She went into her own bedroom then, wanting to take a cooling bath and wondering if it would be worth the trouble afterwards to prepare the special steak she'd bought for Tamera and herself – before she'd known that her daughter wouldn't be home to share it. A tear welled in one eye and she blinked it away rapidly as she slipped out of her shorts and blouse, putting them in the clothes hamper on her way into the bathroom. She placed the stopper in the tub and ran water in it – lukewarm the way she liked it on muggy summer days such as this one – and as she waited for the water to fill up, she looked down at herself in a critically detached way, as a woman does when seeing how age has affected her.

Yet her mind still dwelt on her child. She was thinking how Tamera would one day make a good wife for a man, and that no matter how lonely and sad she felt when her daughter left, it was selfish not to allow her to be with boys her own age. When the right man came along, Carla was certain that Tamera would give herself in marital relations totally and completely, just as she herself had done with Arnold. As I may yet do again…

The thought of her own secret sexual desires made Carla blush with shame, but as she gazed down at her own naked body, she had to admit that she still had much to offer a man. I've a good shape… and if I'm lucky I'll be able to please another man with the same intensity and passion as I offered Arnold. Until then, I'll hold myself in reserve, just as if I were a virgin again…

Her flaxen blonde hair was longer than her daughter's and she experimentally let it fall down over her shoulders and curl provocatively around the ruby nipples of her cream-white breasts. God, I still look very brazen and sensual that way… then shame-faced at her thoughts, she swept her hair back up again and raised her arms over her head, stretching her breasts and loins taut, in a classic nude pose.