Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,48

fell back onto the table, her feet still touching the floor, and he bent over her. Gillian nibbled at his ear lobes, and her lips ran feverishly over his throat. His mouth groped for her mouth before he moved down toward her breasts.

As he continued to kiss her breasts and then advanced upon her stomach, Gillian remained calm. So strange. She felt no physical attraction to this strange round-faced man who was coming at her with increasing urgency. She did not particularly like his looks. She felt nothing but embarrassment for his fumbling ways. And yet even he – even this flawed and damaged specimen of a man – could arouse her, could lick at her center of passion, perhaps could even satisfy her.

She pushed the doctor back then and reached for his belt. She efficiently undid the belt, then the zipper, smiled as the trousers fell down around his ankles. He mounted her, entered her, probed with his rigid flesh where he had once poked with a speculum. Gillian realized idly that she had never before made love in this position. His frenzy controlled her then, and the climax of the one sparked the climax of the other, his ejection riding the waves of her spasmodic contractions.

"Alan!"

It was a scream and the two of them looked at the door, at the small woman in the starched uniform. Her mouth seemed suddenly smaller, perhaps because of the size of her eyes. Gerda had entered at the wrong moment; there was no way for her husband to stop, to apply brakes, to turn back, to explain. He drove home his final thrusting motions under the gaze of his outraged wife. Even later he made no effort to undo the damage. Trousers around his ankles hobbled him, and Gillian's legs encircled him. He looked at his wife – hopelessly, helplessly – and the three of them seemed frozen in positions that were individually ludicrous. Then Alan felt the warmth returning, felt the motions of the woman beginning anew. He made no effort to stop himself and he responded slowly to Gillian's encouraging undulations.

"Alan, get off her right now!"

"Go away, little bird," Gillian said. "Go away unless you want to see your husband in a new light."

"Go away, Gerda," the doctor said. "This really doesn't concern you at all."

"It's better the second time" – Gillian raised her voice so that Gerda could hear each syllable – "it's always better the second time, lover."

"Alan," Gerda said, "I'm not going to ask you again." Looking back at Gerda one last time, Alan turned then and settled his mouth into Gillian's throat. Neither of them took any visible notice as the door slammed behind Gerda. Gillian, at that moment, felt a surprising sense of disappointment. The disappearance of the audience, particularly a disapproving audience, took some of the edge off it. Live and learn, live and learn. Still, she did not convey her disappointment to the good doctor – she relaxed, rising and falling with his ebb and flow. Then methodically she drained him a second time, emptied him, calmed him and gentled him.

"I'm sorry about your wife," she said finally. "I didn't intend to ruin your marriage – seriously I didn't come here to do that."

"It was ruined a long time ago," the doctor said. "Just one thing – did you take any precautions this time?"

"Yes," she said. "But it was nice of you to ask, Alan."

"l was just curious," he said.

Before facing Gerda, Hetterton went again to his locked cabinet. This time he dropped four of the tiny pills onto the spoon. And then he sat down in his empty office and waited for the drug to take effect. When the shaking in his hands was under control, he walked over to the house and faced a strangely composed Gerda. To his surprise, she said she did not want a divorce. She said that she still loved him and would remain with him on two conditions. Alan agreed that never again would he see Mrs. Brown. He also agreed to the purchase of a $545 electronically amplified guitar for his son.

Gillian never saw Alan Hetterton again – and she was not surprised or disappointed by this. However, from time to time, she heard rumors. Rumors linking Alan Hetterton and Maxine, Alan Hetterton and a fifteen-year-old candy striper at Huntington Hospital, Alan Hetterton and a sixty-four-year-old spinster school teacher. And then in June she read the final chapter in a newspaper gossip column -

"North Shore