It wasn't that she had never laid another man, Jill thought, self-consciously turning her back as she unbuttoned her blouse. She had made love to two other men besides her husband; well-one boy and one man, and neither of the affairs had turned out to be much.
Jill slid out of the blouse and hung it on the back of the chair, her skin gone chilly and goosebumpy. Her husband had been the only real lover for her, the only man to truly arouse her passions and satisfy them.
Now she was only moments away from cheating on him, just seconds from giving the private places of her body to a stranger that she didn't love, and could never love.
Oh, lord, she thought, shivering and lifting one slow leg after the other from her jeans, don't let me make a botch of it; I have to put on a good act, have to make him desire me enough to do me favors in return. But she was so scared, so damned scared.
He said from behind her, "You have beautiful legs, Jill. They're long and sleek, and tanned from the sun. You must stay out in hotpants a lot."
She stood helplessly, her hands dangling, unable to reach up for the bra hook, for the elastic band of her panties. He wasn't a bad-looking man, she told herself, and she'd been more than a year without sex, ever since Steve shipped out to Vietnam. She ought to be stimulated, even eager for it.
"Let me," he said, and she was glad, in a weak way, that he was unhooking her bra.
His skin brushed hers with an electric shock, and she realized with a start that he was already stripped, that his naked, ready penis was touching her back. Then Jill flinched again, because he had dropped her bra and his warm hands were sliding around her rib cage to cup both her breasts. Her breath rasped in her throat, and a knot grew in her tummy; if only she wasn't so afraid.
His fingers mashed into her mounds, then caught her suddenly erectile nipples and rolled them. His breath was tickly in her ear: "Gorgeous tits, Jill-full and high, and these hard nipples ..." His penis jabbed into her back, and he made slow, grinding motions with it, rubbing its rigid length back and forth across the curves of her buttocks.
Jill closed her eyes and lifted her hands to his wrists. Gently, she drew them down to her waist, and placed them on the top of her panties. Forgive me, Steve, she prayed, but I'm doing this for you, to save something that means more to you than anything else.
The man slipped his thumbs into her panties and pulled them down, down, baring her rump to him, removing the final barrier between them, between Jill Devlin and the betrayal of her husband. Quickly, she kicked away her panties and gasped as he bent down his penis and let it lift between her legs. It nestled tightly against her pubic hair, the length of its hot roundness passing from the crack of her buttocks to beyond her groin and the tuft of honey-blonde hair.
Looking down, Jill saw the head of it standing out from her mound, all shiny and purpley and with a droplet of clear fluid glistening from the little mouth at its very tip.
She had never even kissed Boyce Pittman, and yet she was standing here with the cheeks of her ass pressed into his pubic mound, and staring wide-eyed down at the head of his penis. As she looked, his right hand came over her hip and across her belly, sliding slow and easy, to dip its fingers into her hair, to feel lightly, almost apologetically, for the hood that masked her clitoris.
His left hand felt for her left breast and found it waiting tremulously for his touch. "Jill," he breathed into her neck, into her ear, "oh, Jill baby-I never thought I'd get this chance, the chance to screw you good. You're so sweet and hot and beautiful-oh, baby, oh, baby ..."
Boyce's left hand squeezed down on her tit until there was pain, and the fingers of his right hand probed for her labia, slid up and down the lips of her quivering cunt, turning them wet and expectant. Jill was glad for that, too; she'd thought it might hurt, if she didn't love him, when he started to put it in her.
He was pushing her forward, moving her inexorably toward the bed-her own bed, the one she'd shared with her husband. Jill tried to turn in his arms, to face him, to at least kiss the man before allowing him full use of her body, but Boyce held her facing front. She had a ghastly premonition, knew a thrill of cold shock as she thought that he might be a pervert, that doing it straight wouldn't be enough for him. Oh Lord, she thought, oh, Lord! She'd never, never done it any other way, not even with her husband.
Numbly, she let herself be pushed onto the bed, only her hands outstretched to hold her bridged, with her feet still on the floor.
"Look at that," Boyce groaned. "Oh, what an ass, and the way your tits hang down-oh, Jill, oh, baby, I'm going to screw you until you faint!"
He pushed her down some more, and Jill turned her face to put her cheek against the bedspread. Her breasts flattened themselves to the stitched silk also, and she closed her eyes again, going tense with the anticipation of something awful about to happen. She felt the probing as he held one hand on her hip and used the other to guide the spongy head of his penis into her-into her- Her pussy! Not anywhere else, but just coming in the back way, the head of his thing parting the lips of her mound, pushing itself steadily into Jill's vagina. Relieved, she sighed aloud, and her pussy gave an unconscious little wiggle of welcome to the stiff meat entering it.
Both Boyce's hands were on her hips now, moving down and spreading her cheeks wider so he could more easily feed his staff up into her slowly stretching vagina. It was an average penis, she thought-not any bigger than her husband's, and not smaller, but different by its unfamiliarity and the method in which it was being used.
Jill's hands caught at the bedspread when he gave a lunge that buried his rod to the hilt inside her pussy. Grunting softly, Boyce pulled back until she could feel the distended lips of her inner labia around the head of his penis; then he slipped it deep again, slid it home with a long, twisting stroke that she felt from her mound to the entrance of her womb.
"Umm!" she moaned involuntarily, and Boyce responded by quickening his strokes, but thrusting his thing solidly into her box, faster and faster, until she and the bed shook from the force of his drives.
She was doing it. She was laying another man, and worse than the mere fact of sexual betrayal was another thought: she was beginning to enjoy it! Oh, no! she thought; Oh, no-this just can't be possible! Jill Devlin was no loose woman, no abandoned bitch with a streak of nymphomania, but a woman in love with her husband. Yet-oh, Lord-she was starting to feel the sensations, the slippery, frothy feelings of hot, good strokes. Her clit was swelling, throbbing sensuously with each thrust of his cock.
"Oh, your cock!" she said into the crumpled bedspread, and the swinging of her hiked ass became pronounced, real in the gyrations she made so she might feel the entire meaty prong that was running itself in and out of her clenching pussy. "Give it to me, lover! Oh, feed it to me deep and strong-oh, yes, lover-yes, Boyce darling! Stick it to me-oh-oh ..."
Panting, he drove it into her vagina and jerked it back for another plunge. His hands trembled on the cheeks of her uptilted ass, and she could sense the coming explosion that was building within the testicles that slapped against her upper thighs with wet noises. So Jill hurried feverishly to match his approaching climax, grinding and humping, digging her fingernails into the bed for better leverage. She shook it to him, pulled and rotated upon the meaty rod that was blurring in and out of her frantic cunt.
"Uhh!" he groaned. "Uhh-oh, baby-I'm coming, coming!"
Writhing, she came a heartbeat behind the stuff she felt spitting into her sheath. Her clit vibrated madly and Jill bit into the bed, clawed into it as her ass kept humping, humping on that fantastic feeling. His semen spurted into her, splashed against her womb as the head of his prick flexed, let go, and flexed again. The length of it was hard, powerful, and Boyce had it crammed to the balls inside her vagina, using his hands on her hips to try and shove his tool even deeper.
"Beautiful," he kept saying softly, "oh, beautiful, beautiful!"
She began to feel a strain, to ache slightly here and there, so Jill let her tummy drop forward, and his penis made a plop as it slipped out of her and drew a sticky trail between the cheeks of her ass. Still breathing raggedly, still not quite able to believe that she had responded, in such a bitchy way, Jill knew a flush of embarrassment. Drawing the crinkled spread around her exposed body, she rolled away from that edge of the bed and sat up, vainly trying to cover her breasts.
"Don't hide them," Boyce said. "They're too pretty to hide. I want to do a lot of things to your tits, Jill-kiss them and lick them, and maybe bite them a little. I want to-to put it between them and squeeze them together on my shaft, and feel your tits around it, feel them up against my balls."
Her face was warm, sweaty. Moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue, Jill said, "I-let's have a drink, Boyce. I mean, this is all so new to me, doing-something like this. I'm not used to being so-so casual about things."
"Sure," he said, "let's have a few shots, first. I'm not used to it, either. My wife is-so frigid I haven't touched her in months, and with my position in town, I can't just go up to any woman and say-"
"Straight, Boyce, just a little ice?" She had the spread around her like a toga, a sarong, something that wrapped and hid her body but not the new marks etched into her being with virulent acids.
She brought him Scotch on the rocks, a big drink. Hers was bigger, but she cut it down some before turning back to the bed. Boyce lay there nakedly unconcerned, looking down at his nude body from time to time as if surprised that he could relax that way before a woman. His penis wasn't relaxed; it still throbbed erect, and Jill bit her lip. She didn't want to go through another session with him just now. She was in too much turmoil, too disturbed emotionally.
But, yet-hastily, she averted her eyes from the erection. "Here's to-something. Us, maybe."
"To us." He sat up and grinned at her. Boyce Pittman had to be pushing forty, yet he looked boyish and unwrinkled. He drank half his Scotch and said, "I knew you'd be-adaptable, Jill. There's no reason for us to be enemies, just because my bank holds the notes on your place. So when you called me today, I thought-well, I'm very happy I came. Yes, very happy."
No commitment, she thought; no promise yet about holding off those overdue notes on the ranch, at least until her husband got back from Vietnam. Steve might have some ideas about holding off foreclosure; but all she could do about it was just what she was doing. Drinking down her Scotch, Jill Devlin let the converted bedspread slip from one shoulder. A camera, she thought; maybe if she had somebody to take pictures of this respected family-man-banker-pillar-of-society while she turned him on. It might be possible to blackmail him into holding off, so she had to think about arranging that, later. Now was for keeping him close and interested.
Softly, she said, "I'm glad, too, Royce. It's been so long, and you're so-so virile." Leaning, she took his empty glass and felt his eyes on her bared breast. "Another drink and then we'll kind of get to know each other better. There are so many things a man and a woman ought to know about each other."
"Yes," he said, "of course. I-my wife never knew how I felt about doing it. About sex and how much fun it can be. I mean, she thinks screwing is animal and dirty, and somehow, she makes me feel like that, too. Damn it, she makes me sneak around like-oh, look, Jill; I don't mean you. You were something totally different and unexpected, but I'll admit I was hoping for some opportunity to know you, to-well, to discover if you're as voluptuous as you look. And you are; oh, yes, you are."
She sat on the side of the bed, one breast bared like some primitive tribeswoman, gulping Scotch and hoping that she could carry this all the way through, that somehow she could make this man hold off just a little longer. If her husband came home to find nothing left of the ranch, the place where he'd been born, she didn't know what would happen. Steve Devlin wasn't a gentle man.
"Thank you," she murmured. "I've been lonely out here, trying to keep things going."
Boyce put a hand on her leg, and she looked into the remains of her drink. Except for this thing about exposing himself, this bottled-up sex that seemed to bother him, Boyce Pittman was really a bit prissy and smug, and she already knew enough about him not to be fooled by that little-boy exterior. He was a cold and merciless man of ambition, they said in town; a driver who got things done, and done his way.
A hungry man, they whispered, one who maneuvered and manipulated, and came out on top of the money pile, richer and stronger than ever. But no matter how much he took, how much property he fed on, they said he never got enough.
And Boyce Pittman held just a shade over twenty thousand dollars worth of overdue notes on the Rafter D. He could clamp down on the place any time he wanted. But she was trying to hold off that time, and although Jill knew that her body wasn't worth twenty thousand dollars to any connoisseur, she was trading it for a few days, a few weeks.
She felt his lips brush the nipple of her naked breast, and turned to press the mound to him. "Go on, Boyce-do whatever you want; do anything you want.
Hold him, she thought; hold off the axe.
He nursed her nipple as if he was a baby, kneading the softness of her breast with his fingers, licking and sucking, pulling in the nipple, making softly moaning noises. She saw his penis, stiff and still damp from the blending of their juices, and she stroked his hair, whispered little endearments to him.
The whisky was working inside Jill; she wasn't used to much of it, and the stuff warmed her, made this scene acceptable. It had to be done, she thought, forcing her mind away from her husband, from the look that would be on Steve's face if he happened to walk in just now and catch her naked in another man's arms.
Steve would never understand, so she would never tell him. She'd give herself up to Boyce, be whatever he wanted her to be, and Steve didn't have to know.
"H-here," Boyce husked around her wet nipple. "Here, do it to me like this-play with me; play with me."
Obediently, she took hold of his penis; it was warm and smooth in her hand, a big, swollen head, the rigid staff below, the thick base set in heavily curled pubic hair. She saw flecks of gray in the red-brown hair, and fondled his cock slowly, bringing her fingers up and down on it, squeezing the head, then letting go to stroke the length once more.
"Yes, yes," he hissed into her tit. "Oh, yes, mama. Sweet-sweet ..." and still talking, he pulled her body over on top of his own, his legs spread wide. "Put it in, mama-put it in deep!"
The head prodded at her labia, and she accepted it easily, smoothly, because those lips were already wet, giving the lie to her reticence. But she wasn't, she protested silently, inanely to herself; she was not one of those terrible women who only had to be touched by a man to give in. Yet here she was, mounting Boyce's cock with anticipation of another orgasm. It was for the Rafter D, she insisted; it had to be, because she would never, never have done this with the banker if circumstances hadn't forced her.
"That's nice," he panted, both hands on her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her buttocks. "Oh, that's nice and hot inside, all slick and tight. Lovely pussy, Jill-an enchanted pussy."
She rode his cock; she rocked back and forth on its upright stiffness, feeling the rub against her clitoris, the deeply gratifying roundness that filled her vagina. Maybe it was all wrong, and possibly she should not allow herself to enjoy screwing anyone but Steve, but Jill couldn't help herself. It seemed that once a prick was in her, she had to do it justice.
Blissfully, she ground her ass and worked her pubic mound. It was good and she was good. She closed her eyes and screwed on.
Chapter Two
At the bank, Boyce Pittman was a different man, but when Jill looked across the big, polished desk at him, she could also see the nakedness and the red-brown hair that grew so thickly in his crotch. Seeing that in her mind, she could remember how he had turned her on yesterday, because now he had that flinty, ungiving look.
"Just dropped by," she said, sinking into a rich leather chair and crossing her legs. She was wearing faded jeans and boots now, but she knew how the pants clung, and saw his eyes flick to her man's shirt, where her breasts pushed against the thin material. Arching her back to make them more prominent, she said, "I had to pick up some feed and stuff for the ranch, so I thought I'd make sure how much more time you're giving me-on the note."
Pittman cleared his throat and leaned back in his leather swivel chair; it was built tall and wide, with a regal scroll up top. He said, "Well, Mrs. Devlin-there are my responsibilities to the stockholders of this bank. The note is far overdue and . . . "
She put her purse on the thick carpet beside her chair and ran both hands across her belly, sliding the fingers insinuatingly from her navel to her hipbones and back again. Legs stretched and parted, she stared at him; Jill licked at the ripeness of her lips, and said, "Oh, you can find a way. A brilliant man like you can always find ways to circumvent rules meant for more ordinary men. All we need is just a little more time. I thought you and I had discussed all this yesterday."
"Ah, yes," he said, and she noticed how his eyes moved toward the closed office door. "Yesterday was-very interesting, but I seldom mix business with pleasure. If you have more time, how is your husband going to pay off twenty thousand dollars? Not on a sergeant's income."
Jill continued to rub her groin, now dropping her hands to stroke the tips of her fingers along her full thighs. "Oh, but you forget the reenlistment bonuses the army's giving these days. If Steve reenlists instead of retiring at twenty years, he can draw as much as we owe the bank, or more."
Pittman made a steeple of his fingers and tried not to look at her thighs. "And if he doesn't reenlist?"
She shrugged, making certain that her breasts jiggled with the motion of her shoulders. "He'll bring home some money-travel pay, unused leave time, ration money, savings-all that. I don't know just how much, but at least it will be enough to pay the interest. And there's the calf crop, the new foals."
Pittman leaned forward and shuffled papers on his desk. Jill could see the indecision working in him, and read the play of emotions that he struggled with, but she didn't think too many people would interpret them as well. Because she was a woman who had known him intimately, she could reach intuitively below the surface and sense his actions. Others would see only the near-expressionless face; others wouldn't have the sexual contact she had, and perhaps not be able to dangle its lure before Boyce Pittman.
"The calf crop, the foals," he said. "Beef prices are fairly high, but those quarterhorses-"
"We'll get rid of most of them," she cut in, "soon as Steve comes home, just keep the old stud and a mare or two. We've learned that you have to build a reputation for running horses, in order to sell them, but we just haven't had the time or money."
"Ah, yes, the money." Pittman lifted a ballpoint and clicked it, made quick, precise notes on a pad. "I can stretch a point or two, with you. For a while, that is, Mrs. Devlin. As you said, there are methods; but I can't simply ignore my duties to the bank, even though there are-compensations."
Slowly, gracefully, Jill stood up. Lifting her arms high, she adjusted the straw cowboy hat on her honey-blonde hair, and knew that her breasts were standing out in bold relief. With a little roll of her hips, she leaned for her purse, turning at an angle so that Pittman could see the way her jeans hugged her buttocks. She felt wanton, bitchy, but there was just a little undercurrent of desperation in her, also; she had to keep Boyce Pittman on the hook, until after her husband got home. Besides, there was a new awareness in her body, a fever that had been brought out by the stimulation of a new and different man.
"I'll be available for a conference," she said, "any time you feel you might have a question or two. The only hand I have at the ranch is old Dink Watson, and he stays in the barn."
Pittman's eyes raked over her again with an almost physical impact, touching her breasts and moving down her flanks to settle into the base of her groin, trying to probe through the cloth that covered her pubic mound.
"Yes," he said, "yes, I'll call you very soon."
"Please do," she said. "There are still so many things to-discuss."
His eyes flickered, and she thought he might come around the desk and kiss her, perhaps run his hands over her body and follow the route his eyes had already traveled. But here he was a different man, proper and calculating, so he only flushed slightly and nodded, and of course, stood up as she left his office.
Jill was conscious of the way her thighs brushed in passing, of her nipples pushing into her shirt. It would have been fun, doing it right there in the staid surroundings of the Mid-Oregon Trust Bank, squirming naked and hot on that deep pile carpet while the bank president fed the meat to her. Boyce would never let himself go to that extent, though; he was first the banker, then the lover. Or the luster, she thought; nobody had said anything about love.
She was still in love with her husband, with Steve Devlin, Master Sergeant, United States Army. He was eleven years older than Jill, and more than two decades of soldiering had scarred and weathered him, but he knew how to treat a woman; there was tenderness in him, and an abiding devotion. There were two or three things that flawed him, and one was his profession, the army. The army was his true wife, and any other woman could only be a temporary mistress, until that first love affair had run its course.
Sergeant Devlin's first wife hadn't been able to hold on; she'd taken their kids and called off the marriage, and so far as Jill knew, he hadn't seen or heard from them since. Jill had been his wife for nine years, and traveled with him until they inherited the ranch. She couldn't have gone to Vietnam with him, anyhow, so she tried running the ranch until he made up his mind about getting out. She hadn't done so well with it.
And now she had cheated on Steve, for the first time in their married life, for the first time in nine pretty good years, except for the separations. But it was a good part his fault, at that. He'd lost his last reenlistment bonus in a crap game. All that money just tossed away, while he knew damned well his parents' ranch had a mortgage on it.
Her pickup was parked down the street from the bank, feed sacks piled into the bed, salt blocks and a roll of barbed wire that Dink Watson said he needed. It seemed that everything went for the animals, she thought; there was only a small box of groceries for Dink and herself. Jill climbed into the truck and started it; as she pulled away, the mirrors showed her a gray Buick easing from the curb, also.
She wheeled the truck on down the main street of Midway, turning off the main highway and onto the state road three miles out. There was more dust here, and she stayed ahead of it, avoiding the bumps and dips from habit, slowing for the curves she knew so well. Another turn to the right, and she drove along a little used county road.
Her sensuousness bothered her, nagged at her body, and she thought this was something like being awakened that first time by Steve. This constant awareness of her skin and flesh was that way, akin to the flowering that had happened to her after her first sexual experience with the man who was soon to be her husband.
She hadn't been a virgin, but she wished she had been, so he could have been the one to take her cherry. It would have made a big difference, for the first two fumbling boys she had known had just about turned her off on sex, and she was practically a twenty-year-old frigid woman, until Steve Devlin came along.
The truck hit a low spot in the road, and jolted her back to the present, but Jill pressed her thighs warmly together and smiled at the residue of memory. Steve Devlin was a tender and accomplished lover, a learned practitioner in the sensual arts, but he was also thoughtful and considerate; he never forced anything on a woman that she didn't seem to want.
So there had never been any oral contact, nor any perversion about the anus; but everything else, she thought-every other wildly delightful position that two passionate people could get into. It had been more than enough to keep Jill content, so long as Steve was in the country. She supposed it had been good for him, too; he always stayed close to home and paid constant attention to her, when he was stateside.
But he wasn't stateside now, and hadn't been for too long a time. And the damned ranch had to be held onto, for they had no place else to go, except back into the great olive drab womb for the rest of their lives. Jill had just about had it with the army, and two wars should have put it down for Steve, too, only she wasn't all that certain about him. His letters never came right out and said he was retiring.
She turned the truck onto Rafter D land, and held to the wheel as it bounced over the rutted road that led half a mile back to the ranch house. It was good land, encircled by forest and with enough water to irrigate more than two hundred of its acres; there was pasture land besides, and even if all the fences were going bad, they could be fixed up. Happening to glance into a side mirror, Jill caught the reflection of sunlight off another car, a wink of metallic silver that puzzled her.
She let the truck idle in neutral, watching the mirrors, and after a while, the car came back down the county road, moving slowly; she could make out two men in the gray Buick-one big man and a slim one. The car hesitated at the ranch sign, then pulled off in a billowing of stirred dust. Jill frowned as she drove on; there was only a dead end farther up the road; any other ranches were down the other way. The Rafter D bordered national forest land on three sides, and any car coming this far up the road couldn't be going anywhere else.
Tourists, she thought, and passed beneath the big log gateway with the hanging sign, bumping over the cattle guard below it. Then she remembered seeing the gray car as it came from the curb near the bank in town. Her frown deepened; was she being followed for some strange reason known only to Boyce Pittman? Was he actually jealous?
The stock in the near pasture looked fine, she thought; if they could only hold the herd together for a few more years, just selling off the runt calves and breeding selectively, the Rafter D would be in good shape. Cut down on the horses, and pour that much more feed into the Herefords, and it wouldn't take long.
As she pulled the truck up to the barn, the stallion hung his head over the corral fence and whinnied at her. Not Comet D, she thought; not the stallion; they'd keep him, if everything else had to go.
Taking the box of groceries from the pickup bed, she carried them toward the house, leaving the truck for Dink to unload when he came in from riding fence. Jill looked down near the house and saw tire tracks that she hadn't left there, off to one side in the dry dirt. Not a car, though; another truck. She shook her head, and went on into the house, into the kitchen where she put the grocery box on a table.
Somebody else had come to visit, then; Boyce Pittman drove a money-saving Toyota. Maybe a Buick would have heavy tires like those that had left the tracks, but she doubted it. She didn't like it, either. Too many things were disturbing the usual calm schedule of the ranch, and they bothered Jill.
She bothered herself, too. Damn, she thought, reaching into the box and setting cans up on a shelf near the stove; after the lay she'd gotten yesterday, she should be docile and more or less content, but instead, her body seemed to be crying out for more and more.
It had after Steve first laid her. She thought of him again, of the masculine gentleness he exuded, the charm he could display to a woman. Steve Devlin had been all over the world, and his travels taught him many things, especially about women, although Jill had often wondered why his screwing wasn't affected by all the different kinds of women he'd known. But she didn't really want it different, she decided long ago; she was perfectly content with Steve's screwing just as it was-slow and tender and deeply gratifying.
He would put his face between her breasts, and the warmth of his breath made her skin tingle, made her nipples rise straight up. His hands would cup her breasts, push down on them, and his mouth would taste first one blunt point, then the other, giving both of them equal treatment and equal time.
Then his hands would stray below, caressing her rib cage, drifting to her hips, and there they would separate, one hand dipping around to fondle one haunch, as if he was weighing and complimenting the cheek of her ass. The other hand would trail over her belly, dawdle awhile at the belly button, then wander down, down to her pubic mound. And all the while, he would be licking, sucking, pulling lightly and lovingly upon her nipples.
Jill's mound would surge upward, push its hairy softness into the palm of his hand and her labia would puff themselves, expand in eagerly damp anticipation for the coming caress of his finger.
Steve wouldn't keep her waiting long; he'd tease awhile, sliding a fingertip up and down the lips of her vulva, making her slippery, making her quiver and squirm for more. About then, she would grab for his penis, and squeeze its hard warmth in her hand until he stopped tickling and eased his finger into her ready vagina. Steve was very good with his fingers; one of them would explore the hood and finally the clitoris, stroking it to a state of savage excitement, and two other fingers would fill the entrance to her vagina, while a thumb teased her anus. He never went any farther than just teasing her anal ring, but the very touch of anything there turned her on so much that she would be burning to screw.
Then Steve would mount her, or have her crawl over and ride his penis, or turn so that they were side by side, with one of her legs lifted over him. It changed around often, sometimes even during their lovemaking; she had sat upon his cock facing away from him, and he had done it dog fashion to her, using her dangling tits for handholds as he thrust his stiff penis steadily up inside her clenching vagina.
He never came before she did, always holding back until she had reached at least one orgasm, and more often two, before letting go and pumping himself strongly, hungrily into her until he also came. Then she would shake and grind and luxuriate in the most intimate sensation in the world-that of a man's hot semen shooting into her pussy, filling the pulsating sheath of it with juicy oils. Jill dug that the most, and tried to match his moment of ecstasy, or failing that, to come quickly upon the spurting of his liquids.
Sweet and understanding, Steve was; never hurried and never abrupt. She was so very lucky to have gotten a man like him. Oh, there were moments of anger, of flare-up and edge of violence that he sometimes showed her, and she had noticed how other men walked softly around her husband.
But Steve had never slapped her, even when she yelled at him about getting drunk, or gambling money they needed. Usually he just rode out her temper storms in silence, or walked out. Still, she wouldn't trade him for any man she'd ever met.
Jill found herself staring down at the stove, and opened a can of soup, broke out some hot dogs from the freezer. Dink Watson preferred to do his own cooking, and usually ate mulligan or beans-when he ate. The first few days of every month, the old hired hand didn't eat, he drank. He was useless then, passed out in his bunk or mumbling at ancient shadows in the barn. At least he didn't smoke, and she'd learned to accept the odor of snuff about him, to step wide of where he was aiming.
She looked at the hot dogs boiling, and saw the phallic symbolism in them, the upcurving shapes that suggested the male organ in erection. She liked them thicker than that, she thought-and longer; besides, the wieners had no flared heads. Jill felt her face go warm and poured mushroom soup into a heavy mug; if the soup was lighter, creamier, she'd find identity in that, too.
What if Steve found out she'd been laying another man? Jill sat down at the kitchen table and looked into the steaming cup. She wasn't certain just what his reaction would be, but she had a hunch it could be dangerous. They had talked of separations, of needs they both would have, and Steve was frank about making it with prostitutes, especially in a combat area. Halfheartedly, he'd offered her the same relief, so long as she was careful and discreet, but Jill said, "Oh, no; never! I'm not like that, because with me it has to be love, not just sex, so that means you, and nobody else." But now she knew better.
Chapter Three
Jill wished she'd worn something else to town, but she was so used to her work clothes that it hadn't seemed to matter. But now, whenever she stooped over a vegetable bin, or bent to find canned foods on a lower shelf, she was conscious of every move. Men had always looked at her, and she was kind of proud of drawing attention, but now it seemed that the stares were more lascivious, that eyes clung to her legs and buttocks, that eyes penetrated her shirt and found the heavy nipples torturing themselves there.
She looked up, a bag of onions in one hand, and the stock boy grinned down at her. Before he turned quickly away, she could have sworn she saw a bulge in the front of his pants. Jill dropped the bag into her shopping cart and steered it down the aisle of the market. She had no real business being in town again so soon; the shopping could have waited. But she'd been edgy at the ranch, jumpy over things that shouldn't have bothered her.
Why the hell hadn't Boyce Pittman been out to see her? He hadn't even called, and she damned him for being so overcautious, for worrying about his family man image. She needed to be screwed, and she wasn't about to go around looking for stock boys who happened to have hard-ons.
That would be a quick way to get her name smeared all over the county, where Steve Devlin could read it loud and clear, as soon as he came home. Then it would all be for nothing, and Steve himself would no doubt kick the ranch down the road. He could always reenlist and ship out to some other exotic part of the world, and say the hell with civilian life and all its headaches.
And leave Jill to do what? She didn't want to think about it. She checked out the groceries and said, "Yes, Mr. Sutton, it's a nice day and I'm sure the hay will make well this year." Then she hauled the stuff out to the truck because she didn't want a box boy around. Or any other kind of boy; she wanted a man.
One of them stood leaning against her truck, his thick elbow propped on the door handle; the other lounged at the light post nearby. The man at the truck was heavy, very thick through the chest and hairy as a horse in his winter coat; his eyebrows were bushy and his face was darkly watchful. He didn't smile at her, just leaned there and looked.
The slim man was cute, in the way a girl is cute; she saw how his long hair curled over his collar, and the care with which it had been combed and sprayed into place. She saw his simpering smile, and then she looked at his eyes. They were something else, so pale they were almost colorless.
The slim one came closer and said, "Mrs. Devlin, owner of the Rafter D?"
"You ought to know," she said. "You followed me home the other day. Where's your gray Buick?"
He laughed-a high, girlish spate of laughter, and stroked his left hand over his hair. "See, Jojo-I told you she was bright and alert. Oh, pardon me, Mrs. Devlin-that's Jojo holding up your truck, and I'm Lang. Say hello to the bright lady, Jojo."
Jojo said, "Come off that shit."
Lang minced closer yet and held out a card. "Poor Jojo; he's still struggling with two syllable words, but he does have his uses. I think he really could hold up your truck-in pieces, if need be."
Jill glanced down at the business card. "Who's Aaron Mercer?"
Lang giggled. "Oh my; everyone should know that. Still, this is so far out in the hinterlands, that I suppose-"
"Knock off the shit," Jojo grunted, "and tell her."
Lang raised an eyebrow at the big man, and shrugged. To Jill he said, "Mr. Aaron Mercer would like to see you. He's staying at the only motel in town, The Shorthorn." He giggled again. "And that is ridiculous, where Mr. Mercer is concerned."
Jill looked up the street and saw a rancher she knew; she glanced down the street and saw some other people come out of the store. She said, "I'm not going to any motel to meet anybody. If he wants to see me, he can find my telephone number in the book. Now you, Jojo-get the hell off my door handle before I start yelling help."
The big man moved casually away, never taking his eyes off her. Lang said hurriedly, "But Mr. Mercer said ..."
Pushing by him, Jill climbed into her truck and slammed the door. She was angry, but there was a chill in her, too. She drove quickly away, down to the end of the street before turning into a station for gas and use of the pay phone. That pair would scare the stuffing out of a turkey, she thought-the big, animal one; the slim, cute one with eyes like a blind rattlesnake. She dialed the number of the bank and got through to Boyce Pittman.
"Why, Mrs. Devlin-I thought we had most everything settled-"
"It's about my note," she said, in case anyone was listening at the switchboard. "I'm going to the ranch now, and if you could possibly find time-"
"Ah, I think so," he said. "I have to look at some property out that way later today, if that would be all right?"
"Just fine," she said. "I'll be waiting." And after she hung up the phone, Jill wondered why she hadn't asked him about Mr. Aaron Mercer.
On her way home, she thought about that, about a man who used thugs as messengers, about thugs who followed her to the ranch, and a feeling of premonition came over her again. She put it aside, but it came back to ride in the bouncing cab like a ghost of a gray monkey, clinging to windows and knobs with tiny, worrisome claws.
Then she was on Rafter D land, and the sun was brighter. She wheeled the truck right on up to the house and climbed down. Peering over at the barn, she didn't see Dink Watson around; she carried her shopping inside and wondered about that, too. Dink was usually close to home this time of day, when the cows came up to be fed and the horses gathered for graining. Maybe he was still working on fence, she thought, but looked out the kitchen window a time or two, anyhow.
The telephone rang stridently, and she picked it up. "Yes?"
"This is Aaron Mercer." The voice was soft, but there was steel under the softness, and an exciting timbre. "I'd like to see you."
"N-not today," she said. "I-I'm expecting someone else."
"Pittman?"
Jill blinked into the receiver. "Why, yes, but-"
"It would be better if he doesn't know you've talked to me. May I see you tomorrow afternoon, then?"
"I-suppose so," Jill said.
"And I apologize for my men," Mercer said. "They're all I brought with me this time. Until tomorrow, Mrs. Devlin."
He didn't say good-bye, and she found that she had not expected him to; somehow, Jill felt that Mr. Aaron Mercer would be different from other men, not bound by custom or tradition. His voice had stirred something in her, and she thought she must be freaking out, that she was turning round-heeled. Now all a man had to do was talk to her, and she got those little squiggles all through her body.
Don't tell Pittman, he said; it would be better if she didn't. Better for whom, for what? Jill bit her lip and walked to the cabinet over the sink. Unlocking it with a key from her ring, she took down a fifth of pretty good bourbon. From long habit, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Dink Watson was nearby, for he could smell the stuff from a country mile away. That's why the cabinet was kept locked, for Dink's protection; he'd never break into anything to get whiskey, but if it was left out, he'd "find" it, and finders, keepers.
She had a long drink, and poured another in a water glass. Once Dink got the feeding done, he'd cook his stew on the little stove in his room and watch his small TV for a while, then go to bed. He didn't come to the house unless she called him, or unless she wasn't there. Dink had worked for the Devlins for twenty-five years, since Steve was a kid, and he took a while to accept new people. After nine years, Jill was still new people.
He wouldn't come nosing around after Boyce got here; that was ranch business, her business, and Dink Watson wouldn't be interested. That was good; she had an itch that only Boyce could scratch right now, and it was past time for working at it. Just for the Rafter D, she told herself; Boyce hadn't come right back to her, after those first sexual samples, so he might be trying to slide out of his end of the bargain.
But he'd promised her some time, and she needed that, as much as she needed his maleness. And she'd made him happy, gratified him, turned him into a little boy nursing at his mama's breast. For all Boyce's power and financial wizardry, he was still a juvenile in sex. A frigid wife, he said; a lack of warmth and giving, and a man in his position had to be careful. Belatedly, Jill thought again of a camera, of pictures during copulation that might force Boyce Pittman to keep hands off the ranch. If she had to do something so underhanded, she would, but right now, she'd just worry through without blackmail.
She heard the car and gulped down her glass of whiskey. Leaping up, she scurried about the living room, straightening up and making largely ineffectual passes with her kerchief at imaginary dust. Still in shirt and jeans and boots, she was furious with herself for loafing so long, for not showering and making herself all frilly and perfumy.
She met him at the door. "Hi, banker; come on in."
Boyce walked stiffly erect, his briefcase swinging in precise arcs. He wore an Italian silk suit, cut with just a hint of mod, and his tie had a splash of vivid color, but the rest of him was conservative. His red-brown hair was cut close and his sideburns were of an acceptable length.
He said, "I'm glad you called, Jill. I-well, I've been trying to make myself stay away from you. Nothing like you has ever happened to me before, and I don't like not being in complete control of myself."
She took his briefcase, put it on the couch. Then she went to stand close to him, so that the points of her breasts could brush his shirt, so that he could feel just the kiss of her hipbones before she slipped away. "Drink, Boyce?"
"Why, yes. I don't have to get back to the bank today, and I don't have to hurry home, either. My wife has a meeting early, and ..."
She left him in the living room and poured two drinks. Already, the pair she'd downed were causing her ears to buzz and the blood to move more quickly through her veins. She brought the drinks back and touched his glass with hers. "Here's to swingers. You turn me on, Boyce, more than I thought was possible. I've never cheated before, you know, and now it seems that I can't stop with you. Drink up, lover, so you can help me take a shower."
His eyes widened. "I think I'd like that. If you're sure nobody will come to the house-"
"Old Dink is still out on the fence line," she said. "Come on!"
Gulping down his whiskey, Boyce followed her into the bedroom. She was undressed before him, because he folded his clothing, or hung it carefully over the back of the chair, and Jill only kicked hers into a corner. In the shower stall, she got the water going hot and full of needles, and when she turned to pick up the soap, he was in with her and pulling the door shut behind himself.
A little high on liquor and higher on anticipation, Jill slid a soapy hand over his penis, and laughed at the gasp it drew from him. "Wash my back," she demanded, and turned away from him.
His hands were shaky, but they moved over her wet flesh with an intriguing slipperiness. He soaped her back, beginning at the nape of her neck and running his palms down her spine, down her hips, making bubbly caresses over her cheeks, and she felt the touch of his hard penis. Reaching behind, she caught his wrists and brought his hands around so he could fondle lather over her breasts, and she rolled her ass back against him as he did so.
"Ahh," he breathed, and hugged her closer, shoving his cock against her, grinding his testicles into the crack of her ass. "Ahh, Jill-what a magnificent animal you are-so alive, and warm, so giving."
She turned in his arms, foamy and with water purling off her skin, the soapsuds washing down to make colorful jewels in the honey-blonde curlings of her pubic hair. "This way," she panted, "oh, Boyce-do it to me like this!"
He stood with his feet braced apart, stood uncertainly as she climbed up on the edges of the tub, her hands upon his shoulders to help her balance. Jill slipped her legs around his waist then, and the water roared down over them as she locked her thighs about Boyce's body.
"Put it in," she begged wetly, her lips on his, "oh, put it in me!"
Fumbling, Boyce guided the head of his penis up and found her slippery labia, and the head of it popped into her ready cuntlips without hesitation. "Uhhh!" he grunted, and settled it home to the roots as Jill wiggled her ass to make it fit solidly.
Then she leaned back until her shoulder blades touched the tiled wall, and the hot, needling water lanced down over her tits, over her writhing belly. He pounded it up her, battering the thickness of his shaft against her wet and hairy labia, grunting and sighing as he worked the head of his cock deep into her vagina. Jill rippled her sheath around his tool, ground her ass to make it touch everywhere inside her, and gasped as her clit was rubbed by every stroke.
"Oh, do it to me!" she moaned. "Stick it deep in me, lover! Hammer it up my pussy until I can't breathe, until I just can't take it any more! Oh! Oh, yes-oh, darling!"
Straining, coming up on his toes to make the penetrating thrusts, Boyce Pittman fed her his cock, rode his slippery prick in and out of her shuddering envelope with savage determination.
Her body rocked and bounced, and her tits jiggled. He held tightly to her waist and lunged for all he was worth, excited by the water, the sleek tingling of her flesh, by this new position she had made him use.
"Umm!" Jill groaned, and rolled her head from side to side, matching the heavings of her ass. "Oh, baby, I'm coming-I'm coming!!"
The thrills shot through her, raced crazily and starbursting from the center of the universe, her clitoris, the geysering golden sparks radiated to every cell of her vagina, her womb itself. She felt the head of his drilling cock expand, felt him shudder and hesitate in his strokes, and then the wondrous flushing ejaculated inside her pussy, the beautiful hotness that was hotter than the water and more slippery than the soap. He came, and came again, and she thought that each spurt of his release was almost as strong as the first.
Then it stopped, and she discovered that her back was aching. Lowering her legs, unwrapping them from about his body, she let them slip down his thighs. His penis came out of her and stood dripping until the shower washed all the semen away. Jill turned off the water and slid back the tub door. Stepping out onto the bathmat, she took a thick towel and handed one to Boyce.
"That was wonderful," she said, her breasts trembling, her vagina quivering.
It was only after she was in the bedroom and looking for a dress to put on that she had the time and inclination to feel guilty. It wasn't as strong an emotion as it had been before, and she thought that it would probably wear itself completely away, in time.
Did she want that to happen to her? Jill toweled her hair roughly and dropped the towel on the throw rug beside the bed. At the dresser, she found panties and bra, and put them on. She was just pulling a light gingham dress over her head when Boyce Pittman came out of the bathroom, the towel tucked self-consciously around his middle.
"We could both use another drink," she said, and left him to dress while she padded barefoot for the bottle of bourbon and their glasses. She looked out of the kitchen window at the barn, and saw the horses gathered there, heard the lowing of the cows. Dink Watson wasn't back yet, and that started to bug her. A little while more, and she'd have to saddle Comet D and go look for the old man; he could have been thrown, or got himself snakebit.
She took the glasses to the living room, and Boyce met her there, dressed except for his tie. "Thanks, Jill. I just remembered, I do have to make another real estate stop. I suppose I could leave it for tomorrow, but that-that incident in the shower has just about drained me, I'm afraid."
"Me, too," she said, and took a swallow of whiskey. "You take a lot out of a woman, Boyce."
"Do I?" he asked proudly. "Do I really? Well, that's good to hear. I-I guess I've always been a bit guilty about Martha, about my wife. I thought it could be my fault that she didn't, that she doesn't like sex."
"No," Jill said, "it's not your fault, Boyce. You can make a woman flip out; I know."
He expanded visibly, and she thought that his smile was real for a change. He said, "I'll call you right away. Tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay."
He didn't kiss her good-bye; he hadn't gone that far into being real or lost that much of his banker's shell. When the edge was off his sexual desires, she thought that Boyce Pittman would always retreat behind his armor again; he was more comfortable there.
He sped his car down her road, and she watched the dust settle behind its passage. Boyce was always in a hurry to get away from her, and that made her wonder how long she could hold him, how long he would keep the ranch mortgage foreclosure from the bank files. Maybe she'd have to furnish him with wilder sex, something far out that wouldn't scare him off. The trouble was, Jill didn't know anything far out, and she didn't think that the little local library carried that kind of research books.
She heard the cows again, and frowned at the barn; no Dink yet. She left the house and trotted over there, around back where the small room was. Knocking on the door she called. "Dink . . . Dink?"
No answer, so she turned the knob and stepped into the semigloom. She smelled the odor before she saw him sprawled on his cot-whiskey. Leaning over the bed, Jill shook his shoulders, but the old man didn't respond, didn't even groan, and she knew that he was deeply under. There was an empty fifth beside the bunk, and another one only partly full, set carefully against the wall.
"Damn," Jill said. So far as she knew, Dink had no money, and surely he hadn't saved out two fifths from the first of the month.
Then she saw the tin can used for an ash tray: it was filled with cigarette butts, hand-rolled ones. Dink didn't smoke, and didn't usually allow anyone else to smoke around the barn, so his visitor must have been someone pretty special to him.
She swore again because she had changed from her work clothes. Rather than go back to the house, she hauled the grain cart to the corral and dipped each horse a ration; she had to give hay and grain both to the stallion, in his separate run. Then there were the cows, so she climbed on the tractor and hauled the trailer full of silage down the fence to the feeders. At least Dink was in the habit of getting everything ready for the evening chores, but that didn't help her now. She had to stand in the sticky stuff and fork out silage until her arms ached and the sweat was running down between her breasts.
Somebody had come out to the ranch and fed old Dink booze, enough of it to black him out for the day and night. So Jill had to do the chores until he was back on his feet, and she was already handling a lot of the ranch work, anyhow. She said dirty words about whoever gave Dink the whiskey, and drove the tractor back to the barn, dusty and dirty and needing another shower.
Dink had his problems, and she had her own. Like screwing a man in the shower of her husband's house. Like enjoying the hell out of the screwing, despite the smokescreen of logic that said it was all for the ranch, which made it all for Steve Devlin, in a roundabout way.
Would she camouflage her own desires with some other story, if Aaron Mercer got close to her? She went into the house and straight to the shower. She didn't even know what the man looked like, but his voice turned her on. She didn't know a lot of things-such as what he wanted, why he'd have bodyguards.
And who got Dink Watson drunk.
Chapter Four
Aaron Mercer came the next afternoon, and she saw that he hadn't traveled alone. Jojo and Lang got out of the front seat of the gray Buick, and looked around before the other man came out. Mercer was tall and lean, and composed of varying shades of gray-hair, silk suit, eyes; only his skin was different; it was tanned and healthy-looking, and somehow Jill knew that the tan would extend farther than just his throat, that it would be baked on all over his body.
He came to the porch with a long, easy stride, a faint smile upon his lips, and when he got there, held out his hand to her. "Mrs. Devlin."
The touch of him was smooth, and his hands were soft, but with strength to them. Glancing down, she saw that his nails were manicured. She took her hand away, aware of a tingle in her flesh, wanting to hide it behind her back and rub away the sensation he'd left on her skin.
"Please come in, Mr. Mercer." She didn't include the two men waiting at the car, and he didn't seem conscious of their presence.
Jill was wearing relatively new jeans, and a horse-show kind of blouse that had fluffs at the sleeves but none up front, so her breasts showed through the silken white material to best advantage. Her hair was tied back with a white ribbon, and she had on only a touch of lipstick.
"I have only bourbon, or if you'd prefer coffee?"
"In New Orleans," he said, "they mix the two, and in time, they have some really wide-awake drunks."
She laughed and asked him to sit down, feeling somewhat like a schoolgirl unsure of herself on a first date. She drew coffee from the big pot and poured in a jigger of bourbon, sitting down across from him.
Mercer sipped at his cup. "Very good. And so are you, Mrs. Devlin. It's a pleasure to look at a woman so healthy and vibrant; hothouse plants can never quite match the natural ones, can they? All right, then-I'm here to do more than admire a lovely woman, of course. And I'll be brief: Do you have some special kind of deal going with Pittman? Something in particular about your property here?"
Jill stared. "I-I think that's personal business."
"Yes, but it might possibly concern me. You've never heard of me, Mrs. Devlin?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so."
"I'm a real estate developer," he said. "I build towns, sometimes. Or retirement estates, things like that. Whenever I move into an area, some people try to figure exactly what I intend doing, and I'd rather they didn't. That's why I asked you about Pittman; he's been spending time with you lately, and he isn't exactly a woman chaser. I also understand that his bank holds a mortgage on your land."
"Yes," Jill said, "he's been seeing me and he holds the mortgage, and if you know that much, you know we're behind on our payments."
Mercer nodded, then asked, "He hasn't said anything to you about me, or why I'm here?"
"Should he?"
"No, but I learned long ago that bankers are the least trustworthy of the people I deal with. They're too familiar with the workings of money."
Jill finished her coffee and bourbon, and liked the flavor it left in her mouth. She was conscious of Aaron Mercer's appraising eyes, of the obvious pleasure he derived from looking at her legs, her hips and breasts.
He said, "I can't find fault with Pittman's taste in women, though. Perhaps he doesn't constantly think of money, as I'd believed."
Jill felt a strange warmth, a sense of having pleased this man, and wondered why the hell it should be in the least important that she should care, one way or another. But there was power in Aaron Mercer, the same kind she knew lived in Boyce Pittman, but a more urgent, stronger dynamic.
"I still don't understand why you've come to me, Mr. Mercer. My involvement with Boyce is-personal, in the main. I'm a married woman, and although it may sound silly, a happily married one."
"Of course," he said softly. "More or less happy, that is. Bored, sometimes; lonely more than you should be-happy like that. Else you wouldn't have a personal involvement with Pittman; you would be far more selective."
She stood up. "Another drink?"
His eyes followed her, strange gray eyes set deeply within that richly tanned face. "You hope I'll say no, so I'll leave and you can stop being uncomfortable."
"I'm not uncomfortable. I'm just a bit angry, because all this is really none of your business."
"Oh, but it is my business. I intend to make you an important part of my stay here. I'll take that drink, please."
Inwardly cursing the man's insolence, Jill took the cups to the kitchen for refilling. Outside, the big man sat in the car; the slim one was perched atop the corral fence.
"One for the road," she said, handing him the cup, knowing that funny tingle as her fingers brushed his. "I'm really not a promiscuous bitch, Mr. Mercer. What I've done with Boyce was something necessary at the time."
"Please sit down," he said, those eyes of his fastened to her own. "I promise not to rape you, although there's something to be said for the mastery-and the being mastered-of a good, feverish rape."
Weakly, Jill sank into her chair, and drank deeply of the hot coffee and whiskey mix to settle herself. Aaron Mercer was an unsettling man. His voice could be rough, turn honeyed, and always so evenly logical; yet its tone was throaty, and carried the forcefulness of the male.
"That's better," he went on, his eyes working slowly over her body now. "A woman's most responsive sex organ, her most erotic of the erogenous zones, is her mind. Then let us communicate, my dear; let us talk of you and your husband, or you and Pittman-and of course-you and me. Don't you feel a certain inevitability about this?"
She touched her lips with her tongue. "I don't know what I feel. Please; you'd better go now."
He leaned forward. "That's not what you mean at all. You feel threatened, but you shouldn't. I am complimenting you, my dear. I see you as an intelligent, very attractive woman, a compelling woman of beauty who is also highly sensuous. That lascivious streak is important, because being lovely simply isn't enough, except for some other insensitive clod. But you are voluptuous, ready for debauchery, and I appreciate that. So few American woman have that honest lewdness."
Quickly, Jill drank the rest of the mixture in her cup. It was too hot, and burned her throat, but she needed it, and the time to get herself together. Mercer didn't wait for an answer. "You're twenty-eight, twenty-nine," he said, "and that's the full bloom of the average woman's sexuality, and although you're certainly not the norm, I would say that you're unfolding your petals now, for the first time. Tell me, Jill," he mouthed her first name as if it had a special flavor, "tell me, have you ever had a man go down on you?"
She shook her head before she could catch herself; the man had her mesmerized. "I-that's perverted, a deviate reaction ..."
His smile was comforting, warm and wise. "Only if it's a constantly sought end to sex, rather than a means to heighten pleasure, and even then, there's some question as to perversion. A deviation from the accepted pattern, yes-but does a properly programmed married woman seek an adulterous affair and claim that she is still in love with her betrayed husband? Yet I believe that you are still in love with Sergeant Devlin, because I accept you as a whole person, as the uniqueness of yourself, and therefore not a deviate, but a woman who makes her own rules."
"Oh, wow," Jill breathed. "Mister, you can certainly fit all the little parts together, but I don't see how ..."
He leaned back, eyes smoldering, lips firm. "I would have you undress yourself, slowly and gracefully so I could feast upon each newly exposed part of your body until you were naked. Then you would sit as you are, in that same chair, but with your legs spread farther. Please, my dear, part your thighs slightly. Ah, yes, that's it; now I can see the suggestion of your mound where the jeans are snug against it."
His voice stroked her, soothed her, and Jill found that her eyelids were getting heavy, that a slow lassitude was stealing throughout her body. Doped, she thought, but remembered that she had fixed the drinks herself, that he hadn't been near her cup. It was just his approach, his sexy voice and the things he was saying. He made her feel as if little soft hands were fondling her breasts and caressing her belly.
"You have a lovely vulva," he went on. "I can picture it as you sit there. The hair will be thick and curly, and the same shade as your hair; it will spring luxuriantly against the velvet skin of your belly, and beckon me to look closer at the portals it guards. Ah, yes, my dear-and your labia majora will be distended, reddened in anticipation of love; beneath them, the labia minora, softer lips, wetter lips, eagerly awaiting my kiss."
Jill sucked in her breath, and knew the dampness was spreading through her vagina, that it was seeping out to dew the lips he was describing without ever having seen them. With his voice only, she was being made ready for loving.
"I'll kiss your knees first," Aaron Mercer said, "and proceed slowly along the inner portions of your tender thighs, hesitating to breathe upon your pubic hair before I kiss your mons Veneris. Ah; there will be a definite flavor there, a spicy scent that is all your own. But it is there for me to savor, to taste, and I will touch the end of my tongue delicately into your hairs, pushing it down until it finds and lingers upon your sultry labia."
Sighing, Jill opened her knees and stretched out her legs. Through heavy lids, her eyes peered across at the man, and the look of him was intense, meaningful. She could swear that she felt his breath upon her crotch, his tongue licking hotly over the slippery labia that were trembling so in hunger for more. But somehow, he was still there on the couch; somehow, he was only describing in minute detail just what he planned to do to her body when he went down on her.
Why didn't he? Oh, why didn't he?
He stopped. He wasn't going on; he left her dangling there, wondering what the plunge of his tongue would be like, trying to know the feel of his teeth against her pussy and the snuggling of his head between her thighs. Jill shivered, and with a great effort of will, pulled her feet back to the chair and pressed her legs together.
"You see?" he asked. "Nothing so terrible, no touch of it grimy or degrading. There is only beauty in giving, and only beauty in the taking."
Audibly, Jill swallowed, and hoped that she hadn't dampened the crotch of her jeans while he had been staring so intently between her legs. It was the damnedest feeling, as if it actually had been happening to her, only without being carried through to its ultimate conclusion, and so she had been cheated. She was going to say that, when he began to talk again, but this time, it was different. It wasn't about him performing cunnilingus on her, but about her doing it to him, going down on him.
"You approach me, and naturally you're curious about what sort of penis I have, whether it's short or long, thick or slim, whether it's circumcised, or if you'll have foreskin to play with. I take it out of my pants and let you see, so that your first questions are answered. Then I will lower my pants and sit with my legs open, so you can kneel between them."
Jill lifted a hand to her mouth and pressed the back of it to her teeth. She tried to force her eyes away from his, but the struggle was too much for her. She gave up the fight, and when her eyes did slide away from the penetrating gray of his, they fastened themselves to the bulge that was growing in his pants, to the erection that was swelling along his belly. A big one; a thick one that was also long and heavy. Blinking, she tried to decide if she was fantasizing or seeing the real thing.
Honeyed and liquid, his voice poured over her, and somehow she looked down and saw herself kneeling there before him, ready to do anything he wanted. No-anything she wanted, and at that brightly faceted moment in time, Jill Devlin wanted very much to lean down and take the enlarged head of this man's cock into her lips.
Closer and closer it loomed, and she saw the clear, shining drop of fluid clinging to the slit in the glans; she saw the distended ridges and below them a vein throbbing and expanded with the essences of life that pulsed in it.
Her lips parted; her breath gusted warmly down upon that lovely object, and the saliva gathered sweetly inside her cheeks and along her tongue. Jill's mouth opened wide, and she could almost-almost-taste the male musk exuding from his cock and the hairy testicles nestling below.
"Not yet," he said sharply, and Jill blinked her eyes rapidly, amazed to find that she was still sitting in her chair, that Aaron Mercer was still fully dressed upon the couch.
Clenching her hands, she felt a chill touch of fear, some deeply buried primeval warning system that was sending out caution signals. He stood up slowly, so as not to alarm her further, and his smile was benign, meant to heal. She was still afraid of him, but her fright seemed irrational when he began to talk about business.
"We can talk some more soon, Jill. About your ranch and about ourselves. Please remember, if Pittman seems to be doing something wrong for you, at least come and ask me about it. We'll talk then."
Dazed, she followed him to the door and said good-bye through dry lips. He didn't look back, but crossed the yard at his long, easy gait to where Lang was holding open the back door of the gray Buick. Jojo drove the car away, moving slowly and carefully down the rough road, and Jill stared after it for a long time after it was gone.
Then she shivered and rubbed her hands rapidly over her upper arms to warm them. Turning back into the house, she hurried to the kitchen and drank a large, straight shot of whiskey. Steps sounded on the porch, and she stuffed the bottle back into the cabinet and snapped the lock.
Dink Watson knocked on the door. "Mrs. Devlin?"
She busied herself at the sink, washing coffee cups. "Come in, Dink."
Hat in hand, boots scuffing across the floor, he stood beside the table until she asked him to sit down. Then he said, "Thank you, ma'am," and accepted the steaming cup of coffee she served him.
His hands shook as he sipped at the brew, and his rheumy old eyes watered. After a while he said, "Didn't mean to get drunk, but then I never do. This fella come visiting-old Sam Starr from Texas, come clean out here because he didn't know Hale Devlin was dead; used to be partners with your daddy-in-law a long spell back."
Dink forced himself to drink more coffee, and Jill said, "And naturally, this Sam Starr brought along some whiskey, so you two could talk over bourbon and branch water."
"Somethin' like that," Dink admitted. "Then it got kind of drunk out, but not afore we took a good look at the stud horse. Sam Starr was right interested in Comet D; said something about the bloodlines him and Hale Devlin had been tryin' for.
I'm right sorry about losin' a day's work, Mrs. Devlin, and I'll make it up."
"Drink your coffee, Dink. Was this man from Texas driving a pickup with fat tires?"
"Yes ma'am-Chevy three-quarter with one of them campers on it; got to have overload springs and good tires for that kind of weight."
Then that explained the set of tracks she'd seen in the yard, but it really wasn't clear why this Starr hadn't called the ranch from town, or inquired around about Steve's father before driving out. And she still hadn't seen him, only the hired hand had managed that.
"I'll get to the rest of that fence tomorrow," Dink said. "I appreciate you doin' all the chores like that."
"Okay, Dink. This Texan didn't say anything else?"
The old man rubbed his forehead. "Can't recollect, rightly. We talked horses a whole lot, and he said he was sure sad that him and Hale Devlin split up like they did."
She shrugged. "Guess he'll come back, if he has anything important on his mind, like buying some of our horses. I'd sure like to unload most of them."
"Can't say he looked at the rest much," Dink said, "just the stud."
She asked, "Can you eat?"
He shuddered. "Not right now, ma'am, but I thank you just the same. Might be I'll try some mulligan later on tonight, if my belly settles."
"See you tomorrow, then," she said. "I might have to run back to town on business; seems like that's all I do, stay on the road to and from town, but it's because of the ranch. You know we're in trouble, don't you?"
Dink rose from the table, battered hat twisting nervously in his veined hands. "Yes ma'am, and I sure wish there was some way for me to help."
Jill put a hand on his arm. "Without you, we couldn't run at all, Dink."
He left quickly, embarrassed by praise, and she watched him check the water troughs before going on to the barn. It was true enough; Dink Watson kept things together with spit and baling wire, and it was up to her to supply the credit the ranch needed. If not through Boyce Pittman, then maybe through this other interesting and frightening man, Aaron Mercer. What had he said about being a developer, and about coming to see him if Boyce didn't help?
That had been overwhelmed by the other talk-the hypnotic words that created such imagery she had been caught up in some kind of dream that left her shaken to the core. Whatever the cause, she had been ready for oral gratification, both to receive and to give it. Just that bit of knowledge was spooky enough.
Chapter Five
She rode the stallion the next morning, moved him smartly out through the scattering Herefords and across the green grass of the far pasture. Comet D felt good between her legs, big and muscled and brimming with power. He snorted and blew, throwing his head like a colt, until she checked him with the bit enough to remind him not to act too silly.
The saddle moved against her crotch, and she squeezed the stud into a slow lope with the pressure of her thighs. As he did so, her breasts began a slow, sensuous jiggling, bouncing up and down with the rocking chair motion of the horse. She looked ahead at the trees, but could not concentrate upon fence line or timber, or anything else except the rubbing of her erectile nipples against her shirt front.
Maybe it had been a mistake, bringing Comet D out; she'd forgotten the sexual stimulation a woman got from riding a horse. There was all that meat between her legs, the rhythmic movements, the pressing of her labia against the saddle. It was too much for Jill, especially since she had been through such a freaky experience the night before.
Aaron Mercer had convinced her that she was ripe for other sexual experiments, that such acts were not perversion or even deviation, but a natural yearning that should be fulfilled. He had brought her right to the brink of such gratification, and then pushed her back by not allowing her to go on. He had tantalized her by not turning the image into the real thing.
She turned the stud into the trees for only a little way, then slowed him and pointed him for the corral again. If she stayed in the saddle much longer, she'd bother herself too much to think straight. There was a struggle going on within her now, and it wasn't all concerned with saving the ranch. A goodly part was dedicated to choosing between two men who could quench this thirst within her body, and neither of them was her husband.
Boyce Pittman would come if she called; he'd already promised to get in touch with her today, and at least he was a known quantity. There wasn't anything to suggest terror, nor any quirks beyond the mild one of him wanting to be mothered, to be fed the nipples of her breasts.
Aaron Mercer was something else indeed, but the temptation was there, the promise of far out thrills, the black magic of a debauchery to exceed anything that she had ever known. And a woman liked to skirt the edges of danger, to brush against fear. The beast waited in its lair for beauty, and she wondered who would accomplish the taming.
Comet D pulled up at his own corral, and she got down to take off saddle, blanket and headstall. He danced into his fenced run with a shake of his glossy hide and a look that plainly said she had only teased him with a short ride like that. Jill carried the tack around to the room built for it, and put everything into place before shutting the door again.
Moving across the corral, across the yard, she knew the kissing of her thighs against each other, and the agitation within her breasts, her belly. She thought she might be going out of her mind, because nothing so intense had ever pushed at her before. She'd always been sexy, but nothing like this.
Reaching her sexual maturity, Aaron Mercer said, coming into the flowering of her sensuality. Turning into a nymphomaniac, maybe; keeping such an interest in loving and being loved that she was hard put to concentrate upon anything else of importance.
She hesitated on the porch of the ranch house. Could that be what they were doing to her, using sex to cloud the financial issues? Jill chewed upon her lower lip. She had started it up with Boyce, but perhaps he'd gone along with the seduction altogether too willingly, knowing that a woman was more apt to become emotionally entangled.
And Aaron: ah, yes, the mesmeric Mr. Mercer-he was also somehow involved with the bank, and perhaps with her ranch; certainly he was mixed up in her sex life, although he hadn't laid a finger on her, as yet. He would, she knew; he most certainly would.
When she got into the house, the telephone rang, almost as if it had been waiting for her to come through the door. "Yes?"
"Mrs. Devlin." It was Boyce Pittman, and he sounded harried, that metallic quality stronger in his voice. "I-I'm calling from a phone booth, so it's all right to speak out; from my end of the line, anyway."
She said, "Why would anyone want to tap my phone, Boyce?"
"No reason," he said. "Nothing; forget it. It's just that I'm under some pressure, Jill. I should come right out to see you, really, but if I do that, we won't talk about business, and we should."
She looked over at her bedroom door, and thought of the action that had taken place in there between this man and herself, the first time he had mounted her from behind, so eager and anxious. And she had entertained the naive idea that she couldn't reach orgasm with a man she wasn't in love with.
She asked, "Is there something wrong, Boyce? Are you thinking about calling in our mortgage?"
He hesitated, and her heart rose to become stuck in her throat. He was about to foreclose; she could sense it in his strained silence.
"We can discuss it calmly," he said. "I never made you any promises, Jill. I told you I had a duty to the bank, to the depositors. There was never any commitment made."
"Of course not," she said, and the realization came to her that Boyce Pittman had never intended to hold off for more than a few days, that he had always meant to foreclose, no matter how much sex on the half shell she dished up to him.
He cleared his throat. "Well, if you can give me a definite idea on just when your husband is due to come home-"
"Very soon, I'm sure. I haven't had a letter from him in weeks, so that must mean that he's processing for the trip stateside. He might even be on his way right now. Steve Devlin likes to surprise people."
"I'm sure, I'm sure," Boyce said, "but that really isn't solid, is it? And even so, even if he returns immediately, there's no guarantee that Sergeant Devlin will be able to even pay off the interest on these overdue notes."
Jill clutched the phone. She'd cheated on her husband, given herself to this man in the first place because she only wanted to protect Steve's interests. True, once she had let him into her body, she had screwed him back with an all-consuming fury, but that wouldn't have happened, if she hadn't made herself easy for him to reach.
"Look, Boyce-you said a little time-"
"I said several things under stress. It-well, don't think I'm not appreciative of what you've done for me, or rather what we've meant to each other. You told me I was an excellent lover."
She stared at the bedroom door, not seeing it, but only a swirl of shadows. "Yes, I said that." She took a firm grip on the phone, and felt the sweat gathering in her palms. "Boyce, I seldom say anything I don't mean, so maybe you'd better pay close attention to this. I won't let you foreclose on the Rafter D; understand that. I'll do anything I have to, whatever it takes to stop you."
There was only a short pause at the other end of the line, and Boyce said coldly, "There's nothing you can do. The notes are overdue, and the Mid-Oregon Trust is legally entitled to collect in full, or to possess said real property as described in the deed. That, Mrs. Devlin, is that."
"The hell it is," she said swiftly. "There's the fact that Dink Watson peeped in the window yesterday and watched us screwing. You know old Dink, and how faithful he's been to the Devlins? He's a little slow, but since we took so long at what we were doing, he had plenty of time to get the Polaroid. Some of the pictures are a bit blurred, but people can sure tell who's doing what to whom, in all of them."
Jill ran out of breath and waited; it took a while before Boyce said slowly, "Blackmail."
"Whatever it takes."
"Your own reputation will be ruined, too; Devlin will throw you out, divorce you."
"He'll have a chance at the ranch, a chance to keep it. I'll see that those pictures and copies of them are spread all over the county. How will your wife take them?"
Boyce made a strangled noise. "You're bluffing; nobody saw us."
"Try me and we both lose." Jill's hands were slippery, but she held her voice even.
"I have a young daughter," Boyce said. "She's only fourteen. A scandal like this could destroy her. Jill-"
"Mrs. Devlin," she said.
"All right. I'll see what I can work out, check a few ideas. But I can't stall very long. Look, Jill-Mrs. Devlin-maybe I can even find some money to soften the foreclosure, say three or four thousand, perhaps a few hundred more. But before I turn it over, I want all those photos. I warn you, I won't be pushed too far."
She let out a silent, quavering breath. "Just far enough, Boyce. I'm only interested in protecting the ranch, not in bleeding you."
"I'll be in touch soon," he said. "Good-bye."
There was a touch of hysteria in her laugh as she hung up the phone. Boyce said good-bye properly, in spite of everything. She'd fooled him! She had conned him into believing that about the pictures; more time had been bought, and something else. Boyce couldn't be all that certain of his position: why else would he offer her money?
To get her out of the county, where she could do no harm to his precious public image, so no shocking revelations of the banker's sexual escapades would reach his frigid wife and thus cost Boyce Pittman half his worldly goods, spiced by a whopping alimony and child support. Three or four thousand, hell; it ought to be worth twice that to Boyce, just to make certain she left the state and stayed gone.
The trouble was, she had no pictures to turn over to him, and he might not believe she'd run a bluff on him. Jill moved away from the phone, wondering just how nasty Boyce Pittman could get.
No matter, she thought, going through her closet and laying out a dress outfit, a Western suit that she'd used to ride Comet D in the local shows. The pants were snugly cut, and had an applique design that dipped a stylized arrowhead right down into the cleft of her buttocks; they were flared and a rich, deep gold that went very well with her skin tones and the color of her hair.
A white ruffled shirt, the vest that matched the suit, with the same arrowheads pointing at the tips of her breasts; a green throat pin of costume jewelry to make another focal point; lacy pants and a wisp of a bra; high-heeled Western boots and that cute green straw hat with the Cheyenne roll.
Peeling out of her work clothes, she darted into the bathroom and took a quick, but thorough shower, using cologne at all the vital spots, and taking time to run her shaver over legs and underarms. A bit of mascara, a dab of lipstick, and she skipped naked back into the bedroom to get dressed.
We can always talk, Aaron Mercer had said; if Pittman does something wrong, come see me, and we can always talk, he had said.
All right, gray, hypnotic man with the voice like warm honey; okay, she would pay a visit, go directly to the only motel in town and walk in, just as if she had legitimate business there. She'd never given the town of Midway anything to gossip over, so there'd be nothing said about this first visit.
She was excited, and had to struggle with the bra to get it hooked. Smoothing down her pants, looking in the mirror, she decided she was well worth Mr. Mercer's time and effort.
Oral contact, she thought; his sleek gray head in there between her naked thighs, his breath tickling into her pubic hairs, and then-and then- That was what she had to find out.
Jill bounded out of the house and across the yard. From his corral, Comet D sent a whinny her way, so she waved at him before climbing into the truck. She'd handle Boyce Pittman when she had to, but for now, she had bought more time, and the offer of money besides. She could tell that to Aaron Mercer, and see what his advice would be, how he would react. Not that she'd say anything about the made-up photos, of course; she didn't want to expose that facet of herself to him.
Turning onto the county road, she speeded up and thought about her desire to please Aaron. He was compelling, and yet something about him made her want to run away and hide. Not just yet, though; she had to first see what made him tick, to find out if he could follow up on all that sexy imagery he had created for her. What a shame it would be, if he was all talk.
She passed no car on the highway, except for an empty hay truck belonging to Dick Oliver. She waved at him, hit the horn twice, and went around him into the city limits of Midway. She glanced at the front of the bank, but didn't see Boyce, and drove sedately on by to turn into the parking lot of The Shorthorn, the only motel in town.
Head up, Western straw on the back of her head with its ribbon dangling, Jill marched into the office and asked the poker-faced manager for the number of Mr. Mercer's room. She'd never been here before, and the man didn't know her, although he could ask around and find out, if he was nosy.
He didn't seem to be. "Number eleven," he said. "That's the suite; straight on back."
"Thank you," she said, and marched out again. Looking up the street at the bank, she didn't see Boyce, or anyone else she recognized from here, so she walked firmly, but not too quickly, past the motel pool to where the two gray Buicks were parked.
Frowning at the identical cars, she headed for number eleven. The door to number ten opened and Lang slid out, one hand patting the ends of his long hair. "Hello," he said.
She stopped. "I came to see Mr. Mercer."
"That's a sweet outfit," Lang said. "I mean really; it sort of clings to you all over. Now I know how the West was won. That color wouldn't do a thing for me, I'm afraid."
"Mr. Mercer in?"
She heard heavy steps behind her and angled her head over her right shoulder to see. Jojo's thick, jowled face was without emotion, and his flat little eyes watched her. She suddenly knew that he had come out of number twelve. Aaron Mercer had the suite in eleven, and his bodyguards kept watch from the rooms on each side.
"Oh, he's in," Lang said. "Just knock on the door and announce yourself."
Jojo grunted. "You check out her bag?"
"Don't be gross," Lang snapped. "Mr. Mercer left word on her."
Jojo walked to his room, and Jill saw she had been correct: number twelve. Did a real estate developer need bodyguards, or was that title a cover for something more nefarious? Again, Jill knew a whisper of warning, but closed her mind to it and tapped on the door.
He smiled her into the room, and immediately she saw his personal touches in it, things that softened the transient look of all motels, no matter how plush. There was an Oriental jade statue; there were books whose covers she scanned quickly, and fresh flowers in a porcelain vase also Oriental, but so lovely the blooms could only furnish background for it.
"Tang Dynasty," he said. "The statue is Koryo, from the centuries when Korea was yet the hermit kingdom. I like to keep them with me."
"You're full of surprises," she said, and knew the words were banal as they left her lips.
There was a small refrigerator beyond a diminutive breakfast counter, and Aaron Mercer went to it. He was wearing a gray silk smoking jacket with black lapels piped in silver; his slacks were very pale-gray, and the white shirt open at the neck showed gray hairs. "The occasion calls for champagne, and I happen to have a magnum here. I didn't bring this with me; it's domestic, or I should say, indigenous."
Jill's giggle was nervous, and she choked it off quickly. Sitting on the couch, she crossed her legs and pulled in her tummy. The bottle popped and she wished she had something to do with her hands, almost wished she'd never stopped smoking. Then he presented her with a wine glass filled with the cold, crisp bubbly, and she was on even keel again.
Not fully in control of herself, she admitted; just being close to Aaron did weird things to her equilibrium, but she didn't feel quite as girlish, after drinking the chilled wine.
She said, "Boyce Pittman offered me three or four thousand dollars beyond the foreclosure. I thought that was odd."
Aaron considered his glass. "Did he ask you to sign a release?"
"No; it wouldn't be any good without my husband's signature, too.
He nodded, and light from the desk lamp seemed to slide around in his silvery hair. "True, but it might serve to show intent. How much are you in default, Jill?"
She twirled the empty glass in her fingers. "Twenty thousand."
"On a full section, six hundred forty acres, more than a square mile. That's not very much."
"It's not worth too much," she said. "Only about two hundred acres is good for anything, and the rest is cutover timber, scrub oak, laurel and bull pine; we can only irrigate a hundred acres and pasture on the rest. I guess it's worth more than what we owe, at that."
He bent over and refilled her glass. The champagne was cold against her teeth. "About seventy thousand more, I'd say."
Jill sputtered on the wine, swallowed and asked incredulously, "Dollars?"
Aaron chuckled. "Yes, my dear. I know that ranchers are prone to look at the agricultural worth of the land, rather than where and how it lies. But I want you to consider that figure-seventy thousand dollars clear, after the debt is paid."
"Wow," she said, "I consider everything above a hundred dollars just figures on paper, and not real."
"All money is paper," he said, "and only as real as man's need for it. But no more talk about finances now; just do as I ask, and hold that figure in your mind: seventy thousand dollars net. We'll talk some more on it, but later-sometime later, after we know each other much better. That's the primary reason you came here, wasn't it?"
Abashed, she nodded, and sipped at her glass. When she put it down, Jill said, "You knew I'd come. You fixed me like that, and you knew I'd have to come find out if it was some kind of trick. And, I guess I just wanted to."
Aaron placed his own empty glass upon the desk top. "You're refreshing, my dear, and I appreciate a certain amount of honesty. I've been eager to sample your loveliness, to taste your sensuous flavors."
"Yes," she said, and, "please." "If you'll stand up," he said. "That outfit becomes you, and I'll be careful with it."
It was kind of cold, she thought, sort of too-logical; yet there was the race of blood through her veins, and the tingle of delicious anticipation along her skin. She stood quietly, erect and somehow keeping herself from swaying as he reached out and took off her hat. Then the jewel at her throat, and the brush of his fingertips was electric, but he didn't stop to fondle her throat nor her breasts.
Smiling directly into her eyes, Aaron began to speak in that furry voice, and she trembled before it. "Lovely skin, and when I remove this vest and lay it aside, I see the lifting of your breasts. Ah, yes, and the nipples rising full. Your shirt, my dear-if you will lift your arms-so."
Jill's breasts felt swollen, and there was an ache in her nipples. The air brought goosebumps to her bare skin, and she could barely keep her knees locked into place. Aaron touched her breasts then, drew slow and deft fingers beneath the mounds, then up and around them, and his caress of her nipples was tantalizing. Bending, he breathed softly upon them, and Jill's hands fluttered, lifted partway up, only to fall back to her sides again. He flicked the tip of his tongue lightly over her paining nipples, a hot, wet fondling that sent tremors down her spine.
"Such lovely, full breasts," he said, "artfully molded, sweetly designed; you are indeed a delectable creature, my dear."
She couldn't answer, and knew that he didn't expect an answer, and then he was at her pants, loosening the belt, pulling down the zipper at the side. In a trance, Jill lifted one leg and then the other, so that Aaron could draw the pants down and away. He placed them upon a chair with the rest of her things, and took his time removing the last thing she had on, her panties.
When they were gone, Jill pulled in a deep and shuddering breath. Aaron stood close, touching her gently upon the mound, the hips, her belly, raising his hands to fondle her breasts again. He was artful, teasing, bringing her to an apex of desire, but behind the immediacy of the need his ministrations aroused in her, Jill knew a nagging sense of disappointment. Somehow, she had imagined Aaron would be totally different, that he would be more masterful and dominating, but then she thought that maybe most women partly believed that they craved mastering, when in reality they still wanted to cling to a free personality.
"Sit down, Jill," he said, and guided her into the chair with gentle hands.
He was going to do it, she thought; he really was. She looked up at him as he took off his own clothing, and her fingers dug into the chair arms. Aaron's body was good; it was slim and kept in condition, and his chest was covered with virile gray hair. Then he stepped out of his shorts, and her eyes went wide at the sight of his penis.
Jill had never seen one so big. It was long, and thick, and the shining head of it was blunt and heavy; there was nothing misshapen about it, nothing out of proportion. It was simply huge, and she knew a stab of fear as she stared at the thing, for she didn't believe she could take it into her vagina without tearing.
"It's the same as I said," Aaron purred, moving toward her with that gigantic rod pulsing before him. "Slow and easy, Jill-just lean back and let yourself go." He went to his knees before her, his hands stroking her knees until her legs sagged apart of their own volition.
And the fear left her, because it wasn't important now. At last, Jill was going to know what it was like to be orally loved, to enter into that long-forbidden form of sex she had also believed to be a deviate act, a thing of twisted perversion. But this man had told her differently, and she wanted to believe him-so much, so much.
"Your inner thighs are like satin," he said, trailing his fingers over them, "and your vulva is quivering with eagerness. Ah, Jill-your pussy is a marvel of beauty, the hairs so thick and soft."
But he didn't go directly to her aching vulva; instead, his face burrowed into her breasts, and she sighed. Until the sharp nip of his teeth made her gasp in shock, and when he raked fingernails down over her hips, she caught at his head to pull him away.
But his face had already moved down to her belly, where his tongue pushed into her navel. Jill flinched and tried to climb out of the chair, but it was far too late for escape. Her movements only lifted her pelvis to him as she slid farther down in the chair.
He didn't hesitate, but plunged his face into her crotch, and Jill knew the wild sensation of a fierce intimacy. His mouth found her labia, and his tongue darted into the humid lips to move thickly up and down, penetrating into the vagina. His teeth raked her labia, and in reflex, she closed her thighs upon his head.
Aaron's hands dipped beneath her buttocks, and he had the cheeks of her ass in his palms, lifting and twisting her lower body to suit his desires of the moment. He growled into her vagina, and lapped her fluids like a dog might, but the thrilling strokes of his tongue were turning her on more and more, sending shivers of hot delight through her entire body.
When her drifting hands did find his head, it was only to stroke his hair, only to urge it ever deeper into the writhing pit where the soft, wet flames were growing more insistent. Eyes closed and head thrown back, Jill squirmed in the embrace of Aaron Mercer, and it was all she had hoped it would be-crazy and deep and far out. Her legs curled over and across his back, and she began to grind her vulva into his face, feeling the lips of her pussy slide across his chin, his cheeks, his nose. Aaron was eating her now, biting gently at her labia, and moving around, licking and nibbling-until he found the clitoris rising out of its protective hooding.
"Oh!" Jill cried out. "Aaron-oh, Aaron!"
He was nuzzling deeply into her now, his teeth pushing, his tongue lancing to curl around the center of her excitement. She hiked her ass and opened her thighs so he could reach it better, and a wordless moan tore from her lips as Aaron sucked the clit out and into the delicate gripping of his teeth.
She went insane then, twisting and heaving, surging her hairy crotch against his mouth, and clinging madly to his head with both hands.
"I-I can't stand it! Oh-ohmigod-migod-it's killing me! Oh, oh, oh! Aaron-eat me up, chew me to bits and swallow me! Oh, my darling, my dearest, my sweet-I'm coming now, now!"
Ecstasy cascaded over her and in her; bliss ran rampant through her flesh and over her fevered skin. Every nerve end tingled violently, and her insides melted, melted and ran down to puddle hotly within her convulsive vagina.
Then he let go of her clit and began to suck her, to suck as if her pussy was some juicy, sweet fruit, and he was a starving man. Her oils flowed and flowed, and he drank them down, pulled them into his avid mouth to swallow them while he chewed at her cuntlips and rolled the flexing cheeks of her ass in the palms of his hands.
Shivering, rolling her head like a metronome, from side to side and in a patterned rhythm, Jill grew weaker, and her head started to spin. But Aaron would not release her; his finger prodded against the ring of her anus, and now she felt the thick, throbbing length of his penis against the calf of her leg. And he continued to suck, to pull the soft lips of her pussy into his mouth and push them out again with his tongue.
The squirming sensation moved in her vagina once more, and she could not resist it. Aaron was touching her clitoris again, but only delicately now, tickling it with his tongue as he sucked tenderly upon her vulva, upon her labia. His thumb pressed and rotated, pushed and insisted, and suddenly it was spreading her anus, easing its tip into her.
And that was too much for one moment. Her climax came racing through her body like a flash flood, bowling over everything in its path, and inundating her consciousness with a tidal wave of emotion that reached a crest. Then it exploded in a swirling, scattering, spray of enchanted rainbows, and Jill sank exhausted into them.
When she again opened her eyes, she was lying on the couch, and Aaron Mercer was straddling her body. She stared at the swollen, engorged head of his monstrous cock, at the gleaming pearl of fluid dangling upon the vertical slit. His testicles swung down like those of a great bull, and Jill was frightened once more.
His knees moved, and he came sliding up her belly. She caught a steadying breath as the distended glans loomed so close to her face. But Aaron wasn't read for that as yet. He dipped his penis down with one hand, and used the other to squeeze her breasts around it. The thick and veiny staff snuggled there between her mounds, and the head lay pulsing at the base of her throat.
Jill closed her eyes, hoping against hope that he would force her to take that terrifying thing into her mouth, and felt him moving back down her body. But her relief was soon over, because Aaron began to worry the head of his huge cock at the wet hairs of her pubic mound.
Chapter Six
She was still weak, but she managed to walk straight when she went into the camera shop. Jill's head was fuzzy, but she'd thought of buying some Polaroid film and perhaps faking a set of prints for Boyce Pittman. Overexposure, blurred prints-anything that might make him believe the pictures were real. She'd need someone to help, probably, but the only man around was Dink Watson, and that was out.
Film in hand, Jill was walking back toward the counter when the woman stopped her. "Hi, Jill."
It was Dee Oliver, looking neat as usual, with every hair in place, her pants suit crisp and fashionable. Jill didn't understand how the woman did it, because Dee was a ranch wife, too. Jill said, "Hi, passed your husband on the way in."
Dee lifted an eyebrow. "Then you don't know yet."
"Know what?"
The other woman smiled. "I hear he's been calling all over town, trying to find you. Your husband, dear. Steve's come home from the wars."
Jill dropped the film, and it skidded along the polished aisle. She chased after it, stooped, turned to say over her shoulder, "Thanks, Dee. Thanks a lot. I-I'd better hurry home; I didn't know . . . "
And since there wasn't time to stop at the cashier, she whizzed by him waving the film. "Pay for this later, Charlie."
Steve was home; Steve Devlin, her husband of nine years, was at the ranch and had been trying to find her. While she'd been in a motel room with another man. Jill's throat tightened, and for a moment, she thought she was going to cry, but fought down the impulse and got into her truck.
She wheeled it down the street, and when she passed the bank, saw Boyce standing in the front door. He gave her a little wave and a smile as she drove by. Puzzled, she kept going into the county road, feeding the truck more gas than usual. What did Boyce have to be so happy about? Surely, Steve's return didn't mean anything to him, beyond a possible mortgage payoff.
Boyce had never waved at her before; the move just wasn't in character for him. She slowed the truck and tried to get her head together, to look at everything from Boyce's perspective. His reaction to Steve's return-and surely, he'd heard about it before she had-could be caused by relief, by the hope that Jill would be too preoccupied with her husband to make any more trouble for Boyce Pittman, and/or the Mid-Oregon Trust Bank. That could be it, and nothing more; or he could have made some move against her, done something that protected himself.
"He talked to Dink!" she said aloud, and the pickup veered as her hands tightened on the wheel. "Boyce got hold of Dink and slipped him some whiskey, and found out that there are no pictures. That's it; that has to be it. Oh, damn, damn! And all the time, I was in that motel being stupid."
Then she thought of ninety thousand dollars; that was the figure Aaron Mercer gave her; seventy thousand clear, he had said. She and Steve could buy a nice small ranch with that, put equipment on it, and keep the stock they had now. They could make it just fine, starting over without debts they'd inherited with the Rafter D. Seventy thousand dollars, clear.
"Oh, Steve," she breathed, a new and different kind of excitement rising within her, and a vindication of her involvements with other men. It was working out, after all; it didn't matter that Boyce knew she'd bluffed him about the pictures, and it didn't matter if he tried to foreclose now. They could accept Aaron Mercer's offer and pay off the bank.
Jill stopped the truck just inside the ranch turnoff, and sat staring blindly at the dashboard. Had there really been an offer? Aaron had said: Here's a figure to think about. He hadn't said: I'll give you that much for the ranch.
And if he had said it, did he really have that kind of money?
She would have to sweat it out for a while longer, go back to see Aaron after she'd talked it all over with Steve. She had to find out for sure that a "developer" who traveled about with bodyguards wasn't just some kind of crook putting up a front.
Those bodyguards; when she'd left the motel, they looked from their own rooms, and Lang had simpered after her; ugly Jojo only looked, but she could feel their thoughts, know that they'd been seeing her as an immoral bitch who was fresh from playing sex games with their boss.
Jill moved the truck up the ranch road. Well, she thought, what the hell was she, if not an immoral bitch? Good lord-all that oral sex that she had wallowed in, and Aaron mounting her so soon after she'd passed out from the intensity of repeated orgasms. His penis-she shook her head and steered around a bump; she didn't want to think about that now. She had a husband waiting, a loving man that she hadn't seen in two years; she wanted to think about him.
The gate ahead, the cattle guard; she drove on, and a sickness caught at her stomach. Was there some way a man could tell if a woman had been screwing recently? Aaron's semen, she thought; oh, lord-suppose it made her too slippery or something, and Steve would know without a doubt that she'd been laying someone else, and only a few minutes before. The idea was frightening. She'd have to have a douche, or at least a bath. Maybe Steve wouldn't want to wait that long. "Oh, lord, oh, lord," she breathed, and turned the truck into the front yard of the Rafter D.
But then she saw him come out onto the porch and slammed open the door of the truck to go flying across to meet him more than halfway. His arms were spread wide, and Jill raced into them, hurled herself against his hard, comforting body and wrapped her own arms tightly about his neck. She saw only the blur of his face, the eyes bright and smile white, before her uplifted mouth crushed fervently into his, and something like a small sob broke against his teeth. "Steve-Steve!"
His mouth was sweet, and her tongue sought the depths of it, her teeth raked his, and she squirmed hotly, tightly against him. Then Jill remembered that she was supposed to hold him off, and dropped back from him, pushing him away, laughing up at him and seeing again his beloved, battered face. "Hey, husband-welcome home!"
Scooping her up, he carried her across the porch and into the house, where he set her upon her booted feet again and kissed her, lingeringly, with tenderness and longing, and she felt an immediate response rise in her body, a swelling of nipples she thought would remain flaccid for days to come.
She forced herself back, her hands against his chest. "Wow! Don't you want to give us a little time? Are you hungry or-or anything?"
Steve laughed. "I'd say mostly anything."
Jill slid away from his hands. "Back off, soldier. I've been running around town, and I'm all hot and sweaty, let me jump in the shower for a minute-"
"No chance." He caught her wrist and pulled her close. "I don't mind a little heat and sweat; on you, it's good. We can discuss it later, but right now, after I've been away from my woman for so damned long ..."
So she went with him to the bedroom, because there was nothing else she could do, and because she truly wanted to be with him. He came out of his uniform in a hurry, scattering blouse and slacks and shirt beside the bed, and she tried to match his exuberance, but her fingers slipped on a zipper, and then fumbled with a bra hook, so that when she turned to the bed, he was lying upon it waiting.
Steve looked well; he looked really wonderful, tanned from his belly button up, dead white below the line, except for the patch of black, curly hair between his legs; except for the purple head of his penis rising tall.
Aaron's cock had been twice that size.
Quickly, Jill moved to the bed and lay down, one hand dropping to grasp his penis, that familiar, loved penis that had taken care of all her desires for nine good years. It fit warmly and snugly within her palm, and she stroked it tenderly.
It had been difficult getting her fingers to reach around Aaron's cock.
Jill kissed her husband and rubbed the points of her breasts across his chest. His hands felt over her body, finding the remembered hollows, the places where he made her tingle, and she thought, // / concentrate, this will go all right, because I want him, I do!
She knew the scent of his shaving lotion, and the taste of his tongue, and she knew the hairy thrusting of his pelvis after she had lifted her leg over his body. Guiding the head of his penis to her slot, she was just a little surprised to find her labia moist for him. Not too moist inside, she thought; not all slidy and greasy from the stuff that Aaron Mercer left in there. His cock pushed in slowly, neatly, and she knew a gentle thrill as it centered itself and sank home.
Aaron's huge cock had stretched her labia, fought its way into her vagina and filled the length and breadth of it, stuffed her completely.
Jill pushed back, rotated her ass slowly in the gyrations she knew Steve liked to feel, and somehow he seemed not like Aaron, but like Boyce, and wasn't that a hell of a thing to do-compare her husband's lovemaking to other mens'? She ground her pelvis into him, hurried the squirmings and found that his testicles were in her hand, that she was squeezing and pulling upon them in time with the rhythm of his strokes.
Like two hairy melons, Aaron's balls had been, and the head of his prick had ballooned inside her, had tapped the entrance to her womb itself.
"Darling," Steve panted, "oh baby, oh Jill-so wonderful-"
She screwed him rapidly, humping and bucking to milk him of his semen before he could discover there was more of it contained in the far reaches of her vagina.
"Darling," he moaned, "oh, darling, darling. Do it to me, darling!"
And Aaron Mercer had said, "you bitch; you hot-assed bitch, fuck me!"
Shuddering, Jill clawed at Steve's back, and rolled her hips to meet his passionate release. His semen spurted thick and hot within her, and she clamped her thighs together to hold him in her vagina, to surge steadily against his cock while it pumped the essence of his manhood into her. And in surprise, she also came, slamming her pelvis against his in a series of rapid poundings as she came.
They lay quietly after that, and slowly, she eased his penis out of her to turn over onto her back. He pawed over on his side of the bed and found cigarettes, his lighter. "Still not smoking, Jill?"
'That's right," she answered, glad for mundane conversation, for all the little things they had to collect again, so that they could both become whole.
"I tried it in Nam," he said, "giving up cigarettes. But I got too jumpy, especially during the last few months. I guess I can quit any time now. I'm not going back there."
She turned on her side to look at him, seeing the broken nose in silhouette and the scar tissue along his right cheekbone, the G.I. haircut that barely left enough black-gray hair to cover the top of his head. Her fingertips brushed slowly across the side of his mouth, and Jill loved her husband all over again. She said, "You're not going back to Vietnam-or not back into the army?"
His eyes were closed; smoke drifted up as he let it purl from his lips. "I got the divorce, Jill. I'm not married to the army any more. Only the army pays the alimony to me, for the rest of my life. Half pay, baby; we can make it on that and the ranch."
"I'm glad you retired," she said. "Two wars, Steve; that's what the retirement pay is for. And we can make it-if we can pay off the notes at the bank."
Steve's eyes opened and he watched the upward moving column of smoke. "I have some money; two thousand from a crap game in Saigon, travel pay of five hundred; almost sixteen hundred in accrued leave time, a few bucks I saved. Call it forty-five hundred. That's not enough, is it?"
"I'm sorry, Steve. It isn't enough. We owe twenty thousand dollars, and the bank doesn't want to wait any longer. The calf crop, if we can move all the foals and most of the mares at a loss, maybe sell some of the old farm machinery, get somebody in to cut fence posts off that north hundred ..."
He put out his cigarette, stubbed it out in an ash tray that hadn't been used since he'd been home before. "What's all that tally out to?"
She sighed. "We're six thousand short, at least; only four if we're lucky. But he-the bank is pushing pretty hard; they don't want to wait until we can sell off everything. They want the ranch, Steve. I know this is the wrong way to welcome you home, darling, and if I could, I'd change it all-"
"You've done all you can," he said, and her heart shriveled up inside her chest. "But I'm home now, and maybe I can talk to some other people."
Sitting up, Jill wrapped her arms about her knees. "I-there's a chance that we might be able to sell and make a pretty good profit, if the bank doesn't foreclose first. I, well-I talked to this man just come to town, and he said-he said he might buy the Rafter D."
She was going to tell him for how much, but he cut in. "We're not selling. When the old man died four years back and left us the place, I didn't think it was such a good idea; then I'd have moved it, if anybody would have paid a decent price for it. But this last tour in Nam changed a lot of things in my head, and I want roots, a place to grow solid in. I left here because I was a smartass kid who just had to hire out to fight a war in Korea and see the world. Okay, I've fought the wars and seen the world, and the green grass of home looks a hell of a lot better to me."
"That's-that's fine," Jill said. "I'm with you, whatever you want to do, but maybe after you go to town and ask around, you'll see that maybe our only chance of coming out with anything at all is to-to ask this man if he'll buy."
Suddenly, moving with that swift energy he could still unleash after forty years, Steve was off the bed and moving for the bath. "I am hungry," he said, "and thirsty, but one thing at a time. First we eat and then we get drunk, and then we make a lot more love. I'm going to shower now; sure you won't join me?"
"N-no," she said, picturing the screwing she had given Boyce Pittman in that shower, seeing again how she had wrapped her legs around his waist and taken his penis up her while the hot water rained down on them. "No, Steve-I h-have to fix something to eat, and find the bottle, and-you go ahead."
In the kitchen, Jill pressed a hand to her belly and bent over the ache there, a pain not sexual, but something just as deep. She straightened up and pulled her robe closer about her body, and moved to the sink in her scuffs. Her hair felt tangled and matted, and when she had looked down, she'd seen the teethmarks between her breasts, marks that Steve hadn't noticed in his excitement. There were scratches on her buttocks, too, and she wondered that Steve hadn't discerned the gray taste of Aaron Mercer in her mouth.
A woman was built for hiding, she thought, and took down pots and a pan; a woman was designed for secrecy and sneaking and cheating. And this woman couldn't play it up front and honest yet, not at all. When Steve found out there was no credit and that it was probably only a matter of hours, no more than a few days, before Boyce Pittman had the vital papers served-maybe then Steve would listen to her.
She would have to make a trip to see Aaron again.
"Ohmigod," Jill breathed, and busied herself hauling things from the freezer, opening cans.-She hardly realized what kind of meal she was putting together, but she had to keep things moving.
Boyce Pittman and nothing keeping him from foreclosing now; she hadn't seen Dink around the barn, and he was probably passed out on his cot again. Aaron Mercer and his talk of ninety thousand dollars, his bodyguards and the two gray Buicks so much alike.
Now Steve didn't want to sell the ranch, and if he delayed doing just that, or if Aaron was a phony and couldn't come up with all that money, then Boyce Pittman would win all the chips anyhow.
She turned over some pork chops in the pan, and watched them thaw in the hot grease.
Chapter Seven
Jill awoke with a small hangover, just enough for a throbbing behind her eyes and a bitter taste in her throat. They'd both had too much to drink last night, but she remembered the latter part of the evening with pleasure, and stretched like a contented tigress.
She had been tigerish, riding Steve's penis violently, clawing at him later, when he mounted her from behind. She had even wanted to feel it in her anus, but hadn't dared suggest such a thing to Steve, no matter how high they were. It wasn't something he'd do, she knew.
Sitting up, she knuckled sleep from her eyes and put out a hand to the place her husband had slept beside her, but Steve was already up and gone. There was something else he hadn't done last night; he hadn't gone down on her, or even kissed lower than her breasts and rib cage. Jill had wanted more of that mad release, but it was another move she couldn't just make on her own.
Married to Steve Devlin for nine years, she couldn't come right out with it: Eat me, please. It would jolt the hell out of him, after all this time, and besides, he might want to know where and how she'd gotten such an idea. She certainly wasn't ready to tell him that.
Climbing from the bed, she went into the bathroom, and when she came out, she was showered and refreshed, cleaned and sparkling. She dressed in almost new jeans and boots, and a bright Western shirt; there was a dab of perfume behind each ear and between her breasts, and as an afterthought, upon her mound.
In the kitchen, she saw that Steve had fixed his own breakfast-cereal and toast, and Jill felt guilty for oversleeping. He probably was out on the ranch, eager to look everything over, and to meet with old Dink again. That was, if Dink was in any shape to talk.
Jill made a quick meal for herself, and drank an extra cup of coffee with two aspirins for what was left of her hangover. She felt good, really; she felt loved and wanted-especially wanted. Looking down into her cup, she thought how strange it all was, thought how she had been screwed by three different men, within little more than twenty-four hours. She'd only been laid by one, for the past nine years, then all of a sudden, she'd added two more to her list. And she'd enjoyed it all, especially the new thing with Aaron Mercer, and especially that monstrous cock he'd worked into her tight vagina.
Aaron, she thought. Somehow, she'd have to reach him again, and talk about the money, maybe get some sort of guarantee. She knew that seeing him would mean sex, for she wouldn't be able to stay away, if he wanted to lay her, to eat her. But even if Steve was home now, she still had to carry the main burden of the ranch, and if that meant screwing Aaron as many times as necessary, okay. Steve didn't have to know, and there was certainly enough of her to go around; she'd already proved that she could screw two men and screw them well, less than an hour apart.
When the phone rang. Jill jumped. It rang again before she could get to the living room to answer.
"Jill; Boyce Pittman here. I called to tell you-"
"That you were out here yesterday, bothering old Dink," she hissed.
He sounded genuinely puzzled. "Did he say that?"
Jill retreated hurriedly. "No, but he was drunk and I thought-but I guess it could have been my husband."
Boyce said, "How is your husband? Enjoying his wife as much as I did? Did you scratch and claw him when he got to pounding it to you?"
"You bastard; you must be in that phone booth, and if you think you're going to give me a bad time about laying you-"
"Oh, no; I enjoyed every second of it, Jill. I don't begrudge your husband getting a little pussy for himself. No-I called to tell you I can boost my cash offer on the ranch, just for old time's sake. How does seven thousand dollars sound to you? Above and beyond the debit, of course. All you have to do is to sign a quitclaim deed, and have Sergeant Devlin sign it, too."
Jill took a breath. "Try ten thousand on for size, Boyce. I've been talking to some people."
"Ten thousand? Now look here, Jill-I'm only doing this because I don't want to see you out in the cold without anything to show for the years of effort on that ranch, and-"
"Ten," she said, "ten."
"Goddamn it! Look, now-the bank can foreclose any time-"
"And wait two or three years, before it can sell the property to anyone else, meanwhile paying taxes on six hundred forty acres. The Rafter D is under the homestead law, Boyce, and I damned well know it. So do you."
He cleared his throat. "Oh, yes, yes. That's why I'm willing to give you something for your signatures; the bank may be able to unload the property and get its money back, if I don't have to wait too long."
"I'll think about it," Jill said. "I'll let you know in a day or so."
"No longer than that," Boyce said. "No more stalling, Jill. I mean, the sexual interlude has been pleasant, but no amount of screwing-even as good as you are-can build up to thirty thousand dollars."
She said, "You're pretty damned cocky."
"Why shouldn't I be? Your loving husband is back home, and you won't be so anxious to wave those pictures around. Oh, and by the way, Jill-ah, Mrs. Devlin, that is-the price includes your putting those pictures in my hand. You know which pictures, dear: the ones of you and I screwing on your husband's bed. Good-bye, now."
Jill put down the phone, her mind racing. Boyce was too arrogant, and she couldn't believe that he had changed overnight into someone so sure of himself, so unafraid of exposure and social stigma. He had also come up with a few thousand more dollars on the ranch, and the question was: why?
Aaron Mercer had said seventy thousand clear, after the mortgage is paid off.
And Boyce Pittman was now willing to go to ten thousand clear. A change of heart? Hardly; Boyce wasn't known for giving anything away. That meant the Homestead Act did have something to do with things, that Boyce was being hurried to sell at a fat profit.
Who was pushing him-Aaron Mercer?
She walked back into the kitchen and poured herself another cup of coffee, thinking hard. She didn't hear Steve come in, and when she turned around, she jumped in surprise. "Oh! Hi, husband-you startled me."
"Yeah," he said slowly, and she saw that his face was set, "sometimes wives forget their husbands are around. Or maybe it's convenient for them to forget they have husbands at all."
Jill frowned at him, her coffee cup balanced in one hand, sugar spoon in the other. "W-what do you mean, Steve?"
He said tightly, "I mean you forgot there's an extension in the barn. I guess you forgot because Dink never uses the phone or answers it. But I was standing right there by the tack room when it rang."
A cold knot gathered in her belly, and the cup shook in her hand. "Steve-I-I-"
"Put down the cup," he said, "and the spoon. I'm going to slap hell out of you."
Automatically, she obeyed him, then asked, "Did-did you hear it all? All that Boyce Pittman said?"
"Right down to the part about him screwing you on my bed."
She tried weakly, "Steve, I-"
He slapped her then, and she caromed off the kitchen table, tried to catch her balance, and staggered into the living room to fall to her knees. Red and white lights were going on and off behind her eyes, and a drum thumped hollowly in her head. Tears sprang from her eyes and slid wetly down her cheeks, though she tried to hold them back.
Gritting her teeth, she shook her head to clear it, and saw her hair ribbon fly off. Swiveling around, she stared up at his belt buckle, the buckle he'd won running the Texas barrels on Comet D, the last time he'd been home. Jill said, "Goddamn you, Steve, I guess I had that coming, but don't hit me again!"
She put her hands down to the carpet to help herself up. He reached around behind her and put his boot against her ass. He shoved hard, and Jill fell flat on her belly, her cheekbone bouncing off the rug.
Rolling over, she spat it at him: "Why, damn it? Because I laid another man? And what the hell did you do for the last two years in Vietnam-get by on wet dreams?"
"No," he said, "I made it with slope whores, and before that, I made it with Kraut whores, and gook whores. But I didn't marry a whore; I married a good woman."
Jill sat up again, and rubbed her cheek; both sides of her face felt numbed now. She said, "You married a woman, good or bad, for better or worse, and I didn't have a male whore to buy sex from. Look-your ego may be bruised right now, but do you remember telling me a long time ago that it would be okay if I took myself a transient lover while you were overseas? Do you remember that?"
He stood with his feet spread wide apart, his thumbs hooked into the black leather belt. "I remember, and you said, oh, no, that you could only do it if you loved the man. Do you love that stuffed shirt son of a bitch?"
"No," she said, sitting on the floor and not looking up into his cold face. "I was wrong, before. A woman can lay a man and not love him; I did."
"All these years," he said, "I treated you like a lady, like a wife, and all these years, you've been fucking around on the side."
"No, no! Just-just this week. I never did it before, and I wouldn't have done it this time, except for the ranch." Jill looked up now, her eyes blazing. "The Rafter D would have already been lost if I hadn't gone to Boyce Pittman and-and made myself available to him."
"Bullshit," he said. "You're looking for an excuse, an out."
She leaped up and faced him. "I'll be damned if I am! What the hell have you done to keep the place? You blew your last reenlistment bonus in a poker game-five thousand dollars. That would have beat off the bank for a long time, and-and the money you've spent on Vietnamese and German and Korean whores-that would have helped, too! I was here, me and that mortgage because you didn't give a damn about the Rafter D, so I had to do something to save it, to keep this land your parents worked for-and you, you-"
His eyes were flinty. "You didn't have to fuck for it."
She said, "He wouldn't take a handshake."
"What else did you do for that pompous bastard? Something you never did for me? Did you go down on him, Jill? Did you eat his tender, civilian prick?"
"No!" she screamed. "No, you son of a bitch-no!"
"You must have done something pretty good," he went on inexorably. "He just offered you ten thousand dollars above the mortgage. You must have given him some pretty good blow jobs, or took it up the ass-something special. And all this time, you've conned me into thinking you were just a sweet, innocent kid."
Jill moved back until she could reach behind her back and heft the ash tray on the end table there. She said, "Stay the hell away from me, Steve."
He didn't look like her husband any more; he was a battered, brutish man with something evil flickering in his eyes, with something terribly cynical stamped in the creases around his mouth. He came toward her, rocking on the balls of his feet. "Cocksucker," he said.
She pegged the ash tray at him, threw it with a full-armed swing that would have fractured his skull had the heavy thing landed solidly. But Steve bobbed under it, and it slammed into the wall.
Then he was on her, iron fingers locked around her wrist, jerking her into his body with a thump that knocked the breath from her lungs. Jill sagged, and would have slumped to the floor, if his other hand hadn't caught into her pullover blouse. With a single jerk, he tore it apart, and when she tried to pull away, he ripped at her jeans like some huge animal gone mad.
When he let her fall, she was naked except for her boots, but she was getting her wind back. She punched at his belly, and he turned to let her fist slide off his hip. Jill tried to kick up at him, to turn him into a gelding, because she was so damned mad at the mean son of a bitch. He slapped her foot aside and left her whole leg stinging.
Crying, gasping helplessly in her hurt and her anger, she stared through tear-blurred eyes and saw him dropping his own jeans, his shorts. In dismay, she saw his penis rise swollen and ugly, turning harder and longer as she looked at it.
"What-w-what are you-"
He lock-stepped to her, slowed by his dropped pants. In horror, she stared up at him towering above her as he said, "I'm going to make you eat it, my darling little wife. I'm going to take this cock and ram it right down your throat, and you're going to blow it. You hear me, you cheating bitch? You'll suck my cock and like it-just as you did to Pittman."
"I-I didn't," she sobbed, "I won't-I won't!" And she scrambled backward, scuttled like a crab trapped on the beach and trying for safety. But there was no safe place. Her back came up against the couch, and she felt a blaze of pain in her scalp as his hand twisted in her hair.
Jill saw his hairy lower belly, his thick thighs slabbed with muscle; she saw his balls swinging furred, and the veined shaft that rose to a ballooned and purpled head. The vertical slit was wet, she saw, and revulsion filled her.
"Steve-no-please-don't make me d-do this! I never did it to him, to anybody-I swear-I swear!"
"Here," he said, "open your mouth."
The thing lunged at her and she managed to twist her head so that it slipped off her chin. "I'll bite it off! I will, damn you-I'll bite it in half!"
Her face was pulled into his belly, and his penis slid along her cheek; Steve ground her face into his belly, into his balls, and she gasped desperately for air. Then he shoved the head of it between her open lips, and she groaned.
The hot, swollen head pushed into her mouth, and she felt it slide over her tongue. His hands were on her head now, and he just kept thrusting his cock deeper, skidding it along the roof of her mouth, and Jill bit down as hard as she could.
Steve had been ready for the move, and felt the warning in his thumbs laid alongside her jawbones. Jill thought for an instant that her head would shatter, that her skull would be crushed, and she sobbed as she pulled at his wrists. He was so damned powerful, so damned strong.
"Ooh-ahh-n-no-" her voice was muffled, her pleas were muted and indistinguishable, for his meaty pole was filling her mouth now, and tapping at the entrance to her throat.
"Use your tongue," Steve said. "Lick it in there, wrap your hot tongue around it, stick the tip of it in the head of my prick. Do it, Jill, or I'll crack your head like an eggshell."
Jill used her tongue, licked it up and around the head of his cock, wrapped it around the flanged glans and felt the satiny skin of the shaft against her teeth as she worked the end of her tongue into the wet and sticky slit.
"Suck it," he ordered. "Pull on it, baby."
She did it, afraid not to, shuddering as he began to stroke his cock into her mouth, taking longer and longer thrusts until she could feel the spongy head reaching far back into the velvet pocket of her throat. Jill sucked the moving cock, eased up as Steve pulled it back, sucked harder as he shoved it in, and she knew the feel of his hairy balls against her chin.
Gasping, flinching each time he pushed too far and she thought she might have to throw up, Jill tried to get it over with, to hurry him so it would be done, finished for now and for all time to come. Her hands lifted and she took hold of the cheeks of his ass, working her fingertips around so that every time he drew back for another long stroke into her throat, his anus came into contact.
She sucked him hard, curling her tongue and biting down gently, and she knew that he was going wild with the sensations. "Uh!" he grunted, and "Uh-uh!" again, and his ass churned with the urgency that was building so powerfully up in his swinging balls.
He was going to come, she knew. He was going to come-and in her mouth, perhaps down her throat. Oh, no, she screamed inside her head-oh, no! No, damn it! She couldn't let him degrade her so, she would not accept it-she'd spit it out-she'd-"
"Ahh!" he said above her where she could not see, "ahh, you bitch, that's it! I'm coming!" His strong hands gripped her head into immovable position while his busy prick pumped in and out and suddenly she was flinching and strangling on the ejaculation.
Too late, too late.
Steve came in a frenzy, hunching his hairy pelvis tightly to her open and gasping mouth, his prick buried to the hilt into her mouth, her throat. His semen fountained out from the convulsive head of his cock, and the hot, thick shower bathed her throat. She had to swallow or choke on the heavy fluid, so she swallowed and swallowed, and the stuff went slipping down her throat and into her stomach.
H His hands loosened and fell away from her head. Jill edged back and tore her mouth from his still pulsating cock; she wiped her hands across her lips and spat, spat again while he backed from her to fumble up his shorts and lift his jeans into place.
"There," he said, his voice ragged. "That wasn't bad, was it? No worse than blowing the banker."
"You son of a bitch," she said evenly, "I told you I'd never done that to anybody-not Pittman, not you, not-" and she caught herself barely in time, so she didn't mention Aaron's name, but instead said, "Not the other two boys I screwed before I met you. And I won't do it again with you, mister. If you try it again, I'll shotgun you!"
Steve's smile was thin, but she thought his aplomb had been shaken. "Okay, Jill-but I'm not through with you, or with that sneaky bastard, either. Pittman's got a daughter, hasn't he? Sure-a cute little kid who ought to be fifteen or sixteen years old by now."
Staring, Jill said, "She's only fourteen; Sherry Pittman is only fourteen, but what does she have to do with-"
"A horse trade; my wife for his daughter. He put the prick to you, and I'll put it to Sherry. See how he likes that, the bastard. See how you like it."
She climbed slowly up and sat on the couch, her legs trembling, unable to stop herself from wiping at her mouth again. "Steve, right now I'd like it fine if you fried in hell, but maybe I'll think it over and change my mind; I'm not sure about that part. I realize that you're hurt and feel betrayed, and maybe you hate me right now, too. But we've been together awhile, and everything is all screwed up, and it could straighten itself out, if we give ourselves a chance."
He turned his back and fumbled with his belt buckle. "I don't know. I just don't know, goddamn it! You and me-you're not the girl I married-and I'm not-but look!" and he whirled savagely upon her. "Look now-I'm not going to back off from Boyce Pittman. I heard him running his fat mouth today on the phone, heard him bragging and gloating how he'd screwed you on my bed. I listened to that arrogant shit talk about how no amount of fucking was worth the money, and I don't think he ever intended to hold off on the mortgage. I think he was fucking you more ways than one. So when I find enough money to push him back from the ranch, and after I get to his prize daughter, Pittman is going to know it. I'll nail his hide to the wall, any way I have to do it-and that's even if I have to put a bullet through his fucking head!"
Jill leaped up from the couch as Steve strode for the front door, his boot heels banging down hard, but she stumbled over her torn jeans, and he was gone before she could reach him. Not caring that she was nude except for the incongruity of her cowboy boots, Jill ran onto the porch after him. But Steve was already trotting across the yard and in a moment would be piling into the truck.
She screamed after him. "Don't do it! Listen to me-there's no way you can borrow enough money-there's no way you can stop Pittman from foreclosing, even if he has to wait years before he can sell the ranch again! Steve-Steve! I know what I'm talking about, and if you get to his kid, he'll forget the ranch and come down on us like a bomb. Damn it, damn it-Steve! You'll lose the Rafter D!"
Chapter Eight
Jill climbed into the front seat of the gray Buick, and Lang smiled whitely at her. "Mrs. Devlin; my, my-you can manage to look yummy in just about anything."
"Thanks," Jill said, and stayed far on her own side of the seat.
"Jojo stayed with Mr. Mercer, of course," he said, putting the car into gear. "So I drew the assignment of driving you. I don't mind at all. Mr. Mercer said you wanted to see him again, so I suppose that's the first stop."
"Yes, please," she said, and trying to find any kind of ally, "Your hair looks nice, Lang."
"Oh," he said, and lifted a hand to the back of his head, "oh, thank you, dear. I mean, without a beauty shop, it's difficult, but I manage. Of course there are shops even in Midway, but they're so provincial, and I can't trust my hair to just anybody. It's very fine, you know."
"I can see," Jill said, and wondered why anyone would hire this one as a bodyguard. Then she remembered his eyes, the first time she'd met him, and remembered the reptilian set to them.
On the way to town, Lang chatted about everything-the countryside, the lack of gourmet food in Midway, what an irritant Jojo could be; but he said noting of any importance, such as where Aaron Mercer came from, or what his business was in town. So Lang really said very little, and Jill was glad when they rolled into the parking lot of the motel, just as happy that the lot was discreetly shielded by the swimming pool and a generous design of greenery. She didn't want to be seen there.
At the doorway to Aaron's room, she thanked Lang again, and he seemed genuinely responsive. She glanced at the room beyond, and saw the curtains drop back into place. Jojo was always alert. She tapped at the door and it swung back right away.
Inside, Aaron paraphrased the compliment Lang had paid her. "You make the simplest clothes look chic, my dear. I'm happy you came."
She nodded agreement at the offer of a drink and said, "I'm grateful for the car, Aaron. My husband took the truck, and there's no other transportation on the ranch, except horses and the tractor."
"Glad to be of service; bourbon all right? It's a real pleasure to see you looking so lovely, so fresh and unspoiled. That quality is rare, Jill, almost as rare as your natural sensuousness."
He looked neat and polished; there was a bright yellow scarf at his throat to relieve the effect of so many shades of gray; his soft leather slippers matched the scarf. Jill caught the scent of his musky shaving lotion, and knew that Aaron was correct at least about one thing: There was an inborn sexiness to her. Even disturbed as she was, angry and hurt and shocked as she was-yes, and worried, too-it would take very little to turn her on, right here and right now.
She said, after she'd downed all her drink, "Pittman is up to ten thousand above the payoff, and my husband found out I've been sleeping with him."
Aaron smiled slightly. "I noticed that small bruise on your cheekbone. Where's the betrayed spouse now?"
"I don't know. He said things about getting even with Boyce, and that he'd find the money for the mortgage by himself. I'm sure he can't, but I'm not sure he won't get into serious trouble over Boyce. My husband is a violent man, Aaron, and dangerous."
He pursed his lips and tilted the bottle over her glass. "He might possibly be dangerous to the transfer of your ranch. If he's in jail, it will be difficult to convince him he should sign the papers, and if you divorce him, that will take too much time."
Jill stared. "Divorce? But I didn't-"
"It's out of the question anyhow; too time consuming. But of course, if you'd like to travel with me and some time later file for a separation-"
"Aaron! I-I love my husband, even if-" "He mistreated you? Only that small bruise?" "No! He-he made me take him in my mouth.
He said I must have done it to Boyce and so I'd do it for him, and he-he forced me to eat him, to swallow his semen. It-I don't know-it was the idea behind that kind of rape that made me ill."
He shook his head and refilled her glass. "Poor girl. That should never be forced on anyone, but brought about carefully, so as not to destroy the appreciation. Oh, my; I think your husband has spoiled something for me."
He walked across the room, hands in the pockets of his gray silk smoking jacket; when he turned back to her, he was composed. "Pittman gave you a time limit to accept or reject his latest offer?"
Bewildered by the sudden change of subjects, Jill said, "Yes; a couple of days, he said, and no more. And I don't know if I should tell you this, Aaron, but my husband's way of getting back at Boyce is through his daughter Sherry. She's only a child, and Boyce dotes on her, and I think he'll just blow sky high and forget about the ranch and everything else, if Steve somehow manages to lay that kid and sees to it that Boyce knows."
Aaron poured himself a drink, his first. Then he said, "A complication, to be sure. This all began so simply, with only the well-defined and basic ingredients-and now it becomes confused, new seasonings added, new chefs gathering about the cookpot, each clamoring to use his own spoon."
Frowning at him, feeling the effect of three quick drinks, Jill said, "I don't understand."
"Of course not, my dear, but don't bother. Tell me, have you thought over the money we spoke of-the bank's twenty, and your seventy thousand?"
"Yes, I have, Aaron. And-and it sounds damned good to me. I wasn't sure before this morning, when Steve-when he treated me like a no-good bitch that he despised. Now I am sure, and I'll sign my share, any time you have the papers ready. Steve-well, maybe I can still convince him, once he finds out nobody will lend him the kind of money we need."
This time his smile wasn't convivial, but more as if it had been quickly roughed in by a careless artist. "He'll be convinced, my dear. Now, is there anything else?"
"No. It's just-I mean, I don't know why I come to you all the time, unless it's because I have nowhere else to turn, and you-well, you radiate a kind of strength."
"That's a nice compliment, Jill. You're also perceptive, in addition to your other, more obvious, attributes. Freshen your drink?"
She shook her head and stood up. "No thank you. If I have any more, I won't leave this room. And much as I'd like to stay-really-I have to try and find Steve before he does something stupid."
He moved close to her. "Keep the car as long as you wish. Do try to speak to your husband, and Jill-" Aaron's hands came up, their palms out. He cupped her breasts, thumbed gently over her nipples, then slid his hands down over her hips to place one on her buttocks and the other between her thighs where he fondled her pubic mound. "-Jill, my dear, voluptuous creature, don't let that single bad experience stop you from fully enjoying oral love. I'll help you; I'll go down on you as I did before, thrill you with my tongue and teeth, as I did the other night when you went nearly insane with ecstasy. But this time, there'll be a difference; this time, while I'm eating your delicious pussy, you'll be eating my prick. We'll love each other together, and I promise you'll adore it."
Jill trembled; his voice was warm and sugared, and his deft hands were moving, moving. She knew his penis was rising, that his huge, deeply satisfying penis was readying itself to screw. She was ready for its thick, long penetration, too; Jill could feel her vulva loosening, turning sultry and humid. Her knees were weakening, and she knew the lifting of her rigid nipples.
"I-" her mouth had suddenly gone dry, and she dampened her lips with her tongue to try again. "I'll do anything you say, Aaron-anything; you already know that."
His hands fell away and he kissed her lightly upon the mouth, a fatherly kind of kiss that surprised and disturbed her. Aaron said, "I hope so, my dear. We'll postpone our lovemaking, but only for now. First we should get this business with Pittman, with your husband, out of the way."
So she was out on the street, driving the unfamiliar new Buick, seeing in its grays and blacks, the personality of Aaron Mercer himself. Even to the throb of power under the hood, she thought, and was sorry that she hadn't made it with Aaron again. He was a connoisseur of women; he knew their needs, and realized how they loved to be appreciated. Aaron would never have slapped her for laying someone else, if he hadn't been around for two years. And if Aaron forced her to go down on him, it would be with a gentle and urgent persuasion, for her own good.
But she didn't love Aaron. He thrilled her, aroused her to fever pitches that she had never before known, but she didn't love him. She was still in love with the hard-headed ex-sergeant who was hiding his badly bruised ego under a cloud of threatening rhetoric. Jill had to find him, to explain, and surely, once the sharp edge was off his hurt, he'd listen to her, see her side of things.
Would he understand about Aaron? Jill bit her lip; that was asking too much of Steve, of any man. He might accept the fact that his wife had screwed one man because she thought it might save the ranch, but he'd never forgive her if he discovered that she'd also been laying another man-alternating between her lovers.
Driving slowly, she cruised along Main Street, peering into store windows on her side, trying to make out Steve's shape. She parked at the end of the street and walked slowly back, going in and out of the drug store, the Happy Hour beer garden, the grocery store; no Steve.
She tried the feed store before it closed, and the bakery, and peeked into gas stations where sometimes men played pinochle; no Steve.
Walking fast, she went back up the street and got into the Buick. The girl, the Pittman girl; she rode a lot, went to horse shows all over the state. Maybe Steve was already working on the kid, trying to get next to her while she trained a horse. The damned fool, Jill thought; if Boyce didn't shoot him for seducing the child, then the banker might get the law on him for statutory rape.
Maybe forcible rape, if the kid didn't go along, and Steve lost his head again. But he could be charming and smooth, and there was something about her husband that had always turned women's heads. Sherry Pittman could be susceptible, as well.
Jill drove to the fairgrounds and through the main gate, then around back to the stables. There were several kids working horses in the open arena, but Jill didn't see the red-brown hair of Sherry Pittman anywhere, nor the Arabian the girl usually rode. She looked for the pickup, and didn't find that, either.
Damn Steve, she thought, going back into town and beginning her slow drive down the other side of the street. Parking the car in front of the closed bank, she looked up at the clock and blinked; it was getting on in the day, and she'd better get to Steve before he made a bigger fool of himself. He could have picked up the girl and taken her over to Junctionville, she thought. If he had, there'd be no finding him until he was ready to be found.
Would a kid that young let herself be talked into anything by a forty-year-old man? But they grew up so fast these days, Jill thought; kids that young were getting pregnant and hanging up on drugs and balling in sex orgies. Because the town of Midway was small, that didn't mean it was innocent.
She walked the street again, steering carefully away from the motel, and heard the jukebox banging in the last ginmill. Steve lurched out of it and stood swaying in the middle of the sidewalk, drunker than hell. Jill walked toward him, trying to put together the right words in her mind, making ready what she could say to him, so he'd come home with her.
The Buick, she thought, oh, lord, the new Buick! How would she explain that? She wouldn't try; she'd help him to their old truck and drive him back to the ranch, and later she could call Aaron and tell him where the car was.
A big man blocked her view of Steve, somehow drifting in and closing off her husband. A square and blocky man, with a dark head set thickly down between heavy shoulders, and she thought she recognized his back.
Jojo. What was Jojo doing here, away from his job?
"What the hell-" Steve said, and staggered back against the brick wall. Hurrying toward him, she saw Jojo move faster, and Steve's head jerk back. Then Steve fell over on the sidewalk.
She screamed wordless shock and hate as she ran at Jojo, but he only swept out a furry paw and wiped her casually aside, so that she ricocheted into the building herself. She wobbled around and braced her back against it, and saw Steve get up.
He was drunk and confused, but the reflexes of a hundred street brawls took over, and when Jojo chopped at his head again, Steve got away from the punch. Jojo swung the other big fist, and Steve kicked him in the belly.
"Uh!" Jojo grunted, and backed up a step. But when Steve tried to kick him again, he caught Steve's boot and flipped him off his feet. Jill pressed her hands to her stomach as her husband hit the sidewalk hard and lay still.
"No-no!" she begged, as Jojo moved to him and leaned down, one fist drawn back for a pile driver blow.
Steve rolled into Jojo's legs and Jojo fell on hands and knees. Steve came up behind him and kicked Jojo very hard in the side, over the left kidney. Jojo jerked up to his knees and grabbed his side with both hands, and that's when Steve punched him four, five times in the face-swift, cutting, punishing blows that rocked Jojo's head back and forth and made blood jump out of his face.
Jojo grabbed one of Steve's hands and used it to pull himself slowly, ponderously erect, while all the time, Steve was hammering the other fist into his eyes and mouth. Jojo's face was a red ruin, and he was sucking air through bloody bubbles, but he got the other arm around Steve's waist and began to squeeze.
Jill started forward as she saw her husband lifted from the ground and slammed back again, but then Steve stuck his thumbs into Jojo's eyes and pried his head back far enough so that Steve could butt him under the chin-twice, three times-and Jojo made horrible, strangling noises.
He let go when Steve got a knee up into his crotch, and started to fall like a big tree that has fought the high winds too long. But Steve Devlin wouldn't let him fall. He punched him and punched him, grunting with the whiplash force of each blow, until Jojo kind of slid off to one side and crumpled.
"Steve-oh, Steve, my darling!" Jill reached him and propped him up, because he was just about to fall across Jojo's motionless body.
"Jill? Jill-what the hell this big bastard hit me for? I never-never ..."
Some of his weight was lifted from her, and she saw another man beside Steve. The man said, "Poor Jojo; but he has his uses."
"Uuuhhh!" Steve moaned, the gut noise driven out through his open mouth.
"Lang! Lang-don't!"
There was something leather in his hand, something woven and springy, and he brought it snapping down across Steve's neck again. Gasping, his eyes rolling, Steve dropped to his knees.
"Be a good boy," Lang said, smiling sweetly. "Listen to your nice wife when you sober up."
"B-bastard," Steve mumbled, and Lang hit his exposed rib cage with the blackjack, swinging it easily and expertly, striking and mumbling.
"Be good," Lang said, "or I'll smash your balls, dearie."
"Oh, god," Jill said, "oh, please don't hurt him any more-oh, please! He-let me get him out of here before a crowd gathers. L-let me take him home!"
Lang touched his hair with his free hand, and the other one made the blackjack disappear. In its place sprang a knife with a long, bright and wickedly slim blade. He made a loosely peeling motion with it, and a red line jumped along Steve's cheekbone.
"Pay attention," Lang said. "You don't want to see me ever again, dearie; that's to remind you. All right, Mrs. Devlin; take him home and talk sense to him."
Somehow, she got Steve up and with her shoulder braced under his armpit, steered him around back of the bar where he'd have parked the truck. Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief when she saw it there, she wrestled Steve into the cab and shut the door after him. He was breathing heavily and the cut on his cheek wasn't deep, so she thought he was all right. When she started the truck, he fumbled with the window and stuck his head out to retch, and she could smell the bitter odor of beer and sickness.
Driving from behind the building, she looked up and down the street before pulling out, and saw that Jojo was already gone, Lang with him. She shivered, and took the pickup out of town, speeding a little on the state road, turning into the county one. Glancing at her husband, she saw his head lolling back on the seat, saw his eyes closed.
Why had they beaten him up? Aaron Mercer was behind it, because his men wouldn't stir without his orders. He'll have to be convinced, Aaron said, and now she understood a small part of the cold steel that lay beneath Aaron's softly rational talk.
Good, lord, she thought-Aaron is a killer! Whatever he was involved in here, whatever he had to do with the ranch, with Boyce Pittman, or anything else in the county, she had to see that Steve kept out of the man's way.
Jojo-brutish and powerful, but Steve had handled him. Then Lang came-mincing, effeminate Lang with the quick blackjack and the swifter knife; of the two, Lang was the more deadly by far.
And what did that make their master, Aaron Mercer? Jill turned into the Rafter D and took the bumpy road in a hurry. Steve had to sign whatever Aaron wanted now; he had to. If he didn't, they might kill him.
Chapter Nine
She'd just slugged her coffee with whiskey when Dink Watson knocked on the kitchen door, and Jill told him tiredly to come on in. She'd had a hell of a night, and wasn't really in the mood for facing any more problems, no matter how small. Steve was still sleeping it off in the bed, and she hadn't been able to face that either, so she spent an uncomfortable night on the couch.
"Mrs. Devlin-this here is Sam Starr; he got here afore you was up, so I just kept him with me in the barn until you was stirrin' about."
Jill nodded. "Mr. Starr; will you have some breakfast? You, Dink?"
Sam Starr was lean and bent, his hair white and his face weathered by sun and sand and many years of squinting into the wind. "No thank you, ma'am; might indulge in some coffee, though."
She didn't offer to lace it with bourbon, but poured two more cups and sat down with them, drained out and uneasy in her mind. Sam Starr made remarks about how the weather was different from Texas, and she said yes, she supposed it was, and he went on to talk about horses.
"There was a stud on our place name of Hale's Comet; he was named after Hale Devlin, and it was kind of a play on Haley's Comet back then. Anyways, that stud could run like a snakebit fool, and three, four of his get did, too. One of 'em broke track records at El Paso and Juarez, and she mighta' gone on to be might nigh good as Three Bars, except she pulled a tendon we couldn't fix."
Finishing her coffee, Jill listened toward the bedroom where her husband was sleeping off his monumental drunk, and his beating. She really wasn't interested in running quarter horses just then.
"Now this Comet D horse," the old man said, "he seems right catty on his feet, but he couldn't rightly be the colt that Hale Devlin took with him when we busted up our partnership; that was too long ago."
Jill got up and poured more coffee for them all, then, with her body shielding her movements, dropped another slug into her own cup. She needed a lift this morning, for there was still Steve to face, to convince of the futility of begging money in town. Convince him, Aaron Mercer had said, and that strong, cruel man certainly meant it.
She said, "No, Hale Devlin brought Comet D's sire from Texas. He was named Comet R, after the Rafter ranch; Comet D was for Devlin. He can run, Mr. Starr; I don't know about how well he'd do now, because he's a full twelve years old, but he can show his feet to just about anything in the county 3 and some of his get..."
Listening, she heard Steve go into the bathroom and shut the door. Into the silence, Dink Watson said, "Comet's get run at a few tracks, but mostly folks want 'em for cutting horses, show stock and like that."
Sam Starr's washed-out blue eyes found hers, and Jill looked away. He said, "You ever considered sellin' Comet D? My guess is that he's got just the blood cross I been chasin' down for years. I'd make you a fair price on him."
The shower went on, and she got a picture of herself in that same glassed-in stall, soapy and slippery, getting the meat shoved to her by Boyce Pittman. Her husband was standing in there now, baking some of the soreness from his naked body with the hot water, and somehow, she got a picture of him on one side of her and Boyce on the other, their rigid cocks reaching at her, their hands caressing foam over her squirming body, one cock probing into the cleft of her buttocks, one reaching hotly into the hairy depths of her pubic mound.
"I-I'm sorry," she said, "my husband isn't feeling too well, and I didn't hear everything you said, Mr. Starr."
He nodded, his work-worn fingers holding his coffee cup. "Said I'd like to buy your stud, was you of a mind to sell. Wouldn't plan on runnin' him none, but just usin' him to cross back on that mare's bloodline."
"We've never thought about selling him," she said. "I'd have to talk it over with Steve, but I don't know if he'll consider it ... "
Sam Starr rose, hat dangling in his hand now. He was in faded jeans and a patched, washed-thin shirt; his boots were run over at the heels. She felt sympathetic for him, though; he'd come all the way from Texas to look at a horse.
"Tell you what," she said, "if you don't mind bunking in with Dink, we'd be glad to have you stay awhile. It just might be that my husband will have to sell off all our stock, and if Comet D gets a good home ..."
Steve came into the kitchen; he had a bruise over one eye and a cut over the other; the scratch on his cheekbone was thin but definite, and the left corner of his mouth was puffed out of shape. His hair was wet from the shower, and he'd shaved, out of habit, she guessed. Wearing a short sleeved shirt and Lee Riders, he would have looked pretty good, but for the anger smoldering deep in his eyes.
"Howdy," Sam Starr said. "You'd be Hale's boy, then. I was his partner once."
"Sam," Steve said, "Sam Starr."
She poured another cup, and made room at the table for Steve. He ignored her, and eagerly talked over old times about his father, with Dink pitching in now and then, and Sam Starr relaxing. They didn't notice when she left the kitchen, and she went to sit on the porch, to stare out at the pastures where the Herefords moved, and beyond them at the little band of horses.
Maybe she ought to see a doctor, she thought. She certainly had a fixation on sex; let her husband take a shower, and she pictured herself naked between him and her lover; one of her lovers. When someone talked about breeding Comet D to a mare, she pictured the stallion's huge penis, and that image was followed by, overlapped by, Aaron Mercer's giant phallus.
And what the hell would she tell a doctor? Cure me of my sexual urges? She didn't want to be that cured, but Jill did wish she could control herself more. Take Aaron now-she was afraid of him, now that she'd seen the lengths he was willing to go to, just to "convince" someone. He had convinced her, for sure; but had it worked with Steve? Her husband hadn't seemed cowed this morning, but belligerent.
Aaron terrified her now, but still-Jill closed her eyes and rested one cheek on her drawn up knees-he possessed that compelling quality, that mesmerizing power that drew her to him. It was like being close to a beautiful snake, and admiring his grace, his markings, yet knowing the horror of his deadly fangs.
Aaron's penis was his deadly fang; it was a spear, a rhino's horn, designed for impaling softer flesh. She saw herself again writhing on it, riding its thickness, twisting and hunching upon its knobbed length.
Steve. She reached for his image and held tightly to it. Steve wouldn't go on being angry with her; he couldn't. He'd understand, once he'd talked to the lawyer and the other banker, and the savings and loan outfit over in Junctionville. He would know there wasn't anything else she could have done, that instead of raising hell with her about screwing Boyce to save the ranch, he ought to be thanking her for doing it.
She lifted her face from her knees. Maybe Steve had already talked to everybody; maybe that's why he was so loaded early in the day. It could be that he'd gotten the same turndowns she had, and now he knew what a hopeless fight he was up against.
God; they'd kill him if he didn't cooperate. Whatever Aaron Mercer wanted with the Rafter D-and she had to assume he wanted it, too-then they'd better let him have it. Otherwise, Lang and Jojo would ambush Steve somewhere and leave his body to be found, and by the time the estate had cleared probate, Aaron would have her signature on a bill of sale. And Steve wouldn't be alive. And the ranch would be lost, anyhow.
She heard the back door slam, and Dink Watson laugh. From the corner of her eye, she saw the two old men cross to the barn, and then saw the heavy-tired pickup with the camper parked back there. The rig looked new, not nearly so worn as its owner, and she thought that Sam Starr must have saved for a long time to buy it.
Steve came out on the porch, and she kept her back to him. He sat down near her on the steps, but not too near, and after a while he said, "You tried to help last night."
"Sure; I still consider you my husband."
He said, "You called that little one by name. You said Lang."
Jill sighed. "Yes, and I said not to hurt you, but he wouldn't listen."
"How do you know him? You probably know the big one, too."
"Only by name," she said. "He-they work for another man, a stranger in town, and I'd guess he sent them." She swung around to face him, and her heart went out to him about his battered face. "Oh, Steve-"
"You're keeping some weird company," he said. "First I find out you've been screwing the town banker, and right after I have a fight with you about it, along come these hoods and beat hell out of me. For this mysterious stranger, you say-not for you; not because I slapped you around and made you go down on me."
"You think that?" Her eyes blistered him for the idea. "Damn it-if I'd put those two on you, I wouldn't have tried to stop them; I'd have jumped on and helped them."
One corner of his mouth lifted. "Guess you would, at that. But what made them work me over, without a word?"
"To-to convince you," she said, "that you should sign over the ranch as soon as possible. I talked to that man; he's supposed to be a land developer, and I don't know why he wants the Rafter D. I don't care why. I don't want to see you dead because you didn't listen. Lang-that swishy one, could have cut your throat as easily as he marked your cheek. And he would do it."
Steve touched exploratory fingertips to his eye and winced. "This developer-and Pittman, too. How come the Rafter D is all that important suddenly?"
"I told you I didn't care why! Between them or maybe together, Aaron Mercer and Boyce Pittman are playing some kind of deadly game that has us in the middle, and we're not big enough to stand up to them. They'll hurt you, maybe kill you, and I-" Jill stopped, not wanting to say she loved him, her pride still hurt from the bad time he'd given her.
Steve said, "Experts have tried to kill me-Koreans, Chinese, Charlie Cong; I'm still here."
Exasperated, she flared at him. "Damn it, don't be ridiculous! Where are your mortars, tanks, airplanes? Where are the medics, the helicopters? This is a different kind of war, Steve-and all the odds are on their side."
"What do you expect me to do about it? Let them bang me around?"
Carefully, she said, "Sell the place. That's safer by far, and there's an offer-a big offer, Steve. Ninety thousand dollars, all told. That leaves us with seventy, plus all the stock and machinery. We can buy a smaller place, one with lots of water, thin out the horses and keep the brood cows-"
"My," he said, "but you've been a busy little wife. Very businesslike, rational and logical, and yes-that's a hell of a lot of money. From this Mercer guy, I guess. Have you been playing around with him, too? Does that go with the concerned wife game-all that screwing! around?"
"Please," she said, "I'm trying not to fight." And there was a heavier guilt inside her now, a burden that she couldn't unload, but had to keep secret. If Steve knew about Aaron, that would finish it all.
"Okay," he said. "Could be I'm pushing this too hard, but it was a jolt-hearing that bastard brag how he stuck it to you, that Pittman. I want his ass for it, and the best way to do that-"
"Is banging his child? That's getting back at me, more than at him. A better way is to sell the Rafter D out from under him. I don't know what's going on at that bank, or why Mercer isn't dealing directly with Pittman-"
"Oh, come on," he said bitterly, "after laying him a few times, you know him well enough to call him Boyce."
"Damn it-are you going to listen?
Steve stood up. "Both of them have to buck the Homestead laws, and if they're in a hurry, too goddamned bad; that'll slow them up. Maybe I can't stand up to them head on, but I've been in a guerilla war for a while, and those tactics work pretty good. And now, Jill-right now, I'm not going to listen, because I can't. I want to, but I can't; not now, anyway. Maybe later I can be rational and logical and get it all easy in my head, but right now I'm shook up."
She looked up at him, and felt a quick lightness, because he hadn't said he hated her, because he said maybe later it would all work out, and he could forgive her for laying another man. Men, she thought, and wasn't all that certain that she wanted absolution for a sin that had been partly necessary. There had also been need and loneliness, and they could equally share the blame for that.
He said, "I'll take the truck, and later on-sometime-I'll let you know where I am and what I'm doing. If they get after you, leave word at the feed store for me to call you. I'll call anyhow, every day. Jill..."
"Yes," she said.
He shrugged, and walked back into the house. Stung, she called after him. "Steve-stay away from that child!"
His voice floated back. "Do I tell you who to lay?"
And Jill knew that she'd broken up any communication they might have had going for them again. He was a stubborn, hard-nosed man, just what the army needed as an infantry sergeant, but he'd have to change to get along worth a damn in civilian life. The rules were different here, and maybe that included the old laws about cleaving only unto each other. And possibly she was still looking for an out, an excuse for having enjoyed herself so much sexually with her two lovers. Jill climbed up from the porch steps and stood uncertainly for a moment, until she saw Steve cross from the kitchen and make for the barn.
More talk to Sam Starr and Dink, she thought, then he'd be off to town, where he could bang his hard head against the money walls, if he hadn't already done so. After a few more bruises to his ego, he'd go his mulish way and find that kid, that Sherry child.
Jill snorted; it would do Steve good to have the kid slap his face-or better yet, laugh like hell at him for a dirty old man. His great lover act would collapse then, and his idiot plan for revenge with it. And they would be safer all around.
For if they were going to buck Aaron Mercer, they didn't need another major enemy in Boyce Pittman. Oh. Boyce would fight now, for the fat profit that had to be in this for him somewhere, but he'd turn tiger, if his daughter was hurt.
Outside, the truck started up, and she looked through the window to see it roar away, carrying her husband, very probably on his way to screw a fourteen-year-old girl.
Chapter Ten
Dee Oliver gave her a lift to town, and didn't ask questions about why Jill wasn't with Steve. They talked about painting their houses, and the coming calf crop, and how the price of beef was holding, and they interspersed the ranch talk with woman talk.
"Thanks again," Jill said, when Dee drove into the main street. "I can get by fine from here."
Her neighbor looked sharply at her. "If you really need anything, Jill ..."
"I'm just fine," Jill insisted, and kept the smile fixed until Dee drove away. Then she walked straight up to the gray Buick still parked where she'd left it the night before. Aaron or his men must have seen it there, but nobody touched it. So she climbed inside and was just putting the key into the ignition when a man's hand appeared on the door.
Jill flinched; the car keys rattled; she said, "Boyce! You-kind of spooked me."
He peered down into the car. "Nice; I think I've seen this car around town before."
"It's not mine," she said. "I'm just using it."
"Looking for money to pay the bank? I'm not fooling, Jill; I mean to start foreclosure proceedings forty-eight hours from now."
She remembered him on the phone yesterday, and how he'd big-mouthed their affair for Steve to hear. "You'd better start them from long distance."
He laughed. "Now, now-are you threatening me? With those photos, perhaps? Not since your husband came home; everybody in the county knows what a violent temper he has. Why, I understand he got into a drunken brawl just last night."
Jill said, "Glad you know about his temper, and his ability to break up things and people. Maybe you'd also like to know that your big, gloating mouth already broke our little secret. There's an extension in our barn, and he listened in on your phone call yesterday. That's why he was smashed and fighting mad. You want to bet I won't use those pictures now?"
His face went pale. "I-you're just saying this. He might even try to do something ..."
She stuck the blade deeper and twisted it, now that she'd found a soft spot. "The price just went up, Boyce: twenty-five thousand, above the mortgage."
Mopping a handkerchief at his face, he said, "No; I can't-damn it, I won't. That's a holdup, and my bank-"
"Add your wife to the pot," Jill said, "and your little daughter. Besides, that ought to leave you a fat profit, anyway; twenty-five from ninety leaves sixty-five."
He stared. "N-ninety? I don't know what you're talking about. If you have some idea of doing-" Boyce clicked his teeth shut on the rest of it, and he had control of himself again. Coldly, he said to her, "If circumstances warrant, I'll just have to chance those pictures that your hired hand took; if he took any. Before you blackmail me for that kind of money, you'd better bring me a sample photo."
He'd called her bluff, or part of it. Jill kept her voice steady. "Why not? There are several."
"Soon," Boyce said. "Within the time you have left."
"Count your own time," she said. "Steve might be looking for you right now. Maybe I'll have him bring you the picture."
"You are a rotten little bitch," he said.
"I think you're sweet, too." Jill let the Buick into gear and spun his hand off the door. Chin up, she drove down the street and turned the corner, just as if she knew where she was going.
She was through the fairgrounds gate before she pulled off to one side and parked. Putting her forehead down on the steering wheel, she let the tears flow unchecked. Oh, damn, she thought; she wasn't made for threats and intrigue, and she didn't like people hating her.
Dabbing at her eyes with a bandanna, she sat up and looked around to see if anyone had noticed her. Two men walked by and turned into the 4-H building, and there was a tractor pulling a trailer filled with manure crossing by the horse barns; nobody was staring at Mrs. Steve Devlin making a fool of herself. Oh, well, she thought; scratch one lover. She could definitely write off Boyce Pittman as a man who'd never warm her bed again.
And that left Aaron. Even if Steve didn't come home, that still left Aaron, until he tired of her and moved on somewhere else, or to someone else. She didn't kid herself about that. Aaron would say thank you and turn away, whenever the mood struck him; nothing she, or any other woman, could do would hold him one second longer than he wanted to stay. Jill considered; did she really want Aaron for any more than a sexual fling?
Maybe not even that, now. She was afraid of him now, and that might turn it all off. It was possible that the almost hypnotic spell was broken by what he'd had done to Steve last night, and Jill decided that she would only go to him for business. It might be better to use the phone, at that.
Restless, at loose ends, she climbed out of the Buick and walked past the closed fair buildings, the arts and crafts house, the huge shed where Grange halls built their exhibits. The beef barns were empty, of course, and the hog pens; come fair time, they'd be noisy with hectic activity, spilling over with stock and kids.
Her eyes blurring again, Jill wandered across the grounds, turned from the playground swings and just kept walking, head down and trying to see a way out of her troubles. When she looked up again, she was standing at the hay barn. It was mostly empty now, she knew, except for the far corner where several tons of oat straw were stored as stall bedding. She walked that way, moving slowly, without spirit. Instead of her husband helping, pitching in to take a fair share of the load, Steve had gone off on a tangent, maddened by her laying Boyce. The ranch was getting too heavy for her to carry alone, and very soon, she'd have to do something about it.
Leaning against a high wall of bales, Jill plucked a stem to chew on. She moved along the stacked straw, just walking because she had no place to go. And when she heard the sound of low voices, Jill stopped and looked around. Nobody in sight, she thought, and then the laughter rang sweetly out. Bending just a little, Jill peered through an opening in the bales, a rectangular window made by careless stacking of the straw.
She saw the girl, sitting on the bale and leaning back in an utterly feminine, provocative position. The girl was dressed in a simple T-shirt and cutoff jeans; she had on boots and her hair was deep red, highlighted by paler browns. Her eyes were a direct blue and her face was well-freckled. The hair was worn in short bangs over her forehead and falling softly in waves over her ears and down to the base of her neck in back.
She said to someone Jill couldn't see, "Aren't you afraid I'll scream and run away?"
Jill stared at the generous, soft mouth untouched by lipstick, at the tan that went down into the T-shirt, darker gold freckles scattered through it. The girl was so young and so naturally lovely. Jill's heart gave a little leap, and she thought, Oh, no; this can't be Sherry Pittman!
Then the man moved into Jill's line of vision, and she bit her lip as he said, "No, I'm not afraid. And I don't think you are, Sherry. If you were, you'd already be gone, giggling away like a scared kid. But you're not a kid, are you? You're a small woman." , The girl's little, braless breasts lifted when she took a deep breath. "I'm fourteen years old. Doesn't that make me a baby to you?"
"No way," Steve Devlin said, standing near but not touching her. "You've been a woman since you were about eleven, I'd say."
Sherry Pittman smiled; her teeth were small and even. "Nobody else tells me that. Nobody else ever saw it."
"They don't know how to look," Steve said. "I do. I remember you from before I went to Vietnam, years ago. I thought you were sexy and beautiful then, but you've grown into a sexier, even lovelier woman since."
Sherry lowered her red-brown lashes, and Jill felt a pang of envy, just watching the miniature seductress at work. The girl was so adorable, such a delightful combination of child and woman. Sherry said, "Am I really sexy?"
"Every inch," Steve said, and now his hand lifted, moved to softly touch her cheek, to brush lingering fingertips down the richness of her sunset hair. "And you know it, girl. You knew very well that I'd follow you in here."
Her smile brightened. "I hoped you would. And now what?"
He dropped his hand. "I already closed off this little room in the straw stacks. We're alone, and now I'll take off your clothes."
Jill could hear the girl catch her breath sharply. "And-and yours, too?"
"Of course." Steve said. "Then we'll make love."
Sherry sat up on the bale, her hands together and her eyes down. She said, "Does it matter if I never-did it before? I mean, older men are supposed to have this hangup about doing it to virgins."
Steve didn't hesitate; his voice flowed smoothly on. "I'm glad you are. It will be good, being your first man."
"Don't think I'm dumb, or something. I know how it's supposed to go, everything that happens. I know from sex education classes and from my horses, so I'm not just stupid. I was-well, all the boys who try to paw me are just boys. I've been waiting for the chance to do it with a man, but they've all been scared to try me. I'm so glad you're not scared; it seems like I've been waiting forever to get started. For a month now, I've been taking my mom's pills, just in case. So you needn't worry about getting me pregnant."
"I wasn't worried," Steve said, and Jill stared wide-eyed through her peephole, "because I intend to lay you anyhow. I want to screw you, pretty little woman, and that's all that counts."
"Oh, wow," Sherry said, and stood up suddenly, her pale, freckled hands gripping the bottom of her T-shirt. "I dig that kind of upfront talk, man. Oh, Steve-let's both get undressed at the same time, so I-I won't chicken out."
"All right," he said, and Jill drew back from the hay, straightened up and decided to break it up. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and discovered with surprise that her fists were tightly clenched.
Did she want to break in on them?
Shuddering, her breath ragged in her throat, her nipples pushing strongly against the material of her shirt, Jill chewed her lower lip. Maybe not right away, she thought; she had never seen anyone screwing, never actually watched a man and a woman make it together. Even though this particular man was her husband, and the woman was only a little girl, Jill still felt a desire to watch it; just for a little while.
Leaning back to her view tunnel, she saw Steve peeling off his boots and coming out of his shirt. Looking over at Sherry Pittman, she watched the girl whip off her shirt and saw the gorgeous little tits, shaped just so, delectable little mounds with beautiful nipples rising from their creaminess, pink nipples fully erect.
Sherry was staring, too; her eyes were fixed upon Steve Devlin as he climbed out of his pants and his penis poked out through the buttons of his shorts. Jill saw the young girl tremble, saw her force her shaking fingers to pull the zipper on her cutoff jeans.
Sherry wore pants, simple white nylon snuggies that outlined every appetizing crease and every symmetrical curve of her lower body. Jill saw that she was far from physically mature, but with a marvelous hint of the lushness to come, with just the beginnings of a ripeness that had to turn on every male who saw it.
When the girl stepped out of her panties and stood erect again, Jill stared almost hungrily at the flawless young skin, the satiny perfection of a milk-white skin brushed with roses. Sherry's hips were slim and her tummy flat, a gentle rising that started from below her delicate navel and culminated in the lovely mound of her pussy.
Jill ignored Steve; she could not take her eyes from the naked body of the young girl, and now her gaze was fastened to the center of attraction, that hairy little pubic mound. It was a work of art, the creases of each slim thigh outlining its shape, the light growth of reddish hair merely accenting the pink labia. The line of her slit was clean, gently curved, adorable in the purity and the daintiness of its texture.
Then Steve couldn't be ignored, for he was moving toward the girl, his shirt in one hand, and his fully aroused penis throbbing in front of him. Sherry looked up from the male organ then, and looked instead into Steve's eyes, with a gaze so direct, so honest and childishly trusting, that it was a gift unto itself.
Steve spread his shirt upon the hay bale, and Sherry stood waiting, waiting. She looked so very small next to the massive body of Jill's husband that she was afraid Steve might hurt the child, crush her. His penis looked huge when compared to that tiny, elegant little pussy, almost hairless and so far unscrewed.
He placed both hands upon the smooth shoulders and looked down into the elfin face, into the trusting blue eyes, and said to Sherry, "I'll be gentle; I'll be very gentle, darling."
The girl shivered, and the tips of her breasts moved. She said, "I know it hurts a little. I already know that, but it has to hurt when you grow up."
He urged her tenderly back until she sat on the shirt, and said to her, "Lean back on your elbows, Sherry, and spread your legs. That's right, beautiful, sexy girl-oh, yes. What a lovely cunt; I've never seen a cunt so lovely."
Sherry sighed, and Jill sighed with her; Jill clenched her thighs tightly together and pressed the cones of her aching breasts hard into the hay. She stared entranced at the scene before her, and thought that if her husband didn't go down on his knees to that exquisite little pussy, he was out of his head.
He did just that, sinking to the earth and kissing her knees as his deft and knowing hands stroked her thighs softly, teasingly. Steve said, "I'm going to make it easier for us, darling; before we screw, I'm going to make love to you orally. I'm going down on you, to taste that sweet cunt, to eat you and make you have orgasm. When I do, Sherry, you react just the way you feel-wiggle or hold my head or kick, or push against my face-anything. Just let yourself go."
Never, Jill thought, holding to the outside straw bales; never did he tell me that, and he never went down on me, either-not in nine years of marriage did he put his face in there between my thighs. Then she forgot herself in the vivid identification of what was happening.
Steve's head lowered, and his caressing hands moved over the girl's sleek hips, moved down to her finely shaped buttocks, and held there as he kissed her thighs, top and inside, one leg after the other. Jill glanced up at Sherry's face; it was held far back with the chin high and her eyes closed, that rich hair hanging down, and there was a dreamy half-smile upon her lips.
Then Steve moved to her throat, stretching himself up and across the arched body to kiss her there. His tongue darted out to lick the pink nipples, and Jill could plainly see the ripple that moved over Sherry's entire body. He kissed down the slight rib cage and settled to probe his tongue into the girl's belly button. Sherry made a hushed, moaning noise, and arched to him, her hands fluttering helplessly .
He was into her crotch immediately, burying his face into Sherry's lightly feathered mound, and although Jill couldn't see exactly the moves he was making now, she knew that his tongue was working into those tight but eager lips, that he was probing into the narrow vulva to taste the inner juices of that fresh, unused pussy.
The girl's head lifted, swung forward, and her legs did the same; Sherry's head bobbed loosely on her neck, but her legs curled up and around Steve's shoulders, and her pelvis was grinding, surging into his face. And now she had her fingers worked into Steve's hair, holding him frantically to the heavings and squirmings of her wildly stimulated clitoris.
Jill knew exactly how the girl felt; she had gone through her own initial experience only days before, with Aaron Mercer's experienced mouth bringing her to the crests of delights she had never before known. Now she was one with this lovely, excited girl, sharing the experience with her.
"Oh, man-oh, man!" Sherry was panting. "I'm-I'm freaking out! Do-do it to me, darling-Steve, darling!"
His hands cupped the small, glossy cheeks of her churning ass, and his face was buried deeply into that satiny crotch, eating and licking and sucking. Jill dug her fingers into the straw bales, feeling a vicarious carnal bliss as the girl obviously reached her climax and cried out.
"S-steve-I-something's happening to me!
Oh-I'm coming apart-I can't stand it-I'm dying!"
He groaned into her pussy and continued to work at it, to devour that tender and honeyed warmth, and Sherry squeaked, "Oh! I can't hold it back-oh, I can't! Please-please-I might pee!"
And the girl shuddered, her body vibrating like a guitar string. Hunching weakly, she fell back, letting go of his head and going flat upon her shoulder blades on the bale of hay. It was only moments before Steve lifted his head and began to lick his way back up that supine body, his hotly suctioning mouth pausing at a pixie breast while his hand guided the head of his inflamed and already lubricated penis into the wet, relaxed vulva exposed so sweet and helpless for him.
Her eyes trembled open, and Steve said down to them, "You're juicy now, open and ready so soon after your first orgasm. Just stay loose, darling, and let me work it on into you-ahh-hot, wet and so hot I can't believe it-just relax, Sherry, and don't fight it."
Jill watched as the head of his penis pushed into the scarlet labia; the naked lips stretched to let it in, and as Steve rolled his ass, the swollen glans vanished steadily into the girl's vagina.
His cock hesitated, probed, and Jill heard the girl gasp; then Steve pressed forward with a sudden lunge, and the girl said loudly, "Oh!" but that was all, and the staff of his rod slipped on up inside the narrow sheath of her vagina. The hymen was torn, and Sherry Pittman could lay claim no longer to being a virgin, even if she had wanted to. She was being fucked, and her delicate ass hiked, wiggled, and those smooth pussylips took the first hard prick into their gates.
Jill chewed her lips and clutched the bales; her breasts were now flattened against the straw and she had to back away for fear of maybe toppling the stack over on them as they screwed. Sherry's arms and legs were wrapped around him now, and Steve held to her ass as he slid his penis in and out of that gleaming pussy. His balls swung into the hairless crack of her ass, and he burrowed his prong to the hilt with every hungry, driving stroke.
Sherry was losing her cherry to an expert, Jill thought, to a dedicated man who was concentrating upon providing the girl as much or more rapture as he was getting. He ground his pelvis so that his shaft would caress her clitoris, and he packed the head of it deeply to excite the vaginal depths.
"Darling," he groaned, "oh, darling baby girl-I'm letting it all go-I'm coming inside you-coming-coming!"
"Do it! Do it! Do it!" Sherry cried. "I'm coming, too!"
And suddenly they were locked together, immobile as two marble statues, his penis rigid inside her static vagina, and Jill knew the pure beauty of such a moment, that matchless moment in eternity when a man and a woman mix and blend their orgasms.
Tactfully, as quietly as possible, Jill backed away from her peephole. Her own vagina was throbbing, and the ache in her erectile nipples was torture, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She had seen Sherry Pittman deflowered, after first being eaten, and the nectar of her virginal pussy sipped.
Weak-kneed, conscious of the flame raging inside her own body, Jill made her way out of the hay barn and back across the playground. There she stopped to lean her feverish cheek against the cool iron support of a child's swing set, and turned her forehead to soothe it also.
There was something wrong with her, she was certain; more than simply coming into her sensual maturity, as Aaron claimed. All her life, Jill had been reasonably straight and sensible; if there had been anything twisted in her subconscious mind, she hadn't had the slightest hint of it. And now-now, she was a thoroughly confused woman, because she had not only stood idly by and watched her husband screw a fourteen-year-old cherry, but she had been a rapt and willing spectator, as excited as if the act was happening to her. If that wasn't offbeat and weird, she didn't know of anything that was.
Shaky, Jill left the playground and walked quickly back to where she'd parked the car. She reached for the door handle and pulled back her hand. Jojo was sitting in the car.
His face was a mess, the eyebrows cut and puffed, his mouth misshapen. But his little eyes were emotionless. He asked, "You find him?"
Jill said, "Find w-who?"
He climbed slowly, ponderously, from the car and propped a thick elbow on its top. "Mr. Mercer says call him."
"I will," Jill promised, and was glad when Jojo shambled away. Fumbling at the key, she finally got the Buick started and drove off, heading home because she didn't know where else to go.
Chapter Eleven
As Jill passed under the big Rafter D gates, she saw the column of smoke climbing twisted and scary to the sky, boiling up black and fiery.
"The barn!" she yelled, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The car lurched ahead, slamming over bumps and bouncing hard into potholes, but she didn't care about anything except the burning barn.
Skidding the Buick to a dusty stop by the corrals, Jill leaped out and ran for the blazing barn. They caught her arms and held her back. "Mrs. Devlin-can't do no more-it's gone!"
"Comet!" she cried, "Oh, god, Comet D and the horses!"
One of the men was Sam Starr, and he shook her. "They're clear; back on off with us now. We got to help wet down the house, else a spark might set it, too. Come on, woman!"
They led her stumbling to the pumphouse, and had her unreeling hose to keep her busy at something. Jill stared back at the barn and saw the high tin roof crumble and slide sideways into the maw of the leaping flames. Sparks sprayed the sky, angry red and swirling everywhere through the geysering smoke. The corrals were going, too-at least those close to the barn-their white posts and rails turning black before they burst into fire.
She looked across at the near pasture, and saw Comet D standing back under some scrub oaks, his head high and snorty, his ears pointing at the blaze, his mares skittering behind him. The horses were safe, but she didn't see the cows; they hadn't been at the barn, she thought; they should be all right, too.
Stunned, not yet believing her senses, Jill walked robotlike to where the two old men were playing hoses on the roof of the house.
Sam Starr lay down his hose and came to her. "Sure sorry, ma'am. Me and Dink was in my camper when it started, right there ahind the barn. Thought I heard some shots-three of 'em maybe, comin' from the direction of the house, but we got so busy at the barn, I didn't check it out."
Dink yelled, "Neighbors comin'!"
Trucks rumbled up and disgorged men and women alike; nobody wasted time, but hurried around the barn to stand by with shovels in case the fire tried to spread to the brush. They came to help, without being called; somebody had seen the smoke and phoned others, and they came to help. Ranchers expected no less from their neighbors, and gave no less.
Jill couldn't get untracked; she said yes to this one and no to that one, and went to make coffee when the flames were dying. In the kitchen, she stopped just past the door, and reeled from another shock. The kitchen was piled with scattered pot and pans, and cans had been emptied, flour and beans and sugar scattered haphazardly over the floor. There'd be no coffee now; black grains were dumped on the table and had spilled off.
Back outside, she stood close to Dink and Sam Starr, not saying anything to them, just seeking the comfort of their nearness. Steve, she thought, and wished he was here with them. It would take time for him to hear it in town, and more time for him to drive home.
The barn burned, and all that stored hay lost; the tack-a thousand dollars or more worth of saddles and bridles and halters, gone; tools and grain, feed and things they wouldn't even know were missing until they needed them. Oh, lord, Jill thought, oh, lord; it had not been an accident, either. Someone had deliberately set it, and somebody had torn up her kitchen.
Searching for those nonexistent pictures, she thought, and that could also be why the barn was burned, too. She'd lied and said that Dink Watson took the Polaroid photos; everyone around here knew that Dink slept in the barn with his meager possessions. Maybe they'd tried to kill Dink, too, just to be certain.
She'd gotten herself in deep; she was drawn into something that it was possibly beyond her power to stop. One lie leads to another, and violence only begets violence, and if she and Steve didn't get rid of the Rafter D, they might not be around very long. If Boyce Pittman had done this, if Aaron Mercer had done it, the reason no longer mattered. Jill had to get them out of the mess, any way she could.
Sam Starr was talking to her, and she brought his words into focus. "The cows got spooked by the fire and lit a shuck for the woods. Them horses ain't that smart; they want to hang around and see can they get burnt, too. I reckon me and Dink will circle around and try to pick up some tracks, boots tracks, that is. My guess is the fella that set the fire done it from the house, some way, but we'll see if we can cut a trail in the pasture, in case. Best you get in the house and set down, ma'am; you look peaked."
The living room had been ripped apart; the bedrooms were torn up, drawers pulled out and the contents tumbled about; pictures off the walls and their backs ripped free; rugs turned back, even the top flung off the toilet tank.
Boyce; it had to be Boyce, or somebody working for him. Aaron had no interest in the pictures; he didn't even know of them. Jill stood in the wreckage of her home and thought that Boyce might have told the other man. There was so much she didn't know, and couldn't puzzle out, because she didn't have the strength or courage left for fighting. She would give it up, sell out to Mercer or Boyce or their secret cartel, any way they wanted. If only Steve would agree, they could get away and be safe.
She began to pick up things, to stir among dresses and shoes, to pile stuff on the bed and to work at pushing the drawers back into dressers, and setting chairs upright. Jill wanted to be sick, but her throat was too dry, closed too tightly, and the nausea remained trapped in her body.
The phone rang; she let it ring several times before moving sluggishly to answer it. She didn't want to chat; she didn't want sympathy and commiseration from neighbors who hadn't come to the fire.
"Mrs. Devlin; are you alone?"
"Y-yes," she said through the smoked cotton in her throat.
"I sent word for you to call, but you didn't."
"I had a fire here," she said. "Someone burned my barn and ripped apart my house. I was too busy to call you, Mr. Mercer; I was just too goddamned busy."
He hesitated only a second, and when he answered, Jill couldn't read anything in his voice. "That sounds bad. Where's your husband?"
She started to say where she'd last seen Steve, but didn't. "In town somewhere; I don't know."
"Maybe you'd better come in and see me, as soon as you get straightened out there. Tonight, Jill."
"Tonight? Don't you understand what I just said? We've had severe losses-I have to see insurance people, the fire chief, the sheriff. My husband doesn't even know about this yet; there's stock to round up and horses to separate, to calm down. We have to find hay and feed, and-"
"Tonight," Aaron repeated firmly. "You be here, Jill."
She stared at the phone and heard the buzzing on the line. He'd hung up after giving his orders. No threat, no promise-just a directive that meant she'd damned well better show up, or else. Had Aaron been surprised when she told him about the fire? Was he ever surprised about anything?
To keep from worrying any more, she threw herself into the cleanup, sweating and tugging at furniture, piling and sorting and gathering until she was tired. Dark caught her resting at the kitchen table, with a pot of stew on the stove and drinking her second cup of coffee spiked with whiskey.
They came in more weary than she, because they were older and had done harder physical work. In silence, they ate stew and drank coffee, and when Sam Starr leaned back to smoke his Bull Durham, he said, "That was good, ma'am; sticks to a man's ribs. Me and Dink found them cows, but thought we might's well leave 'em in the woods, seein' the hay's gone. Figure they'll come to silage afore long. The horses now, they can make do on graze, until we can get some feed in town tomorrow. And like we thought, we didn't cut no trail out there. The fella stood out past the corner of the house here and shot at the barn with them tracer bullets they used in the war. They worked good; set the hay afire after passin' through the wall."
Dink Watson said, holding out his hand, "Here's the cartridge casings. Bigger'n a thirty-thirty, but only a mite. One of them military type rifles, I'd say."
Jill wouldn't reach out her own hand; she stared at the brass casings as if they were small and glittering snakes. "You'd better hang onto them, Dink; the fire marshall will probably want to see, and the sheriff, too. I'll tell them all about it, tomorrow. And boys-I really appreciate all you've done. If it hadn't been for you two, we'd have probably lost it all."
They looked away, embarrassed at praise, and Sam Starr said, "No thanks due, ma'am. We'll keep a close watch, from here on. Dink can bunk in my' camper with me; I'll put it on the jacks so we can use my truck."
Jill nodded tiredly, and propped her head on one hand. They scuffed back from the table and mumbled thank-yous, and she was alone again. No Steve to lean on, nobody to help fight off the threat that grew more real and more dangerous as the hours passed. Gathering the dishes, she put them in the sink and left them there. Aaron Mercer said come to town, and she didn't dare defy him.
But she didn't change, didn't shower or pretty herself. Smudged and sweaty as she was, he'd have to accept it; she was too damned beat for anything else. Leaving lights on in the house, she went out to the Buick again, turned it around and headed back to town.
She put the car beside its twin, and knocked on Aaron's door. When Jojo opened it, Jill went on inside without another glance at the man. Lang wasn't in sight, and when Aaron didn't show right away, she poured herself a big drink at the door. She was in the process of downing it when Aaron came from the bedroom, impeccable as always in grays, and his focal point of color a pink scarf.
"So glad you came, Jill."
"Yeah," she said, "me, too."
He didn't touch her; he lifted one supercilious eyebrow and looked over her disheveled condition. "But you're actually grimy."
Jill finished her drink. "To which you may add sooty, sweaty and damned tired."
Aaron said to Jojo, "Draw a bath; make it good and hot."
Jill reached for the bottle again. "I'm not interested in a bath, or in sex, or anything else but somehow getting myself out of this mess. If that doesn't suit you just now, I'm not even sorry, Aaron."
His smile was narrow and not reflected in his eyes. "You'll feel better after you've soaked awhile. Go on, have another drink; it will help you relax."
She took her drink to the sofa and sat down. Here was where she'd been introduced to oral sex, where this man had gone down on her and eaten her with a dedicated, practiced style. This was also where she had known the feel of a massive penis being fed strongly into her vagina. Jill realized that she would never think of Aaron Mercer without seeing his penis, that she could never be near him without being sexy.
Aaron knew that, too; she could see the knowledge in his eyes. He said, "I really don't care to see a woman mussed, especially a woman of your sensuous beauty, Jill. You must take better care of yourself."
"Did you order me here to tell me that?" Defiantly, Jill gulped her drink.
Jojo came from the bath. "Water's ready, Mr. Mercer."
"Thank you, Jojo. My dear-"
"Horseshit!" Jill said sharply. "No bath, no screwing around, none of that goddamned-"
"Jojo," Aaron said, and the big man scooped Jill off the couch before she could realize he was coming. She squirmed, but he squeezed and she couldn't breathe, couldn't move; she just hung limply against him, cradled in those apelike arms. There was an animal odor about Jojo, a scent that drove a sharp claw of atavistic fear into Jill, and she didn't try to resist any longer.
He put her down in the bathroom and said, "Undress."
Hands shaking, she pulled off shirt and jeans, and waited for him to leave the room. He didn't; Jojo stood hulking at the door, his beaten face without expression, his shiny flint eyes intent upon her. Jill got out of bra and panties, and stepped into the tub. The water was just a bit hot, but she didn't complain; she lowered her naked body into it.
Aaron said from the doorway, "You may soap and rinse her, Jojo. Play with her, if you like, and bring her to me dry."
"Aaron!" Jill called out, but he was already gone, and she heard him turn on the stereo in the next room. She was alone with Jojo.
She trembled when he touched her, and closed her eyes to sit like a lifeless doll as he splashed water over her breasts and belly, then began to soap her upper body with his huge and hairy hands. Jill had never been so terrified in all her life. It was like being handled by an ape, and she didn't dare even gasp too loudly, for fear that he'd snap her neck or tear off one of her breasts.
Jojo's fingers moved over her breasts, and dallied with her nipples, slippery and sudsy, and her trembling increased until she was shaking all over with a chill. He rubbed her belly and her back, and grunted, "Hands and knees."
Splashing, she scrambled to obey him, and propped herself as he said, her knees and lower legs under water, her hands braced against the bottom of the bathtub. Jill's tits dangled and her belly flinched when Jojo started to soap her buttocks and her upper thighs. She kept her eyes closed tightly, but she couldn't control the tremors that ran over her body in quick little waves.
His thick, blunt fingers felt between her thighs, poked and prodded into her mound, fondling, cupping, skidding wetly along her labia. He pushed into her anus and spent a lot of time making bubbles in the cleft between her cheeks. But finally, blessedly, Jojo was done with the soaping.
"Lie down on your back," he told her.
She rolled to her side and onto her shoulder blades, her bent knees stuck up. His hands dipped into the water and ran over her body, up and down and around. Jill opened her eyes and saw his thick, muscular forearms moving back and forth in the sudsy water, saw the fur wet upon them.
"Get up," he said. "Get outa' the tub."
Stiffly, mechanically, Jill stepped out upon the bathmat. Jojo went over her body again, this time with a soft and fluffy towel, rubbing her skin until it was tender and glowing.
"Okay. Go on out."
It was like walking to a sacrificial altar, she thought, like approaching the high priest upon some towering pyramid, knowing that the obsidian knife waited in his hand, knowing that a priestess died just as painfully as any commoner.
In ceremonial grays, the pink of blood splashed at his throat, Aaron Mercer turned from the bar. "Much better-aah, yes; much better. You've regained your bright, scrubbed look, my dear.
There are inner lights in your skin; delightful. Did Jojo lose his head and squeeze you anywhere? It's not often he's allowed to play with girls; he likes to break them."
Naked, afraid, Jill shook her head, and when she could get her throat to work again, said, "Aaron, please? What do you want from me?"
He handed her a drink. "You're being more cooperative, too. Jojo has that effect upon women. I just want you to imagine what he's like, if I didn't tell him what not to do."
"P-please," she said.
"Find your husband; take him home; then both of you come to my room and I'll have the papers for you to sign. That's tomorrow, my dear. For now, you can well imagine what I want from you. I want to fuck you, Jill, and I'm going to. What's more, you'll respond as usual."
Chapter Twelve
She rode beside her husband in the pickup, swaying as he rounded a curve too fast, holding to the inside door handle to brace herself.
"Steve-they'll be around. Don't pile us up."
He slowed the truck then, but his jaw remained set. She looked at the profile of his craggy face, at the scars of his life written there, and she loved him. Steve had been at the ranch when she got home last evening, because news of the fire reached him in town, and he wheeled right out.
They'd talked, there in the kitchen, and Jill sensed they were reaching for each other once more, trying to establish a communication that had been lost. Maybe it was because he was so coldly, furiously mad that her infidelity didn't matter any more-not as much as it had, anyway.
And possibly it was because Steve Devlin had gotten something out of his system when he screwed Sherry Pittman; some part of his manhood might have been regained when he took the girl's cherry and so doing, struck back at the man who'd laid his wife.
She said now, "You haven't told me what we're going to do, once we see Aaron Mercer."
He glared through the windshield. "Play it by ear, I guess. See what he tries, so we know where we stand."
Last night, she hadn't said anything to him about seeing him put it to the beautiful little girl at the hay barn; especially, she didn't say the scene had excited her almost beyond belief. No more than she'd told him about Aaron laying her, not once, but several times now, the latest being last night, after she'd been cleaned and polished to suit his taste. And he had made a project of screwing her then-teasing and forcing and showing off for the watchful beady eyes of Jojo.
Worse was the fact that Aaron had been right when he said she would respond as usual. Tired, worn out by the fire and its aftermath, scared silly by Jojo and ordered to fuck by a man even more frightening, Jill had found herself moving, squirming despite her disgust.
She was a nymphomaniac, she decided, after Aaron finally let her go; certainly she qualified as to having more than a morbid interest in sex. Even before she reached orgasm on Aaron's big, driving cock, she'd forgotten that Jojo was watching, that every detail of the copulation was being registered in his feral eyes. Aaron put on a show for the silent, hulking brute-or forced Jill to; they tried several positions, top to bottom, wrapped around each other, and always there'd been that thick, meaty rod working steadily in and out of her steamy pussy.
"How'd this guy get to you?" Steve asked, and she jumped.
"What-what do you mean?"
Impatiently, he repeated it. "When did this Mercer contact you first?"
"Oh, right after-after I found out that Boyce Pittman was going to foreclose, anyway. Steve, please be careful around him. Those men who jumped on you-they work for him, and they never let him out of their sight, day or night."
"Isn't that kind of weird, for a real estate developer?"
"That's what I thought," she answered. "Are you going to-to accept that big offer?"
He shook his head, and she sank back on the seat. Maybe when he listened to Aaron, he'd change his mind. Steve had seemed receptive enough last night when she broke down and told him all about Aaron Mercer and the cash offer, and explained how she thought Boyce was somehow involved with the man.
She even confessed to lying about Polaroid pictures, supposedly of she and Boyce together, doing it. To make him back off, she told him she did it to force him not to foreclose. And Steve said what's a little genteel blackmail, after a little genteel whoring?
But then he apologized to her sincerely.
So she didn't hit him in the face with a detailed report of everything he'd done to little Sherry Pittman; she held off asking him why he went down on that pretty child, why he'd eaten that almost hairless pussy, when as her husband, he'd never so much as kissed his wife's. Jill kept that secret. Just as she kept the secret of screwing Aaron, because it would only hurt Steve to learn that.
"There's the motel," he said, and turned the truck into the parking lot. "What room's he in?"
"Eleven," she answered, and had a thought that turned her mouth dry. Suppose Aaron told Steve himself, told him all about how his wife had been screwing in the motel room, how she'd been getting dicked by two lovers, only hours apart from each other? Suppose that Steve learned she had hurried to him on his homecoming night with Aaron's semen still trapped in her vaginal passage?
They got out and walked to room eleven; Jill looked at ten and twelve, but didn't see the drapes stir. They were there, she felt; Jojo and Lang were watching them and awaiting orders. She reached for Steve's hand and held it.
When Lang opened the door, Jill wanted to run. She tugged at her husband's hand and tried to tell him silently they'd better flee, but Steve pulled her inside the suite. Lang closed the door behind them, and she caught a faint scent of his cologne, something a woman would wear, a perfume heavy and clinging.
Aaron was in slacks and shirt, both silvery gray; the color at his throat was funeral black. He said, "Bourbon, gin? The Scotch is only fair, and-"
Steve cut in. "No drinks, no crapping around. You ordered my wife to bring me here today, and although I don't see any bars or stars on your shoulders, we're here. So get with it."
Lifting one eyebrow, Aaron Mercer said, "Oh, yes, the military mentality, and the typical enlisted resentment. All right; we'll get with it, since time is important to me just now. I sent for you, and your lovely, accommodating wife, of course-so you can both sign a quitclaim deed on the Rafter D. You'll receive my check for seventy thousand, and there's another made out to Mid-Oregon Trust, which will be delivered today."
"Look-" Steve said, and Jill clutched his arm desperately.
Aaron ignored the interruption. "Lang-if you'll bring those documents here, please?"
Steve moved, and she brushed against his body, trying to somehow block him from being hurt. Beneath his denim jacket, she felt something. My god, she thought, he's got a gun!
He said, as Aaron took the papers from Lang, "Stick them up your ass, Mercer; better yet, shove 'em up your queer's ass-he looks like he'd enjoy it more."
Lang's indrawn breath hissed through suddenly clenched teeth, and Aaron snapped, "No, Lang!" To Steve and Jill, he said, as if they were quietly talking over a legitimate business deal, "You've hurt Lang's feelings, so please sign these now."
Jill said, "Steve-please. Aaron, keep him back and I'll sign-"
Roughly, Steve jerked her back to his side. "The hell you will! I don't need your goddamned money, Mercer! The barn was insured, even if the hay wasn't, and we can build another barn. We can build the Rafter D into anything we want. If we can't work our way out of this bind, then I'll let the bank take the ranch first. Under the Homestead laws, Pittman can't sell it for at least two years, and for some reason, you're in a big hurry."
Lang put a cigarette into the corner of his lips and struck a match to it. He held the match for a long moment, then blew it out. He leaned to drop the match in an ashtray. Aaron said, "All right!"
And Lang straightened up with that long, thin knife winking deadly in his fist.
Jill gasped, "Steve!" and her husband shoved her aside with his hip. Against the wall, she saw Lang eeling toward her husband, and saw Steve reach under his denim jacket.
The .45 automatic in his hand wasn't shiny. It was dull blue, and the mouth of it looked big as the end of a feed barrel. It stopped Lang in his tracks, and Aaron stood carefully still. Steve looked down the length of his arm at Lang, looked down the blue steel bulk of the pistol. It seemed to Jill that the air in the room grew thin and tight, and she could hear the pulsing of her own heart.
Steve said, "The man said I hurt your feelings. That right, boy? That right, you pretty little son of a bitch?"
Lang made some awful kind of mewling noise.
Steve said, "Let go the knife."
Lang dropped it; it didn't make any sound when it struck the thick carpet.
Then Steve took a pair of quick steps, and wiped the end of the gun viciously into Lang's cheek. The slim man went to his knees, and Steve hit him where the neck and shoulder join. Lang fell over, his legs twitching.
Aaron Mercer still hadn't moved, and Steve said to him, "You're being smart," before lifting the heel of his cowboy boot and slamming it down upon Lang's outspread fingers-the lax fingers of his right hand.
Jill winced and shut her eyes, only to open them too soon. Steve was putting his mark on Lang's face, grinding the same bootheel into the man's cheek.
"Put your knife to me again, you little bastard!" Steve said, but Lang was beyond hearing him.
Swiveling the gun muzzle to Aaron, Steve Devlin said, "Stay off my back. Stay off my wife's back. If you're half as smart as you are smartass, you'll get the hell out of town and stay gone. I won't sell my ranch, and if you screw with me or my wife again, I'm going to blow holes right through your goddamned head; your head, Mercer-not this queer's head, and not that big ape's head, but yours. Do I get through to you, big shot? Do you read me loud and clear?"
Aaron said slowly, "You've made a bad mistake, Devlin. You should have never, marked up Lang like that; it was even worse than causing him to lose face before his boss. You really should have killed him."
"I've had my say to you," Steve said. "Come on, Jill."
With a gentle shove of his left hand, he urged her to the door behind him, and his right hand dropped to hip level, the .45 rock-steady there. Jill felt for the knob, her eyes darting from Aaron to Lang's still form, her heart beating quick time in her chest. She said, in a voice that didn't sound at all like her own, "The door's open, Steve."
"Go on out; I'm right behind you."
She backed through the door, feeling behind her with an extended boot, staring at her husband's broad shoulders, and Jill thought that now the load was rolling off her back, that now Steve had come into his own and was putting a stop to people who tried to force her, to force him.
His left hand was on the knob, and he pulled the door shut with a bang as he stepped outside. That's when Jill saw the blur of the huge hand swing over her face and opened her mouth to scream a warning. It never got past her throat. Jojo's hand clamped over her mouth and jerked her head viciously into his chest.
Something cold and hard poked into her right ear, and it hurt.
"Move the gun behind you." Jojo said. "Do it, Mac-or I blow her fuckin' brains all over the parking lot!"
Steve said, "Take it easy-don't hurt her-"
"Behind you," Jojo said. "Turn the knob with the same hand; you can do it holdin' the iron. Mr. Mercer?"
She saw the door swing back, and Aaron said, "I have it, Jojo. Please come back inside, Devlin. And Jojo, do bring her along before somebody sees this little charade."
He carried her like a doll with the sawdust leaked out, her feet above the carpet, and it was difficult breathing around his splayed fingers. Jojo kept the gun muzzle in her ear. When he took it out and let her go, she collapsed upon the couch, her boots only inches from the mashed hand of Lang. Jill sucked for air and shivered.
"Hit him, Jojo," Aaron said. He held Steve's pistol easily, with familiarity, and Jill found a ragged second to think about that.
Then Jojo hit Steve in the body, hit him twice with great, sledging blows that drove Steve back into the wall, bent over the pain in his belly. Jojo moved close and pounded him some more, hitting him in the chest and along the neck. Steve tried to stay on his feet and couldn't. He slid down the wall and Jill moaned in sympathy.
"He'll keep awhile," Aaron said. "Take poor Lang into the bath and clean him up, Jojo. When he's awake, bring him out and make an ice pack for his hand. Oh, yes-and take his knife with you; I think when he recovers that he'll want it very much."
Jojo picked Lang up, carried him into the bath, and some crazy, frightened trick of Jill's mind saw herself being taken into that room, saw the hairy man with the big, slow hands as he soaped her breasts and belly, as he ran his fingers foaming into her labia and played games with the ring of her anus. She drew back from the too-real imagery, and her teeth locked into her lower lip.
"The papers are on the desk here," Aaron said. "Sign them, Jill; there are several copies, of course, but each blank where your signature is required, is marked with a penciled X. Make your name legible."
Somehow, she got off the couch, and somehow, she struggled through the carpet that seemed to be dragging at her legs. Reaching the desk, she reached for the ballpoint pen and missed it; she reached again. Against the wall, her husband lifted his head, but it sagged forward on his chest, and maybe she only thought she'd seen his eyes flicker open for a second there.
Jill signed the first part of the document, fumbled the page over, and dutifully signed each of the succeeding pages, being careful with her name, writing it clearly and heavily upon the paper. When she was finished, she put down the pen and looked at Aaron Mercer. He was still holding Steve's pistol.
"Aaron; let us go. Oh, please, let us go; don't hurt us any more."
He didn't actually smile; it was only a motion of his lips, quickly gone. "My dear, your husband is a stupidly stubborn man. Whether or not he has to be hurt depends upon his cooperation."
She stood there uncertainly. "He'll sign."
"I hope so," Aaron answered, "but I don't really think so. Not right away. He'll have to be convinced, and Lang will be most happy to convince him."
Chapter Thirteen
Lang backed away from him, hissing like a stepped-on snake. Lang held his right hand cradled tenderly in his left; so far, he had only kicked Steve in the body. He looked at Aaron Mercer and said, "My knife; do I get to use my knife?"
Jill saw that her husband's jaws were locked; he creaked them open to say, "All the way, Gertrude. See if you're any better than the Cong."
Mercer looked at Jill and she said from the couch, "Steve was captured by the Viet Cong; they held him nearly a month, and tortured him for information. He didn't give them any; his citation says that when he escaped, he left four of them dead behind him, and killed six more getting into his own lines."
Aaron Mercer sighed, and when Lang jittered around with his knife, told him to put it away. "We don't have a month to waste. Just sit there and watch him, Lang. Watch him very closely, no matter how well you think he's tied, and no matter what else happens in this room Just keep your eyes on him."
"All right," Lang said, "but I know I can make him sign." He lit another cigarette and dropped the matchbook back on the end table.
Jill stared at it, at the matchbook that read Shorthorn Motel on its cover, and thought that the letters looked like the engraving on a tombstone.
Lang asked, "You going to hurt the bitch, instead?"
Aaron's smile was razor thin and just as sharp. "I intend to hurt them both, but perhaps Devlin will be pained more than his dear wife. Jojo-take off her clothing."
From the floor where he lay trussed, Steve said, "That won't make any difference; I know about Pittman screwing her, so what's a couple of more guys?"
Jill lowered her face and stared at her hands. She looked up again when Jojo stood over her. "Get up," he said, and she did.
Jojo took off her shirt and bra, popping buttons and snaps, he flicked a heavy fingernail against her nipples, and Jill clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. He hooked a thumb into her jeans and tore the zipper loose with one brutal jerk.
"Sit down and take off the boots," Jojo said, and Jill did it. Her flesh was cold, and for once, the nipples of her breasts did not rise to the occasion. When her boots were off, Jojo leaned to tear the jeans over her feet. He popped the elastic of her panties, and threw them away. Then he stepped back.
She glanced at Steve and saw him wince, saw the pain move swiftly across his eyes at the sight of her nudity exposed before these other men. She knew he did care, that it mattered very much to him, when anything was done to her, and Jill was glad. Steve was faking it, then; he was trying to hold them off by only pretending that he was still teed off at his wife for laying the banker.
If he could take it, she thought, then so could she. She could hang tough and not show pain or fear. She lifted one hand to her forehead and when Steve's eyes followed the motion, she used her fingers for cover to wink at him.
Now they were together, even though he was tied and helpless in a corner, and she was stripped naked on the couch.
Across the room near Steve, Lang sat down on a straight chair, straddling it, his hurt hand supported by the chair back, his left toying with the switchblade. The cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, drifting slow eddies of smoke around his head, giving him the look of a nether world creature.
"Well, Jojo," Aaron said, "it's our turn to undress."
Jojo grunted, and worked at his clothes while Aaron was slower, more careful, with his slacks and shirt. Jill locked her teeth again when she saw the thickly furred body of Jojo exposed in all its animal ugliness-the sloping shoulders, slabbed chest, the muscle-covered ribs and a belly whose hair was so thick she couldn't see the skin beneath it.
And the penis!
Small and thin, jutting straight out from the forested crotch like some ludicrous caricature of a man's cock. It was tiny, and the testicles attached to its root were small. It was if Jojo's body had grown enormous and powerful at cost of developing his genitals.
A hysterical need to laugh worked within Jill's belly, but she dared not. Some inherent feminine instinct told her that if she laughed at Jojo's deformity, she might enrage him so much that Aaron Mercer might not be able to stop him from destroying her.
She looked at her husband, and Steve was looking at the book of motel matches on the end table. Was he trying to tell her something? Quickly, she glanced away, and saw that Aaron was now undressed, that his cock was hanging limply.
He said, "Turn her over the arm of the couch, Jojo. I believe that her husband will get a full view of the proceedings from there."
She moved before Jojo put a hand on her, draping herself over the end of the couch, hiking her buttocks into the air. Darting a swift look at the matchbook, she nodded. Then she felt Jojo's big paws upon her hips, sliding and fondling and she was afraid.
Aaron said, almost purring, his voice honeyed as she remembered it could turn, "Jojo has certain tastes. Since he is regrettably built a bit smaller than most men, he has to gratify his urges somewhat differently. My dear Jill, he may hurt you, but he'll hurt you more if you don't cooperate to the best of your ability. He's going to shove it right up your ass."
From his chair, Lang giggled, and the high-pitched trill of it was obscene. Jill braced her knees upon the couch cushion, and took a grip with both hands upon the arm of the furniture.
Her anus; they were going to assault her there. Jojo meant to cram his penis into her rectum, where nothing had ever been forced before, and even if his cock was small, he could bring her pain with it.
"Have you ever done it to her that way, Devlin?" Aaron asked, as Jojo began to rub down into her pubic mound with his thick fingers and to prod the head of his warm penis into the cleft of her ass.
Jill shut her eyes and hung on. If she tightened up, he'd rip right on into her anyway, so she tried her best to relax, to keep her muscles loose, even though shudders were starting to rack her body and her skin had a clammy feel to it.
Jojo made slavering noises behind her, and Jill knew the push of his glans into the rubbery ring of her anus. She shook again, and he pushed harder, stronger; the head of it worked into her, forced her flesh to stretch.
"Yeah-yeah-yeah!" Jojo said, and gave a surge of his pelvis. His cock slid on up into her tube, and she felt his hairy crotch come up tightly against her cheeks. Jojo's organ was buried into her body, shoved full-length, and Jill was thankful it wasn't any longer or any thicker.
But he made up for the lack of size when he pulled it back to the head and rammed it savagely home once more, making her head bobble and her breasts crush into the couch arm. Jill couldn't hold back the grunt that escaped her lips, but she choked off any other noises. She could take it, if Steve could. But she didn't want to look at him now, didn't want to see the anguish in his eyes.
Jojo pounded her again, and again, his groin slapping against the back of her thighs, his fingernails digging into the cheeks of her ass as he spread them for the hammering of his cock. Jill hung on, her head flopping with each brutal stroke, her rectum clenching upon the thing that was battering inside it.
"No reaction yet, Devlin?" Aaron's voice was unctuous, yet with an edge to it. "Then be sure you watch the rest of this act with your hot, lovely wife. I've wanted to put this thing into her mouth for a long time. I may even find out if she can choke on it, Devlin."
"You bastard," Steve gritted.
"See that he doesn't look away, Lang. If he does, you may stick him with the point of your knife, but just a little; I still need his signature."
Jill opened her eyes when Aaron dragged her face up by taking a grip on her hair. He said down to her, "You can eat this very well, Jill. Just imagine-two pricks in your body at the same time; how lucky can you get?"
But Steve somehow lurched to his feet just then, and roared something maddened, something unintelligible. Aaron whipped around to see, but Jojo kept pumping, pumping his organ into Jill's anus.
Lang moved his left hand, his knife hand, and Steve jerked back. He slid down the wall again, with scarlet at the corner of his mouth. Lang said over his shoulder, "I only stuck him a little."
"Are you ready to write your name?" Aaron asked, and when Steve didn't answer, turned back to Jill, holding his hand around his huge prick and moving the gleaming head of it slowly, inexorably, toward her lips.
She could see past the angle of Aaron's hip, and when she looked over at End table, the book of matches was no longer there.
Jojo said jerkily, "Better-hurry-boss; can't-hold-back much longer."
Her head bounced, but Aaron took it between his hands and held it still. Then he pushed the head of his monstrous cock into her lips, forcing them open, moving the spongy thing across her tongue and sliding it along the roof of her mouth.
"Can you see all right, Devlin? Your wife has a lovely mouth, a beautiful mouth. She's using her tongue on my cock now, Devlin; she's sucking in, man. Did she ever do that to you? Watch her lips, watch the way her tender ass is beginning to squirm while Jojo screws it."
Lang tittered, and Jill caught the pale movement of his face turned to the scene at the couch.
Jojo grunted, "I'm coming!"
His semen spurted into her tube, hot and sticky, and somehow more penetrating then anything released into her vagina could be.
Aaron shoved his penis far back into Jill's throat, and she gagged on its size, its throat-filling blockage.
Her distended eyes saw the flicker of fire, the spiral of smoke behind Steve. She bit down on Aaron's penis, bit hard and tigerishly upon that meaty rod that was threatening to strangle her, and she tore at it with her teeth as if she was a jungle cat making her kill.
Aaron screamed.
Lang's head snapped completely away from Steve and the burning curtains. Steve rolled into Lang's chair and toppled the man onto his back, and as Aaron dragged his mangled penis from Jill's mouth, the curtains burst wildly into full blaze.
Jill felt Jojo jerk away from her buttocks, and as Aaron struck viciously at her head, she rolled off the couch, and his fist only brushed her hair. Aaron was still screaming-little diminishing noises breaking from his twisted mouth as he cupped his genitals in one hand and chopped the other fist blindly at Jill.
She saw Lang trying to scramble up, saw Steve lunging his body at the slim man, using his weight like a battering ram. And it was Lang's turn to scream when his broken fingers were hit again.
But Jojo was the big danger to Steve, and Jill dodged Aaron again to leap for the bar across the room. Jojo stood uncertainly for a precious second, then plodded for Steve, naked and hairy, dangerous as any rabid ape.
Ducking behind the bar, Jill snatched at the shelves and found the pistol-found Steve's big .45 automatic. She brought it up with both hands, pulling the hammer back with a thumb and swinging the muzzle at Jojo.
But Steve came to his knees in time to butt Jojo savagely in the crotch. Jojo fell back a step, and another, bending low over the sudden agony in his groin. There was noise and smoke, and Lang scuttling around on the carpet, snatching for his dropped knife.
He found it, lifted himself with it glittering in his left hand. And Jill pulled the trigger of the .45. The thunderclap of the big pistol in the small room was like a major explosion. Plaster jumped from the wall, and Lang gibbered away, pawing for the couch and rolling over behind it. He left his knife on the rug.
Jill shot at Jojo then-or somewhere between Jojo and Aaron Mercer. The cannon blasted again, and glass shattered. Smoke filled the suite, and the drapes burned furiously.
"Jill! Jill!" Steve roared, and she couldn't see where Aaron ran to, couldn't find Jojo right away. So she stooped for the knife and used it to saw between Steve's wrists with her right hand; her left held the automatic, and its hammer was back.
When she cut away the ropes from her husband's feet, the hammer fell accidentally. The .45 bucked and blasted, and a fist-sized chunk of carpet leaped out of the floor.
"Jesus!" Steve said, and stood up to delicately take the pistol from her. "Grab your jeans-quick!"
Stumbling, holding her jeans and boots to her otherwise naked body, Jill plunged for the door. She spun around outside in time to see Jojo rushing from the bedroom, a weapon in his paw. Steve's .45 jumped, and plaster flew next to Jojo's head; he vanished again.
Jill yelled, "Steve-come on!"
He was with her, both of them hitting the truck seat at the same moment. The door of the motel unit was shut, but thick black smoke was pouring from beneath it and spilling from a broken window. Jill saw people's heads popping out of doors, saw men running from the office; then her head snapped back as Steve jerked the truck around and punched it out of the parking lot with tires screaming.
"You're going the wrong way!" she shouted hoarsely at him, but he kept the truck wheeling on through town, and when he skidded it into a dirt road that ran through the city dump, Jill realized what he was up to.
Not too many locals knew that the dirt road circled clear around Midway and came out on the country road behind the Rafter D ranch. Steve was throwing off pursuit, and for the first time, she thought that the police might be after them, too, that her husband was buying time.
She hung on then, because the road was rough and twisty, and Steve handled the pickup as if it were an armored vehicle, hurling it over bumps and fishtailing it around curves. When she could catch her breath again, they were bouncing over a cowtrail through the north forty of the ranch. They were home free-for the moment, and when they rolled to a stop at the house, she wondered what would happen next, thinking surely that Aaron Mercer and his hired thugs would give it up now.
Steve didn't think so. "Run on in the house," he said.
Chapter Fourteen
Jill dashed into the house, still pressing her ripped jeans to her belly and hanging onto her boots. She was halfway across the living room when she saw somebody in the corner, someone too small to be either Dink or Sam Starr.
Migod, she thought, not already-not here!
She saw the girl come hesitantly from the shadows. It took Jill a double take to recognize her, and then the shock wasn't much less: Sherry Pittman.
"Stay put," Jill said, "I-I have to-oh, hell!" She raced on into the bedroom and kicked shut the door. Snatching at underwear and a shirt, she crammed herself into them, then hunted for more jeans, for socks; she sat down and pushed her feet back into her boots. Only then did her heart slow its beating and drop back toward normal.
Sherry Pittman; what in hell was the girl doing here? She'd already been well laid by Jill's husband; what more could she want? Jill went back into the living room and the kid was still standing where she'd been, with her chin up and those unflinchingly direct blue eyes reaching out at Jill.
"M-Mrs. Devlin, I-my name is Sherry-"
"I know who you are," Jill said, looking beyond the girl to the window. Steve had left the truck and was over by Sam Starr's camper.
"Well," Sherry said, "I had to come over here for-for two reasons. My daddy set fire to your barn. I was home when he came in, and he was all dirty, and sweaty, and he was scared silly. I came to apologize for the terrible thing he did, and to help any way I can."
Jill touched the girl on the shoulder, and Sherry winced away. "I need something in the kitchen," Jill said, "a big drink. Come on, and you can tell me what the other reason is."
She had the drink poured when Sherry said in a small, faint voice, "Because I'm in love with your husband."
Tossing down the drink, Jill splashed more whiskey into the glass. Through the kitchen window, she saw Steve talking to the two old men, warning them probably. She looked back at the girl; oh, lord, to be honest and conscience-ridden again; to be fourteen years old and madly in love.
Jill said, "Okay; I love him, too. And look, Sherry-I don't blame you for it; I don't blame Steve either. I know what happened in the hay barn yesterday, and-"
The girl gasped. "He told you!"
"No, he didn't. I saw it. Don't faint, girl; get hold of yourself and think about loving Steve. Okay now? He doesn't even know I watched the two of you. I'll say it again; I don't blame either of you. I think it was-beautiful."
Sherry touched the tip of a pink tongue to her lips, but just then the telephone rang stridently. Jill walked to answer it, and gave the girl a reassuring smile, understanding some small part of what the child was feeling. Then she remembered the hay barn and thought; Child, hell!
"Yes-hello?"
"Jill, this is-this is Boyce. Oh, my god, Jill. I just found this note-it's from my daughter, my daughter Sherry. She said she's riding out to your ranch and-is she there?"
"Yes, she's here, Boyce." Jill looked a question at the girl, who shook her head. "She doesn't want to talk to you."
"Tell her to come home right now! Jill-please, damn it. She's only a child and she doesn't know what's going on, how dangerous it is for her to be-"
Jill said, "She told me you burned our barn. And she's not a child, Boyce; not any more."
"You-I can't conceive of anyone-I didn't burn your barn, damn it! I'll admit that I searched your house; yes-I was hunting for those blackmail pictures, but I didn't-I couldn't set fire to anybody's place. I was cutting through the woods to where I'd left the car when I heard shots, and I didn't know-I couldn't tell if they were meant for me or not and I ran-Jill; please, please let me talk to my daughter!"
She held out the phone, but Sherry turned her back and stared out of the kitchen window. "No dice, Boyce, and I don't fault her for it. What do you mean, how dangerous it is for her to be out here? You'd better spit it out, because she's not going anywhere-"
Boyce Pittman swallowed hard, dryly; the sound was nearly that of retching. He said, "It's Aaron Mercer. He-he isn't Mercer."
Jill's fingers clamped onto the phone until the knuckles turned white. "What?"
"Mercer-the real Aaron Mercer, of Mercer Developments, just flew into New York today from somewhere in Europe." Boyce's voice went up a notch. "How was I to know? I mean-he was due in Midway, and we'd been in communication about your ranch, and-damn it, I couldn't know he was-this man in town was an imposter. Mercer is like Howard Hughes, and nobody sees much of him, only-"
Jill snapped it. "Get to it! Why is that dangerous?"
Yet she knew in her heart that Aaron-whatever he was called-was deadly; that the two men with him were no less evil. But they had already been beaten; they'd already lost-hadn't they?
Boyce Pittman said, "Mr. Mercer-the real one-said his people discovered an organizational leak, that a gangster-a Mafia man-had the advance information on our Midway development, where the Rafter D is the key because of its location. Mr. Mercer called from New York today, and he was identified by a prominent stockbroker I know well up there, so it's certainly him-and he said-the gangster was trying to make a quick killing for better than a hundred thousand dollars, maybe a lot more, by getting your place and selling it to Mercer."
Boyce gulped for breath, and Jill pictured him behind his banker's desk, jumpy and sweating, truly frightened for the first time in his money-padded life. But he was frightened more for his little girl-she gave him that much. Little girl, hell.
"He-this mob man-he just called me from the motel, and had me vouch for him to the sheriff. He said he'd kill me if I screwed him up, and he'd kill Sherry, too. Please, Jill-about Sherry-he's going out to your ranch, and he's so mad he's insane. He means to murder Steve, so you'll be the sole survivor and full owner of the ranch-he said he has your quitclaim, and he's making this last ditch try to salvage the operation-oh, my god; I'm so scared I can't think straight."
Jill said bitterly into the phone, "If you don't call the sheriff, I swear I'll march Sherry right out into the yard for Steve to hide behind." Then she banged down the instrument.
To the girl, she said, "No, I won't. But I had to put some pressure on your father, so he'll rise above being a son of a bitch for once in his life."
Steve loped across the back yard and through the kitchen door. Jill handed him a glass of whiskey and told him swiftly about Boyce Pittman and the two Aaron Mercers. He drank and looked at Sherry; the girl smiled tremulously at him, and somehow Jill wasn't jealous. She saw them again in her mind's eye, locked together on the bale of straw, naked and lovingly coiled in that static moment of the perfection of simultaneous orgasm. And she wasn't jealous.
He said, "Sherry, get down on the floor by the stove, and stay there. Jill-fill some pots with water, in case they pop some more tracers into the house to burn us out. You can take the shotgun then, and cover the bedroom window, but stay down, you hear?"
"Yes," she said, "and you?"
He took the Winchester from its pegs over the mantelpiece, and jacked its lever. Fingering into the shell box, he thumbed the tube full and took the dust covers off the telescopic sights; then he dumped the rest of the shells into his pocket. He said, "I gave Dink Watson my pistol and another full clip, just in case."
Jill shook her head; those two poor old men out there. They'd be safer, running off through the woods; Dink couldn't see to shoot a pistol, and Sam Starr must be at least seventy-five years old. She lifted the single-shot 12-gauge from the rack and poked a shell into its chamber.
Steve said, "I feel better, knowing they're hoods. They'll be easier to kill."
Jill said, "They may be harder, because they're professionals, and they won't give you half a chance, Steve; they know you're dangerous now, and Aaron-whoever he is-he was completely insane."
He looked into her face. "You bit him, didn't you-bit his penis?"
She managed a grin. "Damned near off."
And Sherry Pittman said, "If you've got a twenty-two, I can shoot one pretty good."
Steve shook his head and Jill said, touching the girl's pale, freckled cheek with her fingertips, "I take back what I just said about your dad. He must be something special to produce a girl like you."
Tears welled in Sherry's eyes, and she spun away to hide them.
"Car's coming," Steve said. "Both of you-down!"
Listening, Jill knew that the car-a gray Buick, or two of them-hadn't come all the way to the house. Its motor stopped some distance off, and she used the interval to grab a box of shotgun shells off the shelf before ducking for the bedroom as she'd been told. Boyce would call the law, she thought; he wouldn't put his daughter up as a target in the coming shootout.
But, the sheriff wasn't available. So they were on their own, setting themselves up against three Mafia killers, and the head man was in a blind, mad rage because his penis had been damned near bitten through. Now Jill wished she had chewed it off, that the motel had burned down with Aaron and Lang and Jojo still inside.
But they were coming. Fanned out along the bushes beside the road, maybe already crossed over into the thicket of willows near the house, possibly circling into the woods near the burned barn-they were coming, and by the time any help got here, Steve Devlin could have been shot full of holes.
They would have to kill her, too; she was scared green and her mouth tasted like old dust, but Jill was determined to fight them off beside her husband.
"Mrs. Devlin-J-Jill?" Sherry was standing in the bedroom door. "Don't you have a twenty-two I can use? I won't be afraid to shoot it, honest I won't."
The bullets slapped into the wall. Splinters spewed from the fir paneling, and a picture was knocked from the bedroom vanity.
Jill threw herself at Sherry's legs, clutched the girl around the knees, and dragged her to the floor. They shivered in a tangle there, while more bullets ate away at the front windows, and glass whirled, broken about them.
Into a sudden quiet, Steve said calmly, "Some kind of full automatic weapon; sounds like an old Army carbine. Only one of them firing, so far. You girls doing okay?"
Jill pulled at Sherry's hand, and they eeled together back to Jill's shotgun. She said, "Okay, Steve," and eased her head over the windowsill to check out the stand of willows. She didn't see anything.
She peeped to the left, and couldn't find Dink or Sam Starr; maybe they were well under cover in the woods, and they ought to be. The pile of black cinders that had been their good, solid barn was still smoking a little, and there was a burned smell in the air.
Bam-bam! Bam-bam-bam!
More glass shattered, and bullets snicked wickedly through the door. Steve fired twice, the blast of his Winchester loud inside the house. "Damn!" he said with feeling. "Either this scope's off, or I led Jojo too much; missed him clean, both times."
Jill looked back toward the willows and saw some branches moving. She jerked the trigger of the shotgun and it damned near took off her shoulder. Sherry screamed in shock, and Jill peeped over the windowsill again; willow leaves were floating to the ground, but nothing else was stirring. Jill thumbed another shell into the gun and locked its breach; next time, she'd hold it away from her shoulder, off to the side.
Steve called out. "Anything?"
"G-guess not," she said, easing the barrel of the 12-gauge over the sill again.
It leaped out of her hands and she was pulled into the wall below the sill. "Steve-Steve!"
He bounded into the room and whipped the muzzle of his rifle through the window. He fired, fired again, then looked down at her. "Knocked a leg out from under him, but he's making for the camper anyway-with your shotgun. It's Lang."
Pellets hailed into the house as the shotgun turned traitor and fired their way. Jill said, "I'm sorry."
Steve blurred away, running bent over with the rifle at his hip, and she came heartsick to her knees to see him burst from the front door, firing as he leaped.
Jill stumbled after him, and Sherry was only a step behind. They reached the doorway, and Jill caught at the girl to stop her, to hold them both back.
Jojo was in the middle of the yard, working the carbine, a long curved clip sticking from its bottom. Steve's bullet hit him somewhere in the body, and he staggered back; the carbine went off, but the burst chewed into the porch foundations. Steve shot him again, and the impact turned Jojo completely around, so that he was facing away from the house. His carbine rattled some more, tearing gouts of dust near his feet.
"Up your ass!" Steve yelled, and aimed at the stumbling man.
But Jojo fell before Steve could shoot. He fell face down, his apelike arms outthrust stiffly, the carbine spinning away as he toppled.
Steve said, "Oh, hell!" And Jill screamed, "Lang-Lang!" But Lang wasn't trying to kill them with the long-barreled pistol he carried in his left hand. He threw down the empty shotgun and ran crippled, ran dragging his wounded leg, trying to get away from the camper, away from the smoldering ruins of the barn.
A .45 caliber pistol sounded from the blackened and crumbling foundations of the barn, and Lang was knocked down. He went down hard, skidding a ways along the hard ground before his body stopped.
Steve lowered his rifle and started to turn. Blood scattered from his cheek and he fell full-length on the ground. Jill screamed, and Sherry's scream rang out a pulse beat later. Jill saw Steve rolling, saw him kick himself around and come to his elbows with the rifle out, searching, searching.
Over by the gray Buick, Aaron Mercer walked stiffly into the open. He took three, four jerky, walking-doll kind of steps. Then the carbine he held dropped out of his hand, and he got off balance, so that he leaned far forward. His feet moved again, trying to catch up with the tilt of his body, but they never made it. They did kick a few times in the dust of the road, while the red puddle came out to be absorbed by the dust.
From behind the pasture fence, an old man in faded denims stood up to wave a saddle carbine over his head. They came together then, walking toward each other from three different directions-Sam Starr and Dink Watson and Steve Devlin.
Jill and Sherry sat down on the front porch with their arms about each other, and they cried.
Sam Starr said, "Held it a mite too fine, I reckon. Put the bullet in him just about when he drew down on you, and that throwed him off. Couldn't get a clear shot at him afore; he was hunkered down ahind that car."
Steve had a bandanna wadded to his cheek. He said to Sam Starr, "Where'd you hit him?"
"Well, now," Sam said, "I ain't all that proud of a neck shot; most generally I take them Texas turkeys in the head."
Dink Watson said, "That other one wasn't expectin' nobody in the burned down barn; he already stuck his goddamned head into the camper. I had to hold on him with both hands, but the job got done."
"It sure as hell did," Steve said, and then they were all laughing as if they'd gone crazy.
The men laughed and the women cried, and somehow Jill knew that this was how it always was. She climbed up from the porch and took Sherry back into the house, so neither of them would have to look at the bodies in the yard, and so they wouldn't have to see whoever it was driving up the ranch road so fast. Jill figured that whoever it was, they wouldn't have to kill him.
She gave Sherry Pittman a small drink of bourbon, and took a large one for herself. Drinking it down, she found she could think, but that there was a numbness about her reactions, something of unreality. It was almost done with. The bad guys were dead, and the good guys had almost won. There was only one little detail to be cleaned up-the Devlins still owed twenty thousand dollars on their ranch, and the payments were far in arrears.
Jill wished that Boyce Pittman had burned down the barn; even now, she hoped he was lying when he denied it, but her intuition told her the truth had been spooked out of him. If he had tried to burn them out, they might have used that as a lever to make him hold off.
But a rose was a rose and money was bread to a banker; when Boyce recovered from his fright over his daughter, he'd come to his usual cold, banker senses and shut down on the Rafter D. It was still worth a lot of money to the real Aaron Mercer. Jill tried to hold off the raw hysteria that was building in her throat, but it was a losing battle. She giggled, and held her hands over her mouth and couldn't stop giggling.
It was so funny; it was just so goddamned funny, about the real Aaron Mercer, because the other one couldn't stand up.
She was laughing and crying together and little Sherry Pittman was holding her close and trying to calm her.
And that was the biggest damned joke, too-being comforted by a fourteen-year-old girl, being calmed by this small, ex-cherry type kid who also happened to be Steve's mistress, more or less. Mostly more, and more down than up, and wasn't that the silliest fucking thing anybody ever heard of?
He didn't slap her, like in the movies. He took her by the shoulders and shook her, so that Jill's head bobbled back and forth and her teeth rattled so that she said, "You'd better stop that, you silly bastard, before I get seasick all over the front of you."
Steve said, "That's better, darling. We're okay now; it's all over, and if you're worrying about me-the bullet only clipped my cheek."
Jill rubbed at her eyes and cleared them. She saw her kitchen filled with men, and over by her stove, Boyce Pittman was talking earnestly to his daughter, alternately threatening and pleading with Sherry, but the girl was saying no.
Jill stepped into the waiting circle of her husband's arms and put her head on his chest. Then she must have gently passed out.
Chapter Fifteen
Jill was more than a little bit snockered. But she was warm and loose in the joints. It was dark outside and almost everybody had gone home that should have. Sweet little Sherry stayed, damned well telling off her old man, that dirty old foreclosing banker man.
Then there was Steve looking piratical and rakish-or was it raffish-with the bandage across his cheek. And there was Dink Watson, drinking twice as much booze as anybody else but right now Jill just didn't give a damn how drunk old Dink got; he deserved every swallow, and if they ran out of juice, somebody had to go to town for some more. Damned right.
There was cute old Sam Starr, too. Sam was used to hitting Texas turkeys on the wing, and most generally in the head. Oh, wow; Sam Starr was just too much, with his patched jeans and washed-thin shirt and the new camper rig he'd saved up all his life to get. Because cute old Sam Starr kept talking about his own spread, and Jill thought for sure he said a hundred thousand or so. That was so freaky she shook her head and bumped the heel of her hand against her ear, so she could hear better.
"Takes a lot of ground to run them horses," Sam said. "Most of it's only sagebrush and cactus that don't get enough water to grow needles, and it's away down in Johnson County. But I get by on it. I'm still sorry your daddy didn't see fit to stay there with me, but I guess we was both hard heads. Like I said, I been runnin' them quarter horses on it since before Hale Devlin left, and some of 'em do pretty good on the tracks."
Dink Watson nodded sagely, and Jill closed one eye so the other could focus better. Dink said, "I'm the old school, too; horses do better on the range where nature put 'em, and I expect a hundred thousand acres ain't too much for a herd the likes of yours, Sam."
Sam went on. "Been looking' quite a spell for that blood line cross, but that special little mare died afore her time. I'm fair decided that I found it in that Comet D stud out there in your pasture. I'd appreciate it, was you to let me trailer him on home with me."
"Oh, hell," Jill said, "we're such dingalings that we sit around a kitchen table and get smashed and talk nonsense about horse trading. Damn it, Steve; damn it, everybody! The Rafter D is twenty thousand dollars in hock, and no way of getting out, so the remaining bad guy gets to pick up all the marbles anyhow-and excuse me, Sherry dear. Twenty thousand dollars, and that's that."
"Sounds fair enough to me,". Sam Starr said, and Jill felt as if she had been sloshed in the face with a cold, wet rag. She almost sobered up.
"What? Do you mean that you-that you can afford-that Comet D is really worth-" Jill sputtered out and just sat there staring at the old man.
Dink Watson set her straight by solemnly announcing, "Mrs. Devlin, ol' Sam's too shy to admit it, but he owns so much of Texas that the governor calls up from Austin every day just to say good mornin', and am I arunning' things to suit you, Mr. Starr. Course, Comet D ain't worth no twenty thousand dollars to nobody but him, account of he's got his head set on the stud."
Sam Starr nodded and sat there rolling a Bull Durham cigarette. "Oh, the stud will make out pretty good, I reckon; if he's got the blood I think, his mares will throw some runnin' horses that'll get it all back, and some to boot."
"I don't believe it," Jill said. "I'll sober up in the morning with a headache and it will all be a dream."
Laughing with the rest, but gently, Sam Stan-said, "You want to go to the bank with me in the morning, Steve Devlin-while your pretty wife's soberin' up?"
"I sure will," Steve said. "But if you don't want to pay for the horse, you can take him free. You and Dink stood up for us today, and that's worth more than money."
At the door, guiding Dink and his bottle out into the night, Sam Starr said, "I know that, boy. Good night to you all-Miss Pittman, Mrs. Devlin."
Jill stared at the empty doorway. She sat there blinking at nothing until Sherry touched her on the shoulder and said, "Jill? Can I help you? And if you show me where some bedclothes are, I can make up a bed on the couch, and-"
Putting her lips to the girl's soft palm, Jill drew a deep and steadying breath. "Just give me a minute or two, dear. So much has happened in such a short time." Turning her head then, she looked across at her husband sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table.
"Steve," she said, "now the bad part is really, really over. Now the good part, the best part can begin. Isn't that right?"
"Right," he said.
They stood together in the bedroom, and Steve had sense enough to leave them alone for a while, to talk. Jill was still high, but the buzz was a good one now, without trouble looming ahead, and lacking the specter of fear.
So she said to the girl, "Sherry, you stood up to your father tonight and made him back down. You wanted to stay with us. Still apologizing?"
"No," Sherry said. "But I made Daddy cool it because I told him you might press charges of vandalism, breaking and entering, all the stuff he confessed to. Then he said it was because of Mother and me he did it, that you had pictures-of you and him making it, and I said I didn't care, that he was wrong and I'd either stay here tonight or run away for good."
Jill took off her shirt and sat down to slide off her boots. It seemed lately that she was either dressing or undressing. She said, "It's true about Boyce and me, but there was no love. I was lonely; I hadn't seen Steve in two years, and I thought I could buy Boyce off by seducing him. It was my fault, and not his. He never intended to be bribed for long, and there are no pictures; I made them up to get more time for the ranch. So your mother will never know, unless you tell her."
Sherry sat perched on the edge of the bed, her back very straight. "Does-does Steve know?"
"He found out." Jill said, and got up to step out of her jeans. "You were for revenge on your father, and on me. But that didn't take. I saw the two of you, and he loves you, Sherry; he loves you very much."
"But Jill-I-I don't understand; I mean-if he loves me, then how about you?"
Jill unhooked her bra. "He loves me, also. In a different way. But what he feels for you is just as true, just as sweet. You're everything young and pure to him, the first romance, the girl in school-and you're so lovely that he considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. And maybe he is."
Blushing, Sherry moved off the bed. "I-well, thank you, Jill. If you'll show me where the bedclothes are-"
"Nonsense. You're sleeping with us, of course. If you're not too shy, that is."
The girl's blue eyes went very wide, and her mouth made a soft O. "You-you mean-"
"Why not? There's enough of him to share. Do you want to get undressed and hop into bed before he comes back?" Jill peeled off her panties and saw the girl's eyes flick in feminine curiosity at her mound, at the honey-blonde hair curling deep and rich there at her pubis. "Sherry, would you like the light out?"
"P-please," Sherry breathed, fumbling at her belt. "I-maybe it'll be different when I'm kind of used to it, but even this idea is so freaky I can't get hold of it. I mean-oh, wow, Jill!"
Jill regretted not being able to watch the girl undress. There was so much loveliness to see, to admire; but she could picture her as she'd been in the hay barn, that milky skin so finely textured and flawless, the just-budding breasts with their pink nipples, that delicate wisp of hair at the upper edges of her pink-lipped pussy. Jill remembered.
The bedroom was dark then, and they lay naked, lay trembling just a little under the sheet, for Jill felt as childlike, as unsure, as the young girl beside her. Jill held Sherry's hand, and they breathed in offbeat, soft gasps; it was as if they were little kids together, shivering in scary, delighted anticipation at the lion tamer's act in the center ring of the biggest, brightest circus there ever was.
And the calliope whistled, and somewhere there just had to be pink cotton candy, and when the lions and tigers were chased back into the runway, when the handsome daredevil trainer bowed and climbed the benches high up to where they sat, it would be more wondrous still.
Steve came into the room, and they stopped breathing. "Jill?"
"Yes," she said, "and Sherry, too. We've been waiting for you, darling."
And Sherry whispered, "Darling."
They heard him undressing, heard the clink of buttons and the thump of boots, the rustling of denims. When he came to the bed, Jill said, "Over here; I'll slip out so you can be between us."
He said, "Thank you, Jill."
"Not now," she said, lifting the sheet so her husband could lie down next to the lovely little girl. Then she followed him, and curled to his naked warmth, one arm across his body, where it touched Sherry's arm.
All the ugliness fled from Jill; the day was wiped clear, and there had never been a hairy, grunting man working his thin penis into her anus. There had never been a cold, torturing man forcing his huge cock far down her throat. Two men had not done these things to her as her husband watched helplessly. The night was here, and they were three together in love, so the day was gone forever.
Steve turned his head and kissed her. His mouth was at first gentle, then demanding, and she gave her tongue up to him, slid her teeth over his. Her breasts flattened against the side of his chest, and Jill pushed her mound to his thigh.
When he moved, it was to kiss Sherry in turn, and the girl moaned softly. Then he said, "I don't know how to go about this, which of you to-"
"Take turns," Jill suggested. "Just sit up and turn around, while we get adjusted." She felt him lift away from between them, and slipped her arm under Sherry's head to pull the girl close beside her. "Now, Steve," she said, her thigh pressed to Sherry's, her breast snug to Sherry's budding tit.
He went first to the girl, and Jill knew a deep, vicarious joy as she felt him run gentle hands over Sherry's writhing body, stroking hips and belly and thighs, caressing the almost hairless little mound. She trembled as the girl did when Steve lowered himself between the slim, fine legs and sought the tight, hot entrance to her tiny pussy.
He was tender and loving; he was patient and careful, and Jill kissed Sherry's cheek as her husband worked his cock into the narrow, near-virginal cunt. Jill knew the exact moment when he slid it all the way inside, when the glove of Sherry's young and eager vagina grasped the length of Steve's prick.
Stroking into the squirming girl, thrusting slow and deep into the sweetly clinging walls of the dewy cunt, Steve fucked Sherry until the girl gave her little cry of completion, until her slim, small ass hiked and shivered.
Pulling out quickly, he moved to his right, his hands searching for the inner softness of his wife's thighs, and Jill spread herself for him. He pushed into her hurriedly, thrusting strongly and solidly into her wet vulva, an urgency in him that he couldn't put off much longer.
So Jill rolled her tail and ground her pelvis, and heaved under him, riding the frantic hammering of his rod, and when she felt his glans flex in preparation to ejaculation, Jill was ready to meet it. The goodness and sweetness flowed from her clitoris; all the honeydew and oils rushed to bathe his beloved penis with their juices. She came and came, and her head whirled when she thought she could never stop the prolonged orgasm.
Steve pumped his love into her vagina, as deep and far as he could shower the hot semen, and his testicles jerked against her labia. He loved her, she exulted; he loved her again, more freely, more in a total, unselfish way than he had before.
Sinking back, melting under his hot body, Jill thought that it all would be different for them from now on, that her husband would no longer treat her as a fragile object to be laid only in the proper manner, by the numbers, Army style. No; he would let himself go with his wife, because she was his mistress, too, because he knew her to be weak flesh and passionate blood that needed a man just as a man craved a woman.
He knew she had screwed another man; he had watched her degraded in the rear, in her mouth, but he loved her still. Maybe he wanted her more because of the things that had happened.
He rolled from her, and as he lay on his back, Sherry snapped on the bedlight, and blinked in the sudden glare. "It's silly to be embarrassed or ashamed," she said, and climbed on top of Steve to straddle him.
Jill smiled; out of the mouths of babes, or something like that. Sherry was so right, for it should all be natural, all giving and sharing between them. When the girl went home tomorrow, as she'd have to, it would be with a wholesomely liberated outlook of life and sex. She wouldn't fault her father for long, either; she'd be able to see Boyce Pittman as another human being, flawed as they all were, as she herself was, as her lovers were, man and woman alike.
Eyelids fluttering, Jill rolled onto her side. Sherry was trying to fit the head of Steve's organ into her spread labia, rocking back and forth on him as she rode her horse. He held lightly to her slim hips, and moved his pelvis to accommodate her as best he could.
Jill said, "Now you can thank me."
"For-what?" he panted.
"For saving the ranch; for being an understanding wife; for making you a present of that beautiful, insatiable small woman there. You know, the one making you sweat so much."
"Thanks," he gasped, "Thanks-for all of it. Especially-especially for this-oh-this little girl."
"Little girl, hell," Jill said, but without malice.
