don't."

"You mean that you don't have a girlfriend right now. But your life had got to be a freeway paved with the broken hearts of former girlfriends."

"No," he said softly. "I've never had a girlfriend. Never broken anyone's heart."

She paused to think. "Are you saying that you've never written a poem for any other girl?"

"No other girl ever asked me to. I don't talk to girls much. I don't do anything with girls much."

"Are you telling me that you're a virgin?"

She didn't think that it was possible for his ears to grow any redder but they did. They began to glow with hellfire. "Yes," he mumbled at his empty plate.

She stared at him for a minute. He wasn't brilliant. He was an idiot. He had the power to melt the panties off a girl with seven lines of poetry and he didn't realize it.

Well, I'm going to fix that tonight, she thought. Then she thought again. No. Let's not do this tonight. Let's take this slowly and make it perfect. As perfect for me as for him. But I will make love to him soon, even if I have to drug him and rape him. She giggled at the thought.

Alan quailed at the sound of that giggle.

In a long life filled with embarrassing moments, having to admit his inexperience to this woman was the capper. He had never felt so inadequate.

He was mystified. Candace's seemed to like his poem but now she was grilling him about his non-existent sex life. Maybe this was tit-for-tat. Maybe she was embarrassed that she had needed his poem explained to her so now she was determined to embarrass him back.

It was working.

This was the first date in his life – something that he had dreamed about for years – and he wanted nothing more than to get out of here and end it as quickly as possible.

Candace seemed to read his mind and was happy to oblige. "Let's get out of here," she said and signaled to the waitress to bring their bill.

She handled waitresses so much better than him, no fumbling, no waiting for half an hour to be noticed, no hesitation about asking for exactly what she wanted. It was like she knew what the waitress was thinking. It was like Jedi mind control.

She made him feel inadequate without even trying.

During the few minutes that the waitress was totaling the check, Candace was reading and re-reading the poem that he had written for her.

Alan was relieved that she was more interested in looking at those few words than in continuing to talk to him. He felt himself fading into the background, becoming part of the furniture. It was a familiar, comfortable feeling.

But it couldn't last. The waitress brought the check before he was ready. He glanced at it, rounded the total upward, added a hefty tip, and then rounded the total upward to a round number again and chucked that amount of money on the little black tray. The double round up meant that he was over tipping, but that is what he always did. He lived in fear of being thought a person who tipped inadequately. And the difference between under and over tipping was only a couple of dollars – an insignificant amount to quibble about.

When he rose from his seat, he saw Candace smiling at him. Was it a happy smile? A victorious smile? A pitying smile? Alan was not sufficiently familiar with smiling women to read the nuance in her expression.

Though her smile might mean disdain or contempt, Alan was pleased to see it anyway. It looked like a good smile of some kind, not a nasty one.

If he was wrong then he was wrong in the direction that made him feel better, not worse. It would be a good kind of wrong.

His first date was over. He had made no other plan than eating dinner so he drove Candace directly back to her house. It never occurred to him that she might want to go anywhere else.

On the drive back, they were both as quiet as they had been on the drive to the restaurant.

When he parked in front of her house, she did not open her door. Instead, she reached across and turned the key off. The car fell silent but for a light, infrequent ticking as the engine began to cool.

She put her hand on the far side of his head and lightly turned his face to hers. Then she leaned forward and tilted her head up to plant a gentle kiss on his lips.

His first kiss.

Her lips were soft and warm, not pursed, but relaxed against his. They were parted only slightly, just enough to let her gentle breath caress his mouth in the instant before they touched.

She did not withdraw but kept her mouth pressed lightly against his as she softly stroked the side of his head.

In the warm glow of that all-consuming kiss, Alan forgot all his fears about Candace thinking him clumsy and inexperienced, forgot all his feelings of inadequacy, forgot to be shy. His body overruled his mind and responded with the same gentle affection that it was receiving.

He reached out and slid his hands around her upper back, pulled her lightly toward him, felt her breasts press softly against his chest, and parted his lips to taste her sweet breath. It was the taste of life.

On the bench seat of his mother's car, their torsos and necks were twisted to face each other, their heads tilted so that their mouths could meet at the perfect angle, but they were in no hurry to part again.

Alan would have stayed in that position until his muscles seized and froze in cataleptic rigidity for eternity and been happy forever.

Candace was the one to part from him and pull slowly back a space of inches, still holding his face with her hands, and stare deep into his eyes.

Alan had never looked so directly into a woman's eyes from such a near distance. He found them beautiful in the penumbra of the porch lights. The pale blue striations of her irises seemed to draw him into the inky depths of her dilated pupils until his entire world was a lovely, dark, liquid night spangled with shards of reflected lights.

Then, another miracle.

Candace lowered her hand to take his and move it to her breast. She drew his palm and fingers across that soft, fabric-draped mound to the tip and pressed him against it.

He could feel the small peak of her nipple against the center of his palm. His entire hand tingled with a magical aura as though it had been dipped in fairy dust.

She moaned softly and leaned into his grasp, then thrust forward and kissed him again, this time more surely, firming her lips into an open oval and pressing certainly against his.

He responded in kind and found a new world of pleasure in her touch and taste.

She left his hand in place on her breast and reached to his chest, laying her hand flat against his nipple.

It was his turn to moan with joy.

His hand, of its own accord, explored her breast, gently squeezing and caressing her, feeling the edges of her bra, the swell of her curves, and the wondrous center of her flesh.

She did the same to his chest.

After a long time that felt much too short to Alan, she broke from his embrace, again looked into his eyes, and murmured, "Walk me to the door," in a breathy whisper.

She waited for him to circle the car and open her door before she slid out, then she took his hand in his and led him up the walkway.

It was the first time that Alan had held hands with a girl. His hand glowed with feeling in her warm grasp.

At the door, under the porch light, she turned to face him, then took him in a tight embrace, one hand pressing hard against the small of his back and the other between his shoulder blades.

She rocked slowly and he could feel the full length of her body pressed against his. Her firm thighs worked against his; her belly pressed softly into his middle; her breasts flattened across his chest.

She breathed into his ear. "Next time, we'll do a little more than this. Call me and tell me when you're going to take me out again."

Before he could respond, she gave him the third kiss of the night, this one hard and aggressive, her mouth closed and her lips pursed.

Then she was gone.

Alan stood for a minute looking at the door that she had shut behind her, feeling bereft of her presence but basking in the light and joy of those recent moments.

His mind was in a fog as he drove home. Take her out again? Do more than kiss? Did she really want to see him again or was she playing some cruel joke on him? No matter how he looked at it, he had no choice but to believe that her words were sincere. 

She wanted to see him again.

All he had to do was pick up the phone in the next day or so and call her and he would have a second date. It was like he had a girlfriend.

His first girlfriend.

Then he stopped himself. He was counting his chickens before they hatched. One date did not a girlfriend make, no matter how successful. He couldn't think of her as a girlfriend until he had had more than one date with her.

Successful? A date with a girl, successful?

Yes, it had been successful. She had kissed him. Three times. And let him feel her up. Though she had been fully clothed, that still had to count as successfully copping feel.

His whole body felt as though it had been bathed in a magical elixir. A plus three elixir of joy.

Suddenly Dungeons and Dragons sounded lame. Who cared about imaginary friends and enemies when he had a real girlfriend?

Not that he would stop playing. He liked spending time with the guys. But he might stop taking it so seriously. Maybe he should stop taking his turn being the dungeon master and let Gary and Tim do it all the time.

When he got home, that was the first thing that his mother asked him. "Were you out playing your games? I thought that you did that on Saturday night."

"No, Mom," he said. "I wasn't playing D&D, I do other things, too."

"Working late?"

"No. If you really have to know, I was out with a girl."

She looked shocked. Her face went pale. "What girl?"

His mother's reaction pleased Alan. "Her name is Candace. I met her at the party the other night."

There was a pause while he let her digest this information.

"You called her?"

"Yes."

"You got her phone number?"

It was Alan's turn to pause. Then he said, "Well, actually, it was her who called me first. I don't know how she got my number."

Stella knew. She felt her heart begin to beat faster in her chest. Her proposition to the girl's father – what was his name? Peter – had seemed like a good idea after a few glasses of Chardonnay. It had been a hypothetical possibility. A remote possibility. A dream floating in a mist of alcohol. Now, in the sober world it had become a firm commitment with a full measure of weight and substance. The unlikely had become a certainty – as the unlikely too often does – and she had incurred a debt.

"She called you?" she asked faintly.

"Yes. That can happen you know. A girl can meet a guy that she likes and call him."

That can happen if someone makes it happen.

She remembered all too clearly the payment that she had promised for making it happen. Peter had made it happen and she was now going to be his piece of ass on the side. His great piece of ass on the side.

And who was he? Just some guy that she had met at a young lady's birthday party when she was drunk enough to make the bargain and he was drunk enough to accept. She didn't know a thing about him.

Except that he wanted to have sex with her badly enough to send his daughter on a date with her son. That was some sterling recommendation, that was.

She felt sick to her stomach.

But it was an excited kind of sick.

The kind of excited sick that she hadn't felt in years. The kind of excited sick that her husband could no longer instill in her. He was a good man. A good provider. A good father. A stable man. But, even in his prime, he had not been an exciting man. He had never been a bad boy who could make a woman's heart thrill in fearful anticipation. Around her husband, there had never been a scent of danger in the wind.

If Roland and Peter's positions had been reversed, Roland would have been barked an embarrassed laugh at her preposterous proposition and wandered off.

When Alan wandered out of the room in the direction of his bedroom, he looked happier than he had looked in a long, long time.

Left alone in the kitchen, Stella leaned against the counter, grabbing it with both hands to steady herself.

What would she do now?

She could stiff Peter. Pretend that she didn't remember making any promise of a sexual nature. Be offended that he would suggest such a thing. Threaten to tell her husband if he contacted her again.

What could he do about that?

The answer was obvious. If Peter had the power to tell his daughter to call Alan and ask him to take her on a date, he would have the power to tell her to dump Alan and never see him again. Her son's newfound happiness was at stake. Stella couldn't risk destroying it.

She had no choice. Soon, she would be nothing but a great piece of ass on the side for some guy who was callous enough, and desperate enough, to want a woman who was an essential stranger to him.

She had done this thing to herself. No one else had done it to her.

Maybe Peter would forget about collecting his due. Maybe in the cold light of sober reflection, he would decide that he would be happier if he remained faithful to his wife. Maybe he did not want to have a piece of ass on the side, no matter how great.

Fat chance of that, eh? She managed to laugh quietly to herself. 

She took a deep breath to steady herself then went up stairs to the spare room that they used as an office. 

She had a new email message from someone that she didn't recognize – pdq70930 at a hotmail account. She didn't have to be a rocket scientist to deduce who that was. It was an appropriate moniker. Peter was pretty damn quick. She clicked it open.

The message was succinct. "Alan and Candace had a good time tonight. When can I see you?"

No sense delaying the inevitable. She replied: "Are you available tomorrow at 2:30?" Her stomach twisted as she pressed the Send key. 

She prayed that he would be unable to take time off from work.

Peter must have been sitting at his computer waiting because she received a reply within a couple of minutes. "Yes." Not God but the devil had answered her prayers. And the devil's answer was to confirm her fate. Lust. Fornication. Adultery. Sin.

She replied with her address and told him to park down the street and walk the last few doors to her house. That would be less obvious than having him park in the driveway. She also told him that he would have to leave before four. That would give her an hour and a half margin before Roland was due home. Then, just for the hell of it, she added, "I hope you're as horny as a goat because I'm going to give you a great time."




A Tale of Two Love Affairs



If she was going to sin, she was damn well going to do it right.

She spent the rest of the evening watching television with Roland but when bedtime came and the TV went dark, she couldn't have described a single program that she had seen. Her mind was awhirl with visions of illicit sex. 

What would Peter expect from her? That she do no more than lay on her back and spread her legs? Or would he want her on top so that he could watch her fuck him? Or would he want her to bend over so that he could take her from behind? 

She had done all of these things with her husband, but not for years. Her honeymoon was long over.

Would Peter want her to suck him off?

That was something that she had never done with Roland, but she had done if for a couple of other boys that she had dated before she was experienced enough to know how to say no. She remembered the feel of a man in her mouth and remembered that she had never liked the taste of male sex.

If Roland had demanded that she do the same when they were dating, she might never have married him.

But she was proud that she had satisfied more than one boy that way. She knew how it was done.

A great piece of ass on the side would know how to do it.

The thought that she might have to take Peter in her mouth gave her a sick feeling in her stomach again.

But again, it was the excited kind of sick. The kind that made her pussy feel slick between her legs.

Some part of her wanted Peter to demand a blowjob as payment. Hoped that he would tell her to get on her knees and give him the sloppiest, most enthusiastic licking and sucking that any man had ever enjoyed.

It would be degrading. Disgusting. A whorish act.

But she would do it.

She would hate it, but she would do it without hesitation and she would pretend to enjoy it. That was what it meant to be a great piece of ass on the side.

If she gave Peter only mind-blowing blowjobs, she wouldn't feel like she wasn't cheating on Roland. By perverse presidential logic, she wouldn't be cheating because she wouldn't be giving Peter the same kind of sex that she had given her husband.

She spent a restless night tossing and turning beside her husband, dreaming half-awake dreams about giving epic blowjobs to epic cocks.

Roland slept like a log, oblivious to her turmoil. Men were blind to their wives' desperation. The pigs.

Stella always left for work before her husband. This morning, she spent a long time staring into her underwear drawer. What would a great piece of ass on the side wear under her dress while she was teaching thirteen-year-olds about the desperate antics of Charlotte Doyle aboard the Seahawk? Nothing in her drawer. It was full of full cotton granny pants, half of them almost worn through in the seat. A truly great piece of ass was going to need new underwear.

She resolved to go to Victoria's Secret instead of eating lunch. Missing a meal would be no hardship; there was no way that she could load food into her roiling stomach.

She taught class after class from rote memory. She was an automaton merely simulating lifelike behavior. The thinking parts of her mind were occupied with base, lustful, lascivious images that were most inappropriate for the impressionable pubescent children sitting in rows before her.

While describing Charlotte as a spunky woman facing men in positions of power, a small corner of her mind was terrified that the thoughts that were flooding her mind might take control of her mouth and she would blurt out a description of a woman facing a powerful man's spunk. A rather different thing altogether.

The afternoon was worse than the morning because she had replaced her white cotton panties and sports bra with a red lace thong and pushup bra ensemble. She had new black stay-ups with lace tops and seams up the back in her purse. She didn't dare wear those in class. After the last bell, before leaving the parking lot, she would strip off her pantyhose in her car and replace them with the stockings.

She could have waited until she got home to change into her great-piece-of-ass underwear but she feared that Peter might be overeager and be waiting for her when she arrived. A great piece of ass on the side would be ready to hump a man at any time. She wouldn't need time to get changed while he was standing around cooling his heels.

That's what she told herself, but maybe the truth was simpler. Maybe she liked being ready for hot sex at any time. Maybe she liked feeling like she was already sinning.

When the final bell rang and her last class ran screaming from the room, she was stunned. She looked around the empty classroom and thought, This is it. There is nothing left between me and adultery but a short drive home. In less than an hour, I'll be throwing my clothes off, showing my body to a strange man, and asking him how he wants to use me. 

This was worse than dating. When she was dating, she knew all night how far she was going to go. Her date could only guess whether he was going to get lucky or not.

This time, they both already knew that Peter didn't need to get lucky. He would have her for certain. All she could do was wait and speculate about how he would want her to do it.

All the way home, she barely saw the road for the fantasies that galloped through her mind. Other cars didn't seem real. Twice other drivers honked at her and she shrugged them off. She was lucky to make it without an accident.

She arrived home at two-twenty. Peter was not waiting. If he arrived according to the agreed schedule, she had ten minutes to wait.

Ten agonizingly long minutes wondering if he would really come to her or if he would chicken out at the last minute and allow them both to preserve the sanctity of their marriage vows.

Her brain hoped that he would do the sane thing and stay away.

Her body from the neck down, sweated, exuded, trembled, and pulsed with desire.

She closed all the curtains in the house and stripped off her dress to wait in her red and black ensemble. She knew that men found high heels sexy so she put her patent leather party pumps on.

As she peered through a crack in the living room curtains, she was keenly aware that her nipples were hard as beach pebbles. And it wasn't from the cold.

She slid her finger beneath the thong at her crotch – it was easy because she was barely covered – and felt slick, wet lips.

She had never been so ready for sex as she was at this moment. She saw the irony in that. During their entire marriage, she had never been as ready to satisfy her husband as she was ready to cheat on him now.

When she felt the inevitable surge of guilt, she suppressed it by reminding herself that she was doing this for the happiness of her son. For so long, she had tried to get him to find a girlfriend without the slightest success. Now, she had finally found a way. She remembered how happy he had looked when he had come home last night and that made her feel better about the sin that she was about to commit.

Then she stopped thinking about her son and thought only about the man walking up to her house.

Peter was here.

She opened the door as soon as he rang the bell.

His eyes grew wide when he saw her standing in the doorway, dressed only in a red lace bra, red lace panties, black stockings, and black high heels.

"Come in," she said and closed the door after him.

She put a hand on her hip and slowly swiveled on her toe, giving him an eyeful of her naked ass bisected by the bit of red thong and the long thin seams up the back of her stockings.

"See anything you want?" she purred. She pushed her hand against the bulge in his crotch. "I think you do," she giggled. "I certainly feel something that I want."

He stared at her chest, silent, overawed.

She felt beautiful. Not because she had a great face or body. She knew that she did not. She was beautiful to him because she was a real woman who was not only available, but was being eager for him. She was beautiful because she offered herself to him without reservation.

Her unabashed desire for him, however contrived, made her the most beautiful woman in the world because that was the single thing made her different from every other woman. Even Peter's own wife was not so eager to please him as Stella. Not by any stretch of his imagination.

She faced him, held her arms apart from her body, and said, "How do you want me? Your wish is my command."

She meant it. That was more than just the bargain that she had made. It was her power over the man. Her power to make her son happy.

He said nothing. He stepped forward, put his arms about her torso and slowly pulled her into his chest.

She was in no hurry. They had an hour and a half to complete an act that would take a tenth of that time. She put her arms about him and squeezed hard, feeling the buttons, zippers, seams, and fabric of his clothes press against her nearly-naked skin.

She could feel the expansion of his chest as he breathed deeply, feel the pounding of his heart against her breasts, feel the pressure of his erection against her crotch.

She raised her face against the side of his head and whispered in his ear, "I want you so badly, you wouldn't believe it. I want to feel you inside me, in the deepest, wettest, hottest part of me."

He moaned with desire.

"The bedroom is upstairs," she said, and pushed away from him. He said nothing to the contrary so she made an executive decision. She would to make love to him in the bedroom.

As she led him up the stairs, she made another decision. She could not take him to her conjugal bed, but would have him in the guest bedroom.

On the stairs, she felt his hand grab the buttock, left uncovered by her red thong. She stopped, put her hand over his and pressed it hard against her. She moaned and bent forward to thrust her rear toward him. "That's the great piece of ass that you're getting," she said. "I want you to enjoy it."

He grabbed the other buttock with his other hand and kneaded them both for a minute.

She waited and soon felt his lips kissing where his hands were massaging her. His lips rose above her butt to the small of her back and he kissed her all the way up to the nape of her neck.

As he worked his way up her back, his body, still clothed, rose to press against her until she could feel the bulge in his pants pressing between her lower cheeks.

His hands followed around the curve of her waist and over the wale of her ribs to cup her lace-covered breasts.

When she felt the hot wind of his breath on the small hairs at the top of her neck, she asked, "Do you want to take me right here on the stairs or wait until we get to a bed?"

"Bed," he gasped and released her.

It was the first word that he had spoken to her since the night of the party when he had agreed to her sinful proposition.

She half turned, took his tie in her hand, and led him upward. She put as much wriggle into her hips as she could manage.

He followed like an eager puppy on a leash.

As soon as they entered the bedroom, they both began working frantically on his clothes, she unbuttoning his shirt and he throwing off his shoes and pants.

When he was naked, it felt perfectly natural for her to sink to her knees and begin worshiping his cock with her fingers and mouth, kissing the shiny, engorged, purple head while she massaged the length of his shaft.

When she heard his breath deepen and he began to moan, she pulled away, reluctant to let him finish in her mouth. She wanted him inside her properly.

She rose, flung the covers from the bed, and dropped the thong to the floor.

His eyes were riveted to place where her legs parted. She pulled him to her as she lay back on the bed, opening her legs wide to give him her sex.

He lowered himself onto her and slowly teased her lower lips with the head of his cock for a few moments, then slid into her.

It was done. She was officially an adulteress.

She didn't care. All she wanted was to feel the full length of him inside her, his crotch pushing into hers, his body working to give her as much pleasure as she could take.

She screamed when she came. Screamed and clutched him to her as hard as she could, squeezing his hips with her legs, trying to pull him inside as deeply as possible.

Her cunt pulsed and squeezed his cock and he came into her, pulsing hot and hard.

He groaned, the baritone of a bull beast lost in ecstasy.

He had never felt so good. He lay on her for long moments, feeling himself resting deep within her, warm and wet and happy. He brushed his lips across hers and whispered, "That was wonderful. Thank you."

She squeezed him in a tight hug in reply.

As he began to shrink, he drew himself from her and rolled onto his back to lie beside her. He listened to her breathe, a slow rhythm of nature like the ocean or the sough of winds through mountain pines. It was better than the sound of ecstasy; it was the sound of contentment.

For these minutes, all was right in the world.

She was still wearing her red lace bra and black seamed stockings. He remembered vividly her shedding her thong but didn't know when she had lost her shoes.

Though he loved looking at a woman's breasts, he did not mind that he had not seen Stella's. He was happy to imagine how beautiful they would be if they were naked.

He felt drowsy and knew that he would fall asleep if he did not move now. He forced himself to sit up.

She looked up at him with that special, slight, contented smile that may be found only on women basking in the afterglow of an earth-shaking orgasm.

"You said that I could stay until four, but it might be better if I left sooner than that," he said. "Unless you'd like me to stay longer."

She shook her head. "No. You're right. If you leave sooner then it will be that much safer for both of us."

"I wish that I could stay all night," he said. "But that might get awkward about the time your husband returned." 

She laughed, then said, seriously, "I wouldn't want Roland to find out about us, but I'm more worried about Alan. I'd hate for the children to know what we're doing."

"We'll keep them in the dark," he agreed, but he was thinking about her phrasing. She had said, what we're doing, not what we did. She was talking as though this was an ongoing relationship not a one-time event.

He liked that an awful lot.

But was also a sharp reminder that her offer to be his lover would only last for as long as his daughter was dating her son.

He bent down and kissed her long and slow, then said softly, "You're a perfect lover. I never imagined that anyone could make me feel this happy."

"Thank-you," she said back. "If you want to shower, the towel on the rack is clean. Just leave it on the floor when you're done."

Peter's hair was still wet when he let himself out a few minutes later.

It was early, only three-thirty, so he drove back to the office and worked for another two hours. When they did this again, he would take the time as a late lunch instead of telling his secretary that he had an unscheduled meeting.

When he came home for supper, the world looked different. Jane's food tasted better. Their furniture looked more stylish. Jane, paradoxically, looked sexier.

He wondered about that. Jane had never dressed in red lace for him like Stella did. Had never greeted him at the door half naked. Had never sunk to her knees and kissed his cock. Had never offered herself to him, asking, How do you want me? Had never considered that he might be so eager for her that he might have to take her on the stairs instead of waiting until they reached the bedroom.

Jane had never done any of these things but Stella had shown him that they were possible. Knowing that such things could be done, he could imagine Jane doing them. Jane was not Stella and never would do what Stella did. He knew that. But imagining his wife doing what his mistress did was an erotic fantasy that stirred his lust for her.

When the word mistress passed through his mind, his crotch tingled with prickly heat, even though he was staring at his ice princess.

Next time he made love to his wife, he would pretend that she was wearing red lace and black silk, pretend that she was offering to do anything he desired, pretend that she was eager to feel him inside her. That would make love with her so much better. Not as good as with Stella, but much better than before Stella.

If Jane had offered to make love to him that night, he would have been happy to do so. But she did not offer and he did not ask. They watched television, sitting on opposite ends of the couch as usual, and then went to bed, her to sleep soundly and him to dream of Stella.

The next morning, his heart still glowed from the memory of his assignation with Stella, but he went to work as usual. And, as usual, he did not see Candace – she worked late shifts and slept late – but she was at the forefront of his mind.

The deal that Stella had offered was that she would make love to him for as long as his daughter and her son were dating. Stella had not said that there would be a one-to-one relationship, that she would make love to him after every date between Candace and Alan, but that seemed to be the most likely terms implied by their bargain. Especially in the early stages when the younger people's decision to see each other again depended on how they had liked each other's company the previous time.

When Candace had come home after her first date with Alan, she had seemed happy enough. Peter hoped that meant that she would see him again, but he had to be certain.

He called home at ten and let the phone ring a dozen times before hanging up. Then he called Candace's cell. She did not answer so he left a message asking her to call him at the office.

She did not return his call until three-thirty. "Hi, Dad. I'm getting ready for a shift at four so I don't have much time."

"I was wondering if you'd like to go out for lunch tomorrow?"

"Again?"

"Again."

There was a pause then she said, "Okay. Eleven-thirty like last time?"

"I'll pick you up at eleven-thirty. Try to be ready on time."

"Okay. Got to run. See ya tomorrow."

"Wait," he said. "Are you going out tonight?"

Too late. The only answer was a dial tone.

The day at work crawled by at a turtle's pace but in the evening when he was with his wife, time seemed to pass even more slowly. He kept looking at the clock by the television, wondering if it would ever flash over to the next minute or if the laws of physics had been rescinded and time had actually stopped.

When he wasn't willing time to pass, then he was willing his wife to suggest going to bed early – her code meaning let's make love tonight. 

That happened. Not often, but it happened.

But, no matter how desperately he looked at her, no matter how hard he concentrated on sending her a telepathic message, she remained oblivious to his desire.

Finally, he simply asked, "Feel like going to bed?"

"Not now," she replied. "I'm too tired." Her code meaning go screw yourself.

And that was that.

When bed wasn't her idea, Peter wasn't going to get lucky. He should have known better than to ask.

He spent another restless night, dreaming of Stella, while Jane snored in contented oblivion on the other side of the bed.

He felt like he had spent a lifetime waiting for a chance to talk to his daughter – and he had spent that lifetime rehearsing what to say – but when he was finally facing her across yet another mystifying assortment of sushi, he was at a loss for words.

Trying desperately to gather his thoughts into some coherent order, he said, "You looked like you had a good time on that date with Alan the other night."

Her eyes narrowed. "You seem awfully interested in my date with him. You've never asked me all these questions about the other boys that I've dated."




A Tale of Two Love Affairs



"He's different than the other boys that you've dated. That's all." Peter struggled to keep his tone casual, desperately aware that the result of this conversation would either give him another opportunity to fly to the peak of ecstasy or throw him into a pit of despair. He couldn't stop himself from asking, "Do you think you might see him again?"

"I might," she said with the casual abandon that he wished he felt. She popped a piece of sushi into her mouth. "Good sushi. Have some."

"I'm not very hungry," he replied, picking up a piece of his own and nibbling on the edge. He couldn't have said what it tasted like. "When do you think you might go out with him again?"

"I don't know." Again her eyes narrowed. "I don't get it. Really. Why do you keep asking about Alan?"

"Well, you know. I suggested that you go out with him. I guess I feel responsible for how it turned out. I want you to be happy. You looked happy the other night so I felt good about it. That's all."

"Yeah, well. It was all right."

"What did you do?" he asked. "I mean," he hastened to add, "where you go? Where did he take you?"

"Just out to dinner. That's all. It was okay for a first date. Casual. Not too intense."

"Okay," he said. Then he added, "I guess you'll have to have a second date to get to know him better."

"I guess." She was mystified by her father's sudden concern for her love life. What did he want? Was he trying to find out how far she'd gone with Alan? Did he want a base count? Details?

"But you don't know for sure if you'll go out with him again?"

"No, Dad. I don't know for sure. It kind of depends on if he asks me, doesn't it? That's the way dating works, you know. The girl waits and hopes and the boy decides if he's going to call or not." She was getting exasperated by the third degree and she let it sound in her voice.

But her father didn't seem to get the hint and kept on in his typical, annoying way. "But you can call him. You did the first time and that worked out all right. You could do that again. He's awfully shy. He might never call you."

Damn. Her father sounded like he was on the verge of crying. What was with him, anyway? He was always the calm, collected guy who never lost his cool. "Yeah, I called him because you asked me to. But I'm not going to do that again. He has my number. I told him to call me. If he doesn't care enough about me to call, then I'm not interested in seeing him again."

"But he's not like your other boys. He's the kind of guy who could really like you but be too shy to call."

"If he can't man up and get over it, then he won't be seeing me again. And he better not wait too long because there's a lot of hot guys in this world and I'm not a girl who's going to wait, pining away." She chose a piece with bright orange flying fish roe on it. She could never remember the Japanese names for the different kinds of sushi; she just liked to feel the little fish eggs pop between her teeth. "Boys are like busses. When one drives away, there's always another one coming along soon."

Her father looked stricken and she took pity on him. "Don't worry. I think he's going to call. He sure looked interested when I left him the other night." She didn't tell him that Alan had looked as horny as hell and that was a much more reliable indicator of a second date than being entranced by her sparkling personality.

"Will you do me one favor?" he asked.

"Sure," she said and waited to hear what he wanted.

"If you go out with him, even just for a cup of coffee, anything, let me know?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

They spent the rest of the meal talking about inconsequential things like her job and plans for the future. She had no doubt that the only reason that her father had asked her to lunch was to talk about her date with Alan but she had no idea why he was so fascinated with her love life all of a sudden.

It was a mystery.

When she finished her shift at midnight, she found a message from Alan on her cell phone. She found the timing suspicious. Three hours after she had told her father that Alan better call soon if he wanted a second date, he called.

Was her father telling Alan how to get a date with her? For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why her father was obsessing about her and Alan but it was beginning to bug her.

She answered Alan's message with a text, instructing him to call her after ten in the morning.

He called at ten o'clock, exactly, waking her up.

"'Lo?" she said, her voice fogged with sleep.

"Hello?" Alan said. "Did I wake you?"

"'Sokay. Godda ged up enway."

"I can call back."

"No. 'Sokay. Whadya want?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to go to dinner again."

"Whadelse?"

"Sorry?"

She struggled to speak more clearly. "What else?" she said. "Dinner and what else?"

"Umm." There was a long pause. "Movie?" he said finally. "Dinner and a movie?"

"Movie and dinner," she countered.

"Sorry?"

"Let's go to the movie first. Go to a late afternoon matinee. Then dinner. Then we won't be out so late."

"Okay. Okay. That'd be great. Great."

"Your date, your movie, your restaurant."

"Okay. Great."

"Sunday?"

"Okay."

"I don't work Sunday."

"Okay. I'll pick you up on Sunday. What time?"

"I don't know. Before the movie starts. Let me know."

"Okay. I'll let you know.

"Okay." Then she said, "Wait. The restaurant. Not the Pig's Tie. That's all. Any other restaurant, but not the Pig's Tie."

"Okay. Umm. What's wrong with the Pig's Tie?"

"Nothing. It's a great pub. I just don't want to go on a date there."

"Okay."

"Bye."

"Bye."

She thought that took more effort than it should have and went back to sleep for another hour.

When she got to work, her shifts were posted for next week. She was working lunches on Wednesday and Thursday. It had been a couple of weeks since she'd worked lunches. She preferred dinners – the tips were better and she didn't have to get up so early – but the boss insisted that she work some lunches, too.

One of her customers tried to chat her up a little but she was busy. He left his business card on the tray with "Call me" written on it. She chucked the card. He was cute enough but a guy had to try a little harder than that get her attention.

She wasn't easy.

Then she thought about Alan and laughed. She was making herself pretty easy for him. But that was her father's doing.

On Saturday, she got another message from Alan on her cell phone. He said that he'd pick her up at three on Sunday. She wondered if he had deliberately called when she was on shift to avoid talking to her. Was that a shy guy trick?

She expected her lovers to want to talk to her, not want to avoid her.

Dinner and a movie. Not exactly an exciting date. She presumed that clubbing with Alan was out of the question. She had no interest in teaching him to dance. At least not vertically.

The movie was a test. She judged men on the kind of movie they chose for a first date. Action movies meant a shallow man; sex comedies, an immature man; police dramas, a dull man; chick flicks, an insincere man; science fiction, a geek, of course; slasher films, an insensitive man; foreign films, a pretentious man.

She was curious about what kind of man Alan was.

When he picked her up, she did not ask where they were going. She wanted to be surprised.

She was.

When he bought tickets for Disney's latest animated fairy tale, she laughed out loud.

"Is that okay?" he asked with a concerned expression.

"It's wonderful," she said. "Perfect." She spontaneously grabbed his arm and kissed his cheek. "Let's go."

The theater was half-filled with children and their parents. 

She led him to the back row and, for the next hundred minutes, let herself be mesmerized by the art and music of the spectacle. Unlike previous Disney animations, this was not an expansion of a traditional myth or fairy tale but was a new story, a loose working of the theme of an ugly duckling who comes to glory through his own agency. She held Alan's hand and leaned her head on his shoulder and felt contented.

It was the best first movie date that she'd ever had. She shouldn't have been so surprised. He had a poet's sensitivity hidden away in there. Maybe there was hope for him after all.

After the movie, Alan took her to a middle-of-the-road Italian restaurant where he had spaghetti with marinara sauce and she had fettuccini pescatore. She decided that he was going to have to get a little more adventuresome in his choice of foods and suggested that they begin by splitting an antipasto salad. It wasn't a big step, but it was a start.

After the bill was paid, she told him to take her home.

It was only six-thirty when he parked in front of her house. Not even dark yet. "Come inside for a while," she said, and hopped out of the car without waiting for an answer.

He had no choice but to follow her up the walkway, having no idea what to expect. He didn't know much about having a girlfriend, but he was pretty sure that the second date was too early to meet the parents.

And he was positive that he wasn't prepared for that.

But, when she pulled him across the threshold, the house was dark and silent. "Mom and Dad are out for a while," she said. "We've got the house to ourselves until they get back." She pushed the door closed and locked it, then turned her face up and pressed her lips to his, pulling him into a hug. 

Again, his senses were overwhelmed by the soft pressure of her body clinging to him from thigh to chest.

The kiss lasted for a long, long moment.

When she finally broke the clinch, she held both his hands in hers, looked up at him and said, "I think we should get comfortable on the couch, don't you?"

"Okay," he said.

She kicked off her shoes, waited for him to follow suit, and then led him through a doorway into the living room.

There was no television here, just a couch and two easy chairs arranged about a stone fireplace. "Have a seat," she said, gesturing to the couch, while she drew the curtains closed.

He had never felt as shy as he did when he watched her closing them off from the rest of the world, creating a private place for the two of them alone.

"I think–" he began to say but she interrupted him.

"Do you know why men and women kiss each other?" she asked as she sat down beside him.

"No," he said. "Because it feels good?"

"To stop the other one from talking crap and spoiling the mood."

He wanted to tell her that that was a brilliant insight, that humans were the only animals that both talked and kissed, but he couldn't. She was already kissing him.

He felt like he had been lost in her soft, warm embrace forever when she pulled her mouth away from his, kissed his earlobe, and whispered, "You can't kiss my breasts while I'm wearing my blouse and bra. You should do something about that."

Then she began kissing his lips again.

Breasts. Right.

Without breaking lip contact, he reached up and followed her neckline with his fingers down toward her cleavage until he found a button. It took a minute of fumbling to get it undone. The next one was marginally faster and the one after that, a little faster yet. He was learning fast.

After she shrugged the blouse free of her shoulders, he was stymied for a minute. How did a bra work, anyway?

He stroked her breasts through the cups, for a while, then let his hands explore around her sides and back. An irregularity in the main strap at the center of her back had to be some kind of fastening but he couldn't feel any buttons. Zippers and Velcro seemed unlikely so that left hooks.

She waited patiently, nuzzling his face and neck while he fumbled with the garment. 

Her ministrations were distracting but he concentrated on the problem as best he could. Grasp, push, slide was the combination, and her straps fell loose.

He pulled back from her to look down at the wondrous view of her two perfectly-shaped, perfectly-sized breasts falling free inside the loose cups. What was perfect? Whatever she had. If she had been as flat as the prairies or as peaked as the Rockies, it would not have mattered a whit. Whatever she had was his new definition of perfection. For the rest of his life, every woman that he met would be judged against this benchmark.

He pushed the straps off her shoulders and the entire apparatus fell away.

She arched her back slightly to present herself to him and he obliged by running his lips slowly down the double curve of skin from shoulder to nipple. When he kissed and sucked that pink nub of sensitive flesh, she moaned.

She moaned.

Alan never dreamed that he would be able to make a woman moan.

It was the most beautiful sound that he had ever heard.

Her breathing deepened in response to the stimulation from his lips and every breath she took moved her breast against his mouth, stimulating her that much more.

He switched to the other side and enjoyed to a new delight. While he kissed, sucked, and licked, she held his head lightly and played her fingers in his hair.

Then she drew his head up to kiss his mouth again. During that kiss, his shirt fell open as though by magic. Her fingers were far more deft with buttons than his.

After she brushed his shirt away, she worked her lips down his neck, across his chest, and began kissing his atavistic nipples. He had always thought male nipples useless but she proved him wrong. He had never noticed how sensitive they could be. As he watched her flick her delicate pink tongue across them, he knew heaven.

He heard himself moan.

When he thought that he could stand no more joy, she began working back up his chest. When she reached his ear, she whispered, "Tonight, I'm going to keep my panties on. You can feel me, but I want you to stay on the outside. Okay?"

"Okay," he croaked.

In a graceful movement, she slid off the couch and stood before him, naked from the waist up.

He could have sat and watched her for hours and been content with his life, but she sucked in her belly and unbuttoned her waistband, then unzipped her fly.

His eyes were wide and dark as caverns when she slid her jeans to the floor and stepped out of them.

He had never seen such long legs, smooth and white as polished marble.

Her bikini panties were black and shiny like silk.

She stepped back and sat beside him again, then took his hand and slid it to her crotch, parting her legs slightly so that he could run his fingers over that magical space between the tops of her thighs. He could feel soft, mysterious bumps beneath the slick nylon. When he pressed lightly, they yielded and parted and Candace moaned again. There was pleasure in her moan and Alan felt his heart melting at the sound.

She pushed him back, prone along the length of the couch and lay on top of him, her naked breasts pressing against his chest and her nearly naked crotch pressing against the raging bulge in his jeans.

His hands moved by instinct to cup her buttocks and knead them firmly and deeply.

Her moans grew louder and more intense and she ground herself against him.

Suddenly her body froze and then lay limp against him. "You feel so good, I can hardly stop myself from tearing your clothes off and having my way with you right now. But I won't. Not tonight. I'd like you to leave now. I want to go out with you again. Will you call me soon?"

"Yes," he gasped.

The date was over and the sun had not yet set but he felt like he was floating all the way back to the car.

She was beautiful and she had been all but naked in his arms.

If heaven offered anything less than that, dying would be a disappointment.

As soon as he came into his house, his mother left the family room and came out to talk to him. "You were out with Candace?" she asked. "You're home early."

"How did you know that I was out with her?" he asked.

"I told you that you had to call her to ask for a date," she said, "so I assumed that you did."

Alan noted the non sequitur. It did not logically follow that he was coming back from a date with Candace just because his mother had told him to call her a couple of days ago. Candace could have turned him down. They could have gone out some other night. He would have come home much later from a date if she had not suggested seeing the movie before dinner instead of afterward.

It was vaguely unsettling that his mother seemed to make such an accurate guess about his private life but he let it pass without comment.

"Well," he said, "I'm kind of tired. I'm going to call it a night."

"Sure," she said. "I understand."

He wondered how much she understood.

"Did you have a good time?" she asked.

"Yeah. Sure. What's not to like for a guy going on a date?"

She smiled inwardly at his naïveté. He had no idea how bad a date could go. There be dragons on that part of the map and she was happy that it was still unknown territory for her son.

She watched him leave the room. He was practically prancing. Apparently the date had gone very well.

Now she had an obligation to fulfill for Candace's father. She went upstairs to the computer, logged into her email account and sent a simple message to Peter: "Tomorrow at 2:30?"

He replied, "Yes," immediately.

And that was that.

Her stomach churned. With fear? Excitement? The thrill of the forbidden? Lust? Guilt? All of the above?

She had to force herself to spend the rest of the evening sitting quietly beside Roland, watching an endless stream of crime dramas. While mayhem was executed and resolved again and again on the screen, a different flavor of mayhem whirled through her mind without hope of resolution. Mayhem not of thantos but of eros; not of cold, pale, dead flesh but hot, pulsing, living flesh; not of blood but of sweat; screams of ecstasy, not agony.

However wrong it might be, she wanted to feel a man hard inside her. If the world gave her Peter instead of Roland, then that was what she would take.

Her first impulse was to meet Peter at the door nude, but she changed her mind while teaching her second period class. Something to conceal, something to tease, something to be removed was more erotic than baring everything before the game had begun.

She spent another lunch hour at Victoria's Secret. This time, she let her imagination roam a little more freely. She might be a size twelve, but that was no problem. They stocked sizes a lot bigger than she needed and she knew that real men liked more curves than could be found on the standard Victoria's Secret models.

She settled on something called a Lacie Plunge Halter Teddy in hot pink. The plunge meant that the neckline dropped all the way to her navel, separating her breasts. The back was barely there, a thong separating her ass cheeks.

There was no way that she could wear this and not look hot for her lover.

It worked. When she opened the door wearing nothing but her teddy, Peter leaped onto her like a ravenous lion on fresh meat.

She laughed and pushed him away and then raced up the stairs, all her parts bouncing with joy.

He raced after her, tearing off his own clothes as he went, leaving shirt, pants, and socks on the stairs and underwear on the upstairs hallway.

She flung herself on the guest bed, held her arms akimbo and welcomed his body into her embrace.

No man's professed love for her could ever be as sincere as Peter's rampant display of lust.

As they tussled on the bed, springs and frame creaking ominously, she squirmed out of the teddy. The instant that her crotch was free of the garment, Peter was inside her, no preliminary foreplay necessary or desired by either party.

Their coupling was fast, loud, and vigorous – two eager bodies grinding and pulsing against each other to a cacophony of grunts, squeals, and moans.

Stella had never so desperately wanted a man nor felt wanted by that man so desperately in return. She was oblivious to anything but her primal need to have as much contact with his flesh as she could get.