Because of the controversial nature of the subjects raised by this novel, A Father's Love has had an extensive pre-publication history. The author, Stephan Rawlins, is an American writer who has spent the last decade living in Western Sicily, a poverty-wracked, crime-ridden region rarely visited by tourists and not well studied by scholars and sociologists. As Mr. Rawlins was finishing the final chapters of this absorbing novel, he permitted an Italian translation to be made by a well-known Sicilian author who innocently allowed friends in government circles to read sections of the work. When word that the book would be published spread, certain highly placed government officials became disturbed and undertook to use the time-honored technique of claiming that the book was pornographic and obscene to prevent its release.
While plans for the publication of the English edition progressed, a court action was fought to prevent the Italian translation from being distributed. However as this edition goes to press, we have been informed that this crude attempt at censorship has been rejected by the courts and that A Father's Love can now be released to our Italian readers.
Publication of A Father's Love has also raised considerable controversy in legislative circles. While the above mentioned court case was still in progress, a Sicilian deputy to the Italian Parliament denounced the book in a speech to the assembly. During the sharp debate which followed, this deputy was challenged by representatives from other parts of the country and forced to admit that the facts as stated by Mr. Rawlins were correct and accurate.
What were the causes of this violent reaction? The novel tells the story of a young woman falling into an incestuous relationship with her father and this drama is told with a degree of frankness and sincerity which can only mean obscenity to the narrow-minded. Certainly many scenes in this book are remarkably erotic and may shock certain readers, but the publishers believe that A Father's Love is a work of true art.
But beyond the sexual content of this book, the authorities were disturbed by Mr. Rawlins' frank revelations concerning the aphrodisiac qualities of certain of the wines produced in Western Sicily. The fact that some of these locally manufactured wines were capable of stimulating the sexual appetite (particularly among women) and destroying the capacity for clear thought had long been known by the residents of the area. Under an informal but severe restriction by local authorities, exportation of this wine has been forbidden for decades and frequent attempts have been made to prohibit the peasants in these areas even from raising grapes. Since police and government officials have been unwilling to admit the existence of these wines, there has been a minimum of scientific research into the subject, but some preliminary studies at the University of Rome seem to indicate that the spring water used to irrigate the vineyards contains some as yet unidentified mineral which reacts only during the fermentation process to create one of the world's few known aphrodisiacs.
The editors regard publication of this book as a two-fold public service. First of all, it is an absorbing and stimulating psychological study of a father-daughter incestuous relationship, a subject which has been avoided by less courageous writers despite mounting evidence that relationships of this kind become more numerous each year. Secondly, it is a bold exploration of the curious properties of this strange Sicilian wine, an investigation carried out despite harassment and opposition by those attempting to conceal the facts and prevent a scientific examination of a serious subject.
CHAPTER ONE
Jonathan Oliver Winters successfully negotiated the last stretch of road leading to Romina's home, despite the fact that both of them had been drinking very heavily at their graduation party. Generally speaking, the evening had been fun for Romina, and she was happy to be finished with the tiresome business of classes and teachers and examinations and anxious to start the real life. On the other hand, she realized that she was going to miss the informal, good-natured companionship of her schoolmates and friends. They would all be separating now, inevitably, even though they had just finished swearing eternal promises to stay in touch. The out-of-towners would be returning to their home cities. Those who lived here in Boston would be getting married or going to work and starting their careers. All of her friends seemed to have their plans for the future completely made and of all the people she knew, Romina was the only one who had not yet decided what she was going to do with her life.
The idea of teaching in a grammar school or taking a position as a secretary in an office appalled her. She had majored in English literature in college and was finding that while the study of Shakespeare and Milton was an excellent general preparation for a lot of things, it was specific training for nothing in particular and despite her high marks and quick intelligence, it was clear that she would have to start at the bottom of the totem pole.
Jonathan parked his father's Oldsmobile in the alley next to her home, calculatingly moving the car far enough into the drive so that it could not be observed from the street, but not so far that they could be seen from the window. He had also carefully cut the motor just as the automobile left the street so that Mrs. Santini, Romina's mother, would not hear them arrive and interrupt the little project Jonathan Oliver Winters doubtless had in mind.
The lush black-haired girl sighed with irritation, having watched the boy go through this same painstaking procedure at least once a week for the past two years. Now the usual ritual would begin. After he had spent all that money on showing her a good time, she could hardly refuse him a few good-night kisses. Excited by this minimal bodily contact, Jonathan would press his attack, fumbling with the back of her dress with one hand while he stroked the tops of her knees with the other. Romina would soon be as busy as the general of an army, repelling an invasion here, warding off a thrust there, seizing a hand prepared to strike against a vital target down there and wiggling to avoid a frontal assault up here. The two of them had gone through this same exercise at least one hundred times in the two years they had been dating and in the privacy of her mind, Romina often wondered what it was about her that kept him returning to the attack week after week with no encouragement from her whatsoever and no hope of success.
When Jonathan's physical approaches had been spurned, he would normally turn to verbal arguments, talking about the new morality, the permissive society and the joys of the sensual life, all of which he had read about extensively in books. The young man was going on to law school next year and he could be quite eloquent when he wanted to be. When they had finished with sociology, he would launch into poetry, frequently reciting Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" which he did rather well. Then he would make one final lunge, Romina would break away and their evening's entertainment would be over for the week.
Romina continued to accept dates with Jonathan and refuse offers from other boys because she had learned that the would-be lawyer could lose his case gracefully and peacefully. Some of the other boys she had dated were not so easily discouraged and after a couple of wrestling matches, some of which had come close to ending in disaster, she had decided to restrict her dating to people who quoted poetry.
"Romina," he said suddenly after they had both sat quietly for a few minutes, "Romina. I'm going away next week. My uncle wants me to work in his law office in New York for the summer to get some practical experience before I start Columbia in September. I guess I won't be seeing you much after this week, unless you decide to come to New York and work."
"I hadn't made any plans," she replied hesitantly, uncertain as to what he was getting at and wondering if this were a new tactic of some kind.
"We've been good friends, honey, and I want you to know that I'll always remember you. There's no point in pretending that this has been any great love affair. I'm not accusing you of anything, just stating the facts: you don't love me now and you probably never will. But I've been pretty fond of you and I want you to know that I'll miss you."
Romina was suddenly touched. After all, he had been a good friend and a very considerate escort, despite these little grab sessions after every date. But of course he was right; it had not been a great love affair. Romina's experience with men and love was limited, but she knew there would have to be a feeling deeper than friendship before any sparks could fly and until the sparks started flying she would have to go on refusing. But now he was telling her good-bye in no uncertain terms and she felt a little sad. Everything would be changed now. A whole new life was beginning and she suddenly realized that she was going to miss Jonathan Oliver Winters more than she would have believed possible. Acting out of impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips, thinking as she did so that it was the first time in their relationship that she had made the first move.
Instead of making his usual lunge in her direction, Jonathan contented himself with slipping an arm around her shoulders in the most brotherly fashion and prolonging their kiss. How much nicer it is like this, thought the young girl vaguely, when I don't have to worry about defending myself every minute. She had been kissed any number of times during her college career, but she had never been able to sit through one of these sessions without the morbid fear that she was doing something very evil and that she must continually remain on her guard against the possibility of losing her virtue. The Italian family in which she had been raised was big and great, but there had never been any doubt in the education Romina had received from her mother that there were certain things one could not do until after marriage.
As she shifted slightly in her seat, her foot struck against an object lying on the floor.
"Oh look!" she cried disgustedly. "We forgot to give them the wine!"
"It slipped my mind," admitted the boy. "Just as well, I'd say. The label's about ready to fall off. Where did you get it anyway? It looks a hundred years old."
"My mother would kill me if she knew," Romina explained. "I don't know where it came from originally, but we've had a half dozen bottles of it sitting in the cellar ever since I can remember. One of my relatives must have brought it over from Italy. I asked my mother once if we could drink some, and she almost went into convulsions. She said I could have some at home with my husband after I was safely married, and not before. She's never even let me touch it."
"What'll you do if she notices one is missing?" questioned the would-be lawyer, his legal mind already functioning.
"I could say I accidentally knocked it over," shrugged the young girl, crossing her bare legs and studying the label on the old bottle. "I thought it would make a nice hostess gift."
"Well, there's no point in smuggling it back into the house," offered Jonathan, reaching into the glove compartment and extracting a combination bottle opener and corkscrew. "We'll have a farewell toast." The cork was crumbling with age, but the young man managed to pull it out intact. He gallantly offered the first swig to Romina. Feeling a little funny about drinking directly out of the bottle, she raised it to her lips and took a healthy swallow.
The wine was somewhat warm after sitting on the floor of the car and had a pleasantly stingy taste, sharp but agreeable.
"It's still good," she commented, puckering her lips slightly from the heaviness of the flavor. "Here, you try some."
The boy drank deeply from the bottle, smacking his lips in a satisfied way as he handed her the bottle back. The two of them were thirsty and they drank and chatted, neither of them anxious to bring their last evening together to an end. Finally, when they had drank all but a few swallows, Jonathan recorked the bottle and laid it on the floor, settled back against the seat and threw an arm carelessly around her shoulders. Normally, for Romina, this was the signal for her to pull cautiously away, but she felt unusually mellow after drinking the wine and relaxed against his chest, deciding that this was, after all, their last night together.
Jonathan ran his fingers through her long black hair, touching her lightly behind the ears and caressing the back of her neck while Romina remarked to herself that there was nothing immoral about this and noted how nice it felt. Smoothing her dress down over her white full thighs, she remembered how her mother had protested against her wearing this outfit as she was leaving the house for the party earlier that evening. She giggled a little drunkenly at the thought and Jonathan interrupted their kiss to offer her a penny for her thoughts.
"I was just thinking about my mother," she answered.
"If my kisses remind you of your mother, there is definitely something wrong with my technique," he joked.
"No, it isn't that," she laughed. "Mom was terribly worried about this dress I'm wearing. She said it was immoral!"
The young man glanced down at the lithe beautiful girl he had been dating for two years and now would probably never see again. She had the body of a young Greek goddess, with full lush breasts straining against the fabric of the flimsy miniskirt her mother had condemned as indecent. The skirt was unusually short, revealing the girl's creamy fluid thighs and slender tapered legs. Her black smooth hair, worn long and flowing over her shoulders emphasized the texture of her smooth fair skin. Romina's mother had been wrong in saying that the dress was immoral since on another girl it would have been regarded as perfectly normal. With Romina's voluptuously curved young shape, unfortunately, almost anything she wore looked slightly immoral and Mrs. Santini had been struggling for years to dress her daughter in baggy shapeless garments which would conceal her large ripe breasts and tantalizingly firm thighs from a lusty world.
Late in the evening while she was dancing, one of Romina's straps had broken and the other one began to bite painfully into her shoulder. After a few unsuccessful attempts to repair the situation with a safety pin, she had removed them both, allowing the gown to slip even lower over her widely spaced well-formed breasts. Now, as Jonathan looked down on her, he could see the beginning of the dark area around her nipples and gloomily admitted to himself that this was probably all he would ever see.
Since the weather had already turned quite warm, Romina had gone out without stockings and as she moved on the front seat of the car, the dress climbed up toward her hips, revealing her splendid well-tanned legs. Tearing his eyes away from this vision, he turned her head toward him again and kissed her lightly on the lips. To his surprise, she did not retreat as usual, but sighed languidly and nestled closer into his arms.
Running his hands over her smooth warm shoulders without provoking any objection, Jonathan became bolder and allowed one of his hands to drop to the tops of her breasts. Romina immediately caught his hand but the strange wine had burned away the fine edge of her moral sense and she did not brush it away as usual but pressed it more firmly against herself. This was unfamiliar terrain for the girl and she noticed with surprise that she was breathing faster and wondered if the liquor was responsible for these strange sensations. She could feel her full brown nipples expanding and hardening, something which had never happened before under these circumstances and the black-haired, full-breasted girl was puzzled for a moment, wondering if something was physically wrong with her. It occurred to her wine-dazzled mind that this was precisely the kind of dangerous situation her mother had warned her about, but somehow the older woman's words did not seem applicable to the things she was feeling. She did not love Jonathan, this she knew even when intoxicated, but she found it impossible to deny the slow burning sensation which was rising unbearably up between her thighs.
Romina slipped her hand inside the young man's jacket and rubbed his chest affectionately, at the same time releasing her hold on his other hand. A little amazed at his own success, the daring boy deliberately slipped his fingers down the front of her dress and cupped her smooth white breast in his trembling hand.
The effect on Romina was amazing! Until this point, she had been rational despite the wine and almost calm, experimenting a little with her emotions and her body and listening very carefully to that voice in the back of her head telling her that the situation was becoming dangerous. Now the voice had almost disappeared and she was conscious only of the waves of pleasure which began to rush through her wine-numbed body.
Her mother had warned her repeatedly that it was sinful for her to touch these parts of her body or let anyone else touch them and she had never before known this kind of stimulation. As Jonathan's kiss persisted, she felt his hand gliding gently along the silky smoothness of her legs and without thinking, she spread her thighs slightly, allowing a sigh to escape her lips. Another powerful wave of pleasure started up from her now sensually quivering hips and into her flat smooth little belly and she moaned slightly as he removed his hand from her breast, reached around behind her and deftly undid the zipper on her dress. There was a feeling of enormous relief as her large, ripely youthful tits tumbled free of the restraints imposed by her dress and before she could collect her thoughts and stop him, Jonathan bent swiftly and fastened his mouth on the tip of one nakedly throbbing breast.
Panic fighting with the growing lust in her body, she tried drunkenly to force his head away from her traitorously responding nipple, but then surrendered as a new surge of lewdly wicked sensation swept over her trembling body, and she pulled him even more tightly against her.
"Oh God! Jonathan ... you're driving me mad!" she mumbled, amazed at the suddenness with which this powerful emotion had swept over her. She had never dreamed herself capable of doing things like this, or allowing a man to touch her in this way. This was precisely the kind of thing her mother had always warned her against and now it was happening and she was doing nothing to stop it. What would become of her? What did this mean?
The young man moved his lips adroitly from one breast to the other, sucking her hard brown nipples gently between his lips and licking them softly with his tongue and Romina hardly noticed as his hand began caressing the soft, inner flesh between her limp, unresisting thighs. Her own hands were busy as well, hungrily touching his chest and face in a way she had never done while they were dancing.
His fingers continued to commit their delicious aggression, moving up the softness of her naked thighs to caress her warmly quivering stomach. Her dress lay bunched uselessly up around her waist, her succulent young breasts bare and her tempting loins protected only by the pair of flimsy white nylon panties she was wearing. Romina played with the buttons on his shirt, suddenly realizing she was unbuttoning him, possessed by a frantic, unconscious desire to feel his chest against her naked breast tips with nothing in between. Jonathan, amazed by his sudden success with a girl who had permitted him nothing more passionate than a friendly kiss for over two years, summoned up his courage and decided to go exactly as far as she would let him. Moving his hand slowly and carefully down the warm flatness of her stomach, he slipped his fingers beneath the thin nylon crotch band of her panties to her softly curling pubic hair and enclosed her wet throbbing pussy hotly in the palm of his hand.
"Ahhhhhh!" she groaned, sliding her almost naked young buttocks further down in the seat and spreading her legs even wider to allow him more complete access to the warmly throbbing cunt lips in between. In her wine-clouded mind, Romina slowly became conscious of the fact that her hips and loins were no longer accepting orders from her brain. Without realizing it, she had been grinding her buttocks fiercely into the seat, twitching and squirming as Jonathan increased the tempo of his caresses. As his hand swept over her tiny tingling clitoris, the whole world seemed to change for her. She forgot about the possibility of her mother coming out to investigate or the fact that this was supposed to be their last night together. The sensations he was creating in her trembling body filled her mind completely and she made no protest when he lifted her buttocks off the seat and slipped the frail white panties down over her smoothly rounded buttocks and sleek thighs and onto the floor. She had never before been naked in front of a man and the cool evening air teased against the rising moisture up between her legs, adding to the frenzy of her excitement.
With the last protection of her panties gone, Jonathan's hand returned to the moist warmth of her pubic region and she groaned as his middle finger began to part the softness of her cunt hair and slowly, teasingly, penetrate the wetness of her tiny virginal vagina. Romina was only technically a virgin, having lost her physical virginity while horseback riding as a teenager, but this was the first time in her life that she had ever had the experience of feeling the inside of her vagina touched and a tingling sensation unlike anything else she had ever known dominated her belly and loins, the most maddening pleasure she could imagine.
Jonathan looked down on the writhing, nakedly moaning girl with pure amazement. His own excitement increased by leaps and bounds as he studied the rapid rise and fall of her rib cage and the excited little throbbing motion of her nipples, now hard and tantalizing. Many a night he had thrashed around in his lonely bed imagining her mountainous young breasts nude and defenseless in his hands, and he had difficulty believing that they were finally within his reach, open and offered up for anything he chose to do with them. Below the crumpled useless dress which had so inadequately covered her firm luscious body, his hands had full possession of the thin hair-lined slit of her cunt, exposed and visibly glistening from her wetness even in the half-light of the moon.
Then with, with a sudden inspiration, he dropped to the seat and nuzzled his head between her open legs, snaking his tongue hotly into the thin fleshy gap his fingers had opened in the softly curling matte of her pubic hair.
"Aaaaagggggg!" she groaned, so loudly that he was afraid that someone would hear them. As be swirled and licked voraciously at the warm feminine fluids of her open hungry cunt, he undid his trousers and taking her hand in his, he wrapped her small thin fingers around his now rigid cock.
Romina thrilled inwardly when she heard his gasp of pleasure and she pressed his length with her fingers as hard as she could. She had seen her boy-cousins in the bath as children and remembered a male penis as a puny, limp little thing. Despite her modern education in biology at the university, she had never quite understood how such an inadequate instrument could ever accomplish all that the textbooks had claimed it could do. Now, in spite of the strange effects of the wine, she understood.
Throwing herself back on the seat, she pulled the still astonished Jonathan over her, waiting impatiently for him to drop between her widespread legs as he fumbled with his pants in an effort to free himself for intercourse.
"Come, come, oh God, come!! " she called to him drunkenly and he dropped his trousers on the floor of the car. Now naked himself and ready for action, he poised himself between her outstretched knees and plunged forward, accidentally forcing one of her legs against the car horn as he struggled to enter her body.
"For Christ's sake," he yelled, yanking her knee away from the horn as he felt his cock begin to wilt from the sudden shock and noise. But the horn did not stop, continuing to blare out into the night, advertising to everyone within a radius of five hundred yards that something was going on in the alley of the Santini house.
Jonathan, using language which Romina had never heard before, struggled violently with the horn, his cock going completely limp as he fumbled with the steering wheel.
Sobered suddenly by absolute terror, Romina dove for the floor of the car, searching desperately for her white nylon panties. At the same moment, Jonathan abandoned his futile attempts to repair the horn and started to struggle into his pants. The two of them banged their heads together, cursed each other furiously and managed to get more or less dressed by the time Mrs. Santini poked her head out the bathroom window and asked them angrily what was wrong. Buttoning his shirt frantically and jumping out of the car, Jonathan pulled up the hood and yanked the horn wires free, restoring silence to the night.
Assuring her mother that she would be right in, Romina made a few last-minute adjustments to her appearance in the rear view mirror and accepted a cigarette from Jonathan to calm her nerves before facing her mother. Their last few minutes of conversation were strained, neither making any reference to what had just happened, or almost happened. When the cigarette burned down to the filter, Romina allowed the young man to peck her on the cheek and fled the car, her mind still filled with fear and wonder.
Now somewhat sobered by her experience, the lithe young girl fully expected that her mother would take one look at her face and know instinctively what had happened, but the older woman seemed distracted and unhappy, lost in her own thoughts. Romina noticed what seemed to be tears in her mother's eyes as she entered the living room and found her bent over a newspaper.
Mrs. Santini, at forty-five, was still an attractive woman, the startling good looks she had boasted as a girl having mellowed gracefully into the gentle dignified beauty of middle age. She had devoted most of the last twenty years to raising her daughter, carefully stretching out a small inheritance received from her father, a successful Italian immigrant who had made his money in the clothing trade. A deeply religious woman, she lived and prayed for the day when her daughter would be securely and happily married and begin producing grandchildren for her.
Mrs. Santini had not remarried after the death of her husband and Romina had never known her to take the slightest interest in another man. The two women, mother and daughter, were unusually close, and Romina was sufficiently upset and worried by what had just happened to feel the need to confide in her mother.
"Mom, I've got to talk to you," she began bravely, sitting down across from the gray-haired woman and lighting another cigarette, despite her mother's often expressed disapproval for her smoking. "Mother, something terrible just happened ... I mean it didn't happen but it could have---"
"I heard the horn blowing," Mrs. Santini replied inconsequentially, apparently still distracted by her own thoughts. "Will Jonathan be able to repair his car?"
"Yes, I don't know, that's not what I meant. Mom, you know I've always tried to be a good girl. I've listened to what you said, always, and tried to avoid bad situations."
"What are you trying to tell me, Romina?"
"I'm trying to tell you something went wrong tonight! Jonathan told me he was leaving for New York and probably wouldn't be seeing me again. He was kissing me good-bye and suddenly I ... I lost control. I don't know how it happened. It wasn't his fault, the poor thing, he's been the perfect gentleman for as long as I can remember and he didn't start it, I did. Mother, it just came over me, this ... this feeling!" And she burst into tears and buried her face in her mother's lap.
"Did it happen?" the older woman asked gently.
"No," sobbed Romina in reply. "But no thanks to me. The horn got stuck and brought me to my senses in time. Oh, what does it mean? How could this happen to me?"
Romina was genuinely perplexed at her own behavior. She had deliberately neglected to mention her theft and drinking of that bottle of Italian wine, but she frankly failed to see how it could have had any effect on the situation. Despite her mother's strictness on the" subject of alcoholic beverages, she had drunk wine frequently at family get-togethers and occasionally had taken enough to get tipsy. Never had she felt emotions remotely resembling what she had experienced tonight. No, she decided, it couldn't have been the wine. But what had it been?
Mrs. Santini stroked her daughter's hair for a few minutes before answering.
"It isn't your fault, baby," she said finally. "This was built into you before you were born. I hoped and prayed you would inherit my blood and not your father's but I realize that I've been fooling myself for a long time. You're your father's daughter and there's nothing that can be done about it."
"What do you mean?" questioned the girl. "What about my father?"
Mrs. Santini carefully folded her glasses and put them away, giving Romina the opportunity to observe that her mother had, in fact, been crying. The older woman sighed heavily, avoiding her daughter's eyes as she began to speak.
"Well, you know that my family came from Northern Italy. They were all quiet, calm people who worked hard and when my father came here to this country, he didn't come as a penniless immigrant. We were respectable law-abiding people. Your grandfather never approved of my husband because he was a Sicilian. It seems foolish sitting here in Boston, but these things are important in Italy. The northerners think of Sicilians as terrible lawless noisy people and I guess most of the time that's what they are. Your father was different. He was kind, very considerate, but he was every inch a Sicilian. I ... I guess I'm beating around the bush, but the fact is that he was an extremely passionate man. I don't mean just in love, but in everything. He was capable, sometimes, of flying right out of control. And I think you've got some of his character in you. That's why I tried so hard to teach you to look before you leaped because he never did."
Romina was moved by this admission and startled to think of her mother confessing that her late husband was an "extremely passionate man." Somehow she could not imagine her quiet staid mother having anything to do with passionate men and the thought rather shocked her. What kind of man had her father really been? Was there some shameful family secret she knew nothing about?
"Mom, tell me a little about Dad," she pleaded. "You hardly ever talk about him!"
"What is there to say, really? We knew each other for such a short period of time. He came here from Italy to get a new start on life. We didn't know each other very long before we were married and I got pregnant with you almost immediately. Then he had to fly back to Italy on Christmas because his father was dying and the plane crashed. It happened all so fast. Fortunately, my father had made some money and we never had to worry about starving."
"Yes, but what was he like?" Romina insisted, still unsatisfied.
"He was a very good man, no matter what people may say. He was not well educated because he never had the chance to go to school but he was intelligent and always had a great interest in education. It was he who insisted that we teach you Italian. He would have loved to hear how well you speak the language now. He'd be so proud of you."
"But ... aren't there any details I should know?" Romina persisted.
"What good are details?" Mrs. Santini exclaimed, making a gesture of resignation with her hands. "Why should I burden you with these things? It's bad enough that every Christmas day for the rest of my life I will remember getting that telegram saying that his plane had gone down."
"But Mom, why aren't there any pictures of him around the house? I'd like to know what he looked like at least."
"Oh, I've explained a million times that he had this thing about photographs. He never let anyone take a picture of him and there weren't even any photographers at our wedding. It must have been some Sicilian superstition. Just as well. Forgetting's hard enough without having the house plastered with pictures that only bring back memories."
"But Momma..." Romina began again, but her mother cut her off with a wave of the hand and rose unsteadily from her chair.
"I'm tired, honey, and we've both had our share of emotional upsets for one day. I'm going to bed." Letting the newspaper she had been reading fall to the floor, Mrs. Santini kissed her daughter and moved off toward her bedroom, walking slowly and tiredly.
Strange, thought the girl, now alone in the familiar room. She was unhappy about something before I came in. Was she thinking about father? Or did something in the newspaper make her sad?
Idly, the girl picked up the newspaper and scanned the front page. The news was usual: a revolution in South America; the cost of living was expected to rise; the vice-president had made a speech. Mrs. Santini rarely followed news stories and hardly ever bought a paper. What could the problem be?
At the bottom of the page, a short article caught Romina's eye and her lifelong interest in Italy inspired her to read it.
Palermo, I June (AP) According to Police officials here, the legendary Sicilian bandit, Il Volpe, has once again narrowly escaped capture by Italian law enforcement officials. Sources in the Ministry of the Interior state that pressure to find Il Volpe mounted after the Baron Gianfranco delta Ville, one of Sicily's wealthiest men, was robbed of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. After mobilization by elements of the Italian Army, a painstaking search was made of the hill country near the Western Sicilian town of Strappani, long a headquarters for the bandit's operations. Two days ago, a company of Army regulars surprised Il Volpe in an isolated farm house together with five or six members of his band. After a furious fire fight, troops stormed the building, only to find it inexplicably empty. Since then no trace has been found of the bandits and the local Army headquarters today announced that the search was being suspended for the time being.
Il Volpe, whose name means "The Fox" in Italian, has long been a popular hero of the peasants in this poor and underdeveloped region of Sicily and it is believed that much of the money stolen from the Baron della Ville has found its way into the pockets of the poorer farmers and shepherds in the countryside. Il Volpe achieved national attention a few years ago when he prevented a Northern Italian bank from carrying out a widespread program of foreclosing overdue mortgages on peasant farmers in the Strappani area by systematically assassinating bank officials. After five years' intermittent warfare, the bank was forced to conclude an informal truce and the peasant-farmers were allowed to keep their farms.
In contrast to the popular image of the bandit, Il Volpe is said to be soft-spoken and well educated, a man in his mid-forties. As a youth, he was accused of a crime of honor, having murdered a policeman who had molested his sister. He fled to the United States in 1949, but Italian authorities were able to trace him and requested his extradition. In 1950, he was deported to Italy. Upon his arrival in chains at the Palermo airport, he engineered the first of a series of sensational escapes, fleeing into the mountains where for twenty years he has carried out his "Robin Hood" operations and successfully defied the efforts of the Italian police to put him under lock and key.
Beneath the news story, there was a photograph of Il Volpe, obviously taken by the police during one of the outlaw's short periods of captivity. The face was thin and sensitive with large intelligent eyes and a strong nose. It was the picture of a very hard man, obviously capable of killing, and yet Romina found the face strangely appealing. Thinking of the comfortable weakness of a man like Jonathan Oliver Winters, Romina allowed her fantasy to play for a moment, imagining what it would be like to be kissed by Il Volpe. If a puny, would-be lawyer could arouse that much passion in her, think what this fiery outlaw could do!
Ah, but these were foolish and sinful thoughts because there were no romantic outlaws in her life and even the puny would-be lawyer had just said good-bye and fled to his uncle's law office in
New York. Enough! she told herself sternly, shaking herself to drive away these impure ideas. There would be time for all this when she found the right man and married him and meanwhile there would be no repeat performances of tonight's filthy little spectacle, no matter what passions she had supposedly inherited from her mysterious father. She shuddered at what she had almost done with Jonathan and scolded herself for letting a silly picture of some Sicilian bandit get her all worked up a second time.
Folding the newspaper carefully, she switched out the living room lights, checked to see that the front door was locked and retired to her bedroom. Her sense of depression returned as she closed the door behind her and faced the neat comfortable room she had slept in for most of her life.
Here I am, she said as she languidly removed her clothing, twenty-one years old. All my life people have been telling me that I am beautiful and I don't even have a boyfriend any more! Struck by a strange compulsion, she stood in front of her full-length mirror and studied herself as she removed each garment. Her breasts were widely separated and unusually full, but a lifetime of athletics had kept them firm and bouncy. With surprise, she noted that her nipples were still swollen and extended, and even ached a little. She ran her hands over the brown, ripe little buds and they reacted immediately to her touch, straining desperately against her fingers and frightened, she pulled her hands away. For some reason, the face of that bandit, II Something-or-other, remained in her memory and she fought off a temptation to go and read the newspaper article about him again.
Instead she hung her dress carelessly over the back of a chair, kicked off her shoes and giggled involuntarily as she discovered that she had put her panties on inside out when the car horn had unexpectedly begun to advertise their presence in the alleyway. She slipped off the panties, still moist in the vagina band from her earlier passion, and faced herself again in the mirror.
She would have to start watching her weight carefully in a few years, she decided. Now, her waist was slender and girlish, and her tummy was flat and smooth, but Italian girls had a tendency to spread in their twenties and Romina resolved not to be one of them. Her mother was still trim at forty-five and she could-do the same.
Studying her pubic region in the reflection, she observed with a shock that there were still fine pearly droplets of liquid from her own body on her thighs. The soft dark hairs of her pussy were moist and matted and she could clearly see the red parted lips of her tiny vagina, usually closed and out of sight, but now open and exposed where Jonathan had teased them into excitement.
Frightened by the force of her own sexuality, she quickly snapped out the lights and jumped into her single bed, not even bothering to put on a pair of pajamas. It was almost four in the morning and she felt a curious combination of drunken excitement and sleepiness, her mind invaded time and time again by strange fantasy images of Sicilian bandits, sometimes merging with Jonathan. For a few moments, she fell asleep, immediately lapsing into a dream that she was again in the front seat of the car necking, but her partner was not Jonathan but Il Volpe, whose picture she had seen in the paper, and he was caressing her tenderly with a sureness and skill which poor Jonathan had never possessed. Her eyes opening as she fell out of the dream, she discovered that she was covered with sweat and that the hand in her dreams which had been stroking the trembling lips of her vagina was in actual fact her own. Throwing off the blankets and retaining only the sheet, Romina turned over on her stomach and wrapped her hands around the pillow to keep them out of temptation's way, but as soon as consciousness began to fade, she reentered the dream world and her hips began grinding inexorably into the mattress. Telling herself that she was asleep and therefore not fully responsible for what she was doing, her hand once again crept down to caress the soft moist fleece between the legs. As she fingered the soft fleshy folds of her cunt, she found that the sensation increased in strength and intensity and in a few minutes she cried aloud in the night as a storm of incredible pleasure swept over her. Then, exhausted, she slept.
CHAPTER TWO
When she forced her eyes open in the morning, Romina observed a number of things: first, it was very late, almost eleven o'clock, and her mother would have been up several hours ago, already attended morning church services and departed for the youth center where she did volunteer charity work. Her second observation concerned the fact that she was starting the day with a colossal hangover. Her lips felt dry and cracked. Her head thundered with pain and her eyes objected to focusing.
She staggered out of bed, splashed water on her face in the bathroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror. That was quite a session last night, she told herself grimly, observing the scratches on her thighs made with her own fingernails. And it must never happen again!
Feeling aimless and depressed, the girl pulled on a housecoat and wandered into the kitchen to prepare some coffee. As the coffee pot burbled and chortled its way to percolation, she suddenly remembered the newspaper article she had read the night before and decided to read it again while she was having her breakfast of coffee and aspirins. She glanced around the living room and discovered to her annoyance that it was no longer there. The furniture had been dusted and the ashtrays were empty, a fact which suggested that her mother had tidied up and had probably thrown the newspaper into the garbage.
Irritated, she investigated the contents of the garbage pail, feeling nauseated by the smell of grapefruit rinds and coffee grounds. At the bottom of the pail, stained and crumpled, she located the newspaper. Pulling it out to see if it was still in readable condition, she spread the paper on the kitchen table and smoothed it out with her fingers.
With a shock, she saw that the article about the bandit had been neatly clipped out! It was no longer there. For some reason, her mother had wanted to save that article. How strange!
The coffee was ready and she poured herself a cup and drank it black while her mind, still not fully awake, pondered this surprising development. Of what possible interest could an article about a Sicilian robber be to a forty-five year old Italo-American lady who had lived in Boston all of her life?
Mom is a very normal person, Romina thought, but she does have these little secrets. There is that mysterious person who sends her roses once a year, for example. Mom claims she has no idea where they come from, but who believes that! And that gold earring in the shape of a fox which she wears around her neck all the time. I'd like to know what happened to the mate of that set and why she wears it every day. No question about it, there is more to her than she is willing to admit. And what's the big mystery about Dad? Why don't my aunts and uncles ever mention him? Somebody, somewhere, some time must have taken a picture of him, so why isn't there one around? And now she clips articles out of the paper about some Italian bandit: how does this fit into the picture?
No answer immediately presented itself and Romina was still not feeling quite awake, so she decided to take her shower and get the day started. She stripped and stepped into the stream of water, turning it first warm, then scalding hot and finally ice cold. As she jumped out shivering onto the bathroom rug and reached for the towel, the thought suddenly hit her.
Suppose her father was not dead? Suppose he was alive somewhere, having run off with another woman or in jail, convicted of some terrible crime? And the bandit in Sicily, who was he? Her father's brother? Or her mother's old boyfriend? Or ... Or, oh God, even her father?
Stunned by the enormity of what she was thinking, she forgot to turn off the shower or dry herself with the towel. It's impossible, she tried to reassure herself. It simply could not be. And yet, everything pointed to the fact that there was something strange about her father's disappearance and the article about the Sicilian bandit added a whole new dimension to the problem.
Romina walked nakedly into the living room, dripping water on the rug and pondering the dilemma. She had to knew the truth! But how? Asking her mother was clearly out of the question. If the older woman had wanted her to know, she would have told her years ago. She had obviously gone to great lengths to keep her from getting at the truth. Besides, the thought of confronting her mother with a barrage of questions was simply impossible. Mrs. Santini would simply declare, as she had in the past, that the subject was not open for discussion.
So what to do? Attacking the problem logically, the first step was to verify the details of her father's death. With a new sense of determination, Romina called for a cab and then marched into her bedroom to dress.
* * *
"The name again, Miss?" asked the official as he bent over his file.
"Antonio Santini."
"Can you spell it?"
"S-a-n-t-i-n-i," obliged Romina.
Mr. Baynes, Assistant Deputy Director of the Boston Branch of the Federal Aeronautics Administration, was not normally sympathetic to the assorted oddballs and nuts who wandered in off the streets asking various strange questions. Just last week there had been that crazy professor who was making a comparative study of plane crashes and the phases of the moon. And a few days before that a student had come in asking for help on a term paper he was writing on the aviation of the Civil War. He had seemed so hurt when Baynes had explained that airplanes had not been invented until after the Civil War. Mr. Baynes had been barely polite to the professor and downright rude to the student, but this girl was different somehow. Even though the answer to her question could only be found after digging through piles of dusty documents, she seemed so sincere and so earnest (and so good-looking) that he did his best to help her.
"And exactly when did this plane crash occur?"
"It would have been either early Christmas morning or possibly the day before. My mother said that she got the telegram on Christmas Day."
"And you don't know the name of the airline?"
"No, only that it was going from Boston to Italy."
"And the year is 1950."
"That's right."
The bureaucrat sighed and pulled open another drawer, wondering when the day would arrive when all this information could be fed into a computer and retrieved by pushing a button. He located a folder for all air crashes which occurred in 1950, together with the passenger lists. He began thumbing through the papers.
"Here's an accident on a New York-London flight in October," he offered helpfully.
"I don't think that could be it."
"Ah, here's December. There was a daily Pan Am flight and a twice-a-week shuttle by Alitalia during this period. Also some American Airlines charter flights."
"Yes?" prompted Romina helpfully.
"But no crashes."
"But no crashes?" repeated the black-haired girl, as if stunned.
"No crashes at all during the last half of December anywhere in the world, Miss. And certainly none on the flights you're talking about. I've double checked this every way I can think of. My only guess is that someone has been telling you a tall story about Mr. Santini's disappearance."
Romina thanked Mr. Baynes for his help and walked out into the bright sunny afternoon, her hangover headache still bothering her, and still incapable of digesting the information she had just received. No plane crashes at Christmas time in 1950. Her mother and her entire family had been lying to her all her life about her father, concealing something. But what?
1950. The date somehow rang a bell in her mind. What else had happened in 1950. It was the year she was conceived, of course, but she had seen the date somewhere else and very recently. Suddenly the words from the newspaper article about Il Volpe came rushing back to her. "And in 1950, he was deported to Italy ... "
Meditating, Romina walked slowly through the Boston Commons towards her bus stop. She had a good deal to consider.
CHAPTER THREE
"Good-bye, darling, have a good time in Arizona!" cried Mrs. Santini as Romina started up the ramp to the boarding platform, struggling with tickets, purse and hand baggage. "Don't forget to send me a postcard now and then to let me know how you're getting on."
"Bye, Mom, take care of yourself!" the girl shouted in response, thrusting her boarding pass at the airline official and climbing the stairs to the waiting aircraft. There was no question that Mrs. Santini would receive postcards from Arizona, describing the beauty of the desert and the Grand Canyon, not to mention the fun she was having in the company of her old school chum from Phoenix who had graciously offered to put her up for the summer. In fact, the postcards had already been written, stamped and forwarded in a large envelope to Charlotte Baker, a former classmate who lived in Phoenix, with instructions that they be mailed to her mother once a week. Charlotte, who was fond of intrigues and amorous adventures, was the perfect person to act as a conspirator in such an undertaking as this and Romina had allowed her former classmate to believe that she was, in fact, going off on an illicit vacation with a man.
The Boston-New York shuttle was too brief to allow her any time for her own thoughts, particularly since she was seated next to a young mother with two children, both of whom had a distinct tendency toward air sickness. Romina landed in New York slightly nauseated herself from all the mopping up she had been forced to do.
Other than Jonathan Oliver Winters, Romina did not know a soul in New York, so there was no point in calling anyone or going into the City itself. Instead, she found her way immediately to the Alitalia counter and booked her passage through to Rome and then Palermo. She was fortunate because there was a flight with vacancies leaving within an hour, and before she had time to contemplate the wisdom of her actions any further, she was sitting on a sleek Alitalia 707 and fastening her seat belt for the take-off.
When the No Smoking sign flickered and went off, Romina gratefully lit a cigarette and settled back in her seat. Now that the die was cast, she began to entertain serious doubts about the whole project. Perhaps there was some very good reason why her mother had hidden from her the secrets surrounding her own birth and the disappearance of her father. Perhaps it would be better, after all, if she remained in ignorance. Furthermore, how much chance did she have of succeeding? Damn little, she was forced to admit. Supposing Il Volpe did know something or even supposing that he was her real father, could he be found? The Italian police were having their difficulties locating him and how could she hope to succeed where they had failed? Of course, she did have one advantage the Italian police did not, since she posed no physical threat to Il Volpe and he could have no possible reason for hiding from her.
The trans-Atlantic flight passed without incident. Romina, exhausted by the emotional turmoil in which she had lived for the past few weeks, took the opportunity to sleep most of the way across. She was seated next to an elderly Sicilian priest and the two of them chatted sporadically, giving her a chance to practice her Italian. She had been studying the language for years and already spoke it fluently. Her own relatives were Northern Italians, but several of the tradesmen in her neighborhood were Sicilians and she had taken the trouble to learn the dialect of that region. She knew she would have no difficulty communicating when she arrived and even the priest complimented her on her linguistic ability.
At Rome she changed planes for the shuttle to Palermo, but once again her schedule was tight, giving her no time to mop around at the airport and think about changing her mind. Flying South, she examined Italy from the air, enjoying the alternation of irregularly shaped green and brown patches of land, seeing the country become more desolate and wild as they flew away from the prosperous North. Then the plane arched out over the sea and there was nothing to look at for the last hour of her journey until the shores of Sicily suddenly appeared. In another moment, they were on the ground at the Palermo airport and she felt the heat as soon as the aircraft taxied to a halt. Thanks to the time change in flying over the Atlantic, it was still mid-day and Romina considered staying over in Palermo for a few days to spend some more time practicing her Italian and getting used to the idea of being in Italy.
More excuses, she told herself severely. You're not here for sightseeing and you have a job to do, so get on with it. At the Palermo air station, she asked for and received instructions on transportation to Strappani and arranged for a hotel room to be waiting for her when she arrived in the little town, since the journey overland was long and hard, and she would hardly arrive in condition to wander the streets looking for a place to stay.
The bus was old enough to have been used in General Garibaldi's last campaign and the driver drove it with savage ruthlessness, sparing neither tires, nor brakes nor passengers. Romina had hoped to catch a few hours sleep on the way, but she found herself being thrown violently bad: and forth as the ancient vehicle careened terrifyingly along mountain roads, making sleep entirely out of the question. The countryside through which they were passing was savage and brutal, with very little vegetation and fewer and fewer signs of cultivation or even civilization as they approached the western tip of the island. Here and there on the hillside, she could see shepherd's huts, or small poor-looking farms and they occasionally passed peasants leading thin, tortured donkeys along the side of the road, heavily burdened with bales of sticks. From time to time, the bus was forced to slow to a crawl in order to pass through a herd of sheep being driven down the road. Everywhere she looked there were signs of poverty and harshness. Even the land itself seemed to be uncompromising and cruel, as if it resented being inhabited by mere mortal man.
Strappani was only a few miles from the sea, and as they approached the water, a gentle breeze from the Mediterranean brought some relief from the staggering heat. Romina tried to strike up a conversation with some of her fellow passengers, but found them sullen and suspicious and unwilling to exchange more than a few muttered comments about the temperature. The men gaped at her boldly, not even averting their eyes when she indignantly met their gaze and tried to stare them down. She had thoughtlessly worn a miniskirt and it seemed as if every eye on the bus was focused on her uncovered legs and she felt naked and exposed-in violent contrast to the solemn, black-robed women who were covered from head to toe, despite the heat.
After what seemed an eternity of being shaken around, the bus pulled into Strappani. There was a taxi waiting for her at the bus terminal, having been sent by her hotel, and word had apparently spread that a foreigner was coming because there was a small crowd of men waiting by the taxi with no other apparent purpose than seeing her step down off the bus.
Romina was too exhausted to do any sightseeing that evening and slumped in the back of what proved to be Strappani's only taxi as the driver took her to what was the town's only hotel. It was dark when she appeared at the registration desk and handed over her passport to a wizened old man behind the counter who plied her with endless questions about her reasons for coming to Strappani. She discovered as she signed the register that she was the only guest currently staying at the pensione and guessed that foreigners did not often visit this remote village. When she stated that she was merely a tourist and had heard that Strappani was a pleasant town to visit, the hotel keeper gazed at her with an expression of frank disbelief.
Her room was cramped and furnished in dreadful taste, but the bed looked reasonable and Romina sprawled on top of it gratefully the moment the hotel keeper had accepted his tip of one hundred lire and backed out the door. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she discovered that there was an old man in an adjoining building who was gazing placidly out his window into hers, not even making an attempt at pretending he was not studying her with great interest. Closing the windows made the room suffocatingly hot and she considered complaining to the man at the desk but decided that this would only keep her out of bed longer and probably fail to achieve any real results. She compromised by undressing in the bathroom, showering and climbing under the sheet with her bathrobe on, slipping it off with difficulty under the cover. Her neighbor in the next building observed her contortions without a visible change in expression and Romina was tempted to call him one of the choice names in Italian she had learned from her uncles as a child.
She was still running through her limited vocabulary of Italian curse words when she fell asleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
When the sleek, buxom American girl awoke the next morning, the heat of the day had already begun. Without opening her eyes, she could feel the hot rays of the sun pouring in the open window and bathing her smooth shapely body with light. Feeling deliciously sleepy and not at all inclined to open her eyes and start the day's activities, Romina lay still for a while, awake but immobile, enjoying the sensation of the hot sun on her well tanned bare skin. The sheet had been pushed down to her smoothly rounded hips during the warm evening, and she suddenly remembered her inquisitive next door neighbor. Opening her eyes and squinting against the fierce light, she saw that he was sitting in the same position, possibly having been there all night, staring placidly out his window at the vision of her fully exposed breasts and tummy. Except this time he was not alone. Around him were three or four other men, all calmly drinking their morning coffee and enjoying the sight of her half-naked young body.
"Ma va fa'n cullo!" the angry girl shrieked, using the foulest Italian vulgarity she could muster for the occasion and wrapping the sheets around her, she darted into the bathroom to dress. She would have to ask the landlord for a different room, she decided, or be forced to spend the rest of her stay in Strappani being inspected by the gentleman next door and anyone else he invited in to enjoy the view.
She deliberated for some time over her choice of clothing, once she had calmed down and taken her shower. On the one hand, she would be more comfortable and less stared at if she wore something quite modest and simple, covering as much of her as possible, since it was obvious by now that the men of Strappani liked looking at pretty girls. On the other hand, she was not going to be able to locate Il Volpe on her own and in order to find the necessary assistance, she would have to be as attractive as possible. Also, the more people who knew she was in Strappani, the greater were the chances that word of her presence would reach Il Volpe's ears. And then, there was the heat to be considered. It ran contrary to her modest nature, but Romina ultimately decided that she had better wear something brief and absolutely smashing if she expected to accomplish what she had come to do. Now was no time for timidity.
The supply of clothing she had been able to bring with her was limited, but she had tried to include at least one outfit for every occasion. Among her dresses, there was one she had purchased a few weeks ago which her mother had seen and promptly forbidden her to wear in public. It was a light cotton miniskirt which showed off her long tapering legs and splendid thighs to their best advantage. Designed to be worn without a bra, the dress was scoop-necked and daring, revealing the tops of her lush, well-rounded breasts and allowing her bosom to move freely and provocatively as she walked.
If this doesn't bring Il Volpe out of the woods, she decided, inspecting herself in the bathroom mirror, nothing will. She applied her make-up quickly, since her stomach was already growling for her morning coffee, brushed her hair briskly and descended the stairs in search of some breakfast.
The landlord had thoughtfully set up a table for her in the shade of the hotel garden and she sat and sipped the rich brown espresso coffee mixed with milk and munched on fresh rolls while she mulled over her plans for the day. It would not do to go around announcing to everyone that she was looking for Il Volpe; there would be too many questions to answer. On the other hand, she had to tell someone or the word would never reach the outlaw that she was seeking him out. It was a dilemma with no easy answers. The young American girl decided to spend the day acting like a tourist, seeing the town and letting the town see her.
Breakfast finished, she shouldered her purse and her thirty-five millimeter camera and set off on a walking tour of Strappani. Generally, the men were outside of town working in the fields and Romina saw mostly women as she wandered. The twentieth century had not yet penetrated this part of Western Sicily and despite the heat, the married women almost universally wore hideous black dresses which covered them from neck to ankles. Only the young girls wore lighter, more sensible dresses, but nothing remotely approaching the miniskirts and tops worn in the cities of Northern Europe and America. Romina watched old women carrying incredible weights on their heads, climbing agilely up and down the steep streets of the mountain village with perfect balance, bringing water or bales of firewood to their homes. Everyone seemed busy and none of the women openly stared at her, although she could tell that there were whispered conversations inspired by her appearance every time she passed through a group of women. There were a few men in town, mostly shop-keepers, policemen and elderly gentlemen who were too far along in years to make the tiring trip out to the fields every morning. The men gaped at her frankly, but Romina was growing accustomed to the idea of being examined by every man she passed and reminded herself that attracting a certain amount of attention was part of her plan.
The streets were narrow and she looked into the houses as she passed by their open doors. The furniture was poor and chickens seemed to be at liberty to perch in the hallway or scratch in the dusty road for some unlikely worm. She visited the local church, a dank depressing structure with grotesque medieval statues of saints and a large crack in the masonry wall which ran from ceiling to floor. A priest emerged from a door to the right of the altar and glared in her direction, reminding her that it was considered rude to enter a church in Italy with one's head uncovered. Leaving the musty church, she wandered through the market place, looking at slabs of meat covered with flies and housewives haggling with merchants over the price of cheese and vegetables. The poverty here was too intense to be picturesque and the misery in which these people lived depressed her.
On the outskirts of town, Romina passed a small trattoria, or family restaurant, and decided to have lunch. Walking in this tremendous heat had tired her and her appetite was listless, but she realized that it was necessary to keep her strength up, no matter what the temperature.
An elderly woman with white hair and a sympathetic grandmotherly face was the restaurant's manager, cook and waitress all combined and she was obviously delighted to have a bright young foreigner to talk to. There was, of course, no menu. Guests ate what the management had decided to cook that day and on most days this was chicken with peperone, a side dish of sliced tomatoes and a glass of cool white wine.
"Oh, don't you have any local wine?" questioned Romina as the old woman brought her a wine made and bottled in Palermo.
"You must not drink our wine," muttered the elderly lady mysteriously. "Don't worry, I won't charge you extra."
"No, it's not that," insisted the American girl. "I just wanted to try it."
"No, no," repeated the older woman seriously. "You must never touch the wine made in Strappani. All decent women drink wine from Palermo. You are a foreigner and do not understand these things!"
"What things?" asked Romina innocently. "Isn't the wine healthy to drink?"
"The wine from Strappani is different from other wines. It makes you do crazy things, Signorina. Don't let any of the men give you any or you will be the sadder for it. Eat your chicken before it gets cold."
Romina obediently ate her chicken, chatting with the strange old woman about life in America and listening to some details about the town's history. Finally, she worked up her courage and posed the question which really concerned her.
"Signora, have you ever heard of a bandit they call Il Volpe?"
The crone's eyes narrowed suddenly and she stared at the young black-haired girl for a full minute before answering.
"Never heard of him," she responded shortly and broke off their conversation abruptly to begin clearing the table.
Romina paid and left, resuming her walk through the older section of town. After lunch was the hour of the siesta and there was hardly anyone left on the streets, but she resisted the temptation to return to her hotel and sleep for a while, wanting to see as much as she could on her first day and get the geography of the village clearly in her mind. After walking for some time, she found a bar that was open and went in to drink a Coca-Cola. A young man with a thick thatch of black hair stood behind the counter, surveying her fresh young form with visible appreciation, and initiated the conversation with the usual questions about what she was doing in Strappani and where she lived in the states. Romina welcomed the chat and asked questions of her own about the town and the people who lived in it. Finally, she edged around to the subject of criminals.
"Do you have any bandits in town?" she asked casually.
"You do not need to worry, Signorina. We have a good police force here, although it would not be wise to venture out of the town after darkness unless you are in company with someone."
"Why? Are there bandits in the countryside?"
"I would not say that there were bandits, Signorina, only that it is not a good idea to go around after dark unescorted."
"Do you ever think they'll catch Il Volpe?" she asked quickly hoping to surprise him into answering.
"I know nothing about any Il Volpe, Signorina," the young man responded, his face suddenly hardening. "That will be one hundred lire for the Coca-Cola, please."
* * *
By late afternoon, the slender Italo-American girl was approaching despair. She had talked to about ten people in the course of the day, none of whom had even been willing to admit having heard of Il Volpe, although it was obvious that they knew perfectly well who she was talking about and simply did not trust her enough to discuss the subject.
How stupid of me, she cursed herself, to think that I could waltz into this village and expect Il Volpe to pop out from behind a tree and present his visiting card. He has been a wanted man all his life and he is certainly going to be very careful about showing himself. She was sitting on a rock near the edge of town, wondering if she ought to abandon the whole project and fly back to Rome when the police car pulled up next to her.
Out of the car came a man in his middle thirties, wearing the uniform of a police lieutenant. He was big for a Sicilian, measuring well over six feet, and he had the heavy powerful body of a professional wrestler. His face was brutal and hard, although not entirely unattractive and he moved with the easy confidence of a man accustomed to giving orders.
"Signorina Santini, please permit me to introduce myself. I am Lieutenant Barzini, the chief of police in Strappani, at your disposition."
"I'm happy to meet you, Lieutenant," Romina responded uneasily, wondering why he had taken the trouble to learn her name. "I certainly am enjoying my visit to your town."
The lieutenant made himself comfortable on a nearby rock and stared at her suspiciously.
"You have come here to see the town?" he questioned. "This is most unusual, since Strappani is far from the usual tourist route. Here we have no monuments, no famous ruins, no colorful festivals, nothing to attract the tourist and you are the first foreigner I can remember who has spent more than a few hours here."
"Oh well," stumbled Romina, a bit taken back by this frank approach. "I had heard that it was a very pleasant town and very characteristic of this part of Italy."
"I'm afraid you were misinformed, my dear young lady. Strappani is a very unpleasant town, although I suppose it is characteristic of this part of Italy where there are a great many unpleasant towns. The people here are stupid and dishonest and I have no doubt that you have been cheated a dozen times already without realizing it. There is frankly nothing here to see and I am still wondering why you came."
Romina was ready to tell him that, it was none of his damn business why she had come, but she knew that she could hardly afford to start making enemies of any kind, particularly with the police, so she offered him a polite he instead.
"Well, perhaps you are right, although I think it is a very charming town and everyone has been perfectly delightful to me so far. I was touring Sicily and just decided not to go home without having seen this section of the island."
The tall lieutenant shook his head cynically and smiled cruelly at her.
"Foreigners have a tendency to underestimate the Italian police. We keep a rather close track of things in this part of the world. For example, you arrived on a flight from New York the night before last and immediately took a plane for Palermo. Without leaving the airport, you arranged for hotel reservations and got on a bus and came here, to a town with no facilities to offer and nothing to distinguish it from a thousand other towns. No, I correct myself: there is one unique thing about Strappani."
"And what is that?"
"I have reason to believe you already know the answer to that question. You have been asking everyone in town about Il Volpe and I suppose he does make this town a little unique. Why don't you ask me? As the chief of police here, I am rather an expert on the subject. And when you have asked your questions, I will ask a few of my own."
Romina deliberately paused and gazed at him coldly, trying to give herself time to think of a more-likely story. She had not counted on anyone looking into her movements quite so thoroughly, and it was clear she would have to offer some convincing explanation of her behavior. An idea suddenly struck her.
"You are very clever, Lieutenant," the girl assured him, trying to turn on a little charm. "Perhaps you can also tell me what I do for a living?"
"I could find out if I needed to know," the sullen policeman replied shortly. "But suppose you save me the trouble."
"I would appreciate it if this were held in confidence," she cautioned, lowering her voice.
"Naturally."
"Very well then, I am a reporter for the Boston Globe. As you probably know, there are about a million Italians living in Boston, most of them Sicilians or descendants of Sicilians. Our readers are very interested in what goes on here and we try to keep them informed. You were right when you said that Il Volpe was the one unique thing about Strappani. He's very well known in America and my editor sent me to do a story on him, written from his home town. I had hoped to be able to do it without letting anyone know what I was up to but I guess I didn't cover my tracks very well."
The big policeman digested this information without any visible change in expression and for a minute, Romina was afraid he was not going to believe her.
"Well!" he exclaimed finally. "This puts a new light on the subject. I would be happy to tell you what I know about Il Volpe and you must be careful to spell my name properly in your article. Our good friend Il Volpe can be quite useful to both our careers."
"How?"
"You can write a splendid article on the subject and perhaps win one of those prizes they give to journalists. And perhaps I can catch him or at least shoot him and be promoted to captain and transferred to some big city."
This prospect did not appeal to Romina in the slightest, but she had created this role for herself and now she had to live with it.
"Where do you think Il Volpe is hiding?" she probed, looking for information.
"That's the problem," admitted the rugged police officer. "Look up there!" He pointed up at the craggy hostile mountains which overlooked the town. "He's up there somewhere and he's been up there for twenty years. I told you the people in this town were dishonest. Probably any one of them could lead me directly to his hideout but they won't. And the people who live up there, the shepherds and hunters, are even worse. They get a cut whenever our friend robs some respectable citizen and they have no interest in helping us find him. There are a million caves and little shacks in those mountains and he could be in any one of them. The Army comes in every couple of years and marches around shooting off their guns but they never even come close."
"Do you think anyone will ever catch him?" asked Romina, hoping for a negative answer.
"You are looking at the man who will bring him down!" boasted the arrogant lieutenant. "The others have been fools. They charge into the mountains with a hundred men, and Il Volpe knows they are coming before they leave the city limits. Il Volpe and his band operate like guerrillas and I will do the same. I will go alone or with a few picked men and high-powered rifles and when I get him in my sights the first time, there will be no more Il Volpe!"
"Won't you even try to arrest him? Bring him to trial?"
"They've done that before, Signorina, and nobody ever succeeded in hanging on to him long enough to get a trial started. Besides, he's been convicted two or three times in absentia. Fools! Trying a man you cannot catch! When I find him there will be no judge and no trial, only a quick execution! Il Volpe knows what kind of man I am. He is terrified of me and so are the villagers!"
Romina was not precisely terrified of the lieutenant, but he seemed like a very unpleasant character and very conceited. Nor could she quite picture Il Volpe up in the mountains shaking in his boots at the thought of this loudmouthed policeman. However, to date, he was the only person she had encountered who was even willing to discuss the subject and she realized that she had better put up with his obnoxious boasting until she located a better source of information.
"Now, I am giving some thought to your article," the tough, muscular policeman announced grandly. "You should not focus specifically on a common outlaw like Il Volpe, but show the situation as a kind of duel to the death between me, the representative and defender of law and order in the community, and Il Volpe, who stands for violence and dishonesty. It is certainly fortunate for you that I decided to take an interest in you, because alone you would have been able to accomplish nothing!"
Romina suppressed the urge to tell the lieutenant what an absolute jackass he was and nodded politely as he continued to brag about the day when he would kill Il Volpe and the rest of his gang. Fortunately, she had a small notebook and a pen in her purse and she pretended to take notes while he talked.
"Listen, I have a great deal to explain to you which will be essential as background for your story, some details about my own life and career as well as my comments on the criminal situation in this part of Italy. We can talk over dinner. Unfortunately there are no restaurants in town which offer the kind of cuisine to which I am accustomed, but you as a journalist must be used to living off the land. There is a small trattoria near here where the food is at least not poisonous."
Without waiting for her to accept or refuse this presumptuous invitation, the arrogant police lieutenant helped Romina to her feet and steered her toward the police car.
Barzini drove like a drunken adolescent, mostly on the wrong side of the road, blowing his horn and scattering a group of children who were playing in the street. After a short but very unpleasant journey, they pulled up in front of a restaurant with a screech of brakes and a cloud of dust.
The restaurant was a small home surrounded by a very pleasant garden where tables and chairs had been set up. Romina could see fear come into the faces of the waiters and guests as they recognized the brutal form of the policeman emerging from the car. She remained in her seat for a moment, expecting him to open the door for her, but soon realized that his social graces were not that developed and climbed out on her own, following him into the garden.
"Buona Sera, Signor Tenente, Buona Sera!" chorused the waiters respectfully, scrambling to find him a table.
"A table in the shade, idiots!" he thundered as they offered him a place still lighted by the rays of the sinking sun. There was only one table in a shaded area, and this was already occupied by an elderly couple who were quietly eating their dinner. II Tenente glared at them for a moment until they got the idea and sprang to their feet, saying, "Scusi, Signor Tenente, scusi!" Waiters rushed lo carry the couple's food to another table and brought a clean linen table cloth for the policeman and Romina.
Barzini did not trouble to thank the elderly couple for the sacrifice of their table, but seated himself immediately without even waiting for Romina. The American girl was highly embarrassed at being a party to this kind of boorish behavior and hoped that the villagers were not holding this against her.
Nosooner were they seated when a man who seemed to be the owner of the restaurant presented himself and bowed, first to the lieutenant and then to Romina.
"Buona Sera, Signor Tenente," he recited. "It is always a great honor to have you here. What can we offer you?"
"Some of your wretched wine, I suppose," responded the policeman insultingly, "and then some pasta. But hurry with the wine because we're thirsty. And bring some mineral water as well!"
"Subito!" responded the owner and he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, shouting instructions to his waiters.
"Do you have a good wine in this part of the country?" asked Romina, trying to start some civilized conversation.
"There is nothing really good in this part of Sicily," snapped the policeman, "but the local wine is better than the bilge they turn out in some of the towns around here and is rather unusual. You will want to try some for the experience at any rate. If you don't like it, tell me and I'll order something from Palermo. I don't know how many times I've asked the owner here to acquire some Northern Italian wines which a cultured man can drink. I'll have to raise the subject with him again the next time his license comes up for renewal."
Suddenly what the old lady at lunch had said about drinking the local wines came back to Romina. "You must not touch the wine made in Strappani," the old woman had warned her, but she had balked at saying why. Nevertheless, Romina was adventurous enough to feel a little challenged and curious about this mysterious wine and anxious to taste it.
A waiter emerged from the kitchen at almost a dead run and placed on their table a tall bottle of cool white wine. The lieutenant poured her a glass and looked at her expectantly. Romina raised the glass to her lips and smelled the wine, finding that it had an agreeable delicate scent. She was about to take a sip of the clear white liquid when she glanced over the policeman's shoulder at an old woman who was working in the kitchen of the restaurant and watching them through the open window. The woman shook her head violently, signaling her not to drink the wine. Romina lowered her glass in confusion as the lieutenant took a swallow from his glass and looked at her with perplexity.
"What's the matter? You haven't even tasted it! I thought journalists were supposed to be curious about these things!"
"No ... I was just enjoying the smell," she stammered, and avoiding the eyes of the old woman in the kitchen, she put the glass again to her lips and took a sip.
The taste was very agreeable, if a little unusual, and Romina realized that it was one of the best wines she had ever sampled. While she was certainly no connoisseur of wine culture, no one could grow up in a large Italian family without becoming fairly sophisticated about wines. Also her throat was parched from walking in the hot sun and the wine was deliriously cool. She took another sip and it tasted even better.
But wait! she thought. This is a wine I have had before. The flavor was distinctive, unmistakable. Could it be the same wine she had drunk that disastrous night with Jonathan? It seemed unlikely that a bottle of wine from this obscure town could have found its way into her cellar, especially since her relatives were all Northern Italians who despised all things Sicilian, including the wine, but somehow the flavor seemed almost the same! Romina took another sip and derided not to worry about it. Jonathan and that bottle of wine were now part of the past. She had another job to do today.
Their dinner was some of the best tasting food Romina had ever eaten, although she would have preferred to enjoy her meal in some other company. The police chief ate piggishly, cramming food carelessly into his mouth as he talked. He continued to boast about his future conquest of Il Volpe and all the other criminals in Western Sicily and promised to introduce Romina to people in the village who had known Il Volpe as a young man. By the time they had finished the first course, a rich flavorful spaghetti with a marvelous sauce, and started on the chicken cacciatore with peperone, Romina was feeling quite happy in spite of the obnoxious lieutenant. She was having no difficulty understanding even the strongly accented Italian dialect of the villagers and everyone had praised her for being able to speak the language so well, at least everyone except the crude policeman who seemed to assume that she had learned Italian for the express purpose of communicating with him. The warnings not to drink the wine must come from some local superstition, she decided, since it was superb wine and got better with every mouthful.
Without being asked, the waiter brought them a second bottle with the meat course and Romina realized she was becoming a little tipsy. So what! she told herself. She was entitled to a little enjoyment and one would hardly be safer than in the company of a policeman, even a boorish one.
They had finished the fruits and cheeses and were waiting for their coffee and cognac when it started to hit her. A rosy warm sensation started in her stomach and began spreading to all parts of her body. Despite the fact that the night had cooled considerably from the blazing heat of the day, she felt extremely warm and even the frail mini-skirt she was wearing seemed to be excessively bulky. She broke out in a light sweat and had to continually wipe her hands on the napkin to keep them dry. Her throat seemed parched and water did nothing to quench her relentless thirst. Wine had never before produced this effect in her and she wondered if this was what the two old women had tried to warn her against. Actually the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. Her head was swimming delightfully and her arms and legs felt supple and good despite a sense of weakness in her whole body. She found it difficult to concentrate on what the lieutenant was saying and a few times he finished one of his speeches with, "Isn't that so?" forcing her to agree that it was so without the faintest idea of what they were suppose to be discussing.
"You know, I feel quite strange," she mumbled when he paused in his monologue long enough to drink his coffee. "I wonder if I haven't drunk too much of this wine---"
"It will pass, it will pass," he assured her.
"You have to get used to Vino Strappanese and it takes awhile. No one else drinks the stuff but the people who live here and the old women invent a lot of stupid stories about it. You feel warm? Come, I'll take you for a drive into the hills where the air is cooler.
At that same moment, the lithe young girl became conscious that the old woman from the kitchen was standing by her side.
"Does the Signorina feel faint? She is welcome to lie down in the house for a few minutes," she told the lieutenant boldly.
"She'll be alright," snapped the policeman. "I'm going to take her for a drive in the country."
"I think it would be better if she stretched out here," insisted the old woman firmly. It was the first time Romina had heard anyone contradict the lieutenant and even in her confused condition, she braced herself for the blast. But the policeman restrained himself with a visible effort, apparently not wishing to cause a scene. The restaurant owner quickly appeared and ordered the old woman back to the kitchen and Romina felt herself guided expertly to the police car. She tried to walk normally but felt as if she were floating at least six inches off the ground and she was happy when the policeman spared her any further embarrassment by roaring away from the trattoria into the fast-gathering night.
* * *
Lieutenant Luigi Barzini bad been waiting a long time for an opportunity like this and he was determined to let nothing stop him now. when one of his policemen, Corporal Antonioni, had brought him the news that there was an Italian-speaking American girl in town who was more beautiful than a movie-star, Barzini had started making his plans. He was certain he had impressed her this afternoon with his talk about killing Il Volpe and was now half-convinced that he could track down the famous bandit and win himself glory and promotions. Fortunately, the girl had apparently never heard of what Strappani wine did to a woman's cunt, when he touched her up there between those firm, beautifully full young thighs of hers, she was going to burst into the hottest little fuck he had ever had. And, another piece of perfect luck, just a few days before, on the edge of the woods, the tough-talking policeman had discovered an abandoned shack containing an old iron bed and mattress in fairly good condition. His own apartment in town would be infinitely better and it was dangerous to venture this far from the center at night, but Barzini was taking no chances as far as the girl was concerned. She could start screaming at any moment if the wine had not done its work properly and the policeman wanted no witnesses. If she complained later of being raped, who would take her word over his? Everyone knew American girls had no morals and half the town had seen her tossing back vino Strappanese, something no decent woman would do in public. She was already half-compromised and he vowed to finish the job that night.
As he neared the abandoned shack, Barzini shot a glance at the beautifully formed young woman who slouched next to him on the seat, looking to make sure she was still conscious. It would spoil everything if she were not awake and aware of what was happening to her. He wanted to humiliate her, to rub her face in the dirt, to hear her scream with pain and groan with pleasure. He had watched them so often, on trips to Palermo, the proud, tawny, healthy tourist girls from America, exposing their bodies in a way no peasant woman would dare. And he knew that if they noticed him at all, they scorned him for being the local policeman of an insignificant town. What good did it do to have the people of his village bowing and scraping when not one of these long-stemmed beauties would give him so much as the time of day?
"Where are we?" the girl asked vaguely as Barzini parked the car behind some bushes near the unoccupied shack.
"I brought you up in the hills where the air is fresher," he said, opening the door. "Don't you feel cooler?"
"I feel so strange," she muttered as he walked around to the other side of the car and assisted her out. "My body feels like it's on fire! What a strange sensation---"
"You are going to have a number of strange sensations," the policeman replied menacingly as he propelled her into the half-light of the deserted shack. "Strip off your clothing, Signorina! You'll feel so much cooler when you're naked!"
The lieutenant watched with satisfaction as the fog in her mind was pierced by the resignation that he was going to rape her.
"Don't touch me!" she cried in alarm.
"Strip!" he shouted harshly, bringing his hand suggestively to rest on the pistol he carried at his waist. "Unless you want to see that lovely dress torn into rags!" He stepped closer and spun her around, nearly causing her to lose her balance and fall. Quickly finding the zipper, he brutally ripped it down to her full, well-rounded buttocks and yanked the garment from her sensitive shoulders, tearing it nearly in two.
Romina could not bear the idea of being touched by this brutal and overpowering man, but she was too dizzy and too terrified to put up much resistance. The miniskirt fell to the floor, revealing her full lush hips and white, tempting breasts.
The policeman's eyes watered at the sight, impatient to run his hands over her body and torment the brown tantalizing little buds into hardness. Ripping the frail white nylon panties from her loins to bear the softly curling triangle of her pubic hair, he abruptly turned her around to face him as he began stripping off his own clothing.
Despite her wine-drugged horror at the situation, Romina was unable to pull her eyes away from the massive body being revealed before her. The lieutenant was a huge muscular man and the American girl gasped when his long sinewy cock appeared, jutting out like a battering ram from his groin. Romina's intoxicated mind was frozen with fear and revulsion as the policeman stepped toward her, grinning sadistically.
"I can't do it!" she begged him piteously. "Please, I hardly know you ... I can't . ... "
"You won't have to do anything, Signorina," he replied with mocking respect. "If the American lady will be so kind as to lay down and spread her legs, the humble policeman will do the rest!" With a quick movement of his muscular arm, he placed a hand between her naked breasts and sent her sprawling backwards on the musty old mattress.
"It's too big," she whimpered as he crawled over her. "Please, you could hurt me very badly...." Her pleading was interrupted as the lieutenant's body crushed heavily down on top of hers, his thick probing tongue recklessly invading her mouth. He covered her nakedness completely, like a blanket, painfully pinning her helpless arms and legs to the mattress. The effect of the wine was still very much with her and the room began to spin as he shifted his lewd attention from her bruised mouth to her naked breasts, biting and sucking each tender brown nipple brutally. At the same time, she could feel his massive cock lying on her bare flat stomach as she tried to keep her legs pressed tightly together. But the crude rough policeman was too strong for the frail young girl and with a triumphant grunt, he inserted one knee between her firm, fully ripened thighs and forced her legs violently apart.
Oh God, it's all over now, she thought desperately. I did the best I could, but he's too strong for me. She tried to relax her body the way a patient does in the dentist's chair to avoid the pain as much as possible, but the fear was too much for her and she continued to tremble and shake. When the thick meaty head of his cock began its insistent probings into the soft, hair-covered flesh around her vagina, she felt her wine-filled body stiffen with the last ounce of her strength, futilely trying to deny the aggressor entrance into her tiny, virginal little opening.
Lieutenant Barzini smiled sardonically as he raised himself on his elbows and viewed her fragile, well-formed body lying helpless and spread-eagled beneath him. This is going to be good, he told himself. She's as tight as the devil down there, maybe even a virgin. And she's going to get the fucking of her life, the proud insolent bitch! What does she expect, Walking around half-naked? She might have gotten away with that dress in Palermo, but this is Strappani and in Strappani, men are men. Reaching down between their bodies, the lieutenant guided his thick fleshy instrument to the tight little opening between her legs.
"Nooooooooo!! ! " Romina pleaded as she felt the lips around her throbbing vagina forced inexorably apart. Fighting desperately against the effects of the sense-deadening wine and concentrating with all her strength, she tried to hold him out and succeeded for half a minute, before the tiny elastic ring of her battered outer cunt lips weakened under the cruel steady pressure of his hard muscular penis. She groaned piteously as the thick bulbous head of his rigid blood-filled cock slipped slowly, relentlessly up inside the tightness of her tormented vagina. Barzini smiled as he listened to her groan, enjoying her pain and humiliation, then thrust himself abruptly forward again, deliberately trying to make her scream.
Oooooh God! God!" her mouth opened wide to spit out the sound.
The pain was unbearable and as Romina's shriek filled the night, the lewd, sensuous policeman congratulated himself on having had the good sense to bring her out into the isolated countryside where no one could hear her.
"Do you like it, little Miss America?" he taunted brutally, watching her face contort with pain. "What does it feel like to have the cock of a man from Strappani inside of you?"
Romina's only response was a deep pitiable moan as she lashed her wine-dazed head from aide to side. Her helpless suffering excited him even more and seizing her shoulders for better leverage, he roughly thrust himself further up into her tortured young vagina with all the power in his cruel muscular body, impaling her completely on his long, lust-inflated cock.
Romina's beautiful tapered legs flailed out wildly on either aide of the naked hips of the big policeman as he pinned her helpless form to the bed, and in her drugged confusion she felt as though her body was being ripped in two by the massive giant rod which had suddenly become lodge in her delicate unused cunt. Barzini's lengthy swollen cock seemed to fill her entire stomach as its blood-filled tip pressed harshly against the tenderness of her cervix. The policeman held still for a moment, wanting to savor each stage of his lewd conquest. Looking down between their two bodies, he studied the twin elegance of her magnificent breasts, now rising and falling rapidly as she struggled for breath. Below was the smooth flatness of her stomach, extending down to her loins where the black, softly curling pubic strands covering her open cunt entwined with his, nearly concealing the thick stub of his sinewy cock stretching the agonized lips of her tight moments-before virginal little vagina almost beyond endurance.
Romina squirmed piteously as she lay spread-eagled and penis-filled beneath him, dazed by the wine and suffering hot terrible pains as his murderous hardness inched gradually further and further up into her. She could feel every detail of his hard monstrous cock as it burrowed within her, pressuring outward against the smooth inner walls of her burning vagina and the odd sensation of his heavy sperm-filled balls slapping nakedly against her tender and unprotected anus as he hit bottom!
Having penetrated all the way to the hilt, the cruel lusty lieutenant began a slow deliberate fucking movement, withdrawing himself almost to the tip of his lust-hardened cock, and then sliding slowly forward again until he had buried himself all the way back up in her helplessly cringing little belly once more. Romina turned her head to the side, covering her face with one hand, feeling enormous relief and even a strangely beginning tingle of pleasure every time he withdrew and then renewed torment and pain when he rammed himself forward again, groaning involuntarily with each powerful stroke.
Her mind still fuddled by the strange wine, Romina lay in a kind of stupor, grateful that the pain was lessening and that she did not seem to be seriously hurt by the assault. The policeman's muscular cock seemed now to be a living thing inside her, its hard rubbery tip pressing against her tormented cervix and the thick penile folds of flesh applying a relentless pressure against the trembling walls of her sensitive vagina. She moved slightly on the mattress, trying to shift her buttocks into a more comfortable position and was surprised when the movement sent a ripple of pleasure and not pain into her loins.
Feeling the girl's lithe youthful body begin to relax and moisten, Barzini doubled his pace, rocking back and forth on the old musty mattress. Her rhythmic grunts began to sound less like suffering and more like ecstasy as he labored over her and he knew that the lust inciting wine was at last having its desired effect.
Romina trembled on the fine line between pleasure and pain as the lewd policeman fucked into her obscenely and relentlessly. Her mouth hung open limply and her eyes were tightly closed, her mind fighting valiantly but vainly against the lewd little ripples of pleasure growing ever hotter in the cock filled cunt up between her open thighs.
"Oooooohhhhh!! " she crooned as the Sicilian's thick cock rammed again and again deep into her belly, so deep that she felt it could almost pass through her body and up into the back of her throat. Unconsciously, her hands came to rest on his thrusting hard buttocks and without realizing it, her hips began grinding back at him, her now hungrily nibbling little cunt lips screwing themselves tighter against his insistent loins.
The girl, her mind dazed and fogged by the wine, was only dimly aware that her youthful body was reacting lasciviously to this merciless pounding. The pain was almost gone now and her legs and arms felt alive with a life of their own as she coiled her long firm legs around him, trying to force his impaling rod further and further into the depths of her hitherto-innocent cunt. A maddening electric tingle began somewhere near the base of her spine and spread inexorably to all parts of her body, radiating through her moist hair-lined vagina and up into her swollen throbbing tits. Her brown sensitive nipples, now as hard as rocks, were standing up boldly atop her heaving breasts. Sweat poured over her belly into the warm wetly matted fleece of her pussy where it mixed with the rising love-juices from her hotly flowing cunt and trickled in tiny tickling rivulets down over her nakedly upturned ass cheeks.
Her mind temporarily destroyed by the effects of the aphrodisiac Strappani wine, the American girl felt as if the brutal Sicilian had become a part of her own body and the muscles deep inside her cruelly stretched cunt contracted and expanded rhythmically as he fucked mercilessly in and out of her. The hard ruthless man looked down at his now almost lust-crazed victim with lewd satisfaction. This one's not going to make any trouble for me, he assured himself. Tantalizing her, he slowed his pace for a moment and withdrew partially his piston from her, grinning with obscene enjoyment as he watched her arch her back towards him in a lusty effort to keep the wet, fleshy contact of cock to cunt from being broken.
Suddenly, a new deep-throated growl issued from her throat and the girl's sweat-soaked over-stimulated body began to shake uncontrollably. A thick creamy liquid streamed from her wildly throbbing pussy lips, wetting his balls as they slapped obscenely against her smooth upturned buttocks and the muscular policeman re-doubled his efforts, wanting to hear her scream with passion now as she had screamed with pain only a few minutes before.
"Oh God, yes, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" she shouted in English, her wine-weakened mind too confused to remember any Italian.
"Aaaaaaagggggghhhhh!! ! ! ! "
Despite his superior size and strength, the Sicilian had to struggle to hold her as the girl's body shot completely out of control, her arms and legs jerking spasmodically and her nakedly grinding loins thrusting wildly up against him as the violence of her orgasm swept over her.
As the spasm passed, Romina lay back on the bed exhausted, the effects of the wine now suddenly somewhat diminished. She could not bear to look the lieutenant in the face after what had just happened and she covered her eyes with her hands, feeling him slowly withdraw his still hardened penis from her gently pulsating vaginal walls.
Something is wrong, she thought in confusion, her mind still" slowly clearing. Nothing happened to him. He didn't cum.
"Did you like that, little American?" the policeman asked gloatingly as he pulled himself free of her with a lewd popping sound.
"Oh please..." she stammered. "I don't know what to say..."
From beneath her lowered eyelids, she stole a glance at him as he stood next to the rickety old bed, wiping his still-rigid penis with her dress.
"You don't have to say anything," he responded harshly. "You've had your fun and now I'm going to have mine! Get down on the floor on your knees, bitch!"
Her mind still working very slowly and still not comprehending what it was he wanted of her, Romina obeyed. Her naked body bruised and glistening with sweat, she slid out of bed and kneeled to her knees in front of him. He took a step closer and his long still-inflated penis waved in her face, only inches from her trembling, slightly parted lips.
"I'm told sucking cock is very popular in America," he informed her obscenely. "And I want you to feel at home. Open your mouth!"
Suddenly, as the blood-filled tip of his masculinity touched her lips, it struck her. He wanted her to take that massive, as yet, unemptied hardness in her mouth! He actually expected her to suck him!
The shock of this realization drove the last of the wine-inspired fog from her mind and her thoughts begin to function again. I'll die first, she told herself. I will never do this to any man!
As the policeman spread his legs and moved even closer, revulsion swept over her and the lithe young girl, her strength fear-inspired, ducked her head agilely and darted between his legs and out the open door. By the time the outraged policeman collected his wits and came crashing after her, she was already into the woods, a wild despair in her heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
Roberto was tired. Whatever the screaming was about, it was none of his business and he had a long way to climb up the mountain to where the others were waiting both for him and the supplies he was bringing. Furthermore, the boss had specifically ordered him to stay out of sight and out of trouble.
Nevertheless, a woman's scream in the night made him curious. Usually at this hour, the woods were deserted. The townsmen were superstitiously afraid of the hill country at night and flocked back to their homes as soon as the sun began to sink. The forest after dark belonged to the bandits and no one else. And yet somewhere near him, a woman had screamed.
Quickly deciding to see what was happening, the bearded young bandit slipped the bundle from his shoulders and placed it in the crotch of a tree. Then he began to move silently towards the source of the scream. For the slender self-confident young man, the woods had been his nursery, his college and his livelihood. Light or dark, he knew the hill country like the palm of his hand and he slipped through the shadows without a sound. Halting as he approached the edge of the clearing, the highwayman listened carefully, straining his eyes to see in the half-light from the moon.
The woman was somewhere near him now, because he could hear her stumbling footsteps as she blundered through the trees. Behind her, Roberto could detect another noise, the sound of a man running, crashing through the bushes and swearing.
Instinctively, the bearded bandit reached for the pistol hidden in his shirt. The boss would be angry if he became involved in some local lovers' quarrel now, so soon after the troubles they had just had, but this was Sicily and a woman in difficulty was not to be ignored. Raising the pistol, he stepped to the edge of the clearing just as the fleeing woman circled a large bush and darted into the open space.
Roberto was momentarily stunned. The delicate, terrorized girl, not seeing him, halted for a few seconds, looking around desperately for some avenue of escape and the bandit, still hidden by the shadows, stared in amazement at the lush naked beauty only a few feet from his place of concealment. This was no ordinary lovers' quarrel, he realized, and he strode forward boldly just as the lieutenant pounded into the clearing after her.
The exquisite American girl felt a new wave of horror sweep over her as she watched the dark mysterious figure of the bandit appear out of the shadowy woods. For a moment, Romina thought that the angry lieutenant had somehow circled around in front of her. Then she realized that this was a new element in the situation. Without thinking, the frightened naked girl decided that whoever he was, he had to be an improvement over the lustful furious policeman behind her and she rushed to where he stood. She stumbled blindly over a root as she ran and collapsed groaning at his feet.
The bold young man took another step forward, confronting Barzini and straddling the cowering, trembling girl as he leveled his pistol at the lieutenant.
"Don't let him near me!" beseeched the lush young woman, clinging to his legs, her mountainous chest heaving from the exertion of dodging through the woods. "I beg you, please..."
Barzini stopped in his tracks, apparently stupefied by the scene before him. Wearing only his white sleeveless undershirt, he presented a ridiculous figure and without his own pistol, a good deal of his courage seemed to vanish.
"Don't shoot!" he quavered.
"Ah, it's our noble police lieutenant," replied the bandit softly, a mocking tone in his voice. "What's going on, Barzini?"
Romina, curled at the bandit's feet, felt an enormous sense of relief as she saw the pistol and heard the unafraid stranger openly oppose the policeman in this way. Barzini failed to respond, his hands held before him, silently imploring the gunman not to fire and backing away from him into the forest.
"Just a minute, my friend," cautioned the outlaw in the same calm tone of voice, "the signorina seems to be without clothing. Perhaps you could loan her your undershirt."
A look of utter hatred passed over the policeman's face and for a moment, Romina feared he was going to try some desperate action. Then Roberto slowly and deliberately raised the pistol and cocked it, the barrel aimed directly at Barzini's chest. With a shrug, the policeman tore the sleeveless undershirt from his body and threw it on the ground in front of him, before spinning into the bushes and disappearing as rapidly as he had come.
The slender soft-spoken man walked quickly to where the soiled garment was lying and tossed it to. Romina. Christ, what a beauty she is, he thought as he watched her struggle into the male undergarment. No wonder that idiot policeman was trying to rape her! With a sense of regret, he watched her still-swollen, glistening breasts, the small droplets of perspiration clinging to her ripe brown nipples, disappear into the folds of the cotton. He stared at her boldly, studying her luxuriously curved hips and buttocks and the triangular patch of soft black pussy hair between her long bruised legs.
"It's not much," he remarked, shaking his head to drive away the lusty thoughts, "but it'll have to do for the moment. We'd better get going. His courage is going to return the moment he gets his ringers around a gun."
"Oh, thank you," stammered the girl as she tried to cover herself with the inadequate undershirt. "I have to explain...."
"Save it!" snapped the outlaw, taking her by the arm and raising her to her feet. "You're going to need all your breath for getting up on that mountain. Barzini will be after us in another minute and we have enough problems without my shooting a cop. Let's go!"
Romina pulled the policeman's undershirt down as far as it would go and discovered that it failed to cover very much of her. The shirt ended just above her much-abused and battered young pussy and the neckline was scooped, providing a clear view of her generous, well-formed young breasts. Roberto glanced at her appreciatively for a half a moment but decided he could waste no time in admiring her beauty. There would be time for that later, but in the meantime he had already disobeyed the boss by becoming involved in an affair which was none of his business. If he got into a shooting match with the policeman, there would be hell to pay, and Barzini was no man to be trifled with.
As it was, he would have some explaining to do when he arrived at the hide-out with a half-naked foreign girl in tow. The frightened young woman behind him, he lead the way rapidly through the woods and up the steep slope.
So much was happening that Romina had barely time to get her wits together. Most of her attention was devoted to watching where she was going, since Roberto avoided the paths, if there were any, and took her through the thickest portions of the woods. The mysterious individual who had rescued her seemed to be able to move in the darkness with perfect ease. Romina, whose eyes were accustomed to the bright lights of the city, could hardly see a yard in front of her and time and time again she stubbed her bare feet against rocks. Her legs and arms were already badly scratched from her wild flight from the lieutenant and she sustained a few more gashes and bruises being dragged through this impenetrable forest. Not knowing where he was taking her or why, she followed the fast-moving energetic stranger as best she could, clinging to his hand as if he were her older brother.
After an hour's silent march steadily uphill, they cleared the woods at last and struck what seemed to be a mule path where the going was easier.
"We're almost there," commented Roberto, at last breaking his long silence. "We must have lost our friend by now. Do you want to rest for a moment?"
"Oh, if we could," the exhausted girl pleaded, feeling as if her lungs were about to burst.
"Fine, here's a rock you could sit on."
Romina sat down gingerly, feeling the cool moss-covered stone tickle her naked buttocks, inwardly grateful that it was too dark for him to see here properly. "What happened with the policeman?" he inquired mildly.
"It must be an old story," the ravishing American girl responded with some bitterness, trying to cover up her half-exposed breasts with her arms. "He got me to drink some of that funny wine they make here and then started ripping off my clothes. I was running away when you came by." Too shy and embarrassed to admit that she had been the victim of a highly successful rape, and unwilling to discuss precisely what had caused her to run away, Romina hoped that nothing in her voice would betray the fact that she was giving a rather condensed version of the facts. She told him she was a tourist, hoping that the story of her search for Il Volpe had not traveled this far.
"And ... can I ask who you are and where we're going?" she inquired timidly.
"I'm afraid you've fallen into rather bad company," he commented calmly. "Although perhaps not as bad as you were in when I found you. My friends and I live here in the mountains because we have all managed to get ourselves on the wrong side of the law."
"Then ... you're outlaws?" the striking young woman asked excitedly, forgetting in her emotional state to tug the undershirt down over her naked pussy. Could they conceivably be the band she was looking for? The lieutenant had said that the hills were full of criminals? Was it possible?
"Rather melodramatic way of putting it," Roberto replied dryly. "But I suppose you could say that, although we hardly ever think of it in those terms. Come on, if you're rested, let's go up to the cottage and we'll give you some clothing and decide what to do with you."
Without waiting for her to say yes or no, the youth rose and started up the trail, forcing Romina to scramble to her feet and follow him or be left behind. After another fifteen minutes of climbing, Roberto suddenly motioned to her to stop and she froze, wondering if the lieutenant had somehow managed to trail them here.
The quick-moving bandit slipped a few more feet down the trail and disappeared around a corner. Romina waited, her fears mounting. Had she escaped out of the frying pan into the fire? What would these men do to her? Suppose this was not the group she was looking for at all.
Her heart nearly stopped as she heard Roberto's soft voice conversing with another man with an exceptionally deep voice. She could not make out what they were saying and remained rooted to the spot until Roberto re-appeared, smiled briefly and extended his hand.
"Come," he said simply. "I want to present you to our leader.'-
Her knees weak with apprehension, Romina leaned heavily on the young bandit as he helped her the last few feet. There, standing full in the light from a cottage window, stood an unusually tall man, thin but powerful-looking with hawk-like face and penetrating eyes.
He extended his hand without smiling.
"My name is Il Volpe," he said.
CHAPTER SIX
After only five days, it seemed to Romina that she had lived up on the mountain forever. Because of the altitude, there was always a gentle cool breeze from off the Mediterranean Sea, a pleasant change from the sweltering heat of Strappani. The cottage, resting at the foot of a steep cliff, was simple but large and comfortable and she enjoyed helping Selenia, the only female in the group, as she prepared meals for the men and cleaned their rooms.
Their attitude towards her had been generally polite and correct ever since the night of her arrival, but now some of them were becoming downright friendly and were going out of their way to make her feel welcome and at home. She remembered how frightened she had been when Roberto and Il Volpe had led her into the living room and presented her to the group. The policeman's undershirt had not covered very much of her body to begin with and had been torn in several strategic places during their rapid dash to safety up the side of the mountain. No one had made any particular move to give her more adequate clothing and she had been forced to answer their questions while the men inspected her almost-naked form with obvious interest. Of all the members of the band, Il Volpe himself had seemed to be least enthusiastic about the idea of having her there. He had pointed out quietly that they were running a certain risk in sheltering her and remarked rather pointedly that the incident had given the police one more reason to attack them.
Roberto had replied that the damage was already done and argued that once having taken her under their protection, they could hardly abandon her now. Il Volpe had given in finally and decreed that she could remain in their midst for the time being and must be treated with absolute respect by the entire group. No one had consulted her wishes in the situation.
The evening of her arrival had not seemed like an ideal occasion to inform Il Volpe that she suspected him of being her father and Romina had decided to bide her time and try to find some evidence which could settle the matter one way or another. The bandit leader was a strange man and the girl was not entirely sure how to treat him. It was hard to believe that Il Volpe was old enough to be her father, since he looked and acted like a man in his mid-thirties. His hawk-like face was fresh and unlined and the thick hair on his head was still jet-black. However the outlaw chieftain spoke little and seemed to prefer to keep to himself and not mix even with the members of his own group. When he encountered Romina in the cleared area outside the cottage, he invariably bowed low and always called her Signorina, even though the others had begun using her first name after the evening of her arrival.
Selenia, the solitary female member of the band, was a different story altogether. The young Sicilian woman was about Romina's age or possibly a few months younger and not nearly so tall. She possessed the voluptuous shapely figure which is characteristic of Southern Italian women, with large mobile breasts and firm solid hips, as well as an earthy raw sense of humor. Selenia was always ready to laugh at any joke, no matter how low the humor and never seemed to mind when her behind was patted in passing by one of the men. She possessed enormous reserves of energy and vitality and Romina, who was used to a more leisurely pace of life, frequently became exhausted just following her around.
The two women liked each other instinctively even though the American had initially feared that the Italian girl would regard her as a potential rival and be jealous. Romina wondered if Selenia had a boyfriend among the bandits, and if so, which one he was, but she never worked up the courage to ask.
As the two of them worked side by side, the physically well-endowed Italian girl explained a little of the gang's background. All of them had fled at various times over the years into the mountains to join Il Volpe after they had each run afoul of the law in some way.
Tullio, for example, an enormously fat man who consumed mountains of food at every meal and was fond of making lewd remarks to Romina, had been a friend of Il Volpe's since boyhood. He had once hidden the outlaw from the police and had been forced to hide himself in the hills when the lieutenant had found out and tried to arrest him. Mario, a prematurely bald fellow who was the group's carpenter, shoe-maker and handyman, was a deserter from the Army who had been sentenced to a long jail sentence by a military tribunal for a crime actually committed by one of his officers. Benito, a fast-talking, nervous man in his thirties, had stolen some chickens from a nobleman to keep his family from starvation and had joined Il Volpe to avoid going to jail. And Selenia herself had stabbed a policeman who had tried to force his attentions on her and then found a warrant sworn out for her arrest. The others all had similar stories. They had started life honest but poor and each of them had been driven by poverty and the local police into banditry. Roberto seemed to be an exception and Romina gathered that their was some element of mystery regarding his presence. Selenia admitted that she did not know where he had come from, but mentioned that he had once been a school-teacher and was second-in-command after Il Volpe.
As much as she was enjoying her stay with this interesting group of people, the figure of Il Volpe was still very prominent in Romina's thoughts. At times, she found herself romantically attracted to this strange silent man, so much so that she sometimes hoped desperately that he would not turn out to be her father. Other times, she longed to tell him why she had come to Sicily and ask him about his stay in North America with the fervent desire that he could settle, once and for always, the secret behind her parentage. But he remained remote and distant and since no one had yet said anything about leaving, she decided to wait a few more days to see if she could discover anything on her own.
On the fifth day after her arrival, the two women prepared a particularly fine dinner, cooking a wild boar which Tullio, the fat man, had shot in the hills nearby. She was tired after all the work and feeling full "and happy, Romina excused herself after the fruit and coffee and retired to her room.
Undressing languidly, she hung the rough simple clothing which Selenia had loaned her on a peg above her cot, slipped into the undershirt (which she was using as a nightie), blew out the oil and crawled under the sheets.
Meanwhile in the next room. The dinner was rapidly transforming itself into a party. Romina tossed in her narrow bed as she heard corks popping and wine being poured and the gay lusty laughter of Selenia echoing above the lively conversation of the men. The American girl suddenly felt lonely and half decided to rejoin the party, since sleep seemed to be slow in coming. But the idea of getting dressed all over again did not appeal to her since the night was warm. As she lay restlessly in bed, she noticed that light from somewhere was entering the room and sitting up, she discovered that a brick was missing near the ceiling in the wall dividing her room from the area where the party was taking place. Acting out of a childish impulse, she balanced on the edge of a chair and peered into the next room.
The scene which met her eyes had changed considerably. The dishes and silverware had all been cleared away and the entire group was drinking wine, the very same lust-inspiring wine which the lieutenant had made her drink in Strappani. Selenia was sitting boldly on the table in front of the group, her skirt up around her hips and her full finely-shaped legs exposed, drinking the aphrodisiac liquid directly from the bottle. Most of the men had removed their shirts and the room seemed heavy with sensuality.
"Oh, it's hot," complained the full-breasted young woman, a little drunkenly.
"Take off your dress, Selenia," advised Tullio with a raucous laugh, "and you'll see how much cooler you feel!"
An impish smile crossed the Italian girl's impishly puckered lips.
"Oh, it's going to be one of those nights, is it?" she retorted. Getting unsteadily to her feet, Selenia undid the buttons of her dress at the back, walking to where the fat man was sitting with a bottle of the conscience-destroying wine between his knees. His hands went quickly to her lushly rounded hips and the corpulent outlaw tugged as Selenia wiggled the garment off her shoulders, let it fall down over her full exciting buttocks and thighs and drop to the floor. Romina inhaled deeply at the sight, wondering what this behavior could possibly mean.
A general chorus of appreciation could be heard as Selenia's smooth tanned body appeared before them, now concealed only by a pair of cotton panties and a brassiere.
"Feeling cooler now, Selenia?" asked one of the men as he stepped up behind her and ran his hands lewdly over her firm flat stomach.
"No, no, I'm still hot," she complained, the broad grin on her lips betraying the fact that she was joking. She squirmed with pleasure as the bandit worked his lascivious fingers underneath the elastic waist band of the girl's flimsy panties and began drawing them down over her broad inviting hips. Why, they're stripping her! thought Romina, her mind in a daze. It's that wine! It's driven them crazy!
His hands still working, the bandit shifted his attention to Selenia's back, where he deftly undid the fastening of her brassiere.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" she crooned as the bra slithered off her magnificent, voluptuously shaped bosom and joined her panties on the floor. "That feels so much better." Standing stark naked in front of the men, she deliberately excited them, rocking slowly back and forth, her legs slightly spread, her eyes closed, massaging her full ripe brown-tipped breasts with her hands.
"Selenia would like to lay down now, boys," announced the lascivious fat Tullio, who seemed to be the master of orgies for the band. Well, I think she had better he down, thought the scandalized Romina, still watching from her concealed position in the next room, before this goes any further.
But Tullio and Romina were not on the same wave-length. Pulling a mattress off a cot in the corner, the bandits made a bed for Selenia on the top of the table at which they had eaten only a half-hour previously. Over the mattress went a blanket and atop the blanket they settled the supple naked Sicilian girl, her skin now covered with a light fine layer of sweat. From where Romina was watching, the thin, vertical mouth of the girl's openly gapping vagina was plainly visible, only partially protected by the thinly curling strands of dark soft pussy hair.
Around the room now only Il Volpe remained immobile while the others began sensuously stripping the clothing from their bodies. Selenia writhed erotically on the mattress, squeezing her lush ample breasts with her fingers and groaning softly, as if she were alone in the room. Roberto was the only member of the band not represented and Romina guessed that tonight was his turn to stand the guard outside.
The fat foul-mouthed Tullio was the first to approach the naked girl. His thick fleshy cock almost hidden by the enormity of his bulging stomach, he circled the table and roughly pulled the girl's legs apart. Heaving himself up between her separated knees, the monstrous bandit began running his tongue up and down the in-sides of her thighs while the Sicilian girl, her mind now temporarily dulled by the lust-provoking wine, thrashed back and forth, her face contorted with ecstasy. Passing over her body on his hands and knees, his enormous belly almost touching hers, the outlaw sucked the girl's swollen heaving breasts until her brown nipples hardened into protuberant little buds. Then he worked his way down her soft belly, his hot energetic tongue penetrating every hidden little crevice until he reached the moistly open mound of her pussy and the tenderness of her inner thighs.
The other men moved around the table, watching with interest, intermingling encouragements with lewd comments and continually passing the morality-destroying wine back and forth. Selenia writhed beneath their eyes like a mad woman, groaning softly and gripping the edges of the mattress almost as if she were in pain. Romina had never in her life seen anything remotely like this and not even her own rape by the policeman had upset her quite so profoundly.
Then she had been drugged and not fully responsible for her actions but now she was cold sober and she considered bolting from the cottage in horror. But even as the thought passed her mind, she dismissed it. Where on earth could she go from here? Even assuming she could find her way down off the mountain in the dark, which was not at all-likely, Lieutenant Barzini would be waiting for her in the town.
Turning her attention again to the lewd spectacle before her, Romina shuddered with horror as she watched the grotesquely fat Tullio lower his mouth until it was only a few inches from Selenia's soft moving pubic mound. His greasy hands were spread out over her flat smooth stomach with each of his thumbs digging cruelly into the fleshy outer lips of her warm hair-lined cunt. The Italian girl, meanwhile, seemed to be off on another planet. Her mouth was open and a thin trickle of saliva escaped her lips while her eyes stared vacantly off into nothingness.
Romina twitched involuntarily as she watched Tullio's fingers deliberately probe the moist mysteries of Selenia's softly curling pubic hair, slowly exposing the red throbbing slit of her vagina. Visibly hardening under this obscene torment, the Italian girl's tiny delicate clitoris was contracting and expanding violently just above the tight elastic ring of her now openingly palpitating cunt.
"Go to it, Tullio!" called one of the men vulgarly. "There's your dessert for you."
Needing no more encouragement than this, the fat man's head dropped on to the target, his thick busy tongue lashing out like a whip against Selenia's waiting vaginal hole, lewdly exciting the raw sensitive nerves around the fleshy ragged edges. The girl's body jerked spasmodically up around his neck while her restless hands fluttered through his hair. As she tried to force his mouth further into the intimacy of her body, the voluptuous naked girl's hips began to grind in a regular sensual rhythm, keeping time with the insistent probing of the bandit's hot slavering tongue. From her open mouth issued small bird-like cries of pleasure, her lips curled back over her teeth in an expression real animal lust.
Romina felt a series of uncontrollable shivers run through her body as she viewed this depraved spectacle and the sudden horrifying thought crossed her mind that she might herself be sexually excited by these obscene activities. It is not possible, she told herself severely. I haven't had a drop of that orgy-wine and no decent woman could watch a debauchery like this without feeling upset and disgusted.
As she debated with herself, the short bald-headed man called Mario stepped up, rubbing his hands with anticipation. His dangling cock was already half-erected and Romina was shocked at the size of it, gasping with amazement as she watched it slowly rise to its full height and looking like the sawed-off branch of a tree, jutting boldly out of a jumble of reddish curly hair. The bald-headed shoemaker moved to the edge of the table and began running his hands lewdly over Selenia's now hotly writhing body, pinching her swollen breasts with his thin craftsman's fingers. As soon as Selenia sensed this obscene caress, she bent from the waist, twisting her torso and wrapping her arms around the shoemaker's middle. This brought the man's thick cock to within a few inches of the girl's moistly parted lips and Romina dug her finger nails into the palms of her hands as she watched Selenia's tongue snake out in a vain attempt to touch the lewdly pulsating flesh so close to her open lips. A sadistic evil grin crossed Mario's face as he reached down between Selenia's circling arms, took the hot scarlet head of his muscular cock and rubbed it tormentingly across the girl's face and chin. Selenia strained forward, trying to capture the illusive penis in her mouth, but Mario laughed cruelly, swinging it lewdly from side to side whenever she lunged at him.
Finally, with a frantic effort which almost tore her away from Tullio who was still licking her hungrily grinding cunt into sensual madness, Selenia imprisoned Mario's extended cock between her parted lips. With an obscene animalistic roar, Mario seized the opportunity to plunge himself forward, burying his fleshy pole deep in her open willing mouth.
My God, she'll choke to death, thought
Romina, terrified. They're going to kill her like this!
But Selenia, her cheeks bellowing in and out, began sucking the thick red organ as if it were an exotically flavored ice cream cone, running her tongue hungrily over the bulbous blood-swollen tip, her eyes rolled back in her head like a mad woman and a look of wild intensive sensuality on her face.
Time and time again Romina shook her head in vain attempts to clear her dazed mind, but each time she was unable to tear her eyes from the lewd drama unfolding before her. Transfixed, she watched Selenia's tender lips stretched cruelly around the massive penis sawing regularly in and out of her mouth while at the same time Tullio continued to burrow between her legs, making obscene smacking sounds as his meaty tongue tormented the soft wet walls of her hotly pulsating cunt. Mario stood nonchalantly by the edge of the table as he fucked brutally into her mouth, joking with the other men and occasionally taking a swig from the strange aphrodisiac wine which had been the ultimate cause of all Romina's troubles.
Selenia's hands were pressed tight against the shoemaker's hard thrusting buttocks, one in each hand, and Romina could see the girl's arm muscles contract as she strained desperately to pull him even further into her throat. From the corners of her mouth trickled a thin white mixture of saliva and sperm, running in fine white rivulets over down her chin and into the hungrily working hollows of her neck.
"Christ, these two are taking all night!" complained one of the men impatiently.
"Come on, Tullio," urged another, obviously in agreement. "Get your cock in there and go to work. And try not to split her down the middle, will you? The rest of us want some."
Dragging her eyes away from the doubly penetrated girl writhing on the table, Romina studied the man she had reason to believe might be her father. Il Volpe was still not showing the slightest sign of sexual excitement, calmly sitting and puffing on his pipe as he observed these depraved proceedings.
Obeying the request of his companions, Tullio reluctantly raised his head, his mouth dripping with sweat and the vaginal fluids from Selenia's body. Placing his enormous hands under her buttocks, he raised the sex-maddened girl up and threw her legs over his shoulders as if she were a sack of potatoes. Undisturbed by this activity, Selenia continued to suck Mario's pulsating cock as if her life depended upon it.
With a grunt, the fat outlaw rammed his great penis into Selenia's already well-lubricated cunt-al passage, penetrating her like an express train roaring into a dark hotly greased tunnel. The force of his thrusts brought his thick muscular thighs into violent contact with the girl's upturned and exposed buttocks and from her vantage point, Romina could see Tullio's heavy swinging testicles crash against the tiny puckered ring of her rectum. Loosing no time, Tullio began fucking into her with long hard strokes as Selenia's buttocks responded, undulating lasciviously back up at him with each powerful movement.
Romina shifted her horrified attention to Mario, who was fucking into her cruelly-stretched mouth with ever-increasing speed. The bald-headed man seemed determined to bury his cock completely in the girl's throat and Romina wondered why she was not choking on the huge thickness. Instead, mewing purring sounds and moans of pleasure emerged from Selenia's cock-filled mouth as Mario's heavy, sperm-filled balls slapped ruthlessly against her chin.
Oh God, thought Romina desperately. He's going to mangle her like that! If he empties his cum into her throat, she'll strangle!
Unable to tear her eyes from this depraved scene, Romina watched as the shoemaker partially withdrew his swollen throbbing cock and Selenia wrapped both hands around it, jerking at him as if she were trying to twist his penis off. When the monstrous red tip was clear of her open mouth, Mario suddenly groaned as heavy jets of hot sticky sperm began spraying out of his cock like shells from a machine gun. The viscous white liquid poured into Selenia's waiting mouth and Romina shuddered in near despair, watching the Italian girl's adam's apple bob up and down as she hungrily, almost as though she were starving swallowed desperately at his cum, anxiously trying not to lose a drop. When Mario's orgasm passed, Selenia pulled him close to her again, still gulping down the hot, lust-inciting fluid, and tenderly licked him clean like a mother cat, running her tongue carefully over the slowly deflating penis while saliva and expended semen dribbled over her chin and thin strings of the white, viscous substance stretched from her glistening lips to the tip of his softening cock.
The shock of this grotesque scene was enough to tear Romina loose from the paralysis which had held her until now. As Mario collapsed happily back into his chair and another man took his place at Selenia's now empty mouth, Romina tore her eyes away and carefully climbed down off the chair.
I must get away from here, she told herself! Here I am, trapped somewhere in the mountains with a gang of criminal sex maniacs! Despite the gentleness with which she had been treated thus far Romina knew that once they had drunk enough of that sex-wine, they could easily turn their attentions to her.
But running away would mean abandoning her project! So far, she had been remarkably lucky. Within two days of her arrival in Sicily, she was Il Volpe's houseguest. How foolish to leave until she was able to establish firmly one way or the other whether or not he was her real father.
And there was one more reason, she forced herself to admit. As the days had gone by, Il Volpe, the bandit chief, had become increasingly prominent in her thoughts and she could not decide whether the emotions she was feeling towards him were the sentiments of a daughter for her father or-she choked at the thought-the feelings of a woman for a man!
She had to know the truth, and yet it still seemed totally impossible to ask him directly. Romina returned to her bed, resolving to sleep and consider the whole problem more carefully the next day, but was dismayed to find that she was painfully and overly excited by what she had just seen and totally incapable of sleeping. What to do?
A thought suddenly occurred to her. If Il Volpe had really once been married to her mother, he must have with him some memento, a photograph, a letter, something to remember her by. If she could find some evidence, some proof, she would finally know where she stood. And tonight was the perfect opportunity to play private detective. With the noise they were all making in the next room, they would never hear her moving around. And Selenia would keep them occupied for hours.
Still wearing the torn undershirt they had taken from the police lieutenant, the girl swallowed her fears as slipped out of her room into the hallway and crept down to the entrance to Il Volpe's bedroom. The door yielded to her gentle push and she quickly stepped inside and closed it tightly before putting a match to the oil lamp next to the bed.
Il Volpe's room was neat and simple. There was a desk in the corner piled with a number of books. A few articles of clothing hung behind the door and there was a landscape painting over the bed. Obviously, in his career as a bandit, Il Volpe had found it expedient to travel light and avoid accumulating useless objects. In the corner of the room stood an enormous wooden chest, and Romina carefully raised the unlocked lid, excitement growing in her stomach.
Inside were obviously the outlaw's prize possessions. There was a suit of city clothing, old but clearly kept in good condition. On the other side, wrapped in newspapers, was a well-oiled sub-machine gun and below this there was a rather large box which proved to contain shells for the murderous looking weapon. Shaving equipment and a small mirror rested at the bottom of the chest, along with a series of small boxes of various shapes and sizes. Romina picked one up at random and opened it. It was the type of spring operated ornate box normally used for woman's jewelry. Inside, resting on a tiny velvet cushion, was a woman's earring, made of gold and fashioned in the shape of a fox.
Suddenly it struck her and her hands began to shake so badly that she had to place the earring on the desk or risk dropping it. It was the mate to her mother's earring, the one she had worn around her neck for so many years! God, this was the proof she had been searching for! There was no longer any doubt. Il Volpe was her father! A rainbow of conflicting emotions ran through her mind and she could not decide whether to laugh or cry. How could she tell him? What should she say?
"I thought so!" came a steady voice from across the room. Romina, startled, looked up to find herself face to face with Il Volpe himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"I knew there was something strange about you the day Roberto brought you up here," said the bandit leader, an unusual harsh bitter cruelty in his voice. "On our next meeting, I must congratulate Lieutenant Barzini on the powers of his imagination. It never occurred to me that he would send a policewoman after me."
'"A policewoman?" repeated Romina, a little stupefied.
"And the marvelous scene the two of you acted out just as Roberto happened to be passing by! How could he have resisted the opportunity to save a beautiful naked woman from being raped?"
Oh Christ, thought the trembling frightened girl, he thinks that horrible policeman sent me here as a spy. She had to explain! She had to make him believe her!
"No, no ... you don't understand," she began, but Il Volpe's hand flashed out of nowhere and caught her full on the side of the face. The slap sent her spinning backwards against his bed and her cheek burned with the unexpected pain.
"You will speak when you are spoken to," he informed her brutally. "You have forfeited your right to be treated as an honored guest in my house."
As the hurt subsided, Romina suddenly became aware that she was still wearing only the policeman's torn undershirt and that the garment had fallen high up on her stomach as she sprawled across the bed, revealing to the outlaw's eyes the curling dark triangle of pubic hair covering her naked pussy. She followed his eyes as they dropped to the tantalizing sight of her naked crotch and it suddenly struck her that he too was still under the influence of the sex-stimulating wine from Strappani. In an instant he was at her side, seizing her by the arm and propelling her to the door.
"This is a problem which concerns us all," he muttered angrily. "We'll let the group decide what to do with you."
Still making a vain attempt to stretch the undershirt to cover her vulnerable pubic area, Romina was pushed roughly into the living room. Selenia had fallen asleep on the sperm and sweat soaked mattress, her legs spread apart lewdly and a trickle of unswallowed cum still oozing from the corner of her open mouth. The rest of the bandits jumped up startled as their leader threw Romina onto the floor in their midst.
"Found her searching my room," he explained shortly. "One of Barzini's spies. I've suspected her from the beginning."
"Oh Christ!" exclaimed the bald shoemaker. "Now what do we do with her?"
"Get rid of her," suggested Tullio menacingly, staring angrily at the quivering terrified girl.
"That's right," agreed another man enthusiastically. "She can't leave here alive. She already knows too much about us." All the men in the room were naked except for Il Volpe and Romina felt close to fainting from the combination of fear and the acrid scent of lust, sweat and sperm from their wine drunken bodies. They closed around her.
"Roberto brought her here," Il Volpe stated firmly. "And we should hear what he has to say before we do anything. It's only fair to him!"
While the men discussed her fate, Tullio, the monstrously fat bandit who had been the first to assault Selenia, approached her, grinning obscenely, and seized her arm, his strong brutal fingers causing red marks on her tender skin. He turned her around slowly like a slave master examining a possible purchase.
"No matter what we do with her eventually," he announced, "I can't see any reason not to have a little fun with her in the meantime. I don't think Selenia will mind, do you?" The rest of the men sniggered with a glance at the heavily sleeping Italian girl. "And this little policewoman is something special or old Tullio's eyes are failing him."
Romina looked quickly at Il Volpe, begging him with her eyes not to let this awful thing happen to her but the bandit leader met her beseeching stare for a long minute and then abruptly turned away towards the door.
"Do what you want."
"he consented harshly. "Just remember, someone must relieve Roberto from the guard post tomorrow and you are not to kill her until he returns. I'm going to sleep. Clean her up when you get through with her and bring her to my room in the morning."
With this cruel sentence, Il Volpe spun on his heel and walked out of the room, his mind in a turmoil.
I thought I knew who she was, he said to himself in anguish as he walked down the corridor to his room. The face was almost the same. Her body looked the same. She even smiles like the other one used to smile. What an impossible dream? A crazy idea! If she had been my daughter, she would have said something before now!
He halted in the corridor as a chorus of lusty laughter from the living room reached his ears. Suppose he was wrong? Suppose the mysterious young girl was not a police spy at all but really the product of the love he had shared with the American woman twenty-one years ago, the wife he had loved and been forced to leave? If this were the case, he had just handed his only daughter's body over to the lusts and desires of his own band of criminals!
Il Volpe shook his head to drive away this monstrous suspicion and entered the solitude of his bedroom.
Impossible! Had she been his daughter, she would have spoken up! And why search his room? The incident with the policeman had made him suspicious from the very start. No daughter of his would drink Strappani wine with a policeman. She was a fucking spy and nothing else! He slammed the door savagely behind him and threw himself on the bed. Closing his eyes in a useless attempt to sleep, he saw before him in his mind's eye the sight of her exposed helpless legs and smooth white little belly as he had seen them while shoving her onto this very bed a few minutes before. The bandit leader felt lust growing in his loins, a terrible gnawing confused lust. Images of Romina as his daughter, as the innocent stranger or the cunning policewoman all mixed in his mind and could not be separated. He turned his face to the wall, summoning up all his will power to control his feelings. She was not his daughter! In the morning, when the boys had finished with her, he would fuck her himself till she screamed. When Roberto returned, they would decide what to do and if the group wanted her put out of the way, he would do the job himself with his own pistol!
* * *
"So you thought you could pull a fast one on us, did you?" mocked Tullio, now fully in command in the absence of both Il Volpe and Roberto. "What do you say, boys? I think that this undershirt covers up a little too much of what we'd like to see. Take it off, bitch!"
Romina stared helplessly back at the corpulent outlaw, her arms paralyzed by fear and too numb to move. Was this how it was destined to end? To be raped and murdered by a gang of bandits in the mountains of land she didn't even know? How could she save herself? Crying out that she was the daughter of Il Volpe would only make them laugh now. No one, not even the bandit chief himself, would be-likely to believe that story at this stage of the game.
"Not very obedient, Tullio," commented one of the bandits.
"Needs a little convincing," responded the fat man. "Loan me your belt, Mario."
"No!" she cried, as she saw the powerful outlaw, still naked, seize the stout leather belt. Two other men hoisted the slumbering Selenia off the table and dumped her without much ceremony on the steel springs of the bed. Then Romina felt herself grasped by strong hands and stretched out on top of the mattress which was still soaked with cum and the sweat from Selenia's gang-ravished body.
Laying spread-eagled on her stomach, she knew instinctively that pleading for mercy would only make matters worse and she realized that she was totally in their hands now, helpless before whatever brutal torment they chose to inflict upon her. The undershirt was cruelly ripped from her back and the outlaws laughed heartlessly as they viewed her naked unprotected buttocks trembling whitely with fear and raised up like a sacrificial offering to their eyes. The tough, violent men crowded around the table expectantly, prodding and pinching her with their fingers as Tullio cracked the belt experimentally in the air. Beneath him, her slim but voluptuous body glistened with terrorized perspiration as she awaited the blows to come.
"When I'm through with you, little police-girl," Tullio promised, determination and bitterness in his voice, "you're going to beg us to fuck you anyway we want. When you start begging, I'll stop hitting."
The belt came down hard on her naked upturned buttocks sooner and more painfully that she expected and a cry of agony escaped her lips.
"Aaaaagggghhhh!! ! " she wailed, but the blows continued to mark her squirming back and thighs, faster than she could have believed possible. She vowed, even as the pain increased, that she would never submit. They could and probably would rape her mercilessly, but she would never beg them to do it to her!
"Beg!" Tullio commanded harshly, his deep voice echoing across the room.
"Oh, please stop, please..." she implored them.
"Not like that, baby," the fat man growled.
"Beg us to fuck you. Tell us how much you want it."
"No, please," she whimpered piteously. "Don't make me do it!"
"Turn her over, boys, and we'll try the other side," Tullio ordered. Once again, Romina felt powerful hands manipulate her body, turning her roughly over on her back.
"Now spread her legs," Tullio added and two muscular bandits drew her ankles apart, exposing the tender fleshy folds of her hair-lined crotch and the pinkly shining entrance to her tight little cunt. Once more the belt flashed through the air and Romina's scream reverberated through the room, causing even Selenia to stir in her drugged intoxicated sleep. The belt had landed full on the softness of her ripe delicate clitoris, sending a blade of intolerable pain up her spinal column. Whatever else they did to her, Romina knew she could not endure that torture again.
"Oh, I can't stand it..." she cried out, as Tullio flexed his arm for another blow. "Fuck me if you want ... do whatever you want to do to me but don't hit me again."
"Now did I understand you correctly, Signorina?" questioned Tullio, with heavy mockery. "You wish these gentlemen here to shove their thick fat cocks up into that tight little pussy of yours?" As he spoke he whirled the belt high over his head, knowing that her will was broken and wanting to keep the pressure on.
"Yes," she hissed helplessly, her voice barely audible.
"Now some of these honored gentlemen have special tastes. I do trust the American Signorina will not mind if they do some things to her that the young lady's boyfriend back home never thought of?"
"Please, do anything you want, but don't hit me again!" she sobbed in despair as her lovely body was suddenly covered with lewd hands, caressing her full resilient breasts and exploring the soft moist mysteries of the pink-rimmed vaginal opening below her flat smooth stomach.
Tullio positioned himself between her legs, massaging his heavy flaccid cock with his hands as he gazed down at her helplessly spread form.
"Need a little drink first," he muttered and one of the men uncorked a fresh bottle. After pouring about a quarter of it down his throat, the monstrously fat bandit looked down in satisfaction as his cock, barely visible beneath his bulging stomach, responded to the lust-exciting wine and began steadily rising.
"Give me some!" cried Romina impulsively. The wine would make it easier, she knew, and she wanted to be drugged, unconscious if possible, while the gang did its lewd work on her:
Her plea provoked a general chorus of laughter and one of the men held the bottle between her parted lips.
"Drink it all," commanded Tullio sternly. Romina was forced to drink or strangle as the sexually-stimulating fluid came bubbling out of the bottle and she choked and gagged as it poured slowly down her throat. Only when the bottle was empty did they remove it from her lips and she began immediately to feel the now-familiar sensation of warmth in her stomach and loins.
"Take a look at this," bellowed Tullio in triumph and Romina struggled to focus her glazed eyes on the long menacing instrument he was holding between his pudgy fingers. Without waiting for her verdict, he climbed up on the table with surprising agility and fell with his full weight on top of her outstretched body;
She moaned helplessly as she felt the hardness of his penis pressing forcefully against the soft tender flesh of her thighs. The fat man inched forward, moving his now fully hardened cock closer to its goal. She tried to tighten the fragile muscles surrounding her pink cuntal slit, but his weight was crushing the breath from her body and she felt her arms and legs go limp. There was nothing left for her now but surrender. Tullio poised himself for the final attack, grinning lasciviously at the naked foreign girl who was now completely in his power. He knew perfectly well that she found him repulsive and he vowed silently to make her like his fucking whether she wanted to or not.
The black-haired girl groaned as she felt the increased pressure of his long thick cock against the warm, fearfully trembling folds of her cunt.
Suddenly the groan turned into a gasp of pain as the ragged wet edges of her vagina suddenly yielded before the insistent probings of the rounded tip of his hardened rod. And then it was Tullio's turn to groan. The fat man had known his share of women in his long criminal career, but he had never felt anything remotely like this before. The wet grasping walls of her tight young vagina, already stimulated and throbbing into life by the fast-acting wine, gripped his muscular fleshy member like a greased, foam rubber vise and he surged into her with renewed strength, feeling the moist interior walls of her cunt give way before the attack.
The helplessly impaled girl writhed piteously beneath him, the pain he was causing in her almost-unused loins spreading like fire up into her stomach. But her useless struggles only served to excite him more and the tightening of her vaginal muscles on his huge, lustfully pulsating cock caused it to expand even more until her belly felt as if it were stretched to the point of no return.
As the corpulent bandit began fucking into her with long firm strokes, Romina felt other hands roaming over her defenseless body. Her breasts were being pinched and kneaded by someone whose face she could not see, bringing both of her tiny brown buds involuntarily into a state of hardness. Another hand insinuated itself forcibly under her buttocks and she felt the author of this new aggression run his finger lightly over the exposed lips of her tiny rectum.
"Hey, we can't wait, Tullio!" cried one of the men. "You take too damn long!"
"Turn her on her side, Tullio." advised another. "We'll stay out of your way."
"Wait till you're my age," grumbled the fat man, panting with exertion, but he obediently rolled over on his side, never losing a stroke and exposing Romina's soft, well-rounded buttocks to the man who wanted them
A scream broke from her lips as she felt her tight unused little anus being probed lewdly at by someone's thick middle finger.
"No, no, not that," she begged. "Aaaaggghhh!! ! "
Scorning the futile resistance offered by her tightly contracted little ass-hole, the unseen man's brutal finger suddenly slipped into it, and on into the warm interior of her body, cruelly stretching her vainly clenched rectal passage as she had never believed possible. She tried to hold her thighs perfectly still to minimize the pain, but the insistent thrusting of Tullio's savage loins forced her body back onto the twisting, circling finger.
The pain was excruciating and she felt her ass-hole being slowly but surely widened so much that it seemed unlikely ever to return to its original size and shape. The pain in her cruelly stretched vagina was lessening now, because the fluids from her body were beginning to flood into the burning passage as the lust-inspiring wine had its inevitable effect.
The finger wormed even harder up into her tormented rectum and was joined by a second and a third as her nether passage slowly yielded to this relentless assault. Then suddenly the fingers withdrew and she enjoyed a moment of comfort. Her mind, now totally confused by the maddening wine, relaxed for a few seconds. It's not so bad being fucked from the front, she thought vaguely, but from behind it hurts too much.
But the reprieve was only temporary. Once again she sensed harsh hands drawing the soft white moons of her buttocks cruelly apart and then came the horrifying feeling of a man's thick extended penis pressing against the tight restricting ring of her anal flesh.
A scream of real agony broke forth from the temporarily-demented girl's lips as her tiny pre-stretched anus yielded before this overwhelming pressure and the man's rubbery hardened cock plunged mercilessly up into her bowels in one long smooth stroke. Her buttocks jerked and writhed in desperation but the two men pinned her neatly between them and with each futile movement of the young woman's body, the thick unrepentant cock glided a few more inches into the warmly yielding cavern of her ass.
Working like a team, Tullio and the unidentified bandit synchronized their thrusts, battering her naked young body back and forth between them like a rag doll, only a thin wall of fleshy membrane separating the two plunging ravaging poles.
"Christ, she's tight in the ass," grunted the unseen man who was fucking jerkily into her tortured rectum. From Romina's throat there came a low tormented whine as the two thick cudgels skewered into her back and front. The two bandits began to pick up the tempo as her twin passages gradually adjusted to this double invasion and the natural juices of her body started to flow and lubricate both hotly clenching channels.
While her body was being torn violently by this lewd double rape, Romina's mind felt as if it were coming apart at the seams. Her eyes refused to focus properly because of the wine and the ill-treatment to which she was being subjected and she could no longer control the direction of her thoughts. She was barely conscious of the fact that the pain in her loins was almost gone and aware of a new and more disturbing feeling which was slowly and gradually taking its place.
Her body, in spite of her fear and revulsion, was beginning to lewdly react!
With what was left of her capacity for clear thought, the girl knew perfectly well that she was being brutally raped, in fact, fucked half to death, by two common outlaws who might tomorrow put a pistol to her head and blow her brains out.
But now, somehow, nothing seemed to matter, nothing but the magic overpowering sexual sensations rushing through her tortured bruised body...
Feeling the change come over her, the two men re-doubled their efforts as Romina let herself go, her smooth round buttocks undulating hungrily and lasciviously in tiny answering circles. Her groans became more insistent and she dug her nails into Tuliio's broad back, trying to spread her milk-white young thighs even further apart and draw him even deeper into the tenderness of her throbbing vagina. Everything was forgotten now: the torn undershirt on the floor, the humiliation of being fucked back and front in the presence of a roomful of lustfully jeering men, the unknown fate which awaited her in the morning. All that counted for Romina now was the hot searing sensation in her rectum as the unknown man's hard, blood-filled penis stabbed ruthlessly in and out of her bowels and the pressure of Tuliio's heavily tunneling hardness against her now-hardened cervix, deep inside of her where no man had ever touched her before.
With a shock, she realized in the back of her wine-clouded head that she really wanted to be fucked like this! She wanted them to do everything to her that they had done to Selenia and more! And inexperienced as she was, Romina knew that she was approaching orgasm and the two men had to struggle to hold her wildly-jerking body down.
"Oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck into me harder," she screamed as the greedy moist walls of her cuntal passage clasped the fleshy battering ram which was pummeling her from the front. At the same time, her rectal entry contracted fiercely against the invading penis it contained. Her head lashed back and forth, savagely, her eyes clenched and her mouth open. The muscles on her neck stood out like cords and her smooth soft tummy hardened with the approaching spasm of climax.
"I'm cumming! Oh God, I'm cumming!" she groaned, as an obscenely building wave of indescribable pleasure swept outward from her burning loins, spreading inexorably through her milk-white thighs and up into her heaving swollen breasts. Gushes of fresh, youthful smelling orgiastic fluid poured out of her body past Tullio's hard plunging cock and mixed with the accumulated sweat of three laboring bodies before trickling down her legs in tiny heated rivulets. The unusual force of her orgasm brought both men closer to the end and as Romina screamed out the fury of her own climax, she could feel Tullio's powerfully plunging cock beginning to jerk up inside her wide-stretched cunt.
The bandit crushed his lips tightly against her bruised mouth, a long low groan emanating from his throat as he began spurting his hot angry sperm mercilessly into her twisting writhing groin. She could feel it stream into her in great unending torrents and his once-enormous cock seemed to deflate like a pricked balloon as each wave of cum gushed out of him. As Tullio collapsed, his head nestled between her ripe heaving breasts, Romina felt the other man, whose face she had never seen, began to cum deep up in her over filled bowels.
Digging his fingers painfully into her thighs, the unknown bandit plunged into her hotly clenching rectum as far as his hardness would reach, but Romina now welcomed the hurt and the impalement and lewd, wicked pleasure flooded through her wine-destroyed mind as she felt the second load of masculine cum pouring sodomistically into her gratefully accepting anal passage.
In another minute, both men had pulled their now-deflated cocks free of her battered sweat-covered body, and Romina lay alone on the sodden mattress, her legs spread wide apart and her naked sperm-soaked vagina open and gaping at the room. Her mind was now completely out of control, as a result of the aphrodisiac wine, and she lay idly staring at the ceiling. Another man dropped himself heavily between her wide splayed legs and she found herself lifting her loins invitingly, now wanting them all to fuck her, one after another, any way they wanted, so long as her humiliation and degradation was complete. One of the bandits placed a fresh bottle of the conscience-destroying wine to her lips and she gulped it down eagerly, wanting total oblivion and madness. The men followed one another quickly, each making his offering before the altar of her hungry cunt, but their faces and bodies and cocks all blended into one. From time to time, her body would begin to react of its own accord, and she would groan her way into another orgasm, but she was long past keeping count. Once she thought it was Il Volpe himself-her own father-that she held in her arms, but when she focused her eyes, an irrational joy in her heart, she saw that it was only Tullio again and she let her head drop back on the mattress in disappointment. In the early hours of the morning, as the bandits were coming back for seconds and thirds, unconsciousness finally claimed her and she slept, unmindful of what they did to her sperm flooded body or what fate awaited her at dawn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Il Volpe awoke early, just as the sun was rising, and as usual he was fully conscious and ready for action the moment his eyelids were open. Without bothering to dress, he strode to the kitchen and prepared himself his obligatory cup of morning coffee. This was normally Selenia's task, but he reasoned that the young Italian girl had been through a rougher-than-usual night and he decided not to disturb her.
Standing naked in the kitchen drinking the thick bitter espresso coffee, Il Volpe took several deep breaths, feeling good and also feeling exceptionally mean. In an hour or so, Roberto would be coming back from guard duty and they would decide what to do with the girl, but in the meantime he had his own plans for her.
This woman had done him wrong and he meant to have his revenge! She had come up here without being invited, insinuating herself into his group and relying on the ancient Sicilian tradition of hospitality to protect her from harm. She had roused in him again the wildest of his old hopes and ancient dreams, the insane desire to see his daughter. Worse than that, she had made him half-fall in love with her!
And then she turned out to be a police spy! Not his daughter. Not even a lover. But a spy. And by God she would pay for it! He would humiliate her the way no woman had ever been humiliated before!
With a roar of sudden rage, the bandit chief sent his coffee cup sailing into the wall and stormed out of the kitchen and into the living room. His heartbeat increased as he saw Romina's figure on the mattress, naked, bruised, battered and asleep. Some of the other bandits had crawled off to their own beds after the orgy but Tullio was snoring away beneath the bed, his over-worked, flaccid penis hanging limply between his fat legs.
"Tullio!" Il Volpe roared and the corpulent outlaw sprang to his feet with amazing speed, his reflexes conditioned by his lengthy criminal career. "I told you to have that woman in my bedroom at daybreak! Must I do everything myself?"
"Sorry, boss," the fat bandit mumbled apologetically. Without a second's hesitation, he slid his powerful hands beneath Romina's slumbering body and lifted her into the air without the slightest sign of exertion, carrying her roughly down the corridor to his leader's bedroom.
Romina was wide awake by the time she found herself being dropped nakedly onto Il Volpe's bed and her eyes popped open in time to see the two men, both perfectly naked, standing before her.
"Well, how was she, Tullio?" asked the master criminal, hatred in his voice. "Did you and the boys soften her up for me?"
"You bet we did, Signore," responded his subordinate respectfully. "We needed the belt at first to teach her a little obedience but once she warmed up, we had quite a time with her. A real hot little bitch of a policewoman, Sir!"
Romina, not knowing quite what was expected of her, rose from the bed, smoothing her hair with her hands and suddenly becoming conscious that she was standing stark naked in front of the man she now knew to be her father.
"On your knees, bitch!" he spat out, looking at her with bitterness and disdain. The bandit leader squared his shoulders, as if settling his mind on something for once and for always, and walked menacingly toward her.
Romina, startled at the harshness of his command, sank to her knees immediately, bewildered and desperately searching her mind for some way of explaining herself. She was about to cry, "I'm your daughter!" when Il Volpe stepped deliberately up to where she was kneeling, his magnificent penis swaying only inches from her parted lips.
Then she understood what was required of her and something incredibly perverse deep inside her made her bite off the words before they could escape from her mouth. There was clearly another dimension to her feelings about Il Volpe, she realized. He was not only her father.
He was a man, a tall muscular handsome man who was about to use her in a way which not even the bandit gang the night before had dared do.
The idea filled her with emotion and she stooped her shoulders from shaking with an effort. His massive cock, there before her eyes, was filling with blood, becoming rigid and hard, standing out of his brown clump of pubic hair like the mast of a schooner. Her father was going to defile her mouth with that unforgiving instrument and the idea filled her with revulsion.
And with desire!
As she leaned toward him hesitantly, she felt his fingers curling in her long black hair, pulling her face closer to his already hardened cock.
"Suck it in your mouth, spy!" came his command from above her and she quickly lifted her hands to his rigid flesh, pushing back the foreskin and exposing the giant, smooth-skinned head. She could hear Tullio, who was watching this depraved scene, chortling with obscene glee and somewhere in the back of her head, she resented his being there and observing this. Despite the fact that the fat outlaw had fucked her and cum up inside her any number of times the night before, she insanely felt that what was about to happen was a kind of father-daughter affair and that non-members of the family should not be present.
Now she felt the acrid but not unpleasant taste of his cock against her lips and she glanced down at the length of him. He was bigger than any of the men she had seen thus far, at least nine inches long and nearly as big around as the handle of a baseball bat.
She hesitated again, a little repelled at the idea of her mouth being misused in this fashion. With this same penis, twenty-two years ago, Il Volpe had fucked her mother and the seed that had given her life had come out of this tiny slit in the bulbous blood-swollen tip. She reached out experimentally with her tongue to gather the tiny droplets of fluid oozing from the fleshy folds of his foreskin and as she parted her lips, Il Volpe moved deliberately forward, pressuring his thick hardness deeper into the saliva-wetness of her open, half-willing mouth. She could feel the giant pulsating gland at the end of his powerful cock gliding along the smoothness of her tongue. The taste was masculine and pungent and she closed her lips tightly around him as his hips began a slow undulating motion.
As her jaw began to work, the thick cock began to slide in and out of her mouth, making wet obscene smacking sounds with each stroke.
Alright, she told herself, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it right. Il Volpe thinks he's humiliating me and he's correct, but I'm going to suck him like he's never been sucked before. He'll remember this the rest of his life or I'll die trying! Let him shoot it into me, let him cum in my throat. I want it!
And she began to suck him in earnest, trying to draw every drop of sperm out of him and into her, moving her head up and down over his muscular throbbing penis, her movements in perfect time with the increasingly rapid thrusts of his hips. She felt the juices in her empty vagina begin to flow and erotic fantasies danced through her head until she wondered if she were still being affected by the aphrodisiac wine she had been force-fed the night before.
Gradually the pace of Il Volpe's strokes quickened and he fucked in and out of her gurgling mouth like a madman, ramming his fleshy member deeper and deeper into the back of her pliant mouth.
Oh cum, cum, cum, she pleaded in her mind as she gagged whenever he penetrated too far into her throat. Cum into my mouth and fill me with it!
Il Volpe's hands left her hair, sliding down to her cheeks and pressuring them tightly to his cockhead inside as he slammed into her like a smoothly working piston. She knew he was close and worked to heighten the pressure of her lips on him, to make it better for him when he would finally empty his heated white cum deep into the back of her mouth.
Then she heard a long low groan from high above her. His cock seemed to double in size and then discharge like a pistol, flooding thin hard jets of cum far back against her desperately working tonsils while tiny grunts and moans of intense pleasure rumbled in her throat.
She clasped her lips tightly around his jerking instrument, trying not to lose a single drop of the precious fluid from which she came and swallowed it greedily, the muscles in her throat standing out prominently as she choked it down.
"Now lick me clean," came the stern order from above.
Shivering with the emotion produced by the shocking experience she had just been through, Romina made haste to comply with his command and began twisting her tongue around the slowly deflating object she held in her hands, swallowing the last remnants of his cum as she slavered obediently over him. Pulling the foreskin as far back as it would go, she was particularly careful with the tip of his penis, sucking it repeatedly back into her mouth while she cupped his heavy testicles softly in her hands.
However, instead of completing the usual process of deflation, Il Volpe's rubbery cock slowly began to react to her licking, gradually becoming rigid and stiff once again.
"Did you take her from behind last night?" she heard her father inquire casually as she held him tenderly in her hands, waiting for instructions.
"Mario did, but he said that she was tight as hell. And Mario's not really that big, although he wouldn't like to hear me say it. I'd never fit and you, Signore, would split her right up the seams."
"Do you think so?" responded Il Volpe, his voice calm and philosophical, as if they were discussing some normal everyday problem. "Better stick around. I may need some help in holding her down if she's really that tight. Let's get her up on the bed."
Before she could protest this obscene tortuous suggestion, Romina found herself hoisted bodily onto Il Volpe's large soft bed and sent sprawling on her hands and knees.
"Please, no ... don't..." she began to plead, but Il Volpe cut her off with a sharp remark to his subordinate..
"We may need the belt again, Tullio. I don't like noisy women!"
Romina bit her lip and fell silent. Her own, unknowing father was going to sodomize her, there was no doubt of it now. And they had said that the man who had done it last night was little: Il Volpe would kill her if he tried to make love to her rectum! The act was a physical impossibility!
But there was no question of resistance, since Tullio had positioned himself near her head and was forcing her shoulders down on the bed, his meaty muscular fingers making red marks on the soft bare flesh of her arms. And the mention of the belt was enough to make her obey their order to be silent. She remembered the whipping she had received the night before and had no desire for a repeat performance.
"On your knees, bitch, and lift your ass in the air!" she heard Il Volpe command harshly and although she felt humiliated and ridiculous, she obediently pulled her knees under her and raised her buttocks behind her.
"Looks tight," the bandit chief commented and she could feel his finger experimentally probing the opening to her still slightly stretched rectum. She tried desperately to contract the tiny elastic ring which circled the entrance to her anus, but the finger's superior strength conquered her resistance and slipped up inside the smooth, hairless little opening to the first knuckle.
Romina was surprised that the pain was not worse than it was, apparently since she was still somewhat stretched from the previous night. The real hurting began when a second finger joined the first and tears of pain and abject humiliation came flooding to her eyes. She had been raped and hurt before, yes, by the lieutenant a week ago, and by the other bandits last night, but this was altogether different. Now the man who was hurting and humiliating her was her own father and he didn't even know it!
She could feel his wiry forceful hands on her smooth moon-like buttocks, drawing them inexorably apart and inserting his thumbs in the moist crevice until she could feel the cool morning air penetrating into the sanctuary of her bowels.
She would never survive this, she told herself. She could never again stand upright and look the world in the face after undergoing this subjugation and shame. If the act itself did not kill her, the disgrace surely would. She tried to wiggle away from him in despair, but the tantalizing movements of her nakedly spread young buttocks only served to excite him more and she felt his massive cock pressing heatedly at the door to her rectum, demanding entrance. The penis so wide what it had barely fit into her wide-stretched mouth was now about to be thrust ruthlessly into her ass-hole! She began to struggle desperately.
"Hold onto her while I get in!" Il Volpe snapped angrily and the pressure of Tuliio's hands increased. She could feel her father's fingernails digging into her thighs as he worked fiercely to force his way into her upturned rectum.
Her tiny elastic anus resisted until it could resist no longer and then surrendered to the overwhelming pressure of his blunt hardened penis. It popped suddenly up into the barrier of her tightly resisting anal muscle and her scream reverberated throughout the cottage!
But her useless groans and cries only seemed to stimulate the sex-maddened outlaw. The steady inexorable advance of his rigid genital organ shot ever-renewed waves of pain through her body, stretching the fibrous membranes of her rectum beyond the point of no return. Now she held perfectly still as he wormed his way deeper and deeper into the softly yielding depths of her body, hoping to minimize the pain, trying futilely to relax her ass muscles the way a patient tries to relax when receiving an injection. Her backside felt overwhelmed, filled, stuffed, as if she had suddenly been impaled on the stump of a tree.
Il Volpe was panting with the exertion of forcing his hardened penis into this tight resisting opening, but he knew that her will to oppose him had been effectively broken. He gathered his resources for the final push and, taking a firm grip on her loins, thrusting himself violently forward, impaling the trembling girl completely and burying himself to the hilt.
Romina had never felt so dirtied in her life as she trembled in the debasing kneeling posture before him, her buttocks waving high in the air and her breasts and face pressed tightly against the mattress. Il Volpe, moving at first with difficulty, began thrusting slowly in and out between the full, quivering moons of her ass-cheeks, his thick cock making a depraved smacking sound each time he withdrew it almost to the tip and then plunged forward again.
Her tiny, badly stretched rectum clung to his impaling rod like a rubber glove, but she gratefully realized that the pain was gradually lessening with each stroke as the natural juices from her body began to lubricate her burning passage.
She could hear him grunt and groan with pleasure as he fucked ruthlessly into her and a new determination suddenly started swelling within her.
Alright, he had wanted her to suck and she was sure that she had sucked him like no other woman in the world. Now he was fucking her into her ass and she would fuck back at him. If it was sodomy he wanted, sodomy he would get and she swore that this would be the greatest ass-fuck of his life. She was glad Tullio was there to witness it and only wished that the others could watch as well. She wanted the humiliation, the degradation, and the subjugation they were forcing on her and she would show them that she too, could wallow in the depths of sensual depravity as far they, and further. There was nothing she would not do!
As the tempo of her father's fucking into her nakedly raised buttocks picked up, Romina began to screw them punishingly back into his loins, trying to increase the pleasure for him. She was nothing more than a sex-slave now, willing to do whatever they asked of her. She was completely in their power and she reveled in the thought of her total self-abandonment. She swung her buttocks in 'ever-widening circles, meeting each of his sensual thrusts with a counter-thrust and her head began to lash back and forth between Tuliio's knees.
The fat man, seeing that her reservoir of resistance was drained, released his iron grip on her arms to allow her to squirm and writhe freely and she wrapped her arms as far as they would go around his massive waist in order to use his body as leverage.
Tullio, who had never been given time to cover his nakedness, looked at his boss in surprise as the girl's body began to respond to this brutal sodomy, a thing neither one of them had ever expected, and then transferred his attention to what was taking place between his legs. Il Volpe's violent fucking had driven the girl steadily forward into the fat man's groin. His thick weighty cock, despite the demands placed on it the night before, reacted to the friction generated by her cheeks and he gaped in amazement as the mysterious American girl suddenly twisted between his thighs and ovaling her mouth wide sucked his slowly rising penis between the heated moisture of her lips.
Tuliio's first reaction was fear, lest Il Volpe think he was trying to interfere, but the bandit leader saw immediately what was happening and simply laughed.
"She's on her way, old friend," he jested obscenely. "Careful she doesn't bite it off when I shoot into her!"
Infected by the fantastic sensuality of the scene, Il Volpe arched his arm around the girl's desperately struggling hips and groped below her rhythmically pumping belly for her vacant unused cunt. Slipping his fingers through the thin moist curls of pussy hair, he spread the red pulsating lips of her open vagina and located the hard ripe little bud of her clitoris.
Both men knew now that there was no rebellion left in the innocent young woman they were impaling from both ends and the two outlaws fucked into her jubilantly while Il Volpe manipulated her tiny throbbing clitoris with his fingers. Romina slavered over Tullio's huge, lust hardened cock as if she were a starving child with a candy bar, simultaneously churning her frantic rectal passage hotly back into the powerfully driving loins of her father.
She wanted it now and she wanted it badly, groaning and grunting with increased passion. The two men sensed that she was with them now, sharing the obscenity of their act rather than merely submitting to it. As her body bucked and heaved, the handsome bandit and the other man fucked into her with renewed energy, Tullio's thrusting hardness penetrating deep into the back of her throat and brushing hard against her tonsils.
The pain was gone everywhere from her body and by now she had acquired enough experience to know what was happening to her when her orgasm gathered like a storm on the horizon and then soared through her body leaving no part unthrilled by pervasive torrents of pleasure.
She clamped down fiercely on her rectum as the spasm reached her bowels and as the seizure took effect, she could hear her father groaning while his own orgasm swept over him and the hot thick cum poured in never-ending waves into the depths of her voraciously absorbing anal passage, filling her to the bursting point with the warm sticky wetness. At the same moment, Tullio, over-stimulated by the extraordinary sensuality of the situation, began pumping in thin powerful spurts, his white viscous cum far into the back of her throat. She sucked him furiously, even while her own ecstatic orgasm was raging hotly through her body, trying to draw the last drop of the lust-inciting fluid from his pulsating cock.
As their simultaneous bursts of intensive pleasure passed, the three of them collapsed on the bed, exhausted and drained, and the only noise was the sound of Romina's throat as she persistently swallowed the last of Tuliio's heavily discharged sperm. For a long time, no one spoke and Romina closed her eyes, utterly satisfied and totally exhausted.
And then the shooting started.
CHAPTER NINE
Romina heard the gunfire first, raising her head from Il Volpe's chest and listening to the sound of running feet and finally Roberto's voice as he burst into the cottage shouting Il Volpe's name.
The bandit leader, reacting with the brute instincts of a cornered animal, was off the bed and into his pants before the American girl had time to catch her breath and Tullio was not far behind, knocking her out of the way in his dash towards the door.
Then Roberto burst into the room, his chest heaving with excitement. His eyes widened as he saw Romina naked on the bed, drops of expended semen still clinging lewdly to her chin, but he lost no time in asking questions.
"Barzini's coming up the path with a squad of men!" he stated, urgency but not panic in his tone. "They saw me and opened fire!"
"How many men has he got with him?" asked Il Volpe quickly, his voice steady but tense.
"At least ten, all carrying automatic weapons," replied the younger man. "I don't see any way of standing them off with that kind of firepower!"
"You're right, we've got to clear out fast," their leader snapped, clearly in control of the situation and of his emotions. "The boys have been drinking and they're probably still sleeping. You two get them on their feet and moving. How much time do you think we have?"
"Five minutes at the most," answered his second-in-command.
"We'll have to go up the cliff. Nobody can carry anything but a weapon, because we'll have to move quickly. Everything else stays here."
"What about her?" questioned Roberto as Tullio pushed by him to begin executing the orders he had received. Roberto's eyes, despite the urgency of the situation, lingered on the girl's lush naked form.
"I'll deal with her!" Il Volpe snapped angrily. "I told you to get the others moving."
As the younger man wheeled obediently and ran down the hallway to rouse the other members of the gang, Il Volpe thrust his arms into a jacket and strapped a pistol around his waist.
"I don't know how you managed to lead them up here," he said, bitterly spitting the words at her like bullets. "I suppose you have a portable transmitter hidden somewhere. But you'll never live to see Il Volpe a prisoner."
Romina heard a commotion at the end of the corridor as Roberto and Tullio passed the warning to Selenia and the sleeping outlaws, rousing them into activity with kicks and curses. Then her eyes widened with horror as she saw the famous outlaw remove his pistol deliberately from his holster and level it at her.
"In this part of the world, the penalty for treason is death," he informed her coldly, a strange quietness in his voice. The girl was too terrified to speak and huddled back against the wall in absolute horror, holding the blanket in front of her breasts as if the thin fabric of cotton could somehow stop the bullets.
"And to think ... to think that when I first saw you I thought ... you were someone else...." his voice cracked as he spoke these last few words, and Romina, her mind frozen by fear, closed her eyes and whimpered with fright as Il Volpe raised the pistol and cocked it.
At that instant, the door flew open a second time and Roberto again burst into the room.
"We're ready to go. They should be here any second now and ... what are you doing?" The ex-school teacher's eyes narrowed as he took in the horrifying scene.
"Executing a police spy," Il Volpe answered shortly, his pistol still trained on Romina's exposed vulnerable breasts.
"No!" cried the young man. "Don't shoot her!"
"You don't know the situation," snarled the older man. It was she who brought them up here."
"We haven't got time to argue," insisted the younger man. "I brought her up here and she received our hospitality from my hands. According to the traditional law, I must be consulted before the right of hospitality is withdrawn!"
"You'd let a police spy live?" asked Il Volpe acidly.
"I'm not convinced she's a spy and you haven't got time to convince me," Roberto countered. "Let's just lock her in here and leave her for Barzini. Please, I never asked you for anything much and I'm asking for this!"
There was a long moment of suspense and Romina felt as if her heartbeats could be heard all across the room.
"We'd better get going," Il Volpe finally decided, shaking his head as if to drive away some evil thought and jamming the pistol back into his holster, before leaving the room with scarcely a backward glance.
Roberto lingered for a split second at the doorway, gazing at her with a strange faraway expression.
"I will be seeing you again," he said definitely before slamming the door behind him. And then she was alone. Romina listened to the retreating footsteps of the band and Il Volpe's whispered urgent instructions as they filed out the back door of the cottage and started the arduous climb up the face of the almost-vertical cliff which rose immediately behind the cottage. The harsh lieutenant would be here in another few minutes, angry at having missed Il Volpe one more time. And she would be his prisoner again, available for any kind of revenge he chose to inflict upon her.
Her entire body shivering with fear and desperation, the girl rose unsteadily from the bed where she had been so horribly misused and she walked, still naked, to the window. The opening was barred and small and offered no possibility for escape, but through it she commanded a view of the entire situation. High in the left hand corner of her field of vision, she could see the bandits inching their way painfully up the steep cliff. She strained her eyes as she tried to pick out the figure of Il Volpe, the man she now knew to be her father, the man with whom she had just performed two hideously obscene sex acts and who had been ready to shoot her in cold-blood just a few minutes later. She spotted him, only a dozen yards from the top of the cliff, apparently urging the others to hurry.
She could also see Roberto, the tall bearded young man who had already saved her life twice and had mysteriously promised that she had not seen the last of him.
Suddenly the sound of machine gun fire rippled across the clearing and Romina saw the bandits dive for cover, cramming their bodies wherever they could find concealment on the almost-barren cliff. It was Barzini and his men!
Romina went pale at the sight of the big muscular lieutenant as he led his squad out of the trees near the trail and ordered them to continue firing against the group huddled on the cliff.
There seemed to be about eight or nine policemen, all shooting with automatic weapons and Romina quickly saw that the situation was completely hopeless as far as the bandits were concerned. The gang had all managed to find cover for the moment but it was clear that they could go no further up the cliff without exposing themselves to certain death, and climbing back down meant facing surrender or summary execution. The police could lie in the comfort of the cool grass for days, if need be, with food water and plenty of ammunition.
But the bandits had only carried pistols and no water and they were fully exposed to the heat of the morning sun. The situation was hopeless!
Romina was now very close to absolute despair. Everything had begun so well, and gone so terribly wrong. Falling in love with her own father was bad enough, but now to see him killed, hunted down cruelly and murdered by a ruthless blood-thirsty policeman, this was too much! But she was helpless, a naked defenseless girl in a locked room.
She caught a sob in her throat as she watched the policemen, lying only a hundred feet or so from where she was imprisoned, adjusting their aim and bringing a more intensive fire on the doomed bandits huddled on the cliff. A few pistol shots answered the machine gun fire, but then abruptly stopped and Romina guessed that Il Volpe had recognized that a shoot-out was hopeless and passed the word to save the ammunition.
Suddenly a thought exploded in her mind like a hand grenade. The machine gun!
In his haste, Il Volpe had left a sub-machine gun and a packet of ammunition behind him in the chest, the same place where she had found the mate to her mother's earring. If she could only figure out how to work it.
She flew to the chest and lifted out the gleaming oily weapon, surprised at how heavy it was. The ammo box was even heavier, but she managed to get it open and extract a bandolier.
Running her hands over the murderous-looking piece of weaponry, she located the safety switch and turned it to the "on" position and then stuffed the cartridge belt into a likely-looking aperture in the side of the gun above the trigger.
Obviously there was no way to test-fire it within the confines of the tiny room and so she lifted the gun to her shoulder with difficulty and rested the muzzle on the window sill, the barrel poked through the bars.
Naturally assuming that the cottage was empty, the police had taken no precautions against being fired upon from that direction. Barzini himself was partially concealed behind a tree, but the rest of his men were sitting ducks, protected against fire from the cliff by tree stumps and rocks but completely exposed to Romina.
Can I really do this? she asked herself. Assuming I can get this thing to work, do I really want to pull this trigger and kill a bunch of innocent people?
But then, how innocent are they? Barzini, she knew, was far from innocent and from the stories she had heard while a guest in the cottage, it seemed unlikely that the other policemen were much better.
But still they were human beings! In the course of the past twenty-four hours, she had found herself doing a great many things she had never believed possible, but shooting men with a machine gun had never seemed to be in the cards for a shy Italo-American girl from Boston. She focused her eyes over the sights and trained the weapon on the back of a policeman only a short distance away. At this range she could hardly miss and once again her courage failed her.
After all, why should she? Perhaps no harm would come to her when the lieutenant searched the cottage and found her. There was no reason for him to kill her and he could hardly take off his pants in the presence of eight or nine policemen and rape her again. Or could he? But even if all of them decided to take off their pants and rape her, she had learned-thanks to the bandit gang-that a woman could live through this and more.
They would eventually have to take her back to Strappani and release her and then this whole ugly experiment would be over. She could go back to the United States and look for a job and forget that she ever had a father. Her mother still thought she was enjoying herself in Arizona and life could go on as it always had.
A new ripple of machinegun fire interrupted her thoughts. The day was becoming hot and she saw that the sun was shining directly in the eyes of the trapped men on the cliff, another advantage for the police. Her father's head appeared for a moment from being a rock, studied the situation and then retreated as the policemen opened for a second time. It was hopeless! Before long, they would have to try some desperate measure, a dash for the top, probably, and then Barzini's men would cut them down like dogs.
And then too, there was Roberto to consider. While her own father had handed her over to the depraved lusts of a group of common criminals and then sodomized her himself, Roberto had shown her nothing but kindness. The slender black-bearded ex-school teacher was up on the cliff too, she reminded herself, doomed to be shot and killed like the others. And Selenia, the cheerful peasant girl who had loaned her clothing and made her feel so welcome! No, Selenia could not be forgotten either.
But most of all, there was her father! No matter what he had done to her, he was still her father, the man she had come to Italy to find. Was Il Volpe's daughter so weak she could not pull a trigger? Only a few minutes ago, she had knelt before this man in slave-like submission and taken him willingly into her mouth. Could she stand here now and watch him die? At this very moment, her naked young body was full of his sperm, in her stomach and in her bowels. If he died, something within her died with him. For twenty-four hours she had been trying to find a way to tell him that she was his daughter and that she loved him. Now there was a way.
She could say it with bullets.
The first policeman screamed and pitched over violently when the machine gun shells poured into his body, but Romina did not take the time to study his death agony and shifted her aim immediately to another man. The police were slow to react, apparently believing that the shooting was coming from the cliff and for a wild moment, they all fired furiously at the cowering band high above, while Romina picked them off one by one from the side.
When four or five policemen had been wounded or killed outright, Romina saw Barzini point wildly in her direction and aim his revolver at the window. Determined to win this battle or die in the attempt, the young girl squeezed the trigger again, watching the machine gun eat up the shells from the bandolier and vomit them violently out the muzzle. She covered the entire area with bullets, firing wildly and continuously.
The end of the firefight came very quickly. One of Barzini's men, bleeding from a wound in the shoulder, broke and darted down the trail and the others panicked and followed him, believing that Il Volpe had somehow outwitted them again, determined not to give their lives in a vain effort to get the lieutenant promoted to captain.
Barzini tried uselessly to order them back to fight, but soon saw that it was useless and lowered his pistol, half hidden behind the tree. Shots were now coming from the cliff, adding desperation to the policeman's position, but for some reason, he held his ground, ignoring the shooting from the cliff and straining his eyes to see into the dark interior of the cottage.
Romina met his glance for a long moment and saw the grim determination on his face turn to amazement as he recognized who it was who had foiled his plan to trap Il Volpe. As she squeezed off another burst in his direction, unfortunately missing him, the lieutenant shook his fist at her and rapidly joined his men in retreat.
The young girl, her body now trembling so wildly that she could barely retain her hold on the vibrating weapon, fought to keep calm and conserve ammunition. As the bandits began working their way cautiously down off the cliff, she continued to fire bursts into the forest, hoping to convince the police that the counter-attack was still in progress and keep them moving.
CHAPTER TEN
The danger over, Romina surrendered completely to this outburst of pent-up emotions and buried her face in the pillow in a vain attempt to shut out the world, the bandits, the police, everyone and everything. She no longer worried about the fact that she was still totally naked, since it had been so long since she had been dressed that she had almost come to accept nudity as a natural state of affairs.
Outside, she could hear Il Volpe briskly giving orders to his men as they assembled at the base of the cliff. He made no reference to her.
"Roberto, take the men and patrol the forest for a few minutes to make sure they kept moving in the direction they were going. I den't expect a counter-attack but it's wise to be sure. Selenia you take care of that cut on Tuliio's back. When we meet back here again, we'll have to start packing. This place is no longer safe. We're going higher up on the mountain!"
Romina listened without interest as Roberto gave instructions to the men under his command, and heard Tullio, who was apparently badly cut, cry out as Selenia applied antiseptic to his wound. And she heard the now-familiar footsteps of her father as he opened the door to the cottage and walked down the long corridor to the room where she was lying.
The door opened, but she did not look up or move and she listened to the sound of the door being gently closed behind him.
"Why?" he asked simply, his voice calm and dispassionate. "Your friendly lieutenant had us cold. Why did you save us?"
Romina's only response was a muffled sob. How could she explain now, after all that had happened? If he still thought she had been sent here by the policeman, what could she possibly say to convince him otherwise? For a long moment, the two of them remained in their respective positions, Romina spread-eagled on her stomach and Il Volpe standing over her, looking down with puzzlement at her naked alluring form.
Then, unexpectedly, a decision formed in her mind. She had to try at least one more time!
Sitting up to face him, her eyes suddenly swept over his desk and there, unmoved through all that had happened in this room, was the jewelry box she had discovered the night before. With a swift movement, she jumped off the bed and opened the box before his eyes.
"Where is the mate to this earring?" she demanded mysteriously.
A look of horror swept over the outlaw's face as an awful suspicion gathered in the back of his mind.
"I gave it to my wife ... twenty-two years ago..." he mumbled in a choked voice. "It was a promise that I would return to her someday. I was never able to . ... "
My last name is Santini," the girl said simply, unable to meet his tortured gaze. "My mother wore an earring identical to this on a chain around her neck every day since I can remember. They told me you were dead but ... I discovered part of the truth and came here to find the rest."
Il Volpe looked as if he had been struck by a whip. His strong body seemed to crumble and he sank down on the bed, his mind spinning.
What had he done? His earliest suspicion had been correct! This girl had been his daughter all along and the things he had done to her ...
Suddenly, she sat down next to him and took his hand.
"I know, I know," she reassured him softly. "I understand what you're thinking. It's alright. You had no way of knowing who I was. I wanted to explain but ... somehow the words would never come out. I wasn't perfectly sure myself until I found this earring last night, and afterwards things began to happen too fast for explanations."
With a cry of near-despair, the rugged bandit turned toward her and wrapped his arms around her bare shoulders, pulling her close to him while he wept unashamedly. It was a highly emotional moment and they clung to each other, both sobbing, like two children lost in a wood. Il Volpe could not bear to meet her eyes, and Romina was still sunk in a total mental confusion, not knowing what to do or say to relieve his enormous sorrow.
Touched by this demonstration of intense human grief, Romina tenderly kissed the tears away from his eyes, overcome herself by great waves of love for this tormented man. Il Volpe pulled her even tighter to him, crushing her bare breasts against his chest and she ran her fingers through his thick black hair, trying to soothe him, touching her soft lips to his tear-covered face.
The room was becoming terribly hot and she undid the holster belt and slipped his forest jacket off his shoulders, trying to make him comfortable and forgetting about her own total nudity. Then she urged him to lie back against the pillows. When he seemed more comfortable, she kissed him once again and put her arms around him soothingly, her naked tits pressed against the rough hair on his uncovered chest.
Half destroyed by the depths of his emotion, the outlaw tightened his grip on the young girl and returned her kisses, the two of them lying side by side on the bed. Trying desperately to console him, she began to stroke his sob-wracked body with her hands as they lay pressed tightly against one another. Instinctively, his hands sought her breasts and Romina became conscious of the fact that the tiny buds of her nipples were hardening and extending in response to his touch.
Inexperienced as she was, the girl knew that the fine line between father-daughter love and sexual desire had been reached and that they were now in dire peril of slipping into the danger zone. But his hands seemed to hypnotize her and she felt her body shiver as his caress roamed over her smooth flanks and buttocks and she buried her face in his shoulder to hide the blush of shame which was spreading across her face.
"Oh, your knee is cut!" she cried, discovering a red patch of blood on his trousers. There seemed to be no particular point in modesty now and she balanced on her knees above him as she drew down the zipper of his fly, exposing the slowly rising length of his penis. He lifted his buttocks off the bed as she drew his pants down and slipped them off altogether, leaving him as naked as she.
"It's nothing," he commented, hardly able to tear his eyes from her tempting form to study his own wound. She saw in an instant that he was right. He had cut himself on a rock, but the bleeding was stopped now and there was no reason to be alarmed. Having examined his leg, she settled herself again in his arms, his naked body pressed tightly against her.
Warning signals were also flashing through Il Volpe's brain and he knew that he was once again becoming powerfully aroused and that what had been possible before was no longer. But a voice in the back of his head kept urging him on.
You can never go back, it said. You can never again see her as your daughter and nothing else. She means too much to you physically now! Either you put her out of your life completely or accept the fact that you love her as a man loves a woman. And putting her out of your life is impossible, so you have no options.
Besides, the voice continued, is she behaving like a daughter? Or like an inflamed desirous woman?
It was true. The girl was now crouched on her hands and knees over the reclining figure of the outlaw, running her lips wildly over his chest and stomach, her ripe young breasts swaying tantalizingly over him and one of her hands rested directly on his penis which was now twitching and starting to erect. There was no question left in the outlaw's mind. However much they might be connected by an accident of birth, the basis of their relationship was now raw sex and nothing else.
Romina, by this point, realized clearly what was happening to them, but felt powerless to stop. She was now accustomed to obeying this man and satisfying his desires, and if he wanted to possess her sexually, she had no independent will of her own left to resist. She wanted him to own her, to use her in any way he chose.
She wants it! Il Volpe told himself joyfully. She wants it as badly as I. Her body responded eagerly to his exploring hands and she sighed lustily as he laid her down next to him and rose up on one elbow to examine the prize he had won.
Her naked breasts and shamelessly bared loins seemed to be offered up to him as a sacrifice as he towered over her. The same submission and subjugation he had seen before the police attack was still there, but this time it seemed to be totally voluntary and the thought sent shivers of pleasure through his muscles.
He ran his hands over her lewdly, delighting in each of the secret crevices and indentations in her smooth supple body. It was the same tender young woman he had given, the previous night, as a plaything to his men, the same girl he had forced to take his cum in her mouth and then sodomized earlier that morning, but somehow she seemed new and different and the outlaw was filled with uncontrollable desire like a young man possessing a woman for the first time.
Kneeling beside her, he kissed her face tenderly and then ran his hands boldly over the heaving mounds of her breasts and hardened brown nipples, the flat white tummy and down to the clump of sparse dark pubic hair which guarded the entrance to her much-abused vaginal passage. The touch of his hands brought unconscious animal mewls of passion to her lips and her hips twitched involuntarily as he ran his fingers gently over the insides of her nakedly trembling thighs.
Her eyes popped open as he invaded the sanctuary of her pubic hair and took her tiny moist clitoris between his thumb and fore-finger, and for a moment, he thought she was going to object to this on-coming incest. But she merely moved her legs further apart, allowing him more complete access to the intimacy between her thighs, while small bird-like whimpers of rising passion escaped from her parted lips.
Bending from the waist, he pressed his lips to her bruised mouth and was amazed to find her active tongue snaking passionately past his lips and circling lasciviously in his mouth. Il Volpe still found all of this difficult to believe. He could accept his own passion and would have been willing to accept that there were many men in the world who desired their daughters. But her obvious passion for him was puzzling. Was she in shock? Or dazed by the gun battle? Was she fully conscious and totally responsible for her actions?
He had to be sure. Otherwise he could not take the responsibility for the heinous incestuous act they were about to commit together. She must consent freely to all that he wanted to do to her. She must ask him step by step to go ahead for otherwise it was rape and Il Volpe could not knowingly rape his own daughter.
Running his lips over her maddening form, he snaked his body down so that his lips were level with the softly inviting curls of pussy hair. She spread her legs instinctively, understanding that he wanted complete access to her vagina, but before he dipped his lips to her open gaping cunt, he stopped unexpectedly.
"Open your eyes!" he ordered and her eyelids popped up obediently.
"You must share the blame for this," he told her, his voice firm and unyielding.
"I accept it," she answered simply, looking down at him through the twin peaks of her extended heaving breasts.
"I want to suck your cunt for you the way I made you suck my cock."
"Please suck me ... father!" And then she closed her eyes again as he lowered his head and took the tiny, throbbing little bud of her clitoris between his lips, clamping his ivory teeth around the tiny pink object and tormenting it with his long snake-like tongue. Romina ground her hips into the mattress as wild sensations began shooting from the base of her spine to the back of her neck.
Nothing else mattered now but the action of his lips against the fleshy outer folds of her burning cunt. Dropping his head even lower, he carefully placed his thumbs on the moist lips of her vagina and pulled them gently apart. His huge, wetly driving tongue shot forward a second time, burying itself in the cavernous exposed slit. A wild groan burst from the girl's mouth, but the couple neither knew nor cared whether anyone was listening and the gun battle, the policemen, the gang itself, all were forgotten in the sensual depravity of their act.
Romina, her mouth open in undisguised ecstasy, revolved her hips in perfect time to the darting tongue deeply invading her widely-split pussy.
"Aaaaagggghhhh!" she groaned as he lashed her mercilessly with his slavering tongue. "Oh come inside of me. Fuck me, Fuck me!"
But Il Volpe still delayed, having another test yet to perform. Lifting his face from her flowing clasping cunt, he crawled forward, his knees moving up either side of her writhing, twisting body until his muscular legs stretched on both sides of her neck and his long robust cock stuck out directly over her lust-contorted face.
She opened her eyes and saw his heavy swinging balls hanging beneath this imposingly rigid pole and understood immediately the question he was about to ask, knowing in advance that he had to have her full consent.
"Yes," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Yes, I want it like this. In my mouth! Please cum into my mouth and let me swallow you!"
He bent until his balls rested against her trembling chin and then rested for a moment, feeling her proud, resilient young breasts come into contact with his hard tensed buttocks. He wanted to go slowly, giving her all the time in the world to change her mind if she so desired, but he felt her hands on his back, urging him forward, so he gently inserted his fingers into her long black hair and lifted her head toward him.
This action brought her trembling mouth up to the swollen tip of his swaying cock and the end pressed delicately against her slightly parted lips. A groan escaped his mouth as the soft surface of her flesh touched the sensitive red gland and he looked down to find that her large intelligent eyes were wide open and searching his face, trying to communicate to him that she knew what she was doing and wanted it as badly as he did.
Then her mouth opened wide and her head surged forward without his having to pull her over him. Il Volpe's mind whirled and spun as the tightly rounded oval of her mouth closed like hot melted butter over the taut skin of his desire-hardened cock. Other women, in his long criminal career, had submitted grudgingly to this brutalizing embrace, but he had never believed that he would seethe day when a young and incredibly beautiful woman would beg him for it.
Romina slowly brought her tongue into play, caressing her new-formed father's cock and causing it to jerk convulsively as she ran it lightly over him. Her lips were firmly closed around his huge pulsating organ and created a perfect seal as she accepted as much as possible of the length of him into her mouth. Moistened by her freely-flowing saliva, her tongue and the soft inner walls of her mouth moved against him With an intensive, almost agonizing pressure. With wet nibbling movements, she began to suck on him, her tongue licking and curling around him as if she had been born and raised for this one moment. The young girl's heart rejoiced as she heard him groan with the overwhelming pleasure she was giving him and she desperately wanted him to cum into her mouth and then watch her swallow his sperm and show, once and for all, that she was his in every possible way.
The pressure in his loins was becoming increasingly unbearable and his balls slapped lewdly against her chin as he thrust himself rhythmically into her hotly clutching mouth, his cock seeming larger and harder than it had ever been before.
Then, unexpectedly, the passion became too much for him and he seized her head between his rough hands and cried aloud as the white-hot liquid sprayed up from his powerful testicles and out the erratically jerking head into her impatiently waiting throat. Romina groaned jubilantly as she felt the hot viscous offering of her father's sperm pouring into her mouth, bloating out her cheeks and filling her to overflowing.
But determined not to lose a drop, she clamped her lips even tighter around his exploding penis and gulped ravenously, swallowing and gulping desperately at the flood of hot, volcanically flowing semen.
To his surprise, she did not release her hold on him, but continued to suck at his cock gently, thrusting her breasts up against buttocks. He felt a sudden rush of disappointment as he inspected his soft deflated penis, the tip of which was still buried in her lips. It had lasted so little time and now he would be unable to make love to her again for some time and perhaps she was disappointed in him.
But the young girl refused to accept defeat and continued her efforts to make a man of him again, biting him gently and sucking him almost as fiercely as before, and he thought he detected the hint of a crooked smile around the edges of her cock-filled mouth. Then, without notice, he felt the blood once more begin to flood down from his body and his organ rose gently but firmly back to its original size. Only when she was convinced that he was fully rigid and hard, did she release his cock from the sensual captivity in which she had held it prisoner. He pulled himself free of her reluctantly releasing mouth with an obscene popping sound, a thin thread of cum connecting his now-alive penis with her glistening lips.
And now it was time for the final test. But there was no longer any doubt about her answer.
"I want to fuck you now," he whispered.
She nodded, her eyes fixed on her face.
"Yes," she told him softly. "Would you like to fuck me from behind or from the front?"
Stunned by this total willingness to accommodate his wishes, Il Volpe was too moved to answer and he resolved that whatever happened to them from this day forward, he would make this the most memorable fuck of both their lives. Sliding back down her body, he felt her grope for his again hardened cock and push the foreskin slowly and torturously back, exposing all of the massive sensitive gland. Then she guided him quickly to the moistly waiting triangle of pubic hair, groaning with passion as he parted it worshipfully with his fingers in preparation for his entry.
Once in position, he could delay no longer and with one sure powerful stroke, he buried himself completely in her soft unresisting vagina. She had been adequately stretched by the gang fuck she had received the night before and the sexual secretions from her interior flesh had lubricated the smooth fleshy walls of her cunt to perfection. She clamped her slightly bearded vaginal lips around him firmly as a groan of intensified lust burst out from between her tightly clenched teeth.
Then, without waiting, he began to fuck into her with all his strength, plunging recklessly in and out and feeling as if his cock had taken on a life of its own and was acting independently of any instructions his brain might send it.
Romina's body, now stimulated and excited beyond all human endurance, reacted frantically and her naked young hips began to twitch and jerk beneath him. Hums and mewls of ecstasy poured continuously from her mouth as if she were going into some kind of nervous fit. Her supple warm body was covered with a light layer of sweat which glistened on the surface of her skin like a light coat of oil.
"Oh God, yes, yes, yes," she screamed. "It's good, so good. Fuck me harder, Daddy, harder, harder!! ! "
Bracing himself, Il Volpe cupped her tense firm buttocks in his hands for better leverage and fucked into her as if his life depended upon it, storming in and out of her hungering throbbing cunt-hole like a jack hammer as her hips and loins crashed back into his body with a violence he would never have expected. The sensuously clinging flesh of her vagina, maddened by the excessive stimulation of her delicate nerve endings, clutched desperately at his pounding cock and her nails dug hard into his back. Romina's lips curled up over her teeth like a wild female animal as she clawed and fought her way towards a hard-earned orgasm and gurgling sucking sounds filled the room as the rich, warmly seeping secretions from her vagina swished hotly around his lustfully driving piston.
"Fuckmefuckmefuckme, Oh God, Daddy, fuckme!! ! " she chanted endlessly as the rising spasm of orgasm approached and her head flailed back and forth on the pillow. Il Volpe struggled to control her sweat-slippery body as the young girl flew into total animal abandon, her shapely legs skewering out at an impossible angle and then wrapping possessively back around his tensing buttocks, urging him on to greater and greater efforts.
As the end drew near, the pitch of her orgiastic squealings became higher-and more insistent and she crushed her mouth ruthlessly into Il Volpe's, passing back to him the taste of his lingering sperm he had shot into her only a few minutes before. As his pace increased, the man's heavy potent balls slammed down hard into her nakedly grinding buttocks, teasing sensuously at her tiny puckered anus.
"I'm cumming! Oh God, I'm cumming!" she screamed and her body suddenly became rigid and hard, the pressure of her thighs on his back increasing as if she wanted to draw him completely inside her pulsating belly.
Despite the fact that he had previously cum three times that morning and fought a gun battle with the police in-between time, the bandit leader felt the familiar tightening in his balls, telling him that he too was ready, about to shoot another load of hot white sperm into his daughter's willing young vagina. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around him that he could barely breathe and their open mouths were pressed together fiercely, groans and cries intermingling, and they came at precisely the same instant in time, and a long wailing agonized scream issued from Romina's lips as her heavily grunting father pumped his fiery seminal fluid deep, deep up inside her warmly contracting little belly.
* * *
They lay still for a long time afterwards. There seemed to be nothing more to say after what they had just gone through together. The cottage was completely silent and Romina wondered if the gang had discreetly withdrawn when they heard her shrieks of animal lust coming from their leader's bedroom. At last there was the sound of a man's footsteps coming down the hallway and Il Volpe chuckled under his breath.
"It's Roberto come to tell me that it's time to stop fucking and go," he commented, looking a little sheepish. "I wonder if we can make it up the mountain after all that exercise."
Il Volpe lifted herself from between her still widespread thighs, pulling his now-soft penis free of her body. A few drops of cum rolled out of her again flooded pussy and Romina was wiping herself clean on the sheet when the footsteps came to a halt in front of the door.
"Be ready in a minute," called Il Volpe, looking around for his pants, but the door unexpectedly flew open and both of them froze where they were.
Lieutenant Barzini grinned evilly as he strode into the room, his revolver cocked and ready.
Romina only dimly remembered the events of the next few seconds. With a roar of animalistic rage, Il Volpe flung himself at the policeman and Romina heard shots. She somehow found her father's machine-gun in her hands and there was more shooting. And then nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Somehow without opening her eyes, Romina knew that she had been unconscious for a long time. She was lying now in a different bed and the sheet drawn up over her bare nipples was smooth and soft unlike the coarse cotton covers she had been accustomed to. And the air was much cooler, which meant that she had been transported even further up the mountain. Her muscles ached from their long inactivity and there was a rather sharp hurt on the left side of her head behind her ear, but otherwise she realized that she was still miraculously in one piece.
Opening her eyes seemed like too much of an effort at the moment and she dreamily lay in the soft bed, trying to focus her attention on the voices hovering around her in the room.
"She's going to make it," commented a professional well-educated voice in a matter-of-fact tone. "The crease in her skull is healing over nicely and I can't see any evidence of brain damage. The injection I've just given her should bring her around in a few minutes. Her heart beat has picked up nicely and I can detect an increase in muscular activity ... as soon as she's conscious, I would recommend a tranquilizer to help her through the shock ... ah, blood pressure is improved ... lovely girl, I would say that she is worth substantially more than the five million lire our beloved government is offering for her capture . ... "
Romina understood the doctor's words, but they had no real impact on her, still lost as she was in the half-way dreaminess of semi-consciousness.
"I do hope you won't be tempted to try to collect that five million lire, doctor," came another voice. It was Roberto! But where was Il Volpe?
"All I hope to collect is my old age pension, Roberto," retorted the doctor, obviously somewhat offended. "And you know me better than that."
Romina's eyes fluttered open and she saw that she was lying in a cool shuttered room. Outside she could hear birds singing and crickets chirping, revealing that she was still in the countryside. Roberto, his beard neatly trimmed and wearing a clean tan suit, was sitting by her bedside and at the foot of the bed stood another man, about Roberto's height but about a decade older, who was obviously the doctor.
"Ah, here we are!" smiled the medical man as he saw that she was once more in the world of consciousness.
"You've had a long sleep, little lady!" The physician checked her pulse and heart again, cautioned her against trying to sit up for a few minutes and then offered to leave them alone for awhile. Roberto invited him to help himself to some food and wine and the doctor nodded and left.
"How do you feel?" asked the young man solicitously, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. "I've been worried about you."
"How long have I been unconscious?" she asked, her voice gravelly with disuse.
"Ten days," replied the ex-school teacher. "When you didn't regain consciousness after the shoot-out, I sent Mario and some others to Strappani and they brought back Doctor Torresi to take care of you. He says you're going to be alright."
"Roberto," she asked clinging to his hand. "What happened? Everything is so confused in my mind. I remember the lieutenant came back and then ... and then nothing."
"Torresi said I wasn't to let you become excited," replied Roberto, "but I guess you have to know the worst or you'll wear yourself out wondering. When we came down off the cliff, Il Volpe told me to take the group down the path to make sure the police were still running. Tullio had a bad cut on his back from falling against a rock on the cliff and Selenia was taking care of him when we left."
"I figured Barzini would run all the way to Strappani because I'd known him all my life and he had always been a coward. But he wanted you badly and somehow managed to get the four men who were still alive to set up an ambush for us. We walked right into it and he took us all prisoner without firing a shot. I expected that he would kill us right then and there, but he was thinking about you, not us, and he left three of his men to guard us and started back up for the cottage with his sergeant."
"The rest of the story is mostly guess work. Apparently Tullio felt better after Selenia patched him up and the two of them came down to the trail to see what we were doing. They must have come away without their pistols and blundered into Barzini and the sergeant on the path. We found their bodies later, both shot at close range. I can understand if you didn't think much of Tullio, but he was a good loyal man, even if he was a little rough at times. And Selenia ... you're an outsider really and it's hard to explain how we all felt about Selenia. We loved her very much, all of us..." the young man stopped for a moment, swallowing and trying to bring his emotions under control before going on with his story. Romina was filled with shock when she learned of the deaths of the fat rough bandit and the cheerful peasant girl, but she somehow sensed that there were worse things still to come.
"When we heard the shooting, I jumped one of the policemen who was guarding us and got his rifle away from him. The details are pretty gory, but there was a couple of minutes of real hell and when it was all over the three cops were dead and we were racing up the side of the mountain after Barzini."
"Finding Tullio and Selenia slowed us down and he obviously got to the cottage way ahead of us. As nearly as I can re-construct things, the sergeant stood guard outside while Barzini went in. The lieutenant apparently got off the first shot and killed Il Volpe. Then he nicked you in the head and you cut him down with the machine gun. The sergeant took off when he saw us coming and escaped, I'm afraid, and now everybody knows what happened."
Romina nearly fainted when her fears were finally confirmed. She had somehow guessed that Il Volpe was dead from the way Roberto behaved. He was now acting with a new air of authority although the grief he held inside him was not well-concealed.
But she could not believe that she had machine-gunned the lieutenant!
"Surely ... surely," she stammered," it was Il Volpe who shot Barzini. I could never have done it."
"Il Volpe's revolver had six shots in it," the young man answered simply. "We didn't bother counting, but the lieutenant must have had thirty bullets in him and we found the machinegun in your hands with the barrel melted. No loss to the world, really."
Romina sank back on the pillow, too exhausted even by this short conversation to cry. Doctor Torresi came back into the room and administered a sedative which would give her a few hours of natural sleep.
As the drug took effect, she felt her muscles relax. It all seemed so unreal. She managed to cry a little then, thinking about her father's death, and then she slept.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Even gangs of ruthless criminals in the mountains have their generation gaps within them and Il Volpe's group was no exception. With Romina's father and Tullio gone, Roberto gradually changed the emphasis of their activities. They robbed less for themselves and more for the benefit of the downtrodden peasants in Western Sicily and their popularity grew accordingly.
But even robbery was becoming less important as the months passed and Doctor Torresi's visits became more numerous. His first trip to the secluded mountain hide-out to cure Romina had been at the point of a gun, but afterwards he had come voluntarily, spending days in deep conversations with Roberto. Much of their talking centered around the subject of Strappani wine and its unusual effects ... Romina knew she would never forget one particular conversation between the two men a few months after she had regained consciousness.
"You know, I've been trying for years now to isolate chemically what it is about vino strap-panese that gives it the effect it has," said the young doctor. "But I don't have the equipment or, frankly, the know-how. I've managed to smuggle a few bottles to colleagues of mine in England and France for analysis but they need large quantities and the government controls are simply too strict. I can't get it out of the country, even for medical purposes. The government says that it's illegal and that's that!"
Roberto started to make a joke about serious doctors who spent their spare time experimenting with sex-wine, when suddenly the idea struck him.
"Wait a minute, I've been wondering ever since I was a teacher what could be done to improve the economy of this region. The people are poor. Nothing grows here but grapes and the government won't let us sell the wine we make. Without Il Volpe, half the peasants around Strappani would have starved to death a long time ago. What we need is a product, legal or illegal, something the people can sell and earn a living at selling. And wine just might be the answer, particularly a wine like ours. Will your doctor-friends pay for large samples of vino strappanese?"
"Of course!" the doctor responded emphatically. "Outside of our wine, there are only two or three other known aphrodisiacs and all of them have serious negative side-effects. But our stuff doesn't even give you a hang-over. It's more than just good for improving sexual relations among normal people. In my years of practicing medicine in this area, I have never encountered a case of male impotence, even among the old-timers, and frigidity among females is unknown, possibly the only place on earth where this is true. If a sufficient quantity of this wine could be made available to the medical profession, we could bring happiness into the lives of many sexually tormented people!"
Thus, an industry was born. Some of the older men in the gang grumbled at giving up the glamor of banditry to become wine merchants, but cheered up when Roberto pointed out that what they were doing was still dangerous and thoroughly illegal.
With incredible energy and organizational ability, Roberto arranged for grape vines to be planted in obscure out-of-the-way parts of the hill-country where they were not-likely to be found, and a mysterious sailing launch began landing at isolated points along the rocky Sicilian coast at night to take on barrels of cool white wine, bound for London, Paris and the United States.
For Romina, life was active and exciting. Her physical strength restored by the bracing fresh climate of the mountains, she became a full member of Roberto's group, slipping naturally into the role left vacant by Selenia. Return to the United States was impossible, since the sergeant who had accompanied Lieutenant Barzini on his final assault had escaped to tell stories of a beautiful black-haired American girl who handled a machine gun like a man, and she was now wanted by the Italian authorities for the murder of the lieutenant and four of his men.
And for the same reason, she was a popular heroine among the common people of Western Sicily, almost all of who felt that Barzini's departure from this earth was a decided improvement. She had considered telling the gang that she was really Il Volpe's daughter, but finally decided against it. That was over with now and there was no reason to bring it up again.
That she and Roberto would become lovers was accepted by both of them as a matter of course and one night when her strength was back to normal, she simply came to his bed without being asked. When they had made love, he poured her a glass of Strappani wine and explained the hard facts of being a woman in a bandit gang. The group had to be kept small and capable of moving quickly and lightly. Obviously they could not encumber themselves with a collection of wives, but they were normal men and needed sex as much as they needed food and sleep. Thus the tradition had grown up: there was only room for one wife in a band, and she had to be everyone's wife.
Romina understood immediately and accepted the situation, rising from Roberto's bed to go and offer her comforts to the other men, but he pulled her back into his arms and covered her once again with his tawny muscular body.
"One more time before you go," he grinned at her in the darkness. "I want to show you that I'm as good a man as my father was."
An awful suspicion edged into the girl's mind.
"Your father?" she repeated stupidly.
"Oh, of course, I'd never told you. I was born the year before he went to America."
As Roberto plunged into her for a second time, bringing the now familiar thrill of pleasure to all parts of her body, Romina smiled to herself in the darkness, realizing that she now had two secrets to carry inside her. She had passed from her father's bed to her brother's!
