For those still uncertain about the moral stance of Marcus van Heller in the series of erotic works which he has been writing throughout the last fifteen years, The Wantons will easily be able to clear the tabletop of any doubts. There is, in here, as clear a descent of innocence as one could possibly mark off in a time of youthful psychedelics, rumbles, bewilderments and mass confusions. The work has the quality of a violent adolescent diary, the diary of a nightmare; and when I say adolescent I do not necessarily mean that the work is limited to that sphere of age from puberty to 'adulthood.' The truth is that contemporary times, with its heavy emphasis on youthful advertising, youth fads, movies, and a generally anarchic approach to the reality of the mind, is awfully hung up on or in that Coke bottle called adolescence; wherein we pretend to project ourselves into acting our ages but at the same moment would nullify and deny our age at the drop of a turntable handle or the price of the ticket to Saturday's football game. The time of youth has traditionally been known as the most poetical, the most innocent and the most dangerous part of a human being's life. It is then that the doors are at once opened all the way, and closed all the way; when one's destiny in this life seems to be given the first impetus of which one becomes conscious; when the heroes one worships appear to rise and fall with each day's awakening; when one is both, deeply alone and yet with a wide feeling for community, for that invisible community of the heart's fellow-feeling; when one sees paths unfold before one's eyes; when one is fulsome with precedence, pretentious for sincerity and sincere in one's pretensions; when, most of all, love and fear are most profoundly fleshed not to be, as in later years, finessed and rationalized for social and/or economic reasons.
Given these traditional values relating to adolescence, and given then the cruelly fractured world which so many kids, not unlike Linda, the book's heroine, find themselves caught up in, it is no wonder that The Wantons comes off as a sort of warning against those evils which, falling short of love, are sundry and everywhere tempting. This is not a question of soul, of any belief in the divine light. In the last lines of the book, a young woman who has been propelled through a series of encounters involving' sex, drugs and prostitution, is dead, physically dead.
Van Heller shows many hands in the telling of this hard-bitten story of young corruption. For one thing, unlike his other tales, located either in an historical past or a contemporary present, the sense of 'place' is absent here. It is as though he wanted his readers to understand that this work was not particularly London or Liverpool or New York or Paris, but the anywhere that is nowhere when one climbs aboard the fugitive train. Then, too, the author not unknown for a certain tough-mindedness in relation to his characters takes a definite "stand" in terms of his heroine. From the very outset she is presented as the helpless object. One sees, very early, that it is that quality of helplessness, so central to the young, which interests van Heller most of all; for, helplessness makes for vulnerability, vulnerability literally a being-able-to-be-wounded-and, as such, heroic in the author's mind. Time and again in The Wantons the helplessness of Linda is presented, a certain causeless vacuity which drives her on. It is not a question of kicks, and here there may be a revelation for those who too easily condemn others at the level of kicks: a massive internal fear drives this young woman, whose story opens in the limbs between the broken family and family of contemporaries found at the lower depths. And this fear, with physical rage and submission at its end, is what sophisticates the story, if that can possibly be the right word.
For there is something half-comical and certainly more than a little pathetic in those descriptions of human and animal cruelty dumped around the shoulders of one so young, so young and so old at the same time. And it is the quality of this derangement in age which gives a special impact to The Wantons: we are able to see that in the eternity of the nightmare of a sexuality utterly on the loose, in the loveless depths where the human animal is all claws and insect bites and Bosch-like grotesquerie, there is a nullification of history, of the process of things occurring in their own time, that amounts to defamation. It is as though, through Linda, van Heller were crying out to the generations of the earth: For God's sake, pull yourselves together; the human animal or beast or what you will is, as human, helpless; and, as helpless, in need of care. Of all his works, none strikes so centrally at the hard facts of the inner voyages involving the fantastical and physical in our time, when each day more and more find themselves submitting to images of inner beasthood foisted upon them by the sense of humiliation, futility and defeat from the inner workings of the home to the workings of government machines. Perhaps a work like The Wantons will help to draw the lines heavy, which have been so much smudged and vagued by so much subliminal weaponings these cruel, distancing and crushing years.
Jack Hirschman, Ph.D. Los Angeles, October 1967
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THE WANTONS
CHAPTER 1
Linda dried herself slowly on the rough towel, listening to the vague sounds of her stepfather moving about the flat. She was trembling slightly; an uneasy excitement flickered through her.
The bathroom door was locked, but soon she would have to open it and go out into the other rooms which seemed to her as frightening and dangerous as a jungle. It was almost certain by now that her mother was not coming back from Brighton until the morning.
When her mother had announced the trip to see Aunt Sarah earlier that day she had almost given way and begged her not to go, leaving her alone in the house with him. One part of her had been frozen with fear and a foreboding of evil; and yet another part, that part which had stifled her words of protest before they found voice, had welcomed the terrifying excitement, welcomed it in that flesh-crawling way in which she couldn't resist a horror film.
She stood, almost holding her breath while looking at herself, in front of the long mirror. Her flesh felt refreshed and relaxed after the bath. She put her hand to her breast, the young, well-developed breast which he had touched the other day. He had come up behind her and put both arms around her, holding a breast in each hand and squeezing gently. Then he had smiled a peculiar smile and gone out into the kitchen to help her mother with the drying up. She had been nonplussed, and then embarrassed, and then frightened. She had even thought of telling her mother, except that her mother hated her so and wouldn't have believed her.
And then, two days after that he had come into the bathroom while she was cleaning her teeth in her pajamas just before going to bed. He had been in his pajamas too and he had caught hold of her as before, only this time he had slid his hands under her jacket and electrified her with the touch of his cool fingers on the soft, resistant flesh of her breasts. He had leaned heavily against her and she had felt his weight on her buttocks. He had pressed her very hard, pushing her forward slightly over the basin and she had felt the hard, bulging thing prodding at her. She had been struck dumb; she had wanted to cry out but her throat had completely dried up in a second and she'd simply leaned over the basin, trembling, watching his face in the mirror come down to her neck, seeing the lips open and then feeling the warm pressure of the mouth on her skin. He'd straightened up then and with that peculiar smile which looked half-mad and yet so quiet and self-assured, he'd whispered: "If you say anything to your mother I'll kill you."
She heard a door close quietly and the images faded, bringing her back to the present. She had read books; for the last two years, since her thirteenth birthday she'd been reading books and thinking about it and feeling it in her flesh with a morbid sort of fear. She knew what he wanted. That was the trouble. She was not so much afraid of him as she was afraid of it and her yearning curiosity.
That had been it she'd felt prodding at her bottom when he'd crushed her over the basin. The uneasy excitement moved fluidly in her from her breasts down to the warmth between her legs. She was almost sick with uneasiness as she looked at her naked young body.
She had only known him for six months. That was the length of time he'd been coming to the house to sleep with her mother. She'd often lain in bed, trembling and listening to her mother's thin, passionate gasps and groans through the wall. They had frightened her, those noises. They didn't seem to belong to her mother but to some lost soul, some lost animal soul caught in a trap. And then she would hear his gasps and finally a long drawn-out, shuddering moan. Then there would be silence for a while until she heard their door open and her mother pad out to the bathroom.
So it would go on almost every night, and she would lie in bed waiting for it to begin, hating it, feeling afraid of it but needing it as if it were something to do with her own flesh so that eventually it was the point of the day she waited for.
Until at last, three weeks ago, when they had got married and he had moved into the house permanently and she had to speak to him, see him, come into contact with him at all times of the day when she was not at school.
At first he had seemed to take little notice of her, but then she had found his eyes on her often when she thought she wasn't being watched. His eyes, with that peculiar smile, took her all in, resting on her hips, on her breasts, making her flush and tremble inside.
She studied herself in the mirror, turning sideways, looking at the young, developed body with its maximum of flesh in the right places. She realized suddenly what she was doing and colored although nobody was watching her. She began to pull on her pajamas. It was becoming embarrassing to stay in the bathroom any longer; she had already waited a long time, hoping her mother would come. But now it was too late.
She pulled her dressing gown around her, wishing she'd made arrangements to stay over at Betty's place.
At the door she listened. No sound. She unlocked the door quietly and stepped out into the passage. Quickly she went to her room. She closed the door and stared at the key in the lock. That seemed the only safe thing to do, but she hesitated to take such a positive action as turning it. That was bringing things right out into the open; she preferred to pretend they didn't exist.
Sitting at the dressing table she began to brush her hair. It was long and red. Her father's hair had been red; and she had his bright blue eyes, his firm white features so they had told her. That was why her mother hated her. She wondered where her father was now and then her heart jumped and began pummeling her as there was a knock at her door.
"Yes?" She tried to keep her voice steady. But even the one little word was too much and curved off crookedly at the end.
"I've made you some cocoa."
Her body tingled as if the tiny hairs all over it were standing on end. He had never done this before. She groped for something to call back, anything to put him off. She glanced at the open window.
The door opened slowly and he came in carrying a steaming cup in each hand. He pushed the door closed with his foot.
Her lips trembled slightly. She went on brushing her hair, mechanically, over and over again, trying not to watch him in the mirror.
"There."
He put one cup beside her on the dressing table and sat on the bed, stirring the cocoa in the other, watching her all the time with that smile.
"You have beautiful hair," he said, still smiling. "Not at all like your mother's."
She didn't answer. She felt as if some essential organ had been taken out of her body leaving a drafty gap which would gradually consume her if the organ was not replaced.
"Astonishing that you're only fifteen," he went on, smiling and seeming to muse. "You have the body of a much older woman."
His words frightened her. He was so calm and sure of himself, like a schoolmaster. She was overwhelmed by his presence so helpless that she still couldn't say a word.
He swallowed his cocoa and stood up. She realized with a stab of shock that he, too, was in his pajamas.
"Drink up," he said. "If you go on brushing you'll wear it away."
Obediently she put down the brush and began to sip the cocoa. Stealthily she watched him in the mirror. He stood still with his arms folded, staring at her, letting his eyes fall from her shoulders to her buttocks. They rested on the firm lines of her buttocks on the dressing stool. With another shock she saw the great bulge in his pajamas down where the thing was. It was enormous and he made no effort to conceal it, seeming rather to lean his hips forward slightly, pointing it at her. She gasped audibly and then regretted it.
"What's the matter?" His smile was broad and insolent.
"Nothing."
She was hot; her face was burning and the uneasy excitement was down there, hot, between her legs again. She shivered in a quick spasm and then stood up.
"I'm going to bed now," she said in a frightened voice.
He didn't answer and made no effort to stop her. His eyes simply roved over her, resting this time on her breasts as if he could see through the thin material of her pajamas and moving down to the V between her legs where her red pubic hair made a tiny bulge.
She stared him in the eyes at last and, once there, she felt lost. His black eyes smilingly overwhelmed her. He reached forward and pulled her towards him. She wanted to resist, but her body went where he pulled and the next minute he was crushing against her and his lips were flattening hers apart and his soft tongue was probing into her mouth.
She closed her eyes, unresponding, but the excitement in her had reached a point at which it had to break. It had moved between her legs like a great itch.
He edged her back towards the bed and pushed her onto it, coming down half on top of her. Now she was on her back in the position the books always described. His face was against hers, that tongue probing; she was trembling violently all over in a way she couldn't stop at all and she wanted to know, she wanted to give.
She put her arms around his shoulders and squirmed against him, her heart fluttering like a bat, blindly, helplessly.
Behind her closed eyes was only a partial recognition of what was happening; full recognition was lost in the trembling, the helplessness.
' The air was cool on her bare breasts. She felt very naked and desired only to be more so. His hands were drawing new sensations from her breasts and then his lips, and behind her closed eyes she wanted him to swallow them because the thrill was too acute.
And then the air was all around her hips, like a caressing hand, and her white buttocks were sliding on the counterpane and between her legs, right up inside her, connected with every part of her being, but above all down there between her legs was the hot liquid feeling of lava bubbling away, threatening to boil over.
His mouth was moving over her body, following his hands, and between the lost, flushed burning a fleeting moment of horror would rake her and then dissimulate in the boiling cauldron of flesh.
Now his pressure was down there along her thighs, stroking them, moving up, brushing gently, sending her giddy with the feeling that she was just a trembling leaf falling, falling.
His fingers were there. It was the last moment. She was still trembling violently as if with a disease. She opened her legs suddenly, spread them apart with a final pain of excitement shooting through her belly. And his fingers entered the elastic, moist tunnel.
She gave a little whimper and closed her legs again, but his fingers were there, crushed between her thighs but inside her, a foreign stimulation. They moved gently like a spider's legs, feeling around in the darkness. Her mouth was open and the uncontrollable trembling went on. His lips were sucking her nipples again and gradually he eased her thighs apart, pushing with his elbow into the soft, glazed flesh.
For her, the room no longer existed, only sensation existed the ravishing sensation of a younger, eager body learning and loving and wallowing in the love.
His fingers were raking her secrets like practiced instruments, titillating her vagina, titillating in an overwhelming flood of intoxication that she could hardly stand even though she knew it had to go on, that there was no going back. She was filled with a great need to debase herself, to abandon herself within his sight, to release a violence of passion. She began to move her legs, to wriggle her behind on the bed, whimpering quietly through her open lips. She wanted no contact with him as such, she needed above all to abandon herself for her own need, now that it was here, had happened, she needed to sweep away all her inhibitions in one swipe, to do everything possible.
She moaned and another fleeting thought came: her mother's moans, the lost animal soul. A fleeting horror came but swept on and she was just a body on a bed, a body filled with need.
His lips moved up from the teats and covered her mouth. She opened her mouth and his tongue moved in.
Somehow, smoothly he was on top of her. She was more naked than ever because her bare, white thighs were out on either side of him and this was the final abandonment. His nude body was warm on hers; the trembling was all inside her now, had withdrawn from the outer skin, but it had passed into him. Through all the sensation she was aware of his trembling body, still sure, but trembling.
All the sensation reached a pinpoint apex down there at the gaping passage between her thighs. It was as if every perception in her had been magnetized down, rushed down through her body to that one acute spot.
She gasped and pushed her thighs flat as the solid thing, so hard and pointed, moved into her. It was too much. Tears of pain came to her eyes. But she wanted it, that was what she needed, anything less would be failure.
She pulled her thighs up slowly and then cried out at the sudden solid invasion. The tears flushed into her eyes and ran helplessly down her cheeks. But that first enormous entry was the worst and now the solidity began to take on a probing rhythm as his hips slid against her thighs and his fast breathing made her suddenly fully conscious of another being with a part of his body inside hers.
She opened her eyes and there was another streak of horror in her head as she was partly aware, through the pain which constricted her, of his black hair and the blue jaw and the heat of his body and the sliding of the skin against hers and the abandonment of her woman-strength to him. She closed her eyes again and the mind glazed over and perception moved back just to the channel of sensation in her loins.
The pain was receding and the firm, sliding pressure which filled her was moving back to the sensation of before only better now, because she was more naked than ever with this filling of her need.
Little spurts of sound shot through his lips as he pushed into her, and they found an echo in the breath which began again to pant from her lips.
She felt his hand move under her bottom, the warmth of his palm balancing her buttocks, she moved her bottom on the hand, feeling the rubbing of skin against skin, letting him have anything he wanted of her because it was what she, too, wanted.
His other hand moved under her and both hands went down her buttocks to the spot where his penis was throbbing into her. The fingers brushed at the ridges of flesh on either side of the passage and she gasped and jerked her hips sharply up against his.
The probing was still advancing, filling her loins with fresh sensation so that she began to groan quietly. There was only a slight soreness now to offset the burning, all-pervading rapture of her body. She pushed her thighs out from her hips, inviting him farther, and she felt his hips wriggle up against the hairy softness of her abdomen.
She was wriggling uncontrollably now, her head flopped back, mouth open. He was biting her neck and beginning to jerk into her with swift, strong strokes which shocked her every moment. She felt very wide open, as if the whole of her inside had been turned out to the open air; she felt hot and wet and in her loins there was an aching of sensation, of reaching for something that would be attained in sudden destruction. This was it, and she was suddenly terribly afraid of it, afraid of it but knowing it must go on, feeling that it would destroy her.
Her body was sweating and longing. The rapture brought tears to her eyes again.
His face came up and swallowed her again, biting her lips, and each bite was a fresh stab of excitement. Her breasts, too, crushed under his body, felt a pain that was almost not a pain. His long rod of flesh was surging fleshily right into her passage. It seemed to expand as he jerked on and on, forcing against the sides of the channel as if it would stretch her until she became just one big hole down there for his use.
His hands had moved back under her buttocks and were squeezing them hard, feeling them, pulling them apart, his fingers stabbing at her anus. She had never imagined that, but his fingers were there invoking a new source of stimulation, trying to enter the other passage.
She pushed her hips into him, pulling her thighs back towards her body. She gave a little gasping moan as he rammed his last length into her. Now there was nothing left of her at all but the enormous well which itched and burned, contracted and seethed with bittersweet excitement.
He was pummeling into her with rapid, staccato strength, gasping continuously with each in-stroke and her legs, she saw vaguely, were moving around, rubbing on his thighs as she squeezed in, falling away in the next second; her hips seemed to have a will of their own, writhing around against his as the weight and solidity within her seemed to grow bigger and bigger, her thought vaguer and vaguer so that she knew only the swirling inside her loins which made her strain and strain against him, wanting him to fill her, to invade every inch of her body. The swirling grew, grew in a whirlpool as if, like the water disappearing from her bath, all the liquids inside her were being sucked down to her vagina where his penis was destroying her. This, this, she thought, now, now. She couldn't stop; it was too late now; this was the destruction, the fulfillment of the thinking, waiting, reading, needing. She uttered a thin scream, jackknifed against him and dug her nails into his shoulders as it seemed that a carnal spirit rushed out of her, sweeping her body like a blasting wind, robbing it of strength, before it plunged down and out of the throbbing orifice between her thighs.
She lay, still vaguely excited, twitching her limbs, but in a half stupor afterwards, while he continued to ravage her in growing excitement. She was pleasurably aware of his moans, his furious thrusts, the way he clutched her behind, pulling it up at his hips off the bed. She gasped as his rod pushed for a moment even farther than before, sending a streak of pain through her belly. And then he had slowed and was groaning like a wounded lion, stiffening into her in sudden rigid jerks until, with a last moan as if he were dying, he shot into her and she felt the hot flood of sperm passing from him to her.
He stretched on her, panting for some time while she thought of nothing but the fact that she'd had it, that there was still pleasure in her loins together with a growing soreness in her vagina.
He rolled off her at last and lay looking up at the ceiling with its ridge of pattern. She didn't move, didn't open her eyes. She lay with her legs spread-eagled, the sperm dripping out of her onto the counterpane until she began to feel normal and slightly cold. Desire had slowly evaporated. She became afraid to open her eyes as reality flooded into her. During the heat, the passion, nothing had mattered, but now she was back before the beginning and without the excitement she'd felt; and a flush of guilt and disgust and horror, that he had done that to her and that she'd assisted and enjoyed, swept through her causing her to shiver. He was her stepfather, her mother's husband. She shuddered again. His great thing had been in her, just the way it had been in her mother, bringing groans and writhing from her just as it had from her mother. That was incest. Was it incest if he wasn't really her father? Yes, it probably was anyway it didn't matter.
She opened her eyes cautiously. His were closed as if he was asleep. She looked at his large, blue-chinned face and averted her eyes.
They traveled down his fleshy, white body and rested on the hump of his penis which curved up over his hairy thighs. She watched it, fascinated and half-revolted. It was yellowish-white and very smooth with a few thin veins standing out on it. A clump of hair spiked out around it, thickly, like a bird's nest. She wished she could see it better without having to change her position and risk disturbing him. She became suddenly aware of her own naked body so close to his that they were almost touching. It wasn't at all the same as when they'd been making love; now it was obscene. She looked at his face again and the eyes were still closed, so she slipped off the bed, picked up her pajamas in a quick movement and tiptoed to the door. He called out as she reached it.
"Where are you going?"
"The bathroom."
She slipped along the passage, remembering that it was the first time she'd ever walked through the flat naked. Once in the bathroom, she locked the door, turned on the light and leaned against the door, bent over, looking at her thighs with the mucous flow oozing over them.
Now it all seemed so fantastically unreal that she felt if she dismissed it from her mind it would not be true at all. But the viscid stream continued in its slow path down her thighs. That was sperm; that was from him; it was inside her. Supposing she had a baby! She dismissed the unpalatable thought. That only happened to other people. Anyway she'd soon know; her period was due in a few days.
She got into the bath and ran the water, sponging away the marks of his passion. Her vagina was definitely sore now. How could she face her mother? The soreness would remind her physically even if she managed to put the memory forcibly out of her head. Tears came to her eyes. She felt she couldn't cope with such a responsibility of guilt. And how could she go on living with her stepfather? She loathed him now. It would be agony to have to sit at the same meal-table with him. And supposing he made fresh advances to her! The probability was obvious and she shuddered at the thought. Now she couldn't bear the thought of his touching her, could hardly understand how it had all happened with such lack of resistance on her part.
She dried her legs and rubbed some talcum powder between them. She thought of him lying on her bed and realized that she couldn't go back there. The thought of seeing him was too much and she had read, too, that some men liked to do it several times a night. She felt very helpless and scared. She wished she could get out of the house, but all her clothes were in her room. She climbed into her pajamas, and sat on the hard, wooden chair beside the washbasin. She would have to stay here in the locked bathroom until morning.
For a long time she sat in the small room remembering the details of their intercourse with reluctant horror. If only it could have been someone else, some boy she knew. But they were all so young anyway. The farthest they'd ever gone was to put their hands halfway up her skirt in a game of "Truth or Dare." She thought of her friend Betty who had also had hands put up her skirt. In fact, once, some boy had almost touched the spot over her briefs but hadn't quite managed it. They had discussed it for hours, going over the sensation they'd had, wondering how it would be to go farther, wondering when and how their first time would be. What would Betty think if she knew! She didn't think she'd be able to tell her; it was too terrible, too shameful.
There was a rattling at the door handle followed by a knock. She stiffened and sat perfectly still, trembling.
"What the devil are you doing?" came her stepfather's voice.
"Having a wash," she said unsteadily.
"You've been having a wash for nearly an hour. Let me in. I need one too."
She hesitated, decided not to answer.
"Let me in I want to have a wash."
"No," she said at last. "I'm staying here until morning."
"Good God, what's the matter with you? Let me in and don't be so stupid." There was an edge of annoyance in his voice.
She didn't answer and there was a silence followed by his receding footsteps and the sound of his door banging. For some time she sat on the chair listening. At last she got up and tiptoed to the door. She put her ear against it and listened again. Then quietly she turned out the light and opened the door. There was no sound from his room in the darkness and with a feeling of relief she hurried quietly along the corridor to her own room. She opened the door softly and slipped inside. She locked it in the darkness, feeling for the key and turning it. She switched on the light, listened a moment and then crossed to the dressing table. What a relief. She bent to look at herself in the mirror, gave a horrified gasp and spun round. Sitting on a chair near the door, half-shielded by the massive wardrobe, was her stepfather. He was smiling at her with the same, strange smile and he rose to come towards her.
"Poor kid," he said. "Why are you acting like this? I suppose you're embarrassed, now?" His voice sounded gentle and reasonable, but underneath was that same menacing power: he and only he was to decide how things should be.
"Don't, don't," she pleaded, shrinking against the dressing table as he came towards her.
He stopped a little in front of her and slipped out of his pajamas. Her fascinated eyes were drawn down to where his organ pointed erectly at her, soaring out from the black hair like a white spear with a dark hilt. She began to tremble again.
"No, no!" she said softly.
His penis was enormous. Now that she saw it erect it was bigger than she'd ever imagined and the skin had drawn back and the red, inflamed knob was like a cudgel. She couldn't believe it could have penetrated her. And there, hanging straight down below it as it swung towards her, were the balls, raw-looking and hair-covered and loose.
He watched her staring at his genitals, smiling with his deep, confident smile.
"It's always better the second time," he said quietly.
"No, no, don't touch me, please!"
When he seized her trembling body she began to struggle, but she was too frightened to struggle very strongly and with a little chuckle he threw her on the bed and ripped off her pajamas. He stood at the edge of the bed for a moment looking down on her body. He pursed his lips and made a sucking noise and then pulled her to the edge of the bed forcing her face downwards across it. She cried out as he shoved into her from behind, pushing her thighs apart with his knees, holding her buttocks, leaning back from her, away from her hips.
Now she was more naked than before because he could watch as he had her, could see his organ moving wetly into her crack as he flexed his abdomen at her soft buttocks. She was trembling violently again and as soon as she'd felt him strongly, sexily in her, she'd forgotten the horror and was again aware only of the all-pervading sea of sensation as his long, relentless flesh greedily ransacked her body.
CHAPTER 2
They sat in the last rays of fading sunshine in the big park watching some kids shoot down the slide in the nearby amusement park.
"You're very quiet, Lindy," Betty said affectionately. "What's up?"
She'd had it on her mind for two days now and the desire to tell someone was acute. If only she gave someone else the guilty knowledge, got them involved too, she could share the burden. It would immediately lessen what she had to carry.
"It's nothing," she said, however. "I'm just feeling a bit bored with the holiday already. Let's go to the dance tonight."
Betty hesitated. She was a pretty blonde girl, as well-developed as Linda but slightly shorter, which somehow gave her an even sexier appearance. Last time they'd gone to the dance they'd been pestered by Teddy boys who'd made crude remarks to them. She didn't think they even were real Teddy boys, but they dressed in that Edwardian cut and had long side beards, and they strutted about in a conceited way and smacked girls on the bottom, and if they danced with you they held you very close and kissed your ear and pushed their hips hard against yours. Betty had been rather frightened of them and hadn't wanted to go again. But if Lindy wanted to go, then maybe it would be all right. She knew what a loveless home life Lindy had and she liked to give in to her as much as possible.
"All right," she said. "But supposing those Teddy boys are there?"
"So what," Linda said. "I'm not frightened of them."
It was true that, in a sense, her newfound maturity had done away with half the fears she had always had with boys like that who seemed so much older than she.
"Lindy, something's the matter." Betty took her hand.
Linda looked at her and squeezed the hand, then she looked listlessly away to the amusement park. Betty was sweet, her best friend. She was the only one she could tell, if she was going to tell anyone.
"I've had it," she said at last.
"You've had it? What do you mean you've had it?"
"You know it. I'm not a virgin any more."
She went on staring at the kids on the slide, wishing now that she hadn't said anything, knowing that she would tell Betty everything.
She felt the hand on hers tighten, heard the gasp.
Betty didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Her mind went racing over all the boys they knew, wondering.
"Why didn't you tell me? When? Who with? Oh, you didn't. You're kidding!" When she spoke, she didn't know what to say first. She relapsed into silence with bright, eager eyes waiting for Linda to tell her and she was disturbed by her friend's moody silence.
"Lindy, what's the matter with you? Why won't you tell me?" she asked after a few minutes.
"Oh, it's too horrible when I think of it."
And suddenly she had burst into tears and Betty was holding her tightly in astonishment, begging her to stop.
"It was my stepfather," she blurted at last through the dregs of her tears.
Betty released her in horror.
"He made me," she went on, "while the old woman was out. She went to see Aunt Sarah and stayed away a whole night."
"Oh, Lindy, Lindy," Betty was almost in tears herself. "Oh, how awful. What did you do? Did you tell your mother? What a beast."
And Linda told her the whole story in a voice which became more steady and matter-of-fact as she went on.
"It's done me a terrific amount of good to talk about it," she said, when at last she'd told everything there was to tell. It somehow didn't seem so important now and Betty, too, had got over the first shock and was wanting to know the details of what it looked like and how she'd felt.
"No, he hasn't done anything since,' she said in answer to Betty's question, "and I'm almost getting used to the idea that it happened. But if ever she's out again I'm going to come and stay at your place. I couldn't go through it again."
"How terrible," Betty said, giving a sudden shiver of disgusted excitement, wondering how it would have been for her in the same circumstances. She tried to form pictures of Linda being fucked by her stepfather, but they were too vague and incomplete.
"Yes," Linda agreed. "But you know while it's actually happening, you get a helpless sort of feeling and you don't want to stop it and you can't think of anything else."
Betty shivered again. She felt that Linda was definitely ahead of her; she wondered how long it would be before she caught up. But with a stepfather!
"Well you'd better make up your face before we go to the dance," she said. "Should we change? You can come to my house and borrow a dress if you like."
"No, let's go as we are. It's not as if it's a posh place."
The dance hall was in the main street of the London suburb in which they both lived. It was growing dusk when they reached it and the streetlamps had already flickered on. The smell of frying wafted on the night air from a fish-and-chip shop and a number of strollers were out with their dogs or walking arm in arm to stare into the illuminated store windows. A few hundred yards past the dance hall a few people were drifting shortsightedly out of one of the two local cinemas, and a policeman was looking at the stills in the glass screens outside.
There was a small foyer to the dance hall with a little turnstile where the tickets were sold. From there one went along a short corridor into the hall itself.
A number of youths were standing about in the foyer aimlessly. They looked up with interest and one of them whistled as the girls walked in.
Betty paid for the tickets, very self-conscious, while Linda stared indifferently back at the youths.
They walked through the corridor and into the hall where the heat was oppressive in spite of their thin, summer dresses.
On a dais at one end a sextet was playing; at the other end light refreshments were being served over a long trestle table from an inner room. Between these two extremities a row of chairs was pushed against each side wall and about a score of couples were dancing between the gatherings of youths who were sitting on them.
"It doesn't look very exciting," Betty whispered. She began to wish they hadn't come.
The bare room and the lounging youths exuded a hostile atmosphere.
"What else is there to do?" Linda asked. "You never know, it might be fun." She desperately needed some excitement any event that could by its importance or interest help to drive her experience with her stepfather into the background.
They walked down one side of the hall and sat down in a couple of vacant chairs where they remained for several minutes the center of considerable speculative interest. Eventually, a couple of youths came over and asked them to dance.
Mooning around the floor with her partner, whose hand moved nervously on her back and whose conversation lapsed after a few commonplaces, Linda felt nothing but irritation. She, too, felt the dull lack of excitement about the place. She wondered what her partner would say if she suddenly told him: "You needn't try any kid stuff because I'm not a virgin, let's just go and do it in the park." She gave a little laugh and the boy looked at her in astonishment.
"What's up with you?" he asked in an offended tone.
"I just thought of something funny."
He grunted and continued to push her around the parquet floor to the uninspired music of the orchestra.
She looked over his shoulder and caught Betty's eye. Betty raised her eyebrows in a bored gesture and she grinned at her.
They were still dancing silently when there was a general glancing of eyes towards the entrance. Linda stared over, and saw a couple of the Teddy boys had just come in. She didn't remember them from last time; they looked older and were quite good-looking in their way. She couldn't understand why people deplored the way they dressed: if they didn't make the shoulders of their black suits too spivy they looked quite elegant with their old-fashioned sideburns and the tight trousers that gave a slim beauty to their legs.
She watched idly as they strolled down one side of the hall and then up the other, staring at the seated spectators. They turned inwards and she watched their eyes roving over the dancers. Inevitably, as the eyes flickered over each of the women and her partner, she found herself staring straight at one of the young men, saw his eyes drop as she turned, felt them sizing her up, examining her figure. He continued to look at her and after a moment she looked away.
Their partners wandered off at the end of the dance as if they didn't quite know what to do next and Linda and Betty sat down in the seats they'd originally occupied.
"Do you see those two Teddy boys looking at us?" Betty said nervously. "Don't look now."
Linda looked, however, and both youths were now staring over at them and chatting quietly from the opposite side of the room. The one who had been looking at her while she was dancing grinned and, after a moment's hesitation, she smiled slightly.
"They look all right," she said to Betty. "Better than these other wretches."
"They're supposed to beat people up sometimes," Betty said. "And usually they go around in gangs. I don't like the idea."
"Don't be such a baby."
With a shuffling flourish the music started up again with a quickstep and a few couples got up immediately to dance.
"They're coming over," Betty whispered in some agitation.
Linda watched them come across the floor, dodging between the couples, hands in pockets, confident. They reminded her unexpectedly of her stepfather, but she thrust the thought from her mind.
"Like to dance?" said the one who'd stared at her.
"All right."
For some reason she'd expected him just to glare at her and jerk with his thumb, or some sort of Apache approach like that. She was pleasantly surprised that he treated her with some politeness and that he chatted easily as they toured the floor. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Betty was dancing with his friend.
"Not much of a hole is it?" he said.
"It's very dull." She would have felt bound to agree even if her sentiment hadn't been similar to his.
"You like a bit of excitement, eh?"
"Depends."
"Oh, sure like me."
He looked down at her. So far he hadn't attempted to bite her ear. She wasn't sure if she was pleased or sorry.
"Jim and I usually drive up into town, but we thought we'd look in here tonight first."
He had a car. That was a further surprise.
"What do you do in town?" she said, still looking up at him.
"Varies," he said with a grin. "Sometimes we dance or just have a drink in a bar or two; sometimes we go to a party. There's a party tonight. Maybe you'd like to come."
"Oh, I'm with a friend."
"The one Jim's dancing with ? She could come too the more the merrier."
"Well, I'm not sure. I'll have to ask her."
"Oh, sure there's no hurry."
She decided she liked him. He was easygoing and pleasant and there was an unstraining command in his bright blue eyes which went so strangely with his dark hair and the mobile dark eyebrows which he could raise separately in such a fascinating way. His long, square face with the wide mouth and straight nose fitted well with the Edwardian haircut. Yes, he certainly was handsome and not gauche like most of the youths there who pretended to be so big.
The youth who had first danced with Linda came across the floor towards them with a fixed expression. He tapped her partner on the shoulder.
"Excuse me."
Her partner looked around in surprise, continuing to dance. A grin came into his eyes. "We're dancing," he said.
"It's an excuse me," the youth complained. "Too bad. You'd better find someone who's willing."
They danced away and the youth went back to the edge of the room scowling.
"Hope you don't mind," he said to her.
"Delighted. I danced with him first. He was a bore."
"Couldn't be much else; I don't suppose he's old enough to have been around."
"You've been around."
"Sure."
The music crooned to a stop and they walked back to where Betty and Jim were talking.
"Mind if we join you?" Linda's partner said, and they all sat down.
"I thought we'd go on to Sam's place later," he added to Jim.
"O. K. by me Des."
Des short for Desmond, Linda thought, a nice name.
Later they danced again and had coffee and a sandwich and the two girls excused themselves to go to the toilet.
There they engaged in an animated discussion. They had both been asked to go to the party in town.
"Do you think we can trust them?" Betty ventured.
"Trust them? What do you think they can do to us?"
"Well they might expect..."
"Probably would. Don't you want it?"
"I don't know. It frightens me."
"Well, they might not anyway. They seem too nice and polite to insist imagine having a car."
"Yes. How old d'you think they are?"
"Probably about twenty. They seem pretty old."
"And how would we get home?"
"They'd bring us back of course."
"But they might not come back until late."
"God, anything else you can worry about? We were out until 4:30 on Guy Fawkes night." "Your mother doesn't care, but mine might be worried."
"Well, I want to go," Linda decided. "Are you coming?"
"All right if they'll bring us back."
They made up again hurriedly, ran a comb through their hair and went back into the bare hall, where the dispirited music was still dragging on, to tell their new escorts they'd like a bit of excitement.
CHAPTER 3
The atmosphere was pungent and smoky and the softly-tuned jazz from the record player mingled like an aural incense.
Linda and Desmond lay on the floor listening to the music and he stroked her bottom through her dress.
"Let's have another drag," she breathed, moving her hand slowly towards the thin cigarette between his lips. They had told her not to expect anything from the first one and she had gone on smoking while they smoked, quietly inhaling, taking in a lot of air with the smoke as they suggested. Now she felt tranquilly wonderful. The room around her seemed a world in which she would live forever. She had no idea of the time and didn't care. All around her were friends, all those couples lounging and lying in the big room, hardly speaking, fondling a little, talking quietly. Betty was over there lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling with a smile on her face and Jim was lying with her, looking at the ceiling too.
She felt a great liking for Des and a great intimacy with him. He was stroking her bottom gently, feeling its round bulge lingeringly and he had a kind look on his face. She felt she was safe and at peace with Desmond. She never wanted to go home. Home! She smiled happily. It didn't bear thinking about.
She drew in on the cigarette and the smoke passed in a dry relief down her throat; the sweet, exotic aroma floated to her nostrils and she breathed deeply, with concentration. Then she relaxed and passed the butt end back to Desmond and the music enveloped her softly in an erotic wave of peace the way his arm and his gently stroking hand enveloped her.
Sam was sitting next to the record player. It was he who made possible this peace, this discovery. She felt tender towards him and to his mistress whose money had provided this Hampstead flat.
The record slid to an end and after a while someone put on another. Most of the girls were young about eighteen and the men a few years older except for Sam who looked about thirty. His mistress was supposed to have a lot of money.
"Linda." It was Betty's voice. She moved her head and looked over. Jim had undone the top buttons of her dress and had his hand inside. "I feel good."
Betty was going to have it tonight. Linda knew that for sure as she smiled back. This marihuana, "pot" they called it, was great stuff.
She listened, again to the record. It was very clear. Everything was very clear, even the sound of Desmond's hand stroking her buttocks and Jim rustling Betty's dress.
"How do you feel ? "
She looked up at Des.
"I feel wonderful."
Her heart overflowed with tenderness for him and she knew that she could tell him anything if she wanted to, that he felt the same for her. She leaned up and kissed him suddenly, tenderly, on the cheek and he moved his hand from the full flower of her buttocks down between them over the dress, sharply aware of the sudden cleavage into separate orbs. His fingers between her legs pressed through the dress and briefs to the fleshy line of her labia. The tenderness she felt flushed in a tender, warm desire to give herself. Desmond felt soft warmth under his hand.
"Any room outside?" he asked Sam softly. It seemed to Linda that his voice rang clearly through the room.
Sam jerked his head absently towards the door and resumed his glazed concentration on the music.
"Let's go," Des whispered to her, pressing his fingers meaningfully against the hot, giving ridge between her legs.
"All right."
They rose quietly and she was suddenly aware of a floating unsteadiness in her limbs. Nobody took any notice of them. She was vaguely aware that Jim was kissing Betty and that Betty had one breast bare and protruding from her dress. Around the room everyone seemed to be necking or lying still.
With an arm around her, steadying her, they left the room quietly. Outside, the air was cooler, the thickness of the atmosphere cleared and for the first time she felt slightly dizzy and gave a giggle.
"What's the matter?" Desmond grinned at her.
"Nothing I felt a bit dizzy that's all."
He caught hold of her then and kissed her, pressing her hard against a wall so that she felt dizzy again as if she were sinking slowly through turns and turns of a spiral staircase.
His hands cupped her buttocks, pushing her hips out from the wall against his hips. She heard the loudness of his breathing. She put up her hands and caught his face and pushed her tongue into his mouth and rubbed her lips against him, murmuring little sounds all the time.
He released her suddenly and drew her along the passage and through a door into a bedroom. Moonlight came in through a window beyond a glass partition which cut the room in two. It all seemed hardly real. She was vividly aware of a number of objects which seemed to come toward her suddenly and unexpectedly and have no relation with one another.
Des pushed the partition back a little without switching on the light and they passed through into the small room beyond. Thankfully she sank down onto the bed, pulling him down with her. The sensation of lying down and the roaming in her head was a delicious combination and she felt tender and generous and her body seemed like an acutely strung instrument ready for ecstatic sensual use.
"Take your clothes off," Des whispered, in the moonlight.
"Take them off for me," she whispered back, settling snugly on the bed.
She felt his hands pulling her dress gently up over her hips, her breasts, felt him move her arms and pull it off over her head. The cool air and the cool counterpane refreshed her skin like a shower. She felt him fumbling with her brassiere and he pulled her half up, holding her against him. Her face came up against his loins and she rubbed her cheek against him. But something kept her at a distance from his body, a great, hot bulge in his trousers. She turned her face towards it, looking at it. She felt a tenderness towards it, a desire to caress and fondle. Slowly she moved her hand on his leg as he held her, still fumbling. The bulge was farther away than she'd anticipated, but her hand reached it and closed over it, creasing the trousers around it. Far above her she heard him gasp and against her hand she felt the flexing of bulge and hips behind it.
Gently she squeezed it through the cloth, trying to feel its length. She kissed the bulge tenderly and on an impulse bit it gently through the clothing.
She saw his hand come whitely down between her face and the bulge and, fascinated, watched it pull at buttons which jerked undone one after the other.
She pushed his hand away and, with her movement, felt her bra slip down off her breasts. There was still a wild floating in her head, but she focused on the opening and pushed her hand through it. Her hand was assailed by the heat of his loins. She searched around with her fingers, pulling aside his shirt, eventually finding the slit in his pants while he strained impatiently against her. She felt the hot, hard length against her hand hard, but with a soft, delightful surface. She pulled and it shot out through the opening. Des grunted above her.
It felt beautiful in her hand; a long, white, hot, soft-textured length of stiff Plasticine to play with and mold.
She could see it white, almost luminous in the moonlight. He let her feel it, breathing heavily, pressing against her as he held her up on the bed.
The length of white substance was almost the whole range of her vision. Beyond that was only the vague floating and the clear sound of his breathing.
She stroked it and slowly pulled back the skin from the end-knob which glowed redly at her in contrast with the soft folds of the drawn-back whiteness. Gently she moved her fingers on it and held it in her hand, squeezing slightly and then harder to see how hard he could stand it. The object was hot and slightly pliable under her hand a beautiful thing.
His hand came down over hers at last and he moved her hand up and down with his over his penis. She began the gentle massage and continued when he let go and pushed his hips out at her with a gasp.
He began to squirm and rock on his feet. She could feel the rocking movement against her and it seemed to make her float farther away with her white penis in her hand.
The sound of his passion was like a rushing sea above her and again his hand came down and pulled her hand away. She released him reluctantly and then he had caught hold of her face and was jabbing his penis gently against her soft lips. For a moment she didn't understand what was going on, but the pressure was there, heavily, on her mouth and automatically her lips opened and the white flesh plunged into her mouth. For a moment she fought against it, afraid she would choke, but he held it there and reached down to stroke her breasts. Floating, hardly aware of what she was doing she began to move her mouth against the soft velvet which filled it.
She was aware of a trembling behind her breasts, almost as if it had nothing to do with her directly and she sucked at the heat between her lips, trying to cool it.
Above her was the moaning, rushing from his lips; his hand pressed hard against her hair, forcing her against his loins. She licked the knob with her tongue, enjoying its smoothness. It was like a big, velvety lollipop which she would eventually swallow. She caught it in her hand, holding it against her mouth while she sucked the end; nothing seemed strange in her activity; she sucked as if she did it every day of her life in a normal routine.
In her floating, spiraling mind it seemed that the great thing was expanding, that it would fill her mouth and plunge down her throat, perhaps to emerge through her vagina. She felt a giggle deep inside her and sucked harder.
Above her, his moaning had reached a frenzied pitch and he was no longer rocking, but had locked his thighs together and was rigidly flexing his hips at her while he leaned slightly backwards with the top part of his body.
She heard the moaning break into little barks, coughing barks of sound and he pushed into her mouth, grazing the velvet organ along her teeth, choking her. And she felt her mouth flooded suddenly with a hot, sticky wetness which encircled her tongue and lodged on her palate and oozed down her gullet.
He sank against her and she realized vaguely that it was finished, found the knob, slight and limp now, still in her lips and gave it a few little sucks and licks before letting it flop out against his trousers.
She lay back on the bed, aware of its whiteness, like the whiteness of him. Through the window there was only the silver space of the sky washed in the moonlight. It seemed to envelop her; she felt a great delight in it.
After a little while she felt him against her, naked, warm and soft-skinned and his hands ran fluidly over her bare breasts and pulled her briefs down over her thighs and off her feet. He was sitting up looking at her. He kissed her belly, her breasts, moved his lips moistly over her soft body. He kissed her knees, her thighs and she was tenderly excited.
His lips moved up her thighs. He turned her over and kissed her buttocks, her back, running his lips down her spine. She shivered delightedly and he turned her on her back again and opened her legs. She felt his face there, slightly rough between her thighs. She was floating happily, sensually, and all she had to do was lie there and he would give her joy.
And suddenly his mouth had moved up between her warm thighs to the long lips between her legs, his tongue had darted out and into her vagina. She pulled up her legs, gasping and then reached down to grasp his head as she actively began to move into a rhythm with him, unable just to lie, wanting to float and writhe and twist, unearthly and above the world in a torment of strange passion.
Desmond buried his face in her crotch and sucked her clitoris. He was fairly high, but nowhere near the way she was. What a find! he was thinking. What a hot little bitch! And now he was going to fuck the daylights out of her. God, how she was writhing and wriggling and clutching at him and moaning! It was going to be a real kick hearing her moan all the time as if she were in agony.
Against his lips he felt the soft, ragged moistness of her nether lips, the hard slipperiness of the clitoris and then he withdrew and slithered up onto her, wriggling up between her legs, crawling onto the slim strength of her body.
He lay along her and she lay under him with her eyes closed and her hips moving like prayers in the moonlight. She was pretty, damned pretty. God, what a kick! And her pretty face and excellent body were tormented now in a marihuana maelstrom which was making sex seem like the end of the world.
He was sent by the pot he'd had and the sight of her puckered face and the feel of her body underneath him and he covered her mouth passionately with his, sucking at her moist, lost lips and tongue the way he'd sucked at her clitoris.
Her breasts were like soft, pointed cushions beneath him and her hips like a pillow. He strained against her, crushing his prick against the little lawn of hair down there at the point. She wriggled against him and moaned.
Slipping down on her a little, he guided his prick at her cranny with his hand. It was throbbing with a certain feeling of frustration.
He moved a hand against her thighs and she pulled them higher and then he had crushed slowly, agonizingly through the labia up into the vagina, high up towards the cervix and was beginning to undulate his behind between her legs. His frustration disappeared on the first entry and all his high excitement zipped down through his body to that one penetrating rod of sensation lost in her fleshy passage.
Up and down, up and down, gently, gently and growing stronger his hips played, while his penis drove in and out, in and out and an explosion of sound escaped his lips on every stroke.
The girl grasped his shoulders and then put her arms tightly around him as if she were hanging onto some whirling machine at a fair; her mouth hung open letting outa stream of low sound. His penis, cleaving into her, had a permanent acute sensation as if he wanted to pee and couldn't. Her tight little passage sucked pains of joy out of his lost flesh with each thrust.
God, oh, what a kick, oh, oh; the words danced in a vague pas de deux with a plethora of feeling in his head. Her skin caught and brushed and battled with his as she wriggled against him. Her thighs squeezed and released and as he explored farther and farther, letting the knob lead on into the welcoming tunnel, she swung her legs up and wrapped them around his waist, crushing him in a vise as she gasped out.
She was gone, really gone, with eyes closed, just a body abandoning itself. What a sexy little bitch! And he was half gone and it was wonderful, out of this world, that great sucking pool of joy down there where they met and mingled and he dominated and she gave and begged for more.
He put his hand around her buttocks. What delightful mounds they were a little too big for his hands, they overflowed and he could lose his fingers in them as they relaxed. When they tautened he pushed his fingers between them and felt the little anus. It was a tiny little slit, like an unopened vagina in a small child. She squirmed, squirming within squirms as he touched it. She contrived to press it against his fingers as with her arms she pulled his hips at her loins. He dug his finger at its resistant surface and felt the little, glossy crack give and his finger worm in a little.
"Oh Des, oh Des," she moaned as his finger moved into the soft hole. He moved it around within the tight cavity to bring more passion from her limbs as he fucked her.
As his hips writhed and squirmed, impelling his rigid member up between her hot, flailing thighs he rubbed his chest across her breasts, feeling the hard nipples brush his firm flesh, feeling the full, solid flesh of the breasts resist and give and suck against him.
She brought down her slim thighs from around him and spread them out on either side, horizontally so that tendons showed between thighs and crotch. He rammed into the greater depth that that gave him and she jerked with the sudden excruciating expanse of his filling.
She reached around him with her arms and pulled his head onto hers, biting his lips, thrusting out her tongue, licking him, biting and licking and sucking his neck. When he bit her neck, she cried out and hugged him closer, swinging back her thighs to press him into her.
His rhythm which had grown farther and almost brutal began to slow as he felt the end drawing ecstatically near.
She too began to wriggle all the time, clamping her buttocks together on his hands, pushing her hips flat into his and then relaxing, moaning and gasping and waving her tongue in his mouth.
God, this time he would die! It was too excruciating to bear! He soared slowly, crushingly into her, up and up, never ending, a feast of sensation all the way.
He was vaguely aware that she was almost delirious, rocking and moaning against him and flexing her loins with every stroke. He heard her gasp in a long drone of excitement and pain, felt her wriggle in a sharp, furious movement as he pulled her behind at him and then she was pressing her hips at his off the bed for several seconds as she cried out her fulfillment.
She continued to hold him tightly, with her lips moving in a prolonged ecstasy while he forced his staff up and up in great, grand, final movements, feeling the tissues of her passage clutching at him, drawing the lifeblood from his penis which would surely shatter into total destruction.
"Oh God, God, you lovely bitch, ooh, oh!" His knob seemed to be growing and growing, heavy with its imminent discharge. His whole length of penis seemed to expand, to hurt, to have a needle running sharply down its center. He dug his nails into her, felt her hands around him, digging, urging, asking for his sperm. His penis had grown to an enormity and she was groaning again. It was going to suddenly turn inside out, it would burst. He gasped, caught his breath and then lost it in a great surging of his lungs as needle after red-hot needle of ecstatic pain shot hotly and wetly from him to her in a culminating blaze.
He wriggled his prick into her even when it was growing limp and empty. He didn't want it to be over, that delight which was better than he'd had before.
At last he lay still on her hot, rounded body, which was still as death, but with a heart he could feel pumping at a declining fury of speed.
She opened her eyes at last and smiled at him, kissing his cheek.
"God, that was wonderful," she whispered.
"You said it."
He felt a great contentment and satisfaction; a temporary euphoria in which he wanted to lie for as long as possible.
"You're heavy," she said after a while, and he rolled off and lay beside her with one arm across the peaks of her breasts.
He felt now the full effects of the pot. He wanted to lie absolutely still and take delight in the fact of being warm and still and able to watch the moonlight and have his arm across her warm, smooth breasts.
They lay for a long time without speaking, perfectly still.
The opening of the outer door and a shaft of light flooding the outer room and cutting across the wall beyond the foot of their bed disturbed them slightly, but not even enough to make them turn their heads. They remained still, looking at the long yellow shaft lighting up the yellow wallpaper and the top of a chest of drawers. They heard the door close.
"Nobody here," came Jim's voice, hazy and strange, from the other room.
There was the sound of footsteps across the outer room followed by that of someone falling on the bed.
"Oh, I feel as if I'm not really here." It was Betty's voice, slow and careful as if she was having difficulty in speaking.
Linda stirred, attempting to sit up, but Desmond held her down, putting a finger to his lips.
"Perhaps we'll see something amusing," he whispered with a wink.
Linda stifled a giggle. What a joke. Betty was about to be fucked for the first time and she and Des would probably be witnesses. How funny!
"Get down on the other side of the bed," Des whispered. They slid nakedly off the bed and crouched down on the side away from the partition. Des reached up and pulled their clothes down with them.
There was a murmur of voices from the other room. Linda was trying to stifle her growing desire to laugh.
The light flashed on in the other room and filtered dimly through the partition. They heard Jim moving and then his voice saying: "Looks as if someone was in the other room, but it's empty now. You want to go in there?"
Linda held her breath.
"No, I can't move off this bed. Let's stay here."
There was silence with a few muffled noises for a time and then Betty's voice.
"Why don't you turn the light off."
"No, I want to see you. God, you're beautiful."
Gently Des and Linda eased themselves up. The light came through very dimly. They climbed softly onto the bed and lay out flat facing the partition, watching.
Betty was lying on her side, her back towards them, unclothed and Jim, in a similar state of nudity, was leaning over her on the bed.
"Jees, she's almost as good as you," Des whispered.
She looked pretty good, Linda admitted to herself. Slim shoulders which curved down in a long line to her hip, exaggerated by her reclining position. Her bottom was bigger than Linda's, each separate buttock seeming to belong to the other, cast in an embracing, oval mold. Her thighs were shorter, more muscular that was what gave her the dumpier, slightly more sexy appearance; her calves were slim and strong.
She saw Jim's body, too, with its hair. It seemed to be almost covered with hair: on his chest his shoulders, his thighs, his belly and in a great fuzz around his fat, white erection. Linda felt a thrill of excitement to think that a few days ago she'd been a virgin and now she'd seen three pricks and been fucked by two men.
They watched Betty, saw her put out her hand and touch the giant rod. All her nervousness, her inhibitions had disappeared, Linda noticed. That was the pot.
Jim slid down beside her and they saw him kiss her, watched Betty roll back so that she was flat on the bed and her breasts pointed to the ceiling. They were whoppers, Linda thought. She remembered how they had developed before hers and how embarrassed Betty had been about them at first.
Their faces were fused and Linda saw Jim's hand stray away and flow over first the right breast and then the left. She could hear Betty's breathing quite clearly.
"She's a virgin," she whispered to Desmond.
"No kidding!"
Desmond looked through the partition into the clearly-lit room with an interest that approached envy. What a feeling of power that was to be initiating someone into the ways of sex. He wondered how long it would take Jim to find out.
They saw Jim's hand stray away over her ribs down over the belly and the film of hair that was just visible. Betty kept her legs together for the moment, but as he fingered her around the sweating vault of her crotch, she opened them for him.
"He's lucky," Linda whispered. "If it hadn't been for the pot she'd have been terribly embarrassed she might not even have wanted it at all."
"She'll be a damn good fuck once she knows how," Des murmured. "D'you see the flesh on those hips?"
"How about me?" Linda pouted.
"Oh, you're tops already." He risked the rustle to rub his hand over her rump and she hid her face because she wanted to giggle again.
Jim, meanwhile, had pushed his fingers into Betty's vagina. She had cried out at first, but now she was wriggling around with her thighs half open and her head moving from side to side as he kissed her neck.
Jim took her hand at last and placed it around his prick, squeezing it round him. They saw his organ shooting out over Betty's hips as he lay alongside her.
"She's learning," Des whispered, as Betty began to squeeze and caress the rigid flesh and Jim began to breathe heavily and push his hips and thighs against her side.
Jim moved his mouth down and they saw the outermost angle of her breast with its cherried nipple disappear into his mouth. Betty gave another shriek and clutched his head after having moved as if to push him away.
"I wonder what they'd say if we burst in on them now," Linda whispered with a grin. "I don't think I can stand much more of this."
"Nuts," Des whispered back. "Nothing more exciting than being a Peeping Tom. I want to see how she looks when she s having it for the first time."
By now Jim's penis was flaming red, turning almost purple. He moved as if to climb onto Betty, and they heard the words falter from her lips: "No, not yet, not for a bit."
Jim sank down again and they could see his wrist jerking about between her thighs.
"I I didn't tell you but I'm a virgin," Betty said softly.
At first they could see that Jim hardly believed her.
"God almighty," he said at last. "Where you been all this time and with a body like that?"
Linda hid her face in the counterpane again and Des followed suit. Jim had looked comically surprised almost hurt that she'd never known a man before.
He recovered eventually, while she lay with eyes closed, wriggling quietly against the wrist between her muscular, white thighs, and he began his digital penetration with greater care and relish. He actually looked down towards her slit as if he wanted to see what a virgin's hole looked like. Des, watching, felt a fresh pang of desire.
Kissing her breasts, mauling her, Jim was gradually getting her more and more excited. She'd spread her legs wide, now, and was squeezing his penis so hard that he had to tell her to ease off.
"Do you think we can try it now?" he panted.
There was a moment of hesitation. Linda knew just what fear, excitement and desire for complete abandon were battling in Betty's head.
"Yes, all right."
Jim knelt up and climbed between Betty's legs. Her knees came up chest high on either side of him. Linda, seeing his fat thing stabbing out like a spar at an angle of 75 degrees with his belly felt a sudden desire to be filled again, but she couldn't take her eyes from the drama of devirgination. Des, too, lay transfixed.
Gently Jim stretched out on Betty, who gave a little whimper of anticipation as she felt his thighs move out under hers, his knees against her upturned buttocks.
They almost lost sight of his prick as he guided it with his hand, but they heard Betty's sudden shrill gasp and saw her jerk as if she'd been stung.
"Ooooh, oh!" she gasped. "Oh, please." Her head was flung back and in spite of her gasps she made no effort to push him off. She was taking it very well after the preliminary fingering.
When Jim's hand came away they could see where his prick had made a bridgehead. Just the knob and a bit more inside her; the rest they could see, white and somehow tense-looking. Betty had a look of strain about her for the moment. They could see the delightfully voluptuous line of her buttocks, tensed, slightly lifted in the strain, waiting for further shock. It hollowed in like a piece of molded clay.
"What I wouldn't do to have those buttocks in my hands," Des was thinking. "I'd give her something she'd remember for her first time."
"Stop moving, they'll hear you," Linda squeaked.
He realized he'd been moving his hips on the bed. He grinned and put his hand between her legs. In answer she pushed her hand under him, searching for his prick. He turned over towards her, still watching the others through the partition. She saw his prick had fattened again into its burden of desire. She caught it and began to move the skin softly up and down. Trying to stifle his breathing, Des let her start to toss him off. The pulsation in his penis was the more acute from his watching the spectacle.
Linda, too, turned her eyes back to the partition while continuing to massage the stiff mast of flesh at her side. It gave her a vicarious thrill to be filling Des with sensation, to be able to feel his great, hot doughy thing in her hand, between her deft fingers.
Betty was giving a series of little shrieks back in the other room, while Jim gently edged into her. His face was an open key to his passion. His mouth hung open, panting and his face was screwed up, tense. He won't hold himself back much longer, Des thought, watching and feeling his own passion rise as he followed their movements and felt the relentless hand on his penis.
Jim had placed his hand under Betty's bottom and pulled her hips up towards him a little, ranging his organ. Betty, with her eyes closed, the corners screwed up in a pain which was still half anticipation, was trembling and gasping.
Suddenly, with a firm thrust of his hips, Jim surged into her. They saw his white prick tear right in, disappearing, inch by inch, smoothly and quickly, from their view.
His head went back as he thrust. The tight, resisting passage gave him a sensual joy which was almost unbearable. Betty's head strained back into the pillow and her body arched up in shock as she gave another little scream.
"Oh, oh, oh, you're hurting me!"
But there was no quarter now. Jim had lost his prick in her and there was no going back. He couldn't even if she really wanted him to.
After several slow strokes which brought his penis almost right out into their vision and then plunged it right back again so that they could see where his black bush of hair met the raw flesh of her love lips, Betty's cries of pain calmed and settled into groans which could be a mixture of pain and passion.
Jim lowered his head and they saw her lips move round toward his, as she felt his breath on her cheek. Her face was screwed up with a torture which was exquisite. They were making so much noise now, that they couldn't hear the labored breathing from the next room.
In, in, in. Betty's virgin body was rifled, her channel scourged by a great, foreign body which marihuana had made her want more than ever. And now she knew the pain and ecstasy of it, the completion of herself, the end of those nights of wondering, fearfully desiring, unknowing.
Linda and Des watched gluttonously, following every movement as the two crushed bodies became one and sank into a single rhythm, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, according to the lead which Jim gave.
They watched the muscles on her thighs contract as they pressed him, saw her buttocks tense and relax, her breasts flattened slightly under his weight. Above all they watched that source and center of the joy, that strangely naked section where his piece of protrusion fitted into her hollow and their hair mingled and moisture began to run and slide around her crotch and over his prick as it withdrew. Linda watched, fascinated as Jim's balls swung slightly, skinnily with their movement. Her hand moved, still on Desmond's penis, and in her mind it was moving on Jim's.
Desmond was straining. In his mind his prick was plunging into Betty, giving her the first experience she'd ever had of sex; his hands held those buttocks, his teats weighed on hers, his mouth on hers, his face hotly against her moist, helpless lips in her hot face.
Jim was gasping for breath as he buried himself in the soft suction of Betty's virginal tautness. He wanted to be brutal now and he pushed her thighs back towards her breasts leaning up from her, pushing with his hips, giving them a last flick into her so that some of his hairs were also sucked in with his flesh and reappeared moistly dripping. Betty writhed slightly, gasping, helpless, lost in herself, hardly aware that it was he, Jim, doing this to her, aware only that her body, that aching channel in her belly, was filled with a strange object which seemed to split it and rub it with an exciting, titillating rhythm which seemed to be growing to a white heat in the wandering haze of her mind.
Desmond, gasping quietly, one hand over his mouth, stared fixedly at the wet, raw area into which Jim's prick was slipping and then fixedly at Betty's tormented face, the face which that raw area was producing, which Jim's raging organ was producing. He watched, stared, fixed his eyes, concentrating until they bulged from his head because he could feel himself coming, and he wanted to be almost feeling that flesh when he came. Beside him Linda was breathing heavily, too, excited by his excitement and by the furious winding up of her friend and his friend in the other room. The air seemed to be filled with gasps and vague, sensual movement.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Desmond moaned softly.
Linda wriggled quickly in towards him, surprised that she should think of the counterpane. She turned over onto her back so that she could get her hip under his soaring flesh without changing her grip. He stared and stared through the partition until suddenly he tensed, seized her and bit her neck in a long roar of breath, and she felt a stream of hot liquid make a wet, punctuated path all the way across her belly.
In the other room the locked couple were coming to their climax. That was obvious from the animal noises they were making. Taking advantage of the noise, Linda slipped off the bed for her handkerchief. She wiped the sperm from her belly and wiped Desmond's penis before getting back onto the bed to watch the final throes.
Betty was wriggling like a worm suddenly come into the light. Her face was contorted with a sort of pain. While they watched they saw her lips move very quickly and then her mouth open very wide as she suddenly convulsed against the body above her and inside her.
The pot's pretty good to get a climax for a virgin, Desmond thought.
Now it was only Jim and he was very near the end. He'd moved his hands to her shoulders as if pinning her to the bed against her will and was leaning up, putting the whole of his weight on her drawn-up thighs. His face, too, was wracked with passion, and his teeth seemed to be gritting together. They saw him slow suddenly, thrust, thrust, thrust and then push hard against her as he choked and then again, choking again and so several times until he'd emptied all into her.
When they'd been lying quietly for a while Desmond and Linda went laughing in to them. The pot made it all very funny and Jim and Betty weren't at all offended that they'd been watched.
CHAPTER 4
It had been very much in the small hours that Des and Jim had finally taken them home and they had let themselves in by the unlatched back doors of their respective homes. They had both been still slightly high the following day and, although the excuse of an unexpected party was reluctantly accepted, Betty's parents had questioned her about what she'd had to drink and Linda's mother had forbidden her to go out for several nights. A threat which she had, in her usual manner, soon forgotten, being too concerned with her own activities.
But all that had been some time ago, and since then Linda had managed to keep out of her stepfather's way and both girls had seen their new boyfriends several times.
From the pot, which they now took like old junkies, they were to graduate tonight to heroin, "horse," as the boys called it.
Linda had come to idolize Des. He had been kind to her, taking a special interest in her which she'd never enjoyed before. She had also discovered in her a great, yearning capacity for sex in which she realized she was rather less reserved than Betty. She found she could hardly have enough of it and the present advent of her period was interfering with her peace of mind particularly in view of the fact that Des had begun to take an obvious interest in certain other members of the gang which gathered often at Sam's place.
She was calling for Betty at her place tonight and the boys were picking them up near the dance hall.
Linda had put on what she considered her "sexy" clothes to try to retain Desmond's interest. She had a white cotton blouse with a drawstring neck. Underneath she wore no bra and needed none. Her breasts were young and firm enough to have their own uplift and without the bra the nipples pointed through the material and the skin gave a pinkish sheen to the blouse where the breasts bulged at their most voluminous proportions. With it she wore a tight black woolen skirt which clung to her hips and outlined her bottom as she walked. Thus she hoped to fight off any challenge.
"Good heavens what are you trying to do?" Betty asked when she saw her. "You'll get run in for indecent exposure."
"You think Des'll like it?"
"He won't be able to keep his eyes off you to say nothing of his hands."
"Then I'll take a chance on getting run in."
Betty had grown up a lot in the past few weeks. She looked apprehensively at her friend.
"You're getting pretty stuck on Des, aren't you?"
"Don't you think he's worth getting stuck on?" There was a note of complacency in Linda's tone.
"I don't know, Lindy. I'm not sure that I'd want to get stuck on any of them really stuck I mean. I can't see them being very serious about it."
"Des is pretty serious about me," Linda said defensively. "He keeps telling me how no other girl's had the effect" on him that I have."
Betty pursed her lips dubiously.
"I wonder what he meant by that," she said, thinking of the number of times he'd had Linda in the past few days a source of discussion which was, with habit, becoming less and less a source of discussion, more and more accepted as normal.
"Oh, don't be so unpleasant," Linda said, a slight flush rising to her cheeks. "He meant that he thinks I'm very special."
On their way to the dance hall people turned and stared at Linda's undulating buttocks and some men even peered openly at her breasts as the two girls walked towards them and then turned their heads in the act of passing to see them in profile.
"Everybody's staring," Betty whispered, keeping her eyes straight ahead. "It's your tight clothes."
"Walk on the other side of the road if you're embarrassed," Linda snapped impatiently.
"You don't have to get ratty."
They walked for a while in silence, only broken by an occasional whistle from a passing youth, and then Betty spoke, almost timidly:
"Do you think we really should take horse tonight, Lindy?"
"Why not it's supposed to be much better than pot."
"Yes, I know, but it frightens me, Lindy. Some people become slaves to it and then when they can't get it they have to be strapped down and they get in a terrible state so that they'd sooner be dead. I saw a French film about it last year. It was terrible."
"Oh, what nonsense, Betty. They make those films just for propaganda. Des says it's no worse than alcohol and you don't have to become addicted unless you're very feebleminded about it and take an enormous lot."
"I'm not sure we should take it. I just feel that it's wrong."
"Yes," Linda said, "just as wrong as making love. That shortens your life because it makes your heart pump stronger and it can give you a craving too.'
"Oh, that's not the same at all."
"Well, I'm going to have some. Once can't hurt anyone."
Jim and Des were already waiting for them, looking a little annoyed that they'd been kept waiting, but both pairs of eyes focused on
Linda and the annoyance was clearly forgotten.
"Jeez," Des said as she climbed in beside him in the front. "What sort of outfit's that!"
"Like it?"
"Like it! Sure, the way I like a bikini."
A passerby had watched Linda getting into the car and peered in as he passed. Des leaned over and cupped a hand around one of her breasts just to give the fellow the shivers.
"If you walked around like that in Piccadilly," he grinned, "you'd have to have a bodyguard."
Linda put her hand on his fly and squeezed and he felt her thigh in return before putting the car in gear.
"Betty's afraid to have any horse," Linda said as they shot away from the curb.
"No, I'm not." Betty blushed feeling silly now that the boys were there. "I just said that some people get addicted and I didn't like the idea."
"Wait until you've had some," Des drawled over his shoulder. "It's worth an early death."
The usual crowd was at Sam's. It was funny, thought Linda, but nobody ever asked what anybody else did or where they came from. That was the cool way to behave. She still knew next to nothing of the band of young men and girls who gathered there around the figurehead of Sam. All she knew was the small glimpse of their personalities she had during the evening visits.
She noticed with a twinge of displeasure that the girl Des had been fooling with a bit lately was there. She had nowhere near such a good figure as Linda, but she had a wiry body and thighs which promised a strong and energetic sexual power, and her older face with its dark, knowing eyes added to the apparent strength of her personality.
Linda couldn't understand or even believe why Desmond might look twice at the girl while she was there. She knew nothing of the fading attraction of the familiar. ' '
As usual there was a faint aroma of incense at Sam's place. Nobody had ever seen the mistress who owned the flat and nobody had ever asked about her. She was obviously a woman of taste who liked luxurious fittings; apart from that she might not have existed. Indeed some people doubted her existence, but, as was usual with the gang, nobody asked any questions.
"How about a game of strip pontoon?" someone suggested as Sam went into another room to bring back the horse which was going to send them all to paradise. After a little coy hesitation on the part of some of the girls, everyone agreed and cards were fetched.
Linda sat on the floor next to Des, looking at the girl she regarded as her rival, who sat on a divan opposite them. She felt safe next to Des. Apart from Betty, she decided, he was the only person she'd ever loved and of course with Betty it was different.
"Here we are, boys and girls." Sam had returned with a syringe and a little black box. He put the box down in the middle of the group. "That's for the sniffers," he said jocularly. "Those that want stronger stuff had better come over to the table."
"What's he mean, 'stronger stuff?" Linda asked, embarrassed at her lack of knowledge.
"They're mainliners," Des explained. "They have to take it in a vein to get the effect."
She shuddered.
"What a horrible idea sticking needles into your veins."
"Yeah. They're pretty hard cases," Des added. "Not much hope for them."
Linda looked at Betty. She knew Betty was wishing harder than ever that they hadnt agreed to take it. She felt a little squeamish herself now that it came to the point.
"Still all we do is sniff," Des explained. "Easier and not too strong."
He picked up the black box and eased off the lid carefully. Inside was a thick layer of white powder and a little, flat-bladed paper knife.
Des pushed the blade into the powder, covering it with a thin coating. He held it out towards Linda.
"You take it first, Des," she said unsteadily. "Show me how it's done."
He grinned at her, recognizing her nervousness.
"Nothing to it," he said. "You don't have to be scared."
The girl opposite them laughed sarcastically and Linda hated her but didn't look at her.
Des sniffed up the powder, holding one nostril closed and drawing in vigorously for several seconds. He waited a few more seconds and then took some more. He settled back with a look of satisfaction and then filled the knife-blade and passed it to Linda.
"Just sniff it all in one go and then sniff it right back," he ordered. "Don't spill any; it's precious."
The girl laughed again and Linda found difficulty in ignoring her. She felt like flinging the knife into her face.
She was aware of Betty's fearful eyes on her as she took the knife and covered one nostril with her hand. With a quick gesture she sniffed back the fine white powder, feeling it fly up her nostril, tickling her slightly. There, it was done! And so easy. She felt quite pleased with herself.
"How long do we have to wait for anything to happen?" she asked.
"Not very long but don't expect too much," Sam said, coming back from the table, pulling down his shirtsleeve.
Des passed the knife to Betty. The initiates took first place. She hesitated for a moment, but encouraged by Linda's example and the fact that she still looked calm and unharmed, she sniffed the powder with an almost fierce gesture of defiance.
"You'll feel it in your throat," Des said, as the heroin passed slowly round the little group.
Linda cast her thoughts to her throat. Yes, she could feel a slightly thick, powdery sensation. Apart from that she felt nothing. At least she didn't think she felt anything, but, not knowing what she should expect to feel, she wasn't quite sure.
"Who's going to be banker?" Des asked. "Deal, someone."
Linda looked down at her legs half bent underneath her. She moved her hand along one of the calves. Was it her imagination or did her legs seem rather light. Yes, it was true: her whole body seemed to have lost a little of its substance; a very pleasant, almost voluptuous feeling. At the same time, her head seemed to clear abnormally. Everything sounds of voices, movements seemed to move away from her a little but was nonetheless extremely clear.
Betty put her hands to her face suddenly.
"I feel slightly sick," she said.
"A common occurrence first time; won't affect you as soon as you've done the act; bathroom first right, second door on the left," Sam rattled off as if he was quoting a well-known place.
Betty stood up and went quickly to the door.
"She'll be all right immediately," Jim said reassuringly to Linda.
"Funny, I don't feel sick at all."
"Not everyone does. Feel anything?"
"Yes, I feel as if I were a happy ball of marshmallow."
There was a burst of laugher around her in which Linda joined, and then they began to play pontoon.
After a few minutes Betty came back smiling and said she felt fine.
As they played and pieces of clothing came off, jokes flew from one side of the room to the other. It seemed that the spirit of wit was let loose amongst them. Linda was surprised at the ease with which she bantered and capped remarks. Her mind and imagination seemed to be soaring on a magic carpet. All thoughts of home, worries about her stepfather, about everything, began to disappear.
It was true that the cards, the other people, her own hands as she played, seemed to be rather away from her to feel quite natural to her, but the clarity with which she did, said and saw everything was overwhelming. The slightest movement of a foot, or the twisting of a card, was apparent to her without it being even necessary to look up.
She was aware of what clothes were on and which off and how much remained with everyone around her. Above all, she was aware that the girl opposite Desmond was down to her bra and briefs. Another loss to her would be fatal. She grinned to herself. It was all very funny, the thought of this girl who was probably trying to get Desmond, sitting opposite him, right under her nose, too, and slowly undressing.
Betty too, she knew, had had to remove her blouse, but was still well clothed with bra, skirt and briefs (shoes were removed beforehand they didn't count).
The amazing thing was that she, amongst the women, was untouched. She won all the time. But, of course, if she started to lose she'd be stripped quicker than any of them with no bra under her blouse.
The men were lucky. They had jackets, shirts, pants, trousers, socks to take off. Nobody yet had had to remove his trousers.
Once again the girl opposite Des lost. It seemed to Linda that in her imaginative clarity she knew what the girl was going to do before she did it. She tried to will her not to, but it was too late. Instead of taking off her bra and revealing her breasts, which looked skinny compared with Linda's, she wriggled out of her briefs and sat with her thighs together and the muff of hair on her lower belly attracting the gaze like a busby.
After a few lascivious looks by the men several of whom had probably fucked her, Linda thought viciously the game went on. But to Linda's bright, all-seeing eyes, the movement of the girl's thighs was clear. She deliberately opened them, gently at first, just a fraction of an inch and then several inches, at the same time sliding forward slightly on the divan.
Linda felt, rather than saw, that Des too, sitting directly opposite the girl as he was, had noticed the movement. She saw the girl smile at him invitingly and she knew he had a perfect view of her rival's vagina.
She herself, in fact, could see the soft red bunches of the lips down there, sharply clean and naked in contrast with the dark hair.
"You bitch," Linda thought, but with an astonishing elevation of feeling. "If you carry on like that I'm going to tear you limb from limb!" The thought exhilarated her. It seemed a wonderful idea. But now her turn was coming up.
"Buy one, twist, stick." Desmond's turn, and then the banker played his hand. "Pay 21's."
And Linda had lost for the first time.
She was about to take off her skirt, leaving both her hips and breasts thus covered, but the sight of the hussy opposite with her legs splayed apart for Desmond's benefit made her change her mind. She'd give them all something worth looking at. Nobody but Des and Jim had seen what she had up top.
Grinning eyes moved onto her as she began to unpull her blouse. They followed the movement of her fingers undoing the string between her breast-hills, saw it loosen, the whole garment slacken and then she began to ease the blouse out of her skirt, where she'd tucked it like a shirt to pull it tauter over the mounds.
With a quick motion Linda pulled the blouse up over her head and let it slip down her arms and fall to the floor in front of her.
There was a surprised clicking of teeth, a brightening of eyes and almost every penis in the room thickened and rose a few degrees at the unexpected sight of Linda's nudity under the blouse.
She straightened her shoulders and let her breasts arch out provocatively. There was a slight smile of exhilaration and triumph in her eyes and in her gesture. She knew just how much everyone, every man that was, wanted to reach out and run his hands over her breasts. She had come to realize just how beautiful they were.
She could feel Desmond's eyes on her although she didn't look at him. She wondered if he was annoyed at her action or whether he was proud that she could create such a subterranean stir. She'd certainly succeeded in drawing his eyes from the other girl's vagina. She leaned slightly towards him so that he could look down on the curves from above.
The game went on. Everybody took a little more horse. Soon the men, too, were beginning to get down to their last vestiges of underclothing. Betty's breasts were naked, too, and one girl was now presenting a round and naked behind to the rest of the company, lying on her stomach so that they shouldn't see the other side of her a mock purity.
Opposite Des the other girl had also had to take off her bra and Linda was gratified to see that her breasts were meager in comparison with her own.
Even so, Desmond's eyes had left her and his attention seemed to have wandered back to the other girl. His eyes were almost continuously riveted on the aperture between her legs as if he was aching to crawl up it. The girl was well aware of her success and kept getting herself into postures which were as suggestive as she could make them.
Linda, who had joined in the extra helpings of the drug, began in her turn to make suggestive movements of her breasts and of her eyes at other members of the gang, but every so often her eyes flashed back to the girl and Des. Mixed with her sense of exhilaration was a dangerous feeling that she would have to do something violent in order to feel better. She would love to scratch the girl's face, to feel her nails scourging the flesh of that cynical, confident expression. The girl was looking at Des as if she'd already got him into bed with her. The bitch!
While she watched from the corner of her eye in her newfound clarity of vision, the girl actually began to wriggle on the divan, fixing her eyes on Des with a deep look of passion and invitation.
She leaned back slightly from the waist with her thighs apart and moved her buttocks slightly so that her nether lips were thrust out towards Des and then withdrawn. She worked her loins in a way which not only excited him but gave her obvious pleasure as well. And all the time she kept her eyes on his in that fixed come-hither look.
Linda felt the desire to scratch boil up inside her. She knew she was not going to be able to control it long. It was as if she could feel and see several minutes into the future.
She saw Des lean forward towards the girl with a wild grin in his eyes, his lips twitching. He was wearing only his pants and she could see he had a powerful erection underneath, only this time she knew it wasn't for her.
The girl's lips moved as if she were about to say to Des, "Shall we go and fuck?" She had completely forgotten Linda; perhaps she'd never even noticed her, or cared. That thought dug deeper than most of the others.
She dug her nails into her palms, her buttocks tightened under the thin cotton briefs she wore. There was no time to lose, she thought. She had to interfere before the girl got Des any more excited. She had to break the spell.
"Pontoons only," said the banker.
And as if his words had been a signal, Linda pushed herself from the floor with a quick movement of her strong young thighs and launched herself at the other girl. The girl saw her coming at the last moment and there was a look of astonishment in her eyes as one hand caught her a crack on the side of the face and the other scratched at her neck bringing a sudden red perforation along the soft skin.
She put up an arm to ward off the attack and then both girls had rolled off the divan and were scrambling about on the floor while everybody scattered out of their way.
"Somebody stop 'em," Sam said wearily.
"No-let's watch some fun," came the chorus.
'"Long as they don't break anything."
The gang had risen and formed a rough circle around the struggling pair. Nobody moved to separate them. The spectacle of the two bodies, one half nude, the other completely, was too good to interfere with.
"What's it about?" Jim cried.
"Who cares," someone answered. "Maybe they really want to fuck each other." There was a chorus of guffaws. The girls were as delighted with the entertainment as the men.
Linda had more weight than her opponent, but the other girl was very wiry as she soon discovered. She had pushed a knee into Linda's stomach and managed to heave her off and had now rolled over on top of her and was clawing at her hair, banging her head against the carpet.
Des, who stood grinning above them, was well aware of the probable cause of the fight although he hadn't noticed Linda watching him. He'd been losing interest in Linda for some time now that he knew her and her body so well. He really needed a new mate with warm flesh alongside his and the promising gestures of the other girl had whetted his appetite to get between her legs. This fight would serve as a good excuse to push Linda away a little and keep her at a distance. Everybody knew she'd started it and there was a rough and ready morality in the gang. That sort of squabble shouldn't take place. It was up to every female to keep her male interested-and if somebody else could take him away, then there shouldn't be any crying-or fighting. However, it made a bit of fun occasionally.
Des watched closely. Yes, he'd love to fuck this girl. Her buttocks tensed into tight, hollowed globes as she straightened out on top of Linda, scrabbling for a hold. They gave promise of good sexual energy and they looked firm and strong enough to be a delight to an enclosing hand. Her back, too, as she fought was supple with thin traces of muscle around the shoulders. She was really quite sinuous.
She certainly was giving it to Linda. Her hands lashed across each side of her face as she lay half-helpless underneath. Her breasts bobbed in harmony with the blows. Of course, he thought, regretfully, they weren't as fine as Linda's-but one couldn't have everything.
There were crude remarks and shouts of encouragement for one or the other from the surrounding crowd. Betty, who had been about to hurl herself on the girl from behind, had been restrained by Jim who had insisted that each member of the gang had to fight his or her own battles. Now she stood with tears in her eyes, watching as Linda, with a gymnastic effort, managed to sweep her legs up towards the ceiling and clasp them suddenly around the girl's neck, levering her backwards. At the climax of her upward sweep her briefs had suddenly slit between the legs and the tautened cloth had separated in a great rent which ran from the forward point of her vagina lips round to her anus, revealing the whole area as if a curtain had suddenly been pulled aside. There was a cheer of jocular pleasure from the male spectators and the watching girls tittered.
Linda leaned on her elbows, levering the girl backwards with her feet so that her breasts stood out in strain. The girl's hands caught at Linda's feet, trying to pull them from around her neck and suddenly she succeeded and both girls rolled over and sprang to their feet before closing again, their faces contorted now with hatred for each other.
"What a sight," Sam murmured speculatively. He was looking at Linda as he spoke. To him she was strange and new.
The girl punched Linda's breasts as they closed in and, as Linda doubled up from the pain, she gave her a shove which sent her crashing over the end of the divan. Her briefs split the last few inches up the back as she fell facedown and the large, voluptuous ovals of her buttocks shone up into the watching eyes like twin suns. All the men around them had throbbing erections, most of them plainly visible.
The other girl was on Linda in a twinkling, giving her no respite. She was like a seasoned campaigner dealing with an upstart recruit. She put a knee in the small of her back and pulled her hair with one hand, forcing back her face, while she slapped her head with long, sweeping blows with the other.
"Let me go, Jim," Betty tearfully insisted. "I must help her." But Jim held her hard, grinning like a monkey.
Tears welled from Linda's eyes, ran down her cheeks and made the jump to the full warmth of her jutting breasts. She gave a desperate twist and managed to unseat her adversary, who fell beside her on the divan, still clinging to her hair. Linda lashed out blindly and heard the girl give a grunt as the hard little fist connected with her eye.
Linda squirmed over and managed to get in a vicious hair-tug herself which pulled the girl off the divan and onto the floor. Linda was vicious with fury now and she lashed out at her opponent with her bare feet, feeling the give of breasts and belly under the flying toes.
The girl lay protecting her face with her hands, her legs all awry, giving a spread-eagled view of her vagina, which was moist with excitement.
It took her a moment to collect her wits. She winced as the blows caught her and then with a deft movement she trapped Linda's foot with one hand and tugged.
Linda was swept off her feet and crashed onto her back a foot away, her big breasts quivering with the shock, her slim belly heaving up and down, legs flying as if she were in the throes of love.
The other girl leaped on her, punching her in the stomach, scratching her shoulder until long red weals ran down her upper arm.
Slash, slash, slash! Her hands dashed flatly against Linda's burning cheeks and she squatted sharply down on her stomach, ramming her buttocks in Linda's stomach, robbing her of breath.
Linda tore at the girl's pubic hair-the nearest handhold, and the girl squealed with pain and jabbed Linda in the throat with her elbow as she fell forward on her.
The pressure of that elbow cut off Linda's breathing. She suddenly became helpless, curled up coughing, fighting for breath. Her opponent slapped her over the ear a couple of times and then stood up unsteadily, leaving Linda in a half-vomiting heap at her feet.
"Okay," Sam said. "That'll do. Somebody get her a glass of water-and you'd better all get out for tonight or we'll have complaints from below."
The girl was trembling from the nervous effort she'd undergone. She was smarting in several places and her eye felt like a great bump. Then she felt a hand between her legs, running along the length of her passage-entrance, adding to the stimulation she had felt from the fight. She turned and Des put a hand on her breast
"Get dressed and let's go," he said. "There are better ways to use your energy."
Linda was still spluttering on the floor. Betty and Sam lifted her onto the divan. Someone passed the glass of water.
"Better go and let her rest a bit," Sam said.
"No, I'll stay with her," Betty said.
Jim came up behind her and put warm hands over her breasts.
"Well, let's go into the bedroom," he urged.
"Not now, Jim. Linda doesn't feel too good."
"That's all right," Sam said. "Nothing you can do. I'll put a blanket over her. She needs peace and quiet for half and hour."
Betty hesitated. She always felt she was being stupid to insist when other people disagreed with her.
Jim leaned around and kissed her breasts.
"Yeah. Be better for her to have peace and some air," he insisted. "We'll only be at the end of the passage."
"Well-all right. But only for a little whileif you think it's better for her."
"Come on."
Jim followed her out of the room with a hand on her buttocks.
Sam held the glass of water for Linda while she sipped it. Gradually the room cleared and everybody left.
"How do you feel?" Sam asked.
"A bit sick," she croaked.
She lay back on the divan, her ripped briefs still clinging tenuously to her, her full breasts challenging the ceiling. Sam stared at her and felt his throat go dry.
"I'll get you a blanket," he murmured. "Just stay where you are."
CHAPTER 5
When Sam returned to the room after several minutes, he was dressed only in a big, woolly bathrobe.
Linda had not moved and her eyes were closed.
Sam put the blanket over her, pulling it up around her shoulders, letting his fingers trace her breasts on the way. The sleek texture of the skin made him bite his lip with repressed desire.
Linda opened her eyes.
"What happened to Des?" she asked.
"Have some more horse," Sam said, ignoring the question and offering her some of the white powder heaped up on the little knife.
Linda shook her head.
"Where's Des?" she repeated.
"I'm afraid you lost out on that one," Sam said slowly. "He went off with the bruised beauty you scrapped with."
"The bastard-oh, the bastard!" Fresh tears came to Linda's eyes. How could he treat her like that after what she'd just been through? And it was all his fault in the first place.
Sam sniffed a little horse philosophically.
"That's Des," he said. "You didn't expect to keep him interested forever, did you?"
Linda closed her eyes again, and the tears oozed out from under the lashes.
"You don't want to go and get stuck on someone like Des," Sam was adding. "He's got too many irons in the fire."
Linda hated Des in that moment. He had dared to go off with that naked, cunt-wriggling bitch. Even now he was probably fucking her in the back of the car-or maybe she had a place somewhere. She felt an overwhelming desire to revenge herself in some way, a desire to hurt Des, to make him feel again about her the way he must feel about the other girl at the moment.
She sat up and the blanket fell away from her breasts. She noticed Sam for the first time, saw his eyes fall to the points of her teats.
"Where's Betty?"
"In the bedroom with Jim. They figured you'd need to sleep a bit and be quiet."
"I think I'll have some more horse after all." Linda stretched out her hand to take the knife from him. As she did so she noticed the fine, dark hair on the back of his hands.
"Nasty scratches you've got on your shoulder should have something on them," Sam said.
Linda nodded indifferently, sniffing back the powder.
"Take some more if you want it," Sam said, putting the box down on an occasional table beside the divan. "I'll get some iodine for those battle wounds."
When he'd disappeared, Linda took another heap of horse, feeling, in some strange way, that that in itself was an act of rebellion against Des.
By the time Sam reappeared a few minutes later, Linda was already feeling better. She watched him arrange the bottle and cotton wool on the table, open the top, soak the cotton wool. He seemed to work very slowly and deliberately.
He took her arm, taking his eyes off her breasts again with an effort.
"That stuff makes me feel better already, Sam," she confided as she winced from the slight sting of the dressing.
"Oh, yes," Sam assured her. "It's infallible. You'll feel better still in a few more minutes."
The very fact of admitting how much better she felt had seemed to add to the improvement. She began to feel calm and quite content. She could hardly understand why she'd bothered to cause so much fuss. She felt slightly ashamed. It seemed all so unnecessary.
"That sting?" Sam asked.
"A bit."
She looked at him when she spoke, something she'd hardly ever done before. He was not bad looking really, she thought.
Sam caught her look and smiled. His eyes fell back on her breasts as she looked away and the lump grew in his throat.
"Move your arm in a bit," he ordered, feigning difficulty in painting the cuts.
Linda brought her arm in against her body and his fingers were gently crushed against the hot bulge of a breast. They pressed against the flesh, indenting it slightly.
Sam couldn't concentrate on what he was doing after that. His whole awareness went down into those hotly-crushed fingers. The waxy flesh seemed to envelop them in a tender embrace.
Now Linda felt good. She couldn't believe that a minute or two ago she'd felt lousy. What the hell did she care about Des? There were plenty more fish in the sea.
She became aware of the fingers against her breast, warm, tender fingers; she felt them with a great clarity of sensation. She looked up at Sam who'd stopped dabbing her arm and was looking at her with his eyelids slightly drooping.
She felt his fingers move against her breast and she pressed his hand close with a pressure of her soft arm.
Sam's lips opened as if he was going to say something, but instead, he swooped suddenly and kissed her nipple. She put her hand against his face, holding it, cool and smooth against her hot breast, and she felt him suck on the nipple. A quiver ran down her spine and she thrust her nipple and the breast behind it against his lips, ramming it into his mouth.
Sam eased her gently back on the divan and came down beside her. She winced as he brushed against the injured arm, but then his lips were on hers and she was floating away just as on that first night, when she and Betty had taken marihuana.
He licked her lips with his tongue and she pressed her body against him, feeling the warmth of him through the blanket and his robe.
It's so easy and so wonderful, she was thinking. So easy to forget Des. Who was Des ? Somebody she'd known for a week or two. Somebody who cared so little for her that he'd go off to bed with another woman just like that. And it was so easy not to care. It didn't matter at all to her. It really didn't matter at all, she thought with a cloudy passion as her teeth grated against Sam's. There were so many others. The world was so big-and she could do anything. She had power-power was growing in her. At the moment it was power over Sam, power over herself so that she could enjoy, and nothing else would matter at all, everything else was insignificant, all fights, arguments, school, parents, no money. She was at peace, at peace in passion. She could lose herself willingly in the wonderful purging peace and satisfaction that passion brought.
"Oh Sam!" she breathed, as his hand went back to her breasts, fondling them as if they were a face he was trying to recognize in the dark.
"I've wanted you for a long time, Linda," he breathed back brokenly. He knew it now, although it had only translated itself into thought this very evening when he'd seen her breasts suddenly fleshy and naked, inviting a covering hand.
He pulled the blanket away and it fell with a rustle to the floor. He pulled the cord of his robe and wriggled it off, and her hands swept over his body like flames. God, how he lived for these moments: a new body he didn't know, the sudden utter intimacy with someone who was strange and now needed him as badly as he needed her.
Her hands caressed his warm flesh, leaving a fresh flush on every spot they touched. He pressed his loins against her and felt the hand wander over his behind, pushing the buttocks against her, moving onto his hip, resting there, and then pushing in between their bodies, searching for his source of power. He moved his hips off her and the hand burned his prick as it seemed suddenly to envelop it like hot liquid, stroking, exploring, grasping, squeezing.
He gasped into her mouth which opened under his and the gasp was stifled by the slippery phallus of her tongue uncovering further intimacies between them.
She wriggled against him and he felt the points of her breasts brush sharply against his chest. He pressed his chest against them and rubbed his body across their taut expanse, savoring the flesh which had first translated into thought his desire for her.
The flames of her hands had kindled a great overwhelming spark in his body; his body was roaring, making a strange roaring sound which he knew, after a time, to be in his head.
"My God, my God," he groaned as she squirmed against him.
His hands moved with separate lives, dragging her torn briefs off her hips. Her thighs, the texture of her soft, willing body was like water around him, caressing with an ethereal touch, sweeping up his limbs, devouring his hips in the sudden shock which water inflicts.
Fingers, thrilled with their own sensation, moved up between her thighs, brushed the wet flanges of flesh, and came into contact with the short, hard little cord.
For some seconds he brushed against it and around it, not understanding and then realization and a keen disappointment shadowed coldly, angrily in his chest.
"Why the hell didn't you say you were having your period?" he demanded.
Linda's mind came back down through the clouds of forgetfulness and exulting pleasure to the coldness, the repressed fury of his tone. It took her several seconds to realize what he had said.
"God, I forgot I clean forgot."
After a few more seconds she began to giggle and in a few more Sam began to laugh, too. It was the first time he had ever heard of such a thing.
The laughter and the proximity of their bodies and the lingering flush of desire revived a sense of lost passion between them. Their frustration was acute. Now was the moment they desired. The thought that they could make love in a day or two was no balm.
Linda could feel Sam's penis hot and heavy against her hips. She herself felt as if she had been half-opened and then left to rot in her desire, but there was nothing to be done. That was the way she was, and she knew she'd still be bleeding although she felt no pain. She had always been very glad that she felt no pain when she menstruated. But at this moment it seemed like a curse that there was no pain. If she'd suffered the dull, throbbing pain and sharp spasm that Betty had to endure, it would have reminded her, prevented her from permitting their lovemaking to start with its fatal frustration.
She lay against Sam, his warmth still covering her, the sense of peace and mingled desire still quivering through her. Again she felt his penis heavy against her loins and she couldn't resist putting her hand down on it, brushing her fingertips along its fleshy, smooth length. How similar they all were, she thought. It could easily have been Des. She wondered if women struck men as being all the same.
Sam strained against her, his penis shooting like a boom over her rounded belly.
"I'm sorry, Sam," she murmured as she stroked him. "I honestly forgot all about it. I never have any pain and the horse must have put it right out of my mind."
His answer was a panted grunt. If it had been a word she didn't understand what it was.
She liked the feel of his prick in her hand, liked to be giving him pleasure and it stirred in her the echo of his impassioned loins. If only she weren't indisposed. She gritted her teeth with annoyance.
Then, as she fondled his organ, she felt Sam's hands on her shoulders, pulling her gently. She resisted automatically, but then let herself go where he pulled, leaving herself in his hands.
He pulled and pushed her gently over on the divan, pushing her away from him so that she lay on her side with her back towards him.
Puzzled, she had let go of his prick. She lay on her side with one of her arms under her neck, one hand clasping her breast, the other across her hip. She felt him slither his hips at her, wriggling close so that he touched her back and buttocks.
What was he doing? She lay still, aware of his faint, changing pressure against her bottom. She felt his penis nudging the convexities of flesh, felt his hand down there and then felt the penis again being guided by the hand between the buttocks close to her leg junction, not far from the posterior end of her labia.
Trembling slightly as his intention became half known to her, she lay prostrate and loose, waiting for him to take charge.
She felt his hips thrust at her gently, felt the long spear press between the buttocks, moving one away from the other as if he were boring a hole between them. She felt the prod, the sharp sensation as if she were squatting on the lavatory, about to open her bowels. Yes. She knew. He was going to fuck her at her ass-hole. She shivered, not knowing whether she was shocked and revolted, recognizing in herself all the reactions of doubt and disgust that various books she'd read had implanted, that various people she'd spoken to had fanned. She'd always been brought up to dislike homosexuality. It was unnatural, people said and as far as she knew, it might be, but she'd never understood exactly why everybody made such a fuss about it when it never affected them at all.
Now she was face to face with a variation of the problem. Sam's organ was pushing against the hairless, tight rim of her anus and she was subconsciously closing it against him surely his prick was too big to get in, anyway.
Thoughts and half-thoughts whirled in her head. What would Betty think if she told her? How many girls indulged in it? Perhaps it was the usual thing during menstruation? How would she feel afterwards? Was it possible? And all the time Sam was pushing and breathing fast and she'd clamped her cheeks around his prick and was closing the little bud to him.
"Relax, baby," he whispered after a few minutes' effort.
She didn't answer. She felt him slither off the bottom of the divan, sensed him moving to a cupboard behind her. She heard the chink of bottle, a silence and then he had slumped down behind her again and was pressing warmly, nakedly against her.
She would have to tell him to stop. It was no good. She wriggled her bottom away from him, felt his penis slip greasily on her buttocks (so that's what he'd done) and then his hand came quickly around her hip, easily, cunningly like a snake and rifled between her legs. She stopped wriggling and heat seared down between her thighs. With a sharp shock she felt his fingers on her clitoris which hardened almost immediately and she gave a little squeal of passion. In that moment she felt his prick stab back between the fleshy cheeks and she wanted to give, with his fingers massaging her clitoris and her loins suddenly consumed with sensation she wanted to give, to yield up her anus as a sacrifice.
"Go on then, Sam," she panted. And she pushed her buttocks back at him, feeling the weight of rod move again onto the little bud.
No longer was it closed to him. She strained as if she was trying to shit. She pushed her behind back at him. He was exactly there. She could feel the point of his prick like an arrowhead, exactly on target.
She gasped and wriggled her crotch, brushing her thighs against his hand, her loins aching, wanting to give at the same time as they received. It was going to be difficult. She could feel that. His crushing knob was hurting even though she was sure it hadn't entered yet. She wondered what her stepfather would think if he could see her mother! She felt an un-uttered laugh of exultation sweep over her and she brought her thighs up in front of her, stretching her bottom backwards onto the weapon. She was safe from them now. Now she had pot and horse and the gang, and Sam with his desire to fuck her behind.
She could feel him slipping in and out between her buttocks, brushing against the few hairs there which she'd tried to cut with the scissors. It had always seemed obscene to have hairs growing around her anus, much more so than around her vagina. She would have to get Betty to take them out with tweezers now. She felt the exultation again, the desire to laugh. Whatever he'd put on his prick had made it easier.
She gave a gasp and straightened her legs in pain as she felt the thick entry. It was an overpowering hurt which constricted her throat and brought tears to her eyes. like being deflowered all over again, but this time it was more painful still. Nobody ever fingered her anus much to make it easier.
Sam lay still, not removing his penis. She could feel the thick stub in her like a lodged bullet. She groaned softly, but she still wanted to give. The turmoil in her loins was a cauldron of seething excitation and Sam was still rubbing her own little erection which seemed to stretch out, rigidly for his fingers.
With a determined movement she brought up her thighs again and pushed back at him. She bit her lip and her head arched back on her neck in pain. He was too big. But I must, she gritted, I must. He was too big. But I must, and it will soon be over once he's in.
The pain became constant and that in itself was an easing. No worse to follow. He felt enormous in her. It made a monster of a penis to have it in your behind.
He was pressing his belly against her buttocks, undulating gently back and forth. She wriggled with the pain and moved her thighs back against him, but now he was well in, and her movement didn't stop him; he simply fucked in and out between her closed buttocks, gasping all the while, as if his prick was being torn off him, until she pushed up her legs again.
She felt as if her ass was being sliced into separate halves like some soft fruit which came apart as the fingers touched it. But now the pain had mingled into a strange sensation of stimulation and pleasure at that little, stretched, hairless hole between her buttocks. It was stimulating her loins, her vagina. She really wanted it now, and more of it.
As if he had sensed her mood, she felt Sam's hands pushing her over onto her face. He slithered over onto her, balancing his loins on the slack 'cushion of her buttocks as she lay with her face pressed onto the divan, her loins crushed between it and his, feeling his great, relentless shaft threading her in, in, in, mercilessly.
She pushed out her legs from under him, splaying them out so that he had better access to the canyon between her cheeks. The weight of him on her, all his bodyweight behind his penetration made her feel more mastered, more dominated, more giving and desiring and passionate. Her loins were stirring with every thrust he made. The pain had transformed it-, self into almost unadulterated physical pleasure. There was a certain masochism in it but it was her pleasure. She wanted it now, more and more until she was fulfilled as she knew she would be.
Gently she wriggled her behind and felt Sam thrusting harder, digging deeper as a result of her sign. He was far into her bowels. Her bottom, her little bud which had opened into a wide, voracious flower, seemed more naked than she could have imagined. She felt that he had everything she was capable of giving, that she was at her lowest and yet her most exalted at the same time.
He was sliding in easily now, with grunts and moans and murmurs of a passion which seemed to make him inhuman. Her anus felt wet and wide and her buttocks and vagina were hot and tingling.
Linda squirmed her thighs against the bed on either side of him. She swung her calves up as if to encircle him. Her legs swung wildly, aimlessly on either side of him, as he dug into her, lunging his stiffness with a tearing stab through the open portals of her anus lips.
She pressed her loins into the divan, straining, enclosing his penis so tightly that for a moment he found difficulty in moving it at all, and then she relaxed and the brutal rhythm began again in time to Sam's moanings and her own stifled groans and tremblings.
He was heavy on her, but she didn't want it to stop. This was a new wonder, a new delight and she could feel the squeezing in her belly, like an announcement, "Oh Sam! oh Sam!" she breathed, crushing her hot face into the divan.
She felt her helplessness and was both frightened and exulted by it. Sam, who hardly knew her, was impaling her from above, had speared her solidly up her anus, crushed into her rectum so that now she couldn't escape even if she wanted to, until he had done with her, until he had shot his load deep into her bowels, past the outer flesh which was the most that many men were ever to know of her. And she didn't want to escape. No, not for a moment. She wanted to take all he'd got and in taking she would give. She would wriggle and squirm to delight him with, the brushing of her flesh under his, with her subjection to his will.
Deep in her loins she felt the movement and she gasped and crushed her lips against the divan as if it was Sam, until her teeth were bared.
The movement grew like a revolution, pervading her loins, becoming her loins until all was swept before it and she felt the wild, tickling, paining, delighting surge towards her orifice. She gasped and gasped and gasped again with Sam still threading her in a paroxysm of activity. With a furious movement she squirmed herself into the divan spread-eagling her legs one way and then the other under him as the flood swept her vagina and ran stickily down the insides of her thighs and the tears of passion filmed her eyes.
Sam was aware of her tremor, knew she had come, and her climax seemed to signal to his, to draw it inevitably towards its completion.
He slid his hands under her soft belly and pulled himself back onto his knees behind her, easing her up onto her knees without coming out of her back passage.
She came up willingly, spreading her thighs wide, on her knees. Her bottom rounded and stretched in front of his eyes like a sensual moon with a deep split down the center. He gritted his teeth as his eyes took in her helpless nudity, her inescapable ravishment.
He saw his prick sucking out of her and plunging in again, and his gaze was fascinated by its obscene disappearance into this other hole of a girl he'd never even fucked naturally.
His hands roved over her buttocks lovingly and then seized them savagely bringing out red marks on their smooth, white flesh. "You beauty," he thought. "You lovely, sexy beauty."
Now as he fucked her ass she began to rotate it, pressing it back at him as if she loved every second of his penetration. He watched the undulating moon with a sadistic pressure in his chest. Every time he lunged into her he flicked his belly against the soft buffer of the rump with a last savage determination to plunge as deep as possible, and each time he was satisfied by her sudden gasp as if he had torn her passage a little with the thrust.
He moved his hands up to her waist, gripped it with a maniacal strength, so that she squirmed on the end of his impalement. He moved his weight forward, leaning on her heavily, and the top half of her body flattened out like a children's slide, her head crushing again onto the divan.
He fixed his eyes on her sideways-turned face. It was flushed and wracked with torment, his torment. Her curved back below him was slim and strong. He ran his hands along its firm sides as he leaned, and undulated his hips against her buttocks.
His penis felt as if it were swollen to several times its size, an abnormal, bloated, excruciating sensation. Her passage was slippery now, but it was still tight enough to suck at his organ on the withdrawal, reluctant to release him.
His hips were a mass of hot thrusting. He knew he was not far from coming and he wanted to get everything he could out of it. How lucky she was having her period, he thought, biting his lip as he rammed, pressing his thighs against the inside of hers, pushing her knees out farther apart, stretching her slim anal orifice a little more.
A whoosh of breath shot from his lips with every grinding stroke. His knob felt delightfully sore as it swept into the soft, dark depths. When he was in up to his hair, the elastic rim of her ass-hole clung around the base of his prick like a broad, tight rubber band.
He fucked and fucked into the tight, vulnerable slit, spreading her below him so that she groaned with his powerful, tissue-tearing entry. His penis was heavy, full of its burden, his loins blazing into one great pain.
His buttocks tightened and hollowed as he rammed in, his hands grasped her waist forcefully as he pulled her back onto him. He surged forward, directing her movement as if she were a flesh-and-blood puppet.
"Oh Sam," he heard her gasp as a brutal thrust gouged her. Her buttocks were warm as they slapped against his belly on the forward movement. He was aware all at once of her gasping cries as he wriggled even farther into her, of the soft warmth of her bottom, of the blazing in his loins which gathered and began to surge, of the exquisite tearing on his prick, of her twisted body helpless on the end of his penetration. It all grew into a cacophony of sensuality, a strange kaleidoscope of images: buttocks, back, twisted face, prick-surging, pain, gasping, exquisiteness, rushing, coming, yes, coming: now, now and with a sudden belly-rending acuteness of ecstasy he flooded into her ass, tide after tide of discharge, ramming in hard with each fresh spurt, throwing back his head as each fresh shower was torn from his tube of flesh and he saw her ass whirl and sway as she urged him through his final convulsion.
He stayed in her, exhausted, for several seconds, perhaps as long as a minute, leaning along her body, holding her to him around her hips.
"You're heavy Sam," she said at last and he released her. His penis flopped out of her as he sank down onto the divan beside her.
Now that it was over Linda felt a slight resurge of her feelings of before. Now that passion and the necessity of yielding had faded, she was aware only of the ache of her anus m and the sensation of moisture and of a thick object being still lodged in it, keeping it wide open and obvious for all to see and know.
She clamped her buttocks together and relaxed them several times. She felt slightly ashamed, yet she knew she'd do the same again in similar circumstances. For the moment she d completely forgotten about Des, Betty, Jim.
"You hurt me quite a bit," she said to Sam, not looking at him.
He leaned over and kissed her neck as she lay face downwards.
"Can't be helped," he said. "First time?"
She nodded, still not looking at him.
"Bound to, then," he affirmed, and he pulled her round so that she looked at him, and kissed her on the mouth.
They were both dressed before Betty and Jim appeared in the doorway.
"Oh, yes." Linda clamped her buttocks together under the summer dress. "Much better, thank you."
CHAPTER 6
Betty and Linda continued to frequent Sam's flat. Sometimes Des and Jim picked them up, at others they had to take a bus or the tube. They had been accepted as members of the gang.
But Linda's newfound happiness with Des was ruined. Sometimes he slept with her, filling her with a passion no other man was capable of making her feel. The rest of the time he either ignored her or treated her the way he treated any other girl, as if she had no real significance for him at all. Then Linda found herself in despair. It helped a little to talk about it with Betty, but as soon as Betty wasn't there and she was left alone with her thoughts she became afraid of her own loneliness, intensified since she'd known Des. There was nobody else to talk to.
The only time she felt happy was when she'd taken some horse, and she began to pay private visits to Sam's flat when his mistress was away, which was often the case. They would take it together and then they would make love, and make love again, and that was the only time, the only way she could feel any contentment.
In desperation, when horse was short, she began to sleep with other members of the gang, but the ease with which they came to her only made her long for Des the more, except for the brief moment when she could pretend that the man between her legs was Des, that the prick that filled her was his, the penis she sucked was his, the lips on her vagina were his and just occasionally they were his and then she gave everything, but afterwards it seemed only to make things worse.
"Linda, you look terrible." Betty told her one day. "Have you seen yourself in the mirror?"
Linda nodded dully. When she wasn't taking horse she felt terrible. There was nothing to live for.
Betty stared at her closely as they ate the cold meal her mother and father had left them before they went out. Linda's eyes were dull and they had been so bright and her naturally pale face seemed to have taken on a sickly hue compared with the creamy whiteness her skin previously had. She had grown thinner, too.
"Is it Des?" Linda had not spoken about him for some time.
Linda shook her head negatively.
"Well, what's the matter then? You'll be worn to a shadow if you get any worse. What's up, Lindy?'
"Well, it is Des in a way. It's because of him that I'm like this."
"But aren't you eating or something? How is it you're getting thin?"
After a moment's hesitation, Linda stood up, put her foot on a chair and pulled up her skirt displaying her thigh. Betty stared at the leg. It was punctured by a number of little dark spots.
"What ... ? " She realized suddenly. "My God, Lindy, you've been using a needle!"
Linda nodded miserably.
"It doesn't hit me the way it used to," she said. "And it's the only thing I can do, otherwise I think too much and I'm miserable."
Betty was frightened.
"But Lindy," she said softly. "That's going too far. It's like Des told us. You have to be careful with it, otherwise it gets you and you can't do without it, and you get ill if you can't get it."
"It's too late," Linda said. "I can't do without it now."
"But how do you get it all the time?" Betty was shocked.
"I go and see Sam."
She answered Betty's questioning glance. "Yes, he fucks me every time. I have to let him do that and anyway it helps me to forget Des too or rather I imagine it's him."
Tears came to Betty's eyes. She still liked to take pot and occasionally a bit of horse, but she'd kept it within bounds so that she could give it up at any time. Linda's appearance and her confession filled her with pity and a certain anxiety.
"Lindy, why don't we give up the gang Jim doesn't mean much to me and you can still see Sam for the horse. If you don't see Des then perhaps you'll be able to give up the horse gradually and you'll find someone else much nicer than Des."
Linda heard Betty's words but they had no meaning in her pattern of things. She couldn't even focus her will on the idea.
"Oh, I like to see Des and he's nice to me sometimes and takes notice of me. He even fucks me; the last time was only about three weeks ago."
Linda suddenly burst into tears.
Horrified, almost wishing she'd never started the interrogation, Betty came over and held her. This was terrible. She'd never expected to see anything like this happen to Linda, ebullient, high-spirited Linda, whose reaction against her loveless home seemed to make her only more self-possessed and sure.
"Lindy, darling," she whispered. "Please don't. We'll do something, really we'll do something." But even as she said the words she hadn't the vaguest idea what they could do.
"It's no good, Betty," Linda said, straightening and dabbing her eyes. "I need the stuff now, too and I need some now more than ever."
"Please don't go over there," Betty pleaded. "I don't like to think of you like this. Stay here and we'll try and think of something."
"Think of something?" Linda grinned through her tears in a quick flash of humor at Betty's wild hope. Then she became listless again. "Don't be silly, Betty. I need Des and I need horse and that's all."
Betty felt her spirit droop. Poor Lindy, poor, dear Lindy. She'd never realized before how much she'd like to do something for her. She'd had a tough time all the way. She was one of those people born to have a tough time, because without having had love she suffered all the way, grasping at it too hard, losing it again.
"You're not going over there now," she pleaded. "I can't come with you, Lindy. I promised Mom and Dad I'd stay."
"That's all right; I know my way by now." Linda tried to joke.
"I wish you wouldn't go. It'll only make you worse tomorrow. Mom and Dad would let you come and sleep here for a few nights and it would be good for you to be away from home and away from the gang."
Linda smiled. How little Betty understood her need.
"No, I'm going Betty. I'll see you tomorrow. Thank God we still have a month before the beginning of term. I can't think what I'll do then. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters."
Betty was struck dumb, hating to hear Linda speak like that, but realizing nothing she said would make any difference.
"Will you come round tomorrow, or shall I come round to you?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't know how I'll feel tomorrow."
"I'll come round to you. Please don't take too much, Lindy. Remember how dangerous it is like that."
Linda grinned palely and didn't answer and Betty felt as if she was some stupid schoolmistress giving good advice.
She watched Linda walk down the path and off to the bus stop. She seemed to wear the blouse without any bra and the tight skirt nearly all the time now, like a symbol.
CHAPTER 7
Linda walked through the silent corridors of the block of flats where Sam lived. The hollow sound of her footsteps, the bareness of the walls with their regularly spaced doors seemed to echo herself, a silent melancholy.
She rang the bell and after a while heard Sam's footsteps. He opened the door and peered at her as if he didn't recognize her.
"Oh, it's you. Come in."
"You don't look pleased to see me, Sam."
It was a matter of complete indifference to her as long as he gave her some horse, but she said things like that to keep on the right side of him. like all junkies he underwent the usual fluctuations from high spirits to moroseness. She never knew how she'd find him.
"I suppose you've come for the usual?" There was an unexpected note of sarcasm in his voice.
She turned and looked at him with dull eyes, trying to smile.
"Of course," she said. "You know how I like both."
"Well you'll have to make do with one, today." The note of sarcasm was still here. She suddenly realized it was not meant especially for her, that it was directed at the world.
"What do you mean, Sam? What's up?"
"We're out of fodder "
Her eyes were startled.
"No horse?"
"No."
"Well can't you get some more? Where does it usually come from?"
"Where does it usually come from?" Sam mocked her. "She asks where does it usually come from. Little Miss Ignorant, never has to do any thinking 'cause it's always there for her."
God, he is in a bad mood, she thought.
"Well there isn't any where it usually comes from unless you have ten nicker." He looked at her with viciously mocking eyebrows. "I don't suppose you happen to have ten nicker?"
"Of course I don't! Where would I get money like that?"
"Of course she doesn't. Only Sam's able to produce money like that for little Miss Ignorant to stuff herself on horse. Well I 'aven't got any nicker no bees and 'oney at all!" He almost shouted the last words.
Linda was stunned. This was a situation she'd never thought of. She had accepted the limitless supply of pot and horse just as she'd accepted the provision of the flat. No horse! Her mind reeled under the impact. The necessity now became passionate whereas before it had been merely expected and desirable. No horse! The thought crossed her mind that he was kidding, or perhaps lying for other reasons. But it was only fleeting. He was too nervous and unhappy for that. Just now, he was the typical deprived junkie.
"What can we do, Sam?" The words were addressed more to herself than to him.
Sam's hands twitched. His sarcasm was gone now that she'd accepted the situation.
"I can't get my hands on any money for two weeks," he said, "and I've failed to borrow."
He stared at her with dull, unseeing eyes and laughed harshly. "You can't get that sort of stuff on tic."
"God, Sam, we've just got to get some."
She managed to make the T into a 'we' just in time.
"You're telling me, baby. You're the only one who can make any money."
"I don't know anyone to borrow from. How could I make money?"
Sam gave a short laugh.
"How'd you think? Juicy little girl like you. How'd you think?"
She didn't answer, staring at him. She knew what he meant and for a few minutes while they stared at each other her heart began to thump.
"I couldn't do that Sam," she said at last. Sam shrugged his shoulders with sham indifference.
"All right," he said. "Then there's no pot."
Linda walked past him and slumped into a chair in the salon. For a moment she toyed with the idea of pulling herself together, of pushing the thought of the drug from her mind. But it was such an unrealistic thought that it fled before she had time to fully savor it. She needed the horse, perhaps not as badly as Sam, but who cared about that. She needed it.
Images of the prostitutes in Brewer Street crowded into her mind: peeping from doorways, trotting up and down to the fringe of Piccadilly and back, standing against walls with one leg in front of the other, disappearing up stairways and into taxis. She and Betty had even seen one, desperate in the early hours, open her coat to a man displaying her utter nudity beneath.
And Hyde Park too. They had watched the approaches, seen the tangled arms and legs of couples on the grass with quiet shadows of the voyeurs flitting to trees for a view. They had seen one pro leap to her feet and threaten in coarse language to fling her shoe at the "bastards" and then return to her receiving position as the shadows slunk off. She and Betty had even been followed by men as they strolled through the misty dusk in the park and had felt shivers run up and down their spines when a male voice asked in the darkness if they had a light.
They had felt the cold loneliness of the women, waiting for the hunters to come and destroy them as they gave them enough for tomorrow's living.
She couldn't do it; just wander and wait for any man at all to approach her, give her money for the pleasure of putting his prick in her. It was like giving oneself into the hands of an employer, a wicked employer who cut the employee off from the rest of the world to use as he alone thought fit. The fact that money had been paid put an obligation on the woman. It meant the man could do what he liked and he might be a filthy, beastly ogre of a man. Her mind cringed under the thought. To be away from everyone you knew, all love and friendliness, naked and alone for your body to be used by an enemy. She shuddered.
And yet there was a certain frightening thrill in the idea, a prohibitive thrill, but one, nonetheless, which could send a pain into the loins.
Sam had followed her into the room and slumped down into another chair. He was watching her with dull eyes which masked his thoughts.
"It'd be dead easy," he said after several silent minutes had dragged by.
She raised her eyes and looked at him and he went on:
"What you do is stroll around Piccadilly you might even try Bond Street, you look sexy enough, although you're not very elegant in those togs. With your looks and youth you'll be picked up in no time." He gave a wry grin: "Ah, youth, wonderful youth," he mocked. "Then you tell the so-and-so you want ten nicker for the night if he looks a swell then ask for more; you can get up to 15 or 20 even walking the streets go with him and give him a good time and Bob's yer uncle."
"But what would I tell them at home?" Linda suddenly on the defensive, leaped at the first difficulty which came into her mind.
"Oh, fuck that!" Sam dismissed the objection and then, seeing that she was serious, added: "Christ, what's the difference between getting in at five in the morning and ten next day? You've been here till after four often enough."
"I always say I've been at Betty's or at a party but all night's a bit much."
Sam was warming to the subject. He saw Linda's indecision. It was only a matter of pressure and she'd be out on the job.
"Why don't you go back to Betty's place and get her to go round with you to your place and invite you to stay the night? Girls often stay at each other's 'omes."
"But if anything went wrong they'd find out from Betty's people that I hadn't been there."
"What could go wrong? And how often do they see Betty's old folks?" There was a belittling note in Sam's voice as if he considered the whole point unworthy of argument.
He came across and ran his hand up her thigh under the skirt.
"You can do it with your eyes shut, kid," he said encouragingly, searching with his fingers up under her briefs, for the cunt he'd so often enjoyed.
She pushed his hand away irritably.
"If I'm going to do it I've got to be fresh," she snapped.
CHAPTER 8
Linda strolled up Bond Street. On Sam's advice she had dressed in a summer frock to avoid looking common or over-sexy. Her red hair fell almost down to her shoulders, the dress fitted her closely enough for her bottom to round outward through it as she walked, the soft, white flesh of her breasts visible above the square-cut low neck. She looked young, virginal almost, fresh and pretty.
Everything had gone well, except that now she was so nervous that her legs felt weak as she walked.
Betty had played her role and her mother and father had shown an indifference which was more or less normal. She had simply told
Betty she was going to spend the night with Sam and get high. Betty had still been treating her as if she was a hard case and she hadn't dared tell her the real motive for her night out in case she made a fuss.
She and Sam had come in on the Tube. She'd insisted he come with her to make her feel easier and he hadn't taken much persuading with his eagerness to see her safely paired and making the money they needed. He had become quite normal now that there was hope and Linda's nervousness had pushed her need slightly from the foreground of her consciousness.
There were not many strollers in the long street. She walked slowly, occasionally glancing around to see that Sam was still wandering along a couple of hundred yards behind her.
One or two women out with dogs stared at her curiously and passed on. They were the regulars, but she looked so fresh they failed to recognize competition.
She saw their lack of recognition and wondered if men would realize what she was up to. At the thought that they might not, that she might not get picked up, the need for horse reasserted itself over her nervousness and she stepped into a doorway and stood looking out.
After a few minutes when nothing startling happened, she resumed her leisurely stroll.
She had only walked up the street once and was turning back when she realized that a man on the opposite side of the road was watching her in the glass front of a window, his back toward her. It was clear by the fixedness of his stance.
Linda glanced nervously away and then looked back cautiously as she drew level. He was of medium height and looked elderly. He wore a light overcoat in spite of the warm weather. She noticed that his walking stick had a silver handle and then she was past and walking slowly away from him. Sam had turned and was retreating in front of her.
She glanced back after several yards and saw the man staring openly across at her. He looked ugly even from that distance. Her heart began to beat madly and she felt a hot flush rise in her throat. If only Sam had had a bit of horse, she thought desperately, just a tiny little bit to make it easier. It was worse than when her stepfather had been alone in the house with her.
Suddenly afraid, she walked on without looking back. When eventually she did so he had turned away and was looking in another window.
Again she underwent a sudden and complete reversal of feeling. The hope for horse slipped away. She saw it receding in the uninterested back of the man.
With quick decision she stopped outside a doorway and faced the street, staring back in his direction.
After a few seconds he turned, saw her and advanced calmly down the street with his eyes on her. He was elderly. The thought of having to spend the night in bed with an old man, skinny and smelling of age filled her with disgust.
She retreated into the doorway which cut back deeply between the two sides of the shop. Immediately she felt trapped, as if she was in a cave but she was too petrified to move, feeling she would break into a run if she did. She stood, staring at the entrance illuminated by a street lamp, terrified and trapped. Here she was out of Sam's sight; the man would trap her. And even as the thought clouded in her head, his shadow fell across the doorway and he was there, blocking off all hope for escape.
He came towards her and she waited for him, staring at him, breast frozen.
His face in the dim light was heavily jowled and wrinkled. It looked yellow. His eyes were bright as they fixed her, pinning her still until he reached her.
"You're very young."
His first words filled her with apprehension. They were calm, confident, made her feel a very small girl. She wondered if he were a police inspector in disguise and the thought brought her to her senses, reminded her of her role, her need.
"What of it?" She felt she should not have spoken like that immediately after the words were out. If he were a prospective client, her tone would hardly endear her to him.
"Sorry if I offended you, my dear. It was really a compliment; you're in such superb contrast to most of the slack, aging ladies in this street although they do their best and put on airs of youth."
Now he was close up to her and she could see him more clearly. He was ugly. His lips were thin and hard, his nose big and covered with tiny red lines, hairs dropped blackly from the nostrils, flesh hung from the drooping line of his chin, the hair swept scantily from his narrow forehead trying vainly to cover the near baldness of his head.
Yet his eyes, like his voice, contained a power of command, a gleaming, magnetic confidence which made it difficult to keep her voice steady and cool when she answered him. She wished she had the experience of the aging ladies of whom he spoke.
His eyes were taking her in, prying, in an insolent agedness, into her young flesh.
"I've never seen you before," he went on. "But, I forgot, you dislike questions."
He grinned at her and the grin revealed discolored teeth and she caught a whiff of whisky. She remained silent, not knowing what to say, wishing Sam would pass the doorway.
"Well would you like to come home with me?" he said after a silence in which he had stared at her with amusement, as if torturing her by withholding food.
With a flood of relief she saw Sam walk slowly into view on the opposite side of the street, peer into the doorway and then turn to look in a window.
"That depends."
"Depends on what my dear: my copulative capabilities or the size of my bank balance?" He laughed mirthlessly.
"How would 30 pounds be?"
Linda fought hard to hide her astonishment and her feeling of triumph. Was he serious? The sum was immense.
"All right," she agreed after a moment's mysterious hesitation.
The man smiled and showed his brown teeth again.
"I had better explain," he added, "that there are three of us, myself and two companions and we are not completely normal in our desires."
Linda looked at him with a sinking chill. Thirty pounds and now it was going to be spoiled by half a dozen attached strings. It would have been bad enough just with the one. Her stomach turned over with the thought of three of them messing her about and God knows what they wanted to do to her.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked, and, as if to add to her case, "I'm used to normal activity."
"Well my dear, we're not as young as we were and we take a certain amount of arousing. We also hate each other, really, deep down, although we've been living together for years and we like to see the others suffer. My friend M, for instance,-likes to be tied up and tickled with a feather. You can start with his feet and work upwards. It becomes excruciating for him but it gives G and myself great pleasure to see him undergo such discomfort."
Linda stared at him as if he were a lunatic. She recollected herself and let her eyes wander to see that Sam was still there. She'd heard of these strange perverts. Sometimes, Sam had told her, they didn't even want to fuck, or they came before they got down to it and then couldn't raise the energy for a second time. Easy money. But it made her feel uncomfortably out of her depth. She didn't know quite what would be expected of her and she was not sure that she believed the old man.
"Of course, if you think it's a little out of your normal routine, I can always call on Elsa down the street here," he went on suavely. "In fact, she rather expects it as a duty. She'd be quite annoyed if she knew someone else were usurping her place."
Linda felt slightly reassured, but she decided to let a demand of her own weigh the balance for her after all there were three of them.
"I'll come with you for forty." She held her breath afterwards, wondering at her daring, feeling immediately that she had made an outrageous demand.
"Well, really, I should have thought thirty was extremely reasonable." He was smiling still and she was about to say that she had been joking, suddenly afraid to lose thirty, three times as much as she'd hoped after all, when he added:
"But of course, youth; so hard and demanding nowadays. Youth running the roost. All right, we'll say forty."
Linda's eyes gleamed with triumph. Forty pounds! She'd never imagined such a sum before. She wondered if she could have asked for fifty and got it.
"Come on then, my dear. Let's get a taxi."
Sam was still staring into the window as they came out of the doorway, an incongruous couple, looking like grandfather and granddaughter with an incomprehensible change in hereditary looks.
Linda glanced at Sam. She was churned up inside from the thought of the money and the strange activities it seemed she would have to indulge in. But as Sam straightened and turned she managed to give him a wink. He looked up and down and then strolled off in the opposite direction.
"I do believe I just managed to rescue you from a wolf across the road," her companion chuckled.
By the time they had picked up a taxi, Sam was out of sight and Linda felt very afraid, as if she was three years old and left in a new kindergarten with hostile strangers.
In the back of the taxi the man talked to her in a smooth, confident fashion and eventually put his hand on her knee as if testing it, and moved it up her thigh.
She suffocated her disgust and let his bony fingers travel up to the top of her thigh where it creased into her hips. To her surprise he then released her and looked out of the window at the lights and traffic, humming to himself. She felt like a slave who had been tested and found satisfactory.
She found herself quite unable to talk to him. She wished again that she had the confident savoir-faire of the professional prostitute. Sam had told her to be nice, to talk, to let them see that she was something out of the usual run, but she felt simply like a frightened little girl who wanted the whole thing to be over.
She even thought of running away when the taxi stopped, but she knew she wouldn't because of the money. She would reluctantly go right on with it. In twelve hours' time it would be over. The thought of the horse would keep her going.
The taxi put them down in Mayfair and he let them into a smart mews flat. The luxury, the evidence of money, added to her greed she wished she had demanded more but added also to her fear. Where there was this money and luxury there was bound to be power. She felt helpless beside it.
He left his coat on a stand in the large vestibule and led her down a short, broad corridor at the end of which a huge, oak double door blocked the way.
"Wait here a minute, will you?" he said and slipped through the doors out of sight.
I could run now, Linda thought, left startlingly alone. If only Betty had been with her to go through the same experience.
She brushed her dress straight over her hips and looked at herself in a long mirror beside the coat stand. Her eyes looked a little dull, but apart from that she was probably the most attractive thing this old man had ever picked up. She turned, looking over her shoulder at her back view, noting the buttocks straining against the tautened dress. The thought that the old man and his companions would soon be looking at, have their hands on God, maybe even their pricks up that bottom filled her with nausea. She glanced again at the door through which she could still escape but then a voice behind her was saying: "Come this way."
She walked through the double doors after the man, who had changed into a dressing gown.
Inside the big room two men were sitting, also in dressing gowns in big armchairs. A fire was blazing in an old-fashioned fireplace in spite of the summer warmth.
She took in these few details only, for her eyes were drawn to the other two men. They too were elderly and were just as ugly as the man who had picked her up.
One of them was small and bony with weak eyes with traces of a yellow mucus liquid in the corners and weak, vicious features; the other was a gross, fat-faced individual in a green smoking jacket and bow tie to match. He looked utterly debauched and slightly younger than the other two. His thick lips pouted pensively at the young girl who stood uncertainly in the doorway. When he spoke it was with a husky, consumptive voice.
"What a dainty little morsel H, I thought you'd be bringing Elsa."
The man addressed as H, who had picked her up, turned to her and indicated the other two men. "My friends," he explained, "G and M." He indicated first the fat man in the green smoking jacket and then the small one with the weak face.
"And what may we call you, sweet maid?" asked G, a supercilious pretense at gallantry.
Linda searched for her voice. She felt sick.
"Linda," she said, completely unable to think of another name.
"B'linda Blue-eyes," G said airily. His eyes were hard as he looked at her. She could see his one thought was the use to which she was to be put. In spite of his mocking familiarity, she was a piece of putty, no more, as far as he was concerned.
The vicious-featured man in the chair hadn't uttered a word. He simply stared at her with eyes which, despite their appearance of weakness, never faltered.
"Come in my dear, come in," H invited her. "You're soon going to know us very well. Don't be shy."
He addressed the other two.
"She really seems remarkably indifferent to the sophistication of her profession," he said with a grin. "Tell me my dear, are you a virgin?" They all guffawed at his joke.
Linda hated them and their tone of mockery. She wished they would get on with whatever they wanted and get it over with.
The gross man suddenly pulled the front of his dressing gown open and came towards her. He flopped his long, lank penis in front of her.
"You see this B'linda Blue-eyes. Well, like those of my friends, it's half impotent. It takes a lot of arousing and, as you can see it's really worth the trouble."
He held it in his hand towards her.
"Feel it," he insisted. "Isn't it a fine thing? And once it's up, ah? then it's almost as long again and a great thing to have shoved in you."
Linda had obediently taken the long, limp flesh. It had thickened, stiffened slightly in her hand and then remained at a half-erect stage.
"And look at those testicles." He opened his dressing gown farther, revealing a great mass of coarse black hair covering his belly in a forest. His belly was like a humped hill with thick black scrub.
"You must admit they're magnificent," he went on. "I sometimes think it's their weight which prevents my phallus from leaping to attention."
The other two laughed and he glanced around at them.
"But as H said, you mustn't be shy. We want to see whether you can challenge us in excellence. I'm sure you have a pretty little hole, pretty as they come."
They all laughed again and Linda felt terribly helpless against them. She was afraid to speak, afraid to move. They were totally unlike anyone she'd ever met. They could have been some weird characters from a bizarre film.
G touched her breasts and she felt them sway under the dress, without a bra as usual.
"And such beautiful big junkets. And have you been putting breast developer on your buttocks?"
Linda felt that if he went on in his peculiar, superior tone she would burst into tears, but H butted in at this point.
"Don't you think, G, that M should be made to suffer first?"
"Ah, how right you are, H. I always suffered from an impulse to be unorthodox, but the usual pattern is best in this particular matter."
The man referred to as M raised himself from the chair in which he'd been mutely contemplating Linda. He took off his dressing gown without a word.
Linda gazed at the old, white body which was revealed. The skin was crumpled around his belly and thighs, the bones showed through and the flesh hung on him flabbily like pouches. She saw his stubby, limp penis, crinkled and uncircumcised. She averted her eyes, afraid that she would run from the room if she continued to look at the corpse-like apparition.
"Right. Take off your clothes, my dear," H said with a lascivious expectancy in his voice.
Linda felt the horror of a woman debased. She kept telling herself of the money. Forty pounds, forty pounds, forty pounds! The words kept running through her head to drive back her nausea.
"Come on B'linda. How can you tarry at the sight of such a delicious Prince Charming?"
M looked at G wearily as if he had once hated him but could no longer raise the energy. Then he strolled to a big rug near the fire.
Linda, with a flash of despair such as one feels when diving from a height into water, pulled up her dress, wriggled it over her head. They all stared at her large, upright breasts with goggling eyes. It was the first time she'd reached such a stage with any man and left him still with a limp prick.
Quickly she slipped out of her briefs, lifting first one leg out and then the other. Their eyes raged over her, taking in every roundness, every nook and cranny. H and G moved around her. She felt their hands smoothing over her buttocks, her back, belly, breasts, thighs, getting to know her, brushing their half-limp pricks against her as they moved, breathing ugly breath on her.
"There is hope for us yet," G said. He quoted: " "Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.' Old Oscar would have climbed another step up the cultural ladder had he seen this beauty."
They caught hold of her and led her to the rug on which the heat from the fire fanned gently.
"Now, my dear, you'll learn what it's like to really tickle someone's'imagine."
M lay down on his back on the rug and stretched out his arms and legs towards the corners. He looked fiercely up at Linda as his two companions rolled back the extreme corners of the rug to reveal small, strong staples in the floor with thick, strong cords attached.
"There lies ugliness one of the seven deadly virtues," G said scornfully.
"I wish you'd read someone else than Wilde," H said, but with a certain indifference.
"There's none other worth it," G snapped back. "They're all too frivolous or too serious. He was the only one who understood what life was all about."
"Nonsense, he changed his mind too often."
"But he never changed his style."
"Shut up and get on." The words wheezed from the petulant mouth of M, the first he had uttered.
"Patience M: don't take yourself so seriously."
Both chuckling they bent down and began to fasten his skinny wrists and ankles to the cords of the staples while Linda stood, naked and flushed pink by the fire and embarrassment, behind them.
When it was done and M was firmly shackled to the floor, with the rose glow of the fire turning his limp penis to a sunset shade, H went to a drawer in a desk at one side of the room and returned with an enormous feather which he handed to Linda.
"An ostrich feather," he announced. "Very delicate, to be used with a fairy touch. You can start with the balls of his feet and work your way up, ignoring his phenomenal phallus until the last by which time it should be ready for you to impale your vagina on.' He leered at her and he and G turned the armchairs inwards to the fire, and sat in them, watching.
Linda looked with distaste on the feeble, prostrate body beneath her. It all seemed so silly and disgusting.
She knelt down at the old man's feet and began to flutter the feather against them. His toes began to twitch and he wriggled on the rug. She looked up after a while to see that the limp, rose penis had risen into a low-trajectory cannon and fallen rather sideways over his old-fleshed thigh.
Wondering if it was generally aphrodisiac to have one's feet tickled, she began to move the feather, dusting it up his skinny, veined old legs and up the-haired thighs. For some time she brushed it gently along his thighs, but without appreciable difference to the penis. The old man had his eyes closed, his forehead furrowed with concentration as if he were trying to create an erection from sheer willpower.
Gently she moved the big feather over his hip and revolved it on his slack belly. She hoped he wouldn't get an erection and then she wouldn't have to degrade herself by fucking him in front of the two eager watchers. But then again she remembered the forty pounds. Nothing had been said on the subject but it might well be that they would only pay her if they had complete satisfaction.
Once she looked up at the other two, seated, almost lying, in the armchairs with their legs crossed, their gowns open, fingering their unmanly pricks. Their eyes were intense as they watched every advance of the feather, watched the shadowing of faint muscle in her young body as she bent to her task.
She crawled alongside the old man, presenting a full, exposed bottom to their eyes. She moved the feather gently up his ribs, over his chest, around his neck, his shoulders and back again to his belly. She glanced at his organ. It had lifted from his thigh, seemed to be straining to reach the vertical in search of the more-than-vertical.
"Now his balls," G rasped suddenly.
She pulled the feather over his hips, down his thighs and frisked it around the two skinny pendulums. She saw the almost imperceptible movement of the prick and brought the feather up the underside of his penis, gently gliding.
A thin whine came from his lips and he wriggled his hips, the pouches of his buttocks brushing against the rug. His penis moved up.
Overcoming her squeamisliness, Linda took hold of the thin stick and pulled the yellow skin back from the pink knob. She began to run the feather softly against the knob, tickling it so that the whine came from his mouth again.
His penis was erect now, a long thin groping stick. She wondered if she should get on it, but, as if divining her hesitation, H said:
"Let him have a bit more, otherwise it'll go down as soon as you get on it and that'd be such a disappointment for both of you."
G gave a hoarse laugh which choked off at the end. He was still fingering his penis unsuccessfully.
Linda moved the feather up and down the rod of flesh, over the testicles, the whole of the pelvis. Did he really need this to get an erection? But, of course, he was an old man. Perhaps only the lightest of touches could get him going.
There was a disgusting obscenity about the whole thing. The old man with his loose flesh, erect now and squirming against the floor like a youth in passion; the other two, ugly and debauched, writhing in their chairs, gloating at the spectacle, at her young naked flesh, trying vainly to arouse themselves; the warmth of the room with its rugs and drapings an atmosphere of evil if there was such a thing.
"Get on, get on," M barked suddenly.
At the peremptory order, she was suddenly struck motionless, as if elastic bands held her in her place. She knelt beside him, the ostrich feather immobile in her hand, unable to take the step of swinging her thigh across his belly and descending onto his piercing rigidity. The ravishing of youth by age; there was horror in it, degradation and disgust.
M began to curse volubly, his penis to slacken. There were sudden gusts of laughter from H and G and then H's voice ordered her in cutting tones to resume.
"Your timing is not what it should be my dear," he said. "You must take what he has to offer as soon as you're told or you'll miss your pleasure to say nothing of your fortune." He added the last words in an undertone and Linda started. For the moment the thought of the forty pounds had slipped from her mind. She pulled herself together. She could do anything for such a sum.
She flicked the feather over his genitals again, with increasing dexterity, tickling his exposed flesh with concentration, forcing herself to forget the general, the whole, by concentrating on the specific, the part.
Perspiration was gathering in a film over his forehead. She fancied she could feel a youthful heat from his loins, but perhaps it was the fire.
His phallus was erect again, his body writhing as far as his shackled limbs would allow it.
"Just another touch to his feet," H said.
The feather whisked over his feet, under the arches, the soft skin at the base of the toes.
He began to squirm furiously.
"Enough, enough!" he cried.
"Carry on continue!" H's voice cut in.
M squirmed his feet, straining his ankles against the bonds which held him. His penis seemed to be expanding all the time as she tickled and he wriggled and complained.
"Now this time when I tell you to get on, get on immediately," H added. "If you want your pay, that is."
Forty pounds, forty pounds, forty pounds! After all, if she closed her eyes it would only be like any other prick, Linda told herself, and she'd experienced enough of them by now.
"Right, get on!"
Trying to make her eyes unseeing, concentrating only on getting the erect prick into her passage, she swung her leg over him, still tickling, so that she was astride him. She caught the hot stick of flesh, arranged her loins above it and then crushed down on it, with a searing flash of hopeless degradation storming her in the moment she felt it run thickly into her slow on the resistance of her vagina, then with a firm smooth pressure which was her own doing.
She threw back her head and heard M wheeze through his teeth and the others breathe quickly and coarsely as they strained in their chairs.
The degradation lasted only a moment while she was still able clearly to think of what she was doing. Then, with that familiar feeling of a prick inside her, she was lost in sensation.
Her buttocks squashed right down around his organ, full and heavy with the strength and energy of youth on him, bringing out a moan of pain.
Linda had pushed right down, taking all he could give in one descent and it was not enough for her. She knew immediately it was not going to satisfy her. Already, as she oiled up, it became lost, just a pressure without much backbone.
She felt a sudden tinge of annoyance that not only should they put her through such an ordeal with their disgusting, decrepit bodies, but then be unable to return the full pleasure. Male entry had brought about an immediate volte-face in her feelings. Savagely she plunged down on him, spreading her thighs on either side so that their insides, near her pelvis, flattened also against his hips. She'd make him suffer. He wouldn't get his pleasure neat. She'd make him curl up with suffering.
She heard the heavy breathing of H and G, heard them shuffling on the chairs. Up and down she rode like a rider breaking in a wild horse only the horse was tame, just lying there gasping.
With her eyes closed she could forget the room, the old men, the obscenity of the juxtaposition of youth with age, and just live in the delicious sensation of a prick surging into her orifice towards the desired climax.
Her breasts bobbed as she rose and fell, her neck fell back, curving in a graceful arch, her thighs rippled with light muscle, her buttocks sucked in and then blew out in upward and downward movements, and all the time, every second, this pole shot up into her.
She had intended to keep her eyes firmly shut, but his wheezing gasps made her open them, half forgetting where she was. It was then she felt the full debasement of herself.
His mouth was open and the dirty teeth showed yellow, through the dry lips. His eyes were fixed on her with a baleful look of savageness and passion. He was watching the contortion of her passionate face, letting her feeling flow from her to him.
Automatically she continued to rise and fall on his searching prick, her body seeming to have no connection with what her eyes saw. They both stared as their features worked in their passion. She was unable to take her eyes from him and so they stared, watching each other's agony portrayed on their faces.
While she watched she saw his eyes gleam in an almost beseeching expression as if he were a young man imploring his beloved to remain with him forever. She felt his thin hips rotate under her thighs as they pressed down, his thighs gyrate against her buttocks.
But his prick wasn't enough. She could feel the stirring in her loins and she closed her eyes again, but it seemed the excitement had met a barrier which it would not cross.
She put her hands down in front of her and caught his thin penis as she rose off it. She squeezed it, feeling its inadequacy with her hands, trying to expand it with the touch of her fingers and then she descended and felt it run inside her until it petered out and left her with a vacuum to be filled.
Behind her closed eyes a fury grew. She needed it now the way she needed horse and this dirty old man was going to deprive her. She felt as if she'd been defrauded.
"Can't you make your bloody thing any bigger?" she gasped out. "More, I must have more!"
She crooned the words out without opening her eyes as if in a trance and the pricks of H and G suddenly rose up to a nearerect state.
"What a savage little beauty," G gritted between his teeth.
Linda quickened her movement on the old man, bludgeoning his prick with her rushing down-movement. He was sweating profusely, his hips felt crushed and it gave him a stifling sensation in his throat.
He tried to croak out to her to be gentle, but no words came only a muffled explosion of breath.
Linda's mouth was open, her head back. She caught hold of his hips on either side and tried to pull him into her, unaware now of the thin bones, hardly covered with flesh, as anything more than an inanimate substance.
"Oh, oh stop, stop!" The old man found his breath at last and panted out a plea which brought hoots of lustful laughter from G and H.
"No mercy, no mercy!" H ordered.
Linda would have had to be pulled off him anyway. She was almost oblivious of her surroundings now that she needed that something extra to satisfy her. She wriggled her hips, screwing them down on him, slightly this way, slightly that, rubbing her buttocks against his flesh, trying to make his thrust greater than it could possibly be.
M was moaning, his cracked lips moving in protest, his body protesting against this ravishment. He'd never had such energy and force used against him before.
Nonetheless, his prick was throbbing as well as feeling swallowed and sore. He felt he couldn't stand it, that he would die; he could feel his heart fluttering, but he knew he was going to come. If he could only last out until that moment when the throbbing broke into a thousand stars of delight.
He glued his eyes on Linda's breasts, watched them jump loosely up and down; he moved his gaze to where his old prick, more excited than it had been for a long time, disappeared and reappeared, swallowed by her body one moment, thrust out the next. If it wasn't for the pain he could have enjoyed the sight, voluptuously reveling in the thought that she was young enough to be his granddaughter. But his heart was fluttering and he felt weak, except that his prick seemed to be growing and growing and there was a spiraling activity in his loins, snaking its way down, down with ever-growing strength, opening his mouth, dazing him, going to his head, his prick, making him dizzy...
Linda opened her eyes, hearing the strange animal noises issuing from the old throat. She couldn't get it to fill her; it was no good. She gave her hips a good downward thump and another in petulant fury and the half-arousement of passion. The old bastard, the old eunuch.
She heard the gurgle like disappearing bathwater gush from his throat and felt the liquid warmth in her passage as she flopped downwards ; she felt him tense as if in a fit and then he went limp and even paler than he had been before. The inadequate pressure in her vagina dwindled quickly to nonexistence. She sat on him like a victorious wrestler. She felt cheated.
G got up and waddled over. His penis was nearly erect and pointed out of his dressing gown.
"Good God, H, he's fainted!" he barked. He looked at Linda with a leer. "She's not only a beauty, she's one of the devil's flock," he said in tones of satisfaction.
Linda climbed off the limp body. She felt like crying now. She was back in reality, and except for the itch in her loins it was a very unpleasant reality. The fact that the old man should have fainted was more obscene than comic.
G kept his eyes on her, his penis still at three-quarter mast while he untied M's wrists and ankles.
"I thought people only fainted in the Marquis de Sade," he went on suavely. "Indeed, you must have venom in your charming little channel. Perhaps we'd better pay some begger to come in and suck it just to make sure before we proceed."
H had come up behind Linda, meanwhile, and was pressing against her as she stood up beside the mantelpiece.
She felt his prick, which also seemed to be almost completely stiff, brushing against the warmth of her buttocks.
"You have the most springy flesh," he said in her ear, licking it. "It's a wonder you weren't flung to the ceiling every time you gave his petrified penis a bit of air."
Linda felt his breath, which smelt of a mixture of bad eggs and whisky, surround her in an aura of foulness. If only she didn't have these conscious moments. Forty pounds, forty pounds! She forced the words through her head as if she were trying to think of other things while she had a tooth pulled.
"He's living still," G said sorrowfully, from the floor. "He wouldn't know how to make such a magnificent exit."
H had pulled Linda's reluctant hand around her back and placed it on his penis. He began to jerk his penis in her hand and after a second or two she responded to his wish and began to rub him gently.
"Delicious, my dear," he whispered with a catch in his breath. "I must recommend you to Ram Gopal for those wonderful finger movements."
Linda felt the bulbous flesh thicken spongily in her hand. She wondered how long it would be before he filled her. It would be too terrible to be left unsatisfied and without horse, even though it meant enduring his beastly old embraces.
"I really don't think we can wait for him to recover," G said. "It's a pity to think that he might be robbed of another erection that should really finish him off but I personally believe in striking while the iron's hot and all I need is a little blowing on my iron for it to reach a white heat."
He went back to his chair and sank down in it, with his prick rearing uncertainly out.
"Bring her here H," he said. You can limber between her thighs while she tastes my nectar."
H pulled her away from the mantelpiece and pushed her onto her knees in front of G's widespread thighs. She saw the fat man's eyes as he looked at her. They were cruel and in-turned, bent on his own satisfaction.
"Now suck, B'linda, until you're blue in the face to match your eyes."
Linda moved her head down, fighting once more against nausea. The black scrub-covered belly came towards her, she smelt the sweat of lust and then her lips were against the end of the great, knobby prick.
It smelt, too, of sweat and there was a salt taste as her lips went over it and it was shoved upward into her mouth. She closed her eyes against the fat, hairy belly, the jungle of the thighs and tried to close her mind to everything but a mechanical movement of tongue and lips.
A few seconds later she felt hands closing her thighs from behind and the warmth of another hairy body against her back. A half-limp staff prodded between her thighs and began to intrude there, pushing against the milky flesh, backwards and forwards, hot as a long doughnut just cooked. Hands came round her and played with her breasts as she worked her mouth on the tip of the fleshy rod.
The organ began to swing up under her and she had to move her head forward as she felt it suddenly on the roof of her mouth.
"Aaaah," G let out a stream of breath in satisfaction.
The prick which rubbed, more fiercely now, between her thighs was also thickening, hardening like cooking pastry.
"Say when," grunted H, behind her. "It'll take me a bit longer yet."
"Ready, aaaah, ready!" G was lunging his great oozy belly at her.
"Over on the other rug," H said, getting up from behind her.
"All right B'linda, you can leave your labor of love for two seconds and then we'll see who faints first," G gasped softly.
H pulled Linda to her feet and G swung heavily to his. She stared at his prick. It was the biggest she'd seen. If that couldn't satisfy her, nothing could.
"Let's not go out into the wilderness for our pleasure," G pleaded, looking with distaste at the rug on the far side of the room. "Here within the fire of civilization. You can lean on the chair, H. I'll swing her on my bough."
H obediently arranged himself against the side of the chair, turning his back on Linda and slipping out of his gown altogether. He put his hand on the back of the chair and spread his legs.
Now, B'linda. With your left hand you will continue to give rise to his hopes, with the other you will explore his anus up to the last finger joint he-likes that. In fact, H, I don't know why you don't let Simon have a go with you. Your Grecian tendencies are more than clear."
"I've told you before, G, that a tender female finger gains in comparison with a gross male member."
"Very well," G continued with a coarse chuckle. "And you'd better bend well down, B'linda, because I'm going to thrust my venom in your womb the way Baudelaire would have loved to I might even write a poem to you afterwards, but I expect I shall be too busy looking for smelling salts for you."
Linda stood behind H and began to toss him off gently. But she could not bring herself to push her finger through the dark mass of hair into his anus.
G stood behind her, looking at her behind and making kissing noises with his lips.
"You've forgotten your orders," he said after a few seconds. You must really obey to the letter unless you want us to impose a surtax on your earnings. Do not forget, B'linda, that for the time being you are our employee, our slave."
Linda concentrated on the penis which she could not see, as, tentatively, she brushed her middle finger through the backside hair. The hair was coarse and a warmth came from the long crack between the loose-fleshed buttocks. H wriggled his feet farther apart in anticipation. Her finger came to a halt against a firm, resistant flesh.
"Push!" H ordered, jerking his behind back at her.
It had to be done. Linda pushed, her nail digging into the walls of the anus, making H squeal. Then the portal had given way and her finger was in just the tip of it enough to feel the nipping pressure and then the softness of the inside. H clamped his buttocks together and his prick seemed to lunge out into space over the arm of the chair, pulling her hand right down to its base.
When H pushed his behind back at her again and her finger pushed in a little further, G caught hold of her shoulders from behind and pushed her down so that her back made a horizontal line and her inside shoulder pushed against the back of H's thigh which supported her.
Behind her she felt the presence of G moving round her, looking at her; she heard his breath sucking in sharply, blowing out again unevenly.
She tensed as she felt his hand explore between her legs and, as he entered her hole with one finger and loosened it, opening it, moistening it, a physical reaction made her shove her finger deeper into H's rectum. She heard his choke of recognition.
Then she felt G arranging himself behind her stretched behind which formed two arches of a bridge. He pushed her thighs apart and she was aware of the outside of his legs against the inside of hers. Her position was a little strained, but if they didn't take too long she reckoned she could stand it.
H's prick seemed to be rearing up at its fullest, now, but he gave no indication of wanting her in any other position. He continued to push his behind back just above her face so that her finger plunged in as far as the second joint.
The warmth of G's belly rested on her bottom and oozed around it and suddenly, with a hot, unexpected rush, his phallus made a furious breach in her, a breach which was consolidated immediately as she gulped with a second thrust carrying it smoothly, like a ship passing down a narrow canal, into her passage.
In the considerable shock of his deep penetration, Linda rocked forward and lost her hold on H's prick. But his thighs, against the cnair, held her up and he immediately replaced her hand on his organ and pushed his buttocks back against her hand once again.
The big prick in her moved up and up a long slide in and a much shorter one out, like a rowing stroke reversed. With each long in-stroke he pushed farther up into the depths of her vagina towards the cervix.
Linda moved her behind round circularly on the end of his bar of pulsation. She closed her eyes and forgot where she was. This was it; this was content, passionate content. Her vagina was being widened by the splitting penetration of his tool.
She continued to dig into H's ass. Her finger had gone in right up to the hilt now, but she didn't notice. She moved it around automatically in the soft, slippery depths of his hole, while her hand went on caressing his penis, slipping up and down, up and down on the moving, hard flesh.
Behind her G grunted and strained. She felt the whole bulk of his weight against her pelvis, almost lifting her off her feet, sending her head into H's thighs like a rugby player making a tackle according to the textbook.
His prick was so big in her now that it hurt, but it was a delicious, welcome hurt. Her stretched posture added to the hurt, the delight.
Her flesh winced sensually as his big, pudgy hands came down around her hips, and held them and pulled her hips back onto his prick as he thrust in. She was like some toy, some puny plaything into which he was pushing his penis.
And that was what she wanted to be. The thought of Des flushed through her mind for a moment. That was what she wanted to be: some puny plaything on the end of a man's prick, filled by it, helpless against it, completed, ravished.
Her dream-like thought was broken by H suddenly twisting round with a groan, holding her up by her shoulders while he lowered himself onto the arm of the chair. He pulled her head onto his lap, pushing his prick into her mouth, while G continued to punch his weight fully into her hole.
Both men could see each other, pumping, face convulsed at each end of her rounded full-fleshed body and she could see neither, only feel the entry of heavy, rigid lengths of flesh at each end of her upturned body.
Rocking on his feet, G began to push into her so hard, searching for ever further penetration, that she was actually lifted off her feet several times with whimpering gasps and flung forward onto H's prick which shot through her mouth and into her throat, almost choking her.
"Fuck her, fuck her," H groaned to G. "Throw her onto my prick. She nearly swallowed my balls."
"I've a good inch to go yet," panted G, still with a cruel facetiousness. "And they say an inch is as good as a yard. Stand ready."
Linda heard the coarse, impersonal conversation above and around her, the lascivious words bandied from one to another and now, in her agitated state, they served only to heighten her desire.
"Fuck me, fuck me with the other inch!" she heard herself moan from around the prick between her lips.
"Why, the sexy harlot she has a cunt like a well," G roared savagely and with a grip that made her squeal he pulled aside the flanges of her vagina and plunged in with the final inch.
"Oh oh oh!" she moaned.
She felt as if her womb had been pierced by some bulldozing instrument which was now going to churn her loins into a raging sea of flesh.
Again H's spear plunged down her throat, choking her, making her struggle and gasp as if she were drowning. She seemed to be impaled on that great prick up her cunt. She was sure it must be stuck there never to be withdrawn.
G pressed his great belly over and around her ass, jiggling against her without withdrawing, savoring the delicious sensation of flapping his prick around in the farthest depths of her, pulling her back tightly against his loins with his hands.
"Ooooooaaaah!" he breathed. "A wonderful fit. I could stay like this forever."
"And so could I, almost," Linda thought, "except that I need to feel the harsh pistoning into me!"
Sucking mechanically, she began to revolve her globes of buttocks, instilling a final desire in him to plunge in and out and in again in a glorious pain of movement.
She had all but forgotten about the prick in her mouth which had become almost an inanimate object, irrelevant to the delight at the other end of her, but suddenly H, with a whine of breath, reached down and pushed her head onto his stiff rod, running his hand over her hair, crushing it as if he'd like to kill her.
"I can feel it," he called, savagely joyful. "It's coming at last!"
She heard G wheezing against her ass. He quickened his stroke and the change in tempo made her tense. She felt sore and slightly aching, but both pains were subjugated by the overpowering pressure of desire to empty her loins.
H was tensing his legs under her, shooting them out under her bent body, pushing his hips up at her face. His flesh grazed against her teeth as she sucked and had sudden desires to bite.
"Oh oh oh! Bliss, bliss! Oh oh!" He seemed to be in delirium. She wriggled a hand under her face and held the stem, squeezing it at the same time as she sucked.
The desire to empty her loins was growing, growing. Her vagina would be the trapdoor through which the whole of her loins would flow. She closed her eyes, the pressure of desire heavy under the lids.
G's thumbs were pulling apart the lips of her vagina, moving in against her clitoris as his prick moved in also.
"Nearly there, nearly there!" he gasped.
H was practically buckling on the arm of the chair. His body had fallen back across it, his head resting on the other arm. He was like a skelton in the throes of some macabre dance of passion. His penis was filling her mouth. It was very hot in spite of her saliva's cooling balm. She knew he was about to come as his hands reached again for her head and his breath seemed to halt in a complete stillness. There was a hesitation in the air with only the rocking, where G was fucking her back there, to disturb it. She knew he was going to come and she sucked voraciously, gluttonously and waited to receive the old man's aging sperm. The hesitation was rent by an agonized groan which sent a shudder along the whole of his body and she felt the hot, sticky liquid filling her mouth like a fountain and she swallowed, swallowed fiercely because her loins were gradually opening, ready to storm in a cloudburst through that already open trapdoor.
H fell back into the chair, slithering away from them, watching with dull eyes as she ranged her shoulder against the arm of the chair, contorting her face as she felt the emptying hesitate, waiting for the cloudburst.
She gasped and gasped into the furry arm of the chair, and she rotated her bottom, pushing back at him as he pushed forward and her mouth opened and with a gasp which filled the room, her loins emptied and flooded down through the trapdoor which opened a little more in its climax to allow the cloudburst to escape.
H's dull eyes watched G's great, black belly enveloping her conquered buttocks, his great mast of prick plunging fully into her. He saw G's face crease into a score of pained wrinkles. He wished vaguely that he still had it to come.
G pushed and pushed, savagely. He wanted to kill her, to destroy her with his maleness. He had heard her gasps. He knew he'd hurt her, but he knew also she had accepted the challenge and reveled in it and he wanted to hurt her, to have her cry out for mercy. But his penis was a great throbbing spear over which he no longer had any control and he could only bring dull groans from her now. His prick was reaching, reaching, his entrails a swirl of excitement, all mixed up together. He had to hold on. He gritted his teeth. He threw back his head and rocked his loins at her, pushing, pushing with a grinding gasp into her soft body, up, up her vagina into the very source of her. He gasped, gasped and gasped and then the gasp broke into a strangled cough and he had shot his burning volleys into her in a staccato rush of fury which grew, then waned, and died slowly away.
Linda leaned up, realizing for the first time how stiff her back was and then she leaned, worn out but satisfied, against the back of the chair.
G sank down onto the rug beside M who had come to and, unknown to the others, had been watching them throughout their last moments.
"A pleasing display," he said after a while. He was grinning. His orgasm seemed to have given him a good mood and a tongue in his head.
H stretched in the chair and looked down at his lank penis.
"So soon over, my dear M, so soon over."
"The great thing about things that please is that you can always do them again," G called unsteadily from his armchair.
"But not often enough, eh?" M said with a wry grin which made his vicious features like those of a stoat who's trapped the rabbit at last, "Speak for yourself."
"I think I speak for all of us. Our trouble is that we've already done them too often and a surfeit of anything breeds an impotence in connection with it."
"Give me an hour and we'll see."
"Ah, I'm sorry to see that, as well as quoting Wilde, you've fallen prey to his adolescent boasting. You're becoming a bore, my dear fellow."
"If boasting is solely concerned with adolescence then the teen-agers are supreme. Nothing helps one to rise in the world like the ability to boast well."
"Ah-to boast well, perhaps."
Linda, exhausted, hung over the chair and listened with half an ear to the conversation.
They amazed her still, these men. They seemed from another world. They had just finished having her, satisfying their lust and now they were indulging in the most ridiculous argument she'd heard-with a vicious undercurrent which they masked with their calm and their affected politeness.
G stood up and pulled on his dressing gown.
"The trouble with you M is that you've taken your years badly. You haven't even the energy to boast."
"I prefer to conserve it for more necessary occupation."
"You need to, M. They become more necessary as the capacity dies."
"Now children," H cut in suavely. "Don't let us quarrel in front of our charming guest, who is behaving so well towards us."
Recovered, now, Linda could not believe the past hour. It was unbelievable that the mere presence of a stimulant around her clitoris, a prick somewhere in her, should give her utterly different emotions, fill her with a disregard for everything but her need to be filled and to give pleasure and receive it. She felt freshly revolted. They had swum back again into the forms they had when she first arrived-except that now they knew her body, had seen her naked, used her. She shuddered, trying not to be drawn in by the sordid view of their debauched bodies.
"The poor child is cold," said H with mock sympathy, as if he divined her repulsion. "Here, take this dressing gown. We can't have you getting cold before the next performance."
Linda fitted herself into the gown reluctantly. It smelled of him. She wondered how long the night would be and the lack of horse set up a fluttering inside her. She wished they were three editions of Des or even that Betty was here with her. That would make it less horrible. At least there would be sympathy and they could even laugh about it afterwards. Now, it would always be a horrible memory.
Later, when the procedure began all over again in a bedroom with a fire as big as that in the other room, she kept repeating and repeating: Forty pounds, forty pounds, forty pounds!
CHAPTER 9
Linda lay back on the divan at Sam's place. The music of the record player filled the air soothingly and she breathed deeply, contentedly.
"And then what happened...? " Sam was saying from his reclining position on the floor.
"Then he gave me my taxi fare and said that if there was one thing he abhorred it was meanness about trifles." She laughed at her recollection. "And then the other one scowled and said, 'If you're mean about trifles the big things look after themselves'-whatever he meant by that."
"They certainly sound a crazy bunch of birds."
She and Sam laughed for several seconds over her description of what had happened during her night of prostitution. They were both very happy on horse and they had enough money not to have to go short again, even if Sam hadn't any money coming for a long time.
"I'm surprised they didn't quibble when it came to handing over the dough," Sam said. "But I guess you gave them such a good time."
"I don't think the money really meant anything to them."
"Boy, you should keep in with those guys-give them this phone number or something."
"Oh yeah. It's all very well for you-you didn't have to look at their scraggy old flesh, to say nothing of the rest. And they made me so sore, all over the place. I felt really weak when I left this morning."
Sam lay back and put his hands behind his head, tittering.
"What a life," he said. "What a crazy life!"
They grew silent, just listening to the music, feeling wonderful.
It certainly had been a crazy life for her since she and Betty had got themselves picked up by Des and Jim, she thought. She had grown up about ten years in a couple of months. She closed her eyes. It was a better life too; cut loose from all the old worries and dissatisfactions, freed from the need for love. But, of course, she did feel the need for love when she was off horse. Still, that didn't make any difference to the complete satisfaction she felt while she was turned on.
What would happed, she wondered, if you stayed turned on all the time. You'd kill yourself. And why not? "The paths of glory lead but..." That bit of verse they'd had at school put it all in the right perspective. Dying of alcohol, too much exercise, old age-what was the difference after all except a span of time. But then you had to have enough money to get it; you had to be sure you could get it; and you didn't have to have a job or have to go to school, or you'd probably find you couldn't concentrate on the work. That was the trouble: having to go to school. How many weeks was it now? If it weren't for that she'd gladly take horse all the time until it killed her-just for the sake of enjoying every moment of her life, short though it might be.
God, she thought with a smile, I'm getting quite philosophical. She'd heard that horse was a stimulant to the intellectual powers over a period.
"Sam..."
"Yeah."
"You don't have a job, do you."
"Don't need one. Someone sends me some money."
"Do you take horse all the time?"
"Nearly all the time. I get depressed when I'm without."
"And what do you do all the time?"
"Mostly what we're doing now: listen to the music, lie and just enjoy." He grinned up at her. "And I fuck a bit."
"Don't you ever wish you had a job or were interested actively in something?"
"Me? No. Where does it all get you? A lot of worry, meanness, hatred, occasionally a bit of happiness and kindness and it's all working towards its own extinction. Nothing's much use. Everybody's trying to find the best way to enjoy their life. I've found mine."
"Don't you sometimes think it's sort of artificial getting your happiness the way we do?"
"Christ, what's got into you? For all we know everything's artificial. I'm not religious."
Linda lay silent. She still had thirty of the forty pounds they'd given her. There had been a time when she'd have rushed out and bought clothes or maybe a record player of her own or any number of things. But now she didn't feel the slightest desire to do anything of the kind. It didn't interest her at all. Why should it when horse made it all so unnecessary and rather ridiculous? It had shocked her that she hadn't wanted to spend the money and she had wondered what had happened to her, where she was going.
But it was probably true what Sam said. She knew that she felt very superior to people who rushed about trying to get things done, to improve things, improve themselves. What a waste of time! But there was school. In a few weeks' time term started and she couldn't stand the thought of it. It would be too much for her and such a bore. She wished she were like Sam, without any obligations or functions to perform in society.
There was a ring at the doorbell and after a long pause Sam got up and went out to the door. She heard the opening of the door, his murmur of recognition and welcome, the sound of footsteps along the passage.
She looked up and it was so long since she'd seen Des that her heart jumped a little as he came in.
"Hi," he said. "Betty told me you'd be here; thought I'd see how you were."
"Hello, Des," she said quietly. "Come and have some horse."
CHAPTER 10
After Linda's departure, Betty wandered thoughtfully in the back garden of her home. It was too sad about Linda. She had withdrawn into herself and seldom sought Betty out. And one had only to look at her to see that her health was suffering, yet she seemed unconcerned about what was happening to her. She was becoming just like the junkies Sam had told them about, the people who spent their whole time lying in a semi-stupor, too lethargic to eat, even to move. Sam was almost one himself. Poor, dear Linda. Betty felt horrified that her friend had so deteriorated. She didn't know exactly why she felt the way she did. It wasn't simply that Linda looked so unhappy except when she was taking heroin; Betty felt there was something degenerate about the whole thing.
Des was the only person who could bring her to her senses; Des, who was too sensible to take more than a very occasional shot of horse. It was only since he'd stopped going around with her that Linda had taken to the stuff with such abandon. In a way you might almost say that Des was responsible. Perhaps if he began to take an interest in her again she would give it up or at least cut it down-but perhaps she'd already gone too far and couldn't.
She turned in the garden and looked back at the house. If only she could make Des go back to Linda. And maybe she could. Perhaps if she saw him and begged him and explained to him, he would see that it was his duty to try and get Linda back on the path or normalcy. But perhaps he wouldn't-and even if he did, unless he were going to marry her, he'd leave her again and then she'd fall back into her present routine. Still, that was looking too far ahead. The thing was to take it a step at a time and the most important step at the moment was to stop Linda ruining herself on drugs.
Slowly she walked back into the house where her mother and father were watching television with blinds drawn against the summer twilight.
"I think I'll go for a walk," she told her mother in a whisper, leaning over the back of her chair.
Her mother's hand touched hers.
"Do you think you'll be late, dear? We'll leave the key if you're not getting back before we've gone to bed."
"No I shan't be very long at all, mummy. I just want a breath of air and a bit of exercise."
"All right, dear."
Her father didn't look up at all until she closed the door, and walking towards the dance hall, Betty pondered on the acceptance that habit bred in people.
Both parents now accepted the fact that she might be in after they had gone to bed and were not unduly worried about it. This was due to the precedent she had created-against their original desires-by going to such a number of fake parties until early in the morning and then getting home all right. They began to be convinced that she was capable of taking care of herself, that there was nothing to worry about, that she was with nice friends. Frequently they asked her about the good time she'd had and she made up tales-always with a twinge of regret, as she really got on very well with her parents-which put them more at ease. They too felt rather sorry for Linda as they knew she didn't get on at all with her mother and that her stepfather was a polite stranger to her.
Poor Linda, Betty thought again. Her mother accepted almost anything from her, but not through trust and love, simply because she couldn't have cared less, frequently didn't even know or care what her daughter was up to. But like all parents who spend half their time not caring, she was inconsistent and would sometimes fly into rages because Linda had not told her where she was going. The stepfather took no apparent interest in Linda at all-except for the one instance when he had in fact taken a supreme interest and forced her to yield her virginity to him. After that, it seemed, fear that the mother might find out, or perhaps, simply lack of further interest, had made his attitude towards her one of cool unconcern.
Betty turned her thoughts on Jim. It was strange that she had never felt about him the way Linda felt about Des. Although not really. She had a background of love and affection; she didn't need to seek out so desperately as Linda. God, if she'd had parents like Linda's she'd probably have drooled over Jim. As it was, she was able to keep him in perspective with the result that.he was more interested in her than she was in him.
She had even lost her curiosity about sex now that she knew what it was like and, although they had intercourse fairly often, she sometimes stood him up on it just so that he wouldn't take it for granted.
Wondering if he'd be with Des tonight, she turned at last into the High Street.
There was the usual muted bustle of activity. The fish-and-chip shops were blindingly alight and noisily crowded, a maze of trams and cars shuttling to and fro. People were pushing up and down the steps of the public lavatory in the island in the middle of the roadway and staring as always into the lighted shop windows.
Betty walked unseeing towards the dance hall, wondering what she would say to Des, how she could succeed in getting him to do something about Linda. By the time she reached the crowded entrance she saw herself clearly as the champion who alone could use her influence to save her lost friend from misery.
There she hesitated. There were so many youths lounging in the foyer-why did they always lounge in the foyer?
She walked past the entrance, afraid that if she lingered by herself they would annoy her, try to pick her up. There had been no sign of Des or Jim.
Slowly she walked back again, peering in as far as she could see. A youth walked out towards her, a conceited grin on his face.
"What-ya doin'? " he asked.
His approach determined Betty. She pushed past him and went up to the man at the turnstile.
"I want to see if someone I know is inside," she said. "I don't want to stay. There's just something I must tell him. Could I just pop in for a minute?"
The man looked her over in mock seriousness.
"I'm sure they won't want to let you out once you've gone in. All right, Miss, don't be long."
Betty pushed through and went quickly down the passage to the big bare hall where the inevitable band was inevitably playing a tired waltz.
She saw Des immediately and breathed a sigh of relief. He was standing with a group of youths. Jim was not among them.
She waved at him from the doorway and for a moment he stared at her uncertainly. Then-when he realized she was alone, it seemed-he waved back cheerily and came around the floor to meet her while the eyes of several companions followed him.
"Well, hi," he called when he was still a few feet from her. "Long time no see. All by yourself?"
"Yes, Des. Look, I wanted to talk to you about something. They've only let me in for a minute to find you. Do you think you could come out for a bit?"
He looked at her doubtfully. He always felt uncomfortable when a woman talked to him earnestly as if she wanted something.
"Well, I'm with some of the boys down here. Why don't you stay? I'll get your ticket."
"No, really Des. I'd rather talk to you away from here. I'll tell you what it's about when we get outside."
Des looked back at the "boys" who were staring along with interest.
"All right." He waved them a nonchalant farewell and strolled out behind Betty. Behind him they raised eyebrows and grinned.
"So that's the way it is with Linda, Des. She'll go out of her mind."
Betty wondered if she'd painted the picture of a degenerating woman a little too vividly for truth. But he deserved it, after all. It was largely his fault.
Desmond's face had taken on all manner of expressions throughout her account and he'd tried to butt in several times. But now he looked thoughtful. It seemed to her that there was even a trace of considered cunning in his eyes as he looked down at her.
"It's none of my business, Betty, you know that. I understand the way you feel. It's only natural as you're her friend. But just think if she'd picked me up and I'd gone willingly, and she'd wanted me to fuck her and I'd done it and then she'd been taking horse and I'd wanted some, and I'd fallen heavily for her and she'd played ball and then changed her mind-how would you feel then? Would you feel so sorry for me that you'd plead with her to start taking an interest in me again?"
"But Des..."
"I'm sorry Betty. I thing you're looking at it the wrong way. You're just emotional about it. It's very understandable, as I said."
Betty stared at him. All this quiet reasonableness and refusal amazed her.
"Des, I can't stand for you not to do anything. Even though you don't care for her, couldn't you just pretend to for a little while until she got back to her old self?"
"Don't be a pain in the neck, Betty. You know how she'll get about me if I do and then it'll be worse than before."
"But Des, she's soon going to become a hopeless addict and then if she can't get the stuff she'll be committing suicide or they might put her in one of those places."
"Look, Betty, I'm very sorry about it, naturally, but I'm not her nursemaid. People should take responsibility for their own lives."
He spoke as if he were quoting something he'd read and remembered because it suited him.
Betty stared at him despairingly. His refusal to help made it all the more desperate that she should influence him to do something. The bit about Linda committing suicide had just come out on the spur of the moment; she'd never thought of it before, but now in her racing mind it seemed eminently possible.
"Des, I'd do absolutely anything for you if you'd only see Linda and take her out a bit."
He looked down at her and there was no doubt about the cunning in his eyes.
"Why should you want to get mixed up in it?"
"Because she's my friend and I-love her, I suppose."
He continued to look at her calculatingly. "Suppose I asked you to love me, then?" he asked.
She gazed at him in astonishment. "But Des, I don't..."
Her voice trailed off as he put his arm around her. She suddenly realized what he meant. He wanted the love of her body. Her mouth opened to speak ... he knew she was still seeing his pal Jim, he knew how she felt about Linda and what she considered to be, or wanted to be Linda's property ... but she saw in his eyes how irrelevant these things were to him and she didn't utter a word.
"And then I'll go and find Linda, and act like I think I've been an idiot to stop seeing her."
Betty drew her eyes away from his which seemed to be hypnotizing her. She didn't dislike Des and the act would be easy except for the feeling of guilt she'd have towards Jim and Linda. In fact the clandestine sensation made her shiver with a little voluptuous pre-taste. And she was doing it for Linda.; there was no reason to feel guilty.
As if he recognized her capitulation, Des added a fresh condition.
"Course there's no reason why you and me shouldn't have a bit of enjoyment anyway. You're not exactly giving me anything-we're both enjoying something. So to make sure I really have a fair bargain for what I'll have to go through, there's something else."
Betty looked back into those eyes gleaming at her, knowing their ascendancy. Her heart began to thump.
"You saw the boys back in the hall. Well I owe 'em some money. Now, in order for me to agree to this little arrangement we might have, you're going to have to pay off the debt for me-you know how. They'll be delighted to take it in kind."
Betty stared at him aghast. Her heart thumped furiously and color flamed to her cheeks.
"You can't be serious!" she flared. "As if I'd behave like a whore just to help you settle your filthy debts. You must be mad!"
"Well, I guess if you really want me to stop Linda doing away with herself you'll do what I say." His voice had taken on an indifferent tone.
Betty's blood boiled. She could have flung herself on him and scratched his face to ribbons. The impudence of his trying to turn her into his prostitute!
Des said nothing and they walked side by side, silently, towards the dance hall.
But her thoughts went back to Linda. Poor, dear Linda. Maybe this was one act of evil which would produce an enormous result of good. She cooled down a little, considering. After all, she hadn't known Jim when she'd first let him have her but that had probably been the pot. Still it was soon over. The only thing was the embarrassment of seeing the boys again. But she need never go to the dance hall after that and they never went anywhere else. Of course, Jim might find out but Linda meant more to her than Jim, much more.
She stopped thinking in words and thought in pictures, pictures of unknown boys screwing her, of Des screwing her. It filled her with a mixture of thrill and loathing. Perhaps this was the way Linda had felt when her stepfather had put his incestuous hands on her.
"Des, wouldn't you just leave it the way it was. Just me and you? The other's too horrible."
Des shrugged his shoulders. He had become completely indifferent. He knew how to judge a situation.
"If you don't want to do it, then it's all off," he said. "Jeez, you don't realize what a bore it'll be for me having to go around with Linda."
Betty felt again the urge to dig her nails in his face. Instead she said: "All right, Des."
He looked down at her with a broad grin of triumph.
"That's the idea," he said. "You're a real pal to Linda."
His eyes flickered over her face and rested on her breasts. They had almost reached the entrance to the dance hall now.
"We can all go up to the park, now," he said.
Betty was going to object. The thought of having them fuck her one after the other was too much. But then she thought that maybe it would be better to get it all over with in one night."
"The park won't be open much longer," she said, "and there are people about."
"Okay, so we'll have to hurry,' he grinned. "We can always avoid the people."
"Des, tell them to follow us up. I can't bear the thought of them looking me over on the way."
"All right. But you mustn't be snooty when it comes to the job or they might insist on having it twice."
Betty looked at him coolly, trying to hide her sudden fear that she was putting herself utterly in Desmond's hands, that he might demand all sorts of things from her on subsequent days.
"Don't worry. I know how it's done," she snapped.
Des chuckled.
"You wait here," he said, "and I'll tell 'em to follow us up."
He left Betty in the foyer and none of the loungers bothered her because they'd seen her with Des.
Inside, Des had gathered his cronies into a little group. There were five of them.
"You saw that chick who came in here and called me?"
The answers were a series of soft whistles and duckings.
"Who wants to screw her?"
There was an electric silence.
"Is she willing, Des?" someone asked him eventually.
"It'll cost you ten bob each," Des said. "I'm going first and I'll be able to tell you how good she is."
"Is she a whore then?" asked a voice.
"No, that's the point. She's not far from a virgin. I know the guy who fucked her for the first time a month or two ago and she's a nice girl, but she owes me money and can't pay. So she said to me just now that she'd screw any of you for ten bob and give me the money to pay off her debt so you can give me the money now."
"And when and where do we try the goods?"
"Well, being a nice girl and never having done this before, she's a bit embarrassed. She wants you to follow me and 'er up to the park. When we get there you can all shove it in her as hard as you like in the dark."
His words had an inflammable effect on the little group.
Hands went to pockets and then somebody said:
"But there might be a few people in the park, Des, and there's old Jim, the parkie. He might try to run us in."
"You afraid of old Jim?" Des asked scornfully. "We'll have to do it standing up. She can bend over a seat or something it's a bit awkward sitting on yer lap. The rest can keep watch around and whistle if anyone's coming, then whoever's in at the time just behaves like they're a necking couple. Necking's not fucking."
There was a cackle of laughter.
"Probably wouldn't hear a whistle," someone said with a chuckle.
"Might be too weak to come out," said another.
"Okay, let's have your ten bob."
All five paid him the money and followed him out with hot pressures already against their flies.
"Just hang back a minute," Des said, "and then follow us up you can stare at her ass on the way, it's pretty nice. You can decide in what order you're going to fuck her in after me and when we get to the park, we'll find a spot and you can keep at a distance and watch for people. If anyone comes, whistle 'Clementine ! ' Everyone who finishes putting his spunk into her can whistle 'Keep the 'Ome Fires Burning' and then the next can take over all right?"
"Okay, all right." There were murmurs of excited agreement.
"See you then," said Des and walked through the corridor to the entrance where Betty was self-consciously waiting for him.
On the way to the park, under the street-lamps, Betty fought against an overwhelming desire to look around to see the gang of youths she could hear following them. They had come out quickly from the dance hall and she'd caught a glimpse of them with their eyes roving all over her lecherousy. Now she knew they woud be staring at her behind and she wished her dress didn't feel so tight. Still the more excited they were the sooner they'd come.
Des walked with his arm around her and one hand over her breast, playing with it. She wished, now, that she could give in and enjoy herself with him, make the best of the inevitable, but the thought of that gang following her and how they were all going to plunge their pricks into her intimate part filled her with a nervous excitement which kept her in a state of tension.
Des lowered his hand to her behind as they walked and she felt it move over the buttocks, exploring, at the same time as she heard the appreciative whistle from behind.
"Can't you wait until we get to the park?"
"You're too exciting, Betty."
She felt his fingers push her dress into the ravine of her buttocks, tightening it round the pert ovals of flesh. She walked on, putting up with him making a little exhibition for the gang, afraid to deny him anything.
When they reached the park he pulled her round to him and kissed her, slipping his tongue in her mouth and pressing hard against her, rubbing his hips against hers, bringing, in the deeper darkness, her first tremor of real response.
The park was fairly large, but also rather formal. There were no wild spots for making love, only places where shrubs and trees gave a greater gloom and, perhaps a seat half surrounded by foliage a short distance from one of the paths along which people exercised their dogs and lovers strolled.
Des slowed down so that the gang behind could catch up a bit and not lose sight of them.
"It's not very secluded," Betty said, apprehensively.
"We'll have to stand up," Des said. "It's best if you lean over one of the seats and I come from behind unless you can think of anything better."
Betty gulped. It always seemed strange to her to be had from behind. But that would mean that the boys would not see her face it would be more impersonal.
"I don't care."
Des looked round to make sure the gang were with them. He saw the vague figures about fifty yards away, vague darker shapes than the rest of the darkness. They walked on along one of the paths and then climbed up a bank and down a rock garden into an ornamental garden where little wooden bridges crossed narrow streams and pools. Here there were leafy arbors more secluded than anywhere else in the park and it was easy to watch for the approach of strangers.
Des led Betty along one of the narrow, gravel paths, waited until the shapes of the gang formed in their wake and then pushed her into an arbor which crept back from the path. There was a seat in the arbor and, a few feet behind it, the rock garden, crowned with large bushes rose into darkness. It was gloomy in the arbor and she could only make out Desmond's face and the glimmer of stars in a distant pool.
"This'll do," Des said with a hoarse note in his voice.
He pulled her onto the seat and his hands began to run wildly, excitedly over her as his lips fastened wetly on her neck, her lips.
It was very quiet. The gang must have split up to take up their watch. Betty could hear Desmond's breathing like an alien animal in the silence of the night. And she heard her own breathing too as his hand slid up under her dress and he strained her against him.
Betty felt her heart jolt up to her throat as his fingers crept under her panties and reached the concealed lips. Her dress was up, way up her thighs and she felt the cool night air. It was the first time she'd been made love to in the open air. It made her feel naked, vulnerable.
Des was breathing like a steam engine. He was trembling and in a hurry as his fingers plunged into her vagina. She started and the members of the gang stationed within short distances of the arbor, heard her intake of breath.
"Take out my prick!" Des ordered.
With fumbling fingers she felt around his loins, met the great, hot bulge and felt over it for the buttons. She found them and began to snap them open one after the other. Her hand advanced inside, into the sudden heat and pulled aside the ends of his shirt.
The prick was thick and sweatingly hot in her fingers and she drew it out into the chill air and ran her fingers up and down it.
Des had unzipped the dress from the armpit down to just below the breast where the zip ended and his furiously searching fingers had unsnapped her bra and closed over the warm, softness of her breasts.
She felt the excitement grow in her. Anyone might come at any moment. As if in answer to the thought and to frustrate the growing excitement, the rollicking notes of "Clementine" came whistling at them through the darkness.
"Fuck!" snapped Des furiously.
He thrust his prick back into his trousers and, whisking Betty's dress down embraced her in the more decorous fashion which was nothing new to the local parks.
Pretending to kiss, they both watched for whoever was coming. If it was old Jim, he'd 'probably shine a torch on them and occasionally a police patrol passed through to enliven their beat.
But instead of old Jim or the police, it was simply a courting couple who wandered along the gravel path, started into the arbor, and then, realizing it was already occupied, swung out again to find somewhere of their own.
They had hardly turned, before Des, his body heaving with emotion, had whipped up her dress again and was mauling her vagina.
After a couple of moments, Betty pulled out his prick again and began to squeeze it tightly.
"Take your panties off," Des whispered hoarsely, "And we'll go round the back of seat."
Betty glanced round, hesitantly into the darkness behind the wooden seat, and Des impatiently reached right up under her crumpled dress and started to pull her panties down over her plumpish little belly.
Betty pushed his hands away and stood up in front of him, pulling her dress up around her waist and pushing down the briefs.
Des couldn't keep his hands off her. They closed on her buttocks, ran between them, felt her belly, curved down to the revealed muff of hair, jabbed between her legs. She could just see the dim outline of his penis cleaving almost luminously out from his loins.
She got her panties down round her thighs, holding onto Desmond's shoulder with one hand. Over her knees and then she lifted one slim leg and pulled it and her high-heeled shoes through the leg space. She released her hold on Des's shoulder and, balancing on the free leg, brought the other up through the panties. Des pulled her at him and kissed her buttocks, her belly, and she felt a sharp sensation run through her hips.
"Give me those," Des said.
He took the briefs from her and stuffed them in his pocket. He let her dress fall and stood up, kissing her, pressing against her so hard that she thought she would fall over. She felt his hot, naked organ clearly through her dress, against her thighs.
"Jeez, I need it bad, Betty," he whispered with a catch in his voice.
She put her hand down and squeezed his sex-arm in reply.
"Come on."
They moved round to the back of the seat. Once they started, there would be a certain urgency in case someone came. Des couldn't face the idea of having to stop, even if he had to rush. He could force Betty into letting him fuck her in comfort some other time. Now he needed the breathtaking relief of plunging his prick into her warm, waiting hole.
At the back of the seat, he kissed her finally and then turned her around. She wasn't quite sure how she should position herself and stood uncertainly, while he pulled up her dress at the back.
"Bend forward, rest yourself on the seat back." He pushed her forward gently and she leaned forward and lowered her head onto her arms on the seat back.
She felt him pulling her legs apart and then his hot prick was between her thighs and pushing up towards her vagina, "Push your hips back," he whispered, and she obliged, so that her body from bottom to head was pushed back at him, forming a horizontal line between his loins and the seat back.
With a groan of pleasure he reached the lips with his knob and sank into the moist, warm passage. Betty straightened with a gasp, but he pulled her back again, drawing her bottom back firmly against his lower belly.
Des grasped the fleshy fold of her hips on either side and thrust his loins at her again and again. Sharp spasms of rending, fluid sensation shot through his penis. He tried to control his breathing, not to make too much noise. He could hear her gasping quietly against the wood of the seat back, trying to smother the audible sounds of her passion in her arms.
Her skirt fell back and hung around his prick, hiding it underneath, so that they looked almost respectable from a distance, except for the extreme suggestiveness of his movement.
He grasped her hips through her dress, unable to see her flesh or his under the concealing folds of the dress, the concealment making the union more sexy in some strange way. There was nothing to see except a normally clothed girl bending forward over a seat. There was just that gorgeous hidden sensation down there below her buttocks, between her legs where his penis was secretly gouging her.
Pushing back against him to avoid being pushed forward over the seat, Betty could feel the smooth cloth of his trousers against her nude thighs. It seemed deliciously obscene to her that he should be clothed, all except for that all-important rod of white flesh which jutted stiffly from the slit his flies made in the garment. She had no contact with him except the hands squeezing hard into her hips, the thighs and the lower portions of her buttocks against that strange cloth and between the two, that solid bounding prick surging into her body, splitting her lips away from each other, forcing between and soaring up inside. She tried to control her excited gasping. Apart from the possibility of anyone coming, she knew the gang were within a short distance and could probably hear every lovemaking noise which was torn from either of them.
Des quickened his strokes, flexing his loins, tightening them inside, concentrating his mind on Betty and her helplessness before him, on the delightful thought of his possessing her, while his senses were devoured in that prick-point between her legs.
The darkness surrounded them, showing vague shapes, the dim form of the leaves with an occasional silver reflection from the pool, and above a lighter, starlit darkness.
Des hurried, tensing, concentrating. God, it was wonderful! She had a wonderful cunt! It held him in nicely and contracted with a gentle squeeze around his prick as he shoved roughly and regularly into her. His penis was heavy with sensation.
He pulled her dress up and held it under his hands around her hips. That way he could look down on the dim, white circle of her bottom, could see it moving back at him, could watch his throbbing prick as it disappeared with strong jerks into the dim cleavage between her cheeks.
He gritted his teeth as he flicked his prick into her and tightened his hands around her hips. Every so often she gasped loudly, as if with pain, but after each gasp she thrust her bottom back at him with renewed vigor.
His penis was heavy, so heavy, too heavy not to suddenly reach its peak and crash over into newfound lightness. He began to mouth vague words of delight. His penis was big, enormous, and he knew that it was going to reach the point, the coming, teeth-gritting point when it would crash over the line.
Down on the level of his loins he could feel the plump flesh of her bottom flattening against him. She was very excited and gasping into her arm.
Listening, trying not to be distracted from their task of watching for strollers, the gang heard an account of the act which was just as descriptive as if they could see through the darkness.
The gasps and rushings of breath which had become audible enabled them to follow the intercourse stroke for stroke until, to their straining ears, Desmond's gasps streamed into a sharp choking cough and they heard Betty give a stifled scream as if from pain.
After a few minutes the nostalgic lilt of "Keep the Home Fires Burning" floated through the dark stillness.
Betty remained in the position in which Des had left her, leaning against the seat back with her dress up around her waist. She had not reached a climax and it had left her excited and frustrated, waiting impatiently, but with considerable embarrassment for the next.
She heard him grope through the darkness and come towards the seat.
"Here round the back," she whispered.
He came around the back of the seat and she didn't even look at him, so acute was her embarrassment for he didn't speak or try to kiss her. He stood behind her and she heard him fumbling with his trousers.
He, in his turn, was fascinated by the fleshy fullness of the bare bottom which trembled and waited in front of him. He was a little afraid of offending this unknown and attractive girl and he didn't kiss her or maul her about. He just stared at her dim, white contours for a few seconds with his heart beating rapidly and his penis shooting up to its fullest extent and then he took it out, took a deep breath and moved in towards her. He, too, was afraid someone would come.
Without looking at the youth, not knowing him or his face, Betty suddenly felt his anonymous hands gripping her waist and the hot length of his strange organ rubbing against her thighs too low down.
She felt one of his hands leave her waist and brush against the insides of her thighs, the abrupt roundings of her lower buttocks, as he searched for the spot. She felt the blunt end of flesh against her anus and then he had moved it down again and drove into her gently as if he were half afraid of what he was doing.
His sigh was one of utter relief as if he'd been waiting all his life for this moment.
It took a second or two for the new stimulant to work and then Betty began to recapture her sharp, needling progress towards climax. But then, when she began to sweat on her upper lip and the desire was like a urinating strain in her vagina, he didn't give her enough, was still gently afraid.
"Harder, harder," Betty begged. "Push in!"
She felt him enter farther, his grip tighten on her waist. He couldn't seem to believe that she wanted him to shock her with his fury, to fuck her as if he meant to kill her. She groaned with the coming explosion. She was suddenly furious at him, through her passion.
"Oh, what's the matter with you!" she spat. "Fuck me! Fuck me like hell!'
Her words seemed to break his reserve and she felt a sudden fierce inrush of thick flesh which speared up against her cervix and robbed her of breath. She gasped and gasped again, hanging onto the back of the seat as if she were on a crazy switchback.
He drew back and rushed savagely in again and she was suddenly on the point and she rammed her behind back against his trousered loins and rotated it in abandon on his prick, uttering cries of mingled pain and ecstasy as his organ chafed her passage and rammed to its end.
She felt the growing explosion. Ready, ready, coming! She rammed her behind back at him and held it there with all her force as the walls of her channel seemed to break, to split and reform, split and reform in a wild, killing pattern of fluid ecstasy.
She half-collapsed over the seat back and his body followed her quickly forward, his hips jerking uncontrollably, afraid of losing their position.
Betty now found herself in a state of semi-exhaustion with her head and torso flopped forward over the seat, her hips crushed against the back, feet almost off the ground, on tiptoe.
Every forward ramming of his hips crushed her hard against the wooden rest and his prick seemed to nose into her as if it would push through her to the seat.
The position was uncomfortable, but it added to the whole savage unreality of the situation, and in her half-swooning state of fulfillment the aches and pains seemed hardly to belong to her at all.
Savagely he thrust into her. Precision had given way to a blind, uneven pattern of searching for fresh, excruciating angles of entry, of long strokes, short strokes, quick strokes, slow strokes. Now he pulled her back at him and held his penis hard in to its extremity for some seconds, giving out a whine of breath, now he rushed in and out rapidly with little accompanying grunts.
She felt his snuffling in to her, gasping with passion, shuffling in with his feet and his hips as if he, now, couldn't get it in far enough. He seemed to want to stretch her cunt, to protrude it farther towards him so that his penis would descend deeper into its ever more stimulating depths.
He pushed her forward slightly and she felt herself losing balance. Her head and top half from the waist fell forward over the seat and she put down her hands to hold herself up, placing them on the seat base. She felt herself falling farther and squealed a warning and then his hands moved onto the tops of her thighs and pushed them against the back of the seat, using them as a lever to keep her in her stretched, upended, uncomfortable position.
Thus her cunt was pushed out to him, her hips resting on the top bar of the seat, her buttocks pushing upwards in hillocks.
He pulled her thighs wide, still holding them hard against the seat to prevent her sliding over completely. She felt stretched and open as if she were all vagina. It had never been so stretched and exposed.
Then he dug deeply into her again and it seemed to penetrate farther than ever before and made her cry out in spite of her efforts to be silent.
It didn't seem to matter to him that she cried out. He dug in again and again until she felt she couldn't stand it and the blood was running to her head, and the seat back was cutting in a ridge across her hips. And then she felt him quicken and slow and give one final lunge which sent fresh spasms of pain up into her belly, pain which was lost in his excruciating groan of fulfillment. He gave another lunge and another and it was only her knowledge that it was all but finished which stopped her from fighting against him.
Forgetting her when it was over, he let go of her thighs and she half fell, half slithered over onto the seat. He seemed to collapse against the seat back and leaned, panting, his head on his hands, his penis hanging, small, limp and dripping from his trousers.
After a few moments she straightened her dress and climbed up off the seat. He had hurt her. Her vagina was slightly sore and there were pains in her belly. She felt she couldn't face anymore. She took a few deep breaths and then she heard the youth rustling about and stared round to where he was buttoning himself up in the darkness.
He didn't say a word to her, nor she to him and in a second the familiar tune was whistling up from behind the seat and he had brushed past her and his shadow had receded from view.
Betty took out a handkerchief and wiped the sperm which was running down her legs. Four more to go. She suddenly felt less noble about Linda but it became almost a question of fear overcoming her desire to creep off into the sheltering darkness. They would find her and be the more brutal for her attempt to escape their aroused lust.
She stood perfectly still, listening, and she heard the footsteps approach and saw him loom up, anonymous, pull her at him and devour her mouth.
This one pushed her down on the seat and she relaxed, sinking onto it, relieving the ache of her back.
He wanted more than the quick act. He'd seen her breasts as she and Des left the dance hall and now he slipped his hand into the slit of her dress left by the still open zipper and moved it under the disarranged brassiere. He was breathing fast. The very contact of his hand with that large springy, hard-crowned mound of flesh excited him so that she heard his hips shuffling on the seat beside her. He kissed her and wormed his tongue into her mouth, biting her lips.
Through her dress she felt the seat, hard and cold against her hot flesh. She squeezed her thighs together, trying to contain and ease the pain in her vagina.
Soon his hand wandered away from her breasts, down to her knee and began a slow ascent up her thigh, tickling the glossy flesh of the inside until it reached the point where her pubic hair infiltrated in a downy vanguard from the surrounding exterior of her vagina.
She felt nothing; no emotion, no sensation. He was like so much putty. She let his hands go where they wanted to, let him do what he wanted and soon he'd pushed her down on the seat, opened her legs and wriggled between them on the narrow seat. There was a shock of pain as he entered her to the hilt. Her vagina had grown dry and he chafed her as he rubbed in and in.
He put his hands under her buttocks, lifting her hips up towards his prick. His hands were warm against her flesh where the cold seat had been and she let her head fall back under the arm rail of the seat.
She heard and experienced everything very clearly, as if she were a detached person, watching except for the pain.
His breathing seemed ridiculous, incongruous in the still night. His passion, compared with her lack of feeling, was grotesque.
She could feel his prick very clearly, very separately in the dryness of her channel. His hands clamped her buttocks in sharp squeezing motions on the in-thrust and his knees scraped against the seat as he pushed into her.
For a time she watched his face above her he couldn't reach her lips as her face was cut off by the arm rail twisted with passion, continually changing in expression as he groaned and moaned quietly. Every so often he hurt her with a sharp searing pain as he rammed right up into her and she winced and closed her eyes. Eventually she closed them all the time.
She heard the warning whistle, but he went on screwing her, gasping away.
"They oh they whistled ah!" she warned him between gasps of pain.
"Fuck them!" he gritted between his teeth.
She closed her eyes again. If he didn't care, she couldn't care less. It was too unreal and there were three more to come.
Through his breathing she heard the footsteps and, opening her eyes, stared out of the arbor to where the lighter darkness of the sky threw a dim light on the path.
She saw the couple reach the arbor. The youth on her either didn't see or didn't care. He was breathing quickly and furiously, reaching his climax.
The two shadows stopped, stared into the arbor and waited, listening.
She could see them dimly and she watched them quite dispassionately. They were obviously a courting couple. She saw them bend, trying to peer at the seat from which they could hear the strange noises issuing.
She actually heard the man whisper something to the girl. She heard them because she could see them and could distinguish different sounds beyond his breathing. The girl giggled that was clear too. They had realized what was happening.
Undulating on her, the youth took no notice. His prick seemed one solid weight that never left her passage. She was not aware of comings and goings, only of the continuous solidity of it. Her dress was up around her waist, her thighs on view. She knew that as their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, the couple peering in from outside would be able to make out the white of her thighs, the approximate shape of their molded bodies just as she could now dimly make out their faces.
They stood as if fascinated and then she heard the giggle again. They didn't seem embarrassed to be listening and trying to watch so near. Perhaps the scene impassioned them, simmering their latent lust.
His penis was no longer tearing at the skin of her passage. He must be near his climax. The preliminary seminal fluid would be moistening her before he shattered his lust into her body.
She gave a gasp of pain, still, every so often and when her screwed-up eyes opened again she would see the couple outside bending still lower trying to gain all they could from the act they could hardly see.
"Oh God! Oh God!" her ravisher uttered suddenly. She felt him stiffen against her, the weight of his hips and thighs crushing her pelvis and then a long, moaning rush of breath shot from him and she knew that his sperm had inundated her protesting vagina.
When she looked back beyond him as he collapsed on her, resting his head on the arm rail above her, the couple had begun to move on, giggling. She saw the man stoop to kiss the girl just before they moved from sight. She wondered if they would find a quiet spot to emulate what they had just heard and half seen.
After a few minutes, the youth got up and left her, forgetting to whistle in his empty exhaustion.
She lay still. She didn't know how long it was before the next shadow was with her, finding her just as the previous one had left her. Hands on her buttocks, lips trying to find hers under the arm rail, prick in her cunt, movement inwards, outwards, breathing, gasping on and on until it seemed to her there would never be an end. Each seemed less real than the previous one; each time she felt less, was aware only vaguely of the violent activity around her, in her, for which she was the cause, the source.
At last, somebody came out of her, leaving her, this time, hanging once more over the back of the seat with her naked buttocks, whitely protruding towards the bushes and the rock garden behind.
Her vagina was hot and aching; the pains still in her belly. She clung to the seat, un-moving until she felt a hand on her arm and a voice which she recognized as Desmond's saying:
"Come on Betty. What's the matter with you? The boys are very pleased."
She let him lead her away from the seat back and sat on the seat. After a while she put on the panties he held out to her. Then she sat still again, numbly.
Des looked at her. His well-being from his fulfillment and the money in his pocket dissipated very slightly at her obvious distress. He didn't see why she should feel that way.
"Come on," he said at last. "I'll buy you a coffee espresso. The park'll be closing down in a minute."
She allowed him to lead her away. The pain in her vagina made walking difficult.
CHAPTER 11
"Des, what would you say if I said I was going to have a baby?"
A silence followed Linda's words while Des slowly turned and looked at her. He had been looking away, ironically enough, at the children playing in their enclosed section of the park, the little tots, left there by their mothers. His mind had been concentrating on nothing except the half-conscious thought that it was really quite pleasant lazing here on the grass with Linda. And now that Betty had been to bed with him several times and he'd had a surfeit of her body, he'd actually come round to a way of thinking that Linda was more interesting to him, nicer. And he'd almost got her off horse. Surprising how he'd been able to do fairly easily what nobody else could have done. He'd wondered occasionally at her willingness to make love with him any time, any place. But it had never seriously entered his head to take precautions. He always assumed, vaguely, that she must know when it was all right. It was up to the women to be careful for their own sakes; they were the ones who suffered.
"What do you mean?"
"Des I think I'm pregnant."
He stared at her, eyes wide and startled.
"You're kidding!" There was fear and an attempt at dismissal in his voice.
"I'm three weeks overdue."
She said the words simply, unemotionally, not looking at him. The fear of having to tell him was overcome by her fear at having the knowledge alone. She had not even told Betty.
"Jeez!"
They both stared at the ground and suddenly Des said in a tone of bluster:
"What's it got to do with me? Why're you telling me?"
She looked at him. Annoyance was overtoned in her heart by a gripping sadness. She knew what he was going to say, what he meant.
"Because if I am, Des, then it's you. There hasn't been anyone else for a long time."
He looked at her searchingly, almost sneeringly, but the sneer slowly dissolved. He knew she was right. A number of thoughts chased one another rapidly through his head: could she pin it on him? could he deny it successfully?
But he would be dragged into it anyway; what would happen if she had the kid impossible; could they get rid of it? Here his mind stopped. Maybe they could get rid of it. Sam had told him about certain people he knew. There was a certain circle where abortions were fairly frequent almost routine, you might say. He could ask Sam. But maybe it wasn't so anyway. No point in rushing...
"Ever happened before...? "
"Never, Des."
"That you've been so long over I mean."
"Oh. No, I'm usually regular no more than a couple of days at the most."
He bit his lip. He couldn't really believe she was pregnant, though.
"P'raps we'd better wait a bit just to be sure."
"Well if I am, I am," she said. "So whether we wait or not doesn't make much difference 'cos that's all we can do."
"You don't want to have a kid do you?"
She looked at him in annoyance.
"Of course," she said, "I love kids. I want to have dozens all of them illegitimate, all of them while I'm still at school."
"Keep your 'air on. I'm just making sure of your attitude."
She stared at him as if he was mad.
" 'Cos maybe we can get rid of it."
"How? Her eyes lit up with hope and then clouded over with thoughts of the accidents she'd heard of which happened when women did things to themselves.
"Sam knows people. You could get it done properly no trouble. Only thing is the money."
They relapsed into silence. It was early October but the sun was shining warmly and the sky was blue above the moulting trees. Saturday no school was a pleasant day for Linda, and Des had no work with the five-day week. It should have been relaxing and wonderful.
"How much does it cost?" she said at last. "Don't know. I'll have to ask Sam all about it"
Linda told Betty about it some days later. She'd told her about it during break at school and it had put Betty off the lessons for the morning. During the afternoon, too, she kept comparing the unreality of that existence with this. The pot, horse, fucking like a prostitute with strange men, careering round town in cars, drinking, sometimes staying away the night and making excuses, and on the other side the mistress talking there, the airy classroom, the math and history, the order, the girls who were virgins wondering what it was like, the blue sky and the playing fields through the big windows.
She found herself wishing for her youth as if she were some old woman who, after a life given to pleasure, regrets what she considers to have been her mistakes, wishes she'd gone under the wing of the Church so much earlier.
Linda had no idea of what Betty had done for her. It would have ruined everything if she knew why Des had picked up with her again, that he'd been making love to Betty at odd times ever since. Betty had held on to her shameful secret, fighting down her guilty feelings every time she looked at Linda, automatically drawing a slight wedge of aloofness between them in the process. Not aloofness, really but their relationship had lost the everyday, all-telling closeness it had had. But now this.
She hardly heard anything that was said until the final bell sounded and she rushed Linda out of the school and began to question her mercilessly.
"Des is borrowing the twenty pounds from Sam," Linda said in answer. "Yes he's a doctor. That's why it costs so much. He'd be struck off if anyone found out not that it is really expensive; some of them charge much more but this one's a friend of Sam's."
But Betty was horror-struck. Abortion! God she'd be careful in the future.
"Where is it going to happen?"
"At Sam's place on Saturday."
"But aren't you scared Lindy?"
"Yes." Linda smiled to keep back the tears. If she allowed herself to think about it she was very scared.
Betty sensed the hidden tears and took her friend's hand.
"I'd like to be there if you'll let me. I couldn't bear to think of you not having another woman with you."
"I was hoping you'd come. Des will be there and Sam, but it wouldn't be the same without you, Betty."
Linda and Des went into the bedroom with the young doctor. Sam and Betty stayed in the other room. Sam was quietly high.
"All right if I come in?" Des asked.
"Certainly," the doctor said. "Any time you want to go, though, do it quietly."
He smiled at Linda. He was blonde and had a trace of freckles. She wondered in determination to take her mind off the ordeal why he was willing to risk everything for the sake of twenty pounds. Perhaps he really felt sorry for women who got themselves this way.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "In no time at all you'll be rid of all this worrying."
She smiled back at him. She trusted him.
He began to open his bag and his voice became formal.
"Right, just take off your clothes and lie back on the bed, will you?"
Linda closed her eyes as she lay back. She heard his voice, obeyed his orders..."Open your legs, will you? ... A little more ... Don't move now ... Does that hurt? ... Right, it's only a cold liquid." She felt his fingers professionally fingering her vagina, felt instruments traveling up into her, scraping, an occasional prick, surprisingly little sensation. Everything seemed to go on in another world beyond her closed eyes. She was aware of things only piecemeal, not as a concocted whole. Something cold was pressed against her vagina, she started and lay still, cold liquid rushed up into her, another start and then relaxation.
After a while in which she no longer even vaguely followed what was going on she heard his voice, the doctor's, saying:
"Okay young lady you'll do."
She sat up suddenly aware of her nakedness and pulled a coverlet around herself.
"Is it done? Am I all right?"
"Well it's done. You should start bleeding any time."
She smiled happily and looked at Des who was standing at the foot of the bed grinning.
"Why, there was nothing to it," she said, with a laugh of nervous relief.
"All right if you get it early," the doctor said. He put his instruments back into his case and looked at Des.
"Well, it should be all right now," he said. "If there's any complications you'd better get Sam to get in touch with me. But there won't be any complication."
After he'd left they rejoined Sam and Betty. Betty'd had some pot too. She was unable to stand the suspense.
"All our troubles are over," Linda announced. She had seldom felt so happy with relief.
"Oh thank God, Lindy," Betty breathed. She slumped back onto the floor. "I must have been more scared than you. Was it all right? What happened?"
"I hardly felt a thing but you'd better get Des to tell you about it. I kept my eyes shut all the time."
Des slapped Sam on the back. His relief was as great as Linda's. No fuss, no scandal.
"Let's have a bit of pot, Sam," he said with a grin. "And no horse for Linda,"
It was several hours later that the pains started somewhere in Linda's womb. At first she thought they were menstrual pains, but they went on and on and there was no blood and, after all, she'd never had pains before.
They had all got fairly high and were coming out of it a bit. She began to pale and eventually stood up.
"I feel sick," she said. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Everyone watched her leave in silence; nobody said anything for a few minutes after the door closed behind her.
"She looked pretty sick." Sam broke the silence reluctantly.
Betty got to her feet
"I'll go and see," she said.
Alone in the bathroom, Linda was doubled up against the washbasin. She clung to Betty as Betty caught hold of her. Her face was contorted with pain.
"What's the matter, Lindy?" Betty cried in alarm. Nobody had suspected this turn of events.
"Oh God, oh God! It's my stomach, Betty lower down. Ooooh!" Linda could hardly speak; she just hung, white and crumpled, to Betty.
"Maybe it pains because you're going to bleed," Betty said desperately anything to avoid alarm, to keep Linda calm and give her courage. And perhaps that's what it was.
Linda simply groaned. Her grip tightened on Betty's shoulders.
"Sam Des!" Betty called at the top of her voice and they both came running in as if they'd been waiting for the signal.
Des took one look at Linda, yellow-in-the-face, limp.
"I'm going to get that doctor!" he said.
"P'raps it's just pains, ordinary pains," Sam said.
"Just as well to know," Des snapped. "What's his number?"
Sam gave him the number and Des stayed only to tell Linda that the doctor would be back in no time before rushing off.
"Help me get her on the bed, Sam. She's not going to be sick," Betty said.
Linda was still lying on the bed in a crumpled heap which occasionally twitched when Des got back to the flat.
Sam saw the look on his face.
"All right?" he asked.
"No, he's not in. They don't know when he'll be in. Some emergency case."
Sam stroked his chin. Linda looked in a bad way. He didn't want any trouble in his flat.
"How do you feel, Lindy."
"It's killing me, Des..." Her voice sounded weak, hopeless. "Well fuck that I'm going to get another doctor."
Faced with what looked like a serious situation, Des was coming out with colors flying. He didn't want serious trouble either.
"Yeah, but another doctor'll probably know something's up."
"So what?" Des turned on Sam. "We don't have to tell him more than that she's got stomach pains. Let him do the rest."
"For Chris' sake don't say anything about the doc."
"I wasn't born yesterday!"
Des left the house at a run. When he got to the telephone booth he searched at random for a nearby doctor.
They stared at the doctor aghast. He was middle-aged with strong, unyielding eyes. And his manner was that he was in charge and wasn't taking nonsense from anyone and he'd just said that Linda had to go to the hospital straightaway. He'd also asked them who'd been fooling about with her, had got quietly furious at their bluster, told them that this sort of thing could be recognized immediately and finally accepted with a look of scornful doubt Desmond's declaration that he'd used a knitting needle.
"But if she goes to the hospital ... will she have to ... how long will it take?"
The doctor fixed Desmond with a disapproving eye. When he spoke it was in the frigid tones of a puritan talking to a degenerate seducer.
"Perhaps there'll be nothing we can do," he said clearly and concisely. "Perhaps due to this ill-intended tomfoolery it will be too late. But perhaps she'll stay in the hospital until the baby is born."
"You mean she won't be able to come out later tonight or tomorrow?"
"Out of the question. You realize that this messing about can have fatal results?"
Betty stood, weak and white-faced. Sam watched sullenly while Des questioned the doctor and Linda lay apparently indifferent to everything on the bed.
"Will somebody go immediately and telephone for an ambulance?" the doctor snapped. "There's no time to lose."
The next hour was a nightmare for the four of them except that Linda was hardly conscious. The ambulance, men in white smocks coming in, stretcher, looks, words, questions, answers.
When all was over they sank into chairs and Sam went over and turned on the record player as if he expected some relief from it.
Betty sat and stared blankly at the revolving disc from which the quiet storm of music rose. She could hardly believe it all. Now the cat was really out of the bag. Everyone would know Linda's parents, her parents, everyone at school, all the neighbors. They would all know she was Linda's close friend and suspect her of carrying on in the same way perhaps other things would be found out the pot and horse, her own promiscuity. But why should it? Anyway, poor Linda. She was the one who was in it to the neck. Compared with her everyone else had nothing to worry about.
If only these things could be foreseen. Always the thought: that couldn't happen to me. She thought with a sudden thrill of fear of her own period, due in about a week. Suppose...
She brought herself back to the room with a jerk.
"I can't understand how it happened?" Des was saying. "That doctor looked as if he knew just what he was doing and he seemed sure everything would be all right."
"Things go wrong," Sam muttered. "You can't be absolutely sure with those things unless you have it done in the right place."
A silence settled on them again while a trumpet soared out from the record player.
Betty looked at Des and wondered if it was his fault or theirs. It was so difficult to apportion blame. It began with curiosity and it needn't have ended in this.
Poor Linda. What sort of pain was she going through now? They would get in touch with her parents. Perhaps she should see them first. But she shrank from the thought. Perhaps she could pretend she had nothing to do with it. Perhaps they wouldn't ask any questions about her.
My God! she thought. Next time I go to bed with a man I'm going to be married to him or, at least we're going to be careful.
She got up in the silence.
"I'll be going."
"Don't go yet, Betty. Let's go and have a cup of coffee. Christ, this has knocked me back."
"All right Des. Let's go."
CHAPTER 12
Linda recovered in the hospital. She was kept in a ward, with her thoughts and a few magazines to read. It was thought advisable to keep her there for observation.
Her mother and stepfather came to see her and although she took a disapproving attitude, her mother seemed to find a deep, lost feeling for her daughter. She came to see her often, alone, and brought her things. About the child she said little except that when it was born they must take a paternity order against the father unless he was prepared to marry her.
Betty also came to see her often. She told her that Des would come and Sam, but they were afraid of meeting her people during visiting hours.
Linda felt more at home with Betty after all Betty knew all about everything. But she found a sudden sympathy with her mother that she'd never have believed possible. If only we could have been happy with each other before, she would think as she lay in her bed, bored and apprehensive about the future. Why did it have to take a crisis to make her realize I existed?
The months passed and Linda began to accept the fact that she was going to have a baby, and started thinking about what she would do. She didn't think Des would marry her. Somehow all this business had put him into a normal sort of perspective. She'd marry him if he wanted her. But she didn't expect it.
And in that case she didn't know quite what she'd do. She could have the baby adopted, she supposed. But something in her didn't like that idea. She wouldn't be able to give up the only thing on which she could pour her love unrestrainedly.
Perhaps her mother would let her keep it at the house and look after it. But the thought of her stepfather, whom she'd been able to avoid, dampened that idea. Perhaps she could get a job. She had heard of girls working in factories and earning considerable sums of money per week. Perhaps she'd be able to get a small flat or a room. But the difficulties seemed the more enormous, the more she thought of them, and staying at home if her mother would permit it as seemed likely now was the most feasible solution.
Every so often a doctor would pass through and make an examination. He was always stern, but not unkind and he never mentioned how she was in her hearing. It sometimes seemed strange to her that they kept her in the hospital all the time, but nobody said much to her except that she noticed the nurse seemed to watch her a lot and asked her occasionally how she felt.
She grew big and knew the time was not far off. And one day the pains started so that some hours later she was groaning with pain. She was given an injection which eased the pain somewhat, but the pains seemed to go on and on until it seemed that day had come again and night followed and they gave her more injections and the pain was always there.
Much later, with the horror in her womb which made her only half-conscious, she was taken from the ward and wheeled through corridors. Her last memory was of a strange place with men in white, wearing white masks and the pain, always the pain...
The surgeon turned his eyes to the Sister and she gazed at the still little rubber bag. He shook his head. But they spent some time more in the theater.
When the Sister went out to tell Linda's mother that her daughter was dead, she felt almost as much disturbed to tell her that the child was living. What sort of chance, she wondered, would he have?
THE END
Postscript
If the world seems neurotically hell-bent on a self destructive course and Orwell's 1984 seems to be coming steadily closer, it is because global movements reflect the neuroses in human personality. The macrocosm is the microcosm writ large.
On the conscious level few people recognize their self-destructiveness for what it is. They call it freedom. And, certainly, if by that they mean their right to destroy themselves, it is. But, generally speaking, what they mean is freedom for a given moment and then the shackles of remorse and pitiful consequences.
Youth is no more prone to this than age, but in manifestation and lack of rationale it is more obvious. For this reason, when I wrote The Wantons in Paris some ten years ago, it was youth I chose to represent the problem. There was one of the periodic rebellions going on: Teddy Boys in London, Tricheurs in Paris, others elsewhere. They were out for kicks and against accepted values without as usual anything better to offer. I am the first person to be out for kicks but not thoughtless ones.
Linda, the "heroine," was based on the character and story of a girl I knew in those days. She came from a deprived background and compulsively added to her sense of insecurity, her self-destruction, with every action. She never even attempted to use her mind to repel threatening disaster. She knew all about contraception, for instance, but she took continual chances. For some reason she was astonished when she became pregnant; horrified at the idea of abortion. But abortion she had by a medical student in an appallingly unhygienic back room. It was a partial failure and she went to the hospital. Today she is a frustrated woman of 35 unable to have the children which would give meaning to her life. This is not just a case for reforming abortion laws. Hers is a typical example of the tragedy attendant on the human being's readiness to allow those doors of perception to slam shut at all the crucial points. Linda is little different in essence from the world's generals, politicians, what-have-we whose destructive urges are pushing the world to explosion.
The Wantons is a plea for the individual to attempt to neutralize the self-destructive impulse he harbors. It is a plea for greater human consciousness.