In Chapter one our heroine, Kate, a successful businesswoman turning 60, has asked herself a troubling question. Is she a slut? Thus began a series of chapters in which she describes to her husband Henry (her fourth husband) her life beginning with her late teen years and her sexual activities at each stage. The portion in italics in each story is her recollection of some memorable sexual experience from her past. In this chapter Kate tells Henry of a night of debauchery she enjoyed with her third husband and his licentious friends at a very private club in Paris.
Henry and I awoke to a cold, gray Carmel dawn. Overnight the fog had rolled in off the Pacific. We were lying in bed comfortably warmed by each other and a lovely down comforter, when our bliss was interrupted by a soft knock at the cottage door.
"Oh, I'll bet it's Claude with breakfast," I said, as I stood and walked across the room to answer the door.
"My dear," Henry said, as I reached for the doorknob, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?"
"You're naked."
"It's only Claude. He's seen me naked lots of times before."
"Oh, yes, of course," Henry responded in a dry tone implying that he still didn't totally approve.
I turned and looked back at Henry, my hand still on the knob. "Since when did you become such a Puritan?"
"Oh, never mind. You're right, of course. Just let him in. I'm starving."
He still sounded a little put off, but I put it down to early morning low blood sugar. I had been with Henry enough to learn the beast in him had to be fed first thing each morning or he wasn't worth a damn.
As I expected, it was Claude on the other side of the door, bearing a tray with just squeezed orange juice, freshly baked croissants from my favorite local bakery, unsalted butter, jelly, and a steaming pot of coffee. He brought the tray in and set it on a table.
"My my! Don't you look lovely today," he said with a devilish gleam in his eye as he took his time enjoying my naked form.
"Well, stay and join us for breakfast," I offered.
"There is nothing I would rather do," he said with his charming French accent, "But duty calls. I have another fifteen or twenty hungry guests to feed back in the main house. Try not to get too many croissant crumbs in the bed clothes." With that he departed, fondling my ass and brushing my tit with his shoulder as he stepped past me to the door.
"I was right. He is a lecherous bastard," Henry said as he poured coffee for us. "I think I like him."
"Well it's good that you
like him
because you are just
like him.
"
Henry groaned at my play on words.
I laughed. "Okay, I admit, that was pretty bad, especially for an English major. But what I meant is that you both have the most deliciously dirty minds."
"I knew what you meant, and Claude and I both should appreciate the compliment. No one can recognize a dirty mind like a publisher of erotica."
"Brrrrrr. It's chilly in here," he continued as he pulled a robe around himself.
I likewise pulled on a robe and we sat, silent for a few minutes, enjoying our coffee and croissants.
Finally Henry spoke up, totally changing the subject. "So, are you going to tell me more about your wild weekend in Paris with Yves?"
"Ummmm, I said, as I downed a sip of coffee. "Well, as I told you, thanks to Jim Worthington's reprehensible conduct, it turned out to be quite a bit more than a weekend. More like ten days before I flew back to San Francisco, again on Yves' G-5."
"So you flew off to Paris for a weekend with the Frenchman who picked you up in the bar in New York, stayed for ten days because Jim Worthington had pissed you off by selling the company, and then married the Frenchman after ten days of frenetic screwing? Does that about cover it?"
"Hardly," I said.
"What did I leave out, besides all of the juicy details about the sex, which, of course, I do want to hear?"
"First, I didn't marry him on the first trip to France. That came about six months later. It turned out that marrying a French millionaire who is in a war with his family is a complicated process.
"Furthermore, I didn't stay for ten days because I was pissed off at Jim Worthington. I got over that about twenty-four hours after I sent him the 'fuck you' cable. After all, it was his company, mostly, and as it turned out he sold pretty much at the peak of the market for traditional publishing companies. If we had hung around much longer, Jeff Bezos and his damnable Kindle would have eaten our lunch."
"So why did you stay? Was the sex with Yves that good?"
"Oh god, yes. Well, that was part of it. He was really good in bed. Great staying power and wildly creative. But the main reason I stayed and eventually fell in love and married him was that he was just so much fun. Dragging me off to Mass in the oldest church in Paris after barely finishing a morning fuck, the impromptu picnic in Luxembourg Gardens, a trip to Burgundy to visit one of his wineries, shopping in some of Paris' loveliest little boutique clothing stores, dinners in grand restaurants, and obscure little bistros, romantic walks along the Seine in the rain, wild rides in his Ferrari through the winding mountain roads of Provence. It went on and on."
"I see. Pretty hard to match." He sounded a little sullen.
"Now, now," I said. "Let's not be petulant. Remember that you're here with me, and he's gone, smashed up along with his Ferrari on that mountainside north of Nice."
