The Sweet Caress by Roberta Latow Page B

my seduction of the lady is complete. When next we meet she invariably falls into my arms.’
    Jessica read the book and came to the conclusion that Tom Salinger was, as she had suspected, a master on the subject of sexuality and depravity and a libertine in the fullest sense of the word. Clearly, she and Tom were sexual kindred spirits and though she was interested in travelling the erotic road with him for the sheer thrill of discovering where it might take them, she tantalised them both by resisting his advances – for the moment. There was the work with him to be getting started on, and a budding friendship she was enjoying. But the temptation to succumb to Tom became stronger the more he revealed himself to her. The idea that highly sophisticated and decadent sex might be found in a puritanical New England college town excited her interest and teased her desire to experience it.
    Luke was spending Christmas Day at his sister’s house some fifty miles away. He did not invite Jessica to join him there because he felt she might feel a family affair at such an emotional time as Christmas would suggest more of acommitment than she was ready to accept, and he would have been right. Instead, he asked her to celebrate Christmas with him over dinner at Wiggin’s Tavern. A meal there on Christmas night meant old world New England dressed in pine and spruce and red ribbon, wreathes of holly, fresh apples and oranges and nuts, open fires, and a relay of carol singers. The men wearing black tie and the women long dresses and the children in their best party frocks. The menu was always the same: traditional New England Christmas fare of turkey with all the trimmings, and a fine claret.
    Jessica knew that he was inviting her to dinner at Wiggin’s Tavern for
her
and she declined the invitation, for
him
. ‘Two traditional Christmas dinners in one day?’ she said. ‘No, I think not. Why don’t you come to dinner at Rose Cottage for our Christmas?’
    He accepted.
    Her invitation to Tom for that evening was a spur of the moment decision. She had been inspired to ask him when a few days before Christmas he had remarked that the best Christmas he had ever had was in Shanghai in the company of a young and beautiful woman, the mistress of a friend of his. She had been given to him for one night as a Christmas present. Her name was Jade and she had been instructed by her lover to amuse him with a night of sex, food, and other playmates, both men and women. Christmas had never seemed the same after that.
    On Christmas Day a blizzard came whirling down from Canada and struck New England, crippling Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. Luke was stranded in Connecticut and missed Jessica’s Christmas night dinner, ten succulent north Chinese dishes cooked to perfection.
    In Rose Cottage she and Tom had just sampled the succulent Peking duck when Tom rose from his chair and made room for Jessica on the table. Taking her by the hands,he helped her from her chair and removed from her the ivory chopsticks she was still holding. He placed them across a bowl and led her round to the end of the table where he told her, ‘I know a better way to consume this Christmas feast.’ He raised the skirt of her evening dress and placed his hands round her waist to lift her on to the table. Tom joined her there with trousers undone and his sex rampant. He wrapped her legs round his middle and thrust himself into her. Raising her on and off him several times, he felt the rush of warmth, that special female nectar sweeter than any drink of the gods.
    Tom was enchanted with her erotic freedom; from his first sight of her he had sensed that he would be. He undid the zip at the back of her dress and dropped it off her shoulders to expose her breasts. He felt the weight of them in his hands and was delighted by how sensitive they were to his fondling of them. Her nipples went immediately erect, the nimbus puckered. He felt her grip his