David Martin: Loaned wife

He'd keep playing just long enough to win it back, and maybe a little more. Then he'd quit it for good and be the husband and father they deserved.

Of course he would. Just like the other times.

He drained the beer and went up to bed, pausing in the bathroom just long enough to empty his bladder. He didn't even notice the once-exciting scent of his wife's pussy on his pillow, or its dampness.

His mind was preoccupied with his wagers.

He even dreamed about them, when sleep finally came.

Tom awoke to the smell of percolating coffee, the odor spiraling up the stairs, down the bedroom hall to his nose, there to tickle and tease him awake.

He resented the awakening. He had been in a fine dream – Vegas, the big table, riding a streak. The other gambling had stopped and all the customers had come over to watch him. The dealers and croupiers stood at the other tables, lonely sentinels, without even the cigarette girls for company. They, too, had come to his table, for that was where their customers were.

After the fourth straight point – nine – he'd begun letting it all ride. He could feel the power in his fingers, knew that he couldn't miss.

Again and again, he rode, his pile growing geometrically. At some point, he had decided – not hoped, but decided – to break the house, to empty the casino's coffers in memory of all the two-bit games from which he'd walked empty handed. He was going to strike back for all the little guys who'd come to Vegas with dreams and left after forty continuous hours without a cent.

He could feel the eyes of the people on him, and he knew that they were making him stronger. From time to time, they would look at the croupier, that legendary glacial figure who never became ruffled. He could see great bullets of sweat popping out on his forehead and knew that the croupier was frightened. And with good reason.

One more hit and Tom would wipe out the casino.

He followed the croupier's eyes to the back of the crowd, and saw there three men with an aura, if not a look, of importance about them. The owners. They knew, as well. Yet they also knew that to back down, to refuse the bet, would destroy them. Even more important, there was their personal, sporting code and they abided by it.

He picked up the dice, weighing them in his hand. He knew he would take it, knew that the first throw would be a natural seven.

He turned and saw the eyes of one of the cigarette girls on him, the one who always smiled when she saw him. She was tall, willowy, icy blonde and pale – and haughty, with a turned-up nose like Allison's.

He'd returned the smile, coolly, then turned back to the table. The green felt seemed to stretch out forever, and there at the sides were the boys he played with each Thursday.

As he shifted the cubes in his fingers, the odor of coffee rose to his nose, breaking his concentration, sapping his power. What was coffee doing in the casino?

He tried to shrug it off, cocking his arm for the throw, sweeping it forward through what had become almost a brown haze of coffee, his fingers opening…

His eyes opened to the morning. "Oh, shit," he moaned, knowing that he had to get up, and that, in any event, the dream could not be reclaimed.

Grunting, he sat up in bed and took a deep breath and grimaced. His mouth tasted as if a vacuum cleaner bag had been emptied into it.

It was not going to be one of his better days.

He forced himself up and stumbled into the shower and twenty minutes later, looking almost alive, he sat at the kitchen table.

Janet came over to him, most of her clearly visible as she stepped through a sunbeam. She leaned down to kiss him, the front of her peignoir opening to give him a great view of her tits, clear down to the nipples, and he smelled the faint scent of lilacs.

"Good morning, master," she said. "How'd it go last night?"

He forced himself to nod.

"Did you win?"

"A little," he lied, hating himself for it. "Six bucks." As far as Janet knew, the most he'd ever lost was twenty dollars. She'd said nothing that time, just looked at him with those big, hurt, reproachful eyes.

"Where's Penny?" he asked. His daughter's appearance an a warm, early summer morning, all fresh scrubbed rosy cheeks and long, flashing legs and pony tails bobbing with little mosquito bites of breasts pushing cutely at her shirt was enough to brighten his morning.

He corrected himself. The mosquito bites had gown. Considerably.

"She doesn't have to be in till ten today, so I lot her sleep. This is the last day of the year, you know, and all she has to do is go in for her report."

"Oh," He sipped at the coffee, found it tepid, and swigged it down. "Another cup, please?"

"Sure, whatever you want, master," she said. It sounded somehow reproachful and he felt guilty.

He had another cup of coffee on the train to the city. And when he reached his office, he was finally awake – fully.

Which meant that he could only contemplate his losses more clearly.

He went to his office, composing his face so as to appear deep in thought, the better to avoid acknowledging the calls of "Good morning, Mr. Jamison!" as he went through the different cubicles.

Tom Jamison was a sales manager for that same tire company, long, hard-working years after the day when he'd met Janet while filling tire orders in Washington. He had a private office, a walnut paneled room with a large window and plush carpeting underfoot.

He'd no sooner settled behind the wide chrome and rosewood desk and reached for the intercom button when the door opened and his secretary walked in.

Flowed in.

Allison Warner was one of the girls who would always get the finer things in life, the breaks, the cream – and she would get them one way or another. She was young – barely twenty-three – very pale blonde, with creamy, ivory skin, bright blue eyes and a pair of lips that men wanted only to cover with their own. She always wore a pale shade of lipstick, to make her lips look cool and untouchable, knowing full well that they were too lush, too pouting for the effect to work, that the pastel shades would only make her the more desirable.

She was tall and willowy, very long-legged, with flat, boyish buttocks and lanky thighs that rippled beneath her dresses. Her throat was graceful and smooth, and she had a way of holding her head just so that made it seem that she was challenging men to persuade her to… to anything.

She had high, firm breasts that fit the palms of Tom Jamison's hands perfectly, with large, strong nipples that swelled out into his fingers like walnuts when she was aroused.

She flowed into the room. In her hands were a tray and on the tray was coffee and orange juice. It wasn't brought out of tenderness or thoughtfulness; he knew that. He knew she perpetrated such considerations for the same reason she did everything: because it might get her something.

"Good morning, Mr. Jamison," she said brightly, in subtle contrast to the bird cries of the others.

He nodded. His eyes were fixed on her slim, taut body beneath the simple summer dress she wore. It was deep blue, with white hem and accent stripe, and the combination only served to heighten her aura.

But as she walked, her legs glided beneath the dress and her breasts thrust against the fabric. It was almost sufficiently lightweight to make out the coloration of her nipples beneath, but not quite. It was almost flimsy enough to make her pubic patch visible as a silvery fire glinting beneath – but not quite.

Enough to tease, he thought angrily, knowing all the same that he wanted her.

She carried the tray around to his side of the desk, rustling to stop beside him and placing it on the desk. Her arm brushed his and for a moment, he thought the twist of her body would press one of those perfectly formed tits against the side of his head.