Miss Understanding

Chapter 1 But with a wife like Joan, it was hard not to. And, remembering the torrid s*x-session they had had last night, it was just damned impossible not to indulge in a bit of mental skylarking, he thought. That woman brought out the beast in him at times. It was frightening! He had come home from school, depressed. It had been a bum day-faculty meeting, horrible class, run-in with Cook, one of his colleagues. Terrible day. He'd walked into their rented house with a sour frown, thrown his brief case savagely on the couch. Joan had offered herself for a kiss, which he'd accepted dutifully rather than with any real enthusiasm. "Bad day, darling?" she'd asked. For reply, Lee had snorted, lit a cigarette, then answered, "My God, yes, the worst day imaginable." Joan had smiled sympathetically. "Sit down, and I'll fix you a drink. You can tell me all about it" Lee had nodded mutely, too tired and too disgusted to offer any argument. "It's so damned silly," he'd said. "I shouldn't let things get to me like this. "No, you shouldn't," , she agreed. "Lee, you're awfully tense these days. You should try to relax." "Sure! A novel to finish, a new course to get off the ground, relax just like that." "Lee, I'm your wife," she'd said plaintively, "and you haven't given me much chance to show it." He looked up from his drink, and their eyes met. Her meaning was clear enough. She didn't have to draw pictures. It had been a hell of a long time since they'd made passionate love, and it was his fault. He laughed inwardly. If he kept going like this, he'd become a fossil like old man Stone, the department chairman. Joan was right, he should leave his problems at school and give her the attention she needed and deserved. He slipped his arm around her, and she snuggled against him. A very warm, alive body, Joan's: sweetly redundant with curves, swelled with breasts that were creamy-white and firm, that defied any brassiere to hide those hemispheric tops-breasts that his hands could not completely surround, breasts whose n*****s were pink, hard and pebble-like. The cleavage between the globes was deep enough to submerge his nose and lips in. Before their marriage, Joan had been a dancer, and she still kept her body young by going through her old routines. Every inch of her body was firm, lithe, womanly. Her stomach was flat; waist, taper-thin; hips, full and rounded; thighs, strong and pillar-like. When she walked, her buttocks strained suggestively against her skirt, or her shorts, or whatever she wore. You could clothe the woman in a pup-tent, and her body would beckon underneath. But after two years of marriage and increased responsibilities, one slipped, became careless in recognizing the signs of s****l need she was now reminding him of with her blue, flickering eyes; her full, sensuous lips that needed no paint to heighten their healthy red coloring; and the very warmth and vitality of her body leaning against him. Lee felt her body move more firmly against his, her lush, compliant breast touching his shoulder. "I've been thinking about ... us, all day," she whispered throatily. "It's been too long, darling." Her hand stroked his hair; every now and then, her fingertips sent electric currents into the back of his neck, streaking through his body. Her lips touched his cheek, his ear. There was nothing academic about wanting your wife. You didn't have to reason things out, didn't have to consult the PMLA for references. He put his arms around her, held her close against his hard body. "You don't let a guy forget," he smiled; he nuzzled his lips against the white, soft skin of her neck and breathed hot air into the opening of her blouse so that it bathed the tops of her breasts. She gasped, pulled him closer still. "You make me dizzy," she marveled, "absolutely dizzy." She felt his fingers deftly working at the blouse-buttons, one by one until his hand was resting against the warm, smooth skin of her stomach and ribcage. It was slightly awkward trying to unsnap the bra because of extra strain caused by her hill-sized breasts, but he managed. The breasts leaped free, pushing the bra defiantly out of the way; no doubt the garment would have catapulted across the living room had it not been for the straps that hung on her shoulders. His hands roamed her breasts, cupped them, squeezed them. They were smooth, round, unbelievably full. His palms got the brunt of pebble-hard n*****s that swelled in response to his touches. "Lee, my God, Lee!" she gasped. He saw her jaw go suddenly slack, her lips open and pout moistly for a soul-kiss; he closed his eyes, moved his face toward hers, and their lips collided. There was the sweet, body-trembling collision of tongues. She searched the interior of his mouth with its white-hot tip, making him tremble and quake all over, while her hands moved deftly down his back, around to the front of his loins: wherever she touched him, his muscles tightened into little knots, until he became one collective bundle of painful need. "Undress me," she whispered. He looked at her. She had shrugged the shoulder straps loose, and through the completely opened blouse, he could see the mounding thrusts of perfect hemispheres, punctuated by the swollen, engorged n*****s. He gently removed the blouse and threw it on the floor beside the brassiere, then worked on the zipper to her skirt. His hand moved inside, next to silky sheer panties, pushing the skirt down her hips, thighs, finally past the knees. Her legs were a wonder-long, lean, tight but meaty and sensuously, voluptuously, undeniably feminine. The thighs joined the hips with a perfect symmetry-a long, gentle, continual swelling and rounding of undulating white flesh. They kissed again. She felt good next to him, squirming with hot eagerness, her soft, yet firm belly flaring Us warmth through his shirt, while her hands frantically tore at his clothing, with a refreshing disregard for their well-being. A button popped loose, went across the room jet-propelled and hit a wall with a clicking sound. Her hands were inside, trembling against his downy-haired chest, seeking their way down, until they came to fitful rest against his belt line. His belt was loosened. His slacks were opened. Her hand joined his flesh and moved slowly down, making his muscles cramp painfully. "All the way, Lee, get them all off!" Her voice was now reduced to a grating rasp. A voice of raw s****l want. They separated limbs just long enough to divest themselves of all clothing, and embraced again, completely nude. Now Lee felt her n*****s scratch at his chest; an overwhelming urge to kiss those n*****s, to feel them between his lips, took hold of him. He kissed them slowly, for long, excrutiatingly pleasurable moments. Her response was rabid. Every chord and muscle of her body snapped loose, and went haywire, until she moved against him with the fury of a lioness in heat, hands scratching his flesh raw. Her thighs were dewy with wanting. Her flesh screamed for release; helpless, they fell back against the cushions of the couch and locked in embrace. The final embrace. The ultimate onslaught. In his passion, he bit her lower lip and drew blood, while she whimpered with a sound hovering deliciously in pleasure-pain. "God, I'm hot, take me hard!" she moaned, "Hard, hard, hard!" The word moved out of her lips with the force and rhythm of her body vibrating expectantly against his. He took her. Viciously. Her hot readiness allowed their bodies to join in an embrace of hungry flesh with moans and gasps and violent words born of unslaked pleasure. Lee jammed his hands under her buttocks, grasped her quivering cheeks. They worked together, struck up raging movement while her thighs spurred against his sides. She drew him to her slowing his rapacious pace. She moved with maddening, deliberate slowness. Her body, her needs, dictated the tempo of the embrace, and he was sure he would go insane with anxiety and excitement, when blessedly, she picked up the beat and urged him on with her hands, which grasped the small of his back, near his buttocks, pushing, driving.... It hit him all at once. It welled up inside him and swept through him until he saw bright, flickering lights; a warm liquid bubble increased in size until it pushed against the walls of his body, threatening to burst him wide open. Then it happened. It had not been one bubble at all, but two bubbles blended into one. It burst simultaneously; their bodies stiffened, their lips gasped out incoherent sounds of pleasure, and they were swept away by the force of their perfect lovemaking. Their pleasure spilled over with titantic, mutual force, lifting them into ecstasy. His office was hardly conducive to passion-packed reminiscing. It was small, business-like, lined on two walls with books, mostly paperback texts. On one side of his desk was an office-sized typewriter, on the other the telephone. Between, the pile of papers to be corrected. Students would hound him, It was their right. He remembered his own undergraduate days, when an instructor or professor had taken months to return papers. It was annoying, frustrating. It created needless tension on the student's part. Still, he could count his blessings-a wonderful, extremely sexy wife who loved him, his doctorate behind him, a novel well in progress, that if well received, would enhance his academic career and propel him into a literary career as well. He was young, the youngest in the department: twenty-six years old. He was on his way. In a few years, by virtue of his creative abilities he'd be up with Stone, the department chairman. Damned few academicians had it, he knew. They were critics, pedants, theorizers, everything except writers. They were unable to see that writing and literature were two distinctively different things. And he knew that people like Stone resented men who had attained a professor's ranking by virtue of their writing reputation. Hell, take Faulkner, Lee's specialty-a man with one year of college, flunked freshman English-they'd made him a professor at UVA. More immediate, John Hanley of their own department: a B. A. from some third-rate school, nothing more. But he had written a novel hailed as the greatest thing since The Ginger Man and Cantly. John had a light schedule. He held office hours three hours a week, and worked on his new novel under the auspices of the university. He had professor's rank and salary. Guys like Stone resented it. In fact, Lee was one of few people in the department who had befriended Hanley, had had him and his s*x-pot wife over for dinner and drinks. It was all part of the stinking game. If you were a thinker, you ground out your degrees and your critical essays and your unassailable theories concerning writers who had been dead many years and were not around to defend themselves. Shakespearean critics were especially guilty of the error. On the other hand, if you were creative, you didn't need a degree; you merely needed a school hot for the prestige that your literary butt could ostensibly offer if it graced a chair in their English department. Lee did not want to be a pedant; nor did he wish to be a scholar. He wanted to be a teacher with utterly complete rapport between himself and the students he taught, and he wanted to be a writer. He knew he could write. He felt it in his bones; all those years of academic slavery had robbed him of the time required to try his talents. Now, he was doing it; he had shown his manuscript to Hanley, who had been visibly impressed. Everything seemed to be working well for him. There was just a minor difficulty, one that hardly mattered, as long as he asserted himself. Joan was a bit ambitious for his sake, a bit too taken up with the idea that a wife should prod her husband, regardless of whether or not he possessed the essential ambition and drive. He had it. He didn't need anyone else to supply it for him, and he constantly reminded her of that fact. Last night had been an exception, really. It wasn't often that she urged him to relax, to lose himself by making love to her. Other than that, their marriage was as nearly perfect as marriages were meant to be.