CHAPTER TWO
Andrea Bentham slipped the strap of her guitar over her head and laid the instrument gently on a bearskin rug to the right of the couch. Without it she felt five times as naked as she had before. She let her ass drift gently down to rest on the antique blue brocade of the cushions and exhaled slowly, looking Sean Michaels up and down with an amused look of frank appraisal.
Sean had been knocked silly in the head for just about five seconds. His eyes hadn't crossed; he hadn't blubbered incoherently; he hadn't melted into a puddle of lukewarm semen on the floor. But she was giggling inside anyhow. Her instincts had been perfect. She'd sized him up after two brief and casual meetings as the kind of suave super-stud who'd have to keep his cool upstairs even though there was a biological conflagration in the basement… a guy who always approached girls like her with his Standard Seduction Plan greased up and ready to go into operation. Take a taxi cab to X restaurant, have Y number of Z drinks, put in W minutes of earnest personal conversation leavened with V minutes of abstract intellectual discussion, have U to eat, (YOU only later), polished off with T liqueur, and pop the question: 'Like to come back to my place for a while?' I've got some (beautiful) (lovely) (excellent) (original) S's you might be interested in.'
The trouble with the Standard Plan was that it left all the initiating to the man and put the woman on the spot like a golf ball on a tee. When the club took the backswing you decided whether or not you liked the look of the guy's stroke, and if you didn't you just rolled off and let him wrench his shaft with a clean miss. Of course, all the way along you had to make little decisions. Shall I Go To His Place? Shall I Act Aloof? Should I Let Him Put His Hand On My Tit? Shall I Let Him Finger Me? Is He Worthy Of The Priceless Prize Of My Puss? Will He Find, Feel, Fuck and Forget Me? Or (probably worse,) Will He Make A Potentially Honest Woman Out Of Me By Giving Me The Option Of Marrying Him?
Fuck that. The Standard Plan was as silly as an ice-pop dildo. It was time for a variation on the Women's Lib theme. Time to slap him in the face with a wet cunt, and say, 'Hey there, stud, can you get it up without feeling that you've seduced me?'
Of course there was one small disadvantage. The wet-cunt-slap meant getting in pretty deep before you had any idea whether the guy was going to be worth a shit in bed. Well… if Sean was the type who fucked you like you were a hole in the ground, shot his wad after three quick pumps, and ran out the door (or went to sleep) before the come even started to dribble out again-tough shit for her. She could still have a good laugh, give him a swift boot in the buns, and retreat to her room to indulge in multiple orgasms after her own fashion. But actually vibrations were telling her that she and Sean were going to synch pretty well. He was sitting in the chair opposite her with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm-a lascivious image of The Thinker-gazing contemplatively from her face to her crotch.
She descended from her own brief flight of thoughtfulness to realize that a slight movement was in order. She drew one knee up and felt her outer cuntlips pulling apart. It felt like an envelope being steamed open. The curving, pouted ridges of flesh were held together by a thin, clear glue of glistening cunt-juice. As the juice started to run more freely, as the heat built up, as she spread her legs just a little more, a tiny slit appeared between them and shot upward and downward like a crack in a piece of glass.
Sean took a deep breath. As though he were watching her perform on stage he leaned back and made a move to cross his legs. Andrea could see he was trying to conceal a dark blotch growing at a strategic point on his blue double-knit bell-bottoms.
'You don't have to do that. Cross your legs and you might break it.'
Sean's chuckle evidenced self-possession with overt tones of genial incredulity. He returned his legs to their open position and reflected on the strangeness of what was happening.
Ordinarily a woman's body was revealed to a man in a set pattern. First you saw the face… the head, really… and the arms and legs. The extremities.
So far so good. He'd heard Andrea sing at Folk City a couple of times. Since he was a writer and had been captivated by her he'd even given some thought to how he'd describe her. Except for the tenuously exaggerated curves of her hips he would have called her willowy. But really, if one wanted to compare her to a type of tree a white birch would have been more appropriate. She had that appearance of pristine rigidity that one associated with the birch. He was sure that the sharply articulated twigs, the brittle deep green of the shiny leaves, the northern crystal affinity with snow fitted in someplace. And why had he thought about trees? Because he'd felt from the beginning that opposite that impression of a stubborn far-sightedness reaching for the sky was a carefully concealed set of roots spreading hungrily into the rich loan of sensuality. Perhaps that was too flowery, but then Sean had felt a hint of romanticism about her too.
On the more specific side, Andrea had slender legs with slim ankles (there was something about thick ankles that turned him off every time), soft calves and thighs-very womanly although her ambiance was girlish-and, thank God, no knobby knees. Her arms? Well, Sean didn't notice arms much unless they didn't fit in, so they had to be ok. He'd spent more time on her fingers. In fact he'd spent quite a while assessing their delicate sureness as they'd fretted and plucked the strings of her guitar. Educated fingers. That was always an advantage.
And then her face. (Why was it that he always liked to work descriptions of women from the bottom up?) Deep-set, alert-looking green eyes under finely arched brows. High cheekbones. Pale complexion overlaid with a timid late-spring tan. The kind of girl who had to be careful how much sun she got. A hothouse flower. The image of the royal maiden for whose retiring favors the medieval knight would slay a thousand dragons. Somehow that romantic image had always appealed to him, but in twentieth century America he found himself having to say he liked girls with pure white skin that burned before it tanned. (But not when they got burned and started peeling! Yetch!)
And then her nose. Perfectly proportioned. Straight. Perhaps just slightly turned-up. With spirited nostrils that looked as if they'd flare when she felt wild.
And her cheeks: they showed the traces of vanishing childhood dimples.
And her jawbones: wide, strong, giving her a 'healthy outdoors-girl' look to counteract any impression of frailty that the rest of her face might have given.
And her chin: smoothly rounded to soften what otherwise might have been a clash of angularities between her cheekbones and her jawbones.
An undeniably beautiful woman. The kind of woman about whose beauty there could be no argument. A classic beauty whose appearance could be compared to no standards because it set standards.
Was she ravishing?
No.
At least not until now. But now she was more ravishing than any dark-eyed big-bosomed witch.
Handsome?
No. That was not enough.
Striking?
That was on the way.
Superlatively striking. Electrifying. But with a muted look of intellectualism… rendered almost severe by the pervasive impression of untouchable purity.
That was what made it so overpoweringly erotic for her to be sitting casually across from him unaccountably nude… and brazenly shifting position.
Sean had certainly expected-by the fourth or fifth date, if he was lucky-to spend a long evening stripping away her clothing and revealing her body according to the usual pattern. He had looked forward to the luxury of tantalizing himself as he removed her blouse and revealed her bra-clad torso and wondered what her breasts and nipples would look like; and afterward to seeing her naked but for panties and wondering what her cunt and ass looked like. He'd expected that long before he got her spread-eagled with his tongue running up and down her slit the rest of her body would have been systematically digested and forgotten. But she'd hit him with it all at once. Naturally her crotch had drawn him like a vacuum, with only the wide aureoles and puffy nipples of her tits to serve as occasional distractions. Now he found himself in the weird position of having to move out from them and fill in what had been left behind. Andrea showed amused patience as he completed the task, his eyes flitting back and forth, up and down, gathering everything together beneath the wavy cascade of auburn hair that broke wantonly over her shoulders and flowed down her back.
When he was done he pursed his lips. He cocked his head and stroked his full blonde beard. His Irish eyes
