Holly Meade considered herself a Southern patriot of the highest order. She was willing to risk her own life for her country by volunteering as a spy. And she was willing to sacrifice her virtue and the lush softness of her voluptuous young body to help the Confederate cause. It was with the greatest of confidence and the fiercest of loyalty that she set out in the warm, Virginia rain to the hated Yankee capital, Washington, D.C. Of course, she had no way of knowing what hellish devices and unnatural acts would be practiced upon her helpless golden body if she were found out by her powerful enemy.
ONE
By keeping her eyes resolutely fixed on the Bonnie Blue Flag, Holly could contain her tears. Behind her, Captain Dudley Pomeroy did his gentle best to comfort her with a soft stream of encouraging words as accompaniment to the snipping of his scissors. It was a help, too, that he allowed none of her waist-length blonde tresses to fall to the floor as he cut them from her head. He was as careful with her shorn locks as if they'd been the flag of the Confederacy-which hung on the staff there in the corner of his hotel room. Just then, she felt that he'd sooner desecrate that banner they were both pledged to uphold than let a single strand of her sacrifice fall to the floor.
"This is," he solemnly said, "the most demanding of any duty I've been assigned in the war. You're a brave girl to bear it as you do, Miss Meade."
She swallowed at the constriction in her throat and said clearly, "Our boys at Shiloh and Manassas and Antietam were brave. My parents were brave. Giving up my hair is nothing at all to what they gave up. It's nothing at all to what I'm prepared to give up for the Confederate States of America."
The scissors clicked down on the table behind her and his long, gentle hands come to tenderly clasp her dainty shoulders, straight as the chair she sat in. He said, "It's done, Miss Meade. Do you want to come see yourself in the mirror now?"
"No. I want to kill me a Yankee."
"You will. I promise you. Even if they catch you-and the chances are quite likely that they will-I know you'll send a few of them to Kingdom Come. If you're very fortunate, if you learn your lessons well, the information you bring back will send hundreds, thousands to their graves."
She curled her lips and looked back over her shoulder at the tall, bearded man in the gray uniform. "They'll never catch me."
He patted her shoulders, and his smile was sad as he said, "This is eighteen hundred sixty-three, Miss Meade. The days when women like Rose Greenhow could operate for us in the shadow of the White House are over. The times when Belle Boyd could skip back and forth between the lines, knowing they wouldn't hurt her if she was caught, are long gone."
Holly tossed her head, but the gesture felt entirely empty without the weight of her blonde mane swinging about her. She said, "I don't care if they hang me, as long as I can do something for the South."
"If they catch you, they'll surely hang you-but that will be the last of the things they'll do to you."
Until that moment, Captain Pomeroy's hands had felt reassuring on her, infusing strength in her even as they brushed against her head during her tonsure. Now when they moved on her shoulders, they drew a shudder from her. She looked down at the fingertips that crept over the edge of her bodice, long and tapered and strong, entirely masculine against the blue-white skin of her upper chest. Her voice was smaller as she said, "No matter what they do, I'm ready for it."
She gasped as the hands plunged into her bodice. She wailed and caught at the sinewy wrists as the fingers closed over her breasts, kneading deeply, mashing her nipples flat and roiling her breasts like two greedy animals under her worn dress. She cursed and turned her head to bite the forearm, and then the hands were withdrawn and she was left panting and spluttering with her rage, her humiliation.
She wheeled about in the chair, her fine features twisted and flushed as she said, "Captain Pomeroy, you are a pig! Don't you ever so much as touch me again!"
Somber, infuriatingly calm, he said, "I thought you'd react that way. You'd break in no time if they caught you. I'll see to it your assignment doesn't involve too much risk of capture."
Rising, a new anger flooding through her, Holly said, "You'll do nothing of the kind! You'll . . . "
"A spy disguised as a Union drummer boy can do almost as much for the cause in Boston as she can in Washington. Even though it's farther, it's a good deal safer on a blockade runner through the Atlantic than on a horse through the front lines."
Fists on her hips, her back stiff and straight again, Holly advanced on the man, enunciating clearly, "I am not going to Boston. Within one week, I will be in the enemy's capital, getting information for as long as I can. If I'm caught and...tortured, that's no concern of yours. Don't worry about me. Just worry about my dispatches."
His gentleness had returned when he took her by the arms and said, "Wherever I send you, I will worry about you, Miss Meade...Holly. I've already developed a...a certain fondness for you. But a commanding officer often feels that for the soldiers he sends off to danger, and three years of war have inured me to it. I'm able to keep my fears for your personal safety in the background. But I'm not able to send a spy north whom I feel might betray us."
"Betray the South? I wouldn't! I just wouldn't! .No matter what they did."
"Men can be very cruel, Holly. Especially men at war."
"I know that better than you. I saw the Yanks burn our house-with Daddy and Mama in it. Whatever they did to me, I wouldn't break."
"I think you would," said Captain Pomeroy, and placed his hands at each side of her bodice, then rent it wide.
She smothered a gasp. Her hands went up automatically, defensively. Mouth open, she looked at the long white teeth grinning through the brown beard, then lowered her gaze. The hairs stood up on the hands that worked at her breasts. The fingers looked gnarled and bony in contrast to the taut, unblemished fullness they probed at. The hands looked tan and weathered against the creamy white texture of her. When thumb and forefinger encircled a fine, rosy nipple, the nipple looked as if it might scream-just the way Holly craved to. The hands crawled on her breasts, each trying to hold one in its entirety. The fingers crept like spider's legs. The hard palms weighed the bulging sacks of treasure.
She whispered, "No matter what they did to me . . . "
His voice was harsh and flat, the lilting Carolina drawl gone, as he said, "You Dixie whores grow good tits."
Her chin quaked uncontrollably and it took ail her will power to keep her hands at her sides, fists tightly clenched, nails deep in her palms. The pain she felt there wasn't nearly enough to blanket the burning of her cheeks, the churning of her stomach, the crawling sensation in her breasts. As she forced herself to watch, even her nipples revolted, gathering themselves up into dimpled peaks as if to spring from her shame-filled body.
The harsh voice whipped at her, "How many cannons around Richmond?"
"Thir...I...I don't know."
"You do know! That's where you come from. Who's your commanding officer? Who're your contacts here in Washington? You answer me, you filthy Rebel slut or I'll strip you bare-assed naked and make you beg to tell me!"
"Please. Believe me. I'm not a spy. I came north because...because my home, my family is all gone. Please, I...Oh, Captain Pomeroy, that's enough. For the love of God, that's enough!"
The drawl was back, warm and good, as he said, "Dear Holly. Do you think those scum will stop just because you've said you had enough? I can't do it. You see now. I can't send you up there."
The hands were trailing from her breasts, allowing her to breathe again. She caught the wrists and pushed them back on her, moved them about on her breasts. Tears flowed down her pale cheeks, but her voice was calm as she said, "Sergeant, you may torture me all you wish, but I have no information of a military nature to give you."
"We'll see about that, whore!"
He caught her dress again and tore the flimsy material to below her waist. His grin was totally evil, totally Yankee when he encircled that narrow waist with his hands, the thumbs moving to make the tiny cave of her navel wink. He gloated over his prisoner. When the tears fell from her cheeks to spatter on her firmly crested breasts, he laughed.
"How many reserves in Richmond?"
"I don't know. I'm from Culpepper." She was amazed that her voice still functioned.
It was the captain who said, "Holly, tell them you're from Danville. Culpepper's too close to Washington...if I do decide to send you there."
"I'm from Danville, Virginia, sergeant. And I'll see you're hanged for violating an innocent girl like this."
Sneering, the sergeant said, "Innocent? We hear you Rebel gals start fucking your nigger slaves before you even grow tits. And we hear spies like you have to lay with old Stonewall Jackson himself before he sends you up here."
She kicked at him with her knee, but he laughed and easily turned it aside. He went to his knees to rip her skirts and petticoats down to her ankles. When she tried to kick him, he inserted his hand between her legs, hard against her pantaloon-clad crotch, then rose to hold her struggling form captive with one arm.
He moved his hand in an awful way and, close to her face, he leered and said, "You act like you still got a cherry you're saving for old Stonewall."
"Don't you talk about General Jackson that way! He's a God-fearing, moral man. And if I had any cherries, I'd give them to him, hungry as I am!"
"Holly, dear. Are you a virgin?"
"A virgin? Of course I am! I may want to be a spy, Captain Pomeroy, but I'm still a lady."
The Captain's arm relaxed about her, but the sergeant's hand still moved slowly between her legs. The captain said, "Honey, I shudder to think how they'd deflower a girl like you. They'd have ways of doing that that would make any spy talk."
"I wouldn't let them. I'd fight them all the way."
"No. That would make it all the worse. In a situation like that, it's best to yield to them. You're more valuable to the Confederacy alive than dead. If you could learn to relax, I know you'd survive."
"Relax and let some damned Yankee put his thing in me? I couldn't. I just couldn't."
"I could show you how. I'm going to show you how. For your own good. Nay, for your own life, dear Holly."
The hand between her legs felt damp now, and very hot. She looked down at where it moved between her trembling-tight thighs. She saw her nipples at full military attention, carmine like the field of her flag. Her skin was as pure white as the outline of the bars in that flag. The little veins were blue, the same shade as the bars. On her pantaloons were thirteen buttons, the same number as the stars on her flag. But, no. The red of her nipples was the wrong hue. The color of her flag was blood red, and though thousands had shed their blood for the flag, she had not.
Holly relaxed her clenched thighs and breathed deeply, felt her love of country swell in her breast. Her captain saw it, too, for he was constrained to move his hand up and lift one breast, then place his reverent lips at the crest of her pride. His spontaneous gesture of patriotism so moved her that she felt it fill her body with their combined fervor, and she nestled his dear head proudly closer, thrilling at what she knew they both felt. His hand moved down again, this time within her pantaloons, and she tried and succeeded in keeping her thoughts on her country as he cupped her private parts. She thought of how that hand had wielded the Colt revolver that had slain dozens of her country's enemies. She was entirely confident that the finger that gently probed within her was the same that had pulled the trigger. It had to be. At each of its slow squeezes now, she could feel the deeply satisfying thrill that could only come with the death of another Yankee. At each slow and expert pull of it, she felt an even greater need to thrill again at yet another death. Holly found she was perspiring in her almost religious ecstasy as the beloved finger of death slew Yank after Yank.
One by one, it killed a whole platoon of privates, and her pride so overwhelmed her that she squeezed her captain's head closer to her to have his lips and tongue taste more of her bursting patriotism. She groaned when the finger moved four times to slay the corporals. She opened her legs wider to let it be unerring in the death of the sergeant. The Yankee lieutenant was a sneaky one. It took four trigger pulls to bring him down, but when he fell, Holly moaned aloud in her happiness. She thrust the trigger smoothly but firmly against the finger and her hips moved at each recoil of the gun as the Yankee captain, the major, and then the colonel went down. Her body was perspiring from the heat of battle. At the epicenter of the fray, there between her legs, her perspiration was so copious that she feared the finger might slip off the trigger.
She said, "Captain, I am ready...more than ready, to give my all."
"Yes," said he. "I do believe you are."
He pulled down her pantaloons and led her naked to his bed, and she shivered despite the warm Virginia April. As he began to solemnly disrobe, she felt her patriotism waver, and she had the urge to slay a whole company of Yankees herself to keep her proper spirits up. When he stepped out of his drawers and turned to face her, a cannon blast of heat struck her. The cannon faced her. She looked down its small black muzzle and trembled inwardly at its steely barrel. Was this how the boys felt when they faced Yankee artillery? Were they torn between fleeing and casting themselves upon the ghastly weapon in order that thousands of their comrades might be saved? She would not flee.
Every fiber of her being surging with that strange elixir that only heroes in heroic situations can exude, she spoke with vibrant voice, saying, "Take me. Torture me just as they would."
He came and sat beside her, took her hand in his and closed it over the heated shaft of his cannon, his voice entirely warm and good now, Southern and musical as he said, "You mustn't fear this, Holly. Trust me. I'm not going to torture you as the Yankee scum would...not this time. We'll start you slowly and in a little while have you to a point where you can stand their very worst. Just trust me. This first time should be very gentle on my part...just as if I were your devoted husband. I'll not take any chance at all of frightening you with any force, or by going so quickly as to hurt you."
Squeezing him fondly, she said, "You are a gentleman...a perfect Southern gentleman."
"Exactly," said the captain, and stretched out on his back on the bed, his hands clasped behind his head. "As we used to say when we were riding with Jeb Stuart, 'Mount up and proceed at your own pace.' "
Still retaining her grip on his cannon, she straddled his hips. She knew where it was to go. Once she'd watched from a distance as Blue, her servant and the last of the Meade slaves, bred with one of the field girls, and she knew the two organs fit together so well that belly could touch belly. But Blue, for all his outlandish size, couldn't have had an organ this large. There was fully an inch of Captain Pomeroy's thing within her, and still another six inches in her hand. She tried and tried to fit more of it into the patch of corn-yellow hair, between those lips that were so ghastly pink and inflamed from the heat. It was terribly hot in the hotel room. She dripped perspiration, although the captain seemed not to notice it at all. He seemed quite cool and relaxed, even though she was in the clutches of an almost malarial fever. The fever was particularly manifest in her private parts, and she was sweating so heavily now that the fluid was drenching her hand and the captain's thing. She would have blushed with her embarrassment had not her cheeks already been as rosy as they could possibly be.
She worked the end of his thing over her trigger, and found it even better than his trigger finger there. It stirred her to mimicking the sounds of slow gunfire, little grunts from in her chest. She was quite caught up with this when he said, "Down lower."
"Hmm? What?"
"Put my cock in your hole, like a good girl." "In my hole. My pee hole?" "Your finger hole."
"My what? Surely you don't think . . . "
"I think you haven't got the brains to be a spy if you can't get my cock in your cunny. A spy would be diligent and ingenious...and just now, rather hasty."
It was painful when she at last fitted another inch of it into her, but she smiled at him with the good feeling of accomplishment. He smiled back and nodded, mutely, kindly instructing her to proceed. Holly had to move her hips about in her efforts to follow instructions, and she found this movement to be quite easy. It eased the pain and let her patriotic fervor build until another dull ache signaled the end of her passage. Still he nodded for more, displaying the patience of the born instructor, and still she sought to please him by finding this key to her future survival.
Her hips were moving quite rapidly then, in smooth, circular motions which she found fascinating to watch. She realized then why women have two breasts instead of one or three. With an odd number, the line of sight would be cut off. This delightful anatomical arrangement allowed her' to gaze down between her bobbing, swaying breasts and see it all. Her belly was pulsing in and out like an overworked but delicate blacksmith's forge. Her blonde hair and his brown hair were wet through and through with her torrent of perspiration that was the source of that heavy odor, at once reminiscent of alley cats and her mother's Parisian perfume. A long, thick vein throbbed in the shaft of his thing, like the artery of a supply route bringing her even greater sustenance to continue. The lips of her private parts were like a baby's...like her infant nation...sucking greedily at this everlasting source of strength.
Then she saw a rivulet of pink start down his shaft, thin and mixed with the perspiration born of her exhilarating toil. The sight of this brought forth a wonderfully satisfying groan from her that seemed to make the pain fly, but that was as nothing compared to the satisfaction she felt at the shortening of his supply highway. She had fully half of it in her, and now her labia were in the way. Barely able to control her fingers, she spread the lips to suck in more of him, and then her bright, rich blood, the true color of her flag, flowed forth in a vivid path.
Baptized, christened, she had to plunge down on him all the way, feeling no pain at all now, but only a fervor for her land that could only be described as rapture. He felt it, too, for he gasped as they slapped bellies. Marvelously, it was there to be felt again as her hips raised to reveal the smear of her blood, then plummeted down to fuse their patriotism once more. Again and again she felt of it until her body was aflame with the most enormous love and devotion to a cause that anyone could know. She found she was snorting like an animal, making sounds too similar to those the darkies emitted in their religious ecstasies. That wouldn't do, no matter how close she felt to God just then. Her Heaven was the Confederate States of America, and her mission was to destroy the North. She put her heart, her soul, her body, her private parts into this.
"I'll smother you, General McClellan!" and she jammed her hips down on him.
"Sherman, I'll strangle you!" and she proceeded to do so, wringing the life out of him with muscles she'd been hitherto unaware of.
Captain Pomeroy pushed up at her and said, in a voice of a true zea lot, "Lincoln! Time for Old Abe now! Together!"
That hated word set off a fury in Holly Meade. The small but nubile Southern belle forgot her breeding, her manners, all they had taught her in finishing school, and became a savage warrior driven by a lust of staggering proportions. She drove at him again and again, ever harder, ever faster. She enveloped the hated Lincoln in the flames of her own burning Hades, strangling him and beating him with her hips. Deep within her, she could distinctly feel life blood spurting, and she knew her dear teacher could feel it, too, for he gasped and groaned in imitation of her own ecstasies. She couldn't damn old Abe, for her breath was being used to fan his flames of hell, but she knew the exact moment she consigned him to perdition; at that very moment an enormous cataclysm shook her. All the glories, all the battles, all the heroism of the South rose up and were concentrated in her body. For long, shuddering moments, she was the vessel for the valor of the South. As she collapsed on Captain Dudley Pomeroy, CSA, she knew their cause, their war, was won.
When Holly was tumbled on her back, she realized she must have dozed. Looking up, seeing the angular man staggering away from her, she didn't believe it could be her commanding officer. He looked too bent, too debilitated. Between his narrow legs swung a sparsely furred sack, and below this hung a limp parody of that magnificently strong organ of her salvation. She felt too weak to stir from her entirely immodest posture on the bed, but even as she dwelt back on what she'd so recently known, she felt the strength rising that would allow her to follow and see what he might need of her. She wavered there, feeling stronger by the moment, and then smiled when he reappeared.
Without his uniform, his thing distractingly flaccid, he looked little like the man she'd come to for a mission. But the smile, the eyes, the soft words were still his as he came to lie beside her. She reached for the coverlet.
"No," said he, and firmly drew it away. "Modesty is just one more thing you'll have to sacrifice if you're caught. But I'll declare, I'm sure tempted to keep you here as my adjutant."
"You're sweet as can be, Captain, but I must go north. Now I feel it stronger than ever. What else must I know?"
Tenderly, he said, "You learn so quickly. As quickly as I tire." Then he laughed at her look of alarm and said, "But with a budding young spy like you, I can't allow myself to tire. With your help, I'll show you the very worst the Yankees can put you to."
"What must I do? Just tell me? I'll do it."
He smiled and took a fistful of her short-cropped hair, then used this handhold to force her head down to press against his faintly acrid-smelling loins. "Kiss it, Rebel. Take it in your mouth and suck it."
In a voice muffled but still hugely indignant, Holly said, "Captain Pomeroy! I mean, Sergeant! You can't mean that. Let me up this instant. People don't do that. Not even animals do that. Not even...not even darkies do that."
"You eat it. Take it in your mouth and suck it."
"Oh, no! It's moving. It's getting big again. Agh, I wouldn't put that thing in my mouth for anything!"
"It's not a 'thing', it's a cock."
"All right, but it belongs in a woman's private parts, not in her mouth. Ugh."
"Your parts aren't private once you've been captured. Then you've got a cunny between your legs and a mouth in your pretty face. The Yankees will use them. Holly, I'm doing this for your own good."
"No. I'd...I'd bite it off."
Entirely exasperated, Captain Pomeroy let her up, faced her flushed and scowling countenance. He said, "Haven't you learned anything, dear Holly? The more you resist, the more they'll hurt you. You may only make a token show of your virtue and then go along with them, with anything they want you to do, if you want to survive and help us. And sucking a cock isn't all that bad. Europe is filled with cock-suckers. Even nobility does it there. Don't disappoint me now. Give us a good suck and then I'll be ready for your last lesson, and you can be off for Washington tonight if you like."
To Holly's great dismay, she found that she didn't vomit with his cock in her mouth. She listened carefully to him-though that was increasingly difficult with the way he moved his hand in her private...in her cunny-and she heeded every word he said in applying the proper suction and in exercising the latest London tongue techniques. He complimented her repeatedly through his instructions, but when the time came for her next lesson, she still felt she had more to learn.
However, she readily acquiesced to being laid on her back on the bed, and she held her thighs up and out in the attitude the Yankees preferred for their torture. When Captain Pomeroy inserted his cock in her, she visualized it to be a ramrod, her cunny the cannon that could shoot clear to Washington. She fired shell after shell, rocking back and forth on the gun carriage that was her body, glorying in each of the direct hits she scored, finally sending the capital city of the enemy up in an inferno of flame.
Following this, Captain Pomeroy joined her in a catnap, then donned his uniform to prepare her for her hazardous mission.
Holly's breasts were bound with bandages, though these were badly needed by the boys in the bursting hospitals. She was dressed in the uniform of a Union drummer boy. It was tight in the hips, but it fit her well enough. The trousers were thin, as was the tunic coat, all except for the right sleeve. This was of almost new material, sewn to the jagged and darkly stained edges of the old. The cap was too large, but Captain Pomeroy said it was purposely so, the better to conceal her features, almost too delicate to be pawned off as those of a boy instead of a seven teen-year-old girl. She was given a two-barrel, .32 caliber, rimfire derringer which fit nicely within her right boot. He sat her at the table to pore over maps with her, and to give her repeated instructions as to her contact in Washington. He wouldn't let her stir until it was all committed perfectly to memory, then he made her go through it all again, together with her false personal history and spurious motives for traveling to Washington. There would be no safe conduct pass through the Confederate lines, for these had been found to be too easy to duplicate once fallen into the hands of the enemy. She didn't need it. She knew the territory between Richmond and Washington perfectly well from her many journeys with her father. He again reminded her of the most pertinent military information she might seek. His own gray cape was put about her thin shoulders, not as a protection against the chillier evening air, but as the only personal protection he could give her against capture by his own troops.
His kiss followed that. It was warm and lingering, speaking volumes about his desire for her to stay on as his adjutant-as his woman. He couldn't speak then, nor could she. She could only look up through tear-dazzled eyes and silently mouth the words, "Thank you. I'll be back."
She knew he was weeping, too, when he turned and faced the table whereon her long golden tresses lay-perhaps the only part of her he would have when the conflict was finally resolved.
TWO
When Holly Meade emerged from the hotel side door into the clouded night, she emerged as a spy. She moved cautiously, but not overly so as to arouse suspicion. Head down, hands in pockets, she sauntered along the board walk, kicking at splinters in the manner of a boy, though she was anything but what she appeared to be. She was a woman, now and forever more. She could feel the strength of womanhood like a glowing coal in her loins, and there was a need in her to roll her hips with each step to allow that fire to move about and warm her, give her what it could of the courage she'd need. But she kept her hips rigid in her gait, her shoulders slumped in the posture of the weary boy, though all of her felt tense and tingling on this, the outset of her mission.
The rumblings of war were all about her, and now each of her own footfalls was a part of that stirring noise. The noise was solemn now, not at all the hasty clatterings of supply wagons and ragged cheers of drunken soldiers she'd heard when first her father had taken her to their new capital. The high spirits of that immature war were gone along with the immaturity of a whole generation-her generation-and it was far more satisfying to hear these solemn, somber, workmanlike sounds. Far to her left the clanging of sledges sounded the extension of another rail spur to bring more guns and ammunition to the city's bulwarks in the unlikely event Richmond was besieged. In the streets, ambulances creaked south against the lumbering supply wagons going north. Across the street, a brick building was aglow with the orange fires of the forges, humming with the machines that turned out the Confederacy's version of the Springfield rifle. Yankee sympathizers-what few of were left-sneered that the South hadn't guns of its own. Holly knew that situation was all part of the conspiracy. With the taxes levied on the South, the North had built their gun factories far from that territory they knew would someday choose to go alone. Now she exulted in each ring of the anvil, wishing it were the sound of a hammer driving a stake into the breast of the vampire Father Abraham. The rumblings and the clankings and the occasional shout made her blood pound and she dug her hands through the hated Yankee uniform to try to contain the warm gush of feelings in her. Just ahead in the shadows was Toby the mule, the last of all the Meade stock, excluding, of course, Blue. The sound of his bray would mark her departure from Richmond and the start of her next leg up toward seeing the Confederacy triumph.
Another rumbling sounded close behind her and she whirled and, looking almost straight up, said, "Blue! What're you doing sneaking after me?
You're supposed to be looking after Toby."
In his voice, like the distant rolling of thunder, the huge black said, "Your daddy told me to look after you."
"So you followed me to the hotel! Honestly, Blue, can't I trust you to do ....But how did you follow me back? How did you recognize me in these clothes? Without my hair?"
Teeth gleamed like pearls in the broad, long, coal black face and he said, "I reckon I seen you around the farm enough to know you no matter how you dressed, Miss Holly. We better go ahead on. They's some drunk soldiers back of me."
She spluttered and protested, but the massive hand on her arm all but lifted her forward. At the side of the big, gaunt mule, she said, "All right, Blue. Good-bye. Good luck. I'll miss you."
Slinging their meager sack of provisions over his shoulder, Blue rumbled, "You won't miss me. I'm coming with."
"You're not at all. I'm a spy. I'm on a mission for the Confederate States of America, and I can't have a darky traipsing along after me. Go on. Skedaddle. You're emancipated."
He offered her a leg up on the mule, then held its rope bridle and started north.
"Blue, are you deaf? Go on back!"
Still he obstinately refused to hear her, and had she a riding crop, she'd have lashed it down on his burr head.
She said, "All right. You're freed. I give you your freedom. I can do that, you know. I'm the last Meade."
"I know. Your daddy taught me to read same time he taught you. I know the laws."
"Then go back. Go hole up somewheres till the war is over and I can get the farm going again. Blue, please!"
"I'm right sorry, Miss Holly. I'm coming with."
"You damned dumb nigger," she said, and her expletive was returned by the slow swiveling of the big black head, the glint of white that was his eyes. Even high in the saddle as she was, the eyes of the black giant were at a level with her breasts, and had it not been for her lifelong training, she'd have cringed from the malevolence of his gaze. As it was, she sniffed and said, "Well, all right. You can go a little farther with me."
The moved through the darkness in silence for a time and a sprinkle of rain began. She'd ridden nothing but side-saddle since she was a child, and now it felt strange riding her mount like a man. The position inevitably drew her back to the other mount she'd had that day, and she basked in the reflection of those good, patriotic feelings. They'd been almost overwhelming, and just then she thought she might never again feel just that way, even when the last Yankee flag was lowered. Now, wholly an hour after leaving the hotel, she still felt strong residues within her, and the feelings seemed to grow stronger at each plodding step of the mule. She hugged her breasts to her as she thought of how good, how solicitous, how thoughtful her commanding officer had been. He'd even shown her something of prison hygiene before she'd left, demonstrating how to wash that strange sweat from her private parts-her cunny, she must remember to talk like a man if she was to act like one-saying something quite unfathomable about having babies as he did so.
But now she was sweating again. The rib cage of the old mule was so broad, it spread her legs so wide, that she could feel the sweat oozing out on its bony vertebrae. At its every step, she could feel more of it, and she silently prayed they'd not be stopped. Even in this rain, she knew the crotch of her trousers would be more darkly stained. The pickets would think they'd stopped a drummer boy so frightened he'd peed in his pants.
She continued to job along, growing more restless at every step, wanting to dig her boots into the mule and make it gallop till it gasped its last breath. But Blue held the reins-good, solid, reliable Blue whom she'd played with as a child and known all her life. The war was being fought over men like him, so she understood, and still he was faithful enough to stay with her. She'd never admit it to him-she admitted it to herself with great reluctance-but he was a vast comfort there before her, plodding stoically through the rain.
Toby stepped in a hole and she was jogged so she almost slid off his back. She shifted about to reposition herself in the most comfortable spot, but couldn't find it, no matter how she tried. Her sweating was such that she felt distinctly warm in her cunny, and she knew she ought to open the cape and let the rain cool her. Still, that heat wasn't really uncomfortable. In fact, it felt rather good. But something was missing. She needed a flag and marching men outside a cozy but conspiratorial room. She needed a patriot as ardent as herself to share in her warmth.
But there was only Blue. Perhaps, though, he'd understand her devotion to the cause if she explained it to him. But, no. Ladies didn't have political discussions with darkies, no matter how long they knew them. But she did need something.
Great exasperation in her voice, she said, "Blue. Get on up on Toby behind me. Now, don't argue. There's plenty of room and I've got this big cape and there's no need in the world for you to get all wet and cold. Come on. If you're going to poke around and look after me, I'll look after you, too."
He sat an inch behind her, his bare feet dangling a foot below her boots. By kicking the mule a little, by shifting to find the most comfortable position under the cape that covered them both, she got her backside firmly against his loins. She knew her speculations were true then. Only the whites, only the chosen race had things...had cocks that were so long and thick and hard. In addition to their black skin, God had inflicted the blacks with cocks that were very bulgy and soft-though quite warm. She snuggled closer and lowered her head as if in sleep, then inhaled deeply of the warm, moist air under the gray tent of the sodden cape. There was the same deeply penetrating odor she'd smelt in the hotel room, but there was another odor, equally offensive and equally appealing. That odor was Blue.
Did he sweat between his legs like she did? Was that tremor in the hands that held the reins a sign of it? Oh, no! The soft bulge in his ragged trousers was growing! Could it be that he was like Captain Pomeroy there?
Holly nodded again and all but slipped off the mule, and Blue had to catch her about the middle. She smiled sleepily over her shoulder at him and worked and nestled her hips closer against him. He said, "I believe I'm gonna walk a spell."
He'd already slipped off the sheening wet back of the mule before she could say, "I'll declare, you're the dumbest hand we ever had, Blue, even though Daddy said you were bright as a button. You haven't got the sense of a four-year-old, let alone a twenty-year-old. There's room up here. Now you get on up here, Blue. Blue, you hear? You want me to catch my death before I even get to my mission? You want me to fall asleep and go off in the mud? Blue? Blue! You dumb damned nigger, if I had me a blacksnake whip I'd take the hide right offa you and kick you off in the ditch for the 'gators to feed on, you miserable ingrate...Blue? I'm sorry. Now get up here with me. Blue?...Double dog damn you, Blue, I ought to take my pistol out of my boot and blow you another hole in your thick nigger head!"
The one-hundred-mile-plus journey from Richmond to Washington was a constant irritation to Holly, with all too few adventures to spice the way. To begin with, Blue refused to leave her to her own devices as a spy. There were no arguments about his leaving; he simply refused to discuss it as even a remote possibility. There were patrols-first Secesh, then Yank-to fly from, but the cowardly ex-slave wouldn't face them even long enough for Holly to practice her story. Instead, the big buck drew Toby-and Holly with him-into the brush to cower like a yellow dog of a Yankee. The rain persisted and though she had to agree it was good cover for them, she didn't at all like being drenched and cold, then not having the warmth of a fire or even that of another body when they stopped to rest. She got even wetter when they had to swim the Rappahanock River. That was a double irritation, for she'd planned to follow Captain Pomeroy's instructions and take the easier route up the Potomac. Again Blue's cowardice-and Toby's reins in his hand-had prevailed. He'd made them widely skirt every town from Seven Pines to Chantilly, and the only gunfire she'd got to hear was far to the east, somewhere along the banks of the Potomac.
In Washington, her irritation had mounted to downright anger. What kind of people were these Yankees to so gaud themselves in the fripperies of war after such horrendous battles had been fought? While the boys in Gray slouched through the streets of Richmond, these played at toy soldier in straight ranks and files, glistening new guns over their shoulder, headed by a fife and drum corps. While most houses in Richmond were only dimly lit with guttering tallow candles, even the saloons were ablaze with light here. She concluded it was all a show, put on to deteriorate the morale of her country through shallow and erroneous reports of spies not as thorough as she. She'd show them. She'd obtain facts and figures about emplacements and troop movements, and in no time the Yankees' capital would fall to the guns of Stonewall Jackson and Robert Edward Lee. She'd start in the most dangerous, yet most bountiful source of information-the saloon that bustled with the most Bluecoats.
Holly told Blue she was only going to loll about outside the doors, keeping her ears pricked for any stray bit of military gossip. When he was safely across the street, barely to be seen in the blackness, she brazenly pushed through the swinging doors and went to belly-up at the bar.
Whiskey held no fears for her. She'd sipped from Daddy's glass since she was a tyke, and had her gums massaged with stuff even when she was teething. She only smiled from beneath the brim of her campaign hat when the bartender remarked humorously at the age of the drummer boy, then tossed off the burning liquid and reached out for more. She sipped the second whiskey. Like everything else, the Yankees didn't know a thing about good whiskey.
While she sipped, she listened; and while she listened, priceless information flowed at her from all sides. Joe Hooker's men were headed south, possibly along the same route she'd taken A .58 caliber gun called a Gatling had been tested which would fire a hundred rounds a minute through six barrels. A drunken sailor raved about the ship Monitor, unsinkable and impenetrable by any cannonade. Reports had it that Grant had overrun the fort at Vicksburg and was turning north again.
Much of what she heard she knew to be the wildest of rumors, but still the slight, plumpish drummer boy persisted in sidling closer and closer to the most drunken of the braggarts. Holly's head buzzed with her information, and she longed to streak for her contact and turn in her first dispatch. Still she stayed, loath to miss a single word that might mean a Southern life, a Yankee death. The hand that patted her fondly, lingering over her blue-clad rump, came as a shock to her.
She held back her impulse to instinctively protect her femininity by leaping away, slapping a crude face. Then, confident her disguise was perfect, sure that this was just another male gesture of camaraderie, she smiled over her shoulder at the gray-beard who grinned at her from beneath a broad blue hat.
The hand moved in a firm caress as he leaned closer and said, "I knowed a boy like you when I was in Libby Prison."
Holly nodded, smiling, well aware that her voice might now betray her with the fear she felt tingling in her.
"You got the fattest little ass I ever did see, boy. I got me a bottle of whiskey and a room at the hotel. I got a five-dollar gold piece, too. That gold piece is a lot softer than what I got in my britches."
In the cover of the crowd, he took Holly's hand and guided it to his loins. There was no mistaking that long, hard length of cock there and Holly stood petrified, able only to move her fingers along the organ in the grinning soldier's trousers. She was discovered. Her disguise had been seen through and torture was in store for her as the penalty. Yet he had addressed her as "boy"' And there had been an implication in his words about Libby Prison. She fervently wished she'd had time for further education from Captain Pomeroy. Just the thought of that sent quivering of her patriotic fervor through her.
The soldier said, "Ahhh. I knowed you was a boy who liked a good corn-holing. I got two bunkies at the bar. You wait outside whilst I get them and then we'll all have a party."
Still smiling, Holly nodded, then his cock was taken from her hand and she stook in confusion, absently rubbing her hand over her belly. Watching him thread his way through the room, seeing the straggly hair beneath his hat, the slumped and mud-caked shoulders, she came to her senses with a start. That filthy creature was the enemy. All around her were her enemies. The foul whiskey had lulled her into the feeling she was in the company of human beings, but they were nothing but atrocity-committing beasts, and the one who had touched her, the one she had touched, was probably the worst of the bunch. She wiped her hand again on herself and felt the urge to retch, then gathered herself up to flee. The soldier was talking to two more of his verminous ilk, and all three were turning to look directly at her. She turned on her heel and went for the door, discarding her empty glass along the way.
A column of infantry was tramping through the street. Over their heads, Holly could see Blue under the soiled gray cape and she waved at him, jumping up and down as she did. He came forward with the mule, but a Yankee sergeant held him back from bursting through the marching men. Damn! He was never near her when she needed him! She pointed at the rear of the column, out of sight around a corner, then cast a look over her shoulder. Not twenty feet behind her, the gray-bearded soldier and his companions were making their way through the crowded saloon at her. She turned to walk swiftly in the direction she'd pointed, wanting to run but not daring to, craving the feeling of Blue's back set up like an immense wall before her.
The trio was following her and the end of the column of troops was not in sight. She couldn't see Blue and Toby now, not even by jumping into the air. She began to run and lost her cap, and by the time she'd retrieved that part of her disguise, the hallooing soldiers were only thirty paces behind her. The crowds impeded them, but the illumination on the busy street gave her no cover. She went around a corner into a darker street and ran as fast as she could, and at the end of that block, she looked back to see them still after her, farther away, but running now. Her fear made her feet fly, and she blessed the britches she wore that permitted long strides. Still, their legs were longer than hers, and it was only a matter of time before they caught her and had their foul way with her, then turned her in as a spy before she'd made even one dispatch. Even then she could hear their feet pounding on the wooden walk, the knell of her doom.
A clattering carriage drew abreast of her. It was a handsome coupe drawn by a huge black team. In the driver's seat, scowling back over her shoulder, sat a young mulatto woman. Holding the door open next to Holly was a woman who might have been Spanish, dressed in black, probably in mourning. In an authoritative voice, she called out, "Are those men after you, lad?"
Holly swerved and ran straight to her, clung to the rustling skirts, gasping, "Yes! Oh, thank God you came along."
"Why are you running? Did you steal something from them?"
Before Holly could answer, the soldiers were there, already stepping off the boardwalk, panting but still leering. Gray-beard said, "Would you lookit that? One for each now. I'll still take the boy."
The explosion above Holly and the cloud of dust that went up at the feet of the men sent her clinging even harder to the woman. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard a Negro female voice say, "This here shotgun's got two barrels." Then she was hauling herself up, being helped into the carriage as it picked up speed again.
Holly clung to the woman and wept. Her body was convulsed with her sobs as she buried her face against the comfort of the ample bosom and nestled ever closer in the haven of the soft arms and the whispering silk and the fragrant perfume. Patting her, squeezing her, the woman said, "There, there. You're safe now, lad, safe in my arms. What's your name, dear? What? Harold? Harold, you're very lucky I came along. They'd have done terrible things to you if they'd caught you. I know about men like that. You do, too, or you'd not have run. Oh, yes, a nice soft boy like you would have been a prize for them. I'm lucky you came by, too. I was lonely, Harold. Now we've both found a friend in the night. My name is Adele, dear."
"Adele. Thank you, Adele. Thank you. Oh, I'm getting your frock all wet."
"That's quite all right, Harold. Here. I'll just open these buttons and you go right ahead and have your cry. Don't be ashamed, even if you are a soldier. I know all about you nice little drummer boys so far from home."
It was even more comforting to feel her cheek against the soft upper mounds of Adele's bosom, a comfort Holly hadn't known for a long time. She let the tears flow between their soft skins, moved about in response to the woman's hands, hugged the tightly boned waist to her in all contentment.
The Negress' voice sounded as if she were in the cab with them. "You keep messin' with them drummer boys and you gon' bring home lice to the colonel."
Adele's voice vibrated nicely against Holly's face as she said, "Not this one, Sarah. Little Harold even smells clean. Drive slowly, dear. Would you like to watch?"
Sarah's answer was a slam of the cab's ceiling hatch, and they clopped along in silence for a time as Holly's tears subsided under the tender ministrations of her benefactress. Her left hand felt especially comforting on Holly's thighs and the counterfeit drummer boy relaxed more and more. She didn't try to stop Adele when she removed her cap. It was too dark to be found out in the carriage, and the soft lips felt too nice at he ear.
"Harold, have you ever been buggered before?"
"N-no."
"But you've seen it done in camp before, of course. Tell me, did it excite you just a little?"
Confused, stalling, Holly said, "I don't know. A little."
"Poor boy. How old are you? Hmm? Fourteen. Ah, yes. You're too young to get truly aroused, but I like you just the same...perhaps better. Tsk. Your little pricky can't even get hard like the men's do yet. I can't even feel it. No matter. If I keep looking, do you suppose I'll find it?"
Holly now tried to squirm away from those warmly searching fingers. Her tears had stopped and her breathing had evened, but each of her squirmings seemed such an effort that her lungs couldn't fill enough to sustain her. It was probably that tightly binding bandage. She'd only had it off once in the past week to luxuriously scratch her constricted breasts, and now she craved nothing more in the world than to scratch them again, but with much more specific friction than she was getting by moving against her new friend's corseted side. Between her legs, just below where Adele's hand glided and delved about, she could feel that delicious sweating commence, and she squeezed her thighs tightly together to try to contain it. Adele hugged her closer, and she hugged back, inhaling deeply with her nostrils at the deep cleft between the big breasts. Holly could faintly detect that distinctive odor of her own sweated loins, and she shifted more and more to hold it in, knowing it was a womanly odor, fearing detection even by such a good, gentle woman as Adele. She felt so relaxed that she ought to fall asleep, but even with her eyes closed she knew sleep wouldn't come. Perhaps it was that whiskey that gave her this all-encompassing glow.
Adele's lips tickled directly in her ear as the woman said, "Honey-boy, you're just as cuddly as a baby. I could hug you and squeeze you all night, but there's not that much time. Ah, you're so sweet and soft. Better than any of the other boys I've known. I've just got to kiss you, Harold."
And Holly had to kiss Adele. There was no way in the world for a poor little drummer boy to refuse such an invitation. She lifted her face from the warm bosom and for an instant her benefactress' features were etched on her brain-the dark hair pulled back, its severity shattered by the spit curls at the temples-the thin, arched, sweeping eyebrows-the long-lashed eyes, dark and compelling-the long, straight nose with flaring nostrils-the high cheekbones covered with skin like pale, hand-rubbed doe skin-the crimson lips, wide but full, that parted just as they met hers.
How could a kiss be so soft? How could anything in the world feel so deliciously good on her lips? Unlike the lips of Captain Pomeroy, these lips moved constantly on hers, forcing her own to willingly do the same. The lovely woman even brought her tongue into the kiss, and just the tip of it was enough to be felt clear down to Holly's curled toes. She couldn't stand more of it, and when it slyly pushed deeper into her mouth, she tried to fend it off with her tongue, at which time, Adele's soft hand went to her nape and pulled them even closer into the kiss. Holly's breasts itched horribly now, and she was driven to grinding them against the corset's edge, against any surface, soft or hard, that she could reach. She felt the sweat between her legs backing up in her, and her whole lower body was atremble in trying to contain it while Adele's other hand came dangerously closer to discovering her. Still the kiss went on, still the tongue probed at hers. When she at last succeeded in pushing it from her mouth, her own tongue was captured by Adele's teeth and held there to be further tickled and tormented by the other tongue.
Holly had never been sick from too much whiskey before. She'd laughed at those she'd seen who had. She'd wondered how it felt. Now she knew. That Yankee whiskey was making her sick all over. She couldn't breathe. Though she was terribly warm, her body was driving her to positively writhe against the warmth of Adele. Desperate then, she tried to push away. When she did, her hand sank into the pillow of Adele's bare breast. It was held by the wrist to grope and push at the soft flesh, to feel the hot velvet ball of a huge nipple in its palm. She pushed and moved there, craving to put a space between them, but entirely unwilling to hurt Adele.
Holly's swollen lips clung to Adele's painted mouth for a moment as the older woman pushed her away, as if they were unwilling to give up the kiss. The languorously smiling Adele looked more lovely than ever half-reclining in the shadows of the corner of the cab, and Holly hovered close to her, not caring about her possible illness now and quite ready to resume the kiss if it pleased her wonderful new friend. Adele's hand was still at her nape, and now it gently pushed Holly's head down until she was gazing at the bared breasts. Her mouth fell open and she gasped at the size of them, like two pale moons glowing in the night, capped with dark aureoles as big around as Holly's palm, tipped with nipples fully an inch long.
Her head was being gently urged downward as Adele said huskily, "That's how the French kiss. Kiss my titties that way, just as if the nipples were my tongue. You'll like that. I will, too."
Holly had to please her. She accepted a nipple in her mouth and timidly touched her tongue to it, felt of the dimpled and velvety texture, had a clear vision of when Captain Pomeroy had kissed her thus, and suctioned it deep in her mouth to lave and lash it with her tongue. By using her hands to lift and mold the heavy globe, she could get even more of the aureole into her mouth. This she did, and writhed with her delight at Adele's words of approval.
"Oh, honey-boy, you leam so very quickly. Yes, dear, lick it all over with your little tongue. Keep on now. Don't stop. I just want to feel how smooth your back is under your tunic. Honey, don't wiggle so. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to make you feel real good, better than those rough old soldiers would have."
Holly felt very good all over. It hadn't at all been whiskey-sickness she'd felt, but the same sort of excitement she'd known with Captain Pomeroy. In fact, she'd had just the right amount of whiskey and was only now relaxed enough to be enjoying the huge excitement of being on her mission, of having survived her first ordeal, and in so doing, finding a good and comforting friend. She continued to lave and suck the breasts alternately, just as Adele wished her to do, and she discovered something of why this sort of kissing was so pleasing to Captain Pomeroy. In all truth, she found it just as fascinating as kissing Adele's lovely, painted lips. There was a great heat rising from Adele's voluminous clothing and in it Holly could clearly detect that lovely, sweaty odor. Adele was just like her. She was just like Adele. It was reassuring to her.
It was difficult to obey Adele's urgings to halt her wigglings, for now she'd come about to straddle Adele's knee on the seat. When she tried to move from it, it followed, and she knew that had it not been for Adele's excitement, she'd surely be detected as an imposter. She did what she could to fan that excitement. She knew it pleased Adele to touch her bare back, and when Adele's hand dipped under her waistband, she shifted to make room for it.
"Good Lord, Harold. You've got a bottom as nice as a girl's. It feels positively beautiful. You can't have been in the army long if you've not been buggered with a bottom like this. Or have you been fibbing to me. Were, you just being faithful to some dear lieutenant when you ran from those ruffians? I can tell. Just hold still, honey-boy, and stop your wiggling for a moment. And, yes, keep kissing my titties. Ah, bite 'em a little. Yes. You can wiggle to heart's content in just a moment."
Squeezing and kneading and delivering delightful little pinches all along the way, Adele's hand slid deeper within the back of Holly's britches. Before it got to her private parts, she'd have to stop it. Just another inch and it would be at her butt-hole, and she desperately tried to collect her thoughts into a course of action. Then one fingertip was right there, tickling her horribly. But at least the hand had stopped. Hoping to keep Adele's interest, Holly lifted her loins from that finely contoured leg to offer more of her bottom to the hand.
"Oh, honey-boy, you are a virgin. If Sergeant Creel could feel this, he'd swoon. Just relax your bottom, dear, and let me feel you. I won't hurt. I promise. Oh, yes. Isn't that nice? Doesn't that tickle down inside your balls? I'll just bet I'll feel you getting hard any second."
Hard? That one finger that wormed and probed at her butt-hole made Holly Meade feel soft all over. Contrary to her friend's wishes, she had to try to expel it, but at each of her wrigglings it went deeper. She devoutly wished that she had a cock between her legs, for she knew it would be very hard then, thus satisfying Adele's desires. As things were, she could only wriggle and writhe against that finger she knew to be slender but that seemed to fill her so. At each movement, her loins were tilted more closely to Adele's leg, and to her horror, she could feel her sweat leaking out. Still she had to move, had to writhe, had to feel more of the finger and the leg and the wondrously exciting nipple.
"That drives you mad, doesn't it? Oh, wait till your comrades-in-arms discover you! How I'd love to keep you with me. You could be so well trained. I could teach you so much. For instance, did you know a woman has a cock as well as a man? It's true. It's just a little pricky hidden between her legs, but it's much like a man's. Mine's all big and swollen now. I want you to feel it, honey-boy. Give me your hand."
Holly's hand was drawn from the soft flesh of Adele's breast and used as a means to lift the rustling black skirts, then the soft, cotton petticoats. Adele guided it over beautifully contoured thighs and a belly nearly as soft as her breasts, then down between the open thighs to be pressed against broad, soft, cotton-covered crotch. The cotton was soaking wet and the crotch very warm beneath it. Holly could distinctly feel the lips of Adele's cunny-much bigger than her own-but the cock that had been mentioned eluded her.
Now it was Adele's turn to writhe and wriggle her hips. "Ahhh. God, that's good. It's the first cunny you've ever felt of, isn't it? And this is the first titty you've ever kissed. Oh, I'm going to have all I can of you this night. Pull my drawers down. Get right down on the floor and pull them down, honey-boy, and I'll let you see me and play with me some more. Go on! You can kiss me some more later."
The musk was so heavy there that Holly could almost taste it in her open, panting mouth and she was salivating wildly. A weird scene, like a landscape of the heaving surface of the moon was unfolding under her hands. As she pulled the drawers down, a low volcano appeared, undulating with Adele's movements and quickened breathing. The shallow gullies of her loins were there, moving, too, in the upheaval. Then there was a forest, a steaming thicket of tangled black foliage that disappeared deep in a forbidden valley. As the drawers came down, Adele's luminescent thighs closed to conceal that valley, but when the garment was pulled over her buttoned shoes, the woman's hands urged Holly's on to explore. It was damp and warm there, then wet and hot to Holly's captive hand. Her fingers were pushed right into that valley to be covered with the slimy sweat that exuded forth from it, and the stench of it became so strong that she couldn't swallow fast enough. The pressure of Adele's hand on her wrist was so tight it restricted the movements of her fingers.
Moving smoothly against Holly's fingers, Adele said in warm and dulcet tones, "D'you feel it now? It's just a little pricky and you've made it very wet, but it's much like yours, isn't it? And it feels so very nice when you touch it like that. Can you see it, honey-boy? Get closer, dear. Men love to look at this. It's the most beautiful part of a woman. Ah, your hair is like silk. Am I hurting you?"
"No. Oh, no."
"Squeeze it. Rub it. Pinch it just a little. Ah, that's so sweet. You've got me so hot I'll just die if you don't kiss it a little. Will you do that for me?"
"Kiss it?" said Holly, and squirmed about on the floor of the jiggling carriage. The seam of her trousers was pulled up, caught firmly between the folds of her cunny, assuaging the itch she felt there, but still making it all the worse. However she moved, there was no way to find relief for it.
"Kiss it," said Adele, and pulled harder at Holly's short blonde hair. "It would please me very much if you did that for me. After all, you do owe me a great deal for saving you as I did. I'm stronger than you, Harold. I could force you. But it would be very sweet if you really wanted to please me. Do you? Do you want to give my cunny a nice, long French kiss?"
Holly did not answer. Not with words. She licked her lips and pursed them and pushed forward to implant a kiss keeply with the dark, musky valley. Before she could end it, she was being pulled by the hair up until her lips were on Adele's little cock, and then she had it between her lips, sucking and tonguing it as she had been shown on Adele's tongue, then her nipples. It was not little at all. Its size amazed her. With both hands she worked to free her own heated loins from the almost unbearable pressure of her trouser seam, and so strenuous were her efforts that the thin fabric tore in her hands. Then she could reach in and itch it, scratch and pull at it, centering her efforts on what she had thought was a trigger but what she now knew to be a little cock, a pricky.
Adele's voice was urgent as she said, "Open me wider. Kiss me deeper. I've got to come!"
Holly shifted about as she burrowed her face deeper into the sopping, reeking flesh, spreading it wide with both hands to permit her to breathe. When she felt Adele's moving foot between her legs, she closed on it, wriggling her burning crotch hard against it. The foot moved. The leather-bound ankle pressed again and again at her in just the rhythm she needed to keep the itch from making her pull her hands from the wonderfully textured flesh of Adele's cunny. She met each movement with her own, arching her back, then snapping her hips forward against the increasingly more lubricated leather. Huge feelings flooded through her, thoroughly reminiscent of that warm afternoon in a Richmond hotel room, and she was compelled to move faster, tongue and hips both, to feel more of it, to experience that cataclysmic climax to it all.
She only dimly heard the writhing woman on the seat now as she called out, "Sarah! Look at this! Quickly, Sarah! While I'm still coming!"
"Lawd, you're really gettin' it tonight."
"Just look at him. Ah. Ah! He's...he's insane for more pussy. Oh, Gawd, he's the best of all of them. Uh. Ohhh. If Staunton could see this, I know he'd get me a boy from Old Capitol. Oh, it's too much. I don't think I can take any more. Ahhh. One more time. Yes! Urgh. Urrrgh! D'you...d'you want him next, Sarah? Mmmmmm. Ohh."
Chuckling, Sarah said, "No boy or no man ever touches this black cunt again. That one ain't neither one. I never seen a boy's ass move like that. You got yourself a gal, Miz Adele."
THREE
The paunchy man with the graying spade beard felt within Holly's torn trousers and said, "By Tophet, your little drummer boy is a girl; Adele. What a stroke of good fortune."
When Holly tried to twist from the thick, probing fingers, Adele turned her arm up her back still farther. The woman's tones showed no sign of her effort as she said, "Yes, isn't it delightful? Can you imagine how surprised I was?"
"Jehosephat, her cunny's all aflame. Don't tell me you contrived to bring this baggage to that state."
"Didn't I?" cooed Adele, and then launched into a description of their encounter on the street, through Holly's delivery to the door of the two-story brick house on Pennsylvania Avenue, omitting none of the details.
Through it all, Holly squirmed against the pain in her shoulder and the terrible finger that moved so slowly between her legs. Terror and humiliation mixed with her excitement to have her in an awful state of agitation, and she tried to calm herself by focusing on the familiar, inanimate objects about the luxurious drawing room. Etchings framed on the wall, the plush, covered settee, the cut-glass chandelier, books and papers strewn on the desk where the man had been sitting, gas lamps flickering on the walls, the heavy pile rug, and the brocade drapes-none of it did any good; she could still hear the degrading words and still feel the humiliating finger.
When Adele finished her narrative, laughing with the fat man she called Staunton, Holly said hotly, "I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing."
Staunton said, "And I suppose you're still drunk to be as hot as a camp follower now, eh? By Gads, Adele, you've run onto a girl with an inferno betwixt her thighs."
Close to tears, Holly raged, "I'm not a camp follower! Anything I did was...because of the whiskey."
Leaning so close Holly drew back against Adele, the man said, "You're sexually excited, girl. You're hot. What's more, you're a Rebel spy."
Adele said, "Oh Staunton, do you really think so?"
"Of course she is. Why else would she be in this discarded uniform, running about the streets of Washington in the dead of night?"
"I'm not at all a spy. My name is Holly Munson and I'm from Danville, Virginia and I just came up here to look and see what's going on because we're all out of food back home and I'm tired of the war and I didn't even come through Richmond on the way up here and I, . . Ow! Oh, you're hurting me . . . "
"And we'll hurt you more unless you tell us the truth. You see, Holly.. . if that is your name...we're friends of the South, too. Have you ever heard of Rose Greenhow?"
"Of course. Everybody has. Please stop touching me like that. Please!"
Staunton persisted, as if he hadn't heard her plea. "That woman holding your arm, my dear, is none other than Rose Greenhow herself."
"Well, that's a big fib. Everybody knows Mrs. Greenhow's locked up in Old Capitol prison. You damned Yankees can't trick me. I saw that big old Bluecoat hanging around in the shadows outside your door."
"Sergeant Creel? He's no more in the U.S. Army than I am. We're your friends, Holly."
"No friend of mine ever stuck his finger up in me like that. Will you stop that!"
"Yes, Holly. There. Now tell us what you're learned on your mission and we'll help you get the information to your contact here. Adele, let our comrade-in-arms go. Come to my desk with me, Holly. See here? These maps and papers are Yankee battle plans. I'm just preparing them for delivery to our courier. He could just as well take your information along with him."
Gathering the tatters of her disheveled uniform about her, Holly looked at the papers with great skepticism. They were indeed Union battle maps, and there was indeed a cipher shown to her that she couldn't begin to understand in her state of agitation. The man introduced himself as Colonel Staunton Hearn, commissioned in the Federal army for a time, but actually working for the
South. He talked smoothly and convincingly while the woman who was either Adele Pace or Rose Greenhow stayed close behind her, touching her lightly over the hips and waist, blowing at her ear.
The colonel said, "So you see, we are friends, Holly. Otherwise we'd have turned you in already. Now you tell us what you've learned and away it will go to Richmond this very night unless, of course, your contact is swifter than ours."
The broad smile of the big man was so open, that closer smile of the woman was so warm, that Holly sighed and said, "This is my first night here. I haven't even met my contact yet. But I learned an awful lot." Then, with the colonel making notes, with her fellow spy giving her fond squeezes and pats of encouragement, Holly repeated all she could remember of what she'd heard at the saloon. Feminine hands gently roved over her body, mutely letting her know that her own caresses of just such a body hadn't been so improprietous as she'd thought. It helped to make the words flow, and before long, she'd purged herself of her precious information.
Rose's voice purred at her ear, "You actually did come from Richmond, didn't you?"
"Mm-hm. Just a week ago. With Toby and Blue."
"Toby and Blue. They're . . . " "My mule. My slave...No, Blue's just a hired hand now."
"Did you see most of the fortifications at Richmond, dear?"
"Oh, yes. I guess all of them on the north side." "Does this feel nice, honey-girl?"
"Mmmmm."
"How many cannon did England deliver to Richmond, Holly?"
"I don't know how many came in, but I saw . . . " Holly froze. The warmth that had spread through her turned to a chill and the hands within her breeches now felt like vipers. With her elbows, she pushed Adele back from her and looked back and forth between the man and the woman as she hissed, "You did trick me. You're Yankees. Filthy Yankee pigs!"
Adele lifted her eyebrows and Staunton chuckled as he said, "Wrong, my dear. Mrs. Pace is a native of Italy. As for myself, I'm from England. Up until lately, we've shared our talents equally between North and South. But with the monetary situation such as it is, we tend to favor the brother in blue just now."
The irate girl in the soiled uniform of blue backed from them, hissing, "Europeans! I might have known it. You...you cock-suckers!"
Her epithet made Staunton roar with laughter while Adele's mouth flew open in mock amazement. Holly tried to use their distraction to escape, jerking the hall door open only to find the mulatto Sarah there with her shotgun. Staunton was still laughing when Holly was backed to his desk. He opened a drawer and took a pair of manacles from it, tossed them on the scattered papers. "Ladies," he said, "please be good enough to shackle Holly's hands behind her back."
She put up only a token show of resistance. She remembered the advice of her commanding officer-yield as much as she had to in order to save her life, in order to save the Confederacy.
Then Staunton lit up a cheroot and leaned back in his chair. Still smiling, he said, "Between your report, Adele, and our spy's suggestion, I have a capital idea. To begin with, let's have a better look at her. Sarah? Would you be kind enough to divest our girl of that uniform she seems to so despise?"
Gold glittered in the mulatto woman's teeth as she approached Holly behind reaching hands. As she worked at the buttons of the tunic, she said, "This is off some battlefield. Whatever drummer boy this come from don't have no right arm any more."
"Fortunes of war," said Staunton Hearn. "Proceed."
With many a tug and jerk, the blue coat was peeled down over Holly's arms till it hung behind her over her iron-bound wrists. As Sarah unwrapped the broad bandages about Holly's chest, she remarked, "Awful tight. No wonder she's breathin' so hard. Hey, lookee here, Colonel. She's got nice little tits. Real nice. They just all wrinkled up now."
Adele cupped one of Holly's breasts and said, "Like a pair of pillows that have been slept on for too long. Come, Sarah. Help me plump them up for the colonel."
As the brown and the white hands went at her from each side, Holly tried to twist away, vehemently saying, "Don't you touch me, you filthy Yankee and your filthy, Yankee-lovin', nigger wench. So help me, I'll kill you if you touch me."
They laughed at her anger and, as each used a hand to restrain her, they used the other hand to squeeze and knead a breast until the ugly red lines of the bandages were disappearing.
Staunton Heam said, "By Jove, she does have a nice little pair. They'll grow and sag, just like that tight little cunt will get loose and flaccid with use and age. But now she's a prime specimen of what the Confederacy is fighting for. Let's see a bit more of her."
The trousers tore. Threadbare already, they were no obstacle to the women's hands that pulled at them, and in moments they hung in tatters about her boot tops.
Colonel Hearn put down his cigar and heaved himself out of the chair to come round the desk to the girl, looking her up and down as if she were a half-beef on a hook. He prodded and poked, making her close her eyes and turn her head. Then his hand closed hard as the manacles on her hands and he turned her face to his. The corners of his mouth turned down, his pale-blue eyes icy, he stared at her until her gaze flickered away for a moment, until her eyes became moist. Then he spoke sharply.
"Do you know what they'd do to you if we turned you in?"
"T-torture me."
"And after that?"
"Kill me. Hang me."
"No, they'd give you to the prisoners, men like those Adele saved you from tonight." ". . . no. They'd...they'd hang me." "They'd give you a uniform and throw you out in the compound. You might already have a disease by then, but if you didn't, you surely would in a matter of hours. The men in Old Capitol are hungry for more than food. They'd barter for your body after the first half-dozen had used it. You'd be a piece of merchandise, passed from hand to hand, used like a captive whore by your own countrymen until you either died or went mad."
"No! It's not true. I'm a Southern lady. They'd know that. They'd respect that."
"You mentioned cock-sucking; what do you know about it?"
"I've...I don't know anything about it."
"Get down on your knees, girl. You're going to learn about it. Quickly, girl. It could save your life if you fail to cooperate and we're forced to turn you in."
Wide-eyed, seeking help with her eyes even from those two women who pushed her down, Holly went to the floor. Hearn laboriously unbuttoned his breeches, and as he did, he spoke to her.
"Pastimes are few in prisons, North or South. Though there's only a rare woman thrown in with them, the pleasures of the loins rank second only to the pleasures of the belly as their sport. Drummer boys like you pretended to be are choice meat."
His cock was out now, pointing at her face like an accusing finger, looking alarmingly like that of Captain Pomeroy.
"The scrawny, undernourished boys are taught to suck cock. The plump ones-like those men in the saloon thought you were-they're buggered. Their bottoms are used daily-nay, hourly-as vessels for the cocks of their valiant comrades. Adele, hold her jaws open with your hand so she won't be able to bite me. Holly, use your tongue as Adele so considerately taught you. Yes, there's a good girl."
She licked it. Eyes tightly shut, remembering each separate word of her commanding officer's instructions, she smoothed her tongue over the distended skin of the hated Yankee's cock. He was worse than a Yankee. He was even a traitor to them. She forced that thought from her head and concentrated on her survival, silently blessing Captain Pomeroy for his foresight.
Adele said, "Is she doing well?"
"Only adequate. Don't let go her jaws. Sarah, be a dear and give our spy a bit of a tickle in her cunt to keep her mood right."
Holly felt the hand go directly toward her private parts from behind, and she tensed against it, then relaxed. "Don't fight them," he'd said. "Save yourself at whatever cost." She relaxed her thighs, and this was exceedingly difficult with the Negress' sneering laughter in her ears.
"Ah, yes," said Heam. "She's coming along fine. Relax your hand just a bit, Adele. Better yet. Holly, if we do turn you in, you just might survive your incarceration by becoming a real expert in this art. More tongue, dear. Yes, that's a good girl. I have first-hand knowledge of what I speak. Our erstwhile Man-at-Arms, Sergeant Creel, U.S. Army retired, was a prisoner at Libby Prison, you see. Your charming commandant there took some little delight in throwing in a female spy for the Union from time to time. Bone for the dogs as it were.
Few of these knew how to suck cock or would learn, Adele, I think you can safely release your hold on her now. Yes. Oh, indeed yes. By Tophet, she's coming along just fine."
With no suggestion, Adele had joined with Sarah to further add to Holly's tortures. She let go of Holly's hair and used that hand to probe and poke a finger up her butt-hole. The other was used to fondle the young breasts as she got down beside the kneeling, weeping girl.
Hearn continued, saying, "Young or old, they'd not last a week among those animals. Sergeant Creel said the men would queue up for a city block to have a go at them. Some wouldn't take less than their cunts, but most could be cozened into a cock-sucking if it was a very good one. These were their own countrywomen, mind you. A few months in any jail will turn the most ardent patriot into a beast, ravenous for any woman. Ah, yes. Adele, she's got magnificent suction."
Adele couldn't answer. She had her mouth circling one of Holly's tingling, aching nipples, and her tongue was moving as agilely as was her finger. Still it was Sarah's fingers that continued to work in such a way that Holly was scarcely able to concentrate enough to hear Colonel Hearn's advice.
"Learn this and learn it well, my dear, and you just might survive once the guards at Old Capitol have had enough of you. Better yet, be a sensible lass and team up with us. Instead of disease and...ahh...and starvation and pain and degradation, you'd have wealth and power and all the comforts of the body any girl could ask. You could. . . Great Caesar, but she's good. She must. . . she must be coming."
When Adele's mouth left her breast, Holly could still feel it there. She could feel mouths and hands and tongues all over her body, tingling and tickling it, making if feel both weak and strong. She heard Adele say, "She is. Oh, she is!" And then whatever they were talking about happened to her everywhere at once. Sarah was laughing at the way her body heaved and swayed, but Holly didn't care. She didn't even care when the fingers in her cunt jabbed hard and cruel, for that was just one more outlet for the immense surge of emotions that took her over. Her hands writhed against the cold steel behind her back, aching to be free to dig into every flaming part of her convulsing body, longing to close about that wonderful cock in her mouth that seemed the center of the universe.
Then it was spewing forth at her. Her mouth was being filled with hot gushes of some sticky, thick liquid that choked her, made her gag, made her open her mouth to scream as it came down her throat and cut off any sound she might make. Spitting, heaving about, she twisted away from it, only to have it spurt again and yet again into her face, over her horror-filled eyes to close them as she was allowed to fall forward.. Through the vast upheaval that still shuddered through her, she found the strength to spit upon the rug.
Over her, she heard them talking.
"I never seen anybody come so hard. Not even when I was a slave."
"The time in the carriage was nothing compared to this."
"By George, it's still going on. Give me a lift getting her to the cellar before she goes to sleep. Then well have a Council of War."
FOUR
"Best button up, Staunton," Adele said airily. "We can't have a Council of War with the gates to your last defenses down."
"By Jove, the girl so preoccupied me, I'd forgot. Do forgive me."
"She was good, wasn't she? And I taught her all she knows. Learned to suck at my breast, as it were."
Fastening the last button of his trousers, Staunton Hearn picked up his dead cheroot and relit it, puffed out the blue smoke in a haze over his head. He cleared his throat twice and said, "You are a very shallow woman, my dear Adele. In a way, you're like her. In ten years, when she's your age, she could be just like you. Reasonably wealthy, still of a passionate nature-still looking forward to better things."
"And still seeing to the care and feeding of an ox like you, dear Staunton."
"Precisely. The difference is that you came to your present state unaided. You stumbled and drifted and fucked your way to where you are with no help but a certain drive you have-bound up, I'm sure, with your animal instincts. That one's got a better chance for herself. With the proper training, with the help of people as experienced as we, that girl could rise to prodigious heights."
"Perhaps. And perhaps lift you along with her on her aerial flight to total comfort."
"That's one thing I adore about you, Adele. You read me as no one else can. But wherever I rise, whomever I choose as my hot-air balloon-be it the North or the South or that girl in the cellar-rest assured you'll rise with me."
A penciled eyebrow arched higher. A crimsoned lip curled. "Oh? Tell me more."
He turned and faced her, hands flat on the desk. "It's just this. That girl has a sexual drive that's enormous. Once aroused, it won't let her stop at anything. It doesn't take a great deal to arouse it, either-as was proved to both of us this very night. She's no beauty, but she's got a great deal of that charm that so appeals to the bumpkins here. She's got the little-girl face and the figure to match, even though under it all there's a need for sex like a sow in heat. These are assets-ours for the moment and not hers-and it's up to us to use them.
"Just now, all over this raw land, the bumpkins are fighting one another. Spies are thick as flies, North and South. With the training most of them have had, they're caught as quickly as that girl was. Not one in a hundred gets any information back to where the money is."
"She's not doing it for money. That's plain to see."
"Precisely, my dear. She's doing it for love of country. Even if she were doing it for money, all she'd get would be a batch of worthless paper. By now the South's gold goes for arms and nothing else. The only way she can profit as an agent is by working for the North."
"But she'd never do that. You saw how she acted. The only thing she could think of worse than a Yankee was a cock-sucker."
"Yes, by God, and she sucked a cock tonight! Sucked a cunt, too, as well you know. By using that girl's sex, by turning it back upon itself, you and I have the makings of the most valuable tool the Federals could have. Just look at her! She fairly reeks of cotton and the stately plantation and the disregard of the black. Couple that with her sex, her little-girl looks, and she'd have Jeff Davis himself squirting his load while he babbled secrets to her little ear. After that, after this idiotic war is over, there's countless other places where we could put her to service-and have her thank us for it every time!"
Adele took the half-cigar from his pudgy fingers and puffed it, then said, "Staunton, you're talking as mad as she acted when she burst. There's no way in the world we could get Holly to go against the Stars and Bars. Later, perhaps, when this war is over, we could . . . "
With a slam of his fist that sent papers flying, Hearn shouted, "Later, hell! Now is the time, woman. Opportunism is our watchword and money is our goal. The Federal States still have money and they're willing to spend it to end this bloody war. By Tophet, with or without your help, I'm going to change that girl into a machine whose only fuel is sex, whose only end product is aid to the Federals. That girl is the perfect tool for doing the job we've already received down payment for from those industrialists in New York!"
"No! No, Staunton, she wouldn't!"
He snatched the cigar back and puffed it, sat back and blew the smoke to mingle with Adele Pace's exhalation, said, "Now, are you with me or against me, my dear?"
She curtseyed in a stately manner and said, "I am always with you, my dear Colonel. What is your plan?"
He stook up over the desk and massaged his big belly, saying, "We begin tomorrow. I hope you didn't give her any comforts down there. Not so much as a wash rag. Good! Excellent. When she wakes, she'll be terrified, ashamed, soft and ready for her lessons. Send Sarah out tonight for some Confederate flags. At least one large one. Lay in a supply of the finest foods. No, don't open your pretty mouth about the cost. We have those swines' money; we'll invest it. Another thing. As a final precaution, send out the dear sergeant to look for a mule named Toby and a nigra named Blue. Perhaps it's the other way about, but they should be wailing and moaning about the place you picked up the girl. Forge a warrant and have him bring them here. Once we get the name of the girl's contact out of her, we'll have him brought here, too. The only hope she'll be permitted is to join with us!"
FIVE
Holly's first waking thought was that she'd been taken to Old Capitol Prison. The walls and floor of her cell were of stone, the ceiling massive wood beams. The only light in the room came from a long, thick candle that burned on a low table beside her bed. That bed was narrow and firm, its thin mattress covered with only a gray sheet. The sheet was very soiled from where he'd moved her boots on it during her sleep. Except for her boots and the shreds of breeches about her ankles, she was nude, and she instinctively reached for those shreds to cover herself.
She gasped at the unexpected soreness and stiffness, and the pain brought it all back to her-the few hours of triumph she'd known before her ignominious capture and degrading treatment of the night before. Was it the night before that it had all happened? It must have been, for there was no light to be seen at the barred windows high over her head in two of the walls and she felt as if she'd slept a long time. Hands still manacled behind her back, lying on her side, there was no way at all to reach down to her feet. She heaved herself to a sitting position and then stood up.
The chain between the wrist irons was about six inches long, but it was still very difficult to work her shackled hands down behind her buttocks. She scraped some skin from her hip and continued to push her hands down as she wriggled her hips about. Once below her buttocks, it was easy to reach to the floor by squatting, but not so easy to reach within a boot. Bent double, her posterior was the highest part of her anatomy, and her face was bent to look directly at her loins. The yellow hair was matted. The odor she emitted was so foul that she must have been quite insane to have been aroused by it the night before. She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth until she at last closed her fingers about the butt of the derringer, then extracted it from her boot. Regardless of the pain now, she quickly worked her hands up until they were again behind her waist. Here she held the little gun and tried to point it at the door. If she got close enough, she knew she'd be able to kill whoever walked into her cell, also the one who came to investigate the gunshot. Then her gun would be empty, without even another shell for herself.
Quickly she made a circuit of the room and found its bleakness of features to be distressing. Returning to the bed, she found it frustratingly difficult to work the little weapon inside the mattress cover. Once it was concealed close to her head, she lay down as she had been before. The gun was just one more lump in the mattress to an observer; to her it was the one way out if her interrogation got unbearable. She was still lying thus when Sarah came in, a basket over her arm, an oil lamp in her hand.
Again struggling to a sitting position, Holly said, "I hope you brought me something to eat in that basket."
Standing over her, sneering down at her, the mulatto said, "You look like a pig. You smell like one, too. Get up so I can change that sheet."
When Holly didn't move, Sarah slapped her across the face. She grimaced and Sarah slapped her again, saying, "You jump when I talk, girl. Get up and take care of yourself or you won't get nothin' to eat at all. There's a chamber pot under your bed. Get it. Use it."
While Sarah watched, amused contempt on her face, Holly got to her knees on the hard floor and managed to drag the pot out with her foot. Shuffling along, she kicked it before her to a corner and turned to Sarah. She said, "Well, don't look!"
"You do what I want, and I do want I want. Sit down and pee, girl."
Holly sat on it. She did have to urinate, but nothing would come with those contemptuous black eyes on her. Sarah watched her all the time she was pulling the soiled gray sheet from the bed. When the Negress turned to reach into the basket for another sheet, Holly wanted her to watch her. She couldn't let Sarah's attention become too fixed on the mattress. It was an effort, but she tinkled a few drops into the pot, making Sarah turn and smile at her again, then shake out the new sheet.
At the sight of it, Holly rose in all indignation. "You can't do that! You can't put the flag of the Confederate States of America on my bed!"
"You shut up and pee, girl. I ain't gonna tell you again."
Holly squatted and glowered and made it flow out of her.
With the Stars and Bars on the bed, Sarah came to Holly and dragged her to her feet by one arm, then over to the bed. Her grip on Holly was very tight as she unlocked one of the wristlets. Then she pushed Holly down on the bed and locked the open cuff to its side. She took another set of manacles from the basket and locked Holly's other wrist to the other side of the bed. She pulled off Holly's boots and had her kneel on the bed. A bowl and spoon came from the basket and Sarah sat before her.
Only then did Holly realize how hungry she was. The bowl was filled with a watery soup in which floated bits of fat and gristle. It smelled rank. But Holly's stomach growled and her mouth watered at the sight of it. Sarah began feeding it to her rapidly, spilling much of it down her chin and onto her breasts and lap, onto her flag. As Sarah carelessly fed Holly, she spoke to her: "I was born a slave. In Virginia. I didn't like it. I don't like waitin' on people. I don't like you."
"That's easy to see."
"Shut up. When I was eleven, the man who owned me took me outta the fields and inside his house. He screwed me, and when I screamed, he beat me with a whip covered with rabbit skin so's it wouldn't make marks and cheapen my value.
Then he give me and the whip to his son, 'bout fifteen years old. He screwed me and beat me, and when he git drunk, he let his friends do it, too. That was my job, servicin' the men."
"Sarah, we had slaves, but we certainly didn't treat . . . "
Sarah flung a spoonful of the greasy broth into Holly's face and said, "They all got together and used me real bad when Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But that wasn't the worst. Soldiers in imagine uniforms come around and ask for supplies for their men just after that, Feb'uary of this year. Along with the pork meat and turnips and taters, they give 'em me. They was tired of me by then. I supposed to be a cock, but all they did was screw me. First the officers, then the men. I had to make like I liked it. Sometimes they'd make me screw myself with a candle like that one right there. Then they'd sit around and laugh."
Sarah set down the empty bowl and picked up the candle, blew it out, and began smoothing her fingers over the hot wax, making the end round and blunt. She said, "You ever screw yourself with a candle, girl?"
"No! Of course not!"
"Open up your legs," said Sarah, and prodded Holly in the belly with the warm end of the candle. When Holly didn't move, she reached out and pinched her nipple with thumb and two fingers. The first contact was painful, and it grew worse so quickly that Holly's tears started before she could get her thighs apart. Sarah rubbed the candle there and said, "You got to move right fast when I talk, girl. You got to learn to obey just as good as I did. Now get up on your hands and knees."
The brown hand only started for her nipple when Holly had scrambled to that position on the bed. Sarah went around behind her and flicked at her thighs until she'd opened them, then began moving the candle against her exposed vagina. "It ain't really so bad, compared, that is, to bein' screwed by them soldiers." Holly waited to collapse on the bed in her tears when Sarah shoved the end of the candle within her. "Some of them soldiers had cocks lots bigger than this here candle." Another inch went in and Holly screwed her eyes tightly shut, her sobs creeping down to her chest then. " 'Course, I still had to do the cookin' and the washin' for 'em, too, what little they cared about washin'. " The sides of the candle were greasy, and it was very hard and cold as it dragged Holly's flesh along with it. She moaned, she keened out a low wail. "One night I found me some jimson week in the brush and I cooked it up in their stew." Holly's whole body was racked with her sobs. She started to slump forward and Sarah's claws dug into her hips, pulling them up again. She was allowed to go to her elbows and bury her weeping face in her hands.
Sarah calmly continued, saying, "You shoulda seen all them fine soldiers rollin' around and spittin' up blood. I woulda stayed just to laugh, but I headed north." The candle was being pulled out, again dragging Holly's tortured flesh with it. There was a large white star there on the bed when she opened her eyes, and she opened her mouth and took it between her teeth, biting hard to keep from screaming. "I got raped four times gettin' up here, but I made it." The candle went in again, even deeper, and even the cloth in Holly's mouth couldn't muffle her cry entirely. "I was lucky to find work with Miz Pace and Colonel Hearn." All the way out and all the way in again, and Holly shifted her legs wider to ease the pain. "I get to sleep in a nice clean bed every night here and I never et so good in my life." Holly's sweat was starting, and she silently blessed this, for already the pain was diminishing. She counted four long strokes without making a sound.
"Yep," said Sarah, "I got it real good here. If the South was to win this here war, I'd go right on over to Europe with Miz Pace and Colonel Hearn." The candle was so strongly reminiscent of Captain Pomeroy's cock in her that she had to open her eyes and look to be sure that it wasn't. In the light of the oil lamp, it was almost the same color, too, and it shone in the same manner with her increasing sweat on its length. She licked her greasy lips and closed her eyes, hunkered her breasts down against the flag. It was moving very easily in her by then. Her ordeal was past her. The torture was over and she'd prevailed. She exulted in her triumph. She moved herself to take even more of the punishment.
At the top of a giddily long stroke, the candle stopped in her. Quickly, she looked back over her shoulder at Sarah, crookedly grinning as she rose and reached for her basket. Withdrawing a coiled length of white fur, the mulatto said, "When my owner give me to them officers, he give 'em this, too. It was so's they could keep me in line. Soft, ain't it?" she said, and flicked it out to its four-foot length, then snaked it over Holly's elevated buttocks, making the girl want to squirm. "It hurts, though," she said, and whipped it up, then down across Holly's buttocks, making the girl let out a sharp scream of surprised pain. Sarah shouted, "You shut up!" and proceeded to slap it hard against her four, five more times. Then it hung at her side while she moved the candle in and out with long, swift strokes.
Six strokes with the whip and five with the candle. Two stokes with the whip, then a dozen with the candle. The whip applied until Holly had torn a hole in the star, and then the candle used with agonizing slowness. Sometimes the whip struck the candle, giving Holly a completely new and unexpected oasis of pleasure in her desert of pain. She could feel her sweat tickling down the insides of her thighs through all her torment, and she was compelled to open her eyes when the candle was being used in order to take all she could of the pleasure before the pain was resumed. Once she collapsed forward on her belly and lay wriggling and writhing, sobbing under the slow and steady blows of the whip. When she got back on her knees, the whipping stopped and she knew long, glorious minutes of ecstasy from the white candle and the black hand.
"Get over on your back now, girl. Just get your legs up under you and you can do it. But you better keep you a tight hold on that candle. If you let it slip out, I ain't gonna help you get it back in."
Body trembling, muscles tense, weeping silently now, Holly did as she was bid. Once it almost did slip out, though she was holding it as tightly as she could. She managed to squat lower so the handle end of it came to rest on one of the blue bars of the flag. While Sarah laughed, Holly balanced herself and carefully lowered her hips upon it until it was as deep as it could possibly go, then cautiously scooted forward until she was on her back, the candle still safely within her.
The fur-covered lash across her belly wasn't so bad as she thought it would be. Across her breasts it was excruciating. She screamed loud and long at the third of these blows, and Sarah had to hold her hand over her mouth while she used the other to reach for the candle. Holly spread her legs at once and basked in the wonderful aftermath of the pain. She could feel that explosion coming on from inside her when Sarah stopped with the candle and started again with the whip.
At each of her times with the candle now she felt closer to what they'd referred to as her coming. It was uncanny how her torturer could sense this and know just when to resume with the whip. She decided it was from the way her hips moved as of their own accord, and she tried very hard to hold herself perfectly still during the next candling. When she felt herself succeeding, when she felt the first of the surges in her body, she could have shouted for joy. Then Sarah saw it and she took up the whip again.
But now the lash was hardly painful at all. Even when it struck across her breasts, its sting was lost in the wonderful floods of feelings that swept through her. She reveled in them, and again exulted in the knowledge that her body had overcome the worst they could do to her. The coming ebbed slowly, and with its ebb, the whiplashes slowed to a stop. Sarah sat beside her and took the candle in her hands, began moving it slowly and evenly. Holly's first words since her ordeal began escaped her.
"Oh, no. Oh, Sarah, please. I can't stand that now."
Implacably, the Negress continued her stroking as she said, "Does it hurt?"
. "Yes. Oh, it's worse than pain. It's...Oh, I just can't stand that now."
"When them soldiers was screwin' me, I'd have to take one right after the other. I did my best not to come, but I couldn't help it sometimes. 'Course, they just kep' right on when I had. So I know how it feels. I know the cure for it, too. More screwin'. You see? Already it ain't so bad. Already you startin' in to have your fun. I can see that in your eyes."
It was true. Even as Sarah spoke, the awful, ugly, revolting feeling was disappearing and the warm and wonderful glow was coming back. Holly lifted her knees and spread her legs farther to let it come. The feelings were coming sooner this time, better and stronger. She had to get up on her elbows to watch as the candle dipped in and out of her, watch as her pink lips closed about it as it entered her, then puckered about it, loath to let it escape completely on its outward course. It seemed like only minutes before she was coming again. This time Sarah continued all through it with the candle. Holly was allowed to thrash about on her bed, unrestricted save by the manacles. She was permitted to buck her hips up to get all she could of it and grunt and groan and cry out with no fear of the lash's return. She could see it all happening to her pink-striped body writhing on the red and white and blue.
And when it was over, when the candle was bringing her only the ugly feeling again, she opened herself wide as she could, concentrating on the good feelings to come, and thus speeded the time of her ecstasy's return.
When Holly was again deep in her rapture, smiling and feeling wonderfully good, Sarah stopped with the candle. The girl opened her eyes and looked at the leering Negress at her side and said, "Are you going to beat me again now?"
"No, girl. I'm gonna take the candle out and go." She began to slowly withdraw it.
At once Holly's legs closed on the brown hand and she said, "No! Just a little more. I need just a little more."
"Ain't you had enough yet, you white trash?"
The hand was wriggling free. The wonderful candle was escaping her. She tried to lock her vaginal muscles on it, but her passage was far too slippery to hold it in its slow, inexorable course. Straining with her lower body, she simpered a smile at Sarah and said, "Please, honey. Don't take it out yet. Pretty please with sugar on it, Sarah."
"Well...Open up your legs."
Reluctantly, fearing a trick, Holly did so. Her perspiring body trembled as Sarah withdrew it to the very brink, the plunged it home, making Holly sigh very deeply. Sarah said, "You thought I was gonna take it all the way, didn't you? See? You gotta trust me. I'm gonna pinch your titty now, and if you yell, I will take it out."
The pain was very sharp, but Holly's whole concentration was upon the candle being ever so slowly withdrawn from her. She gritted her teeth and clamped her lips closed as she looked down past the brown fingers twisting her roseate nipple, down at that other hand that could either please her or punish her terribly. At the last second, the candle was again driven home.
Her nipple was freed and now Sarah fondled her breasts and moved the candle very nicely, although too slowly to give Holly all she wanted of it. Sarah said, "You try to hold it now. No, don't use your legs. Come on. Hang on, girl. Tighter. It's coming on out. Squeeze it hard. Harder."
"I...I can't," she gritted. "I'm losing it. Sarah, please!"
"Who do you think will win this war, girl?"
"What? The...the South. Please Sarah, no! The North! The North will win! Ahhh . . . "
"See if you can hold it tighter this time."
"Yes. All right, Sarah. Whatever you say."
"You know we got that man of yours today. That Blue."
"You did? Ohhh . . . "
"Yep, he sure can't do nothin' to help you. He sure a big man and black as coal, ain't he?"
"Yes. Ah. That's just right."
"Big as he is, he won't bust outta his cell. We got him chained up in the cellar. You know that soup you had today? That was your old friend Toby. How'd he taste?"
Holly wanted to retch for just a moment, but the feelings of the slowly moving candle were far too good for that.
Sarah said, "You know, you could be here for a long, long time. Long as this here war goes on,"
"Or until...until General Lee takes Washington. No, Sarah, don't take it out! I'm sorry. You can't. . . You can't blame me for being true to my own country, to my own people."
Sarah jammed the candle fully into Holly and stood up. She said, "You know what I think of you and your people and your country?"
"I know. You think we're just awful. But, Sarah-honey, please move it in me just a little. I'm so awful close to coming."
"Lawd, can't I see that! I believe anything I did to you now would make you come."
"Yes. Anything. Please."
Sarah climbed up on the bed. She stood up there, lifted her longs skirts, and stepped astraddle the writhing, supine white girl. Her loins were very black with her crinkly hair, and then they were a livid red gash as she parted the lips of her vagina. She said, "Girl, if you squeeze your legs together and kick 'em around, I do believe you'd make yourself come. While you do, I'll show you what I think of y'all."
Holly's legs started to move before the yellow stream of Sarah's urine spurted forth. The hot liquid hit her in her face, burned in her eyes as she twisted frantically to escape from it. Half on her side, held back by the manacle on her left wrist, the urine splashed over her shoulder and down on her breasts. Sarah took another step back and it was gushing hotly over Holly's delicate white belly, running off in rivulets as Holly sought in vain for a place to hide. When she kicked up at the brown legs, the flow stopped and Sarah calmly stepped off her and kicked her thigh until Holly's kickings had stopped and she was weeping copiously. Then the mulatto arched her body backward and let another stream go that hit Hilly directly in her loins from which the candle still protruded. When Holly rose and tried to bite her calf, Sarah turned about and sent the stream into the short, blonde hair of the twisting head, matting it at once and sending dripping locks over Holly's forehead. Holly fell back and was convulsed by sobs as the last of it flowed out on her face.
Then Sarah stepped down and rearranged her skirts. She replaced bowl and spoon and lash in the basket. She left the lamp burning on the table and, basket on her arm, went out the door.
Ten feet above the frail white girl who lay huddled in a ball on the rumpled, sodden flag, Adele Pace said, "We must get a second peephole here. What's she doing? Has she fainted?"
Lying on his stomach, his eye pressed close to the hole in the floor, Hearn said, "No. I don't believe so. She's still weeping in a most piteous manner. It shouldn't be long, though, before that sleeping draught in the soup takes effect."
"How much did you give her? How long will she sleep?"
"At least twelve hours. Think you can wait that long, my dear? Aha, she's stirring. The Princess awakes."
"Let me see, Staunton."
"You'll see enough of her when you're cleaning her up. Even more later."
"What's she doing? Is she still crying?"
"Oh, yes. By George, she's moving her legs about! Just as Sarah told her. What a perfect little jewel. There's nothing at all that would stop that one from having her pleasures. She's going faster now. Her legs are up high and she's literally trying to run through the air. Ah, the look on her face! Sheer wantonness. Now she's trying to reach her lovely candle with her hand, but the other manacle is just a bit too short. Atta girl! Try the other hand. No? Have your wicked captors made your chains just a bit too short? Pity. Well, back to your bicycling through the air to reach your orgasm, little Holly. Faster, girl! Faster! You must get there before your sleeping draught takes hold. Ah. Ah, yes. There it comes. Quickly, Adele. Have a fast look. See something of the raw material we have to mold to our pattern."
Adele scrambled to take the colonel's place at the hole, then let out a low whistle. "She's going wild. Perhaps we should just make a courtesan out of her."
"That's the last resort. But a body and a fever like that is much more valuable as an instrument of intrigue. But come now. We must go and congratulate Sarah on her most profitable morning in Holly's transformation."
SIX
When Holly woke up, she thought she'd died and gone to Heaven. She was on her back, looking up at hazy outlines of gauzy clouds. She was aware that she was naked, sandwiched snugly between what most surely was satin of an unusual depth and softness. Sweet fragrances filled her nostrils, and when she inhaled more deeply of them, the satin smoothed over her expanding breast. She breathed deeper still and the hazy clouds took on the shape of the canopy of a four-poster bed, pale-pink organdy trimmed with dimity lace. She found that she was able to raise her head and, looking down over the foot of the bed, saw herself in a very large mirror on the wall across the small room. The mirror was tilted out from the wall so it was as if she was standing to look down at herself.
She was covered with a pink, satin quilt light enough to show the outline of her body. The room was all whites and soft yellows, perfume bottles and combs and flounced chairs, doubled in the fine pier glass. There was a small fireplace in the comer. What amazed her most was her own countenance, pink and white and pretty as ever, her short blonde hair curled now and done up in a tiny pink ribbon. The sight of her looking so radiant and tranquil and alive made the ordeal she'd known in her last bed quite difficult to accept as reality.
She ran her hands over her body under the cover, then looked and saw none of the broad pink stripes she'd been covered with. The only tangible reminder of her prior anguish was a dull pain in her thigh when she touched it. The bed smelled of lilacs and mimosa, and she snuggled into it happily, hugging the satin-covered pillow to her, rolling about and wallowing in the soft bed with its sensuously smooth coverings.
To her left, a field lark sang, and she sat up, holding the covers up to her neck, and looked that way. Then she dropped the covers and tumbled out of bed to scamper to the window and let the sunlight strike her naked body while she breathed great draughts of the cool morning air, so bright and sparkling as to make her head spin. The lark sang again and she looked for it, saw it in a brilliant green tree and waved at it.
She was on the second floor of the house, looking out at the garden in the rear of it, very well tended and already bursting with crocus and daffodils, entirely secluded. She leaned out and decided it was too far to jump down. Besides, there were flagstones just below the window. She decided, however, that if Sarah come through the door, she would leap out head first before she'd let herself be touched by the cruel mulatto.
The sound at the door made her reflect on that, but only for an instant, and then she scurried back under the covers as the door opened.
It was Adele, smiling at her, wearing a long white nightgown with many frills and ribbons, made of all but transparent silk. Her glossy black hair was done up in a thousand ringlets in a pile on her head; there was no trace of the malice Holly had once seen in those exotically dark eyes; her rich red lips smiled warmly. The woman turned and picked up a tray from outside the door, set it down on a table within the room, closed the door, and bore it to Holly.
Adele said, "Good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?"
"I suppose so."
"I'll bet you're starved," said Adele and sat on the bed, placed the tray over Holly's legs. It was a silver tray, each little dish on it covered with a silver cover. She lifted these away and revealed a sunny poached egg, two slices of buttered toast, some thick bacon, and a little bowl of strawberry jam. Holly's mouth watered. Adele poured coffee with a magnificently rich odor from a silver pot and offered the cup to Holly. Holly looked from the cup to Adele's eyes, and stayed immobile, holding the covers up at her neck. Adele said, "Don't be such a shy goose, Holly dear. After all, I've seen your adorable little body before. Let go the covers and eat, darling."
Holly's stomach took her over. The covers fell from her hands and for several minutes there was no sound but that of the silver utensils at work lifting every morsel of the food to Holly's mouth while Adele kept her coffee cup filled. Adele spread jam on the last half of toast, set the tray on the floor, and sat close to Holly to feed the final tidbit to her. When Holly reached for it, Adele said, 'Tut tut. I'll do it, dear. You deserve some spoiling after the dreadful time you've had since we met. Honestly, I feel terribly guilty about bringing you here. All I can do now, though, is do my very best to make up for it. Oops!"
She'd let a drop of the jam fall on Holly's left breast, and before Holly could stop her, she bent her head and lapped it away with her pink, pink tongue. "I do believe that's the nicest jam I ever tasted," she said with a sly grin, and now used her finger to daub a little smear of it on Holly's nipple.
Holly held her off with both hands as she said, "Oh, no. Just let me alone."
Coming closer, pulling at Holly's wrists, Adele laughed merrily as she said, "Darling, I can't leave you alone. You're all I've been thinking of lately. I must taste more of your goodies. Don't fight me, dear. Don't be coy. I'll have my way sooner or later."
The tongue barely brushed Holly's nipple, but she managed to push the stronger woman away again, saying, "You'll have to handcuff me to do that!"
"I would resort to that if I had to, but it'd be so much more pleasant for both of us if we were free for a fond little bit of fun between girls."
Now she got her tongue directly on the jam, and this drove her to embrace Holly about the waist and hug her as she sucked the whole nipple into her mouth to wash every trace of the jam away. Holly still pushed at her, but her struggles were subsiding, and she said, "I suppose you would chain me up at that. You and your Yankee friends."
Adele moved to dreamily caress the wetted nipple with her cheek as she said, "Mmmmmm. Let's not talk about Yankees or Rebels or anyone else but you and me, dear Holly," and she returned her mouth and tongue to very languorously kiss the blossoming rosebud.
"Please, Adele. You don't know how that feels."
"Mmmmm, but I do. It feels like more." She drew the feebly resisting girl to her to favor the other nipple with her kiss.
"Honestly, Adele, this isn't right at all. Ladies don't do this sort of thing. Please stop."
"The worldly ladies I know do. The sweetest thing in the world is for two lovely ladies like us to frolic in bed together."
"Well, I'm not worldly at all, so just stop. Adele!"
Holly had retreated to the other side of the wide bed with Adele and her hungering mouth always in close contact. Now Adele dragged her back to the middle of it, her eyes and her smile full of sly mischief. Adele tried to pull down the covers, but Holly held them firm, and when she was thus occupied, Adele embraced her and lavished warm kisses about her throat, pressing her body close to the squirming girl. Holly pushed her soft, warm attacker from her and rolled away, off the bed and onto the floor. Laughing, Adele followed her and she staggered to her feet just in time to elude the reaching hands and get to the door. She twisted the knob. She tugged at it. And then Adele was there again.
Frantic, she continued to pull at the door knob while soft arms went about her, smooth hands glided over her to cup her breasts, then slide a long caress down to her loins. Against her back, she felt another caress. That was from the two silk-covered breasts that voluptuously moved down her, making her shiver from head to toe. Adele's kisses down her spine were even more shivery, and she plastered herself against the door in her effort to escape them. Adele was kissing her all about her buttocks, very lightly, just as lightly as those hands that fluttered up between her legs and all about her hips. She was shivering all over now, even deep inside her, and she sighed as she recalled her commanding officer's advice. He could never have imagined she'd be hungered for by a woman, but she was sure his advice to submit would apply here, too. When Adele's hands gently urged her to turn about, she sighed again and let her body go with them.
The kisses all about her loins were just as light and fluttery, but they felt distinctly warmer. Bent down as she was to kiss her, Adele presented a fine target for some sort of a blow on the head. But that gleaming bank of curls was far too lovely for Holly to disturb with other than a gentle hand touching about in it.
At the touch of Holly's hand, Adele smiled up at her. She kissed all about the girl's navel, and then smoothed her downy cheek over Holly's moving breasts as she pressed her own warmly into Holly's thighs. Holly's hands went quite naturally to Adele's shoulders, then slipped about the graceful neck as Adele rose and took her in her arms to fuse their mouths.
The kiss was fully as sweet and exciting as those which Holly remembered in the carriage, and her tongue moved and fenced with Adele's just as giddily. But the embrace was far more exhilarating. It seemed to completely envelop her and, try as she might, she could find no reason not to permit this. She felt of Adele's softly rounded belly with her own and nested her pubic mound just beneath that of the other woman, moving about to settle herself in the most comfortable of positions. Though Adele was taller than Holly, the weight of her fuller breasts pulled them down so that the nipples of both women were on exactly the same level. Holly could clearly feel those big buds of Adele with her own taut ones. She snuggled closer to them with her own, pulling Adele closer with her arms, letting nipples kiss as well as mouths. It was wonderfully good and warm and exciting, the only flaw-a minor one at that-being the thin garment Adele wore. At first it had seemed so gauzy and fragile as to be almost nonexistent. Now each tiny wrinkle that formed in it was a little irritation as Holly and Adele pulled closer and closer into the long, long kiss. Very marvelously, Adele shared Holly's needs.
Slowly, she pushed herself away from the girl and, sighing with every breath, slipped her fine shoulders out of the nightgown and wriggled her body to slither it down to a halo of a puddle about her feet. Then she leaned into another embrace, yet another kiss that was impossibly softer and more sensual than before.
How could another human being feel so smoothly good? Was it conceivable that all the wondrously pliant flesh she felt with her own flesh was real? Undulating against her, the softness and warmth and smoothness seemed to be transferred from Adele to her, making her feel softer and smoother and warmer than she ever had before. She wanted to tell Adele of her discovery but her lips and tongue were much too involved to speak. She tried to convey what she felt mutely with those same organs; from Adele's response, she felt she'd succeeded.
Again it was Adele who ended the kiss, now panting in perfect unison with Holly. She said, "Oh, honey-girl. My legs are too weak to hold me. Let's get into bed."
In bed their embrace was sweeter yet. Before there had been a hard floor to act as an ever so slight irritant on their feet; there had been the unyielding door at Holly's back; the business of balancing together on their legs had been necessary. Between the satin sheets all of those irritations were gone. Soft, smooth sensuality was all about Holly, and the best of it-far better than even those marvelously smooth satin coverings-was the other body that serpentined along with hers. Arms and legs and breasts and tongues were constantly atangle, perfectly content in each new contact, yet going on to find yet another, better, sweeter way to touch.
The one touch Holly shrank from was that of her cunny against the smooth thigh that so insistently and frequently pushed up at it. Though it was difficult to arch away from it, she repeatedly did so, for she was quite ashamed of the oozing flow of animal sweat that was there. She longed to open her legs wide, but she remained playing at the worldly lady, forcing all of her concentration to center on their breast to breast and mouth to mouth kissing. Then in slow, dreamy contortings, her thigh came up between Adele's legs and she thought she felt a sweat like her own. To be sure, she pressed on.
Adele said, "Oh, God, that feels so good. D'you feel my love juice flowing?"
"What? Love juice? I thought it was sweat."
"Honey-girl, that's the juice from the good, sweet, pure love we have for one another. If it's sweat, it's the sweat of our deep affection. I know you're flowing love juice as much as I am, because I can smell it, and it smells so very good. Now open your legs like me and let me feel it."
Love juice. Goodness. Purity. Affection. All the words repeated themselves through Holly's brain while she felt more of Adele's sopped cunny with her thigh, while she undulated her own cunny-back and forth, up and down-on Adele's thigh. It was more heavenly than ever. She wanted to linger where she was until Eternity, yet she had a deep craving for more. Deep the craving was, for it dwelt in her cunny hole. Up until a few weeks ago, she'd been unaware of its existence. It was just a dark and narrow passage in her body, tightly closed to even an inquisitive finger. Now it seemed to yawn between her legs no matter how she squeezed them about Adele's thigh. It was an open cavern, waiting, craving, aching to be filled. Again, Adele knew this.
The long-haired brunette pushed the short-haired blonde away with no little difficulty, with many a lingering kiss, and rolled over to open a drawer in the nightstand. From this recess she withdrew an object a foot long, turned with the arc of a barrel hoop. But it was much thicker than a barrel hoop. Each end was no bigger around than a man's thumb, and from those ends it swelled smoothly together to a two-inch diameter at the top of its arc. Pale brown, very smooth, it was made of India rubber, hard and yet resilient and quite soft to the touch.
Adele threw back the covers and, much to Holly's alarm, fitted one end of it into her cunny with great and obvious enjoyment. She said, "I bought this in Casablanca over five years ago. Harem girls use them, I was told. It's lain in one drawer or another during all my travels because I've never yet found another woman so like me as to use it with me. Ahh, it fits me so very well. I just know it will fit you just as well. Just look at it, honey-girl."
Holly looked. Adele lay on her back now, her legs spread wide on the satin sheet, the coverlet slipped off on the floor at the foot of the bed. Her hand was at the thickest part of the rubber device, moving it most luxuriously in and out of her red-lipped cunny. Her big, globular breasts moved slowly with every stroke of the thing. The lovely face was turned to smile at Holly, and it was somehow made even lovelier by the fact that these elegantly coiffed ringlets had fallen about in a wild tangle of curls. Holly could see it all twice-once in the mirror and once in the flesh-and it was a hopeless decision as to which was the more exciting view.
The mirror made it more exciting by enabling Holly to watch herself moving her hand in her cunny, by enabling her to see almost every part of Adele's opened legs. But in the flesh, she knew she could at any time take what was left of the rubber device as her own and thus be sure that it would fit her as well as she already knew it would fit. She chose the flesh.
Another smile from Adele helped her on her way, and she stood on her knees astraddle the wide hips. She tood the device in her hand and probed until she quickly found her cunny hole whence that love juice so copiously flowed-the same substance she had hitherto thought to be animal sweat, but which she now knew to be the elixir of all her desires.
The thing fit remarkably well. It seemed as if it were made exclusively for her. It filled her last need as she joggled and jiggled and fidgeted her hips down against those of her dear, dear friend. Leaning forward with her hands resting on Adele's shoulders, looking down into that fantastically beautiful face, Holly moved up and down on the thing. Once or twice it would remain stationary in Adele, and she could feel its every friction throughout her body. Then she was able to hold it in her cunny and make it move in and out of Adele.
Was this enough? Had she thought it to be nearly enough? That was moments ago and now she knew what more she needed.
She laid down on those huge and exciting breasts, sought and found those blood-red lips with her own, felt of every pore of that tongue as sensitive as her own, and she moved her body, tensed and then relaxed her vaginal muscles with utmost care to savor every sensation that she could.
If Holly had been fast enough, she would have bitten Adele's tongue to keep it in her mouth. When it was taken from her, she still had the impulse to bite or tongue the soft cheek of this woman under her. But then that tongue was at her ear, in her ear, seeking and finding yet another new sensation for her. Between the tonguings there was a whisper even more intoxicating.
"Doesn't it feel good?...Your love juice is running right down the dildo and into me...Mine is running out to make a lovely spot on the sheet...Your ear tastes divine, honey-girl...I can't, though...We can't...We've got to come, haven't we?...We've just got to come...No! Not yet. Promise me something first."
Holly put her tongue in Adele's ear as a prelude, then, her hips barely able to maintain the slow pace, said, "I promise."
"Mmmmm. Promise this will be the first. Promise that as soon as we rest for a little while, then I can get on top and make us both come. Promise? Promise, Holly?"
"Promise," she said, and let her hips go.
Holly went frantically at first, making them both gasp and pant with it all. Then she slowed, in complete control, making them both hover wonderfully on the verge of that familiar yet wonderful surprise they both needed so very much. A long minute of this, holding the dildo to give the most of it to Adele, then selfishly claiming all of it for herself, and she had to have it all. Holly let her hips fly unreined.
Adele pulled her with both arms into another kiss, and there was no stopping then. Eyes barely open and seeing only the lovely face so close before her, Holly could still clearly see the dildo between then. There was no contest for its possession now. It could be seen in her mind's eye as suspended in space, entirely immobile, while each of the smoothly molded and highly heated sets of loins moved on it. She had a good, solid come which lasted a long time, aided and abetted by the kiss she clung to, helped along by the breasts she could mash against with her own. It seemed to go on forever at its peak, as if it would never end. But, end it did, leaving Holly with a marvelous afterglow made even more marvelous by her sharing it entirely with Adele.
Adele said, "Oh, my God. What have I been missing? I had no idea of how sweet it can be with two women together all the way."
"Hmmm? What about those worldly friends of yours?"
"There weren't any. I've never laid with another woman before. I'm sorry I didn't. But I'm glad you were the first, dear Holly. Was it good for you?"
"Best yet. On top is the very best. Your turn to try it now."
"Oh, not just now. We should rest a bit. Aren't you rather sore?"
Holly rolled over, taking Adele with her, taking care to keep the dildo in position in both of them. She said, "The best cure for that sort of ugly feeling in your cunny at a time like this is just a little more screwing. It's got to be slow, though. Try. Just try, Adele."
"Yes. I will. I need it. I need it almost as bad as you do."
"No. No, I need it worse than anybody in the world now, east or west, North or South."
Adele barely suppressed a giggle, then tickled a nip at Holly's earlobe. She said, "You'll surely hate me for this, but I'm going to blackmail you. That's just one more of the things I'm adept at. Ahh. Oh, honey-girl, you were right. It's feeling better all the time, isn't it? I'll keep on, Holly. I'll make you feel every bit as good as I did a few minutes ago, if you'll tell me something."
"Yes? Adele, hold it tight for a moment. Please. Yes, just like that. Now I'll do it."
"So good. So sweet. Don't make it end. Tell me. Colonel Heam demands to know. Tell me about your contact here in Washington."
"You damn Yankee. Let's screw now. I'll tell you later. Right now, for all the life of me, I can't even think of it."
"Yes, dear. I know. How well I know how unimportant wars and spying and politics really are. North and South, slavery and Abolitionism, it doesn't rate a damn. All that matters is us, here and now, loving."
"Yes! Do it. Make me come. Make us come!"
The smell of food woke Holly. It was dark outside. The only light in the cozy room came from the warmly blazing fireplace. Adele was close beside her, those wondrous big breasts spilling toward her, that sweet smile there on her sensuous lips. The silver tray was there, heavy with lobster and steak and drawn butter and crispy fired potatoes and champagne. Together they ate it, giggling like schoolgirls, using their fingers and ignoring the silver utensils, feeding each other, kissing, tangling their legs beneath the covers.
When the sumptuous meal was done, Adele set the tray aside and said, "Content?"
"Yes, very. I couldn't want for any more of anything." t
"I'll wager you could, Holly-honey. I'll wager I have something through that door over there that would make you stir your stumps just now."
"You couldn't. It's impossible just now."
"Hmmm. What would you think about a nice warm bath? How would you feel just now knowing there was a tub of hot, scented water waiting? Would you be at all interested?"
"Well. . . Yes, I'd be interested."
"But not enough to stir from bed."
"I didn't say that, Adele."
"I had the tub made special in New York. It's very wide. Not as wide as our bed, of course, but wide enough to hold the two of us while we help each other wash." She toyed her fingers about Holly's finely aroused breasts and continued, saying, "Won't you stir, honey-girl?"
Holly lifted the fine chin and kissed the soft lips. Then she said, "Let's go. But where's our dildo?"
"Under the pillow, dear. It will be waiting for us when we get back, all clean and sweet and hot."
They lingered in the tub together until the scented water was cooling, kissing and nestling through their ablutions and using their fingers to bring each other to a mutual come. They dried each other and then Adele took Holly back to the bedroom where there were a dozen bottles of cologne from which to choose. Adele dusted herself with powder, then Holly, going to her knees to see that every inch of the girl was as smoothly coated as she was. She pressed kisses about Holly's loins until she had the girl laughing and reaching for more, then she rose and they kissed deeply.
She put Holly into bed and made a nice little fire in the fireplace, picked up a hairbrush, and climbed up to join the pretty little blonde. Holly said, "Now I suppose it's time for you to beat me."
"Beat you? With this brush? Oh, my dear. The only thing this brush is for is to make me more attractive to you. My hair's an awful tangle and I do want to be lovely for you."
Sitting cross-legged and smiling at Holly, firelight flickering shadows over her mature body, lovely breasts rising and falling with the graceful movements of her arms, Adele was surely the loveliest sight Holly had ever seen.
Adele said, "You look as if you're going to cry, dear. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Everything's right, and you're so beautiful I can scarcely bear to look at you. Could I. . . could I brush out your hair? After all, I help get it tangled."
It was even better then. Holly could see the front of Adele in the big mirror and returned her affectionate look through it. She could touch the finely textured skin and smell Adele's fragrance while she ran the brush through that cascade of black, silky strands. When she felt her tears of joy welling, she could put the brush aside for a moment and hug and kiss Adele, reach around her and feel of her breasts.
They argued in bed as they sought the most comfortable position in each other's arms. Holly wanted to sleep without any covers so she could wake up at any time and be assured by the mirror that all of her great happiness was real. Adele insisted on the covers, for the night would be cool, and further, she vowed they'd see amply of each other on the morrow.
Holly awoke to look into the lovely eyes of the woman who shared her pillow. Beneath the covers their legs were entwined, and Holly fell into the easy rhythm of Adele's loins against hers. Adele withdrew the dildo from under the pillow, and the mere sight of it increased Holly's warm feelings. When Adele kissed it, Holly felt her love juice fairly gush in her cunny. She had to kiss it too, and then she had to taste Adele's lips for a time. Within minutes of her awakening, she was ready for the dildo.
Adele said, "Let's throw the covers back so we can see."
"Oh, yes. Wonderful, dearest."
"And come. We'll lie across the foot of the bed so we won't miss a thing in the mirror."
"Adele, you are so good to me."
"And the day is so young . . . "
They loved. They breakfasted and went into the bathroom together where a fresh tub of scented water waited them. There hadn't been a moment since they'd wakened when they were not touching, and even when Holly excused herself to make a pee, Adele wouldn't let go of her.
Adele said, "Just go ahead, honey-girl, but I want to watch. I've heard it can be very exciting."
Holly's bashful protests were swept away by a fresh flood of Adele's kisses, and soon she was squatting on the gilt-edged pot with her knees held wide, while Adele knelt before her, stroking about her loins and inner thighs, looking excited.
Adele said, "Let it go slowly, honey-girl. Make it last."
"Adele, I can't with your hand there."
"Yes you can. Pee right against it while I hold you like this. Come, dear. Try. Just a few drops. Yes! Oh, yes, that is exciting!"
To Holly's amazement, Adele took a cupped handful of her pee and splashed it over her own big breasts, reaching her hand for more of the golden fluid as she did. The second handful was rubbed between her legs, into the black-haired cunny as she laughed in her excitement.
Holly shut off the flow and her voice was shaking with her anticipation as she said, "You sit up there. I want that too. Hurry, Adele. I hope you have to pee a lot."
"I do. Do you have much left?"
"Yes," said Holly, and held her hand out to be filled. She slapped it against her belly and breasts and reached for more, splashed this on her so excitedly that drops of it flew in her face and she licked her lips and savored the taste. She said, "Adele, I think I'm coming."
"Quickly, honey-girl. On the floor. Your head over there, mine over here. Now open your legs and let me come to you. See how well our cunnies fit this way. Oh, yes. Kiss my foot and I'll kiss yours. And pee. Let it all come out right into me and I'll do the same and we'll both have a come."
After their bath and the rite of scenting and dusting each other, Adele announced that she had a surprise for Holly. She drew the girl back into the little bedroom, and from the closet she produced a half-dozen boxes. She said, "You get to open them, but I get to put them on you."
First came a breast supporter that Adele said was made in Paris, France. It had little lacy straps that went over her shoulders and a broader one that went around her back. It hooked in front between her breasts, between the two lace cups that were supposed to support her breasts. The cups were open at the ends, allowing Adele's lips easy access to Holly's nipples. A boned corset came next, fashioned out of soft white leather. It fit Holly from just under her white-clad breasts to a point halfway down her hips. Adele had Holly hold onto one of the bed posts as she pulled the lacings very tight.
"Ever worn a corset before, honey-girl?" "A few times, but never so tight. I can't even breathe."
"A long corset like this does that to me, too. It keeps me aroused all the time I have it on. A little tighter now."
"Yes. And then we can kiss."
"Not till you're dressed in all your pretties, dear."
They were the first silk pantaloons Holly had ever worn, and they fit her as if they'd been made for her. She was reluctant to keep them on, for she knew they'd be soiled at the crotch in no time at all, but Adele only laughed and said these could be washed and there were others to be had. Then the lovely brunette got on her knees to embrace Holly's hips and kiss her strongly in her silk-covered crotch.
She helped Holly into four layers of petticoats and a lovely little camisole, and then had Holly open the largest of the boxes. The gown was blue, the same blue as Holly's eyes. It was made of watered silk that sank and glistened and rustled with every movement. Like everything else, it fit to perfection, and Holly turned this way and that to look at her reflection in the mirror as Adele knelt at her feet to fit new high-heeled boots to her feet. Adele opened the last box and stole up behind Holly to slip a long shower of golden curls and ringlets on Holly's head. The wig set her off to perfection, and Holly was utterly amazed at the vast beauty that was hers.
Holding her lightly from behind, nibbling at her ear, the beautiful naked woman who had been so generous with her said, "You are beautiful, Holly. This is how you should look always. You could, you know, if you put all your trust in us."
"I would. Oh, I would if you weren't working for the Yankees."
"This war won't last forever, dear. While it's here, we must be a part of it. After all, even the things you're wearing cost money."
"The war means nothing to you but money?"
"When the war is all boiled down to the basics, there's always a matter of economics."
"Yes, and there's the matter of boys doing brave deeds and shedding blood and ever dying."
"Under flying flags, while the great majority of their comrades-at-arms are stealing supplies and looting whatever they can and doing all the profiteering they can."
"War is ugly business."
"Yes, and we shouldn't even have talk about ugliness here. May I screw you? Please? I really must, you know. You're much too lovely not to be screwed. Pretty please? Don't I deserve some pleasures for giving you all these pretty things?"
"When you smile at me like that, it's all I can do to hold back from screwing you, Adele. Where shall we do it this time?"
"It's such a lovely day, let's do it there at the window. Come, my pretty, and lean on the window sill. Drink in the wonderful day while I attend to my duties from behind."
It was a lovely day, and Adele was doing her duties in a most lovely fashion. One by one she lifted Holly's petticoats, alternately making her laugh and squeal with her words and kisses. Although Holly entreated her, Adele refused to let her turn around. Her pantaloons were pulled down and Adele positioned her just so to present the most there was of her cunny to the fingers that deeply and tenderly caressed her. Then Adele fitted the dildo into herself and manipulated the other end into Holly.
Adele's belly felt gloriously good rubbing against her buttocks. The hands were good, too, as they pulled and pushed slowly and gently at her. The moving object within her was marvelous above all else, for this was what Holly needed to complete as a woman. With something like that moving in her, the whole world was bright and wonderful. With that part of her body so wonderfully filled, matters of great import could be entirely forgotten for a time, and all was beautiful.
Then something entered in to jar Holly's beautiful world. From behind a shed at the back of the yard came a man bearing a burden. He was hunched and bent under the weight of what looked like a side of beef. His face seemed bent under that weight, too, for his features were twisted under the short beard that might have been dirt smeared on his face. He was some little distance from Holly, but she could see a rivulet of blood dripping down from the meat and over the man's forehead. He wiped at it, smearing it across his face, then wiping his hands on breeches made shiny with dirt and grime. He looked up at Holly.
She closed her eyes and tried to turn, but Adele held her fast, saying, "Ready for a good come now, honey-girl?"
"Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I need. Make me come, Adele dear, so hard I even forget my name."
The two women fondled and kissed and loved the day into night, then ate from the same tray in their bed before a crackling fire. At the conclusion of the meal, Adele urged more cream-centered chocolates on Holly, explaining that although she loved them, they were bad for her figure. Holly ate all six of them. Then Adele set the tray down and took her in her arms beneath the covers. Holly felt wonderfully good, completely relaxed and content.
She had a desire to use the dildo again with Adele that night, but just then she felt too good to move.
As Adele held her, she whispered, "I wish it would never end. If only you put your trust entirely with us, it wouldn't end. We could come up here and completely blot out any thoughts of what we did during the course of business. We could have money and power and beauty and love all the time, any time. It would be such a good, good life, honey-girl."
When Holly was fast asleep, Adele stole from the bed. The door was opened for her by Colonel Hearn who said, "Well done, my dear. By Jove, any woman would succumb to such charms and blandishments as you offered the girl. She'll be on our side before the week is out."
"Did you see much of it through the wall?"
"Enough to make me look forward to my place in this educational process with enormous gusto."
"D'you think you can keep up with her?"
"I'll do my best. Now let's get her below stairs."
"I'm too exhausted to lift her hand. Call for Sarah and Creel to do it."
"Sarah, yes, but not Creel. I don't want him near her till morning. Of course, it will be night to her the way we've got the windows boarded up."
"Creel's just liable to kill her, you know."
"No. I doubt that. I told him exactly what would happen to him if he went too far."
"If he gets carried away and does do her in, we'll be out some hard cash. This has cost us a good deal so far."
SEVEN
When Holly first began to awake, she knew where she was, but hoped she was in a dream. There was a bare possibility of that, because she had that same feeling of dull immobility and helplessness that belongs in a dream world. Her senses weren't at all sharp, except for her sense of smell. There was damp earth close to her and the fetid odor of stale urine was strong about her, as if she were in a desecrated grave. She tried to focus on the source of the pale-yellow light and made an effort to sit up on her damp bed that was covered with a red and white and blue spread, badly rumpled. When she moved, her left wrist was caught and held by something unyielding and she stared at it until the black manacle came into focus. She felt the other one on her right wrist and then lay her head down and began to silently cry.
She cried for several minutes and then forced herself to sit up. She could see it all clearly then, from the cold stone walls to the still darkness then, from the cold stone walls to the still darkness outside, the steadily burning oil lamp Sarah had brought, the rude bed covered with the Stars and Bars, and her own soiled body.
Where she'd been clean and perfumed before, now she was soiled, her body streaked with grime and dried urine. Had all the hours she'd spent in the bright and sunshiny room with Adele been a dream? It couldn't have been a dream, for the welts and soreness were entirely gone from her body. Then again, her bed was still damp from the mulatto's urine, and she could feel her hair still plastered against her forehead from it, matted and tangled. It was all so very confusing, and her brain was working too slowly to fathom it.
When she heard the latch on the heavy door being worked, she immediately thought of the pistol she'd hidden in the mattress, and she lunged for it, only to be brought up painfully by her shackled hands. The pain brought more of her senses back to her. The pistol would be of no help when Sarah returned to torment her. But perhaps it was Blue opening the door. He was in the cellar and he might have used his enormous strength to free himself for her rescue. She opened her mouth to call out his name when the door swung open and she stared in horror at her visitor.
It was the same man she'd seen in the yard or in the dream, still bent as if he were carrying the side of meat, though his only burden now was a wooden tray. His left shoulder was hunched forward and his left leg twisted inward at the other. He had only two fingers on his left hand, if that mangled claw could be called a hand. His face was twisted, too. Part of his nose was gone so that one nostril was a gaping hole. His eye on that side was wide open and staring at her, a deep' scar connecting its socket to the huge nostril. A tributary of that scar ran into his matted black beard and reappeared at the corner of his mouth, pulling it down before it went on to his short chin whiskers. The other side of his mouth was turned up in a parody of a grin that showed gaps in his stained teeth, and his right eye had a demoniacal expression glinting in it. He slammed the door and came at her, and she was too paralyzed with fear to even try to shrink away from him.
His clothes were filthy, the remnants of a uniform too begrimed to tell if it had been blue or gray originally. Either the clothes or he himself had an odor about him even fouler than the air of Holly's dungeon. He sat the tray holding a mug of coffee and a bowl of the same soup she'd had before, on the table, and he sat on the bed next to her. When he touched her, she at last galvanized into action, trying to twist away, all to no avail. Grinning his awful grin, he roved his good hand over her body, making her flesh crawl, making her hard pressed to keep control of her bladder. The hand continued to rove at will, to pluck and pinch and tweak at her until she closed her eyes and turned her head. Her chin was caught in a grip of steel and turned to the grotesquely grinning face that was filled with rage then.
In a low, rasping voice, he said, "I ain't very pretty, am I? You look at me anyhow. You look see what they done to me at Bull Run and Libby Prison. Keep on lookin' whilst I feed you."
She did so, wide-eyed and quaking as he held the mug of tepid coffee to her lips. It was very strong and she had to take great gulps of it to keep up with him, and still some of it ran out the corners of her mouth. The man made a sound like a laugh at this.
He set the empty cup down and picked up the bowl and spoon and she said, "I don't want that. I.. . I know what it's made of."
"So do I. I butchered that mule. You eat it or wear it," he said, and poured some of it over her head.
She ate it, wanting to retch at the first bite, then forcing her thoughts from it as she realized how hungry she was. When it was all gone, most of it inside Holly, some in her hair and on her breasts, he set the bowl aside and began touching her again, poking and prodding about her locked loins. Again she thought of the advice to yield to save herself. But in this case, she preferred death to accepting any touch from this creature. His hand was very strong and he could pinch cruelly hard, making it all she could do to keep from crying as he continued to probe closer and closer to her private parts.
He said, "My name's Creel. I used to be a sergeant in the army, but the only soljering I do now is when they dress me in a clean uniform at night and let me guard the front door. Them's the nights they workin' on things that'll make it hard for the Rebels. Yanks, too. It don't make a durn to them and it sure don't to me. One's as bad as the other."
If she could keep him talking, if she could rouse some feelings of empathy in this broken creature, she might have a chance with him. She said, "You were...wounded in the war?"
"Hit by a charge of grape at Bull Run. My men left me. They run. The Rebs run right over me chasm' them. I crawled to a clump of trees some way or another and laid down to die. Woman found me. Young, yella-headed woman like you, only a sight cleaner. She turned me in to the Rebels."
"And probably saved your life by doing it."
He prodded her low in the belly so hard that she let out a cry. Also, it was even more difficult to control her bladder now.
He said, "I'd of been better off dead. You'd be a sight better off if I was, I'll tell you that for a fact.
"Them doctors sewed me up with bits and pieces of string and gave me a nice wagon ride to prison. I spent a week in what they call the hospital there and then they took me out and put me in the compound with the other twenty thousand, brave Yankee soljers they took. A man who can't even get up off a stretcher don't have much of a chance there. You know what them Yankee heroes done to me? They done this!"
His slow movements and what strength he'd already shown to possess were a farce. Very rapidly, he was able to lift her legs and take them from under her, turning her about so that she laid on her stomach. Writhing and kicking, she was unable to escape from him as he ran his hand down between her buttocks and poked a finger into her anus. It was terribly painful and she screamed. He tried but could not succeed in closing her mouth with his gnarled stump of a hand, as she twisted away from the thing, too repulsed by it to even try to bite it. He pushed her face down into the mattress and cut off her yells, and she feared, then hoped she would suffocate and thus end the feeling of that awful finger in her bottom. She felt she was going to faint before he released her head, and then her instinct for self-preservation took over and she gasped for air, her tensed sphincter relaxing, the pain lessening.
He said, "That's right, missy. You cain't fight me. Make up your mind to givin' in. Onct they get used to it, lots of folks get to likin' a good corn-holin'. O'course, it ain't done with a finger. It's done with a tallywhacker like this."
Only one button held his ragged trousers together and his organ came out easily. Holly stared at it, inches from her face, filled with the greatest dread she had ever known. It was just as big in girth as the other two male organs she'd seen, but it was fully two inches longer. It was rigidly erect in the clutches of the claw that had been Creel's left hand.
He said, "Get a good look at it, girlie. It's goin' right up your butt."
"No. No, it couldn't. It's...it's impossible."
"Aw, no. It's right easy with a little bacon grease. You got any bacon grease, missy? No? You got somethin' hid up your cunny maybe make it go easier? Le'sjust see."
He straddled her back, facing her feet, pressing heavily on her as he forced his hand between her legs. She knew it was his claw that was probing for her cunny, for his good hand was being used to sample and knead the flesh of her buttocks. The thought of that horrid object about to touch her made her kick and twist all the harder, and so great was her fright that she began to urinate.
He guffawed and said, "Look at that. She cain't even hole her water. Peein' on her own flag. That calls for a drink."
He was off her, fumbling in his pocket, and she managed to close off the flow of her water. From his pocket he withdrew a flat pint of whiskey and took a pull from it, then grinned down at Holly lying on her bed of shame. He caught her by the hair in his claw and forced the bottle to her lips and poured hot, burning whiskey into her mouth. While she lay gasping and choking, he used the opportunity to swiftly probe his fingers in the dry lips of her cunny.
"Shucks. You ain't got no grease at all. I'll have to fix that."
He was unlocking her manacles. For a little while, she didn't believe it. Then her right hand was free, and then her left. She rubbed her wrists and breathed easier. It wouldn't be long now. She'd be able to survive anything he did for the little while she had left. When he rolled her over on her back, she did not resist. When he put the bottle to her lips again, she drank. He spread her legs and she stretched her arms out over her head on the bed. He was kneeling between her legs, grinning down at her crotch like a savage demon straight from Hades. Holly just touched the end of the bunk when he dragged her closer to him.
Creel got down on his elbows between helegs and held the bottle over her open slit. He poured some of the whiskey onto the tender pink flesh and laughed when the girl again screamed. Then he put out his tongue and licked the glistening slit from bottom to top, savoring the taste of the whiskey with its pungent spice. His good arm locked about one of the soft white thighs, he held the bottle with his claw and dribbled whiskey onto the squirming loins and moved his tongue quickly to try to catch every drop of it before it ran off her.
She'd been beating his head with her tiny fists, but now she just pushed at him. Already he could smell her faintly ammoniacal smell of awakening lust, and this drove him on to more furious tonguings so he could taste that which he had missed for so long. At the first taste of her slimy exudations, he pushed her bottom up off the bed and plunged his tongue as deeply as he could in her hole. It was all about in there, but he was licking it away faster than it was coming out and he used his hands to stretch her even wider to get deeper at it.
Holly's legs flailed the air and she screamed again at the bristly beard scraping in her splayed slit, then clamped her mouth closed and endured it. In his mad drivings he was pushing her slowly toward the end of the bed, and she could almost reach it now. His tongue felt huge, almost filling her hole it seemed, and the sounds of his slurpings in her were revolting to hear. She tried not to visualize that twisted face buried in her trembling, pink loins that was dredging and sucking juices from her in spite of her vast revulsion. Instead she visualized her own face between similar loins in the carriage and how temporarily wild that had driven her, how thrilling it had been for that other woman.
She couldn't think of the name of that other woman. She wasn't sure for a moment if she herself had been the sleek woman who'd stopped the carriage for the frightened drummer boy.
She cried out as teeth scraped her clitoris and stopped groping with her hands above her to push the greasily matted head down until his tongue was in her hole again. At the touch of his head, she knew who she was. She was Holly Meade, Confederate spy, whose only mission now was to reach the little pistol at the end of her bed. She stretched her arms back as far as she could, her breasts very taut on her chest, her belly flattened, but still she couldn't manage to reach it through the hole in the mattress. But she could feel its outline, and this she clung to. Just two bullets in it. One for him and one for her. She placed her feet against his back and pushed herself up the bed another few inches.
He rose and pulled her up, his face and beard glistening with smears of her moisture, and he held her face in his hand and claw to bring it against his. No matter how she twisted, he continued to push his heavy tongue at her tender lips until they'd parted and he was licking against her teeth. Her nose was against the remnant of his nostril and he knew she could smell him as well as her as he mashed his face harder against her. When she bit his lip he clubbed her with his claw, then rolled her over on her belly and lifted her hips. She tried to crawl forward, and he pulled her back against him with his hand, used his claw to help push his cock into her streaming cunny. He went all the way in and held it there, then said, "Good and hot, ain't no you?"
"Yes. Terribly hot. Go on. Screw me." "Where?"
"Right there. Good and deep. Screw me for a long time."
"Cunnies ain't my meat. You know that."
"Then...then do it in my butt-hole, but for God's sake, do it!"
The long cock was withdrawn so fast she thought some of her insides had come with it. Then it was probing at her anus and she was moving to open herself as wide as she could for it. It would be terrible, even worse than that kiss that had had her close to vomiting, but it would be over soon. Her hand was at the edge of the bed. The big knob of his organ pushed and pushed and then popped into her anus and she wanted to scream with the pain for she knew she'd been split wide open. Her anguish sounded like great lust as she said, "More. Give me more."
"Ah, yes, there's more," he said and pushed hard at her, pushing her forward, then dragging the fine white hips back at him until they were pressed against his ragged trousers.
She'd almost had it. She'd actually touched the barrel when she'd been pulled back, and the moment she'd touched it, the pain dissolved away. Now the pain was back. He was going all the way in and all the way out with long, slow strokes, each stroke tearing her insides and pushing her guts about. She got a good hold on the edge of the bed and was able to keep her finger on the little gun barrel, just an inch below her sweating face, and the comfort of it was enormous. She truly was getting to it. In no more than another minute she'd have it in her hand. The thought of turning about and blasting another hole in the face was sheer ecstasy.
The rasping voice said, "That's it, girlie-girl. Wiggle your ass around. Gettin' to like it already, eh?"
"Love it. Love it," she moaned, and rotated her hips against the smooth stroking of the long, hard cock in her. In just a few moments, that cock would be dead, and it was only fitting its life be snatched away during the very height of its dirty existence. She worked her hips harder, gyrating them crazily as his hands slammed her harder and harder back against him. The ecstasy of her coming destruction was flowing through her now in a very sexual way, and she could feel her juices running out of her and down her leg.
"Harder! Deeper! Ah! Oh, yes! God, that's good!" His last great surge had driven her forward several inches and now the gun was in her hand. She held the cold metal against her lips and gloried in her feelings. She had to concentrate hard to feel any pain now. The ecstasies of her anticipation were such that all she could feel was the deeper and deeper pleasures that radiated out from her violated anus. She bit the walnut grip of the gun as she felt the pleasure so strong in her that his cock might have been in her cunny. By squeezing her sphincter on him, the pleasures were sharply increased. By doing this rhythmically she could experience something like a coming.
Again and again she squeezed as he pumped harder and harder at her, the waves of pleasure rushed through her like a torrent. She was coming! She was gloriously, wonderfully coming with every part of her body. Her love juices were flowing forth in huge quantities, and she had to see it happening so grandly to her. Panting in her eagerness, moaning in her great delights, she lifted her back and looked down to see that she was peeing.
The stuff was gushing forth from her in a stream broken only by the writhing of her body. It spewed forth and ran down her legs to form a puddle directly below where she was coupled anally with the Yankee sergeant, orgasming so strongly she couldn't stop it. The urine ran yellow into the white stars of her banner.
She placed the gun in her mouth, closed her lips around the twin barrels and pulled the trigger. It only clicked. A faulty cartridge, for she knew it was loaded. She braced for the roar of the gunshot that would tear through her brain before she heard it and pulled the trigger for the other barrel. Another empty click and she collapsed on the bed, too defeated to even weep as, behind her, she heard the grunts and moans of the Yankee at his climax. When he withdrew his cock, she lay perfectly still, entirely rigid. Her comings were still happening in her and she felt if she never moved again they'd go on and on and she could be lost forever in those feelings, never to have to face reality again, never to stir from her sodden bed of deepest shame and deepest pleasure.
Above her, Adele said, "My God, Staunton, where did she get that gun? From Creel?"
"No, if he had a gun like that, he'd have sold it for whiskey. She must have brought it in with her. In her boot. Yes, in her boot. Careless of us. Inexcusable."
"It didn't work, and that's what matters. Has she fainted?"
"Possibly. Give her an hour to sleep before you bathe her and get her upstairs. She'll probably be out even longer this time. A session with Creel is something of a shock to the system."
"D'you think she's gone entirely mad?"
"Close to it, but she's young and strong. Good, sturdy, American stock. She'll survive and serve us well."
EIGHT
It was daylight when Holly awoke, and she knew she was in the cozy bedroom again. She didn't know if it was reality or a dream, or if her last waking moments had been fact or fantasy. Neither did she care. All she cared about was the warmth and sensual luxury all about her. Just as she'd been doing before she had either fainted or gone to sleep, she began squeezing her thighs together. When it wasn't enough, she began to rub her loins with her hand. At the sound at the door, she stopped.
It was Colonel Hearn wearing a satin robe and bearing the silver tray. He smiled at her in a most kindly fashion and greeted her warmly, asked if she'd slept well as he latched the door and brought her the tray. She watched him, mute and unmoving, until he was at her side. Then he picked a box from the tray and said, "This is for you, my dear."
Stoically, she opened it and withdrew a nightgown of yellow silk, very flounced and imagine, with a low, scooped neck and a hemline that would reach to her hips. She said, "For me?" "For you. Put it on, dear."
He noted no embarrassment when she sat up, exposing half her nudity, before she slipped into the frothy little garment. She thanked him for it, then thanked him again when he put the tray across her lap.
He said, "I hope you like ham with your scrambled eggs."
"I like it fine. It's very good."
He beamed at her as she ate every morsel of her breakfast and she thanked him again when he removed the tray. He asked her, "Would you like to get up and make your toilet?"
"Yes. May I?"
"But of course, Holly. Would you mind if I came with you?"
"Please do. Whatever you like, Colonel."
Assisting her from bed, he said, "I've taken the liberty of having a bath drawn for you. I trust it's still hot. Do permit me the liberty of watching you in your ablutions, if it's not too much of an embarrassment to you."
"Oh, no. I'd welcome you." She gave him a small smile.
While she used the pot and removed her little nightie and bathed, the colonel sat on a tufted bench and chatted to her about his travels. He spoke of the many foreign lands he'd visited, of the joys of discovery in these exotic places, of the serenity of the ocean cruise. She listened courteously, making appropriate comments now and then. He assisted her from the tub and asked if he might towel her dry. She readily consented. He worked very gently with the thick, fluffy towel, lingering over her erogenic areas while Holly exchanged looks and smiles with him. When he delved gently between her thighs with his hand, she parted her legs for him.
"Are you at all sore there, my dear?"
"No. Not at all, Colonel."
"Would you like me to make love to you, dear? Make you feel very good all over?"
She opened his robe and slid her hands about his big waist, pressed close against his fully rounded belly. She placed a kiss on the graying hair of his chest, then lifted her piquantly smiling face and kissed his lips, tickling her tongue out until she found his. She pushed the robe off his thick shoulders, and when he was as naked as she, she fluttered her hands down to his loins and gently moved them over his organ until it was hard. Then she backed an inch away from the kiss and said, "Colonel, I'd love it."
"By Tophet, you are an affectionate little dear. Knew it the moment I laid eyes on you. Now if you'll take my arm, I'll escort you back to the boudoir where I'll do my very utmost to show my growing affection for you. I've another little gift waiting you there."
So touched was she by his offering that he was hard pressed to get her arms from about his neck and show it to her properly. It was a slim yellow book he'd taken from the nightstand, and now he leafed quickly through it as he said, "We have many of these. They're printed up in France. Excellent etchings, what? The illustrations in this and the other volumes represent just about every conceivable variation on the sexual act. Does looking at them stimulate you, Holly?"
"Oh, yes! They're absolutely wonderful! Ooo, my cunny's getting wetter every time I turn a page. Would you like to feel it?"
"By Jove, it is wet."
"Mmmmm. Your hand is so good. I wish it was this lovely cock of yours in me, though."
"All in good time, my dear. Just now, lie back and spread your pretty legs. Now I'll just put this nice, soft pillow under your sweet ass. There. Comfy? Grand. Now I want you to lie there and leaf through the book while I do all I can to make you happy."
The colonel lay on his belly with his face at the juncture of her loins and carefully parted the gold-tufted pink lips. Very gently, he began to move the tip of his tongue along the length of her slit. When he reached her clitoris, he pursed his lips and sucked it slowly in his mouth to lave it more thoroughly than the rest of her. Then he raised his head and said, "Is that pleasing, Holly?"
"Oh, Colonel, it's the most wonderful thing I've ever known."
"I do hope my beard isn't an irritant."
"No, it tickles. It's wonderful. You're wonderful to me."
"It is my pleasure, my dear. Relax. Read your book. Trust me to please you well."
The colonel was not only gentle and thorough at it, he was good. No portion of the portals of that young pink cunny were allowed to escape his lips and tongue. He knew exactly where to use suction to best advantage and exactly how much pressure to apply with his tongue in combination. In minutes he had the girl writhing and moaning there on her perch of the satin-covered pillow, so heated that she frequently clasped the yellow book to her bosom and squealed in her delight. When he grew a little weary, he'd pause to catch his breath, smiling fondly up at her contortions and using his nimble fingers to maintain her state of huge excitement. At those times he'd ask Holly to describe the illustrations she was looking at, and she would do so eagerly, painting a word picture in glowing terms. Then he'd return to his task with renewed ardor.
He'd brought her to orgasm three times that he knew of, and had her nearing the crest of another when he stopped his kissings and reached beneath the bed for a cloth. He handed this to her, saying, "My dear, your sweet cunny is a bit too wet for me to comfortably continue. Be a dear and wipe it dry for me."
She did so and held the cloth out to him when he said, "Did you see what that cloth was, dear?"
"Hmmm? Yes. Part of a Secesh flag. Won't you go on now, Colonel? Just a little more? It would be so very good of you."
"By Jove, yes! And gladly! I'll want you to come as hard as ever you have in your life now."
He fastened his lips over her clitoris, sucked it in his mouth, and tongued it in firm, swirling motions. In a few moments, she began to come, casting the book aside and reaching down to pull his head harder against her gyrating hips, moaning and crying loudly. He was steadying her jolting bottom by holding one buttock firmly in each hand, and at the zenith of her delirious bliss, he slipped one thumb into the hole of her cunny and firmly massaged the walls of the passage as far as he could reach, still continuing in his steady tonguings and suckings on her clitoris. Her fine young body was immediately convulsing even harder, her hips moving even faster, her moanings a babble of adoration for him. Her love juices were flowing very heavily down over her anus and he smoothed them against the ring of it with the ball of his thumb. She squealed louder still and pushed herself against his digit until it entered her, then arched her bottom against both intruded thumbs in quick, snapping movements not hard enough to dislodge his avidly working mouth. Her cries were loud; high pitched and keening one moment, guttural and basely gleeful the next. Suddenly she went rigid at the apex of one of her thrusts, her hands at her sides clawing the satin bed, her face screwed into a grotesque mask of lust, and a deep, animal growl issuing forth from her. He increased his suction, flicked his tongue more rapidly, moved his thumbs harder. For a long moment, she remained in that attitude, then her body burst forth into a last, great paroxysm of surging, humping, flailing activity, tossing about on the bed, twisting every possible way, gone completely out of control.
When he quit her, she turned and lay on her side, either sobbing or laughing, her body twitching and jerking. He went to her and held her strongly in his big arms, pressed her close to his large, solid bulk. Slowly the muscles in her body came back under her control. Her little hands stole up his chest to cup his face. She lifted her lips to his and kissed him, then moved them about to feel more of his wetted face and beard.
Tenderly, he said, "Is there anything more you'd like now? Anything at all?"
"Yes. I'd like to screw you. I'd like you to lie back while I screw you. Would that be all right?"
"Holly, dear. Anything you like would be just fine."
When she'd seen that he was arranged most comfortably on the bed, she got the bit of red and white and blue and dried her inner thighs. Tossing it on the floor, she got astraddle his hips, and with many a smile and blown kiss, she fitted them together. Her eyes grew wide and her smile was one of pure delight as she lowered herself on its length, then snuggled her bottom firmly against his loins. Supporting herself with a hand on each of his thighs, she began moving up and down. She moved sideways, too, and in a circular motion that brought him obvious pleasure. She went alternately slow and fast, periodically tightening her vaginal muscles and relaxing them, all the while gazing and smiling at the supine man with utter adoration in her blue eyes.
At length he said, "Go on and have a come if you want, dear."
"I want to very much. Even more, I want to wait for you."
"So be it. Just a few moments more and I'll be happy to oblige."
In those few moments, she outdid herself in her actions, moving even faster, gripping his organ even more strongly and at the first thrust of his hips up at her, she went wilder still. Her hips were a white blur of activity then, flashing up and down and all around in a frenzy of motion and, through all their gyratings, not moving enough to allow his spurting organ to slip from her hold. When he'd gasped and grunted along with her to the end of his ejaculation, she came forward, her slim belly pressed close to his gross one. She kissed his chest while her vagina contracted slowly and luxuriously on him to drain every drop of his pleasure from him.
He said, "By Tolliver, you're a most pleasing wench. I'd wager we could both do with a bit of a catnap now."
"Mmmmm. Not me. I feel too good to go to sleep. I want to stay awake and keep feeling it. But, you nap if you want to. I'll watch over you."
"If I were to doze, I fear you might have ideas." He looked pointedly at the open window.
She smiled and kissed him. Then with many an expression of blissful reluctance, she lifted her little body from his great loins. She placed a pillow under his head, fluffed it up, then turned about and curled in a comfortable ball with her head on his lap. She took his flaccid organ in her hand, then into her mouth to lick it and suck it gently. Holding it under her cheek like a small pillow, she said, "Have your catnap, Colonel. I'll stay right here, if I may, where you'll feel my every move."
He closed his eyes.
The movement that woke him two hours later was that of Holly's mouth working on his organ. Lifting his head to look over the mound of his belly, he saw the little blonde. Her eyes were closed, and she managed to convey an expression of great joy and contentment even with the thick shaft moving in and out of her sweet pink lips. When he placed a hand on her ruffled blonde hair, her eyes flew open and she took her mouth from him and said, "Oh, Colonel, I'm so sorry I woke you. But a marvelous thing happened while you were asleep. Your lovely cock got nice and hard right under my cheek. I just had to try to bring you a come for your dreams."
"I'm glad I woke, dear. It's even better for me when I can watch your lovely face. Go right on, if you wish."
She did it slowly and lovingly, occasionally looking up at him for some sign of approval, though never once removing her mouth or hands from him. When he announced that he was coming, a fine flush spread through her cheeks and she worked more vigorously, though not so hard as to cause him discomfort. She stayed with him to the very end, greedily licking every last drop of the stuff that jetted forth, and swallowing it all.
He said, "Ah, that was as fine a sucking as ever I've had. Now be a good girl and reach over in that drawer there. I've got something for you."
She was awed at the string of pearls nestled snugly in the velvet box. Her eyes filled with tears when he assured her that they were hers. When he put them around her neck, she ran to the mirror and posed this way and that with the jewels as her only covering, then climbed back to embrace him warmly, to wriggle against him in her happiness. "Are they really mine?" she asked. "Of course, they are, dear. And there'll be many more pretties for you as long as we're together."
"I hope.. . I hope we're always together, Colonel. Just like this."
"Ah, one can't spend all one's time in bed. There are times when that palls and one must return to constructive duties. But have no fear. That time isn't at hand yet. Now's the time to relax and regale one another with pleasant stories while we rest preparatory for a later display of our growing affection for one another."
She settled happily against him and said, "Tell me about your trips to China. I've always dreamed of going to China."
"It's a fascinating country, and it's quite within your reach as long as we're friends and associates, you and I. But, I'm a bit famished now. Be a dear and get the doorkey from my robe. There should be a tray of champagne and caviar just outside the door and I'm far too comfortable to move."
He watched with interest as she fetched key, then tray, returning with the tray to the bed, then relocking the door and putting the key back in his robe. He poured the champagne and showed her how to spread the caviar on the fresh, crisp toast squares, and she fed them both while he regaled her with the tales of his Oriental adventures.
The colonel napped again that afternoon, with his head cradled nicely against the firm little breasts of the girl while she stroked his forehead in a soothing manner. When he awoke, he fondled her for a long time, and when he had her passions properly aroused, repeated his cunnilingus in the same I anner he had that morning.
By then night was falling and he lit a cozy fire in the fireplace. They nestled close to watch the flickering flames. He said, "I fear I've talked myself out. Let's hear a bit about you, dear."
"There's not much to tell. I haven't done all those things you have. Nothing at all, really."
"But interesting things, nevertheless. Let's hear all about you, Holly. I really should, you know, if we're to remain good friends."
"Well...I told you my name was Holly Munson before. It's not. It's Holly Meade. And I'm from near Culpepper, not from Danville. This captain who got me to spyin' for the South told me to fib like that, but I'm not very good at fibbing."
"Oh, that comes with a bit of coaching. I could teach you to lie well enough to convince Mr. Lincoln himself you're his long-lost daughter."
This caused her to laugh merrily and say, "Oh, wouldn't that be a fine joke!"
"Indeed it would. But let's hear about you, dear."
"There's not much to tell, like I said. My father and mother homesteaded some land near Culpepper just after they got married. Most of the land was taken around Culpepper, but everybody sort of forgot about our little valley, I guess. It doesn't look like much from the big valley outside, and I guess it really isn't much once you're back up where the house is...was. Anyway, my Ma and Pa built it up pretty good. Oh, nothing big and imagine like some of them plantations, but it was good enough for us.
"All we had was about two hundred acres of land we could work-not enough to do big with cotton-and only eleven slaves-but they were more like hired hands than slaves. Pa used to say we were self-contained, that we could get along just fine up there no matter what. Even after the war started he used to say the same thing.
"Oh, we knew there was a war goin' on, but it didn't affect us much at the start. Not till just a few months ago. Up till then we did just like we always did, working the land and selling what we grew, going down out of our valley to get stores and livestock now and then. I don't think Pa ever did take sides, one way or the other. He just knew it would end someday and, either way, we'd be just the same as when it started.
"And then there was this big battle down in the valley below us. I don't even know who won it-if anybody did. Some of the Yankees came up our valley, carrying cannons behind their horses, stopping to shoot at the Confederate soldiers chasing them. We could hear it at the house, coming closer and closer. The noise was awful.
"Pa said it would be all right, and he told me and Ma to go up in the hills by the house and wait it out. Ma wouldn't go. Instead, she stayed with Pa; Blue, that nigger you got in the cellar, he took me up there, kicking and fighting all the way. He got us behind a tree we used to play in when we were little and we watched while the Yankees came up and put their big old cannons right in the front yard and started in to shootin' at the Confederates as they came out of the valley and up at the house.
"One of the cannons blew up and that caught the house afire and Ma and Pa got caught in it. That was about the time I fainted. Just passed right out. When I woke up, it was all over. Just smoke and dead bodies and busted cannons left. Blue told me-he's not very good with words sometimes-he told me the Confederates overran the guns and killed every last one of the Yankees who'd busted in on us in the first place."
The colonel patted her head and said, "Poor Holly. War is very cruel."
"Oh, I know that. And I know if our farm had been fifty miles north, and it was the Confederate boys that got there first, it would have come out just the same way. It's done. I can't go back to that. My folks are dead and I've mourned enough for them. They had a good life and it's over and mine is still going on."
"Jove! That's the spirit!"
"I don't even want to go back there now."
"We could see that you'd never have to. What did you do after the battle?"
"Oh, I was all filled up with patriotism and revenge, and I took Blue and our last mule and lit out. Say, I know what happened to the mule. Is Blue still all right?"
"He's quite comfortable, for a former slave."
"Good. I hope he gets out of this all right. I hope you turn him loose because he's a very nice person, even if he is black. Anyway, we went on down to Richmond and I asked around and met this captain who told me how to be a spy and get even for the things the Yankees did."
"His name?"
"Pomeroy. Captain Dudley Pomeroy. He told me what to expect up here and what to look for and how to get the information I found out back to him."
"And how was that to be done, Holly?"
"Oh, there's this livery stable on. . . let me think...New York Avenue. The man's name there is Hargood...No, Hargrove. I was supposed to say, T'd like to rent a high-spirited mare, snow white.' Then he'd say, 'All the high-spirited animals are off to war.' That way I'd know it was him. Then I'd give him the information, he'd put it in a cipher, and send it back to Richmond. That was all. But I didn't even get a chance to see him once before Adele picked me up that night."
"My dear, I for one am very glad it worked out this way."
She smiled and said, "Mmmmm. I'm beginnin' to feel that way myself."
"Not angry with us any more?"
"Not in the least. I'd never be angry with you if you'd let me screw you again now . . . "
"At my age, I need sustenance to keep up with a girl like you. And at your age, you need some pretty baubles to keep your eyes sparkling. Run fetch the tray outside the door. When we finish with that, we'll see about our screw."
They dined on cracked crab and more champagne, with Holly pausing every few moments to radiate a smile at the ruby ring on her finger, to give the colonel a kiss between the tidbits of crab she offered him. When the last of it was gone, she said, "Now you'll have a screw to remember, and all I ask is that you don't move a muscle."
Later, watching the last glowing embers in the fireplace, her head nodded against her shoulder.
Each time it did she came awake with a start and continued in their conversation. At length he said, "You're as sleepy as I am, Holly dear. It's time we went off to dreamland together."
"Oh, no. I'm not sleepy at all. You go on and I'll amuse myself with this precious book."
"Come now. I know you're barely able to hold your eyes open."
Her eyes grew moist as she slowly said, "Really. I don't want to go to sleep."
He touched her face to turn it to his and said gently, "If everything you've told me is true, Holly, you'll wake up right here in this bed. I promise you that."
Her eyes were touching in their innocent credulity. She said, "I will?"
"I promise. Now put your pretty head down and close your eyes and have a dream with me about sailing off for Shanghai."
She was asleep within the span of twenty heartbeats.
NINE
It was daylight again when Holly awoke, and this awakening was a fine one. Her senses were clear and she felt entirely refreshed. Best of all, she was still in the comfortable, snug room. She was by herself, the colonel was gone, and she could wallow in the big bed and stretch between the satin coverings in a shamelessly self-indulgent manner.
She did just this for a time, then arose and donned the pretty blue robe she found at the foot of the bed. She went to the window to drink in the fresh morning air, then wandered about the room, just touching all the pretty furnishings and accouterments that struck her imagine. She paused at the mirror to smile at the reflection of herself in the rich robe, the pearls still about her neck, her hand with the ruby on it held at her cheek.
She found the key to the room on the table by the door, and she unlocked the door, then cautiously poked her head out in the hall. Stooping, she picked up the tray and brought it back in, locking the door behind her. Along with a hearty breakfast consisting of more foods she hadn't seen in a long time, there was a lovely red rose and four more of the yellow French books. As she ate, she alternately sniffed at the rose and turned the pages. Occasionally she'd linger over a page and finger herself between her legs.
She was not surprised to find a warm tub waiting for her, and she looked at some more pictures while she bathed. After her bath, she scented herself with cologne and dusted herself with powder. She found the blonde wig and put this on, combed it out nicely and did it up with a blue ribbon. She donned the little nightie and the soft robe and sat by the window to read some more, still touching herself now and then, but being careful not to bring herself to orgasm. She reckoned it to be somewhere shortly before noon when she heard a key turning in the door, and she rose to go and greet her caller.
It was the colonel, looking grim, and behind him was Adele, looking equally somber. When Holly made to embrace them, she was turned aside.
The colonel said, "You lied to me, Holly."
"But I didn't! I swear I didn't! Why would I lie to you?"
"Because you're still faithful to the South."
"But I'm not! The only ones I'm faithful to are you. No, that's not even true. In truth, I'm only faithful to myself now. There. That's everything. I haven't kept anything from you."
He advanced on her, ominously, saying, "You did lie. You lied about your contact here in Washington."
"But, I didn't! I told you exactly what Captain Pomeroy told me."
"That contact was caught by the Federals over six months ago. What you told us was a ruse to keep us from catching the new one."
"But. . . but, my commanding officer . . . "
Adele interrupted, saying, "She might have been telling the truth. News of Hargrove's capture might not have reached her Captain Pomeroy."
The colonel shook his head and said, "It's highly unlikely. I'm afraid she's still not to be trusted. Come along, Holly. It's back to the cellar for you. Best leave your pretty things here. They'll be waiting once you return.. . . if you return."
All during the time she was removing the frothy lingerie and the jewelry, Holly wept and protested her innocence. All during her march down into the bowels of the house, she continued to wail and beery her fidelity to them. When she was at last escorted into the dim, dark dungeon, she slumped down on the soiled bed and again tried to convince them of her veracity. She wrung her hands and got down on her knees on the cold stones to plead with them, and as she did, she struck her leg against the derringer she'd dropped there. She looked at it and, in her great distraction, picked it up and held it between her hands, clasped in their prayer-like attitude.
Eyes filled with horror, Colonel Hearn backed away, sweeping the likewise terrified Mrs. Pace behind them. "Great Caesar's ghost, she'd got a gun! Get behind me, Adele. In her state, she'll not hesitate to use it!"
"A bullet for each of us! Staunton, where did she get it?"
"I have no idea, but if she doesn't shoot us with it, it's her key to escape. Back, Adele!"
Holly looked from the terrified couple to the gun, then back again. She said, "Oh, it doesn't even work. Look," and held it in the air to click it. "Please believe me. I was telling you the absolute truth just as far as I knew it about that contact. How was I to know he'd been caught? I already told you I hadn't the chance to see him. Colonel Hearn. Adele. Please. Please believe me. Don't leave me here again. I.. . I couldn't stand that. And I couldn't stand to be away from you. Please."
Their frightened looks changed to slow smiles and they looked at each other. The colonel turned to Holly and held out his hands, and she came forward on her knees, slowly, not believing, her hands held out to him. They came to meet her, the colonel drawing her to her feet, Adele wiping away her tears as the girl laughed through her blubberings.
Hearn said, "We believe you, Holly."
"Yes," said Adele with fond comfort in her voice. "Come. Let's get out of this dreadful place and back to our snug room. We have some talking to do."
Still snuffling, Holly embraced them both and said, "And...and perhaps a little loving?"
"By Jupiter, yes!" cried the colonel. "You deserve a bit of sport for all we've put you through this day. Pleasure before business on this day of days!"
One on each side, Holly's dear friends walked her up the stairs to the second floor bedroom. There she undressed them. She was all excitement in her tasks, but not so excited as to permit them to assist her in any way in their divestments.
She'd undo a button or two on the colonel's vest, then hasten to push Adele's hands from the buttons on her basque to do it herself, then quickly return to help the colonel off with his shirt, then lovingly pull down Adele's frock. It took a while, for her work was interrupted many times by her show of fond affection for the couple, but when it was done, her expression showed she knew the result was worth the effort.
She stood between them, a naked male belly and a rampant cock pressing her at the one side and a pair of breasts and a warm cunny pressed at the other, she hugged them both to her with all her might. When she pulled them to the bed, both came forward willingly.
For a time, the trio rolled about together in their nudity, with Holly first atop one, then the other, with Hearn and Adele embracing her as they embraced each other. Holly would have gone on to larger things straightway, but the sage Colonel Hearn stayed her until all three were at an equal state of readiness. Then he took charge of the cementing of their friendship.
"By Tophet, Holly, if you keep nibbling about at Adele's cunt that way I'll feel terribly neglected."
"Staunton, leave her alone. She's enjoying herself."
Holly lifted her flushed and smiling face to say, "Colonel, I'm so sorry. I surely didn't mean to neglect you."
Adele, on her back, her legs in the attitude of a frog about to spring into a pond, pushed Holly's face in her crotch the moment the girl finished addressing Colonel Hearn. She easily moved Holly's avidly working mouth against her hungering flesh, crooning out a sigh of utter contentment, then said, "Staunton, do let her finish me. It won't take long at all now."
Holly moved her fingers to take the place of her mouth. Lifting her head against the pressure of Adele's hands, she smiled mournfully and said, "Oh, Adele. I was hoping it would take a long, long time. But I simply can't bear the thought of poor Staunton being so alone. I do need something in my cunny besides his dear fingers."
"Jove, we'll find a way," cried the colonel. "There's an arrangement the East Indians have thought up for just a happy menage a trots as we. Here, Adele. Turn about on the bed and put a pillow under your head. Keep another pillow close at hand. Keep your legs open-Gads, you can't close 'em by now-keep them open while Holly gets over you. That's it, dear girl. Bury your pretty blonde head in Adele's loins and have at it. No, keep your hips up for a bit. I know it's tempting to lower them on Adele's face, but there'll be time for that. Now, I'll just anoint old John Bull with a little cream and we'll be at it in no time."
He used a liberal amount of Adele's cold cream on his rigid organ while he kneeled on the bed behind Holly's elevated buttocks, Holly on her knees and kissing deeply at Adele's rhythmically moving loins. When he placed the blunt and slippery end of his cock at Holly's butt-hole, she hesitated a moment, then squirmed herself back against it.
He said, "Ah, yes. It doesn't take our Holly long to take a liking to something new. I'll ease it in and it won't hurt a bit. Adele, keep diddling our dear with your fingers. Ah, halfway home now."
Still gasping from an orgasm, Adele said, "She's wonderful. The more I come, the more she wants me to come. I can see you going into her butt, Staunton, and it looks simply divine. She's terribly tight, isn't she?"
"Just right. Her bottom's just like her cunt. It would mold to the girth of any cock that got near it. Ahhh. All the way in now. How does her cunny look, Adele?"
"Livid red, with delicate shades of lavender, all surrounded by pretty pink skin and lovely golden hair, and all of it wet as can be. It's really a very exciting view. Oh. Oh, I'm going to come again."
"Have a closer look, Adele. Use the other pillow under your head whilst I go on buggering her nice and slow."
"Ah, I can smell her so strongly. So fresh and yet so very womanly. Her clitty is so big now, so close to me. Ahh, she's got her mouth right on mine now. Right on it! Yes, Holly, that's it! Oh, harder! Ah, she simply loves to kiss me there."
"She needs that, too, Adele. After all the suffering she's known, we must prove to her that she'll know nothing but the most intense pleasures from the moment she gave us her trust, to eternity. Kiss her cunny, Adele. Just like she's kissing yours."
The colonel used his weight to slowly bear Holly's sweating, straining body down until Adele's mouth closed over her clitoris. Her hands pulled Adele's hips closer as the older woman heaved through her climax, and she herself moved her hips in a frenzy of passion as it became very obvious she was orgasming, too. Each downward movement of her hips jammed her clitoris harder against Adele's moving tongue and suctioning lips, and each upward movement increased the wonderful friction of the colonel's organ tightly bound in her anus. She moved rapidly, the juices pouring down her inner thighs, in a contorting paroxysm of emotion that four hands helped her in.
Through it, she could hear Colonel Hearn's words, "That's the ticket, Holly. Let yourself go completely. Feel it all. Experience every bit of sexual pleasure that any woman possibly can. Ah, it's good! Damnably good, isn't it? And there's more. There's absolutely no end to the pleasures you'll have in return for a few occasional services to provide the wherewithal for our other comforts. There's one service in particular just now you could do for us that would provide us the funds to go to Europe and not lift a finger for a year or two. We could forget all about this ridiculous war and spend all our time seeking the very utmost in pleasures of the senses. We'd have the funds to provide you with men and women, boys and girls who could show you things you've not even dreamt of before. You'd experience all and more you saw in those books, my dear. And it's all yours in exchange for one service, unpleasant at the time but a minor irritation compared to what it would bring us all. Ahh. You're really feeling it now, aren't you? You're having the biggest come of your life. Adele, don't shirk now. Have at it with a will, and I will, too. She must know it all. She must be thoroughly sated for a time to show how fond we are of her. Harder! Faster!"
Holly was sated. For a time they thought she'd swooned, but when they began to carefully wash her with warm cloths, she opened her blue eyes and smiled warmly at them. Then they all joined together in bed to work on a bottle of chilled champagne, Holly in the middle, nestled snugly between Adele and the colonel.
He said, "Content?"
"Perfect. Just perfect."
"Splendid. With the body sated, it's a fine time to discuss business."
"Oh, yes. You said you had something to do, something I could help you with. What is it, Colonel?" she said with a yawn.
"Pay attention now. There'll be time for a nap shortly. We've been offered a great deal of money to perform a task that would be difficult for you, impossible for us. There's a group of businessmen in New York City who consider themselves to be patriots of the highest order. Unfortunately, they're either too old or too busy to offer their services as members of the Union Forces. In their misguided good intentions, they've subscribed one hundred thousands dollars to pay for the killing of a Confederate General officer whom they feel is the largest threat to the Union and, by the way, to their way of life."
When he paused, she nodded and said, "Go on."
"Well, we convinced them of our ability to the extent that they've given us ten thousand dollars in gold to cover our expenses. About half of that's been spent in forming our plans for the task, still leaving ample funds to carry out the terms of our contract, return to New York for the rest of the money, whereupon we'll be off on a tour 'round the world, the three of us. You are to carry out the major part of our plan, Holly. You are to be the instrument of the assassination of Stonewall Jackson."
At her expression of alarm, the colonel said, "Holly, dear, the life of one man is nothing in this world. The killing of that particular man will serve the purpose of shortening the war and saving thousands of lives, South and North alike. Would you like to think about it before you give us your decision?"
Adele said, "Perhaps she'd think best about it in the cellar."
"Adele, no! No more threats. Holly, would you like us to leave you now for you to mull it over?"
"No. It's just that I can't see how I'd do it."
He turned to face her, enthusiasm in his voice now as he said, "Simplest thing in the world for a successfully returned Secesh spy like you. I'll make up some safe conduct passes for the three of us and we'll be off in the carriage for Richmond. We'll give you some military information to turn in to your commanding officer, and your fidelity to the South will be totally unquestioned. That, coupled with your talents in the boudoir, will enable you to get close enough to old Stonewall to do him in."
"But he's a very religious man and devoted to his wife. I could never tempt him into bed with me."
"True, but you'd have no trouble at all in gaining the friendship of his junior officers, thus getting more and more access to the general."
She smiled and hugged herself, saying, "Working my way up through the ranks."
"Precisely. And when you're close enough to him, you'll introduce the European friends who saved your life in Washington, and we'll slip a dram of arsenic in his sweet potato pie. Then we're off to see the world. Well, what do you think of it?"
"I don't think it would be at all easy. But I'm sure it would be worth doing. Just think! Just think of all the times we could have in Europe and China and India!"
"Yes, dear, you think about those good times and we'll all have pleasant dreams about them. On the morrow we'll make ready and then be off to make our fortune, off to do our bit toward ending the war!"
TEN
In the morning, while Holly gushed over the wardrobe of clothes she'd been bought, they discussed specifics of their plan.
The colonel said, "We'll leave tomorrow morning. That will give you ladies time to pack and me time to assemble the information for the Rebels. We'll tell Sarah and Creel we're going to be gone a few weeks. They can worry about the landlord when he comes 'round for the rent of this place."
Holding up a pair of silk pantalets, Holly said, "Oh, won't they be furious when they find we're not coming back? Unless, of course, they already know."
The colonel and Adele looked at each other in silence, then she said, "Holly's right. They might be listening right now."
"No. Creel's dead drunk and Sarah's off to the store...But they might have heard us before. And of course, they haven't the scruples of a weasel between them. They must be eliminated."
"I suppose so," said Holly as she artfully arranged the tresses of her long, blonde wig over her pink-tipped breasts. "Either that or keep them locked up till your landlord comes. When is he due?"
"Three weeks," said Adele. "Plenty of time. Staunton, we could put them in the cellar until then!"
"Of course we could! We've two cells there. Put Creel in with the black and leave them all enough food and water. We'd be done with our mission by the time the landlord found them."
Holly said, "Ohh. You're going to leave poor Blue there, too? I was hoping he could come along. I know the road to Richmond, but it would look much better to have him as our driver."
"Hmm. Is he to be trusted? I suppose he's bitterly against the South."
"As a matter-of-fact, Blue is a little too dull to be for or against any cause. He's simply faithful to me, perfectly willing to do anything I say. We could even set him to guarding Sarah and Creel in the basement."
"No, I rather like the idea of having him as our driver. Creel and Sarah would be secure. Those windows are boarded up tight in both cells."
Holly came to sit on the colonel's lap, kissed him fondly, then leaned forward to kiss Adele. She said in coy tones, 'Two cells?"
"Yes, they'd be at each other's throats in no time if we . . . "
Holly cut off his words with another kiss, then cooed, "Yes. Wouldn't that be amusing?"
"Staunton, our girl has a head on her shoulders. We could even watch them at it!"
"By Tophet, yes! I'll drill another peep hold straight-away. Our Holly girl deserves a look at the revenge she's calculated for those two. Come! Get some clothes on you, girl. We've got work to do!"
While Holly dressed, the colonel and Adele carried a store of bread, the rest of a side of mule meat, and a cask of water to her former cell. Then the three of them combined to carry the unconscious Creel down and throw him on the bunk, still covered as it was with the soiled Rebel flag. Holly paused to lean over the soddenly sleeping man and spit in his face before they left. When Sarah returned to the house, the colonel told her that she was to get her whip and go to the cell where she would find Creel awaiting, manacled to the bunk. She smiled broadly and hurried to obey.
She entered the room in all eagerness and the door was closed and bolted behind her. Within a matter of seconds, she'd noticed Creel's wrists were free, and she was pounding at the locked door. Smiling at each other, the colonel and Adele and Holly withdrew to the main floor of the house where the colonel drilled a third hole in the floor directly above the recumbent Creel, stirring slightly now as Sarah worked frantically over him.
They all watched as Sarah turned him on his back and tore strips from the Confederate flag. She bound the drunken man's wrists and ankles firmly to each side of the bed and stood over him, the fur-covered whip in her hand.
The colonel said, "He'll not wake up for a while. Then we'll hear his cries and watch it all. Come and we'll pack."
Holly said, "Oh, I wouldn't want to miss anything. Let me stay."
"Very well, dear. Adele, come with me, if you please."
As they worked together at assembling an impressive packet of maps and battle plans, the colonel said, "Well, my dear? Have you any doubts about little Holly's conversion to our way of seeing things?" i
"None at all. She proved it with our little charade of the inoperative gun, and now she's showing she's got a real appetite for animal lust. I think she'll be an asset to us wherever we go."
"And if she doesn't come along, if we have to leave her as a sacrificial lamb after we've done in old Stonewall, then we'll manage to get along without her."
"Yes, dear. We'll always get along."
Holly called excitedly to them then and all three joined on the floor to peer through the holes in the cellar ceiling.
Creel's left eye had been open and staring all along, for his terrible scar never permitted that eyelid to close. His right came open slowly, red and watery, and shifted about the room before finally coming to rest on Sarah looking down at him. Gazing at her fixedly, no emotion of any kind showed on his matted, twisted features; but it could be seen that his arms were barely stirring, testing the bonds on his wrists. Seemingly satisfied with the 'mulatto woman's workmanship, he relaxed, a grotesque parody of a smile further twisting his features.
"What they got me down here for, Sary? Did I let the roughneck in me out whilst I was in my cups?" He ran his tan-coated tongue over the stumps of his teeth on his dirty, hair-fringed lips with obvious distaste and said, "I feel like I been eatin' black powder. I'm parched, Sary-girl. Be good to your old pal and fetch me a dipper o' that water."
Impassive, Sarah said, "You ain't no friend of mine and I sure ain't no pal of yours. I remember every filthy look, every dirty word you ever said to me. That's why you gonna stay tied up till they let us outta here."
"What? You mean to tell me they locked you up here too, after all the work you done fer 'em? Ain't that the way of them foreigners, though! But be a dear girl and give us some water, for after all, we're in the same boat together, so they say."
"You get no water and no food till you're so weak you couldn't get offen that bed even if you was untied."
The wheedling tone in his voice diminished and he twisted hard at the bonds on his right wrist as he said, "For God's sake, show a little Christian charity, woman! Can't you see how parched and sufferin' I am?"
At last she grinned, broad-lipped and sloe-eyed. "You sufferin', eh? Ain't that too bad. You keep on tryin' to twist outta that rag on your wrist and I'll see you suffer more."
She leaned over him to leer at him, her hands on her hips, looking immaculate and imperious in contrast to the man who writhed helplessly in his soiled rags. She was wearing a spriggled muslin housedress of white and blue that came down to her ankles, but that fit her nicely from her ample hips and narrow waist to her big bosom. It was low at the bodice, revealing much of her tawny brown decolletage and all of her sleekly strong arms up to her shoulders. She hovered there, gloating in the man's helpless struggles, then hooked her fingers in her bodice to pull it lower so that one plump breast, chocolate brown and black tipped, dangled heavily over the contorted face.
With great mock concern, she said, "Maybe the nice, brave soldier would like a drink from here. Huh? Would you like that?"
Still twisting his arms slowly, he made himself attempt to smile as he said, "Sure, Sary. Give me some of that water and I'll give your tit a nice, long suck. I'll suck your pussy, too, if it pleases you. All them things I said to you was just the way of an old campaigner to show he truly likes you, girlie-girl. Now, give us a drink."
Still grinning malevolently, Sarah said, "So you like me, eh? Let's see if you do." She put her hand in the fly front of his frayed trousers and tore them open, revealing his organ, limply lying on his loins. Ignoring his snarl, she took it in her hand and said, "You been fibbin' already. If you liked me, this'd be nice and hard by now." She took the fur-covered whip and coiled it, then began smoothing the thing about his loins and over the flaccid penis, saying, "I'd help your cock up with my hand, but I don't like to touch dirty things like that. And besides, you prob'ly don't want no nigger gal touchin' your pride and joy."
Squirming, back to wheedling, he said, "Sary, you know I ain't that way. You know I was only foolin' when I called you a nigger gal. Come on, pretty thing. Give me a taste o' that water and then a taste o' yer pussy. I'll give you a better licking than that Holly gives Miz Pace and, if you want, I'll give you a better screwin' than the colonel gives either of 'em. See? It's comin' hard now, even though I am parched half to death. That shows how much I like you, girlie-girl."
Snaking the fur over his rising organ, Sarah said, "It is nice and big now. And now I'm gonna show how much I like you, Sergeant Creel."
When she tore his shirt off, he grinned and nodded at her. When she went to tear at his pantlegs, he vigorously protested. She ignored his protests and shredded them down to his ankles, and now he tried in vain to conceal his left leg from view. It was horribly mangled, laced with liver-colored scars consisting of broad lines dotted on both sides with the marks of a hasty surgeon's needle, twisting tortuous paths over the maimed and gnarled member that had once been a straight, strong leg. .
Harshly, he said, "Cover that up, damn you!"
"Why?" she smiled as she traced the ugly scars with the whip. "Your leg ain't no uglier than your face."
"Aargh!" he roared, and strained all at once at all of his bonds, his dirt-crusted body heaving about on the soiled bed, his erect penis bobbing like the mast of a ship in a squall.
She began lashing him. She stood back a few feet from the bed to get all the speed she could into the tip of the whip as its first blow slammed his penis flat on his belly. With unerring aim, she struck it again and again, ignoring his shouts of pain and rage until it was wilted and limp, and still she went on as if to drive it back into his body. She stopped beating his loins only when his howls changed into pleas for mercy. Then she began on the rest of him. She started at his knees and worked upward, pausing for an extra blow at his loins, until she was slashing the whip down across his face. Then she worked downward again.
By then he was drenched with perspiration and it ran off his body in rivulets, cutting a multitude of white paths through his mottled gray skin. She was sweating, too. It could be seen staining the underarms of the pretty frock and running down her neck and into the dark cleavage between her heaving tits. Another stain of moisture was forming down her spine, visible through the dress down to her buttocks so that one knew her loins were sweating even more. Big drops of perspiration stood out on her forehead and on the upper lip that was curved into a relentlessly cruel smile. Even the whip was wet with sweat, its soft fur matted down so that each new blow now made an even more distinct line across the nude, pink-striped body of the sobbing man. She continued with the whip until even his pleadings stopped and he only lay there and wept.
The mulatto woman was breathing very heavily and there was a look of madness distorting her lovely face. One shoulder of her frock had slipped down and she absently tried to pull it back into place, then impatiently tore it away, revealing one breast with its nipple black and hard as obsidian. She was highly aroused sexually, and this was confirmed by the musky smell of her loins, strong enough to clearly .be detected even through the rank odor of their combined perspirations. She watched with relish at the twitching form of the man she'd so thoroughly subjugated, and as she did, she dug at her loins with the butt of the whip.
Creel made a sound. He coughed. He croaked. He said, "Water."
Sarah at once threw the whip aside and got up on the bed. Her hands were shaking as she lifted her skirts and tried to pull down her sodden pantaloons. They stuck to her wet skin. They wouldn't go past her full thighs, spread as her legs were over the barely conscious man. With a snarl, she tore her pantaloons down the middle and groaned deep in her throat as she placed a hand between her legs and massaged herself vigorously there. She stopped and used both hands to part the black lips of her wetted vagina and arched her body until she had to crane her neck forward to see past her breasts at his slack face.
"Hey, Sergeant. You want water?"
"Water. Gimme water."
"Open your eye and look where it's comin' from."
He did so and moaned slightly, twisted very feebly at his bonds.
She said, "You want a drink or don't you?" "Sary, don't . . . "
"It's all you're gonna get, Sergeant. And to get it, you gotta beg for it." She stood there, smiling evilly down at him, still holding herself open, and now using her thumbs against her clitoris.
His tongue looked furry as he vainly tried to wet his lips, staring all the while at that hugely exposed female organ three feet above him. Slowly, chin trembling, he opened his mouth.
She sniggered and said, "You wasn't shot in the tongue. You can talk. You can beg."
Still twisting about very slowly under the spraddled legs, Creel croaked, "Give me a drink. I don't care what it is but give me a drink...please . . . "
Even her voice was shaking with her excitement as she said, "Oh? You don't care what it is? You'd just as leave get up and have some water out of that cask than some of my nice nigger pee?"
"I...I want your pee, Sary. Please," he whined. "I'd rather have a drink o' yer pee than all that cask o' water or all the whiskey in Kentucky. Please, pretty lady. Be a nice girlie-girl and give the old sergeant a squirt o' yer nice, warm pee."
It was hard for her to start it. Her bladder was full, but the state of her excitement gave her little control over her muscles there. Further, she was giggling very softly in this state of arousement, causing her body to shake slightly, and she wanted badly to see him get every drop. When it came, she didn't miss.
His mouth was slackly open when the First of the yellow stream entered it, and at once he yawned it wide to let it gurgle deep in his throat. His chest convulsed as he fought to keep from coughing, losing any of it, and he swallowed as fast as he could at the frothy, salty liquid that streamed and gushed into his mouth. He lifted his head to get more of it, twisted about when it seemed that her laughter-shaken body would deprive him of any of it, and when the stream slowed to a stop, he greedily licked his lips for the last dregs.
Sarah's voice was rich and vibrant with her high excitement as she said, "You didn't get enough, eh? You can lick off the last couple drops."
Still holding herself open, she suddenly squatted on him and mashed her cunt against his face. She smeared it about on him, grunting and humping her hips, having to lean forward to support herself with her hands on the top of the bunk, waddling her thighs farther apart to feel more of his face on her. Gasping and grunting, she rasped, "Lick it good. Feel all of my pussy with your face, white man. Make me keep on comin' or you won't even get any of my pee to drink. Ah. Uh. Uh! That's it! Keep it comin'. Oh! Oh, sheeit! I'm gonna have me a good come."
The strips of cloth she'd torn from the flag were very stout and strong. They fit about his ankles and wrists tightly and there was no chance at all for him to work his right hand free. But his left, that stump of a claw, hadn't the strong, straight bones in it that his right did. It had been very painful, but he'd managed to worm the stump flesh containing sharply shattered bones out of the tight loop of cloth. When it was free, he flexed the twisted thumb and gnarled finger like the pincers of a nightmare crab, then moved it up behind her.
It inched under the bunched skirts behind her, crawling under them and over his grimy, sweaty chest with utmost patience. Close to its goal, it stopped, like a weird, subterranean animal in a dark and humid cave, poised before the prey it could not see, but knowing from much experience where it would strike. Its prey was unsuspecting, moving fast in Sarah's great excitement, but wholly exposed to the unseen attack.
When Sergeant Creel's hand leaped forward, Sarah shrieked loudly and tried to plunge forward off the end of the bed. Showing enormous strength, and even greater cruelty, Sergeant Creel hooked his powerful thumb more deeply in her anus and slowly drew the screaming mulatto woman backward. When her loins were directly over his face again, just before she could reach behind her and try to drag at his thick wrist, he jabbed his hand forward again and took a deeper hold in her body. Howling in pain, she twisted her torso back and forth, reaching for the source of her awful suffering, only increasing that suffering each time she pulled at his wrist.
Above her screams, he shouted, "Stop it! Stop it, by God, or I'll tear your hole plumb outta your filthy black body! Stop it, I say!" and he dug at her cunt with his finger, then closed his pincers until only a thin membrane of her flesh separated them and she was reduced to blubbering pleas for deliverance from a benefactor that was not there.
"Ah, that's better, Sary-girl. Now I'll just ease off a bit whilst you get to work on me other wrist. No use tryin' to roll away, 'cause what's left I' me hand is strong as iron. You see?" he said, and used the pincers smartly to make her scream again.
He still held her fast when his right arm was free and then had her, blubbering and wailing, turn about and untie his ankles. Using sharp stabs of pain when emphasis was needed or when the imagine struck him, he made her tear strips from her skirt and tie the pieces of cloth to the sides of the bed. Between his right hand and her left hand, they bound her right wrist to the bed, and he at last eased the pressure in her anus and vagina. He raised his stump from her to strike her with it if she made a move to attack him, but she only slumped back on the bed, weeping uncontrollably. He was clumsy but thorough in binding her other hand to the bed, and then he sat and gloated over his handiwork.
He grinned, gap-toothed and grotesque, and held up his stump, saying, "That's a handy hook when it comes to women. It's all wet and dirty, though," and he wiped it over her mouth. Then he jerked the shreds of her skirt up and jammed the pincers where they had been before. She came to life, trying to expel his stump by twisting her hips about and closing her legs on him. With his good hand, he slapped her hard across the face until she stopped, beaten again, her defeat even showing in ,her sobs now. He moved his thumb and finger in her more carefully.
"You got yerself worked up good and proper, didn't you? Me, too, and that's a fact you can see for yerself. I didn't right think it was the whippin' that stirred me, though. It's the stink of yer hole that started it, and now it's feelin' how good and tight it is. I need me a good screw before I give you back the beatin' you gave me, with some extra."
Sarah's voice was very quavery as she said, "Like...like you screwed that girl."
"That's right, girlie-girl. Right up the ass. It hurts like blue blazes at first. Then if you got someone likes you, he can make it feel right good.
If he don't like you, he can make it hurt even worse."
She nodded at him very somberly and he rose and went about to get between her legs. Without any urging, she lifted her knees and spread them as far as she could, even bringing her hips up off the bed to expose her anus completely for him.
He leaned on her open legs to open them farther yet, then inched forward on his knees till his penis was pressed at the black ring of her anus. Grinning, without saying a word, he moved his hips from side to side, back and forth, the head of his cock ever in contact with her flesh.
Suddenly he surged forward, burying himself completely in her with such rapidity that her resolve was shattered and she screamed hoarsely. He watched as he dragged the length of hard meat in and out of the tortured flesh, laughed aloud at the bright stains of red that marked his course. When her screams trickled off to sobs, he just as suddenly withdrew his cock and plunged it hard into her cunt, drawing a great shout of mixed pain and rage from her. He fell on her, pistoning his hips, mauling her breasts with his claw while he turned her face to his with his good hand.
"Ha? Hah? How d'you like that? How d'you like havin' a cock in you again after all yer vows never to feel it like this again? Hah? Is it good? And is it made better havin' this ugly face slobberin' over you? Hah? Does it make you think back to all the slave owners and soljers screwed you half to death? Does it? I want it to! I want you to think back over every man who ever used you like an animal, every man who ever hurt you! I want to hurt you just like you hurt me with your looks at me like you'd puke if I touched you. I even want you to come, you black bitch, so you'll never forget how I used you like the filthy animal you are!"
She was flailing on the bed. Every part of her body was bucking against the misshapen hulk of a man who plunged at her so relentlessly, who laughed at her every struggle, who mashed his twisted face against the flawless brown skin of her throat. As she kicked frantically at his scarred, thin buttocks with her heels, first one shoe flew off, then the other. Still she kicked, but now it only served to spur him on to greater efforts. All the muscles in her body stood out tautly under the glistening wet brown skin, and her head whipped back and forth on the bed as she repeated, "No, no, no, no, no . . . "
Her arm strained harder and then came free as the muslin binding broke. Driven by this taste of freedom, she rolled her other shoulder up against his and heaved that arm free as well. She took two handfuls of his hair and jammed his face harder into her throat, moaning, gasping, "No, please, don't let it happen. Oh, Sergeant, lemme be. Don't make me do this. Don't make me turn into an animal again. I swore...Oh, mercy...I swore I wouldn't ever be like this with nobody ever again. Please! Sergeant, please don't make me come! Kill me, but don't make me come! Oh! Sergeant come with me! Oh! sweet mercy me, gimme all you got! Screw me and bite me and pinch me and hurt me, only come with me! Oh! Aoh, it's too much...too damn good!"
With her grip in his hair still firm, she lifted his face and brought it against hers, then held it there with her arms while her hand went to roam over his scarred back and pull him harder into the frenetically humping embrace. Their humping slowed, but now each thrust of their bodies together was very long, very deep, causing both of them to shudder visibly. Slower and slower they went, still locked in their kiss, until all their huge motions had been expended and they lay spent, still clasping.
There was tenderness, reverence in Sergeant Creel's every movement as he rolled over on his side. Sarah came with him, holding their loins close together with one brown leg twined about his blank.
Softly, he said, "It's been such a long time. I'd forgotten what it was to do it proper with a proper beautiful woman like you."
"It's been long enough for me to know I can't quit it. Not when there's men like you around who's strong and can still be gentle when it's over with."
"And ugly . . . "
Silence for a time, then Sarah's husky giggle. She said, "Law, me. You gittin' hard again! With the hold you got on me this time, I don't see as how you'll have any trouble at all rapin' me."
"Wait," he said. "Let me turn out the light, Sary, dear."
"No, sir! In the dark or in the light, you get to know my shame. You get to see me carried back to the jungle by your cock. With the light on, I get to see what you're ashamed of, too. That sort of makes it even, don't it?"
"Even," he said softly. "I never thought I could start off even with any woman again."
She moved her hips against him and said, "We can figure out who's the most even later on. Right now, let's just start off, honey."
Above them, the colonel and Adele and Holly arose, and the colonel said, "Rather a disappointing finish to what started out to be a great good show. Drat! Who'd have thought that I'd be providing those two with a honeymoon?"
ELEVEN
Colonel Staunton Hearn was feeling expansively good. Always one to derive great pleasure from the counting of his blessings, he had enough of these right at hand-so close he could touch them-to make any man beam with the happiness he felt. One by one, he reached out to place his pudgy hand on those blessings.
He reached into the picnic hamper on the floor of the swaying coupe and closed his fingers about a chicken drumstick, the last of the viands they'd stuffed into the hamper at Centreville, over a hundred miles behind them. He withdrew it and gazed at it lovingly, nibbled at the golden brown crust, and regretted not one bit that he'd had to pay five dollars cash for each of the dozen chickens that had sustained them on their journey south.
He touched another of his blessings, patted the hard bulge nestled against his soft belly, that bulge that was the sack of gold coins, almost five thousand dollar's worth. He touched it, he patted it, he massaged it lovingly. Then he reached for yet another blessing. m
The bottle of champagne was warm, but not distastefully so. It was quite palatable, in fact, and there were eight more bottles of the same vintage residing in their luggage atop the carriage. He hoped that the wine would travel well. He hoped there'd be ice available in Richmond, and when he reflected on the way in which things had been going his way of late, he became unequivocally certain that there would be.
He tore the last bit of meat from the drumstick and tossed it out the window, then rubbed his fingers together to brush off the crumbs outside the carriage and at the same time feel another of his blessings-the warm, early May air of Richmond. The trip had come off with great smoothness. The safe conduct passes he'd forged had worked uncommonly well. Almost every picket who had challenged them had done so on the run, either to or from an obscure hamlet called Chancellorsville where it was rumored the South had won a major victory. They'd had to give a wide berth to Chancellorsville, and that had cost them a delay. The delay would have been longer still if it hadn't been for Blue, the huge former slave who now handled the reins of the carriage's team.
To properly count all his blessings, the colonel knew he should stop the carriage and call Blue down to pat him on the head like the obedient animal he was. Blue's incarceration in the cellar had altered him from the savage, snarling monster they'd locked up at gunpoint to the docile, cap-tipping black who never tired in the driver's seat. Sharp words from little Holly had helped in this transformation of her servant-the colonel's servant now-words that first assured the black that she was safe and happy, and then had scolded the giant until his back was to the stone wall of his cell. The colonel appreciated but didn't touch Blue.
Instead he took his hand back inside the cab and touched yet another blessing. He placed a finger at Holly's tightly whale-boned waist and, amid many a giggle and coy look from the pretty little blonde, wriggled it up between her fine, firm breasts until she caught his hand in hers and pelted it with breathless kisses. Ah, that was a real blessing that had fallen in on him from heaven. Cute as a button, she was, and especially so this day in her long, blonde wig, the pretty, pink frock that had so pleased her, the tiny bonnet on her head, eyes all a sparkle with the excitement of the adventure he'd brought to her life. And charming and fresh and innocent as she appeared to be, she'd responded so well to the colonel's training that she'd be a useful tool for many years to come. In his own bed, she'd please him more than she could ever know. And in another man's bed, she'd please him further still by giving of herself so fully, yet doing it all with the colonel's own best interests at heart. It would be a shame to have to leave her in Richmond, if it came to that. He'd rather leave Adele, in all truth. Ever since Holly had come along-and especially on this trip-Adele had shown less of an affection for him and more of a desire for the softer embraces of the girl. He'd heard of one woman falling in love with another, and now he rather feared it, for any sort of a love affair between those who trafficked intrigue was dangerous.
He poked Adele more sharply, making her jerk her hand from under Holly's skirts. When she looked crossly at him, he smiled blandly and offered her the bottle. She took it and offered it first to Holly before she drank. He decided something would have to be done about that budding affair.
Then Holly was squealing with excitement, pointing and saying, "There it is! There's the hotel Captain Pomeroy stays at. Oh, I do hope he's still here. Have you got the papers for him, Colonel?"
"Indeed I do. And, Jove! what good fortune. If I'm not mistaken, that's General Jackson's battle flag flying over that group of tents just down the street. By all means, as soon as you receive your congratulations from your commanding officer, prevail upon him to take you there to receive further plaudits from those of Jackson's men not riding about and firing guns at Chancellorsville. We'll just tie up across the street there. Blue! Pull up there. Gads, man! Are you deaf? Holly, tell your black to tie up. And by thunder, tell him to heed what I say to him from now on! Dratted Nubian . . . "
Holly Meade only lifted her skirts to her shoe tops as she crossed the street to the hotel. Still she drew many looks and a few coarse comments from the men in shabby gray who trudged south, the walking wounded who'd left so many of their countrymen strewing the fields at Chancellorsville. She smiled at them, not the brazen smile of the coquette, but the smile of the Southern belle whose patriotism was momentarily allowed to override her sense of propriety. At the desk of the crowded hotel, she was informed that Captain Dudley Pomeroy might still be seen, but that she had best hasten, for his orders had come to send him off on a mission so dangerous the good captain could only whisper about it. She mounted the stairs with quick little steps and rapped at his door hopefully, eagerly, the packet of important papers clutched to her breast. From within, his voice brusquely bade her enter.
She stepped into a room cluttered and strewn with man's paraphernalia, in and out of trunks and portmanteaus, a prodigious amount of gear for the military man who reputedly travels light. She stepped over soiled linen shirts and a cavalry saber and a box of papers, looking here and there in the half-filled luggage, while across the room, the tall figure of Captain Pomeroy knelt in a closet, throwing shoes and boots behind him like a dog digging for a bone.
Over his shoulder, he said, "Dammit, where've you been? Four months in this confounded hotel and they don't even have the common courtesy to be quick with a porter when my orders call for me to hie myself for Savannah post haste and forthwith! Come on, boy! Stuff those things in my trunks."
In her tinkling, musical voice, Holly said, "I've been called many things, Captain Pomeroy, but I've never been called a boy."
He whirled, eyes wide, mouth open in the fringe of his yellow beard. He stared for a moment, then exclaimed, "Holly! Thank God you're safe. Oh, I've worried so about you."
He got to his feet amid the debris of his packing and came to her, arms extended. She waved at him with the packet of papers and airily turned away, casually glancing to his luggage as she strolled about the room.
Following her, Pomeroy still held out his hands as he said, "I've been so worried, Holly. Not a single dispatch in these last four weeks. I thought sure you'd been taken prisoner."
"Hard to send dispatches through a contact who's been caught months ago." She waved the papers again. "That's why I brought these in person."
"You mean...you mean you actually did get some information?"
"Oh, not much. The strength of Joe Hooker's army. The diagram of their encampment. Grant's telegrams from Vicksburg. Not much at all, really."
"Not much! Honey, you've got more than...as much as any of the spies I've sent north have ever got! Oh, I'm so dag-goned proud of you, I could hug you and kiss you all over. Hand 'em here, Holly, and let's have a look at them."
Instead, she took another turn about a large steamer trunk, looked down into it, then reached in and plucked out a two-foot-long swatch of golden, yellow hair, thick and lustrous and tied with a blue ribbon. She said, "Law me. Is this mine? There were times I never thought I'd see it again."
"Of course it's yours, Holly. I've saved it, treasured it, gone to sleep with it on my pillow every night since I had to send you away. But now you're back and all's well and...and I'll have another mission for you, even more dangerous and productive than this last."
She was frowning, fingering the hair, and she moved away from him again as he tried to reach for it. She said, "I don't recall my hair being quite this long nor quite this coarse."
"Oh, you know how time plays tricks on you. Is that a wig you're wearing, honey? My, it sure does look...Here! You stay out of that trunk. There's important papers in there!"
His admonition came too late. She'd already dug her hand into it to come up with a whole handful of shorn hair, black and brown and red and yellow, all dangling from her hand with blue ribbons to tie them up, all mute evidence of others that had passed through that hotel room. He reached for them and she flung them in his face, and he spluttered and fought free of the tangle of tresses with both hands. When he was free of the hair, he found himself looking into the twin barrels of the little derringer he'd given her in that very room.
He smiled. He shrugged. He said, "Holly, you can't be mad at me for keeping the hair of some of the other spies I've had to train and send north. I won't try to lie to you. I was as fond of some of them as I was of you."
"And how many of them came back? How many of them even got dispatches back?"
He shrugged again, smiling cockily, and came at her, holding his hand out for the gun. "It doesn't matter if they came back or not. What matters is they tried. Now give me that gun, Holly, and we'll talk about our trip to Savannah. Savannah's a real nice town, you know."
"One more step and I'll shot, Cap'n Pomeroy."
"Savannah's a real nice town. I already got a reservation for a room big enough for two. We could have some high old times there before you go off to war again. Now hand me that gun and.. . "
He leaped back a yard when the little gun exploded to fire a smoking hole in the floor between his feet, and a totally different expression came over his handsome features now. Gone was the smile and along with it, the color from his cheeks. His mouth stood as open as his eyes, and his face resembled the color of tallow. He stammered, "It.. . works."
"Of course it works. A very good friend of mine, a colonel in the British Army, fixed it for me. Something about the firing pins having been pounded over flat with a hammer. Now, who do y'all suppose might have done that?"
Some semblance of his former smile came back and he tried to laugh as he said, "Well, I can't have pretty girls runnin' all over creation carrying guns, can I? It'd be dangerous to the troops."
"And so you traded worthless derringers for girls' hair and maybe even their lives. Oh, Captain Pomeroy, you are a caution."
Her smile brought him sallying forth, modest but assured. He said, "I'll admit I always did have an eye for the ladies, but that's all I'll admit. Now put that away, Holly. Guns made me nervous as all getout. Help me pack and then away we'll go for Savannah."
Shaking her head, still smiling back at him, Holly continued to hold the little gun at his eyes as she knelt to the floor. She tipped out the contents of the packet and groped through the strewn papers until she found the pair of black iron manacles. These she tossed to him and said, "You try these on, Captain Pomeroy, and see if they fit you as well as they did me."
"Here, here, Miss Holly. I won't have this! You can't be blaming me for any trouble . . . "
As she raised the snout of the gun to arm's length at his eyes, he faltered to a stop and began fumbling with the handcuffs. He was perspiring lightly on his upper hp when he had them on and held out for her approval.
She said, "That's just fine, Cap'n. Now get on over to that open bedroom door. Fine. Now just hold your arms up high over your head. When I say three, you're going to jump as high as you can and see just how far you can get your wrists over the top of that open door. Ready?"
"Holly-honey, you cain't do this to me. All's I ever had was your best interests at heart. Remember? I didn't even want to send you to Washington at all, and anyways, I cain't jump that high. That's a powerful high door, honey-chile, and all's I really want to do is to make up to you for ever'thing you had to suffer through up there, no matter . . . "
"One."
"God, don't point that at me, child! I jus' cain't stand no guns. If I could, I'd be up there at the front, along with the rest of the boys, shootin' and . . . "
"Two."
"And don't look at me like that! For the love of
God and country, give me a chance to explain, honey. I . . . "
When she opened her mouth, he leaped. He leaped high, seeming to be suspended in space for a moment while he flung his chained wrists over the top of the door as far as he could. And when he fell back, he was indeed suspended, his feet dangling inches off thee floor. Silent now and sweating heavily, his face dead white, he watched as she primly put the derringer and the papers back in the packet, then got up and moved about the room, looking down at the floor. He moaned when she picked up the cavalry saber. When she advanced on him, hissing it out of its scabbard, he opened his mouth to a cavernous width.
"Cap'n Pomeroy-if you really are a captain-if you let out so much as one squeak 'cept in answer to my questions, so help me I'll skewer your liver on this."
His mouth hung open, entirely mute, while he craned over his strained shoulders to watch. She used the sword with a swiftness that made him shudder as she slashed at his red sash, then cut his black belt, then sawed at his trousers and drawers until his uniform breeches hung about his dangling boots and his buttocks and loins were laid bare. She gave him a resounding blow across the buttocks with the flat of the sword, a blow that drew two parallel lines of red drops of blood, but that drew no cry of protest other than a low, terrified moan. Then she dropped the sword with a clatter and walked about the room, impatiently kicking at his accouterments as she looked.
She said vexedly, "My land, you are afraid of guns. Don't even have one around, and that little derringer just isn't big enough for what I need. Of course, it'll do fine for shooting a nice round hole in you if you start in to yelling, but I surely do need something bigger. Ah! Hark! What's this? You got yourself a Gallager percussion carbine. Lots of these were left laying around after the fight on our farm. Me and Blue used to use them to hunt with after our crops got burned and our stock took off by the troops. And look here! You even have some buckshot charges for it, all brand new and sure to fire. I'll just slip one of them in the breech, close up the chamber, put in the cap, and it's all ready to go 'cept for cocking back the hammer."
The man hung on the door began to whimper. He kicked his feet, very slowly, his boots a muffled thudding on the door as they struck through his shredded uniform. He hid his face against the door and moaned, "Buckshot. Not buckshot."
She walked up behind him and spread the cheeks of his buttocks with a firm, experienced hand. When he tensed by reflex, she bent and bit him enough to draw blood, then straightened her bonnet. He was sobbing when the hard object jabbed at his butt-hole, and he tried to tense again as it pushed in, but then it was too late. It was too late and the barrel of the gun was too smooth once the sharp sight was past his sphincter. It was an easy matter for Holly to slide eight inches of the short barrel up him, but easy as it was, it made him shudder and sweat even more as he looked with horror-filled eyes over his shoulder.
Holding the stock in her little hand, smiling winsomely up at him as she knelt at his side, Holly said, "Now, tell me. Captain. Are you really a captain? Do you really train spies for the Confederacy or is it just for your own amusement?"
"Dooon't. Dooon't pull the trigger."
She pulled it, saying, "See? No harm done if it isn't cocked. And I wouldn't have the heart to pull it anyway, once it is cocked...like this."
The sound of the hammer coming back sounded awfully loud in the room where the only other sound was Pomeroy's fast, heavy breathing.
Holly said, "Now, Cap'n I want you to take a tight hold on this gun barrel. Real tight. Real tight, 'cause I am going to let go of it now. Like this. Oh! Oh, don't let it slip. I know how these Gallagers go off if you drop them...and I'll give you another try at it. Put it up real good and far in your butt-hole. Got a tight hold? All right. You start talking the minute I let it go. If you say the right things, answer what I asked you right, then I might stop it before it hits the floor. Now!"
"I am not a captain, not even a private...Oh, God it's slipping . . . "
"Tighter. Squeeze. And talk."
"I sent a couple dozen girls up there...It's still slipping!...and you're the only one who came back...My God, it's almost gone! I can feel the sight starting to come out! Holly! Holleee . . . "
"You hush or they'll think I'm getting raped in here. Hold onto that sight while you tell me about your time with Jeb Stuart, Cap'n Pomeroy. I do love to hear war stories."
"I was just an overseer. I never was in the army. I. . . Aagh! It's still slipping!...I got the uniform off a dead captain at Bull Run, and...And I can feel that buckshot ripping into me already! . . . "
Holly said, "Tsk! Would you look at that! You really are a caution. All the troubles you've got and you went and snuck your cock up stiff. How'd you manage that, Cap'n?"
"It's...pressing on something in me. I...can't help it."
"Well," she said, starting to stroke his rampant cock. "I can help it. Maybe if I make you come, whatever's got that gunsight stuck will relax and you can be shed of that ol' carbine."
"No. Nooo . . . "
Still stroking, using ever greater pressure, Holly said, "And where was it you got your money for all this, Cap'n?"
"From...from the first.. . of the girls. Oh, sweet Jesus, don't make me come. She had a lot of money. Nnnng. Gold coins. Oooo. Ooow, it's slipping."
"No, it's holdin' firm. Your cock's startin' in to drip a little on the end, though. Go on...about the gold."
"It's...it's mostly all gone. Oh, Heavenly Father, pray for us sinners...Aaah...What's left of it-the gold-it right there by my boot. In my britches. It's yours. Take it. And for God's sake, take that gun out of my butt!"
She gave off manipulating his organ and she had the compassion to support the sagging carbine as she delved in the shreds of his pockets for the roll of coins. He hung there, panting, saying, "Over a thousand dollars. Enough to get us to Savannah and live in style. Enough to make it all up to you, no
Holly."
Holly slipped the roll of coins in her bodice. She released her supporting grip on the carbine and resumed manipulating him, much more firmly and rapidly now. His head flew back and he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, his lips working frantically in silent prayer. Every muscle in his body was strained to the tautness of a bowstring, and his toes beat a shallow, muffled tattoo on the door, much like the sound of the military drum draped in black crepe and following a casket. He shuddered out a long, low groan as his ejaculation began.
Holly rose and dusted her hands together as she stepped over the litter to make her way to the door. Framed in it, she turned to nod and smile at the gasping, shuddering man who hung unseeing on the door, his penis still spitting his seed into the air, the carbine still drooping from his anus and its butt-place only inches from the floor. She closed the door. There would be a crowd forming in the hallway, and she knew Captain Pomeroy to be a modest man.
When the first sharp crack of gunfire had issued forth from the hotel, Colonel Hearn had exchanged a worried look with Adele. Instinctively, his hand had gone to the sack of gold under his waistcoat and he'd drawn this out and clasped it in his lap. They assured each other that the gunshot hadn't come from Holly's derringer. They asked each other what earthly reason she'd have to use it in the presence of her commanding officer, and they laughed at their own initial fears.
Several minutes later, when the second gunshot sounded, it rolled at their ears like a clap of thunder. All about the lobby of the hotel heads were craning upward, and already people were milling toward the stairs. Clutching the gold to his chest, Hearn leaned out the window and shouted for Blue to get the horses going. No response at all, and Hearn climbed up on his seat and pounded at the hatchway, shrieked at the black man to get the carriage going.
Then to his surprise the door of the coupe was opening and Adele was helping Holly, pretty and smiling as ever, into the carriage. Frowning darkly, he said, "What happened up there? Did you have anything to do with those shots?"
With A dele trying to make her more comfortable beside her, Holly said, "I heard those shots. The first one sounded so close it might have been in the same room with me, but I was already downstairs in the lobby when the second one went off. Do you suppose anyone got hurt?"
"IVe no idea, but I do know I don't want to be in the center of any hue and cry. That has all the makings of a mob out there, and a man and his gold are soon parted in a mob. Get your confounded black to get us out of here!"
"But don't you want to hear what we're supposed to do now?"
"I'll hear it on the way!"
"Honestly, Colonel, you do get so upset. You'd better be careful of that or the sack will bust and those coins will be rolling all over the place." He sat down, clutching it to his breast again, looking wide-eyed out the window at the gathering throngs, heard Holly say, "Cap'n Pomeroy was so pleased at seeing these papers. He would have taken us right down to General Jackson's headquarters but he was having a very serious interview with a Mr. Gallager and . . . "
"Tell it on the way, Holly!" He glared at her, rolled his eyes out the window, and turned to jam the sack of gold coins down behind the cushion.
"I'm trying to, but between your fidgetings and Adele's sweet little old ticklings, it's not at all easy. And there's not much time. Captain Pomeroy said the papers were so important I ought to take them straight to General Jackson's tent myself, and he'd come down and give us any more introductions later on."
"Us?"
"Oh, yes. I told him how I met this wonderful European couple who helped me escape from Washington, and he wants to meet you, too. But now we'd best hurry on. Blue! Would you please drive us down the road to those tents?"
Holly had a talk with a grim-lipped major who lacked a right arm and a left eye. While she talked with him, Colonel Hearn and Mrs. Pace were detained in the company of a downy-cheeked lieutenant who walked on one wooden leg. When Holly had turned over the papers and told her story from start to finish, the major reached across the table and shook her hand.
He said, "You're a very brave girl, Miss Meade. You went through a terrible ordeal."
"I had a few things to keep me going. When they were torturing me in that cellar-in ways I'd rather not describe-I had a lot of time to think."
"Yes," he said, averting his gaze from hers. "You were thinking about love of country and that gave you the strength to carry on, to find a way to fulfill your mission even though you couldn't know it was a false one. I don't mean to disillusion you, Miss Meade. What I'm going to tell you is to discourage you from trying to continue in your role as an unofficial spy. These papers you brought are very interesting, but they're almost worthless. The campaigns they describe are, for the most part, over and done with. And as for the plot on General Jackson's life, it was doomed to failure from the start. On May second, eight days ago, the same day you started out from Washington, General Jackson was shot at Chancellorsville-by mistake-by his own men. He died this afternoon."
They looked at each other in silence for a time, and then Holly said, "I am sorry to hear it. He was a great, good man. But love of country wasn't what kept me going, even though you may look down your nose at me for saying it."
He looked instead at his empty right sleeve and slowly shook his head.
"What kept me going wasn't love," she said. "It was hate. First it was hate for those that caught me. Then when I realized how Captain Pomeroy had made a fool out of me, it was hate for him. I took care of Pomeroy. I hope you take care of these two."
"I'll see to it personally. There's a new prison camp starting in Mississippi where they'll go. It's called Andersonville."
"I don't want to know where they are. I want to forget them and forget the war, and that's just what I intend to do. I'm going back to see what my hired hand and I can make out of what's left of our farm."
"I envy you, Miss Meade. The sooner we Southerners realize the war is lost and get back to our farms, the better off the South will be. I'd like to help. Rightly speaking, that carriage and team should be impounded. You'll need a way to get back home and some horses to plow with once you're there. While I have a chat with Colonel Hearn and Mrs. Pace, why don't you and your hired man take the rig out for a drive?"
TWELVE
When they got out of the city limits of Richmond, Holly stripped naked in the cab of the coupe. She rolled all her undergarments in a ball and stuffed them and her wig in a portmanteau, then got back into her thin summer dress. Barefoot, she scrambled out of the cab of the carriage and up on the driver's seat next to Blue. She hugged his thick arm to her face and still held it with both hands as she looked up at him and said, "Hello. Blue, I sure missed you these last weeks, and I never did get a chance to say hello to you good and proper once you got out of that cellar."
He smiled, a broad band of white in his black face, and drew slightly away from her as he said, "And I didn't have much of a chance to greet you, bein' so busy playin' at bein' the big, dumb nigger-man. Hello, Miss Holly."
She hugged his arm again and he said, "Miss Holly, don't you think you ought to get back in the cab?"
"No. It's too nice a day."
"You'll get all freckled in that skimpy little dress without no bonnet."
"Good. The sooner I get used to the sun, the better. With the work I have to do, I might even get as black as you."
"That'd be goin' some. But it's me who's goin' to be doin' most of the work on the farm."
"You don't have to, you know. You are freed."
'T know that. Now you get down in the cab 'fore you get a sunburn."
"Just 'cause you're freed doesn't mean you can tell me what to do, Blue! Golly, I haven't seen you to talk with in just weeks and...Blue! Look at that! There's a sow with a whole litter of shoats."
"Yep. And a farmer with a shotgun. I might could sneak around and get him from behind, though."
"Let's try the more direct approach first. I can't think of a better way to spend some of that gold than for shoats."
The valley where Holly's father homesteaded had been a narrow valley at the neck. Beyond that neck, it grew very quiet between the walls of the canyon, and a distance of almost a mile was to be made before the valley opened out to the tillable fields. The narrow valley was very quiet on the morning when Holly and Blue approached it, although there were many visual reminders of the din that had recently echoed through those red and rocky walls. Broken caisson wheels and the skeleton of a horse lay in a pile. Farther on, an irregular row of graves lay beside the road. Both on the road and off were holes dug by explosive shot, and the trees were pockmarked with grape-shot and musket balls. Only a few birds made a sound, for even the smaller animals still shunned the valley.
The sound of the dusty coupe was very loud as it twisted and turned along the road to avoid the shell holes. The harness creaked and one wheel squeaked, but these noises were lost in the chorus of grunts and cackles and bleats and quacks and baas that came from the menagerie that rode in the cab, on the roof, and trailed along behind. Holly made a noise, too, squealing when she saw how full the stream was when they reached it, hugging Blue's arm to her bosom in her excitement.
She was silent when they emerged into the broad fields with the rows of charred cornstalks and cotton plants, silent until the carriage at last stopped at the blackened foundations of what once had been a large house. The broad lawn, once attended by four pickaninnies, was knee high and had already insinuated itself between the stones of the foundation. Two twelve-pound howitzers on broken wheels, both of their barrels spiked, pointed back up the road they had traversed. The remnants of a Federal flag was wrapped in the spokes of one broken wheel. On what had been the front porch of the house, near where Holly's mother and father had been put in the ground, stood a guidon from which flapped the shreds of a Confederate flag, obviously forgotton when the victors had found the corn liquor in the cellar.
For the first time on their journey, Blue touched Holly. Clumsily, tentatively, he put his big black hand at the small of her back, all but spanning it, then drew her gently closer as the carriage rolled to a stop. His own eyes were filled with tears and his throat was constricted, and he knew the slight blonde's emotions were running even higher than his. When she nestled closer to him and slid her hand up his leg, he sat the brake and jumped down, turned to reach out for her.
Her foot barely touched the wheel and she was flying at him so quickly that his hands slipped clear around her waist as the force of her little body sent them both sprawling on the turf. He was shocked to feel her softness all against him, not moving away as she clung to his face with both hands, clung to his waist with both knees as he lay on his back. He was even more shocked to see no trace of sadness in her impishly smiling face. He made to push her off him.
She clung to him, slowly wriggling against him, smiling even more vixenishly.
He pushed her off forcefully and rolled away from her, saying, "I feel a heap of sadness here, Miss Holly."
Behind him, she said, "Will you please stop calling me Miss Holly? You're Blue and I'm Holly and we're partners in this farm and this valley."
"I feel very sad lookin' at what the war done to this place, lookin' over there where your folks are buried."
"But they are buried, aren't they? And we're still alive and kicking. At least I am. I don't know about you."
"Ain't you got no respect for the dead?"
"Don't say 'ain't'. My father taught you better than that. Oh, hell, Blue. Say it if you want to. Do anything you want to do from here on out, because the first job of work we're going to do us put up a barricade at the mouth of the valley. Then we can say what we want and do what we want and nobody can say boo to us. We can even run naked if we want."
"Miss Holly! I know they changed you when they done all those bad things to you back in that cellar, but that's no way to talk at all."
"What do you know about what they did to me?"
"Well.. . I could hear some of it. . . They hurt you pretty bad."
"And that's why you're afraid to even touch me now?"
"It's not the place of a black man to touch a white woman, even if he's freed."
"Even if he wants to?"
"Well.. . I don't want to, either."
"Blue . . . " her voice tinkled out, floated at him from behind. "Blue...Turn around and look at me, Blue. Then see if you don't want to touch me."
With some trepidation, the big black man rolled over toward her. At once he wanted to turn away, but his gaze was held captive by her. She had slipped out of her dress, but she was not naked. She'd torn a shred of the Federal battle flag to hold with one hand over her breasts, while the other held a bit of the Confederate banner at her loins. She was smiling, mincing toward him in a gait that made her hips swing wide. They were very white hips, the whitest Blue had ever seen in the flesh, just as white as he'd seen them in so many dreams. Her trimly tapered legs were white, too, as
ISO well as her tiny waist. Her arms and her upper chest were tanned from the sun, and her face was made even lovelier by the profusion of freckles on it. She was six feet away from him when she let the two bits of cloth flutter away to reveal her apple-round breasts and her golden loins, and the sight of all this sent him rolling away from her at last.
In his haste, in his panic, he tried to crawl away from her, but she was on him in a flash. She was literally on him, leaping astride him like he was a horse and trying to rein him in with her little hands in his kinky hair.
Holly cried, "Whoa up, damn you. What's the matter with you? Don't you know when a woman wants you? Whoa, I say!"
"You let me go, Miss Holly. This ain't right."
"How do you know till you try it? Honestly, Blue, you're the stubbornest nigger I ever knew."
"Don't you call me nigger! I'm a freed man now."
He'd turned his head to say this, and now she bent over him and caught his broad jaw to wrestle him down on the grass as she'd once seen him do with a recalcitrant bull. As she struggled atop him, she exclaimed, "Well, you're not a man at all if you won't take me! You're nothing but a dumb nigger."
Trying to fight her off, but entirely loath to use his hands on that white, white flesh all about him, he said, "I am...I'm warning you. Don't you call me that no more."
"Nigger, nigger, nigger!" she cried, and got him on his back, kept him there with a furious assault of arms and legs and breasts and loins.
She was twisted about on him, half-on and half-off, and her fair white buttocks presented a marvelous target. His rage overcame him and he swung his huge hand to smack that bottom resoundingly. The force of his blow immediately put a broad pink outline of his hand on those snowy cheeks. It also drove her little form farther down on his, and she caught herself with her hands at his loins. Those dainty white hands at once closed on the huge, hard shaft in his threadbare trousers.
For a moment, she clung to it, entirely immobile, then she rent the trousers asunder and with a cry of, "By Tophet, that's a monster!" she yawned her mouth wide and took the great black knob it. He struggled against her. He moaned and pleaded and tried to push her away, all to no avail. She had a firm grip on the foot-long member with both hands. The axe-handle girth of it was firmly in her mouth, and each time she was threatened to be moved from her perch, she closed her teeth until he gave off in his struggles.
Finally he lay back moaning, saying, "Oh, Holly. What did they do to you? What did they turn you into? This ain't right. This ain't right at all. You shouldn't ought to . . . "
His words were cut off as pale legs and thighs nimbly scrambled over his head and a golden-fringed vagina was pressed against his face. Two huge black hands moved on two plump white buttocks to settle her more to his satisfaction, and for a time there were no sounds at all in the valley. Even the animals had hushed and turned to look at this strange behavior of their humans.
When the stillness was broken, it was by Holly who wrenched herself away from the tight embrace and turned about like a creature gone wild to tear at the remainder of Blue's clothes. She was panting, wild-eyed, and her trim hips were pumping and jerking continually, even at the empty air, as she stripped the panting black man bare. When he tried to touch her, she roughly knocked his hands away, saying, "One touch, one more little touch from you and I'll come. It's all I can do to hold it back for another few seconds so's it'll be just right for us this first time. All right. You're bare-assed as I am now. Give it to me. I'll do all I can to hold back till you're all the way in me."
She rolled off him and onto her back on the grass, lifted her legs with both hands and spread them wide as she could. She twisted her head back to look fixedly at the broken cannon. She wouldn't look at the huge black man, glistening in the sun with his sweat, his muscles rippling as he crawled between her legs and toward the throbbing pink slit of hers that was so in need of that magnificent black cock. She dug her hands into the grass and beyond that into the earth. She wouldn't touch that sleek body, so hard and yet so soft, so smooth and so velvety of texture. Her efforts brought forth little sobs from deep in her throat as she tried not to feel the huge member that was slowly filling her body, driving her to the brink of madness in her efforts not to move.
Her voice was very tremulous as she said, "Is it all in?"
"All you need is in, Holly." "You have...more?" "Well.. . a little . . . "
At those apologetic words, she began to orgasm. Her hips leaped off the ground to seek and find the last few inches of his member, and her vagina closed hard about it all, both to pull him forward and to milk him so hard that his orgasm started. Ten inches suddenly separated the black and the white bodies, and then they were slamming together, only to flay apart and come together again, time after time. A huge cry escaped from the pretty pink lips, tinged with laughter and pain and the greatest ecstasy, and it echoed through the valley and sent the animals stirring. Great, spasmodic growls issued forth from the black lips, in perfect rhythm with each of their lunges together.
Then their lips came together. Black and pink, they mashed hard together, opened wide, and their cheeks were sunken in with their suction to hold the kiss in their flailings, their tongues wrapped tightly about each other's to get every bit of contact that they could between the two enormously contrasting forms that were so completely merged as one.
When it ended, when the last drop of his seed had been drawn from him into her loins, they lay breathing deeply for a long time. His cheek was against hers, and she felt his first tear come.
She said, "Blue. What's wrong? Did I...hurt you?"
"I prob'ly hurt you, but that's not why I feel bad."
"Then what is it? Wasn't I as good as other girls you've had?"
"You were the best. There'll never be another like you, no matter where I go."
"Go? Who said anything about you goin'? "
"I got to. I couldn't stand to look you in the face now that I done this."
He tried to withdraw himself from her, but she closed on him to hold him there. She said, "I done it just as much as you did, Blue."
"I know that. And that makes it even worse. They got you all mixed up there in Washington. You got to straighten out and marry a white man you love and have kids and all of that. Long as you got a stud mule like me around, you won't do it."
"Suppose I fell in love with you and had your kids, Blue?"
It was painful, but now he made the effort to pull himself free of her. He rolled away, presenting his broad V back to her gaze as she sat up. He said, "White ladies don't fall in love with nigger boys."
"I'm no lady and you're certainly not a boy. If I haven't proved I'm not a lady by now, I'll prove it again. Blue, I love you. Besides my revenge on those people, the only thing I thought about up there was you-how kind and gentle and strong you are. Your color doesn't mean a thing to me. No. I'll take that back. I love you more because you're black. White men look sick and puny to me. Blue, I love you." She came to press herself warmly against his big back as she spoke, moving her breasts against him, reaching around to tenderly touch him, sliding her hands over his washboard-hard belly and down to gently stroke his cock, still damp with their mingled comings.
"Miss Holly, I'm going to get up now and put on some clothes and make you some sort of a tent right over where your folks' bedroom was. I'm going to sleep under the carriage with the animals. I'll stay here and make some pens for your animals, do your plowing, and get them seeds in the ground for you. Then I'm going to leave. Prob'Iy go to California."
She began to cry. She wept on his back, her tears mixing with his sweat. As she wept, she said, "But I love you. I really, really love you, Blue."
"On the way, I think I'll stop in Richmond and have me a talk with that there major with the one arm you were talkin' to."
She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and said, "You know, you're not really free. Nobody signed a paper saying you were free. And if the South wins the war, the Emancipation Proclamation isn't worth a damn."
"That major sure had a good, solid look about him. I'd just bet you he knows a lot about farmin'. "
"You know what they do with runaway slaves, Blue. They cut their hamstring muscles so they can hardly walk, let alone run. If you stay, I'd even...I'd even get you a black woman if that's what it takes to keep you happy."
"Yep, I believe that there major could get talked into comin' up here right quick, forgettin' all about this dumb war, just keepin' you happy."
She arose and wiped away her tears with her fist, then swung that fist to ring a solid blow against the side of the big, black head. When he turned, shocked, she shrieked at him, "Go on! Get on out of here now and don't stop to talk to that major! Just go off and find you a whole passel of Indian women, but if you think for one minute they can love you or please you any more than I can, you're the dumbest damn man in the world. Go on! Get on out of here! Git! I don't even want to look at you. I don't want to see the man who won't take my love just because I'm white. But that's not the real reason, is it? You can't keep up with me, and that's why! I thought you had all the love and the sex in your body that I do, but I was wrong. You're afraid to stay because you know I'd not only screw you to death, I'd love you to death, too. You're a coward and a weakling, Blue, and I hate you worse than poison!"
He glowered darkly at her, and when she didn't flinch under his gaze, he darted out a hand to her ankle and snatched her off her feet and down into his hugely enveloping arms. When she tried to strike him again, he roughly pushed her back on the grass and covered her mouth with his, held her pinioned there with one mammoth leg between hers while he ran his ham-like hands over her delicate body until her fists opened and she was pulling him closer. When he at last let her out of the kiss, she was blinking her eyes, shuddering along the length of her body.
He rumbled out his deep chuckle as he looked down at the frail body that so strongly pushed its hips up at his swelling organ, and he said, "You're gonna be sorry, Holly. I'll make you sorry. I'm going to be screwing you and loving you every minute of every day and night. I'll be screwing you in ways nobody even thought of before. And I'll be loving you. I'll be pestering you half to death wanting to help you with your chores and still do mine."
She was crying, and he was, too. She was laughing with him at the same time, trying to hug him harder, snuggling closer under him, saying, "And...and I'll be pestering you, Blue. I'll be helping, too. 'Specially when you're putting up that barricade in the valley. If we did it right...if we got some blasting powder and knocked down some of the rocks, we could stay here forever and nobody'd ever bother us again."
"Honey, I love you. I loved you since as far back as I can remember. But I know-I just know I'm going to love you too much, screw you too much. Now, this is my last warning. You're gonna be sorry."
