shows beneath that silken Pucci minisheath you’re wearing? Except for your dress and shoes, you are completely naked, and when you stand erect certain basic hirsute attributes are proudly evident despite the outer covering.”
“I didn’t think it showed,” Sharon said. She knew the red was showing on her shoulders, but the blush wasn’t in the casual tone of her voice.
“Perhaps I have a more experienced eye than most. And perhaps I think you are lying. You
“Then you shouldn’t be looking in that direction.”
“Why not? It is the reason for your ... undressed appearance. Flaunting the female plumage, no? An admirable approach. I am thoroughly enchanted. And why not? Your skin is flawless, your physique perfect. Of all the women in the room, your breasts are by far most suited for their purpose. Large enough to be the objects of attention, to sustain themselves without implementation, yet not so large as to interfere with more important actions.”
“Is sex all that you have on your mind?” she asked him. His half-shaded eyes unveiled themselves momentarily in surprise and she was pleased that her voice had held no expression of excitement he had deliberately tried to implant in her.
“That is generally true,” he told her. “Can you suggest something that should take precedence?” He sipped his drink and waited for her answer.
“Try gainful employment.”
Raul shrugged and smiled again. “Hardly necessary. I am quite wealthy. Working for more would only be a pretense. I would rather spend my time and energy working on you, my dear. You interest me immensely.”
“For what purpose?”
“The ultimate purpose,” he said, “of taking you to bed with me, totally naked and ready for the unlimited capacity of Raul Fucia. Your enjoyment of my efforts would be profuse.”
Sharon let her eyes range over him, then her teeth glinted in a small grin. “I’m afraid I’d be a disappointment to you, Raul. You see, I’m quite virginal.”
“Lovely,” he said. “A woman virginal in spirit is a wonder to behold.”
“In body, my friend. I’m a complete maidenheaded virgin. How about that?”
There was no denying the tone of her voice at all this time. She had calculated it to perfection without any effort at all and for a moment nearly enjoyed the consternation that showed in his face.
“Impossible!”
“Not so impossible. I’ve just never been laid, that’s all. I never met a man I wanted to get that close to. Simple, when you consider it.”
He put the drink down, pulled up the ottoman beside her and sat down quickly, his hand reaching for hers. She let him take it without resisting. “Then, by all means, you must have me. I insist, you must!”
“Why?”
“Because the initial experience has to be a momentous occasion. Only a man of experience can ...”
“Raul ... balls. When I want to, I’ll go. Not before. You’re not the man either.”
“But you have not seen me.”
“You’re beginning to show, Raul. The thought of a possible virgin in your life was a little too much. Was that why you sat down?”
“My dear Sharon ...”
“I’ve been around, my fine foreign friend. I’ve necked, petted and experienced orgasm. I’ve engaged in a few sexual episodes that produced the proper physical pleasures and enjoyed it and I’ll probably do more of the same again when I want to. I know all the tricks, positions and erogenous zones and I’ll be a real terror when the time comes. Only right now I still have the little goodie that makes me an unpenetrated virgin and I’m going to keep it that way.”
She felt his hand slip away from hers slowly, his eyes uncertain. “You are a ... a ...”
“Lesbian?”
He nodded.
“No, though I allowed myself the pleasure of experimenting in that direction several times. Does that startle you?”
Apparently it did. The bewilderment touched his mouth and he reached for his drink again. “But ... when you could have had a man ...”
“I have,” she said firmly, “but not in the primary circumstance. I have felt and tasted several men. There was great mutual enjoyment. Have I been explicit enough? There has even been penetration of another nature I found extremely satisfactory. So no, I am not a Lesbian, I am not frigid, I am not sexually abnormal. I am simply hanging on to an asset a man might consider quite valuable someday.”
Raul finished the drink, found an empty spot on the end table beside him and put the glass down. “American women,” he said. “You are quite shocking.”
“At my age I can afford to be,” Sharon told him. She deliberately leaned forward, knowing he was able to see the full sweep of her breasts beneath her dress in the movement. The slippery feel of the fabric made her nipples thrust forward prominently. “Now, why don’t you practice your erection on someone more appreciative.”
Somehow he managed to contain his frustration and rose to bow in a continental manner. She took his fingers in a gentle handshake. “I feel sorry for you, Sharon Cass,” he said.
She smiled again, a flash of amusement in her eyes. “I feel sorry for you, Raul. You know what you are missing and there is no possible chance of getting it at all.”
“Not quite true, my dear.”
His exit was graceful, she thought, for someone who had to revise all his thinking. Tonight he’d have some woman tucked under silken sheets next to him, wondering if somewhere along the primrose path he had lost his touch. His performance wouldn’t be up to par at all and tomorrow he’d begin to worry. So he’d try for her again and lose the battle again and the decline would begin. Like the gross income chart on S. C. Cable’s wall behind his desk.
“Would you really deball him?”
It was a funny voice, oddly scratchy with a strange accent she couldn’t quite place, a Brooklyn voice with the New Yorkese deliberately rubbed out. She half turned and looked at him, then smiled because he was out of place somehow and she couldn’t tell why either. She let all the reasons compute in her analytical mind and decided that he was too big in the shoulders and chest for one thing, and his hair too short for another. It was what they used to call a crew cut. His black suit was new, but molded from a different era, as if he were conscious of only one style and couldn’t care less for what the “in” crowd had adopted. He looks like an eagle, she thought.
Suddenly she was back in front of the mirror again. She felt the tiny blonde hairs rise on the backs of her forearms and a prickle go across her shoulders. It was like dropping into an abstract vortex of time and sound and colors she couldn’t understand at all. Her stomach muscles seemed to tighten until juices were being squeezed right out of her. Inside her mind a faraway voice said, “I have a funny, funny feeling.” And she answered back, “No. It’s silly and childish. It never will really happen.”
“Well?” he asked.
“It wouldn’t have been very difficult.”
“Your destruction of the boy was, a little more practical,” he said.
“I didn’t think there was an eavesdropper.”
“Hell, kid, I wouldn’t miss a scene like that for the world. I was envying his approach until you dropped him. You really mean all that stuff?”
A curious laugh escaped Sharon’s lips. “Yes. It was all true.”
“Even about being a virgin?”
“Does it sound odd?”
This time he grinned and shrugged, toasting her with his drink. “Sounds crazy, kid, but it’s your game.”
She wondered where he had found a beer in Walt Gentry’s supply. It was something Walt only brought in for his slumming parties. “What’s
