Penthouse Read Free Page B

her, shecreamed and had to change panties. And only her tighter bras cinched in the disturbingly protuberant erection of her nipples,
     which drenched her D-cup brassieres as well.
I’m all twat,
she thought half proudly, but wondering—a little worried, too—where her increased sexual urge would end.
    Crystal had also noticed that the more wildly she thrashed on Fen’s axis of love, the more needy she got. Satisfaction seemed
     to be losing its meaning for her. Instead, the act of sex hoisted her to a new plateau of heightened yearning. For the past
     week, when she and Fen made love, Crystal grew wild for an encore. And this she did not usually get. The vet had been her
     first infidelity. She and Fen made love in the morning when he was hyped from hitting the books. That one morning, as soon
     as he’d pulled out of her, she bounced out of bed and took Sammy to Dr. Padillo’s. The appointment was for nine-thirty, and
     there was no time to crown sex with Fen by masturbating on the bathroom rug. That was probably what set things off with Padillo—her
     sheer, insatiable needs. But she wanted to be careful. With a doctor for a husband, so much was at stake that she was no longer
     seeking out men.
    Crystal doted on Sammy. She liked to think of herself as a dog person, but an attractive woman—let alone a gorgeous, leggy,
     ripe-breasted sex siren like Crystal—could not walk a dog safely around the hospital at night. So she had decided to adopt
     a cat. She wanted a crossbreed, and would have gone to a shelter except that Fen was afraid of bringing in some awful disease.
     Instead she had heard about Dr. Padillo, this vet in the seventies on Amsterdam, who gave away homeless cats with all their
     shots done free. Fen hated the cat. Crystal tried to placate Fen—she knew which side her bread was buttered on—but she would
     notbudge on wanting a cat. It always calmed Crystal to think how she had got what she wanted—Fen. She used this ticket to lower
     her hormonal temperature now. Crystal was a nurse whose fondest wish, like that of most of her profession, had been to marry
     a doctor. As soon as Fen passed the licensing exams, he would be an M.D. Poor fellow—he had delusions about becoming an Albert
     Schweitzer, but Crystal had more sensible plans. She was in the process of convincing him he could save just as many lives
     on Park Avenue. Crystal was Manhattan-born and trained, and she had a survivor’s cynicism overlying her basically warm heart.
     Crystal was positive that a mild-mannered, towhaired Danish pediatrician would have the mothers of the East Side eating out
     of his hand.
    Sammy looked more raccoon than cat. Crystal was proud when people asked if he was really a raccoon. She thought his lineage
     must contain a raccoon ancestor somewhere. Fen maintained that this was genetically impossible, but how could the science
     of genetics explain Crystal Fine Olsen herself ? Huguette, Crystal’s mother, a ballet teacher not yet in her fiftieth year,
     was a majestically beautiful Haitian, black as ebony, thin as a rail. Her father was a Russian Jew with an intelligent, friendly,
     generally dark, Mediterranean-style face and a slight, sinewy build. He sold marine insurance. He had gotten a free cruise
     once on a boat to Bermuda, where her mother’s dance troupe had been performing. They married and settled in New York because
     this was the city where they could live unremarked, an unconventional, interracial couple bypassed and, because they had severed
     connections with family, atomized, yet neither heckled nor hurt. Then came
bebe
Crystal, their only child. Reuben Fine saw Crystal come down the slide in the delivery room. There was no questioning she
     wasHuguette’s, or, he was confident, his. The translucent, pale-cream skin and pink-gold hair were remarkable features in themselves,
     but considering
bebe’s
parents, a considerable shock. When Crystal’s eyes lost their baby blueness, they