NOLAN'S INVESTIGATIONS

Gracefully, Bridget Nolan applied the clips of her white suspenders to the dark tops of their nylon stockings and, straightening up, regarded both legs with critical detachment in the wardrobe mirror. Yes, that appeared to do the job! Although the right clip needed to be adjusted a little, in order to bring it into line with the left one, so that the suspenders were equidistant down the middle of her thighs instead of slightly awry, as at present. She made the necessary adjustment and then regarded herself anew in the long mirror - this time with some satisfaction. For her underclothes looked pretty smart and sexy. The suspenders were every bit as fresh-looking as the nylon panties she was wearing for the first time. They didn't clash with the latter but formed a delicate harmony with them - a harmony in white. The clash, if anywhere, came with the dark tops of her stockings, which was as she liked it. There would soon be another clash lower down, when she stepped into her white shoes. But that, too, would be intentional.

Turning away from the mirror, Bridget reached into the wardrobe for the silk dress she was intending to wear out to dinner that evening - a white one which would go nicely, she thought, with everything else, including the stockings. She removed the hanger and put on the dress, letting it slide down over her slender body with obvious pleasure, since its contact with her skin was pleasantly smooth and cool. To be sure, it was a warm evening and the coolness of the dress felt agreeably refreshing to her, especially as she had only a short while before taken a bath, which had somewhat warmed her up. Even with talcum powder one was apt to sweat a little in the circumstances. Indeed, a few beads of sweat were at that very moment cascading down her back, but she wasn't particularly conscious of them, what with the feel of the smooth dress against her skin. And neither was she particularly conscious of the sudden entry into the bedroom of her husband, who came creeping up behind her and put his hand on her back, causing her to jump with fright. He was a few inches taller than her, a fact which allowed him to peer over her shoulders or head with comparative ease. His short curly-black hair contrasted sharply with her long wavy-red hair, as he stood right behind her with a slightly mocking expression on his pallid face. "Aren't you ready yet?" he commented, while his hand caressed her back.

Bridget had recovered her composure and gone back to looking at herself in the mirror. However, the dress hadn't quite fallen into place, so that a large part of her left thigh was exposed to his gaze. He grew intrigued by what he saw and, although she quickly smoothed the offending part into place, she was too late to prevent him from becoming sexually aroused. For he proceeded to caress her back more firmly, continuing to gaze over her shoulder at where the exposed thigh had been. "Would you like to do me up," she requested, growing uncomfortably conscious of her exposed back. For she was afraid that if she didn't do something to cool him down, he would mess her up, undoing the care she had put into getting dressed.

"Certainly," he said, and he pulled the zip up the length of her back to the base of her nape. "But now I'd like you to lift it up," he added, thereby assuring her that he was still pretty warm.

She frowned slightly and pretended to ignore him.

"Go on!" he demanded more firmly. "You know what I mean."

Reluctantly, she raised the rim of her dress in both hands, until part of her thighs was exposed.

"Higher!" he cried, becoming impatient.

She lowered her eyes and, with ever so faint a blush, lifted up the rim to a point where the dark ridges of her stocking tops were on display. Yet even that evidently wasn't sufficient for him, since he immediately repeated himself, compelling her to expose the white suspenders.

"Aha! so that's it," he exclaimed, staring more closely over her shoulder at the reflection of her thighs in the wardrobe mirror. "Virginal innocence this time, is it?"

She smiled and nodded in equally faint measures, for an instant flashing her bright-blue eyes at him. "Satisfied?" she sneered, though she might have known better where he was concerned!

"Now let's see your briefs," he demanded, smiling lustily.

Once again she was obliged to respond in kind and lift her dress still higher, doing so with noticeably less reluctance than before, because she was fairly proud of her new underclothes.

"Hmm, quite the little angel this evening, aren't we?" he remarked, as the first glimpse of her white panties came into view. "All spick-and-span. One would never think you had sexual proclivities, still less a cunt. But, of course, you have - in spite of your spiritual ambitions."

Bridget blushed anew, this time rather more deeply. Unfortunately she knew quite enough about his sexual proclivities by now, indeed she did! But he had to have his way if there was to be any peace in the house. One had to satisfy his whims as best one could. "Seen enough?" she at length asked, as the seconds ticked away and the business of holding her dress up became more tediously trying.

"In this context," her husband replied, his gaze still riveted on her latest exposure. "Although, while you're looking so seductive, you might as well get down on your knees."

"Oh, Barry!" she protested. "Do I have to?"

"Yes, get down on your damn knees!" he insisted implacably.

She knew from experience that it was useless arguing with him. He was her master, after all. She had to obey him.

"And keep your dress up," he reminded her.

Reluctantly she kept it held up, so that her thighs remained on display to his avid gaze.

"Now squat on your heels," Nolan directed with obvious relish.

Again she obeyed him, drawing her legs slightly closer together in the process. Inevitably the flesh on her thighs spread out conspicuously with the pressure of her calves against them, and this, she knew, was precisely what he wanted to see. For, to him, it contradicted her spiritual pretensions.

Nolan chuckled to himself awhile, then knelt down beside her and ran his hand up and down her nearest thigh a number of times. "What's this?" he sneered, referring to the seductive enlargement of the limb in question. "And what's this?" He had thrust the hand between her thighs and was resting its palm against that part of her panties which covered her crotch. "Is this a fiction?"

She had started to smile to herself as he said this. For it was only too obvious what he was getting at, especially as his hand had now begun to tickle her.

"And what's this?" he continued, sliding the hand further underneath her until it rested, with splayed fingers, against her rump. "Is this necessary for the spiritual life, too?"

It was still possible for her to treat his behaviour as a joke, in spite of the ironic sarcasm in his comments which, at another time, could have caused her to lose patience with him. For it was Saturday evening, after all, and Saturdays were somewhat different from other evenings as far as attitudes went. Had it been a Sunday or a Monday, she would almost certainly have lost her patience with him - assuming he would have been stupid enough to try it on then. But, under the circumstances, one just had to relax a little and enjoy oneself as best one could. Otherwise every day would be too much alike. On Saturday evenings one just had to take one's husband's perverse little self-indulgences lightly.

"Oh, but you know what they really are, don't you?" Nolan declared, having removed his hand from the last 'this'. "You damn-well know why you were given them, don't you?"

"Why?" Bridget rejoined innocently.

"To seduce men with!" came his implacable response. "To enable you to fulfil yourself sexually. To get seed into your womb! That's why you were given them - those thighs, this cunt, that arse. Not to mention those arms, these tits, that nape, this face. Oh yes, all of it! They weren't intended to facilitate meditation. They were made to seduce men with!"

A fresh blush had appeared on Bridget's face with the reception of this self-evident information. For although she had heard him speak like this before, she was still capable of being embarrassed, from time to time, by the coarseness of certain of the words he used, which assaulted her lady-like primness. Needless to say, he used them specifically for that purpose, since it gave him pleasure to drag her body through the dirt of sexual slang in defiance of her spiritual pretensions. He knew that a word like 'cunt', used in a specific context at a certain time of day on a day like today, had the effect of diminishing her spiritual morale and making her more accessible to his sexual demands. It worked like a spell on her, bringing her completely under his influence. Occasionally he would flatter her by telling her what a beautiful cunt she was, as though he were Mellors and she Lady Chatterley. Occasionally, too, he would flatter her by telling her what a beautiful cunt she had. But he would never use the word in any other context or with anyone else, the way he would sometimes use, say, the words 'dickhead' or 'arsehole' or even 'prick'. It was strictly entre nous, between man and wife. And the wife, being a well-bred young lady, would retain a discreet silence and perhaps even allow herself the luxury of a faint blush. She would never say "I know."

Which was how it was on this occasion, when the possibility of an affirmative response presented itself. The temptation to immodesty had to be avoided, if one wasn't to compromise oneself in either one's own or one's husband's eyes. To give the game away would have been unthinkable. Nolan could insinuate all he liked, but one would never confirm him in his insinuations. One had to pretend otherwise.

"And you don't need me to remind you," he continued, ignoring her latest blush, "how many times they've succeeded in enabling you to seduce me. Oh, no! You're perfectly well aware of the matter.... But I haven't finished with my little investigations yet. I've got other things to investigate. So I suggest you stretch out on the floor stomach uppermost, toute de suite."

Obediently Bridget did as requested, since it was a bit late to remonstrate now. Seeing as the game had progressed this far, there seemed to be no earthly reason why it shouldn't progress a little further, maybe even reaching a climax or logical conclusion, if such a thing were possible with Nolan. Besides, she had little doubt what was coming next. They had played this particular game at least three times already. It was becoming rather predictable, not to say monotonous.

"Would you like me to lift up the rim of my dress again?" she ironically inquired of him.

"No, it will be raised back in any case," he blandly assured her, "since I'm going to raise your legs up myself, if you don't mind!" And, sure enough, that is precisely what he did, as he turned his back on her face and, straddling her stomach, lifted up her dark-stockinged legs by the ankles until her inverted feet were pressing against his lower abdomen. Now he could look down the entire length of her legs and note the gradual progress of their flesh towards its culmination in the ample contours of her seductive rump. There was nothing to impede his view of her new panties from this vantage-point, which afforded him direct optical access, as it were, to the indisputable cynosure of her fleshy charms. Looking down at Bridget's rear from this angle was indeed a revelation, a confirmation of the woman's seductive power! And if she was blushing or feeling slightly insecure and vulnerable behind him, so much the better! That would teach her for playing the spiritual hypocrite and laying claim to certain religious aspirations which he lacked! That would put a dent in her spiritual pretensions for a while, even if it couldn't be guaranteed to completely demolish them. For he knew her well enough by now to know that she wouldn't give up those pretensions too easily, no matter what he did or said to her. No doubt, the fact that she was the daughter of a philosopher had something to do with it, making her more conscious of the spirit than would otherwise have been the case.

But she was still a woman, damn it, and therefore a creature, Nolan reasoned, in which flesh generally predominated over mind, in which appearance generally got the better of essence. She was entitled to meditate, by all means, but meditation wouldn't change her into a man! She would still possess all the physical charms with which nature had endowed her, including large breasts, the fluidal contents of which would not take kindly to the proximity of too much airiness, and it was from the exploitation of those bountiful charms that she would derive her raison d'être in life, not from the spirit! If she persisted in assuming the contrary, too bad! It would simply show that she was a victim of heredity, upbringing, and to some extent the times, which, as many people well knew, worked to further the development of masculinity or, at any rate, artificiality at the expense of the more natural feminine element in life. If she was primarily a victim of heredity and upbringing, there wasn't much Nolan supposed he could do about it. But to the extent that she might be a victim of the times, with her head up in the clouds of a prosperous career, he thought it possible she could be disillusioned to a degree which would make her more consciously feminine and, consequently, a better companion than she had occasionally shown herself to be. For although he wasn't entirely destitute of spiritual ambitions himself, he found their prevalence in a woman, especially a highly attractive and seductive one, both obnoxious and somehow irrelevant. Women weren't put into this world to develop their spirituality, he reflected, but to safeguard the flesh and thus keep the species going. Heaven, when it finally came, would be an entirely transcendent affair - pure spirit. To live with a well-endowed woman who regularly practised meditation for long stretches at a time and imagined that she was a potential candidate for the transcendental Beyond was simply to live with a dupe. Better to disillusion her if one could. And how better, Nolan conjectured, than to make her thoroughly conscious of her seductive power and, if possible, undo or, at any rate, undermine her past conditioning? True, it might not prevent her from meditating, but at least it could serve to remind her of her rightful interests in life, to make her conscious of the necessity of taking her physical charms more seriously. After all, one had to acknowledge the flesh to some extent, if mankind were to survive.

"Yes, what a pleasing arse you have," Nolan commented, once he had studied the development of her flesh from the calves to the thighs, and then from the thighs to the ample contours of her buttocks. "There are few women who could be accused of outdoing you, where the extent of its seductive potential is concerned."

"Really?" Bridget responded, her intonation betraying a calculated degree of petulant indifference; for this was usually the point where her husband terminated his investigations. Yet no sooner had she given vent to that ... than she felt a degree of concern entering her mind. For, to her surprise, Barry had now pulled her legs back to a point where her feet were almost level with her ears, having suddenly decided to squat down on her upended calves as though to pinion them or, at any rate, her shins to her chest. And this is precisely what he next proceeded to do, so that she was absolutely powerless to move. "Darling, what are you doing?" she asked in rhetorical bewilderment. Had he gone completely crazy?

But no, Nolan was simply taking his investigations a stage further than previously, squatting down on her calves while resting a palm on each of her buttocks. He was scrutinizing her white-pantied rump from an even more advantageous vantage-point. And not only scrutinizing it, but, to her greater surprise, caressing it, to boot! She was completely at his mercy.

"Yes, one can be under no doubt as to the quality of your arse, even with your briefs in the way," he remarked, ignoring her question. "But one will have to get rid of them if one wishes to verify the quality of what lies beneath." And almost immediately, before she could say anything, he seized her briefs in both hands and began to lift them away from her flesh, applying his teeth, in due course, to that part of them which had covered her sex. Before she could protest or inquire just what he thought he was doing, he had bitten a hole there and begun to tear them down the middle by pulling their material in opposite directions, causing a three-inch rent to appear. Now he could scrutinize her sexual cynosure close-up.

"But, Barry, they're my new panties!" she protested, as the enormity of his fetishistic eccentricity began to dawn on her. "I bought them specially for this evening ..."

"Did you indeed?" Nolan responded unconcernedly. And, without further ado, he began to apply his lips to her sex, gently kissing it and simultaneously inhaling the musty odour which emanated from its soft skin. There was nothing she could do to prevent him, for even her arms were pinioned down either side of her chest. He had her exactly where he wanted her at that moment. After the first few preliminary kisses, his investigations became a little bolder, as he proceeded to probe her opening with his tongue and even - heavens! she could hardly fail to notice - nibble at her emerging clitoris with his sharp front teeth.

Yes, he was exploring her flesh all right, and what he had discovered about it was sufficient to preclude him from changing his opinion of her spiritual pretensions. It simply confirmed him in it, making him, if anything, more determined to stick by his guns. For now that she was beginning to moan softly behind him, to experience her womanhood afresh, he could be under no doubt that the lesson he had to teach her was sinking in, and that she was responding to it in an appropriately sensuous manner. She would continue to respond to this lesson until he brought it to a thrilling conclusion. And then, well, then it was her duty to accompany him out to dinner dressed not in all-white, as it present, but in all-black - her proper colour. That was why he had put a rent in her new panties!