Pleasure Thieves

"You should have told him who you were," she complained poutingly.

"An oversight, my dear." He cupped her delicately molded chin. "I didn't want to clutter his handsome head with details."

"Oh, Phillip. Really darling, you must play straight with him. It has nothing to do with trust or confidence. Just that I hate those deadening moments of feeling stupid."

"It's most stupid of you to feel that way. Most stupid. You are absolutely indispensable to me, Carol. If I neglect to tell an associate something, it's because it seems so immensely complicated to me that I can't find the proper words to communicate."

"Indeed." She started to laugh. "Phillip without words … that's like…"

"Like Carol without a hot cunt."

"Please, Phillip. You switch so fast from the correct to the revoltingly vulgar."

"Revolting … vulgar … what a strange vocabulary my little girl is developing."

"I'm sorry." She leaned tiredly against him. "I'd better go before I get ugly. I have an editorial conference at breakfast tomorrow. We're photographing eighteenth-century New England Saltboxes. It should prove very expensive to devoted husbands."

Phillip reached for her hat. He took it off in one concise motion.

"You mustn't speak of going."

"I had better," she insisted.

"My dear, you begin to sound like a woman with a rendezvous.

Maybe our Mr. Hatch slipped a crumpled urgent note into your hand?"

"Yes, he did," she admitted. "We're to meet at Woolworth's in eighteen minutes. But don't worry, sweetheart, he just wants to talk about you."

Phillip laughed out loud. "Carol, you're good for my soul." He kissed her white neck, and their flesh trembled. "You're good for me in every way."

"Let me go," she whimpered with hidden pain.

"Of course not," he replied gently. "I see you're upset, my sweet.

We must have a nightcap and find out what's the matter." He put her hand to his mouth and vibrated against the palm. "Nothing would be worth anything, Carol, if you were made unhappy. Nothing. I mean that."

"Thank you, Phillip." She ran her free hand lightly over his short-cropped grey hair. "I know your concern. I'm better already. Just a momentary decline." She squeezed the hand that held hers. "Let's have the nightcap."

They walked arm-in-arm back into the study and sat on the wide couch that had hidden Carol all evening. Phillip mixed the drinks.

"Will you pull many jobs, Phillip?"

"No." He looked at her seriously. "There are four major jobs I have in mind. Then we will retire."

"I couldn't bear it," she exclaimed. "Excuse me for being selfish, but I couldn't bear to have you away for another year."

"Nor could I, my dear," he agreed in a lighter voice.

"I thought I would die of loneliness." She put her head into her hands.

Phillip looked down at her and frowned. "I've never heard you speak like this, Carol."

Her head was thrown back on the couch. "Don't you know, darling,"

she lilted in a tear-stained gay voice, "that it's very hard for me to adapt to other men. You broke me in very uniquely. I don't think any of them could possibly service me."

"I don't want them to." His voice was light with hidden flecks of metal. "I don't want another man to touch you."

"And women?"

"That's disgusting."

"Didn't you have Harry in prison, Phillip? You can be honest with me."

"What is this, third degree? Words like 'have' and 'have not,'" he winced.

"I notice," her mouth was cruel, "that since your return, you have had an almost incessant desire to put your remarkable cock in me from the rear."

He stared at her brazened face. "Your cunt and ass are remarkably similar, my sweet."

Her eyes closed with pain. "How could you," she murmured.

He sat down beside her. "And I love both equally. You must know that. I think of your cunt every time I look at you. I can't watch your mouth without wanting to push myself into it. Forgive me if I think of you as a creature with numerous convenient openings. But you don't know how a prick aches sometimes. You can't imagine. Right now it's throbbing with misery. What will you open for me tonight, my sweet?"

"Nothing." She was panting. "Nowhere. Stay away from me, Phillip. Maybe it's time I found another man. First lovers often become masters. I'm not your slave, Phillip. I'm a woman. A grown woman. I'm not the little girl you used to lull to sleep with your fingers and cock. I'm not, I'm not, and I'm tired." From her voice, she could have been weeping.

"Beautiful little Carol, she doesn't know how to cry," he consoled.

"And doesn't have to. As long as Daddy is here, she doesn't have to.

I'll scare all the nasty demons away, Carol."

"You're a monster." She reached over and put her mouth against his ear. "You're a monster, Phillip. An aberration, a sensual tyrant." Her mouth was shaping the words against his flat ear.