He was big inside her. Oh, God, he was so big, so hard, so much harder than she would have thought it was possible for a man to be, and moving faster now, opening her, filling her, taking her up until she had to cry out for him to fuck her, fuck her more, come in her.
She screamed once then and listened to him groan against her ear, feeling it as the stiff, jolting shots filled her, warming her and moistening her even more.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," he whispered then, "no one in the world is as good as you are."
Her legs were still wrapped around him. She didn't want him to leave her yet. He was still hard and big and she didn't want him to take it away. She could still feel the tremors of her orgasms.
He raised up on his elbows now and looked down into her face, smiling a little.
"Good, baby?" he said.
She nodded.
"Tell me," he said. "Tell me how good it was."
"As good as it can get," she said. "I love it when you make me feel that way."
"What way?"
"You feel so big inside me I feel like I'm going to split open with it."
He laughed softly and she felt him growing even harder in her. God, how could he do that, she wondered, come and then get hard again like that so fast. She could feel the head of his sex against her insides, probing at her as he began to move again. She felt him widening her still more and she knew she felt slick and hot against his flesh, yielding to his pressure and yet holding him in her at the same time.
"Move your ass against me," he whispered then. "I can feel my balls against your cunt and I love it ... move it against me."
She tightened her legs and started moving with his rhythm, up and against him, down as he drove into her. She could feel her orgasm starting again already and she wanted to whimper with the pleasure of it, but it was building in her throat.
He stopped.
"Don't," she said. "Please don't stop. I need it."
He laughed and pulled back, out of her, and then crept down to suck gently at her breasts. She arched her back, straining for him and he moved his hand down between her legs.
He moved down and began to lick at her, softly, like a cat cleaning itself, and then harder, his tongue pushing into her sex, spreading her lips open, moving up against her clitoris, against that tight little button that broke just then and splashed pleasure through her Ike bursts of electricity.
She moaned and pulled at him until he twisted around and she could take his cock into her mouth. He moved then and she could feel it filling her, slipping down her throat until she knew she couldn't possibly take any more, and then moving back until she had to catch the head of it with her lips to keep it from escaping.
Then he twisted around again and was up over her, slashing down into her, filling her, fucking her, riding her hard, nothing left but the sensation of fucking, crashing into one orgasm after another until she couldn't speak anymore, all she could do was moan and gasp and hang on to him, her legs tight around him, her cunt on fire with the sensation of it.
Then he was coming again, that amazing shot of hot liquid that never failed to burn her as it exploded in her and never failed to ignite still one last orgasm even after she had already exploded.
He slumped on her then, panting, and she held him. Now that the passion was dying, she felt an incredible wave of tenderness come over her, love for this man who loved her and who could make her want him so much.
He rolled aside then and lay beside her. He was breathing rapidly and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his chest. She raised on one arm to look down at him, then bent down to lick softly at the sweat, liking the taste of the salt in it. He whispered something. She didn't understand the words, but she knew what he wanted and she smiled and moved down to take his cock into her mouth. It was still half hard. She could taste semen on it, semen and the taste of her own body. She liked that taste. She liked filling her mouth with it, lamed being able to taste him for hours after he was gone, liked the seawater taste of him.
She sucked gently, licking him with her tongue at the same time. And then she stopped. and put her head on his belly, tired, contented.
"Marianne, I'm going to have to go now," he said.
"I know." She was whispering.
"I won't be back anymore."
She didn't understand him at first. Then: "What?"
"I won't be back."
"Why?"
"My wife knows."
She sat in the half darkness, looking at him. He looked sad. "You said she knew all along."
"Yes, but now she says she'll get a divorce."
"Good. Let her."
He didn't say anything.
"You told me you loved me."
"I do."
"Then leave her, not me."
"I can't," he said.
"Why not?"
"Money ... children."
She looked at his cock, now completely soft, limp against his leg, and she thought about how much she loved him, and how much she loved that, and about how it was with him ... how it had been with him. "Why don't you just get out of here," she said. "I want to make love to you again."
"No." She wanted him. Maybe she wanted him now worse than she ever had before.
* * *
When he was gone, she got up and went to the window and looked out. It was snowing a little and the wind was making white swirls on the comer under the streetlight.
For a moment, she thought that she was going to cry, but then the feeling was gone. She wouldn't cry. There wasn't any point to it. He was gone and down in her guts she had known all along that he wasn't going to stay. He was married and she had known that.
Oh well, shit, she thought, maybe one affair with a married man is what every good New York career girl needs in her life.
No more, she thought. Next time I'll do the fucking. Then she laughed.
* * *
Her name was Marianne Cooper. She was twenty years old, although she told people she was twenty three because she didn't want them to think she was still a child. Not that many would have. She was tall, five feet, seven inches in her stocking feet, with long blonde hair and round brown eyes, and breasts that were not large enough ever to sag, just big enough to make men turn to look at her.
* * *
"I just don't understand why you're quitting, Marianne," Miss Mason said. "You've been doing so well here."
"I just don't want to sell dresses anymore," she said. "Well, what are you going to do?"
"I'm going back to Texas."
"Texas?"
"Sure, didn't you know? I'm from Texas and I'm going back." Not back to Texarkana, though, she thought. Never back to Texarkana. Not back to where that happened to me.
"Well, if you need a job reference there, I'll be glad to give you one."
"I won't need any references," Marianne said. "I've got all the references I need."
TWO
The place was called Toppers. It was a red brick building standing by itself on a side street in north Dallas. She had never heard of it, but it was fronted by signs advertising "topless girls, best in town," so she went in. What did she have to lose?
She stopped just inside. The sun was bright outside and she was blind in the inside darkness. While she was trying to focus her eyes, she heard a man's voice say, "You looking for somebody?"
"I'm looking for the manager," she said. She turned toward him, but all she could see so far was a shape. He was big. That was all she could tell.
"I'm the owner."
"I'm looking for a job."
"Yeah? Doing what?"
"Dancing."
"Our dancers are waitresses too."
"Good. You make more money that way."
"Come on back to the office," he said. He turned and walked toward the back. She followed him.
The lights were brighter in his office. He was blond, big, about thirty, handsome, as if maybe he had been a football player once and hadn't yet started turning to fat. He had a kind of faint, half quizzical look on his face, a little smile.
"What are you looking at me hie that for?" she said. "You don't want a job here," he said.
"Why not?" He made her nervous the way he was staring at her. He looked like he thought she was funny. "I'm good looking enough."
"You're plenty good looking," he said. "Too good looking. You got too much class. You don't belong in a joint like this."
She laughed. "It's your joint. Why are you putting it down?"
He shrugged. "I'm not putting it down. It makes me a good living. Guys want to look at naked girls, I'm just the guy to furnish them the girls to look at. And the girls make two to three hundred bucks a week so it's not a bad deal for them ... two to three hundred from me, plus whatever they make on the side."
"That's why I'm here. Where else could I make that kind of money?"
"I don't know," he said. "You want money that bad?"
"How bad?"
"Bad enough to show your tits to a bunch of drunks?"
"Yes." What's money got to do with it, she thought. It's just a way to get paid by men. I'm tired of men using me.
"You're sure?"
"Yes," she said. Her voice took on an edge of anger. "I'm sure. Now you want to hire me or do you want me to go somewhere else?"
He shrugged his heavy shoulders again. "You want to work, I guess you can work. Take off your clothes."
He was laughing at her again. She didn't know how she knew that because his face was totally without expression. But he was laughing at her; he didn't think she'd do it.
She stood up and unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged out of it. Then she unfastened her bra and dropped it to the floor, her breasts swinging free. She thought she heard him gasp slightly, but there still wasn't any expression on his face.
She unzipped her skirt and let it slide down, then stepped out of her panties to stand naked in front of him. "All right," she said. The air conditioning in his office was giving her goose pimples. She hoped he wouldn't think she was nervous.
Because she wasn't. She wasn't nervous at all. She felt oddly excited and happy and this was the first time in her life that she had ever stood naked before a stranger before ... except in Texarkana, with that doctor, after the rape.
"All right," he said gruffly. "You look damn good. You want to work, you can start today. I'll pay you one fifty salary. You get tips. You want to hustle some, ' that's your business, but you do it careful so you don't get the place raided. You do that and you're fired, right then."
There was expression in his eyes now, hot, and she smiled when she glanced down and saw the bulge in his trousers. "Oh my," she said, laughing, "I hope the customers react that way." She walked over to him and brushed against him, the tips of her breasts touching hie chest, not knowing exactly why she was doing it, just wanting him to want her.
"Be careful," he said. "I don't have any feeling about screwing the girls who work for me."
"That's all right," she answered. "I don't have any feeling about fucking the boss." She used the harsh word deliberately, wanting to shock him and still not understanding the impulse.
He touched her breasts, tightening his hands on her, squeezing until, her nipples were hot and erect under his palms.
"Sit down," she said softly, pushing at him until he sat back in the chair that was behind him.
She knelt in front of him and unzipped his pants. His penis popped out, hugely erect, ready. She caught it in her hand and worked the skin back and forth gently, watching his face. "You're big, boss," she whispered.
He started to say something, but the words died in his throat when she bent down and sucked his cock into her mouth. She held it still for a moment, then began working up and down on it, slowly at first, then faster. He was arching against her, straining with the pleasure of what she was doing.
Then he was coming in her mouth, hot and thick. She started to choke, then caught herself and swallowed. There was so much of it she had to stop moving and just hold his penis in her mouth until the jetting stopped. Then she sucked more, softly, taking it all until she heard him sigh softly.
She looked up then, her lips moist with his semen, and smiled at him.
"You still think I'm not suitable for working here?" she said.
"You'll do," he said. He stood up over her, looking down, then unfastened his belt and let his pants drop to his ankles. Amazingly, his cock was enlarging 'again, stiffening already.
"Wow, so will you," she said.
She lay back on the rug and he knelt between her legs. He held his penis in his hand and rubbed it against her clitoris, gently, down into the crack of her pussy. She could feel herself moistening for him and she wanted him to hurry. She hadn't had a man since the one left her in New York and she hadn't really wanted one, but that was all psychological and she was surprised now to feel the urgency building in her body.
"Do it," she said, "please do. it."
He laughed softly. "Do what?"
"Fuck me," she said. "Oh, God, please fuck me."
Then he was in her, all in one motion, incredibly big, incredibly deep in her, thrusting so hard that she could feel him slamming against her cervix, bruising her, hurting her some, but making her love the pain.
She put her legs around him then, locking her ankles behind his back, pulling him even further into her. She was moving under him now, with him, thrusting up as he came down into her, rhythmic, working with him, her nails clawing against his back spasmodically. She couldn't help herself. Her orgasms were bursting now, exploding one after another so that she couldn't breathe properly. There were lights behind her eyes, dazzling, making her scream out with the pleasure of it....
He raised up above her, catching her legs and raising them, holding them in the crooks of his elbows, lifting her ass so that he was slamming down into her as hard as it was possible to do it, burying himself in her, slamming his balls off her. She whimpered with it, loving it, trying to pull him even deeper into her.
He was slow to come now, fully in control, drained off by what she had done to him with her mouth. She looked up into his face and saw....
What?
Lust. Anger. Passion. And something else. Some-thing she couldn't define.
Desire? Tenderness?
Oh, hell, he was a man, and he was fucking her. His cock was huge in her, so big she didn't know how it could all be in her, but it was, so hard that she could swear she could feel the ridged veins against the walls of her cunt.
Oh, God, she was coming again and she thrust her body up to him. He was in her now with her entire body almost lifted off the bed, only her shoulders still there, pumping into her.
"God," he whispered then.
"Let it go," she said. "I want it. Fill me up with it."
Then he was coming again, blasting into her, straining against her, moaning with the pleasure of it, and she was coming again just from the pleasure of knowing what he was feeling in her.
He collapsed on her then, heavy for a moment, breathing hard with exertion. Then he rolled off her and lay beside her on the floor.
"Jesus," he said. "Jesus, you're really something." She laughed. "You think so, huh?"
"Most of them just pretend," he said, "but you really like it."
"Of course, I like it," she said. "I never do anything I don't like to do."
THREE
They were applauding and whistling when she came off the stage. She was carrying her one piece costume until she could get into the back to put it on. She had learned that the tips she earned would be a lot higher if she walked naked through the audience before dressing again, naked except for the little G-string that the Tex-as law said she couldn't take off.
She was sweating and breathing hard, but she felt good. There was something tremendously exciting about the dancing, about being naked before all those men, in knowing that they all wanted her.
A man took her arm. "Sit down and have a drink with me," he said. She smiled. "Like this?"
"Why not? That's what I came to see."
She smiled again and tried to pull away, but he held her more tightly. "I've got to go get dressed," she said. "Come on, let go."
"I said, have a drink with me."
"Wait till I get dressed."
"No."
"Please...." She tried to pull away again. She was starting to get frightened. She knew it was silly. What could happen to her in a room full of people? But she was scared anyway.
"Sit down, goddamn it," the man said. He was drunker than she had thought at first.
Chuck Steward came out of the darkness to take hold of the man's arm. "Let go of her, partner," she said.
The man looked up angrily, but then he tried to smile when he saw how big Chuck was. "I didn't do anything to her," he said. "I just wanted her to have a drink with me."
"I know you didn't do anything," Chuck said. "Just let go of her anyway."
The man let go and Marianne turned quickly and walked . back through the room to the back where the liquor was stored.-She put on her costume quickly and then stood leaning against the wall, gasping.
Chuck Stewart came in behind her. "What was that all about?" he said.
"Nothing."
"Nothing? For Christ's sake, you're tougher than that. You can certainly handle a drunk like that. If you can't, you're in the wrong business."
"I can handle them," she said. She wanted to cover her face with her hands, but she didn't. She forced herself to stare steadily at Chuck.
"Well, what was wrong?"
"Nothing," she said. "I just didn't lire the son of a bitch pawing at me."
"You're choosy, huh?"
She felt a quick flush of anger. He didn't have any right to be laughing at her. "You're goddamn right I'm choosy," she said. "I'll decide who puts his hands on me."
He looked at her, puzzled, then he laughed. "Okay," he said, "whatever you say. Let's just get back to work. Okay?"
"Okay," she said. "I'll be right out."
He hesitated as if he were going to say something more, then shrugged and went out.
She could feel tears in her eyes. The bastard, she thought. The bastard.
She was seventeen when it happened. Not a virgin because she and Mike had gone all the way a few times in the back of his car. But that was all she had done and that wasn't near as much as some of the other girls in Texarkana. Not that that mattered. It would have been bad the way it happened no matter how experienced she was. But sometimes, even now, she wondered about it, about why it had to happen to her. Everything she had ever been taught added up to the idea that if you were the right kind of person, only good things would happen to you. Be a good girl and good things happen. Be bad and bad things happen. But bad things don't happen to good girls. Therefore, if something bad happens, it's at least partly because you're not a good girl.
It didn't make sense to her.
It was after a dance at the school. She had gone alone because Mike was home with the flu. She hadn't really wanted to go without him but. one of her girl friends, Sally Majors; had wanted to go and didn't want to go alone, so Marianne went with her. Only then Sally was walked home by somebody, so Marianne had to go home alone. Of course, she could have had somebody to walk her home, but Mike wouldn't have liked that. Besides, she didn't want to. She loved Mike. She didn't want to be unfaithful to him, even that little bit.
She was walking down a side street about three blocks from her home when the car with the three men in it pulled up beside her. "Hey," somebody said, "where you going, honey?"
She glanced at them and saw three men in the car, older men, thirty maybe, dressed in work clothes, like farmers. They were all holding beer cans in their hands.
She didn't say anything. She just kept walking. She knew better than to say anything to them. That would just encourage them to keep bothering her. She knew the best thing to do was just to ignore them. When they saw they weren't getting through to her, they'd go away. They weren't dangerous, just out on the town on a Saturday night, looking for a little excitement and there wasn't much in Texarkana. One of them laughed and said, "She sure does."
"You hear what he said, honey?" one said. "He said you got great tits."
She-gasped. "You be quiet," she said. "Don't you talk to me like that."
They all laughed at that. "Why not?" one said. "Don't you want good old boys like us to think you got great fits."
"You want to go for a ride with us, honey?"
Strangely, she wasn't afraid, but she was suddenly blazingly angry. She stopped and faced them. "Why don't you just go away and leave me alone," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, acting like this. You're probably all married even."
That convulsed them. The driver had stopped the car beside her and they were all laughing as if she had just told the funniest joke any of them had ever heard in all his life.
"You just leave me alone," she said. "You're filthy."
She was so angry she didn't notice the one in the back had opened the door until he was out and standing beside her. He didn't touch her. He just stood there beside her, looking down a her, still laughing.
"You sure got a temper," he said.
"You leave me alone."
He touched her arm then, softly, gently running his fingers up and down it as if he were touching something incredibly soft and beautiful.
"You got nice skin," he said.
She shuddered and tried to move away, but he caught her arm and held her now. She started to scream, but he suddenly spun her around, holding her tightly with one arm and clamping a calloused palm over her mouth.
"What the hell you doing, man?" one of the men in the car said to him.
"We could sure have some fun with her," the one holding her said. He giggled. "You want to have some fun, honey?"
She tried to struggle, but he was the strongest man she had ever seen. He held her so she couldn't move' and no matter how hard she tried to struggle he didn't even seem to notice.
"You're crazy, man," one of the men in the car said. "Why's he crazy?" the other one said. "We sure could have us some fun with her."
"And go to the pen for life?"
"How they going to catch us. We ain't from around here. She couldn't tell on us. She don't know us from a telephone pole.
The man holding her was feeling her breasts. He was pulling her against his body and she could feel his penis hardening against her leg. She still wasn't afraid. Nothing like this had ever happened to her or to anyone she knew and she didn't believe even yet that anything real bad was going to happen. They were just messing around, that was all, and they were going to let her go then.
"Get her in the car before somebody sees us," one of the men in the car said. "Hurry up."
Oh no, she tried to say. That was different. In the car. She couldn't let them put her in the car. She couldn't. She could feel a blinding fear erupting in her now, panic, choking her, making it hard for her to breathe. She tried to kick the man holding her, tried to pull away, tried to fight, but it didn't do any good. He just picked her up and swung her around to push her into the back seat of the car.
Then they were driving fast. The man holding her had let go of her now, but at first she couldn't say anything. All she could do was sit there in the comer of the car, huddled, trying to make herself small, trying to catch her breath.
The man sitting beside her laughed again then and put his hands over on her breast, feeling, squeezing it roughly. She tried weakly to push his hand away, but he didn't even seem to notice what she was trying to do.
He put his hand down and pulled her sweater up and slipped. his hand up inside, then down into her bra, feeling her bare breast, pulling at her nipple.
"Oh, don't," she said. "Please don't."
He didn't pay any attention to her. "Jesus Christ," he said to the man driving, "find a place to park. I need me some of this stuff. This is the nicest cunt I ever saw."
Then, as if he had just reminded himself of some-thing, he let go of her breast and pushed his hand up under her skirt, tugging at her panties until he got them pulled aside and he could feel the bush of pubic hair.
"Holy Christ," he said. "Holy Christ."
She tried to hold her legs together, but he forced them apart and jammed a finger up into her. She moaned when she felt that. She took hold of his wrist with both her hands and tried to push him away, but she couldn't. His finger felt hard, horny inside her, almost like a piece of bone.
"Jesus, if you don't find a place to park, I'm going to fuck her right here in this car and I don't like fucking in cars." He laughed.
"You just like fucking," the passenger in the front said. He laughed harshly as if he had amused himself immensely. "Only what makes you think you're going to get firsts?"
"I caught her didn't I?"
"So what?"
"So what makes you think I want to be sticking my cock in after you've dirtied it all up?"
They both laughed.
"Please," Marianne said. She pushed the man's finger out of her. He leaned back in the seat and laughed loudly.
"Oh, Jesus have mercy," he said. "We're going to have us a night to end them all."
The driver swung off onto another road and stopped under some trees. He turned off the motor and looked back. "This ought to be okay," he said.
"Let's get her outside," the one in the front passenger seat said. "Hurry up."
The one in the back with her pushed the door open and took hold of her arm and jerked her out.
"Hold on to her," the one who had been driving said. "Don't let her run."
"She ain't going to run," the one holding her said. "She's going to like it."
"Get her clothes off her," the other one said. "Oh, God, I like them naked and I ain't never seen a woman built like that naked."
"You been doing most of your fucking with pigs," one of them said.
"Real pigs," the other one said. "He likes to fuck real pigs."
"Take off your clothes, honey?" the one who had been in back with her said.
"No." She couldn't do that. Not even Mike had ever seen her totally naked.
She heard a little clicking sound and then the man in front of her was holding a knife. "Honey, we ain't kidding around with you. It don't hurt to fuck, but it can sure hurt to fight being fucked. Now we're going to fuck you. You can take it and like it and not be hurt. Or you can fight us and be hurt. But you're going to get fucked either way. Now you take off them clothes or I'm going to start hurting you with this knife."
"Shit, we can take them off'n her," one of the others said.
"Naw, I want to watch her undress," the one with the knife said. "There ain't nothing I like better than to just watch a woman undress. And she's going to do it."
She couldn't move. She couldn't believe this was really happening to her.
"Now, honey," the one with the knife said. "Start with that sweater. Those tits of yours feel real good. I want to see whether they look as good as they feel."
She reached down and caught the bottom of her sweater and pulled it over her head. She felt strange, sort of half sick, sort of only half conscious, as if this were a kind of bad dream that wasn't real, something she couldn't stop because you can't control a dream.
"Come on now, honey, hurry up," the one with the knife said. "Get that brassiere off."
She took it off and held it in front of her until one of the men jerked it away so they could see her breasts better.
"Oh, God, look at them," one of them said. "You ever see any better than them?"'
"Get the rest of, your clothes off," the man with the knife said. "I'm in a hurry to get to fucking."
"I'm going to go first," the one who had been driving said.
The man with the knife, the one who had been in the back with her, said, "I'm going first man. I grabbed her. I'm going first."
"Screw you," one of the other men said.
The man looked at them. His face was twisted now with something Marianne couldn't recognize ... hate, lust, anger ... something. "I said, I'm going first."
They looked at him. Then one of them shrugged. "Shit, it don't matter who goes first. We're all going to get some of it."
The man with the knife looked back at her now. "You don't get them clothes off right now, I'm going to cut off one of your nipples, honey. I ain't kidding."
She shuddered. Then, suddenly, as if someone had turned on a light, she felt perfectly calm, clearheaded. She knew they meant what they said, they were too tensed up now to argue with. They really were going to hurt her if she didn't give in to them.
She reached down and unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the ground. Then she pushed her panties down and stepped out of them.
"What do you want me to do now?" she said.
"Just lie down and get fucked," the man said. "Just get yourself down on your back, baby, I'll take care of the rest of it."
She lay down on the ground and he stood over her opening his pants. When his penis was bared, she closed her eyes for a moment. It was so big. Mike wasn't that big. At least she didn't think he was. There, in the back of his car, she hadn't ever really had a good look at him. But she didn't think he was that big. This man was monstrous, huge, the end of it swollen, dark. In the light from the moon, she could see him clearly.
He knelt down between her legs and forced her open more. Then he put his hand down on her, between her legs, feeling her there, forcing his finger into her again.
"You ain't very wet for me, baby, but you'll get wetter," he said. "I'll make you plenty wet when I put this thing into you."
Oh, God, she thought, Oh, God, he's really going to do it to me.
He was in her then, suddenly, savagely, ramming his cock full into her, jamming in so deeply she could feel his balls against her buttocks. Mice had never done it that way. He had always kind of slipped in gently. Not like this. Not hard like this.
She groaned and then bit her lip to keep from making any more noise. But he had heard her.
"You like that, huh?" he said, grunting out the words. "You like having it in you, don't you?"
She didn't say anything. She just closed her eyes.
He was moving in her now, in and out, plunging at her the way a horse plunges at. a mare, hard, fast, faster. He was grunting with the effort of it, slamming at her, trying to make himself come as quick as possible, wanting to be coming, wanting to be able to say that he had fucked her. She knew that suddenly, even under the pain and the pressure. She thought, my God, he wants to have done it more than he wants to be doing it.
He was trying to feel her breasts too, his hard, calloused hands bruising her, pulling at her nipples, hurting her.
She whimpered and then cried out in pain and far away someone said, "Man, she really likes it, baby, slip it to her, your ass looks like it's going a hundred miles an hour."
Someone else laughed and then it was gone, the other sound, and all she could feel was the cock in her.
Cock in her. She had never thought of it that way before. Always before it was making love.
Now she was being fucked.
Oh, my God, she cried out, I'm being fucked, and then somewhere in her mind she realized she hadn't made a sound, that the scream had been in her mind.
He felt bigger in her now. He was swelling in her and moving still faster.
She tried to turn her head against him. He was trying to kiss her and there wasn't anywhere for her to go. He was kissing her with his mouth open and she could feel his saliva on her face. She could feel him stiffening, jerking with each thrust now, and he was moving faster. She knew he was going to come and she thought, suddenly, what if .he makes me pregnant. She jerked, trying to throw him out, but it didn't work. He just groaned hard and she could feel him coming in her. She could feel herself getting wet, hot, and she knew it was from his semen.
He slumped down against her then, breathing hard, and he said, "You did like it, you little bitch. There at the end. You came too, didn't you?"
She didn't say anything. She just looked up at him.
One of the other men said, "Come on, man, give me a turn now. You've had yours."
The man pulled out of her and hunched back on his heels, looking at her. "I've had mine for now, but I'm coming back for seconds, boys. This here's one fine little piece of ass."
Then the other man was in her, driving at her, and it was almost as if the first one had never left her, except this was not quite so big, not quite so rough. But he kept at her for a long time. She thought he was never going to come. He kept flicking her hard, thrusting in and out of her, working at her. She could hear the sound of his cock moving in her, wet, squishy.
Then he was coming too, hard, hotter than the other man, straining against her.
"Oh, God," she said aloud, her hips moving under him. She couldn't help it. She was getting hot from it. How could she not get hot? They kept fucking her and fucking her and coming in her.
"Listen to her, man, the bitch really, really loves it," one of them said.
The man pulled out of her and stood up quick, turning his back as he fastened his pants.
The third man reached down and pulled up into a sitting position. "You're going to eat me, baby.'."
She didn't know what he meant. She sat there, the hard ground hurting her bottom, staring at his hard cock.
"Take it in your mouth, bitch," he said. "Suck me off."
"Oh, no," she said. "I never did that before."
He grabbed her by the back of the head and pulled her face over to him. "In your mouth," he said. "I'll break your goddamn jaw if you don't do it right. I ain't never had a blow job and you're going to give me one."
She didn't want to do it, but he pressed against her mouth. He had hold of her neck and he was hurting her. She opened her mouth to try to say something, to plead with him, and he rammed his cock into her mouth.
"Watch your teeth," he said. "Don't you bite me."
Strange, such a strange sensation to feel that in her mouth, filling her mouth, big, harder than she would have expected from flesh, big, psychologically big, not as big as some bananas maybe, but bigger because of what it was.
"Move," he said. "Suck on it."
He sank down, pulling her with him, so that he was lying on his back and she was crouched over him, on her hands and knees. He held her bead between his two hands, moving her up and down on him until she kept moving by herself. Then he groaned and lay back, letting her do it. "Do it," he said, "oh, Christ, do it."
Something was behind her then pushing at her, and she suddenly jerked and cried out in pain. One of them was pushing into her bottom, hurting her. "Oh, God, don't," she said, "don't do that. It hurts."
The man under her grabbed her head and jammed his cock back into her mouth. "Don't stop sucking," he said. "I'm going to come."
The man behind her was completely in her bottom now, forcing himself deeper into her, using her there as if he were in her pussy, hurting her, opening her.
Oh, God, the man in her mouth was coming, filling her mouth with hot, sticky, salty semen, choking her.
The man behind. The man in her mouth.
Oh, God, what were they doing to her?
* * *
She could remember up to there, but later she could never remember everything they did to her after that. They were in her everywhere. She knew that. She sucked them all. She knew that. Once they were all trying to be in her at the same time, one in her pussy, one in her bottom, the other in her mouth. Maybe they made it. She couldn't remember. Everything blurred together into one memory of pain and anger and humiliation and the sound of their laughter.
After a long time, they put her back into the car and drove her naked to the edge of town and pushed her out. Oddly, on the way there, they seemed quieter, not laughing anymore, as if they were a little uneasy about what they had done. They didn't talk to her. She wanted to get dressed, but when they threw her into the car they left her clothes behind.
Then they were gone and she was on her hands and knees at the edge of the road.
She felt tired and confused and ashamed and at first she didn't even hear the man and woman who were standing by her, talking to her, trying to find out what had happened to her.
* * *
There was a doctor who gave her a shot of something and kept talking about niggers and she kept saying, no, they were white, they were white.
Her mother and father were there. Her mother was crying and her father kept swearing.
A nurse who looked down at her and said, don't worry honey, worse things'll happen to you.
A policeman who was talking to her father.
* * *
They never caught them, of course. The policeman talked to her for a long time, but she couldn't tell him much because all he seemed interested in was hearing about what they had done to her. She told him what they looked like, but she hadn't heard any names, or couldn't remember any, and she couldn't remember what kind of car they had. All cars, dark cars, looked alike to her. No, she couldn't remember their license number, or even what state it was. They had said they weren't from around Texarkana, but maybe they were lying.
And her mother said, "It's all right, honey, it doesn't matter."
And Mike said, later, it's all right, it doesn't matter, but it did matter because he kept wanting to know what they did, kept asking her questions. Until she told him what they did, how she sucked them, how they were in her bottom and in her mouth and maybe in her pussy all at the same time. And then he wanted her to suck him, so she? .d, but after that he acted funny with her, and he didn't want to go places with her anymore. Even when they had their prom just before graduation, he didn't take her. He said it was because he didn't have enough money, but she knew that wasn't so. He worked at the grocery store everyday after school and he could have gone. He just didn't want to. Because of what had happened.
She left right after graduation. She went to New York because that was the biggest city in the country, because she had seen it in movies so much, because she wanted to be where no one knew her. Where she could start over.
Only that hadn't worked either. She had never had enough money. And all the men wanted was to go to bed with her. And when she met one she thought she loved, he was married and he left her too.
* * *
She straightened up and went back out into the bar now. One of the other girls was dancing on the little stage and all of the men were looking at her.
Chuck Stewart came over and said, "You all right now?"
"Sure I'm all right," she said. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Okay," he said. "I just asked."
"I can take care of myself," she said. "I don't need any wet nurse looking over me."
"Sure," he said. "Suit yourself. Next time I'll let you handle it alone."
"Yeah," she said, " do that"
She moved away and walked over to one of the tables where there were three men sitting. "How you doing, men," she said, "anything I can do for you?"
One of them looked up and laughed. He brushed his hand against her hip. "What do you have in mind?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "I'm game for almost anything."
FOUR
When she opened the door, she was surprised to find Chuck Stewart there. She had never seen him outside the club and he was always dressed slickly there, as if he had a vision of what his customers expected him to look like: cool, a little overdressed, something like a pimp. Perhaps seeing him like that helped their illusions about the girls. This Sunday morning, however, he was dressed in blue jeans and a yellow knit shirt. He looked almost like a cowboy and she smiled in spite of herself when she thought that.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he said.
"Sure." She held the door open wider. "Come on in. I'll give you a cup of coffee."
She thought he seemed uneasy, nervous about some-thing, and for a moment she wondered if he were there to fire her, but then she thought that's silly, he wouldn't come here for that, and besides I'm doing a good job. The customers all like me.
He followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the door while he watched her measuring coffee into the pot.
"I just thought rd drop by and see how you are," ho said.
Sure, she thought, you check on all the girls on Sunday morning. Just a concerned boss.
"How'd you know where I live?" she said.
"I called information. They told me what your phone number was and your address."
"I'll have to speak to them about that," she said. "Come on, let's go in the living room. The coffee will be ready soon."
Sitting on the couch then, she looked at him and said, "Okay, what's up?"
"'What?"
"You didn't come here just to have a cup of coffee."
He dug into his shirt pocket for a cigarette and lit it carefully, then leaned over and rubbed his hand through his hair. "No," he said, "I didn't, and I may be a damn fool for coming here at all."
"Why?"
"You may just tell me to go mind my own goddamn business."
"Try."
"I hardly know how to start ... I guess I just have to ask what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
She looked around her apartment. "What's wrong with it?"
"Not your apartment, the Club."
"You don't like the job I'm doing?"
"Sure I do. That's not what I mean."
"Well, what do you mean?"
"I mean, you're not the usual kind of girl who comes in there to work."
"Why not?"
"Look at the other girls ... they're all whores, more or less."
"Some of them are nice," she said defensively.
"Sure, lots of whores are nice. That doesn't make them any less whores."
"Well, what's that have to do with me?"
He leaned closer to her. "You're not a whore."
She laughed. "Have you forgotten how I got my job there?"
"No, I haven't forgotten. But you're not a whore. I don't know what game you're playing, or why, but you're not a whore. You don't belong in this business."
"Why not?"
"Because it'll turn you into a whore."
"What's wrong with that?" she said harshly. "If you're going to get fucked, you might as well get paid for it."
"It doesn't have to be like that," he said.
"Sure it does."
"There are lots of things you could do."
"Are you firing me?"
He flushed. "No, goddamn it, rm not firing you. rm trying to help you."
"I don't want to be helped."
He stood up then. "Okay," he said, "suit yourself. I offered, that's all."
"You didn't offer anything except a suggestion that I might be happier in some other line of work."
"So what would you have liked, an offer to become my mistress. Maybe I could set you up in a nicer apartment down on Turtle Creek or something, and keep you in comfort and luxury."
"At least that's an offer."
He looked at her seriously and there was some kind of emotion in his eyes that she couldn't recognize. "No," he said, "that's not an offer, that's a proposition, and you remember the old story about the man who asked the girl if she'd sleep with him for a million dollars."
"I never heard of it," she said.
"She said yes, she'd sleep with him for that. So then he offered her two bucks and she said, what kind of a girl do you think I am. Then he said, we've settled that, we're quibbling about the price now."
"All right," she said.
"I came up here to suggest that you think twice about living a life that's going to turn you into a whore. I didn't have in mind just making you a richer whore"
"Why don't you just leave me alone?" she said, suddenly angry. "I don't need any moralizing from you. If the girls who work for you are whores, what does that make you?"
"A pimp, of sorts," he said, "but at least I know precisely what I am and I don't make any excuses for it or deal in disguises."
"So if I want to be a whore, that's my business," she said.
He gave her that strange, unrecognizable look again. Then he shrugged and said, "You're absolutely right. Sorry I tried to interfere. Just do your thing."
"I intend to," she said.
* * *
When he was gone, she sat in the living room, drinking coffee, trying to read the morning paper, but she was so angry she couldn't concentrate. She didn't understand exactly why she was that angry. She supposed it was just reaction at the idea of a semi-stranger butting into her apartment and calling her a whore, or maybe it was the idea of a man presuming to tell her how to live, a man, after what men had done to her, lied to her, raped her. Who needed a man's advice.
The doorbell rang again and she jumped, startled. Then she thought it was Chuck back again and she got up angrily and walked over to the door to jerk it open.
It wasn't Chuck. It was Maria Sanchez, a Mexican girl who danced at the club under the name of Mary Jo. She had her long, black hair hanging loose down her back and she was wearing a yellow hot pants outfit.
She didn't have on a bra and her nipples were visible under the blouse.
"Holy, Mary," she said, "what are you so hot about?"
Marianne smiled apologetically. "I thought you were somebody else," she said.
Maria walked in by her. "Who?"
"It doesn't matter." She smiled again. "A man, that's all. He just managed to make me mad."
"Men can do that." Maria sat down on the couch. "Is that coffee I smell?"
Marianne didn't know why she hadn't wanted to tell Maria that Chuck had been there. She just didn't. She also didn't know why Maria was here. They had been casually friendly at work, but that was all. "Sure, there's coffee," she said. "How do you take it?"
"Black."
She fixed the coffee and brought it back into the living room. Maria was looking through the magazine section from the Sunday paper, but she put it down and took the coffee. "Thanks," she said.
"What have you been up to?" Marianne said.
"Nada." She sipped at the coffee slowly, looking at Marianne all the time. "You like working at the club?" she said.
Oh hell, Marianne thought, not you too. She shrugged. "It's all right," she said. "It's a living."
"Sure," Maria said. She put the coffee cup down. "Why?" Marianne said.
"Why what?"
"Why did you ask whether I tiled working at the club?"
"Why not? I just wondered. It's just a way of making conversation, that's all."
She leaned back, stretching. Her nipples were taut and hard under her' blouse. "I like it okay too," she said. "Mexican girls have a hard time getting good jobs in Texas," she said, "especially jobs where they can make much money. So I like it okay." She sat up then and smiled. "I like you too."
Marianne felt a little surprised.
"It's all right," Maria said. "I'm not going to rape you."
"What?"
"I'm a lesbian, didn't you know?'
"No."
"Sure, I like girls, that's why I'm here."
Marianne knew she was blushing. "Oh, but...." she started.
"It's all right," Maria said, laughing. "I know you're not one of us."
"Then, why...?"
"Because you never know, do you? Because you're a hell of a good looking chick, with real class, because rd love to make love to you, and you never know unless you try."
Marianne laughed. She didn't believe this. Maria was so cool, so open, it all had to be a joke. "You're kidding me," she said. "You had me believing it for a minute."
"Believe it. It's true."
Maria laughed back, licking her lips.
"I don't know what to say," Marianne said.
"You don't have to say anything. You can just ignore what I said. You can throw me out. You can take me up on it and, see whether you like it. You can do anything you want to, but you don't have to do any-thing."
"But then, you...."
"I won't do anything. I told you that. I just don't believe in games. Either you're interested in what I have to offer or you're not, but I'll never know if I don't make it clear to you. So I tell you, that's all."
Marianne took a swallow of her coffee. She felt confused. She hadn't even ever thought of such a thing, but Maria was so beautiful and so self-possessed about the whole thing that she couldn't feel any revulsion about it. As a matter-of-fact, she liked the Mexican girl.
She laughed then and said, "Well, we'll just have to see what works out."
"Yes."
Maria sipped at her coffee. "Why don't you come over here and sit beside me," she said.
"Maybe I shouldn't."
"Maybe, but why not?" She smiled.
Marianne got up and moved over to the couch to sit down besides Maria. She felt oddly excited. Not that she expected anything to happen, but there was some-thing strangely stimulating about the possibility, and she did like Maria. She couldn't help liking the beautiful Mexican girl who was so honest about what she was and what she wanted.
Maria put her hand lightly on Marianne's knee and squeezed gently. "We never know what we like until we try," she said, her voice low, almost a whisper.
"No."
"There's no law says you have to have it all just one way," Maria said. "No one says you can't like men and women both, you know. If you like it with me, you can still like it with men."
Marianne jumped a little. That was strange, because that was exactly what she was thinking about. She was tempted to try this with Maria, just to see, but she had been wondering whether that would ruin men for her, whether one experience like this would pervert her for the rest of her life.
"How'd you know I was thinking that?" she said nervously.
Maria laughed. "Girls always wonder that the first time. Even I did."
"Do you go both ways?"
"Sure, but I only do it for money. I only really enjoy sex with a beautiful woman." She was trailing her fingers gently up and down Marianne's leg.
"I wouldn't even know how to do it," Marianne said.
"I can show you."
This was crazy, ,she thought. What was she doing, sitting here seriously discussing the possibility of going to bed with another woman. She couldn't do that. She hadn't ever done it. Only sick people could do things like that.
"I don't know," she said. Her breasts were burning at the tips. She was aroused, she realized suddenly, and the thought made her flush.
Maria touched her breast. "You have beautiful breasts," she said. "I've noticed when you're dancing at the club."
"Thank you."
Maria's hand cupped her breast, squeezing softly, as a man would, but somehow differently. "I don't know what to do," Marianne said.
Maria took her hand and stood up. "Come on," she said, "let's go try."
"No ... I can't."
"We can always stop if you don't like it."
They went into the bedroom together, holding hands. This was unreal for Marianne. It was almost as if she were dreaming. But Maria wasn't forcing any-thing from her. It was just happening somehow....
They were naked together on the bed, lying close together, but Maria wasn't doing anything but stroking her belly gently, easy, almost like a tickling.
Then Marianne sighed because Maria's hand had slipped down between her legs. Maria was caressing her there, softly, gently, slowly, but Marianne could feel herself moistening under the pressure. Easy, easy, site thought.
"Oh, my God," she whispered.
"Be relaxed," Maria said. "You'll love what's happening. I can do things to you a man can't, because I know your body so well. I can make you come better than you ever have before. I can love you best of all."
Maria's finger was in her now, not deeply, just inside, still moving against her clitoris, raising the level of pressure until she thought she was going to come, then backing off, then rising again, until she was moaning softly and moving against the probing fingers.
Then Maria's mouth was against her breast, sucking her nipples, gently, more gently than any man ever had, teasing her, pulling at them until they felt like hot coals.
Maria raised above her and looked down at her. Then she bent to kiss her belly.
"Oh, do it," Marianne said, "please."
Maria's head moved down again and Marianne felt the velvety pressure of her tongue against her sex there, kissing, sucking at her, softly, gently, insistently, like nothing had ever been before, raising her again and this time not stopping until her orgasm exploded violently, making her scream with pleasure, her body arching against Maria.
And Maria had turned so that her own sex was there ... there ... and Marianne suddenly buried her mouth against it, kissing, her tongue against Maria's cleft, going inside it, the taste salty and faintly musky and good, oh, Christ, so good.
Then Maria was above her, her head between Marianne's legs, and Marianne held her bottom and pulled it down so that she could reach Maria's sex, wanting her, loving the taste of her, wanting more and more.
Orgasms exploded in her over and over and she knew Maria was coming too. She could feel the tremors in Maria's body, and she knew they matched the shudders in her own.
She heard Maria crying with pleasure, and she knew she was too.
Then they collapsed together, exhausted suddenly, gasping, their bodies weak from the pleasure they had just experienced.
Marianne lay on her back looking up at the ceiling, thinking about what she had just done.
I ate her, she thought. I ate her pussy. I never even thought of doing something like that and now I've done it, and I loved it. God, how I loved it.
She could taste Maria still and she licked her lips softly, loving it.
And then she thought: I can do it again. It's not like with a man. With a man, it's over. With Maria, I can do it again. There's nothing to stop me. She couldn't look into the other girl's eyes, but she twisted around and began to lick at her again. Maria jerked as if she were still tender, and then she opened her legs more so that Marianne could move her head down between her thighs, spreading her cunt open all the way with her tongue.
Oh, it was good this way, with nothing but her and the other girl's sex. Nothing touching her own body. Nothing distracting her. Nothing but sex, nothing but the thought of giving Maria pleasure.
And the 'sweet-salt taste of it in her mouth.
She could feel Maria caressing her now, not licking her, touching her with her fingers, moving her hand against her, probing into her, but gently, softly, not like a man did it, different somehow.
God, Maria was coming. She could feel it; she could taste it. She knew that wasn't possible, but it was happening. She knew Maria couldn't be coming in her mouth the way a man did, but she was. She could taste the sudden shot of hot fluid ...
... and she came again herself, up inside her, like nothing had ever been before.
She slumped, exhausted.
She heard Maria chuckling.
"What's the matter?" she said.
"Nothing," Maria said. "I just guess you bled that, huh?"
"Yes."
"It was better than with a man, huh?"
She started to say, yes, it was better, then she stopped. She didn't know whether that was true. It was good, it was different, but it wasn't better, just different. "I don't know," she said.
Oh hell, she thought, I don't know anything.
FIVE
The man seemed to be laughing at her, but she couldn't help smiling back at him. He was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, tall, black, wavy hair, slender. She also couldn't help wondering what he was doing in Toppers. He didn't look like the type who'd have to get his kicks by watching naked girls in a bar. She was sure he'd be able to get all the women he wanted merely by smiling that crooked smile he was giving her right now.
"If you sit down and have a drink with me," he said, "I promise not to ask you what a nice girl like you is doing in a place like this."
She laughed out loud. "You really promise?" she said.
"Sure."
She sat down beside him. She didn't have to go on the stage for another hour and there weren't any customers who needed her attention. What difference did it make if she had a drink with him? Lots of the other girls had drinks with the customers and Chuck Stewart had never objected. Besides, the thought suddenly occurred to her, if this man was a cop he really couldn't accuse her of soliciting him for drinks, which was illegal in Dallas. After all, she hadn't even been waiting on him. He had caught her arm as she was walking by him.
"What would you like to drink?" he said.
"I think I'd like a beer."
"This time he was the one who laughed out loud. "A beer?" he said. "I thought girls in places like this only drank champagne cocktails."
"A champagne cocktail in here is half cheap champagne and the rest ginger ale," she said. "Besides, I'm thirsty and I like beer better than champagne anyway."
He smiled at her again and said, "Do we get another waitress or do you get the drinks for us?"
"Oh," she said, "I forgot. I guess I'd better get them myself. What are you drinking?"
"Bourbon. What else would a good Texan drink? Certainly not scotch, that eastern establishment poi-son."
He didn't even talk lie most of the customers, she thought as she went over to the bar to get his drink and her beer. And she couldn't escape the feeling that he was making fun of her somehow, that he was laughing at her. But he was so handsome and he didn't seem cruel to her with his laughter.
When she was back at the table, he asked her name. "Marianne Cooper," she said, and then she wondered why she had told him her real name. She had never done that with any-other customer. Usually when some-one asked, she said her name was Cotton, and she didn't know why she had picked that except that it sounded kind of cute and unusual to her.
"Hello, Marianne Cooper," he said. "My name is Bob Harwood and I think you're the prettiest thing I've ever seen."
"Oh, bullshit," she said.
He burst out into genuine laughter, startled by the way she had responded.
"Well," he said, "I don't really think I ever had any girl answer a compliment that way."
"That wasn't a compliment," she said. "That was Texas bullshit and I don't like it."
"Okay," he said, raising a hand as if to ward her off. "I promise never to compliment you again."
"You can compliment me if you want to. Just try not to sound like all the other guys who come in here and pretend to be rich oilmen."
"I'm not rich," he said. "I'm pretty well off, but I'm not rich."
"That's too bad," she said.
"Oh, not really. I could be rich if I wanted to work hard enough, but I don't. I'm in a very profitable business, but I'm satisfied just to make enough to take care of my simple needs."
She laughed then. "That's bullshit too, but I don't mind that kind." She sipped at her beer. "You're kind of funny," she said.
"I'm glad I amuse you."
"So am I," she said. "Most of the guys who come in here aren't much for laughs."
"You mean they. don't have fun in here?" He was laughing at her again.
"I mean, they don't give me much fun."
"Why do you do it then? I'd think you'd quit if you weren't enjoying your work. My old daddy always told me it's important to be happy in your work."
"I'm happy with the money I make," she said.
He laughed again. "That's a refreshing honesty," he said. "I never did see any future in work except to make money. That's what it's all about, isn't it?"
"You bet," she said.
"And you'd quit here if you found something more profitable?"
"In a flash, but that's not likely. There's not much I know how to do and this pays real well."
He glanced down at his glass and swirled it idly on the table, making wet circles on the wood. "Oh, there might be some things you could do that would pay more."
"What?"
"I might think of something."
"I'm not a call girl," she said.
He looked up quickly, frowning. "And I'm not a pimp," he said coldly.
She felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. "I didn't mean it that way," she said. He seemed to relax some. "Neither did I," he said. "I just thought maybe I could find a place for you in my business."
"Doing what?"
"I don't know. I don't even know whether I want to or not yet. I don't know you well enough."
"Are you hiring an employee or proposing marriage," she said, laughing. He laughed too.
Just then Chuck Stewart walked up to the table. "Hello, Bob," he said. "How you making out today?" Harwood looked up at him, then stood up and shook hands with him. "Making out pretty good," he said. He glanced back at Marianne. "Maybe I'm just trying to hire one of your girls."
Stewart started to say something, but then he just shrugged. "You know me, partner, I'll never stand in the way of someone trying to better herself."
"Oh, I know that," Harwood said. He looked at Marianne again. "Listen, I'll be seeing you," he said. "And you really are the prettiest thing I've seen in a long time, even if you do think that's just Texas bull-shit. I really mean it."
He seemed so suddenly intense that she felt that flush of embarrassment again. But she said, "Thank you then, if it's a real compliment."
"It's real," he said. "And I really will be seeing you." He looked at Stewart again. "You ever think about what we talked about?" he asked.
"I thought about it."
"And?"
"And I think I'll stay where I am, partner. I make enough money here and I don't think I've got nerves strong enough to last in your business."
Harwood laughed. "Well, it does take some nerve," he said.
"Oh, I've got nerve," Stewart said. "I said I didn't think my nerves were strong enough."
"I heard what you said," Harwood said. He grinned down at Marianne. "You take care of yourself now."
She smiled at him and watched him as he walked out of the bar. The sudden glare of light when he opened the front door blinded her for a moment.
"You ought to stay away from him," Stewart said. She was surprised and didn't understand him at first. "Why?" she said. "You don't care if the other girls go out with customers outside of working hours."
"That's not what I'm talking about," Chuck said. "You're right, your personal life is your own business, but that guy can be real trouble for you."
"Why? He seems nice."
He sat down at the table with her. "Just take my word for it," he said. "Stay away from him."
"Why should I?" she said. "Take your word for it, I mean. Maybe you just don't like him,"
"I don't dislike him," Chuck said. "He's never done anything to make me dislike him. I just don't like the kind of business he's in, and I know his business is dangerous."
"Why? What's he in?" she said.
"Just take my word for it."
"I asked you, why should I?"
"Maybe I like you and don't want you to get into trouble. That's a pretty good reason."
She smiled. "Maybe you're just jealous because he's so handsome and you don't want me to see him."
He looked suddenly angry. "Listen, chick," he said, "I don't give a damn what you do, but if you get mixed up with Bob Harwood you'll be sorry all your life."
"Well, tell me why."
"Because he's the biggest dope peddler in the south-west. I don't know how far up in the organization he is and I don't want to know, but I suspect he's pretty well up there. I don't know everything he's into, but I know if there's any big drug traffic, he's in it."
Marianne felt surprised. "You mean, he's a gangster."
Chuck looked annoyed. "I don't pin labels on people," he said. "There are a lot of people in this town who'd call me a gangster or something because I own this place. I didn't say he was a gangster. I said he pushes dope."
"What kind?"
"Why, what does it matter?
"Well, a lot. There's nothing really wrong with marijuana. I know lots of people who...."
"Don't be stupid," he said. "I'm not talking about grass ... there's not enough money in grass to interest Bob Harwood. I'm talking about heroin and coke and LSD and maybe some hash. And I'm talking about it in big quantities. Harwood's not peddling a little grass out of his car. He's pushing millions of dollars worth of stuff."
"How do you know?"
"Never mind how I know," Stewart said. "I know." He took hold of her arm. "You just stay away from him."
She jerked her arm away angrily. "You don't have any right to tell me what to do," she said. "I'll see anybody I please."
He leaned back in the chair. "Sure," he said. "Do anything you like. I'm sorry I butted in." He stood up suddenly and walked away.
She felt a sudden urge to call him back, to apologize for snapping at him, but she didn't. She just watched him go. He really doesn't have any right to tell the what to do, she thought.
SIX
Bob Harwood called her the next night. The phone was ringing just as she walked in the door. Somehow, she wasn't surprised to hear his voice on the phone, and she recognized it even before he identified himself. He asked her if she'd like to have dinner with him. She said yes.
After he had hung up, though, she leaned against the table for a moment and was surprised to find that she was trembling slightly. Was she afraid, excited, nervous? She didn't know. She wasn't even sure she believed Chuck Stewart's story about Bob. It wouldn't be-the first time some man had tried to put down another man by lying about him.
And if it was so, what difference did it make to her? She wasn't going to marry Bob Harwood or anything. She was just going to dinner with him and he was the first man who had asked her for an evening like that since she had come to Dallas.
Then she thought, oh, my God, what am I going to wear?
* * *
She had never been to Brennan's before, but obviously Bob Harwood had. The maitre'd knew his name and greeted them smilingly. He gave them a table beside the window where they could watch the color-lighted fountain outside.
"What would you like to drink?" he said.
"I don't know," she said. "I'm really not too much of a drinker. Why don't you order for me."
He nodded and told the waiter they wanted two vermouth casisses. The waiter smiled and left.
"What in the world is that?" she said.
"What?" he asked, looking out the window.
"No, what you ordered. I never heard of that."
"Don't worry about it," he said. "You'll like it."
"Try it," she said, smiling. "You'll like it."
He laughed. "I guarantee you'll like it," he said, "and I don't make many guarantees."
He was right. She did like the drink, and the wine he ordered with dinner, and the trout kottwitz he recommended for her. And she liked him. He talked to her about a lot of things, about books, movies, plays, about the Dallas Cowboys. She didn't understand a lot of the things he talked about while they ate, but she liked him for assuming that she would. He treated her as if she were used to coming to Brennan's and as if she were educated, and she liked him very much for that.
She had a sudden thought: he's treating me like a lady. And she wanted to laugh, but she didn't because her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
He saw them. "What's wrong?" he said. "Did I say something to upset you."
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak just then.
"Are you surer'
"No, no," she said. "I just had something in my eye for a moment."
He smiled easily at her and she knew that he knew she was lying, but she also knew he would pretend that he believed her and she liked him for that too. She thought briefly about what Chuck Stewart had said and then she dismissed the thought. She didn't believe it and she didn't care even if it were true. Bob Harwood was a gentleman with her and that's all that mattered until he proved that something else mattered. He smiled again and said, "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."
"Oh, I am," she said. "I really am."
And she was, for the first time in a very long time.
His apartment was like nothing she had ever seen before. In the first place, it was the biggest apartment she had ever seen, bigger than a lot of houses she had been in. It had eight rooms and only two of them were bedrooms. He had a library office and a game room and a living room and den both.
She knew she was gaping at it, just standing there in the middle of it staring like a girl straight out of the country and she couldn't help it. She expected him to laugh at her though, but he didn't. He just pretended not to notice that she was impressed. He crossed the room and went to the bar and mixed drinks for them and brought them back. Then he lit cigarettes for them and led her to the couch.
Then he said, "I'm glad you like this place."
She laughed. "That's a funny habit you have."
"What habit?"
"You don't ask me if I like something, you just say you're glad I do. I never saw a man do that before."
He shrugged. "I can tell you like it. And I don't like to play games." just to furnish it and I'd hate to even think what the rent is."
"No rent," he said. "I own the building." Then he laughed at her expression. "I'm sorry," he said then. "Maybe I was just showing off some."
"That's all right," she said. "Really. I am impressed. If that's what you wanted, you got it. I'm impressed all over the place."
He put his glass down and leaned over to kiss her on the lips.
"Yes," he said, "that's what I wanted. I wanted you to be as impressed with me as I am with you."
"Why should you be impressed with me?" she said. She was having trouble breathing properly.
"Because you're the most beautiful woman I've seen in a long time," he said, "and because I want you more than I've wanted a woman for a long time, maybe more than I've ever wanted a woman in my entire life."
She started to answer him, but he stopped her by kissing her. She could feel his hands on her breasts and she tried to pull away but he was too strong. Not that she wanted to pull away. He excited her. But she was confused, half afraid. He seemed almost too much, too fast, too sure of himself, and there was something about his eyes, something mocking, something that didn't go with the words he-was speaking.
He was unbuttoning her blouse then. He put his hand inside her brassiere and she felt her nipple rising under the warmth of his touch. He took his hand out then and ran it around her back. She leaned forward to let him unfasten the brassiere and then her breasts were free. He leaned down to kiss them. He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking gently on it, then harder, until it rose against his tongue like an unfolding rosebud and her head went back, her neck arching in pleasure.
His hand was moving under her skirt, sliding up her leg until he was cupping her sex through the thin nylon of her panties. She felt wet to herself and she knew that she felt hot to him, that he could feel the heat and the moisture of her passion.
She wanted to, say something to him, but she couldn't.
Her breath was coming too fast. Her tongue felt thick and swollen and he kept kissing her until she felt faint with pleasure.
He stood up then and reached down and picked her up into his arms and carried her through the apartment, into the bedroom. He put her down on the bed and leaned over her to take off her clothes. She didn't move to help him. She wanted him to do it. She had never felt so mastered, so out of control of the situation, and she liked the feeling. She liked the feeling that there was nothing she could do about what was happening, that he was going to have her whether she wanted it or not.
She wanted it, though. She wanted to scream at him to hurry, she wanted to be naked, she wanted him naked. She could see his sex bulging in his pants and she wanted it out where she could see it and touch it and kiss it and suck it and have it in her.
She was naked. He was standing over her, looking down at her, smiling.
"Hurry," she whispered. "I need you so much."
He laughed out loud then and began to take off his clothes.
When he lowered his shorts, she gasped and almost cried out, half in fear. He was so big. She had never seen a man so big, both so long and so thick, standing up out of a bush of thick black hair, hard and reddened.
"My God," she whispered, "you're a monster with that thing."
He smiled slowly at her. "Don't you like it?" he said.
"I don't know whether I can take it," she said. "I've never seen anything like that."
"Oh, you can take it," he said. "You'd be surprised what a cunt can take."
She felt a little shivering jar at his words. That was the first kind of crudeness she had heard from him and it wasn't the word that bothered her, it was the hint of violence in his tone.
He lay down on the bed beside her and ran his hands down over her, squeezing her breasts, then down between her legs, one finger, then two going up into her, opening her, making her shudder in pleasure.
"Touch me," he said ... ordered.
He put her hand on him, then wrapped her fingers around his sex. It must have been nine inches long, thick, and so hard it hardly felt like flesh. It was almost like hard rubber, as if there were no softness in it at all.
"My God," she said. "You'll kill me with this thing."
He laughed again. "I doubt it," he said. "Play with it some. You'll like it more the better you get to know it"
She giggled and began to work it some, slipping the skin back and forth on it. She really had never seen anything like it. The veins stood out thick and hard and the head of it was so swollen and large that she seriously wondered whether he would be able to get it in her.
She cupped his balls. They were big and thick to match the penis that rose above them. She squeezed gently on one and he said, "Hold it, you won't hurt it."
She laughed again and roughed them some. He liked that He leaned back and smiled.
She caught his cock in both hands then and held it. She could have almost used two more hands and still there would have been some of it left over.
"Jesus, I'll bet you've cut a swatch with this," she said.
He shrugged. "I keep hearing women say it's not how much, it's how you use it."
"How much can help too," she said. "I don't care what anybody says."
He moved his hand back from her pussy and began to play idly with her bottom. "I'm glad you like it," he said. He seemed to be laughing at her.
"Any girl would like it."
"Suck it," he said.
"I can't. It's too big."
"Suck it. I want you to suck it."
She raised up over it and bent down to lick it. She really didn't think she could get it into her mouth. It was too thick, too heavy.
He raised up to meet her and she opened her mouth and tried and she managed to get the head of it into her mouth, then he pushed and she had four or five inches of it into her, sliding down her throat, choking her until she couldn't breath properly.
But he wouldn't let her back off. He was holding her head.
"Suck," he said. "Move up and down on it, like you were going to make it come that way."
She began to do it. Slowly at first, then faster as it became moistened with her saliva. She could feel him fingering her sex at the same time, gently, then harder, one finger, then two, until she felt herself coming and she thought, oh, my God, what am I doing here, this man is going to fuck me to death before he's finished.
His cock was getting even larger as she sucked it, swelling in her mouth, growing until she thought he was going to come that way.
"Stop," he said. "I want to fuck you now."
She raised up. Her jaw muscles ached from having had the giant cock in her mouth. He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her back flat on the bed and then he was up over her, between her legs, positioning him-self, and she started to ask him to go slowly, to be gentle with her. She was afraid he was going to split her open with his first thrust. But she never had a chance to speak. He was in her too fast, opening her, filling her, jamming against the back of her vagina until she thought he was clear up into her intestines.
Pain.
Shock at the size and force of his entry.
Then growing pleasure.
He was working steadily at her, all the way into her, then out, then back into her. She was wetter now and he wasn't hurting her anymore, just filling her as no one ever had before, just in her more than anyone ever had been before, more of everything than anyone ever had been before.
She was coming again, the orgasms swelling up out of her one after another until she screamed out in the pleasure of them, wordlessly at first, moaning in the simple, excruciating pleasure of them, and then exploding into a shriek that was a prayer and a plea all at once. She screamed:
"You're fucking me. No one has ever fucked me before. You're fucking me, don't stop fucking me."
She heard him laughing at her, and then he was coming too. She could feel him jutting against her, his spasms making his entire body quiver, his semen making her still hotter and wetter inside when she would have thought that nothing could have done that.
He was groaning with the pleasure of it, too, and now she laughed at him, or with him, making little moaning sounds with him, just happy in the pleasure of what they were doing with each other.
* * *
They lay quietly now. He was gentle again now that the passion was stilled. He had his arm around her and she was lying with her head against his shoulder. He was stroking her hair, but he was not saying anything to her. She had her hand lying on his softened sex. It was still thick and heavy, but now it felt like flesh.
"That was nice," she said. "I never knew sex could be like that."
"Good," he whispered.
"Was I good for you?" she said.
"Yes."
There was something tense in his voice, something she didn't understand.
"Is there something wrong?" she said.
"No."
"Did I disappoint you?"
He laughed harshly. "No, you know you didn't. You were great."
"Then what's wrong. I know there's something bothering you."
"Nothing that has anything to do with us."
"What is it?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters if it bothers you."
He half turned and looked at her. "Why?"
"Well, because . " She didn't know what to say, but she knew she couldn't stand for this man to be unhappy. If there was something bothering him and she could fix it, she wanted to do it.
"Would you help me if you could?" he said.
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"I said yes, didn't I?"
"Just like that, without even asking me what it is that needs doing?"
"Just like that," she said.
He looked at her for a long moment and then he said, "Why, just because we were good in bed together?"
She felt a flash of anger, then fear. She didn't want him to be angry at her. "I don't know why," she said. "What difference does it make, do you want me to say I love you, I don't know why. I just know that if there's anything I can do to help you, I'll do it, that's all."
She saw a flicker of something in his eyes and then he smiled at her.
"All right," he said. "I'll take you at your word. There is something you can do for me."
"What?"
"You can make a little trip to Mexico for me."
SEVEN
The car was sleek. It still smelled new and the air conditioning made it hard to remember that the Texas sun outside was burning the pavement at about 105 degrees. She was listening to a radio station out of San Antonio and humming along with the singer.
She felt good, happy, excited. Bob hadn't told her what it was that she was supposed to pick up, but she knew. She was reasonably sure that Chuck Stewart had known what he was talking about when he said that . Bob Harwood was pushing dope. But she didn't care. Dope wasn't her thing, but if other people wanted to use it, that was their business. She wasn't in the morality business. All she wanted was a little money of her own, some fun, and a feeling that she was master of her own fate or destiny.
She smiled at her own self-dramatization and then she remembered standing at the window in New York the night she had found herself alone, the night she stared out and thought: next time, I'll do the fucking.
So here I am, she thought. All this fun and I'm going to make some money too. She had told Bob that he didn't need to pay her for making the trip for him, but he had only laughed at that.
Listen, baby," he said, "nobody's ever in business to do favors for anyone. Of course you'll get paid."
"I'll be glad to do it just for you."
He kissed her then and said, "I know you would, baby, but believe me, I'm going to make plenty out of this ... why shouldn't you get a share since you're doing part of the work."
Well, okay, she thought, okay, that's nice. All this and money too.
Chuck Stewart hadn't liked the idea. She hadn't told him why she was quitting, but somehow he guessed that it had something to do with Bob Harwood.
"I warned you about getting mixed up in things you can't handle," he said.
"What makes you think I can't handle my own life?" she said, half amused. He looked angry and the idea made her want to laugh. What right did he have to act as if he were her big brother or something?
"Listen, you don't know these people."
"What people?"
"You think I don't know Bob Harwood has some-thing to do with this?"
She laughed then. "What makes you think so?" she said. "I just quit this job, working here. I didn't say why. I didn't say I'd been offered a job somewhere else."
He flushed, but then he just shrugged. "Suit your-self," he said. "It's your funeral." Then he said, "It's your business. Do what you like."
"Oh, I intend to," she said. "I really do." She laughed again as she walked out of his office.
She blew the horn as she swirled out and around a slow-moving truck in front of her and then she laughed when she saw the truck driver gape at the way her skirt was pulled back up over her thighs and then grin. "You'd love to fuck me, wouldn't you?" she called out, knowing he couldn't hear her but just enjoying the way she was feeling.
By the time she was past San Antonio and had pulled into the parking lot of the motel where Bob had told her to meet the man he identified only as Ernie, she was tired, really bone weary, and some of her manic high was beginning to fade. She still felt good, but she was beginning to come down some and now she was starting to worry some. But about what? Perhaps the police.
Only there was no way they were going to catch her. Everything was too well planned. She was going to breeze through this thing, make her money, make Bob happy with her, and nothing could possibly go wrong.
The clerk at the desk said, "Oh yes, Mrs. Armor, your husband already is checked in. He's waiting for you in room 237."
She smiled and thanked him and went back outside to drive around to the back of the building where he had directed her.
The man who was supposedly Ernie Armor was about 30, lean, dark, with a kind of hungry shark look that made her feel a little afraid of him even before he said anything. But then-she thought, he works for Bob. What would he do to me? He'd be afraid Bob would get after him if he did anything to hurt me.
He smiled when he saw her, but he didn't get up. He was lying on the bed, his hands back of his head, watching television. When she put down her suitcase, he said, "Hello, wife, I thought you were never going to get here."
"Are you Ernie?" she said.
"Am I Ernie?" he laughed. "You mean to say you don't even know your own ever-loving husband, Ernie? What kind of wife are you, anyway, putting me on that way?"
She pushed the door shut behind her and locked it. "I guess I'm too tired to think you're funny," she said.
"Maybe," he said, looking back at the television. "Funny show," he said.
She glanced at the screen, then back at him. "What do we do now?" she said.
"Now? We rest until tomorrow."
She looked around the room, then at him. "I guess I understand why we had to stay in one room," she said, "but I don't see why you couldn't have taken a room with twin beds."
He looked a little surprised and then laughed. "Why, wifey dear, everybody knows twin beds are out this year. My goodness, what would they have thought out front if I had asked for twin beds, a red-blooded young American like me. They'd have thought I was a fag or something."
He was making her more and more uneasy with that crazy way he looked at her, as if he were about to burst out laughing all the time, but at the same time as if he hated her somehow.
"All right," she said, "but there aren't any rules to this game that say I have to play with you. You can sleep in the chair or something."
"Oh, no," he said, "I'm sleeping in the bed. You can sleep where you please, but I'm sleeping in the bed, baby."
"Well, I'm not giving anything away tonight, baby," she said, stressing the name baby sarcastically. "You can do whatever you damn well please, you're not buying any of my fair white body."
Something flickered across his face and then he laughed. "Don't worry, honey, your fair white body doesn't interest me in the least."
"What?"
He laughed again, harshly, down in his throat, and he didn't sound amused at all. "You're kind of slow, baby. From what I've heard of you, I had the idea you were pretty sharp."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm a homo, baby, I dig boys, not broads. You could be the sharpest, sexiest chick who ever walked and I wouldn't give a damn. You just don't turn me on." He laughed again. "Sorry about that. I know you were prepared to do battle for your chastity and all that. I hope you're not too disappointed to learn that you couldn't give me a hard-on if I hadn't come for a year. You're just not built right to suit me, honey."
She felt embarrassed by him and she didn't know what to say. She didn't even know whether he was telling her the truth. There was something strange about him, but he certainly didn't have any of the mannerisms she would normally have ascribed to a homosexual. He was good looking, masculine looking, and he certainly wasn't what could be called swishy.
"All right," she said then. "I'm sorry. I'm just nervous, I guess, and I didn't know how to take you."
"You can't take me at all, honey. You'll just have to think of me as one of the girls."
Then he grinned at her and scooted over on the bed some. "Don't let me bug you," he said. "I'm just prone to getting bitchy sometimes. You'd think I was menstruating or something."
He laughed and she laughed back. But still, there was something about him that wasn't funny, even when he seemed most relaxed, there was an air of repressed anger or violence, and it made her nervous. It was almost like being in a room with a tiger that everyone said was tame. Perhaps it was, but it was still a tiger.
She glanced at her watch. "I'm tired," she said. "What time do we have to get started tomorrow?"
"Early," he said. "We have to make our contact by ten in the morning and we have to be back' across the border by twelve. Anything later than that and we're in trouble."
"Why?"
He glanced at her sharply. "I wouldn't ask too many questions if I were you."
"If I'm into this," she said, "I think I have the right to know what you meant by that business of after twelve causing trouble."
He hesitated. Then, "Let's just say that the customs inspector who's on duty until twelve probably won't be as careful as the one who comes on later."
"You mean the early man has been bought off?" she said.
"I told you not to ask too many questions," he said.
This time there was an edge to his voice that made her shut up. She walked by him and went into the bathroom with her nightcase. She washed her face there and put on her nightgown and went back out. She was glad she had brought a plain cotton gown that he couldn't see through. Maybe he really was homosexual as he said and maybe he didn't even think of her sexually, just at he said, but there was something scary about him. She couldn't stop thinking that way. In a way, she would have been more comfortable with a normal man, even one that would have been trying to make her.
He had undressed while was she in the bathroom. He was under the cover with the blankets pulled up to his waist, but his chest was bare. He didn't look at her when she got into bed.
"My God," she said.
He glanced at her. "What?"
"You're naked."
"Sure I'm naked," he said. "I always sleep naked."
"You can't sleep naked with me."
He laughed. "Tough," he said. He laughed again and flipped the covers back. "In case you never saw a cock before," he said, "that's what one looks like."
Despite herself, she looked at it. He was soft there, but bigger than she would have expected. Somehow, she would have thought that a homosexual would be smaller than a real male, though she didn't know why. Somewhere, she remembered, she had even read that homosexuals were more preoccupied with penis size than normal men, certainly more concerned with it than women who all knew that size didn't matter much. He was uncircumcised too and she had a fleeting, silly thought that he looked pretty, like a model for a painting, young, sort of defenseless, soft like that. Thinking about it, she couldn't remember ever having seen a penis soft before except after sex.
"All right," she said. "Suit yourself. Just cover it up. I don't have any desire to gaze at you all night."
"I just thought you might like to see it," he said.
She slid into bed and covered herself, careful not to roll against him. "Why?" she said. "It certainly won't do me any good."
"Oh," he said, "you're going to zing me a little now."
She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh at him or swear at him. "I've never had any trouble taking care of myself," she said, "and you've been on me ever since I came in here. Now you get off my back and I'll stay off yours."
He raised his hands as if he were surrendering to her. "You win," he said. "I never could compete with the mind of an angry woman."
"You son of a bitch," she said.
He smiled. "You nice lady," he said. He rolled onto his side and snapped off the light, plunging the room into total darkness. "Why don't you go to sleep and try to forget how bitter you are about not having a cock."
"I'll manage that quicker than you'll get over. not having a cunt," she said.
She waited, but he didn't say anything. She thought he was probably going to drop it and she was relieved about that. She really was tired. She didn't want to spend the night arguing with a fag who had to get the last word in, although she didn't know why exactly she couldn't just drop it and let him have the last word. What difference, did it make? Except that maybe there was some basic, atavistic hostility between a woman and a faggot that made them natural enemies.
She was dropping off to sleep when she felt his hand on her belly.
She snapped awake and said, "Get your hand off me. I'm not one of your boy friends."
He didn't answer her at first. He rolled over against her and she was surprised to feel the bulging hardness of his sex as it dug into the flesh of her hip. "It's all friction, honey. I've been lying here thinking about it and I've decided your hole is better than none at all."
"You go to hell," she said.
His hand was still on her belly and he moved it now, down between her legs, cupping her sex and running one finger into the lips of her pussy. Despite herself, she was wet there, and for a moment she hated herself for the quickness of her erotic response.
"Leave me alone," she said. She tried to push him away, but she couldn't. He was surprisingly strong. He just held her and laughed at her efforts to get away from him. "I'm not. going to do it," she said.
"Sure you are, baby," he said. "I'm kind of looking forward to it. I haven't fucked a woman in a long time and maybe the change will do me good."
She reached over and caught hold of his sex, holding it tightly for a moment, then moving to capture his balls in her hand. She tightened her grip.
"Easy," he said. "Gentleness is a virtue."
She squeezed harder and he squirmed and tried to pull away, but she held on. "Leave me alone," she said, "or I'll rip them out by the roots."
He tried to push her hand away and she squeezed still harder and pulled, twisting at his testicles. He grunted in pain and then lay very still. "Okay," he-whispered. "Let go, bitch, you're hurting me."
"If I let go and you try to force me into anything, I swear I'll rip off your balls before the night is over," she said. "I mean it, I really do."
"All right, I said okay," he said. His voice sounded strained. "Now let go."
She let him go and leaned back into the bed, lying flat. She was breathing hard and she felt frightened, not angry, but she didn't want him to know that.
"You didn't have to do that," he said.
"You were going to rape me."
"Big deal," he said. "You're a virgin."
"I'm not a virgin, but I only make love when I want to."
"Maybe I don't like being what I am," he said. "Maybe I managed to get hard for a woman and I needed it. Maybe it would have done me good."
Oh, bull, she thought, don't give me that stuff. "Tough," she said. "You'll have to hunt up a psychiatrist for getting straight. I'm nobody's therapy."
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
* * *
He was quiet in the morning when they drove into Mexico. He hadn't bothered her again during the night and when she woke he was already dressed and waiting for her. During breakfast they spoke only idly to each other. He seemed preoccupied and not at all concerned with her.
He had papers with him that he showed to the border guard that indicated they were man and wife, on a brief pleasure trip to Mexico. The guard waved them on with a smile, wishing them a happy time.
For a moment, Marianne wished she was indeed somebody's wife and that she was only on a pleasure trip, but then she laughed at herself. She was beginning to feel good again, to have that high, keening excitement building in her mind, and she liked that feeling, She really did.
She didn't have any idea where they were going, of course. It didn't matter. Bob had told her that she was supposed to pick up Ernie, make the package pickup in Mexico, drive back across the border with Ernie, drop him off, then come back to Dallas alone with the merchandise.
They were driving down a country road after just passing through a small village when Ernie swung the car off the road and onto a narrow dirt lane.
"Where are we going?" she said.
"To meet our man." He didn't look at her as he answered.
"What's his name?"
This time he did look at her. "You do have a bad habit of asking questions."
"Well, give me a phony name. I hate dealing with people without even having any idea of what to call them."
"You're not dealing with anybody but me," he said, "and you know what to call me. You don't need to know anything else." He laughed. "I sound like a government security man talking about clearance based on need to know. Jesus Christ, isn't that something?"
She looked at him curiously. Again, there was some-thing in his voice that made her wonder what kind of life he had led, what had led him into this business.
He was peering straight ahead. They drove around a curve slowly and he pulled off the road. There was a black Chevrolet there. A man inside opened the door and got out when he saw them.
The man looked Mexican, but he was wearing American-cut clothing, and when he spoke he had no accent at all. He didn't look at Marianne, only at Ernie, and he said, "You're a little late."
"Not enough to matter," Ernie said easily. "Our schedule isn't so tight that ten minutes makes a difference."
"Ten minutes is enough to make me nervous," the man said, "and I hate to be nervous."
Ernie laughed a little. "Okay, let's make the switch and you can stop being nervous."
"You got money?" the man said.
"Of course I've got the money. Now get the shit out and let's get moving. I don't have all day for this."
Marianne stood by the car and watched them. They moved quickly now, as if they both wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. The sun was hot, hot enough to burn her through her clothing, but she felt pretty good about it all. She had that quick excited feeling again and she was anxious to get moving too, but for reasons that were different from theirs, she thought. She just l ked the feeling of moving, of having things happen around her.
Ernie took the hubcaps off the car and stuffed them full of packages that were wrapped in plastic. Then he jammed them back onto the cars. The other man put the suitcase Ernie gave him into the trunk of his car. Marianne supposed it was full of money, but she had a surprising lack of curiosity about that.
"All right," Ernie said. "Take off."
"You think that's going to fool anyone?" she said. "They'll look in the hubcaps first thing."
"Baby, if they get suspicious, they'd find the stuff if you had it shoved up your pussy. The idea is for them not to get suspicious. That's your part of the deal. That's why you're going back alone. That's why you're here in the first place."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going with our friend here. Where I go after that is my business. You brought the money. Now take Harwood's stuff back to him. Just don't concern your-self with anything else."
He seemed to be afraid of something now, and nervous, as if he really wanted to be gone. The other man already was waiting in the black Chevrolet.
"Bob told me you were going to ride back across the border with me."
"Well, he was wrong. You're on your own, baby."
"I don't know," she said.
He looked surprised. Then he laughed. "I don't give a shit whether you know or not. The money's over there and you've got the merchandise. And I'm leaving. What you do is your business. You can stay here and fry your tits off your body if you want to." He turned and started to walk away. Then he stopped suddenly, turned back to face her, and reached out and caught her nipple.
She was startled and didn't move. He held her firmly for a moment, looking at her face, then he squeezed hard, twisting, until she cried out in pain and fell backwards onto the ground, trying to get away from him.
He stood over her looking down at her, smiling. "Okay, now we're even," he said. "You beefed me and now I've had you, baby." He turned again and walked over to the black Chevrolet. Just as he was getting in he called out, "Good luck, sweetie. Try not to get busted."
They pulled out around her and were gone before she got up from the ground. Her breast hurt and she coughed because the other car had thrown heavy dust into the air. But mostly she felt afraid now, suddenly terribly afraid, and she knew it was because she was alone. Alone, in a strange country, with a car that wasn't registered to her, and hubcaps full of something.
Something.
She didn't know what was in the car. Obviously it was dope of some kind, but what kind?
God, she was scared.
EIGHT
Bob Harwood opened the door when she arrived at his apartment. He smiled in what seemed to be genuine pleasure at seeing her.
"Right on time," he said.
She walked by him into the apartment. "Buy me a drink," she said. "I haven't had the easiest trip in the world."
"You have the stuff, don't you?"
"A car full. But that son of a bitch, Ernie, dumped me in Mexico."
He stopped smiling. His face went hard and cold. He looked at her curiously, then walked by her to the bar. He mixed her a drink, then brought it to where she was sitting on the couch.
"Tell me about it," he said.
* * *
"And you didn't have any trouble getting across the border?" he said when she was finished. "No, but it wasn't that bastard's fault"
"I don't imagine," he said. He looked distant for a moment, then smiled. "Don't worry about him. He'll be taken care of. He thinks he can get away, but he can't. We'll find him."
"What do you want me to do now?" she said. "Nothing. Just go home, get some rest. I'll be in touch with you."
She looked at him tiredly. "I'd kind of like to stay here with you," she said. "I didn't make this trip for fun, you know. I did it for you, because I care about you."
He smiled at her. "I know it, baby, and I'm going to make it up to you, but I've got some business to finish first. You go on home and I'll be by later."
She thought about the stuff in the car. That must be what he was talking about and it made sense. Obviously he was going to want to be rid of that as soon as possible.
"Okay," she said, "but come as soon as you can."
"I will," he said. "I promise."
* * *
She was never able to figure out what happened to her in her apartment. Obviously they were there waiting for her, but she never saw them or heard them. She just opened the door and stepped in and something happened. Later she was able to figure out that probably a man grabbed her from behind and slapped a cloth soaked in chloroform across her face. But that was only a guess. She didn't really know. All she knew was that she walked in and then everything was black.
When she woke, she was lying on a bed in a small room she had never seen before. She was naked and she was cold. The bed had a sheet on it, but nothing else. No blanket or top sheet, just a fitted bottom sheet.
Her head hurt and she felt sick to her stomach, but she sat up and twisted around so that she was on the edge of the bed. There wasn't any other furniture in the room and she could see into the one closet. It was empty. Her clothes were gone.
She stood up and walked over to the door. She felt sicker standing up and she was weak, but she made it to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. She went back across the room to the window and looked out. She was on the second or third floor of wherever she was, apparently, and she couldn't get the window open. Either it was locked, or she was too weak to force it up.
She was feeling a little better now that she had been up for a while. She went back over to the door and knocked on it and called out for someone to come to her and let her out, but no one came. Strangely, she felt a little embarrassed about calling for help. She was naked, locked in a strange room, and she couldn't remember how she had gotten there. Which was going to be a funny kind of thing to tell whoever opened the door.
Except whoever opened the door undoubtedly al-ready knew she was there.
As if her brain were just now starting to function, she realized suddenly that she didn't just happen to be, there, that someone had had to bring her there and that the someone probably would be back.
For what?
She went back to the bed and sat down on it, curling her knees up to her chin. God, she was cold.
The door opened without warning and a man came in. She gasped because she was startled. She hadn't heard anything, and then she gasped again at the sight of the man. He was huge, maybe six feet six inches tall, and broad and heavy. His arms were like tree trunks and his face was chiseled and hard looking and made her think of prize fighters or aging football players.
"Who are you?" she said.
He pushed the door shut behind him. "You can call me Carl," he said. His voice was gravelly, but soft, only the softness seemed artificial, as if he were making an effort to keep his voice down.
She hadn't moved. She was still sitting on the bed, her knees up, only now she was trying to protect herself from his eyes. She had been seen naked many times, but there was such an air of total maleness around this man that she felt threatened just by the way he looked at her. As if he were complete master and the only question was whether he wanted to take her.
He walked over by the bed and looked at her. Then he stepped back and around to the foot of the bed.
"Get up and stand by the side of the bed," he said. "I want to see what you look like."
"What am I doing here?" she said.
"I said get up. Now that's twice I gave you an order, and that's something I only do once. Now get up."
He hadn't raised his voice or changed expression, but she scooted over and got up and stood by the bed. He looked at her, still without changing expression, and then walked around and took one of her breasts into his hand. "You have nice breasts," he said, "and a nice ass. You look good. You'll do fine."
He was still holding her breast.
"Please tell me what I'm doing here," she said. "You're going to learn to be a whore," he said.
"What?"
"You did a job for Bob Harwood and he doesn't like to have anyone around who's done that kind of job for him. You could testify against him if you had to."
"I wouldn't," she said.
He shrugged. "I don't know," he said, "and neither does he, I guess, so now you belong to me."
"Belong to you."
"He sold you to me, in a way," he said.
"Sold me to you?"
"I said, in a way."
"What does that mean?" she asked. She had almost forgotten that she was naked.
"It means he gave me ten thousand dollars and I can either kill you for that, which is what he thinks I've done, or I can make sure you're never seen again, which is what I choose to do. As far as Harwood is concerned, you're dead, which means that I'll be dead if you're ever seen again." He smiled then, coldly, and shrugged. "Which means you are never going to be seen again by anyone who knows or ever even heard of Bob Harwood."
"You can't keep me hidden forever."
"No, that's why I said you're here to learn to be a whore, and the first lesson a whore learns is obedience. You'll have to learn to do what you're told."
She tried to laugh. "How are you going to teach me to do what you tell me to?"
He shrugged again. "By hurting you."
A shiver of pain went through her. The simple, uninflected, emotionless way he said those three words were the most terrifying thing she had ever heard.
"I'm going to teach-you to do anything I tell you, without any kind of question at all, by teaching you that any time you don't, I'm going to hurt you worse than you've ever been hurt."
"All right," she said.
"Now," he said, "get down on the floor on all fours and bark like a bitch."
She shivered again. "Oh, please," she said. "Leave me alone, please."
He didn't change expression or say another word. He just came around the bed at her and took hold of her and forced her down onto the bed on her stomach. He was holding her there and she didn't know what he was going to do, until she felt him suddenly hard against her bottom.
"Don't do that," she cried out, "please don't do that, it hurts," and then he was in her, ripping into her, forcing his way into her ass until she wanted to scream with the most excruciating pain she had ever felt. This was a hundred times worse than the time she had been raped there. This man was bigger, stronger, and he was fucking her there steadily, driving all the way down into her until her mouth opened with the pain and the force of each thrust, but her breath was taken away and she lay still for a moment, hurting, full of him, torn open by the size of his cock in her ass. He had hold of her legs, spreading her, holding her open so that she couldn't tighten against the force of his movements.
She wanted to cry out, but she couldn't. Her breath wouldn't come. She could feel the rock hard ridge of his cock against the deepest part of her ass and she could feel every vein, every muscle in his organ.
Then she started to whimper: "Oh, God, you're hurting me--please stop fucking me that way--please stop, I can't stand it. Do anything else, but please stop fucking my ass, please take it out of my ass, I can't stand it, please, please...."
But he didn't. He leaned harder into her and bent over her whispering: "Take it, baby. Take it up your ass, baby, and remember how it hurts to have it in you that way. Remember how I'm tearing you; you're starting to bleed there, baby, your ass is wide open and I'm fucking you there and you're going to have to learn to take it because there's no way you can get away from me, ever. I'm going to fuck you in the ass whenever I want to and there's nothing you can do about it."
Then he grunted and slammed into her even harder. She arched her back, trying to escape, but she couldn't. His hard flesh was impaling her, killing her, and she couldn't scream. All she could do was take it. He was too big, too strong, and it was there, in her, opening her, forcing her, and there wasn't anything she could do.
Except wait for him to finish.
Oh, God, please finish, she thought, please.
But he didn't. He went on and on, faster and faster, and he seemed to be getting bigger, swelling in her, driving, driving.
She heard him grunt then and he slumped against her. She felt him soften in her and she could feel the wet heat of his semen in her, and then he was gone from her.
She heard him moving behind her, but she couldn't turn over yet. She felt weak and used up, hurt, and when she finally mustered enough strength to turn over, he was completely dressed again, standing there calmly, looking at her.
"Now get down on the floor and bark lie a bitch," be said.
She slid off onto the floor and knelt there, on her hands and knees, her head hanging down, and she barked for him.
"Okay, get up," he said, "and get on the bed."
"Now listen," he said when she was there, "I don't care a whole lot about hurting you. I won't if I don't have to, but you have to understand that I will any time you don't do what I tell you instantly. Remember, you're dead as far as the world is concerned. I've been paid to kill you, and I will kill you the day I'm convinced you won't be more valuable to me alive. But you can stay alive as long as you do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. Do you understand?"
"Yes." She still hurt so badly she could hardly stand it, but there was something so inexorable about him, so irresistible, that she couldn't take her eyes off him.
"Are you cold?" he said.
"Oh, yes." She was shivering.
"All right. I'll send someone with a blanket for you."
"Can't I have my clothes?"
"You won't need any clothes for a while." He turned to leave, then shifted around to look at her again. He smiled and there almost was warmth in his face. "I think you're going to do fine," he said. "You seem like a smart girl. I think you'll probably learn fast that alive is better than dead."
"Yes," she said.
"And any time-you get to thinking about trying to run away, just remember that there are worse things than fucking for a living. Lots worse."
"All right."
"Be straight with me and you'll have an easy life with enough money."
"All right." Her voice was starting to rise and she felt very close to hysteria.
"Otherwise, I'll kill you." His voice was calm and unhurried and she couldn't stand to hear him talking that way about killing her, passionless, as if she were an animal of some kind, like a horse who was being trained to work and if things didn't work out, you could always make dog food out of it and there wouldn't be any emotion involved in the decision at all.
"Won't you tell me where I am?" she said.
He shook his head. "You don't need to know," he said. Then: "Are you hungry?"
The man who brought her a blanket and some food on a tray was black and apparently totally disinterested in her. He came into the room without looking at her, but she noticed that he kept himself between her and the door. She had never been seen naked by a black man before and she caught herself shivering over that. But he didn't even look at her.
Finally, she spoke to him. "Please tell me where I am," she said.
He glanced at her and half smiled, but he didn't say anything.
"Please," she said. "I'll give you anything you want if you'll just help me."
This time he laughed out loud. "What do you think you have that I want?"
She could feel herself blushing. Obviously, she had nothing except her body to offer him. She was naked, alone, without even any clothing to put on, so what was she offering him.
"I'll give you anything I have to give you," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
He laughed again. "No deal," he said. "You ain't got nothing to sell."
He turned and went out, then stopped before closing the door. "Don't waste your time trying to buy out," he said, not unkindly. "You can't get away. Nobody's going to help you. Just make the best of it. That's all you can ever-do."
She started to say something back to him, but he shut and latched the door and she was alone again. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and started to eat. She was hungrier than she realized. She wondered how long she had been without food, because it suddenly struck her that she didn't have any idea how long she had been here before regaining consciousness.
After she ate, she lay back on the bed. There didn't seem to be anything else to do, and she was suddenly drowsy. Odd, how sleepy she felt, only not really sleepy.
Later: the big man in room, looking down at her, the black man beside him.
Maybe.
Were they really there?
Snatches of conversation. Something about sweet dreams. Something else about frightening her, or teaching her, or something.
Something.
* * *
Drifting naked in a kind of cloud. Lavender color around her. Peaceful. So calm and quiet and easy. She wanted to move but she couldn't. Colors swirling around her. Move to where? Nowhere to go. Nowhere. Nothing but space and the lavender cloud.
And something touching her body. Something going into her body. Something that made her feel good so that she moaned down in her throat because she was having orgasms, one after another, like little explosions, and her body felt so good she would have laughed in pleasure, except that she couldn't because the orgasms were spreading through her too rapidly.
Something in her mouth then. Something hard and fleshy, but something that tasted incredibly sweet, like honey, only warm.
Something in her body and in her mouth at the same time.
Something hurting her. Only it wasn't pain. It was part of the drifting cloud and it made her feel good, made her want to laugh.
Something that went on and on.
Nothing but the lavender cloud.
Nothing.
Black.
When she woke, her body was sore and she could taste semen in her mouth, that faintly musky, seawater taste that couldn't possibly be anything else. She was lying on the bed in the same room, the blanket tossed over her. She could feel drying semen on her thighs and her bottom was sore so that it hurt her to shift her weight.
She thought, oh, my God, they've drugged me, and she wanted to weep, but she couldn't. She couldn't do anything just then but lie there under the blanket, shivering, afraid.
NINE
A woman came into the room. It had been several hours since Marianne had awakened. At least, she thought it had. It was difficult for her to keep track of time. There was no measure except the light outside and there wasn't anything out there to see, just barren ground and a few scrub trees. She could have been anywhere. California. Or Lebanon. Just in a kind of semi-desert. And daylight for some time.
The woman looked almost Oriental. She was tall, about five feet seven, with jet black hair that was pulled back severely from her face. She was wearing a simple black dress and no makeup. But she was very beautiful and nothing could have disguised that. Under the simple dress was obviously a full, voluptuous body.
"How do you feel?" the woman said.
Marianne sat up on the bed and pulled the blanket lighter around her shoulders. "I was drugged," she said.
"Of course."
"Of course? What do you mean, of course? And I think I was raped."
The woman smiled. "Rape is not a word that has meaning here. You belong to Carl. Absolutely and totally. You are alive only because he permits it and you have no will anymore. Therefore, you cannot be raped. You can only be used as he desires. Your only chance for contentment is to learn to desire what he desires, as your only chance for survival is to do what he tells you to do, immediately and without comment."
"All right," Marianne said, "but why did he have to drug me?"
The woman shrugged. "How would I know? Perhaps the customer wanted you that way?"
"Customer?"
The woman smiled for the first time. "Of course, the customer. Did you think you were being kept alive just because Carl likes the way you look?"
"I don't...."
"Be quiet. It's all silly anyway. Just come with me. It's time for you to clean yourself up."
"All right." She did feel the need for a bath. She felt sweaty and dirty. "Please, though, tell me where I am."
"It doesn't make any difference," the woman said. "Just don't worry about it."
The bathroom was clean and modern and the hot water in the shower felt better than any ever had be-fore. She stood under it. for a long time, luxuriating in the cascading heat, trying to soak away everything that had happened to her.
When she was finished, she dried herself and put on the gown that had been left for her, and then went out looking for someone to talk to.
She was on the top floor of a second floor house. She found stairs leading down and followed them into a hallway. Behind a closed, sliding door, she heard voices of women. She slipped the door open and looked in and saw six women, including the one who had come up. for her. They were seated around a table, eating. When they saw her, the woman she had seen earlier stood up and said, "Come in, Marianne. We didn't wait for you because we weren't sure how long you would want to soak in the shower."
She went in. There was a place at the table for her and she sat down and looked around. All of the women were looking at her.
One of them, a young looking blonde with huge breasts that seemed about to burst out of the dress she was wearing, said, "How do you like our little home?"
Marianne didn't know what to say. They all seemed to be waiting for her to say something.
Another woman, a redhead who seemed older but somehow more educated, more sophisticated, said, "Why don't we all just leave her alone? It's hard to adjust to something like this."
The dark haired woman said, "She has to adjust. We all did, didn't we?"
"But where am I?" Marianne said then. "Why won't anyone tell me where I am?"
"We don't know," the redheaded woman said. "We all came here the same way you did, kidnapped and brought here because we were an embarrassment to someone who now thinks we're dead. None of us has left this house since arriving here. We've all been ... disciplined ... so that we don't ask too many questions anymore. I'd suggest you learn to behave the same way. It'll save you a lot of pain."
The dark-haired woman said, "Don't talk so much, Vicky. It won't do you any good and won't do her any either. She has to learn the way we did."
"Didn't anybody ever try to escape?" Marianne said.
To her amazement, they all burst into laughter. And then the dark-haired woman said, "Don't try, dear. As Carl told you, there are lots of things worse than being here and fucking for a living."
The redheaded woman frowned and said, "I wish you wouldn't talk that way."
The dark-haired woman laughed again. "I know you think I'm crude, Vicky, but a whore's a whore and we're not exactly a bunch of finishing school young ladies."
"I'm not a whore," the redheaded woman said, "I'm a prisoner."
"So why don't you try to escaper the dark-haired woman said.
The redheaded woman flushed angrily, but then she looked down at her plate. "You know I can't," she said.
"None of us can," the dark-haired woman said. Then she looked at Marianne. "Eat your dinner, dear. Then go back to your room. You'll learn to survive."
It was dark ,outside when the man she knew as Carl came back in. She was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, and he came in so quietly that she didn't know he was there until he spoke to her.
She glanced over at him then and when she saw him, she sat up quickly.
"How are you feeling?" he said.
"I'm all right"
"Good. You'll be expected to work tonight."
"Work?"
"There will be a man come to see you. You are to do exactly as he tells you."
She hesitated, but then she just nodded and said, "All right."
He looked at her for a long moment and then smiled. "You're going to be fine," he said.
The man was about forty five, dressed in a business suit, and when he came into the room and shut the door behind him he looked a little frightened, or embarrassed. She was sitting on the side of the bed and when he looked at her, she looked back silently without saying anything, "Is your name Marianne?" he said.
She nodded.
"My name is John."
She nodded again, but she still didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say, or how to act, but he was so obviously nervous that she felt a little less frightened.
"Did Carl tell you what I want?" John said.
"No."
"Well...." He stepped closer to her. "Will you please take off your clothes?"
She stood up and shrugged out of the gown she was wearing. When he saw her naked, his eyes widened and she could see that he had started to breathe harder.
"What do you want me to do now?" she said.
"Will you...." He stopped as if he were in excruciating embarrassment.
She tried to shrug. "I'll do anything you want, but you'll have to tell me what."
"I want you to ... suck me off."
She almost laughed in relief. Not that she wanted to do that to him, especially, but she had been terrified that he was going to want something really kinky from her.
"Sure," she said. "If that's what you want. Take off your clothes."
"Oh no," he said. He seemed to be gaining confidence now that he had told her what he wanted. "Just kneel down in front of me and do it."
"Well, you'll have to take it out."
"You do it"
She looked at him and felt a sudden tremor of fear. There were strange little lights in his eyes and she wondered what he was thinking, but she tried not to show that she was afraid. She just shrugged and knelt down in front of him and zipped down his pants.
He was still soft. She pulled his sex out and fondled it, trying to make it hard.
"Don't do that," he snapped. "Just suck it."
She looked up, puzzled. "But it's not hard yet."
He slapped her suddenly, sharply, across the face. She fell backwards and he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up to her knees again.
"Don't talk," he said. "Just suck it."
She held it in her hand until she had it in her mouth and then she sucked at it gently, deeply, doing the best she could with it. It swelled some, but it still didn't get hard, and she was so startled she choked when he suddenly ejaculated into her mouth.
She held there until the feeble spurting stopped and then she pulled back and looked up at him. He looked down at her for a moment, then suddenly slapped her again, sharply, driving her back flat on the floor. She started to say something and he kicked her between the legs. The pain was so blinding and so unexpected that she could only gasp and hold herself.
He looked down at her for another long instant and then he pushed his penis back into his pants and zipped up.
"You bitch," he whispered. "You filthy bitch. What kind of woman would do that? Filthy bitch."
He started to kick her again, but she scooted away from him, and he looked down at her again, and then he turned and walked out of the room.
She moaned softly and pulled herself into a sitting position. She hurt so bad between her legs that she didn't think she could get up, but she knew she couldn't stay there on the floor.
The door opened and Carl walked in. He looked at her curiously. "Are you hurt bad?" he asked.
"What's the matter with that man?" she said.
He shrugged. "Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. He pays exceptionally well for his little fun."
"Little fun?" she said. "The bastard could have hurt me seriously and permanently."
He looked at her and said, "But he didn't."
"Fat lot you care."
"That's right," he said then. He smiled. "But remember, it beats dying."
"I'm not so sure."
"You just made fifty dollars."
"Is that all he paid?"
"Oh, no, he paid two hundred, but your share is may, "Right," she said. She was standing up now and the pain was easier, as if her anger were blocking it out. "I get to have him come in my mouth and then kick me in the cunt, and you make three times as much out of it as I do."
He reached out one massive hand without answering her and caught her between the legs. One finger slipped up into her and then he flexed his arm, squeezing her, and picking her up off the ground.
The pain knifed through her like a shot of carbolic acid and she gasped and threw back her head to scream, but he caught her throat with his other hand and cut off her air before she could make a sound.
He held her that way for a long time and then he shifted his weight and threw her onto the bed.
"Stupid bitch," he said. "I thought you were smart enough to learn easy, but I guess you have to learn hard the way all of them do."
"I just didn't think it was fair," she said.
"What's fair got to do with it?" He leaned forward. "Now listen, bitch, you notice I don't beat you up or anything. You're not worth nothing to me if you're marked up, but I can think of all kinds of interesting things to do to you that will make any pain you've had before seem like pleasure."
She looked at him wide-eyed, torn between a blazing anger and a fear that was icier than anything she had ever felt before.
"Let me tell you what's going to happen to you the next time you argue with me about something or you don't do what I tell you or you just piss me off a little. I'm going to take a lighted cigar and stick it in your cunt and then if that doesn't do the trick, I'm going to kill you. I ain't going to waste any time or effort. I don't have the time and I'm too busy for the effort. So you just make up your mind."
He turned and went out without looking back at her.
"Oh, my God," she said aloud. Then she thought, I have to get out of here. Nothing can be as bad as staying here.
TEN
Getting out of the house was easy. She waited until she couldn't hear a sound anywhere and then she put on the gown they had given her and she just went down the stairs and out the front door.
She was half way across the front yard, moving toward a road she, could see in that direction, a dirt covered road that didn't seem well traveled, when the black man materialized out of the shadows of some trees.
"Where you going, baby?" he said.
She half screamed in fear and surprise, then stopped herself and looked at him. "I just want some air," she said calmly.
"You know you ain't supposed to go outside the house," he said.
He moved closer to her.
"I didn't know that," she said. "No one ever told me that." She laughed. "Where would I be going bare-footed and wearing only this gown, for pete's sake?"
He seemed hesitant. "Well, you're not supposed to be outside the house."
He was closer to her now, standing in moonlight, and she could see that he was holding a gun.
"What are you, the guard?" she said.
"Never you mind what I am," he said. He motioned toward the house with the gun. "You go on back there now, right now or something bad's going to happen right fast "
Desperate, she grabbed for the gun and she was surprised when he released it, startled by her movement, and she was suddenly holding it.
"Hey," he cried out, "give me that back."
"Don't you move," she said. "Don't you dare move or I'll kill you."
In the half light, she couldn't read his expression, but he was standing very still.
"I mean it," she said. "I'll kill you if you move."
"I wouldn't dream of moving," he said.
Then he grabbed for the gun. She couldn't ever remember pulling the trigger, but the gun suddenly exploded in her hand and the black man straightened up, his eyes wide, a funny kind of startled expression on his face, and then his mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, and then he staggered backwards as if something were pulling him that way. He fell fiat onto his back and lay still.
"Oh, my God," she said. She dropped the gun and turned and ran.
And she ran. She couldn't remember bow long she ran down the dirt road. Later, she thought how stupid it had been to run straight down the road. If, they had come after her immediately, they would have caught her within minutes. But they didn't. They must not have heard the gunshot, or maybe the girls were too well trained to admit to having heard anything unusual. She never knew. She just ran and ran until she couldn't run anymore and she fell along the road, exhausted, and lay there, hidden in the weeds.
For how long? She never knew that either. Perhaps she dropped off to sleep.
When she raised up, the sun was in the afternoon sky and she could see an asphalt roadway up ahead of her, with traffic. She made herself stand up and walk toward it. She was so tired, exhausted all the way down into her guts, but she knew she had to move.
A truck stopped' as soon as she reached the side of the road and lifted her hand. The driver was a sandy-haired man who looked about twenty five and who leaned down out of the cab and said, "You need some help, lady?"
* * *
It was just outside Houston where he had picked her up and he was headed back up toward Dallas.
"Take me there," she said.
He looked at her curiously. "What's going on lady?" he said.
"Please start the truck. Get me out of here."
He sat solidly without moving. "The cops looking for you?"
"No, not the cops."
"Look, lady .. "
"Oh, God, please," she said. "Let's go."
He looked at her for a moment, then smashed the truck into gear and started driving.
She slumped down into the seat, exhausted, as if she were hiding. He drove in silence for a while, then glanced sideways at her and said, "You want to tell me now what's going on?"
"I can't," she said. "I've just got to get away." She looked at him. "You've got to help me."
He shook his head. "Lady, I don't got to do any-thing. If you're in some kind of trouble and you won't tell me what it is, then it's your trouble, not mine, so don't tell me what I have to do."
"I'll do anything," she said.
He glanced at her again, sideways, peering at her with a kind of flushed curiosity on his face. "Any-thing?" he said, trying to laugh.
Oh, Christ, she thought, isn't there any man in the world who doesn't look at me and see a whore? Why does every man think there's nothing to me but fucking? What is there about me?
"I just want to get to Dallas," she said.
"You said you'd do anything to get there."
"Please just take me to Dallas."
He reached over and caught hold of her breast and held it. Through the thin cloth of the gown she was wearing, she could feel the heat of his hand, and her nipples responded, growing harder.
She wondered if that was because of desire or be-cause of some half-hidden fear that translated itself into sexual reaction.
"What do you want?" she said.
"You're making the offers, baby," he said, squeezing her breast gently. "What you offering? I can always peel off the road here at some exit and deposit you with the nearest sheriff's department."
Why not? she wondered. Why did she feel as afraid of the police as she did the men who had had her? Was it because of the dope she had smuggled? Because of the man she shot? The driver moved his hand from her breast and put it on her knee, sliding her gown up so that his hand was resting on her bare flesh.
"Well," he said, "do you want me to take you to the police?"
"No," she whispered.
"Okay, what's it worth to you then for me not to take you to the police, but to take you to Dallas instead?"
"What do you want?"
He looked at her and laughed, but he sounded nervous. "I ain't offering to rape you lady. If you want something from me, make me an offer. I'm not stupid enough to do anything that can make it possible for you to claim I forced you into anything."
"Do you want to screw me?" she said.
"While I'm driving down the road?"
She looked at him in surprise and then she realized what he wanted.
"All right," she said. "I'll give you what you want."
He grinned. "You think you know, huh?"
"Sure," she said. "You want a blow job."
"Well?"
"I said I'd give you what you want."
He wasn't looking at her now. He was just peering . out at the road, but his face was flushed and she could see the bulge in his pants.
She reached over and unzipped his pants and his sex popped out into full view, hard and big, flushed red with blood and excitement.
"God damn it, hurry up," he said. "I never had nothing like this."
She bent down, closing her eyes, and sucked the hardness into her mouth. She felt him jerk and she thought for a moment that he was going to come al-ready, but then he seemed to settle back into the seat and she began to suck on him steadily. She wanted him to hurry. If she had to do this, she wanted it over with as soon as possible.
She could taste semen leaking from the tip of his cock, salty and thick against her tongue, and despite herself she felt a growing excitement in her own body, and she tried to avoid thinking about it, but it had been a long time since anyone had given her any pleasure. She had been used. She was being used now. But no one had made love to her, no one had wanted her as a woman, as a human being, as a person. No one had seen her as anything but a hole to put a cock in, something to come in.
And this man was no different, but somehow for the moment it didn't matter. She just liked the feel of his cock in her mouth, the way it tasted, the semen taste in her mouth, and she began to work her head up and down, letting his cock slide in and out of her mouth, slick now with her saliva, hard ridged with building pressure.
She stopped moving and just sucked, hard, pulling at it, teasing around it with her tongue at the same time.
She heard him moan in pleasure and she felt a tingle of desire down in her body, a wetness between her legs, a wanting.
My god, she thought, I want it. I really want it. I never even saw him before and I want this cock. I want to suck it and suck it forever.
She began to suck again and he took bold of her head and pushed her down further, so that his cock slid down into her throat, choking her, and she didn't even' care about that. She just wanted that cock, she wanted it, more than any she had ever had.
She didn't care either. She didn't care at all that no one had cared about her pleasure since the last time that she and Bob Harwood had been together.
His cock was swelling larger in her mouth and she raised up, letting it go for a moment, and said, "I want you to fuck me."
He glanced at her in surprise. "What?"
"I want you to stop the truck and fuck me. No one can see us. You got that resting place up there back of the seat. I want you to take me up there and fuck me."
He hesitated for a moment and then he pulled the truck off to the side of the road and killed the engine. His cock was huge as it stuck up out of his pants, throbbing in his excitement.
"Come on," she said, climbing back up over the seat and laying out fiat. "Get on up here with me."
"You're a crazy woman," he said.
"I need to be flicked and you've got a hard-on. Get up here and put it in me."
He seemed worried about something.
"Please," she said. "I need it."
He shrugged then and climbed up on top of her, his trousers still up, and rammed down inside her, his hardness filling her in one thrust. She grunted with the shock and the pleasure of it, and then she wrapped her legs around him and tried to pull him deeper into her. "Do it," she whispered. "I need it so bad. Fuck me now, fuck me hard, I need it bad."
He laughed and began to pump at her, his cock slashing into her like a red hot poker, filling her, tubing her up all the way to the top, then bringing her back down, almost releasing her, then backing away.
Until she was clawing at him, begging for it, crying in her pleasure, begging for the release that only his cock could give her.
She could feel it in her, all of it, as if her cunt were sensitized along its edges, and she knew that wasn't possible. No cock had ever felt like this. No cock had ever filled her this way.
He was raised up over her. His face was covered with sweat. His eyes were shining. He was looking down at her as he moved in her, aware of what he was doing to her, aware of how she felt.
And he was laughing at her, enjoying the knowledge of what he was doing to her.
She began to talk again. "Fuck me now. Please fuck me harder. Don't stop. Do it faster. Oh, god, I need to come. Please make me come."
He lifted her body, picking her up by the bottom, pouring down into her. Again. Again. Again.
She was gasping for breath. She was almost there.
He was driving into her now, filling her, and her orgasms were starting, exploding in her body one after another, until she screamed out with the pleasure of them, afraid he would stop and afraid she would die of pleasure if he didn't.
She opened her eyes and looked up into his face. He was contorted, flushed with exertion, but his body was moving faster and faster and she knew be was almost to come. "Do it now," she screamed. "Come in me now."
She felt him spurting into her, filling her with hot semen that ran out of her even as he was pouring it into her and she moaned with the excitement and felt her-self growing dizzy with it.
"Oh shit," she whispered, "I love it so."
He dropped her out of the truck in front of her apartment and she went in without looking back. She had an extra key taped to the bottom of her mailbox and she got it and went up.
She knew there was a possibility that they would be looking her her here already, but she couldn't help it. She had come here because she couldn't think of any place else to go immediately. She needed clothes and she needed time to think. Once she was in, she could lock the door behind her and she would be safe.
For a while anyway.
But when she was inside and was dressed and had taken a drink to .calm her nerves, she knew she couldn't stay here. She knew that if they hadn't already begun watching her apartment that they would soon.
* * *
Chuck Stewart said, "My God, what are you doing here?" He was standing in his apartment doorway and he was looking at her with the strangest expression she had ever seen on a man's face.
"I didn't know where else to go," she said. "I didn't want to cause you any trouble, but I really need some help and there isn't anyone else I can go to."
"Come in."
He shut the door behind her and then followed her across the living room. She sat on the couch and he went to the small bar and poured them two drinks. He brought them back and then sat down across from her.
"I thought you were dead," he said. "Harwood told me you were killed in a traffic accident in Mexico while you were down there on business for him."
"I wasn't," she said.
"I guess not. Where'd he get that idea?"
She took a deep drink from her glass and then looked at him squarely. He seemed to be sincerely concerned about her and she remembered suddenly how often he had tried to warn her about Harwood and how he had always seemed to be genuinely concerned about her welfare.
"I guess you have a right to know about me before you decide whether you want to help me," she said. "God knows I need your help, but you have a right to know what you might be getting into."
He looked at her, then nodded and sipped at his drink. "All right," he said. "Tell me."
* * *
She told him about all of it, about thinking that she was in love with Harwood, about the trip to Mexico, about the place outside Houston, about the truck driver who had bartered a ride for sex. All of it. Told that way, the story made her feel ashamed of herself, but she couldn't help it. Looking at him, she knew she wasn't able to lie to him. If he helped her, that was fine, because she had a feeling that he was a man who knew what a man's responsibilities were, but he had a right to know. Everything.
"My God," he said when she was finished. "And you lived through that."
"So far," she said, trying to make her voice sound light. "But I don't have any doubt that they're looking for me."
"No," he said, "neither do I. Harwood doesn't know you're alive and the man you call Carl can't afford to let him find out. I'm sure it would be Carl's ass if Harwood finds out he's been doublecrossed."
"Will you help me?" she said.
He nodded absently, as if the answer to that question went without saying, as if he already were thinking of something else.
"Did anyone see you come here?" he said.
"No."
"Are you sure you weren't followed, that no one-was watching your apartment?"
"I'm reasonably sure," she said. "I-can't be completely sure, but if they were there, I don't know why they wouldn't have come in after me."
He stood up and walked to the window and looked out. "That seems to make sense," he said. "I don't see anyone out there, so I guess we can assume you're safe enough here for a while, as long as you don't go outside. I guess Harwood wouldn't have any reason to think you might come here ... does he?" He turned to look at her.
She thought, he's jealous, and the sudden knowledge gave her a sharp thrill, and then she thought, my god, I'm in love with him and didn't know it until now. That's why I came to him. Where else would I have gone, and what kind of pain have I been giving him.
Her eyes clouded with tears suddenly.
"Listen," he said, "it's all right. You don't have to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," she said. "I'm just ashamed of the way I've treated you."
He understood. She knew he did. But he merely blinked once, rapidly, as he looked at her, and then smiled. "You didn't do anything to me," he said. "You didn't owe me anything."
She walked over to him. "Please love me," she said. She pushed up against him. Her breasts felt like they were burning and when she touched him, she gasped, amazed at the depth of her own desire for him.
She could feel him swelling hard against her. Even through his trousers, he felt huge and demanding against her, but he seemed to be trying to draw back, and when she raised to kiss him, he pretended not to understand what she wanted.
"What's wrong?" she said.
"Nothing."
"Don't you want me?"
"Of course, I want you," he said, "but I don't want to be paid, that's all."
"What?'
"You're in trouble ... you come here for help ... I'll help you. I said I would. You don't have to give me your body to pay me. I know the first time you ever saw me you got a job from me by blowing me, but pretending to be as tough as the other girls...."
"Pretending?"
"Of course, pretending. You're not like that."
She laughed. "I'm not? After all the things I've told you I've done, you think I'm not like that?"
"No, you're not like that," he said. "You're not a whore. I don't care what drove you to try this kind of life, you're basically not like that, and you don't have to go on pretending with me. I'll help you because I want to. You don't have to give me anything back."
She felt tears stinging her eyes again. "Oh hell," she said. "I just love you ... I want you to love me, that's all. I want you to take me to bed and fuck me till I can't stand it anymore. Because I need you, not be-cause I'm trying to bribe you into anything."
He looked at her for a long moment and then he bent and picked her up into his arms.
ELEVEN
She was lying naked on the bed, watching him. Her clothes were on the floor where he had dropped them after stripping them off her. He was standing beside the bed, taking off his own clothes.
Her sex was so wet she wanted to catch hold of herself and do something to herself, make herself come. She didn't think she could last long enough to wait for him. She didn't think she ever in her entire life was as hot as she was now, and she knew he was moving as fast as he could, but he seemed to be going so slowly. She wanted him so much. She wanted to scream at him to hurry, please hurry, for God's sake hurry and get into me.
Then he was on the bed beside her, over her, between her legs, down into her, his cock huge and ramrod stiff as it slammed down into the wetness of her feline femaleness; down into the deep maw of her dripping cunt that felt like an open mouth to her.
She was coming immediately, plunging into orgasm with the first thrust he made into her. She wrapped her legs around him, squeezing him, moaning with pleasure as the waves of feeling swept over her. He was moving steadily, hard into her, fucking her with as much strength as there was in his body. Moving, moving. She was coming again. Then again. And still he kept moving in her, down, back, in and out, his cock seemingly growing larger as he moved, swelling in her.
Without being aware of what she was saying, she began talking to him:
"Sweetgod, fuck me, oh please, don't ever stop fucking me, I can't stand it, you're so big, you have such a huge cock, please don't ever stop fucking me, you're splitting me open, nobody ever fucked me so good, you have the greatest cock that any man ever had, please don't stop, faster, faster, give it to me harder, oh my god you're killing me, I'm coming again, oh jesus christ shit fuck I'm coming again, you're so big I can't stand it, faster, faster, go deeper in me, your cock is so big, please come in me, fill me up with it, make me wet with it, I want to feel you come in me, you make me so hot and wet when you come in me, oh shit I'm-coming again I can't stand to come again, there oh help me, jesus, help me, I can't stand it, don't stop, please, please, please, please, please, oh god, please, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please come with me this time, I'm going, there, I'm going off again, again, please, you're coming, good, I can feel it, hot, hot, wet, jesus christ, wet...."
He slumped against her body then, breathing hard, kissing her face gently.
Her breasts felt like they were burning and she twisted to get the pressure of his body off them, but it felt too good to move.
She whispered, "It was never like that, never, in my whole life, it was never like that. I never knew sex could be like that."
He pulled out of her and rolled aside to lie beside her. He turned his head to look at her.
"I still want you," he said. "I haven't had enough of you.,, "Take me," she said. "If you want me, you can have anything you want. Just take it."
He raised up over her and then bent down to kiss her between her legs. She flinched for a moment. Her skin there was still tender, still quivering from all the orgasms that she had just experienced, but his tongue was silken soft against her clitoris and she could feel the pressure building again already, almost immediately raising her toward another orgasm, and she thought that was something she would never have believed possible. She let her hand slide down. His cock already was half hard for her, and she wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing gently, moving the skin back and forth slowly until he was nearly ready, and then she whispered, "Turn around here for me. I want to suck you."
He moved and she climbed up over him, straddling him and taking his cock into her mouth even as she felt him starting to lick her there again.
She started coming again then, with his cock in ha mouth, and she sucked slowly and steadily, trying not to let the explosions that were rocking her make her lose her rhythm. She wanted him to come in her mouth. She wanted it. She wanted it. She wasn't just willing for it to happen, she really wanted it. She wanted to feel it happen, to taste it. She wanted him to be so hot in her mouth that his semen would burn her.
Then it was happening. He was coming in her mouth, thick, jolting shots of semen that filled her mouth so suddenly she could hardly swallow fast enough to keep from choking.
Oh God, she thought, I love him so. I never knew. But I love him so. I can't lose him now.
* * *
"We're going to have to get you out of here," he said.
They were lying in bed together, still naked, the sweat drying salty on their bodies, their passion dead for the moment, but quiet together. Her legs were over him and he was toying gently with her breasts. From outside there was enough moonlight so that she could see his face. He looked tired and very gentle and worried about her and she wanted to tell him not to be worried, that nothing could hurt her as long as he loved her, and she smiled a little at herself for thinking so romantic and silly a thought because she would never have thought she could feel that way again.
"Whatever you say," she said. "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it."
He was silent for a moment.
"What do you think I should do?" she said.
He smiled softly. "I wish I knew. I have to get you out of here, but I'm no superhero, Marianne. I mean, I'm not James Bond or something, and we can't take on the Mafia single-handedly, if the Mafia is what it is and I don't even know about that. All I know is there are too many of them, whoever they are, and we have to run because there's nothing else to do."
"I'll just go away," she said. "You don't want to have to leave your business and everything."
He laughed quietly. "Business? It's a rented room, a jukebox and some whores. What kind of business is that? I'll just go down to the bank in the morning, clear out my account, and we'll split. I've got plenty of money to keep us alive for a while and then I'll think of something else. You're not important enough for them to keep looking forever. Stay out of sight for a while, long enough for Carl or whatever his name is to start believing that you're not going to give him any trouble, and then everything will be all right."
"All right," she said. But she wondered if he was right. She remembered the dead coldness of Carl's eyes and she wondered whether he wouldn't wonder whether her escape would give the other girls ideas. She wondered whether he would believe he could afford to let her go, since at least half his hold on the girls had to come from fear, from the idea that they couldn't hope to get away, from their hopelessness. And her escape had to give them hope. So she wondered whether Carl would ever stop looking for her.
Except Carl had doublecrossed Bob Harwood and if Harwood really was connected with the Mafia or the syndicate or the mob or whatever, maybe Carl couldn't afford to spend much time or effort trying to find her. Maybe he'd be in too much danger himself. Maybe he'd be too afraid.
"Chuck?"
He didn't answer. She raised up slightly and looked down at him. He was sleeping. His breathing was deep and slow and she realized that while she had been lying there thinking, he had drifted off into a deep and natural slumber.
She got up gently, careful not to wake him, and walked naked into the living room. She stood at the window, looking down for a long time, and then she went to. the telephone and dialed a number that she remembered as if it had been burned into her brain. .
TWELVE
The phone rang six times before someone picked it up and a man said, "Hello?"
He sounded sleepy. She was counting on that, on him being confused, not being able to recognize a voice he had heard only a few times on the telephone and certainly not the voice of a woman he thought was dead.
"Mr. Harwood?" she whispered.
"Yes ... who is this?"
"It doesn't matter, Mr. Harwood. I have some in-formation you might be interested in."
"What kind of information?" He sounded more awake now, but his voice was still calm. She could imagine him lying there in bed, his mind racing as he tried to figure out whether this was important or just a crank.
Crazily, she remembered for a moment what he had been like in bed and she wondered if he was alone now.
"What kind of information?" he said again.
"Information about Carl."
"Carl who?"
Still, his voice was calm, but it was sharper now. "You know who," she said. "About Carl and some people that you think Carl has taken on vacation."
"Taken on vacation?"
"Long vacations," she said. She wanted to laugh. This was all so crazy that she could hardly believe it was really happening. "Long, long vacations."
"What are you talking about, you crazy broad." Harwood said. "Who are you?"
"One of those girls," she said. "Only Carl didn't really take us on vacation."
"What?"
"Ask him about the house down by Houston. The house with the girls in it. Ask him how much money he's making off us?" She had an idea. "Ask him why he's really keeping us alive, whether he plans to use us to blackmail you."
"Blackmail me?"
"Ask him whether all the girls haven't written reports for him, reports about you. Just ask him and see what happens, but don't turn your back on him because he's after you, baby, and you better believe he's about to get you."
Chuck Stewart reached around from behind her and broke the connection.
"Are you crazy?" he said.
"I wanted to get Harwood and Carl fighting each other. They can't worry about me if they're worrying about each other."
"What if he recognized your voice?"
"He won't. He thinks I'm dead. Besides, I was whispering. It's impossible to recognize a voice that's whispering."
He turned and went to the window and looked down. "I don't know," he said. "I still think you took a crazy chance, but I guess there's nothing to be done about that now. Maybe it'll help. Maybe you did man-age to get him worried about Carl: Only I keep wondering what could happen if he did get to Carl and he made Carl talk and it turned out that the only girl missing from there is you."
She hadn't thought about that and she felt a twinge of fear now, but then she laughed. They couldn't find her, and if they did, there was nothing they could do to her now. She had Chuck to protect her. He was better and stronger than any of them.
Except.
There were so many of them and she knew that Chuck was just a man. He wasn't superman. And no matter how much he loved her or how brave he was, there wasn't anything he could do about the fact that they had him outnumbered and outmoneyed and out-gunned. All he could do was try and she was sure he would, but maybe after all there wasn't anything he could do.
Except run.
"I'm sorry," she said. "What do you want me to do?"
"I told you. We'll have to get you out of here, quickly, tomorrow."
"I can get my things."
"You'll get nothing. You can't go near your apartment again. They may be waiting for you there. We could both get killed trying to get some clothes for you."
"I didn't think of that," she said.
He came to her and cupped her face in his hand. "You'll have to think now, think hard and sharply and differently than you ever have before. If you want to stay alive."
She smiled. "I want to stay alive," she said. "Since I've discovered that I love you, it's very important to me that I stay alive."
* * *
He woke her early. He was fully dressed, standing over her, and he startled her when he shook her shoulder and told her to wake up.
"Time to go," he said. "Throw some clothes on and let's get moving."
"It's so early," she said. She, couldn't make her mind work. Why was it so important to move?
He shook her again, more roughly this time. "Come on, move it." He pointed to the table beside the bed. "There's coffee. Be ready to leave in fifteen minutes. I'm going after gas. When I get back, you be ready."
She was sitting up now, more awake. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"I haven't decided," he said. "Out of town first. Then we can decide."
"How about' money?"
"I've already been to the bank," he said. "I've got money." He turned and walked to the door. "Get your beautiful ass in gear," he said over his shoulder, "cause the bus is leaving, with you or without."
She heard the front door close and then she got up and started moving. She knew he wouldn't leave with-out her, but there was an urgency to his actions that translated to her. She was fully awake now and she didn't have any doubts that he knew what he was doing. They had to get going.
She had her makeup on and was in her panties and bra when she heard the front doorbell. She padded in and called out, "Who is it?"
"Me"
She opened the door and said, "What's wrong, did you forget...." And then she stopped, frozen by fear and shock.
Bob Harwood was standing there. "Hi, baby," he said. "I haven't seen you in a long time. Where you been keeping yourself?" He looked her over carefully and she was suddenly aware that he could see through the filmy nylon of her panties and bra, that the rings of her nipples were visible and that the thick pubic hair was out-lined in a black triangle open to his gaze.
He stepped in and pushed the door shut behind him. "I'm sure you were going to ask me in," he said. "So I'll just help myself."
"What do you want?" she said.
He looked surprised and then he shrugged. "What do I want? What would I want? Just to say hello to an old friend, that's all. After all, I thought we were kind of special friends, Marianne. I didn't expect you to run out on me the way you did."
She looked at him for a minute. He was smiling at her but there was a hard, mocking look in his eyes. She whirled and ran for the bedroom, darting in and slamming the door and trying to lock it, but he was there, pushing it open and when she twisted around, looking for an avenue of escape, for something to throw at him, for anything ... he was standing in the doorway, smiling, still smiling, and he was holding a gun.
"Don't try anything else," he said. "If you do, you're dead now."
"You're going to kill me anyway," she said.
"Oh, that's true, but you could have several more hours of life before dying. You don't have to have it now. You can die now, if you want to, or you can live for a while. It's up to you."
Chuck, she thought. Where's Chuck? I have to warn him so he doesn't walk into the gun.
As if he were reading her mind--or seeing it in her eyes--Harwood said, "If you're wondering about Stewart, he won't be coming back."
"What?"
"He had an accident."
"An accident?"
"Yes, unfortunately."
"Did you hurt him?"
"I told you it was an accident."
She felt cold down in her insides, cold and completely alone, but surprisingly, unafraid now. "He's dead, isn't he?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
"You son of a bitch," she said.
He laughed and motioned with the gun. "You're undoubtedly right about me," he said, "but that doesn't change things. Now get some clothes on. We're going for a trip."
She shrugged and walked to the closet and pulled out a dress. It didn't make any difference now. Nothing did.
"Aren't you curious about where we're going?" Harwood asked.
"No."
He laughed. "For a tough chick, you seem to have lost a lot of your starch."
She looked at him. "How do you stand yourself?" she said.
"It's not hard."
"Isn't it? You push dope, you make .money off whores, you kill people ... don't you have any feeling for humanity at all?"
"No." He laughed again. "My only feeling is for me, for Bob Harwood."
She wondered if she might have a chance to get the gun. Not that she especially wanted to save her own life now. She felt that Chuck Stewart's death was her fault. But she would have liked to take Harwood with her. She bated the idea of dying and leaving him totally successful.
She zipped up her dress and turned to leave with him. "You're crazy, you know," she said.
"Crazy, why?"
"All this isn't worth it. I wouldn't have turned you in. How could I have? I'm the one who smuggled the stuff in. I'm guiltier than you are. You were perfectly safe. There wasn't any reason to kill Chuck and there isn't any reason to kill me, or there wouldn't have been if you hadn't killed Chuck."
"You think so?"
"You must just Re to kill, h le to have trouble stirred up around you."
"Maybe." He was steering her down the hall, toward the elevator, carefully watching in case someone in the hall should open a door.
"Well, why? If it's not that, why do you like to do this? Why do you do it at all?"
"I like it."
"What did you do with Carl?"
"Nothing. Not yet."
"How did you know where I was?"
By this time they were outside the building and he was putting her into his car and then sliding in after her so that she was behind the wheel. He handed her the keys. "You drive," he said.
She started the engine and eased the car away from the curb. "You didn't answer my question."
"Which one? You talk too 'much." He seemed more nervous outside and he kept looking around as if he expected the police to sweep down on him.
"I asked you how you found me."
He smiled. "Easy. I had Chuck Stewart's phone tapped so when you called me from his phone, it wasn't any big trick to find you."
"Why did you have his phone tapped?'
"Because he's a cop."
She laughed in nervous surprise. "A cop?" she said. "Chuck wasn't a cop."
"Undercover cop, gathering information."
"If he was a cop, why didn't he arrest you a long time ago? He knew what business you were in ... he told me."
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe he thought td lead him to the big boss."
"Is there a big boss?"
"There's always a big boss." He motioned. "Turn up there at the next light. Go right."
"Where are we going?"
"What do you care? Just keep driving."
"Of course I care." She laughed. She felt crazy, lightheaded, almost as if she were drugged. "If I'm taking my last auto ride, I have a right to know where I'm going, don't I?"
"The only thing you need to know is that you're not coming back," Harwood said.
THIRTEEN
It took her a long time to realize that he was taking her back to Carl, that they were headed back to Houston, and when it finally struck her, she felt terrified for a long moment, so horribly afraid that she wanted to scream in anguish, but then that passed and she just drove in silence. She supposed he was going to use her as an object lesson for Carl and then he would kill Carl, too, or perhaps just frighten Carl out of ever doublecrossing him again.
What. difference did it make? Death was death, no matter who inflicted it.
And yet she remembered the way Carl seemed to enjoy giving pain and she didn't want that. The idea of dying was something that she had accepted, but the idea of pain is something that no one ever can accept.
She just didn't know what to do about it.
* * *
They walked into the house unannounced and found Carl sitting alone in the dining room, at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.
Carl looked up, unsurprised. "You found her," he said.
"Well, sort of. To be truthful, she found me." The two men looked at each other and allowed her to see the flicker of amusement between them.
She was stunned. Obviously, they weren't enemies, so what was going on? She didn't understand.
"Take her upstairs," Harwood said, "and lock her in so she doesn't get any ideas about leaving again. Then we'll talk about what to do with her."
Carl got up and came over to take hold of her arm. "All the other girls are gone," he said. "I've got them scattered around so that they won't be able to get back together ever and I gave them all a good scare before sending them out on the circuit. I don't think they'll say anything to anyone. They're all convinced that little pussy here is dead and buried and already in about eighteen pieces, so they're not ready to try the same thing."
Harwood said, "Good. You still got some coffee hot?"
"Lots of it. In the kitchen." He tightened his grip on her arm and twisted her around. "Let's go, cunt," he said. "You know the way."
She didn't say anything and she tried not to show him that he was hurting her. She knew that he knew he was. He was doing it deliberately, but she didn't want to show it if she could help it.
Upstairs, in the room where she had awakened the first time in this house, he said, "Take off your clothes and give them to me."
She started to refuse and then she shrugged and did what he told her. There was no use in getting hurt over nothing. She knew that he would simply hit her and take the clothes off of her if she didn't do what he said.
When she was naked, she stood, looking at him, and she said, "Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?"
"Don't rush things, baby," he said. He came over and caught her breasts in his hands. "You're a hell of a good looking piece, baby. It's possible you could arrange to stay alive if you wanted to. You don't have to die."
She thought of Chuck Stewart who had died because he wanted to help her (or perhaps he was a cop and they had found out about him; hold on to that thought, she told herself, it makes the guilt a little less sharp). She thought that she hadn't cried for him yet and she wondered if they were ever going to give her some privacy for that. She knew she wouldn't ever cry as long as they were looking at her.
Then he shrugged and went out, locking the door behind him. She heard the latch snap shut.
She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She tried to recapture the apathetic feeling she had had earlier, but she couldn't. She wasn't really afraid, be-cause she didn't have much hope and fear almost demands the hope of escape from danger. Without that hope, fear is meaningless. But she was regaining her desire to live. If she could manage it, she didn't want to die. She wanted to go on living, no matter what the circumstances, because there was always a chance that she could change the circumstances.
But she couldn't imagine that they would let her live. Not knowing that Harwood had killed Chuck Stewart. How could they?
And then, amazingly, she slept.
They woke her by tying her arms and legs to the bed, so that she was spread-eagled, open, helpless.
She woke instantly when they began to tie her, but she didn't struggle. What good would it have done?
She wondered why they thought it was necessary to tie her up. What could she have done? They would have been able to do anything they wanted to her and she certainly could not have resisted them. She wouldn't ask them, though. She lay still and let them tie her, just looking at them silently.
When they were finished, Harwood patted her almost affectionately between the legs.
"You're a good looking pussy," he said. "It's a damn shame you had to mess up the way you have."
She didn't answer.
Carl said, "Let's get on with it." His eyes were glistening and he kept licking his lips in anticipation. Harwood looked at the bigger man, then at Marianne, pensively. "All right," he said. "Marianne, we know that Chuck Stewart . was a cop and we know he kept a notebook with names in it and we have reason to believe that you know where that notebook is. We want it and we want you to tell us where it is."
"I don't know anything about any notebook," she said.
"Now, Marianne," Harwood said softly, "I expected you to say that, of course, because you have the mistaken idea that we will not kill you as long as we have not found the book and as long as we think there is any chance at all that you know where it is. We need that book, so you are right. We will not kill you, but we will make you wish we would. Now, you are not the law, so what does the book mean to you? Nothing. Tell us where the book is and perhaps we'll kill you, perhaps not, but at least you won't be subjected to any pain."
"I mean it," she said. "Really, I don't know anything about any book. He never mentioned it to me." She sighed. "I didn't know he was a cop."
"If you didn't know he was a cop, why did you go to him when you got back to Dallas? You hardly knew him except for having worked for him a while. What made you think he'd want to help you?"
"I don't know," she said. "I just didn't know where else to go."
Harwood looked at her for a moment, then stepped back and nodded to Carl.
"I don't think she believes we're serious," he said. "Carl, show her we are." Carl reached down between her legs and grabbed the thick, curling hair there and pulled it as hard as he could. She felt herself ripped off the bed by the pressure and she shrieked in pain, once, twice, and then he dropped her back onto the bed.
"Now that was nothing," Harwood said. "That was just to make you realize we mean what we say. Stewart unfortunately was killed before we could get him, be-fore we could make him tell us where the book is, so our only hope is you. We really do need that book. We can't take the chance of anyone else finding it. If you know, you had better tell us. If you don't know, then that's too bad for you because we have to assume that you do and work very hard at getting you to tell us."
"I really don't know," she said.
Carl stepped forward again, but Harwood caught him and held him. "Now, Marianne, let me give you some idea of the lengths we are willing to go to make you tell us.
"We will use fire on you. We'll stick lighted cigars up you. We'll take a burning match and hold it against your clitoris. We'll cut off your nipples and make you eat them. We'll fuck you with a broom handle.
"We'll hurt you, Marianne. Well hurt you badly. We'll hurt you so that you'll never be a complete woman again."
She felt her stomach turning over. She didn't know what to do.
"Let me fuck her in the ass," Carl said. "I did that to her the first time she was here. She didn't like that at all and she was real good for a while after that."
"What do you think, Marianne? Would that persuade you?" Harwood said.
She felt her sphincter muscle tightening. She could remember being torn open by Carl the last time he did that to her and she didn't want that to happen again.
"Please," she said. "Please don't do that to me."
"Then tell us what we want to know," Harwood said.
"The notebook...." She was thinking rapidly. She had been telling them the truth, of course. She didn't know anything about a notebook. She hadn't had the least suspicion that Chuck was a cop until Harwood told her. But she had to tell them something. She couldn't bear the thought of being tortured by them, or of having Carl violate her that way. She had to tell them something so they would leave her alone and it had to be something that sounded plausible. Something that would take some time to check.
Because she needed time. Perhaps, with some time, she could escape. Or maybe just die. Anything to keep them from hurting her.
"Tell us, Marianne," Harwood said. "I'm running out of patience with you."
"It's in his car," she said. "Up under the front seat. He keeps it in a leather pouch up there."
"You've seen it there?"
"Yes. I didn't know what it was, but I've seen him put it there. He just warned me not to ask about it. He said it was for his business, but I didn't know he was the law. I really didn't."
"rm sure you didn't, Marianne," Harwood said. "I'll just have to check out what you told us." He turned and went out. At the door he stopped and looked at Carl. "Carl," he said then, "if you let her get away again, I'm really going to be pissed off, buddy."
"Don't worry about it," Carl said.
FOURTEEN
Marianne heard the car start outside and then leave. And it hit her suddenly, like being kicked in the stomach, that she was alone now with Carl.
He was standing at the window, apparently watching Harwood drive away, and now he turned and walked back over to the bed and looked down at her.
"You shouldn't have run away from me," he said.
"I guess not," she said. "It didn't do me any good."
"No, and it got two guys killed, Mickey and your boy Stewart."
"Mickey?"
"Mickey's the black guy you shot. You drilled the poor bastard fair enough. I had to dump him in the gulf. I hated to do that. I liked him real well."
"Well...." she said.
"I hope you know that you better have been telling Harwood the truth," he said. "He's one mean man if he thinks you've lied to him."
"How about you?" she said. "You told him you'd killed me. How come he's not mean to you?"
He laughed. "Oh that. Well, I wasn't lying to him, I was lying to you. I figure it makes a broad easier to handle if she thinks it's all a matter of life and death. The fact is, Harwood owns this place too. I just work for him. But it's my job to keep the broads from running away. You're the first one who ever made a successful split on me."
"Not too successful," she said.
He laughed, but his eyes were not amused. "Yeah, but that wasn't my doing. I didn't get you back. Harwood did."
He reached down and fondled her breasts. "You're a great looking chick," he said. "You make me hot just lying there like that."
She could see the bulge in his trousers.
"Well," she said, "you can do anything you M. There's not a great deal I can do to help you, though, tied up like this." She tried to laugh. He was so big that she didn't think she had much of a chance of getting away even if she could get untied, but she didn't have any chance at all as long as she was trussed up.
It also didn't seem to occur to him that she could get away, no matter what, because he reached down and untied her legs and then her arms. She lay on the bed and watched him. She couldn't just ran. She had to find a moment of advantage.
He was naked then, massive and hard above her, the biggest man she had ever seen, his chest and arms reminding her of a tree in their strength and solidity.
Hairy and powerful, he bent over her, touching her, fondling her, opening her with his hands, and then he lay down on the bed beside her.
She had big breasts, but when he put his hands on them, they felt small under the big fingers, and when he slipped his hand down between her legs and put a finger up into her, that finger felt as. big as most men's cocks felt.
He lay back on the bed then. "Suck me," he said. "I love it when a woman sucks my cock."
She raised up over him and took his balls into her hand, caressing them gently. They felt huge to her, swelling even as she touched them, and she traced with one fingernail down over them, between his legs, into that supersensitive spot between the scrotum and the anus, so that he arched his body some in pleasure.
She flicked her tongue out and over the head of his cock, then ran it slowly down the underside, teasing, caressing. She wanted him so wild with desire for her that he would be careless and she was working on him deliberately, carefully, but despite that, she was taking pleasure in what was happening.
He was lying still, letting her make love to him, his hand gently tracing patterns on her back, one finger sliding down between the cheeks of her buttocks, teasing her idly there.
She raised up then, sliding her tongue up over his cock, until she came to the head of it, and then she opened her mouth wider and took it in, letting it slide down her throat until she felt almost strangled by it, and then moving back up so that she was working up and down on it, letting it slide effortlessly in and out of her mouth, until she could empathize with his pleasure in the action, until she could feel herself blossoming with it too.
"Now," he said, "come up here, I want to fuck you now."
She twisted around and lay flat on the bed. He carne down into her slowly, a little at a time, as if he were afraid that he would explode too quickly if he entered her with a hard thrust When he was in her, she threw her legs around him, holding him there tightly, and he began to work in and out of her, slowly at first, then harder, faster and faster.
He felt big to her, but more than that, he felt rock hard, swollen, so hard.
He was talking to her as he moved. He was telling how how much he liked to fuck her, how much he was enjoying this, how good she was, how tight her pussy was around his cock.
Despite herself, she felt a first orgasm ripping loose from her guts, and she whimpered with it and thrust up so that he could pour even deeper into her.
Then again.
And still again.
Until she was shuddering under him, all her rhythm lost, all her ability to concentrate gone, just naked female hanging onto the powerful, plunging body of a naked man, impaled on him, caught by the immense hard maleness of him.
He was raised up above her now, holding himself up so that she could look down between them and see the cock that was in her, watching it move in and out of her.
In her.
God, what a concept, what a fact That he was in her. In her. Splitting her open. Penetrating her. Nailing her. As if she were a butterfly caught on a pin, trembling there, quivering, conscious of nothing but that penetration.
Oh, God, she thought Then aloud, "Oh God, I'm coming again. Jesus, fuck me, I'm coming again."
And he was coming too then, pouring into her. She could feel the hot semen shooting into her, filling her, making her wetter, running out even while he was still in her, moistening and heating her thighs.
And she was coming still again, one last time, one last thundering flashing explosion that made her throw her head back in utter and total collapse.
* * *
She lay there against him for a long moment, her body sheathed in sweat He was breathing hard too and she could feel his heart pounding against her.
He was out of her, lying against her on his side, one of her legs thrown over him.
She thought: what am I? I Eked that. I loved it. I wished it would never stop. And he's an animal. He participated in Chuck's death. If Bob Harwood tells him to, he'll kill me without a second of hesitation. So what kind of woman am I to have liked that? Why don't I feel dirty and violated? Why don't I feel ashamed and humiliated and used? Why does my body feel so gloriously alive?
And the answer, of course, she knew, was that her body was human, was alive, and that she was young and healthy and hungry for life, and she knew that she had to stay alive, that no matter what had happened, she wanted to live, to go on living, to taste life and experience living.
And whatever she had to do for that to happen, why she would do it.
"I have to get up for a minute," she said.
He was lying with his eyes closed, but he opened them then and looked at her suspiciously. "What for?"
She laughed. "I'm not going to run," she said. "I'm so well fucked I can hardly move, much less run." She touched his cock. It was softening, but it was still swollen and hard. "You put so much in me, I have to get rid of some of it," she said.
"What?"
"I'm just going to the bathroom," she said, lauehing again. "Just lie still and concentrate and maybe you can give me some more when I get back."
He grinned. "Not right away maybe, but pretty soon," he said.
She slipped aside and got up. She went out into the hall and then she started to run. She didn't have any plan. She didn't have any ideas at all about where she was going or what she was going to do. All she knew was that her only chance was to get away, somehow, to run.
She was down the stairs before she heard him yell and she was outside the house and running before she heard him yell again and then she knew he was after her.
She was naked and the gravel on the ground hurt her feel brambles and low-hanging trees slashing at her perhaps he would stop to get dressed, to put on pants and shoes at least, and she thought that might be just enough of a head start for her to make it.
She hadn't given any thought of direction. She was just running and she suddenly realized that she wasn't running toward the highway where she had hitched the ride with the trucker before. She was running in the opposite direction, toward woods, away from the house, and she stopped suddenly, panting, and thought about going back, but she knew she couldn't do that. He'd catch her for sure if she went back now, toward the house, and she was sure he'd kill her or hurt her horribly if he caught her.
She started running again, into the woods. She could feel brambles and low hanging trees slashing at her legs. Her breath was burning her lungs. She was sobbing with exertion and once she fell, tripping. over something so that she lay flat out on the ground, her breath knocked out of her. But then she was up again and running and the woods had closed down around her so that she knew she couldn't be seen from the rear.
Had he seen her at all? Did he know what direction she had taken? Was he right behind her?
She stopped, slumped against a tree, and tried to slow her own breathing enough so that she could hear.
There was nothing except the heavy sound of insects humming around her and not too far away the repeating tattoo of a woodpecker.
Oh, thank God, she thought, thank God.
And then a man said, "You stupid bitch."
FIFTEEN
She whirled around and saw Carl standing behind her. He was wearing a pair of trousers, but that was all. He hadn't waited for shoes. He was panting as hard as she was and there was a thin line of blood across his chest where a tree branch had apparently whipped him as he ran.
"You really are a stupid bitch," he said.
She didn't say anything and a man with more imagination than Carl would have thought that she looked like a frightened deer, crouched there against the tree, naked and defenseless.
But Carl didn't have any imagination and he was wildly, hideously angry, so that all he saw was a naked woman who had used him and had tricked him.
He walked toward her and she whirled and ran again, crashing through the brush, away, just away.
But he was right behind her and he caught her arm and twisted her around.
In reflex, she kicked out, ramming her knee up into his groin. She caught him just right and the force of one kick, added to the impetus he had given her by swinging her around, slammed her into him there with more force than a woman her size should have been able to muster.
He screamed once, then slumped forward, falling to his knees, retching and rasping for breath.
She started to run again, but then she stopped and picked up a heavy fallen tree branch, or part of one, that fitted into her hand as if it were a club made for her.
She walked back to him and looked down at him. He was retching, vomiting there, and she raised the club. He looked up at her just once, and there was surprise in his face, surprise and something close to pleading, something that startled her with its naked fear, and then she slammed the club down onto his head, driving him flat down onto the ground, Unconscious.
Coldly then, deliberately, she raised the club again and slammed it down again.
She thought she felt bone give. Bone, and something under the bone, something softer.
She fell forward onto her knees then and began to ay.
* * *
After a long time, she raised her head and climbed back up to her feet. She couldn't go running aimlessly through the woods, naked. She didn't know whether Carl was dead and she couldn't bring herself to touch him to find out. She peered at him, trying to tell whether he was breathing, but she couldn't tell. He was lying motionless. But he could have been only unconscious. She didn't know. But he wasn't breathing hard and she thought he probably was dead. At the very least, he wasn't going to be bothering her anymore.
"She climbed up and started walking back to the house. Maybe she could find her clothes there.
She was just dressed when Bob Harwood walked into the room behind her.
"Where's Carl?" he said.
She had jumped in surprise. She couldn't believe he was there. He couldn't possibly have gone all the way to Dallas and be back already.
"Where's Carl, bitch?"
"I don't know," she said. "He's around somewhere."
"What are you doing loose?"
She shrugged. "You'll have to ask Carl," she said. "Besides, where would I go?"
He looked at her and then turned and walked out of the room. She heard him calling for Carl.
Now, dressed, she felt less defenseless, and there was something coldly angry building in her now. She had been used, hurt, raped, prostituted, assaulted, threatened with death, and the man she loved had been murdered.
God damn them, she thought. "God damn them," she whispered.
She could still hear Harwood going through the house, calling for Carl.
In the closet where she had found her clothes, there was a wire coat hanger. She took it down and unwound it so that it lay in her hand like a steel whip. Then she went out, carrying it down beside her leg, casually, just carrying it, thinking that maybe he wouldn't notice she bad it until it was too late for him to defend himself.
She met him on the stairway. When he was two steps below her, he said, "Listen, bitch, where's Carl?"
"What's the matter?" she said. "Didn't you find the book?"
"I didn't even find the car, bitch. It wasn't where it was. Now, where's Carl? We got to get out of here."
He started up toward her and she lashed out with the coat hanger. It caught him flush across the face, opening a cut that spurted blood. He looked at her in shocked surprise and then he screamed once and fell backwards down the stairs.
She raced down after him and slashed him again with the hanger, but then he didn't get up. She started to run, and then she realized that he was unconscious. Apparently he had twisted his neck or had landed on his head. She could see him breathing. But he was lying still. His eyes were shut and the two stripes across his face where she had cut him were oozing blood.
She pulled him over onto his back and reached beneath his coat and found the gun tucked into his belt.
While she looked at it, he groaned. She looked down and saw that his eyes were opening.
"All right," she said. "Get up."
"Christ, I'm hurt," he whispered.
"You're going to be a lot worse hurt, baby, if you don't get up right now."
He pulled himself up to his feet and she motioned up the stairs with the gun. "Go on," she said. "Get up there. Into the bedroom where you had me."
* * *
She thought he looked odd that way, naked, his penis soft, his face afraid as he looked at the gun.
She made him lie on the bed and then she tied him the way they had had her tied, spread-eagled. Once he tried to grab her, but she cracked him with the gun barrel and he slumped back, tired, as if he hadn't quite regained his strength from having been knocked out in the first place.
Then, after she was sure he couldn't move, she went downstairs into the kitchen and found a knife.
She carried it back upstairs and she wanted to laugh out loud at the way his eyes widened when he saw the knife she was carrying.
"You don't like the looks of this," she said, her voice soft, caressing.
"What are you going to do?"
"What would I do with a knife?"
"Come on, Marianne, don't get crazy."
"Crazy? After what you did to me? Why would I get crazy?"
"We didn't really hurt you?" His voice rose into a question because he was frightened.
"Yes you did, and you remember about what you were going to do to me? You were going to burn me and you were going to stick a lighted cigar up in me and you were going to cut off my nipples and make me eat them ... you remember that?"
"I was just trying to scare you," he said. His voice was shaking even though he was obviously trying to keep it steady. His eyes kept drifting to the knife.
"And you killed Chuck Stewart. You think that didn't hurt me? I cared about him."
"I didn't know that. And I didn't mean to kill him anyway. It was an accident. I didn't even aim for the gun to go off."
She nodded.
"What are you going to do?" he said. "Carl's going to come back and catch you ... you're not going to get away with this."
"Carl's not coming back," she said. "Carl's dead ... I killed him ... and I think I'm going to kill you."
"Oh Christ," he said. "You've gone crazy."
She walked over to him and cupped his balls in her hand, squeezing them gently.
"Would you like me to cut these off?" she said.
"No...." Then he bit his lips and became silent. Evidently he was going to try to muster enough courage not to beg her, no matter what.
"It's all right," she said. "I'm not going to cut off your balls. You wouldn't have any desire for anything then. I wouldn't want that to happen to you."
She could see the relief in his eyes even though he didn't say anything, and she giggled a little.
"No, baby," she said, "what I'm going to do is cut off your cock. I'm going to leave your balls. You'll still want it, you just won't have anything left to do it with."
Then she laughed out loud.
SIXTEEN
"Oh, Jesus, Marianne, please...." he said.
She was holding his penis in her hand, working it back and forth, making it swell.
"Just hold out, baby," she said. "Don't let it get hard and I won't cut it...." She bent down and kissed it gently, sucking the head of it into her mouth, teasing it with her tongue to make it swell, wondering at the same time how he could get hard when he was so scared.
Then she backed up and looked down at him.
She laughed out loud.
"Poor baby," she said. "You don't like it at all when you're the one who's going to get hurt, do you."
He didn't say anything. He just looked up at her.
"Listen, don't worry," she said, "I'm not going to cut it all off at once. I'm going to do it about an inch at a time." She laughed. "Remember what a nice guy you were, going to give me just a little more time to live? Well, I'm nice too. I'm going to give you just a few more minutes to have a cock."
She laughed again. "Well, not a whole cock. Just a piece of one."
He seemed to be losing hope now, because some of the fear was leaving his eyes, replaced by a dull hopelessness that she knew from her own experience was worse than any fear.
"Why don't you go ahead and do it?" he said.
"What's your hurry?"
"Just get it over with and let me die then if that's what you're going to do."
"Die? I don't want you to die. I want you to live a long time without a cock. I want you to remember who it was that cut it off you. I want you to have a long time to remember that."
"You better kill me," he said, "because if you don't, I'll find you. If I have to look forever, I'll find you."
She took hold of his cock again and massaged it gently and then picked up the knife.
"Now, you bastard," she said. "I'm going to cut off the head of it. This is for Chuck Stewart and what I could have had with him, you bastard, and I hope it hurts like nothing you ever dreamed of...."
Then, from behind her, she heard Chuck Stewart say, "Marianne, don't ... don't do it, Marianne."
She turned, startled, and saw Chuck in the doorway and three other men behind him.
And then she fainted.
* * *
When she came to, she was lying on the couch downstairs. Chuck was with her. She could hear voices elsewhere in the house.
"What's happened?" she said.
"The cavalry arrived," he said, grinning at her. He was sitting on the couch beside her and she suddenly realized he was holding her hand.
"Did I faint?" she said.
"Did you faint? Just like Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. You couldn't have been more female. Of course, holding that guy's cock and preparing to cut it off sort of ruined your image as little miss helpless, but the fainting bit helped recoup."
"I thought you were dead," she said.
"No, my shoulder took a hell of a beating, but even that's not too bad. It's just a flesh wound. But then by the time I came to and found myself in the hospital, you were gone and so was Harwood. I figured he might bring you here again, but I didn't know where this place was. You just said it was outside Houston, so I've had every helicopter I could commendeer searching this area looking for a house that matched the description you gave me."
She reached up and put her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth.
"I'm so glad you got here," she said.
"I imagine Harwood is even gladder," he said, laughing. "Were you really going to do that?" Was she? She didn't know the answer. God knows, she had hated Harwood enough, but when the time came for really putting the steel into flesh, she didn't know whether she would have had the stomach for it.
Except she remembered what she had done to the black man. She had shot him. Of course, that hadn't been in cold blood. That had been in a moment of panic.
And Carl. She had smashed Carl. As it turned out, she hadn't killed him, but she had fractured his skull, and she certainly wasn't to blame for not having killed him. God knows, she had tried. The first blow had been in desperation, but not the second. The second blow was in cold blood, slowly, deliberately delivered, in rage, in revenge for humiliation, for violation.
But would she have used the knife?
Truthfully, she didn't know.
What she did know was this--she had hated him. She had enjoyed having the tables turned. She had enjoyed watching him plead with her, watching the fear in his eyes, thinking of what he had done to her and how she had finally won the battle.
She knew this: she had liked the idea of him being hurt. She had enjoyed thinking of him going through life without a penis, but, with his balls intact. With desire, with blood-pounding need, with all the equipment a man needs, except the final, most essential piece.
Like Joe Namath without his fingers. Everything else, even good knees, but no fingers to hold the ball, forced to watch lesser men because he lacked one last thing.
Like Frank Sinatra without his voice.
She looked up at him. "I don't think so," she said. "I just wanted to scare him. I thought he'd killed you and I wanted him to suffer, but I don't think I could really have done that."
"I hope not," he laughed, "because I'd hate to think of spending my life with a woman who might cut me off if I made her mad."
She laughed too and then he bent down to kiss her.
* * *
It was over now. She didn't know how he had managed to keep her out of the case. After all, she had smuggled narcotics into the United States, but somehow she never became anything but a friend of his who was kidnapped because of her relationship with him, and she never volunteered anything else.
Surprisingly, neither did Bob Harwood, except that maybe that wasn't so surprising since he was claiming perfect innocence, arguing that he didn't do a damn thing, that she and Carl had kidnapped him for ransom and that she had smashed Carl after arguing with him over money.
No one believed that, of course, but that was the best story he could come up with and he was stuck with it, so he couldn't very well implicate her in anything else.
She wondered whether he would be able to find a lawyer who would take his case with that kind of defense story. She supposed so. He obviously had plenty of money to pay for a lawyer, so he could tell any kind of story he wanted.
They were in her apartment in Dallas. He was sitting on her couch, his feet stretched out in front of him, watching the Cowboys play on television. He was sip-ping at a beer.
"Where are you going now?" she said.
"Going?" He looked at her in surprise.
"When you leave here."
"What makes you think I'm leaving here?"
"I suppose you get assigned somewhere else."
"Assigned?" He laughed. "Haven't I told you? I resigned."
"No, you didn't tell me," she said, "and I don't believe you anyway."
"Well, it's true. I'm going to open my own practice."
She laughed this time. "What are you, a doctor?"
"I'm a lawyer," he said. "At least I've got a law degree and I'm a member of the bar. I've never practiced law, but I'm tired of being a cop,. so now I'm now going to start being a lawyer. I'm tired of all that excitement"
"Maybe you can be Harwood's lawyer," she said.
He laughed, but then he looked away. "Listen," he said then, "we haven't talked much about what we're going to do."
"No."
She could hardly breathe suddenly, and then suddenly she was aware all over again how important this man was to her.
"What do you want to do?" he said.
"Whatever you want me to."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"I can't help wondering...."
"Wondering what?"
"What you really felt about Bob Harwood."
Of all the things she might have guessed that he was going to ask her, that would have been the last, except that then she knew he was even smarter than she had realized.
She remembered the feeling down in her guts even there at the end when she was holding that magnificent huge cock of Harwood's in her hand. Maybe that was why she didn't know what she would have done with the knife.
She remembered the night she had talked to him on the telephone, whispering, trying to set him against Carl, remembered wondering (jealously?) whether he was with another woman.
She remembered, too, something that Chuck couldn't possibly have known: the way she had felt right there at the last when Carl was taking her, the way her orgasms had exploded, the way she had wondered what kind of woman she was to be able to feel all that with a man like Carl.
And because she was unsure of herself, she sounded angry when she said, "I don't know how I felt. Maybe it's none of your business how I felt about him."
He nodded calmly. "You're right, it's none of my business, unless I plan to marry you, in which case I have every right to know whether you truly love me or whether you really wanted Harwood and just got had by him."
"Marry you," she said. "What makes you think I want to get married?"
"I just thought I'd ask." He put down his beer and stood up. "I didn't expect it to make you angry, but since it has, to hell with it." He walked toward the door.
"Oh, God, don't leave me," she said.
He turned, surprised and looked back.
"I need you," she said. "I don't know what gets into me sometimes, but I need you, I really need you, and if you leave me I don't know what will happen to me. Please don't leave me."
He came back to her then and put his arms around her and she leaned against his chest. "I don't want to leave you," he said. "I love you. I need you too. But I won't be able to stand it unless I know you're going to be faithful to me. I'll help you. I'll love you forever. But I won't stand for you taking any other man."
She felt warm then and good and loved and she raised her mouth to kiss him.
She could feel him swelling against her, even through their clothes, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, and when he stopped kissing her, she whispered, "Take me into the bedroom, please, and make love to me."
He picked her up into his arms and carried her through the apartment and into the bedroom. He put her down on the bed and undressed her slowly, caressing her gently, loving her, stopping to kiss her nipples when they were bared, kissing her belly as he pulled her panties down, loving her as he moved.
Loving her.
That was all the difference, she realized. Anyone who said sex wasn't any good without love didn't know what he was talking about. Sex was good for its own sake. It always had been. The old joke was right when it said the worst sex can be is fantastic, but sex with love is the best it can be, it's the mountain that every-thing else is measured against.
He was naked now, lying beside her.
"I love you," she said. "I really love you and I will always love you and I'll be good for you. I won't ever touch another man and I'll always be good for you."
He was touching her then, opening her, sliding down into her, moving in her.
He was filling her and she was coming almost instantly, the orgasms like jolting electric shocks, jarring her, making her want more and more as they kept coming.
Because she could tell that one last orgasm was coming, that these first ones were the buildup.
She knew that the giant was going to overtake her when he came with her. He was big inside her. Oh, God, he was so big, so hard, so much harder than she would have thought it was possible for a man to be, and moving faster now, opening her more than she ever had been before, filling her, taking her up until she had to cry out for him to fuck her, fuck her more, come in her.
She screamed once then and listened to him groan against her ear, feeling it as the stiff, jolting shots filled her, warming her and moistening her even more.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," she whispered then, "no one in the world ever fucked me as good as you do."
Her legs were still wrapped around him. She didn't want him to leave her yet. He was still hard and big and she didn't want him to take it away. She could still feel the tremors of that last giant orgasm.
He raised up on his elbows and looked down into her face, smiling a little.
"Good, baby?" he said.
She nodded. "Was it good for you?"
"Yes."
"Tell me ... tell me how good it was."
"As good as it can get," he said. "I love it when we make each other feel that way."
And that was the difference. The words they were saying had been said before, the actions had been experienced before, but now there was love, each other, meaning.
Together.
And it would be stay together for them because they loved each other. Which in a way was a miracle that she had never expected would happen to her.
She rolled aside then and bent down to take his softening cock into her mouth, lolling it against her tongue, and she loved the idea of the pleasure it was giving him.
And she remembered that somebody named Camus, who was a French writer or philosopher or something, once said: to love is to want to be loved. And for just one moment she thought she understood that, but then she felt his cock hardening in her mouth, and she wanted to laugh in pleasure. And she turned her attention back to her favorite activity.
