Fanchon's Book

Chapter 9

My beautiful goddess. Gone? Light flashed in the black void of my mind long before I could get my eyelids unstuck, harsh light, searing, cruel-the blinding glare of panic. Where is she? I couldn't feel her near me. Such a terrifying moment, waking up on the floor and knowing that she had taken her presence away; oh, how I needed her!

I forced my eyes to function. There were signs of life, yes, but it was only the thing in the mirror, shaky, haggard, an awakening mound of flesh; naked Fanchon. That sensual bitch. Not much to look at, really, and I turned my head.

Ah!

A sluggish spiral of cigarette smoke climbed ceiling ward; in a spate of rekindled animation I crawled toward its source. No, she hadn't run off and left me. My love was still here. My love, my love. And how imperiously beautiful she looked on the chaise lounge, like a highborn lady taking her ease, the Maja Desnuda; wasn't it fitting and proper that I should greet my love by kissing her feet?

"So you're back among the living, eh, Fanchon?"

"I'm back. Was lout long?"

"A few minutes. You must be pretty' tired."

"I-I guess I am."

"Well, I'll let you go to bed soon. I'm not very sleepy myself, though. Be a dear and sit up with me for a while, will you? Pull up a chair or something." I rose to get the chair, moving unsteadily, just a shade bewildered. Our sex fantasy was over, apparently, and yet I was still doing her bidding. Not that I minded staying up with her: in this sweet aftermath of lust I was glad to remain close and bathe in the aura of our shared love. But she did seem a trifle too composed, indeed almost calculating. When I picked up the chair and swung around toward her, she was staring off into space, her face a study in pensive preoccupation, the cigarette between her fingers all but forgotten as it

The cigarette!

It was a mad dash, but I made it. In one breakneck scramble, I dropped the chair and grabbed the ashtray and slid it under the cigarette in time to keep the skin of her midriff intact. Another split-second and there would have been a badly scorched young woman.

I sagged to the floor to catch my breath and get my nerves untangled. Kristi nodded and patted my cheek, a gracious commendation; I glowed contentedly-and then the vivid memory impaled me, the barbed enlightenment, and I realized what I had just done. The significance of my instinctive gesture was Inescapable.

Leaping to serve her like that. Like the day we met. Exactly. A carbon copy. But with our roles reversed and I had performed my ashtray stint just as swiftly and impulsively as she had done it for me.

Fact. Conclusive and categorical. I had no choice but to accept it, the caustic reality: in my own house, I had become a satellite. Perhaps even a puppet, although no one had jerked any strings to spur my spontaneous act of servitude. The name went with the game. I had played my part only too well, too consummately, and now the greasepaint was indelible.

That first day-butterfly? angel?-how incongruous it all seemed in retrospect; I knew now that my glittering golden girl was a creature of dark desires. But no vampire had ever found a more willing victim, and I loved her for it. Loved her beyond reason. Beyond self. Loved her enough to surrender the reins of my destiny.

"Aren't you going to get the chair?"

"Uh, no, I'll stay right here."

"Yes. I like that. You won't ever leave me, will you, Fanchon? I need you. Don't ever stop loving me." Then, childlike, almost as a plaintive afterthought, "You do love me, don't you?"

"Do I have to say it? I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'll always love you."

"Oh, you darling! It's wonderful the way we're so good for each other. I've never been so happy. Except for… well… you know… " She made a little aggrieved gesture in the general direction of Oliver's room. "You'll forgive me if I get jealous sometimes?"

"I'm glad you're jealous-even though there's nothing to be jealous about. Anyway, you won't have much chance to brood about it. We'll be together every night."

"That's a comfort. Fanchon dear, were you really angry when I asked if we could go away for a vacation?"

"Umm, I suppose so. But more troubled than angry, probably. Because it's something I want just as much as you do. And I simply can't afford it; isn't that awful? My husband controls a whole treasury, practically, and I don't have enough money for a little holiday. Please believe me, Kristi, if there was some way… " I kissed her hand abjectly, hiding my shame; I wanted to lay the world at her feet, and even this one small gift wasn't within my power.

"It's all right. I understand." Her fingers fondled my lips tenderly. "Still… uh, maybe there is a way."

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"Well, I know some people who-" She shook her head abruptly. "No. It wouldn't be quite honest. Forget it."

But I couldn't forget it and I said so. And she started to tell me, haltingly, lamely, about the way that wasn't quite honest. About the people who could take a gram of inside information and turn it into a bonanza. People who dabbled in stocks and bonds and government securities and knew how to make a quick profit on almost any kind of advance tip concerning the dealings of officialdom. No, it wasn't honest. Nor was it seemly that I should conspire against my own husband; and yet no actual harm could befall him, not the slightest loss of prestige in his political position-and hadn't I given him the best years of my life? Wasn't It time I got something in return?

Still-as Kristi had already so scrupulously stated-it wouldn't be quite honest. But she didn't sound the same now and I just couldn't cut her effusive prattle short: she seemed so enthused, so spirited, so unabashedly embroiled in her own naughtiness-as if the entire messy business was just one big hilarious prank, a whimsically conceived tally in her personal vendetta with Oliver. What inspired her most, obviously, was the two-pronged thrill of hoodwinking my poor unsuspecting husband both financially and connubially at a single stroke. Such a mischief-maker!

She sat up suddenly, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise. "Hey, I got all excited just talking about it. How about you, Fanchon?"

"Well, I'll have to think it over and-"

"Sure, sure, bur that's not what I mean. I'm feeling sexy again. Ready for some more fun."

"Oh?"

"But you're not, I guess. You're tired, huh?" She pouted wistfully, making an appealing little moue. "And I did say I'd let you get some sleep, darn it."

As yes, a mischief-maker-but so mercurial in her mental processes, a frisky kitten that might bounce in any direction at any instant: scarcely an augenblick ago she had chortled over the prospect of clawing Oliver, and now the only thing on her mind was a sex-frolic. Malicious one moment, cuddlesome the next. But never dull-and I blessed the fate that had sent the capricious little p-ssycat here to turn my otherwise arid existence into her own private bowl of milk.

Ready for some more fun. What an amusing way to put it, ingenuous and yet flippant; utterly charming, of its caresses as if nothing else had any importance. There was a tickle-spot high on the inside of my thigh; she touched it and I twitched; she jabbed her big toe into it hard and I writhed. Underneath me, the nap of the carpet became less downy; it bristled and bit mercilessly into my squirming buttocks. And at last the aggressive toe pushed past the touchy spot and found another that was much touchier and far more ticklish (and certainly crucial!) and my body no longer floated in softness; up and down it arched and thumped and oscillated between the acute penetration and the blunt abrasion, striving for the pang and struggling against the prickle-and gradually coming to accept both as something more powerful than either. A sob broke from my lips. A sob of need.

"Fanchon? You like it?"

"Ummm…"

"I'm not hurting you?" Ah, but of course she was hurting me. Hurting me terribly! Hurting me more and more with every motion. And wasn't it fantastic the way my hands were holding her ankle and pulling her foot deeper so that it would hurt even"Hey! Are you all right?"

"Please… do it to me! With your foot. I want it. I don't care if it hurts. I love you… "

Her foot slid into me, paused, and then probed for depth. I groaned and clutched it in the hairy wetness, sucking on it with my vulva-mouth, licking it with my *oris-tongue, gasping rapturously every time the wriggling toes prepared the path for a further inch of passage.

She stood up suddenly. "Yessss… " A hiss, fierce that was my Kristi, but terribly exciting too, and I felt myself responding in reciprocal readiness. The way she had her foot dangling in my lap; how could I help but catch the fever of her restlessness? I too was feeling sexy again. Ready for some more fun.

But I was already having it. Fun. I didn't dare say so, though, for fear she might stop. I didn't want that. It was nice to be wooed for a change, nice to sit quietly and let her try to arouse me; such a delicious sensation! My body floated between two layers of softness, the carpet below, thick, plushy, and the stroking foot above, gentle, affectionate; I wanted the fleecy titillation to-go on and on.

"Fanchon?"

"Mmmm… "

"Getting sleepy?" she giggled knowingly. I didn't answer. Not of my own volition, anyway.

But my flesh was slipping out of control here and there, a flicker of betrayal, a ripple of admission; the sole of her foot brought a quivering reaction wherever it glided; even the graze of a sharp toenail evoked a shudder that stifled pain and shrieked of pleasure; no, an answer wasn't necessary. The little tactician had proved her point.

And the foot kept moving; oh, how good she was to me! wooing me like that even though the victory was already hers. Had she tumbled back on the chaise and spread her legs I would have plunged headfirst between them with no hesitation whatsoever, Or had she sat stiffly and merely uttered that one word-suck-my lips would have slavered their unqualified acquiescence. But that sweet, dainty, wonderful little foot just continued on its merry way, bestowing the largesse

and frightening. "Oh yes, I'll do it to you. With my foot. Like you've never had it before."

Somehow, she managed to brace herself and balance on one leg. I couldn't tell for sure. I knew only the thrust of her violence, that foot-kicking into me, kicking, kicking/-and I fell flat on my back and yet it stayed with me, still doing it, still kicking savagely, smashing away with the force of a brutal battering-ram, driving deep into the slippery shaft of my now erupting passion; nor did it stop until my upheaval ended and the tension drained and I lay weak and trembling in the divine afterlife of the most excruciating and exquisitely lethal orgasm I had ever experienced.

When I returned to earth again, she was seated on the chaise and caressing my head with her toes. I angled my face up to kiss them; she muttered an impatient negative and I realized that her immediate desire was for neither the giving nor the receiving of kisses or caresses. Only cleanliness. I bunched my disheveled hair in both hands and finished the job for her, wiping the precious little foot dry.

"Oh, you do love me, Fanchon. If we could be together… "

"We will, we will. Together. I'll do it."

"Such fun. A holiday for just the two of us." Settled, then. The thing. The not-quite-honest venture. But it all seemed so far away and I was tired, so tired-and I saw her leaning back and spreading her thighs in an invitation that might become a command if I didn't"Fanchon? Too sleepy to suck me?"

Not an invitation, not a command. Just a question.

But I gathered my remaining ounces of energy and made the only possible reply and knew that sleep was as much "out of the question" as if it had never been mentioned.