‘Amanda, I adore your mouth.’
‘You like to fuck it, don’t you?’
‘And kiss it,’ he defended.
‘Both are good.’ She looked at his plate. ‘Are you going to take long with that?’
‘Not another minute.’
He stood up and wrapped his arms around Amanda’s naked thighs.
She squealed, ‘Unhand me, you brute!’
Roger faked a Victorian melodrama laugh. ‘Too late, me pretty. You’re in me power now!’
‘Oh no!’
He carried her to the other end of the table and laid her on it, on her back. The wood was brutally hard. Somehow, that made being crushed on to it even sexier. Roger captured Amanda’s mouth with his and kissed her until she started to tremble. When he released Amanda, her high spirits had been subsumed by a weightier emotion – desire.
She looked up at him, her lids half-lowered over her bright baby-blues. ‘What are you going to do to me, you monster?’
‘This!’ He lifted her heels and pressed them wide apart, obscenely exposing her to his admiring gaze. Holding her in place, Roger bent his face down to his wife’s sweet sex.
‘Oh, God, Roger, please …’ she moaned.
‘Mm.’ The tip of his tongue ran up from the pucker between her bottom’s cheeks, across her taut perineum and up to the slick nether lips that practically quivered in anticipation. ‘Yummy!’ His tongue squirmed into her.
Amanda held her breath, wanting to ask him to lap higher but not wanting to hurry him. It wouldn’t have done her any good, anyway. He, just like her, loved to tease.
His tongue worked from side to side. Roger had often told her how much he loved to consume her juices and, though it had been a while since he’d paid her that compliment, he didn’t seem to have lost his taste for her. His hands moved, crossing her ankles above her head so that one hand could hold her like that. What was he doing, reaching sideways? Oh yes – the strawberries and cream.
Amanda felt something very cool touch the delicate tissues that lined her sex. It withdrew, to be replaced by his tongue. That was new! He’d never put cream inside her, to eat, before. So, old dogs can learn new tricks.
Then the cream was being daubed on her little button. Yes! And something was probing inside her. From the feel of it, a very large strawberry was being worked in and out of her. It was strange; the rough berry’s texture, the cool smoothness of cream, her hot velveteen inner walls yielding to the shape of the fruit. Once Roger had established a rhythm with the strawberry he was pushing in and out of her, his lips closed on her cream-coated clit. He sucked and lapped and flicked it, making her more and more excited and still it went on and on and …
And he stopped.
‘Don’t stop!’
‘Say please?’
‘Please?’
‘Beg for it!’
‘I’m begging. Let me climax, please, Roger. I can come again, after. You know that! Please.’ Some irrational part of her honestly feared he’d stop, now, and keep her from the locked and loaded orgasm in her gut.
‘In that case …’ His licking resumed.
Amanda felt his fingertips curl up behind her pubic bone and massage her G-spot. She practically sobbed with relief. ‘Yes, Roger,’ she gasped. The orgasm launched without further delay. ‘Yes, yes, yes … Yes!’
Her legs tried to flail but Roger held fast, trapping the deep contractions inside her, or so it seemed. She groaned with each spasm. Relief mixed with satiation; it was so damn good to orgasm by his hands rather than her own. So goddamn good. Only when the last aftershock had shuddered through her did he release her ankles. She collapsed, as if sun and sex had melted her bones.
‘You’re the best, baby,’ she crooned, eyes half-closed. ‘The very best.’
‘Thank you.’ He loomed over her and bit into the strawberry that had been inside her. ‘Want a taste?’
She nodded dreamily.
He put the berry to her lips. ‘That looks sexy – the way your lips work on that strawberry,’ he said.
‘Let me up and I’ll show you something even sexier.’
Roger released her.
‘Your turn to get on to the table,’ she announced. Amanda stood, only slightly unsteady on her feet. The melting bliss of a moment earlier was gone and, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, or so it felt at that moment, she wanted it back.
‘OK.’ He sat, knees wide.
‘Lie back.’ She put her small hand to his big chest and pushed lightly. He fell back. His robe parted so that only the tie ran across his belly. She pulled the knot apart and the robe fell completely open. She observed his body as an artist might observe a blank canvas. Amanda placed a strawberry in his navel. She dabbed two dollops of cream on to his nipples, snow on his two dark little peaks. Amanda smiled at him, wanting to make him ask.
Roger shook his head slightly, smiling back. He wouldn’t try to rush her any more than she’d tried to rush him.
Amanda took a big scoop of cream in her fingers and slathered it up and down his rigid shaft.
‘Ahhhh. That’s nice,’ he said. He seemed to relax a little against the hard table.
‘I love cream,’ she told him. ‘Yours is my favourite, but this’ll do for now.’ She took him in hand, two fingers holding him delicately at his base while she ran her tongue up the length of him in one long slow slurp.
Roger’s hips twitched up at her.
Her lips closed over the head. It was usually hot in her mouth, feeling as if it had a fever, but the cream cooled it and made it slippery. She nodded, just a little, rubbing his crown against her hard palate, knowing how much he liked that. His moan didn’t surprise her. Amanda’s free hand found the strawberries and cream. Her fingers searched for a big berry. When she found one, she scooped up more cream on it and applied it gently to the tight knot of Roger’s rear passage. He’d never allowed her to penetrate him there, but he did enjoy having the sensitive ring of muscle tantalised.
Rotating the berry and applying just a tiny bit of pressure, Amanda began to work him with her mouth in earnest, lips smacking, tongue lapping, head bobbing, fingers gripping, all progressively harder, until he was hitting the back of her throat with each thrust.
Roger blurted, ‘No – stop!’
Amanda stopped. She raised her head.
‘Stop.’ He groaned.
‘But I like it when you come in my mouth.’ She smiled, her lips loose and wet.
‘I know, but not yet, my darling-slut.’ Roger rolled off the table, and shrugged off his robe, his naked body thick and powerful, his chest matted with dark hair, his manhood smooth and hard, rising from a thatch of crinkly pubic hair. ‘Here you go!’ He heaved her up bodily and perched her on the table’s very edge, so that her pussy was just beyond it. Amanda leant back on straight arms. Roger’s left hand lifted her minuscule skirt out of the way. His right steered his smooth rigid shaft to the parted lips. His hips pushed and he sank deep into her.
The thrust seemed to extend from his tip right into the dark pit of her belly. Amanda’s groan was deep, as if he’d forced it from her with the weight of his push.
‘I love it when you do me like this, Roger. Go slow, please, make it last.’ She shuddered. Her jacket slipped halfway off her shoulders.
Taking the hint, he leant over her and took her nipple between his lips.
She arched her back. ‘Oh yes, yes. Suck hard, please. Bite me.’ She felt his teeth, gripping hard enough to send electric shocks from her nipple to her clit, gentle enough to do no harm.
His head drew back, elongating her breast, before he released it. Roger’s hands cupped the cheeks of her bottom and lifted. She wrapped her arms around his neck and Roger stood, taking her clear of the table. Her legs folded around his hips. He jerked, throwing her upwards a few inches, and met her descent with an upwards thrust of his hips.
Older man? Yes, he was, but not so old he couldn’t make love to her free-standing. Obviously sh
owing off, Roger strode around the patio and poolside. Each step was translated into a thrust into Amanda. She writhed, impaled on his pole. With his hips under the backs of her knees, she was able to grind her clit against his pubic bone. Her second orgasm hit, sudden and hard. She rode him through the contractions, then straight into another paroxysm that rocked her with pleasure.
Roger’s body stiffened. ‘Christ,’ he hissed. He stood stock still, his fingers gripping her bum hard as he flooded her insides.
‘Christ!’
He was bruising her now, his grip was so tight. She clung to him, clenching hard with her pelvic muscles as if to milk him of every last drop. ‘You’re incredible,’ she murmured when he’d stopped swearing. She gave him another experimental squeeze.
Roger couldn’t reply. He was still spurting. He staggered a couple of feet and toppled them both into the pool. They came up spluttering and laughing.
‘Enough?’ he asked. He trod water and leant to kiss her.
‘God, yes, for a while, anyway,’ Amanda said. She was utterly sated. Amanda thanked her lucky stars that she’d married a man who, although he might be older than she, was still as strong as the proverbial bull.
Ten days later, Amanda got a call from the police. Roger had been found, naked, alone and dead, in a motel that rented by the hour. It looked like a heart attack.
2
THEY ALL ARRIVED on the same day: the insurance cheque, the brass urn with Roger’s ashes, his watch, his bunch of keys, his wallet and his prized hi-tech paper-thin multi-function cell phone. Amanda laid them in a row on the dining-room table. This was it, the sum total of a man’s life. They’d had no children so this was all that was left of him. Amanda wished she could cry like an ordinary widow, but she couldn’t. Roger had died cheating on her and that complicated everything, especially her grief.
So. She had a life to live. It had been a month. She couldn’t grieve but she’d gone through the other stages: denial, anger, guilt and so on. The guilt had been the hardest to deal with. She’d read that it was quite common for newly bereaved people to experience extreme lust, and that it was perfectly natural – a genetic response. In her case she had every right to bring herself off, as she had on those many, many nights when she’d been left alone while Roger ‘worked’ late. Even so, she’d denied herself any form of release because she knew, if she gave in and masturbated, she wouldn’t make it halfway through before she’d be sideswiped by hate, first for Roger and then for herself. Even her guilt was complicated.
Now she had his remains in front of her, in her power. Now it was time to move on. Since the day of their wedding, Amanda had devoted herself to Roger. Her world had shrunk to him, home, shopping, a special event here or there and a few friends who, she now realised, had been more his friends than theirs. At this point she had two choices: she could take shelter in a cocoon, just ‘live’ and do what amounted to nothing – or she could go out there, face the world, be dynamic and adventurous.
It wasn’t a hard decision to make. Out there, in the real world, there were men, energetic young men practically vibrating with lust. All these years, it seemed, Roger had been tomcatting around while she’d stayed true to him, except in her vivid imagination. But now she took off her wedding and engagement rings and, with them, all the restraints that marriage had imposed.
Amanda had a lot of catching up to do, just to even the score, so she’d better get started.
First, she dug a hole under Roger’s favourite apple tree and poured his ashes into it. That was the end of him. Next, she changed into a businesslike black suit and took her million-dollar cheque to the bank.
Mr Sorensen, the bank manager, offered his condolences even as he drooled over the size of her deposit. ‘Nice to get rid of that overdraft, right, Mrs Garland, even though …’ He spluttered to a halt.
‘Overdraft? What overdraft?’
‘Your husband’s account – his line of credit.’
‘Why on earth did Roger need an overdraft?’ she asked. Amanda wondered just how generous her husband had been to his various bimbos.
‘I’m not sure why,’ Sorensen continued, ‘but Mr Garland hadn’t deposited a company cheque in over eighteen months. The line of credit is what he – you – were living on.’
Damn it, how many secrets had Roger had? Amanda cut the interview short and stormed off to Forsythe Footwear’s offices on the tenth floor of the Rackstaff Building. She had Roger’s keys. She’d inherited his shares, his controlling shares. Those, both the keys and the shares, added up to power. She’d never had power before, except the power of love that she’d thought she’d had over Roger.
Amanda marched up to the pretty little pink-haired receptionist and looked straight into her pale-green eyes. ‘I want to see the chief accountant, now,’ Amanda said, feeling as if sparks were crackling between her fingertips.
‘The Chief Financial Officer? Mr Eggerdon? Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Your boss, Ms Amanda Garland, widow of the late lamented Roger Garland, that’s who!’
It was immensely satisfying to watch the girl’s face flush to match her outrageous hair. The call was placed with trembling fingers.
An hour later, Amanda was feeling somewhat mollified but still worried. Eggerdon, a pleasant but owlish little man, had seemed delighted to have Amanda take over the frayed reins of Forsythe Footwear. It seemed that the company had been bleeding money for years. Not only hadn’t Roger drawn a salary for the past eighteen months, but he’d been pumping money in. No, Eggerdon had no idea where the funds had come from. Now, with the five-million-dollar insurance that the company had had on Roger, it could stay afloat for two or even three more years but eventual ruin was inevitable, unless some miracle turned its fortunes around.
Eggerdon offered to calculate the back salary owed to Roger and draw a cheque for Amanda. She declined. There was no way she was going to let the company her husband had slaved for all his life go under! Poor Roger – the bastard! It was disconcerting how one minute Amanda mourned the man, the next she hated him. There was only one cure that she could think of – get another man, or two, or three, and have steamy sex with them as many times as it took to get her back to her senses.
3
APART FROM THE one tailored black suit and the two pairs of old jeans that she wore for gardening, Amanda’s wardrobe could be divided into two categories. She had stay-at-home things, ranging from pretty and cute to downright erotic, and she had ‘formal’ – gowns and dresses for entertaining or being entertained, for cocktail parties or for dancing or the theatre. There was no way she could launch her new career as a dynamic businesswoman in any of the clothes she already owned. Fortunately, after paying off that overdraft, she still had nine hundred thousand dollars and change.
Amanda went shopping.
Chez Chic was showing a new collection, Dernier Cri, which Amanda fell in love with. Both the skirts and the pants were high waisted, coming up to just below her bust. The skirts came in two lengths: to just above the knee and down to the ankle. The jackets were in a narrow-sleeved boxy style, almost Chanel, but abbreviated, just meeting the skirts. Alternatively, there were bolero tops, minimalised to the point that they were almost shrugs. Everything was very fitted. The fabrics were either stretchy and bias cut or clinging silk knit jersey. The pants’ cuffs flared slightly. The hems of the skirts were very narrow – so restricting it would have been impossible to walk in them if it hadn’t been for the side slits that were adjustable, fastening with Velcro, press-studs or invisible zippers.
Amanda liked the idea of being able to decide exactly how much leg she’d show, and of having the option to increase or decrease her exposure at whim. Since her spending was an investment, not an extravagance, she bought a dozen outfits, mainly in plain black but with a couple in pin-stripe charcoal and one in dove grey, with a pale-pink chalk-stripe.
Her next stop was Coquette, for tops and hose. The stockings she had at home were almost all black, Roger
’s preference. Black hose would be too much with most of those severe suits, so she bought three pairs of Dim stay-ups in flesh tones and six in gunmetal grey. Amanda found some turtleneck sweaters in silk and in knitted jersey, and purchased a half-dozen of each in a variety of colours. Her new suits called for blouses as well, so she added a couple of white ones in waffle poplin and three more in plain crisp linen before breaking down and splurging on one in each of black and white chiffon and another black turtleneck, but in see-through stretchy net. None of those tops could very well be worn to the office but she just couldn’t resist them. Nor would any man she allowed to see her in them.
Roger would have loved those last items. He’d doted on anything that her skin showed through and the black net turtleneck exposed more than it concealed while the chiffon blouses were as transparent as the smoke from an autumn bonfire.
Fuck him! Some other man was about to get the benefit, just as soon as she found a suitable candidate. ‘Some other men’ and ‘candidates’ she amended.
High on retail therapy, she also bought three dresses that she had no possible excuses for, except that they looked sexy. Her final purchases were a Gucci briefcase, a Mont Blanc fountain pen and a pristine pad of linen-finish paper.
On the following Monday, Amanda dressed as an executive for the first time. She chose a long black skirt, slit adjusted to knee height, a white linen blouse and a black jacket. At nine in the morning, she hip-swayed her way into the reception area of Forsythe Footwear, showing boldness but feeling a total fraud. Perhaps she’d fooled old Eggerdon into thinking she could just sail in and turn the company around but she couldn’t fool herself. She could, however, reinvent herself. Perhaps she could reinvent Forsythe Footwear at the same time. Which was right now.
‘Good morning,’ she told the doll-faced candyfloss-haired receptionist. ‘Where’s my office?’
‘Your office?’
‘The one my husband, Mr Garland, used when he was alive. I’m taking over.’
‘Oh! This way, Ms Garland I’m – um – Nola.’ Unaccountably, the girl’s voice dropped to a whisper when she spoke her own name. She fluttered out from behind her desk. Her flared skirt couldn’t have been as much as a foot long from its low-ride waistband to its flirty hem. Her legs were very attractive. Apparently, Amanda was going to have stiff competition in the leg-show department.
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