Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,60

good, Taylor."

"I'll tell you one thing," Taylor said. "I've never felt so good in this office, not in the past fourteen years."

Again Gillian kissed Taylor on the chest and then, pushing with her hands, she was standing, walking toward her clothes. Taylor followed her. On the desk he could see the pictures of his wife and the Baron, both watching him, and they both seemed angry. He wondered how they liked him naked.

Gillian picked her bra from the left shoulder of the Baron's wheelchair, started to stretch her arms through the straps, but Taylor pulled her to him. She held the bra now in her right hand and, as her arms went around him, Taylor felt the bra skid once, gently, against his back as it slipped to the floor. Carefully, he lowered her back into the wheelchair.

With Gillian's arms around him, her body there just below him, Taylor Hawkes spun the wheelchair away from the wall. In the open room, on the deep green carpet, he gave a push with his foot and tried to jump aboard, as he'd jumped as a child on a rolling scooter.

"The old sonofabitch," he said.

They hit the brown leather couch and came to a stop there.

"My God, Taylor!"

He came down on her, pressing her legs apart, against the arms of the chair, and feeling his knees driving against the wheels. Almost. His knees off the wheels, closer, and he was there now, there, but they were rolling again.

"Goddam!"

"Make it stop rolling, Taylor!"

With his foot, he drove the chair into the angle between the couch and the wall and lunged. "Taylor! Oh, Taylor!" Gently, rhythmically, the chair skidded, forward, backward, gently rhythmically.

Taylor heard it, didn't hear it, thought he heard it, thought he didn't hear it – the click of the lock at his back. The click of the lock and no other sound as the rubber tires of another wheelchair moved silently across the deep green carpet. Glancing up, Taylor saw him, saw the Baron, rolling toward them. And now braking.

"Well, Taylor." The Baron.

"God, Taylor, don't stop!" Gillian.

And now all of them the three of them!

"Taylor! Taylor!" This was Gillian.

"Dammit, Taylor, if you break my chair…"

"Now, Gillian! NOW! Gillian, oh, Gillian!"

For a moment Taylor lay there. And then, slowly, they rose from the wheelchair, he and Gillian.

She made no effort to hurry or to cover herself. She walked to the spot where she had dropped her bra on the floor and bent to pick it up. The Baron, in his black suit, with his round, silver head cocked slightly, turned the chair an inch or two, Taylor thought, to watch her walk.

And then the chair and the black suit and the round silver head were directed again at Taylor.

"In a wheelchair," the Baron said softly. "That's something, Taylor." He rolled his own chair six inches backward and six inches forward. "Well, Taylor, you won't have to explain the Honest ad tomorrow. I'll mail you your check." His voice was still even, quiet. "And I'll have a car pick up Sarah tonight."

"Baron," Taylor began, "if you…."

"Good evening, Taylor." The Baron was starting to roll. Then he paused, a last look at Gillian. She had picked up the bra but she hadn't put it on. In her right hand, it swung at her knees.

"You have a fine body, young lady," the Baron said.

"Thank you, Baron Morgan," Gillian Blake replied. Stretching, she put her arms through the brassiere straps. The Baron made no effort to leave. "You don't live in King's Neck, do you, Baron?"

"Old Brookville," he said.

"Too bad," Gillian said. "I was going to ask why don't you roll over and see me sometime."

EXCERPT FROM "THIE BILLY & GILLY SHOW," MARCH 14TH

Gilly: Did you ever stop to realize how everything has become sexier these days, Billy? You know, movies, books, magazines.

Billy: I know what you mean. And without being a prude, I think it's something we have to watch carefully. Because in some cases, it borders on, well, smut.

Gilly: Exactly.

ANSEL VARTH

Ansel Varth walked as though he should have had a staff in his hand and a tribe of Israelites trailing him. It was, Gilly thought, bizarre in a man in his early thirties. There was a grotesque quality about him that had aroused Gilly's curiosity – and, concomitantly, her libido. She needed something different. Ernie Miklos's ice cubes, Paddy Madigan's mini-member, Arthur Franhop's aberrant innocence, Joshua Turnbull's flying leap – all these encounters had left Gilly jaded. She was looking for a pick-me-up.

She had noticed