SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

MADGE PUTNAM stood by the window of her darkened bed room and stared across the hundred-odd feet of neatly kept lawn and shrubbery into the lighted bedroom of her next door neighbor, Amy Rowan, watching Amy wriggle out of her expensive silver lamé cocktail gown. The half-dozen Manhattans in her middle were a warm weight out of which silly laughter rose easily to her lips. 

"Shame on you, Amy Rowan," she giggled. "If you knew you were putting on a free show for the Acres! You're drunk, that's what you are." 

Her hands went behind her to the zipper of her own dress. Bill usually helped with her zippers but Bill was being a dear, staying downstairs to clean up after the guests on their Thursday night bridge club. She had come up to change into a housecoat so as to be a little freer to help. 

They had been entertaining the Rowans, the Sprotts and McCrarys at bridge. Bill liked bridge. It relaxed him, even though he played what Hilda Sprott called a "poker game." He had so few relaxations, Madge was glad to sit him down on occasion to get his mind off the Medical Center and his patients. Hilda was one of the better players in the crowd; she had been high for the girls, Bill for the men. 

The evening had gone off well enough, she supposed. No body got drunk and for once Eleanor McCrary Sunset Acres called her Nellie Mac-made no play for the men, crossing her shapely gams high up and drawing attention to them by kicking her foot up and down. Ted Rowan had restricted himself to three highballs. Even Tom McCrary was on his best behavior, actually concentrating on the cards when Hilda had taken him into Blackwood, winding up with a properly bid no trump grand slam. 

Sometimes she wondered about Nellie Mac and her flirtatious ways. Did she ever carry them out to their logical 

conclusion? Did she ever meet any of the husbands here in Sunset Acres at a roadside motel the way she was always saying she would, if only somebody asked her? Oh, Madge, stop getting ideas. Eleanor is just trying to liven up things. She'd be the first one to run to Tom for protection if anybody took her up on her offers. 

She suddenly realized she had been staring at Amy Rowan for the past few minutes, and that a slow change was coming over her body. A sense of the forbidden was making her breath come faster. She ought not to be looking like this, as a teenage schoolboy might, at Amy Rowan in her lingerie, crossing her bedroom with the lamé gown in a hand, standing at her closet door, reaching for a hanger. 

She felt a tiny stab of guilt but she could not close her eyes to blot out the sight of the shapely legs in blue silk stockings or the pale thighs seen through a lace mist of blue chiffon. Madge Putnam shook her head, biting down on her lip. 

Come on, Madge, old girl. Forget Amy Rowan. Just turn your back and walk to your own clothes closet and yank down your red taffeta housecoat—the one Bill gave you for Christmas-and slide into it. Bill is downstairs clearing the tables, putting the untouched food away in the fridge. You ought to be down there helping him. 

Only half conscious of her actions, she let her own white jersey cocktail gown pool at her feet and stepped out of it; bent to lift it and hold it in her arms as she went on looking. Amy had turned from the closet now and was standing with her head turned to one side, arms behind her back, fingers working at her bra snaps. 

Madge licked her lips. If I were Bill standing here and getting an eyeful, I could understand it. Men like to look at women undressing. There must be a touch of the voyeur in all of us, she thought, or maybe it's just common, everyday nosiness that makes us want to poke our attention on our neighbors. 

Nosiness, yes; but not this stifled, breathless enchantment. For it was enchantment. 

Her eyes could not get enough of staring, and her body shared their pleasure. Now the brassiere was sliding away and Madge bit down hard on her lower lip. She had not 

realized Amy to be so full, so firm. Almost unconsciously her lips pursed... 

In a blinding spasm of disgust, she whirled from the window and moved on trembling legs across the wall to wall carpeting to the sliding doors of her clothes closet. The guides made a faintly metallic whisper as she thrust back the divider. Her hand sought the hangers, found an unoccupied one and pulled it free, 

A touch of sanity came with the familiar custom of hanging up her dress, of lifting down the taffeta housecoat and tossing it onto the chintz counterpane. Her hands lifted to her forehead, pushing back a fallen lock of thick brown hair even as her eyes roamed the familiar outlines of bed stead and the matching wall pieces which were bureau and chifferobe, dressing table and secretary. There on the wall hung the framed abstractions Bill had bought for her birth day. Below them, on the legless vanity fastened to the wall, stood a Goodelmann bronze. 

These were a treasured part of her life. Each was as familiar to her as the sight of her face in the bathroom mirror. She put trembling fingers to her temples, stroking them, trying to drive away the memory of Amy Rowan as the black brassiere had fallen from her breasts. 

I am Madge Putnam, she whispered frantically deep in side her mind. I'm a happily married woman. I love my husband, Bill. Dr. William Spencer Putnam, to be exact. We have been living here in Sunset Acres in Westchester for the past six years, ever since we decided Bill would do better in a suburban development rather than in a big city like New York. 

She drew a deep breath, head back and eyes closed. 

I am thirty years old. In April Bill and I will celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary. We have no children be cause something is out of whack inside me, but that makes no difference between us. We love one another. Maybe I haven't been as loving as Bill would like over the years, but what wife is? Nobody has it made entirely. 

Why then should the sight of Amy Rowan taking off her clothes affect me with this breathless, molten sensuality? Madge put her hands to her cheeks, holding them and aware 

of their flushed heat as she stared blindly at the carpeted floor. 

I just have to get a grip on myself. It isn't like me to go haywire this way. I've seen a dozen women taking off their clothes at one time or another. If it were a man across the way, Ted Rowan for instance, or Dan Carty, then maybe there'd be some excuse for this excitement. 

"Silly," she whispered feverishly. "Silly, silly, silly to let this get such a hold on me. Two days ago I was with Amy at Molly Westbrook's house for tea. She is pleasant, a few years older than I am, and very normal. She has a twelve-year-old son.” 

She made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. "An amateur Freud, Madge Putnam, finding meanings where there's no place for them." 

And yet... 

She was molten lava in her middle, remembering the way the brassiere had fallen free and how those full white breasts had slid out, standing firm and round. Vaguely she was aware that her own breasts were lifting and filling, swelling solidly under her own brassiere as if in unconscious rivalry. She lifted her hands to them, squeezing, and the touch of her palms sent a wave of dizzying sensation lashing through her body. 

She said fiercely, "I've got to stop it, I've got to stop it. I'm like a peeping Tom. Or would it be Thomasina where a woman is concerned?” She tried to laugh but the laughter ended in a sob. 

Shaking her head as if with a loss of muscular control, she ran into the bathroom, touching the light switch with quivering fingers, bending above the pink enamel sink. The cold water came from the faucet in a flood. Madge held a wash cloth under it, then raised it to her flushed face. 

The coldness shocked her for a moment, driving out every sensation but that of contact. She pressed the cloth deeper into her flesh, quivering. She set the washrag down and stared at her reflection. Her hair was thick and brown, cut in a brush bang effect about an oval, sensitive face in which brown eyes stared back at her with the very faintest touch of mascara at their corners. Her lips were ripe and fully 

curved, a trifle too wide for perfection, but wide lips were generous lips. 

She was the same Madge Putnam she had always been. Even the way her fleshy shoulders rose upward from the strapless brassiere was reassuringly familiar. The crystal choker at her throat was over four years old and quite ordinary. The matching crystal earrings were commonplace enough. There was nothing new about her, nothing different, nothing changed. 

"Whoo," she breathed, smiling faintly. "You were going there for a while, girl. Now you march yourself into your bedroom and into that housecoat and go downstairs where poor Bill is working like a dog putting the house to rights and give him a hand.” 

Her hand tapped the switch. In the sudden darkness she crossed to the bed and was bending for the housecoat when she heard Bill coming up the stairs. 

"You all right, hon?” he called— 

"I'm fine. Just one too many of your dry Manhattans," she yelled back, lifting the housecoat, sliding an arm into a sleeve. "I was dousing my face with cold water." 

He was in the bedroom doorway, tall and lean in shirt sleeves and neatly pressed trousers, his narrow blue tie like a streak of darkness down his chest, saying, "You don't have to bother. Mary'll be here in the morning to put the place to rights. Go on. Shuck out of your things and hit the sack." 

He came across the room as he spoke, and his eyes touched the huge picture window that occupied all one wall of the master bedroom. Madge saw him pause and whistle softly. 

"Well, will you ever get a load of Amy Rowan!" Madge felt her throat go dry. "Bill, don't stare at her. It isn't nice. You—you wouldn't want Ted to look at me undressing, would you?" 

His chuckle was almost neighborly, she thought. "If you were to go around leaving your window drapes undrawn and with all your bedroom lights on, I could hardly blame him, now could I? Man, I didn't know she was that—" 

"Oh, Bill. Now you stop." She stared at her husband as if for the first time. He was a tall, lean man who wore suits with the mechanical ease of a clothes dummy. His black hair was cropped in a close crew-cut, and when he wore the horn-rim glasses he affected for reading, he looked like a young assistant professor at an Ivy League university. His mouth was mobile, quick to shape itself for laughter. The wide grin which had first attracted him to her those years before had blossomed with the years into a smile which, she had been told by more than one patient, gave him a perfectly magical bedside manner. 

Her Bill, as the song said. 

Jealousy stabbed into her abruptly. She came around the edge of the bed to catch him by an arm. 

"Bill, now stop!” she ordered. 

His eyes were gleaming brightly above her, drinking in what was taking place in that other bedroom. And enjoying it. Oh, yes. She could tell that, standing so close to him. Madge wanted to slap him and she wanted to throw her arms 

around him, begging for his love. 

He must stop staring. Now. At once. Her hand caught his arm, fingernails digging in. And then her own curiosity betrayed her. As she squeezed his arm, her head turned and her eyes went to the square of yellow light in the bedroom picture window of the Rowan house. 

Amy was standing before her vanity mirror, brushing her yellow hair, wearing a blue girdle, sheer blue nylons and high-heeled shoes. Madge drew a deep breath. 

"Honey, it isn't nice," she whispered, shaking Bill by the arm. "We shouldn't stand here watching her." 

His arm went around her waist, drawing her closer. "Sure. I know. Just the same all right. Go ahead. Pull the drapes." 

Madge moved to the pull-cords, caught them in a hand. One last glance she permitted herself into the lighted window. 

Amy was turning, hands moving to the garter-snaps, unfastening them, and then clasping the girdle zipper, drawing it down. Madge caught her breath, her fingers suddenly nerveless. The zipper was down all the way now and Amy was bending, pushing down the girdle. 

"Gets you too, doesn't it?" Bill whispered behind her. His hands were on the open housecoat, thrusting it off her shoulders. His fingers were at the brassiere hooks, undoing them, freeing her swollen flesh. 

“Bill—" 

His hands held her bare breasts, sliding around from be hind her. Madge gave a little cry and whirled, crushing her. self against him, arms reaching to draw his mouth down to her lips. Raw sensation stabbed her body. She had never experienced this madness, this forgetfulness of self, this abject surrender to her bodily needs. 

She moaned against the tongue that came searching her mouth. Bill was stroking her naked back gently and with steadily increasing pressure. Frantically she urged herself against him, discovering that she was hurtling down a greased slide into a maelstrom of incredulous delight. 

"Bill—oh darling! This is ridiculous! I'm an old married woman and I feel like a crazy schoolgirl all because I—" 

His lips crushed the words she would have spoken in a psychic confession of the guilt she felt because of having stared at Amy Rowan. His hands were gentle as they stroked the aching breasts and quivering thighs that needed so very desperately to be loved. 

His arms swung her up off her feet. He carried her toward their bed. 

In another part of Sunset Acres, Joe Sprott stood in his lighted bathroom, hurriedly swallowing a mixture of cold water and bicarbonate of soda. He was a tall, heavyset man in his early forties, addicted to high pressure business. An easy talker, a knowledgeable drinker, he could charm, as he liked to phrase it, "the pants off an old maid schoolteacher on a cold winter morning.” At the moment, Joe Sprott was worried 

His hand went to his side, pressing inward. He'd been having pains there lately, little stabbing bolts of agony. He kept telling himself it was only gas, and tried to forget them. He had too many things on his mind these days to bother about a couple of pains. 

There was the Loverett deal, for instance: half a million bucks worth of orders if he could get to Old Man Loverett who had built an idea about collapsible houses into a fifty million dollar industry right here in the heart of Westchester. 

The Loverett mills occupied a dozen acres of former farm land just off Washburn Road in Chappaqua, long buildings with every newfangled machine built that was capable of turning out house sidings and roof variations faster and better than anybody else. 

Old Man Loverett needed a lot of nuts and bolts. 

And he, Joe Sprott, sold nuts and bolts: his own brand. His father had begun the business fifty odd years ago. Now he was president and sole owner, his own best salesman. Maybe worth upwards of half a million, if he ever stopped 

to figure it out. 

He never liked to put on the dog, though. Lead a simple life in a simple community, live well within his means, put money back into the firm every now and so often, expand a little every few years. It was enough. What in hell did he want to give himself ulcers for? He had two factories, a Westchester office and a Chicago office. Maybe when Joe Junior was out of college and ready to step into an executive job, all right. Time enough then to let go with no holds barred and really go places. 

You needed a young man for that kind of pace. He could sit back then and run things from the home office, let young Joe do the running around. 

His burp came from deep inside him, seeming to relieve some of the pressure and the pain. His palm patted his abdomen. Bicarb and water, that was all the medication a healthy man needed. 

He needed to be healthy for more personal reasons, aside from the Loverett deal. There was Nellie Mac to be considered. A real figure of a woman, Eleanor McCrary, with a pair of knockers on her that absolutely made his mouth water. She'd been tossing her legs around long enough. Time somebody made the pitch to her, see if she was serious about her announced intentions of going to bed with any man who'd ask. 

Funny thing about it, when she got to spouting like that, her husband Tom only grinned and looked smug, as if he kind of expected it. He didn't seem a damn bit worried. Maybe he had good reason not to be; but just the same, tonight when he'd gone upstairs to the john he'd met Nellie Mac coming out, tugging down her girdle, smiling in the flirtatious way she had. 

"Damn thing's stuck," she complained, wriggling. “Give you a hand?” he'd asked with a grin. 

"All right, honey," she agreed, pulling her skirt up hip high, showing off her legs and the bottom of the black girdle. 

Remembering the fumbling eagerness with which his fingers had curled around the girdle, tugging at it, the backs of his hands flat against her fleshy hips, his breath came a little shorter. He'd never fooled around with a woman since he married Hilda, but hell! a man was only human and Nellie Mac looked like she wouldn't mind if he got a little personal. 

"There, it's fine now," she said, letting the skirt down as if to call a halt to the touch of his hands on her skin. 

He had turned her, brought her in against him, staring into the narrowed eyes. "You teasing? Or you mean what I'm hoping you mean?" 

"What do you think, Joe?"

"I'm not thinking right now," he said, and he wasn't. 

Her kiss had been moist and open, and even under the strictures of her bra and girdle, he'd sensed the lush softness of her body. They had pressed together in the upper hall, both of them beginning to get a little breathless. They spoke in whispers so the others wouldn't hear. 

“You kidding about meeting a man at a motel?”

"Not if it's the right man," she told him. 

"What about me? I'm my own boss. I could make it any time. Say, next Wednesday?" 

"Non-nnn. Not so fast, darling. I need time to think about it. I wouldn't want to hurt Tom. It'd have to be when he's out of town. He goes to a convention in early April." 

"Jesus, that's two months away!" 

Her palm smoothed his cheek as she slipped out of his arms. "Anxious, honey? That's what I like, an anxious man." 

He had watched her move down the stairs with a swing to her haunches that made his mouth go dry. She might be stuff, for all that she was a married neighbor. He would have to have himself some of that, come early April. He surely would. 

His hand reached for the bathroom toggle switch. He had the feeling it would take a healthy man to cope with Nellie Mac. Might be he ought to go see Doc Putnam before the pain got any worse. If there was something wrong with him he might be able to get it fixed by the end of March. 

Judy Landis lay sleepless. Twice now she had almost drifted off, only to be roused by some night sound cutting into her darkened bedroom and stirring around in her dreaming mind until it could not be shut out. Her hands balled into fists. She pounded them on the bed. 

"Jesus, what's the matter with me? Why can't I sleep?" 

She knew what the matter was, lying here with the blankets and the quilt pulled up to her chin. She needed a man. In her middle twenties she was still unmarried and uncourted, with no prospects looming on the horizon of her everyday world. Nobody she could open her arms to and cover with kisses, nobody she could cook a meal for, nobody she could 

let's be honest, Judy, darling!—nobody she could invite into her warm little bed in her warm little apartment off Crispin Place. 

Her fingers went into her thick black hair, moving it around as if its weight were keeping her awake, thinking about Dr. Putnam and working for him as his nurse, secretly aware that he was the one she really wanted. Too bad his wife was such a nice person or she might forget her nursing ethics and make a play for him. Being with him eight, ten hours a day would make it easy. 

But hell. 

A girl had some principles. At least, she did, more's the pity. Her wide eyes stared upward at the ceiling, watching the black shadow of a tree branch moving in rhythm with the late February wind, thinking about Doctor Bill and his eternal cheerfulness, his ready smile, his patience in the face of weariness and fatigue. 

Two days ago in an excess of delight at reading an article he'd done for the Medical Journal, he had clapped a palm to her rump and his surprise at not finding a girdle but only warm flesh awaiting his slap was visible in his gray eyes. She had giggled and he had grinned boyishly and for the first time in the eight months she had been working for him, she felt that he was seeing her as a person, not as someone in a white uniform who came and went at his requests. 

It ought not be too difficult to manage things so that in stead of slapping her fanny he'd pinch it. The distance be tween a pinch on the fanny and a kiss on the mouth was only a short step. 

"Oh my God," she muttered. "I'll never get to sleep now. I'll lie here until dawn scheming up ways of getting him to kiss me. And we have a rough day tomorrow.” 

Doctor Bill had the Ferguson operation scheduled for ten at the County Hospital, and a page-long list of patients to see between noon and three, before he began his house calls. No G.P. in Westchester worked harder than Dr. Putnam. It was a shame about that new hospital, too-the Moeringer Foundation—the way they were overlooking Bill Putnam when staff jobs were being handed out. He would be an ideal man for chief pathologist. 

She threw back the blankets and swung to the edge of the bed, sitting there in her short nightie and looking down at her legs exposed from hip to painted toenails. Nobody to see them, nobody to admire their shapeliness. She sighed, indulging in the luxury of self pity. 

"I might as well get up," she muttered. Maybe a cup of cocoa and a little plain cake would make her drowsy again. 

She foot-fumbled for her pink mules with the fluffy pompoms, and reached for the dressing gown thrown across the foot of her bed. There was a full moon out and she had no need of a light to cross the quilt rug and stand at the window, staring out over Elmtree Square and up past Merriweather Hill toward distant Sunset Acres. 

Dr. Bill lived up there in that exclusive development, playing a grownup game of king of the hill. The higher you live, the better your status. Still, Sunset Acres was no Waverly Heights, where Dr. Burton Moeringer lived. Burton Moeringer was chief benefactor and deus ex machina to the Moeringer Foundation and its new hospital even now nearing completion on Purchase Street in White Plains. Doctor Moeringer dictated what physician could occupy rooms in his new edifice, which surgeon would be permitted to use its breathtaking operative facilities. 

But not Dr. Bill Putnam. 

Judy felt anger move inside her. It just wasn't fair! 

She drew the coral wrapper closer and turned from the window, moving with a hip-shifting walk and with one hand tangled in her thick black hair toward the door of her kitchenette. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of herself in the door-length closet mirror, and paused to stare. She looked like a jade, she did indeed. 

Big mouth half open as if for kisses and long-lashed eyes that seemed to be always on the verge of sleep, with skin the color of fresh milk showing at her slim ankles and throat where the wrapper failed to cover her. Somebody for a man to pull down into bed with him for a merry romp and a laugh and a clap on the behind when he was done, the way Bill Putnam had clouted her. Only he hadn't finished. 

She bit her lip and wondered if he'd ever begin. 

"Honestly, Judy," she told her reflection. "Are you so hard up that you have to daydream about your happily married boss this way? Leave the man a little privacy." 

She giggled at her thoughts. If he were here right now maybe stretching lazily in her big bed—she would not be wearing the coral kimono. Probably he wouldn't even let her wear the short nightie though goodness knows it didn't hide very much. She held the negligee away from her and considered her mirrored body with head tilted sideways. 

Mmmm, not bad for an ordinary, garden-variety nurse. Showgirl legs and nice hips for one thing, and a slim waist. The upper balcony was all right, too, a solid thirty-eight, B cup. The sheer lace of the nightie bodice failed to hide the firm nipples which were about the size of quarters. All this and that smudge of darkness at her groin going to a cold, cruel waste. There ought to be a law for bachelorettes. 

She closed the wrapper and tied its coral belt. 

It was almost three in the morning. Better forget Dr. Bill until ten o'clock and then think of him only as that rising young medical genius, Dr. Putnam, and of Judy Landis as his hired hand. 

She stuck out her tongue at herself. 

Tom McCrary lay flat on his back with his hands behind his head, staring blindly at the ceiling. Eleanor was still at the vanity bench, putting up her hair, making the ordinary sounds of a woman preparing for bed, the soft rustle of pajamas as she moved, the shuffle of mules on carpeting as she shifted her feet. They were good, comforting sounds, reassuring. 

"Nellie?"

“Hmmm?"

"You think Joe Sprott will fall for it?"

“They always do, don't they?" 

Was that bitterness in her voice? He pondered that, lying there, then came up to an elbow, staring at her. "You getting cold feet?” he demanded harshly. 

"Should I get cold feet?”

"What's biting you then?" 

She swung about on the white leather bench and stared at him. “Nothing's biting me. You sound like the one with a monkey on his back. Relax, will you? Everything's going according to plan. Joe Sprott is set to trot. My, that's a little like poetry, isn't it? Joe Sprott is set to trot. Yes. He is." 

He lay back into the soft mattress, relieved. 

"We got a good thing going for us," he reminded her. "I wouldn't want to spoil it." 

"Nothing will get spoiled."

"I hope not."

"Have I ever failed you?" 

He chuckled. One thing about Nellie, she was as eager for this as he was himself. Sometimes he thought she had a little nympho in her. There were times in the past when he suspected she might have carried on for a while with one of their eager beavers before reporting that he was set up for the kill. The thought of that made him growl low in his throat, but cold reason calmed his temper. 

Nellie was too valuable to break up with, even if she did go on a fling with their victims every once in a while. He supposed he had to make allowances. Women like Eleanor were not found on every street corner. She had to have breeding and poise, good looks and a kind of sensuality. She had to play the part of discontented wife in such a way that she aroused no suspicion. Suspicion would have proved fatal. 

She had to like travel, too. They'd moved ten times in the past dozen years, usually with a profit from selling the house, too. One of these days they might even settle down somewhere and live like normal folks. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, even if it had made them reason ably wealthy. 

The fact that the McCrarys moved a lot was a standing joke at the office. His fellow workers at Hazeltine and Cummings thought he made a business of selling his homes. They had him tabbed for a pinch-penny, an opportunist who'd sell his own grandmother if he could make a buck on her. Let them. Nobody but Nellie and he knew about their different bank accounts which, at last addition, had totaled up wards of eight-seven thousand dollars. 

Eleanor was leaning back, stretching and yawning. His eyes ran over her white body under the thin pink night gown. She was built, all right, the kind of build that attracted a man. It was part of their stock in trade; the only part that mattered, really. 

Sleep was a long time coming. 

Amy Rowan was also wide awake. 

She stood at the picture window in the darkened bedroom of her modern ranch house, staring out at the clumps of azaleas and junipers that bordered her back lawn and formed a dividing line between her property and that of the Putnams. A faint smile twisted the corners of her full mouth. 

Well, Madge? Did you see enough tonight? 

Enough to make you realize that under that trim little housewifely exterior of yours beats a heart that can be taught to pound in rhythm with my own? Enough to start the weakness flooding into the knees and the excitement into the blood, turning your loins to bubbling sap? As no mere man had the power to do? I think so, Madge. In fact I'm positive of it. 

I have been eyeing you for a long time now, ever since the second day Ted and I moved to Sunset Acres, back in August of last year. You were wearing white sharkskin shorts and a matching halter, and there was a trowel in your hand. I think it was mountain laurel you were planting. I looked at your tanned legs and you blushed. Oh my God, darling you blushed. 

I was amused at first. Ted and I reached an agreement long ago, you know. We never bother each other with our little conquests. Let him have his waitresses and the secretaries he meets. I couldn't care less if he wants to share a hotel bed with some little nobody who doesn't know any better. And as for me-well, he understands. 

Will your Bill be as understanding when I take you away from him? Oh, I will, darling Madge. My campaign began a long time ago. Tonight was only an added fillip designed to open your eyes to your basic nature, to make you understand your inner self a little better. 

Tomorrow or the next day you will be as a moth to the flame, running over here to test yourself against my attraction for you. You'll find an excuse to get me to touch you in some way or to show yourself off to me, in a kind of unconscious search for reassurance. 

I've seen it happen before, to other women. They did not consider themselves susceptible, either. 

They thought they were very safe in their humdrum little worlds, with husbands and children, without a weakness. Smug and contented until I opened their eyes to the wonder of their own bodies. Oh, I do so enjoy teaching them how very dependent on me they can become! I never weary of the game, only of the victims who fall so easily into my hands. 

As easily as you will fall, Madge dear. 

Just as easily will I weary of you and send you back to your precious Bill. He probably won't even know anything has happened. Men are so obtuse. It's safer that way, with the men dull and unimaginative. They never suspect a woman can be a rival. 

Amy stretched lazily, alone in her darkened bedroom. 

She had not played the game for a long time now, almost a year. Certainly not since she and Ted had moved to Sunset Acres, though she had been busy enough in a mild sort of way laying the foundations with Madge Putnam. There had been so many things to do after moving up here into Westchester that she'd had little time for amusement. 

Just a few times with Madge... 

The afternoon she had insisted upon teaching pretty Mrs. Putnam to dance the mambo for instance, holding her with an arm about her middle and pressing her breasts into her until Madge flushed and stammered in embarrassment, pretending that her own bosom had not hardened in response. She herself had played the cheerful bit, talking and making drinks-martinis, they were, she remembered-joking about Bill and Ted being hard at work while their wives were having themselves a ball. 

Then there was the day in early September when she had driven Madge and Pamela Trent to the beach with all of them in their bathing suits and Madge sitting between herself and Pamela, her thigh soft against her own. She had brought along a thermos of daiquiris which she kept feeding Madge until she would not notice the hand that patted her rumpor touched her firm breast as if by accident. 

Remembered moments in a campaign of seduction. 

Now the skirmishing was just about over. It was time to move in for the kill. 

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