Joseph Ridgely sat behind his desk in the president's office of Ridgely Pharmaceuticals, Inc. livid with rage, trembling with frustration. It wasn't often that any of his employees defied his wishes, and when Margaret Fox was the defiant one, it was a sign that he was slipping. He would get even with Margaret. More of her tears and her pleadings and her sexual favors would not deter him from his revenge, but it would come later. Right now he still had the problem to solve, with or without her help, and by God, he meant to solve it.
A sharp little knock came at his door, and he snapped, "Come in!" He expected that it would be his son, come to call on him again with another wheedling plea for the loosening of the company purse strings. The frown between his shaggy gray eyebrows deepened, however, when he saw it was Gloria, the dark-haired and diminutive receptionist who'd been hired the month before.
She was a saucy little bitch, and the way she was impishly smiling at him was anything but businesslike. To Ridgely's knowledge, she'd never been in his plush office before, but instead of gawking about at it, her whole attention was kept focused on him. He had no time for her at all, but he couldn't help admiring the view before she stated her business and brusquely ordered her out. She was a little thing, usually smiling in a provocative way, with a cunning miniature figure, always intelligently clad for a girl in her exposed position at the lobby switchboard. Her skirts came right up to her ass and her bodices were either low or tight or both. When she did wear a brassiere, it was the kind that made her tits point sharply out, though her tits did pretty well without any assistance from Maidenform. She wore flat shoes as a rule, taking full advantage of her little-girl height, which in turn perversely accentuated her big-girl figure. Ridgely had pegged her from the start as a smart little cookie, obviously well aware of her sex appeal and ready to use it as best she could on the many expense-account-operating salesmen who called on the company through her desk in the lobby. He was pretty sure Chuck Davidson was in there pitching with her, just as his sales manager did with any new bird in the Ridgely Pharmaceutical nest. A few years ago he would have gone after her himself. At a time like this, in a minor crisis, he'd have brushed aside any objections made by her and laid the pretty receptionist, and in the aftermath, he'd have come up with a solution to his problem. That she was married would have made little difference to him; he would have made the grade with her anyway. Now, the fact that he felt only a scant tingle of desire for the girl as she minced toward him was another sign that he was getting old.
He gruffly asked her what she wanted, and she ignored his question, as with pert and pretty impudence she came around his desk and flicked down the open lever on his intercom.
"How the hell long has that been on!" Ridgely yelled, feeling his blood pressure soaring anew.
"Since lunch," she replied, still smiling, and added insult to injury by perching her pert little ass on the edge of his big walnut desk. "You never use it, so I thought I might as well. I had it turned low so nobody else could listen in, so don't worry about that. It was all pretty dull until . . . "
"Get out of here. You're fired. My son will mail you your termination check. Bullshit! I'll have you arrested for industrial espionage before I pay you for listening in on me!"
She plucked at the hem of her blue skirt, showing another inch of her crossed legs, and completely ignored the towering anger of the big man in the big, wingback chair. "Like I said, it was all pretty dull until you and Margaret had that argument. I mean, who cares about selling vitamins and getting government loans and hiring engineers. I guess I could care about that sort of thing if I knew more about it. I don't. Not yet. But I learn fast . . . "
Ridgely was astounded. Big, grown men had quailed before his wrath and mature women had been reduced to blubbering wrecks, as Margaret Fox had been just minutes before. Yet here was this little girl of no more than twenty-two years and a hundred pounds, prattling on as if he was no more terrifying than a barking dog, and further having the audacity to nudge his knee with hers as she talked! It so confused him that he could only sit there and listen.
". . . really such a thing as industrial espionage? I guess there could be. After all, there's a lot of money in industry for smart people without any scruples. That's what my husband says, and I think he's awfully smart. I'm not smart at all, but I think I'd known enough to see that my intercom was turned off before I tried to talk my secretary into doing something some people would think was immoral." Smiling still, Gloria scratched at a little itch located high on her hip, further astounding Joe Ridgely for it appeared she wasn't wearing any panties. "But then my morals aren't the same as Margaret's. That's why it didn't bother me to listen in on you this afternoon. And you know something? Like I said, I'm always trying to learn something new, and if I had the chance to learn like Miss Fox had today, I'd sure jump at it. I mean about hiring people. Engineers. I'd sure like to learn about that."
Joe Ridgely smiled and leaned back in his chair, hands crossed behind his neck, arthritic right knee being warmed by the contact with that nubile leg. He looked her over again, from that cute, dirty little grin to her dimpled knees and back, very deliberately, and he said, "Gloria, I never had too much formal education myself, and I don't hold much stock in college degrees. But I've learned a lot through the years and I do appreciate a youngster like yourself who wants to learn and better herself by doing it. You just might have what it takes to go someplace in my company, if you're the girl you look like you are."
"Thank you, sir," Gloria said, and further warmed him with her knee. "I do want to help the company . . . and myself . . . "
"Right. Right. I've got a feeling you could help the company right now by helping me hire this engineer character at my price, not his. For a girl like you, it wouldn't be much of a challenge at all . . . I think. But I don't know. Could be that you'd get carried away during your sales pitch to this fine young man and wind up getting sold a bill of goods yourself."
Her eyelashes fluttered and she brushed her hair back with the back of her hand, looking like a giddy high school girl, and making Ridgely's grin broaden. She seemed to melt from the desk to his lap, and slinking an arm about his neck, said, "I just might at that. Fine young men and successful businessmen like you always make me feel so warm and cuddly that poor little me can't even think straight around them."
His hands were big and gnarled, and her flesh felt inordinately smooth and firm under them as he said, "Yeah, you might be able to swing it. You might be able to help me in a lot of ways, if you can keep your head in a warm situation. And when I get help, I pay for it. How would you like to trade places with Beverly Willits for instance? How would you like to be Chuck Davidson's secretary?"
She pursed her full, pretty lips and ran her fingers through his salt and pepper hair, saying, "Or yours?"
"Out of the question right now." She didn't stop him when he felt her breast-no bra that day-and she snuggled closer, looking like his hand was doing nice things to her. "Maybe someday, if you're good, but she's an officer in the corporation and I still need her for now. But that's the job you're after, eh?"
"Not really." She played with his ear as if it fascinated her. "I like it where I am. There's plenty of action out there in the lobby." She blew in his ear and squirmed on his lap.
"Not to mention the master intercom." Ridgely ran the pads of his fingers up her leg, and sought to separate truth from fiction in her small, sighing reaction. "By the way, who's running the switchboard? I'm expecting a call from Davidson."
"Stanley Moss," she said, her voice getting whispery at his ear, her fingers spidery about his, neck.
Ridgely chuckled. "Good old Stanley. From comptroller to janitor, he'll do it all if you ask him right." He said it while kneading the small of her back, exploring for her most erogenous zones. From the way she was fidgeting on his lap, his explorations were all meeting with success.
Gloria fitted her breast into the hollow of his shoulder. Her nipples were up hard and there was unmistakable desire in her eyes and in her voice. But her words belied her appearance. "I can get this Harold Arnold to work for you, Mr. Ridgely-on your terms. It'll cost you, but in the long run it'll save you money. It'll cost you five hundred dollars-cash-and I guarantee results."
"Five hun . . . ! Ridiculous. Shit, I d take on the engineering duties myself for that! Or hire five professional call girls to get him to work here."
She shook her head, and slipping her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, said, "No you wouldn't. You need his education plus the prestige of his degree from Notre Dame. I've read your correspondence before I ran it through the stamp machine, and I know. And all the whores in Los Angeles couldn't convince him to go to work for you like I could. Five hundred dollars is cheap; it's less than you're spending on his expenses and transportation out here." Her finger teased its way in between his shirt button and his belt buckle.
Ridgely's old hand returned to her young leg, just above the knee, and as he progressively squeezed his way up that nicely tapered limb, he considered her proposition. He was still studying her reactions too, and they seemed sincere. She looked like she was getting hot. Appearances were important in a situation like she wanted to get into. If she was to seduce young Arnold into coming to work there at substandard wages, she'd have to come across to him as being entirely sincere, not like either a whore or a nympho. She'd have to get him so aroused his judgment would depart. Ridgely had no doubt she could do that, for she was succeeding in pumping life into his old cock with her squirming and cooings and little kisses, but she wouldn't do for the job if she was the type who lost control of herself before she carried out her mission. His constantly working hand at last got under her skirt and on that ass that he'd so often glanced at. It was bare, as he'd suspected, and she was acting like it was an extremely sensitive little mound of flesh. He studied her more, enjoying himself more than he should, as he moved his thumb around her well-rounded hip and into the soft tangle of her pubic hair.
"Doesn't old man Ridgely pay you enough to keep you in panties, honey?" Ridgely asked with a grin.
Squirming on his rising cock, opening her legs for his thumb, she made a pretty mouth and went along with his game. "I'd work for nothing for Mr. Ridgely. He turns me on, and he's doing such good work and has such great plans for the company. If he was thirty years younger-say, your age, Harold-I just couldn't resist him. Somehow-I don't know-I feel the same way about you."
"Your pussy does. It's all wet, Gloria. Does it get that way for everybody?"
"It's been that way ever since you walked in the door, Harold. I just can't help it. Gosh," she murmured, thrusting her clit, all creamy wet and warm, against the ball of his thumb, "I suppose I'd do just about anything for you. I don't suppose I could help myself."
Ridgely's cock was by then as hard as it had been in a year. He wanted her badly, for himself as well as for the furtherance of his company. Young and lithe and apparently utterly wanton in her ambitions, she made Margaret Fox look like a tired old bag. Maybe Margaret was just that, after all these years as his secretary and mistress. Maybe Gloria Slade was of a new generation of corporation sex tool and capable of not only helping his little company along with its expansion but also rejuvenating him at the same time. She certainly seemed to be learning a lot faster than old Margaret had, but then again there remained the possibility that she was just a girl with hot pants who'd lose her head during the time it counted most. He slipped his thumb in her cunt-juicy and tight-and she moaned most convincingly.
"You'd do just about anything for me and the company, eh?"
"Just about," she said, nostrils flaring, moist breath warming the corner of his leering mouth.
"Would you prove that to me? Here? Now?"
She smirked again, wet the frost-pink lipstick on her open mouth. The gleaming whiteness of her very even teeth made him fleetingly ashamed of his own long, yellowing fangs before she kissed him, very warmly and deeply, very active with lips and tongue. Her arm about his neck tightened just to the point of starting to hurt him as she involved him quite thoroughly in her fresh young mouth. When the long kiss ended, she smiled and asked, "Why do you think I left my panties in my purse, Mr. Ridgely?"
"On my desk," he said, gruffly, catering to the tremendous lust she'd aroused in him, that lust that he used to know so often. Quickly now before it dwindled. "Face down, legs apart."
At last she was shocked. She stiffened in his arms and said hesitantly, "In the rear?"
"Right in your pretty little ass, Gloria," he said, nodding. "For one thing, I want to see how far you'll go for Ridgely Pharmaceuticals, and for another, that's what I like best. Before I'm done with you, you'll like it too. And with Harold Arnold due here pretty soon, you'll want to save this hot little pussy for him. Move, girl."
She squirmed again, differently now, and he enjoyed her anguish, her doubts. She said, "Okay. But it'll cost you more."
"No! Five hundred's too much already."
"It won't really cost you. But anything less than eight hundred a month you pay Harold Arnold gets tacked onto my salary. Deal?" she asked, getting off his lap, lifting the back of her skirt to tempt him.
Christ, it was the prettiest little ass he'd ever seen, the buns as firm and round as cantaloupes, glowing white between her tan lines. He placed his hands on them, finding that they fit perfectly. But only after he'd said, "That's a deal," did she let herself be pushed forward over his desk.
He rose to his feet and parted her buttocks widely, and she flinched but didn't whimper. The sight of her tightly pursed asshole, looking previously inviolate, inflamed him more. He wanted to ask and confirm that she was a virgin there, but with a hot, ambitious bitch like her you never could tell, and he didn't want to be disappointed by her answer. He wanted to get that sweet little asshole more ready than it was, but he was in a double hurry-first to fuck it, then to get her back at her desk in time to greet the kid when he arrived. When he let go of her buns, they bounced back into place and she sighed.
With one hand he worked at his pants and with the other he worked on her asshole. The latter was done by wetting his thumb in her cunt and rubbing the ball of it over and partly within that tight little, ring. It made her grip the other side of his desk more tightly. Yeah, this was a girl who would soon come to like being buggered, a lot sooner than Margaret Fox had. She was barely wet enough when he placed the big knob of his old cock against her soft young flesh.
"You ready, Gloria?"
She nodded and spread her legs further.
"Better relax," he told her.
She took a deep, sighing breath and went limp, but her buttocks twitched and jerked under his hands as he started to put it in.
She took it well enough at first, not moving or making a sound as he worked the bluntly tapered wedge of his glans into the tightness. She couldn't hold back a little whining gasp, though, when he popped the head of it in. It excited him even more, making him lose what restraint he had and push harder. She whimpered and her buttocks twitched, and he drew back and gave her more, grinning and panting as he did. She was feeling pain and he was enjoying this part of it, though the best was yet to come.
He'd fucked as many women's asses as he had their cunts, but only after long seductions, never as quickly as this. He would always remember this time and he knew she would too. He wanted to make sure of that.
Grabbing her by the hips, digging with his fingers, he forced his cock all the way into her butt. Gloria stifled a cry, and he began sawing it in and out, thinking back to all the others he'd had this way, some on this very desk. This was a special one, beautiful to look at from any angle, but especially from this one. Tight as hell, and as much, just the thing to keep him good and hard now, with his excitement still mounting. Slowly getting more lubricated as he worked it in and out, to make it last that much longer as the peak of it all approached. Whimpers and twitching that might be from discomfort now, but that would change to sounds and movements of perverse delight, if not this time then the time after or the time after that. He kneaded those parts of her hips that he knew would make things better for her, digging in thumbs and fingers, closing her ripe young buttocks over his moving shaft, making it better for himself too. She might not come this time, but he sure would. And in time, she'd be in there wheedling at him for this, his specialty, just as the young engineer would be sniffing around her for her cunt. A cunt, any man could service that, and in the doing, provide his woman with pleasure. But few men were bold enough and strong enough to fuck them in the ass and make them like it, and he was one of those few.
Yes, she was definitely feeling pleasure through the stretching, filling pain. The hot little bitch, she was sticking her ass up higher and slowly kicking her legs. Her little fists were spasmodically clutching empty air now instead of the edge of the desk, and those open-throated sounds she was making were unmistakably sounds of helpless pleasure. Seeing that transition in her was intoxicating, and Ridgely tried to prolong it by digging harder still with his fingers, purposely hurting her.
"I'm about ready to come. Want to rest a minute?" he asked, still sawing it in and out.
"No." The single syllable was plaintive. "Do it. Do it all the way."
"You better move that ass better than this for young Arnold," he told her, although she was doing damned well for a novice at his game.
"I will," she panted. "Guaranteed. Come in me now. I want you to."
"Things go as I want them to here," he said, but he began coming.
He had to, for with her last statement she'd set up a writhing in her hips that he couldn't resist. Her belly slapped the desk top in the same tempo his balls were slapping up under her cunt, and pain or no, she was able to tighten her sphincter on him now, when he needed it most. Exultantly, he shot his old sperm up that fine young ass. He had kept himself paced to long, deep strokes to make it last, but now he lost control and rammed her as hard as he could over and over, his feet braced flat on the floor, his hands keeping her from being shoved clear across his desk. For those few precious moments, he was entirely young and strong again, not a sixty-year-old captain of industry, but a twenty-year-old bootlegger, ready to take his pleasure by force instead of having to bargain for it. He strongly wanted to make those moments last as long as possible, but he pulled out while he was still hard, still oozing come, wanting her to think of him as being that way perpetually. She sighed and seemed to flatten out on his desk.
He slapped her smartly on the ass. "Up, girl. You got the job, now go do it. You can clean up in the executive John before you go back to work. But after me."
The phone rang, and he almost didn't answer it. But it might be Davidson with the all important news about the government loan. He answered it, and when the familiar crisply smooth tones of his sales manager came to his ear, he jerked his thumb in the direction of the John and Gloria, thoroughly sodomized, went weaving off in that direction.
She left the door ajar so she could hear what was being said. The experience hadn't been as bad as she'd thought, especially when she didn't think about it. Listening in on Joe Ridgely, Sr., as he spoke on the phone helped keep her mind off it while she gingerly washed herself.
"What do you mean, you don't know yet? Christ's sake, I was supposed to have their answer today . . . I know Stanley's accounting system was acceptable to them. Hell, I checked it over myself. . . What? . . . Well, you go back there tomorrow morning and tell them that it so happens I do have a competent technical man working for me. A graduate chemical engineer from Notre
Dame . . . Yes, he went on the pay roll today. Harold Arnold's his name. And take some of those fat-assed bureaucrats out to dinner tonight. That's what your expense money is for, not for you to shack up with some D.C. whore all night . . . I don't want any excuses, damn it, I want results! Shit, I should have gone back there myself. I would have, except this place would fall apart without me . . . "
Gloria had heard enough of that kind of verbal swagger since coming to work for Ridgely, and she was reasonably clean by then. She left the rest room and went to the company president to kiss his cheek before proceeding to the door, where she flipped up the back of her skirt for him in parting. He looked absolutely ludicrous in coat, shirt and tie, with his pants around his ankles and his withered old pecker hanging tiredly down.
Owlish, balding Stanley greeted her with a benign smile as he rose from her chair at the switchboard, polishing his thick glasses on his tie. She thanked him for taking her place and he said he was glad to, any time, and went toddling off like a circus penguin in the direction from which she'd just come. It was after four-thirty and most of the two dozen people who worked in the plant had left, so she stayed right there at the switchboard to put her panties back on.
Stanley Moss entered the ledger-cluttered cubicle that was his office on tiptoe. It was right next to Joe Ridgely, Sr.'s office, and in fact a portion of Stanley's office had been preempted to make room for Joe's executive rest room. Stanley locked his door and went directly to his small, littered desk. Pushing aside a file cabinet that was mounted on casters, he peered through the little lens in the wall. It gave him a fish-eye view of the president's office, and of the president himself talking angrily into the phone, his pants down around his ankles.
Stanley sadly shook his head and looked away. He unlocked the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and nodded his head at the sight of the tape recorder reels still revolving. That night in his apartment he would listen to what had been said in there and make notes which might be pertinent to his plan of action. He knew in advance much of what he would hear. In particular he knew what the sounds would be that had been recorded while he was on the switchboard. He had hoped that Gloria Slade would turn out to be a nice girl, untouched by avarice, unreachable by old Joe Ridgely. From the expression on her face when she'd returned from Joe's office, and from Joe's state of undress, it was obvious she wasn't nice. So few of them were nowadays that he shouldn't feel badly about it, but Stanley couldn't help but think back to the way girls had been twenty years before and feel sad. He should teach her a lesson, just as he was going to teach old Joe a lesson when he was good and ready. Maybe he would, if it wasn't too inconvenient and unsafe. But he knew for sure he was going to teach old Joe a lesson, one that he'd never get over.
II
The building that housed Ridgely Pharmaceuticals was smaller than Hal Arnold had expected it to be, but the smiling receptionist with the long black hair was worthy of any larger corporation. He felt disheveled in comparison to her late afternoon freshness. His suit was bagged at the knees from the long plane flight, his light brown hair needed combing, and he'd scuffed the shoeshine he'd personally administered before leaving South Bend. He'd borrowed an expensive suitcase for the trip, and he knew now that it made him look like even more of a bumpkin in the big city. She spoke to him before he could stammer an introduction.
"Don't tell me. You're Harold Arnold, come way out west to make your fortune at Ridgely. Hi. I'm Gloria Slade. I stayed late to welcome you and take you to the bear's cave. Don't let him intimidate you if he starts roaring. He's really a very sweet old guy, with way too many things on his mind. What do they call you, Harry?"
"Hal," he said, and he saw that she was even more petite than he'd thought when she got up and came around her desk, hand extended. It was a warm, soft little hand, a friendly little animal that liked to be petted. It-and perhaps she-represented the California hospitality he'd previously thought was just a media myth.
Later he would never remember the words they exchanged as she lingeringly led him down the hall. At her side, he even forgot about his appearance as she smiled up at him, chatting, reassuring. But he would never forget the depth, the happy warmth in her clear blue eyes. Far too soon, she left him in the presence of the president of the company.
Hal had had several employment interviews at other companies during his senior year at college and in fact had already decided he'd go to work for Du Pont. Working two or three years at that large but smoothly run chemical manufacturing company would give him valuable experience in corporate functions and would expose him to the right way of using his chemical engineering education. Their two year training program would give him professional polish, and working with their top quality equipment would be a pleasure. He could never hope to reach the top in a company of that size, but by using his experience with them, his fine education, and all his drive, he could someday be top dog at a small or medium-sized company such as this one. A few years at Du Pont would be an extension of his university education, and with the starting salary Du Pont was offering, those years would be far more comfortable than the ones he'd spent at Notre Dame. He hadn't yet told Du Pont's recruiting team that he would accept their offer, because then he would have felt too guilty about taking advantage of Ridgely's offer to fly him to the coast for this interview.
He'd never been west beyond Chicago before and he wanted to see the coast, that most highly publicized area of the country. He had vague hopes of finding employment there after his Du Pont apprenticeship, but not now, not unless Ridgely came up with a truly exorbitant offer. The company didn't look as if it could afford to start him at some fat sum like twelve hundred a month. The place looked shabby, with the exception of the president's office with its thick green carpet, its immense desk, its walls done in walnut and textured plaster. Still he listened courteously to Joe Ridgely's rambling account of the building of the company and answered the man's questions about himself as if he really wanted that job. He visualized himself starting such a company, staffing its offices with adorable little tomatoes like Gloria Slade. He came to attention when the talk turned to money.
"I know you're money hungry after working your way through college, and there's money to be made here. But later. Now I'm offering opportunity," Ridgely said. "I know you've gotten offers from some of the big boys already, and I know what you'd be doing if you went to work for one of them. Sitting at a desk with a slide rule all day, and going out and raising hell all night. Don't laugh. I know what I'm talking about, son. And after a couple of years there, you'll be so set in their ways you won't be able to work for anybody else. You come with me and it won't be so easy. I'll have you running your tail off every day, wearing fifteen different hats while you help me run this place and plan for its expansion. You'll have to improvise and learn to be shrewd with a dollar. A year working under me will be like getting yourself another degree in business administration. And I'll pay you very little for a start. It'll be enough to get you the things you didn't have in college-the car, the clothes, above all, the girlies-but not enough so you can go out dissipating in Hollywood every night. Days I want you here, working your tail off at my side, nights I want you home, planning for the day when I expand my peanut operation into the biggest vitamin manufacturing house west of Saint Louis. That won't be far from now, Hal. I've got a man in Washington right now, getting the money out of the Small Business Administration.
"In five years-maybe less, because the doctors tell me to slow down, but I won't listen to them-in five years I can see you sitting in this chair, Hal, running this company and reaping the rewards that go along with it." He spread his long old hands and raised his shaggy eyebrows, conveying a look of great, innocent helplessness. "I've got no one else to take my place. You'll meet my son, my heir apparent as they call it, but between you and me and the lamp-post, he's not the man to carry on this company after I'm gone. Frank talk, but that's the way I am. And frankly, I've got a feeling you could run it. I've got a feeling you'll go to work for me, starting out at next to nothing, working your way into this chair, just like you worked your way through school. Opportunity, that's what I'm offering. And this contract," he said, and with a shy old grin, handed Hal a printed page.
Hal's name had been placed in one blank and "24 mos." in another. Joseph Ridgely's signature was on the bottom, and only the salary blank and another line on the bottom had been left 'open. After all the years Hal had been in school, it felt good to have the paper in his hand. It was like another diploma. The big companies hadn't offered him a contract. He stared at it while Mr. Ridgely went on.
"You realize, of course, that you could fill in some ridiculous figure like fifteen hundred a month, sign your name, and I'd be obligated to pay you that for two years. I know you won't do that. What you'll do, if you're wise, is put that in your pocket and leave, go out and have yourself a good time in L.A.-I'll have my receptionist drive you to your hotel-and then sleep on it. In the morning bring that contract back to me, signed, with a reasonable figure filled in for your starting salary. Say, seven hundred a month. Now I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but.. . "
My God, it was absurd! Du Pont had offered him nine, and he wasn't about to struggle at subsistence pay after the years of menial jobs and dormitory living he'd known. Still he listened courteously, his thoughts drifting back to little Gloria. So she was taking him to his hotel. He had enough money to buy her a drink, and how very classy it would be to sit at the bar of the Hilton with a girl like that.
He stood up and shook hands with Ridgely at the right time, whereupon the tall, brusque company president took out a money clip and peeled off a fifty dollar bill. "Here. Have a good time tonight. If. . . no, I'll say when you come to work for me, you'll be lucky to get down to the Red Glove once a week for a beer. Now I'll have Gloria take you to meet my son. He wants to talk to you too."
Hal walked slowly down the hall with Gloria, basking in her warm little fragrance, the fifty crisply clenched in his fist. She was so small and dainty he could look right down the front of her dress when her big blue eyes weren't on him, and the swells of her breasts looked incredibly smooth and firm. He thought she caught him looking and he knew she saw him blushing, but she just smiled, as if proud of what she had and understanding of his appreciation for it all. She seemed in no hurry to deliver him to the boss' son. Working this late already, she just might accept a dinner offer from him.
Joseph Ridgely, Jr. looked every bit an ineffectual as Hal had expected. Soft and pleasantly out of shape, his voice totally lacking in authority, it was hard to believe he'd sprung from the loins of the dynamic founder of the company. Hal thought more about his chances with Gloria as he listened to him, glancing about the small, crowded, tidy office as he did. There were pictures of his handsome wife, pretty daughter, chubby son on his desk, plus piles of papers and forms, rolls of blue-prints, and two book cases crammed with some very good texts on chemistry, engineering, business practices, and pharmacology. After having seen these, Hal paid more attention to what was being said to him.
"I'm sure my father mentioned his plans for expansion. I have some plans of my own, a little more ambitious than his, perhaps too ambitious. Ridgely Pharmaceuticals doesn't really manufacture anything now. All we do is buy bulk vitamins and put them up into tablets and capsules and syrups. It's not a bad little business. It's lucrative, but it's not challenging, especially for a young man with your scholastic achievements and ambitions for the future. Personally-and don't ever tell this to my father-I think you'd be wasted here, even if he did go through with his long-standing plans to enlarge the company. Even I am capable of making this plant bigger, and then any good industrial engineer could run it. I have hopes for something more. I'd like to see this company become a manufacturer of fine organic chemicals, legitimate pharmaceutical drugs, even antibiotics. It could be done. We have some cash reserve and we're trying to get a government loan now. And for the past three years I've been making economic and technical studies on my own that indicate we could do it. We'd need stronger technical help than we have. We'd need some top engineers and chemists, with a good technical man supervising them and overseeing the construction of a real pharmaceutical company. You could be that man, Harold, if you came to work for us. Not because you'd be the first technical degree man we'd hire, but because I think you'd be the best, and you'd know the plant from the ground up.
"Right now my father stands in the way of these plans. He ridicules them. He's made a lot of money packaging vitamins and he sees no reason to change. This may sound terrible, but he won't be around forever. I give him two more years before he retires or . . . has to retire for reasons of his health. It will take those two years for you and I-and especially you-to complete the groundwork for making Ridgely Pharmaceuticals into a company that's every bit as respectable as Pfizer or American Cyanamid or Du Pont or any of the giants of the chemical industry. I need your help for that. We do; the company does.
"I know my father offered you a ridiculously low starting salary. I don't want to discuss that except to say that I'd do everything in my power to see that you got more money, soon. I know he talked about opportunity, too, and the opportunity is here, though on a much larger scale than he realizes. Harold, I sincerely hope we can work together."
When Hal left the office, the emotionalism of Ridgely, Jr.'s plea was ringing in him just as much as the idea of building a chemical empire, from scratch. He'd been moved to the point of seriously considering employment at Ridgely, but Gloria's smile moved him even more as she came around the reception desk to meet him. He was grinning like a fool as he escorted her out the door.
Leaving the plant, the elder Ridgely caught up with them. He had a woman by the arm, middle-aged but very shapely, with a dignified beauty about her that reminded Hal of bridge clubs and art galleries and charity balls, and being married to Mr. Ridgely for twenty years. But he introduced her as his secretary, and said, "You'll be seeing a lot of Maggie when you start work here, Hal. She can be a great help to a man. Just taking her down to the Red Glove for a drink. You two have a good time." He slapped her on the ass then, a purely vulgar act by Hal's Midwest standards, but apparently just another indication of the informality of California living. As they drove off in Ridgely's new Lincoln, Hal wondered if he would ever have that sort of relationship with his secretary, or if he could have a secretary with the refined good looks of Margaret Fox.
Gloria drove toward downtown L.A. in a beat-up station wagon, laughingly explaining that only she could handle its mechanical idiosyncrasies. When he could take his eyes off her, he looked at the masses of smog-tinged, ticky-tacky houses through which the freeway had sliced and decided it would indeed be possible for a bachelor to live in the big town on seven hundred a month. From the stories he'd heard about L.A., it might even be fun. It most certainly would be with a girl like Gloria to show him around. Still, what he really needed were those two or three years of training at Du Pont. Maybe if he kept in touch with Junior, he could go to work for Ridgely two years hence, when he really was a competent chemical engineer. The time on his end of it was right, but by then they'd have long since gotten themselves a young engineer with more gambling spirit than Hal had. But forget about that now. Sleep on it, as the old man had said, and confirm his decision in the morning. Don't even think about it now, rattling along the freeway at the side of this gay, charming, shapely girl who made him so shamefully aware that he hadn't slept with a girl in months.
III
The Redwood Room of the Hilton was elegant, but Hal could give it no more than fleeting glances. Gloria took all his attention. There at the tiny table her knee was touching his, burning its brand on him far more deeply than the fifty dollars in his pocket, and making him wonder just how deliberate the small, clandestine touch really was. She talked about the sprawling city and he drank it all in, watching her lips move, seeing her eyes sparkle, cautiously returning the pressure of her knee, and thoroughly enjoying the heavy warmth that pulsed in his loins. They had two drinks there, but it was her presence that was the intoxicant. He escorted her with proud confidence to the Parisian room for dinner.
Clear turtle soup, California Caesar salad, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, steak and California lobster, lime sherbet, and a bottle of fine California wine. The meal was a far cry from those served at the school cafeteria, but even this was outshone by Gloria. During the salad course he became all but positive she was interested in him as something more than a possible future co-worker. She was interested in him for himself, and her questions drew him out to the exclusion of his finding out about her. He did find out she was a native Californian, but in turn he told her just about everything about himself. The struggle to keep his grades up while holding several part-time jobs, the music and art he liked, his ambitions to excel in his field, his hopes to see every part of the world, the closeness he'd had with his parents before they'd died, and even things about himself he'd forgotten. She listened attentively, commented appropriately, and opened all the floodgates of his past while helping him dream of his future. And it didn't stop her from eating with the same gusto as Hal was. She was by far the most attractive woman in the room, and just the way her even, white teeth tore into the rich, red meat was enough to keep him warmly aglow with creeping sexual excitement. Over dessert, when he got up the courage to cover her sweet little pet animal of a hand with his, she moved closer and warmed his thigh with hers. He could have sat there forever, grinning, proud, gazing at her.
Suddenly she sat straight up and said, "Hey, you haven't even registered yet."
"I forgot all about it."
"Think we can find the desk in this palace? I feel like I could get lost here."
"We can try. I'm an old Boy Scout, you know. But first let's finish our coffee." He had to delay, not touching her now, for he had a most embarrassing erection.
The young couple tarried, window shopping on the way in the fiendishly expensive shops as they made their way to the desk. Dizzy with food and drink and her, Hal didn't quite know how to prolong the time before they had to part. At the desk they could barely suppress their giggles, for the clerk obviously thought they were married. They were still tittering as, arm in arm, they followed the boy to the elevator. She just had to see what kind of a room Ridgely Pharmaceuticals had reserved for Hal, and Gloria's eager curiosity thus solved his problem for at least a little longer.
The room was grand, three times the size and opulence he'd expected, and he stood grinning by his gleaming suitcase while Gloria flitted about like a bright tropical bird, examining every nook and cranny.
"You've even got room service here," she said, reading the dial on the phone. "And valet service too!"
"Let's try it out. Let's order another bottle of that wine . . . if you've got the time."
"Sure I do. And what the heck, Ridgely's paying for it."
He thought that was awfully funny, but then everything was funny at that point. She bounced on one of the two big beds, giggling, while he in stentorian tones asked for room service. Then she came to his side to share the telephone and hear all of the brief conversation.
Her body fit perfectly against his side, and it was very warm. His armpits and loins felt sweaty all of a sudden and he feared he'd smell bad. He stammered out his order for the wine, unable to think now. He groped for the cradle of the instrument looking straight into her eyes, seeing the humor fade into quite another thing. Quite suddenly they were kissing. After having watched those incredibly active lips for so long, he was suddenly tasting them and he finally had his hands on that lithe, warm little body, pulling it closer to his even as it came of its own accord. Every nerve ending in his body was set atingle, especially those of his shamefully gross prick, lightly brushing against her small warm belly, feeling as if it might just burst and forever humiliate him in her eyes. She was clinging tightly to his lapels with both hands, but then her arms slipped up around his neck and she hugged him strongly, her tongue lanced into his mouth and her hips thrust forward as she went on tiptoe, and the fear of letting her know he had a prick and balls was gone. She made a wilting little sound as he pulled her harder against him, pressing her broad, warm pubic mound against his throbbing hard-on. The tingling became a roar.
Her arms were wonderfully strong about his neck, and her buttocks unbelievably shaped to the fit of his hands. He had her feet off the floor, and he felt as if he was soaring too. She kept squirming against him, mouth to mouth, trying to make their already perfect joining even better, while he tried to devour her honey mouth, rich with the redolence of ready woman, knowing just then that his inexperienced clumsiness didn't matter one bit. Her waist was so small, her breasts so firmly yielding, the taste of her so very stimulating that Hal just couldn't stop. Panting, swaying, he wanted to crush her in his arms and at the same time let all the tenderness he felt for her come gushing out. He was totally drunk on her when her words broke a long period of heavy breathing.
"The door. He's here."
"Who? Room service. The wine. Wait, oh please wait."
Hal wondered if he looked as wild as he felt when he signed the check? Hell, he didn't care, and neither did he care for any more wine, but with a shaky hand he poured it while Gloria sat on the edge of the bed, hands tightly clasped in her lap, shaking as much as he. They drank looking over the rims of their glasses at each other, and now the tenderness became so strong that Hal felt very close to tears.
"I'm sorry, I just. . . You are so beautiful that I. . . Gloria, I just don't know what to say . . . "
"I know," she said, very softly. "But I'm not sorry. Come. Sit beside me."
He swayed toward her, then back. "Look, I'll probably be gone tomorrow! If I.. . sit down with you, if I so much as touch you again, I just won't be able to stop!"
She laid her hand on the bed beside her. "Sit with me. Touch me."
"I'm already half out of my head! Jesus, I'm in love with you!" he said, sitting down, fiercely grasping her hand. And then they were at it again, just as eager as before to tangle limbs and mash mouths and to know the perfection, the excitement of two people together who were perfect for each other. Perfect!
They rolled on the bed and he forgot who he was. School, job, debts, problems were gone, and he existed only in this marvelously sybaritic world of luxury with the only other person who mattered his, at his disposal. Either she was light as air or he was supercharged strong, for he could manipulate and hoist her body against his at will. She helped him in this, and was so drunk with passion herself that she didn't even notice it when her hands came into contact with his aching cock, nor when his hands slid up over the smoothest, warmest parts of her under her skirt. When at last she pushed him away, he somehow accepted it, knowing sooner or later it would happen again, that they couldn't stay away from this utterly hedonistic necking. He sat on the bed, trying to regain his reeling senses and control his labored breathing, trying to prepare his head for yet another wild session of necking. The hackles rose on the back of his neck when he looked at her and saw she was undressing.
"What're you doing?" he stupidly asked.
"Taking off my clothes," she said, eyes blazing, smile flashing, even more of her stunning little body showing. "You too. Undress. Everything."
He tried to stop her. "Gloria, listen! I'll be gone tomorrow! Back in Indiana and then on to . . . "
She grabbed the lapel of his coat with surprising strength. "I don't care about tomorrow! I care about now, darn you, and right now we're going to have all we possibly can together! Now, undress. You take everything off or . . . or I'll do it for you."
For a few moments Hal felt terribly embarrassed stripping in front of a woman, but she was so glorious to behold as she emerged from the cocoon of her bright clothing that he forgot himself in his hasty disrobing and could only stare at her, all naked and looking like some heavenly animated Barbie doll as she writhed naked on the bed, smiling at him, reaching out to him. He ripped off the rest of his things and went crawling to her, panting his way across the luxury bed with his hard prick dangling, with nothing between him and that erotic dream that was all open and waiting for him.
But she was no dream and no doll. She was very real, with smells and tastes about her that he'd hitherto only had the merest hints of . . . and she was his, his! She wasn't a bit afraid of his enormously big prick, and neither was she afraid of that slippery wet flesh between her thighs that slid so easily over his thigh as again they merged, naked now, as they should be. They were so perfect together that she knew as he did exactly when he had to have it in her, and working together toward this there could be no clumsiness now.
He knew beforehand he was going to shoot prematurely, and he tried to remember what the boys at school had said about preventing such an ignominious catastrophe. Still he didn't think he'd come as quick as he did. He tried to recall all the constants in the perfect gas law, vainly ran through some integral calculus rules, and thought about the periodic table of elements. But the moment his prick came into contact with her soft, smooth wetness he was convulsed, spasms of purest joy overcame him, tightly mixed with the most ghastly contrition, and he began shooting. She kept writhing against him, vainly trying to get his spouting prick all the way into her, and in the throes of his sweet agony he couldn't even apologize until those hot, wet spasms had dwindled and stopped.
"I'm sorry. God, am I sorry."
"Whew! That was really something!"
"I'm sorry, sorry, sorry," he moaned. "I'm the biggest boob in the world."
She grabbed him hard by the shoulders and rolled him on his back, and she angrily said, "What are you talking about! Hal, that was the sweetest, most intense orgasm I've ever known in my life! And, I'm sorry to say, that includes more than just one man."
"You're kidding."
"I'm not. I've been with . . . well, several other men. But never like this!"
"Hell, I don't care if you slept with the whole USC marching band! I had a few girls myself. But did you really . . . come?"
She fell back from him, smiling, hugging her beautiful self. "Did I. Did I ever! But I want more," she said, clambering onto him again. "I have to see if it was real. I'm not just greedy, Hal, it's just that I have to see if it was real. Oh, hell," . she laughed. "I guess I am greedy, at least with you."
He laughed too. He shouted with glee, and he said, "You give me about two minutes' rest, and by God, there'll be more. I promise."
Impishly smiling, she shook her pretty, tousled head and said, "No, darling. I won't take your promise. I have to guarantee it myself. I want you now, darling. Right now. And I know a way to get you ready fast."
She began nibbling her sweet way down his chest, quite quickly, and when he realized with a shock what she was going to do, he blurted, "Wait. Let me up. I've got to wash."
She shook her head, tickling his belly with her hair, and it gave him the strangest feeling when she began lapping up the spilt semen from his belly.
He'd read dirty books wherein the nymphomaniac female characters grooved on come. He'd heard weird, disgusting stories about the girl at St. Mary's who liked to have you shoot in her mouth. Any part of those things he'd believed had revolted him, yet strangely and perversely fascinated him. But there was nothing revolting about this. This was a manifestation of a kind of love he'd never before known existed. It was anything but dirty, this need of hers to know him completely. It exulted him and it kept his prick from deflating all the way. It made him hard for her soft, soft mouth, and it made him very simply have to reciprocate.
The mere thought of oral sex had always been anathema to him, but now he was totally exhilarated by it as he turned about on the bed. It wasn't just the feeling of her mouth sliding up and down on his prick, it was also the obvious sheer enjoyment she was getting out of it. He stroked her dear hair with one hand and her body with the other, and still she kept it up, even when he was more than ready to slide it back inside her again, as it should be. The body beside him passed by as he moved like a perfectly done erotic diorama, from the round, pointed breasts to the mysteriously sweet little navel to the dark triangle of hair which tried to hide her most secret parts, those parts that were his. And, soaring to the heights of the gods of old, confident and loving, he smiled and helped her open her perfect legs and tasted of her silken flesh.
Some of his semen was undoubtedly there, but that was altogether immaterial. This was far from being a perversion and they were simply not indulging in the vulgarly described sixty-nine. It was a unique experience they were sharing, tremendous in both the giving and the taking, and going far beyond the mere sensory delights of it. It was emotional rather than sexual, but the sex was certainly still there. When she orgasmed in response to his kisses, he came too, though he did not ejaculate. And then he had a great flash of insight and knew how she had come in response to his previous premature ejaculation. Everything they did was together; they shared and thus doubled each response to each other. The emotional ejaculation was no better nor no worse than the real one he'd felt when he'd had his sex partially into her, and he knew each and every thing she was feeling inside when she was thrashing and heaving and coming under the greedy administrations of his tongue that was tasting the essence of woman and of love.
They joined together again, this time fully together, his prick deep inside her cunt, just as it should be. They talked and kissed and laughed, mouths drenched with each other's sex. It was good, it was a new dimension to be able to communicate with words as well as with love and to drink mortal wine as a chaser to the heavenly wine they'd sucked from each other's bodies. And deep, deep inside her agile little body, Hal brought them to a climax that was truly one climax, sharing, laughing aloud, gasping, humping, fucking, exceeding perfection by far. Afterwards, just lying side by side, touching, murmuring, looking ahead to their next total intimacy, it was all so ludicrously better than the three other girls he'd had all rolled up into one. Love? It went so far beyond that puny emotion that it wasn't worth mentioning.
They dozed, he ordered more wine, signed for it unashamed of his nakedness, and they merged again. Before sweet slumber came to help them recharge their perfect bodies once more, he knew that all his labor, all his life had been in preparation for this, and that this was just the barest start of their happiness together.
IV
Hal awoke alone on the rumpled bed and barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up. Crouched on the floor, gasping, he remembered everything from his Indiana departure to the present as a high speed dream, with the part that included Gloria rendered in vivid Technicolor. The thought of her was the only thing that freed him from the harsh bathroom, but instead of finding the warmth and sympathy he needed so badly by then, all there was, was a note:
Dearest Hal, Hard as it was, I had to go. And hard as it will be if you have to go back east tomorrow, I will stand it. I have to. I have the memory of this night to keep me going. So much more to say. So much more to do. But you go back. That is best for you. After a while I guess I won't be looking at the front door at dear old Ridgely and expecting you to come thru it.
Love, love, love, G
It made him want to cry. He sat down on the bed, looked at the damp spot left on it by her, and reread the note. Then he found his coat and took from it the paper. He filled in $750 on the one blank and sighed his name at the bottom. He studied it, shaking his head, then crossed out the figure 24 and replaced it with a 12.
He was sure of her now, but in twelve months he'd be absolutely certain, and a girl deserved a courtship period. Also he needed to pay his debts and save a little money. Also, even if things didn't work out for the expansion at Ridgely, he'd gain some valuable experience. Maybe he was making a terrible mistake, but when he laid down with his nose nestled against that damp spot on the bedspread, he was sure everything would work out just fine.
Frowning deeply, licking her kiss bruised lip, Gloria drove south on the freeway toward Hawthorne. Sam would be mad, even though she'd called him, and the thought of his wrath muted the feelings brought about in her by the good liquor and the rich food and all the sex. He'd be mad, even knowing she'd done it all for him.
They'd met four years before, when he'd been a promising young rodeo rider and she'd been the prettiest barmaid in Marysville, California. Her parents hadn't brought her up for such a job. Of the five kids, she'd been the baby and the favorite, just as she was many people's favorite because of her good looks and gay temperament. For a while her parents had harbored the hope she'd go to college, but with all the activities she was involved in at Sacramento Union High School, it was understandable that her grades suffered as they had. After all, beauty and personality and native intelligence can carry a girl only so far. So they'd enrolled her in a secretarial school after her graduation and she'd liked it at first and she'd looked forward to the excitement of working at Aerojet General, Sacramento's highest paying industry at the time.
But secretarial school wasn't the same as high school. There were no dances and there was too much work, and now that her clothing allowance was going for tuition, it came as an ugly shock to realize just how much of her popularity had been due to her wardrobe. She missed her friends who had gone off to college or who'd already embarked on marriage or were already working and making money, but most of all she missed the boys who used to buzz around her all day long at school. And she hated, she utterly loathed the girls who worked so hard at school, unfairly hard, making her marks look even worse.
She met a man, and he got her a job as a barmaid, working relief two nights a week. He had helped her lie about her age to get it, and not because he'd helped her but because she'd really liked him, she had gone to bed with him. It had been okay, it had been sort of nice, it had been far better than that sweaty, painful but highly romantic night she'd lost her virginity during her last year at school. But it hadn't been something to make a big fuss about, as some women did. The job, though, that was something else. She had men around her all the time. Not boys, but men. And they all thought she was just about the cutest little thing they'd ever seen. And they tipped her to let her know that!
Her tips went for clothes. Her charmingly delivered lies convinced her parents that Gloria was dating each Tuesday and Wednesday night, but it was her nice new wardrobe that gave her away. They had it out one Tuesday night when Gloria, nineteen, and pretty tipsy, came home very late. That very night she'd left the home of her parents and her childhood for good.
Big as it had become, Sacramento was still a small town. It hadn't taken her father long to find out where she was working and with whom she was living. He'd thrown the fear of God-and jail-into the bar owner, who had immediately fired Gloria, and she had defiantly taken off for Reno with a man who'd promised to get her a job there as change girl. That had been dumb, for the gambling casinos were much more particular about proof of age than were the California bars. Rather than working as a prostitute as her erstwhile benefactor suggested, she got a job as a waitress and bade him goodbye. But that was dull service after her stint as a cocktail waitress, and not nearly as lucrative. Yet another man had taken her west to Marysville, and there she thought she'd found her niche.
Under its agricultural facade, it was a wild little town. Cattlemen and hunters, fishermen and construction workers, cowboys and just plain drifters, they were all in Marysville for a while. And all of them drank and nobody worried about her age, and she got good tips and had some wild, crazy times.
Then Sam Slade came along. It was Yuba County Fair time, a bigger time than Christmas for the swinging set in Marysville, and Sam came strutting into the Pair-A-Dice Club with half a dozen other cocky rodeo riders and a pair of the equally hard-drinking stunt riding girls. The men seemed to share the girls, but the girls seemed to favor the long, lean, Levi's-clad pro who laughed a lot and could do the polka so well. More as a joke than anything else, Gloria winked at her regular customers and went after him. She knew how. The right amount of derision in her smile, the right switch in her walk, the answering of his wisecracks with better ones of her own, and soon it was she who was doing the polka with him, whirling about the floor while his friends clapped time and the stunt riders glowered. When the fair was over, Gloria left Marysville in Sam's station wagon.
Redding, Sonora and Susanville, Denver and
Portland and Frisco, they made the circuit of towns and cities both, and it was all one big party, without an end. In the first four months they were together, Sam earned over eleven thousand dollars in prize money, and there was talk that he'd be World Champion Cowboy in 1969. There were some bad times too, as when Gloria had to see him take those spills in the arena. Some of these laid him up for a few days at a time, but even those occasions had their good side, as when Gloria was driving the station wagon and harmonizing a song with Sam, laid out in the back, mixing highballs and urging her to stop the car and let him love her some more. She made her first professional appearance in Modesto, as a clown, and in Carson City she rode in the women's barrel race for the first time. They were married in Reno, so drunk and giggly that the judge frowned all through the ceremony, and it was in Provo, Utah that Sam was pitched off by the Brahma bull that did that quick, ghastly dance up his spine.
The stupid brute of an animal irrevocably changed their carefree, idyllic lives. There would be no more parties, no more tripping from town to town, and with Sam paralyzed from the waist down, very little chance of him earning eleven thousand dollars in a year, let alone in four months. Sam told Gloria that she should leave him, but she went to work, using what little she'd learned at secretarial school, because she couldn't leave a man who'd opened up such worlds to her as Sam had. She missed those worlds, though. The rough, warm rodeo crowd, the constantly changing locale, the big splurges after a good weekend's work, and those golden times of ecstasy that stretched on and on in motel rooms, in the station wagon, in a sun-kissed meadow, always in the strong arms of the man who'd so easily taught her what sex and love was all about. Lately she found herself missing nice new clothes as much as she missed the sex and love they used to have together, and that made her feel bad, but she did need nice clothes if she expected to make good in the business world and thus carry out their plans. Still at times the sex thing gnawed at her, just as she knew it did at him. Both of them were reconciled to the fact he'd never sit a horse again, bit it didn't seem possible their sex life had been reduced to what it was.
Gloria parked the car in front of the apartment house that had been old the day it was built and avoided the clutter of tricycles and wagons and dolls as she proceeded to number four. She let herself in. It was a mess, as it would be until the weekend, littered with clothes and dirty dishes and with the meters and gadgets that would hopefully be a part of Sam's business once he completed his TV repairman course through the mails-if he ever could. He was as much the type to be a TV repairman as he was to be a housekeeper, and at times it seemed like she'd forever be cleaning the house and earning the family bread. She hoped he was asleep, but he wasn't. He was sitting up in bed, having lifted himself with his powerful arms from his wheelchair. The covers were drawn up to his waist, his curly-haired chest was bare, and the portable TV at the foot of the bed was tuned to another old movie.
"Have yourself a good time?"
"Sam," she said, sitting far enough from him on the side of the bed so he wouldn't smell her breath. "You know I wasn't out for a good time. Did you eat any dinner?"
"Yep. Did you? And did you have yourself a good fuck?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Sam," she said, and got up to change into a housecoat and at least clean up the kitchenette. Ominously, he didn't say anything as she was undressing, and she found herself shaking as she pulled on the old robe.
"Who was it? Davidson again?"
"I told you. He's out of town. Want some milk?"
"Who was it, Gloria?"
"Can't we talk about it in the morning? I'm just beat."
"Really fucked hell out of you, eh? How many times did you come, baby?"
There was no avoiding it, but still she tried, standing in the bedroom doorway to answer, as far from him as she could be.
"I didn't come at all. It was this dumb young engineer old Mr. Ridgely wants to hire. He was easy to fake out, a real midway sucker. I'm just tired from listening to him yak all night about how he's going to be a big man someday. The dinner was good. Steak and lobster. I wish I could have brought you some of it."
"Thanks. I don't eat nobody else's leftovers," he said, making it hard for her all the way. She tried again.
"Sam, I'm going to get five hundred dollars for it. And maybe a raise, too! That'll go a long way toward getting us our place in Mexico."
"He was young, eh? And dumb. I'll bet you taught him a couple new tricks. How many times did he come?"
"Oh, Sam. You know it's the only way. You agreed!"
He nodded, his face as handsome as ever. But older, and so very bitter. "Yep, it's the only way. I used to ride the bulls and now you do. Why don't you slip out of that scruffy robe, honey, and show me what you give him."
"Think about the money, Sam. And think about the fact that I got next to old Ridgely today too."
"Oh?" His eyebrows went up. "Fucked them both, did you? Busy night for a good wife. Now you get that thing off!"
She shrugged the robe from her shoulders and stood there, eyes downcast, hands clenched at her sides, while he looked at the body he had known so well. It was still a perfect miniature, and from this angle, unflawed by what she'd become.
"Come here," he ordered.
Gloria advanced slowly and he threw back the covers, exposing his long, withered legs and that flaccid organ which had once transported her to such fits of ecstasy. He caught her wrist and easily jerked her up on his lap. He held her by her hair and grinned at her, but he didn't kiss her. With his other hand he squeezed her body hard, starting at the shoulder, then each of her breasts, her rib cage, her waist, her haunches and thighs and at last her pubes. Her cunt was still damp from another man's fucking and sucking, and now as her husband roughly shoved his finger into it, she told herself that finger was capable of thrilling her far more than any other man's cock or tongue. If only Sam believed that as she did, then maybe he wouldn't demand so much of her.
"I love you, Sam!" she rasped, and grabbed his head and kissed him fiercely, writhing her butt on his lifeless lap, squirming her cunt on his long, hard finger, fighting her way toward orgasm with dizzying rapidity now that she no longer had to hold back.
"And I love you, baby," he murmured. "You been drinking. You drink enough so you forgot who you was with? You drink enough so you come with the dumb engineer and the old man?"
"No, Sam. Only with you. Only with you!" Her body was leaping and jerking on his finger, her open mouth covering his craggy face with kisses.
"You talk them dudes into eating it?" he asked with a wan smile, coolly observing the dance he was making her do.
"No," she panted. It was so hard to lie to him, especially when he had her half out of her mind like this. She was right there, right at the verge of orgasm, when he jerked his hand away and turned her across his lap, face down, her hot bottom the highest part of her. She tried not to think of the stick under his pillow as she squirmed her hot, hot loins against his soft, cool penis.
It was a limber stick, padded with three layers of velvet, and the marks it made on her would only be temporary. The first strong blow of it made her moan and clutch the bedclothes, and the second made her bite down on the old chenille spread to keep from crying out. He was laying it on heavy. She still wasn't used to the pain of it, and it didn't seem possible now that she could orgasm for him that night. Still it was his need, not hers, so she tried.
Through the heavy, thudding pain she concentrated on the pleasure she'd known with him in the past, her tormented brain running back over every special time they'd fucked. She ground her pubes against him, futilely hoping he might come to life, just one more time. Precious moments with a whole Sam flashed through her mind in rapid succession, changing from motel to hotel to station wagon to countryside with each of the jarring, searing blows. But it seemed she'd already used them up, had burnt up each sweet memory of them together on other sordid nights like this. Still he had her close to orgasm, and she thought of trying to fake it, as she had with Hal, but she couldn't fake Sam, and she knew it.
Self-confession burst in her. She hadn't been fooling with Hal. Each of her wild, hip-flinging endings with him had been very real, and though she'd tried to fight her feelings, each crescendo she'd known with him had been full, complete. Awkward, unsure as he'd been, he'd thrilled her every bit as much as Sam ever had, and she wished she was still with him then. Just thinking of it, letting the memory of his strong whole body in contact with hers rush over her, she surged on to orgasm, and at last each rhythmic falling of the stick was good.
She arched and thrashed, jaw muscles cracking, and further thrilled herself with the confession that even the old man had been good. A prick in her ass, filling her up with what she needed, and another stout young one in her cunt, completing her. Men-whole men-worshiping her body with their hands and their eyes and their kisses and their pricks, loving her up, adoring her, making a whole woman out of her. Horses fucking her with immense black cocks and lines of pubescent boys waiting to slip their clean young pricks into her. The leering Chuck Davidson and the cackling old Joe Ridgely, the bowing waiter and the smirking desk clerk, all eager to use her fine young body as it should be used, but most of all Hal, young and dumb, sweet and clumsy, telling her he loved her and proving it with his body.
Her orgasms were still going on when the whipping stopped and Sam's hands dug deeply into her. He was panting behind her scalded back, while under her his lifeless prick oozed sperm against her exploding loins. She turned about and kissed him while they were both still coming, and then as usual they wept together. But on this night she was not thinking about him.
V
Margaret Fox was at that moment cursing Gloria Slade. She was in her apartment, in a negligee, hoping Joe would come to her but knowing he was with the little slut of a receptionist. And Gloria Slade was a slut. True, she herself had gone to bed with men at Joe's direction in the past, but that had been out of love for Joe and to keep the company from failing, not just for money and kicks as the slut had done. But that was in the past. Margaret had served her time as a corporate call girl and now at forty-three, Joe couldn't expect her to start that again. Not if he loved her at all. But had Joe ever really loved her? And if he had, did he still? refrigerator, and then looking at the hour and knowing Joe would neither call or come, she drank it down and made herself a good, stiff highball. He was with the slut, there was no doubt about it, and no more reason to stay reasonably sober. The icy liquor burned as she thought of them together, probably at Joe's big place, laughing as the slut went over each detail of her seduction of the boy. Margaret put her forehead against the refrigerator door and let several dry sobs 'escape. How could Joe do that to her? How could he humiliate her so? Demanding that she throw herself at a boy she'd never even seen before, and then going into a cursing, insulting rage when she'd refused. Showing her off to him in the parking lot, and then slapping her on the rear as if she was a faithful old brood mare. Taking her to the Red Glove for a drink, then gloating about how the slut would deliver the goods she'd refused to handle, and even implying he'd sampled the slut himself. The thought of Joe with another woman still hurt her more than anything else, and it was just possible he had fucked Gloria Slade. He was still a hugely attractive man, and if the slut agreed to fuck a stranger, why should she not fuck Joe? The two of them were probably doing it at that very moment, while she stupidly waited, all perfumed and made-up and laced, with no one to come to her.
She finished the drink and made another, took it to the living room and looked closely at herself in the antique mirror over her artificial fireplace. She was still damned good-looking. Her tall slenderness was a blessing. Her breasts were still high set, with only a trace of sag from their diminutive weight. Her waist was slim, but it would be slimmer without so much liquor. Her long legs were unquestionably good. Her hips were spreading, her buttocks softening, but as Joe told her, this was an asset. Of course he would, with his tastes in sex. Her face wasn't at all bad. A few lines around her eyes and mouth, just the hint of jowls forming, but her expertise with make-up and the way her hairdresser kept her light brown hair crisply curled and blonde-tipped retained a certain youthfulness. Big, soft, brown eyes, good straight nose, sensuous mouth, sensuous smile. She was still a most appealing woman. But like the mirror she was old, and like the fireplace, she was artificial. She drank, and made another.
"Too many years, and nothing to show for them. Nothing!" she said, pacing the living room in her imagine, useless lingerie. Stock in the company, a place on the board of directors, a good check every two weeks, these were all she had and she'd never really wanted any of them. Twelve years with the company, eleven as Joe's mistress, and ten as a divorcee. Wasted years, all of them. All she'd ever wanted was a man-Joseph Ridgely, Sr., to be specific-and during all those years all he'd wanted was his company. He'd destroyed his wife with his obsession and now he was destroying her, and at the moment Julia Ridgely's grave seemed to Margaret a warmer place than her snug apartment.
But that was silly. She got herself together and told herself thoughts of suicide were absurd. Absurd too, not to have bedded Harold Arnold. He was young and vigorous and she was badly in need of a man, even if it wasn't Joe. If she'd stopped and thought rationally in Joe's office that afternoon, she'd have a nice fat prick in her right then-and not in her ass. As it was, Gloria had it. She had Harold Arnold's prick and Joe's as well, and very probably she had several rungs on the ladder toward getting Margaret's job. Margaret had seen how Joe dumped people and equipment that were obsolete, and as much as Margaret knew about the vitamin business, the slut's youth gave her the edge.
It was too hard to think about after the day she had had. She couldn't be burdened with doubts about losing what little she had after the stress she'd endured that evening. She sat down on the couch, fucked up the negligee, and hooked her heels on the edge of the cushions.
By letting herself drift, by looking down at her hand working between her open legs, Margaret could imagine her finger was a prick. Not any prick, but Harold Arnold's prick, young and hard and nearly pure. She'd get that prick too. She wasn't as young as Gloria Slade, but she still had her looks plus far more experience, and it wouldn't be long until Harold's prick was sliding into her cunt-just like that-and his tongue was tickling her clitoris-right there-but feeling so much better. She'd seduce him, right out from under the nose of the ambitious little tramp, and in so doing cement the boy's loyalty to her. As Joe got older and more eccentric, she needed all the friends she could get in the company, and to boot she needed a good, solid prick to call her own. Right there, making her feel good.
Joe was shot. He was over the hill, and it was the young men who, with her help, should be running the company. Davidson and Arnold and even Joe, Jr., making fast decisions tempered by her judgment, and worshiping her as a corporate genius as well as a sex goddess. Margaret set her glass down to use both hands on herself. She didn't need Joe. She could make herself come over and over, all by herself, and in the future there'd be Harold Arnold-if Gloria succeeded that night-plus many others. Joe wouldn't drive her to suicide as he'd done to his wife. Quite the reverse, she'd kill him, and it would be a slow death, one wherein he'd see the company reins being firmly taken from his failing hands. Obscenely squatted on the couch, Margaret grinned more broadly as she began humping faster against her hands, tossing her head from side to side and getting the very most she could out of this orgasm, then going on to another before she softened and made a double fool of herself by telephoning Joe and pleading with him to let her come over.
Joe Ridgely sat with his feet up, watching television, eating a TV dinner. He was in his big, rambling house in the Santa Monica hills, and there was a moon shining on the ocean and a fine view of it from the living room. The TV room had no windows. He used only that room, the kitchen, and the smallest of the four bedrooms for himself. The rest of the house was aired and used only for company parties, twice a year. But of course he had to keep the big house, for it went with his position as a captain of industry, and it was all paid for.
It was really Julia's house. She'd designed it when they'd bought the lot, years back before the real estate hustlers had sent prices soaring. But you couldn't blame the land sharks. They had their thing just as he had his, and if he hadn't been so naturally adept at handling the complexities of corporate business, he might have been a real estate hustler himself. And he'd have succeeded at it.
He always succeeded. That was the one thing no one ever gave him credit for. They criticized his mistakes-behind his back, of course-and they smiled when he made a correct decision. What they didn't realize was that everyone made some mistakes, and it was only the long run that counted. They never had enough faith in him. He'd thought Julia had had that faith, but then she'd proved otherwise when she'd tried to have him committed, just at a most crucial growth period in the company. Poor soul, she'd learned. Her suicide had been her apology, despite how she'd raved and lied in the note she'd left behind. At times when he'd drunk too much, he raved back at her, addressing his degrading remarks to her portrait which hung over the fireplace, scathing her for being so cowardly, telling her he didn't believe any of her filthy lies, and cursing her for bearing him only the one, weak son. Other times he talked to her about his problems with the company, and he told her he loved her no matter what she'd thought and done.
But love dies, like people, with the advancing years. Companies were the only living things that survived, and Ridgely Pharmaceuticals would be there long after he was gone. It would survive the maudlin sentimentality of the Margaret Foxes, the hedonistic scheming of the Chuck Davidsons and the Gloria Slades, the innocence of the Hal Arnolds, the pettifogging fumbling of the Stanley Mosses and, God help him, all the Juniors of the world. The company he had built and suffered for would survive them all. He had built it well. Surrounded by stupidity as he was, it seemed at times the corporation would crumble when he did, but he had enough faith in business to know that wouldn't happen. But why in hell couldn't that soft, stupid Julia have borne him a son like young Arnold, instead of that flabby caricature of herself!
Joe, Jr.'s house also had a view of the sea. Not as large or as lofty as his father's, it was situated on the lower slopes of the Palos Verdes Hills, close enough to hear the surf when the traffic on the Coast Highway wasn't heavy. These Ridgelys used all of their house, from the swimming pool in back to the front porch, and now they were using the latter and enjoying the view. Eighteen-year-old Joan was studying a part in a play, and the rest of the family was helping her with her lines. Joan had enjoyed high school dramatics and was vaguely planning on a drama major when she started college in the fall. That was fine with her father. He felt she had a real flair for it, and she was certainly pretty enough to succeed as an actress. She was as lovely as his mother had been, though more slender and willowy now at the start of womanhood. It seemed the only thing she'd inherited from her grandfather was a streak of his stubbornness and explosive temper. Now she was putting a lot into her lines, ignoring her little brother's giggling at her efforts.
Joseph Ridgely III was called Skippy by family and friends. The nickname avoided confusion around the house, and it suited him. He was short for twelve years and too chubby, according to his grandfather. Right now he was taking after his mother and his grandmother and, to some extent, Joe, Jr. himself, but Joe, Jr. knew that soon he'd shoot up and surpass his sister's five foot eight. He was a good boy, and Joe Jr. hoped he'd get into art or literature or science-anything but business.
Joan read the closing line with great fervor, closed the script book in her lap and gazed over her father's head, eyes brightly shining, smiling to herself, lost in the printed fantasy. The first forceful young man who saw her looking like that would do his best to sweep her off her feet and marry her, for she looked utterly beautiful and filled with high spirits that sought release. Maybe that young man would be Hal Arnold, and Ridgely Pharmaceuticals would become an even more deeply entrenched family corporation. But no, that was silly, for the impressive young man whom Joe, Jr. had been thinking about all evening would never go to work for his father. He was too smart, too prepared for a better future than that.
"That was just fine, Joanie," said her mother. "You hardly fluffed a line. And now it's time for bed."
"I'll stay here a while," Joan said, dreaming.
She was looking out to sea when Joe, Jr. rose and kissed her on the forehead, smooth like his mother's, but not so soft. "See you in the morning, honey. Your reading was great, just great. Come on, Skip. Let's hit the hay."
A small, nagging sexual urge was on Joe, Jr. as he followed his wife Cora into their bedroom, and the urge was out of place, for his day had not been a very good one. He caught up with her and put his hands on her waist, lowered his mouth a few inches and kissed the nape of her neck. That was all he had to do. She turned and smiled at him, took his face in her hands and kissed it, and went to lock the door.
By any standards, even his own, she was not a beautiful woman. His father had been furious, then ridiculing, when he'd married her nineteen years before, when he was nineteen and Cora was twenty-three. But she still looked good to him. Her hair, dark and coarse, and showing a bit of gray, was cut in a shingled bob that had been fashionable and feminine in the twenties. Her eyebrows were thick, her mouth was thin, and the bones in her face were heavy, reflecting her ancestry. She was a big-boned woman with adolescently small breasts and sturdy hips which looked narrow because of her almost insignificant waist. Her skin was dark and her hands and feet were as large as her husband's, and he often wondered how she had produced such a beautiful slim daughter. Probably Joan's daughters would take after Cora, just as Joan took after her grandmother, and that would be a disappointment to Joan. Still Joe Jr. loved Cora dearly. She'd been good to him and he'd been good to her. He'd provided her with a far better marriage than a plain girl like her could expect, and in turn she'd satisfied his needs and given him fine children in the bargain. They were just right for each other.
She talked of her day as they undressed-trying to keep Joan busy making new curtains now that she was out of school, keeping her eye on Skippy and his friends as they swam, nine holes of golf with some of the neighborhood wives-for she knew better than to make small talk about his day at work. When they were both naked she went to the closet and slid back the door. Next to her dresses and pants suits hung an array of soft, frilly nighties, and from these she selected a black one, nylon satin trimmed with lace, with matching panties.
"How about this one tonight, dear."
"How about the new yellow one? It's so summery."
She strode toward him, the lingerie trailing down from the hanger in her hand. His penis had not stirred, but the tingle of desire was now stronger, and she magnified it greatly by draping the shimmering black garment against his front, and purring, "But you look so sexy in black, lover. You know it's my favorite color on you. It makes you look so wicked."
Protest was an integral part of the game they played, and he coyly opted for the yellow as she caressed his body through the satiny black, knowing he'd give in to her, but needing to prolong it. She teased him and cajoled him, tickled him and kissed him with the nightie pressed against his body by hers before he deferred to her wishes-and to his. It was she who slipped it over his head, and she who knelt to help him into the panties, breathing warm kisses at his slowly engorging loins as she did.
"Wait, I'll put on a little perfume for you," he said, and the slick friction of the panties and nightie on him as he minced his way to their dresser did even more to stiffen him.
She asked, "Want to wear a wig tonight, Darlene?"
"No. Let's just turn the lights out," he replied, in a voice that was a full octave higher than his normal one.
She switched off the lights and they met at the bed. With their thick drapes, it was almost pitch black in there, and only vague outlines of them could have been seen by an observer as she pulled him strongly into a clinging embrace. He breathlessly returned her kisses as she pushed him down on his back, and there she lay half atop him, holding him down with her naked weight as she ran her hands over his silken covered body.
With her moving hand cupping his genitals, she chuckled at his ear and said, "Oh baby, does that feel nice."
"Gently, darling. Go gently with me tonight."
Her laugh was low and dirty. "Gentle or rough, Darlene, once you get going you like it either way."
He was really in the mood for it that night, and it was no effort at all to keep his voice feminine, and tinged with bogus fear now. "Remember I love you, Jim. Don't hurt me."
"You just love sex. You just love cock. How do you want it tonight? Fast or slow, straight or special?"
"However you want me, darling. But be gentle with me. Please."
Cora pinched his inner thigh. Her voice was downright nasty now. "I'll be any way I want with you. You're mine, Goddamn you."
She got her arm out from under him, fucked up his nightie, and kissed his smooth, soft belly-roughly, eagerly. She pulled it up higher and kneaded his pectoral flab while she sucked and nipped his nipples, making him moan with forced pleasure. She kept rubbing his genitals through the black nylon, and he was getting harder.
"You about ready, baby?" she asked, slipping her hand inside his panties, rubbing her legs against his.
"Almost," he breathed, sinking deeper into his fantasies, caressing her very softly.
"Don't tell me almost," she chuckled. "You're hot. And so am I, babe. But I'm going to make you hotter."
The bed rocked as she got up on her knees. He arched his body for the removal of the panties she'd just put on him. She crouched over him, and her tongue was very good. She didn't suck him, she just licked him noisily in the way he adored. He found even greater pleasure from the way she threw herself on him and hugged him very hard, rubbing her sex against his so that he could feel the wetness and the erect clitoris almost as if they were his.
"Take me," he whispered. "Darling, I'm so ready now. Put it in me."
"I'm trying, little girl, but you're so damned tight," she murmured back, as again and again she slid her wet, open sex over his penis, from her clitoris to her vagina.
"Take me! Take me!" he panted, digging his fingers into her back.
"Ahhh. Yeah, that's it," she said in a husky voice, at last joining them fully, and thus letting him fully escape into his fantasies as she settled her weight heavily on him and began to move.
Silks and satins and wedding gowns, girdles and bikinis and high heeled shoes; musky perfume and smeary lipstick, beautiful breasts and velvet skin. All these things were his as his passion mounted, driving on by the huffing at his ear, by the heaving against his body. Hands digging deeply into his buttocks and the relentless pounding at his loins, flattening him, driving the strength out of him, making him all soft and warm and pliable. His mother's face, not serenely smiling at him from above his father's fireplace, but twisted with passion, just as his was then. The old man laboring over her, snarling, conceiving a girl as he did it to her. Joanie's face, twisted the same as his mother's, as she lay under a handsome young man on a beach. The young man was Harold Arnold, and he was fucking her very hard! He could see the handsome face clearly now, grinning in triumph as he drove it into her again and again with long, deep, wonderfully satisfying strokes. And she felt so good! It hurt her a little, but it made her feel so alive! She was coming-hard-and Harold was coming with her, just as hard! "Oh! Oh, darling!"
"Yeah baby, me too. Oh Jesus, is this ever good. Baby, are you ever good!"
The sighing and the settling down. The murmured thank you. Nestling close. I love you. Too tired to get up and wash and change. Sleep in satin, drenched with sex. Have dreams of a life of softness, freed of all problems save that of what to wear to bed.
The moment the day's tape ended, Stanley Moss switched off the machine and rolled over to go to sleep. The tapes took up too much of his time. Eight or night hours a day of recording, plus an equivalent amount of playback time each night. He should buy a new tape recorder, one of those that were voice-actuated, so that all the dead space on the reels was eliminated. Yawning, he told himself that would be the first thing he'd buy once he had the money, and then he had to laugh at himself, for once he had his hands on that money, a tape recorder would be the last thing he'd need.
VI
Joe Ridgely went to his son's house once a month for dinner, and there was remarkably little variance in the routine of those evenings. Two martinis in front of the fireplace, served by Joan, and conversation that dealt with Ridgely Pharmaceutical business, past and present. The children escorting their grandpa to the table, where Cora served a roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the salad and vegetable that Joe never ate. One of her splendid pies for dessert, of which the patriarch always had two pieces. A little more talk, a reminder to Junior of the company's latest problem, and an early departure. This evening Joe broke the routine right from the start by bringing champagne, not just a little of it, but two magnums of Mumm's Cordon Bleu which he thrust into the hands of his granddaughter the moment she opened the door for him.
"Put this on ice, Joanie. Damned if you're not looking prettier than ever. Where's my kiss?"
She laughed with him, for his exuberance was very contagious. He hugged her and kissed her both as she stood holding the bottles; she was his favorite, for one thing, and for another, her slim young body felt very good against his old bones. Ever since he'd fucked Gloria Slade he'd felt rejuvenated, and there was no reason he couldn't take out some of his renewed vitality on his granddaughter. She came right to him, and he was sorely tempted to grab a double handful of her tender young ass.
"Champagne!" she said, and gave him a second kiss. "Did you buy it with that government loan you got?"
He walked toward the living room tousling Skippy's hair with one hand and feeling how slender and strong Joan's waist was with the other. "No. With all the Goddamned paperwork that bureaucracy in Washington has to go through, the actual money may not come through for a month. I bought this with petty cash funds. Go put it on ice, we're all going to have some with dinner. You too, Skip. Joanie, let's see how dry you can make my martini tonight. By God, I think it's about time you started joining us at the cocktail hour."
"By God, I think it is too," she said, mimicking him, which only she could do with any degree of security.
Joe yielded to temptation and patted her on the ass in parting. Junior and Cora were waiting for him in the living room, but even the sight of his soggy dumpling of a son and the mustachioed woman he'd married couldn't detract from Joe's expansive good feelings that night. Smacking his big hands together, he took the big chair they always saved for him.
"It's been a good week, a damned good week," he said. "Uncle Sugar gave me back some of my tax money, and I've got myself a brand new bouncing baby engineer to help spend it."
"A week like this makes up for a lot of bad ones," said Junior. "I expected them to give us the loan, but I still don't see how you got Harold Arnold to come to work for us, and for peanuts at that."
"Hell, I could have got him to come to work for shells if I hadn't been in such a hurry to get an engineer. College degrees are a dime a dozen. Barmaid! Where's my drink!"
"Hold your horses, you old goat," said Joan, entering from the kitchen with tray in hand.
She always looked very pretty to him, but she was unusually so that night. Her long, blonde hair shone, and her china blue eyes sparkled brightly. She was wearing brown suede hot pants and a tie-dyed tank top, with the armholes of the top so large that there was no way she could be wearing a bra under it. For a girl as slim as she was, she had pretty good-sized tits, and they moved nicely as she walked. She usually served Joe first, but now she bent to offer the tray of drinks to her parents, presenting her grandfather with a fine view of her very firm, closely spaced buttocks, impudently thrust at him, and that very delicate flesh at the very top of her long, nicely curved legs. He had the urge to work his hands down into her hip pockets. Coming to him with the tray, he saw that it was the high, bright color in her cheeks and the brilliance of her smile that had her looking so exceptionally pretty that night. Those things and her hot pants. He winked at her when he picked up his glass, and she winked back.
There was still one glass left on the tray, and she tried to appear very casual in picking it up. Her father frowned and her mother said, "I hope that's not a martini, Joan."
"Of course it is," said Joe. "This is a night to celebrate, and by God, she's old enough to celebrate with us."
"I don't think she should be drinking hard liquor, Dad," said his son. "She's really not old enough."
"Balls. Joanie's old enough to be doing all sorts of things, and if she takes after me at all, she's probably doing them. You sit down by your old grandpappy, Joan. I won't let your fuddy-duddy parents take away your liquor."
He patted the broad arm of his chair, and she came to him with a saucy flip of her hips that told her parents who was boss when old Joe was in the house. Junior acquiesced readily enough by remaining silent, but Cora kept it up. Eighteen was too young to start drinking, she said, and she'd known more than one teenager who'd gotten into trouble with drinking after having been started at it right in the privacy of her own, well-regulated home. Joe nodded distractedly as he listened to her, his mind on the warmth of that lovely little fanny which nestled so nicely against his knuckles. Joan had almost sat down on his hand, as he had not moved it when she'd come to the chair arm in answer to his summons. Now it was much harder to keep from moving his fingers even more intimately against her bottom. She hadn't known what she was doing, of course, and she certainly didn't know how her warmth was being transmitted down to his loins. At another time, Joe would have scathed Cora for disagreeing with him, but that night he let her run down by herself before he spoke.
"Joanie's not going to be any more of a woman at twenty-one than she is at eighteen. Just take a look at her. Even if she was wearing an old undershirt and romper pants, she's all woman." As he talked, he plucked at the tank top and slapped her leather-covered bottom. Pulling at her top exposed an inch of bare back, and he lightly placed his fingertips on that smooth young flesh as he went on, excitement rising in him. "Shit fire, when I was her age I was drinking a quart a day just sampling the rotgut we made. Not that it was all that bad. Some of the hooch we made was better than the swill you buy nowadays, and by God, we made it with equipment that we picked up in junkyards. Back in nineteen-twenty-eight, we . . . "
Joanie and all of them had heard it all before. How her grandfather had started out running liquor for a bootlegger in Chicago and had worked himself up to the point where he owned his own still by the time he was twenty. The end of Prohibition and the depths of the Depression. Menial jobs, rough jobs, and then turning his meager fermenting and distilling knowledge to work in making nostrums. The Food and Drug Administration on his back for peddling useless syrups, and his beating them by adding new chemicals called vitamins to his bottled snake oil. Struggling to get chemicals during the war, and at last emerging in the post war years as one of the leading vitamin suppliers in the country. Joanie had heard it all, but she, unlike the rest of the family, never tired of hearing it again. It was a fascinating, rags to riches story, worthy of being immortalized in a book or a play, and the telling of it never failed to stir her vigorous old grandsire into a semblance of youth. It stirred her too, and tonight its telling was particularly stirring, for Joanie was almost sure that her grandfather was feeling her up as he told it.
It could have been her imagination, for ever since she'd donned her new hot pants that day she'd felt a little sexually aroused, or at least a little sexually aware, for the very snug little garment had a crotch seam that rode very intimately against her clitoris. Wearing the pants was like having a hand reaching up from behind to tightly cup her pubes, with its middle finger resting in her slit and the ball of that finger against her clit. And when she walked, the imaginary hand was not at rest. She'd had to change her panties twice that day since putting on the hot pants, for their nylon crotch bands had gotten so wet she'd feared she was smelling bad. Still she hadn't changed from the hot pants into something else.
Joanie had become sexually responsive at a fairly early age. She'd started masturbating when she was twelve, and far from outgrowing that childish pastime, she had indulged in it very steadily since then. She always did it with the help of her very active imagination, and she sometimes used such aids as hair brush handles and balled up nylons and tight pants as well. She was careful not to break her hymen with the hard objects; the balled up nylon could provide her with exciting pressure all day long when it was held in place in her slit by her panties; and when she found some pants that fit her just right, she quickly wore them out. Being made of suede, the hot pants would last a long time, and she'd considered wearing them under her skirt on dates. She'd let several boys finger fuck her and she'd liked it a lot, but she hadn't liked their sloppy kisses and their clumsy ways. Now she was just waiting for a man to come along who was both forceful and knowledgeable in the ways of sex, so that he could relieve her of her virginity. Not until that evening had she realized she was looking for a man much like her grandfather.
He was forceful and lusty and he took what he wanted, as now, when he was feeling her fanny and the bare small of her back. It felt tremendously good. Just his fingertips back there were almost equally exciting as anything she'd had in her pussy. Excited as she was though, she knew it was the concept that was the most thrilling thing about it. But was he doing it on purpose, or was it just the idle fidgeting of a senile old man?
His greeting kiss had been warm, his leathery lips slightly parted. When he'd patted her on the fanny before, his hand had lingered, deliriously. She was almost sure he'd inched his hand forward so she'd sat down on his knuckles. And now there was a seeking pattern in the brushings of his fingertips, as if they knew where to find her most sensitive spots back there. Those fingers did seem to know her. They had her labia swollen and her clitoris more protruding from its sheath. They had her so hot that when she shifted a bit on the chair arm the pressure of nylon covered leather on her vulva sent lovely pre-orgasmic tingles through her. Still it could all be an accident on his part, and product of her imagination on hers. There was a way to find out.
She smiled down on his craggy face as he talked. Looking at his lap, she thought there was a bulge in his suit pants, but she couldn't be sure. She quaffed the strong, icy liquor, and the shock of it very nearly combined with her sexual excitement to lull her into a secret little orgasm. His glass was empty too, and now she reached for it, deliberately slipped, and caught herself with her hand on that long, hard bulge in her grandfather's pants. The orgasm almost came.
"I'm sorry, Gramps," she said, righting herself. "I guess I'm not used to martinis."
His smile was crooked as he gazed into her eyes and said, "You're doing fine, Joanie." He crossed his legs and pinched her fanny and said, "Get us all another, will you?"
Her mother protested again at this, and again Joanie ignored her, collecting the glasses and tray, strolling back to the kitchen, vulva all seething and wet, buttocks feeling swollen from the contact with his fingers. There was a half bath off the kitchen and she went into it and locked the door. Hot pants and panties came off in a trice. The nylon crotch band was wetter than on the other two pair of panties she'd changed from that day, but not nearly so wet and slick as her pussy. With quick, jerky movements, she took tissue from the roll and began to blot herself dry, and she'd only just begun when a great weakness overcame her legs and she had to sit down on the toilet and grind her fingers into her open, livid cunt, biting her lower lip to keep from moaning aloud as she orgasmed.
On her feet again, she was terribly ashamed of herself. It ruined the residues of her orgasm and she ruined it further by looking at her flushed reflection in the mirror and murmuring angrily, "You're sick, you know. He didn't mean anything by it, and even if he did it's disgusting to even think about doing it with your own grandfather. Sick, sick, sick!"
No new panties to put on. Thoroughly disgusted with herself and still shaken by the orgasm. Hide the panties in the waste basket and wear the hot pants without them. Hurry back before they came looking for her. And wash her hands, for they stink of sex.
She put a big ice cube in her martini glass, and she tried to apologize with her eyes to her mother on her return. Her mother looked away. Her father and her dirty old grandfather were talking business, discussing Chuck Davidson's plans to make a sales tour of the eastern states before his return to California. She didn't want to go back to her seat on the chair arm, but he beckoned her and patted it and she was drawn to obey his silent command. His fingers returned to her again, even more intimately now. There was no doubt about it; the old man was lusting for his granddaughter. Joanie was thoroughly disgusted with him for it, and with herself for the way his touch so quickly excited her again. Her fast masturbation should have given her some relief, but it hadn't. His fingers burned right through the thin, soft leather and soon she was shifting almost imperceptibly to work the thick, rough seam of the crotch more snugly in her clit. She was feeling the liquor now, and she hoped it would be a long time till dinner. It was all right to toy with her fingers in his graying hair. Her parents made no sign of noticing it, Skip didn't know what was going on, and it got her grandfather to worm his fingers inside the waistband of her pants. Joanie had probably never been so excited in her life, and she was proud of herself for being able to keep her head through it.
The scene at dinner proved to be equally exciting. Joanie's parents always sat at each end of the table, and Joe sat across the table from Skip and Joan. This being a special night, Joe brought his chair around and wedged it between those of his grandchildren, the better to consolidate the family now at the brink of expanding the family fortune with the expansion of the plant, he said. He was very bright and witty, in his coarse way, and unusually attentive to Skippy, on his left, tousling his hair and tickling him as they ate and telling him how he'd someday be taking over the company. It pleased the boy enormously, for usually the old man ignored him. It pleased Joanie too, for it drew any attention away from the fact that her grandfather was caressing her under the table with his right hand at every opportunity.
She gave him what opportunities she could. She kept her legs open wide, so that her knee was pressed against his, and so that his big, strong hand could squeeze its way from her knee to her thigh and he could massage the shallow hollow in that thigh with the balls of his fingers. He couldn't do it all the time; he had to use his knife and fork too. But she could get him to do it again by refilling his champagne glass and pressing her breast against his arm as she did it.
Joanie wanted him to be as drunk as she was, for she did not want him to either stop it or think too much about it. She, however, was thinking about it. She read a lot, and she knew about how most girls have at least a temporary infatuation with their fathers. She had never had this for her father, partly because the soft and flabby man was totally unappealing to her in a physical way, and partly because she had spied on her parents' marital bed and knew and abhorred the kind of sex they shared. But old Joe was different. Vigorous and dynamic, he was more like the man father than Junior was, and tonight she knew that she'd been secretly infatuated with him for a long time. Having been bottled up in her for so long, it was only right that this infatuation should be indulged in. Technically, it was incest, but in Joanie's excited mind it was not, because for many years she'd felt that Junior was not her real father. Logically that was absurd, for she closely resembled Junior's mother, but the idea had persisted for a long time, and now she wanted to believe more than ever before. The more she believed it, the better Joe's fingers felt stealing inside the leg hole of her pants to rub her hot secretions into the swollen tissues from which they overflowed.
She fidgeted about in her chair, working the hot pants down tight over her hips to give him more access to her badly itching pussy, and after another glass of champagne for courage, she cautiously laid a trembling hand on his leg. Dinner was over and he went right on talking. If he was half as aroused as she, he was indeed a man of iron to conceal it so well.
"New vats, two more bottling machines, and we'll lease the place next door. We'll have this loan paid off in five years, Junior."
"I still think you ought to consider branching out into legitimate pharmaceuticals, sir. At least take another look at the proposal I've put together."
"Are you still on that pipe dream? Forget it. Why ask for trouble by going into something new? We're doing just fine as we are, and we'll do even better when we get bigger."
"But Dad, we should get into something new. And there's fabulous profits in manufacturing fine organic chemicals."
"Rubbish. There's a lot of cost in getting into the field too. What do you think, Joanie? Which is better? Getting into something new, or taking what you have and making it bigger?"
His question startled her, but even more startling was the way he took her hand under the table and guided it to his lap, where he pressed it down over his wool-covered penis. It wasn't the hardest she'd felt, but it was certainly the largest, and most certainly the most disturbing. As bold as him, she squeezed it, and as cool as him in a crisis she showed none of her high excitement as she answered:
"I always like something new, but I think it'd be much better to take something old and tired and made it big and strong."
"That's my girl!" Joe enthused. He hugged her and kissed her cheek, sending new tingles of excitement through her with just his strength. "Between you and me and the lamp post, you know more about business than your father does. You know, I'd like to see you working down there, at least for the summer. It would do you a world of good. It would be like getting yourself a degree in business administration. It could change your life. And Lord knows, I need the help, with this expansion coming up. Arnold will be useless for the first few months, and Maggie's not much help to me any more."
"Margaret's slipping?" Junior asked. "I haven't noticed it."
"There's lots you don't notice. Get out in the plant more," he said, squeezing Joanie's leg so hard she felt like fainting. "I'm even thinking of replacing her with Gloria. She's my new receptionist," he explained to Joanie, actually touching her labia now, and causing her to squeeze his penis harder still. "Between you and her, my office could be in apple pie order and this expansion would be a breeze. What do you say? Do you want to come with me this summer?"
"I think I'd like to," Joanie said, brain in a whirl, but speech entirely proper. "I think I'd like to come with you."
"Joan, you are drunk," said her mother. "What about your plans for the summer?"
"What plans? Swimming and horseback riding and fooling around with a bunch of dumb boys? I'd rather help Grandpa," she said, and soothingly ran her hand over his big, hard penis.
"Then it's all settled. You'll start tomorrow. We'll be working weekends, you know, and I'll be a hard taskmaster, but you'll get paid well for it. Eight hundred a month, and that includes your overtime."
"Dad, you're drunk now. That's more than you're paying Harold Arnold."
"Maybe I expect to get more out of Joanie," he said, winking at her, removing his hand from her lap and hers from his. "You're on call twenty-four hours a day as my special assistant, and by the end of the summer you'll have earned enough money to afford a snazzy little sports car for college."
They talked for a few more minutes and Joe excused himself and headed for the bathroom. Joanie's legs still felt too weak to move, and she had to sit there and take her mother's stupid remarks and her father's whining ones. When Joe came back, he said, "Maybe I did have a little too much booze. I'd better take a stroll outside before I try to drive home. Anyone care to join me?" The strength returned to Joanie's legs, and two minutes later they were outside, in the cool night air, alone.
In silence she walked at his side while he sniffed in his handkerchief. Up the hill, around the corner, down the alley. He silently let them through the back gate and together they slipped into the poolside cabana at the back of the lot. In the darkness he looked quite young, and he felt very young as he roughly grabbed her into his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth, slipping his tongue between her lips and buckling her knees so that her aching pussy was tilted up against his loins.
"You're a bad girl," he said. "As wicked as I am."
"I just . . . couldn't help it. And you started it!"
"No, you did. Just by looking the way you do."
"Oh. It's all because I look like Grandma."
"No, damn it! Because you look like you! Christ, I can't leave you alone!"
His whiskers rasped her face, his hands clutched savagely at her body. She felt very alive and wonderful, and deliciously wicked.
"There's more to it than that. Maybe it's because it's so wicked," she said.
"Who gives a shit why?" he snarled, and ripped open the buttons on her pants. "All I know is I've got to have you."
His hand sliding down over her bare flesh momentarily paralyzed her with fear. It was one thing tickling around with' each other under her parents' noses, but being stripped and made love to alone in the dark was quite another thing. In a sudden panic she tried to push him away, but then his thick finger sliding into her creamy slit melted her instantly and she was pulling closer again with both arms around his neck. He chuckled at her ear, low and dirty and wicked, just the way she liked it.
"That's a hell of a nice little cunt. Is it still a virgin?"
"Yes." Panting, she tried to feel his penis with it as well as his fingers. "But don't let that stop you, J-Joe. Don't let anything stop you."
"Your folks fifty feet away are stopping me tonight."
"No! That makes it all the better."
That dirty chuckle again. "You are a little slut. Just like me. Show me your tits."
She thought she'd fall down when he let go of her. A pace back from him, and she recovered and fucked up the front of her little shirt and smiled provocatively as she twisted her shoulders back and forth to shake her breasts for him. But they weren't breasts, they were tits, and since he had made their nipples so aching hard, she shook them faster for him, twisting her lithe torso more, so that her hot pants slithered down about her ankles. He smacked his lips with lewd gusto and reached out with both gnarled old hands to halt the heavy swinging of her creamy young tits. She'd thought the nipples couldn't get any harder, couldn't ache so beautifully any more, but he proved her wrong on both counts by milking them to firmer points between his thumbs and forefingers and showing her for the first time in her life what a hugely erogenous zone a woman's tits were.
"Great set of tits," he mumbled, and stooping, sucked a nipple in his mouth and noisily sucked on it.
His hands could almost encircle her waist. They could and did cover all of her hot little buttocks, squeezing them, parting them, molding them to the shapes that pleased both of them, then slipping down lower to rub her overflowing cunt from behind. Cunt. A dirty word, but Joanie would get used to thinking in those terms, since she was a dirty girl now. And that was her asshole he was rubbing with her cunt juice, not her anus, and wise as he was in the ways of her body he was showing her that her asshole was good for something besides taking a shit with. He tickled the tip of one juicy finger right inside it, and the combination of that and his fingers in her cunt and his lips on her tit had her experiencing a new kind of orgasm. There was no big flash to it, but only a steady, grinding pleasure that went on and on. It had her writhing and pushing for more, and at the same time wanting badly to please him in the same way. She hugged his head closer to her bursting tit and stepped out of the pants with one foot to spread herself for him.
"Were you surprised I wasn't wearing any panties, Joe?"
He shook his head, scratching her more with his whiskers. "Nope," he said, and went for her other nipple.
"I took them off so you could put it right in me. So you could fuck me, Joe. I want you to."
He straightened up. "Not tonight," he said. "Maybe never. This whole thing came over me pretty fast. And I've had too much to drink. You too. We got to think about this with clear heads before we go much farther."
"Don't think," she said, and found his penis with her hand, tried to simultaneously fondle it and get it out of his pants. "Don't think, just fuck me with this beautiful big thing."
"My cock stays in my pants tonight," he said, and secured his zipper. "But tomorrow's another day. You want to come?"
"I am. All the time. But I want to come with your th . . . with your cock in me," she murmured, writhing against him, rubbing his lovely big cock.
"I'll make you come all the way," he said, and gripping her tightly about the shoulders, he ran his hand down her belly and stuck his finger in her cunt. "Tight as a mouse's ear," he chuckled, and began finger fucking her hard and fast.
It was the greatest thing that ever happened to her. She'd never really known what sex was before. It was all she could do to just keep gasping for breath and rubbing his cock through his pants as he turned her on completely. His wool lapel scraping her tit was excruciatingly good and his hot breath at her ear could be felt clear down to her cunt, where his middle finger was rubbing her just exactly where she itched inside and his bony palm against her clitoris was making the itch mount even sweeter. All night long she'd maintained very good control, but now that control was being swept aside by this powerful man who knew her so exactly and she was thrashing against him helplessly, furiously, knowing that there was still more to sex than ever. She was out of her mind with it, and already insane, blindly seeking for still more. He gave it to her with a strangled groan and a spasmodic jerking of his hips, and in the flash of knowledge that she'd made her grandfather ejaculate in his pants, the wonderful madness burst inside her in wave after beautiful wave and she wanted to shout with her exultation in being a woman, fulfilled, orgasming much more completely than most women could ever know.
Racked by an orgasm of his own, not even her grandfather could know what was happening to her, for if he knew the dimensions of her orgasm he would quickly stop and lecture her on the sins of excess lest she become an addict to it, a hopeless nymphomaniac, ready for it all the time. But he just slowed down and quit and blew out his breath heavily a few times and patted her on the rump.
"You come pretty good for a young girl."
"As good as Grandma?" she asked, clinging to him with both arms again, and looking for the wetness of his spent sperm with her naked loins.
He shook her and said, "You cut that out. Julia and you are two different people."
"Well, I want everything you gave her. And more."
He laughed and said, "It'd kill me, child. We'll take what we can get. If," he said, "we still want to go on with this insanity by the cold gray light of dawn. Now, get dressed and get inside."
"We'll want to keep on," she said, utterly confident.
She bent to pull up her hot pants, and all he had to do was run his hand over her upturned buttocks and slip his fingers through their groove to vividly remind her of how strong her orgasm had been.
"That's a beautiful ass," he said. "Here. You want to put these back on?" He handed her white panties.
"Where did you get these, Joe?"
"In the waste basket in the John. Christ, I could smell them like a bird dog."
"And I thought you were coming down with a cold," she said, and grinning, pressed the damp and musky garment to his mouth and nose. "Keep them, Grandpa. Maybe they'll help you reach the right decision about our going on."
VII
Joe's nervousness the next morning had nothing to do with a hangover. He'd taken a pill and slept like a rock, had arrived at the office very early, and had sat behind his desk with his head in his hands for over an hour, thinking, waiting for his granddaughter.
Driving home the night before, he'd had it all figured out. He was a big man, a powerful man, a man of such exceptional strength that the rules for others did not apply to him. He'd once killed a man in Chicago to keep his illegal booze operation from being muscled in on, and he'd gone unpunished for it. He had stolen many times, in the past like a sneak thief, lately within the framework of accepted business standards-standards which he himself had set, for in his opinion, each man's standards were his own. Take Stanley Moss for example; by Stanley's fuzzy standards, Joe had robbed him of half the company, but by his own standards it had been just another clever business deal. Furthermore, his alleged sins included raping and/or sodomizing more than a few women, but in the overall picture, he'd given them as much pleasure as he'd taken. Perhaps Julia was the exception to this, but she had been a very stupid woman. His past sins had not really hurt anyone. Stanley still had a good job, and he couldn't have run even half the company himself; Julia was dead, but that had been her choice, and at the end she hadn't really been living anyway. But Joanie was a different matter.
His sin with her would be incest, and while he had no fears of heaven or hell, he was aware that their further involvement might cause her some sort of psychological damage, and he did love his granddaughter dearly. This morning, alone in the place he loved best, he feared that by going all the way with her he might ruin her for the splendid young man she so richly deserved. And he feared that he might knock her up, for after all, she was the image of Julia, the only woman he ever had impregnated with his seed. Most of all he feared that in the guilty, hung over aftermath of it, she'd already told her parents about it and the police were already on their way to take him to the station, from which place he would surely be committed. She was strong enough to bounce back from their affair and be happy with another man, and he was strong enough-to push her into an abortion, but there was no way in the world he could end his years in an asylum, and the thought of this had him sweating nervous bullets of perspiration. He sighed with relief when he heard Junior's Buick pull into its parking place outside his office window, for now at least the waiting would be over. He was glowering over some old sales reports when Junior's familiar knock came at his door.
"Come in," he said, as brusque as ever, and relief washed over him in waves as his meekly smiling son held the door open for his brazenly winking granddaughter.
"Lesson number one," he said, scowling his fiercest. "Nobody-not you or your pappy or God himself-comes through that door without knocking and being told to enter. I demand my privacy in here, and by God, I get it." He went on with an outrageous tale about how he'd mutilated a girl from the Packaging Department for walking in unannounced while Joanie smiled respectfully at him and he looked her over.
It was astounding the way she resembled Julia, but that wasn't the reason he wanted her. The same eyes and hair and glowing complexion, the same willowy figure. But better, longer legs, bigger tits from what he'd had of them in the dark, and that trace of the devil in her face. She'd dressed provocatively, just for him. A tight, horizontally striped T-shirt of red and white, through which her unbrassiered nipples were trying to poke, and snow white, ultra tight walking shorts whose crotch seemed to have been sprayed up between her golden tan legs. Sandals through which her pretty little pink-lacquered toes peeped, the same blushing color as her fingernails and that adorably kissable and impudently smirking mouth. His prick was throbbing to life as he delivered his monologue, making him feel as young and foolhardy as he had last night when for the first time in two score years he'd creamed his jeans. He ate her up with his eyes while he spoke, and by the time he was through he had decided on a compromise affair with her, something out of character for him, but then she was a very special female. He'd have her in the best way he could for both of them, and if part of his motive was because she was Julia reborn, so be it.
". . . and the same thing'll happen to you if you come barging in here without knocking. Now get to work. Junior, I'm sure you have plenty to do, and Joanie, you stay here with me and I'll run you through Maggie's desk and duties."
"You're not thinking of firing her, are you Dad?" Junior asked, obviously worried.
"I might," he said with a smile. "And I might fire you and give Maggie your job. You never know about me."
Junior made his exit chuckling politely, and his daughter hip-swung her way forward toward his desk. She leaned against it with her thighs, straining the white fabric tighter over her bulging pubes. "What I want to know about you is what you're thinking about you and me now that we've both gone through the cold gray light of dawn business. You know what decision I came to, Joe."
He grinned down at her, rocking to and fro against his desk, tits bobbing yes at him, cunt reaching out for him. He said. "You're going to get some more wet panties, girl."
"I can't help it, I really can't. What'd you do with the ones I gave you?"
"Got drunk on them. Now I'm drunker. Come on into Maggie's office. I've gotta get some work out of you before I.. . come on."
He got up from his desk, not trying to hide his erection. Jesus, he couldn't start off every day like this; trying to keep up with her youthful eagerness would wear him out. He had to save as much of his sexual energy as he could and divert it into work, and only allow himself a climax with her for a job well done for the company. He got to the door of his secretary's office before he looked back at her, and when he did it stopped him in his tracks and made him turn about.
She was still standing where he'd left her, but now she was facing him, her one knee bent in the stance of a model, her full young breasts bared as she held her T-shirt up under her armpits with both hands. Even as he started toward her she let it go, but the jutting swells of her tits held it up nicely, and he could see the taut, full flesh of them clearly now, cream white from the bathing suit she wore and centered with nipples that made her gleaming fingernail polish look drab in comparison. He came plodding toward her, his prick filling again, and she lured him closer still by gently tweaking one nipple between thumb and forefinger while she sucked on a fingertip of her other hand like a pouting, pampered little girl.
She kept batting her eyelids coyly as he approached her, the perfect coquette, but her body was trembling with excitement as he placed his big hands on her waist and ran them slowly up to heft and cup her very warm breasts.
"You know," he said, and only his croaking voice in his ears was old. "You know we've got to get some work done too."
"Yes, but first you've got to get rid of your baby's cherry for her. It itches her so bad her can't hardly stand it," she baby-talked, and turned over the duties of playing with her tits to him by reaching down to fondle his cock. "Mmmmm. Grandpa is so nice and big today. But I bet he's not so big he can't get all his cock in baby's pussy."
He somehow got his hands off her tits and took her by the shoulders, and ignoring her hand on his cock, he very seriously said, "You are the prettiest, sexiest little tomato I've ever seen in my life, but I am sixty years old and I can't hope to keep up with you. If I fucked you all I wanted to, my old balls would shrivel up in a week. What's more, I am not going to take your virginity from you, no matter.. . "
"Like hell you're not!" she snapped, and he saw a glimpse of himself in her snapping eyes and suddenly vicious mouth. "I don't care if it hurts me a little. Christ, Joe, I want it to! I'm a woman, you said so yourself, and I'm not about to settle for just some teasing around and finger fucking like we did last night. And I'm surprised at you for . . . "
"Shut up," he said, and covered her mouth with his hand.
She grabbed it and kissed and was close to tears as she said, "Please take me, Joe, all the way. I know it's an awful sin because we're blood relatives but I don't care about that. I don't care about anything but your making love to me and if you won't I just . . . I just can't stand it!" she said, and threw herself against him, cunt-bumping him and mashing her tits against his chest and twining a leg around his, filling him with energy and life.
But he still had control that comes with age, and he held her hands and kissed away the first tear that fell and then nibbled and licked at her fingers as he spoke:
"You'll get all you need from me. You'll get a lot more than you expect. But under no circumstances am I going to take your cherry. You're going to save that part of yourself for the man you're going to marry, or at least fall in love with."
"But I'm in love with you!"
"No. I won't accept that. And I won't accept your cherry. But I will take a lot more from you, and give you all you need in return."
She tried to turn away. "You can't. Not unless you fuck me."
He pulled her back against him and licked between her fingers. "Like hell I can't. You'd be surprised at the ways an old duffer like me can keep a young virgin happy, and intact."
Her big blue eyes blinked rapidly at him. "Your talking about. . . using your tongue?"
"Among other things," he said, and replaced her hand on his cock. "What's the matter? You think it's a perversion for a man to lick a nice fresh pussy."
"N-No, but. . . "
"Then it's because you don't want his nasty old tongue in you, eh?" he asked, licking her trembling lips, the corners of her mouth, sucking on her finger.
"It's not that. It's just that I'd rather you . . . "
"Mind if I take this off while we talk about it?" he asked, sliding down the zipper of her shorts, very lightly brushing his fingertips over her bulging cunt to make her tremble all the more. She was more passionate by far than Julia.
"Gra. . . Joe, it's something I have to think about."
"You can think about it while I'm doing it, while I have my tongue up your tight little hole," he said, pushing down her shorts and panties, with her helping him despite her feeble protests.
"Joe, wait. Please," she said, as he went to his knees, feeling not a whit of his arthritis, and working the tight garments down over her hips and thighs.
He'd never been a pussy eater. He'd tried it once or twice and though it hadn't been bad, he'd always considered it unmanly, effeminate, something for the henpecked husband to be trained to do. But now, looking at those tan-fringed contours right before his eyes, he was placing hot kisses on the smooth young flesh even before he had her shorts off.
"Please wait, Joe. Daddy might come in."
"He does and I'll kill him," he growled, and getting one of her feet free, he spread her legs widely and tipped her butt up on the edge of the desk and dug in.
Her taste and smell hit him in a big rush. He feasted his senses on them for several giddy moments before he discovered the delights of the texture of that silken flesh with all its cunning recesses and bumps and hollows. The feel of her under his hands was marvelous too, and he slid his hands back and forth around her hips, first digging his fingertips into her firm little buns, then parting her cunt wide with his thumbs. Her response was what had him striving for more. She was shaking all over and ripping at his hair, twisting about to throw him more cunt and gasping, "Oh my God, it's too much. I can't stop coming and it's getting better all the time."
He tried to concentrate on technique, but his tongue was too ravenously hungry for her sweet box that it couldn't light on any one spot. All of her seemed equally sensitive though. Copious amounts of cunt juice were flowing, and his cheeks and his moving hands were spreading the slippery, intoxicating stuff around. He didn't know a great deal about cunt licking-though he would learn-but he did know a lot about women, and so as he felt her approaching a delirious climax, he began rubbing his juice-slick fingers through the crack of her ass and over her asshole.
"Don't! Not there!" she squealed, whipping her hips about even faster feeding him more hot, sweet cunt.
He went right on, of course, burrowing his finger deep in her asshole and causing a veritable gusher of cunt juice to burst forth for his lapping tongue as, high above him, she screamed and screamed, and then went so limp he had to catch her in his arms to keep her from falling.
He chuckled as he bore her toward his John, hair down over her face, cunt juice running down her leg, dragging shorts and panties along on one limp foot. As he entered with her, a sharp knock came at the door and Junior's anxious voice said, "Everything okay in there?"
Joe wasn't one to panic. Joanie was placed half conscious on the pot, and he quickly washed and dried his face before he went to admit his son.
The voices of her father and grandfather brought Joan out of her stupor. It was terrifying. She was sure they'd been discovered, until she heard Joe announce in a loud voice that he'd been disappointed in the panic that a stray mouse had caused his favorite granddaughter. Her father's laughter had so relieved her that her bladder opened and she cluttered loudly in the bowl. Squatting, her pussy open and flowing, brought her thoughts out in a dizzying stream.
It had been so good it frightened her. His tongue in her cunt had been felt by every nerve ending in her body, by every brain cell in her head. Was sex always that good, or had there been genuine love involved this time? Or had it been the sinful aspect of it that had made it so terrific? She really didn't know. All she knew for sure was that she'd been introduced to a new world, one in which she could become totally lost, and despite her fears she was unable to return to her old world.
Joe was alone when she emerged from his bathroom, and she looked at him in awe. He was as brusquely businesslike as ever as he took her to Margaret's office and crisply explained the file system to her. He dictated some short inter-office memos to her which she somehow managed to scribble down and left her with the instructions to type them up and then pull the old invoices for certain equipment existing in the plant.
As he was leaving her his stern expression at last softened and he gently took her by the arms and said, "Did I make you happy, Joanie?"
"Yes! I wish I could tell you. I. . . "
"You made me happy too. But we're going to have to be a lot more careful in the future." He smiled. "And we can't use that mouse gag again."
She pressed up against him, unable to keep away. "I'm sorry I yelled like that. I won't do it again. But when is again, Joe?"
"When it's safe. Now get to work, girl."
Joanie's fanny was still tingling from where he'd slapped her in parting as she typed up the memos. Her pussy still tingled too, and her cheeks were still flushed from her strong, strong reaction to his kisses. Somehow she'd have to learn to control these new emotions of hers. She'd have to be as strong as Joe, or someone would surely find out about them, and Joe would be ruined and she would be deprived of the feelings that only he could bring to her. Rigid control at all times, until they were alone and she could soar like a bird and shriek like a banshee under the illicit kisses of that remarkable old man. She began practicing her control immediately.
She turned her mind off to the lingering warmth and fullness of her sexual self and concentrated entirely on her work. This took repeated efforts, for each time her thoughts wandered even minutely she was thinking of that tremendous orgasm and feeling her labia swell and her fanny feel warm and soft and open. She steeled herself anew before knocking and entering his office with her completed work, and she felt she was just about as brisk as him when she presented him the papers. Austerely calm, she waited his inspection and approval, and yessirred him when he told her to take the invoices on to Junior. In the hall she almost collapsed with relief over having maintained her control in his presence, thus taking a large step in preserving their wicked, wonderful relationship. She acted properly embarrassed when her father kidded her about the imaginary mouse before giving his attention to the papers.
He looked through them and signed. "Same old thing. I can't get through to him that we ought to expand horizontally instead of vertically."
"What do you mean, Daddy?"
"He's going to double or triple everything we have in the plant. He's going to enlarge the company straight up, like building a skyscraper. I say we ought to diversify into different products and then expand from there, like a pyramid. But he's the boss."
"And he's done very well so far," she said, defending old Joe, her lover. "And you'll have your chance to do things your way someday."
"I don't know. I may have the better plan, but I don't know if I have the drive to execute it that Dad has."
"Could I see your plans? The proposal you talked about?"
"Sure. There's not really that much for you to do here today, but there will be when we start on ordering equipment and getting ready to install it. I'll be here to answer your questions."
He gave her a thick folder and she started through it. Much of it was incomprehensible to her, especially the long, complex names of the chemicals that the elaborate equipment would produce. But she stuck with it, largely because it kept her mind off her body. It was starting to make a little sense to her by the time Joe came to take them to lunch.
Joanie had been in the Red Glove a few times before. It was a plastic-plush place that offered business men's lunches and made its money on the drinks that were sold with them. On Saturday it was nearly empty, and those businessmen and women in it were dressed as informally as the trio of Ridgely's. Both father and son knew most of them, and Junior greeted them with smiles while his father took Joanie around and introduced her as the third generation of Ridgelys working for the betterment of man through industry. They all took his introduction as a joke, and she resented it and wished she'd worn something less frivolous than shorts and a shirt. They sat down and ordered, and the waiter gave Joe no argument when he told him to bring three martinis, though Joanie was very obviously under age. She looked around the room over the rim of her glass at the people who'd taken her presence as a joke, and she fantasized about the day when she'd be accorded all the respect that her grandfather now got. When he placed his hand on her bare leg under the table, she had the sudden and almost overwhelming urge to throw herself into his arms and kiss him. But calm prevailed. She remained immobile and separated her sexual self from her intellectual self and was able to simultaneously join in the conversation and enjoy the good, hot feelings his moving hand was bringing her.
"Here's how I'm going to set it up," he said. "You keep on with your regular duties, Junior, plus seeing to it Hal Arnold thoroughly understands every phase of our operation. He starts work Monday, and he's got to know what we're doing now before he can be of any use in laying out the plumbing and wiring for the new equipment we'll be getting. I'll keep my oar in on his training too. I'm going to put Joanie in charge of purchasing the new stuff. She'll be working right under me."
Joanie slipped her hand into his lap and started pumping life into his cock. Her father looked surprised at this announcement of Joe's.
The old man said, "Why not? I'll tell her what to order. She'll make the phone calls, dicker over discounts, and follow up on delivery times. I'll set her up in a corner of Maggie's office, and Gloria Slade can help her. By the time school starts, her job will be done. She'll be close to me, and I think it'll work out fine."
Joanie squeezed her grandfather's thickening cock. "I think it will too."
"It'll probably involve some night work, but better to have her here than running around with boys and such."
"Much better," Joanie said, and opened her legs wider for the fingertips that were pressing against her wetly bulging cunt. She was feeling the martini as well as the sex. Alcohol and desire were spreading through her, and she was controlling both of them beautifully. Both her fondling and Joe's continued through lunch, and as they left she had the laugh on the other patrons of the establishment for not a one of them knew how beautifully excited and wonderfully drunk she felt.
Back in her father's office, she read on through his proposal. It was a test for her. She wanted to see if she could understand the complexities of it all and at the same time keep alive that flame of desire sparked by Joe's touch and by her thoughts of their future times together. It wasn't easy. From then on at work she wouldn't be able to wear her favorite tight clothing, for the very presence of her grandfather in the same building with her worked as a much more powerful stimulus than the crotch band of her tightest pants. She managed it, though, gaining more and more control over her ability to separate her intellect from the good, smoldering desire in her. When she was done with it, she asked her father several questions, and he was as pleased as she at her understanding of his proposal, though for a different reason than hers. She excused herself then, telling him she wanted to further familiarize herself with the purchasing file.
In Margaret's office, she pulled other old invoices for the valves and piping that would be needed to go with the new mixing vats and bottling machines and conveyor belts, then removed every stitch of her clothes and took clothes and invoices into Joe's office without knocking.
"Didn't I tell you never to co . . . Oh . . . my . . . God . . . " he said.
She came briskly around his desk and laid the papers before him, hand on his shoulder, breasts swinging down close to his open mouth. "I suppose you'll want me to order the valves and piping too. Who gives the best discount?"
His hot breath, his leathery lips, then that fantastic tongue of his were felt in rapid succession on her right breast, and she very nearly lost her precious control when his hands were added to these. Her words came with difficulty as she said, "Who will be doing the installation? Do you have enough people for that? And what sort of a budget will we be working under? Joe, how can we discuss business when you're doing that?"
"Business day's over," he mumbled, turning her to get to her other breast, running his one hand up over her bare ass and the other up her inner leg to the warm, wet flesh that opened through her hair. She wanted to grab him by the hair and drag his mouth to her cunt, but still she kept her control. This was her treat now. That part of her brain that she'd been unable to keep on her new work had been planning it all afternoon, and she was determined to carry out its plan.
She turned away from him, caressing his face with her hands and his mouth with her tits, until his chair had swiveled ninety degrees away from his desk. There she exerted her will power and pulled her engorged nipple from his mouth and brought her lips to his as she slowly sank to her knees on the floor. His mouth was very warm and wet from her breast, making control very difficult to keep. She went on kissing him, only allowing a portion of the strong desire to flood through her, and she ran her hands up and down his outspread thighs as she knelt between them. He was leaning forward into the kiss and clutching at her, but she held him off with her hands and elbows lest she completely succumb to her desire to be thrilled so greatly again to the exclusion of his pleasure.
"Get up on the desk," he panted.
She smiled and shook her head and resumed the kiss, now fondling his hard cock through his pants while she opened his fly. She reached within and took out his cock, strong and straight, just like him, and not until she had it free and was caressing it with both hands was she sure she could go through with her plan.
"Damn it, you get up on my desk," he croaked, grasping her strongly by the shoulders, trying to lift her.
"No! You said the business day was over, and I'm the boss now. Sit still. That's an order." She pushed at his chest. They glared at each other from a foot apart, and then he sighed heavily and leaned back, his face grim.
"Joanie, I am not going to fuck you." She nodded, bending lower. "Yes, you are. In my mouth," she said, and his cock loomed large.
The smell of it almost stopped her; it rose like heat waves, and it was goaty and strong. And the sight of it almost stopped her; livid and purplish and fierce, with that single eye glaring at her. His words too almost stopped her; he said she shouldn't do something she might be sorry for, that it was completely unnecessary, that he wanted only to please her. She thought of how her cunt had smelled to him, how ugly it had been when he'd had to look at it up close, and how immensely he had pleased her, and these flashing thoughts permitted her to go on and suck the big thing delicately into her virgin mouth.
He emitted a strangled moan of pleasure, and at once any reluctance fled from her. She sucked it more strongly, gripped it more tightly, and found to her great delight that her excitement was returning. Within seconds there was nothing at all ugly about it and she was swirling her tongue all about the velvety smooth head of it, rubbing her circling lips up and down over the heavy ridge of its corona, and milking the thick shaft with her hand. In the back of her throat she was echoing the little sighs and moans he was making, and her cunt was opening out like a fast-blooming, exotic flower.
It was an unexpected and hugely exhilarating bonus. She'd intended her supplicant act to be exclusively for him, in repayment for his having done the same for her, but now she understood that he really had derived sexual pleasure from his cunnilingus, just as she was pleasing herself by this fellatio. She sucked more warmly still, and the pleasure increased so that she had to reach down and caress her wet and swollen tissues. The taste and smell of him became as wonderful as the hard and soft textures of his sex and she was panting to smell more of him, licking and swallowing to get every morsel she could of him, and rubbing harder at her own growing itch. She knew it was impossible, but she was feeling every bit as good as when he'd been kneeling before her; but she didn't question it, she just enjoyed it.
When she'd made her plan, she'd known she'd be unable to go all the way with this, but now she was ravenously hungry for his come. She could taste a teasing preliminary of it, the salty sweet stuff that oozed out of that eye in which she dug the tip of her tongue. But she wanted more. Her own juices were flowing so copiously that her fingers were sloshing in her cunt and the overflow was tickling down her legs, and now her moans were louder than his in her need to bring him to a full climax.
"Better stop," he panted, and she sucked at him harder, used both hands on his cock to keep him from pushing her away and ruining everything.
He groaned out her name and she worked over him furiously with lips and tongue and hands, even though her cunt was now screaming for attention and her tits felt like they were going to burst. "Uff!" he grunted, and grabbed her head, holding her there now as the stuff of his life, thick and hot, came shooting into her mouth. It was so good it shocked her. She stopped sucking for a moment, but then when a drop of the priceless stuff drooled out the corner of her mouth she was sucking madly again, thrilling at his churnings in the chair, lapping and swallowing insanely, and her cunt began bursting and coming without her laying a hand on it. She lowered her head till it was in the back of her throat, shuddering and moaning and humping her hips, coming right along with him, and when the last drop of his stuff had been sucked out and swallowed, she collapsed weakly on his carpet and gazed dazedly on the slowly wilting flesh before her, wet from her hungry mouth, still beautiful but in a sadly pathetic way now that she had taken its strength from it.
In a weak voice he told her to get up on his desk, but she smiled and shook her head. She was weak from the climax she'd had from sucking him off, but that was only a small weakness of the flesh. Within, she felt tremendously strong, for she had the best part of that strong man snugly in her belly, nourishing her.
VIII
On Monday morning, flanked by the two younger women, Margaret Fox tried to tell herself that the words Joe Ridgely were saying were all an elaborate joke, done in the poorest of taste. They were in her office, but it was becoming more and more apparent that her snug, secure cubbyhole in the company was no longer hers.
". . . changes around here now that the loan's been approved. My granddaughter Joan will be working under me in handling the purchasing of the new equipment, with Gloria helping her. We'll all be doing double duties for a while and I will tolerate no complaining. With my help, Joan will streamline our purchasing system, and once she goes back to school in the fall, I expect you, Gloria, will be in charge of purchasing . . . if you can cut the mustard in the next few months while you're working with Joan. Maggie, you'll still be handling most of my correspondence. I've already told Chester to set up a typewriter at the switchboard because you'll be spending about half your time out there until we get things squared away with this expansion. You'll coordinate Joan's expenditures with Stanley. I want a new account number set up for this loan and its disbursement. I want every penny of that hundred thousand dollars accounted for, and so does the Small Business Administration. When one of those government boys comes by to find out where we stand on it, I want you to meet him at the door and take him right into accounting and show him exactly where we stand on the money. Gloria, if he should come by while you're on the switchboard, smile at him pretty and tell him to sit down and go get Mrs.
Fox. And when he comes, Maggie, you handle him and handle him right. The money isn't in our hands yet, but it will be soon, and in the meantime we're going to get all the equipment lined up and tentative orders placed. But Joanie, don't place the firm orders yet, because if we wait till the last minute we can take advantage of the discounts for cash sales. Any questions? Good," he said, without leaving room for any. "Let's get to work. Maggie, take these withholding tax forms with you and have Harold Arnold fill them out the minute he comes in-damn it, he should be here by now-and then take him in to Junior. I'll be busy with Joan. That's all."
The transition from executive secretary to female handyman was so quick Margaret couldn't comprehend it until she was walking unsteadily down the hall, away from her little office with the philodendron in the window pot and the little paperweights and souvenirs on her desk. Just because they were younger and prettier than her, just because one of them was related to him and the other was sleeping with him, those girls were back there defiling her desk and her office and all the things she'd built up over the long, hard years, while she was being shunted off to the humiliating, naked exposure of the lobby. She'd be handling salesmen and government inspectors, and they'd be handling Joe, tending to the needs of the man who'd turned her love into hate. It wasn't right. It just wasn't right!
The switchboard with its efficient rows of buttons and lights and levers was an alien thing, repulsing her, but she had to touch it and place the calls that were coming in. The typewriter she'd used so often now seemed completely out of place and unfamiliar on the little table the maintenance man had set up. All the people in the plant would soon know the shame of her downfall, the eclipse of her power in the company, and all because she'd refused to seduce a young man who undoubtedly had very badly wanted to be seduced. If she could only have that chance again . . .
But chances didn't come twice. She'd heard Joe say that often enough, and she knew it was true, especially when a woman got to be her age. Gloria Slade was young enough to err now and again with Joe and still climb rapidly in the company, and the opportunities for her elevation would be great now that the company was at last expanding quickly. Margaret felt old, left behind, out of touch with things. In a few months, with Joan Ridgely back in school, Gloria would be Joe's executive secretary and Joe would probably hire another good-looking female to be purchasing agent. Whichever of them pleased him most in bed would be appointed to her place as Corporate Secretary, and she'd be left out in the cold, her only communication with the man she'd loved through the intercom he never used. She placed her hand on the master intercom and her serenely lovely face became bitter and ugly as she whispered, 'Til get you yet, Joe Ridgely! I won't let you do this to me!"
She looked up and her expression at once became normal as the cause of all her troubles came smiling through the front door. Carrying a battered suitcase, the young chemical engineer looked fresh-scrubbed and eager and young, and she hated him for it. But she greeted him warmly and gave him the forms to fill out, telling herself as she did that it really wasn't his fault, that he was even more of a pawn than she was in this corporate game where sex and intrigue were the tools and the object of it all were power and money. And looking at him in his innocence she smiled, for with her age went a knowledge of sex and intrigue that could still win her a share of that power-or could at least take some of it out of the hands of others. Now her allegiance was to herself, not to Joe, and she'd pull out all the stops in using what she'd learned from him. Use her body, pry, snoop, divide and conquer, and do it all so gracefully and carefully that she'd win the game in the end and laugh at the downfall of both Joe and his beloved company.
"That's fine, Hal. I'll take them to Mrs. Slade," she said, retrieving the forms, watching him closely. "And I'll take you to Joe, Jr.'s office."
His face looked slightly puzzled and he said, "Mrs. Slade?"
"Yes, Gloria. The other half of the switchboard team."
"I got the impression she was . . . uh . . . unmarried."
She let him wait for a few seconds, expecting her to say she was either widowed or divorced, and then she smiled and drew all the color out of his face by saying, "Oh, no. She's been married for several years. Come. I'll show you to Mr. Ridgely's office."
He turned and looked back at the front door, and when he faced her again his face was as grim as she felt. He said, "Thank you. I think I can find it myself."
Hal heard the welcoming speech and was shown the desk that had been set up for him in a corner of the office. He was taken through the plant and shown the mixing and filling and packaging operations performed by the girls and their male supervisors. He met the supervisors and the small maintenance staff, and he asked questions about current operations and the plans for expansion. He expressed the proper degree of pleasure at hearing the funds were on the way for the plans he was to help formulate and carry out. The capsuling machines would have absorbed all his interest under other circumstances for they were complex and clever, but just as on his previous time in the plant, he was badly distracted by Gloria Slade.
She was in the plant somewhere and he had to see her, had to clear up this misunderstanding about her being married. Perhaps he hadn't heard the receptionist right. She just couldn't be married. If she was, he'd just turn around and go back to the airport, back to South Bend, and somehow reopen negotiations with the companies he'd politely declined to work for when he'd returned from Los Angeles the previous week. He had no money for a ticket, but he'd find a way. He'd walk back if he had to, and he'd fight his way into Du Pont if necessary. It was likely she was married, for beautiful, passionate girls like her just weren't running around loose. From the way she'd acted with him, the marriage was probably on the verge of a divorce, but that made it no better. The trouble was, she hadn't told him herself, and lies of omission were just as bad as the other kind in his opinion.
Back in his office, Joe, Jr. said, "Here are the blueprints of the plant. First thing, I'd like you to make some new drawings complete with locations to scale of the existing equipment and piping and wiring. Then we can decide on the placement of the new stuff and you can draw it in before it's purchased and installed. I'll be working on the leasing of the adjacent property, and I'd like you to draw that up too. I realize drafting isn't really your line, but it has to be done. And here," he said, handing Hal a folder, "is my proposal for the expansion we talked about, the one I'm still trying to talk my father into going for. You might take a look at it and see where I've blundered," he apologetically added. "First thing, draw in an office for yourself-about here-with room for a drafting table and a desk and bookcases. My . . . uh . . . daughter Joan is temporarily helping out with purchasing. I'll introduce you to her now and she can place orders for the office furniture you'll need."
Hal scarcely noticed the tall, pretty girl he was shaking hands with and talking to. He was looking straight at her, but all he was seeing was the trim little brunette at the edge of his field of vision who had returned to her filing after a brief greeting. Had that been amusement in her eyes or desire? What the hell was she?-a married nympho or a girl in love with him, as he was with her. And what the fuck was he doing there-lusting after a tramp and wasting his time at seven-fifty a month, or really building for his future?
He returned and began poring over the papers he'd been given. In his state of confusion, it made little sense and was completely boring. All except for the proposal of Joe, Jr.'s. It absorbed his interest in spite of his problem. Much of it was more competently done that he could have managed himself, with all his education, but he saw several points he could improve on. He spent two hours on it and had just closed the folder when Joe, Jr. came back into the office.
"That's a beautiful piece of work. It really is."
Pride flushed the soft, pale face. "I'd like to see it happen. I still think it will. But it would cost at least twice as much as the funds we have, but only if we bought used equipment and cut every corner in the book. I'll let you know what progress I make with my father. And, speaking of funds, how are you fixed, Hal? Probably not good. I took the liberty of arranging for an advance of a month's pay. It should get you set up in a place to live. And Mrs. Fox has offered to drive you around this afternoon and help you find an apartment. Gloria is typing your check for my father's signature now. She'll bring it to you soon, and then you can take off. And now if you'll excuse me . . . "
Hal had been about to refuse the offer, but now he thanked his new boss and watched him go out the door. If everything wasn't as he'd expected, he didn't want the job, but he did have to see Gloria alone, and this would be the opportunity. He waited anxiously, unable to find anything of interest in the plans and blueprints now, and as he waited, his anxiety increased. He was on his feet and pacing, almost ready to go striding down the hall and confront her in the presence of Joe, Jr.'s daughter, when she came in with check in hand.
He had to speak quickly, to get it over with before her beauty and proximity melted him into soft butter.
"Is it true you're married?"
"Well, yes, but. . . "
"That's all I wanted to know," he said, and brushed past her.
Mrs. Fox was waiting for him by the switchboard, pleasant and smiling. Behind him he could hear Gloria's heels clacking quickly in pursuit. He grabbed the woman by the arm and bustled her out the door with him, unable to look back lest his rage explode. He was in Mrs. Fox's car with her before he realized he had the check in his hand.
She laughed and said, "You're certainly in a hurry to cash that. My bank is close by."
"Let's go. And then let's go someplace I can have a drink and use a telephone," he said bitterly. The hell with all of them. He'd blow the whole seven-fifty-minus deductions-on a wild, drunken night in L.A. and an airline ticket east, and let them come looking for him with a warrant for his arrest. When they came for him, he'd tell them how Gloria had screwed him half out of his mind and suggest they put her to work street-walking until she'd earned enough money with her cunt to recover their loss. He was too angry to speak as Mrs. Fox drove off, and she was too polite to try to carry on a conversation.
Two hours later they were still in her apartment, and much of his anger had been softened by the Scotch he'd bought with his first paycheck, the music from her stereo, and her subdued sympathy for his problem. They had gone up there for Margaret to change into something more comfortable for her apartment-hunting and for him to have that soothing drink. One drink had led to another, and since he really had no need for an apartment in Los Angeles, he'd done most of the leading toward that next drink. She'd gone along with it, a compliant and unflustered woman with no ulterior motive other than getting the afternoon off-and obviously with no husband.
On the couch beside her, he said, "Seems like all I do out here is get drunk with Ridgely girls."
Her laughter was very gay. "I'm not exactly a girl, Hal."
She'd changed into yellow tailored pants which fit her very nicely, especially that portion of her anatomy that her boss had so familiarly slapped when Hal had first seen her, and a silk paisley blouse with bright colors that shimmered over her diminutively proud breasts. She looked much younger in the outfit and quite pretty, and Hal wondered if he'd ever have a secretary like that, one who he'd be able to get a little familiar with at work, and maybe very familiar with away from work, wherever that would be. She wasn't taking his mind completely off Gloria, but she was helping. With the drinks in him, he grew a little bolder.
"You look pretty girlie to me," he said, and got his courage up enough to take her hand in his.
She clasped it with both of hers and smiled. "You're very sweet, Hal."
"Sweet," he grunted. "Tired of being sweet. Where does it get you? Nowhere, that's where. Be a louse, like old man Ridgely, getting that Gloria to seduce me into working for peanuts. That's the way to be."
"Now, Hal. We don't know for sure that's what he did. Maybe she really does like you . . . or did."
"Married woman. Some kind of a slut she is. Do anything to get ahead. Now, you . . . you couldn't do that. Too nice, tha's your trouble."
"If I did seduce you," Margaret said, leaning close, bathing him in her springtime perfume, "it wouldn't be for personal gain. You're dry and so am I. Can you handle another drink? I can, I think, and then we'll go looking for a place to live for you."
She was gone to the kitchen before he could follow up the opportunity he thought she'd presented. His prick was half hard and he was feeling good. The surroundings were most pleasant in her immaculate and spacious apartment, and he didn't want to leave to go apartment hunting or to go to where he was supposed to be working or to go to the airport. Screw it all. He was at last getting some of the luxury he'd worked for in college, and he was enjoying it. Tomorrow was another day, and with all that money in his pocket, he could go to the Hilton that night and pick up a real whore. Not that Gloria wasn't. Margaret hadn't told him in so many words how she'd carried on with other men, but her honesty had been such that she hadn't denied that Gloria's reputation was unsavory around the company. Apparently the little bitch was even sleeping with old Joe Ridgely, and that disgusted Hal as much as the fact that she had a husband. Margaret said all she knew for sure was that Gloria had been married for four years. Four years! She probably knew a lot more, but she was too much of a lady to tell him.
Good looking lady too, and one who knew how to make a man comfortable. Have him take his shoes off, and his coat and tie. Mix his drinks for him and urge him to put his feet up on the couch. Well-bred lady, with still a lot of good years left. She should have a husband, not Gloria Slade. Slade; the very name made him feel nauseous, and he did as his friend Margaret said and laid back with his feet on the couch. He could see her moving in her kitchen by then, and she moved well. You could tell by the way she talked about old Ridgely that she was or had been in love with him. Probably slept with him too. The old goat, he was sleeping with Gloria now, probably spending lots of money on her, money he saved by paying slave wages and getting his relatives to work for him for even less. Yep, if Hal stayed with Ridgely, he'd sure get himself an education-but in all the wrong things. But he wasn't going to stay. No sir, too smart for that. He was yawning so cavernously when Margaret came back with the drinks that his jaw was cracking.
" 'Scuse me. Better manners than that. Still on South Bend time, an' I got up early as hel . . . as heck."
"Oh, that's all right," she said, sinking to the floor beside him, giving him his drink. "Take a little nap if you'd like. We have plenty of time to find that apartment."
"More time than you know," he said, and laughed and laughed. He drank deeply and relaxation spread, and with it came the need to talk to her and tell her what a fine, fine woman she was and how he'd miss her when he was gone. He forgot whether he'd told her of his plans to leave with the money or not, but it didn't matter. He could trust her, he could relax with her, and this he did, yawning and sipping and talking himself to sleep.
When he awoke it was dark and there were unfamiliar traffic noises outside. He was in a very soft bed, naked, in a place he'd never been before. At first he thought it was Chicago, after the Northwestern game during which he'd drunk so much, and then from the residual drunkenness and queasiness he thought it was the Los Angeles Hilton and he was groping in the dark for the note Gloria had left him. His hand hit something on the table and it fell with a crash. He was reaching down into the dizzying black depths beside the bed for it when a ribbon of light illuminated the room and a woman's voice asked if he was awake.
Instantly he knew where he was, and with that awareness came the awful embarrassment of recalling his giggling and groping while his clothes were being stripped from him, the sickness, the leaning on a soft body and vulgarly patting his only friend on the ass and wrestling in bed with her before sinking into sleep again. He'd screwed up again, and he wanted to die.
He raised up on the bed, sick with vertigo and shame, and saw Margaret framed in the doorway. She was wearing a long, diaphanous white negligee, and it made her look all the more like the archangel of mercy and understanding. "Wait," he said, and glided out of sight, and he frantically began looking for his clothes. They were nowhere to be seen, but he did see that the object he'd broken was the night lamp. At the risk of new nausea, he reached blindly under the bed, holding the covers about his waist, for to -add to his embarrassment he had a terrific hard-on. A pressure on the bed made him jerk upright, and there she was, a yard away, radiantly smiling and handing him a steaming cup.
"I'm sorry. I know I made a fool of myself," he said, drinking the scalding coffee, then gagging. "There's booze in it."
"It'll do you good now. Drink it down, dear."
"What time is it?"
"Past midnight."
"All the planes are gone," he said, and drank again.
"But I'm still here, Hal. Just as I promised," she said, and placed a hand on his knee through the covers.
He flattened that leg at the risk of his erection showing. "My clothes. Gottaget out of here."
"Oh, no. We went through that before, and you promised to stay here and be good. I've cleaned and pressed your pants, and your shirt is drying. You were a pretty sick young man, Hal, and a very lovable one," she said, and her hand traveling up his leg cost him a loss in trying to will away his erection.
"Did I get sick? What'd I do?"
She made a lovely, hurt face, confirming his worst suspicions. "I hope you haven't forgotten. I know I never will. It was the loveliest, the sweetest thing I've known in a long, long time. I hope you meant everything you did and said, but if not . . . " She shrugged and trailed her hand away from him.
"Now, wait," he said, grabbing her hand, not knowing what to say, but desperate to preserve his honor. "Whatever I did . . . or do, or whatever I say . . . well, I stick to it."
"There's no need, Hal," she said, and smiling bravely got up and left the room.
He swilled down the coffee royale and leapt out of bed, and it was the flopping of his thickened cock that reminded him he was naked. Snatching up the first thing he could find, he wrapped it around his waist and went after her. It was some sort of a satin robe, and its slithery rustling between his legs did nothing to deflate his penis. She was standing in the dimness by the window with her back to him, head down, looking very frail and vulnerable, and he tucked the satin in around his waist and gingerly placed his hands on her arms. Her arms felt very soft.
"Margaret, we've got to talk about this."
She turned around. Her eyes shone with tears. "What is there to talk about? You don't want me, not even for a little while."
"But I do! It's just that. . . "
"Then hold me. Just one more time. That's all I ask."
She moved against him and his arms went around her. Her throat was unbelievably soft to his mouth, all of her was to his body. He tried to keep his erection out of the way, but she was fitting so nicely against him that it was not altogether possible. The robe slipped and he made a grab for it, and as he did her arms went around his neck and they were kissing. It was a slow, languorous kiss and he wanted to get out of it at first, but the comfort and sweetness of it were such that his hands had to creep around her waist, allowing the folds of his improvised robe to fall open in the back. His prick was firmly against her now, separated from her very warm flesh by only two thin layers of material, and as she shifted about the robe fell away and there was only one. She shifted again, with her hand sending warm shivers through him as it slid down his side to gently grasp his prick, and then the knob of it was snugly placed between her thighs. It was as soft as a cunt, but dry. The springiness of his cock pressed it up against her vulva, and that radiated steamy heat down on him. She began to undulate her hips as the kiss grew warmer. He felt he could sink right into her, from head to toe, and he would have at that moment had not an airliner droned overhead.
Its vibrations jarred him back to his world of slide rules and equations and crisp new suits and merit raises and a little plastic sign on a desk that said Chief Engineer, and he was able to push her away. He quickly retrieved the robe, and wished he could regain his senses so quickly. It helped not to look at her.
"Margaret, we've got to talk about this."
"Yes," she said, "but later."
She didn't try to touch him again. Her hi-fi was still softly playing, and from the corner of his eyes he could see she was swaying to its tempo. He allowed more of her to enter his field of vision and saw it was the long skirt of her negligee that was so gracefully wafting back and forth. But it was getting shorter. He saw her hands at her hips, bunching up the soft material, showing more of the ivory columns of her legs, and he looked away, panting through his teeth.
"Margaret, we have got to talk!"
"Later? Just a little later?"
He turned to face his responsibility, but then he couldn't talk for he was utterly absorbed by the slow ascent of the thin white nylon. Through it he could see the dark triangular patch of her cunt, but he was compelled to look at it bare. He tried not to stare there, tried not to look at her guilelessly smiling face, but when the bunched folds of the negligee were elevated above the juncture of her loins, he was looking right at it. That was woman, in soft abundance, and he was man, in hard need. He dropped the robe and took her in his arms, and now the fit of his cock between her thighs was much, much better.
"Want to talk now?" she said, moving, moving, wetting the top of his prick-head with her vulva.
"Later," he said, and flexing his knees, he tilted his hips up to feel more of the ready wetness.
"We don't have all that much to say now," she murmured against his lips, shifting her hips from side to side to envelop more of his heat with her wetness.
He groaned and his hands went to her ass, marshmallow soft. He was shaking all over with the effort to keep himself from crushing her to him, driving up inside her. Then her hands went to his ass, and applied the exact pressure necessary to make his hips jerk forward and his cock slide up into her buttery soft cunt. He moaned and she sighed, and he slid it in and out, in and out, swaying with her to the music.
"You didn't forget what we talked about, did you," she said, tickling him so languidly with lips and hands and cunt. "You meant it when you said you'd move in with me until you find a place of your own."
"Yeah," he said, for it could have been far worse. There were many things that could be worse than this sensuous softness that was being given to him. His prick was gliding back and forth in her. It wasn't at all like Gloria's cunt, which had so inflamed him he couldn't even get in the first time. The friction was so delicate here that it was largely her heat that was exciting him to need more.
"A few days, a few weeks," she whispered against the corner of his mouth, "and I promise they'll be happy ones."
"Yeah," he panted, legs shaking with weakness now from being flexed for so long, prick still sliding, sliding.
"I'll make you happy while you're here, dear," she said, and her cunt closed around his prick with such strength and intimacy that all thought of gentleness fled from him.
"Urrrrggghh!" he groaned, and digging his fingers into her ass, he straightened his legs and lifted her right off the floor. Humping hard, barely able to keep his balance, he felt entirely crass and vulgar in doing it in this weird way to this refined and gentle woman, but he couldn't stop himself. Over and over he drove into that hot, tight cunt, grunting like a pig, staggering about like a drunk, and then her legs were around his waist and he was driving straight up into her as hard as he possibly could, and she was showing a vulgarity equal to his by matching him in orgasm, grunt for grunt, hump for hump, until her legs slipped from around his waist and she was hanging limply around his neck by her arms. There was the trace of a sob in her voice as she spoke:
"Just a few days, that's all I ask. Let's worry about them one at a time, and I won't cry when you leave."
He held her and kissed her and led her to bed, so proud of himself for having turned her on, so sorry for her that it had come so late in her life.
IX
After two days of work in the office of the executive secretary, Gloria Slade longed to be back at the switchboard. There were many reasons for her unhappiness in her new job and few points in its favor.
Margaret Fox treated her with a lofty disdain that hovered right at the brink of downright rudeness, and she offered a minimum of help in familiarizing Gloria with the files and the office procedures. Joan treated her as one might expect from an eighteen-year-old member of the corporate family who was obviously the president's favorite. She was doing her best to emulate her grandfather, exerting her authority and using swear words in the office, and her efforts would have been comical if Gloria could have observed them as an outsider. Furthermore she insulated Gloria from Joe Ridgely, carrying all his correspondence and papers in to him by hand, and enjoying the privilege of being the only one who entered his office without knocking. And Gloria's new duties as assistant purchasing agent were dull. All she did was type up orders given to her by Joan after Joan and Joe met with the equipment salesmen or went out of the plant to inspect what they wanted to buy. Gloria didn't know if she could stand spending the rest of the summer in that little office. Much as she disliked Margaret and Joan, their presence was better than being alone in the office. But Gloria was usually alone, with Margaret either on the switchboard or working with Stanley Moss, and with Joan with her grandfather. And the unexpected hiring of Joan was preventing or at least delaying Gloria's opportunity to get closer to the company president. This, however, had its good points, for although she was determined to grasp whatever she could from him, she did not look forward to indulging in his kind of sex. True, that kind of sex was far better than what she was getting from Sam, but she longed for a man, more and more, one who could and would treat her like a woman in every way. She tried not to think about it, but she failed at this. And when Joan would be back at school, and if she was then made purchasing agent, things would still be dull. The major purchases would already have been made, and all she'd be was a glorified supply clerk, shut up in another cubicle as bleak as this one.
She was marking time, and she had never felt she had any time in life to waste. Her only consolations were the increased money she was making, the bonus she'd received, and the hours she got to spend on the switchboard. But she'd paid for the money and was still paying for it. They'd given her a hard, straight-backed chair to sit on in her corner of the cramped office, and on that Wednesday afternoon as she waited her turn at the switchboard, she was amply reminded of how she'd paid for the money. She'd bought some nice new clothes the night before, and Sam's response to this had been so vigorous that sitting in that hard chair was an agony. She wondered if that was why he punished her so, in order that she'd have to be reminded of him almost constantly. The chair at the switchboard was much more comfortable, and even this small point was a major irritant in her new job. The minutes crept by until Margaret came from the board, but even when she was in that more comfortable chair, it wasn't the same.
Working in the lobby now, she had little opportunity for distraction by flirting with the salesmen, for now that Ridgely Pharmaceuticals had money to spend, the salesmen came in droves and usually talked with each other while they waited instead of hovering around her desk. Frankly trying for more attention, she'd confidentially told a few of them that she'd soon be made purchasing agent, and to her chagrin they'd taken the information as a joke. These salesmen she'd get even with once Joe Ridgely kept his promise, and the others she'd have wine and dine her before she placed an order with them.
But the way she was feeling lately, she wanted to fuck them all. The reason for this walked past her several times a day, always coolly courteous, never stopping to talk, and she hated him for what he'd done to her. She'd let several men make love to her since Sam's accident, always for some sort of financial gain. It had been for financial gain with Hal Arnold too, but he had somehow awakened a hunger in her that should have been left alone. She knew it was from the liquor they'd drunk that night at the Hilton. She'd only meant to soften him up with a few drinks, but then she'd gotten carried away listening to his eager ambitions and she'd drunk way too much herself. And then she'd been so softened by the booze that she'd allowed herself to respond too much to him. Too much? AH the way, that was how she'd responded. With him it had been as good as it ever had been with Sam, and there was no way she could deny it. She dreamed about that wild, drunken thrashing at the Hilton and she dreaded the night when her erotic nightmares would awaken Sam and he'd beat it out of her. When that night came, his quiet anger would be such that it would make her latest beating seem like a caress, and she knew it was coming. Every time she saw the supercilious young engineer her pussy lips felt swollen and there was an ache in her breast. The thing to do, she knew, was to pick up one of the salesmen, get good and drunk with him, and get the lust out of her system, and Hal Arnold with it. Still she hesitated, not out of any sense of guilt at deceiving Sam, but because she couldn't decide which of them to use her wiles on. They were all bright and brash and witty, but they all seemed so dumb. But she'd do it. Soon she'd cut one out of the herd, get drunk out of her mind with him, and fuck mindlessly away to the point of sheer exhaustion.
Late that afternoon, when the salesmen were thinning out in the lobby, Hal come in from the plant with Chester, one of the maintenance men. Gloria's lip curled into an involuntary sneer at the sight of the young engineer, clad in coveralls as Chester was, bearing a clip-board and a tape measure. He smiled in that unctuous way of his and gave her a typical greeting.
"Hi, Mrs. Slade. How's your husband?" She answered in kind. "Just wonderful. He's taking me out to dinner tonight. And how are you and sweet Mrs. Fox getting alone?"
His face flushed slightly and he said, "Don't go getting any ideas about Margaret and me just because she gives me a ride home after work."
"What ideas? I just think you'd make a charming couple, even as old as she is."
He went to work measuring wall and floor dimensions and she smiled to herself. Her wild shot about him and Margaret might just have struck home. Even if it hadn't, it had flustered him and given her something with which to needle him in return in the future. Watching him, she decided she didn't hate him-she loathed him. It wasn't because he was single and free to do as he pleased; it was because of his damned self-righteousness. He was handsome and young and educated, but undoubtedly the stupidest man she'd ever known in her life. Sam, crippled or not, was worth ten of him. He probably went to church every Sunday and knelt there drooling over the girls around him. He probably jerked off like mad. She could visualize the girl he'd marry-a mousy little thing with big tits, who would get fatter with every baby and cheat on him all she could. He was a slug, a toad, a worm, and not even worth looking at.
She looked at the clock instead. Amazing how slowly the last fifteen minutes of the day went. Her bottom was so sore she couldn't hold still, and her pussy was getting wetter with each of her squirmings. She'd have gone off with one of the salesmen that night, if only one had been left. The minute hand crawled on, and she was out of her chair at precisely five o'clock. Hal was still measuring things, and she paused to speak sweetly to him.
"Are you and the old gray mare working late tonight?"
He replied very stiffly. "I am. I don't know what Mrs. Fox's plans are, but whatever, they are not your business."
"Excuse me," she said, and bowed to give him a look into her cleavage, then turned and strutted out in her best, hip-swinging gait.
The car wouldn't start. She cursed it and beat her fist against the wheel, dying to be out of there. The motor caught and she roared it, sending a huge cloud of gray smoke out from behind. The bald tires spun as she sped out, but within seconds she was braking the old wreck, for there before her was the Red Glove. Chuck Davidson had taken her there a few times and she knew there'd be men in it now, so she slewed the station wagon into the parking lot and got out, nervous as hell, but needing a man so badly she could go no farther in her search. There were disappointingly few people in the place, but she felt that all eyes were on her as she made her way to a barstool. Too bad Chuck wasn't in town. He'd take care of her. But there was all she needed here-booze and men-and she flashed a come-hither signal to the men at large as she shifted her sore buttocks on the cushioned plastic until they were sticking out behind, and up for grabs. In the back bar mirror, her features looked swollen and sleepy, and any lusting man could surely tell she was in heat like an animal. She felt like an animal in these familiar bar-room settings. This, not the corporate structure, was her world. She was a mouse at Ridgely, while here she was a panther, sleek and lovely, able to play or to pounce. She ordered a drink, and a gray-haired man at the bar paid for it and was rewarded with a smile. If she couldn't find someone younger, stronger, she'd get it on with him. But whoever, she'd get it on with someone, and she'd do it that night. She took a big sip of the good, releasing liquor and slid off the barstool to hip-roll her way to the pay phone. She had to work late, she told Sam, and he'd have to fix his own dinner. She didn't care if he starved that night or if he beat her half to death when she came home; all she cared about was getting a big fat cock in her pussy.
There was another drink waiting for her on the bar, and she smiled her thanks to its donor. He was younger than the first, but he looked greasy. His looks didn't matter; his cock did. But she wasn't completely ready for cock yet. She first had to get good and drunk so that whoever she gave herself to could do anything he wanted to her. She watched herself in the mirror for signs of her drunkenness, feeling the hungry men closing in on her and forcing herself to wait. The gray-haired one came and sat beside her but she brushed him off. Another drink came when she emptied her glass, and she toasted the sender and returned her attention to the mirror. She could see the front door in it, and she appraised each businessman who came through it for his post-work drink as if he was a prize bull. Hot fingers ran up her spine when she saw Hal Arnold come through it.
She tried to avert her face as he headed toward the bar, but he saw her. The bastard stood right beside her and smiled and asked her if this was where her husband was taking her for dinner.
"He's just meeting me here and then we're going to Beverly Hills. That's where the nice places are."
"Yes," he said. "I heard there were a lot of prostitutes hanging around the L.A. Hilton."
"I'm surprised you're not down there, Mr. Arnold. But then I don't suppose you can afford it when you have to pay for it yourself."
"I can afford a few drinks," he said, and got up on the stool beside her.
"Why don't you sit someplace else?"
"It's a free country."
"Oh, clever. Clever."
"I don't want to sit too far away. I want to get a good look at your husband when he comes in."
"Why don't you go back to work? Why don't you go see if you can catch up with Margaret? Why don't you just go?"
He looked at her in the mirror with an attempt at amused contempt, and drank his drink. Let him look. Let him sit there all night and get smashed out of his head, and when he was drunk she'd leave him and pick up a man on a street corner. With him beside her, she wasn't even hot any more, and she doubted if she could get drunk. Again, he'd ruined everything, and she loathed him that much more.
They drank in silence for fifteen minutes, and then he said, "Maybe Mr. Slade isn't coming."
"He might have been tied up at work, but it's none of your business."
"He must really be something."
"He is. He's really something," she said, and drank.
"Does he know how you cheat on him?"
"Go away." She was feeling tired now, and just about ready to go home.
"No, I want to know. Does he cheat on you too?"
"No."
"Oh, I see. He's in love with you or something. Do you step out on him often?"
She felt a hundred years old. "Just go away. Drop it."
"Say, I'm not cramping your style, am I? Were you meeting someone else here? Chester or Stanley? Or maybe one of the girls from the packaging room? Do you go for girls as well as boys? Are you one of those California swingers I've heard so much about? Do you and your husband advertise in the Free Press?"
All of her heat and enthusiasm were gone, and even the liquor now tasted flat and stale. She wanted to get out, to go someplace where she could be alone, and stay there for the rest of her life. She wanted to be rid of Hal and Sam and every other man in the world, but especially Hal. She turned to him and said wearily, "Do you really want to know what me and my husband do?"
"I think it would be fascinating. But let me guess. Do you play chess? Do you take pictures of each other in bed with other people? Are you stamp collectors? Do you molest children together? Am I getting warm?"
"Come on," she said, slipping off the stool. "I'll show you."
She'd get rid of him once and for all. She didn't care if he told everyone in the plant. She wanted to show the whole world what she'd become, to drive the whole world away. He walked at her side through the parking lot, still smirking, but at least silenced now. There was still plenty of daylight left. The parking lot was almost full. He looked properly confused when she got in the station wagon and told him to do the same.
"Where are you going?"
"Just get in."
Now it was she who was smirking as he got in. He was looking very sober, and now she could feel the drinks she'd had, not in an aphrodisiac way, but in a go-to-hell way. His eyes opened wider as she hitched her skirt up around her waist, and she saw him draw back before she turned the other way and pulled her panties down over her ass. He was silent for several seconds and she was proud of her shame, bitterly happy that someone was looking at the fresh blue strips across her buttocks and the older ones that had turned such a sickly shade of yellow.
"Oh my God," he whispered. "Did he do that to you?"
"Of course," she coolly said, rearranging her clothing, turning to face him. "He's a sadist and I'm a masochi. . . masochi.. . " She couldn't say the word. A sob escaped her and he reached for her, but she pushed him away with blind rage mounting in her. "Don't touch me! I'm a masochist-a masochist!-and I love to have him beat me! You can beat me too. There's a tire iron in the back. Go get it and beat me! Kill me!"
"Gloria, I had no idea," Hal said, and the compassion in his voice was just as bad as his comforting hands. She pushed at him and cursed him, cursing herself inwardly for crying so uncontrollably, and then her head was against his chest and all the fight was gone from her, leaving nothing but tears and defeat.
She cried for a long time and he just held her and petted her head as if she was a child. When the tears stopped the sobs continued for a while, causing her body to jerk and twitch against his. At last she sighed and pushed away from him.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I just wanted to get rid of you."
"Did he do it because he found out about us?"
She looked away. "No. He did it because I like it."
His hands on her arms were strong now, and his face was very sober. "That's not true. I know you're not. He did do it because of me, didn't he. Tell me the truth."
Gloria pulled up her skirt again and pointed to the yellowing weal on her hip. "This was because of you and me. This," she said, pointing to a blue one, "was because I spent too much money on clothes last night. That's my sex life at home, Hal." She pulled down her skirt again.
He heaved a tremendous sigh and said, "Has he always been like that? Do you want to talk about it?"
"Maybe it's time I did," she said, and began. She left nothing out, told him the good as well as the bad. By the time she finished, dusk was coming on and her head was against his chest, his comforting arms around her. "So that's it. I must be a masochist to put up with it, and I'm certainly a whore for what I did to you."
"Hush, Gloria."
"I'm sorry for tricking you into going to work for such little money, but I'm not sorry for the time we had together."
"I'm not sorry for any of it. I'm not even mad at you for letting Ridgely . . . make love to you like that."
"You should be. I'm mad at myself, sick of myself."
"I don't want to hear it. I want you to hear some things. First, I'm in love with you. Second, I'm . . . living with Margaret Fox. Third, I'll always love you."
She didn't know which was the most startling news, but she grasped at the part which made her feel best. "Do you really love me? I don't care if you do or not. Just say it again."
"I love you. I will always love you. I'll move out of Margaret's right away. I'll get a little apartment and you'll start divorce proceedings against your husband. With both our salaries we can afford to pay him alimony. You can move in with me now, if you want, or never. But I'm going to see that you're free of him. You certainly have grounds for . . . "
"Hush," she said, and put her hand over his mouth. "Please, no plans. God, I'm so tired of living for plans. If you want to do anything for me . . . make love to me. Now. Here."
"But people could . . . "
"Make love to me! Don't you understand how I want you! Don't you see that I'm dying for you!"
He took her in his arms and kissed her, and oh! it was good. His hands were so strong and yet so gentle, and they thrilled her everywhere they touched her. She scooted her panties right off and took his hand and pressed it hard against her crotch, and just that was enough to bring her to a straining, clutching orgasm. It was wonderful but it wasn't enough. Nothing short of having all of this man would be enough.
Still thrusting her cunt against his hand, holding it clamped between her thighs, she tore open his pants and exposed him, hard and strong and big, beautiful and clean and whole. She had to have it in her. She threw her leg across his lap, then cried out as his hands dug into her sore bottom.
"Gloria, I'm sorry! I never want to hurt you. I forgot!"
"Hurt me!" she said. "Do anything you want, but for God's sake, love me!"
She plunged down on his cock, taking the full, marvelous length of it all the way inside her, orgasming again with even greater intensity and humping ever faster as she did. Time after time, in rapid succession, she relived that great, bursting penetration. He told her he loved her and he proved it by thrusting up to meet her giddy descents on his cock, and by helping her to slide up on it with his hands on her ass. In his feverish excitement he'd again forgotten how sore she was there, but now even the pain felt good and was adding to the series of orgasms ripping through her, each one mightier than the last. A horn blared by and there was a derisive shout, and even that contributed to her enormous physical joy. She wanted to shout, Yes, look! Everyone! I am a woman and I have a man who loves me!
The orgasms were coming faster, getting bigger, tremendously frighteningly bigger, and she could do nothing to stop them. She was tearing at his lapels and his hair, biting his shoulder and neck, completely out of her head with her need for this man, so insane with delight that she was sure it would go on forever and she'd never have to return to her sordid world of pain and labor and heartbreak.
"I love you," he said for the hundredth time, but now the tone of the words were such that those words rolled all her past orgasms up in one lovely big ball and burst it inside her. He'd groaned out the words in extremis, shooting his cum up inside her, right where it belonged, and the gift of his seed was sweeter than the friction of his cock and the meaning of his words. It completed her, it brought her back to sanity, and on her return she was in a world that was all right and proper and worth living in. She relaxed all over and burrowed like a well-fed kitten against his solid warmth.
"Too heavy on you, Hal?"
"Never. Stay like this always."
"Pulled your hair. Bit you. So sorry."
"No. Don't be. I'm not even sorry I hurt you. I feel too good to be sorry."
"Mmmmm. Say it again."
"I love you. I love you, love you, love you."
Another car horn blared and she giggled and wriggled against him. "Me too. I'm going to hold you inside me forever."
"Yes. We'll starve to death right here, and not even feel it. All we'll feel is each other. I love you. I'm going to marry you."
"Hush. Just love me. No plans."
"Like this?" he said, and tilting his hips up, he gave her cervix a tingling massage with his cock.
She snuggled closer and smiled. "You can't love me enough to do it again. At least not yet."
He sighed and gave her another deep massage, saying as he did, "No, I guess I don't love you at all. But oddly enough, I do feel like making love to you again, and I feel like doing it now. Of course, you're probably too tired."
"Whoa, now," she said, backing off to look at him, but wriggling closer to his loins, utterly delighted. "If you really do love me, mister, I'm not about to stop you from trying to prove it again."
"Sure you're not too tired?" he said, smiling, sliding his lovely hard tool inside her.
"I feel marvelous! Like I just woke up from a twenty-two year sleep. The only thing wrong is that I don't believe you love me, and I won't until you do just what you did before."
"Yes. But slowly this time. And this time I want to look at you."
"I'll take my dress off. I'm not wearing a bra, dear."
"I know."
"You were feeling my breasts? I didn't even notice it. I thought it was one great big hand, holding me everywhere."
She started to take her dress off, but he stopped her. "You are bound and determined to get us arrested."
"I don't care. I'd fuck you in front of the Post Office at high noon to get you to say you love me."
"I'm not just saying it, I mean it. I love you. But dear, if we get arrested, they'll put us in separate cells."
"I never thought of that. You really are smart, Hal," she said, trying to cover all of his dear face with her kisses, and still maintaining that easy, natural rhythm on his cock.
"I love you."
"Sweet. Sweet, sweet man. My man for now."
"For always. I'm not letting you go home to him tonight."
"Yes you are. Just don't let me think about it now."
X
Hal remained at the desk in his newly partitioned office until Gloria had locked the door, and then he jumped up and embraced her closely. She felt every bit as good as she had two weeks before, when they'd become office lovers. He kissed her, holding her dear, lovely face in his hands, until she said, "It came just now."
"Really! Did you see it? How did it come?"
"In the regular mail! Can you imagine? I guess the government has a lot of faith in the Post Office to send a check for a hundred thousand dollars right through the mails."
"Hot damn! Now we can really get to work. Does Junior know?"
"I guess the old man told him by now. He sent Chester out for champagne. Not enough for the whole plant, of course. Just for the three Ridgelys!"
"Maybe Junior can get him drunk and talk him into expanding the company like he should."
"Does anyone ever talk him into anything?"
"I think Joan could, if anyone. He really dotes on her, and amazingly enough, she's coming around to our way of thinking on the expansion. She even understands most of the chemical processes we want to go into. She may be young and pretty, but she's sharp."
"Yes, and I'm jealous of her."
He kissed her and said, "You know darned well the only reason I've been spending any time with her is to explain the plant Junior and I are designing, in hopes she can talk him into going for it. But go ahead. Be jealous. Be so jealous you finally get up your gumption to leave Sa . . . "
She kissed him to quiet him and said, "Hush. We agreed. We're not going to talk about that until I work things out in my own head."
"But when? We can't go on like this forever. Every time I think of you with that monster I get sick to my stomach. Leave him, Gloria. Do it now, or by God.. . "
She didn't want Hal to get on that kick again. She hadn't the time. She knew how to divert him, and she did it.
Pushing back from him, turning, she raised her skirt and stretched up the leg-hole of her panties, and he moaned as he saw the discolorations that marred her smoothly nubile haunch, her firmly rounded buttock. "Last night," she said, "just because he felt like it."
The irate sickness clutched at Hal. "That bastard. I can't let it go on. Was it awful?"
"It's been worse. But look."
She turned her back on him completely, stripped down her black panties to her knees, and pulled her skirt up to her waist. "Oh, no," he groaned, and going to his knees, laid gentle hands on her hips and caressed the bruises on her gloriously rounded backside with his lips and cheeks.
"Mmmmm. I've been waiting all day for that. Would you be a luv and rub in a little salve."
"Sure! Of course!"
He fumbled in his drawer for it, glancing back at the delectably rounded behind that was being shown him, his excitement rising despite the fact that his love had again been hurt by the man he hated. It was not an anesthetic salve, just something like a cold cream that had a cooling, soothing effect, and he dipped up a liberal amount with his fingers and gazed straight at her luscious, flawed ass while he spread it on both hands. Her skin felt very warm as he tenderly, lovingly spread it on. Her sighs of contentment were gratifying, but it was the texture and firmness of her bruised flesh that was stirring him. With the cream all over her buttocks the bruises could not be seen, and she had more the appearance of a marble sculpture, done by the hand of a master artist who had been deeply in love with his model. The stuff had a lemony fragrance and Hal breathed deeply of it and of the fragrance of her that came through, expelling his breath warmly against the satiny mounds he was administering to.
"Feeling any better, honey?"
"Mmmmm. Better all the time. Wait. Let me take my pants off. Do you mind?"
"Shouldn't we go to my apartment?" She'd already bent to lower her panties further. Her ass grazed his face, and although his prick was already as hard as it could get, greater desire fogged his brain. "I mean, what if he should come back here with his damned champagne?"
"A little danger never hurt us. And I can't work late again tonight. Sam warned me."
"Oh, baby, baby," Hal moaned, and slipped his creamy hands around her hips. She was bent way over, having trouble getting her panties over the boots he'd bought her, with her ass but an inch from his face. Warm flesh bumped his nose, and he pulled her back and rubbed his cheeks and chin and nose over the gorgeous mounds, kissing her ass, heedless of the stuff getting all over his face.
"Oh, wowww," she said, slowly straightening up. "Does that ever feel weird."
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice choking. "I just couldn't help it."
"Baby, don't apologize. Just do it some more."
He kissed her madly then. Nothing they did together was wrong. He kneaded her hips and thighs and he felt of the swollen wet tissues of her pussy, and he worked in the creamy smooth salve with his face.
She took a wider stance and tried to see him over her shoulder. "Now I'm sorry we didn't go to your apartment. I could watch this in the mirror. Honey, I've got to do it to you someday soon. It's just wild. You can't believe it."
"Oh, yeah?" he panted, thoroughly warming to his task now. "Think I could make it any wilder if you bent over a little?"
"Just a little?" she said, swaying her hips for him, teasing him on, though he needed no teasing now. "Since when do we do things a little? If I bend over all the way, though, my little old butt-hole will be staring you right in the face."
"Your butt-hole?" he said, squeezing and kneading and spreading her buns apart, working his thumbs down through the deep cleft between them. "I didn't even know you had one." The cream was almost all worked in, leaving her buttocks gleaming and slick. "Is this it?" he asked, and began smoothing the ball of his thumb over the tightly puckered ring.
"Oh, Hal," she moaned. "Darn it, it does feel good back there."
"Does it really? How do you suppose it'd feel.. . " He swallowed hard. ". . . if I were to slip my thumb inside, like this?"
"Oh, Hal . . . " It was just a whimper, and it was thrilling.
"Does it feel as good as this?" he asked, and ran his other hand around her to delve into those wet and ready tissues of her pussy. "Which is better, eh? Which is best?"
"My front. My pussy. That's where I want you. Now."
"But what about when the old man did it to you here," Hal said, moving his thumb in her ass more than his fingers in her cunt. "Didn't that feel good?"
"Hal, don't," she panted. "Just love me. Please!"
"Goddamnit, I do! bend over! Like I told you! I'm going to outdo the old bastard."
He had to push her in the back to start her, and then she fell forward with her hands on her knees. He used both hands to part her very fleshy buttocks more widely, then dug into her asshole with his tongue.
He was then performing a sexual act far more perverse than his most perverted dreams. To his taste buds it was bad, but in his brain and his balls it was just terrific because it was something no other man had loved her enough to do and because it was getting her so fucking hot. He loved to get her hot, and this was the hottest she'd been yet. She was sobbing with it and moaning, hanging onto the edge of his desk to keep from collapsing and shoving her ass back at his face even as she protested that it was too much, that she couldn't stand any more. His tongue in her asshole made her orgasm, and right at the height of it he jammed his fingers roughly in her pussy, exulting that no man on earth could ever love her more and show it as much as he was. He had her twitching and choking and coming in every cell of her body before he stood up and turned her around to face him.
"Did you like that?"
"Yes!" She was beside herself with wanting completion.
"Kiss the tongue that did it to you," he said, and she fairly vaulted up to him to wash away the bittersweet taste of her anus with her tongue. He thrust her away. "I suppose you want me to fuck you now."
"Yes! Yes please!"
"Then take out my prick, you beautiful little fool."
She was so clumsy it was almost laughable. He had her now. She'd probably never been this hot in her whole life. He could get her to do anything, to agree to anything-almost.
"Suck it," he said, when his cock was out, rampantly hard.
She did, of course. Her eager enthusiasm made it tremendous, but he steeled himself to the sliding friction of her firm wet lips and said, "I'm going to come in your mouth, Gloria."
"Hm-mmm! Hm-mmm!" she said, shaking her head no, but still sucking him.
"I will," he said, holding her head, "if you don't get off the dime and marry me."
She wrenched away and got unsteadily to her feet, leaned back against his desk, and said, "Don't. Don't ask me now. Christ, you can be crueler than Sam!"
"No! Never! Don't say that. What do you want? Tell me. God, I'll give it to you."
"I want you to fuck me," she said, hunching up on his desk, opening her legs, hooking her heels on the edge of it. "Is that too much to ask?"
Her pussy was open and inviting, all pink and glistening like a rare jewel. It was on a level with his cock, and she guided it in with her hand and grabbed him around the neck, sobbing with happiness as he pushed it in. He could never do that again. He could never try to use her passion and her unspoken love for him to coerce her into anything, even marriage. No matter who she was living with, he had her. Adultery, perversions, deceit, he'd go along with all of it as long as he could make her happy for the moment, and at the same time, make himself happier than any man had the right to be.
Forty feet away, in another part of the plant, Stanley Moss was watching another sex scene and not believing his eyes.
He hadn't used his peep-hole for some time. He'd been very busy setting up all the new accounts for the plant expansion, for one thing, and for another, Margaret Fox had been given total access to his office, so he dared not do much peeping with the danger of her sudden entry always at hand. In his opinion, there hadn't been much to see-interviews with salesmen, Joe working over papers, and usually Joan as the only other employee in his office. He hadn't even monitored the tapes much, because he'd been working late and the final information he was after would be common plant knowledge as soon as the government check was received. It had been received that day, and in accordance with his plan he'd moved aside the filing cabinet and glued his eye to the peep-hole, wanting to be witness to the moment Joe Ridgely signed it. He had been unprepared for the sight he'd seen.
Gloria Slade had delivered the envelope. Joe had sat smiling at it for a while. Then he'd buzzed the executive secretary's office and had waved Margaret Fox away when she'd appeared, had beckoned Joan inside instead. Chester had been summoned and sent out, and the old man and the girl had talked, first joyfully, then earnestly, with Joan sitting on Joe's desk and showing her legs in a manner that Stanley had not approved of. Chester returned with two bottles of champagne, and Joe opened one and the three of them drank a toast. That gesture had been very typical of Joe-the whole plant should be celebrating, but Joe confined the party to himself, his current favorite, and a man who'd recently done him a favor. But when his downfall came, and it was to come very soon, he would undoubtedly share his misery with all.
Chester was dismissed, and Stanley was about to return to his work when Joan's actions kept him riveted to the peep-hole. Still leaning against the desk, she bent towards him with a smile on her face that would not be considered typical for a girl to give her grandfather. She'd placed her hand on his shoulder and he'd returned that smirking smile while she spoke with her mouth just inches from his. They'd laughed together, in a strangely obscene way, and then the mirth had faded from their faces as they merged, open-mouthed, kissing as if they were the most passionate lovers.
Stanley had looked away. What he had seen was impossible, unthinkable. It was a figment of his imagination, brought on by too much work and anticipation lately. He was ashamed of himself for even thinking there was anything sexual going on between them, and when his emotions had sufficiently settled down, he looked again to confirm the innocence of the situation.
Cold chills shuddered through him, for now she was seated on his lap, caressing and kissing his grizzled old face while he toyed with her slim young body. Stanley's view of it was too good. His peep-hole was situated at the side of Joe's desk, giving him a profile view of the old man and a head on look at Joan. One of her legs was dangling over
Joe's chair arm and the other was sprawled across his lap. They were parted so that Stanley could see the crotch of her white panties, plus that awful, gnarled old hand that ran up and down the slender feminine legs at will.
He looked away and muttered, "Julia, I'm sorry." But he had to see more of it before he'd believe it.
Like a whore in a honky-tonk, Joan was feeding Ridgely champagne, leaving his hands free to roam her body. Like the gross old man he was, he was squeezing her breasts with one hand and feeling around her crotch with the other. He'd pushed her skirt up over her loins, and now she squirmed about in his lap and pulled it higher, then worked her panties down until they were just a band of nylon around her hips. Her tan pubic hair showed above the white, and Joe plucked and massaged at it while they talked and kissed.
In a daze now, not knowing what to do, Stanley fumbled around and checked that the tape recorder was running, then took another queasy look.
Joan was squirming more on his lap, scissoring her legs in trying to get her panties completely off, while Joe continued to lewdly play with her. He reached across her to get the champagne, and then they both drank from the bottle and laughed together. She hooked the panties over one foot, and then drew back on them and shot them like a rubber band in the direction of Stanley's peep-hole. Joe took advantage of her bare loins with his hand, and now there was no denying the hot excitement in the girl as she clung to his gray head and kissed him hungrily.
Stanley had seen more than a few sex scenes in Joe's office, but this one completely appalled him.
Too, it hypnotized him so that he could not look away.
Joe took his hand from the girl's loins and, waggling his bristly eyebrows, sucked on the finger that had been in her body. She reached down between her legs for his loins, then drew her fingers up through her open pink slit and thrust those fingers in his mouth. He helped her disengage herself from him and she stood up to kiss him again. She pulled her skirt up around her waist and sat her bare ass down on his desk, and he assisted her in placing her feet on the arms of his chair. It might have been easier for Stanley if she'd showed any signs of reluctance, but far from that, she reached out for him as he rolled his chair forward, and her smile was every bit as lascivious as Joe's when he was pushing her thighs farther open and bending to press his lips to her furry loins.
"What's this I heard about . . . Stanley, what on earth are you doing?"
He looked up from the depths of a weird dream to see Margaret Fox smiling quizzically at him from his doorway. He pointed at his peep-hole and said in a shaky voice, "Look. I want you to see . . . how bad he is . . . "
"What in the world?" she said, and coming around his desk, bent over and placed her eye where his had been.
Her dismayed gasp told him it was all too true. So did the fact of Margaret's remaining glued to the peep-hole. The scene was indelibly etched on his mind, but he wanted to see more now, for as disgusted as he was, he now found that he was also sexually aroused. This in itself was disgusting, but he couldn't help it. Watching Joe with his women had always excited Stanley, and this time was more exciting than he'd seen in a long time.
"This is terrible," Margaret hissed, still looking. "We're going to use this against him, aren't we, Stanley. We could send him to jail for this, or to an asylum where he belongs. How long have you had this thing in here?"
He looked dully down at Margaret, at the body he'd so often seen Joe use, at the ass he'd seen Joe fuck, and he placed his hand on that ass as he said, "A long time. Long enough to see enough to destroy him."
A shiver of delight ran through Margaret's body. She was not alone in her hate, and she had been so very alone since Hal had been the latest to scorn her. They'd be punished, though, every one of them. Hal, she felt, had his built-in punishment by involving himself with the married slut, Gloria, so his slate was just about wiped clean. But she'd just about given up hopes of Joe being punished, and now she was in the position of being the instrument of punishment herself. She'd need Stanley's help, but this would be forthcoming if she played her cards right, and now there would be no slip-ups, for she was dealing. She turned to smile in all admiration at the pudgy little accountant with his hand on her ass. She'd never had any desire for Stanley, had always thought of him as being totally ineffectual and sexless. Now she saw him in a different light, as a quiet but clever man who had the power to destroy Joe. But did he have the hatred for it? From rumors she'd heard, she thought he did, but if not, she had enough hate in her for both of them. She waggled her ass under Stanley's moving hand. She could seduce him, and thus bind him to her permanently, or at least until Joe was behind bars. Spying as he had been, he knew all about her lusty nature, and there was no need to be subtle in her seduction.
"We're going to get him," she said, and pulling her skirt up over her hips, returned to her spying.
Joe was going down on his granddaughter as he had never done with Margaret. It made her hate him all the more. He was licking so deeply that the tendons in his turkey neck were standing out like cables, and Joan was leaning back on her elbows and tossing her head this way and that, her pretty face contorted into a mask of raw lust by it all. Her feet were up on the chair arms and his fingers were digging deeply into her legs and buttocks, in just the way that Margaret wanted Stanley's fingers to be digging into hers.
Margaret was very hot. She'd been in a state of smoldering desire ever since Hal had ended their sex-drenched few days together as roommates, and now the desire was rising swiftly. It wasn't the distorted, fish-eye scene she was seeing so much as it was the thought of Joe's downfall that had her panting. She felt that she would orgasm if the police suddenly broke into Joe's office and caught him at incest. And Stanley's hand was helping, soft and unsure as it was, for it was the hand of a man with power now, and it was transferring power to her.
Joan's orgasm was ending. Margaret could almost hear her sighing as her feet slipped off the chair arms and Joe straightened up, grinning, wiping his cunt-wet mouth on the back of his hand. Head back, still on her elbows, Joan sensually licked her lips until Joe picked up the bottle and said something. She opened her eyes and reached out for it, then showered kisses on his hand before drinking from it. He helped her to her feet and they kissed, with the hem of her skirt caught in its waistband and her long legs and diminutive ass flagrantly bared for his hands.
Stanley's hands now felt every bit as good as Joe's ever had, she told herself, as they caressed her bottom through her panties.
"You should see this, Stanley," she whispered, rising. "You've got to see this to believe it."
"I don't know if I want to," he replied, but was quick about taking her place at the peep-hole. "Oh, God," he said, and Margaret began caressing him.
Young, innocent, eighteen-year-old Joan was down on her knees, sucking at the penis of the old bastard. She didn't look all that innocent now, for her cocksucking was being done with great gusto, and the avid expression on her face somehow made her look as old as Joe. He was leering down at her bobbing head and talking to her, saying dirty things, trying to talk her into even more perversion, and from the look on her face it seemed like an easy thing for him to do. And Stanley's cock was being taken out now and touched by the hands that had so often touched Joe's. Joe's woman as well as his fate was in Stanley's power, and he exulted in this as much as the sensations of Margaret's soft hands on his hard flesh.
Stanley stood up grinning and said, "Yes, if I didn't have him before, I do now."
"And how did you have him before?" Margaret asked, still fondling his cock.
"I have his money, almost. And now I have his freedom . . . and his woman."
She kissed him and said, "You haven't had me yet, but I'm right here for the taking."
With that she turned and bent and looked through the peep-hole again. He felt of her ass, raised her skirt, and smiled lustfully on seeing that she'd taken off her panties for him. She had a nice big ass, soft and fleshy and very white. He'd seen it many times, but he never thought he'd be handling it like this. He made the buttocks quiver under his hands and he tickled around her Ridgely-defiled asshole, making her squirm. Her cunt was a hairy mound of cleft flesh extruding back from between her haunches, and as he poked and plucked at it she planted her feet more widely, opening up that cleft for him. It was silky soft and nicely wet to his touch, and he forgot about the scene next door as he began working his cock into it.
Margaret was in heaven. "Joe's as good as dead," she whispered to the wonderful man who was filling her as she needed to be filled. She would visit him in prison and tell him of how the company was thriving in his absence, and each visit would be a reminder that she'd seen him depraving his granddaughter. She was sitting up on the desk again now, in the same position that Margaret had known on occasion. Joe usually liked to fuck her from the rear, but he was about to do it to his granddaughter from the front. She must indeed have a tight cunt, Margaret thought, for Joe was rubbing a lubricant on his stiff old cock. The girl's feet were up on the edge of the desk, her knees up and out, and she was looking nervously from Joe's face to his cock as he spoke to her. Margaret wished she could hear as well as see, even though little more could be added to the sensory receptions she was getting. Stanley's cock in her was feeling better and better, and so was the obscene quality of what she was witnessing.
They passed the bottle back and forth between them. At his command, Joan drew her long legs up higher, and he began to shove it in her. Margaret exulted anew, for he was putting it in his granddaughter's ass, not her cunt! She seemed to be pleading with him to stop now, but of course he didn't. Her feet were inches off the desk top and she was leaning back on her arms with a look of distress on her face. Margaret squeezed Stanley's slowly moving cock with her well-trained vaginal muscles, knowing that never again would she have to be sodomized by Joe or by any man.
Joe was all the way inside Joan by then, and she was panting heavily and in obvious distress. It was probably her first time, and Margaret could still remember how much it had hurt before she'd learned to relax. Joe was probably telling her to relax, for she was nodding her head and chewing on her lower lip and spreading her legs wider for him. Margaret wriggled her ass as a thrill went through her at the sight of Joan's transformation. The girl's eyes widened and her mouth came open. She looked down in wonder at the big thing moving between her legs, and she began to undulate her body. Joe's grin spread, and he said something that made his granddaughter grin and nod in reply. He leaned over her to kiss her, his hips still sliding that cock of his in and out of her asshole. For a moment, Margaret wished it was in her body, wished that she could feel it one more time in her ass, but that thought was quickly brushed aside, for the cock in her cunt was all she needed.
"He's sodomizing her, Stanley," she said over her shoulder, and Stanley groaned and clutched her hips harder. "He's doing it to her harder now. Stanley? Fuck me hard."
The tempo increased, even as that of the couple she was observing had speeded up. Blood of his blood, Joan was quickly getting with his unnatural ways of sex and was thoroughly enjoying herself now. Supported by the pads of her buttocks on the desk, she was rolling and tilting her hips to meet each of his long, deep jabs, and tossing her head about in her ever-increasing ecstasy. Filthy and perverted and incestuous as it was, the girl was enjoying it fully, even as Joe was, and even as Margaret was in watching it. Joan was humping back hard now, kicking her legs and twisting her shoulders and falling back on her elbows. They stopped dead still abruptly and both looked at his door, and then Joe spoke sharply before they resumed. She was close to orgasm now, and so was he. Margaret could see beads of sweat on both of them from their efforts. Old fingers dug more deeply into young flesh, and Joan lay back flat to receive those final driving thrusts that both of them needed so badly by then. His pants had fallen down and his legs looked more withered than ever in comparison to Joan's smooth limbs. Her hair was flying every which way and his had fallen down over his eyes, and still they humped and heaved and thrust together at a mad pace, at a pace which Margaret thought old Joe was no longer capable of. The surging thrusts behind Margaret got better, the cock in her thicker, and she had to fight to hold back her climax until the right moment.
That moment was when Joe orgasmed. She'd seen it so often she easily recognized it. His lips drew back from his long teeth and the sinews in his hands stood out heavily. His thrust became more savage, so much so that they transmitted his orgasm to the girl, and Joan wriggled her lovely little ass wildly and came forth with an abbreviated shriek that was audible through the wall. Joe covered her mouth with his during his last deep thrusts and Margaret knew everything the girl was feeling with him, for she was feeling those same things as a result of the erupting cock inside her. It was good, so good, right up until the moment he drew his stained cock out of his granddaughter's defiled asshole, and she came to kiss him with a depraved adoration that so sickened Margaret that she had to turn away from it.
XI
Margaret and Stanley primly rearranged their clothes, not looking at each other, ashamed of how the perversion they had witnessed had affected them. They did not look at each other as they did it, and when they faced each other again their expressions were almost normal, almost businesslike.
"How long have you had this hole in the wall, Stanley?"
"Since he remodeled his office. I have his office bugged, too," he said, and opening the drawer, showed her the tape recorder.
"Excellent," she said. "The question is, what do we intend to do with what we have on him? I am in this, you know," she said, taking his hand in hers, "all the way."
He nodded. "Good. Frankly, my plans have been just a little too much for me to handle by myself. Now that I'm right down to it, I need some help. I'm too weak, I suppose. I always have been."
"Stanley," Margaret said, with all sincerity, "any man who can get Joe Ridgely back into a corner is not weak. I will be overjoyed to help you. Listening, seeing as you have, you know how that man hurt me, how much I detest him."
"Yes. Perhaps as much as I do."
"Why, Stanley?" she asked, and drew him to sit beside her on his desk. "I've often felt that things weren't as they should be between you and him, but why?"
He shrugged and said, "Julia, the company, a lot of things. When you get right down to it, just him being the way he is."
"Will you tell me about it? I've never enjoyed hating someone before, and I'd like to hate him even more thoroughly. And you share my hate. Let me share yours."
He nodded grimly. He got up and looked through the peep-hole. Returning to the desk, he said, "Junior's in there now. They're drinking champagne. I will hate to hurt him by exposing Joe as an incestuous sodomist, and I hope it doesn't have to be done."
"If it must be done, we'll do it. Anything to destroy Joe. And what better revenge than to turn his only son against him too?"
Stanley regarded her somberly. "Because," he said, "Joe, Jr. is not his son. He is mine."
She clutched his arm. "Are you serious? Are you sure?"
"Yes. As sure as any man can be. Years ago, I was Julia's paramour. Gracious, I even knew her before Ridgely did. I introduced them, God help me, and in so doing I drove the only woman I've ever loved to her death."
"He did that, Stanley, not you. But tell me about it. I want to share in everything, from now on."
He sighed, and she could see his mind flipping back the pages of many calendars from the past. His voice was soft and furry as he spoke. "I met Joe when he was running bootleg liquor and I was a law student in Chicago. I would have been an attorney if it wasn't for him. I was taking out Julia Rasmussen, the prettiest, sweetest girl in all Chicago, but it wasn't easy for me to take her out because going to school didn't leave me with much money, and night-clubbing wasn't cheap in those boom days just before the Depression. They weren't really night clubs I was taking her to, they were speak-easies, but they had the best entertainment and nothing but the best was good enough for Julia in my opinion.
"We were very happy as sweethearts and very proper together. We were waiting till after I got out of school before we got married. She was a virgin, of course, and that made me sorry I wasn't a virgin too. Well, going to speak-easies and such brought us into contact with some interesting if not very savory people. One of these was Joe. I met him in a place on Clark Street and for some reason we hit it off. I guess because we were opposites. I was an earnest young law student and he was a slam-bang ambitious young man who knew all the gangsters in town but still wasn't connected with any gang. He said he was a runner and I sampled the stuff he was peddling and it was good. You know how fast he always used to be to expand his operations; he was the same way then. He proposed that I distribute booze for him to my friends in college. It would improve his business and it would bring me in the extra money I needed. Money. If it wasn't for that . . . " He stopped and shook his head.
"I'd like to hear it, Stanley. But if it's too hard for you . . . "
"No." He smiled. "Nothing's been hard since Julia died. So I was a runner for Joe, and doing fairly well at it. I found it glamorous and exciting, although there was very little danger involved in selling booze around the campus. Julia thought it was terrible at first, but then she saw the excitement in it too, and even sold a little booze herself. She had to meet Joe. I wanted her to. I could see how much it excited her to be around a small time gangster, but I didn't think anything of it. Sitting with him in a speak-easy, listening to his rum-running stories, her cheeks would get rosy and her eyes would get bright and she'd hold my hand tighter under the table. I didn't think she was falling in love with him. Maybe she wasn't then. I don't know. But I know she was fascinated by him.
"Then we didn't see Joe for about a week, and when we did see him again he said he'd taken over the operation he'd been working for. He said he needed help to make it run the way it should have been running all along, and he asked me for that help. He wanted to run it like a legitimate business; he'd been reading books on cost-accounting and such and he wanted to incorporate things like that into the illegal liquor business. He thought Prohibition would go on forever. Well, the upshot of it was that I went to work for him at the end of that semester. He offered me a lot of money and it meant Julia and I could get married sooner.
"My duties turned out to be more than just accounting. I wound up running the mash pots and the still and everything while he was out getting new customers and delivering and . . . " Stanley shrugged, ". . . seeing Julia. I didn't know what was going on. And I never could blame her for falling for him. You know him, he just swept her off her feet. They woke me up at my flat that night with the marriage certificate and a bottle of champagne. Joe was drunk and raving, saying that she was the best little woman in the world and thanking me for bringing her to him. I could have killed him. Julia was very subdued. She looked haggard, and she cringed from him and pleaded to me with her eyes for forgiveness. I would have forgiven her anything except leaving me, but she looked so forlorn that night that I forgave her for that too.
"It was almost a week before I could see her alone, and then she told me all about it. Their wedding night had been a study in brutality. Not just physical and sexual, but emotional too. Once she was Joe's wife, he told her things about his past. He'd murdered twice, once when he was just seventeen years old and again just recently, when he'd taken over the liquor operation. A gentle, sweet girl like Julia, and she was married to a brutal murderer!"
"There, there, Stanley," said Margaret, concerned over his increasing agitation. "Too often the weak are attracted to people like him."
"I told her to leave him but she wouldn't. Marriage was a different proposition in those days. I thought about hiring someone to kill him, but I couldn't do that. What I did was nothing. I stayed right on working for the man I hated, just so I could be close enough to the woman I loved to protect her as best I could. I couldn't protect her from those awful nights in Joe's bed, but at least I could console her afterward. We didn't become lovers until two years after they were married, when the business was going down the drain and Joe was getting wilder than ever. One night he came home to her with blood on his hands. He'd killed one of our competitors and he was proud of it and he wanted to show her! He . . . he . . . he forced her to submit to his foul body with the blood still on his hands, and all through it he kept saying he'd done it for her, he'd killed for her!
"It very nearly drove her mad. If I hadn't been there, it would have. I comforted her. The comforting led to more. We finally made love one night in my little apartment when Joe was up in Canada, and Margaret, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever known in my life. She was gorgeous, just as I'd always imagined she'd be, and she made me feel like a man.
"She'd been driven right to the brink of total frigidity by Joe, and that night pulled her back an inch from the edge. There were other nights then-far too few-and I could see our love together was canceling out at least a part of what Joe was putting her through. It was hell, and every day we went further into the Depression, every day we got closer to the end of Prohibition, he got worse. He was as mad as a man can be then and still walk the streets, and at last I talked her into having him committed. It would have worked, except in those times of fortunes falling and stockbrokers jumping out of windows in droves, madness was too commonplace. If you had a little money you could fight it in court and put up a front of respectability to get you off. Joe got off; Julia didn't.
"He beat her, he brutalized her, he sodomized her, he . . . he did things to her that still make me shudder to think about. He would have killed her if she hadn't told him she was pregnant. He certainly would have killed her if she'd told him the baby was mine. What he did was break her. He whipped every bit of spirit out of that woman and left her with a fear that lasted for the rest of her life. After telling me what he'd done to her, she shrank from me, afraid to have any man touch her. I thought she'd pull out of it; she never did. Even after the business folded I stayed close to them, doing my damnedest to help her, but he was closer and he could do much more harm than my good.
"When our little boy was born, Joe turned his attention to him. It gave Julia the chance to breathe a little again, but it made it even more impossible for her to leave him. He wouldn't have given up the boy under any circumstances. He'd have killed him first. That's the way he is."
"Yes. If he can't have something, he'll make certain it's ruined for everyone else who wants it. Go on, Stanley."
"It went on. The Depression, tormenting Julia, pampering Joe, with faithful old bachelor Stanley always around to listen to his latest big scheme to get rich quick. I came up with the idea of Ridgely Pharmaceuticals. All the old equipment was still in that warehouse, and it was just right for mixing the tonics and medicines I found in a library pharmacology book. We were partners in it at first, and it gave me the chance to be closer to my Julia. Someone had to be, because by the time Joe Jr. was five years old, she was as close to insanity as Joe had ever been, but in a different way. She withdrew. Not to books or needlepoint or long lonely walks, but to just sitting and staring at the wall. She wouldn't say what she was thinking about. She probably didn't know. Joe laughed it off. As far as he was concerned, she could stay in seclusion for the rest of her life, because it gave him that much more time to fool around on her. Matter of fact, she did stay that way for the rest of her life. I don't think she said ten words during that whole last month before she . . . took her life."
He was quietly crying, and now Margaret felt a new emotion for this quiet little man. It was an emotion she'd needed to feel for a long time, and she put her arms about him and held him in order to feel more of it.
"Oh, I'm all right," he said, wiping his soft old cheeks with his handkerchief. "I just have to cry about Julia now and then, just to let her know I still care." He sniffed and honked into the handkerchief and went on. "I had to stay on with Joe for my son's sake then. When Junior was little, I saw as much of him as Joe did. Then Joe did his best to screw him up too. He was taking after me physically, soft and flabby and liking books more than baseball. Joe sent him to military school, and I like to think it was only my visits that brought the boy any comfort. We used to talk about his mother and I took an interest in the academic subjects he liked so well. I've just stayed on and on, all these years, like one of those suckers that attaches himself to a shark and then can't let go or the shark will eat him. Well, I'm about to turn the tables on him, Margaret. The sucker is about to eat the shark. I won't get my half of the company back, it's too late for that now, and he cheated me out of it too finally. But I'll get the money he owes me for it, and he'll wind up having to sell the company to pay back that loan to the government."
"The check!" she said. "You're going to steal it."
"Exactly. And you are going to help me spend it, Margaret. I don't want to be alone any more, and . . . and I want his woman as well as his money."
N "I'm not his woman any more. She is. His granddaughter. Stanley, he's got to suffer for that, too."
"He'll suffer enough with the loss of the money. We can't expose him for his incestuous behavior. It would hurt Joan too much."
"And your son."
"Yes. I still must think of him."
"How will we do it?"
"Simplicity in itself," he said, spreading his hands out before him. "He will sign it and give it to me for deposit. I will cash it and deposit it so that the government has proof that Ridgely was in possession of the funds. Then, as an officer of the corporation, I will have a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars drawn up and we will depart with that for the Caribbean Sea. Your presence will make it easier. Now I won't have to forge the signature of a second corporate officer. I was going to use your name on it. I've become very good at forging it."
Margaret laughed and laughed, and soon Stanley was too. Tears were rolling down their cheeks and they were hugging each other there in Stanley's little office. At last, weak and still giggling, Margaret went to the peep-hole.
"He's gone," she said. "And I think I can see the check on his desk. Let's go in and look at it. I want to hold it."
Hand in hand, they crept down the hall and entered the office of the president like Hansel and Gretel approaching the witch's house. It was indeed the check lying on his desk, and they picked it up and turned it over and over in their hands, looking at each other from time to time and savoring the greed reflected in their eyes. They were startled half to death by Joe's stern voice as he strode out of his bathroom.
"What the hell are you two doing here?"
The two intended embezzlers faltered back a step and the stiff check fluttered from their hands. Margaret caught it in mid-air, and recovered herself enough to speak first. "We heard it finally arrived. We . . . came in to see what it looked like before it was deposited." She set it on his desk and quickly stepped back to Stanley's side. She could feel him shaking.
"Yeah," said Joe. "Get this deposited first thing in the morning." He sat heavily down in his chair and picked up his pen, and Margaret and Stanley looked at each other with hope renewed. The pen wouldn't work and he cursed it, then threw it down and took another from his breast pocket, and with the pair before his desk breathlessly watching, scrawled the illegible signature that made the check bona fide.
"For Christ's sake don't lose it," he said, holding it out for Stanley.
But Stanley was too petrified to reach out for it. Near paralyzed with fear herself, Margaret took the step forward and was reaching for it when Joe's crafty old eyes narrowed and he withdrew it. "Just what's gotten into you two? And what are you doing in my office this late at night?"
Margaret's impulse was to snatch it up and run, but she managed a wan smile and said, "We told you. We just wanted to . . . "
"I know what you told me!" he roared, sending Stanley back another step. His grimace was savage, and he pounded on the desk and pointed at them with a long, accusing finger. "You came in here to steal this from me! Don't try to deny it, I can see it in your eyes. You two! My most trusted employees. Is this gratitude? Is this what I get for taking care of you for all these years?"
"Joe, you're all wrong," Margaret said. She'd seen him in his paranoid rages before, and she knew how calmness could at times prevail over them. "We were working late and thought you'd gone. Gloria told me the check had come, and we just slipped in on the off chance you'd left it here."
A fairly reasonable explanation. It might have worked if his rage had been borne out of true, unmotivated paranoia, but this time his accusation, wild as it was, was true, and he could see that it was. He pounded the desk again and shrieked, "Liars! Trying to ruin me! She put you up to this, didn't she, Stanley. Getting even with me for dumping her. It was all your idea, wasn't it, Maggie. You screwed him into it, I know you did. Didn't you? Answer me! You answer me!"
A vein was throbbing hard at his temple and his face was turning purple in his rage. It had him trembling more than Stanley, and now the fat little bookkeeper shed his fear and spoke back in calm, even tones.
"It was all my idea, Joe. For years I've been planning ways to get even with you for Julia and a lot of other things, and this time I almost did it. Margaret.. . "
"Julia never loved you," Joe said with a sneer. "She told me so herself, time after time."
"Certainly. She'd have told you anything to get you to stop abusing her."
"I never abused Julia. I might have struck her in anger a few times, but.. . "
"Now who's lying?" Stanley said, and the accusing finger was being pointed at the man behind the desk. "I know everything you did to her . . . the threats, the beatings, the harassment, the way you forced her into degrading herself with your filthy old penis in her behind, not because you liked it, but because she didn't!"
His eyes narrowed and he said, "How do you know about that?"
"Because she told me everything. Because I was her lover."
Joe tried to laugh, but it was just a dry, croaking sound. Abruptly he ended it and snapped. "You fat slob, she would never have gone for you."
Stanley shrugged and winked at Margaret. "She went for me enough to bear me a son."
It shut Joe up. He swiveled away from them and stared at the wall. He remained motionless, hardly breathing, with only that throbbing vein at his temple showing what might be racing so swiftly through his mind. He turned back to them and looked Stanley over and nodded slowly. "It could be true," he muttered. "He looks more like Stanley than me. And if it is true . . . " His voice trailed off and an evil old smile creased his face.
"I know what you're thinking," said Stanley. "You're thinking that if Joe, Jr. isn't your son, then Joan isn't your granddaughter and what you've been doing to her in here isn't incest."
Joe nodded, smiling, not looking at them.
Stanley shook his head. "You still can't have her. Legally, she's your blood, and you can't change that in a court of law."
His fist thudded rhythmically on the desk. "I can have her. I will. I will have her!" He looked up at them and his eyes were wild as fire. "Christ, I ought to give you two this check for telling me this! I can marry her! I can have Julia back again!"
Stanley showed no fear whatsoever now as he came forward and leaned on Joe's desk. "Maybe you can at that, Joe. Lord knows, I've seen you pull off some equally impossible things before. She might even bear you a child, although I really doubt that because Julia told me about those tests you had run on yourself after little Joe was born and no more kids were coming along. You might even have a few years of happiness with Joan. But just remember one thing, Joe. When you die, and you will, it'll be my son, not yours, that'll be running this company."
Joe's old eyes widened. Rising from his desk, he looked like a Biblical patriarch able to spew forth brimstone and fire. He pointed at them again and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out and Stanley went on.
"Junior might not be much of an executive, but he's my son, not yours. He might run this company right into the ground, but it won't be your son doing it, it'll be my son. All you've worked for and stolen for and killed for will go to my son, because you don't have balls enough to make one for yourself, Joe."
Through it Joe's mouth kept opening and closing, his eyes bulged alarmingly, and he waved his finger in ever more random movements. He kept it up for several seconds after Stanley was finished, then slumped back into his chair so hard that it teetered and almost fell. over. He flopped forward, and Margaret involuntarily yelped when his head cracked hard on the desk. He lay there making bubbling sounds while Margaret and Stanley looked at each other, and it was Stanley who went around his desk and pulled him upright in his chair.
Blood was running down his face from where he'd struck his forehead on the discarded desk pen, and it looked very, very red against his ash-white complexion. His color was alarming, and so was the collapse of the left side of his face. That cheek was sunken in and that eye was nearly closed, and his mouth lolled open, drooling. His right eye had life in it; it was able to flicker around and follow the movements of Stanley's hand before it.
Stanley snapped his fingers in front of the ancient face. He chuckled and said, "Stroke. It's a hard way to go, especially for a man like him. He can probably hear and see everything that's going on around him, but he can't do anything about it. Let's try him, Margaret." He reached down and picked up the check from his desk and waved it before Joe's eyes, immediately producing that glint of madness in it. He chuckled again and said, "Gracious, he certainly does know what's going on. It's safe to go now, Margaret dear. He won't be doing much talking for a long time, if ever. Look, dear. Isn't the check ever so much prettier now? It has his signature on this side, and here we have a little droplet of old Joe's blood. You know, this is working out beautifully for us. His stroke couldn't have come at a better time, although I fear I must take a little credit away from Lady Luck for helping bring it on. Now we can come to work tomorrow just as if it's any other day, and be properly shocked at the sudden incapacitance-or death-of our beloved founder. As the oldest employee in the company, I shall make a motion that the plant be closed for a day of mourning. I'm sure I can talk my son into it," he said, with a purely evil smile at the stricken man behind the big desk. "Then we can go to the bank together and collect the money before we leisurely make our departure. Ha. I can see them now, trying to communicate with that burned out hulk so he can tell them where the check is. We'll be all settled down in our retirement acreage before the bank statement comes and the mystery of the missing check is solved."
"He can . . . really hear us?" said Margaret, staring at him in horror.
"Of course he can. Just look at his eye. He can see us too. But he can't do this," Stanley said, and wrapping his arms about Joe's former mistress, he kissed her with all the love and tenderness in his soul. He beamed a smile on old Joe, and said, "Come, my dear. It's time for us to go. We have packing to do."
"Yes, Stanley. But first there's something I've been wanting to do."
He bowed to her in utmost courtesy and she went round the big desk. She took Joe by the hair and bent his head back, then spat in his face.
XII
The full complement of Ridgely Pharmaceutical employees were crowded into the office of the president. Chuck Davidson had been called back from the East, and his secretary, Beverly Willits, had been brought back from her vacation, so that everyone from the janitor on up was present-with the exception of Stanley Moss, Margaret Fox, and old Joe himself. His son sat in his chair, and at his side stood his granddaughter. Joe Jr. rose to speak, very nervous, wishing it was over.
"I have called this meeting because I consider all of the people in this room to be members of the Ridgely family, and as you all know, the head of this family is very seriously ill. My father is under the best of care, but the doctor's most hopeful prognosis does not include the possibility of his ever returning to work again."
A murmur went round the room, and Hal looked at Gloria, and knew that her mind held the same question as his. Had the murmur been one of disappointment or one of relief? He looked back at Junior, considerably aged in the past hectic week of rumors and confusion.
"Very unfortunately, my father's illness is not the only problem we now face. The government loan which we worked so hard to gain . . . is gone."
A new murmur, and this one purely alarmed. Chuck Davidson's blood boiled. He'd worked the hardest for that loan, and without it this company, and his job, were a big, fat zero. He wanted to storm right out of there! The government had no business at all in canceling the loan just because that incompetent old fool of a president was sick! Shit, the company would do far better with Joe gone, and himself behind that desk. His rage gave way before the decorum of the occasion, and he decided to wait until the conclusion of the meeting before resigning.
"The money was stolen by . . . "
It was a clamor now, with half the employees adding to it and the other half trying to shush them. Junior's voice rose thin and reedy above it.
". . . it was stolen by Stanley Moss and Margaret Fox, and at the moment there is very little chance of recovering it."
Junior had had to almost shout to get these words through.
Stolen! Chuck thought. Why in the hell didn't I have guts enough to do it? Namby-pamby Stanley and ever-ready Margaret, what a pair. It goes to prove you can't trust anyone in this old world. It goes to prove there's opportunity left for everyone.
"I can't believe it," Hal whispered to Gloria. "Not Margaret!"
She nudged him with her hip and waggled an eyebrow. "And she was such a sweet old dear."
"The money is gone," said Junior, "and my father is gone. We cannot ever replace him, but we must replace the funds, with interest. To do so, all of us must work doubly hard. All of us, that is, who wish to stay with the Ridgely family now in the harsh times that are following the easy ones. I would not blame anyone for walking out the door right now, and I will pause in my remarks to give you that opportunity."
In the general shuffling of feet, Beverly Willits looked at Chuck, her boss, her lover. If he leaves, she thought, so will I. I'll never be his wife, but whither he goest, so go I. No one left, and Junior timidly smiled his thanks, looking close to tears.
He said, "My daughter Joan will tell you the plan we have decided upon. Joan?"
She nodded brusquely and he moved aside to make room for her behind the desk. She had a manila folder in her hand which she opened before her. She cleared her throat and frowned about the room, apparently oblivious to the smiles that came from this slip of a girl doing her best to imitate her grandfather. Her voice was clear and strong.
"We're going to a profit sharing plan, we're putting a ceiling on wages and salaries, and we're going ahead with the expansion, but not as originally planned." The murmur went up again, but she ignored it and it quickly died. "The profit sharing plan will be a complex one, involving shares of stock to be issued to employees in lieu of overtime pay. The overtime pay plus a substantial portion of the profits will go toward paying off that loan. Wages and salaries are fixed for obvious reasons. My . . . our accounting firm tells us that at our current volume of business we can pay off the loan in about sixteen years. By expanding as we'd planned, we could pay it off in ten. By expanding into higher profit lines of drugs and fine organic chemicals, we can pay it off in five. We haven't the money to do it right, but we do have enough cash reserve to buy used equipment, and we have the people to put that equipment together. Those people are in this room. It will be done in the evenings, after we've all put in a full day's work, and as I said, you will all be paid for it in common stock, so that when Ridgely is back where it should be, we'll all truly be members of the corporate family. Are they any questions? Copies of the plan will be distributed to all of you, but right now, are there any questions?"
Joan glowered around, looking older than her years, sans make-up, dressed in a severe business suit, her long hair drawn back at the sides.
"All right, I'll ask the question that's in all your minds. 'What the hell is she doing up there explaining all this to us?' The answer is that I am now a vice president of this company, the vice president in charge of seeing that it survives. I will in the future be giving orders to people in this room who are my elders and perhaps my betters, and if this is going to cause any dissension or ill will among any of you, I will not tolerate it. As my father did, I am giving you one and all the opportunity to leave now, or in the future do not balk at my orders."
She glowered around her in a ludicrous imitation of her grandfather, and inevitably one of the packaging girls tittered. Joan immediately picked her out of the crowd, and pointing a slender finger at her, said, "You. Out. You're fired. Anyone else?" Shuffling and murmuring, and making way for the outcast. "All right, then. You will be kept informed on the progress of my grandfather and on the progress of this company . . . this company which you will all own a part of. Meeting adjourned."
The girl was busy with her papers, with her father at her shoulder, as the employees filed out of the office. She was back at work, ignoring the discontented mutterings. In the hall, back on the job, the Ridgelys knew that those mutterings would grow.
"How do you think the meeting went, Father?"
"All right. But I think you were much too hard on that girl from packaging. She's been with us for three years."
"I had to show them who was in charge. I wanted to use my authority in public so there'd be no doubt that I'm serious about this thing. I think it's something Grandfather would have done under the circumstances."
"Your grandfather didn't always do the right thing. He was a tyrant."
"Yes, and an uneducated man, perhaps an unstable one, but he was a man who got things done, one way or another."
"And you want to be like him?"
"I am like him. I can't help that."
Junior felt very tired. He wished Cora was with him. Better yet, he wished he was someplace far from the company, as far away as Stanley and Margaret were, but with Cora. He knew the employees were laughing at him, and that Joan was too. The employees were laughing because of the way he'd permitted his eighteen-year-old daughter to grab the title and the authority of vice president, and that was indeed laughable. Joan was laughing at him derisively, because for years she'd known about his transvestite sex life with Cora, and now she'd used that information as ruthlessly as old Joe would have in order to elbow her way into her position of authority. She was very much like Joe in that respect, and it made him weary to think of the travail that he and everyone would go through before the company died the natural death it was facing. As far as he was concerned, his father was already dead, and he himself was looking forward to the total release he would find when Ridgely Pharmaceuticals passed on as well. Still, he would do his best to prolong its life, and to keep his headstrong daughter from making too many impulsive blunders. He still loved her, even though she had blackmailed him.
Joan had not enjoyed blackmailing her father, and she wondered if Joe took delight in using such methods in the past. She suspected that he did, and she further suspected that she would in the future. Power depraves-she'd read that in a book sometime. Her father had looked so hurt when she'd told him she'd spied on him and would not hesitate to use her private information if he did not comply with her wishes. Perhaps in a few years she'd enjoy hurting people like him, people she loved but who hadn't her strength. People would try to blackmail her, too, and she would definitely enjoy calling their bluff. She would be able to, for her sin would be kept as silent as her lover's lips. She didn't think Joe would die of the stroke, even though he had sat for hours at his desk without medical aid. He would live on, reminiscing about his colorful career, thinking of their times together, and projecting himself to her side to guide her in the monumental task she faced. She could never raise his children, but she could raise his company. Not in the way he wanted, but in the best way. She could do it. The Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc, had led vast armies when she was younger than Joan Ridgely. Joan of Arc had been guided by the Creator, and Joan would be guided by the creator of this company. The only difference between them was that God had mercifully quieted the lusty yearnings of the medieval French girl, while nothing could quench the fires that Joan's mentor had lit in her. Good whiskey helped, and now Joan excused herself to carry her purse to the executive bathroom, there to calm her raw nerves with a jolt from the bottle in her purse before pitching in to work.
"You're not serious, Chuck," Beverly said. "You're not going to stay with the company now, not with her as a vice president."
"The company .needs help. She needs help. I think she's a little hysterical now. In a few weeks, when she sees all she should be doing as an executive, she'll need even more help. Why not stay a while? What's a few weeks or even a few months out of my life if someone needs me?"
The statuesque blonde sales secretary came to him and slung her arms about his neck, and belly to belly, looked into his eyes. "You're something else. Every time I finally figure out that you're nothing but a grasping, womanizing, wife-cheating bastard, you come through with one of your darned charitable gestures and I'm all ashamed of myself. If you're staying, I am too. I won't be nasty to her, and I'll do everything I can to help you, honey."
"You know how you help me best," he said, running his hand down over her ample rump, giving her his best smile.
She warmed his chest with her bounteous breasts and said, "What's the matter? Didn't the charming and ever lovely Mrs. Davidson service you properly when you got home? And didn't you get enough whoring around in when you were back East?"
"Do I ever get enough?" he asked in reply, and kissed her. With easy expertise, he worked over her body with his hands and worked over her brain with his words. Although in the past he had fucked her in his office, he had no intention of doing so now. He wanted her very hot, though, and this was happening quickly to her. Then he'd keep her hot all day, for he'd already told his wife he'd be working late, and he already had a date with a very tasty little stewardess who had all but bragged about the fact that she dug the AC-DC scene and group sex. He felt Beverly was just about ready to dig it too. All she'd need was his kind of persuasion and she'd come around, no matter how she protested that she wanted only him. The evening before him would provide a nice little challenge before its rewards were reaped.
The weeks before him presented a larger challenge, for Joan Ridgely was an unknown quantity when compared to Beverly. But he'd get her to see things his way. One way or another, he'd get through to Joan, for they all had their weakness, and then his rewards would be considerably greater than the romp in bed with two women that he looked forward to that night.
"I'll bet you wouldn't stay if she was ugly," Gloria said, sulking.
"For goodness' sake, her looks have nothing to do with it," said Hal. "I'd stay here even if her little brother was trying to play at being vice president. Not that that's a fair comparison, because Joan's really got a brain in her head. Her grasp of the new plant design is amazing."
"So you're in love with her brain, not her body. At least so far.""
"I'm not in love with any part of her! And she's not running the company anyway. Joe, Jr. is, and she was just talking today to stir up some sympathy. Heck, she'll be back in school in another month."
"Giving you plenty of time to slip it to her. Then where will I be?"
"Gloria, a little jealousy can be flattering for a while, but you're carrying it a little far, don't you think?"
Her lower lip came out farther. "I can't help it if I'm jealous of you."
"How can you be jealous of me? You don't even love me," Hal said, and released her to go to his drawing board and look moodily down at the drawings he'd been working so late on during the past few weeks.
She followed him, rubbed herself up against him. "I never said I didn't love you."
"You never said you did."
"Your baby's still making up her mind, honey-pot," she said, tugging at his shirt-tails, tickling at his belly-button.
"Not now, Gloria," he said, and glanced at the door as he tried to right his clothing. "Christ, the door's not even locked, and I've got tons of work to do."
"You're so mean," she said, backing off, looking up at him through her long, black eyelashes. "Sometimes I even think you're meaner than Sam."
"Let's not start talking about him. I don't want to get all pissed off now. Let's you get back to your office and me get back to my drawing board, and . . . "
"He hasn't beaten me for a couple of days now," she interrupted. "Look," she said, and turning, lifted her skirt and tugged up her panties to give him a view of her bruises.
They were turning greenish yellow, and if it hadn't been for the thought of the pain associated with them, they'd have been beautiful shades against her golden tan skin. Hal caught himself leaning forward on his toes before he mentally shook his head and, still staring down at her, said, "Yeah. Lots better. But you better . . . go now. I have such an awful lot of work to do."
"I know," she said, "and I've got to get back to the switchboard in a few minutes." She pushed down her panties and pulled up her skirt again, showing him all of that fantastically curvaceous derriere, blotched with old bruises. She ran her little hand over it and cooed, "Wouldn't it be nice if you could see it without any marks on it at all? All nice and smooth and white, all pretty and nice for you? Wouldn't it?"
"Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah." It couldn't be more erotically beautiful than it was now, though. He licked his lips, watching her poke here and there on those firm mounds with a finger that was just as rigid as his prick.
"Still a little sore. But I guess you're too busy to put a little cream on it."
She'd only lowered her skirt half an inch when he said, "Lock the door. I'll get the salve."
She held her skirt up as she walked to the door, awkwardly with the pants around her thighs. His eyes never left her exposed body as he groped blindly in his desk for the cream and found it. She kissed him very lightly, for he should not get lipstick-smeared, and he dropped to his knees before her. Though she hadn't much time, she turned slowly, provocatively, presenting the flesh he adored just an inch from the tip of his nose.
With her back to him, she bent over and leisurely began the removal of her panties, working her buttocks against his face. The fool, he was letting her turn him on more all the time. Already today in his eagerness he'd forgotten about the cream that had been their excuse before. She gloried in this worship of her body, and she wanted more, always more. She brought on more worship and excited him more by grinding her fanny against his kisses, and when he at last reached for the jar, she spoke:
"Know what'd feel even nicer than that old cream?"
"No," he breathed against her buttock. "What?"
"Your tongue. In my ass-hole."
"Oh, Gloria," he moaned, and did exactly what she'd wanted of him from the start that day. She watched him through her legs, and that added to it. The fact that she had not really locked the door added to her pleasure too, for she loved a little danger to add spice to her sex.
"Think those two are making it in there?" Arlene, a black girl in the packaging department, asked the question of Chester as she jerked a thumb in the direction of the new engineer's office.
"I don't know, but I'd sure like a little slice of that tomato."
"Sheeyit, you'd like a slice of anything, man."
"Even watermelon," he said, grinning, and tickling her loins through her white nylon uniform. "And so would you. I'm surprised you haven't climbed Hal by now."
She slapped his hand away, but it was a very playful slap and not discouraging in the least. "He too busy with his married wench now, but I'll get him. You'll see. If I stay here long enough. I was about to walk out myself when that snippy little bitch fired old Louise. If I was her daddy, I'd turn her over my knee and give her a good switching, instead of letting her come in here and fuck things up like she doing."
"Wouldn't that be a trip, spanking a vice president and then throwing the blocks to her," Chester said, musing.
Arlene laughed, showing her big white flashing teeth, throwing back her leonine black head and thrusting her lithe body forward. "Izzat why you staying on, Chet? So's you can leave here saying you fucked a vice president?"
He smiled and said, "No. The reason I'm staying on is just to see what happens around this crazy place."
