“Can I help?”

“Yes. I want you to watch. I’ll tell you what to do.”

Ronda took the larger of the bullet-shaped vibrators and plunged it into her cunt as she turned onto her stomach. The smaller one she held in her right hand as the fingers of her left hand separated her labia so the tip of the vibrator would caress her clitoris.

Her voice was unsteady. “I’m about to start coming. When I start, I want you to spank my ass. Hard. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, lover. Whatever you say.”

Ronda’s hips rotated around the vibrator in her cunt and her breath came in shorter and shorter gasps until she shouted., “Now.”

Angela’s palm slapped the taut flesh of Ronda’s butt over and over as she came again and again.

“That’s good. Make it burn. Harder!”

Finally, Ronda rolled onto her back, her body relaxed, and she tossed the vibrators aside. “Give me a hug.”

The two women slept in each other’s arms.

The next time Ronda made dinner for Angela was a week later when Jeff was home because Angela agreed to try to discover more of his motives and means. Ronda served braised green beans, broccoli, and baked lamb with a Merlot. She wore the outfit she’d put on when she had thought she’d be going out to dinner with her husband. Dessert was chocolate mousse. When they finished eating, Jeff excused himself and said he had to be back at the office to handle some phone calls to Japan while it was business hours their time.

“See what I mean?” Ronda exclaimed as she poured another glass of wine. “Asshole doesn’t even stay around to talk. He meets you, eats, leaves. That’s it. Business. Asshole. He didn’t even notice that I’m dressed to kill. He didn’t even notice that I’m not wearing any underwear. He should have told you to get lost and fucked me. Asshole.”

“I don’t know. I can see why you were attracted to him, for sure. He’s tall, dark and handsome as they say.”

“That’s the other thing. Why does he work out downtown instead of here? And why work out at all? If there’s not another woman? He hasn’t just had a baby after all.” They both laughed and Ronda kicked off her high heels and began clearing the table in her stocking feet.

“He’s coming back tonight?” Angela helped carry the dishes into the kitchen where Ronda put them in a dishwasher.

“He’ll call and say he was delayed. Wait and see.”

“But I can tell you that when he left he intended to come back tonight.”

“He always intends to be on time, or to come back. He just never does it. What else did you see?” Ronda reached up to the wine rack and extracted another bottle of the same Merlot.

“He loves you very much.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Ronda had extracted the cork with her air pressure device and poured the two glasses full. “Let’s go into the living room. Why do you say he loves me?”

“Well, for one thing, at supper I could pick up on the images in his mind.”

“Let me guess. He was thinking about fucking you.”

“Oh, you have the talent too?”

“No, but you’re a beautiful woman and he’s a man. And I know the asshole.”

They sat in blue velvet upholstered armchairs with a coffee table between them.

“You’re half right.”

“How’s that?”

“He was thinking about fucking me. And I have to say, that was pleasant for me. It was pure animal lust.”

“Told you so. He’s got another woman.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? There it was, he was fucking you in his mind.”

“Well, he was also fucking you.”

“How does that work? I mean he’s only got one dick.”

“Okay, making love with both of us then. I don’t have any dick at all and neither do you and we make love.”

“Oooh, the best love that I’ve ever experienced. That’s for sure. I know he’s not capable of that. He’s tried. Besides, isn’t that supposed to be every man’s fantasy? Fucking more than one woman at a time?”

“Well, with standard equipment like you and I and he all have, how original can it get? There are limited possibilities.”

Pushing in. Prodding, insistent, demanding, painful. But filling and satisfying. Angela picked up Ronda’s image and said, “Did you like it?”

“The anal sex? He only did it once or twice and it kinda hurt, to tell the truth. I didn’t get off on it. You?”

“I liked it the times I’ve done it. Not that much, but I like to masturbate and feel myself being fucked from behind like that. You haven’t told him about us.”

“Should I?”

“Up to you. But love hides nothing. If you love him as much as you say, why do you keep secrets from him?”

“Because I think he’s lying to me. Japan? Do you buy that?”

“I do.”

“Put one of your operatives on him. He’ll lead her right to his snatch. He’s fucking someone else. Or someones. How does that go? Someones else like attorneys general, or someone elses?”

“Maybe you’ve had enough wine. I think I’d say ‘other people’, or ‘other women’.”

“Are you saying…”

“No, I didn’t get that. Although we’re-”

“I’ll bring the bottle,” Ronda said as she walked unsteadily back to the kitchen. “Why do you say he loves me?” As she leaned over to fill her wineglass, she looked up to see Angela’s appreciative eyes on her breasts. She set the opened bottle on the coffee table. “Thanks for that.”

“What?”

“Appreciating my boobs.”

“You are getting psychic.”

“But why do you say he loves me?”

“I think that for him the idea of giving all means money. I think he believes that he’s proving his love for you with this house and the cars and the money-that he thinks of his work as giving himself to you.”

“Asshole.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He knows better. Shit, he loved me better when we lived in a trailer park.”

“You guys lived in a trailer park?”

“Yeah, all this rich person stuff is fake. You could tell I wasn’t from money. Those folks don’t go to libraries. Not to check out books. We lived in a trailer house when he was going to business school. He was good at school, but at least when we had no money, there was nothing better to do than stay home and fuck me. He got a corporate job and rose through the ranks. Just when they were downsizing and firing all their middle management people, he was on the way up. Now he’s a fucking VP at Bowman, Lyons and Heartland.”

“Oh, is that who he works for? Isn’t he afraid that’ll happen to him? That he’ll get downsized.”

“Of course he is. That’s why he says he’s always working. But I’d rather be poor and better loved.”

“Poverty ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.” Angela filled her glass.

“But sure, he’s afraid. He’s done it enough times to others, he knows it’s just a matter of time ‘til someone does it to him. He’s worked out some kind of golden parachute deal, though. He’ll be richer if they fire him than if they keep him.”

“And they wonder why our economy is going to hell. And it’s not because of me not driving my car and using up gas. He told you about the Chinese ship-the junk?”

“Oh yeah, he used to always talk about that when were in the trailer park, when we were poor. He had this fantasy of getting on a Chinese junk and just sailing around the world, doing nothing.”

“Well, that was the setting for what he was imagining tonight at supper.”

The phone rang. Ronda arched her eyebrows in a question. “Want to bet he’s detained by business in Japan?”

“Hello,” she said melodically into the telephone. “What? Business in Japan? You have to go there? Oh well, I’ll see you next week on Thursday… I’m glad you liked the food… Yes, she’s still here… I’ll tell her you said so… Bye.

“Asshole. I told you he’d do it. He says to tell you it was a pleasure to meet you. He wants to fuck you.”

“He didn’t say that.”

“No, you said that. Come on, let’s make love.” Ronda pulled her dress over her head and stood in front of Angela dressed only in her thigh-high stockings, her breasts, stomach and pubis shining in the indirect light.