Installment 2

Mr. Miller had hired her though she had no experience. He was attracted to her, I suppose, for the same reason I was. She had a kind of lurid innocence. She was barely twenty when he started working for her. I had been married to her for almost a year but she really was still quite awkward about sex and men, and still unsure of herself and her attraction to men, even though, as Bob said, she was pretty.

She did not think she was pretty; her mother had never told her she was pretty, nor had ever encouraged her to prettify herself. She wore little make-up most of the time. If she put on lipstick, it was only on very special occasions. Like the one I told you about, I guess. Her clothes were very modest; she preferred to wear, like her mother wore, dresses or skirt-and-top outfits. Rarely wore blue jeans. She was sort of old-fashioned like this. When I first knew her she still wore a girdle and the stockings you fasten to them, because that is what her mother wore. But she did not need a girdle, and I liked the swell of her tummy under her dress, it was sexy. Pantyhose were the new thing, so she started wearing those and it gave her a more natural shape under her clothes. She always wore a bra. She was not one of those liberated females of the day. She was inclined to blush at dirty words and did not like to talk about sex, although she liked to think about it, as it turned out. She was a natural brunette. Pretty, if plain. Pleasingly shaped, but ordinary in the main. I loved her.

Actually all of this made her the more alluring, because in spite of this repressed attitude and this uncertainty about her femininity, she was sexually curious. Naive, but curious. In fact her naivete made her curiosity the more keen. For she would end up doing things that a more self-assured woman would refuse to do. She would be willing to these things, because she wanted to please, because she was uncertain of herself, where another might be repulsed or ashamed. She would submit because she did not know she should not do such things.

And somehow this showed in the way she looked at me, or at any man, for that matter. She deferred to men and she was meek and wanted to please. The Mormon's call it the woman's duty to serve.

But, at the same time, as I say, she shamefully and privately took an intense sexual pleasure from what they made her do, and while she was not certain of her feelings, she was easily sexually aroused, and while abashed by her sexual arousal she was overwhelmed by these feelings. Sexually intoxicated.

She blushed so easily and deeply that I could see it even in these black and white pictures. She flushed so warmly and so readily when sexually touched, flushed on her checks and down, even to the tips of her breasts, like a heat rash. s

Bob said she did not resist what was wanted of her, even if she was often tentative and uncertain and anxious. She seemed to feel awkward about what was expected unless she was guided, but she would do what she was guided to do . Again, this submissiveness was part of what made her so appealing to them and, I admit, to me also.

It had always seemed to me that she wanted to do even what she seemed uncertain to do. She was hesitant, but never reluctant. She was timid, but not unwilling. She was shy and embarrassed, but not repulsed. And if she felt humiliation in any of things she did, if she felt embarrassed, truthfully she could not distinguish between the warmth of that blush and the warmth of the sexual flush that she also felt at the same time.

Perhaps, because her mother had repressed her feelings and taught her to be so uncertain of herself sexually, she actually needed and even craved the anxiety of humiliation; the sense of coercion made her more sexually aroused. I don't know. But the way she responded to what happened to her, I think this is true, even if she would never admit it. How they treated her, the humiliation of it, made her want to do what she did, even if she would never admit it.

Anyway, I think Mr. Miller saw all of this in her instantly, just as I did. I thought about it right after I met him when he had hired her. I saw it in the way he looked at her. I said something to her about it, but she did not understand me. She said he was a nice man. And he paid her very well. Too well, as I should have known.

He had a small jewelry shop downtown, had had it for years. Never made much money at it and had been robbed ore than a few times and was barely hanging on, really. His wife was a bitchy nag. I only met her once and I could see why he preferred to work all the time. So, I was not surprised when Karen's hours begin to get longer.

I asked her about it—what are you doing so late?—and so on. And she said they talked. He was teaching her about gems. And it was true. At least at first.

He would make tea after he closed the shop, and they would sit side by side on stools at his workbench, and he would take gems out of this little packets and give her a loop so she could examine them with him while he explained them to her. She really did learn a lot. Well, that turned out to be true in lots of ways.

This long evening work became more and more frequent, and then one day he had her stay on a Friday night, although the shop was always closed on weekends. She explained to me later that his wife had gone out of town and he was lonely.

She did not get home until almost ten and I could tell she had been drinking. That was not quite the first time things happened, but it was the first serious incident.

Actually she'd been coming up with a bit of booze on her breath for a couple of weeks, and she had admitted that he had started putting brandy in the tea that the two of them drank together.

Later, as I pieced together the whole thing, after Bob had told me more, I understood how it happened. A slow seduction.

He had started with an arm around her as he showed her things. This progressed to a kiss goodnight. It went from this to his sitting beside her and telling her about how unhappy he was with his wife and intimating things about a lack of a sex life, which embarrassed her, but which she permitted. She tried to make him feel better. She felt sorry for him. And he would ask her if she liked him and she would say she did.

Then, inevitably, he confided that he was falling in love with her, that she was so beautiful, and that he knew she was married and that he would do nothing to hurt her, that he wanted to help her, that he wanted her to have things, he wanted to give her things. He gave her a ring. He insisted she take it, although she knew it was a genuine diamond. She must have known this was wrong, because she hid the ring from me.

He wept when he gave her the ring, and she had to accept it, she said. That was the first night that he kissed her mouth, and she was docile to him at first, and then when he kept up, she felt sorry for him and kissed him back. They kissed for a while. Warmly, I think. She said nothing more happened, but I wondered if he did not put his hands on her too. But she insisted nothing happened.

But now this became the common thing. Drinking and then kissing and he putting his hands onto her. He confessed to love her more than his wife. His kisses tongued her open mouth. He became more and more insistent with his fondling. And tried to put his hand up her skirt. She let him feel her crotch, even while she said she tried to discourage him. Just how she discouraged him, I wonder. Because he took encouragement from her submissiveness.

Then one night, after more than the usual brandy, she said he took her hand and put it on himself, on the front of her pants, and she rubbed his erection through his pants. She said this happened just once, but she did not say no to him and that encouraged him and she said she thinks he ejaculated in his pants. She remembers they were now French-kissing and he was squeezing her breasts through her dress and he groaned. She had not really held his erection. She had not even closed her hand on it. She just rubbed it a little. But it was obvious, what had happened. He actually thanked her afterwards and was crying a little. They kissed a while longer and he got another erection and when he put her hand on it, she did not rub it very long but said she had to go.

I can see it from his point of view. She was not resisting. Of course she was just trying to be nice, to make him happy. She had no interest in him sexually, although knowing her I am guessing she was already feeling more than she admitted. But she did not think anything more would happen. After all, in her na•ve thought, they were both married; nothing should happen. He was old enough to be her father anyway. And nothing had really happened anyway. This was really just like necking in a car in high school, although this rubbing his erection was not something she had ever done even then.

So, I think he felt encouraged and maybe he had convinced himself that he was actually in love with her. He certainly was infatuated with her, and at his age to have young girl like to kiss, to let you touch her (even if only through her clothes), and to masturbate you, that was really a big turn-on. She should not have been surprised then when just the very next night, he unzipped his trousers and put her hand inside them to touch his penis directly. She found he was uncircumcised. She had never felt an uncircumcised penis, and she found the way the foreskin slipped off the glans unexpected, and she felt it slippery with pre-ejaculatory fluid and now he unzipped the back of her dress and put his hand into the back of her slip and felt for the back of her brassiere. He wanted to unfasten it. She did not deny him, but she stopped kissing him and told him they should stop. He said nothing and went on kissing her. He did unfasten her brassiere and slipped his hand into the top of her shoulder, under the strap of it and under the strap of her slip, obviously intending to feel the front of her that he hoped to expose, when he began to ejaculate. He ejaculated into her hand as she felt the tip of his penis with her fingers from where it came, and he shuddered, and then as his ejaculation subsided and he sighed and kissed her deeply, she withdrew her hand, trying to wipe his semen onto his undershorts as she did so, but not fully successfully; she ended up smearing the side of her dress with some of it that wet her fingers.

She leaned back and he let go of trying to feel her. He had not succeeded in fact in either feeling her or exposing her; the neck and sleeve of her dress was fallen forward and off her shoulder; her slip and her bra straps to that side had slipped off her shoulder too and she sat without fixing herself, looking serene and warm and sexually inviting. He stared at that bare shoulder and the curve of how her breast began to shape,as he drew down her brassiere, but he was embarrassed (it seemed to her) and apologized for ejaculating. She still did not draw her dress up—so that he took a message from this—and she smiled warmly and said she understood, that he shouldn't feel bad.

Still she made no immediate attempt to pull up her dress, and so he said she was so beautiful and said awkwardly: "I'd like to see you, if you will let me. I won't do anything you do not want me to do. I just want to look."

She told me she did not know what he meant. He leaned and started kissing her again and put his hand to her bare shoulder and slipped his fingers down and inside her brassiere and with his fingers he found and began feeling the nipple of her breast.

As he kissed her more warmly, she felt how carefully, how tenderly he drew the dress down to lap, while kissing her; then still kissing her drew down her slip, then tugged her brassiere to her waist, to expose her, and he had exposed her, if he had but yet looked, and she felt herself exposed and said again, what she always said: "We shouldn't."

She openned her eyes as he drew back to look at her breasts and she glanced down and saw his hand fondling her right breast. Seeing her anxiety, he leaned to kiss her mouth and she turned away from his kiss and said again: "We shouldn't."

This time she meant it and she drew back and pulled her brassiere, then slip, then the dress up over her shoulder before he could do anything more. Still she did not zip up her dress.

He begged again: "Is it okay? May I see you--just look at you?"

Again, she did not really understand what he meant and smiled and she nodded and said "Please, Mr. Miller, it is late."

He said: "Of course." And that is when he turned away, zipped his pants up and went and got a bracelet to give to her. While he was out of the room, she fixed her disheveled brassiere and zipped up her dress the best she could.

I say again: I can see what was he was thinking, even while I know what she was thinking.

She said she told him it was alright because he said he felt so bad about it and again he insisted she take another gift, a little bracelet, not worth all that much.

Now even she should understand what this meant.

Certainly now he was thinking that she would give him what he wanted and I suppose he began to plan out all that he might want.