Free Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz Page A

mother … certainly, but I can’t guess women’s ages.”
    “I am twenty-nine,” she said, lying by only three years. “Does that seem very old to you? Of course it must No … don’t protest, don’t be polite, it doesn’t become you. When I was your age, twenty-nine was unimaginably old. So I have decided, as your penance, to teach you a lesson … a lesson in relativity.”
    The Marquise’s small and swollen mouth was fresh as a fruit and she licked her lips thoughtfully. She moved closer to where Stash sat stiffly on the rose satin upholstery she knew was in bad taste but nevertheless permitted herself in private apartments. One of her plump white arms reached out, the black lace falling away from it, and she placed her hand on his head. “I miss your curls,” she said softly, rumpling his thick hair. He sat straight and motionless, his nostrils drinking in the unfamiliar scent of a woman in a low-cut gown. By the light of the fire, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the blue shadow where her breasts began. Her hand left his hair and began to caress his neck with the most neutral of touches, as if she were absent-mindedly stroking a pet. Stash felt, with horrified embarrassment, that his penis had become rigid inside his trousers. He did not notice Claire’s glance at his crotch, her eyebrows lifting only slightly as her practiced eye told her what had happened. Idly, she played with his earlobe, not moving any closer to him.
    “So, what is relativity? Can you tell me? No … I thought not. The lesson in relativity begins with the realization that my hand and your neck have no age at all. They are only flesh meeting flesh. But to appreciate the true meaning of relativity, we must go further … much further.” She allowed her wandering fingers to touch the soft hollow at the base of his throat, exposed in his open-necked shirt, and then she slipped her entire hand into his shirt and found one of his nipples and started to circle it with one finger. Stash groaned aloud and she drank in the sound with gourmandise—that was his first groan as a man, she thought, feeling his nipple harden. Now he would never forget her. “Ah, little man, you arebeginning to understand relativity,” she whispered to the boy who still looked ahead, his mind spinning. What was she doing … his mother’s friend … impossible … another mockery. In confusion he thought—but he couldn’t be certain—that her hand, which she had withdrawn from his shirt, had, for an instant, fallen lower, to his crotch, and brushed like a feather over the stiff lump of his penis. But then this same hand, quickly raised, now gently unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his strong youth’s chest down the center of which fine blond hair made a straight, faint shadow. She moved closer to him, threw back his shirt, and ran the fingers of both her hands down his half-naked, already well-muscled arms and murmured to herself, “How very grown-up you are, after all, my Stash.” The boy was stunned into immobility even when she caressed him under his arms, fingering the scant, silky tufts of hair that had so recently sprouted there. The painful tumescence of his penis seemed shameful to him, a confession of weakness before this dominant woman. He knew her, the sly one, she wanted to make him try to touch her and then she would remind him of what a child he was. He gripped the pillows he was sitting on in order not to move, not to give her that satisfaction.
    Then he felt her unbuckle his belt and unbutton his fly. For a moment she seemed to hesitate, her head lowered in the firelight, riveted at the sight of the outline that reared under his restraining undershorts. The size of it seemed to make her decide. She slid to the thick carpet and looked up at him as he sat on the edge of the couch, his teeth biting into his lower lip in a grimace which hardened his face into a look it would not naturally wear for ten more