IN HIS BOOK, SEX WITHOUT GUILT, ALBERT ELLIS WRITES: "WOMEN ARE NOT NECESSARILY IN-Musically different in their sex drives and needs; and when they are, they are frequently more rather than less highly sexed than are men." Mary Gray, in the light of this observation, was something of a paradox. She found sex revolting, but idealizing her falsely-accused athlete sweetheart, she became a nurse in a prison in order to be near him. In prison, and in the course of a prison break, Mary experienced more kinds of sex than there are books on the subject. Armed with her knowledge, she decided to make a career of sex-in a very unusual way.
CHAPTER I
"LADY, YOU MUST BE CRAZY-WANTIN' LOCKED up in a place with four hundred men!"
The taxi driver twisted his head around and looked at me, squinting around his puffy nose, his mouth slack with a grin that alternated between concern for my safety and a kind of sensual enjoyment of the situation.
"I have my reasons," I said.
He whistled lightly through his teeth and shook his head again. We had been talking back and forth from the bus station all the way out on the narrow, deserted road that led to Mason Reformatory at the outskirts of the small town of Mason. We had been talking, and his conversational intimacy had gradually built up to a kind of fatherly, advice-giving stage.
"Look, kid," he mused, his meaty hands gnarled on the steering wheel, "take my advice. If you wanta be a nurse, go back and work in a nice hospital, or an old folks home. This ain't no picnic out here. These guys are criminals-and you'll understand I don't mean nothin' personal when I say this ... but they ain't seen a real woman, some of 'em, in a long time. They'll go ape when a pretty young thing like you comes wriggling her hips into...."
"I told you," I interrupted, quietly. "I've got a job there. I don't expect to entertain the men-just to help the doctor in the dispensary."
He shook his head once more, and a deep, abortive chuckle rumbled somewhere deep in his throat.
"Some help," he said, blandly. "Anyhow, any time you want out, just give me a call. I got the only cab in Mason. I'll come haul you out of the place...."
Then, suddenly, we were there.
My heart raced happily as the taxi pulled up to the high, iron gates. I had waited many long months for this moment; and now that it was here, I could hardly believe it. I suppose I am one of the few people in the world who ever wanted to be in jail-but then I wasn't exactly going to be a prisoner. My reason for wanting behind those forbidding walls was something I didn't dare reveal to strangers-and certainly not to an overly-inquisitive taxi driver.
My name is Mary Gray, and I'm a registered nurse. The long months of training and preparation which went into my becoming a nurse were over and this was my first assignment. But the important thing about it was that it was not a casual assignment. I didn't just close my eyes and say "eenie-meenie-minee-moe" the way we used to do as children when we had decisions to make. My decision was based on nothing more than my desire to be near the man I loved.
And he was in Mason Reformatory because he had to be.
I remember reading once in my high school English book a poem that had the line in it: stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. I always thought the man who wrote the poem must not ever have had the experience of being a prisoner himself. I couldn't imagine a worse thing than being locked up in a dull cell with nothing but the companionship of desperately lonely men, with nothing to feed on but regrets and twisted memories. I couldn't bear to think of Joe being left alone like that; and even though what he did to get into prison was bad and difficult to forgive-even for me-I still loved him.
"Far as I can go, miss," the taxi driver breathed, slowing down the car, and leaning his head back toward me. "I guess you got a pass or something to get in."
"Yes...."
"Hope so. Here comes the guard. Old Monk Adams. They say he's a mean bastard-mean as they come."
I looked up in time to see a very large man with massive shoulders walking toward us. He had a rifle slung by a strap over his arm. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of metal-rimmed dark glasses. He came around to the driver's side. He glanced back at me and then at the driver.
"You can't come in here without a pass," he snapped.
"Lady says she's got one."
The guard gave me a sullen look. "That right?"
I tried a smile, but the sullen face discouraged it. "I don't exactly have a pass." I confessed, feeling a little like a criminal myself. "But I do have a letter from Warden Baker. He's expecting me."
The guard waited a second. He didn't look at all friendly; and I could feel his eyes staring holes through me from behind the dark glasses.
"Nobody gets in here without a pass," he growled, finally. "Letters don't...."
"Oh, please," I begged. "Look, can't you make a phone call, or something, to the warden? I know he's expecting me. He wrote me that...."
"Wait here."
The guard swung back off and disappeared into the little brick office just a few feet inside the gate.
"Gives a guy the creeps," the taxi driver whistled, rubbing his jaw. "I don't never wanta get any nearer to this dump than right here."
I thought of Joe again-how he must have felt the first time he rode through these dreary gates; and how he must have resented the sullen look of that guard.
The reluctant driver and I sat for a moment longer in silence, and then the guard came back to the car. He peered in through the window at me again.
"Your name Gray?"
"Yes. Mary Gray."
"Nurse, eh?"
"Yes."
He tossed a scornful look at what he could see of my body, and husked, "Okay ... the warden says it's okay. Taxi can't come in, though. You gotta get out here."
I had never met Warden Baker myself, but I felt that I knew him. He seemed almost like an uncle to me because I had heard my father speak of him so many times, always in affectionate terms.
The man who stood up to greet me, however, was something of a surprise. For one thing, I had expected the warden to be a tall, impressive figure-a kind of heroic, oversized man with graying temples and a strong jaw. I supposed I had seen too many movies about how wardens were supposed to look.
Warden Baker didn't fit that description. He was a small man with a club foot. He was also almost bald, with little reddish-brown wisps of hair clinging above his ears. His smile was quick but somewhat slack and forced, and his eyes seemed tired.
"So you're Phil Gray's little girl, Mary," he said, putting out his hand to me casually.
"Yes...." I stammered, feeling foolish. "I've heard Daddy say so much about you, Warden Baker." I felt foolish because I had poured out my entire knowledge of him in the long letter I attached to the official application blank. I felt that I owed more than just a small amount of Daddy's friendship to this man for getting the job. There was no point in trying to act otherwise. The only thing I was sure he didn't know was why I had wanted to come to work here: I felt that to say I wanted to be near to one of the prisoners would be the worst thing possible.
"Sit down, Mary," the warden said, indicating a chair by his desk. I felt that his glance at me was a little troubled. He sat back down at his desk and folded his small hands together, smiling but still a bit artificially.
"You understand, Mary, that I gave you a great deal of thought before I agreed to letting you come here. Of course, it's my desire to do anything I can for an old friend like Phil-an able attorney like your father ... but...."
His voice trailed off, and I saw the troubled look again. I waited, wondering with a dull dread if he had reconsidered the whole thing, after all.
"Is there something wrong, Warden Baker?" I managed to say.
He looked down at the papers on his desk. I saw a little cloud of concern sailing into his brow. "Well ... to tell you the truth, Mary, I'm a little worried about your real reason for coming here."
I felt a catch in my throat. He knew, then. Somehow he had found out.
I decided the best thing I could do was to beat him to it. "I guess you mean Joe," I said, as casually as I could.
He looked up at me, his pale eyes wavering. "Yes ... Joe Phillips ... I understand you and Joe were once...."
"We were engaged to be married, Warden Baker. The only reason we aren't married now is because Joe decided it wouldn't be fair to me."
The warden was looking at the papers on his desk again. By this time I had realized that the papers were about Joe-undoubtedly his record.
"I suppose I would be insulting you if I asked just what you intend to ... ah ... make of this job?"
"I don't understand."
He looked at me with an official look. "Do you intend to establish contact again with Joe? Did you want a job here just to be near him?"
"Yes ... in a way I did. I'll admit it. But is there anything wrong with that?"
"Wrong?" Warden Baker's eyes shifted uncertainly back to the papers. He was thinking hard about the matter, I could tell.
He cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose it depends on what we mean by wrong, Mary. We can't ignore the fact that Joe Phillips is a prisoner in a state reformatory. And we can't ignore why he was sent here."
"He was convicted of statutory rape," I said quietly. "He was convicted, and he was sentenced. He's paying his debt to society, and I only want to be near him while he does." I leaned forward a little in my chair. The silence in the room was like a hammer inside my head. "I do want to make one thing very clear, Warden Baker," I said, firmly. "I have no intention of complicating Joe's life. And I have no intention of trying to be his wife here."
A small, troubled smile flickered at Warden Baker's mouth. "You think it will be easy for a man like Joe to see you here ... without...."
"Without wanting me?"
"Yes, that's what I mean."
"No ... not in some ways. On the other hand, I think it may help him remember that those on the outside of these walls haven't forgotten him. He's part of my life, Warden. I want it to remain that way." The line from the high-school-days poem came singing into my head again ... stone walls do not a prison make ... and I suddenly realized some of the truth of it. You can be in prison behind artificial, invisible walls, too. I was. I had been ever since Joe was taken out of my life.
Warden Baker was looking at me very carefully. I waited. At last he sighed and closed the folder on his desk. He scratched his sagging jaw slowly.
"You understand, Mary," he said, softly. "I can't know anything at all about this officially. All I note is that you have applied for a position in our dispensary here. We have a position open-and you qualify. Your relationship to Joe Phillips is your own business, and of course I expect you to honor your commitment to conduct yourself at all times as responsibly as possible. I know I don't have to say any more than that."
"Thank you, sir."
"As for Joe ... I've found him to be a model inmate. I suppose you knew we've made him a trusty."
"No, I didn't know that. Joe and I ... well ... we really haven't corresponded much."
"I see. Well, being a trusty means, of course, that he has some freedoms that are denied the majority of prisoners. He is not allowed off the prison grounds, of course-but he is more or less free to roam at will within the walls."
"I see."
"So you understand, Mary-your presence could easily put additional pressures on Joe. I mean, if you let it. But I see no reasons for it not being a beneficial thing for both you and Joe-if the decorum is maintained."
"It will be, I can assure you of that, Warden Baker."
He pushed a buzzer on his desk, and almost at once the guard came back into the room. It was the same guard, the one with the sullen face.
"Monk," the warden said. "This is Miss Mary-Gray, and she's our new nurse. I want you to take her over to meet Stella...." He turned to me and smiled. "Stella is my wife. You'll be staying with us, at least for the time being. Dr. Hawkins isn't here today, so you can meet him tomorrow. And I'll see you later this evening, Stella will show you where to put your things."
He smiled at me again, and I felt that the first Rubicon had been passed at last.
The guard named Monk took me the short distance from the main building to the warden's home. It was set off from the other buildings and nestled in a circle of silver spruces. It was an attractive house with a whitewashed flagstone path bordering the flowers around it. No doubt there was plenty of free labor to keep the place up.
I had already decided that I didn't care too much for Monk. His expression-surly and unfriendly-still had not changed. And once or twice I caught him staring hard at me out of the corners of his eyes, and a small, knowing grin cutting at the edges of his mouth. He didn't speak three words all the way over to the house.
He surprised me by ignoring the doorbell and pushing the door of the house open.
"Stella-Mrs. Baker-ain't here," he said, gruffly. "She took off this morning for town. But she'll be back."
He let me carry my own suitcase into the room near the back of the house. It was a pretty, if sparsely-decorated, bedroom. He lounged in the doorway, watching me as I put the suitcase on the small bed and unlocked the snaps. I turned at last.
"Thank you for showing me the room," I said.
He grinned a slack grin. "Anything else you need, Miss," he breathed, suggestively.
"No, thanks."
He remained there, hulking in the doorway, one meaty hand hooked into his wide, leather cartridge belt.
"Sure about that?" he insisted.
I stared him down. In a moment he grinned again and turned his back on me. I could hear him lumbering down the little hallway and out of the house. I shut the door to the bedroom and unpacked.
I wanted to take a bath, but I hesitated. After all, it wasn't my house-and I'd never met Warden Baker's wife. She could very well look askance at my moving in at all. I decided to rest a little bit instead. It had been a long bus trip getting here and I found that now that the ordeal of getting the job was over, I was more tired than I had thought.
I didn't bother to turn back the cover of the small bed. I Just lay down and shut my eyes.
I don't know how long I was asleep when the noises awakened me. It couldn't have been long, and yet I had been sound asleep, because the noises seemed to work themselves into my subconscious, like little pickaxes hammering away at the walls of my sleep.
There were voices-low and muffled and insistent; and mixed with them, the low chuckle of a woman's laugh.
I got up, intending to make my presence known. But when I got to the door of my room I froze in my tracks. I recognized one of the voices.
I stood just behind the door and-despite myself-found that I was eavesdropping.
"...hurry!" the woman's voice demanded.
"You really are hot today, baby!"
That was the voice I recognized.
It was Joe's voice. And the tone of it burned into my brain with a kind of harsh disbelief. There was no mistaking the meaning of his words, no masking the carnal intent.
"I've waited a damned week for you," the woman's voice wailed, ragged with an obvious need.
"It's better that way," Joe laughed. "I-like a woman to appreciate me. Makes it nicer for both of us."
"Shut up-shut up and hurry!"
They stopped talking then, and I could hear nothing but a muffled, straining sound of bodies moving together. They were very close, and I remembered the other door, the one just across the hall from the room I was in. The door had been open when I came into the house, and I wondered if now ...
I continued to listen, but now there was only silence.
I stood up and very quietly moved to the door of my room. I hated myself. I told myself that I shouldn't do it, that I would regret it a thousand times-and yet I was compelled, forced by my racing heart to discover the worst.
I knelt very quietly and put my eye to the keyhole. The room across the hall came into my vision, and what I saw made me suck in my breath with shock.
A buxom woman-half-naked--was sprawled on the bed. Her legs were thrown apart temptingly, revealing a flash of panties under the tight slip that rode high on her hips. Her breasts-swollen and taut-strained against the upper part of her slip. I could see the outline of her nipples, rounded and hard, pressing out like thumbs against the silken shimmer of cloth.
She had a slack, confident grin on her face and it was directed toward the man who stood in front of her, unbuttoning his trousers. He had his back to me, but there was something unmistakably familiar to me in the shape of his shoulders, the nape of his neck, the way he held his head.
Then he turned his profile toward me and my heart caught in my throat.
Joe!
I stared in disbelief at the man I loved-and at what he was about to do with a strange woman.
CHAPTER 2
I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT MY EYES TOLD ME was true. The sharp pain clawed at my throat and almost became a scream. But I didn't scream. I made no sound whatsoever. I merely continued to watch the unbelievable sexual tableau going on before my eyes in the room across the hall.
Joe worked his pants over his trim hips and pulled his legs out of the tangle of denim. He threw the pants carelessly aside. His T-shirt and shorts followed, and soon I was staring at his naked body. He looked even younger and more handsome than he had the last time I saw him, as if the prison life had trimmed any excess poundage from his already hard, athletic body.
The woman grinned lewdly at the sight of his youthful virility, and motioned him closer.
Joe moved to her with the swagger of the male aroused with lust.
She pulled him down to her and they wallowed on the bed for a moment, crushing their mouths together in frantic combat. Joe's hands moved instinctively to the swelling masses of her breasts, and his hand slipped inside the drape of her slip and played with her thrusting nipples.
She moaned and threw her head back in a paroxysm of pleasure as his fingers continued to excite her. Suddenly, she stood up and pulled wildly at the straps of her slip, forcing them over her shoulders and down to her flaring hips.
She raked her panties down along with the slip, and stepped out of the soft crush of garments and back into Joe's waiting arms. He massaged her enormous, flushed breasts with his fingers, teasing the gorged nipples over and over again until the pink rosettes turned into reddened welts and forced the peaks into little towers of hardening flesh.
His mouth nuzzled against her throat, tasting the forbidden scent of woman. He seemed crazed for her, ravenous to fill his need of what must drive men behind bars into nightmares of loneliness and frustration.
Despite my desperate repulsion for what I was seeing, I could understand what drove Joe to behave as he was doing. After all, he was young and healthy-and his need for sex was, if anything, greater now that he was denied it.
It was the woman I couldn't forgive.
She was older than Joe-much older, although she was obviously trying to appear young and tempting. Her hair had been rinsed a deceptive platinum blonde, and the make-up applied heavily to her face was still another ploy to roll back time.
It was equally obvious that it was she who had lured Joe to this bed of lust, and she who intended to use him to gratify her deepest, basest desires. Her hands were all over him, squeezing the muscles in his upper arms, playing with the hair on his chest, teasing along his legs toward his stiffened rod that rose throbbing between his legs.
When her fingers finally closed over him, grasping his hardened penis, Joe gasped and pulled her over on the bed. His mouth found one of her raised nipples and closed over it, sucking hard at its promise of honey.
She moved her body sensually against him as he pleased her, her hand continuing to stimulate him in the most obscene ways. When they had aroused each other to the exploding point, she threw one leg over his lean hip and drew him over her. Her eyes flashed hard with lust.
"Now, dammit...." she hissed, "You've teased me long enough! Give it to me good and fast-the way you gave it to that one you raped. Rape me, too!"
Joe's face twisted into an evil grin. "Yeah, baby," he husked. "You want it that way, don't you? Okay, I'll please you good. Just exactly the way you want it!"
He pushed her back on the bed and raised her hips with a savage movement of his hands and arms. She laughed a throaty laugh and did nothing to prevent what he was doing to her. If anything, she helped him by spreading her ample thighs wider so that he couldn't miss his mark.
He wormed between her legs and lifted his hips into position. With one lunge he buried himself into her flaming depths. She let out a ragged shout of pleasure mixed with pain.
"Beg me for it, you hot bitch," Joe muttered, fiercely. "Beg me to shove it harder and deeper in you!"
"Yes!" she moaned. "Give it to me now-treat me like a whore, you big stud!"
Joe fell over her like a wild young animal. Supporting his body with extended arms, he began to pump his lust into her insatiable body. With each thrusting mess of his hips, she moaned again, intoxicated with pleasure, delirious with passion.
There was little doubt in my mind that this lust-possessed woman who was flailing her legs and grinding her thighs upward so wantonly was anybody in the world except Stella Baker I
How could it possibly be anyone else, I raged.
When I heard the animal moans coming from deep in her throat and saw her fingernails crisscrossing
Joe's back to dig in like the claws of a vulture, I dropped my eyes from the keyhole and turned limply away. I couldn't bear to watch the finish to a sight that had filled me with such disgust and bitter disappointment.
My mind burned with anger.
What a fool I had been!
I had come hundreds of miles to be near Joe, to give him some small comfort in what I believed was a living hell for him. And not an hour after my arrival, I was watching him writhe on a bed of lust with another man's wife.
It was too monstrous ...
I stumbled back to my room and lay quietly on my bed, and waited.
It seemed hours before the bed stopped creaking. I tried to shut out of my mind, the tell-tale noises I could hear through the door, but they seemed augmented by the silence in my own room and the terrible knowledge I had already gained through the keyhole.
The animal moans of the woman grew louder and with them the increased complaint of the bed springs. The noises coupled in a kind of demented circus of lewdness, finally coming to a shrill climax and tapering at last off into a merciless quiet.
I waited, my heart pounding, to see what would happen next. It occurred to me that Stella Baker might take it upon herself to investigate this room, since the door to it had been closed by me. What would I say if they discovered me there? What would I do? It was, after all, possible to look upon me as the real intruder.
Fortunately, that problem was solved for me quickly. I heard a few muffled and frantic whispers out in the hallway and then the heavy footsteps of a man-Joe, of course-moving away from the hall.
I waited until I heard a shower going and then very quietly and quickly I got up and closed my suitcase. I slipped out into the hall and down it to the front door. I looked through the curtains. Joe was nowhere in sight. Then I slipped out the door. I stood uncertainly on the porch for a few moments-and then I pressed the doorbell.
I pressed again and again nervously and in a few moments the door squeaked open a foot. Stella Baker stood with her hair damp over her forehead and a large bath towel draped around her body. She looked older than I had thought. Her eyes were dark and liquid, still bright with satiated desire. The lipstick and mascara had been washed from her face, leaving a plump, plain, middle-aged woman revealed.
"Yes ... what is it?" she demanded.
"Are you Stella Baker."
"Yes, who are you?"
"I'm Mary Gray. Your husband said I was to come here, that you...."
"Oh, sure. He said something about your showing up pretty soon. Come on in. I was just taking a shower. I ... uh ... been working in the garden ... just got in."
Stella Baker pushed the door open wide for me and I stepped into the same hall I had only recently sneaked out of. I hoped my guilt-and my vague anger and humiliation-weren't showing too much in my face.
Stella shifted the towel closer around her body, and her swollen breasts joggled like melons. I thought how they had been teased and kissed only minutes before by Joe-the man I loved heart and soul-and resentment surged through my heart again. I wasn't sure how long I could keep my anger in check. We chatted small talk for a few moments before Stella Baker gave me a curiously cold glance and said: "Funny you should wanta come here, being young and all, like you. I'd think you'd rather be someplace where there's a chance of-well, meeting a nice young man. You won't meet anything but criminal types around here."
"I suppose some of them are not so bad," I said, making the words a little sharper than was necessary.
"I don't have anything to do with them myself," she insisted. She stopped in front of the bedroom that I knew was mine. "This is where Ben said you were to stay." She didn't sound too enthusiastic.
"I hope I'm not ... disturbing your routine too much," I said.
"I got no routine. To tell you the truth, Miss Gray ... you mind if I call you Mary? ... to tell you the truth, the life here bores me to death."
"Is that so?"
"I guess you have your work and all ... and maybe that will keep you busy. Otherwise, it's a terrible place for a comparatively young woman like myself to be. You don't know how...."
"But, of course, you're married, Mrs. Baker. That should make some difference."
She made a low grunt of contempt deep in her throat which surprised me-both surprised and enlightened me. I saw it all then. She was married to Ben Baker, but she wasn't happy. And I saw more than that, too. She saw in me a threat. I wondered suddenly if she knew even more about me than that. I didn't have to wait long to learn.
"You know Joe Phillips?" she said, looking at me again with a kind of half-smile stitching up the corners of her mouth. She dug a cigarette out of a deep pocket in her robe.
"Well, I...."
I didn't know exactly what to say, and I-was very angry with myself for letting my confusion show.
She grinned wider now. "Sure, you know Joe. It's why you're here, isn't it?"
"Your husband told you that?" I stammered.
"He didn't have to, honey. Joe told me himself."
"Joe?"
"You don't think anything goes on around here that we don't know about, do you?"
I wasn't quite sure who was included in the 'we', so I said nothing. I waited. I was sure she would grind the axe good and sharp.
"Sure," she husked, her voice cutting and hard. "Sure, you know Joe. He was the guy you saw me with about ten minutes ago."
I was almost too stunned to move. In a moment I found my voice.
"I ... I don't know what...."
"Don't lie to me, kiddo. You were right in that room-more than--likely with your little blue eyes glued to that damned keyhole-watching everything we did. Might as well confess it."
I stared at her. I couldn't believe my ears. But the pieces were beginning to fit together-and the picture wasn't pretty. Not at all.
I felt fresh anger at being tricked. "Let me get this straight, Mrs. Baker," I said, my own voice growing as hard as hers. "Do you mean that you knew I was in that room-and that you deliberately staged that scene too...."
"You catch on fast, Miss Gray. Real fast. I thought you might get a kick out of seeing that Joe hasn't lost his touch."
"You're a beast."
She laughed throatily and her eyes flashed. "And what about you-dragging yourself half way across the country just to get in his pants. Don't you think I know why you're here ... don't you know I know you'd have given your soul to have been sprawled naked on that bed instead of me? C'mon-say it. IVs true, isn't it?"
"No, it isn't true! If you think I came to Mason just so I could bed down with Joe like some ... some cheap...."
"Whore?"
I glared at her. "You said it," I snapped. "I didn't."
"No, but that's what you meant, isn't it?" ' I shrugged, my mind spinning angrily. "I really don't know what else you would call it, now that you mention it, Mrs. Baker. At least I don't have a husband to betray."
Her mouth drew down in another quick line of contempt. "You call that thing I'm married to a husband! Boy, you must be blind as well as silly. A cripple, that's what I'm married to. An old man ... a character who couldn't begin to give me what Joe...."
"Please ... I don't want to hear it."
"Well, you're going to hear it, sister, because I intend to set you straight on how things are around here. Joe Phillips isn't yours anymore. That's the simple truth of the matter. And the sooner you get that firmly ground in your little doll head, the better. When Joe finds out you're here, he...."
"So he didn't know I was in that room."
She glared at me, biting her lip. "Well, what I meant was...."
I smiled. She had trapped herself. "Joe didn't know anything at all about what you were doing this afternoon," I insisted. "He had no idea I was watching that little seduction scene. It was all your idea!"
"So what ... you saw what happened didn't you? You saw how he...."
"I saw a cheap, middle-aged woman making use of a young, sex-starved man. You can't dangle meat in front of a starved animal and expect him to walk away. Joe doesn't care anything at all about you!"
She leered at me. "Is that really the way it looked to you? Honey, you need glasses. Joe's told me a thousand times that he loves me."
"You poor, sick woman...."
"Goddamn it, don't patronize me! You think I'm too old to get a man like that. You think I don't still have a body that can drive men wild. Well, you don't know half of what goes on around here!"
"I'll bet I don't. Who's on your list for tomorrow? Monk?"
Her hand lashed out at me and I pulled back just in time to prevent her savage slap from making contact. She was breathing in ragged, panting gasps. "Now you listen to me, you fine-haired little bitch," she snarled. "You're not going to come in here and ruin my party. I've got things just exactly the way I want ' em here. And no damn little set of hot tits is going to ruin them for me...."
I shuddered.
"How in God's name could a fine man like Ben Baker have married you? What gutter did he find you in...."
Her glare snarled up in my own. "You want to know how it happened?" she wailed. "I'll tell you sometime. All you need to know now is that that fine man you call Ben Baker was once as degenerate as the rest of them. like all horny males! Animals rutting and snatching and taking what they can get from any female in sight. Ben Baker was no better than the most hardened rapist inside these walls.
The only difference is, he was too smart to get sent to jail for it. Now he's too damned old and tired to bother!"
"How can you speak of your own husband like that?" I protested.
"Because that's what he is-that's what all men are. They take what they can get. And just because you have a few silly words said over you by a preacher don't mean that it's any prettier."
"I'm sure Warden Baker will be happy to hear what you think of him," I snapped.
Her face went suddenly white. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.
"I'm talking about the fact that I intend to tell him everything you've just said about him. I'm going to tell him the minute he gets to this house."
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Oh, and why not? Don't you think two can play your nasty little game? You didn't invent cruelty, Mrs. Baker-you don't have a corner on the market."
"You are a little bitch!" she yelped.
I smiled contemptuously, hoping this act would convince her that I meant business. "That's right. I am a bitch. And I intend to repay you in coin for what you tried to do to me this afternoon with Joe." I pushed the advantage. "And I emphasize the word tried-because you haven't got to first base in convincing me that Joe means anything to you. And I certainly don't believe you mean anything to him anything, that is, except the most degrading kind of sexual relief!"
"You oughta get out of here," she whined, her voice quavering and frantic. "You ought to count yourself lucky that you saw Joe Phillips for what he is...."
"I know what he is, and I love him just the same. I don't have to be told that he is a man. But I can tell you one thing: You're going to leave him alone from now on! Do you understand that? You're going to leave him alone or I'll spill the whole pot of beans right in your husband's lap!"
We stared at each other for a long moment, two fiery females in the heat of a human jungle. I could see hatred for me boiling in her eyes. I was frightened, but I stood my ground.
I could see the wheels going around in her head. She softened a little, for my benefit. Her mouth twitched convulsively. "Now, look, honey," she husked, painfully. "Okay, so maybe I flew off the handle a little bit-maybe I did the wrong thing setting up that little show. But I figured you ought to know how it is...."
"I know how it is. You thought I'd take one look and run screaming back to civilization. You use your body to taunt and tease men. I'm sure Joe is just one of many. I think it's despicable what you're doing-and even worse that you do it behind your husband's back. He probably needs you, trusts you even!"
"Sure, sure, he trusts me-and that's the way it's got to stay." Her eyes narrowed feverishly on me. "And it can stay that way ... if you let it."
"I told you my terms," I said, coldly.
"Okay, okay, the terms are fine. I stay away from Joe. Who needs him, anyway. He's too damned young. There's somebody else-more important I couldn't leave here-not without Monk."
The weakness for the sullen guard rode into her face. I almost felt sorry for her-and I would have if it hadn't been for the vicious thing she had tried to do to me. And the callous way in which she used Joe and probably others. And I thought, too, of Ben Baker: The poor man, deceived and certainly laughed at behind his back.
"I'll leave Joe alone," she whispered. "I'll do that, if you promise...."
I sighed, and turned away in disgust. "I promise," I said. "I have no desire to hurt Warden Baker."
She stuck out her hand to seal the bargain, but I ignored it. I picked up my suitcase and opened the door of the bedroom.
I left her standing alone in the hallway, her cheap body draped in the gaudy bathrobe, the cigarette dangling at her lips-like a whore.
CHAPTER 3
THAT NIGHT I COULDN'T SLEEP. NO MATTER how hard I tried to rationalize what I had seen that afternoon, to forgive Joe, to minimize the brutal ugliness of the lust I had witnessed, I was reminded of the past: a past that I had been trying to forget, to shut out of my mind; but a past that, nevertheless, continued to haunt me and mock me.
It was not the first time Joe had been tempted by lust-and delivered himself willingly into the hands of his carnal nature. And I wondered again, with that old doubt, if there could ever be a real end to it. After all, he was behind these walls for just such a weakness.
I met Joe when I was fourteen and he was sixteen. It was a casual acquaintance at first; he was simply one of the older boys in the high school I attended, and one of the many older boys that girls of my age quite easily got school-girl crushes on. In Joe's case, I was certainly not his only admirer. The woods, as they say, were full of them. Almost every girl I knew found something in Joe Phillips to admire. Besides being one of the handsomest boys in school, Joe was also the very best athlete. He excelled in almost every sport he turned his hand to-particularly football. When half the boys his age were still gangling and awkward, Joe had put on pounds of muscle and strength, and had developed a casual, masculine grace that was years beyond his age. I didn't realize it at the time, I suppose, but Joe was already the kind of boy that made easy-or at least tempting-bait for predatory females. And our school wasn't lacking in that kind.
I was actually too young to know everything about what went on in our high school, but I got wind of rumors, as girls will, about how some of the older girls carried on behind their parents' backs. The only real involvement concerning Joe came when the superintendent of our high school uncovered a kind of sex club which numbered in its ranks some of the most popular and smartest students in the school. The whole thing was a hushed-up, minor scandal; and I remember that I was shocked, and defensive, when Joe's name was involved.
Nothing happened, of course. The parents demanded that the whole thing be forgotten; and because many of the older students were ready to graduate that very spring, the matter was very quickly glossed over.
For the next year all the kids were extra careful about what they did. If any more sex clubs appeared, they were well guarded secrets. I know that I was never asked to join one. It was about this time, however, that I began dating more or less steadily. The boys I dated were all from good families; and my parents were very strict. You shouldn't get the idea that I felt at all cheated. I was a little strict myself. I had certain ideas about how boys should behave; and if a boy went beyond my code of moral behavior, I let him know about it fast, and in no uncertain terms.
That's why I was a bit uncertain when Joe Phillips called me up for a date.
I remembered the vague rumors about his being involved in the sex club scandal, and although he had come through it-unsullied and more popular than ever, I still had that nagging doubt about his character. But I was only human-and a very flattered human at that. When half the girls I knew were panting to get even a smile from Joe Phillips, I ms being asked out on a date.
I don't think any female alive could refuse that kind of attention.
We went to a movie on our first date. Joe was the nicest thing in the world to me. He was a good conversationalist, and he took particular interest in what I had to say-which was certainly a departure from most of the boys I had dated in the past. He impressed me as not only being an intelligent and well-bred person, but also as a young man with a good future. How wrong first impressions can be and how right!
Even after Joe's trouble, and his subsequent conviction, I never lost the faith in him that was born on that first date. My becoming a nurse just so I could be at his side in Mason Reformatory was living testament to that conviction.
On our second date we both knew each other a lot better, and when Joe asked if he could give me a goodnight kiss I actually smiled.
"You didn't have to ask, Joe," I murmured, loving him for being so thoughtful.
"I won't try to fool you, Mary," he said, giving me a long, honest look. "I'm no innocent character. I've been out with a lot of girls-and believe me, the kissing started a lot sooner than this."
"Then why so slow with me?"
"I ... I like you, I guess. I didn't want to take the chance of not having another date."
I smiled again and this time I kissed him-a slightly longer, more affectionate kiss on the lips. I couldn't begin to understand why kissing Joe made me tremble to the depths of my being. I wasn't exactly innocent myself. I had kissed many boys-or at least had let them kiss me. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes it was like washing my hair-boring and routine. But with Joe, it was nothing but magic and sudden starlight. We kissed several more times, once or twice letting ourselves get carried away. I had never in my life French kissed, and secretly entertained the idea that there was something terribly depraved and immoral in letting the tongues get involved the ways ours did.
But it seemed right with Joe: and lying awake that night in my room, with my mind alive with pictures of Joe's face and a happy, even selfish, little smile on my lips, I realized that if kissing Joe Phillips that way was sinful, then I was well on my way to becoming the school's most notorious sinner.
Although I wasn't quite able to focus on the realization then, I was falling in love.
Our dates multiplied after that. We went everywhere together: to dances, football games (if Joe was playing, I sat in the stands and screamed my lungs out for him), picnics, lakeshore rides in his old convertible, everything. It's funny when you're in love with somebody, you don't have to do complicated, expensive things. Just sitting alone by a campfire with his arm around your shoulder can be the most satisfying thing in the world. I feel sorry for the girl who has never experienced that kind of rich experience-the richness that money can't buy.
Joe's platonic detachment toward me was pleasant at first. I'll have to admit that I found a certain relief in the fact that he didn't try to paw me. I said earlier that I had gone out with boys from good families; I didn't mean to imply that I had been treated like a Dresden doll. Far from it; and some of the boys from "good" families ought to be in Mason Reformatory on general principles. Many times I had to fight off their advances, pull their wriggling fingers away from my breasts and slap away their hands that tired vainly to slide up my dress. I knew very early just what it was most boys were after.
And I had expected that of Joe Phillips. So when he turned out to be more than a gentleman, I was at first flattered and pleased. It was only after we had been going together for a few months that I became ... well ... puzzled.
It was like that first kiss he had been hesitant to take. He obviously wanted me to think the best of him; and I supposed that, somewhere, hidden back in his character and his moral convictions, was the idea that sex was dirty. I don't happen to believe that. I never did. Even though my mother died when I was very young, my father had taken every opportunity to play both parental roles to me. And in the matter of sex he had been clear, firm and intelligent. I knew what the psychological and physiological makeup of the male was a long time before I experienced it. My father's little lectures were very helpful in many ways; but they didn't prepare me for the tugs of the heartstrings. Being in love and facing the problems of sex can be a very different thing from textbook-solving sexual problems.
And so it became a problem with me.
I wasn't satisfied with those goodnight kisses, pleasant as they were. And I knew that Joe wasn't satisfied either. Even at seventeen, a girl can be awfully sure of her heart-and her body. My heart said that Joe Phillips was the only boy in the world for me; and my body ached to prove the scope of my feeling.
But what could I do? I didn't dare insist on some more intimate relationship. I would be risking weakening that peculiar male pride that insists the sexual advances must be made from his position, and not the females.
And so I played a waiting game.
But one other aspect of that game disturbed me. I knew that Joe was a healthy, in many ways aggressive, young man, and that his needs were as acute as any other similarly endowed male.
How did he satisfy them?
The question nagged me with an ever-increasing frustration. It was so much the reverse side of the coin that I felt cheated. Before, I had been somewhat the pawn of boys who saw in me a physical prize: many of them had asked for dates just "for what they could get." I had cared nothing for them. And now, with Joe-a boy I knew I loved-I was ready and even eager to give my body to him, and he never once demanded it.
It made me wonder if he wasn't demanding somebody else's body in place of mine.
Was I merely the Sunday kind of girl-the one he liked to be seen with because her father was Phil Gray, the attorney?
Was I the good girl, the girl with unquestionable character, somebody who might-in time-make a good wife? And was he, in the meantime, giving the urgency of his hard young body to some cheap girl who was less matrimonial material but very available for a moment's ecstasy in a motel or the back seat of his car?
I hated to admit it, but the question bothered me.
Then two things happened which answered both those questions-the good-girl and the bad-girl questions.
On my eighteenth birthday Joe asked me to marry him. He said that he loved me very deeply and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Talk about being on Cloud Nine-I was on Cloud Eighteen!
I could barely make it inside the front door that evening, I was so happy.
My father was still up, sitting in his study reading some briefs for a court case he had coming up the next day. I usually never dared disturb him on such occasions, but tonight was different. I burst into the room like a canon's roar.
He looked up in surprise, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. "Whoa, there, young lady," he cried. "Is the house on fire?"
"No, but I am, Daddy!"
I hugged him so hard that his glasses spilled off in his lap. He pulled me back away and let his eyes roam suspiciously over my face.
"Does this mean what I think it does?" he breathed, a kind of happy-sad sigh coming from deep in his throat.
"He asked me to marry him, Daddy," I said, and the words were like bells to me. "I see."
"You are happy, aren't you?" I begged.
He kissed me on the nose-a pet place for him since I was three years old-and grinned. "I think Joe is a nice boy," he said. "If you love him...."
"I do ... you know I do!"
"Yes ... but ... so young; both of you, so young."
I felt a lecture coming on, but I was so happy that I had the strength-and I suspected, the wisdom-to counter any arguments Daddy could dredge up from that legalistic mind of his. I waited, but he surprised me by only sighing once more and then kissing me again and patting my arm.
"You know, Mary, that Joe Phillips won't be able to give you ... well ... what you have here-at least not at first. He's a nice young man, but he'll have to carve a future out for himself and that isn't easy.
Material things...."
"Oh, Daddy, I'd live in a cave with Joe. I don't give a hoot for things."
He smiled proudly at me. "You're just like your mother. I'm glad for that. If I thought you only wanted to marry a boy...."
"Joe's almost twenty years old, Daddy."
He nodded. "I'm sorry-a young man, then. If I thought you only wanted to marry a young man for the furs and the cars he could give you, then I would be very disappointed. Joe Phillips can't do that. And I don't mind admitting to you, darling, that I've checked very thoroughly into his young life ... and his parent's...."
"Daddy, you old sleuth!"
"...and I've found out the rock-bottom truth about them all."
"And what is that, pray tell?"
"That they are poor ... but honest ... good people."
"I told you that, Daddy. I told you all about...."
"Yes, and I'm happy to say you were right."
We kissed and hugged again, and I skipped toward the door of his study.
"Oh ... by the way," he called, eyeing me from the depths of his armchair. "When is the wedding to be?"
I gasped and broke into a riot of sighs and smiles. "Oh my gosh," I wailed, "I hadn't even thought about that! But I can tell you one thing-I'm going to wear mother's wedding dress."
I think that pleased Daddy more than anything.
It was a good thing we both had our moment of happiness-because the next day the bottom fell out of my world. And in a way, Daddy's world, too.
I slept late, but when I got up there was a note from Daddy on my dressing table. He said to phone him, as soon as I could.
Downstairs in the kitchen as I munched a piece of toast, I dialed Daddy's office and listened as the clicks made their familiar rounds. Daddy's secretary answered and put me straight through to him.
"Mary?"
"Yes, Daddy ... it's me."
"I'm afraid I have some bad news. I ... wanted to tell you myself before...." He broke off, his voice a peculiar waver of indecision.
I held the piece of toast forgotten in my hand. I waited.
"Mary-Joe Phillips was arrested last night."
"Arrested? For what."
"For rape, Mary."
The word burned into my mind. I couldn't speak. I thought I might simply faint and leave the phone dangling from the wall. But I didn't. I just stood there, my heart banging against my breasts.
"The girl made the complaint to her parents ... and sometime ... well, very early in the morning, apparently ... the police went by Joe's home and woke his parents and...."
"Oh, Daddy-it can't be true! It...."
"I'm afraid it is true, Mary. I've offered to defend him, but I'm afraid it looks pretty bad. The girl is only fourteen...."
I listened to the details with a kind of frozen terror. It was like Daddy to tell me, not to hold anything back. And I expected that, and wanted it. We had always been that way with each other, and he knew it. This was certainly no time to keep secrets from each other, and he knew it.
He told me the girl's name and I didn't know her. I'd never heard her name at all. But I thought she might be somebody from the school. After all, the high school we attended was much too large to be able to know everybody.
Of one thing I was very sure of: it made no difference in how I felt about Joe. The question was: would it make any difference how Joe felt about me?
That terrible possibility took more shape when Joe refused to see me. I had to try three times before he agreed to talk to me. And when he did, he had that terrible, hang-dog look of a man who has been found guilty before even being tried.
I was led into a little room at the county jail, and Joe was brought in. A policeman stood right outside the door all the time, and the privacy was not privacy at all. But it was my first chance to be near him and I didn't intend to let the opportunity slip by without making it clear to Joe that nothing had changed.
"You shouldn't have come here, Mary," he said, hoarsely, not wanting to look at me.
"But I love you, Joe. And I don't care about what you did."
"How can you say that," he moaned. "I've ruined it for us."
"No, I'll forgive you, Joe."
He looked up at me and I almost shuddered at the coldness of his eyes. It was a look I had never seen there before.
"You'll never forget it, though, Mary-and that's what I couldn't live with."
The whole thingbecame a circus of quick "justice" as far as the courts were concerned. Daddy wasn't even allowed to take the case. The judge threw him off the minute he learned that Joe was engaged to me. The papers made a great compassionate attempt to leave my name out of the whole matter-for Daddy's sake. And Joe was characterized as one of the free-wheeling high school crowd who had been given far too much freedom for too long. They made a scapegoat of him. They brought all their pent-up bigotry to bear on one young man, and took the vengeance of a mob.
The girl's parents pressed the charges to the last rasp of the judge's gavel, and Joe was convicted of statutory rape.
The lawyer defending him tried every way possible to prove that the girl was nothing but a greedy little prostitute, and he even produced several of Joe's friends on the stand to make the charge crystal clear.
But the prudes were on the warpath. The girl cried and stammered when it came time for her to witness. To hear her tell it, she was innocent as snow. And she was fourteen.
The charge stuck, and so did the conviction.
When Joe was taken away, a part of my life ended. But a part of it began, too. I made up my mind that I would somehow be near him.
And now, lying in the dark bedroom of Warden Baker's house, I was indeed at the end of another part of my life. I was near Joe, as I had vowed.
But as he had prophesied, I had not forgotten. And what I had seen that day with my own eyes had made me wonder again if my love for Joe Phillips was not a fool's errand.
And a fool's reward.
CHAPTER 4
THE NEXT MORNING I HAD BREAKFAST WITH Warden Baker and his wife. Stella and I exchanged distant glances. Our bargain was more or less sealed by the silence with which both of us avoided being unpleasant. I looked for some sign of suspicion in Warden Baker's face and voice, but could find none.
After breakfast I walked with him to the dispensary. It was a small building set apart from the other buildings. It, too, was made of the same gray, dismal stone that characterized the rest of the prison. The interior had been made a little more pleasant by flowers that grew in the prison greenhouse. When Warden Baker took me inside we were greeted by an older man who looked up from a desk in the corner.
"Mary ... I'd like you to meet Dr. Hawkins," Warden Baker said.
The older man rose and came toward me, extending his hand. His sly, dark eyes twinkled, and I thought I noticed a weary relief in them.
"I've been praying for somebody," he said, smiling at me and pumping my hand up and down. "I didn't know they were, going to send me an angel, though."
I smiled back. "I'm glad to meet you, doctor," I said. "I hope I don't disappoint you."
"No chance of that, Mary," Warden Baker said, amiably. "We don't have anything major to contend with here. If anything is really wrong with one of the men, we send him along to the hospital in Pleasanton. That right, Henry?"
Dr. Henry Hawkins screwed up his face into a mock frown. "You make me sound like a horse doctor, Ben." Then he grinned at me. "He's about right, though. Most of our ailments here are of the gold-bricking variety. The men can think up a dozen reasons a minute for getting out of a little work. You'd think this was the Army."
Warden Baker laughed and touched me on the arm. I'll leave you in Henry's hands now, Mary. I'm sure you'll feel right at home before the day is out. See you for lunch."
He waved good-bye to both of us and lumbered away on his lame foot. When he was gone, Dr. Hawkins offered me a chair.
"Might as well relax. The men won't be coming in for a half-hour yet. There's plenty of time to show you some of the ropes. Want some coffee?"
I nodded my thanks and he poured a cup for me and one for himself from a little burner on one of the tables.
"Ben was right when he said we got nothing major to treat. Cuts, bruises, headaches-nothing much worse than that. Suppose that's why the state figures they can trust this place to a broken-down practioner like me-and one nurse, course."
He looked at me shrewdly before he put my coffee cup down. He sighed. "One thing I'll say the men will certainly be glad to see you here. The nurse before you ... well ... she wasn't so much to look at. We got along fine, but if you've ever seen a grizzly bear with a toothache, that was her. Nurse Jenkins. The boys always had a time with her." He stirred his coffee and took a loud sip from it. He looked at me again. "Now with you it might be a different kind of problem."
I shrugged. "I plan to be a good nurse," I said.
He played around with the little silence that followed. Then he nodded. "That's fine. Of course, I've been reading your records. You've had good training and you graduated right near the top. But it is your first job; and this is a prison, and not a regular hospital. Men like we have here can be ... well, something besides gentlemen, if they take a notion."
I waited for the warning.
"Not that you won't find young men just like them on the outside, you understand," he continued. "Some of these men here just had a little bad luck. All kinds of reasons for locking a man up. Some of them may deserve it-undoubtedly do-and some of them are just victims of circumstances. Anyway, it's best to treat them with respect, and they'll do the same for you. But I wouldn't advise giving any one of them what's commonly called 'the eye.'"
"Don't worry," I said, calmly.
"Men locked up ... away from women like this ... can sometimes imagine things. You give one of them the eye and...."
"Doctor, I can assure you that I know all about men. And I didn't come here to flirt with them. I came here to be a nurse, and that's what I intend to be."
He looked at me steadily for a few more seconds, nodded, and raised the coffee cup to his lips for another healthy swallow. He smacked his lips and nodded, letting a little half-grin twist his lips upward. "Good. As long as we understand each other, Miss Gray, then we'll get along just fine. And by the same token, if any of the men get out of line with you, just let me know. I can promise you, they won't do it again."
"I'll remember that," I promised.
In the next hour Dr. Hawkins showed me the entire working procedure in the dispensary. It was a small, compact place. There were five beds and a well-stocked drug cabinet which was kept locked when not in use. He showed me where the medical instruments were kept and the sterilization trays. Despite his rather shaggy-dog appearance and the smelly pipe he insisted on keeping clamped between his teeth when he wasn't drinking the black, strong coffee, the dispensary had a very disciplined and well-ordered air about it. Every throat swab and roll of bandage was neatly in place.
By the time the first man on the sick list arrived, I was thoroughly familiar with the arrangement of things.
The first patient was a lanky young man of medium height, with shifting eyes and a loose, uncertain smile. His hand had been injured in the prison laundry a week before, and Dr. Hawkins had been paying careful attention to it, to prevent any kind of infection from developing.
I busied myself with the files while the doctor took care of our first patient of the day. Once or twice I glanced at the young man and he dropped his eyes quickly as if I might scream if he so much as acknowledged my presence. The doctor didn't bother to introduce us, and I considered that was the routine that would be followed throughout the day.
A few more men came in, with various kinds of ailments. Most of them had a legitimate excuse for arriving, but some of them were obviously the "gold-brickers" about whom the doctor had warned me. One or two of them had obviously just come in to look over the new nurse.
Dr. Hawkins sighed after one of these spectators had ambled out, after casing a hot wink in my direction and behind the doctor's back. "Well, I guess the word is out. We may have more patients than we can handle in the morning. They'll all have to have a look at you. But things will settle down."
About the middle of the morning, the phone rang and Dr. Hawkins conferred at some length with someone on the other end of the line. When he hung the receiver up he took off his smock and raked his battered old hat off the rack by the door.
"Got to do a little errand for the Warden," he said, looking at me carefully. "Think you can handle the office for a few minutes?"
I smiled. "Anything short of an appendectomy." I said.
He laughed. "Good girl. And remember what I said. Any of these monkeys get fresh with you, just remind them that they're still behind bars-and--likely to remain so if they don't behave."
I nodded. "I don't think I'll have any trouble."
When he was gone I was exultant, I felt that I had passed the first part of my test well enough. At least the doctor trusted me enough to leave me alone in the dispensary. Maybe that in itself was a test. I wondered if he might not be around behind the place watching me through a peephole to make sure that I was not the Mata Hari in white that some people would expect of a young woman who deliberately put herself inside a prison-in a sense well within reach of four hundred virile men.
Well, if he was looking, he would soon learn that my ambitions were strictly professional.
And then I wondered what I would do if Joe walked through the door in the next few minutes. If I was being tested-and the possibility was a real one-would I be able to carry off my nursely detachment with any kind of conviction. I was already trembling.
And then I remembered what I had seen Joe doing with Stella Baker.
To hate him for that was absurd. It wasn't his fault. It was that woman's. She deliberately set herself up as a tempting morsel for him.
I couldn't blame Joe for his weakness. He had already demonstrated that he was easy prey for women like that. It wasn't my job to condemn him, but to love him.
Dr. Hawkins had been gone only a few moments when the door opened, and a guard came in.
It was Monk.
He had the same sullen expression of the day before. When he saw me he nodded curtly and pulled off his cap. I was startled to see that his head was shaved, right down to the skin. It made him look not only sullen but vicious-like one of those ugly Nazi guards I had seen pictures of when I was in high school: brutal men who thought nothing of human life, and enjoyed inflicting pain on those poor creatures under them.
"Where's the doc," he snapped, his eyes inching over my face with cold calculation.
"He stepped out for a few minutes. I'm in charge while he's gone. May I help you?"
A small, almost scornful, laugh echoed in his throat. "You set yourself right up, eh?" he breathed.
I stared at him. Guard or no guard, I wasn't in prison-and I didn't like the tone of his voice.
"I beg your pardon," I snapped.
"Okay, okay," he breathed, edging off a little at the tone of my voice. "I just wanted to see the doc. One of the boys had a little accident."
"Maybe I can help."
"Sure you can-if you know how to bring a dead man back alive." His lips curled in a sneer. "When I said an accident, I guess I didn't make myself right clear. This guy's head has been bashed in."
"How ... how did it happen."
"Tried to escape-the ass! I had to stop him."
"You mean...."
"For a nurse you catch on real fast. But you look a little pale. You got to learn to stomach things like this, sister, if you intend to stay sane around here."
At that moment I hated him even more for his insolence. "Well, I'm sure when the doctor returns he will know what...."
"The doc knows all about it. That's what the telephone call was all about."
I stared at him. "Then why didn't he tell me."
"Figured your first day on the job was enough of a shock, I guess. Maybe he didn't think you were ready for the sight of blood."
"I've seen plenty of blood. And I've seen plenty of accidents."
"Don't blame me, sister. I just follow orders."
I felt my cheeks flaming with embarrassment and humiliation. I felt cheated that the doctor hadn't considered me ready for something like this. I stared up again at the loose, sullen grin that was spread over Monk's face.
"When you came in here, you asked if the doctor was in. If you knew where he was, then why did you pretend you didn't."
"Just a little joke, just having a little fun. You like fun, don't you?"
"I don't call that fun."
He smiled thickly. "What do you nurses call fun?" His eyes ran quickly over my breasts, pointedly studying them, then whipped down to my hips and back up again. He took a step or two toward me, and stopped. He leaned casually back on the desk and folded his arms, that grin frozen on his lips.
"I got Wednesday night off-and the weekends," he said. There's a couple of nice bars in Pleasanton we could have a couple drinks, dance a little, then...."
"No, thanks."
He eyed me carefully. "Gonna get awful lonesome living with the Warden and his wife."
"I'll keep occupied."
"Not with the boys, you won't."
I glared at him. "I think you'd better leave," I said, coldly.
He glared again. "Just a little fair warning," he breathed. "You touch one of them boys ... or let them touch you ... and you'll be out on your cute little fanny, baby."
"How dare you talk to me like that!"
"C'mon, knock it off, sweetheart. You think I don't know why you took on a job like this. The whole prison is buzzing with it. They figure you for a pushover. It's just a matter of finding the right time and place. So I'm warning you...."
"I suggest you take your own advice," I yelled. "I'm sure the Warden would love to know about you and Stella."
He shot up off the desk, his arms banging down at his sides. His eyes threw cold fire at me. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded.
"You know what. Stella told me all about you."
"That damned little bitch...."
"And I promised to keep quiet about it-for my own reasons-but push me too far and...."
"Reasons? What reasons?" His eyes changed to a hard challenge. "Why the hell should you protect me-unless you got something to hide yourself!"
"I don't have anything to...."
"I think you do, baby." He took another step toward me, his mouth loosening into a slack grin. "Level with me," he husked. "Maybe if you help me, I'll help you. I throw a lot of weight around this place."
"I don't want your help," I stammered, backing away. I didn't like the look on Monk's face-and coming toward me the way he was, he suddenly looked gigantic. The uniform, the gun, the thickness of his shoulders made my blood ice with fear.
He grinned, searching my face. "You don't have a boy friend or something, do you?"
"No, I...."
He laughed, cutting my words off short.
"You do ... yeah ... I can see it in your eyes. A boy friend. Say, you work fast, eh? Which one of the cruds is the lucky one? You can tell me."
"Keep away from me, Monk," I breathed.
But he didn't. He came toward me with the swagger of a bully. His grin was more sensual now, as if the idea of my having a lover had tapped some depraved reservoir of lust deep inside him.
"I had you figured right the first time I laid eyes on you," he muttered. "All that priss act is just covering up what you really want-right?"
I had backed against the filing cabinet. I made a move to escape, but his arm flashed out and caught me in a tight grip. He pushed me back hard against the cabinet and shoved his body flush against mine.
"Don't get me wrong, sweetheart," he whispered, his breath strong against my cheek. "I don't care if you service one of the guys ... or all of them. But don't forget who carries the whip around here. You gotta be extra nice to me!"
His hand pushed my arm back. Before I could struggle, his other hand found my breast and cupped it, feeling hungrily for a nipple.
"Nice," he grunted. "Real nice stuff, baby. And I'm just the guy to make you good and satisfied."
My breath jerked in my throat. "The warden," I gasped. "I'll tell the warden...."
"Tell him what, honey? That you and one of the prisoners are screwing yourselves silly right under his nose? Don't be a damned fool! We can both have our little fun ... right down the line!"
His mouth sought mine. I screamed as his lips crushed hungrily against my twisting throat.
It was as close as he got before the door was wrenched open, and footsteps pounded across the floor. Strong hands grabbed Monk and swirled him around.
Stunned, I watched Joe slam Monk hard against the wall and slap him brutally across the face. Then he shoved Monk angrily toward the door.
His face flushed from the attack, Monk roared like a wounded bear. He swung the rifle up and leveled it at Joe's chest. Joe didn't flinch. He just stood his ground with a sneer on his lips.
"You goddamned bastard," Monk shouted. "I oughta kill you for that!"
I found my voice and took a step forward. "You'll have to shoot us both!" I cried.
Joe glanced at me and our eyes locked briefly. It was really the first time for us to meet, discounting that terrible scene yesterday with Stella Baker.
"Don't worry, Mary," Joe breathed, confidently. "He's not going to shoot anybody-are you, worm?".
"Don't crowd me, Phillips. I could blow your head off right now, dammit!"
Joe smiled. "You could-but you won't. You're hanging by a thin thread right now, Monk. After this morning-after what you're going to try to convince the Warden was an accident with that poor slob-you don't want any more stink."
"I'm warning you, Phillips! You and me are going to get together one of these days...."
"Sooner than you think, Monk. Only when we do, the odds are going to be a little better. You're not going to be crawling around behind that rifle."
Monk muttered a curse low on his breath and turned to go. Then he turned and shot dark looks at both of us. A small, scornful grin etched the corners of his mouth.
"So this is the guy who's getting into your pants," Monk sneered. "Well, take my advice, doll, and don't waste your time. This jerk is going to be behind these walls all his stupid life."
"I wouldn't count on that too much, Monk," Joe breathed.
Monk laughed throatily. "We'll see, punk. We'll see about that."
Monk lumbered to the door and banged it shut behind him.
I looked at Joe ... and then we came together in each other's arms.
CHAPTER 5
I CLUNG TO JOE, AND FELT TEARS WELLING into my eyes. It had been so long-so terribly long!
It was some time before I realized that I was doing most of the hugging. I pulled back and searched his face. I wasn't ready for what I saw there: he seemed actually disappointed.
"Joe...." I murmured. "Aren't you glad to see me."
His voice came back to me, low, a little raspy. "I'm not sure, Mary."
He must have read the disappointment in my face, because he quickly took my shoulders in his strong hands and pulled me to him. He kissed me quickly on the lips.
"I didn't mean that. Mary ... sure ... sure I'm glad to see you. But-my God, in a place like this! Why did you do it?"
"To be with you, darling."
"It's crazy. It's the craziest thing I've ever heard of. When some of the men told me that a Mary Gray was the new nurse, I just didn't connect you with the name. And when they described you...."
"Oh, Joe, I thought you would be so pleased."
We fumbled our lips together again and kissed passionately.
"God, it's been so long ... so long, Mary!" he whispered throatily. His hands made smooth, searching movements over my back, pulling me closer, crushing my breasts against the gray jacket of his prison clothes. "You don't know what it's been like, all these months without you. You don't know...."
"It's been the same with me, Joe. I've missed you terribly. That's why I had to do something about it. I knew you couldn't come to me, so I decided to come to you."
I told him how I decided against going to college, and instead had entered the nursing profession. I told him of the long, lonely months of hard work that had testified to my determination, of how I had to convince my father that I was doing the right thing; and how-hardest of all-I had begged him to use his influence with Warden Baker to get me placed in the prison dispensary.
He listened with wide-eyed wonder, and a twinkle of admiration and what I believed was love, shone through his eyes. But there was something else there, too; something dark and almost threatening; something that disturbed me very much.
"Joe, I know we won't be able to meet often or the way we'd like to; at least the way I would like to; but maybe if we can just snatch a few minutes together sometimes, then it will be worth it. It's not as if the walls were between us, now."
The look in his eyes deepened now to a kind of sadness, and then a faint, vague irritation. He dropped my hands from his own and turned to face the window. He shook his head.
"You shouldn't have done it, Mary. Damn, if I had only known what you were planning."
I studied his profile. Despite myself I remembered the scene yesterday-the scene I had witnessed through the keyhole. It seemed that that was another man: it wasn't the Joe I knew, the gentle, intelligent, respectable Joe that I had know. That was another man; perhaps a part of him, but not the real him-only the darker side of his sexual nature. And again I was struck by the clear truth of what I felt: there was no anger nor jealousy in my feeling. I really pitied Joe a little for what he had been practically forced to do with Stella Baker. Nowall of that would be different. I was sure that whatever sensual impulses Joe might feel would be directed toward me. And if those impulses became more than he could manage, then I would satisfy them some way, through some desperate minutes stolen from under the noses of the prison authorities.
If Stella Baker could do it, then I could do it. The difference would be that Joe and I loved each other.
"You shouldn't have come here," Joe was saying again, shaking his head and grinding the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. He turned back to me, his face drawn, his eyes colorless and hard.
"Joe...." I breathed, feeling suddenly hurt and wounded. "I thought that...."
"You don't understand, Mary. It's something that I don't dare talk about to you, but...."
"You don't have to talk about it, Joe. I understand. I know all about it." I tried to let a smile warm up that suddenly cold expression of his.
He stared at me. "You know about it?" he gasped.
"Yes. I was in the room yesterday when you and Stella ... well, when you made love. Except that I think that's the wrong word for...."
"My god! You saw us?"
"Yes. I didn't mean to, Joe, but I did. And I want you to know that I under...."
His laughter broke my words off cruelly. I felt blood rushing quickly to my face. I turned away, and he caught me by the arm.
"Mary ... Mary, I'm sorry ... I didn't mean to laugh. It's just that when you said you knew, I thought you were talking about something else. Not about Stella Baker."
I dropped my eyes away from him. I was blushing scarlet now. "I'm ... I'm sorry you take what you did so lightly," I whispered. "I certainly didn't."
He swung me around and tucked his index finger under my chin, tilting my face up to his. He smiled at me affectionately. "Mary ... you know I didn't mean that. Stella Baker means nothing to me. I wouldn't wipe my feet on her. She's just ... release, that's all. She's a whore; she does that with a lot of the men. Behind the Warden's back, of course. But she gets away with it."
"But it's so brutal and filthy ... to do it behind Warden Baker's back!"
He smiled at me again. "You forget, Mary. You're not a prisoner here, but we are. We have no love for the Warden. We've been locked behind these bars for a long time. Sex-at least the kind of sex that can keep a man a man-is next to impossible. Stella Baker performs a good function, in a sense."
"She said you loved her."
He gave a short, pitiless laugh. "Love ... she doesn't know the meaning of the word. Maybe she fancies that she does what she does for love, maybe that makes it easier to live with herself. But we know better. She does it for the sheer animal enjoyment of it-for the physical act of fornication. She's a pig. She can't get enough of it. And we do it for the same reason."
"But if you got caught...."
"You learn to take chances in prison, Mary; even a lot more chances than you might take on the outside. Men behind bars are much more desperate than you might think. It isn't human to lock a man up and deprive him of every damned thing that he once took for granted."
I shrugged desperately. "But you were put in here for rape."
The warmth retreated swiftly from his eyes. He looked at me for a long, painful second, then shook his head slowly. "You still believe that, don't you?" he breathed.
"Joe ... I'm only saying...."
"You still believe I took an innocent, fourteen-year-old girl and forced myself on her. You still think she screamed and tore her hair and yelled rape like an old maid!"
"The jury...."
"Juries and judges be damned! I was framed. That little slut was the high school punchboard. She was a Stella Baker in the making. Hell, if you want to know the truth, that little bitch was on top of me most of the time...."
"Don't, Joe...."
"I'm sorry, Mary. I don't mean to shock you, but I think it's time you knew the truth. I'm not a rapist. There are men behind these walls who are, believe me. There are men who would violate their own mothers to satisfy the grinding need for sexual pleasure. But I'm not one of them. I never was. I was just a green kid who decided I might as well avail myself of some easy sex."
I waited for several seconds. I could feel my heart pounding under the starched blouse of my uniform. I could barely bring myself to ask the next question, but it was one that cried out for an answer.
"If what you say is true, Joe, then why did the girl say you raped her?"
"Because of you, Mary."
I stared at him, pain searing into my head. "Me?" I echoed.
"Yes. She found out that I had asked you to marry me and-well, she was jealous. I didn't think she had the capacity for feeling anything but the immediate moment of sexual lust. She seemed that way ... with everybody. But I didn't know enough about women. She was in love with me. And if she couldn't have me, she said she would destroy me. She damned nearly did!"
"Oh, Joe," I cried, holding him close to me. "Why didn't you tell me that before!"
His mouth nudged close to my ear. I could feel his breath, warm and tender against my skin. "Because I wanted you to forget me, Mary. I really did. I love you so much that ... that I wanted to die rather than to have your name dragged through the stink of that court."
"Oh, Joe ... then that's why you didn't want me to write you."
"Yes."
"But don't you see that it didn't matter to me."
"I said you might forgive me, but that you could never forget what that jury said. I didn't think it would be fair to you, and at the time, I didn't think it was fair to me."
I fumbled my hands around his face and kissed him again. "And do you still believe-I don't trust you ... don't love you?" I murmured.
He searched my eyes and was about to speak when we heard footsteps on the gravel path outside. We sprang apart just as Dr. Hawkins came in the door. He glanced at Joe and nodded and then he looked at me.
He seemed to weigh the color in my cheeks, the sparkle in my eyes. I waited to see if he would challenge that tell-tale look in my face, but he merely set his battered hat on the rack and worked his arms back through his white smock.
"Never knew you to have a day's pain, Joe," he said, quietly. And then he glanced at me. "I suppose you've been taking care of whatever ails the man, nurse?" he quipped.
I nodded. "Yes, doctor, I have."
Before Joe left, I was able to have a whispered conversation with him. He asked me to meet him at the prison chapel at ten o'clock the next morning. I wasn't sure that I could make it, but I promised to try.
The next day our traffic of patients was heavier, and I had no chance at all to slip away. I felt that I couldn't jeopardize my job by just disappearing from the dispensary, no matter how badly I wanted to be with Joe.
I wondered too, how much Dr. Hawkins knew of my real reasons for coming to Mason Reformatory. Perhaps Warden Baker had told him everything and perhaps he had told him nothing. Either alter-native was logical, and both were possible. I couldn't take the chance of revealing my own secrets for fear I would be mis-guessing the doctor's knowledge and his reactions. After all, he had already given me the warning that any involvement with the prisoners would be very unwise. His opinion on that matter couldn't be questioned.
A little after lunchtime, one of the prisoners gave me a particularly searching look. I thought nothing of it, since I was becoming accustomed to the stares and the lustful winks of every other man who came through the door. But just as this particular prisoner was about to leave, he caught the opportunity to shove his face close to mine while the doctor was busy in another part of the dispensary.
"Joe says to meet him when you get off work-same place," the man hissed.
He was gone before I had time to question him.
The prison grapevine, I thought, is not only long but effective.
I was excited all the rest of the afternoon. I tried to keep the nervousness out of my voice and my work, and if I wasn't successful there was never any indication from the doctor. I even puttered around for a few extra minutes after closing time for the dispensary. When the doctor insisted that I go home, I slowly found my purse and short blue cloak and left.
During my lunch hour I had studied the layout of the reformatory from a little map that was pinned on the bulletin board. According to the map, the chapel was in a small cove of elms not too far from the warden's home. It was always open for prisoners who had permission to go from the main enclosure. Otherwise it was used only on Sundays for the regular services.
I carefully avoided going by the warden's house for fear Stella might be stationed at the front window, watching me with a jealous and suspicious eye. Instead I took the long way around and came up to the chapel from the opposite direction.
As advertised, the chapel door was open. I stepped into the cool grayness of the place. It "was empty, the pews shining and ready for worshipers. At the end of the aisle was a simple alter with a gleaming metal cross. A small, rectangular stained-glass window rose above it, and that, together with some smaller windows down the sides of the chapel, provided the only light.
"Joe...?" I called, uncertainly.
There was no answer.
I waited a moment longer. Perhaps he hadn't been able to come, I thought. I had almost turned to go when I heard a shuffle of footsteps toward the front of the chapel. I looked and saw Joe beckoning to me. I hurried down the aisle toward him. We embraced and he kissed me softly.
"I'm glad you could come. Did anybody see you?" he whispered.
"I don't think so."
"Good ... maybe we can have a little while together. Quick, the room back here."
We ducked into a small room behind the altar. It was obviously a supply room where the mops and brooms, choir books, and other paraphernalia for the chapel were kept. Joe shut the door behind us and snapped the lock.
We stood looking at each other for a moment. I felt that I had waited the long months in nursing school for just this instant: to be alone-if only for a few minutes-with the man I loved.
We came into each other's arms again with a kind of frantic hurry.
We kissed, remembering the old feeling-the kisses of an earlier, happier time in our lives. It was so easy to slide back into that comfortable world with Joe. I knew that no man's lips could move me the way his did. I clung to him desperately, shamelessly.
"Darling," he husked. "God, you don't know how many times I've dreamed about holding you like this."
"Me, too," I insisted.
His body, pressing against mine, made my blood surge madly through my veins. I didn't feel that I was a girl any longer, but a mature woman. This was what I had wanted, and I wasn't to be denied it another second. I remembered with a kind of frantic pain the many times I had longed for Joe to hold me, to kiss me like this-and had had to be contented with a good-night peck and a whisper of romantic love.
All that had changed now.
We were more grown up, and we were most honest with each other. There was no pretense, no disguising of the physical need that had driven me out of my comfortable world as the daughter of Philip Gray and into the shadows of a prison. If that didn't convince Joe that I loved and needed him, then nothing would.
And the pressure of Joe's fingers against my shoulder blades, the fumbling scratch at the hooks of my bra, told me that he, too, was no longer acting out a role. He needed me, and he had always needed me. If only he had brought that need out into the open from the very beginning, then we wouldn'tbe standing here, defiling the small room of this chapel with a love that was both holy and profane.
But I didn't care now how holy the place was. There was no purity that went beyond the depth of my feeling for Joe; and if that was sacrilege, then God in His heaven would have to make the most of it!
I loved Joe, and if he wanted my body, then I was bound to give myself to him. I was determined that Stella Baker would never have cause again to trap him into the cobwebbed passion of her sinful lust.
I reached up and opened my blouse and drew his hands around. I pushed the tips of his fingers gently inside my blouse. I drew my warm mouth close up to his.
"Take me, darling," I breathed. "Right here ... right now!"
CHAPTER 6
WE FELL TO THE FLOOR IN A KIND OF MINDLESS trance. Joe was every bit as excited as I was, and I could tell by the way his hands fondled me that he had lost the shyness that once had held him back. The trial, the prison, and the long separation had pushed back the curtains of restraint.
His hands cupped my breasts and tore at the bra that held them away from his touch. I helped him, and together we loosened the strap at the back between my shoulder blades and jerked it away. My flesh fell free and eager into his hands. He pushed the blouse off my shoulders and raked it down until I was naked to the waist. I closed my eyes, possessed by the thrill of knowing that Joe wanted me ... craved me.
When his fingertips touched the nipples of my breast I gasped with pleasure. He whispered in my ear as he massaged the tip-ends of my breasts until they were erect and hard. He kissed my throat, the lower part of my neck, and then slid his mouth down to find one of the nipples. I moaned as he glued his lips over the hardened knob and began to suck.
I had never know it could be so wonderful. I felt that I was floating into a kind of dream-all fire and ringing bells. The pleasure twisted up into my throat and then down into my whole body. I ached to have his hands caress me all over. My need matched and even exceeded his. After all, I had waited for this as long as he had! But even in my ecstasy I felt the need to be cautious.
"Darling-what if somebody should come?"
"Nobody-will," Joe breathed hoarsely. "It's safe!"
I hoped that he-was right, but the fire that was trickling into flames inside my body would have blinded me in any event. I pulled his head closer to my breasts and moaned as his mouth nibbled and pulled at the taut peaks of my torrid breasts.
With one free hand Joe explored his way under my skirt. His warm fingers fumbled past the stretched tightness of my hose and garter and found the silky barrier of my panties. I trembled. I could have fainted with pleasure.
"Yes!" I hissed, my voice so choked with desire that I couldn't recognize it. "Yes ... feel me there, too! Oh, I love that ... I want you to do that!"
He needed no farther invitation. Both his hands disappeared under my skirt and found the elastic of my panties. His thumbs hooked expertly over the tops and peeled them down. I felt the silky material roll down like warm water over my writhing flesh. He pulled the panties to my knees, and I helped him work them quickly down to my ankles, and off. I was naked now under the short skirt, naked and shamelessly alive to his every whim. I wanted him to touch me there, tease me, play with me until his pleasure was as great as mine.
When his hand invaded the soft flesh of my upper thigh again, I shivered and made a little yelping noise deep in my throat. He didn't stop-and I didn't want him to stop. His hand crawled between my legs and buried itself in the fluff of hair. I sighed and fell back, letting my legs open for him. I couldn't have been more numbed with the sweetness of the moment if a thousand volts of electricity had been shot through me.
His fingers worked into the hair, and found the lips of my cunt. He probed and rubbed and found the answering quiver of flesh, the hot moistness that told him of my stimulation. When his finger worked suddenly, deeply, between the edges of flesh I crushed my teeth against his neck and began to give him savage love-bites. That only excited him more.
"The skirt, baby," he husked. "Let's get it off!"
By now I was too aflame to protest. Joe half lifted me up. Together we worked the skirt off my hips. It fell in a twisted swirl at my feet. Now I was naked in the dim light of the little room. Joe pulled a handful of the thick, black choir robes off the wall and spread them on the floor. He kissed me and lowered me to the robes. I lay quietly waiting for him to join my body to his.
Quickly he got out of his own clothes. I watched, fascinated by the realization that at last we were to be one, mated and joined as we should have been so long ago.
When he sank over me I felt his body fit into mine: contour into contour; flesh against flesh. I held him tight, pressing my fingers into his back, pulling him greedily over my breasts and thighs. Our mouths found each other once more and our tongues lashed deeply, wetly together.
"Open your legs," he begged.
I did as he asked, and it seemed that if my passion grew any higher I would scream. My thighs were thumping. A strange, raging impulse was pounding away where Joe's fingers had so recently probed. I felt that I could demand anything of him now. I wanted to feel him there, to feel his proud, stiff rod seeking entrance and being granted it.
And yet when it came, it was in an explosion of agony and sharp, violent pain. I cried and groaned. Once I let out a stifled yelp which he controlled by putting his hand over my mouth.
"The pain will be just for a minute," he promised, his voice husky with desire. "Remember, darling, that I love you!"
The agony grew into a sharp throbbing peak as he entered me. I winced as the enormous stiffness that he possessed probed, inch by inch, into my virgin cleft. And when he made a sudden, sharp plunge and buried himself all the way in, I screamed through my clenched teeth. Love was painful to me-and yet there was a dark, grinding joy to it. And once he was in me, the pain ebbed away through swirls of the most delicious pleasure I had ever experienced.
He waited a moment for me to adjust to what he had done, and then he began to move his hips up and down. The pleasure was indescribable. I knew now what drove Stella Baker to such shameless depths in seducing. He pumped faster, and I demanded he increase even that. Instinctively, I worked my legs up over the small of his back so that he could have more freedom of movement, and so that the pleasure would be greater for both of us.
The next few minutes passed so swiftly that they seemed like clouds moving quickly over a hot sun. I rolled in billows of pleasure as a series of throbbing climaxes rocked me over the edge of restraint. I know now that an animal couldn't have behaved with less abandon. I ground the heels of my feet into Joe's back, urging him to quicken his pounding lust. My fingernails made long, scraping marks over his shoulders and I fed the gorged and burning nipples of my breasts into his mouth at every opportunity.
By the time Joe found release-in a thrust of white hot spasming-I was limp with satiated pleasure, like a hive robbed of all its honey.
Joe fell across me, his knees digging into the robes on which I lay. We did not uncouple, and I could feel his thick rod still throbbing inside me, milking the last sweet drops of pleasure from both of us.
Our mouths found each other like moist sponges, and we kissed passionately to drain the final joy from the act of love.
At last Joe stirred and rolled over on his elbow. His eyes roamed over my nakedness and stopped on the trembling peaks of my breasts. He smiled happily and touched one jutting nipple. He played with it, sending even newer thrills through me.
"It was wonderful, darling...." I breathed.
"It was for me too," he said, thickly. "God-how I've dreamed of having you like this!" His eyes were dark and silent for a moment. He was looking at me tenderly.
"You waited for me, Mary," he said, slowly. "It was your first time ... wasn't it?"
"Yes ... yes, of course it was, Joe. I told you I'd never let any other man touch me. I'd rather die than do that."
He looked away. "I feel like a heel," he muttered, miserably.
"No ... no, you shouldn't."
"The way you-waited," he continued, quietly, "you waited and I didn't. I couldn't even be honest enough to stay away from other women when I had the chance, when I had somebody like you."
"It isn't your fault, Joe. It's just the way things are."
He looked at me. "How can you want a guy like me, Mary?" he asked.
I felt my heart sink.
"Because I love you," I said, simply.
He watched me for another long moment without speaking, and then he said: "I want you to know that no matter what happens, I love you."
"Nothing is going to happen," I smiled. "Nobody has to know about this afternoon. We're together, that's the important thing. And nothing ... nothing in this world can keep us apart. We'll meet. We'll find ways of meeting."
He nodded, a strange sad look in his eyes.
"Joe ... what we've done this afternoon ... we did because we love each other," I continued. "I'm even glad that it happened in a chapel. It makes it ... well ... even more right."
He nodded and then looked away.
"We'd better get dressed," he said, soberly. We'd better not stretch our luck too far, eh?"
That night after dinner, Warden Baker retired to his study to do some paper work. Stella and I did the dishes together.
There had been a kind of armed truce between us for the three days I had been at Mason Reformatory. We had spoken only a few words to each other, a strained politeness that was getting on my nerves. So I was glad when Stella suddenly began to chat.
I responded as warmly as I could. But I should have known something was behind Stella's sudden change of tone. She wanted something from me, and so I wasn't surprised when she turned with her hands still in the dish water and lowered her voice to a whisper.
"I'm going to see Monk tonight. You can do me a favor by keeping Ben occupied."
I stared at her, the old disgust returning. But I didn't dare make her angry. "What do you mean occupied?" I demanded.
"I mean talk to him-do whatever you canto keep his mind off the fact that I'm not in the house."
"Suppose he tries to find you."
"He won't as long as you keep him busy."
I dried a dish in silence. And then I shook my head. "I don't like deceiving the warden. He's been nice to me, and...."
"Listen to me, you silly little slut," Stella hissed. "Do you think I don't know the game you're playing?"
"Of course you do, but I told you, it's only because I love Joe."
"And you don't think I love Monk; is that it?"
"I don't know ... but I think if you did, you wouldn't have done what you did with Joe."
Her eyes burned into me. "Maybe that's because you and I aren't built alike, sister! You're young and easy satisfied. Me, I'm not. I know all about your background, sheltered and pampered and brought up to think there's only one man in the world fit to crawl into bed with you. Well, I grew up on another street. I had to make it with my body for years before I was lucky-if that's the word for it-lucky enough to marry somebody like the warden. When you've been used to having men want you ... and used to wanting men ... it's not easy to say no to a good looking piece of young stud like Joe Phillips."
"I suppose not."
She spat out some breath contemptuously. "I know what you think of me. You think I'm a whore; and you feel sorry for Ben Baker. Maybe what you don't know is that he's still in love 'with his dead wife. He wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. We haven't slept together once."
"Well," I stammered, embarrassed by her sudden raw confession. "The warden isn't exactly a young man."
"You're telling me," she huffed. "But if it wasn't for me, he'd be dead right now-dead from drinking. After his wife died he came into Pleasanton every night of the week and sat in the corner of this bar I-worked in, ordering double shots one right after another. I felt sorry for the old bastard. I began to talk to him. And the first thing you know, he asked me to marry him."
"You didn't have to."
A sneer curled her lips. "You ever work from five 'til after midnight toting drinks in a cheap bar."
"No, I...."
"You're damn right you haven't. Well, then, who are you to tell me it's wrong to take advantage of any kind of offer that would take me out of that dump and put me in decent clothes and a nice house?"
I had no answer for that. Deep in my heart I began to feel sorry for Stella. I wanted to apologize to her, but something held me back. I decided she would resent an apology as much as anything else, coming from me.
"So the least you can do for me is to help me if I ask you," Stella demanded. "After all, did I spill the beans about your little tricking-out this afternoon?"
My heart froze in my breast. "What do you mean?" I stammered.
She grinned wickedly. "You know what I mean ... I mean what you and your precious beau were doing in the chapel this afternoon. How was he, honey? Good as you expected?"
I colored and looked away. She made me feel cheap, and I was frightened that Joe and I had been sp easily caught.
Suddenly she patted my shoulder with a rough gentleness. "Don't worry-my lips are sealed. But remember, we're in this thing together. You got your man and I got mine. You help me and...."
"Stella."
We both froze. It was the warden calling from his study.
"What you want, hon?" Stella called back.
"Have you seen my pipe ... the briar?"
"I think it's on the table by your bed. Just stay where you are, hon ... I'll ask Mary to get it for you!"
She turned to me, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. "There you are," she breathed. "Now you take him his pipe-and keep him occupied. If he does find out I'm not here, then you makeup something. Something good!"
"But what?" I pleaded, desperate.
She smiled loosely. "Tell him I had to see a friend about a dog."
Keeping Warden Baker "occupied" wasn't as difficult as I had thought. He never once mentioned Stella; and I wondered, as we talked, if he wasn't aware of Stella's frequent trysts with Monk. Perhaps he knew and didn't care.
I was beginning to believe that Mason Reformatory was the most complex nest of spies and informers in history. Certainly if Joe and I had been observed going to the chapel, then our every move would be watched. And I wasn't foolish enough to believe that only the prisoners had spies. The warden undoubtedly had his share.
We talked for almost an hour. I was ready to go to my room, to give up the pretense of sheltering Stella's little escapade-when I heard the front door slam. I saw the curious look pass over the warden's face and I cursed Stella for being noisy. It was odd that she would take such elaborate precautions to sneak away from the house and then come banging back in like that.
"Must be Stella...." Warden Baker said, his voice dry as cotton.
I said nothing.
But if I had, it would have been forgotten in the confusion of the next few minutes; because, almost immediately the door of the warden's study was pushed violently open, and Stella staggered through it. I stared up at her in disbelief.
Her hair was disheveled and a trickle of blood was splashed across her forehead. She was holding her head and sobbing.
"Stella!" the warden gasped, starting up from his chair.
And then we both saw the other figure-the one behind Stella. He wore the prison-gray uniform, but he had a rifle in one hand, one like I had seen Monk carrying. And in his other hand he held a pistol, pointing it at the warden.
And then I realized the man was Joe.
CHAPTER 7
"JUST TAKE IT EASY AND SIT BACK DOWN, warden," Joe snapped, "and nobody is going to get hurt."
"Joe," I cried. "What is this?" He shot me a dark frown. "It's a break-out, Mary...."
The conversation we had had in the dispensary filtered crazily back into my mind. Joe had been worried that I knew something. So this was it ... an escape attempt! The implications of it terrified me-not for my own sake, but for Joe's.
"Joe ... don't do it! You'll only get caught-you'll only make things worse!"
A small curling smile of scorn tore at Joe's lips. "Worse! How the hell could things be worse, Mary? You don't know what it's like in this hell hole. You just got here."
"Joe...."
"Forget it, Mary. We've gone this far and we're not turning back." We?
The word was no more than out of Joe's mouth when another figure pushed his way into the room. He was a blond young boy with thick shoulders and cold, blue eyes. He couldn't have been more than nineteen. He raked his eyes around the room like a machine gun, settling abruptly on me.
"This her?" he snapped.
Joe nodded. Our eyes met again at once.
"Sorry, Mary," Joe breathed, "but you've got to come along. There's no time to talk about it, just go with Todd.".
The blond young man still had those cold blue eyes on me-and a pistol leveled at my throat. A small, dirty grin distorted his face.
"C'mon, baby," he husked. "You and me are going for a little walk."
"We're all going," Joe corrected. "Just show her to the warden's car, Todd ... and no fooling around with her. She's my girl."
The blond shrugged with exaggerated disinterest. "Who said anything about touching her," he parried. "But you can't kill a guy for looking ... and thinking."
"Just make sure that's all you do," Joe snarled. "Go with him, Mary."
"I won't," I gasped, still utterly bewildered by what was happening.
Joe leveled his gaze at me again, the pistol stabbing the air in front of the warden's face.
"Look, Mary, I haven't got time to argue. You're coming with us ... King has been hit. Monk winged him before we ... before we stopped him. King's arm is like hamburger. He needs medical attention."
"Joe ... I ... I'm not a doctor...."I argued, stubbornly.
The blond grunted. "She's stalling ... goddammit ... I told you she'd stall. We ain't got time to be nice...." He lunged at me, and his hand shot out at my arm. He caught me in a vise-like grip, and twisted my arm painfully behind my back. "Now move, baby. Work those sweet hips but fast!"
I cried out with the pain.
"Turn her loose, Todd!" Joe shouted, his voice flashing anger. "You touch her one more time and I'll blow your damned head off!"
The blond released my arm with a threatening glare at both me and Joe. "Now, look," he began, loudly.
"Cool it, Todd. We're jumpy and we're wasting valuable time." Joe whipped his eyes back to me. "AH right, Mary, now go with him. I told you I was sorry-but there's no way out. You're just making things worse for me. And Todd has a jittery gun finger-I can't be responsible for the Warden if...."
"Go with them," Stella moaned, her face bloated from weeping. "They killed Monk-and they'll kill us, too, if you don't! You done enough damage here!"
Stella's sudden charge that I was responsible for what had happened angered me. I wanted to protest, but I felt helpless. Rather than endanger their lives, I decided to do as Joe asked.
"Take her out to the warden's car," Joe said to the one named Todd; and to me he commanded: "See what you can do for King. There's a first-aid kit in the glove compartment of the car. He glanced at Warden Baker. "Right, Warden?"
Warden Baker nodded glumly from the prison of his chair.
"And on your way back, Todd, bring that rope," Joe added.
I was carried along with Todd through the hallway of the house, and out into the darkness of the yard. The warden's car was waiting there, the motor running. In the back seat a huge man was slumped, he looked up at me with dark, cruel eyes. He was holding one hand against his right arm.
"Take care of him," Todd snapped, shoving me into the back seat. "And no tricks. King still has a gun, and he'll blow your guts out if he has to."
My heart pounded as the door was slammed behind me. I waited until Todd got some rope out of the front seat and disappeared back into the house.
"Hurry...." the man in the car husked. "The damn pain ... the pain...."
I bent over the front seat of the car and rummaged in the glove compartment for the first-aid kit. It was a small kit, but it had bandages and iodine and tape. I settled the things on the seat between us, and pulled his hand away from the wound. When I tore open the shirt, he yelped with pain, "Is this a gun wound?" I asked.
"Knife ... damned Monk ... bastard had a knife on him."
"It's a deep wound," I said. "You ought to see a doctor."
A contemptuous snarl erupted from deep in the man's throat. His beetle brows converged in an angry frown. "You're the only doctor I intend to see," he breathed. "You fix me up good ... and fast."
By the time I had dosed the wound with iodine and wrapped the arm with bandages, Joe and Todd had returned. They leaped into the car and slammed the doors hard.
"Don't Joe," I begged, putting one hand on his shoulder. "Think about what you're doing...."
"We been thinking, baby," the blond barked, turning those icy blue eyes on me. "We ain't been doing a thing but thinking for six months-and now we're breaking out of this hog pen!"
My protests were drowned in the grinding hiss of rubber screaming on the graveled drive, and the roar of the car's powerful engine.
I don't know how long we drove. It was a nightmare of hissing curves and dark shadows. Joe drove half the time with only the dimmers on-until the frantic near misses with trees and curbs forced him to put on the lights completely.
"We'll never make it," the wounded man growled. "I'll bet the warden is out of them ropes already."
"Not the way we tied them," Todd laughed. "He'd have to be a sonofabitchin' acrobat to "wriggle out before daylight."
The man named King cursed. "I told you we should've knocked him off-just like Monk."
"Shut up," Joe snapped.
A cold shudder went through my body. So they had killed Monk. They had murdered a man to get out of jail. All my hopes for Joe seemed to vaporize with the news. I sat in the corner of the backseat, too frightened to move.
We drove for what seemed hours. Finally we passed a few lights and I realized that we were coming into a city.
"North here!" King commanded.
The car swerved on two wheels, throwing us like rag dolls against each other.
"You're gonna kill us, dammit!" Todd bawled.
The car sped up the dark streets. Blocks raced by, one after another. As King called out directions, Joe responded. A turn right, then left, then two more right turns. Even if I had known what city we were in, I could never have remembered the complex maneuvers of the car. I was lost, like a leaf swirling on angry waters.
"Here it is!" King announced at last. "Rita's got the garage open. Drive in there and cut your lights!"
Joe did as he was told. The car knifed into the gaping mouth of a darkened garage and came to a jolting stop. Joe snapped off the lights and killed the engine. I was aware that somebody was yanking down the door of the garage behind us.
"Okay-everybody out!" Joe breathed.
King winced with pain as he shouldered his way out of the car behind me. He was the largest man I had ever seen, an animal of a man, towering over all of us.
A figure joined us in the garage-a woman.
"King," she husked. She slid her arms around his waist and kissed him wetly on the mouth, "Hi, baby," King grunted. "You got the house ready?"
"All ready, honey."
"Okay-let's go inside."
He stumbled through the darkness into the small, compact kitchen. When the door was shut somebody snapped on a light. We huddled-like pursued animals, afraid that any moment a hunter, gun in hand, would appear to fire pell mell into us. At last the tension subsided and we began to breathe more freely.
I saw the woman glaring at me, her arms slumped around King's waist and shoulders.
She couldn't have been more than twenty, but she looked harried and used. She had a hard look around the eyes, and the cheap, silk blouse she wore outlined the sensual jut of her breasts. She had obviously dolled herself up for the return of her boy friend-King. She drew her mouth down in a disapproving sneer at my presence. She yanked her mouth up to King's face.
"Who the hell is she?" the woman demanded.
"Just a nurse; we brung her along for my arm," King muttered.
"Oh, God-I didn't know you was hurt, King," the woman moaned, her fingers making sudden fluttering gestures over the bandaged arm.
King pulled away. "I'll live," he grunted. "How about something to eat, baby? I feel like I could eat a horse."
"I got your favorite," Rita pealed. "Chicken. I cooked it myself. You remember how you always liked my fried chicken, King?"
"Sure, sure-let's have some of that. You got any beer-any whiskey?"
Rita smiled with a kind of phony domesticity. "I did just like you asked, King. I got the place stocked to last a month."
King fondled her with his good hand. His thick, hairy fingers traced the outline of her ripe breasts, teasing the pointed outlines of her thick nipples. She giggled and tweaked his ear. I looked away in disgust. The woman caught my reaction.
"Get her," Rita hissed, the sting of anger riding through her voice. "Miss Chastity Belt! Why the hell did you have to drag her along? I mean, I could have took care of you, King...."
"She's Joe's piece," King muttered.
"Sure she is," Todd husked, grinning.
I saw Todd looking at me with veiled lust smoldering in his eyes.
"All right," Joe said, quietly. "Let's settle down to some kind of organization here. King, you and Rita decide where we bunk. Todd, you get your ear glued to a radio to see what kind of stink this is going to make."
"Sure, Joe," King said.
Rita led the way into the living room of the small house. The blinds were down and the drapes were closed. Not a thread of light would be able to come in or escape from the whole house. It was obvious that Rita had been in on the planning of the escape from the very beginning. She was a part of it. This was, in effect, the "hide-out."
Rita pointed at a door. "That's where me and King stay. The rest of you...."
"You're wrong, Rita," Joe cut in. "Mary and I will take that room. You and King stay out here with
Todd."
"Hey, what is this...." Rita began.
"It's okay, Rita," King muttered. "Joe's the boss."
"like hell he is! King, you told me you was gonna run this break-out. You said...."
"You got your wires crossed, Rita," King breathed.
"Well, no bitch in imagine underwear is gonna...."
Rita didn't get the sentence finished. King slapped her hard on the mouth with his left hand. She reeled, spilling into a cheap coffee table, sprawling on her hips. I stared in horror at the insensible, brutal violence of the huge man. Joe and Todd said nothing.
Rita picked herself up, whimpering, staunching the little trickle of blood at the edge of her cut lip. She moaned, tears dribbling from her eyes. "You shouldn't have done that, King," she blubbered. "You had no call to...."
"Then you oughta listen to me when I talk, baby," King said, gruffly. "Joe's the boss. He planned the whole damned caper. What he says goes." He glanced heavily at Todd. "Right, kid?"
"Sure," Todd agreed, a scornful little grin accentuating his thin allegiance.
"All right," Joe said. "That's settled. Mary, go on to the room. I'm sure Rita has something that will fit you if you want to change."
Rita gave me a reluctant but somewhat defeated glance. "Sure. C'mon, honey, I'll show you the room."
The room was a small, crowded bedroom, obviously the only bedroom in the house. There was a half-size bed with a rumpled pink bedspread and a silk pillow with frilly lace sewed along the edges. A table and an unmatching chair, and on the wall a very bad print of The Last Supper. It was the kind of bedroom that reflected the sleazy bad taste of the young girl named Rita.
"This is it," she breathed. "Take it or leave it."
"Thank you," I said. "I'm sorry that King made...."
"Look, sweetie," Rita hissed, her eyes hardening suddenly with fresh ire. "King is my stud-and you keep your claws out of him."
I stared at her, incredulous. "I can assure you that I have no intention...."
"Well, just remember what I said. King's more man than six of your Joe. I catch you batting your eyelashes at him and I'll rip your hair out and ram it down your throat."
Her eyes were still flashing, her breasts heaving with the age-old fear of a jungle instinct: the female protecting her male. I felt sorry for her.
?All right," I said. "I understand."
Her pride had been salvaged. The sadistic slap that King had given her was past history now. She had done a little pushing around of her own.
Turning from her, I glanced at the bedroom door. There was a flimsy bolt-action lock, the dime-store variety. But it was better than nothing. I had the impulse to lock it the moment Rita left, and escape out the window. But I knew I wouldn't. Something held me back.
And then I realized that I was no different-no better, no worse-than Rita. I, too, had a man to protect.
And leaving him now would be the worst thing in the world for both of us.
"Course, it ain't King you got to be worried about," Rita was saying, her breath coming in short, thick gasps. "It's that Todd. He's the one you gotta watch."
I measured the look in her eyes. There was something of fear and desire boiling there; it was impossible to separate the mixture.
"What about Todd?" I said, hesitantly. She gave a short, sensual laugh. "Honey,-what do you think that bastard was in hock for, anyway."
"I ... I don't know."
"Well, not for what King was. King was in for safecracking. He's good, the best-only some fink told the cops about his last job and...." She broke off, as if the memory of it was too painful to think about. "Well, anyhow, he's out now, and he's gonna stay out if I have anything to do with it."
"Todd," I insisted, nervously. "You were going to tell me why Todd was in prison."
"Same as why your boy friend checked in, honey-for rape."
"Rape?" I echoed.
"Yeah, for rape. Only he wasn't so nice about it, from what I hear. Nothing statutory about what he did. He left the girls half-dead. Did it several times before they caught him." Her eyes were liquid with the delicious terror of it all, as if she half yearned for the same kind of fate. "So take my advice, honey," she rasped. "Don't ever let yourself get alone with that young stud-not if you value what's left of your damned virginity!"
CHAPTER 8
WE ATE THE FRIED CHICKEN PREPARED BY Rita and washed it down with cold beer.
Todd had been assigned the job of keeping one ear glued to the radio in an effort to hear any reports that might come in about the escape. The hours passed slowly. I dressed King's wound again-after sending Rita out to an all-night pharmacy to get some additional medicine. The wound was deep and King was in considerable pain, although from the stoic sculpture of his face one would never have guessed it.
Joe seemed distracted. He sat constantly by the telephone. Finally I wandered over to where he was.
"I'm waiting for a call," he explained, crisply. "George Mitchell-a fellow I know who got sprung a few months back. He's got the money we need."
"Money for what?" I asked, innocently.
Joe looked at me with narrowed eyes. "For South America," he said, quietly. "We're going to fly out of here in a private plane. By the time the cops get around to looking for us we'll be in Mexico City and then Cuernavaca. They'll never find us."
"Joe-you'll be giving up everything," I protested.
He laughed indifferently. "If you mean Mason, you're damned right, I'll be giving that up."
"But it's running away, Joe. My father ... I couldn't do that to him."
He pulled his hand away angrily. "I thought you loved me. Are you going to hang on to your old man's coat-tails all your life? Grow up, Mary!"
The words stung me deeply. I stood up and walked to the bedroom and shut the door. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt tears welling into my eyes. It all seemed so completely useless! I felt that I had wasted those long months planning and sacrificing to be with Joe. I had my wish. I was with him-but now the victory was like ashes in my hands.
Joe had changed. I fought against the conviction that the man I had loved, and pledged myself to, was no longer what he had been. The prison had changed him, corrupted him. Instead of "correcting" what flaw he might have had in his character, it had merely widened and deepened it. For the first time in my life I realized that society was wrong in inflicting men to torment and slow death behind gray walls.
And I had been a fool to think I could be of any help in changing all that.
Later, when I was lying sleepless in the bed, I heard the door creak open. Joe came in, his face etched with the tension of what he was going through. He came to the bed and sat down limply. I remained motionless, studying his profile.
Finally I reached up and touched his shoulder. He turned and looked at me.
"You're all I have, Mary," he said, thickly. "Don't leave me-don't hate me."
My heart-my silly, illogical heart-melted with his plea. I pulled him down to me, and kissed him on the mouth.
"Oh, Joe," I breathed. "I want to love you, you know that. But this terrible thing you've done. There must be some way to change it, to go back and...."
"I can't go back, Mary. I'd rather die than go back. It's hell! I told you that."
His hands were tangled in my hair. He pulled my mouth up to his again and took my lips with his own. His tongue rubbed softly against my teeth ...
"Come to bed, my darling," I whispered, the blood pounding in my ears. "Let me hold you ... love you...."
Since time immemorial, I suppose, women have thought that they could change men in bed. They have thought that by using their bodies, the wiles of passion, they could heat the hardened clay of men's wills and reshape them, reform them to their own desires.
I was no exception.
For the next hour I did all that I could to make Joe want me, to make him desire me so much that he would agree to changing his mind about South America. I had little hope to offer, little plan, but I knew that somehow, someway he had to give up his scheme, to go back and serve out the sentence that society had imposed on him. Only then could he hope to lift his head in a world he hadn't made, but had to live in. And only by doing it that way could we have any kind of life together.
In the throes of our lovemaking, his mouth found my breasts and brought them to life. They pulsed with fire, the ends hardening with the greed that demands satisfaction. I opened my body to him and once more we knew the boundless satisfaction and joy that we had first experienced in the chapel.
Storm lust gathered in both our bodies and built to a throbbing climax in a crashing of thighs. I wallowed in the ecstasy of Joe's fine body. His knowing male ways made me turn liquid inside, sent spurting thrills galloping through my loins as he pumped the endless rigidity of his own aroused passion into my body.
I had never felt such shameless abandon in my life. I knew at last what I had been missing; but the joy of saving myself for Joe was compensation enough. I wanted no other man, would never be satisfied with any other. At that moment tremors of passion surged through every pore of my body. As Joe's hands touched me everywhere and his strong legs supported his masterful lovemaking, I knew that I would go to the far jungles of the world to be with him. Anything to be able to feed on his love, to be near the sweet torment of his flesh.
"Oh, Joe," I moaned as we made it once more together, spasming and throbbing pliant flesh. "Make me love it ... please me!"
His answering thrust of power plowing into the frothing depths of my body sent me into another convulsive sob of joy. He rocked slower and slower and the pleasure undulated through both of us. We were like ships bobbing on a quiet sea. And then he relaxed in my arms.
I sighed and ran my fingernails over his damp back.
And in a few moments I was asleep ...
When I awoke I was alone in the bed. Joe's absence frightened me. A racous, muted blare of music was coming from the living room. A crack of light splintered the door frame of my darkened room. I got gingerly out of bed, hugging the sheet close to my body. I tiptoed to the door and peered through the crack.
Todd was sprawled in a chair by the radio. He had a bottle of whiskey beside him and a half-filled glass in his hand. The radio was shouting dance music. The station swerved in and out of frequency, as if it had been a longtime since Todd had bothered to adjust the knob. He was watching something, taking deep, loose sips from his glass.
I looked at what he was watching.
King and Rita were dancing. At least it probably had once had some semblance of a dance. They were now merely glued to each other, legs thrust together, arms entangled in a snare of wanton indifference to Todd's hungry stares.
I searched the room frantically for some sign of Joe. I could see him nowhere.
The music found itself momentarily and a tricky blast of wicked cornets and drums rippled the air. Rita responded by sliding her hips voluptuously against the huge body that held her captive. King shoved his mouth down to her ear and seemed to cup it, whispering to her, his tongue making thick, probing trips against her lobes. She giggled deeply, throatily, and her head fell back, the orange earrings clicking like castanets.
I was still standing in the darkness of the room, the sheet draped loosely around my naked body, when Todd pushed up from his chair. His lithe young body seemed brimming with energy, a tightly coiled spring ready to snap. He drained the glass and moved suddenly away from his chair.
He was coming toward the bedroom!
Sucking in my breath fearfully, I stepped back and fumbled for the cheap lock. I found it just in time, shoving the bolt secure. I was trembling when I heard Todd twisting the doorknob. He tired it for several seconds and then his fist thudded on the thin wood.
"Hey," he breathed. "Hey, open up, sweetheart."
I waited, not daring now to breathe. I hoped he would go away. I wondered again where Joe wa show he could have left me alone with these people!
"Hey! I said, open the damned door! I ain't gonna eat you!" Todd growled, and then a low coarse laugh punctuated his remark, and I heard him add in a drunken whisper, "Yet!"
Still I waited, shuddering in the darkness.
"Listen, baby," he called, his fist pounding on the door again. "If you don't open this door, I'm gonna open it for you, savvy?"
My mind raced. I knew that if I didn't think of something-do something-I might unleash whatever psychotic drives lurked deep in his twisted lustful young mind.
I took a step to the door. Raking in a deep breath, I whispered, "I was asleep, Todd-you woke me up. What do you want."
"You," he snapped. Then he added in a kind of honey whine, "I mean-I wanta talk to you, baby. Just talk, that's all."
"Where ... Where's Joe?" I asked, trying to be as casual as possible.
"He's out ... don't worry about him, sugar. He won't be back for hours. Time for a little fun. C'mon, open up. I just wanta...."
"All right. Just a minute. I'll be right out."
"Okay ... but hurry it up, will-ya? It's lonesome out here."
I stumbled back across the room and switched on the little lamp by the bed. I found my uniform and dressed as slowly as I could. I had to kill time. I had to delay!
Twice while I was dressing, Todd's impatient fist slapped against the door. Twice he demanded that I get a move on.
At last I could tarry no longer. I opened the door, but before he could shoulder his way into the room I was out of it, walking quickly right to the center of the living room. I rationalized that at least with King and Rita in our presence, I might have more protection. Not that I could rely too deeply on their moral integrity.
Todd followed me, and stood swaying slightly just a few inches away from me. He was very drunk. I decided his condition might work in my favor. But his eyes were glazed with a hard eagerness that turned the natural blue of them into a steely frost.
His hands come out and locked around my waist. His fingers felt like bands of iron. It was incredible how strong he was-how youthfully strong.
"C'mon, baby," he husked. "Let's you and me kiss and get acquainted. Let's...."
"Let's have a drink, Todd," I said, trying to push his hands away.
He stared at me, then dropped his hands and grinned. "Okay ... little drink first. Little drink to get us all loosened up." He laughed a kind of twisted adolescent laugh. I tried to imagine what kind of boy Todd might have been, if, in some time past, in the dark corners of his distorted life, he had been given some kind of love, some chance to be a decent human being.
He splashed whiskey into a glass and handed it to me.
"You drink, too," I said. "No woman--likes to drink alone."
He winked suggestively, grinning. "That ain't all you don't like to do alone, is it, sugar?" His eyes ran over my body, undressing me in his mind. "I heard those bedsprings squeaking while ago. Sounded like you and old super-hero were gonna screw right through the floor." He leaned closer tome, his breath hot on my cheek. "I want some of that, too. I can make you think it's Christmas, doll. There's more than one cunt can testify to how good I am."
"I'm-I'm sure of that," I breathed, ignoring his lewd stare. I took a sip of my drink. It was violently strong. It was obvious that Todd intended to get me drunk in a hurry-which was fair enough, because that's exactly what I had in mind for him.
"Your drink," I said. "You haven't made yourself one."
While he poured himself an equally generous drink I glanced again at King and Rita. They were lost in some delirium of sensuality. Still swaying together, their two bodies were crushed close. One of King's massive hand was rubbing her buttocks with teasing explorations. His other hand was somewhere inside her blouse. Periodically, she would make little moaning sounds of pleasure, grinding her thighs harder against the column of his leg that rode between hers, thrusting her tongue deep into his throat.
Todd was back, clinking his glass against mine.
"Here's to a good screw," he breathed heavily, winking again at me. Before I could stop him, one of his hands had cupped my breast, the fingers going instinctively for the nipple. Once again I slithered out of his reach. He followed me, eyes afire with lust.
"C'mon, baby, let's go into the damn bedroom." He whispered, "I'm dying to get between your legs. Watching King dry-hump that piece over in the corner-and listening to Joe lay you, springs creaking like crazy-it just about drove me out of my mind. And the thing is, I got more to offer than those two bastards put together. Baby, five minutes with me and you'll be lickin' my chin to get more!"
I thought I might faint. The brutal assumption he was making, that any female was fair game, that any woman on earth could be talked into wallowing in his lust was sick, disgusted me. Todd was a sick young man, and a dangerous one. What Rita had told me about him hummed in my head like a frenzied alarm bell.
I couldn't help feeling frightened, but above all I couldn't let him get me in that bedroom.
I had to stall until Joe got back!
His hands came at me again, squeezing my breasts, toying with the nipples he found easily enough beneath my limp uniform.
"Let's., .let's dance, Todd," I said, my mind reeling with every possibility for delay.
I slid my arms around him and drew him close to me, hoping to keep his hands at my back. His body cemented itself to me and we spun crazily around as the radio blared it's idiotic static-music. His leg immediately wedged itself between mine and I felt his violent male erection grow like a muscle inside his pants. He licked at my neck and my throat. I tried to resist, but he was too strong for me and he pulled my head back and planted his mouth on mine. His tongue forced its way into my throat, lashing and sucking with animal greed at everything in its way.
His hands roamed over my hips, pinching, teasing, demanding satisfaction.
The few sips of the strong drink sailed around in my head, inflaming my senses. Despite myself, I felt a rabid sensuality crawling through my body. I couldn't help it. Every inch of my flesh was at his mercy, and his leg relentlessly rubbing against my thighs kindled something of the recent madness I had experienced with Joe.
Wanton thoughts fluttered through my head like witches, like demons of lust.
If only I could get out of his arms, I knew that I would be all right. And yet I was a prisoner. The irony of it did not escape me. Yes, a prisoner has little choice about his fate!
Without realizing it, Todd had maneuvered us to the sofa. Suddenly with a savage push I lay sprawled there with him on top of me.
"No, Todd," I pleaded, my better self struggling to the top of my senses again. "No ... we can't ... King and Rita...."
A low chuckle escaped from Tod's throat. "Ain't you noticed? They crawled off to the bedroom a long time ago."
I stared. It was true. The door of the bedroom was shut. King and Rita were doubtlessly behind that door, in the darkness on the same bed that Joe and I had made love on. And no doubt their own lust was being savagely fulfilled.
I tried again to escape from Todd's grasp, but I was pinned helplessly under him.
"Now this can be easy or hard," Todd rasped, his mouth circling my own. "But come hell or high water, baby, I'm gonna split that juicy cunt of yours, so you might as well enjoy it. We're gonna screw like a couple of ducks I"
His hand rode under my skirt and yanked at the flimsy barrier of my panties.
"No, Todd ... no!"
I was powerless to stop him. His hands seemed made of steel. His fingers made bruising lunges up my skirt and clamped against my leg.
His other hand pressed along my throat, cutting my breath to a thin stream. He held me down, bending his sweating, inflamed face close to mine. His mouth was a gash of lust.
"I think I know what you want," he said in a hard whisper. "Yeah, I'm sure I know what you want!"
I couldn't speak. His fingers slid higher to the edge of my panties, and began to inch under the straining elastic.
"I think you want me to rape you!" he husked, his breath scalding my face. "Say it! Say you want me to do that to you!"
I struggled-wildly in his arms.
His fingers ripped now at my panties. He had done this before, I realized, and probably many times! I fought against him with all my strength. But it was no use. He tore my panties free with one savage pull.
I gathered breath in my lungs to scream-but I was too late. His mouth plunged against mine, cutting off my cries. The hand between my legs worked quickly to bring me under his power. His knees dug between my legs and wedged them open.
His hand left the damp snarl of hair between my legs and fumbled with the buttons of his fly.
God, I thought, he's going to do it-he's going to rape me!
I struggled now like a tiger. The thought of rape rampaged through my brain to bring back all the dark terrors the female has been repressing since time began.
Violation by the male animal-cruel, brutal, merciless!
When he crawled over me, crushing his body against mine, I suddenly found my mouth free at last from his madness.
I obeyed immediately my feminine instinct to scream.
The sound shattered the room!
CHAPTER 9
I WAS STILL SCREAMING WHEN STRONG HANDS tore Todd away from me.
I gasped, struggling up into a sitting position. My blouse was torn open, my breasts exposed and bruised with the savage young mouth that had sucked at them. My skirt was hiked up to my thighs, my panties ripped down around my knees. I hastily hid my nakedness as best I could while Todd and Joe fought in the middle of the room.
I had been saved at the eleventh hour, but my nerves were shattered.
I breathed life-giving gulps of air as the sound of fists and strangled curses rocked the room.
Thank God Joe was larger than Todd-and stronger. He landed a few blows on Todd's luckless chin and Todd crumbled, his throat letting forth a stream of vileness. Joe stood over him, fists clenched, eyes flashing with hatred and anger.
"You touch her again, you bastard, and I'll castrate you!" Joe shouted. like a wounded animal, Todd crawled a few feet away, nursing his shattered lips and his damaged jaw.
Joe turned, helping me to my feet. "Are you okay, Mary? I'll kick his damned head off if...."
"No ... no," I breathed, shaking my head. "I'm all right. You came just in time."
Joe threw an angry glance around the room. "Where the hell is King?" he demanded. "Why didn't he stop this!"
I motioned weakly toward the bedroom. "He and
Rita...." I whispered. "That slut!"
Joe strode quickly to the bedroom door and kicked it open. "Dammit, King," he shouted. "Can't you quit pawing that whore long enough to stop a rape!"
King appeared at the door in his shorts, his face smeared with Rita's cheap lipstick.
"Huh?" he mumbled. "What is it?"
"Todd was out here attacking Mary. She was screaming bloody murder when I came in. Why didn't you...."
"Why don't you stick around and protect her yourself?" Rita hissed, appearing beside King and sliding a long, limp arm around his waist. She was naked except for a pair of frilly black panties. Her breasts, swollen and taut, jiggled obscenely. She glared at Joe with contempt. "Todd was only giving her what she wanted, if you ask me," Rita finished, hoarsely.
"Nobody asked you," Joe spat.
"Man, you're gonna have the whole damned neighborhood in here if you don't cool it," King pleaded. "Okay, so Rita and me got carried away. Todd wasn't gonna do anything to your girl except...."
"like hell he wasn't. He was trying to rape her!"
King shrugged. "Well, you oughta know how that is, buddy. They didn't put you behind bars for picking flowers in a park,"
"You're a bastard, too!" Joe snarled.
I sank on the sofa again, too limp and too disgusted to stand.
"Sure, sure," King husked. "I'm a bastard; Todd's a bastard; and you're a bastard. We're all bastards. Satisfied?" He ran his good hand over Rita's jiggling breasts, touching the hardened nipples with his thumb. "But we're in this damned mess together, and if we go around losing our heads over nothing...."
"I don't call my girl's body nothing," Joe insisted, his voice dropping a little. "While I'm out trying to rake up the money to get us out of this goddamned hole, you screw your piece and Todd here feels up my girl."
"Forget it, man. Todd's just horny, like the rest of us. You can't blame him for wanting...."
"I'll murder the rat if he tries it again."
Joe turned and stared hard at Todd who had by now pulled himself backup in the chair and was pouring himself another strong drink.
"You got that, Todd," Joe threatened. "I said you so much as look at my girl's ankles and I'll kick your head into shit."
"Yeah," Todd muttered, his mouth pulled down into a grimace of loathing. "Sure, you keep your virgin cunt all to yourself."
Later, when Rita and King were back in the living room, making love again on the sofa, I lay down in the bedroom in the darkness. I didn't remove my clothes this time. I felt filthy and defiled. I hated myself and everything I had done in the past months to get myself into his position.
When Joe came to bed, his arms snaked around me but I pushed him away.
"Mary," he moaned. "C'mon, let's forget Todd. I need you again, baby...."
I couldn't forget how he had left me alone; how it had really been his fault that Todd and I were thrown together; putting Todd into a position of being tempted; being driven to fire up his sleeping, youthful lust.
"Don't touch me, Joe," I breathed, pulling farther away from him. "Don't touch me now or I'll ... I'll never forgive you."
We both lay in silence, breathing separately, as if the thing that had so long held us together had suddenly broken in mid-air ... like a crippled bird, and was dropping quickly down through endless space ... darkness ...
The next morning at the small breakfast table, Todd stared sullenly at me and looked away in elaborate disgust. King and Rita were still playing the great lovers. She sat on King's lap and fed him bits of toast and sips of coffee while his good hand was planted firmly on her bulging breasts. The radio blared continuously in the living room with no sign yet that anything at all had happened at Mason Reformatory.
"There's something funny about that," Joe said, pulling worriedly at his cigarette. "They have to know by now. Why don't they say something?"
King shrugged, nibbling a bit of toast Rita was coyly proffering to his coarse lips. "Maybe you tied them ropes too good," King said. "Maybe...."
"A third grader could have worked free of those ropes by now," Joe snapped. "The warden's no fool. My hunch is he's keeping our break under wraps for a reason-maybe to fool us."
"The law don't play that way," King insisted. "They don't keep anything from the press. After all, we're dangerous characters. The public needs to be warned about us." King laughed throatily and Rita joined him with a sputter of senseless giggles.
"I've got to locate George today," Joe breathed, thickly. "If I don't, then I smell a double cross."
King scoffed. "George wouldn't cross us," he argued. "He knows we'd tear out his guts. My hunch is you didn't look in the right places."
"I looked where we told him we'd look," Joe insisted. "It's dangerous enough for me to get out there-to show myself-and George knows it. Why the hell didn't we tell him to come to us?"
"You know George-the mastermind," King grunted. "He figured if anybody is gonna get caught, let it be us. He doesn't want to be trailed here. like the man said, George don't want to get involved."
"Well, he is involved-right up to his throat. He's got our money."
"You worry too much," King advised, nibbling now at Rita's ear. "You'll find him right where he's supposed to be today. I got a feeling."
"Joe," I said, quietly. "If you're going outlet me go with you."
"Can't, Mary. It's dangerous enough for one. I can't take the chance."
Rita smiled scornfully. "What he means is, honey, he doesn't trust you. After all, it wasn't your idea to come on this little hayride, was it?"
"Shut up, Rita," King said.
Rita grinned again and ran her fingers through King's hair, kissing him heavily on the mouth. "Sure, honey," she gurgled. "Sure, I'll shut up both of us." She smeared her lips over his mouth again.
Joe pushed his chair away from the table. "I'm going out," he muttered. "I'll find that creep George if I have to go on television."
Joe disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes then reappeared with his hair combed in a funny way. He had a hat in his hand and a pair of dark glasses. He looked at me and tried a quick smile. I lowered my eyes.
"I'll be back," he said. He turned to King. "You remember what I said about Todd," he warned. "I expect you to make sure he keeps his damned hands to himself."
"Does that include me, Joe?" Rita teased. She slid a wary look toward Todd. "I might just get a yen for something new and different later in the day."
King slapped her thigh and she squealed with laughter.
"I don't give a damn what you do," Joe said. "But if he so much as puts his pinkie on Mary, I'll slit his belly right down to his...."
"Oh, my," Rita tittered. "Then he wouldn't be good for what I have in mind-not that way."
Joe slammed out of the door, and King locked it behind him. Rita stood with her hands on her sleazy hips, watching me. I could read unbridled jealousy and contempt mixed in her eyes.
"I tell you what, honey," she purred at me, cattily. "Why don't you do the dishes, since you don't plan to do anything else? King and me have got some unfinished business to attend to in the bedroom."
"Why don't you take Todd along with you," I suggested, disgustedly. "I'm sure you're big enough for two."
Her eyes flashed, claws coming up. "What the hell kind of a crack is that?"
"It's your crack, Rita," I purred, "not mine."
"Goddamn you, you still think you're better than me, don'tcha? Why, you mealy mouthed little bitch...."
She came swiftly at me around the table. King grabbed her and pulled her back, wrenching her arm. "Rita, dammit, leave Joe's girl alone. Can't you see she ain't used to this kind of setup."
"She's a two-bit phony," Rita spat. "She makes me want to vomit!"
"So can it! We got better things to do ... in the bedroom."
Rita's eyes flashed with a sudden, twisted pride. "No ... I don't feel like it. I don't want to."
"What the hell do you want then."
"I want to drink. I want to get so goddamn drunk
I'll forget she's around!"
"Sure," King husked. "Sure, so have a drink. Then we'll go play house. We'll play better after a few drinks, eh?"
They wandered off into the living room where Todd had already opened the first morning's bottle of whiskey.
I stacked the dishes slowly in the sink and turned on the hot water. I intended to stay in the kitchen as long as I could.
The only thing I regretted was that King had the key to the kitchen door in his pocket.
By mid-afternoon all three were drunk. Very drunk.
I still sat at the kitchen table. Only this time I was prepared for anything that might happen. In the drawer with the silverware I had found a butcher knife. I had it now in my hand, upside down, with the long sharp blade under the sleeve of my uniform.
If Todd attempted to rape me again, he would get something for his trouble. The thought that I was actually sitting in a strange house contemplating the possibility of murdering somebody filled me with a deep sickness-a self-disgust.
And yet I had come to realize that when one is suddenly thrust into a jungle, one has to live like the other wild animals; one has to survive or perish.
If that was the rule, then I could at least acknowledge it. Perhaps, if I had to live in this house much longer, I would become an animal myself.
I'm not quite sure when it began to happen, but I was suddenly aware that Todd and Rita were kissing. My senses became alert and my heart jumped in my breast. If King saw them ...
And then I realized that King wasn't capable of seeing anything. He was out cold, snoring soundly in a drunken stupor, an empty fifth of whiskey cradled in his arm.
I knew, with an icy awareness, that Todd had deliberately got King drunk. And doubtlessly Rita had been more than willing to hurry the process along. I could remember now that she had been feeding King drinks all afternoon. Their plan had worked. And now, without shame, they were pawing each other, eager to satiate some burning, hellish lust that permeated the very core of their beings.
I sat very still, watching them. I had little choice. The kitchen had no door and the living room was too small not to be able to see every foot of it. I viewed them with disgusted fascination, the way one watches snakes in a glass case, writhing and twisting their bodies over one another.
They kissed without restraint, their mouths crushed together like damp rags; tongues working, probing, sucking. Their hands roamed over each other's bodies in greedy abandonment. When Todd's fingers laced inside her dressing robe and found the eager melons of her breasts, she tossed her head back and gurgled with animal passion, mouth open, eyes smoldering with desire.
And then she saw me looking at them.
At first a frown smothered the leer on her face, and then a smile came limping back-but a dark smile, twisted, mean.
"Go ahead," she whispered at me, hoarsely. "Watch how a real woman treats a man. I'm going to show you the tricks, Miss Lilly-ass-gonna show you what you passed up last night ... gonna...." Her voice slurred off into a monotone.
I knew she was thoroughly drunk-sot drunk. Both of them were drunk-so numbed with alcohol that their brutal lust-was like hot tar.
She couldn't resist one last taunting hiss in my direction.
"This is a real stud boy, missy," she slurred. "He's got what it takes ... young ... young and hot and that's the way a real woman--likes it! He's more man than you ever had...."
I couldn't resist a mirthless smile deep inside myself. It was almost the same sentiment she had expressed about King the night before. The truth was that a whore can always rationalize the need to satisfy her jaded lusts. Man or boy, it doesn't matter. A whore will rut with anything male.
Todd had worked the front of her robe open now, and her lush tits, bruised from a night of sexual orgy with King, popped out. The ripe nipples strained upward, topping the puffy fullness of her flesh like scarlet thumbs.
"Suck 'em," she moaned, pulling Todd's eager mouth forward and down. "I like' em sucked hard, eat like hell...."
His tongue slathered over the jutting breasts; licking and biting the torrid peaks until she shuddered with pleasure. She squealed in frank delight, urging him on to wilder ways of amusing her. His hands played with the spongy fullness, squeezing and massaging and sucking frantically.
In one violent movement Rita tore open her robe and revealed her naked body. She had wantonly planned all of this, I realized-deliberately not dressing so that when the opportunity came, she could be free to let Todd have his way with her.
He was more than willing to play her game. His hands roamed shamelessly over the burning flesh. Not an inch was left untouched, unfondled. She laughed throatily as his fingers violated the froth of curling hair between her legs. She arched her back, spreading her thighs wide for him, urging him to sink his marauding fingers deeper into the crimson cleft that gaped open, demanding the basest kind of satisfaction.
His mouth was like some kind of monstrous insect, licking over the curves of her body, leaving wet trails of saliva as it traveled downward. She squirmed and laughed, and dug her fingers into his neck, pushing him toward the ultimate seat of his perverting pleasure.
He hovered for a moment over her frothing cunt, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a rabid dog's. Then he sank his head between her legs and began to gnaw the throbbing flesh of her most private parts. She moaned, grinding her thighs upward to meet his plowing tongue. I felt a swirl of nausea sweep over me.
I staggered up from my chair and stumbled to the sink. I bent over it, very sick, feeling I would faint from the ghastly display of obscene sexuality I had been witness to.
I was just retching when deep cursing howls brought me back into a standing position, rigid with a new fear.
King's drunken voice roared in the next room. I stood clutching the knife as I heard bodies tumbling together and Rita's sharp screams punctuating the sound of flesh smashing against flesh.
I didn't dare move, or breathe.
The battle continued for several minutes-a drunken, murderous brawl with all the furious ac-compliment of crashing wood and shattering glass.
If only I had the key to the door, I thought, blindly.
I glanced at the kitchen table, at the strong chairs that stood there. Perhaps if I broke the door-if I could somehow smash one of the chairs against the door ...
I had the thought-but not the chance.
All my chances ended with the staccato roar of a gun. It petrified me, splintering my eardrums with it thunder.
The thunder came again, and again.
I waited, blood icing now in my veins.
Silence, total, menacing ... then, in a moment, I heard slow footsteps coming toward the kitchen. I turned, holding the knife behind me, ready to kill if I had too.
Todd appeared in the doorway from the living room, his face red with blood, his blond hair twisted and matted on his forehead. He stared at me, holding the gun lowered at his side.
Rita staggered up to him, her face blanched, her lips drawn back in a thin line of horror.
"Dead...." she gasped, hoarsely. "King is dead!"
CHAPTER 10
"OH, GOD," RITA HUSKED, HER VOICE WAVERING again between sorrow and awe, "King is dead."
"Good riddance to the big sonofabitch," Todd muttered. He waved the gun toward Rita. "You want it next, sweetheart...."
Rita stared wildly at him, her lips quivering and then I saw her eyes go hard, cunning. Her mouth jerked into a caricature of a smile. "No ... no, you got me all wrong, Todd. King didn't mean nothing to me. I proved that to you, didn't I? I mean we were going good when he woke up weren't we?" She licked her lips quickly, trying another smile, letting her breasts jut hopefully forward through the thin robe. "You got what I want, Todd. I knew that the minute you walked into this place. That's why I poured the drinks down King. Hell, I wanted you as much as you...."
"Who said I wanted you? You flea-bitten slut!" Todd hissed.
She grinned right through the insult, her eyes caressing him, teasing over his battered face. "Honey," she whispered, "I got lots to give you-you don't know what I can do with my body. I can drive you wild, satisfy you any way you want. I know ways, good ways...."
"Yeah, you're a real queen," Todd acknowledged, but the tone of his voice was a sensual slur. The gun dropped a little.
Rita took a step toward him and snuggled against his shoulder. She looked at me triumphantly, her narrowed green eyes full of hatred. "What about her?" she breathed. "Why don't you use that gun to...."
"Shut your damn mouth," Todd growled. "I got plans for her, too-once we get out of here."
Rita shrugged. "When Joe gets back...."
"We aren't waiting for Joe. To hell with him," Todd muttered.
"Don't you thing we oughta...."
"I said, to hell with him! Let him work his own way out of this. I'm not going to get caught with a goddamned body on my hands."
"But, Todd, we've got to stay here. We've got no place to go."
"We'll find a place. We'll head back west."
He glared at me with malevolent eyes. "Now do you intend to come peaceably, or do we have to drag you?"
I weighed everything very quickly in my mind, If I struggled now, I might lose possession of the knife. But, if I didn't struggle ...
"I don't have much choice," I said, quietly. "Do
I?"
"Smart girl."
Todd stared around the kitchen.
"Grab the whiskey and some of that food," he commanded. "Get it ready for the car, while I wash up. Hurry!"
I packed the food in a cardboard box found under the cabinet. Rita gathered up the stock of liquor she has set in. My mind raced frantically for some clue to leave Joe-and some opportunity to do it.
When we had everything packed, I started out of the kitchen. Todd had returned, wiping his face.
"Where the hell do you think...."
"To get my purse."
"Leave it."
I looked at Todd, trading him glare for glare. "It's got money in it," I said, calmly. "We might need money. But if you want to be stupid enough to...."
"Okay-get it." A sour smile eroded his face. "And take a look at King on your way through. It might remind you not to try any tricks with me."
Going past the living room, I deliberately avoided looking at King. I only knew that there was a corpse slumped over the smashed coffee table and that a pool of blood was forming darkly on the worn carpet. I didn't shudder. I had seen death before.
In the bedroom I closed the door behind me and snatched my purse off the little night table. I rummaged quickly in it for my lipstick, at the same time hiding the knife at the bottom under a wad of Kleenex. Going back to the door I uncapped the lipstick, and hurriedly scribbled: WEST-GAS.
It was all I had time for before the footsteps reached the door and kicked it open.
"What the hell is holding you up!" Todd demanded, looking at me suspiciously.
"I'm ready," I said, pushing the door back against the wall.
I knew that if he looked on the other side of that door and saw what I had done....
He brushed past me and stared blankly around the room. There was nothing out of the way there for him to see. He sighed and made a jabbing movement toward the kitchen with the gun.
"Move it, baby," he said.
When we had loaded the whiskey and food into the car, Todd made me lie down between the seats in the back. He slid up the garage door and then crawled in beside me, crouching down, the gun still clutched in his hand. Rita got into the driver's seat.
"Which way?" Rita gasped.
"West, I told you, dumb cunt!"
Rita turned the key, and the engine sputtered into life.
"We're lucky, Todd honey, that Joe didn't take the car," Rita trilled.
"This car is probably hotter than a nickel firecracker," Todd muttered. "We stole it from the warden."
"Oh, my God," Rita wailed.
"Shut up and drive. We'll take our chances."
Crouched in the stifling position between the seats, I couldn't help but wonder if Rita was thinking the same as I was: that Todd was taking this desperate chance, not because he was afraid the police would find the house, and King's body; but because he was afraid of what Joe might do to him if he returned and found that King had been wantonly murdered.
"We've only got a little gas," Rita informed us as the car backed quickly out of the garage and into the street.
"How much?"
"It's down-I don't know-a fourth of a tank."
My heart sank as Todd chuckled. "That's more gas than I thought we had. We can go to the moon on a fourth of a tank, baby!"
Rita put the car into drive gear and we drove quickly away down the street, leaving behind a dead man and a hastily scribbled, cryptic clue.
But it was the only thing I had to pin my hopes on-if Joe or the police ever found it!
We drove for what seemed hours. The only time I could make sense out of where we were was when Rita would stop for a red light. I could hear other cars pulling up, the squeal of brakes, the varied sounds of cars and trucks chugging and pedestrians walking.
"Get out of the traffic, you damned fool!" Todd hissed over and over.
"I'm trying to," was Rita's only excuse.
At last we were free of the city and the car picked up speed.
"Okay," Rita sighed. "You can come up for air."
We both lifted our heads. My back ached. I think another thirty minutes doubled between those seats and I would have screamed.
Fields and countryside were rolling past our windows. The signboards signaling the boundaries of the city behind us were becoming fewer and fewer.
"Pull off on the first dirt road you see," Todd instructed Rita. "I don't give a damn where it leads. The sooner we get off this highway the better."
"All right, Todd."
In about ten minutes Rita slammed on the brakes and rubber hissed.
"Back there," she-wailed. "I just passed a dirt road."
"Back up and take it!"
The car careened backwards on the highway and shot off down a dirt road. Dust boiled behind us. Several times the car swerved dangerously. It was obvious that the last hour was beginning to crumble Rita's already frayed nerves. I began to realize with a kind of thawing morbidity that, after all, Rita had seen her boy friend shot down in cold blood. That little stunt she had pulled in the kitchen was merely instinctive reaction: she had saved her own life, possibly.
I wondered now what was racing through her head.
It was obvious that she hated me; that some deep, compulsive twist of ego had set her against me because I represented something she had lost a long time ago, some dangling thread of decency. Maybe she had even hoped to regain it with King, who, compared to Todd, at least,-was faintly normal, vaguely moral.
Todd-was all animal. And the only bond that still existed between Rita and me was the fact that we realized just how much of an animal and how desperately sick this young maniac was.
I only hoped that I could rely on Rita in the pinches. My only other hope was the knife that lay tucked under the Kleenex in my purse-and even now, that was out of my reach!
"Turn again here!" Todd barked.
A second dirt road-less used, narrower, rutted-twisted off from the one we were on, and ran zigzagging toward a distant clump of trees. I saw what I thought was the crumbling outline of a house hidden in the towering moss of leaves.
As we got closer it indeed turned out to be a farm house. It looked vacant, and long deserted.
"Pull around back," Todd directed.
Rita slowed down and maneuvered the car around the side of the old house and pulled up beside a cement-and-brick-covered cellar. She cut off the engine and the silence of the countryside settled in around us like a cloak.
"Perfect," Todd said, smiling thickly. "This ought to make a nice little nest until I think of-well, until we decide to move on."
There was something ominous in the tone of his voice, and I glanced at Rita to see if she had detected anything. But she was wiping her brow, and trembling under the light blouse she had thrown on at the last minute.
I knew her nerves were near the bursting point. And mine were not far behind her. We carried the food and the liquor into the house like slaves, with Todd standing guard over us, his gun hand following every movement we made.
As he herded us in front of him like cattle, we explored the house. It was abandoned, but the people who lived there had left a considerable amount of junk behind. It was as if they had despised the years of poverty that had ground them into the dirt on the land and had left everything behind that they could, spitting a scornful farewell as they slammed the door for the last time.
The furniture-what was left of it-was junk: a battered table with only three legs, a couple of crippled chairs, a yawning old trunk with fading wallpaper pasted inside. And upstairs the same miscellaneous collection of refuse-with one major exception.
In one of the rooms there was an old iron bedstead with a misshapen, dirty mattress stretched across its sagging springs.
We looked at it in silence and then Todd shoved us ahead of him back downstairs.
We settled in the rickety chairs like frightened birds.
"How about getting us a little drink," Todd husked, glancing at Rita. "Sure, honey."
She trotted obediently off to the kitchen. I could hear the clink of bottles.
"Not a glass on the place, sugar...." Rita piped, with a disgusting effort not to annoy him.
"Bring the damned bottle," Todd yelled. "We'll suck it out!" He looked at me and winked.
I turned away from him in disgust.
"You know, baby," he breathed, quietly leering at me, "You might as well learn to like me. I got a feeling you and me are going to get a lot better acquainted before we say good-bye."
I fingered the purse in my lap, and said nothing.
Rita came back with the bottle. She minced her hips as she walked, absurd in her make-believe act of sensuality.
Todd took the bottle and swigged down a mouthful of the warm whiskey. He made a face and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Have a drink," he said, holding it out to me.
"No, thanks."
"I said, have a drink! Take it to her, Rita."
Rita brought the bottle to me and thrust it into my face. "He said to take a drink, Miss Fink." She giggled throatily at her little joke. Todd laughed, too. They both laughed harshly and loudly and too long.
I took the bottle and touched it to my lips. The half-thimble's worth I got washed around in my mouth for a long time before swallowing it.
I had no intention-no intention in the world of allowing my senses to be dulled by alcohol.
After another drink or two, Rita was sitting on Todd's lap and his hands were playing with her breasts. She made little babyish yipping noises every time he touched her-and he touched her all over. She acted as if she loved it, and bit his ear, and kissed his bruised cheek, where King had landed a few murderous blows.
In a few moments my heart jumped gratefully as he handed Rita the gun.
"Keep an eye on Florence Nightingale," he said, calmly. "I'm going to look this place over. Make sure the car is well out of sight from that road."
Rita balanced the gun unsteadily in her hand. "Sure, honey," she gulped.
He looked at her for a long moment. "Remember, baby," he warned. "I'm giving you a big responsibility with that little gun. Don't foul up."
"I-won't, Todd."
"You'd better not. You know why? I took all the shells out except one. You let our prisoner get away, and I'm going to be kinda upset. Understand?"
"Sure, Todd-she won't get away. I promise."
"Okay...." He tossed me a grin and wink. "See you soon, baby. You girls have a nice little chat while I'm gone."
His footsteps died away in the kitchen and the back screen door slapped shut.
Rita and I sat in frozen silence for a moment looking at each other.
"You know what he plans to do,". I said, quietly.
"You shut up-just shut your mouth," Rita snapped, her breath ragged and thin.
"He plans to kill us."
"I said for you to...."
"He plans to rape both of us and then kill us."
She shook her head, but the gun trembled in her hand. "Rape you, maybe," she hissed, "but not me. He don't have to rape me!"
I winced at her utter stupidity. "You little fool," I whispered fiercely. "Don't you understand anything I'm saying? Don't you know what he is? He won't be satisfied just to., .to take you the way King did. He doesn't care anything at all for you. He's sick. A creature like that can only enjoy himself if he is forcing a woman into sex, hurting her...."
"No ... no, that ain't true!"
"Of course it is. If he can't make you resist him any other way, then he'll beat you with his fists until...."
"You're lying! You're just trying to make me give you this gun...."
"That's exactly what I'm trying to do, you idiot! If you haven't got the courage, then give me the gun and I'll do it."
Rita's lower lip trembled like a shaken leaf. "Do what?"
"Kill him, if I have to. Anything to get us out of this!"
"God," Rita murmured, sucking in her breath with fear. "You don't really think Todd would...."
"He's already killed King. He'll kill us, too-but not before he.. , "
The words died in my throat. A look of incredible terror had passed over Rita's face. Apparently she had caught sight of something behind me.
I swerved around in my chair.
Todd was standing at another doorway, watching us, a length of rope in his hands. The look on his face was the twisted leer of the satyr, demented, brutal cunning. He began walking toward me.
I whirled back to Rita. "Shoot him!" I yelled. "Shoot him, Rita!"
But she only stared at Todd, transfixed, motionless.
CHAPTER ll
RITA WAS LIKE A SMALL BIRD, HYPNOTIZED before the menacing coil of a python.
She couldn't move. The gun became a piece of wood in her hand. At last, instinctively, I lurched forward-but too late. Todd caught me by the shoulders with his iron grip and hurled me back into my chair. It overturned and I sprawled helplessly onto the floor. When I looked up again, Todd had the gun in his hand, leveling it at me. Rita's face was buried in her hands.
Todd sneered, "You said some awful nasty things about me just now, missy," he breathed. "Awful nasty things! You don't think I'd lay a hand on a woman that way, do you?"
"You perverted creep," I gasped. "You'd violate your own mother for kicks!"
His face went white. He took three quick strides toward me and slapped me hard. Pain seared through my cheekbones and lights flashed crazily behind my eyeballs. I whimpered, sobbing.
"You goddamned bitch," he hissed, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. "If you ever say one word against my mama again...."
I knew then. I knew that he was insane-perverted, desperate, mad! Rita and I-both of us-had thrown away the best chance of surviving by not sending that one bullet crashing between his eyes.
Now it was too late.
At this point the only weapon I had left-the knife-seemed only a remote comfort. But I still had my purse, clutched in my hand.
"Get up," Todd barked. "You and me are going for another little trip." He turned and tossed the length of rope he had entered the room with into Rita's lap. "Bring that along, sweetheart," he smirked, "We're gonna need it."
Making threatening gestures with the gun, he forced me to stand up and walk to the stairs.
"Go on up-and don't try any tricks!"
I mounted the stairs slowly. Suddenly I remembered the old bed with its dirty mattress. His purpose flashed quickly-terrifyingly-through my brain. I wouldn't submit to that! Once he had me tied to that bed-no. I'd rather die! I'd rather be shot right here on the stairs!
Holding the purse in front of me I quickly opened it and dug stealthily for the knife. It was there, the cold steel of the blade in the tangle of Kleenex. I brought it out by the handle, clutching it in my sweaty hand.
I waited, biding my time as the steps began to run out and we approached the landing of the second floor.
Just at the top, at the last post of the sagging banister, I made my desperate bid for life and freedom.
I whirled and slashed at his gun hand.
I felt the knife tear into his flesh-biting into gristle and meat. He screamed a maddened curse and dropped the gun. I raised the knife again to strike.
His own anger and fear made him a tiger. His wounded hand lashed out and gripped my wrist and twisted my arm backwards, wrenching it painfully.
"Drop it or I'll break your goddamned arm!"
I didn't want to drop the knife-wouldn't have-but my arm went numb, my fingers insensible, and I heard the knife clatter to the floor.
Still holding my arm pinned behind my back, he pushed me forward toward the bedroom. I lunged against the door jamb but he kicked me on through it and shoved me down on the bed. His arms held me captive.
"Bring that rope over here," he yelled at Rita. "I'll show you how to tie her."
"Rita-" I pleaded, "Don't."
He jammed his fist over my mouth, cutting off my words.
With sinking heart, I saw Rita come forward, white and trembling, the rope held obediently in her hand.
. Move by move, he gave her directions how to make the loops and knots: first my feet-spread to either side of the bed and tied securely to the iron rods; then my hands, tied to either side of the top posts.
I was helpless now. When the knots were secure, Todd stepped back and looked at his self-directed handiwork.
"Let's see you squirm out of that, you flighty little bitch," he breathed.
Rita was watching me, breathing hard, her eyes glassy with both fear and relief. Riding over my own fury and despair was a kind of wild pity for Rita. It was obvious she thought she had been spared a similar fate-but I knew in my heart that he would not spare her. What heinous plan he had in mind for her I had no way of knowing, but I was sure that it would not be long in coming.
Todd came around the side of the bed again and took something out of his pocket. A handkerchief. He tied it carefully over my mouth. When that was completed, he stood up and stared down at me, a cold, chilling stare.
He turned and grinned at her. "Nothing, baby. What did you think I was going to do, cut her damned throat?"
Rita blinked and swallowed hard. Todd laughed. "You girls got me all wrong. Hell, I'm just a boy who--likes a little fun." He gestured abruptly toward me for Rita's benefit. "This is a first-class bitch, honey, who won't let us enjoy ourselves. That's why I tied her up. She'll keep out of our way like this-okay?"
"Sure, honey ... sure," Rita breathed.
Todd walked over to Rita and held out his bloodied hand. "Let's you and me go back downstairs, doll," he whispered hoarsely. "I gotta pour a little whiskey on this cut-and maybe have a little piece of your slip to wrap it in. After that ... well, after that we'll have a little supper, and maybe a drink."
"What about her?" Rita wondered aloud.
"Hell, she won't starve. Let her calm down a little. If she behaves herself, I'll untie her. Understand?"
"Yes, Todd-yes, I understand."
Together they left the room. I could hear them going heavily back down the stairs.
When I was sure they were both well out of hearing, I pulled desperately on the ropes. They sliced painfully into my wrists. And they held like steel. I hoped that Rita might have cleverly put slipknots in the place of the ones Todd directed her to tie. I hoped she might have had sense enough to provide me a way out.
But that was wishful thinking, I realized now.
Wishful thinking that could prove fatal for both of us!
It seemed that hours passed ... long, crawling, ugly hours that had no beginning and no end, but merely a continuum that drove me mad with fear and helplessness.
Darkness came, filtering blue and purple shadows through the dirty windows, of the shabby room. With the shadows, new fears stalked me, spiking my imagination with the demon-dancing of terror. The possibility was very real that Todd might comeback up those stairs on tiptoe, in the darkness, his sick mind reeling with the sadistic impulse to attack me by surprise.
At every creak of the house I held my breath, waiting, listening, praying that the sounds I heard were not the sounds of footsteps.
There was nothing but silence from below.
Were they drinking, talking in whispers, making love?'
Then another thought came like a knife between my ribs: had Todd already killed her? Was he, at this moment, raping her corpse.
My brain continued to race with the most savage fears.
But nothing happened.
Not a sound from them, and nothing all around me but darkness and silence, and the occasional creak of the vacant house ...
When dawn filtered thin fingers through the window, I was still awake, my body tense, my mind more active than it could have been made with a pound of Benzedrine.
Suddenly I heard the sound of steps on the stairs. I tensed, waiting, straining at my bonds. The steps were not hurried, but measured and sure. They reached the top of the stairs and came down the short passageway to the room I was in. I cut my eyes around and stared at the door.
Todd entered.
He looked calm, refreshed. He grinned at me. "Have a good night, baby?" he husked.
I looked away from him. It was the only way I could show my loathing.
He came over to the bed and sat down. I saw that his hand had been neatly bound with a fragment of Rita's silk slip. But where was she? Where was Rita herself?
Todd's good hand snaked out slowly and touched my breasts. He pinched along the juts of my bra, slowly, carefully, savoring every inch of what he found so helplessly exposed to his whims. I struggled, yanking one final time at the hateful ropes that bound me.
He laughed, deep in his throat.
"Yeah," he whispered, pitilessly. "Fight with me, baby-I like it like that. I like it like that. I like it better when you fight me back...."
To thwart him, I stopped struggling and lay very still, breathing hard.
"You sanctimonious little cunt," he hissed. "Before I'm done with you, you're gonna wish you'd been nicer to me while you had the chance!"
He brought a knife out of his belt. I shuddered. It was the same knife I had tried to kill him with!
Expertly, coldly, he slipped the point of it into the collar of my uniform and ripped downward. The sound of tearing cloth filled the room. He cut methodically, quickly now, stripping down the side and yanking hard until I was naked from the waist up, except for my bra and slip. He stood up and worked on the rest of the uniform. He slit along the hips and down to the hem and then pulled the ruined rags away and tossed them in a corner.
His eyes were beginning to harden, to glaze with the excitement of anticipation.
The slip was easy for him. He cut the straps with two clean snips, and tore it the rest of the way off of me with his hands. The crumple of silk joined the uniform in the corner.
Panties, bra and hose-those were the only things that covered me now-the only garments that guarded my trembling, naked flesh from his monstrous desires!
He took his time getting my hose off. The nylon crackled as he ran his hand over the calves of my legs, and toyed with the garters. He unsnapped them, and rolled them, inch by inch, down each leg, until they hugged my ankles like coiled snakes. He stood back, looking at me, admiring his handiwork, trying to decide whether the panties or the bra would be the more fascinating garment to remove next!
He settled in favor of the bra.
Oh, God-how I hated the feel of his hands on me!
If only Joe were here to save me, to snatch his filthy, perverted fingers away from my flesh!
He teased the spongy cups of my bra. He slid his fingers under the edges of them and played with the mounds of flesh that naturally swelled there. At last he grew impatient of such coy maneuvers; and, digging his hands under my twisting back, he found the bra snap, and yanked it loose.
He lifted the bra from my body with trembling, sex-crazed excitement. He stared down at my naked breasts, and licked his lips over a lecherous grin.
"Nice," he whispered. "Real nice, baby-I'll bet your boyfriends get their jollies every time they suck those big, hot tits."
His thumb and index finger found each nipple in turn and played with them, gently rubbing them, defying the flesh not to harden.
I shut my eyes, fighting off the hatred of what he was doing to me-the frightful indignity he was forcing me to submit to!
But slowly-horribly-something began to happen.
He had kneaded and massaged my breasts until nature's ironic will forced me to a kind of brutal response. I felt the peaks begin to swell and harden under his relentless teasing.
He laughed softly and bent his mouth down to the quivering tips. His tongue flicker out, covering one fiercely jutting nipple. I jerked with the pleasure-agony for what his life had obviously been devoted to just such moments as this, to callously forcing women to respond to his carnal techniques. His tongue roiled and teased the straining nipples until they were stone hard. He didn't stop there. He drew up high into his greedy mouth all he could get of the awakened flesh and sucked hard, pulling the focus of pleasure right up into the peaks.
I don't know how long he played with my breasts, but when his mouth finally pulled away for the last time, I knew that he had won a kind of sensual victory. My breasts were swollen and hot; the nipples stretched up into thick plums of response, teased into the basest kind of lustfulness. His saliva glistened on the lips of them.
And then he slipped his fingers into the elastic of my panties and peeled them down over my hips.
I was panting now-half with hatred for him and half with the hard riding storm of lust that he had unleashed in me. I thought of those medieval pictures of innocent women being tormented in their beds by the succubae and incubi of the devil-creatures that stole into the beds of women at night and teased them into uncontrollable passion, and then slaked their own lust with orgies of fornication that bordered on madness!
Was this that kind of nightmare? my mind cried, as I felt the panties slipping down my trembling upper thigh, edging swiftly down to join the hose around my ankles.
And then his wanton fingers touched my nakedness.
It wasn't a fumbling touch. Nothing discreet, it was the deliberate, probing grope of a satyr; the fondle of a sex fiend who knows the exact spot to goad a female into frenzy.
His finger triggered my deepest lust.
I moaned, despite myself, and rolled on the bed. His hand cupped me over and over between the legs, and his middle finger slid again and again easily to its mark. He began to play deep inside me now, rubbing that secret erectile tissue that, once stimulated, can bring a woman to tears of joy.
I bit the gag in my mouth, tossing my head in a delirium of base pleasure.
Phantoms of my sexual instinct were suddenly unlocked-fluttering out on dark, evil wings.
My whole being became erotic, abandoned.
Words I had never allowed myself to use-to even acknowledge-came blindly into my brain, demanding to be spoken; words that I had seen scribbled on restroom walls all my life; words that I had overheard friends of mine use, the smutty vocabulary that passes between both sexes like contraband.
Pussy ... horny ... cunt ... screw!
I reveled in the new words! I drank in the sounds of them like hot nectar!
It didn't matter that the man who was bending over me was a criminal and possibly a murderer. Nothing mattered except the pleasure he was generating in me, the peaking lust that was grinding through my body as his fingers dug between the lips of my cunt and his mouth slavered again over my burning nipples.
Suck me ... yes suck me like that ... I love that!
I writhed on the bed, responding in a way that I had never responded to the touch of any man. I moaned, and sweat began to lick over my body. That only made the pleasure sweeter! I wanted him to do everything to me-to make me feel, once and for all, the ultimate shameless abandonment of a whore!
Treat me like a whore-a whore! My mind roared.
Suddenly he was off the bed, ripping off his clothes. My eyes glazed with passion, raked over his naked body, wallowing in his maleness, the size of his throbbing young prick.
If only he knew, I cried inwardly ... if only he knew how much I wanted him now, he could tear off these ropes and I'd join him in this carnival of lust!
He was blind to that, though. He was thinking only of his own aroused passion. He had planned to rape me, and now he was going to do it!
But it wasn't rape-didn't he know that?
I shuddered with ecstasy as his body enveloped mine. I arched my thighs, hungering for him to enter me. His stiffened rod touched the pouting lips of my eager cunt and rubbed back and forth, teasing me into a frenzy. And then he thrust forward and I took him into place. We worked our hips together, rutting like animals too greedy to care what the other thought.
His mouth found my tits again and sucked with biting force on the exploding nipples that begged for just such use.
Screw me, darling-screw me into hell!
The bed creaked and groaned as we built up to a frothing climax and came together, our spewing juices mixing with scalding lust!
Again! I groaned, my words muffled and senseless against the tightly stretched gag in my mouth, do it to me again!
Tears of joy rolled down my face. We were still coupled in lust.
He slumped in exhaustion over my body, his breath pounding in my ear.
I worked my hips angrily against the dead weight of his pleasure-giving body.
"Again!" I hissed. "Do it to me again, damn you!"
He struggled up on his elbows and stared into my face. "And damn you," he rasped. "What the hell do you think I am...."
"I know what you are-and what I am. I know now!"
He grinned loosely. "I told you, baby doll. I told you that once you'd had it the way I can give it, you'd beg for more...."
"Yes, yes-I do."
He pulled himself over my body and straddled my breasts. His upper legs bruised my swollen tits, his knees dug into the hollow of my armpits. He grinned down at me from his position of power, his eyes glazed with a consuming lust.
"Show me, lover," he breathed, cruelly. "Show me how much you like that big thing!"
I twisted my head up to take what he was forcing down to my mouth. A wanton madness intoxicated my mind. My tongue flicked out. I licked his stiffening flesh.
He laughed harshly, deliberately, at my uncapped passion.
"That's good, baby," he whispered. "Take all of it-show me how hungry you are!"
He arched his hips so that I could take more of him. He drove his throbbing penis into my throat, sending the most violent shudders of pleasure grinding through me. I sucked harder and faster to please him, to arouse him again to that peak of frenzy that I knew would end by his taking me again the way I wanted.
My strategy worked.
In a few seconds he pulled himself away from my moving mouth and flung himself between my legs. I yelped with joy as he plunged it into me.
It was even better than before. We were two hurricanes of lust colliding with each other, forcing our bodies to do the impossible. His thrusts were longer, fiercer, harder. I strained and bucked against the imprisoning bonds of the ropes. Strangely enough, the helplessness of my body sharpened my pleasure.
When the needles of joy began to drive me once again to the summit of satisfaction, I clenched my teeth and rode my thighs hard to meet him. Rainbows of ecstasy ribboned through my body as I plunged deep into the lewdness of a thrilling orgasm.
I was still meaning when I heard the pounding of feet on the stairs, and Joe's frantic voice yelling my name over and over.
The sound echoed in my brain like a voice lost in a dark cavern.
My swollen lips twisted into a frowning laugh. They had come to save me, I thought.
To save me.
Damn them!
CHAPTER 12
THE EARLY AFTERNOON SUN LEANED IN AT THE window like the bronzed arm of a young athlete.
I sighed and turned my naked breasts toward it, letting the warm fingertips of its touch caress the scarlet, thickening nipples of my tits. I smiled and stretched lazily, throwing back the bedcovers so that the full effect of the rough warmth could touch me all over and slide into the nooks and crannies of my awakening flesh.
The hot sun licked hungrily at me, like a male aflame with desire.
The fantasy amused me for several minutes, during which I turned this way and that, crawling up on my knees and spreading my ripe, full buttocks open for the warm, carnal sun-fingers to touch, explore; then twisting over on my back and lifting my thighs, I spread them slowly, teasingly apart until the pouting lips of my pussy gaped open out of the softly curling genital hair like a kitten's pink mouth. The sun seemed to grow hotter, focusing like a probing tongue between my legs.
I grinned, loving it, loving all of it!
Finally, I pulled myself up on the edge of the bed and fumbled for a cigarette. I struck a match, the flame hissing into life. I took a deep pull on the cigarette, and tossed the match into the crystal ashtray on the nightstand.
Stella's ashtray.
I glanced around at the room.
Stella's room-and now mine.
A faint smile stole secretly over my lips as I thought of how lucky I was to come by all this, to take
Stella's place here at the warden's house. But I was even luckier than Stella. I didn't have to pretend I loved Warden Baker, didn't have to sneak away from him, trick him, pretend to preserve the image of house maker and wife.
I was none of those things to the warden.
I was merely available to him when he wanted me. And since he was an old man, a crippled old man, that wasn't as often as you might think.
Stella's words came back to me, like frantic fireworks in the night: Ben Baker was once as degenerate as the rest of them ... animals rutting and snatching from any female ... the only difference is, Ben Baker is too smart to get sent to jail for it ...
Stella was right, he was smart. A smart old lecher hiding behind his cloak of respectability. But not too old to keep his hand in, to slaver and crawl for something that all men had to have or die ...
I remembered again his hand on my arm, his warm sheep-dog eyes locking into mine that day I returned. His voice, husky and sad and earnest: "Mary, I know it's been a terrible ordeal for you-ghastly being literally held hostage by that demented young sex maniac. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have you back, safe and sound. You owe your survival, of course, to Joe. The minute he realized what had happened, found King dead and all that, he turned himself in and we instigated a full scale search on the strength of that clue you left scrawled on the door. We found you just in time, my dear, just in time!"
Perhaps ... if you consider that my fate might have been that of Rita's.
Poor, stupid, foolish Rita. They had found her body, endlessly violated, in the cellar of the old house. Her breasts had been sucked raw, her vagina extended twice its normal size by the relentless, all-night thrusts of Todd's insatiably long prick.
And so I had been saved from that ...
Sweet little Joe-sweet, dear Joe had sacrificed his freedom to save me from that.
You understand, of course, Mary, that Joe is still in very serious trouble ... he helped kill Monk, he threatened my life and the life of Stella, he was an accomplice in the death of King and ... therefore, he must be transferred to the Federal Prison at Warrensburg ...
Yes, yes, of course, Warden. Poor Joe. Good-bye Joe.
"And Stella?" I had asked, almost petulantly. "Where is Stella, your wife?"
The warden's eyes, downcast, sad again, his voice generating a tone as artificial as a funeral wreath: "Stella has left me, Mary. She loved Monk. I had known that for sometime, but did nothing ... with Monk dead, she left me. She wants a divorce...."
"I see."
The warden's clever old snake's eyes, twisting over my body, wrapping in their imagination around the tender buds of my young breasts, "But I'd like for you to stay here, Mary. I've talked to your father, to Phil. He was against it at first, thought you wouldn't want to tarry behind these walls another second after-after all this. But he agreed to leave it up to you, knowing how dedicated you are to your work, to helping these young men...."
"Yes, I want to help these young men."
"I agree that you should, Mary. And I think you can be of great ... ah ... companionship to me. I don't require much attention, of course, only small ... favors...."
The warden's timid little proposition always came back to me in moments of idleness like this, making me smile over the cleverness with which he got what he wanted.
And got me what I wanted.
I finished the cigarette and walked, naked to the shower, dragging the thin-silk dressing robe behind me. I turned on the taps and let the soft warm water shoot down over my shoulders and breasts. The pellets of water bounced pleasurably across my trim buttocks.
When I was through, I dried myself carefully, paying particular attention to those little secret crevices that would otherwise go unnoticed in a casual bather. But this was no casual bath, and I was no casual bather. This was a preparation.
I hummed briefly as I stared at the glistening array of perfumes and powders at my command. Finally, I selected one that smelled of the outdoors-green leaves and the soft, funky smell of moist herbs. I touched each nipple and each ankle and the inside of each thigh.
Then I slipped on the thin, almost transparent robe and walked quickly back to my bed. The sunlight was streaming fully now onto the white sheets. I glanced at the little clock on the table.
Soon now ... very soon.
I peeled the robe off, and let it drop on the floor in a careless heap. I throbbed once urgently at the center of my being as I crawled lithely into the middle of the bed. I lay down, drawing my legs up slightly and adjusting the pillows behind my head.
I waited: one minute, two minutes, three ...
And then I heard the front door open softly and close again. I heard the lock snap with a hard, sure click. My breathing became harder, and the throb between my legs started to build to a kind of wanton drum-beat.
Hurry-hurry with what you have for me!
My eyes were riveted to the door of the bedroom.
And-suddenly he appeared, his prison gray clothes dull against the frame of the door. His hard young face was tanned and handsome beneath a swatch of black, curling hair.
"Hi," he said, huskily, hesitantly. "I'm Bill ... Pete sent me over in his place today. Said he couldn't make it. Okay with you?"
I raked a glance over his strong, young body.
"Have you had many women?" I asked, quietly.
"Sure," he breathed, his eyes already hardening with lust. His hands fumbled at his belt. I smiled.
I watched as he slid his trousers to the floor and hauled them over his heavy, prison shoes. He unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. Then he sat down in a chair, and quickly took off his shoes and socks.
He stood at the edge of the bed now, clothed only in his shorts. I studied the generous bulge that was growing there, and felt weak with desire.
"Come here," I whispered, patting the space beside me. "But first-take off everything."
His hands thumbed willingly into the top of his shorts, and he worked them down over his lean hips. He stood up again-young, naked, aroused.
He came to the bed and sat down at the edge. I knew then that he was much less experienced than he pretended. That excited something deep inside me. It meant that he was not only young and willing-but that I could train him to do what I wanted.
"Touch me," I said.
His hand came out and cupped one of my breasts. He breathed hard. I grinned as I watched his promising rod rise to a stiff erection between his legs.
"You want to please me, don't you?" I whispered.
"Yes."
"Then I want you to rape me."
He swallowed uncertainly, but his hand tightened on my breast and his thumb began to nurse the swelling nipple.
"If ... if that's what you want," he husked. "I'll do my best."
I pulled my burning legs higher-and opened them. "That's what I want," I purred, softly, "just your very best...."
