Eric Stewart figured out that he'd put himself in a trap. Before he'd married Candy, she had gone to the States Attorney's office to meet Miss Murphy. Everyone in the office she had asked where to find Miss Murphy would know that she was a rape victim; that was the only sort of case Murphy handled. He had thought that not inviting anybody to see his wedding would avoid their making that connection.

Now, though, he was married and nobody at the office -- except the guy in the personnel office, whom he didn't know socially and almost certainly forgot as soon as he filed the papers -- knew that he was married. When they found out, it would raise more questions, and he didn't want questions.

At church, though, everybody knew he was a married man. They saw him with his pretty, young wife, and he thought that put his prestige higher than it had ever been before. Instead of being that dry stick, he was the dry stick married to that beauty. And Candy, who had worried that she would be too afraid of him to have marital relations, wasn't modest about his seeing her beauty. The first Sunday in March, she came to him and stripped. He was conscious of her lovely breasts, of the patch of brown hair shielding her center -- the center that had received him just the night before. Candy, however, didn't seem conscious of any of this. She was concerned with the shape of her stomach.

"Do you think I'm showing?"

"Maybe, just barely." He belly was lovely, too, but it was still slender.

"Some day soon," she said, "it will be obvious even when I'm dressed. I don't know how long I can hide it."

"Well, you're a married woman. Do you really need to hide it?"

"I can tell the world I'm pregnant. I just can't tell them how long I've been pregnant. Unfortunately, you can't persuade anybody that you're showing in your second month." She thought that a pregnancy that began before the wedding was a great scandal. In the 20th century? Caroline had been known to tell mixed company that the only reason she'd married Bill was that he was good in bed.

"Really, the people you should tell are Carolyn's circle. After all, they can give you advice. Really, there are only so many places in the church where gossip happens." He wished that he could say that nobody in the church would gossip. That wasn't true, though, and he didn't want to lie to her. "You have the choir covered. You have the college students covered, although I don't know if they gossip about people outside their little group. If you have that circle covered, you only have to worry about the other circles."

"You think I should?" she asked.

"Worry? No. Talk to the circle? I really think you should. You said you wanted a support group. That's a specially-designed support group. Now come here." She did, and he kissed the tiny bulge in her stomach, the bulge that was her reason to marry him, the bulge, or rather the baby somewhere under it, which he had promised to treat lovingly because he loved Candy.

When Candy told him that there was another circle now, he could have kicked himself. He'd heard at one point, but had forgotten. On the way home from church the next Sunday, she gave him the address and he drove past the apartment house. Candy knew Evanston now, but not as well as he did. The circle met on Tuesday, which meant that he and Candy missed their movie date that night, but this was more important. She came back happy about the group. This pleased him immensely.

He didn't delude himself that she had married him because she was deeply in love with him. She had married him because the alternative was worse, becoming an unwed mother. Right now, she needed him. Candy wasn't some mercenary; she hadn't married him with the expectation of divorcing him as soon as her son had a name. She had said, "As long as we both shall live."

On the other hand, she had no reason to stick with him for years of unhappiness. So anything which made her happy was in favor of his keeping her. And anything about the church that made her happy was an even better omen for their marriage. He was her attachment to the church. That was what worried him about her picture of everybody gossiping that the baby would come too soon. It wasn't everybody in the world, it was the people of the church who worried her. She pictured them as all talking behind her back.

As a matter of fact, damn few of them cared. If you put out a questionnaire: "Premarital intercourse should be permitted. favor? oppose?" probably two out of three would check "oppose." Maybe nine out of ten if they had to sign it. On the other hand, fewer than a dozen people, most of them women and most of them past 65, disapproved strongly enough to make judgments about people. He'd be surprised if Claire wasn't sleeping with Kurt. And if Kurt had an affair with another coed, Joan would think him horrible, not because he had sex without marriage, but because he had betrayed Claire.

On the other hand, plenty of the congregation would gossip. The choir, if he weren't there, would have a field day with stories of somebody having sex on the sly. They wouldn't be shocked, but they would be titillated.

"Would you mind if I went back to brown hair?" Candy asked out of the blue once when they were driving back from church. That would be all right.

"No. That would be fine. Are you thinking of that?" Why did he say 'fine'? That would be wonderful! Nobody in the office who had seen her would recognize her in brown hair. It wasn't as though they had actually met her and been introduced to her that day. Murphy and her tame cop had, but their mouths were sealed, and they didn't socialize with the traffic group much anyway.

"Yeah. A bottle-blonde co-ed is one thing. A bottle-blonde mother is something else."

"Well, when you do, I want a picture of you." He could put a picture of his wife -- his beautiful wife, though a tiny photo might not do her justice -- on his desk. Then people would get to know that he was married. They might be a little surprised, but they wouldn't be for long. By the time that they saw her, nobody would be reminded of the blonde that they'd seen briefly months before.

One Friday, he came home to a brunette. When she changed the color, she had changed her hair style a little, too. That was all for the best. She was still as pretty, but she looked a little different. Then, too, the hair style would dominate her face more in a picture than it would in life.

"Did you get that photo?" he asked.

"No."

"When you do, let me have a couple of small prints." He wanted one for his wallet, too. He thought of asking her whether she had enough money for the photography studio. He didn't have any spare cash then, though, and he had no good way to get it to her before Monday night. Also, she had both checks and credit cards by this time. She could get cash almost as easily as he could.

"I love the way you look," he said when she came to bed that Saturday night. They were both naked, and he mostly meant her body, but he meant her new hair style, too. He had once told her that he would go without sex if she was too afraid of men. She'd said that she wasn't too afraid, but he remembered that promise and tried to restrain himself.

She had asked him to excite her each time, and he started to excite her now. Of course, kissing her breast and delving into the secrets between her thighs with his hand, excited him, too. He managed to control himself until she was obviously aroused -- her body tensed; she breathed shallowly; her moisture flowed. Then he moved to kneel between her legs.

He opened her lower lips with his fingers and placed himself between them. He slowly pressed inwards. She was so smooth around him, so hot, so wet. Fully surrounded by her, he kissed her mouth. Then he moved in and out. His excitement grew, but he tried to rein himself in. He moved more rapidly and more forcefully. Then he thrust all the way in and pulsed out his love for her. He collapsed on her, with only a portion of his weight supported by his elbows.

"Sorry," he said. Then he moved off. He lay beside her. The physical pleasure had been intense, more intense than with any other person, if a little less than some other times with her. Emotionally, though, something was missing, her response. He knew that Candy reached an orgasm silently and invisibly. He couldn't complain about what she was. He did, however, remember their first time. She had shaken in his lap. Then she had gasped in his bed. She had never screamed, and he didn't want her to scream -- certainly not to fake a scream for his delight.

But never since then had he been able to detect the moment of her orgasm. Well, these days he was busy experiencing his own when she had hers, and he enjoyed those very deeply. Still, he missed experiencing hers.

Tuesday, she gave him two snapshots when he got home. They were different poses, although not vastly different. He put one in his wallet. They went to the movies that night, and she seemed to enjoy it.

The next day, he took the other picture to court with him in his inner breast pocket. After court, he visited a drugstore where he got a frame that would sit on his desk. He put the picture in the frame and the frame on his desk. Nobody commented on it, but nobody else was in the traffic-division office at that time. He got home a little late, but Candy kissed him instead of asking why he was late.

She had made chile that night, and she ate as much as he did. She ate healthy portions of her own cooking, and he never asked her why she'd eaten so little when he took her out to eat.

Thursday was choir night, and she was already in bed when he came back. He tried to be quiet, but she was still awake. He got into bed in his pajamas and kissed her.

"Okay," she said when he lay down. "I give up. Why did you want two photos of me?" Well, he'd have been happy with more; she was beautiful.

"One I put in my wallet. I can show people what a beautiful wife I have."

"And the other?"

"I put it in a stand on my desk at work." That probably wasn't enough answer. "It's something that married guys in the office mostly do." He didn't want to explain why he wanted them to discover slowly that he was married. She seemed to be satisfied, and he went to sleep.

Candy was getting large now, and wearing maternity clothes. He had promised her -- even before they were married -- that he wouldn't impose sex on her if she didn't want it. He was certain that the time was coming when her pregnancy would lead her to refuse him, and he was determined that he would accept that in good grace. Still, he worried that he would hurt her -- worried that she was causing herself pain or fright rather than tell him.

"Are you sure this isn't going to hurt him?" He asked her one Saturday when she was getting into bed. It would be better if she answered his question than if she had to bring up a refusal. And it would be better to stop when the sex act looked like it was far in the future than for her to say no when he was all revved up.

"Well," she said, "there is another way. Look, I'm not rejecting you if I turn away, okay? When I'm ready for you to come in, then I'm giving you another way to come in, come in to the same place." Well, that was a hell of a lot better than refusal. She was talking about rear-entry. He'd never tried it, but he'd read a lot of descriptions before he had any experience at all.

"Now?" What happened to her desire that he excite her first every time?

"When I'm ready -- when you've made me ready." That seemed reasonable. She lay back, and he went to work. She had lovely breasts and he kissed them to excite her, and to excite himself. She spread her legs for him, and he stroked her lower lips and her clitoris. She tensed, and her breathing became shallow. Her lubrication was more and more plentiful. Had she not warned him, he would be getting ready to enter her. Suddenly, she rolled away from him. Warned or not, it *felt* like rejection.

"Stay there. I'll come back to you." *That* didn't feel like rejection. Neither did her motion as she backed into him. He turned to her and tried to open her up. She raised her leg to make his task easier. He got his cock between her labia and pushed forward. The feeling, despite the raised leg, was that she was tighter than usual. She made no complaint, though. She was as hot and wet as ever, but he couldn't go in as deep. Probably, that made the baby safer, too, though this was mostly so that he wouldn't lie on him. The truth was that his first inch contained more nerve endings than the rest of his cock. He would feel as much, maybe more. Would she?

She took care of that problem by grabbing his hand and moving it to her delta as soon as he was inside. When he was touching the critical parts, she lowered her leg. The gave him less room to work in, but enough.

"Can you move your finger when my leg's like this?" she asked.

"Sure." He had thought that she was ready, but she took a while to respond to his strokes. Of course, like this, he couldn't give her nipples any stimulation. When she did respond, she placed her hand over his. She wasn't moving it or directing it. She seemed to merely be welcoming it where it was. Then she moved back and forth rather than going stiff. He couldn't resist moving himself in and out in response to her motions. Neither of them was moving much; they both had their hips resting on the mattress.

"Oh," she said suddenly. She contracted around him.

"Oh, Candy." He moved through those rhythmic contractions. They were physically arousing, a smooth warm grip along all the cock he was able to get in her. They were even more arousing emotionally. He'd never been able to detect her orgasms, and now he felt one directly. He thrust into her more strongly. Then he drove in with all his strength -- not a hell of a lot when they were like this. He pulsed out his lust into her.

When he collapsed, he had nothing to worry about. His weight wasn't on the baby or even on her. Later she moved his arm, which had been resting over the baby. She moved it so his hand was on her breast, though. That was even better.

"Oh, Candy, I love you." He loved her all the time, if most emotionally just then. He was physically satisfied, but he was also emotionally satisfied. She had come for him, come around him. She had invited his hand on her lovely breast.

"I love you, too." That was almost the first time she had said that -- she had made promises to love in the marriage service, but he couldn't remember another declaration. He would remember this one. "Can you get the covers?" Well, a practical task, if a very small one. He got the sheet and put it over both of them. He got the blanket and tucked it in around her and around the baby. He lay back.

He settled himself for sleep, his last thoughts were his memory of her declaration of love.