Ever-Lusting Wife
Ina Ceste
Chapter 1
Elizabeth was excited, and it was more than simply because the children had arrived and were settled In, more or less. She hadn't thought they would be so beautiful, hadn't even imagined the word could be applied to boys, but it was the only one that fit. The girl was utterly lovely, and her brothers were beautiful.
They were sitting around in the spare bedrooms upright now, making sounds in a big house that had been silent far too long, and she was here In the kitchen, putting together a lunch for them that was probably too fancy, and one she might make a mess of, but it was the maid's day off. She could be grateful for one thing – her husband wasn't home, either; she'd gone through enough uproar with Sherman about bringing in the foster children, and thought he'd make them feel uncomfortable at first, if not permanently.
But if Sherman still had his hackles up, she would simply face him down about that woman he was keeping, the mistress she had never seen – and hoped never to see. It was only his guilt about that shameless association that had made him finally give in about the kids. Elizabeth knew it and he knew it, but of course, it had never been brought out into the open. She and her husband never brought out anything, but skirted around the edges, always carefully polite to each other – and always distant
She fluttered about the kitchen, anxious to make the children feel at home, eager to have them be friends, at least. Elizabeth had been jittery ever since the welfare worker called and said he was bringing them out.
You're doing a fine thing, Mrs. Anderson, the man said; few people will take a teenager into their home these days. They all want cute and cuddly little ones, and for you to accept three…
They're a family, she said, brothers and a sister; it wouldn't be right to break them up. And she didn't tell him she was doing it more for herself than for the kids, that she had just gotten so damned lonely she couldn't stand it any more.
Now the children were in her home, and she was excited. Was it because of the way the older boy had looked at her, as if he was appraising the good body she kept hidden beneath a usually shapeless dress? Jody had a somehow adult look about his eyes, a penetrating and too – wise quality beyond his years, but surely, the boy couldn't have actually been leering at her. It was all in her mind, because of what her husband was doing lately, having sex with some – some kind of prostitute. Elizabeth shook her head and continued preparations for lunch, but she couldn't quite erase that first image of Jody Goodall as he'd stood just inside the front door.
The child's eyes had seemed to reach right through her dress and caress her breasts, to go sliding down across her tummy and to linger overlong at the joining of her thighs. She'd known a strange warmth between her legs, a stirring that she Immediately denied, because she was certainly not that kind of woman, even if Jody wasn't only a boy.
Setting out the salads, Elizabeth felt an unfamiliar sensitivity in her breast tips, even though she wore a heavy bra. Just the newness of having someone in her home, she told herself, or perhaps she was overly stimulated because she'd forced her husband into something, for once.
Certainly It couldn't be a sexual arousal; Elizabeth had never known what that was like, and didn't really care to. There at the first, when she was a frightened bride, maybe she had hoped there might be more to It than just a wifely duty, despite what she had always been told. But there wasn't anything more, only the pain and disgust, only the realization that mama had been right, and men were no more than animals. Elizabeth had been glad when her husband finally accepted the fact that she was a good woman, and moved into his own bedroom. Now, at thirty – five years of age, she couldn't possibly be feeling something inherently evil, and not because of a child she meant to accept her as his own mother.