was true. Her entire being quivered beneath the tepid bath water.
'Oh Christ, Judy, Judy, suck it… suck it!' the man groaned through the wall. 'Yes, that's it that's… it… milk it dry, you hot little bitch… suck me dry… ohhhhhhh!'
The inside of Diane's mouth was dry, and she ran her pink tongue over her lips several times, trying to dispel the arid, cottony taste. She found herself trying to picture in her mind the position Judy Carneal and the man, Harry, were in. He was sitting on the toilet seat… yes, that was it, sitting on the toilet seat with his legs spread wide and Judy was kneeling between them, her long auburn hair fanning out over his belly and abdomen, taking his blood- swollen shaft into her mouth and suckling it, up and down, up and down, up and down…
A wave of shame caused her to flush a violent crimson. She was no better than they were! Thinking lewd, filthy thoughts, working herself up into an impossible froth… Suddenly, she wished Roger were home. She was aroused, all right, there was no purpose in deluding herself that she wasn't. For the first time in two years, she was sexually ready; if Roger were only here she would gladly accept his huge penis now, she needed release, needed it desperately…
'That's it, that's iiiiitttt! Tickle my balls, baby… tickle them… holy Christ, I'm almost there… suck it harder, Judy… harder… harderrrr…! Aaaaggggghhhhh, ohhhhhhhh!'
Diane lifted her hand from the edge of the tub again and began to massage her right breast, slowly, rhythmically. God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! her mind almost screamed. But I don't care, I can't stand it! Her mind had blotted out all the evils she had been led to believe came from masturbation. There was only her urgency now, her need for release from the intense arousal of her body by the lustful activities beyond the paper thin bathroom wall.
She continued to massage her breast, avoiding the nipple at first, cupping the creamy naked globe in her long slim fingers, kneading the translucent flesh, causing whirlpools of passion to seethe within her. Then she touched the nipple with her thumb, felt it diamond hard. She rolled the ball of her thumb back and forth across the erect bud, intensifying further the rising crescendo of sexual frenzy.
Diane arched her back, raising her hips off the tub bottom, lifting her stomach and the dripping, hair-covered mound of her loins out of the water. She braced her body by pressing the soles of her feet to the porcelain, and then lifted her left leg out of the water, hooking it over the side of the tub, opening wide the soft, fluted edges of her cunt. Still she massaged her now wildly trembling breast, teasing the nipple, pinching it between thumb and forefinger until it throbbed like a thing alive.
From next door, Harry screamed, 'I'm… going to cum, baby! Suck it, bitch, suck it suck it suck it… aaaaggghhhh, I'm cumming, I'm… cummmmiinngggg, aaaahhhhggg!'
Diane could stand it no more. Her other hand dipped down between her widespread thighs. It was wet with something else besides the water, with the secretion of her passion. She gentled her finger into the moist flesh, and the feeling generated by her own fingers was so very, very good. She manipulated the soft hair lined inner lips until she could feel them swelling with the rush of blood, and her clitoris was rigid and tingling. Her index finger came in contact with the trembling bud, and she began to gasp with total abandoned delight as she felt release imminent. Her hips thrashed the bath water and her hand squeezed her breast, released it, squeezed it harder. Faster, faster, faster her finger rubbed across the sensitive clit, blanking her mind of all thoughts, all sanity; nothing existed for her in that moment except the delirious coming of her impending climax…
And then she was there!
She was cumming like a wild woman!
Her hips flailed frantically at the water, beat it to a froth, as wave after wave after maddening wave of intense, bursting release seized her. Pinwheels of light, in kaleidoscopic colors, appeared in back of her eyes and she cried out, once, in pleasure so acute it was like pure pain. As her orgasm began to ebb, her buttocks sank back to the porcelain bottom of the tub and her hand stilled but did not leave her cunt. She lay there, not moving, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her chest rising and falling spasmodically.
From next door: 'Jesus, Judy, there's nobody who sucks cock like you do. Nobody a-tall! You got every last Goddamned drop in my nuts down that throat of yours!'
'I'm glad you liked it, Harry honey. Now how about doing the same for me? My pussy's on fire!'
'All right. And after that, I'm gonna throw a fuck into you like you never had before. And that's a promise.'
'What are we waiting for?'
There was the sound of a door being opened, and then closed, and then there was only silence. Diane lay there, listening disappointedly to that silence, and sanity returned to her satiated brain.
With it came abject mortification.
She was sick with the knowledge of what she had just done, of the act of carnal self-abuse that she had performed on herself. What was the matter with her? Was she so starved for love that she had to resort to masturbation for satisfaction? Was this what Roger's animalistic love-making had driven her to? Would she repeat time and again these self-manipulations in order to achieve emotional release?
The questions churned and twisted in Diane's mind. She felt sick to her stomach, and… impure, as if her body were harboring thousands of tiny, invisible, creeping things. Abruptly, she stood up in the tub and switched on the shower, letting the needle spray grow as hot as she could stand it and then lathering herself from head to toe with scented feminine soap.
At the end of ten minutes, she began to feel a little better. She stepped out of the shower, refusing to allow her mind now to dwell on what had happened only minutes earlier. She toweled herself dry briskly, not even looking at her glowing pink-red body in the full-length mirror. She dressed hurriedly, and went out to the kitchen.
This day was wrong, all wrong. Last night, she had told Roger that she would have something special for him when he came home from work this evening, but hadn't told him what. It would be a surprise. What she had been planning was a very fancy shrimp Creole for his supper, his favorite dish, with a bottle of good Chablis she had bought from savings out of her grocery money, and candlelight, and soft music; it had been her idea to get him in a gentle, tender, loving mood, so that later on, when they went to bed, Roger would come to her as a husband and a lover — not as a brute. But then the loneliness of the morning had taken hold of her, and the old bitterness at his treatment of her over the past two years, and now the… the scene in the bath tub… Well, it was all spoiled now. She didn't even want to think about sex or love, much less about making the complicated shrimp dish from her grandmother's recipe.
Still, she had to have something with which to occupy her time for the rest of the day, until Roger came home. It was barely noon now, and the prospect of simply sitting in front of the TV screen for the remainder of the afternoon had no appeal at all for her. Too, there was the fact that she had already bought all of the preparations for the Creole — fresh, deveined shrimp and green peppers and garlic and paprika and stewed tomatoes…
Well, she might as well make it now. But there would be none of the Chablis with it, and no candlelight or soft music. It would just be a dinner, like all other dinners. That was all.
Diane opened the refrigerator, took out the shrimp, and set intensely to work on the side-board.
CHAPTER TWO
Roger Slater was adding a long and intricate column of figures when Marcus Cord knocked on the edge of his office door. Roger looked up from the IBM calculator and smiled. 'Come in, Marc.'
Cord entered. He was dressed in the latest semi-mod fashion, not in the conservative grey or black three- button business suit which Roger wore. Cord had on a double-breasted pin-stripe jacket over checkered, slightly bell-bottomed pants, a rich blue shirt with a bright, wide-patterned tie, and Roger knew without looking that the shoes would be an off-color with wide buckles. Cord's hair, was a premature salt-and-pepper, which he wore long with thick, bushy side-burns. The total effect was impressive, rather than ostentatious or absurd. If he, Roger, ever tried to wear such clothes, he would have looked absolutely ridiculous and would probably have been fired as well.
Cord grinned and said, 'Am I interrupting?'
'No. I'm just finishing the Apperson account for Pierson to see. What's on your mind?'
