Second Love

by Gould, Judith

  'Mother,' he said, 'is determined to see a Winslow occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.'

  'But what does divorce have to do with the presidency? I mean, look at Bob Dole. He was divorced. That didn't stop him from running for president.'

  'He didn't win, though, did he?' Hunt said with a slightly twisted smile.

  'No. But Ronald Reagan was divorced from Jane Wyman before marrying Nancy. That didn't hurt him any.'

  'True,' Hunt said. 'But there's still reason number one.'

  'The money,' Dorothy-Anne said.

  He nodded. 'No way is Mother going to sit back and watch Gloria waltz off with a chunk of the family fortune.'

  'I should think your mother would want what's best for you. Surely she must realize how bad your marriage is!'

  'Mother's aware that things are bad,' he said. 'She just doesn't know how bad.'

  'I see. Then she's not aware of your wife's having been on the pill?'

  Hunt shook his head. 'I keep some parts of my life private. Mother knows what she's told . . . or learns on her own. Which'—he uttered a low, ironic laugh—'can be a lot. She's quite aware that Gloria and I have grown apart. That's hardly a secret. Nor is Gloria's drinking. Gloria sees to that. But Mother refuses to see how irreconcilable the situation really is.'

  He paused and looked at Dorothy-Anne as if he were far away. If he was, he returned to the here and now fast.

  'From the way I sound,' he went on, 'you're probably getting the impression that I'm weak, cowardly, given to bouts of self-pity, and completely under my mother's thumb.'

  'Not at all,' Dorothy-Anne said gently. 'I understand.'

  She really did, too.

  He's telling me the important things. Not his favorite color or the wines he prefers, but the nitty-gritty about himself. He's baring his soul and exposing his vulnerabilities.

  She knew it took immense courage on his part and felt privileged for his trust.

  He was saying, 'What it is, I try to avoid confrontation whenever possible. Especially on the domestic front. I abhor unpleasant scenes.'

  Dorothy-Anne had to smile. Don't we all.

  'You're hardly alone in that,' she told him softly.

  But it was as if he hadn't heard.

  'It's strange, isn't it?' he murmured, half to himself. 'Life never turns out the way we expect . . . or intend. Imagine! There was actually a time when I foolishly believed in happily ever afters!'

  A shadow passed over his face.

  'Well, my marriage put an end to that. Gloria turned me off women completely . . . I feared for good.'

  His eyes left Dorothy-Anne and he stared forward once more, as if looking into the past.

  'Two years,' he said, sounding slightly amazed himself. 'That's how long it's been since Gloria and I have had intimate relations.'

  'Two years can be an awfully long time,' Dorothy-Anne said.

  He smiled a bitter scimitar. 'Yes, it can be. But let me tell you what's really weird. I . . . didn't . . . miss it!'

  His eyes went wide and round.

  'Isn't that incredible? Until now, I haven't even given it any thought!'

  'And in all that time, there's been no one else in your life?' Dorothy- Anne asked quietly. 'No lady friend at all?'

  He shook his head. 'Not a one. And not for lack of opportunity. It was disinterest on my part. I suppose when love dies, it does not die alone. Why shouldn't sex die along with it?'

  He was silent for a moment, then glanced over and gave her an inquiring look. His voice was soft:

  'You do understand, don't you?'

  'Yes,' Dorothy-Anne nodded.

  She slowly let go of his hand and let her arm drop from his shoulder, then scooted back a little ways, as though intent on studying his profile from a slight distance.

  'So for two years,' Hunt went on, 'I've been as celibate as a monk. Can you believe it?' He made a short ironic sound. 'Hell, I've probably been more celibate than a lot of monks!'

  A small silvery fish leapt high out of the water, did an acrobatic flip, and dove back under. Hunt stared intently at the moon-flecked ripples, as though the spreading phosphorescent circles held the key to some elusive answer.

  'Do you think,' he asked slowly, 'that I might have stayed married purposely? Because a wife, even a wife in name only, would keep others of the species at bay?'

  'That sounds terribly cynical.'

  He laughed softly.

  'Why shouldn't it? I am cynical. I am cynicism personified.'

  'And this is what she did to you, Hunt? Drained your life of all its joy and wonder?'

  'No. The blame is mine.'

  He leaned heavily forward, his hands gripping his kneecaps.

  'I permitted it to happen. Of course, I wouldn't have remained married if I'd imagined the future held any chance of happiness for me. But I had become jaded, you see. I was convinced that love—that the very idea of a loving relationship—was pure romantic bull.'

  'Oh, Hunt!' Dorothy-Anne whispered. 'If you only knew! I can assure you: the love you dismiss so diffidently does exist. I know, because I'd found it. Yes. Freddie and I . . . oh, we were head over heels in love! And our love grew stronger with every passing day, with every child we conceived, with every passing year! It was indescribable in its pleasure, and sublime in its pain. And then . . . suddenly last winter . . . '

  Her voice faltered and sputtered out. The night seemed to swallow the sound, and she pressed a splayed hand over her face. She could not go on. The agony was too excruciating, the loss too recent, the wounds still too raw.

  'If only I had experienced a day of what you speak of,' Hunt murmured yearningly. 'How glorious that might have been!'

  'Don't be insane!' Dorothy-Anne hissed. 'Never wish for anything so powerful!'

  'Why on earth not?'

  She lowered her hand jerkily from her face, then wrapped both arms around her middle. For a moment, she rocked forward and back and forward again, doubled over in spasming pain.

  'Because,' she whispered hoarsely, 'when a love is so great, and one or the other of you dies, your very soul withers and shrivels. You literally starve for lack of nourishment!'

  She paused and added: 'One can die of a broken heart. I am convinced of that now. I might have wasted away . . . but for my children.'

  'They say life goes on.'

  'They say many things. 'This too shall pass - This is but a moment in time - ' But the fact of the matter is, the emptiness remains.'

  She sighed and sat up straighter and fluttered her hands in the air, as if attempting to scatter invisible ghosts.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I didn't mean to get maudlin on you.'

  'Hey,' he said, 'you're entitled.'

  'I'm tons of fun.' Dorothy-Anne snorted. 'A regular barrel of laughs, huh?'

  Hunt's eyes were intent, his voice low and thick. 'I'm not looking for a barrel of laughs. Hell, I wasn't looking for anything! I've already told you: I'd sworn off women. And then—there you were. First in San Francisco. Then in Huatulco.'

  She was frowning in disapproval, her expression guarded, and yet her pulse was racing madly.

  'It makes me wonder,' he said thoughtfully. 'Is it fate? Were our lives destined to intersect? Coincidence seems far too trivial an explanation.'

  'Please, Hunt,' Dorothy-Anne begged softly. 'Don't talk like this!'

  'But it's what I feel!' he insisted.

  She reached out to silence his lips but her slender hands fluttered, as if of their own accord, back down into her lap, where they roosted uneasily. Her ears hummed. The air was charged and all but crackled, and she became aware of an intense heat growing between them.

  'If only we'd met years ago!' he said. 'Think of how different things might have turned out!'

  They would have been different, all right, she thought. Freddie would never have existed. Neither would the pearls of our relationship, Liz, Zack, and Fred.

  Life without the children was inconceivable. Unthinkable. Not worth l
iving.

  Hunt is wrong, she realized in an incisive flash. Things couldn't have been any different. I wouldn't have wanted them to be.

  'Sometimes, whatever will be must be,' she whispered. 'Obviously, meeting sooner wasn't in the cards.'

  'Not then,' Hunt agreed. 'But now . . . '

  His eyes were bright with excitement, and his words flowed forth in an impassioned rush:

  'Don't you see, Dorothy-Anne? Fate is offering us both a second chance! We can be together! Yes—money be damned! I shall initiate divorcé proceedings at once—'

  He broke off and looked surprised at his own words. Then, in one fluid motion, he moved close to her. The next thing she knew she was engulfed by his warm, powerful arms, and he pressed her against him, but gently, as he might a fragile treasure.

  She found she was trembling, and yet . . .

  Yet she felt the most extraordinary sense of elation, of no longer being earthbound, and soaring higher and higher!

  She clutched his arms to pull away, but gripped him firmly to her instead.

  'Dorothy-Anne!' Hunt's whisper was a tingly breath in her ear. 'My love. My salvation. My second chance.'

  'Hunt, don't!' she murmured.

  'Shhhhh . . . ' he said.

  She turned her face up to his. Her eyes were large and luminous and moved around rapidly, like a dreamer who slept with open eyelids—or a fugitive searching for a place to hide.

  She told herself that she must be strong. That she must resist him.

  But it was impossible. Her arms had no strength, and she was paralyzed.

  There was alchemy at work here, powers she was helpless to counter.

  Then his lips fastened on hers. All thoughts of resistance scattered like sparks. Her fingers dug into his arms and pulled him even closer, and she returned his kiss passionately, as ravenously as a starving creature finding sustenance.

  His voice was a whisper in the night. 'What do you say we go down below?'

  I'll regret this in the morning, she thought.

  But morning was hours away. And in the meantime, the promise of night stretched to infinity.

  'Yes!' she whispered, staring into his eyes. 'Let's go below.'

  47

  Body his, body hers.

  The bed in the guest cabin was queen-size, but Hunt's cock, Dorothy-Anne reflected dreamily, was definitely king-size. Oh, my, oh my. Oh, most definitely. Hunt Winslow, she mused, was a perfect 'ten' in every way . . .

  But these thoughts came after. In the meantime she savored every last moment of this, their maiden voyage of carnal discoveries. And what a voyage it was!

  They began nice and easy. Taking their sweet time, acquainting themselves with each other's geography. Slats of golden light leaked dimly through the louvered door from the lamps in the saloon. It was just enough to see by, aiding the examination of fleshy hillock, ample valley, sumptuous mound, and perfumed curve; perfect for spelunking the hidden secrets of orifice, crevasse, protuberance, and cave.

  'Yes. Oh, yesssss . . . ' Dorothy-Anne sighed out pleasurably as Hunt prepared to undress her.

  She lay supine, luxuriating in sinful leisure on the quilted blue satin spread, staring up at him with an expression of utter bliss. Her breasts, snug against her boatneck sweater, rose and fell with anticipation and she watched, with rapt intoxication, while he, still fully clothed, knelt astride her.

  'You're so beautiful,' he whispered.

  Without hurry, he loosened the waist of her white pleated cotton shorts, his hands gliding across her firm silken flesh as he slid the sweater a few inches up her flat, softly muscled belly.

  'So very, very beautiful . . . ' he murmured.

  Holding her gaze, he slowly lowered his head, kissed her navel, then probed it with delicate, snakelike flicks of his tongue.

  Small electric shocks streaked through her, and the breath caught in her throat.

  'Oh, Hunt!' she moaned, writhing under his tender ministrations.

  Dorothy-Anne let her eyes drift shut, the better to savor every delicious sweet morsel of physical sensation. She trembled as Hunt inched the sweater farther up her rib cage, his languid tongue leaving a moist trail on her sternum. And finally, after what seemed forever, he drew the sweater up over her arms and head and cast it away.

  Dorothy-Anne's breasts leaped free, full and strong and voluptuously tipped with dusky rose nipples.

  She heard his sharp exhalation and half opened her eyes. He was staring down at her, transfixed by the perfection of her breasts, the concavity of her tiny waist, the marvelously rounded symmetry of her hips.

  'Practically perfect,' he said hoarsely, admiring the way her fine, firm rosebud nipples, free of the constraints of her sweater, became plumply erect and unmistakably aroused. 'Yes. Practically perfect in every way.'

  Dorothy-Anne's thin nostrils flared.

  'And what the hell,' she inquired, raising herself forward on her elbows, 'is with this 'practically' business?'

  'That's just so you don't get a swollen head,' he soothed, with a disarming grin. And rapidly closing the distance between them, he sought her mouth and captured it with his lips.

  Now, this is more like it! she thought happily, lying back down and returning his kiss in kind.

  What began as teasing little nips and sucks soon progressed to downright ardor. The sensation of his tongue had no beginning and no end. It reached everywhere, and her entire body thrummed like one vast tuning fork. Paradoxically, she felt on fire even as her skin shivered deliciously with the chill of gooseflesh.

  Her senses were swimming.

  Was it possible, she marveled, aware of a familiar moistness welling up between her legs, that a mere kiss could trigger such astonishingly deep and powerful currents of arousal?

  Obviously, it was. And could. And did.

  Finally their lips broke contact. Her breasts rose and fell sharply, and her diaphragm expanded and contracted as she inhaled deeply, in an effort to catch her breath.

  'Wow!' she whispered. Her eyes were wide and glowed with wonder.

  'You ain't seen nothing yet,' Hunt smiled, moving to the foot of the bed to finish undressing her.

  She lay there pliantly, lifting her buttocks up off the bed as he divested her of her shorts, then her tiny flesh-tone briefs. They crackled with static as he flung them aside.

  Dorothy-Anne held her breath. She could scarcely believe where her desires had led her. Hunt was, admittedly, a hunk and a half, but who would have anticipated that she, of all people—she, who had only slept with one other man in her entire life, her late husband—could suddenly feel so violently excited, so utterly swept away by the promise of passion? Who would have thought she could just lie here, naked as Eve and shameless as Jezebel, offering herself to this beautiful man and finding it absolutely natural, gloriously sinful, and—yes—as necessary as oxygen?

  Certainly not me, she thought dizzily, letting the questions waft out of sight, out of mind, and off into the night.

  Now Hunt was undressing himself. She raised herself up, watching in rapt concentration as he crossed his arms, grabbed the bottom of his polo shirt, and whisked it up over his head.

  Dorothy-Anne couldn't keep her eyes off him.

  His body was perfection. Chest broad, like burnished bronze sprinkled with golden fleece. Stomach flat, hard, and etched with the merest suggestion of a washboard. And hips as narrow and tapered as an Olympic gymnast's.

  With gleaming eyes, the Jezebel part of her continued to assess his physical attributes, and she watched intently while he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his white, trouser-length deck pants, and let them drop.

  She gasped when she saw the monster phallus straining his briefs.

  It simply cannot be, she thought, certain it was a trick of the light . . . or that she was imagining things . . . though why its size should surprise her, Dorothy-Anne couldn't quite say. Everything else about Hunt was, after all, intensely and devastatingly male.

  Why shouldn't the
penis match the man?

  Why not, indeed . . .

  Holding her breath, her eyes were locked on him as he bent forward, his arm and thigh muscles flexing as he raised first one leg, and then the other, and slipped out of his briefs.

  Naked now, he turned to her, and her gaze was inexorably drawn to his phallus.

  It seemed to leap from the gilt thicket of his pubic hair, darker than the surrounding flesh below his tan line, and proportionate in size to his family jewels.

  No, her eyes had definitely not been playing tricks on her. It was unimaginably huge, prodigally excessive, and almost preposterously thick. Veins stood out on it in bold relief.

  She felt a fresh torrent of wetness flooding into her loins, and her heart was pounding so violently the walls of the cabin seemed to pulsate with its deafening beat.

  'Make love to me!' she whispered fiercely. Her eyes were wide and moist and pleading. 'Put it all the way inside me! Show no mercy!'

  'Don't be in such a hurry,' he murmured, amusement glinting in his eyes. 'Where's the fire?'

  'Inside me!' she gasped.

  'Well, in that case,' he replied solemnly, 'we'll just have to put it out, won't we?'

  And he knelt inside her carelessly splayed legs, his splendidly engorged, imperial-sized tumescence resting heavily on her belly.

  Words failed her as his hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs gently strumming her erect nipples.

  Vibrations of pleasure radiated throughout her body. She let her head drop back down on the pillow and tossed it from side to side while moans, like feline growls, escaped her lips.

  Then his mouth sought one of her breasts, and she cried aloud.

  'Yes!' she panted, 'yes—yes—' her words punctuating his every marvelous nibble.

  He bit and squeezed a little harder, and beneath him, her entire body arched upward with longing, everything within her demanding more, more, MORE!—that one repeated word, 'Yes!' an exhortation—that he plunge that magnificent Jeroboam of a cock that lay, rock hard on her belly, inside her to the hilt.

  But Hunt was not one to be rushed.

  'Patience,' he murmured, still intent on savaging her luscious, long- nippled breasts. He moved his free arm behind and under him, his hand feeling along the smooth tender skin of her inner thighs. Unerringly, his fingers homed in on her pouting, engorged wet clitoris, the very nucleus from which the heat of all her pleasures sprang, and slowly he rubbed his middle finger across it.