She smiled, reminded of the classic Twilight Zone episode, and pulled the book from the shelf. The pages fell open to a pen and ink illustration of a naked woman, her hands tied behind her back, kneeling in front of a masked man who held her hair in one fist and a whip in the other. She appeared to be giving him fellatio.
Sam’s eyes bugged out. “What kind of book is this?”
She flipped through the pages, finding illustration after illustration of how exactly the beautifully muscled man should be served. His cock was thrust variously between the woman’s bound breasts, into her mouth, into her vagina and into her anus while the woman knelt, crouched on all fours or was bound to the wall or bed.
The pen and ink sketches were beautifully rendered, every straining muscle and fervent expression as clear as if the book’s pages were windows into a strange black and white world. She expected the man’s features to be twisted into the self-satisfied smirk her ex-husband had worn every time events confirmed his position at the center of his own universe. But she didn’t recognize the man’s expression as one she’d ever seen.
After a brief struggle, Sam dismissed the puzzle as unimportant. Instead, she was transfixed by the expression of bliss the artist had drawn on the woman’s face. On page after page whenever her face could be seen, she appeared nearly transported by rapture. As if the heady ecstasy could be transmitted through the paper upon which it was drawn, Sam found her own breath growing shallow, her nipples tightening and her pussy heating.
Lightly she traced her finger over the woman’s spread thighs, stretched nearly into a full split as she sank onto the reclining man’s cock. Sam’s own thighs burned imagining being spread that wide. Her ass muscles tightened and her pussy dripped hot lubricant into her panties. Her lips were spread as wide open as the woman’s in the picture, ready to claim the man’s thick cock for herself.
She wriggled uncomfortably, trying to rub her clit against the seam of her jeans and get some relief. Her breasts tingled, the nipples tight and hard, and her lungs labored to draw breath.
For the first time in weeks she felt truly alive. She had to have this book.
Stuffing it into her tote, she hurried up to the counter. The clerk rang up the romances without comment then paused when she saw the leather tome.
“To Serve Man. I don’t remember seeing this one come in.” She reached for the cover to flip it open.
“It’s a cookbook,” Sam blurted. “Get it? To serve man?”
“Oh.” The clerk pushed the book unopened into the pile with the romances. “I just do the fiction sections. That’ll be nineteen dollars and fifty-six cents.”
Sam’s hands barely trembled as she counted out the money then scooped her books back into her tote. Her blood sang with a heady mixture of daring and dread. She’d die if anyone saw the contents of this book. And she could hardly wait to get home and read it in private. Carefully she stowed the tote in the trunk of her mother’s car, braced in the corner of one of the empty cardboard boxes kept there to prevent bags of groceries from sliding around.
It took three tries before she could force herself to close the trunk lid. The book seemed to be calling to her, begging her to read it immediately. Locking it away caused a physical wrench in her chest and she had to fight not to pop the trunk and retrieve it. Instead she hurried around to the driver’s seat and drove off to pick her mother up at the physical therapist’s.
She arrived just as the session was ending. The therapist praised her mother’s progress and reminded her to continue exercising. Sam shook her head, anticipating her mother’s response.
“I try. But it’s so hard. It’s too hot to go walking during the day and the pain keeps me up during the night so I’m too tired to go out first thing in the morning. And you know what the traffic is like in the evening. It’s not safe to walk on the roads.”
“Well, make an effort. Every little bit helps.”
They left the therapist’s office, her mother leaning on Sam’s arm. Instead of going to where the car was parked, they walked to the luncheonette in the same plaza.
Somehow Sam made it through the soup and sandwiches, listening to her mother’s health complaints and what history suggested was a highly selective recitation of what the doctor had said, even while her mind played over and over again the images she’d seen in the book. Fortunately her part of the conversation consisted mostly of nodding her head and saying, “Mm-hmm.”
By the time the waiter delivered their check Sam could barely breathe, her chest was so tight. Her breasts ached, the nipples hard and painfully sensitive, the light press of her elasticized bra nearly enough to make her come. Her panties were soaked through, her pussy hot and wet and begging for that gorgeous man’s long, thick cock to be buried deep inside her. She’d almost rested her water glass in her lap in a desperate attempt to cool herself down before she realized how the condensation would stain her jeans. So she fidgeted and counted to ten in base 2 through base 8 and tried desperately not to let what she was thinking show on her face.
As she counted out the money for their meal, her mother said, “Here I’ve been running on and on. How about you? Did you enjoy your trip to the bookstore?”
Sam’s cheeks heated. Her mother had no idea—and she had to keep it that way! “I got a whole bunch of books this time. Romance and fantasy mostly. I can hardly wait to start them.”
They left the restaurant, her mother making the drive home an interminable hell as she adjusted and readjusted her seat, all the while complaining about the speed at which Sam drove as well as every pothole in the road, which were all well and good for healthy people, but she was injured and couldn’t be shaken around like a sack of pota
toes. Sam’s efforts to modulate her driving to suit her mother warred with her need to race home as quickly as possible. She breathed a soft sigh of relief as she finally pulled into the driveway, throwing the car into park and counting to ten before slowly unclenching her fingers from the wheel.
“Come on, Mom. I’ll put the pillows on the love seat for you and you can have a little rest.”
Her mother opened her own door and unclipped her seat belt then sat waiting until Sam circled around to hand her out of the car. Slowly they walked to the house, her mother leaning heavily on Sam’s arm.
The smell of citrus-scented cleaner greeted them as they stepped inside the gleaming foyer. But it was no longer the only clean room in the house. In the past four months every cobweb and dust speck had been eradicated.
Sam positioned her mother’s pillows on the love seat then helped her mother stretch out for a rest, covering her with a light cotton throw knitted in an airy feather and flame pattern.
“You relax too, Sam.” Her mother’s eyes drifted closed. “Read one of your new books. I know how much you enjoy reading.”
“I’ll be in the workshop. But I’ll have my cell phone. If you need me when you wake up, just call.”