account that was willing to select a Midwestern agency if it could be assured of greater sales as a result of a transfer from the smart ad shops of Madison Avenue. Young Tim and Heather were home this weekend, Tim from his brilliant junior year at Chicago Latin High, Heather as a junior at Midlothfan Girls' College. And, although Rachel had offered to prepare supper for them tonight, both of them very insolently told her that they preferred to go out to eat. It was just another of the many pointed snubs they had aimed in her direction ever since that first day, because their father had raved about her cooking and she knew herself to be more than usually competent.
The drumming of the rain on the windows had grown even more insistent, and there were frequent rumbles of thunder in the distance, heralding a violent storm. If only Timothy could be home with her now, so they could comfort each other and resolve that one special problem which she hadn't even anticipated… and neither had he. Again her fingers trembled as she took the cigarette out of her lips and stared nostalgically into the mirror.
Rachel was remembering her second wedding night. This time, it had been with a man she respected and loved, and in the most romantic of settings. Their suite at the Sheraton-Wakiki had been on the twenty-fifth floor overlooking the vast blue Pacific. After a gourmet dinner at the Hano-Hano Room, they had come down to their rooms and gone out on the lanai. The soft cool tradewinds had welcomed them to the paradise of Hawaii, and there had been a full moon.
Remembering how foul-mouthed and ruthlessly selfish Matt Varney had been on that other hymeneal night, Rachel had found herself longing for consummation. Proud of her mature and as yet unflawed body, she had undressed before him and2 donned the black chiffon nightie she had bought especially for this moment. Timothy Woodling, six feet tall, with regular handsome features, closely cropped gray hair, could still boast an athletically supple body and no paunch, as so many executives of his own age had to hide with expensive tailoring. He had put his arms around her, kissed her, and they had moved to the huge double bed. And then it had been a tragic, almost heartbreaking fiasco.
Not that he wasn't everything she had known he would be: gentle, thoughtful, considerate to a fault. His kisses and the soft knowing touches of his fingers on her breasts and thighs and between them had made her blood quicken in her veins, made her nipples stiffen and darken with the anticipation of passionate cohesion. And then when she had whispered, 'Take me, Tim dearest, I want you so I', he had groaned and turned away. He had been impotent.
Rachel had done her best to console him. It could happen to anyone. The nervous excitement, the tension, but of course most of all his feeling that his own children didn't want her as their new mother. And she told him as much and then told him, too, that after all this was only the first time, that it sometimes took weeks for a new couple to learn each other's foibles and likes and dislikes in bed.
And yet it still hadn't worked. All through the honeymoon, he had tried to make love to her. He'd had an erection, a quite adequate one, too, several times during their idyllic two weeks in Honolulu. But even after he'd 'entered her, he hadn't been able to hold himself back; premature ejaculation had ruined the delicious, pulsating harmony that had just begun to vibrate between their enmeshed naked bodies.
And then of course, coming back home, there had been more of the same. He'd plunged himself into new projects at the agency, of which this New York presentation was a culminating part. She could attribute some of his failure to his driving himself too hard, but they both knew what the real reason was. He was even more concerned about the failure of Tim and Heather to take to her, and it was blighting their love life together. And that was why Rachel wished he could be home right now so that perhaps during the primitive fear of thunder and lightning they might cling together and overcome the psychological blocks that were halting their eagerness for each other…
At the other end of the hall, blond Tim Jr., wearing only his pajama bottoms, was seated on the edge of his sister's bed. He was lean and wiry, with a thin mouth, straight nose, and suspicious, closely set gray-blue eyes. He was smirking as he contemplated his twenty-year old coppery-haired sister, who was sitting with her back propped up against two pillows, wearing a yellow cotton shortie nightie and reading the latest issue of Playboy.
'You ought to be in their centerfold, Sis,' young Tim insinuated, leaning forward to put his right hand on Heather's bare, milky-sheened calf. 'You've got a snazzy shape, just the kind I've got a yen for.'
'I know you've got a yen, little brother,' Heather cynically drawled. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes a luminous cat-green, with dainty Grecian nose and full sensual mouth. Of medium height, her body certainly justified her brother's carnal praise: her breasts were high-perched, narrowly spaced young cantaloupes, her waist slim and thus setting off all the more mouth watering lush hips, full, upstandingly rounded buttocks, and ripely curved, full womanly thighs and calves, 'But I'm not exactly in the mood for brotherly fun and games, if you don't mind. I was thinking about Daddy.'
'No you weren't, you were thinking about our new Mummy,' young Tim sneered, his hands sliding boldly up his sister's knee onto the middle of her thigh just under the hem of her thin clinging nightie.
She slapped his hand. 'I told you no, little brother. If you'd quit jacking off and reading all those books you've got hidden in the bottom drawer of your dresser, and go out and get yourself a girl, you wouldn't be bothering me all the time. One of these days Daddy might just catch on.'
'About what?' the blond adolescent assumed an injured look of astonished innocence. 'I haven't ever screwed you, Sis. That's not because I don't want to, you know. But all you ever let me do is play around with my fingers or maybe give you a tongue job. Come on, be nice, I know you're not cherry. And it's all in the family. Besides I know where Dad keeps his safes, so I won't give you a baby, if that's what you're scared of.'
'You're really a perfect idiot, Tim!' Heather Woodling sniffed as she tossed aside the magazine and swung her luscious legs out of bed, slapping at his hand as he tried to sneak it under her nightie once again. 'And while we're on the subject, just keep your dirty little mouth shut about my one big fling. I did it just to find out what it would be like, and it's something I can take or leave depending on my mood, get me?'
'Whatever happened to that hippie writer you let bang you, Sis? Is he still living in Old Town?' her brother wanted to know with a lecherous grin.
'It's none of your goddamned business, but the answer happens to be no. He went back to Frisco and his folks. He couldn't earn a dime here, and besides he talked a better fuck than he gave me. And that's all I ever want to hear on that particular subject, dear little brother mine.'
'Hell, it's a rainy night and Dad won't be back till maybe Monday morning. What's a guy gonna do for kicks?' the blond boy groaned.
Heather gave him a long hard look, her eyes narrowing as they studied his wiry half-nakedness. 'Are you feeling horny enough tonight, little brother, to get some real kicks?' she at last demanded.
'Sure, Sis, if you mean am I up to giving you a good hot poke, the answer is hell yes, with bells on.'
'Get that idea out of your head right now, Tim. I'm not after a brotherly fuck. Oh sure, I don't mind your working me off and helping you out sometimes, but I'm just a little older than you and when I really need a fuck it's going to be from a guy who's got plenty of savvy and knows how to make a girl come before he does. No, that wasn't what I had in mind at all'
'Then really what the hell are you talking about, Heather? I guess I'll go read one of my books or maybe run a new stag movie my buddy Jeff Morley picked up for me at Weird Harold's last week.'
'That's it!' Heather Woodling slid out of bed, her hands smoothing the filmy shortie nightie about her delectably curved hips, her eyes suddenly glistening with malice. 'I've got a much better idea for that movie camera and projector set of yours, little brother, if you're man enough.'
'Hey, Sis, you're really stacked-come on, let's do a sixty-nine, you've got me all worked up in that sexy nightie of yours!' the blond boy sniggered as he moved closer to his sister and, his left hand moving round to palm one of her opulent, firm buttocks, cupped her left breast with his other hand and tried to kiss her on the mouth.
'Cut that out, you randy little no-good bastard! All you're good for is jacking off and reading dirty books and watching fuck movies. What I've got in mind calls for a man,' Heather snapped as she twisted out of his grasp.
'No cause for you to run me down, Sis. You know damn well I could screw if you'd only give me the chance,' he glowered. 'Look at what I've got, just looking at you in that nightie. Take it off, Sis, and I'll show you if I'm a man or not!' He pointed to the visibly projecting thrust of his penis against the taut fly of his pajama pants.
'Oh sure, so you've got a hard-on! Big deal!' Heather sneered. 'Let me ask you one question, little brother. How do you feel about our new stepmother?'
'What's that got to do with my hard-on?' He gave her a surly look.
Heather's laugh was brittle and mocking. 'Maybe everything. But answer the question.'
