Kim stared at him in astonishment, then broke down in sobs.

Ike cradled the young woman against his chest and spoke to her softly. "There, there, my child, it can't be as bad as all that. There's always a way to remedy every situation."

"How?" Kim cried. "We have so little as it is. When we don't even have love left between us."

"Well, think of how bad it will be if he loses his job," Ike said, reminding her that even that was in jeopardy. Still…

"But if a young girl has that, that physical fulfilment, the joy of sex, she can forget about a lot of the hardships that she has to go through in her marriage. She needs a man's touch. Her body craves it. It calms her nerves and her soul." Harvey, one arm around her shoulders, moved the other hand up to one of her full, round breasts, stroking lightly, feeling the shape of the throbbing orbs.

Kim caught her breath, vaguely aware, through the haze of the alcohol he had pushed on her, that she was being touched in a place that only Curt had touched her before. He was touching her breasts and she remembered the times in high school when the football players she had gone out with had tried to put their hands inside her blouse. And she remembered that she had pushed them away as roughly as she could. And then she remembered that she was in Ike Harvey's office and that she and Curt were "on probation" and that if she did anything at all to offend this man that her husband would know that she had come here and that he would lose his job and that he would be destroyed inside himself and that their marriage and their relationship and their sex life and her dream life would all be destroyed because she had offended this very rich and powerful man who now wanted to touch her beautiful, tender white breasts.

So she forced herself to relax and let him run his hands over the fabric covered mounds and she felt her flesh tingling in spite of herself. It was the kind of touch she had been missing from her beloved Curt and she felt her nipple area contract against her will. So she let him do it because she was frightened and desperate and because the alcohol had clouded her judgement and left her without her usual moral defenses.