Making Do

Though the doctor had taken care to close the door of her room, he and Alex had not moved far enough beyond it. Hsiao-ling could hear their conversation all too well.

"No more children ever?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Betancourt. The necrosis ruined her uterus beyond repair. This isn't something we can fix surgically."

"What about...transplants?"

"Uterus transplants? I'm afraid there's no such thing." The doctor paused. "There's another complication."

"Yes?" The tension in Alex's voice had risen to an unbearable pitch.

"Your wife's vagina suffered considerable damage, as well. The nerve tracks to it have been badly compromised. Sexual intercourse will be quite painful for her."

"Can you fix that, at least?"

"That damage is beyond repair as well. I'm very sorry, sir. We've done all we can."

Hsiao-ling was still in the throes of grief over her stillborn son. That Adam had been a ten-pound monstrosity, head and neck fused to his torso and features barely recognizable as human, was irrelevant. She'd loved and anticipated him from the instant of his conception. To learn that childbearing had been struck from her future forever was a blow for which she was unprepared. Her sobs returned at full force, escalating swiftly into a piercing scream.

Alex burst into the room at once, scanning left and right for what might have so upset her. His clenched fists, his combat-ready stance, and the ruddy intensity of his tear-streaked face gave him the aspect of an avenging angel.

An angel in mourning.

Hsiao-ling felt Alex's erection against the small of her back as he clasped her silently in the darkness. She could almost feel him willing it to subside.

He'd been unnaturally quiet and distant ever since he'd brought her home from the hospital. Uncharacteristically, he spoke only when necessary. He made no attempt to converse, not even small talk at dinner. He wouldn't even speak of his candidacy for tenure, up to then the most exciting prospect in his life. She'd done her best to maintain complete normality in their household, to make him feel that all was as well as it could possibly be, but her efforts had brought no perceptible response.

She knew that her sorrows were his as well. He'd wanted children quite as much as she. He'd agonized with her through the final difficult months of what they'd thought was a basically normal, if somewhat outsized pregnancy. He'd screamed in pain with her as the obstetrician struggled to relieve her of her necrotic burden. As if more were necessary, at twenty-six years of age their days of physical intimacy, the greatest joy of their lives together, were done forever. She mourned them just as intensely as he.

Such tragedies had sundered other marriages. Not many young husbands are equal to the stress of sleeping beside a loving young wife whose body is permanently out of bounds.

That Hsiao-ling found herself thinking along those lines a single week after her return home terrified her beyond endurance. She willed it away with his unwanted erection and sought the refuge of sleep. It was slow in coming.

Hsiao-ling could not concentrate on her work. It wasn't the muted conversations among her fellow research assistants, nor the low hum of activity as they moved around the lab, nor the buzz of the thousands of muscae domesticae awaiting their turns in the irradiation unit. She could not force her mind off the aching emptiness in her loins.

Knowing her condition, Alex would not act to soothe that ache. Knowing his tenderness, she could not ask him to ignore her agony for her sake...or his.

He has to be suffering almost as much as I am.

The knowledge blocked all other thought from her brain.

"Are you all right, dear?"

Her head jerked around to find Chen Nyuk-hsi hovering over her. The chief investigator's face was a mask of polite concern. Hsiao-ling smiled formally and made to return to the work before her, but the older woman halted her.

"We heard about your loss, of course."

Of course. The university hospital hardly even pretends to protect patients' privacy. "I'm quite all right, thank you, Professor."

Nyuk-hsi's smile was as pro forma as Hsiao-ling's own. "I just wanted you to know that if you need anything...money, a place to stay..."

Hsiao-ling was shocked out of her pretenses. "What? Why on Earth...?"

Nyuk-hsi shrugged as if to say, What else can you expect? "I just wanted you to know that you're not alone, dear." But as the chief investigator turned away, Hsiao-ling caught the curve of her lip that conveyed an entirely different message.

Serves you right for marrying that guey low faan.

When Alex next left their bed, shortly after retiring, and headed to the bathroom, Hsiao-ling waited a few dozen seconds, slipped out from under the covers, and followed him.

She cracked the door open as delicately as she could. He took no notice. He stood half-crouched over the toilet, eyes closed and a fist clamped over yet another raging erection, pumping himself desperately and muttering "Come on...come on..." as if trying to cajole his body into granting him relief. The look of desperation on his face was heavily laced with anxious regret.

Hsiao-ling's inchoate, vaguely Christian Deism was far less restrictive than Alex's straitlaced Catholicism. Yet she knew how difficult it was for him to seek release in such a fashion. She could feel his agony at the need. She swung the door back the rest of the way and entered. He stopped at the sound, straightened and turned a flaming red face toward her.

Before he could utter a word, she reached up and laid a finger against his lips.

"Shhh."

He stood motionless as she ran her fingertips lightly over his body and descended to kneel on the cold granite tile. The head of his penis bobbed before her eyes.

He was beautiful, a smooth, unobtrusively muscular, and perfectly proportioned representative of his sex. Hsiao-ling had thought him beautiful from moment she first saw him. She'd known better than to say so from well before they met. Few men are equal to being called beautiful. They have great difficulty bearing the burden of good looks, far greater than women. Most are made acutely uncomfortable by being praised for them.

As brilliant and tenderly loving as he was, he hadn't needed to be good-looking. From the day they met he'd treated her like a pearl of infinite price, a treasure to be protected from all harm regardless of the cost. Yet he was beautiful, in every sense. He deserved to know her love, and to feel it.

She took him into her mouth.

He gasped and twitched. His hands went immediately to the sides of her face. She'd never fellated him before, and had only a vague idea what she ought to do. She went slowly, caressing the head of his penis with her lips and tongue, then taking in as much of the shaft as she could and laving it with a gentle, rotating stroke. His flavor was salty, mildly musky, and not at all unpleasant.

His legs began to quiver. Her hands traveled around his hips to his buttocks in leisurely and loving exploration as she ministered to him with her mouth. When she found the cleft, she parted his cheeks and ran a single fingertip down the groove. He spasmed, driving the head of his penis past her glottis. With no warning, his whole length slid down her throat.

She suppressed her impulse to gag and expel him, used the muscles around her throat to massage and encourage him. On sudden impulse, she slipped her fingertip into his anus and lightly stroked his prostate.

He cried out and came with explosive force, clutching her head manically and sending a thick stream of semen down her throat. She milked him as best she could with her throat muscles, just as she'd done with her vagina when they were working on conceiving Adam and all was right with the world. His first spurt of seed was followed by a second and a third as he whimpered and shook against her.

The aroma of his semen permeated her sinuses. It lulled her into an erotic trance. All that existed was his body, her finger lodged in his anus and his penis lodged in her throat. All that mattered was his pleasure, and the pleasure she could take in eliciting and heightening it. All she wanted was to make him come again and again.

Presently she allowed him to withdraw, looked up at him and smiled. He was wide-eyed, trembling with the force of his orgasm, too overcome to speak. She laid her face against his groin and hugged him gently.

"I love you," she said.

"Why?" he whispered in the darkness.

"Because I love you. I don't need another reason, do I?"

He stroked her back and shoulders. "No, but -- Hsiao-ling, what could I do for you?"

She chuckled. "Be my husband. Love me as you've loved me since we first met. Come home to me in the evening and hold me at night, just like this. I don't need anything more than that, Alex."

He was briefly silent. She intuited the reason for his distress exactly as he spoke it.

"Hsiao-ling, I want to give you pleasure too. I want -- I know we can't make love any more, but there must be something!"

She slid one hand along his torso, took his flaccid member in a gentle grip. It twitched and began to stiffen. "Alex, what would you call what we did in the bathroom? Wasn't that making love?"

"Well..."

"Do you remember just after we got married, before our fellowships came in, how carefully we had to budget every penny?" She found the coronal ridge with her thumb, probed for the indentation, and rubbed it gently. "There was no margin, toward the end of every month we feared we'd be unable to pay the rent, and we'd cut back as hard as we had to, to be sure all our obligations were covered? Remember how I would complain now and then, about how spartan our lives were?"

He said nothing. She stroked his penis, risen to attention once more.

"Do you remember what you used to say to me when I complained?"

"That we just had to make do for a while," he whispered. "That it wouldn't be forever."

"That's what we're doing, Alex. Making do. I see the doctor again a week from tomorrow. I'll ask him if there've been any developments, if he's thought of a way to make me...functional again. Not for children, I know that's out of the question. Just for love. Keep your hopes high. As mine are. Meanwhile," she said as she tweaked the head of his erection between forefinger and thumb, "you seem ready for a little more making do right now."

She slithered down his torso and took him in her mouth again.

Every night of the next seven, at ten P.M. Hsiao-ling led Alex into their bedroom, bade him stand and watch her disrobe. When she stood nude before him, his body responded with total predictability, and he would disrobe as well. She would descend to her knees and take him in her mouth, and their new rite of love would commence.

Their intoxication with one another exceeded even what they'd known as new lovers and as newlyweds. He could not resist her ministrations. She reveled in the subtle sense of dominance, her ability to make him come with her mouth and hands. He shivered under her touch, yielded to her every command, whispered words of adoration as she sucked him. She thrilled to the feel of his penis in her mouth, the piercing shock as it slipped past her glottis and down her throat, and the flavor and aroma of his semen with an excitement that all but eclipsed her pre-pregnancy ardor.

In rediscovering sex, each had rediscovered himself, and the other. The bond of love that joined them was stronger than it had ever been. Stronger than in their college days, when Alex had been assaulted, publicly and repeatedly, for daring to court a Chinese woman. Stronger than in their first year as husband and wife, when Hsiao-ling had been shunned by all her countrymen for lowering herself to marry a white man. Such a bond could withstand any imaginable test. Such a love could be sundered only by death.

But for Hsiao-ling, it still wasn't enough.

The doctor's verdict was no encouragement at all. Hsiao-ling could not expect any change in her condition for years to come, if ever. He offered no program to follow, not the merest suggestion of a prospect of returned vaginal health and nervous function. "Keep yourself as clean as possible" was the only advice he had for her. She stalked out of his office as furious as if her wounds were his doing.

The city was quiet as she left the Grand Street medical office. Lunch hour was past, and quitting time was still three hours away. She resolved to stroll and window shop until she'd banked the fires of anger that had risen at the doctor's office.

A new store, a boutique in a spot that had very recently been vacant, beckoned to her from across the street. A selection of saucy lingerie was poised in its display window. At the top of the window, a line of rococo script proclaimed the store's name to be Evenings to Remember.

She crossed in the middle of the block, angling deftly between the parked cars, pulled open the door and entered.

The store was filled with all manner of sensual and sexual items. The flirty camisoles and teddies in the display were among the mildest of its wares. There were rows of corsets and waist cinchers, garter belts and silk stockings, racks of dildoes and butt plugs, vibrators, wrist and ankle cuffs, arm binders, thigh spreaders, nipple clamps, gags, collars, hoods, and staggeringly high heels. It was a fetishist's dream, something for every sexual preference, laid out with imagination and a surprising sense of taste.

She was alone in the shop except for the icon to sexuality that emerged from behind the counter and approached her with a hand extended.

The young woman was dressed all in satin and leather. She'd layered a black leather bolero vest over a glittering red satin blouse, added a black glove-leather miniskirt and round-toed high heels. The outfit suited her. His skin was porcelain-pale and porcelain-creamy. Her lush bosom rode high on her chest. Her beautifully tapered waist was circled by a silver rope chain. She seemed to glide rather than walk, her heels making no sound at all against the parquet tiled floor.

"Welcome to Evenings to Remember, Miss. I'm Martine. May I assist you with your selections?"

Hsiao-ling shook her hand. "I'm just browsing, really. How long have you been here? I don't remember seeing your shop before."

Martine shrugged. "Only a few days. I've had very little trade so far." She grinned suggestively. "I've been thinking of advertising, but the local paper seems so..."

"Conservative?"

"I was about to say restrained."

Hsiao-ling gestured at the rack of cuffs and arm binders. "That sounds as if it should be a good fit to you."

Martine giggled. "Perhaps restrained isn't the right word after all. Well, may I offer you a cup of tea?" She waved at a card table in the corner, already set with a tea service and a plate of small white cakes.

Hsiao-ling hesitated, then smiled and nodded. "That would be lovely."

Five minutes, one cup of tea and one white cake after she'd seated herself, Hsiao-ling plunged into the story of Adam and her sexual crippling. She hardly realized how much she had disclosed, or how baldly and graphically she was describing her condition, until Martine laid a hand on her arm and squeezed. The shopowner's eyes had filled with tears.

"I don't think I've ever heard anything so sad," Martine whispered. "How do you stand it?"

Hsiao-ling shrugged. "We make do."

"You're more stoic about it than I could ever be, dear." Martine sipped at her tea and massaged her temples. "How do you keep him happy?"

Hsiao-ling started to speak, stopped herself, and instead pursed and extended her lips.

Martine nodded. "And how does he keep you happy?"

The question caught Hsiao-ling off guard. She cast about for the right words to capture the unique direction her love life had taken.

"Hsiao-ling," Martine said, "a good man needs to give his woman pleasure, just as much as to receive it. Maybe more. Does he have a way to do that for you?"

"There's nothing he can do for me, really," Hsiao-ling said at last. "The nerve damage from the trauma was too extensive. I can feel pain there, but nothing else. But it doesn't matter," she added in a rush. "I love him. I think...as long as I can please and relieve him, I think we'll be fine."

Martine leaned close and peered into her eyes. "You want nothing else?"

Hsiao-ling opened her mouth, stopped herself yet again.

"Of course I want something else. I want him in my body again. I want to feel him piercing me, thrusting against me, taking possession of me, mastering me and compelling me to come! I want to feel him stiffen and flood me with his seed. I miss it desperately, but what good is there in thinking about it when I can never have it again?"

Martine's eyes rested upon hers for a long silent moment.

"You can have it again."

"What? How?"

The shopowner slid a hand across the table and laid it on Hsiao-ling's. Her eyes had become wells of mystery. Her expression hinted at undisclosed abilities, powers she could invoke to whatever end she pleased.

"Do you trust me, dear?"

Uncertain why she was doing so, Hsiao-ling nodded.

Martine rose and bade Hsiao-ling to follow her. "Then come with me."

As Martine fiddled among her appliances, Hsiao-ling lay prone on what the shopowner had called her therapy table, naked as a newborn, wondering what had possessed her.

"Are you comfortable, dear?"

"Yes," Hsiao-ling murmured.

"Would it upset you at all to be strapped down?"

Hsiao-ling felt a brief trickle of fear, and ruthlessly suppressed it. I've come this far. "No, go ahead."

Martine put soft leather cuffs around Hsiao-ling's wrists and ankles, attached them to guy lines she hadn't noticed were there, and stretched her limbs to their maximum. She did her best to remain unmoving and calm.

"Not many women are as trusting as you," Martine murmured. "But I sense that you're a good judge of character. I would never dream of hurting you. Are you relaxed and at peace?"

Hsiao-ling nodded as best she could with her face against the table.

"Very good." It was the last thing Martine would say for several minutes.

Hsiao-ling felt small, warm hands massage her buttocks, carefully lifting and spreading the globes in a repetitive pattern. Without willing it, she began to rock in time to the rhythm, collaborating in the massage as best she could in her restrained state. The pleasure of it made her coo in time with Martine's caressses.

Presently she felt a cool, rounded, well lubricated object placed against her anal rosette. It rested there awhile, moving very slightly, teasing her open with its caress. A minute later it was the most natural thing in the world when the object pressed forward, delicately probing her rear passage.

"Breathe slowly and deeply, dear."

Whatever it was, it was large enough to stretch her anus to its limit, but not so large as to cause pain. Its progress into her was slow and careful. It seemed to go on for an hour. At the end, it was deeply lodged in her rectum, filling her as completely and satisfyingly as Alex had ever filled her vagina.

"I've penetrated you with a vibrating dildo," Martine said, her voice low and soothing. "We'll just leave it there for a minute or two so you can get used to the feeling."

Hsiao-ling smiled and said nothing.

The vibrations began so faintly that Hsiao-ling could not be sure there had been any change. They escalated from a gentle tickle in her nether tissues to a quite definite message of pleasure, a sexual invasion unique in her experience. She began to rock and coo again.