Raymond Travis - The seductive sister-in-law

"I don't want to look conspicuous," he explained. "If we sit here like two gawkers somebody might suspect something."

Betty strained again to see if she could find her husband in any of the groups of three or four people talking on the open space of floor in front of them. In the corner where they were sitting it would be almost impossible for them to meet up with Kent and that was good, but she began to feel a little uncomfortable with her brother-in-law pressing insistently close to her as he was.

"I don't think we're going to have much luck in this corner," she said after a bit through the blur of cigarette smoke.

Suddenly Bob stood up. "You just stay right here," he said briskly. "I think I have an idea."

Before Betty could utter a protest about being left alone, he had disappeared out of the room. The groups of people standing masked in front of her were breaking off into couples now and some of them went into the interior of the apartment while others began dancing closely to the slow insistent beat of soft guitar music coming from the stereo set in the hallway. There was something openly provocative about how the dancers thrust their bodies up against one another in a kind of grinding movement that matched the sensuous rhythm of the electrified music; it was as though their masks had given them new identities and they were free to do as they pleased in their anonymity. Through the hallucinatory flicker of a "strobe light" that had been set up at the far side of the room, she made out the embracing forms of one couple who appeared exceptionally engrossed with each other. The man ran his hands over the woman's full sensuous breasts and the woman wrapped her hands around the man's buttocks, pulling his groin to hers as though they were in a standing copulation position. God, the two of them were actually "dry humping" as some of the more audacious girls in college had called it, right out in the open where everyone could see! But she doubted whether the others paid the least attention: they were too much a part of the pulse of the music to be aware of anything but the rhythm of their own bodies…

"Interesting, isn't it?" Bob spoke with a kind of animal purr in his voice when he sat down beside her.

"I-I didn't even see you come back into the room," she managed and took her refilled drink from his hand.

"Oh, you were too wrapped up with that little scene," he laughed. "But look closely. Those costumes hide more than you think they do."

The dimness of the room and the constant flicker of the strobe light made it almost impossible to discern more than the obscure outlines of two bodies thrusting back and forth against one another in time to the music, but eventually, as though she were putting together a puzzle, she focused with some clarity on the man's body. He was dressed in a Robin Hood outfit and a black eye mask slanted across his otherwise exposed face. Yes, there was no doubt about it. It was Kent's body, and Kent's mouth pressing against the woman's lips. After three years of marriage she would recognize him under any circumstances. Bob sensed her sudden tensing and slipped his arm across her waist as she sat up and leaned forward on the couch. She made no move to resist. The shock of suddenly recognizing her husband, Kent's, form made her totally incapable of resistance. She felt the softness of her breasts crushed tightly against Bob's chest and then she pulled back.

"You were right," she said, her voice trembling. "I-I wouldn't have believed it… but… I was stupid to have held out hope like that… one infidelity doesn't necessarily cancel out another."

She sat for a moment in stunned silence as Kent and the other woman continued dancing to a low primitively sensual voice on the stereo. The arms of the couple were hooked around one another's backs, their groins locked in an obscene gyrating embrace. Wild thoughts of suddenly denouncing Kent in front of everyone raced through her mind, but she knew that in the midst of this group where adultery was apparently the rule such a disturbance would be very much out of place. More than her own need not to make a spectacle of herself, she felt a desire to find out what he would do next. It was quite obvious that the short girl he was dancing with was Shirley; her large full upswinging breasts barely reaching to the base of his chest and the long swathe of blue-black hair pulled back across her toga-like costume betrayed her quite openly.

"That's my wife, alright," Bob sighed, as though reading her thoughts. "The rule was that no one would know what costume anyone else was wearing. But, Goddamn it, they're really loving it up."

Betty had been so involved in watching Kent and Shirley that she hadn't noticed another couple to the right of them who had been putting on a similar performance. She felt Bob's arm nudge her softly in the side. "Looks like the exhibitionists are taking over," he said sarcastically.

Betty sipped from her Pernod and peered through the darkness at the figures of a man and woman arched in a bending embrace to the side of a long low couch. The woman was running her hands rapidly up and down the man's groin; she had pulled the front of the peasant's dress she was wearing to her waist and he squirmed his fingers into her widespread and openly exposed loins. Suddenly the man reached toward the girl's frilly blouse and pulled it open. The young woman wasn't wearing a bra and her naked breasts popped out, quivering slightly, and the room seemed silent. A new record began playing on the stereo; it sounded somewhat eastern and exotic to Betty and its rhythms matched the lewd uninhibited movements of the lovers who had slipped to the couch.

"This is the second stage of the party," Bob said almost inaudibly. "The next plateau is when everybody starts sneaking off to bedrooms."

Betty nodded, her eyes glued to the incredible performance going on in front of her. She could see the details of the two bodies that were now half-naked with disturbing clarity. The girl was lying spread-eagled in the center of the large couch, her head rolling back and forth on a cushion, her face contorted with ecstasy. The man pulled his pants partially down his thighs and kneeled between her naked widespread legs, running his lips up and down her body. He sucked her heaving breasts into softly quivering hardness and then traced a path down to the flat plane of her spasmodically jerking stomach and inner thighs. The girl writhed beneath his steadily flicking caresses like a woman possessed. Her hands tangled in his hair, pulling his lips to the lightly trembling flesh of her belly.

Bob lit a cigarette and handed it to Betty. In a mechanical response, she raised it to her lips and continued watching the couple's strange performance that had mesmerized her into a mute acceptance of whatever might happen next. No, she hadn't wanted to come here, and it was against her best inclinations to stay any longer, but she was compelled to keep an eye on Kent, whatever the consequences. She dragged again on the cigarette Bob had given her. It had an odd sweet taste and it burned her throat, but its pungent odor almost soothed her, adding to the general light-headed feeling that she had gotten from the Pernod.

"What on earth is this?" she whispered to Bob.

"Strong hash," he said in a mock-ominous tone.

"You must be kidding," she exclaimed under her breath. "Doesn't it make you not know what you're doing?"

Bob leaned toward her impatiently, his eyes still fixed on the writhing couple on the couch in front of them. "It's no worse than Pernod. Probably a lot better for you, in fact. Just draw slowly on it and hold the smoke in your lungs as long as you can. I think it'll help you relax."

Reluctantly, she followed his instructions. After three or four inhalations, Betty could barely feel it going down it was so smooth. In college many of her friends had smoked marijuana and hashish, but she had heard that the drug led on to more addictive things and had refused their offers to "turn her on". She could hardly call herself in that state right now, but she certainly felt a bit more comfortable in the strange setting.