Villiers Touch (15 page)

Wyatt introduced the girl, privately amused by the way Hackman stripped her naked with his eyes; but when he saw discomfort in her face he steered her to the other end of the bar arid said, “I told you he throws wild parties.”

“Then let's have fun,” she said, twinkling. She reached for a potato chip and scooped it into a bowl of onion dip.

Soon after, he found she had been separated from him in the shuffle—and George Hackman plowed forward. “Drink, Steve-o?”

“Martini,” Wyatt said, following Anne with his eyes until she disappeared from view. Hackman poured a glass of gin, anointed it with a few drops of vermouth, and passed it across the bar to him; Hackman leaned close and said confidentially, “Women are okay as long as you keep them on generalities. That's the secret. Never talk to a woman about specifics. See? That's the secret of successful marriage, kid—you marry them for their charm, not their brains, and you only get yourself in trouble if you let yourself get to arguing with them about tomorrow night's supper menu or how much she paid for some Goddamn dress. No woman can make any sense about specifics. If you get trapped in that kind of argument, you just can't win it. So, see, the trick's to keep it all generalities—if you got to argue with her, argue about the future of the welfare state and the black-power movement and the kids trying to burn down the universities, but
never
fight about the price of a Goddamn pair of high-fashion shoes.”

Wyatt nodded his head an inch, gave a brief cool, polite smile, and edged away; he heard Hackman say to the man at his elbow, “Now,
that's
what I call a dry martini. That kid sure plays it close to the chest, don't he?”

Steve Wyatt cruised through the house, passing knots of people. On the couch a blonde was sprawled back with her shoes off and her head in the lap of a man, not her husband; the man had his hand casually cupped over the blond's breast as he spoke to a woman standing beside the couch. He was talking loudly about his divorce.

Wyatt moved on toward the back of the house, searching for Anne. He could see a group in the kitchen and went that way, but found his path blocked by a knot of drunks in the crowded hall; one of them was a middle-aged man with a beard, talking in a strident wail: “… trying their Goddamnedest to grind all their husbands into mincemeat. Carry out the trash, pay the mother-fucking bills, mow the lawn,
listen
to my complaints, come on we'll be late, stop yelling at the kids, what's happened to us, why don't you love me like you used to, Harry's a hell of a lot better in bed than you are darling….” There were thunders of laughter; Wyatt squeezed through the crush and made his way out of hearing as quickly as he could.

Coming into the kitchen, he found Anne propped on a step stool with a pale drink in her hand, talking animatedly with an attractive young couple who stood side by side with their hips and shoulders touching and their fingers twined together. When Wyatt made his appearance, Anne gave him a deep, luminous smile. She looked lidded and dreamy—not drunk, but languid and at ease; when she smiled at him, there was nothing held back. She made introductions; he shook hands with the young couple, and for quite a while the foursome made desultory conversation, after which the young man bounced his car keys in his fist and exchanged glances with his girl; he said cheerfully, “Been a large evening,” and took the girl away with him.

People drifted in and out of the kitchen. Wyatt moved close against Anne's side and put his arm around her, fingers against her breast; she tipped her head back to give him an intimate smile, and pressed his hand against her with her inner arm. There was a flurry of activity when a covey of wives entered the kitchen to brew coffee, a sure sign the party was running down. Finally he took Anne toward the front of the house and found that half the guests had left. The living room was littered with cigarette butts and burns on the carpet, and spilled drinks, and someone had vomited into an ashtray and rinsed it imperfectly, leaving a strong smell in the room. Stale cigar butts and half-empty tumblers added to the maculose aura. A man and a woman somewhere in the house were having a bitter shrieking quarrel. He eased Anne past a couple in the front door and walked her out to the car, not bothering to hunt up the host or hostess to say good-bye. When he stopped by the side of the car, Anne snuggled against him. Her head was at his shoulder. Wyatt slid his hand down the front of her dress and stroked her with feather-light fingers. She made a small sound and closed her eyes. He kissed her gently at earlobe, throat, lips, then deeply into her mouth.

He felt cool and detached; it was a campaign well planned. He put her in the sports car, walked around to the driver's seat, and got in; and drove out fast. Going down the Saw Mill Parkway, the wind was in the girl's hair and Wyatt's gently caressing hand was on her thigh. He said idly, “There's a flask in the glove box,” and smiled to himself when she took the hint. It was an hour's drive to the city, and he didn't want her drunk, but he did want her to keep the easy glow of soft, uninhibited intimacy. It was almost midnight; he had been with her, almost without interruption, for seven hours. Over drinks before dinner he had been easy with her, bantering and teasing; during dinner he had quietly muted the tone to one of soft, dreamy, candlelight romance. The ride to Hackman's, along the tree-lined parkway, had done its work, and the loose, hearty atmosphere of the party, with its unceasing and singleminded emphasis on sex, had done the rest. He had artfully stimulated her with all the sensory devices of the game—the attentiveness that made her feel exciting and important, the nuances of pose and voice, the attitude of deferential assurance, the seemingly inadvertent touch, the quick smile of shared private amusement at things observed, all designed to create a seductive aura of closeness.

In the elevator going up to his apartment she stood in the circle of his arm with her head thrown back against the front of his shoulder; his hand rubbed her belly and breasts, and she murmured drowsily. He guided her into the frankly sybaritic apartment and flicked a wall switch, which turned on one softly glowing lamp and a stereo tape deck which filled the apartment with the music of soft strings. Anne went through the apartment with him, giving the place a lidded look of approval, and when they stopped in the bedroom, she turned in his arms and looked up and smiled.

He said quietly, “How does a nice girl like you find herself in a place like this?”

She grinned at him. They stood quietly face to face, his hands against her waist and rib cage; he lifted his thumbs and wiggled them against the taut, erect nipples of her breasts.

He murmured, “What would you like to do?”

She only smiled.

He said, “Say the word,” and nibbled at her ear.

He felt her shudder.

Anne felt the heavier, faster rhythms of her breathing, the sense of body flush, all the intimate sensations of arousal that had been stirring in her all night. She had wanted this, she had planned it, but now she was afraid.

She had watched him for months, wondering; today, at last, he had made the move. All night she hadn't been able to take her mind off him, his easy athletic grace, his good masculine face. But she had only really known him these few hours, and now, knowing it was the sheer desire to sate body lust that coiled in her, she felt chilled by uncertainty. Was it nothing more than epidermal passion? She was neither a virgin nor a prude; but she put a value on herself, she didn't want it to happen if afterward it would mean nothing at all. Now she had to ask herself at each moment's interval if she should stop or let it continue.

She felt the press of his thighs, the movement of his soft-caressing hands from the back of her neck to her buttocks; she uttered little gasps with every touch of his hands, and she knew if it went beyond here she would not be able to stop it.

He was pulling her against him. He sucked her tongue into his mouth, and she savored the intoxication of sweet wantings. She wanted to be loved; she hated the doubts in her mind that kept trying to push desire away, hated the uncertainty that held pleasure back.

He was slipping her clothes off, her dress and bra. She felt the cups drag free where she was pressed against him; he touched the sudden softness of her naked breasts, massaging the rubbery tips of her nipples with fiery lances of delicious pain. He had shrugged off his jacket; she picked at the buttons of his shirt and pushed fear and doubt into the back of her mind. Craving, excited, trembling, she breathed against his ear, “Yes—
oh, yes!” Hurry, please hurry
. She wanted to fill up with him. She helped him strip off his clothes; she felt swollen and flushed, short of breath. He took her hand and placed it on his—
penis
, she thought.
Cock, pecker, prick. What the hell. Big son of a bitch
. She laughed with an open throat, feeling healthy and girlish. She ran her fingertips along it and felt it grow and throb. The pain in her was exquisite, bursting into flame at the touch of his fingers. She fell back on the bed, spreading her thighs, tugging him down. She felt his great rigid organ touch the twitching moist heat of her, felt it thrust into her alive and throbbing. She thought, in a curiously distant way,
All right, then, I'm getting laid—not for the first time, anyway. Isn't that what it's all about?
She wanted to suck him in, lock him forever inside her. Her head swirled dizzily. She heard a broken groan in her own throat, and then he was sliding into her white-hot agony, rolling and twisting. The charging, plunging rhythm drove her uncontrollably toward a peak of anguished urgency. They flailed slick together, writhing; she uttered pulsing grunts of ecstasy, rising to a crescendo of heat that grew in her to a scalding high hot wonderful flame that drenched her in sweet anguish, reached height after height, reverberated and echoed through all the halls of her quivering flesh, and at last shattered in an agonizing flash of hot joyous triumph and the slow wonderful draining away of frenzy.

She felt sated, yet still excited. When he lifted himself from her she lay naked and grinned absurdly at him. He held her close against his side, not speaking, softly rubbing her arm. She closed her eyes and felt a slow gentle kind of regret, not unpleasant.

She was smiling softly; she opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow to look fondly at him.

His face was kind and gentle. He reached out to touch the tip of her nose. “You're a girl after my own heart.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “I am after your heart, Steve. Be warned of it.”

He picked her up, laughing quietly, and carried her across the room. They showered together, and as his hands rode over her body with soap, as he toweled her gently afterward, she felt the stirrings of desire welling again between her legs. Still damp, they clung together and made love on the bed again; and afterward she said to him in a panting whisper, “I can't get enough of you—I can't fill up with you!”

He came awake sometime in the night with the girl, curled against him like a child. He had been dreaming, but he couldn't remember the dream. He could see her shape faintly in the darkness, the high rounded mound of her hip, the curve of breast and shoulder. She was all right, he thought drowsily. But as he came more clearly awake, he remembered she was Claiborne's secretary and there was a purpose to all this. He had to have her hooked—he had to make it like a drug she couldn't stay away from—and so, stirring gently at first, he rubbed her body with his open hands until she awakened. She blinked fuzzily and smiled; she moaned with loosening sensuality—she was easy to arouse. Her nipples came erect before his hands touched them. He brought her to a peak of desire with easy languor, but when at last he penetrated her and began to satisfy her craving need, he battered her roughly, with powerful plunging strength, not cruel but heavy and brutal, and brought her to a pitched screaming climax beyond anything she could have experienced ever before.

Afterward he took her into the shower again and brought her partway to desire again with his hands and his body under the tingling pin spray of water; but he left her unsatisfied this time; he was shaving at the bathroom mirror when she reluctantly went back to the bedroom alone.

He dried his face and splashed on after-shave cologne. He scratched his belly and stood in front of the mirror with his lips peeled back, inspecting his strong, even white teeth.

When he came into the bedroom she was dressed. She wore a look of anxiety and strain. “This is terrible,” she said. “My mother and father—it's almost five o'clock! I've got to run.”

“What for? Can't you tell them you spent the night at a girl friend's?”

“You don't know them—you don't know my father. I've got to go.”

He said, “I've got to see you again—and I don't mean in the office today. I don't know if this meant anything to you besides a few hours' fun and kicks, but I—”

“Oh, God, no,” she breathed, her eyes wide and moist. “Steve, this—”

“I've got to see you tonight,” he said, putting heavy urgency in his voice. “Darling, I've got to have you to keep.”

She swayed against him, turned her face, and spoke with her mouth muffled against his chest. “Oh, yes—yes. I need you, Steve darling.”

All the tired old slick-magazine dialogue, he thought petulantly; he had probably spoken these lines more often than any Hollywood screen actor. “Not half as much as I need you,” he said, making his voice tremble with sincerity, nuzzling her hair.

“I trust you,” she whispered. “Let's make it forever, Steve darling—I don't want to spoil it, ever.”

She kept talking, and he began to chafe; he responded automatically—her lines were as easy to parry as a third-rate tennis player's strokes—and finally, to his relief, she drew away from him with her eyes moist and said miserably, “I really have to go.”

He headed for his clothes. “I'll drive you.”