Chapter One

      A week back, Constance had caught Jeff rubbing pumice over the pads of his fingertips. Their eyes had met. His had been mildly amused. Hers, she felt, must have been both bewildered and excited. She hadn’t been puzzled. She could guess why he was doing that. It was pretty obvious. He was smoothing the tips of his long artistic fingers to make them more sensitive to the texture of her skin. How was a good girl supposed to react to that? Intrigued? Complimented? Offended? What was appropriate? Life, and love, could be very confusing.

      Now they were in bed together and she was reaping the full benefit of his smoothing. Jeff had a touch that was so delicate it felt like talcum powder was being sprinkled on her skin. Sometimes she couldn’t tell whether she was actually feeling it or just imagining that she felt it. It was tantalising – maddeningly so. She loved it so much that she couldn’t stand it.

      He was tracing lazy curlicues around her navel. She tried to imagine the sensations his fingers would be feeling, but failed. Instead, she concentrated on what she was feeling.

      The meandering circles became ellipses that dipped further with each slow circuit. Constance held her breath. He brushed the edge of what he called the peach fuzz that coated her mound. That tickled.

      If only he’d move lower!

      But Jeff was taking his time. He always took his goddamn time! Sometimes she wondered if he did that to punish her for the one thing she refused to do for him, but that couldn’t be. Jeff loved to please her. When he teased, it was just to make her pleasure more intense. She liked to make his pleasure more intense, too, except for doing that one thing. Apart from that, she denied him nothing. That thing was a biggie, so she had to make up for it the best she could.

      The one thing that she wouldn’t do for him was also, Jeff said, irrational. Well, maybe it was. She couldn’t help that. It was due to her upbringing.

      He was cupping her, taking command of her sex.

      His palm covered her mound. His fingers were curved down, over her sex, resting on its delicate pulpy outer lips. She moved her thighs further apart to accommodate his exploration. His fingers palpitated, pressing in a steady one, two, three rhythm. Constance could feel herself moistening. One fingertip was on her sex’s left lip, one on her right, and the other, delicately, so, so delicately, rested on the wrinkled crease where the lips met. The outer two fingers spread, parting her a fraction. The middle one curled down into her soft wet heat.

      Constance groped sideways, into the fly of the pants of the pyjamas she insisted he wore to bed. Her fingers wrapped his hardness, not as a caress, but just for something solid to hold onto.

      She was wet inside. She was so wet that it felt as if his middle finger was dabbling in a puddle of her juices. Almost splashing. And it wormed higher, insinuating itself up behind her pubic bone. Jeff’d told her that there was a soft dimpled pad there that he loved to massage. She loved it too. When he did that … Oh yes! Just like that.

      And now his other hand was working its fingers under his cupping palm, searching out her little button and finding it. Her lover’s hands worked together, both rotating fingertips, one on her special place that was so deep, the other caressing her other special place, the one that was nestled just between her lips, where they joined.

      Constance couldn’t think. She barely remembered to breathe. The gyrating fingers were winding something inside her up, tighter and tighter and tighter. She reached the point where she could imagine no greater disaster than that those fingers should stop what they were doing before she got to where she was rushing …

      ‘Don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop!’ That was her, babbling, wasn’t it?

      ‘I won’t, I promise,’ Jeff whispered.

      The glorious thing happened. Ecstasy rippled through her. Constance’s thighs drew up to her chest, spread wide. Her hips came up off the bed, paused, then slammed down. Spasms convulsed her.

      After a crystalline moment of sheer bliss, she returned to her senses. She let her legs drop back to the sheet. Oh yes, she was holding onto Jeff’s cock, wasn’t she.

      From a dark recess in Constance’s mind, her dead mother started to scold her for thinking