Susan Carter
A helpful wife

CHAPTER ONE

"Tim! No, please don't!" Melanie Cartwright protested.

She struggled for a moment with his hand, pulling it with hesitant force from beneath the top of her thin, low-cut dress. Tim Cartwright resisted somewhat drunkenly, and then let his hand be pushed limply away.

"Melanie, for God's sake!" the young man thickly hissed. "We're married, aren't we? Jesus, you act like we were still going steady."

"Oh, darling, it's not that," she moaned in a soft whisper against him. "It's that we're in a public theater, that's all."

"What's that got to do with it?" he growled in a low voice.

"I mean… I mean, it's not even a drive-in! We can't… we can't make a spectacle of ourselves in front of all the others here. We're not teenagers any more, you know."

"Not by very much," he chuckled wetly against her ear. "I bet you just don't want your new boss to see you necking, right?"

Melanie flushed slightly, feeling her rosy cheeks flare with heat in the darkened movie theater. "No," she protested, "it's not that at all. Mr. Andersson is a married man. He knows all about love." She dropped her head to his shoulder and began to sigh gently, trying to show her husband she wasn't such a prude as she sometimes sounded. "We'll have plenty of time for loving later, when we get home!"

"Think you can stand seeing sexy films like this every night while I'm gone?" her husband, Tim, whispered suggestively.

"You… you know I don't like them, Tim," she replied, stiffening. "Besides, I'll be out in the lobby all the time I'm working. Now hush and watch the movie. You're the one who wanted to see it so badly."

"Yeah," Tim breathed huskily, looking back to the screen with liquor-dulled eyes. "And man, it sure is a hot one, isn't it?"

Melanie Cartwright didn't answer, again feeling a rapid sensation of blood rushing to her face as she blushed with embarrassment. She'd never seen one of these so-called "art" films before, but avoided them by telling Tim that she was not interested in the more lewd and prurient side to love-making. But the curvaceous blonde wife, only twenty years old and married just one month over two years, had been continually urged by her handsome, twenty-two year-old husband to at least try one before she dismissed the whole idea. And her girl friends, those other young wives and mothers who lived in the apartment-house complex with her and Tim, always seemed to be talking in hushed giggles about the candid versions of wild erotica which their husbands were taking them to. In spite of her deeply religious upbringing and her own ingrained sense of what was decent and what was not, she couldn't help admitting that she had been secretly curious about what such films were like, titillated by their come-on newspaper ads.

Now, tonight, there had been no way of avoiding seeing one such movie, even if she had desperately been against the idea. For one thing, she hadn't been able to find the proper words to argue after all the drinking they'd done during dinner. Tim had taken her to a fancy restaurant before coming here, and they had lingered over their tasty food with different wines with every course, not to mention the before and after cocktails. Tim had more to drink than usual, and Melanie could see he was not very sober, but she, too, was feeling the alcohol's effects to a marked degree.

For a second reason, he had insisted that he wanted to go here, and she didn't have the heart to turn him down, as this would be Tim's last night with her for the next four months. Her husband would be away from home and bed for almost the coming third of a year, and of course Melanie had wanted to make this the best possible going-away night she possibly could. The reason her husband was leaving was one of those minor tragedies that can strike young married men "on their way up" who must sacrifice personal pleasure momentarily for a more secure and richer future. There had been many tears and even a few arguments ever since Tim had told his wife of the necessary parting, but they both knew that it would be best in the long run, a temporary parting that would only make their marriage happier later.

Tim Cartwright had left his menial job as warehouseman at McHugh Plumbing and Heating to join a new, progressive and energetic firm of plumbing representatives, Flynn amp; Associates. It was a real chance to make something out of himself, Tim had told Melanie; perhaps the only chance he'd have before he was twenty-five and most of the trainee positions were being filled by younger graduates. But as a new representative of many different plumbing manufacturers, he had to go to New York City and start learning a thousand different details at the parent office of Flynn amp; Associates, and travel all over the country visiting the multitude of factories for further teaching.

If Melanie could have gone with Tim to New York, there would still have been frequent times when they would have been apart. But a warehouseman doesn't make much money, and there hadn't been the savings available to allow her even that much. The sad fact was that there was hardly enough money to buy Tim the new suits he needed and send him to the other side of the nation. Melanie would have to stay in California, in the small suburb of Greenridge, and keep their tiny apartment for when Tim returned to his new sales position in the area. Partially out of a desire to keep her mind occupied and partially to help meet financial ends, Melanie had taken a job.

The new job to which Tim had just referred was the second reason they were at the movies tonight. Melanie had a high school education, having married Tim almost the moment she'd graduated. She didn't have the skills or the diploma necessary for many of the positions that were offered, and in a residential district such as Greenridge, there weren't many openings for the few things she could do, such as typing or filing.

Both Tim and she had felt very lucky that the Bijou Theater in the small downtown shopping area had needed a girl to take tickets and operate the candy and popcorn concession in the lobby. The owner, Amos Andersson, had wanted somebody to replace his wife, Syble, from the chores, and was most pleased that someone as smart and beautiful as Melanie was available. Older women, he'd said to her, were continually getting sick or baby-sitting their grandchildren, and teenagers from school were eager, but often irresponsible. Melanie was, as far as Amos Andersson was concerned, the perfect combination, and he'd been glad to allow her the few extra days – and nights – with her husband until Tim left. But tomorrow evening she would be going to work at the Bijou, and the theater was the leading movie house for erotic, sex-oriented films…

After watching the picture, SINNING STUDENTS, for almost an hour and a half tonight, Melanie was beginning to feel slight twinges of doubt about whether she should have agreed to see it with Tim. Or, for that matter, that she should have taken the job at the Bijou at all, considering the kind of movies they were showing! She had told her husband the truth about working out in the lobby, closed off from the images on the screen by the closed swing-doors – but still and all, just knowing this was the type of films the customers were viewing would be a shameful thought continually torturing her mind. The soft mewling sounds coming from the other women in the audience around her, and the grating noise of heavy deep breathing from their male escorts was telling enough of the effects such eroticism was having. She could see through the dim light the vague shapes of other couples wrapped in tight embraces around the darkened theater.

Her eyes glanced back to the screen just as the climactic moments of SINNING STUDENTS were being unreeled in vivid color. It was the age-old story of seduction behind the stone walls of an exclusive girl's school. There had been the usual scenes of teasing foreplay with different young teenage girls, all of them beautiful in their youthful, firm innocence, as they fought for all they were worth against the perverse temptations that were continually being forced upon them. Melanie had been watching a number of scenes where one after the other of the girls were shown in various stages of undress, with their budding, tautly uplifted little breasts often filling the screen in larger than life detail, or fleeting glimpses of their hair-fringed pubic mounds and lithely rounded buttocks as they nakedly displayed their nubile young bodies.

But now the wide-eyed wife was viewing the most lecherous of the professors as he was thumbing through a book in his small room. At first glance it appeared as though he were reading it very quickly, but as the angle of the camera turned, she could see that he had photographs secreted between its pages. His eyes gleamed lasciviously as he studied them, but the camera did not show them to the avidly awaiting audience.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. He snapped the book shut, looking up as the door opened and a young brunette schoolgirl hesitantly entered. She couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen, Melanie thought with disbelief; where on earth had the film producers ever been able to hire such sweet, innocent virgins as her? The teenaged girl was dressed in the school uniform and carried a set of books in her arms, and the dialogue was to the effect that she wanted the teacher to help her with one of the lessons. She didn't understand it, she said, and the professor, a wicked gleam in his eyes, said he would be more than glad to explain it better. She sat down and shyly opened her book to the page from which he'd been teaching that morning, and the sound track went over the lesson, the professor inching around closer and closer to the seemingly unsuspecting girl. Then the teacher straightened, snapping his thumb, and said he'd forgotten something that would make the lesson easier, and he excused himself and left the room.

The girl sat erect in the chair, looking around the small room nervously, biting her lip as if she felt a certain danger just being there all alone. But after a few moments, curiosity got the better of her fears, and she reached across and took her tutor's book to check a figure in her own studies. The camera showed the gasp of surprise and the shocked expression on her face as she opened the book and saw the pictures hidden inside. Her first reaction was to close the book and slide it back across the table, but then her innocent wonder took over again, and she reopened the book, shuffling the photos with increasing interest.

The pictures were on an angle to the camera and slightly out of focus to give a tantalizing, erotic build-up, but enough was shown so that Melanie could see that they were pornographic pictures of a man and a woman nakedly entwined in lewd sexual intercourse. The camera switched back to the girl's face as a slow change from amazement to wide-eyed excitement seemed to come over her emotions. The stimulating effect the obscene pictures on her immature mind was apparent, for Melanie could see her eyes slowly dilate and the unmistakable smoky haze of passion begin to flicker through them. The violin music began to grow as she breathed harder and panted in a rhythmic excitement, and she writhed with increasing passion on the chair. The camera lowered to the floor and viewed upwards under the table. The student girl pulled her skirt up slightly and inserted her middle finger up under the tight leg band of her flimsy nylon panties, gently stroking the barely hidden crevice of her moistly parting vagina. A few curls of dark pubic hair and occasional glimpses of soft pink flesh could be seen glistening wetly as her slim inner thighs quivered and her firmly rounded little buttocks undulated. She slipped more of her finger deeper into her virginal young pussy and rotated her hand faster and faster with increasing arousal…

Melanie held her breath as she watched the school-girl fingering herself on the screen. She had never in her life seen anything like this, and was grateful for the protective covering of the darkness around her.

It all looked so real and true-to-life that she couldn't believe it was only being acted, and again she found herself wondering where tender-aged girls could be gotten to do such sordid things in front of a camera. Through a lightheaded intoxicating haze of martinis and wine which she'd had during a pre-movie dinner, she could feel her own body begin to tingle in sympathy with the school girl on the screen. She remembered lying in her own bed when she'd been no older than this girl, and touching her private parts with her own fingers to relieve the building force of her flowering womanhood. That had been years ago, but still she blushed slightly from the shame and guilt flicking through her conscience, and she squirmed her own buttocks nervously, feeling the soft edge of the seat brush electrically against the tender swelling of her vagina. She twitched from the unexpected shock the contact brought, her breath quickening involuntarily.

Tim eagerly pulled Melanie close to him again, letting his hand dangle gently over her shoulder. His fingers lightly touched the tip of her breast, and he felt her jump slightly from his fingertips, but he held her tighter, pressing his hand gently against the softness of her throbbing breast. The young husband was growing more aroused by the second, and lewdly exciting images of the things he would do to his luscious wife's soft body ran through his mind. Man, tonight would be the last night for at least three or four months with her – and after watching this hot sex film, he would turn Melanie every way but up, and then maybe that way too. She had never liked different variations because she thought them to be perversions, but after tonight she'd know she had been fucked when he finished with her, whether she liked it or not!

Up on the screen, a spasming look of horror came on the school girl's face just as Tim Cartwright returned his attention to the movie in front of him. The professor had come back into the room unexpectedly and caught her finger fucking herself with the pictures spread out on the table. The man grabbed the young girl roughly and cursed her, while she mewled and pleaded for forgiveness, but he marched her over to his bed, obviously bent on punishing her. He pulled her down over his knees and she kicked out wildly behind her. Then he lifted her little skirt up over the trembling moons of her fear-quaking buttocks and began spanking her through the flimsy white panties with the palm of his hand. The slappings were harsh and authentic sounding as they came through the speaker, and the girl screamed and kicked under his brutal spanking, her sleekly naked thighs shivering piteously before each cruel blow.

While the teacher yelled at her to leave his private things alone, the camera zoomed in on her flailing buttocks, where he was slowly beginning to draw the white nylon panties down over the delicious firmness of her reddened buttocks. When her panties were all the way off and thrown to the floor, the professor pushed the girl from his lap. She knelt in front of him on the floor, tears of pain and humiliation streaming from her eyes as she pleaded for mercy and begged him not report her to the headmaster of the school. The corrupting teacher's face shone with a cruel glint then, and he outlined what she must do for him if she didn't want to be expelled that very moment…

"Take your clothes off, my little peach. Strip and then we'll do some of the lovely things you were looking at."

"No! No!" the sweet angelic voice cried back.

"Yes!" the insidious professor demanded. "Be quick about it!"

Quaking with fear, the teenaged girl rose to her feet and began to slowly remove the clothing from her budding young body. The professor did the same, grinning satanically as his pants dropped to the rug. His big, hardened penis was just out of the range of the camera, but the whole audience including Melanie knew it was no more than an inch past the bottom of the screen. The girl stood naked in front of the older man, her arms crossed futilely over her well-developed, high-tipped breasts. The curly hair covering the mound at the base of her tender white belly was soft and sparse, and the tiny folds of flesh covering the narrow slit of her pink vagina were plainly visible.

The teacher gleefully made her sit down on the edge of the bed and spread her legs wide apart so that he could kneel between them and see up between her parted thighs. He reached forward and placed one thumb on either side of the rounded hair-fringed lips of her pubic mound to splay their tender flesh slowly apart. The camera zoomed in to expose all of the moist pink valley of her tight young pussy, and her gently throbbing clitoris could be seen just above the puckered opening of her little cuntal hole…

Melanie gasped in increasing surprise, unable to believe her eyes and ears. A tightening sensation was gripping the pit of her stomach, and she blinked her eyes that were hazy from the dinner drinks, trying to bring them into proper focus and assure herself she was actually seeing correctly. The horribly filthy movie was against every moral lesson she had ever been taught, and she knew it was terribly wrong to even be watching it! Yet instead of the absolute revulsion she would have sworn she'd have felt, she was experiencing a strange, light-fingering tingling deep up between her own thighs, and tiny licking flames of unwanted arousal burned through her raw nerve ends. Dear God, it was lunacy to be sitting here at all, but she was perversely enjoying it as well!

Her husband had pulled her so close against him now that she could hardly move and during the excitement of watching the young girl strip, he had inserted his hand down into the bodice of her dress again. She could feel small pinpricks of delicious sensations racing through the tips of her naked breast as he rolled the hardening nipple teasingly between his thumb and forefinger. The heat of his breath seared her ear as he turned his head toward her again and locked his lips wetly against her. She tried to twist away, but the pressure of his hand and mouth were too great for her to fight.

"Come on, Melanie," he whispered into her mouth. "Don't start acting prudish again. Nobody can see us, and nobody would care if they did."

She remained rigid for another moment, and then allowed herself to go limp, knowing the futility of resisting his savage strength. The thought crossed her mind that this was the first time he had kissed her in a theater since they'd been married, and she had almost forgotten the forbidden thrill of what it was like. In spite of her guard being up against letting any emotional display happen in public, she could feel tiny butterfly-like sensations flit increasingly through her stomach.

The now familiar voice of the professor came through the speaker, piercing her mind even though she had her eyes closed and her head turned away from the screen. "You want me to play with you, my little dove?" Melanie heard the voice lewdly ask.

"Oh, yes… Oh, please, yes! I want you to, Sir!"

Melanie sucked in her breath, her face flushing. She could hear the sounds of heavy breathing and movement on the bed and then:

"How?" her teacher rasped excitedly.

"With your tongue, Sir! I want you to suck me like the man is doing in the pictures you have."

"By damn, I will! Get up on the bed and spread your legs!"

The older man's voice came through with a guttural passion she had never heard in her own love making with Tim. Her face turned a still brighter crimson as her husband continued to kiss her with hotly pressing lips and mouth, and she heard another long delay in the voices and a more intense movement of the bed. And then the voices returned:

"Ahhhhhhh," a high ecstatic sigh came.

"Suck me, Sir! Suck me harder and deeper; stick your tongue all the way up my pussy!"

Tim Cartwright felt renewed passion surging through his loins as he heard the girl moaning in the throes of abandoned sex on the screen. He could feel his massively erect penis jerking in the tightness of his pants and, as he paused in kissing his wife, he was able to see a small portion of Melanie's soft upper thigh as she squirmed in her seat next to him. God, how he'd like to grab his wife right that instant and throw his prick to her while they listened and watched this wild sex movie! But he knew her well enough to know that any advance like that would freeze her up until she was colder than an igloo outhouse. He'd have to somehow control himself until they got home: but then, by God, he'd fuck her silly!

Tim withdrew his lips from hers and looked back at the screen. "Hot damn, look at that!" he gasped heavily into his young wife's ear, his hand tightening harder on her softly warm breast.

Melanie turned her head slightly and caught the view of the movie just as the young girl wrapped her hands in the older man's thick black head of hair and pulled his face forward with all her strength into the moist pink opening of her loins. Her teacher's tongue was snaking out and swiping across the throbbing flesh of her tender vagina, bringing groans of lewd delight from her tightly clenching lips. He teased the tiny bud of her clitoris for a moment with his lips and then began to run his mouth up and down the full length of the widely spread vaginal slit. Her hips responded with slow hard grinding up against his face, and she writhed and twisted like a belly dancer under the hotly probing tongue. The girl was being turned into a raw quivering mass of desire before the eyes of the movie audience, contorted expressions of sensual joy clear to all upon her passion-twisted face…

At the same time, the camera was able to view the professor's hardened penis as it stuck out from between his naked thighs while he knelt before the abandonedly writhing girl. A ripple of sensation coursed through Melanie in spite of herself as she pondered its giant size. It was much bigger than Tim's, and she clasped her own legs tighter together as she involuntarily wondered what it would be like to have something that big sliding up between her thighs. She glanced guiltily away from it, only to see once again his thick tongue curling wetly up into the swollen pink lips of the teenaged girl's eagerly spread vagina. Melanie gasped at the obscene sight, having heard about men doing this to women but never having thought the sight of such a depraved act could excite her against her will. And yet it was, and she could feel a building moisture up between her tightly pressed thighs as the emotions reflecting on the girl's face in the film transmitted themselves to her own body.

Thoughts of her own nights of love-making fluttered unconsciously into her mind as she watched the lewdly sucking mouth on the screen. She could recall how early in their marriage Tim had trailed his wet lips from her bare breasts and down her naked skin in a similar attempt to go lower and plant moist kisses on the soft flesh and satin hair surrounding her defenseless vagina. She could vividly remember how she had screamed for him to stop and then sobbed that he was acting "evilly" as she had pulled him back up over her. He had always taken her the normal, "right" way after that, but without the fire he had shown before, and she had always wondered why at the time.

Was this the reason? Was it really the kind of animal things she was viewing in the movie now that it took to please a man? Tim had ceased his attempt to force her into such unnatural and debasing acts, but he had become increasingly casual and indifferent in his love making. If he'd been drinking as he'd been tonight, he could be almost cruel and brutal with her, and occasionally he had actually hurt her! She did have to admit that she was prudish in certain respects, and that not once in the two years of her marriage with Tim had she enjoyed sex like the girl in the movie was obviously experiencing. Had she been kidding herself what it should be like when two people make love? The thought raced through her mind against her will – what should it be like? What would it be like? No… no… such abnormal acts were wicked and that was all there was to it…

"See her?" Tim said softly, nuzzling against her cheek. "If you'd let me, I could do the same to you…"

"No!" his young wife protested, squirming away from his still teasing fingers on her naked breast. "No, you know that's not love, just raw sex! It… It's just not right to do!"

She could feel the moisture begin again between her tightly pressed thighs and she involuntarily ground her buttocks harder against the seat to quiet the unwanted, lewd stirrings she felt.

"But look at the girl's face," Tim continued wetly into her ear. "She's letting the old professor screw her, now that she's hot enough to go up in smoke. She's enjoying it! She's enjoying everything the man's been doing to her. Christ, honey, she's not holding herself back."

"Don't talk like that!" she hissed angrily as the word screw excited her strangely against her will. "I'm not frigid. You don't have to resort to those horrible things to make a self-respecting woman like me happy."

But even as she argued with her husband, her eyes locked on the view of the once innocent young girl on the bed with her thighs spread wantonly apart and the older teacher hunched down between them, his enormous penis sunk all the way up between her uplifted legs. The camera angle showed clearly his thick glistening hardness disappearing into the soft, hair-lined folds of her widely stretched vagina. His cock was in almost to its hilt, only a tiny inch of it remaining in sight, wet and throbbing. The professor's buttocks were flexing and hollowing rapidly as he drove himself hard into the nakedly writhing young schoolgirl beneath him. Her slim white legs were wrapped tightly around his muscular body, her trim ankles locked in a lewd death-grip over his perspiring back. His fleshy prick was spearing into her virginal pussy like a steel rod, bringing groans of indescribable joy bubbling from her moist full lips. The girl's face was contorted in the most depraved picture of pure raw lust Melanie had ever seen.

God, how she must feel, the aroused young wife heard herself think. And I've never felt that way, I know it!

Melanie had never seen two people making love before and it looked so strange to her. She wondered if this was the way she and Tim looked, and the thought caused her to squirm slightly and press her thighs together to hold down the erotic fire mounting against her will deep in her loins.

Tim had dropped his hand to massage still more of her aching left breast into further hardness beneath the covering of her dress. She shuddered from his maddening touch, feeling her breath coming in short, labored gasps now. His lips were whispering moist entreaties into her ear, using words she had told him repeatedly were wrong and obscene, but which were now strangely exciting to her. In rising passion, Melanie pressed her thighs together as tight as she could to extinguish the sinful lusts growing mercilessly up between her legs. She wasn't a streetwalker, a common slut without pride or decency in what she did, and Tim had no right treating her like she was one – especially on this last night that they'd be together! She knew she had to leave the Bijou this very instant or she would find herself in a situation with an unsober husband she could not control! How embarrassing, how utterly humiliating that would be, to have something happen in front of her new employer!

"Tim!" she whispered on the verge of hysteria, pulling his hand from inside her dress. "We must go! We must go right now!"

"For Christ's sake," he snarled bitterly, "What's the matter now?"

"I can't take any more of this… this awful movie!"

"You've got to be kidding!"

"I don't care I don't care, please take me home. Please don't make a scene, Tim, not on our last night together," she quavered, tears suddenly filling her eyes.

"And if I don't go?" he sneered drunkenly, anger smoldering in his glaring eyes.

"I'll… I'll go home by myself!"

"Gawd Almighty," Tim swore thickly, but he jerked his wife angrily to her feet, reaching behind him to grab his own coat. "Then let's get the hell out of here and home, so I can have my little going away present." He snickered obscenely as he thought about it. "Yeah… that'll be better than watching a movie."

"Ohhhh, Tim!"

He shoved her through to the aisle, his rage still growing inside him. "Don't 'Oh Tim' me, you wet blanket. I'm telling you now, Melanie, that you'd better be good to me tonight. Damned good, you hear?"

Melanie gave him a cold stare in answer and walked stiffly up to the lobby, Tim trailing behind her. Out in the lobby, the sudden glare of bright lights made her pause for a moment, and then Tim caught her roughly by the arm. "C'mon," he growled. "I'm hotter than a firecracker."

"Stop being so crude, Tim," she snapped waspishly at him. "I ought to say goodnight to the Anderssons. It's only polite."

"Well, make it snappy, unless you want to be raped here in the lobby."

Melanie was shocked and dismayed by the way her husband was acting, afraid that it was because of the liquor and the stimulation of the movie. The very way Tim was behaving was reason enough for the young wife to believe such films are wrong and should be censored, if not banned entirely. Rigidly, she crossed towards the refreshment stand which was against the back wall between the two sets of aisle doors, self-pity and anger boiling through her. Oh God, no telling what Tim would be like in bed considering the mood he was in now! If only…

"Hello, Mrs. Cartwright," a warm, throaty voice said, "Are you leaving?" It was Amos Andersson who was speaking to her.

She blushed, stammering in reply: "Why… why yes, we are. Tim has to get up early in the morning to catch his plane, and…"

Andersson chuckled appreciatively. "I understand. You two want to be alone, with more important things to do than just seeing my old movie."

"Oh no, Mr. Andersson, we enjoyed it very much!"

"I'm glad you did," Andersson smiled, stroking one end of his small, clipped mustache. "But please, call me Amos. After all, we're working together now… Melanie."

"All… All right, Mr. – I mean, Amos." She dimpled prettily at the big man who was her new boss. She guessed him to be about six-two, and around two hundred pounds. His thick brown hair, lovingly rippled into waves, was long over his ears and at the base of his neck. He had a wide, handsome face, with a short nose above a heavy-lipped mouth, a firm chin cut by a deep cleft and thick eyebrows over small, pale brown eyes. To Melanie, the slightly older man was awesomely masculine, so… well, she hadn't been able to put her finger on it, other than he had seemed to her from the first moment they'd met to be overwhelmingly magnetic. In that respect, he reminded her of Tim in a more mature way, of her husband's forceful and pervasive huskiness, and an odd sort of tingling of animal attraction had hit her in the pit of the stomach when she'd been interviewed for the job ten days ago. Even now, standing as they were in the lobby of his theater in a very respectable manner, she found herself studying him with a detached interest, not as a potential sex mate – heaven forbid the idea – but just as a very attractive and stimulating male.

Amos' wife, Syble Andersson, came from behind the candy stand where she'd been counting change and joined Melanie and her husband. She had a throaty, purring voice that the young wife had always associated with torch singers, like Peggy Lee, and she thought the woman to be very attractive in that same sensual way.

"So good of you to come on my last night," Syble cooed in a light-hearted manner. "I can't say I'll miss the job, not after all the years I've spent standing behind there!"

"Well, I'm hoping I can do half the job you've done, Mrs. Andersson," Melanie answered diplomatically. "I'll certainly try."

"And you will, I'm sure you will," Syble laughed encouragingly. She had a rather narrow face, a straight nose with a little flare at the nostrils, a generous red mouth, long black lashes, and neatly plucked eyebrows. Her hair was sleek and black and glossy, gathering fully around her shoulders and down over her ripely rounded breasts. She was wearing a pale blue dress with a white starched collar peeking over the severe neckline. But she could have been wearing a steel diving suit, and it still wouldn't have held back the innate sexuality that exuded like perfume from this provocative woman. Syble was, Melanie thought, the perfect mate for such a virile man as Amos Andersson.

"Melanie!" Tim called out gruffly. "C'mon."

"Oh, I better be going," she said nervously, catching the impatient look in her husband's eyes. "Goodnight, Amos? And…"

"Syble. Do call me Syble."

"And Syble. I'll be here at seven tomorrow night!"

"Be looking forward to it, my dear," Amos said genially and shook her hand.

Melanie hurried back to her husband, biting her lower lip with apprehension and embarrassment. She appreciated the way Amos Andersson had not acted as if anything was amiss, though it must have been clear as crystal that there was; and he had been a gentleman the whole time, rather than acting like a complete idiot as Tim was doing. A deep sense of shame still pervaded her entire being at the way Tim had been touching her so intimately only a few short minutes before, and the way he was fidgeting around now as though he were some stud bull unable to behave like a civilized man. She had no desire to say another word to him, and she just hoped that they would get out of here and home before something worse occurred. At least at home whatever happened would be privately between just them…

Behind them, and out of range of their hearing, Amos and Syble Andersson stood in the deserted lobby, admiring the young couple as they left the theater. Amos turned to his curvaceous wife, a sly little grin forming on his lips. "I," he said lewdly, "am going to fuck that sweet girl."

"Amos, you're out of your mind," Syble chided. "I don't think you can con her into our bed short of raping her. She's too young and naive, and only been married for a couple of years."

"Sure, but did you catch that idiot she has for a husband?" Amos chuckled suavely, patting his wife fondly on one firm buttock. "Melanie's the kind who, when they fall, fall hard. It'll be fun trying anyway, even if we don't succeed."

"We?" Syble asked with a glimmer in her bright eyes.

"Damned right. You, my love, are going to help me not only get that girl, but mow her all the way down until she's ready to be made a star."

"Ahhh, a new actress for our pictures!"

"We've many lovely creatures for our shows, but the ones past twenty are all so common looking." Amos Andersson sighed appreciatively.

"But that little bitch… ahh, she could make us a fortune!"

"And you've got a plan… for us!"

"Uh-huh, but I'm not going to tell you until we get home. Show's about due to end, and anyway, it'll do you good to wait for the details."

"Why, you horrid tease! I think you're making this all up!"

Amos laughed heartily, noting the anticipatory smirk on his lovely wife's face. "Nope, I've got a plan, all right. And my dear… when have you ever known me to fail?"

"Never," she had to admit, smiling. "Not even once…"