A slow smile spread across her face. She disengaged his hand and stood up languidly. He saw the blouse come off and the skirt drop. He looked away, afraid he would have an orgasm right then. The hard pressure in the lap of his pants made him feel hot-faced and ludicrous.
She stood swaying, a thick sweet fragrance of colognes and gin. He looked out of the corner of his eye in time to see her slip her panties down, exposing a tangle of hair which, freed, exploded into a soft hazy triangle, startlingly dark against the pale weight of her thick inner thighs.
His mouth was dry. He shook his head, afraid to speak. She tipped his face up with one hand, and he saw her mystical smile, vague and submissive and demanding all at once.
Her hand touched the front of his trousers. There was sudden flame. She brought him to his feet and undid his buckle and fly. He blinked very fast. She helped him push his underpants down and moved close against him. He felt her pull him down onto the bed. She was moist inside; she guided him into her. He lay on top of her while she curled her fat legs around him and began to pump.
His body felt rock-hard. Braced on his elbows, he held his hands cupped over her huge loose breasts, squeezing them with sucking rhythm. Her body came alive against him, pitching and bucking, and all the while she stared directly into his eyes with a look of incandescent heat.
In his agony of pleasure he went back into her again and again, unable to leave her alone for more than a half-hour at a time. Sometimes he could come twice or even three times before he lost his erection. She kept exciting him over again by the swell of her breasts when he was inside her, her cries of anguish, until most of the night was spent.
The rest of that summer he hadn’t been able to stay away from her; she wouldn’t have let him if he could. She was there whenever he came-waiting, aroused and tense, to do as her violent needs demanded. His own passions, stored up so long, matched her uncontrollable lust. Yet when he was not with her he felt sick with revulsion against the force which, greater than himself, drew him to her. She was ugly, going to fat; her compulsive hunger for sex-not for him, but for it-was as impersonal as cannibalism; she was intent on nothing but her own gratification. Yet through the spiral of degradation he felt growth, a sense of dynamic power surging in him. Lying with her, drained, limp, exhausted, he felt alive in his manhood for the first time.
She made of him an expert, ardent lover. After that summer he never bedded her again. She found other lovers; he found other women like her. He was never without a woman for long, usually an older woman. He had learned from her-he turned it onto the other ones, knowing how to suck them dry, make them ache in torment waiting for him, make their bodies sing with the drug of him.
Seated off to the side of the lawn party, listening to the conversation but not taking part, he watched the guests with secret amusement. Van Alstyne, a clumsy, pompous idiot still, after all these years, evidently unaware his wife was putting horns on him every chance she got. Daisy, squirming in her seat, not meeting Steve’s glance. Beth, the blonde daughter, blithely unaware, chattering on about clothes and charities.
Finally, near midnight, the guests rose to leave. Wyatt’s mother steered him stubbornly toward Beth’s elbow, but he remained oblivious, and in due course the Van Alstynes trundled off in their determinedly anonymous Oldsmobile.
Fran Wyckliffe Wyatt sent the servants to bed and went striding across the foyer. “I’m pouring in the study, if you’d care to join me,” she said, and thundered into the oak-paneled den.
He ambled in after her and said, “You’re making an ass of yourself, trying to throw me at that bitch.”
“Balls.”
“You’re a Goddamn snob,” he said.
“Of course I’m a snob. I want my son to mingle with his own kind. The Van Alstynes are most acceptable-and they live damned comfortably.”
“Comfortable” was one of those words in his mother’s vocabulary that needed interpreting. It translated to mean filthy rich.
He said with a straight face, “But she wears such distressing clothes.”
“Balls. She’s got marvelous taste in clothes.”
Wyatt grinned, accepting the brandy she had poured; he swirled it gently, sniffing the bouquet.
His mother sat down with one of her bony legs skewed over the arm of the chair. “She’s a lovely thing, Steve. You might do far worse.”
“She’s dull. I’ve taken her out half a dozen times. Take my word for it, I’ve had more fun touring the BMT subway.”
“She’s a hell of an attractive girl. I can’t understand why you’ve never sneaked her upstairs during one of these deadly parties and raped hell out of her.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“I’d know.”
“The last woman I took upstairs in this house gave me the clap,” he said. “This is good brandy.”
“Cousin Howard gave me half a case.”
“Good old cousin Howard.”
She pinned him with her shrewd gaze. “I spoke to him about you last night.”
“To Howard Claiborne?”
“He seems satisfied with your work, but when I hinted he might see his way clear to promoting you, he turned a deaf ear. Have you done something to offend him?”
“Not that I know of. He’s a skinflint by nature-the fellow I work with describes him by saying ‘His guiding principle is “No,”’ and that’s a good way to sum him up, isn’t it? What are you worrying about? I’m doing all right.”
“What’s happened to your ambition? Balls-when your grandfather was your age he’d already made his first million.”
“They didn’t have the income tax then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What do you think I brought you up to do? Waste your life working for someone else on a salary?”
“And,” he said dryly, “it is very expensive to be rich, is it not?”
“Money,” she said, “does not matter as long as one has it. But you’ve a long way to go before you reach that point.”
“Your trouble, mater, is you were born chewing on a silver spoon, thinking that money, because it had always been there, always would be there. Then suddenly it disappeared, and my father killed himself, and you decided to forge me into a weapon of revenge and retaliation against the world for the injustices the world had visited upon you. Now, of course, you’re getting anxious because you want to see me succeed before you die. Well, you were a good teacher, and I’ve been a good willing student, and it won’t be long at all before we’ll have our fortune back. But I wish you wouldn’t keep trying to marry me off to bitches like Beth Van Alstyne-I’ve collected enough stud fees in my time and from now on I’d rather do it my own way.”
She didn’t answer right away. He lit a cigarette and inhaled too deeply.
Finally she smiled at him. “Very well. But let me remind you, your background and your social position impose certain great obligations on you-one of them being the choice of a wife. You can’t afford to pick up with just any sexy guttersnipe. If you want to have flings with some hatcheck girl, then by all means have your fling-take a mistress, be discreet, and let it run its course. But that kind of marriage is out. You understand? Your position rules it out. You’ll have to start thinking about marriage, Steve, and you’ll have to start thinking about it in terms of girls like Beth, whether you like her or not.”
He murmured, “You’re getting anxious to see your grandkids before you croak, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be insulting. Are you eager to have me die?”
“Sometimes I am,” he said, and grinned at her.
She laughed with easy warmth. When he came to stand beside her chair, she reached for his hand and held it gently. “In all my years,” she said, “you are the only man who’s ever really loved me. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like, when I was still young enough to have been capable of it, to have had an incestuous affair with you.”