A View of Fifth Avenue

New York City, 1963

Stella approached the perfume counter with calculated nonchalance. It wasn't the same shop girl today, thank heavens. She could simply breeze past the trays of colognes and take her ritual sniff of Chanel Pour Monsieur, and no one would be the wiser.

She consulted her watch. Her palms started to sweat a little. How ridiculous. Why did she have to get so nervous week after week? And why did she insist on visiting the perfume counter every Tuesday afternoon? The scent of him only made her more nervous.

She located the Chanel Pour Monsieur, removed the cap, and took a deep, reverent breath. She could see him as she inhaled the unmistakable blend of citrus and oak-moss. His long, elegant fingers were twirling his fountain pen; his dark eyes were inscrutable behind his browline glasses.

"Are you shopping for your husband?" chirped the shop girl.

Stella jumped and replaced the cap so quickly she nearly dropped the bottle. "I—no. No, I'm just—I just like the way it smells."

"It's popular." The girl regarded her thoughtfully. "A little old, though." She appeared to be scanning Stella's left hand for a ring.

What did "old" mean? Dr. London couldn't be more than 35, Stella mused as she smiled woodenly at the shop girl and fled.

Her appointment was in fifteen minutes. She headed mechanically up Fifth Avenue as the doors of Bonwit Teller closed heavily behind her.

What would Dr. London ask her this week? If her appointments had taught her anything, it was that she could never anticipate his questions. She glanced down at her pristine Hermès Kelly handbag—a gift from Charles—and sighed. He would somehow know that she had had a fight with Charles. She'd wind up telling him everything—even that Charles had called her a frigid bitch.

That's why she was seeing Dr. London, right? Wasn't it because she was a frigid bitch? Stella caught sight of Dr. London's office window and felt a flutter in her stomach. Was he watching her from his fourth-floor office? Could he pick her out of the hoards of late-afternoon shoppers, the haphazard parade of unhappy young housewives looking for expensive distractions?

She thought again of Dr. London's five o'clock shadow. The previous afternoon she'd spent a good half hour touching herself and imaging how Dr. London—Oliver—would look after a fierce night of lovemaking. Would his thick, scrupulously groomed hair go this way and that? Would she be able to see where her fingers had clutched and pulled at his hair as he tasted her pussy? Would he pull her warm, sleepy body against his and kiss her until she felt his erection nudge her impatiently? Would she wince a little as he plunged yet again into her? Surely the insatiable desire for his cock would make her forget how sore her pussy was.

Stella shook her head and silently chastised herself. Dear Lord, she'd actually gotten a bit wet as she daydreamed her way into Dr. London's building. She stepped gingerly into the elevator and nodded to the operator, who was well acquainted with her routine.

The waiting area smelled of coffee and furniture polish. She waved shyly at Dr. London's receptionist as she approached the desk.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Cassidy! Dr. London is ready for you. Shall I bring you your tea?"

"Oh, no, thank you, Lois." She smiled warmly at the receptionist, who had never been anything but motherly to her. If Lois knew that she'd just worked herself into a state while fantasizing about Dr. London, she'd positively die of embarrassment.

"Stella! How are you?"

She actually jumped at the smooth rumble of his voice behind her. The blood was rushing to her cheeks. She could feel it.

"Dr. London, you scared her half to death!" Lois clicked her tongue at him.

"I'm sorry."

He was smiling at Lois. His smile was so rare and so beautiful that it made her heart lurch.

"Hi, Dr. London," she managed to choke out as he ushered her into the sunny office. His suit was as pristine as ever. It was all she could do not to run her hand along the wool crepe of his jacket and feel the hard muscle of his back underneath. She caught a hint of Chanel Pour Monsieur as she passed him.

"How have you been since our last conversation?" He waited for her to take her usual position on the nail-head leather sofa before taking a seat in his wingchair. The leather had been warmed by the afternoon sun. She watched him cross his legs and place her file on his lap. The grace of his movements mesmerized her.

"I've been all right."

"I don't believe you."

She snapped to attention. He wasn't smiling, exactly, but there was amusement in his eyes. He'd never joked with her before.

"You're right." She grinned at him. To her amazement, he smiled back. "Charles—" She swallowed hard. "I'd rather not talk about Charles, if that's all right."

"What would you like to talk about?"

Stella closed her eyes. She wanted to tell him that Charles had it all wrong: she was neither frigid nor insane. She wanted to tell him about the fantasies that left her half-breathless at night. She wanted to tell him that she dreamed of clawing lightly at his arms and back as he plunged his cock into her hot wetness and whispered lewdly at her ear. She wanted to tell him that she would beg to be committed to an asylum if it meant that he would come to her bed and fuck her daily.

"Stella?"

Oh, God, had he guessed her thoughts? She blushed and plucked an imaginary piece of lint off her dress.

"Why don't I ask a few questions?" He was smiling again. Two smiles in the space of five minutes! She wondered what she'd done to deserve such bounty. "May I speak frankly? I don't want you to feel uncomfortable."

Stella stared. This session was growing stranger by the minute. Never before had Dr. London expressed especial concern for her comfort. Really, though, he'd never gone out of his way to make her uncomfortable. His questions had been unpredictable, but they'd always been innocuous enough: Had she had a happy childhood? How many friends had she had in primary school? How did she feel about her father? Had she ever regretted being an only child? He strung one question after another as if he were threading beads. The rhythm of his interrogations had always been almost soporific. His posture was quite different today, though. He was looking at her. It thrilled and unnerved her. She nodded and smiled shyly.

"I need to know," he said, his low voice a shade quieter now, "how often you touch yourself."

She inhaled sharply and sat up on the sofa.

"You—you don't have to answer right now." He made a conciliatory gesture. "I realize we haven't really—"

"Every day."

"Every day," he repeated mechanically. His pen remained motionless in his hand.

Stella felt half sick. There had been no stopping the words. The part of her that wanted Dr. London to imagine her touching herself had silenced any sense of shame or propriety. She fixed her gaze on the oriental rug at her feet.

"How do you feel when you touch yourself?" His composure appeared to have returned.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you enjoy it?"

"Yes." She met his gaze at last. His expression, ordinarily so stoic, had taken on a certain tautness. She felt compelled to provoke him. "I almost always experience a climax."

He uncrossed and crossed his legs. "And what about afterwards? Do you feel anything?"

"Feel anything?"

"Like guilt."

"Not exactly," she said, coloring a little. "I don't feel guilty about actually doing it, but I do feel guilty about the thoughts I have while doing it."

Dr. London's pen had yet to touch the paper. He looked at her until she dropped her gaze to the floor again. The air had grown a bit thick; it seemed to buzz around her ears.

"Tell me."

His voice was flat, dispassionate, and strangely authoritarian. Stella cleared her throat and furrowed her brows as she heard him light a cigarette. He had never smoked during any of their sessions.

She bit her lip. If she somehow managed to choke out the words, Dr. London would never want to see her again. Her nymphomaniacal fantasies—for surely that's what they were—would disgust him. Or perhaps—and this would be far worse—perhaps he would pity her.

"Stella," he rumbled. "Tell me."

"Dr. London, I—I just don't think—"

"I won't ask again." He turned to exhale a long stream of smoke.

Stella looked at him and blinked. His entire demeanor had changed: he still moved with spare grace, but his presence felt suddenly imposing, his gaze cool and demanding. He looked as if he could spring from his chair at any moment, and it was impossible to say what would happen at that point if he did. She was no longer in charge of the way the session progressed. Perhaps she had never been.

"I...I—I want..." her voice sounded thin and almost alien to her ears. "I want to be held down." She shut her eyes tightly and licked her lips. "I want to be overpowered and...and hidden away and kept and pushed against a wall and kissed and used and...." She finally opened her eyes.

His chair was empty. Her heart leapt up into her throat. But it was too late; the words kept spilling out.

"I want to be fucked! I just want to be fucked. I want to be ordered to come and—"

"By whom, Stella?" His voice was behind her. She watched small curls of cigarette smoke drift into her view, but she didn't dare turn around.

Her mind screamed the answer: You, Dr. London. I want you to do all those things to me. Her lips would not form the words. Her heart was pounding too hard.

"Tell me."

Stella willed herself to turn around. When her body finally obeyed, she found herself mere inches away from Dr. London's face. Before she could take another breath, his lips were on hers.

*****

She thought often of that day, of the very first time that Oliver fucked her on the leather sofa and then held her in reverent silence. He had stroked her hair, traced the soft planes of her face with his long fingers. She had lain against him, her heart beating like a rabbit's, and waited in vain for him to say something. He had finally nudged her gently, and she had taken it as her cue to get dressed. Then she had finally walked home and wondered when her feet would register contact with the pavement. She hadn't even said a word to Oliver's receptionist on her way out.

The words came later. For all his refined reserve, Oliver was, as it turned out, quite a demanding man. He had laid out his conditions at her very next appointment: she was, first and foremost, forbidden to have sex with Charles under any circumstances. She assured him that such a thing would not be difficult; her husband rarely touched her. Still, if Charles did happen to corner as she brushed her teeth or sat reading McCall's, she quickly discovered that she couldn't hide it from Oliver. He could sense it—could smell Charles's touch on her as if he were a dog and a rival had left a mark on his territory.

Stella became unspeakably aroused if she gave too much thought to the afternoon she spent trying to lure Oliver into fucking her. She'd sat languidly in his wingchair, her skirt hiked up around her waist and one knee hooked over an armrest. He had sat on the sofa, his generous erection patently visible through his neatly pressed trousers, and watched her hand trail lewdly between her spread thighs.

"I thought only of you," she said, smiling as his eyes went smoky with lust. "I only want you."

"He touched you." He watched her hand as if hypnotized. "He fucked you."

"I only want you to fuck me," she whimpered.

"No."

"Then I'm leaving." She began to swing her leg off the armrest.

"No, you're not." He paused and fished another cigarette out of his jacket pocket. "Keep those legs spread."

"You're punishing me."

"Yes." His eyes remained fixed on her as he lit up. "But this hurts me more than it hurts you."

She had begged, threatened, and attempted to barter. It was no good. And whenever her fingers began moving too purposefully between her thighs, Oliver promptly stopped her. Did she really, he wondered, need another reminder that she was not to come without his express permission? Stella had left his office so wet that she could smell her arousal on the cab ride home.

There were other conditions: the moment Stella stepped inside his office, she was his to command. Any request was to be met with happy and immediate compliance. She had so far found it quite easy to oblige him: in the past month, none of his requests had even given her pause, perhaps because she had been quite certain that they would all result in almost violent climaxes. She dearly loved climaxing for him, loved feeling his hand clasp over her mouth, quieting her moans.

At night, after Charles was asleep, she grew impatient and wet as she wondered what Oliver would command next. She imagined him ordering her to kneel under his desk and take his cock in her mouth as he made follow-up calls to patients. She squirmed in bed and imagined him forbidding her to let go of the leather chair back as his tongue brought her to the sort of orgasm that left her legs trembling.

He consumed her thoughts utterly. She conjured the low, controlled evenness of his voice every time Charles chastised her. She dreamed of the hardness of his arms, the smooth breadth of his back, every time Charles shot her disdainful looks across the dining table. Oliver's hunger for her, his passion for dominating her in precisely the way she wanted to be dominated, was the only thing keeping her sane. It was quite likely that she was in love with him.

*****

"Going up, Mrs. Cassidy?" The elevator operator smiled warmly at her.

This was it. She was minutes away from seeing Oliver again. Her stomach became a riot of butterflies every time she rode the elevator up to his office. She had found it necessary to stop visiting the cologne counter at Bonwit's before her appointments; the smell of Chanel Pour Monsieur now made her alarmingly wet in seconds. She was like one of Pavlov's dogs.

"Hello, dear!" Oliver's receptionist held her hands out to take Stella's coat. If Lois suspected anything, she certainly didn't let on. Although Oliver made concerted efforts to keep their sessions quiet—he had once threatened to shove her stockings into her mouth if she continued to moan so loudly—Stella had to assume that Lois had her suspicions.

"Hello, Lois." She beamed as she handed over her coat.

"Dr. London would like you to go right in."

"Certainly. Thank you, Lois."

Stella could hear the clack-clack of Oliver's typewriter as she stepped through his open office door with as much grace as her nerves would allow. Her breath caught in her throat as he looked up at her. A cigarette perched between his finely wrought fingers. He had loosened his tie and undone the top button of his tailored dress shirt. Lord, he was handsome; it was sure to be her undoing. She mutely watched him rise from his desk and come to her.

He shut the door and looked her up and down. His eyes traveled with such sensual slowness that she felt herself go slightly limp. And he hadn't even touched her yet.

"Take everything off," he said composedly.

"Kiss me first?" Her hands slid eagerly up his chest. He caught them up in his own and pushed them away.

"You're not listening. Take everything off." He began hastily unbuttoning her jacket, a tweed Yves Saint Laurent she had bought in the lonely days when she did nothing but shop. Stella watched his mouth as he spoke. "When you're naked, face the window."

She looked at the floor-to-ceiling windows and then gaped at him. "What if somebody sees?"

"Now, please."

"You want someone to see me?" She gawked indignantly at him.

"Stop asking questions. Take your dress off." He strode back over to his desk, sat down, and resumed taking long drags from his cigarette. His eyes never left her body.

Stella's cheeks burned as she unzipped her shift dress and stepped out of it. Her slip and girdle soon followed. By the time her bra fell to the floor, his eyes had taken on that opaque darkness that always filled her with a perverse urge to provoke him further. He blew out a cloud of smoke and nodded as she placed her hands submissively behind her back.

"To the window." He extinguished his cigarette. "Hands on the glass, above your head."

Stella squinted against the brightness as she approached the tall window. The carpet under her bare feet warmed as she stepped into the square of sunlight. She stopped right at the glass and looked down at the Fifth Avenue traffic. How long before someone caught sight of the pale, naked woman standing brazenly in the fourth-floor window? She put her hands on the glass and closed her eyes. It was what Oliver wanted.

She waited several minutes but didn't dare turn around. Her eyes acclimated to the brightness. It was astonishing: the scene below her—the bright blur of cabs, the endless parade of businessmen and afternoon shoppers and harried shop girls and delivery men and buses—whooshed on as it would any other day. No one had thought to take in the peep show she was staging under duress.

The scent of Chanel Pour Monsieur signaled his nearness and sent a tingle down her body. "Stella," he whispered, his hot breath tickling her ear, "spread your legs."

She feared the movement would attract attention. "Oliver, it's—"

"Spread your legs." His hot hand cupped her ass; she started at his touch.

"What are you going—"

"Stella, I will take you over my knee the next time you open your mouth. Now open your legs."

Her breath caught again. He had never spanked her, but the thought sent pleasurable spasms through her pussy. As she stepped out to spread her legs for him, she tried to imagine what her ass would look like with his red hand-prints all over it.

But suddenly his fingers were thrusting into her pussy, and all other thoughts fled.

"You're so wet for me. Always so wet," he murmured as he fingered her from behind.

Stella bit her lip to quiet her moans. Her hands moved restively, leaving a jumble of smears on the glass above her head. She arched her back to give his fingers better access. When she felt his other hand glide up her flat stomach and cup her breast, she sighed. When he pinched her nipple, she accidentally smacked her forehead against the window and smiled as she heard him chuckle.

"Be careful, baby," he said soothingly. His fingers continued to pump wetly in and out of her as his other hand wandered greedily, groping one breast and then the other. Stella suspected that he could make her come with just a few more minutes' effort. She pressed her moans against her arm to muffle them.

"Stella, look at me," he ordered. She whimpered in protest as she felt his fingers withdraw and finally turned to meet his gaze. She watched dazedly as he lifted his fingers to his lips and licked off the thick glaze of her juices. He smirked at her. "Step back a little. Keep your legs spread. Palms stay on the glass."

Stella got into position without another word. She was beyond remonstration, beyond indignity; nothing mattered except the pleasure Oliver was intent on giving her. He knelt before her, his back to the window. She gasped as his hands reached around to knead the curves of her ass.

"I can smell how much you want me to fuck you." His hot breath tickled the fuzzy curls between her legs as he spoke. His long fingers spread her gently as they massaged her ass. "But you're not going to get fucked until I've tasted you." He abruptly licked the top of her slit, making her squeal. "Be quiet this time. I'd rather not waste time taping your mouth."

Stella bit her lip hard as his tongue slid adroitly between the wet folds of her pussy. She imagined the obscene tableau she and Oliver made—a lean, well-dressed man kneeling down to pleasure a naked woman, her palms planted on the window—and only became more aroused. His hands had left her ass and begun to roam freely over her body. Stella desperately hoped that he would reach up to maul her tits, which now felt heavy and hypersensitive. She knew better than to plead with him or direct his hands to her breasts, though: the first time she had done such a thing, Oliver had reminded her that he did as he pleased by stopping altogether and ordering her to watch him finish himself off.