Jill had the looks of a sensual lover and a bedroom body. But teasing was her game, and the men who played it with her soon counted themselves among the defeated. Jill had many memories but one in particular governed all her thoughts, her actions. The incident had taken place in her childhood, one humid afternoon when she had watched her sister give herself to a boy, and give the boy everything he wanted. Watching the sweating bodies, the wanton acts, the bestial hungers had been enough for Jill to keep men at arm's length for most of her life. But sometimes she let them get closer. Sometimes she allowed them their abandoned caresses, exchanged shameless touch for touch, enjoyed mutual exploration. But when they thought to exert their masculine vigor, they found the starlight was not in Jill's eyes but glinting off the razor-sharp blade. Jill always played the game to win. Her heart was only for Laura. A long-time Lesbian. Frank S. Caprio, in his study Female Homosexuality, writes of the high incidence of sadomasochistic feelings in Lesbians: " ... definite sadomasochistic trends characterized by behavior actions of hostility alternating with feelings of self-pity." This was Jill.
CHAPTER ONE
The girl who stepped from the greyhound bus in front of Glenn's Drug Store was young, exceptionally pretty, and possessed a certain quality which announced that she was very glad to be alive.
Glenn's Drug Store was located in the center of a six-block-long shopping district which comprised the entire commercial section of Fruitvale, Idaho; a town with a total population of a little over a thousand. What was more, the hour was late after 10:00 p.m. and there were only a couple of people on the sidewalk to see the girl arrive.
One of these was Pete Larrabee, a drifter who was currently employed in the local feed store where the dairymen and beef-raisers bought their supplies. Forty-two years old, he was foul-mouthed man who dipped snuff and got drunk at least three nights, a week. On this particular night he was not drunk, though he had lifted three or four in Bailey's Tavern. He was on his way from there to the town's other watering place, down the street, where he hoped there would prove to be a little more action. Action in Pete Larrabee's vernacular meant the presence of one or more unattached females who were passable in appearance and not so particular that they would be repelled by his lined and whiskery face, his mouth that was stained with snuff juice at the corners, his dark teeth and darker breath, and his totally-unchecked proclivity to express himself in four-letter words.
Larrabee stopped as the bus door opened and Jill Marshall stepped down. He stood and stared, trying hard to focus his eyes against the gloom of the dimly-lit street and the haze which liquor had manufactured in his brain.
Damn! he thought. There's a wild number! What the deuce is she doing, getting off a bus in a backwoods place like this?
Must be somebody's relative on a visit, Pete Larrabee concluded. Man. What a bundle! How I'd like to...
There is no point in detailing Larrabee's thoughts further, for they became mired in a morass of lewd sensuality as his rheumy eyes scanned Jill Marshall's curves. These were plainly even startlingly outlined by the skimpy summer dress she wore. The dress was sleeveless, cut quite low at the neck and hugged her lush young body tightly, ending just above her pretty knees. The bus driver had placed a single suitcase on the walk beside her. In addition to this, Jill carried a handbag in one hand and a small traveling case in the other.
The bus pulled away with a muffled roar, which echoed off the silent store fronts, leaving a puff of dark, foul-smelling exhaust to hang for moments in the July air and then to drift away.
Jill looked around. There was no one to meet her because she had purposely not informed her uncle of her arrival time when she had written him last. She had told her mother she'd done so; otherwise her mother would certainly have called Lou herself. After all, Sarah Marshall's main reason for arranging this job for her daughter in Uncle Lou's packing company was to assure that there would be someone trustworthy who would be near at all times to keep a protective eye on Jill as she began her office career. Sarah wouldn't let her daughter take a job right away in Portland, the city where she had grown up and just completed a year of business college. Portland was too large a city and the people who worked in its offices were too sophisticated. Sarah knew about the lurid activities that went on the way the married men went after the young single girls, the drunken office parties, the liberties taken by bosses. No, Sarah would not permit her daughter to be subjected to that kind of environment ... not, at least, until she was competent enough to look after herself. Jill was good and decent and unspoiled. Sarah was determined that her daughter would remain that way. Had not all her training through the years, as Jill matured to glowing young womanhood, emphasized the danger presented by men and, how a girl must constantly be on guard to protect herself so that she could retain the treasure which Nature had endowed? The point was to retain the treasure until Jill met a man who was in a position to offer her all a girl should receive in exchange, then to see that she got this in full measure, wrapped in a marriage certificate and bound by a wedding ring.
Sarah Marshall had no illusion that Jill would find such a man in Fruitvale, Idaho. But Jill was too young for marriage, anyway. The job in Fruitvale would permit Jill to gain some office experience and a certain measure of confidence in the business world, while under the watchful eye of Sarah's brother. Lou would see that nothing happened to Jill. This would be almost as good as Sarah herself being at Jill's side. Since Lou owned the company, no one who worked there would dare get out of line with Jill. The situation would be a perfect one, Sarah Marshall had concluded.
But Sarah didn't know her nineteen-year-old daughter as well as she thought she did.
Already though Jill had been away from home for only a few hours, she had taken advantage of a "rest stop" which the bus had made along the way, to change from the plain, shapeless skirt and blouse she had worn when she'd first boarded the bus, and had applied not only a liberal amount of lipstick but eye make-up as well. (A light touch of artificial pink on the lips was permissible, her mother had decreed a couple of year ago, but eye make-up was strictly taboo.) The fact was that Jill had been darkening her lips and using eye make-up regularly, this always being done after she left home and carefully removed before she returned.
Jill also had dated boys her mother knew nothing about, and Jill had gone much further with them than Sarah Marshall would have allowed. In fact, Jill's mother would have been horrified had she known. But Jill did remain a virgin. She was a nineteen-year-old virgin whose ripeness was conveyed by both sensory and extra-sensory means to every man she met, flinging a challenge which all males understood and to which most were impelled to respond.
Another illustration of the difference between the real Jill and the daughter Sarah Marshall thought she knew, was provided by the fact that Jill did not inform her uncle as to when she would be arriving in Fruitvale. She had said she would call him at his office from some point along the way, and even left the date sufficiently indefinite so that he wouldn't be concerned about not having heard from her.
She didn't want to be taken under Uncle Lou's wing. This was her first chance to be on her. own, and she wanted to derive as much fun as possible from the opportunity. She would find her own place to stay and she would appear at her uncle's office the next morning. After all, she was over eighteen, fully grown in every sense, and quite able to direct her own life.
That she was fully grown in a physical way could not have been denied by anyone who saw her. Her vibrant body was a model of young, womanly appeal. She possessed breasts which were full and round and delightfully thrusting. There was not a trace of sag in them, and those boys who had held them in their hands had never failed to comment on their firmness, while proving, by the contraction of eager fingers, that the breasts were as pliant as kiddies' balloons not completely blown up. They were, in short, as perfect breasts as any man might ever hope to hold and kiss and play with.
Her waist was slim and smooth and supple. The dimpled crown of her navel rode atop a pleasant little rise which tapered off to adorable shadowy delights. Her hips were well-rounded without being overly large, and her buttocks were trim, resilient half-globes neither too soft nor too hard. Her legs were long and creamy in tone, full at their tops and tapering to shapely knees, delicately arched calves, and slender ankles.
The men who stood on the Fruitvale sidewalk could not see all these delights. At least, they could not appreciate them in such detail for she was dressed, though thinly and skimpily. But what they saw was enough to let them know that here was an article worth coveting and going after, if a man stood any chance at all of success.
Pete Larrabee was realistic enough to believe he didn't stand a chance. She was less than half his age and far too fresh and fine.
The younger man who had moved up beside Pete had a little different attitude. He was Mort Hopper, the proprietor of the local grocery store. Mort had been at his store taking inventory. At ten o'clock, he had decided to knock off for the night, and he was now on his way home. Mort was thirty-four, round-faced, balding, and generally pudgy. He was a married man with five children, but he had a ready eye for every female who came into his place of business or passed on the sidewalk in front. Every once in a while, Mort succeeded in promoting something strange for himself, and this gave his life its zest.
Mort nudged Pete Larrabee in the ribs. "Plow about that, Pete?" he whispered.
Pete chuckled lasciviously. "Man, could I!"
"Gonna try?"
Pete gave the other man a look. "She's probably jail-bait."
Mort had a practiced eye and he was using this faculty right now. "I don't think so. I'd guess nineteen ... maybe even twenty. Watch this I'm gonna see what good I can do."
Jill had picked up her suitcase and was about to set off in the direction of the town's only hotel a small, two-story stucco structure which had a modest neon sign in front. As Mort Hopper moved up to her, she set the bag down again. She looked at him in her customary open way and smiled.
There was more than a glad-to-be-alive look about Jill's eyes. Additionally, they contained a challenge when they were directed at a man. They seemed to say, I'm a female and you're a male, and what are you going to do about that?
Her eyes were brown and quite large. They smiled almost all the time, even when her lips were still, and they were extraordinarily bright and clear. A man could figuratively swim in them as he talked with her. Her face was roundish, her cheeks inclined to be a little plump. Her wide mouth was friendly and full, with white gleaming teeth behind the redness. Her nose was medium in size, and her hair was brown, short and fluffy.
All in all, Jill was very much a living doll. The closer Mort got to her and the better he saw her in the dim light, the more keenly he appreciated this fact.
He smiled. " 'Evening. I don't want you to think I'm being forward, but if I can be of any assistance ... my name's Mort Hopper: I run the food market down the street."
"Oh. I see. Well, glad to know you, Mr. Hopper. I'm Jill Marshall." She held out her hand.
The hormones in Mort's fleshy body, which had stirred at first sight of her and had jumped up and down as he moved close, now commenced a wildly abandoned dance of desire as his large, rather moist hand clasped her dainty, soft, cool one.
Talk about friendly! he thought. Mort-boy, you're gonna get yourself some honey!
She laughed gently. "I don't know anything about your town. I need a room of course, and I see there's a hotel rtown the street ... "
Mort thought fast. "Sure is. The fellow who runs that hotel's a friend of mine and all, and I shouldn't be talkin' against him or his place, but it's no fit spot for a young lady like yourself to stay. I mean, it's mostly for men stock buyers, farm equipment salesmen; guys like that. Now, there's a nice little boarding house around the corner much homier, better atmosphere. I'll be glad to..."
Jill interrupted: "Thank you, Mr. Hopper, but I think the hotel will be all right. I really don't care much for boarding houses." She laughed again. "I mean I don't think I'd like them. I really wouldn't know for certain, since I've never been away from home before."
Mort had wanted to steer her to the boarding house because he knew the owner pretty well. She was one of the women in town whom he tumbled regularly a fortyish widow. They were frank with one another and she wasn't the jealous sort. She understood men. She would have let Mort use the back door to visit Jill at the place, and let him stay in Jill's room, provided the girl was willing. At the hotel ... well, there would be too much talk if he were to hang around.
Though mildy disappointed, Mort was not prepared to give up any of the hope he had entertained for himself and the new girl. There were other places, after all, besides bedrooms. Mort had bedded women in the back of his store, in nearby orchards, and even on haystacks. The farming country around Fruitvale offered many-likely spots for romantic dalliance, and Mort was resourceful.
At the moment, he was concerned with Jill's last remark that she had never been away from home before. The fact that she had made such a remark offered an opportunity to confirm his judgment about her age, also.
He said, "You seem pretty young to be out on your own. Why, I'll bet you're just outta high school, aren't you?"
"A year ago," Jill said. "I'm nineteen."
This pleased Mort and he grinned broadly. "What an age that is! My, my, I wish I was nineteen again! I really had me some fun 'long about then."
Jill remarked sweetly. "When you were nineteen, I was probably just a baby, wasn't I?"
Mort didn't take offense at the emphasis she so obviously had placed on the difference in their ages. Instead he saw the opportunity to make a suggestive quip: "You're quite some baby right now!" He laughed and gave her a light pat on the arm.
She accepted this in good humor. She seemed actually to be enjoying' herself with the older man.
Mort picked up her bag. "If you're bound and determined to stay at the hotel, the least I can do is to carry your bag for you. Wouldn't do for a sweet young thing like yourself to be seen carrying her own suitcase down Main Street."
"Why, thank you," she responded.
As they passed Pete Larrabee, who continued to stand and stare, Mort threw him a wink. Jill glanced and smiled. Pete's pulse rate took a little jump and he berated himself for not making a play when he'd had the chance, why the gal's downright friendly! Mort is sure a lucky dog with women.
Pete stared after them for a while, mainly watching the soft, smooth, thoroughly-enchanting wiggle of Jill's ungirdled bottom. Her thin print dress cradled the contours lovingly and revealed the outline of the brief panties which were her only undergarment.
A stronger desire for action stirred within Pete Larrabee. He finally turned in the direction of the Red Apple Bar and set out with a vengeance. He would have to scare up some fun that night for sure. He would have to, or he'd be in a bad way when he returned home to his lonely bed.
CHAPTER TWO
Once in her room a modest cubicle with pale-green walls, drab furniture, and a pitcher and basin to take the place of a private bath Jill quickly unpacked her bags. She wanted to get right to bed.
Going to bed was, for Jill Marshall, an experience to look forward to, even though she always went to bed alone.
She would have liked to take a warm bath beforehand; to laze for half an hour in a scented tub as she had usually done at home in Portland, then don one of her fluffy nighties. This would be a short one, of course. Beneath which she would usually not bother to wear the frilly panties which were part of the set.
(Fancy nighties were another secret Jill had kept from her mother. Since Sarah Marshall had been confined to bed and wheelchair for the last few years, she never entered Jill's room after the girl retired for the night.)
Jill wouldn't take a bath tonight, however. The bathroom was down the hall, and she wasn't used to being on her own in a hotel. So she would wait until morning. Right now she would merely crawl into bed so that she could think for a little while before she dropped off to sleep. The day dreaming Jill did before falling asleep was far more pleasurable than that which occurred during the sleep-state. The latter dreams were frequently marred by darkly-unpleasant images and the threat of suffering such as she had never endured in real life. She didn't care for her sleeping dreams very much at all.
Now her bags were unpacked and she placed them on the shelf in the small closet. She walked across the room, following her reflection in the dresser mirror and swinging her lithe body in a little-girlish way which was blatantly contradicted by the contours of her body themselves. She was no little girl in a physical sense. She was very much a woman.
This became even more apparent as Jill stood directly in front of the dresser mirror and stripped.
She always liked to watch herself as she took her clothes off. She liked to watch all her charms becoming gradually unveiled. She liked to imagine, as she did this, that a man was undressing her that his hands were drawing her dress upward, were letting down her slip, were unclasping the fasteners of her bra, and finally were clutching the thin elastic at the top of her nylon panties, and were stripping those sheer, nearly-transparent panties down.
Jill never wore girdles or panty-girdles. She liked the freer feel of panties next to her skin. And all her panties were made of pure nylon. There were no cotton, rayon or acetate ones for her. Her body deserved the finest, and she liked the feel of the finest as she stood and walked and sat.
Someday she was going to buy some silk ones, she had promised herself. They weren't available in the stores where she had shopped in Portland, but she knew they could be found in the fancier shops of larger cities. She imagined silk panties were even lighter and softer and nicer to the touch than nylon.
She wondered if men liked silk parities on a woman.
Or off a woman.
She giggled.
She had let only two boys remove her panties, and these boys had certainly become excited. One of them had become so very excited that he had ... well, he had become as excited as a boy could possibly get. But she didn't think the handling of her panties had caused his excitement. Once he had pulled them off, he had tossed them away without a glance.
No. Boys weren't much interested in panties, she had decided. Their interest was more basic than that. She liked nice panties, though. She liked their feel, and she enjoyed the thought of wearing something so light and sheer and frilly while most girls bound themselves in constricting foundations.
Jill had quite an assortment of panties, in all styles and colors. She liked the pink ones best pink, brief ones which clung to her like a caress. They really complimented her beauty, her girlish glory.
Jill enjoyed compliments of all sorts: the silent compliment of fine clothing next to her body; the compliments which flashed in the eyes of men, and the spoken compliments which tumbled from their lips. She enjoyed the compliments which their hands paid her, as well.
Nude now, she held her fresh and lovely breasts, cupping them so that their pink lightly-pebbled noses were in full view. She rubbed her thumbs gently back and forth across this sensitive flesh and watched her nipples rise to their full straining thickness. My, how they stood out!
Boys raved about her nipples.
They enjoyed pinching the nubbins and rolling them between fingers and thumbs. They enjoyed plucking at them, too. And they liked to bring their faces down to her breasts and kiss her nipples in a way that nearly drove her wild.
She had let a few boys do that. Not many. Perhaps five or six in all.
Oh, how they had wanted to possess her particularly after that!
But she had never let any of them have the ultimate pleasure. She couldn't do that. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to do so.
Boys frightened her. But the fright didn't keep her away from them, because she knew exactly how to control their rampaging desires.
Boys were so simple, really. Men too. Men were nothing, after all, but boys grown older. She knew how to handle them all!
Jill turned her back to the mirror and studied herself over a smooth white shoulder. Nice. Oh, yes. Very nice indeed! She had about the prettiest rear end that could be imagined. Boys had told her this, too.
She strode away from the mirror, picked her pink, frilly nightgown from the bed, and slid this down over her body. Her breasts still showed through, as did the rest of her beauty. The nightie dramatized, but did not conceal.
She turned the top of her bed down, then extinguished the lamp beside the bed and crossed the room to raise the window blinds. She looked down at the street. There was a light dimly burning on an opposite corner. She could see three parked cars but none in motion. And there were no people visible on the sidewalk. In the distance, on the back streets, lights shone in a few windows.
Some night she would forget to pull the shades when she undressed, she promised herself. She would see what this was like-the thrill of knowing she was displaying herself to the entire world. This was something she had often thought about doing at home but had never dared to try. Here she could find the courage, since there was no mother to be told by neighbors and to reprimand her.
Jill thought of the whiskery, disheveled man who had stared at her on the street. How would he like to watch her take her clothes off, she wondered. She bet he would become very excited and would want her very much. She smiled to herself.
Mort Hopper certainly wanted her. She could tell by the look in his eyes and the way he had talked. He hadn't tried to come up to the room with her, though. She guessed he was afraid of moving too fast, or else he was sensitive about what the old man at the hotel desk would think, and the other men who were sitting in the lobby.
They had certainly looked her over well! She knew what they were thinking. She knew what every man thought about when he looked at her.
Every man she met wanted her. Jill was sure of this. Some of them wanted her so strongly that they probably could hardly stand the thought.
This realization gave her pleasure. They wanted her and yet they couldn't have her. None of them could have her. This gave her the greatest pleasure of all.
She walked back across the room and climbed into bed. She lay the blanket back so that her body was covered only by the sheet. She soon decided that even this made her too warm and she removed the sheet as well.
Her warmth was not entirely of external origin, however. Most of the warmth was her own.
Now this very personal warmth was about to grow.
This was about to grow until a furnace-like thermal level was attained, and then suddenly the warmth would explode. She would tremble and thrill, and afterward she would sleep.
Slowly Jill lifted the frilly edge of her nightgown, baring her body to the dim glow of light which came into the room through the pair of narrow windows. She lifted the nightie over her firm bosom, which stood high even though she was on her back.
What breasts she had! She knew they were very lovely, and this gave her a great deal of pleasure. This excited her, adding to the warmth.
Her fingers crept upward until one breast was firmly imprisoned by each hand or as much of the breasts were imprisoned as her hands could hold. She began to knead them and to tease her light-pink nipples. Up her nipples came, the aureoles around them also swelling. Her nipples became very fat and very tall. She plucked at them with her fingers. She wriggled. Deep thrills began beating through her.
This was when Jill's dream began her dream about a man.
Tonight she would dream of Mort Hopper, she had decided. She usually dreamed about the man she had been out with during the evening. Though she hadn't really been out with Mort, they had been together for a few minutes. He desired her a great deal, she was sure of this. So she was going to dream about him.
The fact that Mort was personally unattractive didn't matter. Jill found him desirable because of the way he had looked at her. The fact that he wanted her was enough, and this had showed very strongly in his eyes.
She imagined him with her now, and she imagined that her hands were his. She imagined he was kneeling beside her on the bed, staring at all her lush nudity, then pinching and rolling her nipples as he breathed heavily and his eyes glowed with lust.
She dreamed now that he was bending forward, his pudging lips touching her up-thrust breasts. He was kissing her. Oh, yes!
He was loving her like crazy.
In a thirty-five-year-old white frame house about seven blocks from where Jill Marshall lay at that moment dreaming about Mort Hopper, he was climbing into bed beside his wife.
He had stopped at Bailey's Tavern after seeing Jill to the hotel. He had taken a couple no, three drinks with the boys. This he had done not so much to be sociable, but because he had wanted to have some fun when he got home. He wanted to have some fun with his wife after having seen and been close to Jill.
In order to have much fun with Mary, who had been a rather plain woman even when he married her twelve years before and had let herself go completely in recent years due partly to the fact that he had made no effort to keep his own physique; partly to her knowledge of his affairs with other women, and partly to the natural effects of bearing him five children a few drinks were necessary. A few drinks for himself, that is. Mary never drank at all, and she didn't want to have liquor in their house. Mort respected her wishes in this regard.
He was mildly disappointed to find her asleep. He would wake her up, however. She might fuss a little, but she wouldn't refuse him. She wouldn't dare do that.
He got into bed and turned on his side toward her. She was facing the other way. He ran a hand under the covers and to her body. He began to move his hand up and down her leg, just below her upraised hip. Her nightgown was coarse in texture not sheer and silken as he would have liked but there was a promise of warm, soft comfort underneath.
Comfort was about all Mary offered any more. There was little real excitement. At least, the excitement was not on a par with that which Mort derived from other women. There was enough excitement to bring him to the point where he could know the comfort of a release, and that was all.
That was all he expected tonight.
He moved his hand to the hem of the nightgown and slid under it. Mary's warm softness was against his palm and fingers. He slid his hand along ...
She stirred, made a decidedly unromantic sound, and rolled onto her back. Her hair, in curlers, was covered with a scarf which had become partially askew. Her face, puffy in the relaxation of sleep, glistened with an oily cream.
Mary was no beauty at best; now she was something less than pleasant for a romantically-aspiring male to contemplate. But she was the mother of Hopper's children and the companion of his life. He loved her in that sense, and he looked to her for comfort.
He stripped the bedclothes to the foot of the bed. grasped the bottom of her nightie, and drew it up. Mary's legs were too large at the tops; het middle was too much like pudding, and her breasts always spread in this posture so that their shapes were lost.
Mort began to caress her legs gently, displaying a more sensitive touch than one might have expected from a man of his gross appearance. Mary stirred again, moving her legs a little.
He continued.
As he crouched beside his wife, caressing and gradually coaxing her out of sleep, Mort thought about Jill. He remembered how tempting she was, and he began to imagine that this was she before him. These legs were hers, this middle, these breasts...
This nipple.
"Oh! Mort, for heaven's sake..." He kept on.
"I'm sleepy, Mort. Why'd you have to wake me up?"
He raised his face. "You can get in the mood. That won't be too hard."
"But I was asleep. A woman doesn't feel like ... unh ... mmm ... oh, that is kinda good."
Her hands moved to his broad back and the fingers extended to press gently against him. He moved from her right nipple to her left one and, at the same time, his fingertips caressed her in a way which she couldn't possibly ignore.
If this was only Jill, he thought. Then would I fly--I'd take a rocket ride to the blasted moon!
As he proceeded to consolidate his possession of Mary, he imagined again that she was Jill. He held his wife tightly, his face pressed against her lumpy curlers, and imagined he was pressing Jill's silken brown hair. This was difficult but a man could manage, particularly if he'd had a lot of practice at such fantasies.
He imagined that the softness he felt was Jill's and that the warmth was Jills', also. He moved vigorously.
In her bed at the hotel, Jill was moving. And she imagined that the force responsible for her motion was being administered by Mort Hopper. Though she never would have let Mort do this, now she was imagining that her lover was he. She moved ecstatically, her lithe, trim hips bounding. She twisted. Her mouth contorted and gasped.
The fat, older man, Mort Hopper, was loving her and getting a tremendous thrill for himself at the same time. She saw his face how his pudgy features would look in passion. His thick lips were back and his teeth gleamed like an animal's. His eyes were like live coals.
Go, Mort! You silly, fat, old fool ... got Mort rolled over and came to rest on his back. He was breathing hard.
His wife was breathing hard, also. Now she caught her breath and murmured, "That was very good, darling." She turned and kissed him by the ear. Her breath was warm and her lips were moist and slack.
At that moment, in a sleazy room of a ramshackle lodging house which was mainly for pickers and transient farm laborers, Pete Larrabee was about to bed a stringy-haired tramp he had brought home from the Red Apple Bar.
She was nearly as old as he was and little more than a bag of bones. But Pete was very drunk, the lights were out, and the broad at least wore perfume.
But even Pete Larrabee was not without his illusions.
As he loved the string-haired tramp, grunting and huffing out his passion, he thought about the girl he had seen on the street the girl who had stepped off the bus right in front of him and who he, rather than Mort Hopper, might have escorted to the Fruitvale Hotel if only he'd had the nerve to approach her. Pete remembered how she had looked at him and smiled.
What a warm little cookie she was!
What a time he could have with, her on a smooth, white bed! This pig he was with looked like garbage by comparison.
Pete worked savagely.
"Hey!" the woman squawked. "Go easy! Wha-daya think you're doing, any how?"
"I'm loving you, you stupid old hag!" Pete croaked.
"Well, love easy! I'm not made of tin." He shut her voice out. He tried to banish, also, his memory of the way she'd looked when the light had been on. Now, in his mind, he saw only the girl from the bus. He saw that girl the way he imagined she would look without clothes ... with a man ... and in passion. As far as what he felt was concerned, he could just as well be with her right now. They all felt the same.
He huffed on and on, the large amount of liquor having slowed him. He was hardly aware when the woman finished, but then she began to curse and try to push him away. He fought her. He fought her and loved her at the same time. Furiously. Desperately. Her fighting shook the image he was trying to hold in his mind; this slowed him even more and made him angry.
After he had finally finished not very satisfactorily, he reared back on his haunches and slugged the woman with his fists. He hit her several times. She cried and moaned and cursed him in slobbering sobs that nearly made him sick.
He got off the bed, pulled his clothes together, and turned on the light.
He stared at the erstwhile object of his passion and hate. She was a miserable wretch, made even worse now by the red bruises on her arms and body, which would soon turn a dark ugly blue. There was a little cut on her lower lip, from which a line of blood crawled down her jaw.
Pete said a filthy word, delved a hand into his pants and came out with some paper money. He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bed.
The woman paid no attention. She lay motionless but she was moaning very softly and her eyes moved now and then as she stared at the ceiling.
Pete turned and lurched to the door of the room. He flung the door open and left it that way as he proceeded down the hall.
"Lousy witch," he said aloud as he emerged in the still moonlight.
Ae he proceeded to his own rooming house, he resumed thinking of Jill Marshall ... though he didn't know her name. He wondered who she was, why she was in town, and whether she would remain there for long. He wondered if he would get to see her again.
He decided to scout around tomorrow and see what he could find out. The doll had smiled at him. Maybe that meant she liked older men, or maybe he reminded her of her father.
Maybe ...
Well, he would see.
To get some loving of that quality would be worth just about anything a man might have to do.
CHAPTER THREE
The Rombaugh Fruit Company was the largest fruit brokerage, packing and processing firm in the area. In addition to purchasing apples, prunes and other crops from orchards for packing and resale to distributors in California and the East, the company operated a cannery and bottling plant for apple sauce and juice.
Its rambling structures lined two spur tracks of the Union Pacific and comprised the largest single enterprise in the Fruitvale area. Quite a few persons were employed in the plant, storage rooms, and on the shipping docks, their numbers fluctuating with the seasons. But the office force comprised only ten, all of whom were employed on a year-round basis.
The company was owned and operated by Louis Rombaugh, who had inherited it from his father and had nearly doubled its scope and volume of operation in the last thirteen years. A man of huge physique, he was known throughout much of Southwestern Idaho as "Big Lou."
The company's office was located at the front of the old original structure a two-story, yellow, frame barn which housed packing and box-storage rooms. Jill arrived there at ten minutes past nine in the morning and opened the heavy, glass-paneled door.
She had chosen the same skimpy print dress she had worn during the second part of her bus ride the day before. Most of her clothes had been purchased by her mother or under her mother's watchful eye, and they were drab, shapeless nothings. Jill had been forced to pack them because she had little else. But she certainly didn't want to wear an outfit like one of those on her very first day at the office.
She stepped into the large room which was divided by an old-fashioned wood fence. In front of the fence there was one desk, and this was occupied by a thin-faced woman of forty. Opposite this desk, along the front wall between the windows, were several plain wooden armchairs. On the other side of the fence, desks were arranged in a double room, with two private offices enclosed by partial partitions at the side. Filing cabinets and office machines were arranged at the rear, and there was what looked like a storeroom or supply room behind that. There were high-arched windows on two sides and, on the inner wall, a large map of the United States on which many interconnecting lines were marked in red. Jill assumed these were rail routes, since the map bore a railroad's name and insignia.
She glanced past the woman at the front desk and studied the persons who occupied the double row of desks behind the wood fence. There was about an equal division of men and women. Jill noticed particularly a young man at one of the front desks. He looked good to her and she smiled. It took him a moment to recover from the happy surprise of her spontaneous friendliness and to smile back.
"May I help you?" the thin-faced receptionist asked.
"I hope so," Jill replied sweetly (She had a sweet manner with both men and women, having learned early in life that sweetness brought approval.) "I'm Jill Marshall from Portland. I believe Mr. Rombaugh is expecting me."
"Is he?" The receptionist obviously was trying to figure out who this pretty young caller was and what she wanted ... or what Big Lou wanted of her.
"I'm his niece," Jill smiled in response to her unspoken question, rather than to the spoken one.
The other woman smiled then. Her face apparently was not too used to the exercise. "Oh, yes. Mr. Rombaugh said you would be coming to work here. Welcome to the company, Miss Marshall."
"Jill, please. And thank you."
"If you'll just wait a moment, I'll see if yoor uncle is free."
She left Jill standing beside the front desk and pushed the swinging gate in the wood fence. She turned into the first partitioned office on her right.
Jill looked around, her face expressing happy innocence while her body spoke to the male members of the office force in another language altogether. The young man at the front desk, whom Jill had smiled at before, was staring at her. Oh, he's getting ideas, Jill thought. He's just wild to love me, he is!
"Jill! Honey!" The big man in shirtsleeves who bounded out of the partitioned office and now stood on the other side of the fence, surveying Jill with evident pride and pleasure, was fifty years old, had a head proportionate in size with the rest of his body, and a bushy shock of iron-gray hair. His blue-striped shirtsleeves were turned back to the elbows, his tie and collar were loose, and the protrusion of his large stomach had caused the rim of his trousers to curl down over his belt.
His face was fleshy, a little red, and very genial-looking. He was, quite obviously, a man who liked people, and whom people liked.
He swung the wooden gate open. "Why the dickens didn't you call me, the way you said you were going to?"
Jill was smiling. "I didn't want to be a bother," she said. "Anyway, I can take care of myself. I got off the bus at about ten last night and got a room at the hotel."
Responding to the gesture of Big Lou's outstretched arm, Jill walked past him and through the doorway into his private office. Though she was his niece and just a kid, Big Lou couldn't help but look at her bottom, which twisted a soft and perfectly-contoured invitation from beneath the thin, snug-fitting dress. He had noticed her breasts, also, then he thought about the problem he was going to have keeping both the packing house and office males away from her.
Jack Able, the young man at the front desk, turned back to his work as soon as Jill had disappeared into her uncle's office with Big Lou following behind. But Jack didn't return his thoughts to the work right away.
He had studied Jill's bottom, too. He had noted the pliant twist of the matched curves, restrained only lightly by her thin dress of polished cotton and whatever skimpy garment she wore beneath.
He had also studied her breasts as she passed. They had quivered and jiggled ever so slightly as her heels came into contact with the hard floor. She was all live action! Wow!
"Did you see what I saw?"
Jack turned to Tom Colby, a co-worker who had moved up beside him and whispered, so that the females around them wouldn't hear.
"I saw," Jack said.
"Eat your heart out, boy. She's the old man's niece."
"I heard," Jack responded laconically. "Isn't that the way?" Tom Colby asked rhetorically. "The best is always out of bounds for some lousy reason or another."
"She'd be out of bounds to you, anyway," Jack said. "You're married."
"Why'd you have to bring that up?" Tom grumbled good-naturedly and headed back to his desk.
Jack stared down at the papers in front of him, but he continued to see the image of Jill's twisting bottom. And her quivering breasts. And her bottom again. She was great coming and going, and there weren't many of that kind around.
Jack Able was twenty-three, single, and had worked for the Rombaugh Company for a little over a year. He'd been placed by an agency in Boise. As far as he was concerned, the job was just a paycheck and Fruitvale was only a place to cool his heels until the urge struck him to move on. He was slim, clean-cut, a little taller than average, with brown hair neatly combed and parted. His face was serious but pleasant, with brown eyes which were inquisitive and lips full enough to suggest an appreciation for sensual pleasure.
The old man's niece, he thought. That would stop a lot of guys. Jack wasn't at all sure that he would be stopped particularly if she kept smiling at him as she had. She certainly looked like a responsive type. And she was of age, he judged, though probably not by more than a year.
He continued to think of her for quite a while as he fingered the papers in front of him. He glanced at Marjorie Steck, at the front desk, and guessed that Marjorie was still thinking about her, too. Marjorie hated every good-looking female in town. Now she had another one to add to her list. This one would head the list, most likely.
Jack smiled to himself. One of these days, before he left the company, he would take old Marjorie out and show her some loving. He'd give her a tussle that would knock some of the meanness out of her.
But he wasn't going to think about Marjorie now. No, indeed. He had something far finer to train his sights on.
Big Lou dropped his bulk into the leather chair behind his desk and looked at his niece's crossed knees. Danged short skirt! he thought. A man can see nearly all she's got. I'll have to do something about getting her to wear more modest clothes than that.
"Well!" he beamed. "So you're Sarah's little girl! My, the time sure flies! Last time I saw you, you were ... let's see ... musta been about eleven or twelve, weren't you?"
"Thirteen. Uncle Lou."
The aliveness of her eyes disturbed him and he looked down. "You were just a gangly kid, anyway. Now look at you a woman!"
Jill laughed. "You look the same, Uncle Lou big and handsome. I'll bet you're a lot like Daddy was."
Lou became serious. "You don't remember your dad at all, do you?" . She shook her head.
"You were let's see three years old when he passed on, I guess."
"I've always missed him. But Mother's done everything in the world for me."
"Your Mom loves you a lot."
"I know that, Uncle Lou."
"Well!" He slapped a thick hand against the desk. "Time you were getting started. First off, I wanta introduce you to all the folks here. Then ... hey, I've gotta find you a better place to live. That hotel's no good for a young lady."
"I like the hotel, Uncle Lou." She smiled as she said this, but there was a glint of determination in her brown eyes. "I want to stay there."
Big Lou blinked at her. "Well, all right, Jill. If that's what you wanta do. But there are a lot of nicer places. I still wish you'd think over my invitation when we first started talking about you coming to work here Fanny and I would like to have you move in with us."
"Thanks, Uncle Lou. But I told you I want to feel as if I'm really on my own. That's the whole idea of leaving home this summer."
"Okay, honey!" He gave her a broad grin. "Whatever's gonna make you happy. That's the way I want things to be. But I'm gonna keep an eye on you just the same. I promised your Mom I'd do that. Now ... " He placed his broad beefy hand against her bare arm, just below the shoulder. "Let's meet the folks."
Jill's job was that of stenographer-clerk, which would give her an opportunity to use her shorthand and typing, as well as provide her with some needed experience in filing and operating business machines. This was really a "make-work" job, in that no one had recently quit the Rombaugh office and Big Lou hadn't, of course, discharged anyone. The company's business was steadily growing, but at a modest rate which did not at the moment require the hiring of additional office personnel. Lou found a job for Jill at his sister's request. As for the money, this didn't amount to too much and was, he felt, the least he could do. He had helped Sarah out financially from time to time in the past.
Jill's first day was not very different from the first day of any new addition to an office staff. The time was spent mostly in getting acquainted with the people and with the duties of the job. There was no real work expected of her during that day, and this suited Jill fine. She didn't care particularly for work, anyway.
At lunchtime, Big Lou insisted on taking her to the local cafe where he regularly ate. He introduced her around.
During the afternoon he was gone from the office for much of the time, and this gave Jill her first real opportunity to get to know the people she was to work with.
Her initial impressions were confused. Though the office staff was small, even ten people were a lot to meet at once. She had trouble keeping their names straight and in picking out and remembering individual characteristics.
There were two who did make definite impressions on her, however: Marjorie Steck, and Jack Able.
Marjorie didn't like her. That was obvious. The woman was pleasant enough on the surface, but Jill could see behind this facade. Jill caught the critical glance which the thin-faced older woman frequently cast her way the pursing of thin lips and the glint of envy in sharp, gray eyes.
As for Jack Able, his response was exactly the opposite. Jill could tell that he liked her very much indeed. And he was the sort, she judged, who went after what he liked.
Jill deliberately encouraged him. She stayed as close to him as possible, asking innumerable questions, smiling and looking him warmly in the eyes, showing her legs, switching her backside, bending low over his desk so that he could see deeply down the valley of her breasts.
By the time the workday as over, she had him pretty well interested. She felt certain of this even before he asked her for a date. He suggested they have dinner together and take in a show at Boise, which was about half an hour's drive from Fruitvale.
"That sounds wonderful, Jack," she said, "but I'm really awfully tired. This has been such an exciting day, I think I'd like to go to bed early tonight. Ask me again, though, will you?"
Jack said he would and as she said good night, to him, she caught the wistful quality in his eyes. Interested? Oh, yes, indeed! Jill glowed with pleasure at the thought of the fun she had in store.
She walked directly from the office to the cafe where she had had lunch with Big Lou. No sooner had she sat down at the counter than a man who was several plates away an older man with a smoothly shaved face, fresh haircut, and wearing neat if inexpensive slacks and a sports shirt picked up his cup of coffee and carried this to the place immediately next to hers.
The man smiled. "How do you like our little town, Miss Marshall?"
Jill looked at him, and it was a few minutes before she realized she had seen him before. He was the disreputable character who had been standing on the sidewalk and had ogled her right after she'd gotten off the bus. But what a change! He looked almost like a different man.
Jill smiled. "Oh, I love Fruitvale, Mr. ...?"
"Just call me Pete," he said. "Larrabee's the last name."
"How did you know who I am?" Jill asked sweetly.
"I checked around." A foxy twinkle showed in Pete's eyes. "After the way you smiled at me last night ... well, I was interested enough to do some asking."
"Oh." Her smile was almost demure. "Maybe I shouldn't have smiled the way I did. Sometimes people misunderstand. But I guess I'm just friendly. A person can't help the way they are, can they?"
"Not only can't they help being what they are," Pete said, "they shouldn't even try. Anyway, you're darned sweet ... in every way."
Billy Tribbett, who worked the cafe counter, moved up to them.
"Can I buy you dinner, Miss Marshall?" Larrabee asked. "I'd be mighty pleased."
"Well, all right. Thank you, Pete." She smiled again. "I think that would be very nice."
Excitement started to generate deeply within him. This girl liked him. And she really was friendly. You could never tell about young females. Sometimes they actually preferred older guys. This one sure seemed to.
Mort Hopper hadn't gotten very far with her the night before. Pete had found this out, as he had found out a lot of things.
Pete hoped to do better this evening than Mort had done.
Pete hoped, with luck, to go all the way, even if she had to be forced a little.
Had Jill ever submitted herself to a psychiatrist's professional care, he might have traced her peculiarly ambivalent attitude toward men to the conflicting influences which two women had cast upon her life during its formative years.
But Jill had never gone to a psychiatrist. Her mother had never seen the need of taking her, and certainly Jill had seen no need to go. She was happy. She enjoyed life. She enjoyed boys ... now men. She had no psychological problems.
Or so she thought.
She had worked out a course of conduct, as far as males were concerned, which ingeniously resolved the potential conflict that her training and early environment had threatened to produce.
She was aware, however, of a vague sense of disquietude at times, whenever she thought seriously about the future. She knew she would be expected to get married some day ... and she wanted to get married, she guessed. At least, she wanted to live what was regarded as a normal life, and this just naturally included a husband and children.
But that was the future, and the future somehow had a way of taking care of itself. For the time being, everything was fine.
Jill had grown up with the words of her mother, which followed the same monotonous pattern whenever the subjects of "boys" or "Love" came up. And Jill's mother managed to bring up those subjects often. That was her duty, Sarah Marshall felt. She had to protect her young daughter from the torment which she herself had experienced at the hands of the father Jill had never really known.
Men were to be feared. This was the main thrust of Sarah Marshall's argument. Men were selfish, inconsiderate creatures who sought satisfaction for themselves at the expense of women, and they thought nothing of inflicting the most grievous physical hurts. Jill would have to guard particularly against them, her mother had warn:', because Jill was so very attractive. Men would be after her, and Jill was apt to find their attentions exciting.
She could go out with them, of course. This was expected, and Jill would be considered peculiar if she shunned a normal social life. But she must always say "no" whenever they tried to take advantage.
The main point of her mother's admonitions was. as Jill understood this, to be nice to boys and use them for whatever social advantages they offered, but never to permit them to use her for their own ends.
Eventually, of course, Jill would get married, but by then she would be older and wiser, and her mother would help Jill pick out just the right man. He would be someone who could offer all the advantages which a beautiful girl had a right to expect and who, because of the moderate nature of his desires, would not inflict any more suffering upon her than was necessary.
That was the sum and substance of the training which Sarah Marshall administered almost unceasingly, beginning even before the time when Jill's breasts first began to bud.
So much for Sarah Marshall.
There was another Marshall woman, however. She was Jill's sister, Edna.
Edna was sixteen when Jill turned twelve. Edna had been going out with boys for a couple of years. She had learned a thing or two for herself and, while she seldom openly challenged her mother's preaching, she frequently filled Jill's tender ears with what to Edna represented the truth as far as boys and love were concerned.
Edna's "truth" directly contradicted that of their mother.
The older girl had inherited their father's dominant characteristics and she had been subjected, much more than had Jill, to their father's influence. Also, Sarah Marshall hadn't turned quite so bitterly antagonistic toward men until after her husband, the girls' father, had died.
Edna's views on the composite subject of boys and love might have been summarized as: Boys were a kick. A boot. A charge.
Loving was for fun.
As to the physical suffering their mother had foretold in case Jill were to yield the ultimate favor, that was of hooey! Jill would just about go out of her mind with thrills, Edna assured her. The first time there might be a little hurt, but that would last for only a minute. Afterward, she had a lifetime of pleasure to look forward to.
That sounded good to Jill, so good that Jill began to think quite a lot about the forbidden pleasure.
One Sunday afternoon when her big sister went into the living room with a boy friend, Jill determined to do some spying on them. She had to find out what this fabulous experience was like whether this was all fun, as Edna had said, or filled with suffering, as represented by her mother.
Jill was going on thirteen and had never dated. Edna had just turned seventeen and was one of the most popular girls in the senior class at high school. Jill would see. She would find out.
The tree outside the living room window the window at the side of the house which couldn't be seen from the street and which was near the end of the Marshall's commodious davenport was large, thick with foliage, and had one sturdy, straight limb which angled across in front of an upper corner of the window.
When they were younger, Jill and Edna had spied on one another in play from that limb.
By straddling the limb at a certain place, a person could bend slightly forward and peer down at the living room without being seen at all, thanks to the angle and the protective foliage of the tree.
This was the position Jill now assumed. There was no one to see her from outside, for the garage was between the tree and the neighbors' house, and her mother was away that afternoon.
This was before a strange and never-completely-diagnosed malady had consigned Sarah Marshall to a wheelchair. But even then Sarah was not healthy. Jill couldn't remember a time when her mother had not complained of one ailment or another, all of which had gone beyond the ability of medical science to cure.
So Jill, dressed in a blouse and a pair of pedal-pushers which made tree climbing easy, took up her point of vantage. And here was what she saw, furnishing quite a graphic introduction to Nature's all-time best seller The Book of Love:
Edna, a honey blonde of more spectacular dimensions than those which Jill ultimately possessed, was lying on the davenport with her teen-age lover, and her lover had pulled Edna's dress all the way up to her waist. Below the waist, Edna wore only panties. The boy was caressing Edna's panties lovingly as they kissed, and Edna was ... Oh, no!
Jill nearly fell out of the tree.
But she didn't. She held on. And as she held on, she continued to watch.
She watched Edna caressing the boy--who also had been liberated to a certain extent, from the artificial restraints of clothing and Jill marveled at the implication of what she saw. The boy happened to be tall. And he was very passionate at that moment.
Jill's first conclusion was that her mother must indeed have been right in all her warnings. The sight before Jill's shocked twelve-year-old eyes seemed to suggest this, for how indeed could this boy love Edna without hurting her severely? To Jill, there didn't seem to be a way.
She continued to watch, awe-stricken, as the young man's caressing of her sister became extremely bold and began to point the way toward the ultimate experience. All this time Edna's hand continued to move caressing the boy.
Jill had, of course, never touched a boy that way. She had never really thought of it. But she was some four years younger, and that made all the difference in the world.
The boy now had his hand on Edna's bare bottom caressing, patting gently, and kneading the plump and resilient half-globes. He had slid Edna's pink panties downward, so that they comprised little more than a rayon rope about the girl's upper legs.
Edna was squirming, continuing her caressing of him, and they kissed one another with quick little nips at the mouth, the cheeks, the throat, and at the mouth again. Their lips clung together, and Jill could see their facial muscles working.
As the kissing went on, Edna's boy friend temporarily abandoned the lush contours of her bottom to run his free hand to the top of her dress. He felt for the tab of her zipper, found this, and began to ease the zipper down. Mere moments later, he was working one-handed the hooks which held Edna's brassiere.
Edna's breasts had fascinated Jill during the years Jill had watched them grow. They had grown from absolutely nothing to full, firm, melon-like protrusions which stood high and handsome on her chest, with tips of fiery red that could stick way out when Edna ran her fingers back and forth across them. Jill had seen her older sister do this.
Now that Jill's bosom was sprouting, she was extremely bosom-conscious. She could hardly wait until she had a bosom such as Edna had. Then the boys would look at her, too, the way they did, at Edna, and they would wish that they could...
But the boy who was with Edna on the davenport didn't have to wish.
Not any more.
Now he had a free field.
Jill watched as he played with her sister's large pink-tipped breasts, and then as he kissed her. Why, he was actually kissing her nipple! He had his mouth there, his lips parted, and as the muscles of his face worked, Edna appeared to be going out of her mind with delight.
Jill wondered how she would feel, having her nipples kissed.
Next, a great deal of twisting around took place on the sofa and, when this was completed, Jill realized she was about to see what all the talk was about the talk, the whispers, the giggles, the nudges, the secret yearnings ... and the warnings she had received from her mother.
At that moment, Jill felt very sorry for her sister. Jill didn't see how Edna could possibly let this boy do what he obviously wanted to do so badly.
But Edna didn't seem to be afraid. How brave she was! Why, she wasn't fighting the boy at all.
She actually seemed eager. She was pulling at him, her legs having gone in such a way as to prove she wanted him, and to show where she wanted him, as well. To this tender objective, the boy was now preparing to go.
Jill wasn't sure if she could continue to look.
But look she did.
She stared all the harder as the boy made his move. Then, even through the closed window, she could hear her sister gasp and cry out.
Oh, he's killing her! Jill thought. Maybe Edna really didn't know how this would be. Maybe she's never done this before and was just putting on when we talked.
Jill's sympathy for Edna's plight was short-lived, however, for the younger girl soon realized that her big sister was not suffering pain. Her sister was having herself an ever-loving ball! She was bounding and pulling at her boy friends back. She was crying out. Between the two of them, they were punishing the davenport as that venerable old piece of furniture had never been punished before.
So this was Jill's introduction, though vicarious, to the realm of Eros. There is much more which could be said about that afternoon what Jill saw and how she reacted to the experience. But our purpose is served by a recognition of the fact that Jill's introduction tc erotic love seemed to confirm both preconceptions she had previously held. She was convinced that what her sister had said about love being a ball was true ... at least, insofar as Edna was concerned. How could Jill doubt this, in view of the evidence she had seen? But, at the same time, she had been encouraged to believe that her mother was at least partially right, as well. Love could bring pain. Jill had only to think of herself in Edna's place, with that big, passionately-aroused male going after her. Maybe this was what Edna liked, but to Jill there would be pain. There would be a lot of pain. Her mother had surely been right about that. Again Jill couldn't doubt the evidence furnished by her own eyes.
She approached her direct experiences with boys with both these convictions firmly implanted in her mind and each of them was strengthened, as the years went on, by all she heard from both sides. Her sister's assurances were a lure which led her on, but her mother's admonitions proved to be quite an effective brake whenever Jill reached the fateful moment.
Jill's natural resourcefulness resolved the conflict, however. Though this resolution left something to be desired, and did not promise permanent satisfaction, its very restrictiveness yielded satisfactions of a new and different kind. Jill began to glory in her ability to make a male want her. She began to feed on the look she saw in their eyes.
Refusing a man the ultimate triumph gave her a different sort of pleasure. She hadn't expected this. She was having her kicks, but none of the pain, and in this way she was getting the better of them. She was defeating the entire world of men at their own game.
As for the physical side, Jill found that not too much imagining was necessary in order for her own hands to take the place of a boy's ... particularly when she had let the boy's hands wander over her just a short time before, had let him stimulate her to the maximum possible extent and do nearly everything except the ultimate. Sometimes, if the boy was skillful enough, he could even provide her with a release, as she had learned to do for him.
The latter was one of the techniques Jill relied upon to protect herself.
Her system was well-conceived and, for the most part, worked satisfactorily. She fancied herself ahead of other girls and even a little better than they were. Her beauty was glorified. Men paid homage to her and yet she remained inviolate. She had everything ... she thought.
This vague dissatisfaction she brushed aside. The gnawing worry about tomorrow was unacknowledged.
The original fear which her mother had planted in her mind was still there, undiminished by her experiences. The day was bound to come, though Jill refused to admit it, when that fear would have to be dealt with.
Had Jill sought competent professional aid, a cure for her condition could doubtless have been found. But who visits a doctor when they consider themselves well? Jill knew she deviated from the norm, but she assured herself that she'd found a better way. When a small voice told her this wasn't so, she told the voice to be still.
The world at large didn't question that she was what she seemed: a girl who was glad to be alive, pleasant and well-adjusted, if perhaps a bit too conscious of her beauty and too eager to show her beauty off.
There were, however, a number of boys and men who knew differently. Some of them cursed her in their memory. Some of them, when they thought of her at all, were inclined to shake their heads and regard her as a very special kind of kook. None of the relationships had lasted long, many had been for just one night, and some had been marked by sudden explosions of bitterness.
But Jill had brushed this aside, also. The bitterness had been a symptom of how cleverly she had turned the tables on these men, she assured herself.
They had been out to take advantage of her and she had foiled them, while gaining enjoyment for herself at the same time. Their masculine egos couldn't stand that.
As for what they had sometimes said about her ... well, they hadn't meant those things. Not really. They had admired and desired her of this she was sure. The bitterness at the end could not cancel out that fact.
Each new man offered a new challenge, and each one, in his own way, offered a new kind of thrill. For instance, there was Pete Larrabee.
During dinner, Jill had laughed and talked a lot, almost as if she were out with a boy friend, and Pete Larrabee was encouraged about the prospects.
He had reached the tentative conclusion that she was a nympho who preferred the company of older men because they knew better how to satisfy a girl.
Pete owned a 1953 Hudson Hornet, in which he had traipsed around the country for several years. The car had clocked over seventy thousand miles before he'd bought it off a lot in Galveston, Texas, and Pete had at least doubled that. During this time, he hadn't put any more in the heap than he could possibly avoid, and the results of this treatment showed. That day he had cleaned the car up a little, however, and the Hornet was now parked at the curb, several car-lengths from the front door of the cafe.
After Pete had paid the dinner check and when he and Jill were walking to the door, he said, "How about a little ride in the country-that is, if you've got nothing better lined up for tonight?"
"All right," Jill responded immediately. "I haven't had a chance to see much of the area around here at all. I just got in last night ... " She laughed confidentially and added, "As you very well know. Today I put in a full eight hours at work."
They had already discussed her job at the Rombaugh Company, which Pete had known about before he met her at the cafe. (After talking with Billy Tribbett, who had been on duty at the cafe counter when Big Lou had brought Jill over for lunch, Pete had rightly assumed that might drop in for dinner as well.)
Pete led the way to his Hudson. "This ain't much of a car," he said apologetically, "but it's good enough for a guy who's just bummin' around like I've been."
Jill registered no disapproval as far as the car was concerned. She smiled at him. "You never cared much for getting married and settling down, huh?"
"Oh, I did when I was young. But that marriage taught me a lesson I never forgot."
He held the door for her and watched as she got in and swung her legs around. Tasty, he thought.
He walked around the front of the car, climbed behind the wheel, and turned the starter until the Hudson's old engine caught hold. There was a lot of clatter. A mechanic could have filled both sides of a service ticket with just what he heard wrong in that few seconds of idling.
Pete let in the clutch and the old heap rolled away from the curb. "How'd you like to see some of the orchards outside of town?" he asked. "Since you work at the Rombaugh Company and all, and since your uncle owns it, I should think you'd be kinda carious about how the fruit grows."
"Yes. That sounds interesting." Jill cast him another smile.
"You know, there's one thing I just plain can't understand," Pete said as they jogged along.
Jill was watching him attentively.
"How come you ain't stayin' with your uncle instead of in a room at the hotel? I mean, your uncle's got that big old house of his, and there's just him and his wife. I understand they never had any kids."
"I wanted to be on my own," Jill said. "Uncle Lou invited me to stay with him, but I prefer my independence. Maybe that sounds silly, but that's the way I am."
"Oh, no," Pete told her. "I don't think that's silly at all." Then he leered. "Couldn't be that you kinda like to be able to date whoever you want? Could that be the main reason?"
"Mmmmm ... maybe."
"You're a mighty pretty girl, Jill. There's hardly a man who wouldn't do just about anything for a chance with you."
"You really think so?"
"Darned right! I'm a lot older than you are, but you sure make me feel like a high school kid again."
She laughed softly.
Dusk was falling over the countryside, and there were few cars on the narrow back road along which
Pete was driving. They passed dairy farms and chicken ranches, then came into the orchards. Soon the road was lined with row after row of apple trees, their limbs growing heavy with green fruit. Props were in place beneath many of the limbs to keep them from breaking under the weight of the ripening apples.
"What you'd say we pull in somewhere along here and take a closer look at the trees?" Pete suggested.
"I'd like that," Jill said with apparent naivete. But she knew what Pete had in mind she knew, and she had every confidence that she could handle him.
The reactions he'd been getting from the beautiful young woman were almost too good for Pete to believe. He began to wonder if she might be playing him for money ... but, heck, she could see from the looks of the car that he didn't have much. When he'd told her he worked at the feed store, jockeying sacks of meal, she hadn't changed her attitude at all. And she certainly wasn't a common tramp, like the hag he'd dated the night before.
No, she's gotta be looking for the same thing I'm lookin' for, Pete concluded. Man,-what luck!! I really latched onto something this time!
He pulled up a dirt roadway leading through the middle of an orchard and stopped the car. The air had cooled now, with a slight breeze stirring the apple leaves.
"Let's get out," Pete suggested. They did.
After they had looked at the maturing fruit on the boughs and Pete had given an inexpert commentary on apple growing, a subject which he actually knew little about, he suggested they sit down on a little patch of wild grass which had been missed by the last disking of the ground. Jill agreed to this. She was about the most agreeable girl Pete had ever met ... as well as one of the most beautiful.
He wondered how she would react when he made his first move of a strictly personal sort. Would she make a show of resisting or would she come hungrily to him right away?
Pete wanted to learn the answer to this question as soon as possible. He was afraid to delay, as if perhaps some unseen clock would strike the hour and she would disappear or turn into a common creature, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight.
He took a long look at her, seated on the grass beside him. He admired the full twin-thrust of her bosom, the slimness of her waist, the warmth of her hip structure, and the shapely lengths of her legs. Her thin skirt now ended some two inches above her knees. She was wearing stockings that day, of course, since she had dressed for the office, and Pete could see the lower portions of the dark bands which encircled the tops.
"You got a boy friend, Jill?" he asked her.
"Goodness, no! I've just arrived in town."
"I meant in Portland. You must have a boy back there you liked pretty well."
"Oh, I dated several. There was no one special."
He hesitated, squinting. "You like ... older guys usually?"
"I think older men are very nice." She said everything in such a sweet way that a man was tempted to believe she was innocent. But her apparent willingness, and the suggestive way she dressed these didn't jibe with the other. She was kind of a mystery, this one.
"Lot'sa young girls sweet girls, I mean, like yourself-would be afraid to be alone with a guy my age, and a drifter and all. They'd be afraid that maybe he'd ... well, try to take advantage of 'em."
Jill smiled. "I'm not afraid of you, Pete. Nothing you could do would make me afraid."
Well, there was his signal. He couldn't ask for a greener light than that! She was practically telling him to go ahead. His idea about her was sure as heck right, he concluded. She was as eager as he was.
So why should he wait? There just wasn't any reason at all.
He gazed at her face, the softly-encouraging look in her brown eyes, the inviting moistness of her lips. He dropped his eyes to the top of her dress, where the thin fabric was standing a little way out from her body because of the way she was seated; this gave him a view of the tops of her breasts and the valley which plummeted between them.
His gaze sped downward to her legs and where her skimpy dress ended. He could grasp the hem and lift, he thought. A quick, firm tug would be all that was needed, and he would have her peeled like a banana. Then there would be nothing to stop him but a scrap of silk.
He didn't want to frighten her by moving too fast, though. Better to try for a kiss first.
Jill was enjoying herself. She could see how badly this funny old man wanted her, and that gave her a boot. She supposed he hadn't been out with anyone half as pretty in years. Maybe never. She tried to imagine what was going through his mind right then. He was probably looking forward to what a thrill he was going to have when he got her on her back on the grass. He was imagining the sensation when he pressed to her, then felt her yield and receive him.
But he was going to be disappointed as far as the receiving was concerned.
She wasn't going to receive him at all.
He's about ready to make his move, she realized.
She could tell by the little changes around his eyes. She could see he was gathering his nerve, focusing his thoughts on the impending action.
He leaned to her, his arms reaching and face tilting so they could meet, mouth to mouth.
The keenest thrill Pete Larrabee had known for a long time sped through him as their lips touched. Jill's lips were soft and moist and parted. He spread his own, pulling her tightly against him and feeling the erect mounds of her bosom. He moved his tongue.
Her own tongue was waiting right at her teeth. She pressed, as did he, and their tongues slid along and around. He pulled her even more tightly, her thinly-covered back burning his rough hands with excitement.
His fingers touched the track of a zipper. Pull that, he thought. Pull that and go for the bra. That's the best way.
The zipper yielded easily, and then he had his lands on her warm, silken back. She wore a bra, all right. Well, he had known that.
He went to work at the hooks of her bra. At this point, Jill broke their kiss and eased away, gently pushing against his arm which was around her.
"Let's wait for a minute," she said, breathing easily. "I don't like to be rushed."
"Sure," Pete agreed. Things were going so well, he didn't want to spoil them by being impulsive. He could wait for a little bit. The longer he could force himself to wait and look at her and think of what a thrill this was going to be, the more enjoyment he would have.
Jill left the back of her dress standing open, and Pete had managed to release one of the hooks on the bra. One more and he'd have the job done. Jill was going to let him do this, but she wanted to tease him a little more first. She wanted to enjoy the look on his face.
"Do you really like me, Pete?" she asked, her voice velvety, live coals burning in her eyes.
"Dang, I'm crazy about you!" he exclaimed. Then he decided to let his actions speak for him once more. She had said she didn't like to be rushed, but Pete couldn't hold off. She was just too luscious.
His eager lips chewed at hers and his tongue was a still-twisting goad. She closed her teeth gently and drew.
His hands clawed at her brassiere.
Pete was not the most skillful man in the world where the removal of ladies' underwear was concerned. The sort of women he was accustomed to dating weren't apt to wear any; or, if they did, they usually removed their own as soon as he'd put his money on the table.
But Pete got Jill's bra open. He peeled the loose ends forward, leaning back and working her dress down at the same time.
Everything she wore above the waist fell to her lap.
Her breasts stood nude before him.
Pete Larrabee was not particularly a breast-man. That is to say, he didn't go ape when a stripper twirled her tassels. These attributes were exciting, but so was the rest of the girl. He liked hips; he liked buttocks; and he liked legs, too. Probably, if he'd been forced to express a choice, he would have said he liked legs best of all. He liked to kiss up and down a smooth-creamy set of legs, and then he liked to finish where the kissing was the very best. He restrained this urge with a lot of women because ... well, a lot of them just weren't appetizing. But this one man, this one would be honey!
At the moment, he was appreciating the beauty which Jill's full breasts had to offer. Round at their bases, they swelled forward and tapered to thrusting tips. The tips were set in fairly large aureoles which were well defined, lightly pebbled, and capable of responding to a man's caresses almost as demonstrably as the nipples themselves. The nipples, though not yet fully extended, were thick and growing firmer by the moment. And they were the clearest, freshest pink that
Pete Larrabee had ever seen.
Pete liked pink nipples, and a guy just didn't see many that were as pink as those.
"Man, they're beauts!" he exclaimed indelicately.
Jill, her face a little flushed, watched him closely "You really think they're good?"
"Good? They're terrific!" He followed with an alliterative allusion, coupling the word terrific with a plural noun of questionable propriety.
Jill scowled. "Please don't talk like that. I'm not the sort of girl you can use words like that to."
"I'm sorry," Pete murmured and seemed to mean this. "My tongue sorta slipped."
"All right, but please be more careful." She leaned to his approaching hands.
Pete clutched the luscious fruits of her bosom, squeezed their resilient roundness, and tugged at their ripening tips. The tips became wholly ripe very fast.
He leaned further forward and eased Jill to a recumbent position on the grass. As he kissed a nipple lingeringly, Pete figured he was two-thirds of the way home. Just flip up her dress and null down those panties this was all there was left to do. Then he could enjoy her legs to his heart's content. He could pet them and kiss them and arrange them the way he liked. Finally, when he'd kissed his fill ...
Wham! He would take her.
So Pete Larrabee thought.
Jill let him kiss her nipples, and she squirmed with the excitement which the moist, suctioning caresses sent through her body. She let his hands pet up and down her sides, drop to her legs, and grope at the hem of her dress. She let Pete crouch beside her, in an attitude which suggested that he was ready to spring. And she enjoyed the look of him as well as the physical stirrings throughout her body.
Now he had the hem of her dress, and now he was pulling this upward. Her legs, clad in nothing but the sheerest stockings, became visible to their tops. The smooth, pinkish flesh above her hose was exposed to Pete's eyes as he lifted his face from her bosom. Thin, white garter straps stretched upward across this delectable territory and passed beneath the lacy edges of the orchid-colored panties which now came into view
Pete caressed her legs with one hand as he used the other to tug her skirt and slip from beneath her buttocks and arrange both garments at her waist. She was nearly nude from head to toe, except for a froth of fabric about the middle. Her panties concealed little, and her stockings nothing at all.
Pete bent to fasten his lips at a point just above the rim of one stocking. He nibbled gently and trailed his tongue along. Jill shivered. He was not an attractive man and he was twice her age, but he knew how to stir a woman. He was aggressive and sure of himself now, and this thrilled Jill particularly, because she was about to call a halt, and she had every confidence that she was about to do this with success. As confident and experienced as he was, she was going to call the turn on him.
This would have been difficult for her to do, excited as she was, except for the fact that a fear tends to grow larger the longer it goes unchallenged. Now she felt she couldn't possibly go all the way with a man. This was out of the question. What was more, she believed she didn't really want to.
She extended a hand, groped a little, and brought a happily-startled growl from Pete as her fingers found what they were seeking a tiny metal tab. She pulled this.
"Oh, baby! Hey, you sweet little ... unn..." He was kissing her very passionately now, as Jill caressed him. He had kissed all the way around each of her legs and was nuzzling along the straps of her garters. He went as far as he could go before being stopped by lavender lace which was anchored by a thin elastic band.
Pete reached for the elastic at the top of her panties.
Normally Jill would have stopped him right there ... but she had an idea of what Pete wanted to do and she wouldn't mind this in the least. This would solve her problem of physical satisfaction on the spot, so to speak, and when she got back to the hotel she could climb into bed and go right to sleep.
So Jill let the man remove her panties.
He stretched the top toward him, denuding her cute navel and the soft little rise on which this dimple sat. He began to roll the panties down. Jill lifted her buttocks at the proper moment, so as to make the process easy, and her panties then were sliding down her legs and off.
She moved her legs for him.
He growled.
He clutched her about the hips and she couldn't see him at all.
But she could feel. Oh, glory, how she could feel him!
Her legs flexed and waved as he made wildly exciting love to her. The excitement built quickly. Her caressing of him became stronger and more vigorous.
"Please ... please..." She pressed her free hand against the back of his head.
He resumed loving her in this perfectly delightful way as her own caressing of him continued. She was inching up ... and up ... and then she knew she was very close to her goal. There were only a few seconds now...
Her hand flew.
The timing proved exactly right. Just as Jill exploded with a quaking, shuddering spasm which sent warmth flooding throughout her body and made her head reel, the man reached his apex, too. She could feel this. And she could hear his strangled groan.
She removed her hand and lay back with her eyes closed. Deep breaths were causing her up-thrust breasts to heave, sending delectable shivers through them.
When she opened her eyes, Pete was staring down at her, an inquisitive expression on his face. "You like to do that, huh? Gives you kind of a kick?"
"I like what you were doing."
He laughed. 'T don't doubt you did. Most gals do."
She sat up. "Hand me my panties, will you."
"Now, wait a minute..."
"My panties," Jill repeated, a trifle sharply. "I want them."
"But we ain't goin' back yet. Why, heck-fire, I ain't even touched you hardly."
"That was good," she said. "We don't need any more."
"The devil ... "
Jill got to her feet, letting her skirt and slip drop. Her bosom quivered in high-thrusting ripeness.
Pete looked up at her. "I want to stay here for a while. I want to do this right."
"No." Jill saw her panties and went to pick them up.
"You don't want to?"
"I'm a virgin," she said calmly.'
Pete swore in surprise. He stared at her, and then he grinned. "You're puttin' me on, little lady. You ain't gonna get away with this."
Jill's eyes became hard, and her fingers nervously worked at the top of her handbag. "Please. Let's not have trouble. Everything was too good to spoil."
"Good, huh?" Pete sprang to his feet. "Well, if you think I'm about to be satisfied by what just happened, you'd better think again. I want you, and I'm gonna have what I want!" He began to move toward her.
Moving swiftly, Jill's right hand dipped into her purse and out again. There was a clicking sound, and five inches of razor-sharp steel leaped from her closed fist. "Don't take one more step."
Pete cursed foully, but he stood still. She looked as if she meant business, and that switchblade she was holding was long enough to cut out a man's stomach.
"If you touch me again," Jill said evenly, "I'll use this. And if you don't drive me back to town, I'll tell my uncle on you when I get there. He'll have you thrown into jail. You know he can."
Pete knew.
Anyway, right then he didn't have the spunk to fight. She'd taken all the starch out of him for awhile.
He arranged his clothes, cast her a resentful look, and plodded in the direction of the car.
Jill picked up her bra, and jammed this and her panties into her purse. With her bag over one arm and the switchblade still clutched in her other hand, she restored the top of her dress and reached around her back to close the zipper.
She continued to hold the knife as she and Pete drove back to town.
For awhile there was utter silence. He was in a dark mood, but the evening had been quite pleasurable to her. Finally she said in her usual, sweet way, "This wasn't really so bad I mean, you did enjoy yourself, didn't you?"
"You lousy little..." He issued a string of expletives that made Jill's cheeks burn.
"I told you I don't like that kind of talk," she said.
Pete delivered a short, explicit comment about what she could do.
"All right! If you don't want to be nice, we may as well not talk to one another."
That suited Pete, and there was silence for the rest of the way.
So ended a "date" such as Pete Larrabee had never had before, in all his forty-two years.
As for Jill, she considered it too bad that men had to be so stubborn. She never liked having to show the switchblade, and she hated to use it. She had never been forced to do so really. The most she had ever done had been to prick several guys on the skin. One of them had bled a little, but he'd been all right afterward.
Why couldn't they just accept her way of doing and let matters drop?
She guessed they couldn't because of the way they were made. If she were one of them, she guessed she would probably feel the same way.
She smiled to herself. She had gotten the better of old Pete, all right! She got the better of all of them, one way or the other.
And Pete had satisfied her, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jill's second day at the office entailed more work and less sociability than the first one. She didn't care for this. She didn't care for work at all. But it was a necessary evil.
One advantage a girl had when she got married young, Jill thought, was that she avoided a lot of work other girls had to do in stores and offices. Jill didn't take housework into account, for she assumed she either would marry a man who didn't require his wife to be a combination maid and cook as well, or else she would be able Lo get away with doing no more work than she felt like doing. The husband she chose would be considerate and understanding ... at least about that part of their marriage.
The other part of marriage was what frightened her and would keep her single ... at least for as far into the future as she could see.
While she worked, she paid quite a lot of attention to good-looking Jack Able. He was far and away the most attractive man in the place. Jill naturally preferred young men, and the more handsome they were, the better. But the older and homelier ones provided a greater kick in a certain way, since they were so appreciative of a young girl's favors. That was why Jill didn't discriminate.
For instance, though she paid particular attention to Jack Able, she didn't entirely neglect Big Lou either. The fact that Big Lou was her uncle didn't trouble her, for nothing would happen between them which necessarily was forbidden to uncles and nieces. She would see to that, as she always did.
She didn't know if Big Lou was the sort who was apt to do anything about the little invitations she was directing his way. For instance, she took advantage of every opportunity to rub against him. She would swipe a turgid breast across his arm as she turned quickly to move past him, or she would sit for dictation with her legs crossed in such a way that he could were he so inclined see a wide strip of skin about the top of one stocking and even perhaps, if he looked closely, tell what color scanties she had on that day.
He didn't seem to look that closely, but he did look. She felt she was beginning to get to him.
This game added some spice to what otherwise would have been a dull workday. And Jack Able also helped. He was very eager.
Toward the end of her second day on the job, Jack moved up beside her as she was filing a stack of shipping orders. "How're you doing?" he asked in a friendly way.
She smiled at him. "As long as you know the alphabet, you can't go wrong on this job."
"I'll bet you know your A.B.C.'s, all right," he countered.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jill asked. "Just that I think you're hip."
"You mean easy?"
"That isn't what I said. I just figure you know what you want."
"Maybe I do," she admitted.
"So, how about a date tonight? Dinner and a show in Boise?"
"You don't give up, do you?"
"Yesterday you told me to ask you again. I'm asking."
"Not tonight, Jack."
"You're trying to cool me, huh?"
"Not that."
"What're you going to do this evening? You know anyone else in town?"
"I'm going to my uncle's for dinner." (Lou Rombaugh had asked her to come out the evening before, but she had said she wanted to get to bed early. This day she'd been unable to avoid the invitation.)
"Oh." Jack's tone dropped. "Well, I suppose I should have enough sense not to try to date the boss' niece, anyway."
"Don't be like that. I didn't say I wouldn't go out with you ever."
"You just like to keep me dangling, is that the deal?"
"I told you I have to go to dinner at my uncle's."
"Could we meet for drinks later? You do drink, don't you?"
"When I want to. But not tonight."
"Okay." He grinned wanly. "I'll keep trying."
She watched him walk back to his desk and thought that she probably would give in the next day if he asked her. He would be fun, but he might be a little hard to handle, too. He had said she knew what she wanted. Well, he was the sort who usually got what he wanted, she imagined.
But he would find out she was different. Though he would be a challenge, Jill didn't doubt her ability to handle him.
That evening, as she sat with the Rombaughs in the living room of their large old house, Jill sized up her uncle from behind the facade of sweet innocence which she usually wore, and she began to wonder if perhaps Uncle Lou didn't offer the greatest challenge of all the men she'd met so far.
His wife, Jill's Aunt Fanny, was a placid woman in her mid-forties to whom Big Lou obviously was very close. They had been married for something like twenty-five years.
Jill's mother had emphasized to the girl, before the arrangements were made for her to spend the summer in Fruitvale, that Uncle Lou was not like most men. He was, according to Sister Sarah, completely devoted to his wife and guided by fine ideals. Jill had wondered about his ideals and decided she would have some fun putting them to the test.
So far. the results of her flirtatious gestures had encouraged her. Lou Rombaugh had taken note of her as a female; there was no question about that. But now that he had taken note, what was he going to do? What could Jill get him to do? The challenge was an interesting one, and Jill could not but rise to this.
As they chatted, her uncle and aunt sat side by side on the sofa and Jill occupied a chair across from them. She looked at Uncle Lou most of the time, directing her conversation to him. Aunt Fanny seemed not to notice this. She sipped her coffee and cast benevolent glances alternately at her husband and her niece. Whenever she spoke, the remark was mild and colorless. Never once did she imply criticism of anything or anyone.
Big Lou dominated the conversation, but in a graceful way. Almost everything he said was sandwiched between laughs. These expressed nothing in particular except his general good humor.
He looked at Jill's legs, also. She caught him looking more and more. And once, when she strolled across the room to examine a large landscape print, she turned quickly and caught Uncle Lou's eyes trained directly at her buttocks.
Oh, yes, he was thinking about her!
He was thinking, Jill assured herself, of how much fun he could have with her if she weren't his niece, if he weren't married, if he were younger, and if he weren't too fat for a sweet young girl to find attractive. She wondered how much longer these considerations would hold him back if she continued to flirt with him as she had been doing.
She didn't propose to stop. On the contrary, she thought tonight would be a good time to press the campaign a little. She would do this when he drove her back to the hotel, she decided. She would get him to come up to the room with her.
The evening didn't last long, for the Rombaughs were in the habit of retiring early. At a little after ten, Big Lou stood and announced that he didn't want to keep Jill up too late, since she was young and required more sleep than they did.
Jill agreed she had better be getting back to the hotel. Of course Big Lou offered to drive her, and of course Aunt Fanny insisted he do so.
He owned a white Lincoln Continental which was four or five years old, and he treated the car with the greatest respect. During the short drive he talked, as he had done during much of the evening, about earlier days in the valley how the area had grown and developed-as if Jill gave a hang about such things.
When they reached the hotel, Lou parked the Continental at the curb in front and turned to beam at
Jill in the jovial, outgoing way he had. "Well, your aunt and I sure enjoyed this little visit, Jill. We'll have to do this often."
"I enjoyed myself, too," she said. "And tell Aunt Fanny again what a wonderful dinner she fixed, will you?"
"I'll sure do that. You know, there's just nothing your aunt takes more pride in than having folks over for a good old-fashioned feed."
"Well, it was certainly nice of her ... of both of you." Jill's hand depressed the door handle and the door swung noiselessly open. She smiled. "Care to see me up to my room?"
"Well ... sure. I guess that's only fitting and proper." He laughed and got out of the car.
Jill waited for him on the sidewalk and they walked into the hotel together.
There was no one at the front desk at this hour. For service, one had to press a button which rang a bell in the manager's quarters. There was no one seated in the small lobby this time, either.
As Jill preceded her uncle up the stairs to the second floor, she knew he was watching the shimmy-in a; wiggle of her buttocks beneath her snug skirt. This would prime him for what was going to happen when they reached the room. She wasn't at all sure, though, that she would be able to get anywhere with him that night. Uncles and particularly a devoted husband and pillar of the community like Big Lou weren't apt to snap at the bait as quickly as other men would. She didn't expect him to be at all as aggressive as
Pete Larrabee ... and, anyway, he was a few years older.
At her door, she handed him the key, as if he were a young man bringing her home from a date. At first he was surprised then he was pleased. He took the key, stooped, and unlocked the door. When the door swung open, Jill reached inside and snapped on the lights.
"Come in for a minute?" she invited. "Well, I ... "
"Come on. It's not that late." She clutched his arm in such a way that he could feel the full thrust of her breasts.
He went into the room. Jill closed the door and stood coquettishly with her back against the panel. "Has it been quite a while since you were in a young woman's hotel room, Uncle Lou?"
He took the matter lightly, a laugh rumbling from the depths of him. "More years than I can remember, little lady."
Jill crossed the room to where he was standing and moved very close so close that her breasts nuzzled the front of his suit. "You're very nice, y'know that--? I'm so happy I have an uncle like you."
He was a little flustered. "Well, now, that's sweet of you to say, Jill."
She twisted away, letting her breasts drag lightly across him. As soon as she had proceeded a couple of steps, she turned quickly his way again. "Oh! I knew there was something T wanted you to do for me, if you would. I just remembered."
"Well, sure. Anything at all."
"Sit down, then. I want you to see an outfit T bought this noon in the ladies' shop down the street. I didn't really have much of anything to wear to the office, so I bought this skirt and blouse. But now I'm afraid maybe they're a little snug. Let me model them for you, will you?"
Big Lou cleared his throat. He was perspiring lightly, and his normal attitude of joviality had slipped. "I don't know if I ... that is, if I could help you very much. I don't know much about women's clothes."
"What man does?" she chided. "But you can tell me if the outfit would look okay for the office. That's all I want you to do."
Lou looked around nervously. "Have you got ... some place where you can change?"
Jill laughed. "What do I need with that? You just sit on the side of the bed there and shut your eyes. It'll only take me a minute to whisk these things off and put the new ones on."
"Hey, now, Jill-baby ... I don't think..."
"Shh!" She walked up to him and placed a cool slim finger across his lips. "Don't argue. You just sit down and be nice, will you?"
The big man was trapped. While he didn't like the situation, he didn't want to hurt Jill's feelings. After all, she was his niece, and for him to suggest there was anything wrong about her changing clothes in the same room with him would he indecent in itself. Evil to him who evil thinks, as somebody once said.
He sat down.
Radiating an attitude of girlish innocence, Jill busied herself getting out the packages she had brought to her room on her lunch hour. She opened them on a chair, removing a blue skirt and figured blouse.
"All right, Uncle Lou," she announced. "Shut your eyes. I'll look the other way and ... no fair peeking until I tell you."
"Okay, darling," he said with a paternally indulgent smile.
There was, however, in the back of his consciousness, a stirring. He recognized this as something evil and he resisted.
He shut his eyes and kept them shut for several seconds as he heard his beautiful, young niece beginning to remove her outer clothes.
Then suddenly his imagination went to work.
He realized that he couldn't hold out. Heaven help him, but he would have to look.
As he opened his eyes to tiny slits, the sight before him struck the visual center of his brain with almost tangible force. His heartbeat quickened, his blood began to race, and Big Lou Rombaugh began to react as a male instead of as an uncle.
Jill, facing the wall, had her blouse off and was half turned his way, fussing with the fasteners at the side of her skirt. Her blouse wasn't all she had removed, however. Her right breast was displayed in stunning naked profile, for her bra lay with her discarded blouse over an arm of the chair at her side.
Big Lou Rombaugh had seen no breasts other than his wife's for nearly fifteen years. When he was a younger man, he had cheated on Fanny a few times. As he grew older, and the fire within him lost some of its youthful intensity, he no longer had felt the need to do this.
But now he was feeling a need.
He was feeling a tremendous, throbbing need for his young and luscious niece.
He stared as she lowered her skirt and revealed to him the fact that she wore no slip. All she had on was a pair of the thinnest pale-pink underpants a man could imagine and, beneath these, a skimpy garter belt to hold up her extra-sheer hose.
Lou gazed at her all-but-naked buttocks, the sheen of pink nylon dramatizing and not concealing the loveliness of her taut, plump curves. They were even nicer than he had imagined when he had watched her wiggling up the hotel stairs in front of him. They were superb! He had never seen such a pair of buttocks in his life.
She lay her skirt aside, and now she reached for her new clothes.
Lou wanted very much for her to turn his way so that he could see all of her her naked nipples and, through the pale-pink pants, her tummy. But if she were to face him, he would have to close his eyes, and he certainly didn't want to do that. The situation was an immensely frustrating one.
The situation was fraught with guilt, too.
What was he doing, spying on his own niece in her scanties? What had happened to him? What sort of man had he become?
Breathing hard, he jammed his eyes closed. There! That was better. He had no right. . .
But she was so very lovely so fresh and young.
His eyelids moved again, opening to slits.
Jill was in the process of drawing the snug, new blouse down over her chest. She was wriggling, sending a ripple through the naked side of breast that he could see. Her bosom protruded so much that she was having difficulty getting the blouse on. She devoted both hands to working the blouse over her left breast, which Lou couldn't see, while her up-thrust right nipple stopped the progress of the fabric at this side. Now she grasped her right breast in her right hand and pushed the pliant globe under the rim of the cloth while she used her left hand to haul the blouse down.
She reached for her skirt.
By this time, Big Lou Rombaugh was fit to be tied. The spectacle had unnerved him completely. The mere sight of a half-naked female wouldn't have affected him so except for the fact that this female was so young and fresh and sported a set of curves more outstanding than any he had ever seen in his life; that she was also his niece; and that he was alone with her at night in her bedroom.
Sweating, his heart thumping in his huge chest, his manly desire demanding expression, Big Lou sat there and suffered as he had not suffered for a long time, if ever.
He watched Jill step into the new skirt and draw it up, having much the same trouble getting the skirt over her buttocks as she'd had in getting the blouse down over her breasts. She twisted, causing the buttock flesh to tremble in her sheer panties, and she had to run the flat of her hand across those plump resilient hemispheres and shoehorn them into her skirt.
Lou watched all this, growing more excited and distraught by the moment, then jammed his eyes closed just in time to avoid being found out when Jill turned to face him.
"Okay, Uncle Lou," she sang. "Open your eyes and tell me how I look."
The sight of her with clothes on, though the clothes were snug and she wore no brassiere, was so anti-climactic that not much of an impression was made on Lou Rombaugh's fevered brain. He said something having to fight at first to make his voice come out smoothly.
Jill appeared not to notice his lack of poise, but secretly she was enjoying this. She had him coming around, the same as all the others. After what he's seen, he was wild for her, she felt sure. A couple more stunts like that and the fat old man would be ready to commit rape and incest both, in one blind and reckless act.
She let him go very shortly after this, and Big Lou Rombaugh tottered down the stairs and across the deserted hotel lobby, his brain still swimming with the voluptuous visions he had seen and tormented with the guilt associated with them.
He didn't head for home right away but walked down the street to Bailey's Tavern for a drink. That would help steady him, he thought.
This worked to some extent. But he couldn't banish the sight of his young niece's half-naked body from his mind.
Though specifically composed when he finally arrived at his house, he was still thinking about Jill. His wife was in bed but had not as yet gone to sleep.
He would take her, Lou thought. That would get him over the sight of that young filly, and by morning he would be all right He undressed in the dark and slipped under the sheet beside his wife.
When he was about to turn to her and begin the initial caressing which would lead the way to eventual release, he suddenly realized that he didn't want his wife. The mere thought of taking her repelled him. He couldn't take her now.
He lay on his back in the dark, staring at a broken shaft of moonlight which was projected on the ceiling, and wondered what he was going to do to free himself of this torment.
"Lou?" his wife murmured softly.
"Yes."
She slowly turned toward him. "You want to?"
He paused and cleared his throat. "I'm a little tired but if you..."
She patted his hand and laughed gently. "That's all right, dear. I can keep. I can always keep until you want me."
He said, "Fanny..."
She gave him a quick kiss. "Now, go to sleep. It's late and you need your rest."
His wife turned to face the other edge of the bed once more, but Lou didn't fall asleep for a long time.
He wanted Jill. He had to admit that to himself. He wanted Jill very badly.
This was sinful and he didn't dare give in to the desire, even if she might be willing to let him.
Of course, he was sure she wouldn't, just as he was sure she hadn't intended to tease him in her hotel room a little while before. That had been entirely his fault, and now he had to work out his own solution to the problem which had suddenly arisen to monopolize his thoughts.
He certainly couldn't find his solution with Fanny.
Another woman? Was that the answer?
Yes.
That was what he would have it do go to Boise and pick up a woman in a bar. Then maybe he could work out with her the shameful desire which was now eating away at his self-respect.
Cheating on his wife was wrong, and he hadn't done it for a very long time, but this would be better than to let his illicit desire for Jill get the better of him.
After rolling and tossing for the better part of two hours, Lou Rombaugh finally fell asleep.
In her room at the hotel, Jill had fallen asleep long ago and her dreaming was serene.
She had enjoyed herself a great deal when her Uncle Lou was there, and she was looking forward to further enjoyment of the same kind in the future enjoyment even more intense as she finally forced her uncle to admit how he felt about her, then drove him to the point where he would attempt to seduce her.
She would treat him as she had treated the others. She would make him think he was succeeding until the crucial moment, and then she would deny him the satisfaction which he would so desperately crave.
That would be a rare kick.
That would be a lot more fun than what had happened with Pete Larrabee the night before.
After she had contemplated this impending pleasure to her heart's content, Jill turned her thoughts to the other male in the office who interested her handsome, self-assured Jack Able.
He was next on her thrill list.
She giggled to herself and cuddled her head more deeply in the pillow.
Jack wouldn't be as reluctant as her uncle, and he was apt to be more demanding than Pete Larrabee. Jack was at the most dangerous age old enough to know what he was doing and young enough, still, to have virtually inexhaustible needs.
Jack would be a lot of fun ... and another sort of challenge.
If Mother could only see me now, Jill thought, and this gave her a sharp sense of pleasure, too.
Jill didn't care much for her mother, really. Her attitude was marked by a submerged resentment which ran very deep and farther back in time than she could remember.
Though she hadn't thought of the matter in exactly this way, her behavior toward men was, in one sense, a seeking of revenge against her mother a striking-back.
But Jill couldn't strike all the way and permit herself to do what her mother had always warned her against. The older woman's admonitions held too much force for that, strengthened by her own obeisance through the years.
Anyway, she didn't want to go the distance with any man. Why should she, when life was so much fun this way?
CHAPTER FIVE
Till and Jack had their first date the following J night, and the tone of the occasion was set by the young man when he made a remark right after they left the office, about the classic connotation of their names.
"We ought to go out and climb a hill," he said with a grin.
"I guess that would be innocent enough," Jill replied.
"Depends," Jack said. "There are two versions of that old rhyme, you know."
"No, I didn't. How does the other one go?"
"I shouldn't tell you," he said. "Besides, you might take the words as an insult. I had nothing like that in mind."
"Now I really have to know."
"Okay. But the part about the money that certainly would have nothing to do with us."
"Tell me how the rhyme goes."
He told her: "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water; Jill came down with a five-dollar bill; do you think they went for water?" He smiled.
She looked straight ahead.
"Are you insulted?" he wanted to know.
"Not exactly."
"Good. Because I know you aren't the sort of girl who would take money."
"I'm not the sort of girl, period," she snapped back.
"Oh. Well, pardon me all to pieces." He laughed, as if the entire exchange had been a joke, and hugged her around the waist.
Jill quickly abandoned her pique, and the drive to a restaurant, several miles out of town on the Boise highway, was a pleasant one. After eating, they drove on to the city and picked out a show.
Jill knew Jack would make a play for her that night, even though this was their first date, and she was prepared to let him go just far enough to keep him interested, no farther. There was a certain skill necessary to the game. She had to build him up high, so that when the climactic time arrived there would be the greatest possible excitement.
Jack practically ignored her during the show. He didn't press his leg against hers, take her hand, or try to caress her around the knees. He was too cool for such baby games. He figured, in spite of the way Jill had talked, that she was as hip as he and as ready to do what Nature had equipped them for. Either that or she was a teaser. If she merely liked to tease, he vowed to give her some education before the night was over. He would teach her not to tease a guy who knew the score.
After the show Jack invited her to go to a bar, but she demurred. Jill didn't care for the feeling liquor gave her, and on a date this interfered with her enjoyment of the game she played with men.
Jack didn't care, though he'd thought a little booze might loosen her up. They ended up at an ice cream store where they had a pair of mile-high sundaes topped with cherries and whipped cream. '
After they had returned to his car a three-year-old Plymouth he grasped her arm and drew her close to him. "Anybody would think you didn't like me," he said, "sitting way over there."
She smiled warmly as her hip came up against his. "This better?"
"Much."
"I didn't want to be too forward," she explained.
He looked at her the compelling pertness of her expression, the creamy texture of her skin, her wide, mobile lips, the hint of mischief in her eyes and he pulled her into his arms. He felt her breasts against his chest and they were like balloons filled with water.
His left hand went all the way down her side and grasped her at the right hip as she met his eager lips with her own.
Their tongues immediately kissed, and this convinced Jack that he had not been mistaken about the girl. One of two things had to be true: Either she was ready to go and awaited only a touch of the button, or she was out to tease him to the nth degree before she uttered the final and implacable no. He considered the latter possibility because he had known teasers before. After he had gotten through with them, they had been wiser, if not necessarily sadder, girls.
Now he was leaning forward and pressing Jill back against the car seat, his tongue drilling at her lips while his left hand made forays up and down her side. Her front remained jam-packed against him. She moaned a little and clutched him at the back, and she did nothing at all to restrain his hand.
He dipped under the hem of her skirt, felt her petticoat lace brush against the backs of his fingers, and slipped along the warm length of her nylon. He found the top of the stocking, traced the rim around her leg, and toyed for a moment with the clasp of a garter. She lifted her leg slightly, and he petted her there as well.
She moaned in her throat. Then, gently but persistently, she dislodged their mouths and pushed him away.
She was breathing heavily. "Ooo, you really come on!"
"Let's go to some place that's not so public," he said as he straightened himself behind the wheel. (They were parked on a side street in the central section of Boise at the time.)
"Just what did you have in mind?" she asked, and the husky warmth of her voice excited him further.
His glance read warmth in her eyes also. But there was something else there. He couldn't figure out exactly what this was. "How about a motel?" he suggested.
"There you go again," she said, "thinking I'm that sort of girl."
He started the car and pulled away from the curb. "You kiss like you know what lips were made for."
"But I'm no quick make. You'd better get rid of that idea about me."
"You have a way of turning a guy on and off," Jack said. "One minute you're sweet, the next you act real warm and willing, and then you turn ice cold. Make up your mind, girl."
"My mind's made up. There's no motel ... tonight."
"I see." {Tease, he thought. That's got to be the answer, Well, just wait!)
They rode along silently for several minutes. Jack found the road to home and they started rolling in that direction. Jill was still seated against him he could feel her warm hip and the warm thrust of her left breast whenever he moved his arm but she wasn't giving him any further encouragement.
He'd had all the encouragement he needed, though. All and then some.
When they were well out of town on the two-lane highway, which was lightly traveled at that hour of the night, Jack began to watch for a likely turnoff.
Take, her up in the hills and show her who's boss he thought. That's the only way to treat a teaser. Stop the car and gave her a choice: On the car seat or on the ground. State your preference, baby!
Jill expected something like this and she was prepared. She just wanted to handle the situation in such a way that Jack wouldn't be too angry with her. She wanted to stop him without driving him off altogether.
He found his road, a narrow, unpaved one that ran along the edge of a pasture where there was a row of tall poplar trees. Perfect. He braked quickly and Jill lurched against him as he pulled the steering wheel to the right.
"Hey!" she said. "What's the idea?"
"We're going to stop and have a little talk," he told her. The car was lurching over the ruts. That road was giving the Plymouth's torsion bars a workout.
"Talk?" Jill echoed. "What about."
"Maybe the birds and the bees."
"Now, wait a minute..."
He pulled up and stopped beside the poplars. As he set the parking brake and cut the engine, there was utter silence except for the sibilant rustling of branches above them.
"Afraid?" he asked with a rakish grin as he turned toward her. "Not at all."
"Good. That must mean you've decided to give in."
"Jack, I told you..."
"Yeah, yeah. But there's a language that speaks louder than words."
"What do you mean?"
"The language lips and tongues speak to one another that doesn't make any sound. The language of a girl's eyes, and the way hands pull against a guy's back. The way she switches her fanny at him, too. And the way she feels when she's jammed against a man's chest."
"Oh-oh. I can see you have the wrong idea altogether."
"Not me, baby. I got your message and I'm prepared to follow through. If you didn't mean what you were saying ... well, that's too darned bad."
"All I have to do is tell my uncle," Jill stated calmly.
"You tell your uncle and I'd be out of a job, yeah. But that wouldn't bother me. I'm about ready to make a move anyhow." He paused. "That is, I was until you came along."
"I suppose I should feel flattered."
"Not necessarily. You know what a warm little item you are. I'm sure other guys have told you."
Jill looked straight ahead. "I think we'd better drive on, Jack."
"We will ... afterward."
"There isn't going to be any afterward, because there isn't going to be any during."
"Oh, there isn't, eh."
"That's what I said."
Jack had taken about all the talk he had patience for. He felt the time was right to put their relationship on a strictly physical plane.
He reached for her.
Jill's warmth came to him as before her soft, firm warmth which arched high on the front of her and was soft at her waist where his left hand pulled.
Her mouth was sweetly inviting, the lips pliant and parted. Jack brought his mouth firmly against hers and they merged. His kiss went deep. To his surprise, she responded warmly, just as she had done the first time.
He released her after a bit. "Well."
"You kiss good."
"That's not all I do good. You ought to try me."
"How can you talk about that so casually."
"Say, what's the matter with you? Do you have a problem?"
"How do you mean?"
"Some sort of block like you want to but you don't dare. Are you afraid?"
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in my life."
"Well, something's wrong. I've known quite a lot of girls..."
"That's an old line, trying to make a girl feel she's different that she isn't in unless she gives in."
"I'm not giving you a line. I'm just trying to understand."
"Well, pardon me if I don't feel like carrying on a debate."
"What do you feel like doing? Tell me the truth."
"I feel like going home."
Jack looked at her for a long time. "Not yet. There was too much come-on in that kiss."
"Jack, I'm warning you ... "
He leaned closer. "Let's see where that come-ew leads us, huh?"
This time he pulled Jill jarringly against him, and instead of sending his mouth on a direct line to hers, he went for her neck, his lips parted, his teeth coming against her flesh. His warm breath struck her ear and his hands pulled her waist against him, causing her upper body to bend backward.
He kissed along the side of her neck, the front of her throat, and downward. His hands slid quickly up her front to grasp both of her breasts. He squeezed those firmly, then pressed his mouth to hers just in time to stifle her excited cry. Pleasure or protest? He wasn't sure. But she wasn't fighting.
He worked her breasts for quite a while as they continued kissing. The rubbing of his fingers across the summits of her thrusting globes told him that her nipples were becoming very hard.
All the while his tongue worked to persuade her: to show her what the feeling of male possession was like; to demonstrate the darting, sliding sensation that she could expect to know on a much more exciting scale when she gave in to him and let him do with her as he wanted.
He didn't really think she was a virgin ... but a guy never knew. If that was her problem, she could he persuaded. Every girl was a virgin once.
Now his left hand skittered down her side, past her waist, and onto her leg. He reached the hem of her skirt and he lifted it deftly. He lifted her petticoat, too, and moved his hand quickly up her stocking. He slid to her bare skin warm and smooth and slick. Oh, she felt good right there!
He didn't play around her stocking-top and garters as he had done before. Now he meant business. His hand went all the way and began to pet the snugly-packed nylon at her middle.
Jill started to fight.
When Jack's fingertips moved to the elastic barrier at the top of her leg and lifted it to crawl under, she pushed against his chest with all her might. Their kiss ended and she propelled herself to the opposite edge of the car seat.
"Oh, no!" she said, breathing heavily, her face flushed. "That's far enough!"
"Far enough? We've just gotten started."
"Well, kissing and a little fooling around is all right, but don't touch my panties."
"So that's the boundary line, huh?" He was breathing heavily too, and his eyes glinted in the moonlight as he sat half-facing her, gripping the steering wheel with his left hand, his right extending along the back of the car seat.
"I don't let any boy go further than that," she stated firmly.
"You never have."
"That's right."
"You mean you're a virgin."
"Yes."
"Well, I'll be dogged:"
"You ready to take me home now?"
He stared at her, and then he did something which surprised Jill. She hadn't expected him to give up so easily. He faced front and reached to start the car's engine.
They drove the rest of the way to Fruitvale in virtual silence.
CHAPTER SIX
As soon as Jack had dropped her off at the hotel, he drove to a telephone booth at the corner of a service station down the street. The time was only a few minutes after midnight not too late to grab some quick fun, if a certain girl was at home. She had a phone in her room. Provided she said okay, Jack could get in through her bedroom window. He'd done that before, and her parents hadn't been the wiser.
After the excitement of touching and kissing Jill, he needed satisfaction. If he didn't manage to scare up some, he would be facing a rough night.
He flipped the telephone dial the required number of times, then waited while the ringing signal burred at his ear. Probably asleep he thought. Well, that was all right. They're usually pretty good after they've been snoozing awhile ... provided you give them enough time to wake up and get their wits about them.
"Hello ... "
"Linda? Jack Able. How're you, baby."
"Sleepy. That's how I am. What time is it."
"What's the difference? I want to come over."
"Now?"
"Right now. I can be there in five minutes."
"But my folks! They'd skin you alive ... and me, too."
"Your folks don't need to know Just make sure your window's open and the screen's unlatched."
"I don't know, Jack."
"Come on, sweetie. Don't be that way now."
"Why haven't you called me for awhile? You must have a new girl, huh?"
"I've been busy. They've had me working late at the office."
"Rombaugh's? Oh, come on!"
"No bull. I was there until eleven-thirty tonight. They're setting up a new billing system."
"You must be making a lot of overtime, huh?"
"That's right. Say ... how'd you like to go out with me tomorrow? One of the best spots in Boise. We'll spend some of that extra loot."
"What's the matter? Don't you have to work tomorrow night?"
"Nope. I get a night off. What do you say."
"Sounds good, Jack."
"Sure it does. Now, how about letting me come over tonight."
"Well ... "
"Please, baby."
Linda chuckled softly. "You must really have a lotta steam on, huh?"
"Have I! Baby, I'll bounce you through that bed!"
"That sounds pretty good," she murmured. She was warming up.
"Doesn't sound half as good as it's going to feel," Jack said boldly. He knew Linda Samuels well. She wasn't the subtle type ... and she certainly wasn't any prude.
"Okay, honey," she murmured. "Come on over. But please be quiet, huh? My folks would really skin me."
"Don't worry," he said. "Stay wide awake. I'll just be five minutes."
"Do you think I could go back to sleep now, you silly?"
"That's my girl," he murmured, made a kissing sound at the phone and repeated, "Five minutes." He hung up.
As he walked from the phone booth back to his car, he thought, Well, at least the evening isn't a total loss. That Jill she could be bad for a guy's nerves. Darned good thing there are girls who are willing.
He hadn't given up on Jill by any means. As a matter-of-fact, he wanted her more strongly than ever
... now that he'd gotten a few kisses and some feels. She was a Grade-A item, and this realization had been responsible for his sudden change of mind when he'd had her with him at that lonely spot in the car. She was too good to force. He was afraid she might put up a real fight, and that would spoil a lot of the pleasure particularly since they would be fighting in the cramped quarters of a car. Jill was the sort who should be enjoyed at leisure, when she wanted to play as much as he did. Then he could lead her along all the avenues of pleasure, and they could take all night for the grand tour.
She was a funny one, but he would figure her out and bring her around. She was a challenge that would lend life a little extra spice.
He climbed behind the wheel of his Plymouth Fury and fired up the engine. Linda Samuels, here I come! he thought. You'd better have that window open.
Linda's window was open and her screen was unlatched. No problems. Jack pushed the screen, climbed over the sill, then he and the girl were embracing in a pool of moonlight at the center of her room.
Linda was totally nude.
She was a pretty girl, though there was nothing unusual about her. And she was too easy to be particularly stimulating. But at a time like this, she came in handy.
Blonde and blue-eyes, Linda was average in height and had good breasts. They were not the equal of Jill's ... but whose were? Lordy, that doll had a set!
Now that Jack had hold of Linda's, ,he wasn't about to complain. They were a little squashy, true, but they were warm and pointed. He dropped his hands at her sides as she clung to his back, and they kissed deeply. His fingers crawled around the half-globes of her bottom. He clutched, his finger-tips teasing the cleavage.
She was very warm for him and that was good. The phone call, plus five minutes of anticipation, had made her ready. This was all Linda required. He wouldn't have had to caress her any more at all if he hadn't wanted to.
But Jack did want to.
He wanted to stoke her up to the point where she would become very anxious. For when Linda became anxious, she became aggressive. And when Linda was aggressive ... well, there just wasn't anything she wouldn't do.
After he had caressed her boldly for several minutes, and their kissing had continued for all that time, he suddenly drew his mouth away and swung her up into his arms. She let out a happy cry as he carried her to the bed.
"Shh," he whispered. "Your parents. Remember?"
"Oh, yes," she breathed. "I forgot for a minute. When you treat me this way, honey, I just go crazy. A little more of that petting and I'd be willing to tussle on Main Street at high noon."
"I'll pet you some more," he promised as he let her down on the mattress. "I'll kiss you, too. How'd you like to have your toes kissed, huh? I haven't done that for a long while."
"Ohh, that sounds ducky f
"Well, hold everything then. First I've got to get as naked as you are."
She giggled and whispered, "There just isn't any more naked than this."
Jack was pulling at his clothes, tossing the jacket away, then the tie. He got his shirt off and followed quickly with his trousers, his shoes and socks, and finally his shorts. Now he was as naked as she.
He took the two steps to the bed, where she had been twisting and turning like a freshly caught flounder on the bottom of a boat. He depressed the mattress with his knees.
"Now," he said, "where are those little toes?"
She giggled again. "You really wanta start there?"
"I believe a fellow should start at the bottom and work his way up."
She raised a set of dainty toes to his face. "Mmmmm you're ambitious."
Jack held her ankle with both hands and kissed each toe in turn. Then he kissed her instep and her ankle. As his lips began to slide along, his hands slid, also. One of them slid on the outside of her leg as far as her knee, and the other one slid ... all the way.
"Ohh!" Linda cried. "Oh, baby! Mmmmm ... unn ... I can't wait!"
"You won't have to wait long," Jack promised her between moist velvety nips at her flesh. "I just want to ... kiss your knees a little ... and here ... here ... and..." He skipped to her navel.
She said, "Oh," petulantly.
He kissed all around her waist, then continued upward. He crawled forward at the same time and, as he did this, Linda's angling legs achieved their purpose. As he began to kiss her breasts, cradling them between his hands and twisting his face from side to side, she tried to bring their game to the final phase.
But this was too quick, as far as Jack was concerned.
He wanted more from her that night. He wanted all she had to give.
He raised his face from her bosom and sat back on his haunches. The moonlight was bright enough to permit them to see one another pretty well.
"Do you like me, baby?" he asked. "Really like me, I mean?"
"Jack, you know I do!"
"Do you want to make me really happy?"
"Ohh, yes."
"Then ... "
If she had any doubt about his meaning, he made this clear by the movement of one hand. Linda's eyes narrowed and her lips went slack. He helped her sit up.
Her hands went to him first, and then he felt her lips. She was kissing him warmly and wonderfully ... giving him all the excitement he needed on that particular night. Her head bobbed and twisted, blonde hair shining in the moonlight.
He didn't want too much of this just enough to set him up so that he could get maximum enjoyment from the other. He pushed her away roughly, pressing her shoulders against the mattress. He had to move only a Utile to bring them together, for her grip about his back helped.
He went all the way and she cried open-mouthed, twisting and arching in one fluid motion acting as if she couldn't get enough.
Jack had just started, though. Before he was through, she would have plenty.
He worked in a deliberate yet forceful way, claiming her to the full as she moved against him. He dug his hands beneath her soft buttocks, squeezed and aimed her exactly the way he wanted so that each of them would enjoy the maximum thrill with every motion.
She gasped and moaned, and the bed was making a pretty loud racket. If her parents didn't hear some of that, they would have to be deaf, Jack thought. But he didn't ease up. Let them hear, for all he cared. Linda would have to make the explanations, not he. The worst that might happen would be that her mother or father would come to the door and rap. If that happened, he could finish quickly, grab up his clothes and leave the room the way he'd come in.
Surely Linda had locked the door.
Or had she?
Maybe he had better find out. As he continued to love her, he grated, "Did you ... lock the ... door?"
"Nohhh..." she breathed hoarsely. "I ... forgot." Jack cursed but kept going. Even the possibility of being walked in upon wasn't going to stop him now. Linda wasn't asking him to stop, either. The last thing she wanted him to do at that moment was to get out of her bed.
Jack let her buttocks go and dropped his body, running his arms around her upper back. Better get it over with, he thought, and now the bed really began to rock. Jack moved fiercely at her. She cried out.
Linda stayed with his rhythm, her hips pounding. He was getting there. He could glimpse the prize just barely above his reach.
At that moment there was a click and the door opened. "Linda?" (Her mother's voice.) The ceiling light went on.
Her mother screamed as Jack continued to love Linda, and the girl at that precise moment reached her own quivering epitome of pleasure. She sobbed and clutched him and seemed to turn to pudding.
One ... two ... then he was finishing, too. He shuddered as fulfillment racked his body, speeding the passion from him.
"Oh, gosh ... oh, gosh..." Linda muttered as she twisted on the pillow and stared at the empty doorway from which her mother had fled. The woman could be heard, down the hall, calling to Linda's father for assistance.
Giddily Jack wondered what the devil she expected the old man to do at a time like that. But he didn't waste time making wry comments. He jumped off the bed, scooped up his clothes, and said, "Call you tomorrow."
"Jack ... Jack..." the girl moaned.
But he was already vaulting over the window sill on his way back to the car. He pulled his shorts on in the middle of the Samuels' lawn, then his pants. He opened the car door, got his arms in his shirt, and tossed the rest of his things on the back seat. He jumped behind the steering wheel, started the car, and backed up the street without turning on his headlights. In case Linda's mother hadn't identified the nude man with her daughter, Jack didn't want to give himself away now.
The arrival of Linda's mother had provided the sort of shock he didn't care for, but this hadn't interfered with his satisfaction. He had gotten what he was after. Now he could go home and get some sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next day at the office, Jill treated Jack as flirtatiously as she had the day before, but she didn't reserve all her attentions for him. She gave at least an equal share to Uncle Lou.
For instance, she ducked into his office when she saw him through the front window returning from lunch. She listened to the conversation in the outer room as Big Lou spoke to Marjorie at the reception desk and someone else just outside his private office. Just when she knew he was about to step through the door, Jill lifted her skirt and pretended to be adjusting the top of a nylon.
Lou had a good look before she "noticed" that he was there. Properly embarrassed, she dropped her skirt and gasped. "Uncle Lou! You startled me."
He tried to smile, but the effort was a weak one, and this was entirely out of character for the big, good-natured man.
For several minutes afterward, as he sat behind his desk, Big Lou Rombaugh thought of the bare upper leg which he had seen: Such a tender bit of flesh! A man would enjoy kissing that and pressing lightly with his teeth. He would enjoy running his tongue around...
Big Lou swore to himself.
He didn't blame Jill for the torment which afflicted him. She was entirely innocent, of course. She was too innocent, and that was the trouble. Someone should have a talk with her about men ... even uncles.
He had spent a miserable time the last couple of nights. He hadn't been able to turn to his wife for satisfaction. He simply couldn't touch her. To begin with, she didn't appeal to him in that way just now; and, in the second place, he felt a strong sense of guilt because of the lustful thoughts he'd been harboring for Jill. There was only one solution to his problem, he knew, and that was to drive to Boise one of these evenings and pick up a woman there.
Perhaps tonight.
He might as well, he decided. The sooner this was done, the sooner his attitude would be normalized. He had something in his system that he had to get out. If there had been the slightest remaining doubt in his mind, this had been swept away by the incident which had just occurred in his office. The sight of a bare strip of leg. above the top of his niece's stocking, had been enough to set him on edge. He couldn't continue this way. He would have to have an outlet, and the outlet would have to be someone other than his wife.
At about this time, in the outer office, Jack Able strolled over to Jill's desk. "Busy tonight?"
She looked up at him. "You mean, you want to go out with me again?" (There was no one close by at the moment, so they could speak frankly.)
"I'd like to," Jack said. "That is, if you want to go out with me."
"The fact that I'm a virgin doesn't discourage you?"
"If men let that discourage them, no girl would ever be taken out the first time."
"So you still think you can make me."
Jack straightened up, anger coursing through him. What the deuce was the matter with her? She was teasing him one minute and needling him the next. She led him on, then tried to drive him off. He'd never known such a kooky girl.
Well, maybe a little of the independent treatment was what she needed.
"Either you want to go out with me you don't," he said. "I'm not going to beg you and I'm not going to lay out all my intentions in advance. There's such a thing as people doing what they feel like doing at the moment ... or haven't you ever heard of that?"
"That might be all right," she replied, "except that you only feel like doing one thing ... all the time."
"And how the devil would you know?"
"Because you're a man." The answer had come from her quickly and now they stared at one another, each of them thinking about what she'd just said.
Jill was sorry she had made such a blunt statement. She had the feeling she had revealed something about herself that she shouldn't have. For Jack's part, he believed he had gained an insight:
So she's a man-hater, huh? That's what she is. Sweet on the surface, but bitter underneath. Maybe he was wasting his time with her, after all.
"Okay." He grinned. "Think over the invitation. If you decide to accept, let me know. I'll date you if I'm not too busy."
He stomped back to his own desk, picked up his telephone, punched a button and dialed. He waited for the rings.
He hadn't intended to follow through on the date he had made with Linda for that night, but now he had decided to do so. He would let Jill stew for a while in her own juice and see how she liked that.
"Hello," Linda said.
"Hi, baby. Can you talk?"
There was silence for a few moments and, when she next spoke, her tone was distant and resolute: "I can't talk to you Jack. Not now or ever."
"Your folks say that."
"Yes."
"They recognized me, huh?"
"Yes, they did." Her voice was still brittle.
Jack laughed. "Well, what they know won't bother us, baby. Tell them you're going out with someone else."
She spoke very softly: "I can't take the chance. They were very angry. Daddy threatened to ... well, to throw me out of the house if I ever saw you again."
"So? Maybe you'd be happier on your own."
"That's what you think," she said. Then: "Goodbye, Jack."
The next moment Jack found himself holding a dead phone. He slammed the receiver onto its cradle and muttered a mild curse.
"What's the matter, lover?" Marjorie Steck asked, looking at him from around the corner of the partition. "Losing your touch?"
He gazed back. "I don't know. Why don't you go out with me tonight and we'll find out?"
The taunting smile left her thin face and she moved out of sight.
"Well?" Jack persisted.
"No, thank you," Marjorie said coolly.
She thinks I'm making fun of her, Jack thought, but she may be surprised one of these days. I might just get that hard up.
He glanced at Jill and discovered she was watching him from the other side of the room. He looked back at his work Women! he thought. There isn't one of them who'll be honest with a guy.
He began mentally leafing through his little black address book, wondering whom he could call for that night. Of course, he could spend the evening in a beer joint or all by himself in his room looking at television. But he was too young for that.
Well, maybe Jill would have something to say before the day was over. Now that he'd quit playing her game, maybe she would play his. He'd wait for awhile and see.
That evening, while Jack watched The Beverly Hillbillies and decided that Jill Marshall had a much better shape than Ellie Mae Clampett (darn Jill's teasing hide!), Big Lou Rombaugh was seated at a bar in Boise, his thick hand wrapped about a cold, sweating glass of beer.
He had picked a ass spot, he decided. The only two unescorted females in the place were dogs.
He felt uneasy and a little ashamed to be where he was when he'd told Fanny he had to drive to Weiser to see a man on business. But Fanny would never know, and he would be a better husband once he got this out of his system.
After glancing up and down the bar once more, Lou decided to approach the better looking of the two professionals. She was a bleached blonde pushing forty, but she had a fair shape, if what he saw was really hers.
He moved along behind some other patrons and took a vacant place beside the blonde. "Evening," he said.
She looked him over. "You're a large one, aren't you?" Her face was tired and this pretty well defeated her effort to be enticing.
"They call me Big Lou."
"Well, Big Lou, you wanta spend the rest of the night in this crummy joint or d'you wanta have some fun?"
"Fun's my middle name," he said, using a line he hadn't mouthed for fifteen years.
She laughed in a single burst. "Well, fun's my business. Know what I mean?"
"How much?"
She looked him over. Ten for a quickie. If you want all night ... "
"A quickie's okay," he told her. "Then come on."
The sordid arrangement completed, he left the bar with the broad. They hadn't taken more than half a dozen steps up Bannock Street before ...
"Lou!"
He whirled around to see Arthur Davidson and his wife. Davidson owned one of the larger orchards near Fruitvale and was a long time friend and customer of Lou.
Lou squinted. "Hi, Art." He shifted his huge bulk nervously from one foot to the other.
Arthur's sharp little eyes had moved from him to the bleached blonde and back again. Lou could tell what was going through his friend's mind.
Arthur wasn't the one who concerned him, though. His wife, Etta, was staring, too, and the stark disapproval on her face was easy to read. Etta was a close friend of Lou's wife.
Lou looked at the woman. "Hello Etta. Nice to see you."
She quirked her lips in a little smile which quickly went away.
"Sure thing," Arthur Davidson replied, and gave him a little wave.
Both Arthur and his wife were still looking at the hooker when Lou turned the other way and started up the street with her.
"Embarrassing moment, huh?" the woman said.
"Shut up," Big Lou snapped.
"Well, you don't have to be nasty!"
He continued on with her to her hotel, a sleazy joint on a side street. All he could think about was the look on Etta Davidson's face. He could see the woman just busting her bloomers to get on the telephone first thing in the morning. She would do one of two things: either call Fanny direct or call some other woman in town. One would be as bad as the other because gossip traveled fast in a community like Fruitvale where the women had nothing else to dr. And the persons being talked about found out the truth quickly.
What could he tell his wife? What possible explanation could he give her?
He was angry by the time he reached the hooker's room. Angry with himself, with her, with the Davidson woman, and with the situation which had driven him to this extreme in the first place.
His niece, Jill, was the cause of the trouble.
Rut he couldn't blame her. That wasn't fair at all.
The hooker closed the door, leaving them alone in a dingy world of cracked plaster, scarred, old wood furniture that was hardly fit for the Goodwill, and a plain iron bed.
"Ten," the woman said as she slouched in front of him, a hip thrown to the side and her hand extended out in front of her.
Lou dug in his pocket, came up with some bills, and peeled off a portrait of Hamilton.
The woman carried this to a dresser and stashed it away. As soon as she turned to face him, her hands went to the fasteners on her dress.
Lou began to take his clothes off, looking away from the prostitute. This wasn't turning out as he'd hoped. Quite apart from the encounter with the Davidsons which threatened to do him a great deal of harm at home he felt practically no desire for the bleached blonde whose bedroom he had entered. What was supposed to be a fling, now seemed unpleasant; sordid. Still, he would have to see this through. His masculine pride was involved.
Nude, the bleached blonde stirred him, as nearly any nude woman would. She was no beauty, but the bulges which had been so evident on the front of her blouse when he had approached her in the bar, proved to be real. Even on her back, as she lay on the bed, her breasts mounded high. They were capped by titanic rings of rust-red, at the centers of which her nipples perched.
Big Lou went to her.
She began to caress him as he lowered his face to her bosom.
Fifteen years had passed since he'd kissed any nipples other than his wife's. The rings around these were rougher to his lips; they were more puckered. You couldn't say they were better. Aesthetically they were not as good. But they excited him because they were different, because they were attached to a woman he had never known before, even though she was for sale to any man in Boise.
Rising passion swept the anger from him, and Big Lou Rombaugh settled down to claim what he had come to town for to do what he would stand convicted of anyway in Arthur and Etta Davidson's eyes.
He began to love the tramp.
He propped himself on his arms for awhile as he worked with vigorous concentration. The woman rose to him rhythmically, in her smooth professional way, and the thrill was there, in spite of what she was and what had happened on the street a few minutes before.
As he brushed back and forth across her breasti, he felt the loose flesh wobble and the up-thrust nipples prick his palm.
The woman began to make some noise little groans and gasps to add to his excitement and thereby get him through faster. But Big Lou was in no hurry. He remained propped up and continued to work her in a measured cadence, rearing back nearly all the way and socking hard.
There was more animosity then tenderness in this. The encounter was more one of combat than of mutual surrender.
Big Lou went on and on, and gradually the red haze of passion filled his mind to the exclusion of all else. Long feminine fingers were reaching for him, seeking to draw him to fulfillment. He struggled. There was just a short way now.
He finished in a quaking spasm which the woman complimented with her own simulated release and, seconds later, Big Lou Rombaugh was a tired hulk fallen forward.
"Hey! You're heavy."
"Yeah," Big Lou replied to her complaint. Then he did what she wanted.
The woman got up. "You're a big one, all right. In every way."
"A big fool," Lou muttered morosely as he began to get dressed.
He wondered how long before his wife would hear about his being seen in Boise with another woman, and what the devil he could say to Fanny that would save him. His wife was mild-mannered, but she was very moral, and she also had a great deal of pride. He doubted that she would take a tolerant view of his infidelity even once. She hadn't known about the occasions many years before.
Maybe if he talked with Art Davidson first thing in the morning, he might be able to make his friend understand, and Art might be able to keep Etta quiet. This was a vain hope, perhaps, but the best one he had.
As Lou Rombaugh worried about what was going to happen to his marriage, the person who had caused his problem in the first place was engaged in a petty diversion which she had thought about on a number of occasions but had never tried before.
With no date that night, and with the evening now drawing to a close, Jill Marshall was amusing herself by standing beside the bed in her hotel room, with the ceiling light ablaze and both window shades up, and she was slowly and lovingly taking off her clothes.
She had been sitting in the darkened room looking out of a window, waiting until the time was right. People had been passing on the sidewalk across the street, but they were men with their wives or girl friends or else they were moving along too briskly, their attention directed toward the front. Finally, however, a group of four men strolled into view and they stopped by the street lamp standard on the opposite corner, there to engage in a discussion of politics, women, working conditions, or some other subject of mutual interest.
This was Jill's cue.
She stood up, walked briskly to the light switch beside the door, and illuminated the "stage" for her amateur burlesque performance.
This was to be a great deal different from any strip tease performed on a theater or night club stage, however. In the first place, Jill was to strip from street clothes, which no professional peeler would do, and there were to be no nipple cups or g-string remaining when she had completed her act. Every delight of her body was to be placed on display for the benefit of the males who would be watching, she felt sure, from the street below.
Another difference would be that no music would augment her performance. But who needed music, anyway?
And Jill would not play to her audience. As far as they could tell, she would have no awareness of them. They wouldn't realize she knew she had left her window shades up.
This comparison between the act which she planned to carry out and a professional stripper's routine didn't occur to Jill, of course, since she had never been to a burlesque show or to a night club where such entertainment was offered. She thought of the act as a far more personal affair than this, anyway. She would be offering herself vicariously to the men who stood on the sidewalk, and she would have her satisfaction from imagining their response. And all the while she would be completely. safe. They were outside the hotel and she was in, with the door to her room securely locked. The men wouldn't be able to reach her, let alone compel her to submit to them. The only thing that kept the situation from being perfect was the fact that she wouldn't be able to see the excitement in their eyes. But she could imagine this. Jill had a very good imagination.
Her own excitement began to build as she slowly removed her blouse, walking back and forth as she did so and watching herself in the dresser mirror. She hoped that the walking would serve to attract the attention of her "audience", in case the turning on of the light had not done so. She would have liked to walk over to the window and look down at the street to find out for sure, but she realized this would make the performance too obvious and thereby remove much of the thrill. Then, to, she could get into trouble if she gave the impression that she knew she was being seen. As the situation was, she could plead innocently that she hadn't realized the shades were up, in case some old lady were to complain to the hotel manager or the police.
She lay her blouse aside, and now her roundly jutting breasts were concealed by only the lacy cups of a white brassiere. They soared out and slightly upward from the wall of her chest twin monuments to Eros, at which almost any man would delight in worshipping.
The men in the street were a group from the packing house at Rombaugh's, which was not surprising, considering that the Rombaugh Company was far and away the largest employer around Fruitvale.
One of the men, a little fellow with eyes like dark beads and the bronze-toned skin of an Indian, knew who Jill was: "Sure," he told the others, as they stared up at the lighted windows, "I seen her in the office. She's some kinda relative of Big Lou's."
"No bull?" the thin blonde-haired youth asked. His greenish eyes glinted and he poked at his teeth with a toothpick as he watched Jill step out of her skirt.
"What a build on that doll!" an older member of the foursome exclaimed. He was heavy-set with pudgy features and liquid eyes that brimmed with lust.
"She acts like she knows," said the blonde young man, still staring at the window. "She keeps paradin' back and forth. Hey! She's about to take off her bra."
There wasn't any conversation for a while. In fact, the men were so quiet that a passer-by could have heard the ragged sounds of their breath ... if there had been any passer-by. Actually, these four were the only people on the sidewalk at that particular time.
The Indian released a gleeful little laugh after she had bared her breasts. The blonde man said, "Wheee-ooo!" The fat one cursed.
The fourth man, dark and compact, who had been staring hard at the windows and hadn't said a thing since the light had gone on, now broke his silence: "That's the best pair I ever saw in my life."
"You can say that again, Hogan!" the thin blonde man agreed. "Man, they shove right out there!"
The short, bronze-skinned one giggled. "Think about how they'd feel!" He gestured expressively with his hand. "I bet they're hard as anything!"
"I'm gonna do more than think," Hogan stated as Jill bent to step from her half-slip, her breasts swaying tautly.
"Whaddaya mean?" the fat one asked him.
"I mean I'm gonna get some."
"You crazy, man?" the blonde asked. "She's a relative of Big Lou's, Comanche, here, says."
"I don't care if she's a relative of the Governor. She's struttin' across that room on purpose, just daring somebody to come up and grab her. Well. I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna grab. Are you boys with me or do you want to stand here and watch me throw her on the bed?"
"Hey, now ... you better watch your step." The fun-loving Indian was seriously concerned.
"Lookit that!" the fat man said, punching Hogan's ribs with an elbow. "She's gonna take off her pants."
"Sure she is," Hogan said. "She's gonna show us all she's got. And then she figures to crawl into her little bed and giggle to herself about how she got us hot and bothered."
"You think she knows we're down here watchin her?" the blonde man asked, his gaze still riveted on the window as Jill moved past the windows in stockings and panties. She had turned the top of the panties down so that her navel, and the gentle round of tummy on which the navel sat, were exposed.
"She knows somebody's watchin', " Hogan said. "That's how she's gettin' her kicks."
"She must be some kinda nut," said the thin blonde man.
Turned away from them now, Jill slid her panties down her legs, then bent gracefully to step from them.
"What a caboose, huh guys?" the pudgy man said with profound appreciation.
In a tone of finality, Hogan responded, "Well, I'm not gonna let that get cold." He took a couple of steps and looked back. "Coming, or are you chicken?"
The other three stared at him. "You go get yourself tossed in the Boise jail if you want to, man," the blonde said. "Me, I'll watch the rest of the show, then grab my kicks with Rosie."
"Lucky ass!" Comanche grumbled, his mood having become morose. "You got a girl to have your fun with."
"Hey! Hey! She's about to turn around." The older man's pudgy mouth was open, his dark wet eyes squinting now.
"Holy Cow..." Leroy's voice ran out.
The compact, dark-complexioned man named Hogan was on his way.
Upstairs, in her room, Jill was flushed with excitement. When she had faced the window, naked except for garter belt and stockings, she had come close enough to confirm that the men were in fact watching her. She hadn't looked long enough to notice Hogan make his move, however. She couldn't let them know she knew they were there.
Standing a little farther back now, and looking at herself in the dresser mirror, she raised her hands up her body and lovingly cupped her pink-nippled breasts, causing the tips to squeeze forward between her curled index fingers and thumbs.
How they'd like to hold me this way! she thought. I'll bet they're burning up right now!
She turned away and wiggled her fanny as she took a few steps to a plain wooden chair. She lifted one leg, slowly released her garter clasps, and brushed her nylon stocking down. She did this with the other one and then, still facing away from the windows, unfastened her white garter belt and took the skimpy garment off.
Now, shall I turn off the light? she pondered.
No. Not yet. I'll keep them out there a while longer. I'll have a nice warm bath, then come back and walk around some more. I'll drive them crazy before I'm through!
Excitement sang through her as she walked to the closet and took out her pink chenille robe. She slipped this on, then moved to the door and turned the knob.
At the sound, the man named Hogan backed quickly into a little recess along the hall where a couple of fire extinguishers were mounted. He listened as Jill's slippered feet moved in the opposite direction, down the vinyl-tiled corridor. He peeked out.
She's gonna take herself a little bath, he thought. That's good, babe! Get all fresh and dainty for me. Hogan grinned to himself, for this gave him just the break he wanted. He could slip into her room and wait for her there ... that is, if she hadn't locked the door. He didn't think she had. He hadn't heard a tumbler turn.
He waited until Jill had entered the bathroom and closed the door, then he crept silently to the entrance of her room. His hand fell to the knob, the fingers tightening on the metal. His hand turned.
Jill's door opened.
A rush of anticipated pleasure filled the would-be rapist as he stepped into her room. The ceiling light was still ablaze, and Jill's clothing was strewn about, where she had discarded the dainty garments.
Moving like a cat, he crossed the room to the unshaded windows. He looked down. Yeah, they were still there all three of them clustered by the lamp across the street. Those chumps!
Hogan waved with a wide sweep of his hand, then moved out of sight.
Into the closet, he thought. That's the best place to wait. I'll stand in there until she comes back, then move out behind her and snap the light off. That babe won't know what's happening until it's too late. I'll get her down on that cver-lovin' bed and ...
He balled his right fist and slammed it against his other hand.
She won't even get a look at me, he thought: When everything's over, she won't have any idea who got her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The volatile little Indian, whom everyone called Comanche, stared up at the twin rectangles of light and said, "That lucky devil!"
"That's what he thinks now, the blonde man grated. "But he won't be so lucky when that babe comes back. She'll scream her head off and there'll be half a dozen guys in there before Hogan knows what's what. He'll spend the rest of the night in jail, sure as shootin'. "
"That might be worthwhile, Leroy," the fat man said.
"A night, sure. But Hogan'll get a lot more than that. Do you know how much a man can draw for attempted rape? And if he really rapes her ... well, that'll be the most expensive tumble he ever had!"
"I guess you're right," the fat man grumbled.
"Well, I think both you guys are yellow. You don't have the nerve to do anything." Comanche shifted back and forth, from one foot to the other.
"Go ahead, Injun," the fat man said. "If you wanta get your neck in the same sling with Hogan, go on up there."
"I will if you guys will," Comanche said, looking earnestly from one of them to the other.
"No dice," the thin blonde man said, jabbing at his teeth again with the toothpick.
"Sure!" Comanche exclaimed. "You got your Rosie. I've gotta roll into an empty bed."
"Tough toenails, Comanche!" The blonde man grinned. "That's what comes from not lookin' ahead."
Comanche swore. "Okay! Both of you are too yellow, but I'm not. I'm going up there with Hogan."
The fat man turned to Leroy. "Maybe if we all went, we'd stand a chance. I mean ... what're they gonna do to four guys?"
"Throw the four of us in jail, you hophead! They got jails that are big enough to hold a lot more than that."
The fat one looked at Comanche. "You really goin', Injun?"
He nodded with one jerk of his head. His eyes were bright, and the other men knew he meant it.
"We'll turn the lights out, see?" The fat man had hold of Leroy's arm. "She won't see a one of us. We'll keep our hands over her mouth. Two of us can hold her down and another keep her from yellin' while the fourth one's gettin' what he wants. Then we'll change. We'll each have a turn, Leroy."
"Man, you are nuts! I mean, you've really flipped!"
"He's talking sense, Leroy," the Indian argued. "We could do that. Four guys can get away with a lot that one or two guys can't."
"Leroy looked from one of them to the other and thought about what they'd said.
"You know you'd like some," the fat man grinned wisely. "Rosie's all right, but there's nothin' like the kind of wild tussle a babe like this will give yuh. I remember one time down in Oklahoma ... "
"Awright!" Leroy made a chopping motion with his hand. "Maybe we could get away with this. And, sure, I'd get as much of a kick as you guys. But suppose somethin' went wrong? Suppose somebody saw the three of us traipsin' in there, or suppose the babe's stronger than you think?"
"Strong enough to fight off four of us?" the fat man countered.
"Strong enough to make some noise give the wall some good pounding or yell or..."
"We'll be holding her," Comanche said, his eyes glinting. "And we'll have a hand clamped over her mouth."
"She can bite, can't she? Females bite and scratch like crazy."
"Well, I ain't gonna stand around here and argue," the Indian told him. "You comin', Chop?" he asked the fat man.
"The older guy licked his lips. "Yep. How about you, Leroy?"
The tall blonde man squinted. Then he tore the toothpick from his mouth and threw it to the pavement. "Okay! I'll probably be the sorriest man alive, but ... "
The Indian slapped him on the back. "Sorry? Man, you'll be flyin' ! "
"Come on," Chop said.
Leroy looked up and down the street, saw no one on the sidewalk, then took out after the other two. They were cutting across the street.
"There's a back way into that hotel," Chop said. "We'll use that. Nobody'll see us comin' or goin'. "
"Well, let's move along!" Leroy gave each of them a little shove and moved between them as they darted to an alleyway which flanked the hotel building.
In the ladies bathroom on the second floor, Jill was lazing in a tub of tepid water, soaping her breasts gently and wondering if the men were still waiting for her to return to her room.
As long as the light remained on, they would probably wait down there, she thought. The realization gave her a great deal of satisfaction. Look at the power she had over them! She could make them burn with desire, and she could make them stand and wait to burn some more.
She rinsed herself, holding each breast in turn and letting the warm water slide over the firm round globes. Her up-thrust nipples glistened. They were very pink now, she observed proudly. They looked just like they did after a man had spent a long time kissing them.
She stood up, her entire body wet and sleek and glowing. After stepping over the rim of the tub, she bent and released the stopper. The water began to gurgle down the drain.
Now she dried herself, moving the towel briskly to deepen the pinkness of her flesh. After she had finished and hung the towel up, she turned this way and that to admire her beauty in the tall but discolored mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
Well, time to go back, she decided. She had let those fellows wait long enough for their final peak.
She giggled softly and slipped into her robe.
The hallway was deserted when she stepped out of the bathroom. She padded to her own door and noted the strip of light showing beneath the scarred wood.
She turned the knob and walked in.
A prickle of apprehension touched the back of her neck as she stood inside the room and closed the door behind her. There was no reason jor her to feel this way, the thought. Well, she hadn't adjusted herself fully to the idea of being on her own; that was all. She liked the thrill of independence, but there was something about the old sense of security that she missed. Only time would take care of that.
Standing in the center of the room, she slipped her robe off. A cool breeze touched her from the half-open window, giving rise to a small rash of goose bumps. She hugged herself, cradling her ripe breasts on her arms and lifting them slightly. She drew her arms closer together until her two breasts kissed.
She looked down at them, crowded together with their nipples pointing high. A view like that should really please a man, she thought.
She moved now to the window and cast a quick glance down at the street.
The four men had gone.
An old duffer was trudging along the sidewalk under the lamp but he was looking straight in front of him. She could see no one else.
Oh, well. She sighed. Men would take only so much teasing, as she had found before. At least this way she didn't have any problem getting rid of them. They had known they couldn't have her and so they had just gone on their way. She bet they were still thinking about her, though.
She wondered if they would lie in bed thinking about her during the night.
Just as she started to turn from the window, she heard a sound behind her in the room. She whirled, fear grasping suddenly at her heart.
The room went black.
But she had seen them. Three, she thought. Three men. In her room. Now.
She screamed as a form vaulted against her, grasping and twisting her to the side and casting her toward the bed. A thick hand was around her mouth. She tried to cry out and she tried to bite, but the man's grip was so strong she could do neither.
Terrible fear was upon her, twisting at her vitals like a knife. She tried to kick, but there were hands holding her legs. And she heard a husky voice next to her ear:
"Don't fight, baby. Don't fight and you'll like this. If you fight, we're gonna treat you rough. You wouldn't want to get hurt now, would you?"
She couldn't see any of the men but she could see shapes around her, hovering, pressing, grasping, and holding her against the bed. She was nearly frozen with fright.
There were hands tugging her legs, other hands holding her awns and shoulders against the mattress. And hands at her breasts ... stroking, squeezing, pulling.
No! No! Oh, merciful heaven ... NO!
"You think anyone heard her when she yelled before?" one of the men asked another. His voice was tight and hard.
"If they didn't, they're not going to," another hard voice said. "Keep your hand on her mouth, Chop."
The man named Chop was bruising her lips with his hand. She tried to move her jaws, but she couldn't. She wriggled from side to side, trying to free one of her arms, but this was to no avail, either.
She couldn't fight them and she didn't have her switchblade within reach. With sickening dread, she realized there was nothing she could do. One of these men or perhaps all of them, were going to ...
Dear heaven!
A desperate effort, at which she expended all the strength she could command, tore one leg from the hands which had held her. Her knee struck the side of one man's head and she heard him cry out. She raised her knee further, jamming this hard to the body of another of her assailants. He grunted and fell away slackening his hold on one of her arms.
"Comanche ... dad-blast you..." the tallest, hard-voiced man complained as the Indian fell against him.
Jill pulled her arm free and swung claw-like at the face of the tall man, who was now bending over her. He screamed as she drew blood. She could feel the moisture at her fingertips and the sensation of her nails ripping his flesh.
"Get her ... get her..." the other hard-voiced man ordered. He was near her feet. That meant, she assumed, that he was to be the first.
"Get out of the way, you lousy Injun!" the tall man snapped.
One arm still free, though hands were grappling to restrain her. Jill swung this at the man whose hand was clamped across her mouth. She struck him full in the face and he grunted. She struck him again and twisted to the side, his hand slipped off her mouth.
She screamed with all her might.
One man's weight was fully above her now, holding her down and trying to cover her mouth. She got part of another scream out before the hand clamped into place. Then her brain swam dizzily as the man struck her across the side of the head.
She was dimly aware of the grumbling and muttering of the men and of the pressure of hands and bodies against her. Gradually her brain cleared and then...
Oh, glory! A man was kissing her!
The hand which was now against her mouth was even tighter than the other man's hand had been, and the arms which held hers against the bed gave her no opportunity to twist free. The kissing was making her wild. Not only could she feel the man's lips and tongue; she could also feel his teeth.
The man who was holding her down swore angrily. He was the one who'd been standing by her feet before. "I was to go first, you lousy slob!"
"Shut up, Chop," the tall man grunted. "You'll get your chance. We all will."
"Yeah, but I wanted a chance before one of you guys spoiled her."
The kissing stopped. "Okay!" the man who'd been doing the kissing said. (This was Chop, who'd had his hand against her mouth before.) "Go ahead, Hogan."
"Grab her arms. And hold her this time, you lug!"
"How about her mouth? Easy..."
A fist grabbed a hank of her hair. "Listen here, you witch," the tall man grated. "We're gonna change hands on your mouth and, if you try to yell, so help me I'll knock you silly with my fist. Y' understand that?"
Jill moved her head slightly, up and down. One hand slipped away and the other took its place. Jill hadn't tried to cry out. She didn't want to be hit again.
The man who had been above her was moving away. She could feel his fingers trailing along her legs, and then ... more kissing. Didn't these men want to do anything besides kiss her?
This thought was answered when the man they'd called Hogan raised his head and exclaimed, "Now for some action!"
She was nearly paralyzed with fright. The pressure of hands against the sides of her knees, as the other hands continued to hold her arms and her mouth, told her she had only a few more seconds. A few more seconds of virginity. A few more seconds before she would be raped.
She couldn't stand that! She would die!
She twisted at the hands and arched her back.
"Bucks like a bronco, don't she?" the one called Chop said with a lewd chuckle.
"We know she can fight. Let's see if she can..." The word which completed Hogan's sentence offended her, but that was the very least of her concern right then.
The man was hovering, moving closer ... No . . .no. . . .no . . .he mustn't! She felt his weight, his hands, but then suddenly he pushed back from her.
"What was that?" he demanded. "What?" one of the others said. "That sound. Quiet."
There was a rattling at the door. "Miss Marshall?" (Jill recognized the voice of the hotel manager.)
"Come on!" one of the men growled.
The bed rocked as they leaped away from her, and now her arms, legs and mouth were free. She screamed. Again. Again.
Sitting up, she saw that the men were clustered about the door. "Don't let him get the lights," one of them whispered urgently.
The door swung open and there was a tremendous scuffle. The men fought in a formless mass, silhouetted against the dim light from the hall. There were bits of words and curses, grunts and yells, and these were mixed with the shuffling of feet and the sounds of blows being struck.
The hotel manager cried out. There was another voice outside the room.
The would-be rapists were running.
They were gone, with shouts following behind them in the hotel corridor.
Jill was barely aware that the hotel manager was struggling to his feet in the patch of light inside the open door. The scene wavered before her eyes, tilted, and she fell onto her back on the bed.
The ceiling light bathed the room in brilliance, but she was already unconscious. She didn't see the old hotel manager as he stood over her, bleeding from the nose and lip and holding one side of his head.
"Miss ... Miss?"
"What's the matter? What happened?" People were running into the room.
"Call the sheriff," the hotel man said. "And call Doc Perkins."
"Is she ... dead?"
"No," he said sitting up. "But my head's danged near busted open."
"Who were they those men?"
"I don't know ... " the manager sighed as he sank into a chair. "But there was sure a raft of 'em. Must'a been half a dozen."
"There were four," someone said. "I got a good look at a couple. They work at Rombaugh's."
"Will you call that dad-blamed doctor?" the manager demanded.
"Yeah, Wilbur. Sure. Just take it easy now. Sit right there."
Several persons were standing at the side of Jill's bed, looking down at her. One man said to another, "That's Lou Rombaugh's niece, ain't she?"
"Danged if I know."
"Sure she is. I met her the other day at the cafe when Lou brought her in."
"Was she raped?"
"Most likely," He pursed his lips in a small whistle. "What a build she's got, huh."
"You're not just kidding."
The hotel manager struggled to his feet, still clutching the side of his head. "Get out of here, you men! 'Taint decent to be lookin' at her when she's this way."
"Sure, Wilbur. Sure." They began shuffling toward the door.
"Will somebody get Doc Perkins?" Wilbur wailed as he dropped into the chair again.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT PERSON TO SEE JILL, AFTER SHE HAD RESTED for awhile in the office of Dr. Orville Perkins and had given her statement to the deputy sheriff, was her Uncle Lou. He had arrived home from Boise just before the doctor called.
As worried as he was about his own problem, for which Jill was indirectly to blame, he now devoted all his thoughts to her and the terrible experience which she'd had at the Fruitvale Hotel.
He found that Jill was reluctant to discuss it, but he had received most of the details before the doctor had let him in to see her. The men who'd attempted to rape her were employed by his company, he'd found out-at least, two of them were.
That made the occurrence even worse, from his viewpoint. He was responsible for Jill's welfare. His sister had entrusted that duty to him but he had failed even to keep his own employees from molesting her.
He seemed to have failed all the way around, and each aspect of his failure was related directly to Jill herself. Yet she wasn't really to blame. She hadn't been to blame for anything that had happened.
Lou was grateful, at least, that the rape attempt had been unsuccessful. Doc Perkins had told him about the teeth marks, and that was bad enough, but the doctor was certain none of the men had actually raped her. This certainty was based upon the firmest possible evidence: Jill was still a virgin.
Lou bent over her as she lay on the table in the doctor's examination room, which was located in an annex attached to the old house where Doc Perkins lived. She was covered by a sheet and she smiled up at her uncle, her face wan, the fright still showing.
Lou held her hand. "That was a terrible, terrible thing that happened, honey. Believe me, I'm going to find out who those men were, and I'll see that they ... "
Jill turned her hand in his and gripped firmly. "Please, Uncle Lou. I don't want to make any trouble. They won't bother me again."
Her uncle was worried as he looked at her. "I don't know what to make of you, darling. Most girls, if a thing like this happened, would want the men to be caught and punished. But you wouldn't tell the sheriff anything that would help him catch them."
"I don't want a lot of fuss stirred up, Uncle Lou. Let's forget what happened, can't we?"
Big Lou stared at her for several seconds. She was so beautiful even then. Looking at her as she was at that moment, he was conscious of a sinful desire to lower the sheet on her gorgeous body. Sternly he rebuked himself in his mind
"Well, there's one thing I'm gonna do, and that's to move you in with me right now. You're not gonna be living by yourself any more, young lady."
"Oh, Uncle Lou ... " She turned her head from side to side in helpless frustration.
"Now. I won't hear any argument about that. Your mom put you in my care and I'm going to see you're all right from now on. And one thing more: I don't want you having anything to do with anybody who works for the company not the men in the plant or the office, either. I'm going to pass the word around the place."
"You do that and I'll be mortified," she said, her eyes flashing in what appeared to be genuine anger.
"Don't you understand?" he told her. "Those men who attacked you worked for me. They must'a seen you at the office and got an idea then about what they were going to do. Well, they probably won't be back. They're most likely high-tailin' away from town this very minute. But I'm gonna see that none of my other people get any ideas like that."
He paused and a softer light case into his eyes. "You gotta help me, too, by being a little more careful. You know, Jill honey, you're so sweet and so innocent, you expect everybody else to be innocent-minded, too. Well, men aren't that way, darling."
In spite of the shock from which she had not as yet entirely recovered, Jill had an impulse to laugh out loud. Of course, she kept this impulse hidden. She knew about men. She knew a lot about men. She even knew a lot about her uncle.
She knew, for example, that Uncle Lou would just love to get his hands and his lips at her, the way those men in the hotel room did. He would like to do what they hadn't been able to accomplish, too. But he wouldn't, of course, since she was his niece. No, he would suffer and try to pretend he didn't feel about her the way she knew darned well he did.
Men! They were animals. And they were silly fools, too.
"I'll be more careful, Uncle Lou," she smiled.
"That's my girl." He straightened up, some of his old good humor returning. "Now, do you think you're strong enough to get dressed and come with me to the house?"
"But I don't want to move out of the hotel," she protested. "I'll be all right there. No one will dare try anything now. I'll leave my door locked and I'll be careful to pull the shades from now on."
There was something about the look on her face as she said this that made Big Lou squint. "Listen, little lady ... did you have the shades up before those bums broke into your room?"
"No!" she said quickly. "I mean ... I don't think so, Uncle Lou."
He leaned closer. "You're not telling me the truth. You did have the shades up, didn't you? And you were undressing there in the light, I'll bet."
"Uncle Lou!"
He held her by the upper arms and looked her in the eyes. "You didn't know those shades were up, did you?"
"No! Of course not!"
He studied her. To think that she would deliberately expose herself was too much. Lou couldn't bring himself to believe this. But he remembered the time she had insisted on changing her clothes in the same room with him, and the later occasion when she had exposed her legs in his office. Then, too, she always sat with her legs crossed in such a way that a man could see almost to her panties.
Maybe she had some kind of subconscious urge some compulsion that made her behave that way. If that were so, she couldn't help herself. Maybe she needed professional treatment.
He straightened up again but continued to look at her in a worried way.
"I'm all right, Uncle Lou," she said. "And I will be more careful. If I forgot and left the shades up tonight, I'll never do that again. Please let me stay in the hotel? Pretty please?"
She raised up slightly, her breasts joggling, and the sheet slipped. She grasped the edge of the cloth just in time to keep her nipples from becoming exposed.
Lou stared at the luscious swells of her bosom, which had almost spilled entirely naked before his eyes, and found himself assailed once more by an overwhelming desire for her. Good Lord, what was he going to do.
He turned and walked woodenly to the door. "You get dressed now, and I'll take you back to the house with me. We'll get your things from the hotel in the morning."
"But, Uncle Lou!"
"No arguments," he said firmly, looking at her from across the room. "You're moving in with Fanny and me and that's final. We're going to keep our eyes on you, little lady."
He smiled then, walked out, and closed the door.
For one of the rare times in her life, Jill said a very naughty word.
CHAPTER TEN
No doubt Jill would have remained with her uncle and aunt for the remainder of the summer until she was ready to leave Fruitvale and return to seek a job in Portland except for what happened late the following afternoon.
In his preoccupation with Jill's problem, and the problem of taking care of her, Big Lou had neglected to phone Art Davidson as he had intended to do, to try to get Davidson to keep his wife from talking about what they had seen in Boise. But perhaps this wouldn't have done any good anyway, he consoled himself later, women being as they were and men having so little control over them.
Jill remained home from work that day, of course, and she spent most of the time sulking in her room. Lou had sent Marjorie Steck, from the office, over to Jill's hotel room to pack her things and bring them to the house. Jill wouldn't speak with Marjorie when she arrived but Jill's Aunt Fanny seemed to understand this and made apologies for her.
Late in the day, however, Aunt Fanny received a telephone call from a very good friend a woman who also was a good friend of Etta Davidson and after that Aunt Fanny behaved like a totally different person. She went to the bedroom which she shared with Uncle Lou, and on the one occasion when Jill rapped at the door to have a chat with her, she called, "Go away." Her voice betrayed the fact that she was crying.
That evening she and Lou had the matter out. Jill could hear them fighting, and there was no sign at all that any dinner was being prepared. Jill, not knowing what the fight was about, assumed it might have to do with her moving into the house. Perhaps this had displeased her aunt ... and yet, the woman had indicated no such displeasure during most of the day.
Jill hoped this was the explanation. She hoped Aunt Fanny would insist on her moving out, for this was certainly what Jill herself wanted to do.
Around the middle of the evening there was a rap at Jill's door and she found her uncle standing in the hall, looking not at all like himself. He was even more serious than he'd been the night before at Doctor Perkins' office.
He said he wanted to talk. When they were seated in her room and the door was closed, Uncle Lou began:
"Fanny and I are ... well, we're having a little disagreement and ... the fact is, she's gonna take a little trip. Her family lives in Spokane and she's gonna visit them for a while."
"You and Aunt Fanny are breaking up?" Jill asked bluntly.
"No, no," Lou said, but his tone was not at all convincing. "Nothing like that. She's gonna be away for a while. So ... in view of that ... well, I don't see how you could stay on here. I mean, it wouldn't look very good ... at least, until I could find a housekeeper and all ... "
Jill felt like jumping for joy. But she appeared properly distressed and asked solicitously if there was anything at all that she could do.
"No, darling," Big Lou said sorrowfully. "Nothing. Except to be real careful how you behave yourself over there at the hotel, you understand?"
"Oh yes, Uncle Lou. I will."
"I've already talked to the men at the company. I've let them know what will happen to them if they ever bother you. And as for those four who broke into your room last night ... the state police are after them. Four men didn't show up at the plant this moraine, and we're pretty sure they're the ones."
"Shall I get my things together right now?"
"Yes, honey, I guess you'd better," Lou said, standing up. "I'll call Wilbur at the hotel. And I'll drive you over there, of course ... right after I take your Aunt Fanny to the train depot."
"She's leaving tonight?"
Lou nodded. "She made up her mind suddenly." He tried a smile. "You know how women are."
After he had walked dejectedly from her room, Jill sat down to think over this strange turn of events. What could possibly have happened, she wondered, to have broken up her uncle's marriage so abruptly? And he and Aunt Fanny had seemed so ideally suited to one another, too.
Well, a person just never knew, did they?
During the ensuing weeks, Jill's life was duller than at any time since she had grown to womanhood.
The men at the office, including Jack Able, all looked at her. That was true of the men in the plant, also. But none of them would say more than "Good morning" or "Good afternoon." Her uncle must have put the fear of Judgment Day into them, Jill decided.
Not only that, but she couldn't have any fun around the hotel, either. The manager watched over her like a sheep dog guarding a troublesome member of the flock.
There wasn't a man in town who would do anything but look at her ... and that only from a distance.
As for Lou himself, he continued to look, also. But whenever she would try to flirt, he turned quickly away. He spent most of the time in his private office with the door shut. He was like a different man, and everyone said this was because Fanny had left him.
Jill had heard the cause of her uncle's marital breakup, of course, and that had surprised her. She'd had no idea Uncle Lou was a chaser after women. He certainly hadn't laid a hand on her.
But, of course, she was his niece, and she guessed this made all the difference.
As for Jack Able, he treated her almost as if she were one of the guys. Her efforts to intrigue him had proved unavailing. He had even told her he would appreciate it if she wouldn't talk to him at all. "This isn't much of a job," he told her. "If that was all that was involved, I'd say what the devil. But after that trouble at the hotel and the way Big Lou's passed the word around town, I'd be afraid to be seen out with you for fear the cops would pick me up."
Jack still looked at her, however.
She caught the longing, expression on his face more than once, and this gave her a certain degree of satisfaction, slight though this was.
She felt that in time he would break down and ask her for a date, but the weeks went by and he didn't. She marveled at his self-control, then began to wonder if perhaps she was losing her appeal.
She needn't have had any doubts on that score, however.
The fact of the matter was that Jack Able was suffering from a very keen desire for her, and this was made keener by the fact that he had been encountering considerable difficulty in getting dates with other girls.
The episode with Linda Samuels, the night her mother had walked in on Jack's visit to Linda's bedroom, had been broadcast around town, and now no mother cared to have her daughter associate with him. So he now found himself virtually restricted to dating the motherless ones tramps and farm laborers who drifted in and out of town.
These didn't exactly suit Jack Abie's taste, and this was the crux of his present problem. This was what drove him finally to do what he had thought about only half-seriously in the past that is, to seek a date with Marjorie Steck, who manned the reception desk at the office.
He had to ask her several times before she accepted. She had been afraid he wasn't serious, Jack assumed. On the night of the date, she was dressed up as he'd never seen her before, and she had all the fluttery excitement of a junior high school girl going out for the first time.
Marjorie was almost forty and a spinster. Though angular, both in face and body, she had small breasts which stood prominently and buttocks that looked pert and firm. Jack had been forced to allow for the girdle that she obviously wore, as far as an appraisal of her buttocks was concerned.
Funny, he thought, that so many girls wore girdles who didn't need them ... and then there were those who did need them but couldn't care less.
Marjorie wore one. She wore one on the night of their date, as Jack decided when he was escorting her to his car and she walked in front of him.
Maybe the girdle was primarily for protection, he thought. If that was what she had in mind, the hope was a false one. The way he felt that night, more than a little spandex was going to be required to keep him from doing what he needed to do very badly ... and what Marjorie, if he was any judge, badly needed to have done to her.
He took her to dinner, and he was a little self-conscious in the restaurant, since the differences in their ages was quite obvious. Marjorie was not a bad-looking woman, however particularly that night. She had fixed herself up pretty well. Anyway, her features were basically pretty and she had a graceful svelteness. Her hair was a natural-looking light auburn.
But she was no kid ... though she was trying her best to act like one.
After dinner, they went to a movie. There was little else to do in Boise, unless they wanted to go to a bar and drink. Jack wasn't much of a drinker, and Marjorie had demurred when he'd suggested cocktails before dinner.
After the show, they stopped for coffee.
They had talked, during the evening, about the office, as two co-workers are apt to do on their first date ... as if they didn't hear enough about office affairs from nine to five, Mondays through Fridays. Jack tried a couple of times to make some progress with Marjorie in a personal way, but she made nothing of his remarks. He couldn't believe she wasn't interested in being loved way down d ep. He preferred to believe that she was reluctant to bring her true feelings out to the open.
So he didn't hesitate to find a parking spot when they were about halfway home. She didn't act surprised when he turned off the main road excited but not surprised and when he brought the car to a stop and twisted on the seat to face her, her brown eyes were alight with anticipation.
She submerged this when she spoke, however: "My, isn't the moonlight lovely! I don't blame you for wanting to stop and look at it."
"I didn't stop to look at the moonlight," he said softly but with seriousness.
She glanced at him. "Oh?"
"I wanted to look at you. You're lovely, Marjorie."
"Oh, really now..." She blushed.
"You are." Smiling confidently, he moved closer. "And do you know what I'd like to do right now?"
"Wh-what's that?"
"I'd like very much to kiss you."
"Well, I ... I guess that might be ... all right. That is, if you want to."
He continued to look at her and, after a few moments, she said, "Well?"
Said Jack, "On the nipples."
"What?" The word almost strangled her.
"I would like to kiss your nipples."
"Well, if ... I mean..." She had practically lost her voice.
This gambit on Jack's part was designed for one purpose to put their relationship on the right basis immediately and thus minimize the effort involved in making her. She wasn't the sort he would be willing to work all night to seduce ... and why should this be necessary when he knew darned well that she wanted to be seduced at least as badly as he wanted to seduce her? Most men might not have been so blunt. But, then, most men wouldn't have stood much chance with a 39-year-old spinster on the first night out, either.
"What do you say?" Jack pressed as he slid his right arm around her shoulders. "May I?" He lifted his left hand to the top of her dress, in front, where a row of buttons extended to her waist.
She seemed angry. "So that's what you think of me! You think you can take me out, make a cheap vulgar remark like that, and strip my clothes off, eh?"
"There was nothing vulgar about what I said," he insisted. "I was just being honest. I want to kiss your nipples, and that was what I told you." He leaned closer, his hand (which she hadn't attempted to remove) now toying with her top button. "How about you? Wouldn't you like to have your nipples kissed on a nice moonlit night like this?"
Her face was flushed and her eyes were snapping as she looked directly at him, but he would have bet these manifestations were due as much to passion as to anger ... perhaps more. "I'm insulted," she proclaimed. "Still, she didn't remove his hand.
He opened one button. "Marjorie baby, let's not be children, huh?"
"Well, I'm hardly a child ... particularly in comparison to you."
He opened the second button. "You act like one when you won't face up to facts."
"What facts?" She was trying to act as if she didn't know he was undressing her. But she knew, all right. Jack could tell by her eyes that she was thinking. She was breathing harder, too, and her face had become even more flushed. That way, she looked positively tempting.
He slipped button number three. "The fact of your nipples and how I'd like to kiss them."
"Really!"
He opened button four. "I'll bet you have pretty nipples. Women with your coloring usually do. I'll bet they're a real nice rosy beige."
"No," she murmured weakly and put her hand on his just as he released her fifth button.
"You mean they're not rosy beige?" he whispered, his lips moving closer.
"I mean ... you shouldn't ... " This last, was delivered in a passionate breath.
"But I want to. And you want me to. And that makes everything all right." Quickly he freed his hand, opened button six, and slipped his hand inside her dress.
"Ohh ... "
"They feel very nice," he murmured as his fingers moved in a circular pattern about her right mound ... slowly but insistently. "Your breasts, I mean.
I haven't felt your nipples ... yet." He pinched the apex of the mound sharply.
"Oh, nohhh..." She was fighting a losing battle with her self-control.
Jack smiled. "There's that little tip." He kept moving his thumb and index finger in a pincers. "Stand up, you little dickens! Come on ... stand for daddy . ... "
Marjorie lay her head back against the top of the car seat. She was breathing heavily. Jack had her now for the taking, he knew. This was as easy as he had believed, once he had her in the right setting.
He continued to stroke and pluck at her brassiered nipple, and finally dropped his fingers to the lower edge of her bra. He worked his fingertips under the rim and slid them up inside the cup. Shoehorning with the back of his hand, he raised the cup off her breast entirely.
"There!" He held her white, trembling, soft-firm breast in his hand. Her nipple was hard, thrusting straight at him, and he was surprised to note that the turgid little tip wasn't rosy-beige at all but an angry red.
He had always thought red nipples were the most exciting. A nipple couldn't be too red to suit him, and this was one of the reddest he had ever seen.
He played with her nipple in the nude, stroking and rolling and pulling at the sensitive flesh gently.
Marjorie cried out, "Oh, my heavens, love me! I can't wait! Put me on the back seat and drive me wild!"
"Unh-uh," Jack murmured, continuing to caress her very stiff nipple. "There's not enough room in the car."
"Where then?" she demanded anxiously.
"On the ground."
"But my clothes..."
"Take them off."
"Here?"
"No, step out."
"But, Jack, if someone should come ... how would that look?"
"Very pretty, I'll bet."
"Ohhh, Jack ... "
He cuddled. "No one will come along, sweet. We're all alone. There's just you and me, angel, in the whole wide world, and we're going to make the wildest, most passionate love that anyone ever imagined. I'm going to take you all the way again and again until you only want to sleep, and then you can rest your head on my shoulder while we drive home."
That turned the trick. She couldn't resist such a sales talk.
Her naked breast fairly leaped from his hand as she opened the car door and got out. They were in a little meadow where the grass was thick and soft. The only thing to concern them was a little dew ... but he doubted Marjorie would even feel that when the time came for her to lie down.
He followed her out of the car and began to undress at the same time she did. He watched her body gradually being bared to the moonlight. Her dress rose in a flurry and was gone. Next she completed the removal of her brassiere. After this came her slip.
She bent and ungartered her stockings. By the time she had brushed these down her slim legs, removed them, and slipped her feet back in her shoes, Jack had removed his shorts.
She stared at him. "Ohhh!"
"Hurry up," he said softly.
"Yes ... yes..."
She stripped her white panties off, then the girdle which as next to her skin.
"You are pretty," he said as he moved up to take her in his arms. "You're slim and lovely as a goddess."
"Oh, Jack ... Jack..."
Jack wanted not only to please himself, but to make the experience as good for her as possible. He had always felt a little sorry for Marjorie he did at that very moment, in fact.
He ran his hands all over her, from her shoulders to the small of her back, from there to her surprisingly firm little buttocks, and from her buttocks as far down her legs as he could reach. Then he moved his hands back up.
She gasped as he caressed her impudently. He wondered if she had ever been touched just like that before.
He wondered, in fact, if she had ever been like this with a man at all.
That question was answered before long, however, and Jack was pleased to find that Marjorie was not a virgin. She'd had some sort of experience. But, judging by the way she was acting, that experience hadn't been as good as what she was having right now ... or too long a time had elapsed.
She squirmed and rubbed herself against him, and actually tried to accommodate him while they were standing up. This would have been possible, Jack knew, since she was fairly tall and quite light. He could have lifted her a little and that would have been all that was required.
But he didn't like stand-up love.
There was only one way to love a woman, as far as Jack Able was concerned, and, and that was to get her on her back.
Marjorie didn't let him do this, however. At least ... not at first. As things developed, Jack himself was the one who felt the dew on the grass.
He petted and squeezed both of her breasts as they kissed and became acquainted by tongue. Marjorie didn't do this at first. He was forced to tease her with his tongue-tip several times before she extended her own and played back and forth from his mouth to hers.
He took his mouth away and whispered, "Lie down "
"Yes ... yes..."
He got down on his knees just as she did, but then she suddenly grasped him at the shoulders and twisted him onto his back. She was at him then, and there was nothing he could do. With her knees firmly planted in the grass, she sought and pressed.
Jack had her...
He didn't know if she was a horseback rider, but he wouldn't have doubted this in the least. If she wasn't, he would have bet she'd always had a suppressed urge to try.
She had remarkable energy, also.
He didn't have to do a thing, except to lie there, pet her back and sides, and run his hands occasionally to the tossing red-tipped pretties which bounded like separate live entities before his face. After a time he drew her close enough so that he could do exactly what he had said he wanted to do to her in the first place:
Kiss her nipples.
He kissed each of them lingeringly, holding the turgid little spikes between his lips and teeth, first one and then the other, as his hands slipped all the way down her back and caressed her in the way which he had done before when they were standing. Now this was even easier ... and more fun. In fact, this drove Marjorie wild.
They finished together, in a burst of suddenly released passion that shook them and all but drove them out of their minds with delight.
Almost immediately, Jack eased her over to the grass an proceeded to go to work as he had intended to do at the beginning. She was happily amazed that he was ready to go again so soon.
She gripped him about the back, tore at him with her fingernails, and told him at his ear exactly what she wanted him to do.
But he was already doing that.
He did that twice again before the evening over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If Jack Able had been having a problem these last few weeks, it was no more severe than the one which afflicted Jill.
With Jill, the torment was not physical, however. Her problem was psychological in nature. She had been deprived of her special vice the one form of pleasure which was more important to her than all others.
As a result of Big Lou Rombaugh's admonitions, there was not a man in town who would have anything to do with her. This included even Mort Hopper and Pete Larrabee. They looked, as did all the others. But anyone would have thought Jill had leprosy or some other dread, contagious disease, as reluctant as every man was to touch her.
Only the men of the town had been warned, however, for in Fruitvale the thought of love between women was practically unheard of. Certainly Big .Lou hadn't considered this. Nor had the operator of the Fruitvale Hotel.
So when Laura Preston, a woman in her middle thirties who was a buyer for the Rombaugh Company and spent most of her time outside the office, came to call on Jill at the hotel one night, the manager didn't hesitate to send her up to Jill's room.
Though Laura and Jill had become pretty well acquainted over the weeks, Jill had no idea the older girl was a Lesbian.
To Jill, Lesbianism was something that existed far away-on the patios of Hollywood, the penthouses of New York, and the art studios of Paris. She hadn't thought about this much at all, as a matter-of-fact.
She hadn't ever really considered whether she would derive satisfaction from the attentions of a woman. Men had always occupied the center of her interest ... if not her body.
So she didn't think anything, one day, of slipping into the ladies room at the office with Laura and casually lifting her dress as they stood chatting in the open area beside the sinks. "My darned elastic keeps slipping," Jill explained as she held her skirt and slip about her middle and restored the top of her panties to their proper position at her waist. Laura stared.
The female buyer was black-haired, more sophisticated in appearance than most of the girls in that part of the country, and she had appealing, dark-blue eyes. Almost purple, they were. Now these purple eyes took on a brighter-than-usual gleam.
"How lovely," Laura murmured.
"My pants?" Jill asked innocently. She dropped he skirts. "Yes, I like nice ones. I buy nothing but all-nylon. Some day I'm going to have some that are real silk."
, "I have some like that," Laura remarked.
"Do you? Really? Where did you get them?"
"A shop in Hollywood. I used to live down there."
"How exciting!" Jill said. "What did you do?"
"I was a kind of secretary."
"Well! I didn't know you knew typing and shorthand. Maybe you could give me some pointers."
"I don't, actually." Laura smiled. "I can see you don't' understand how a girl could be a secretary without being able to take shorthand and type, but you see I was an executive secretary. I handled ... appointments only."
"Oh." Jill's expression revealed that she still didn't understand fully.
"I met important men who were calling on my boss and I sort of saw that they were taken care of. Now do you understand?"
"Maybe."
Laura was certain the other girl didn't understand, and this was perhaps just as well.
"We ought to get together some time," Laura remarked as they walked out of the ladies' room. I mean, away from the office and all somewhere where we could really let our hair down."
"Sounds nice," Jill said.
And this was what led to Laura's visit at the young girl's hotel room on the evening in question. To Jill, letting one's hair down with another girl meant chatter about clothes and men and other subjects of special interest to females. She was to learn, however, that this expression had a totally different connotation as far as Laura was concerned.
Laura had been converted to Lesbianism when she lived in Southern California. She had found this a welcome change from the sort of "Love" she was required to purvey to the clients of her employer. There were many clients and potential clients of the public relations company who had to be made happy, and some of these required a great deal of attention.
Women, on the other hand, were gentler and more permissive and required only what Laura wanted to give. Love with them had meaning, whereas with men, it had become a ritualistic exercise without substance.
In Idaho there weren't many opportunities for a woman with Laura's exotic taste . (though there were more than most of the local residents would have thought) and she was therefore constantly on the lookout for recruits. The intimate glimpse of Jill which Laura had enjoyed in the company washroom had persuaded the older woman that here was a prospect of rare quality one which should not be neglected.
When Laura arrived at Jill's room, she found the other girl in shorts and halter. "I like to go around this way when I'm alone," Jill explained. "Somehow, this feels so much freer."
"You know, when I'm alone," the black-haired girl confided, "T usually wear nothing at all. That gives you the freest feeling you can imagine."
"I'll bet," Jill smiled.
"Haven't you ever wanted to try that."
"Well, I've thought about it," Jill admitted. "But you've never tried?" Jill shook her head.
"Why don't you try right now and see what it's like?" Laura said. "There's no harm. We're both girls."
Jill had a peculiar sensation as she looked in Laura's violet eyes. She wondered if perhaps there would be some thrill in baring herself that way so boldly in front of another woman.
"Go ahead," Laura urged. Laughingly, she reached for a strap of Jill's halter. "Here ... do you want me to help?"
"Oh, I don't think we'd better ... I mean..."
But Laura was insistent. Her fingers worked deftly at the bit of cloth about Jill's upper body, and almost before the younger girl realized what had happened, her firm and shapely breasts tumbled out.
"Oh, they're beautiful!" Laura exclaimed.
The obvious sincerity in Laura's voice and the way that her dark-blue eyes now gleamed caused a ripple of excitement to course through Jill. This was the sort of feeling she'd had only with men before.
"Do you really think so?" Jill asked.
"Yes! You ought to be a nude model. You really ought to, dear." Laura took her by the shoulders and turned her first this way, then that. "Oh, yes. They're the prettiest I've ever seen."
Jill was surprised and pleased ... and stimulated, too. Such a long time had passed since she had been admired, that this admiration from a woman excited her almost as much as that she had been used to receiving from men.
"I've thought of modeling," Jill admitted (for, in truth she had), but I always thought I'd have too hard a time getting started. They say a new girl has a lot of trouble breaking in that it's kind of like a private club for a few girls."
"That isn't so ... if a girl has the kind of qualifications you have." Laura was staring at Jill's large erect, pink-nippled breasts. "Here let me help you strike some poses. You know, I happen to have had a little experience with models. That is, the company I worked for in Hollywood handled them."
"What kind of company were you with?" Jill asked as the other girl moved her from one position to another, gazing critically at the results.
"Public relations. We had models who worked on special jobs beauty contests, store openings things of that sort." She adjusted Jill's arms. "Now, put your shoulders back just a little more. That's good.
And..." She was still staring at Jill's breasts. "Oh, this will never do."
"What?"
"Your nipples. They're too soft. When you model in the nude, your nipples ought to be ... well ... extended. Here. Let's see."
As the other girl's finger came into contact with the summit of Jill's right breast, a thrill shot through her which was not at all unlike the sensation she was used to receiving when a boy touched her there. Jill marveled at this. She marveled so much, as a matter-of-fact, that she didn't think to restrain Laura as the other girl moved her finger back and forth, tickling Jill's sensitive flesh with the edge of her nail. (Or perhaps she didn't want to restrain Laura. But Jill, of course, would not admit this even to herself.)
Jill's right nipple quickly began to rise, stretching forward and swelling at the same time, until the nubbin stood tall and thick and trembling atop the white fleshy dome. The aureole about the nipple puffed up, also.
As she stared at the fresh young girl's eager response, Laura Preston's red tongue darted forward to touch her lips. "Oh, yes! That's perfect. Now, let's do the other one, shall we?"
Jill became a little embarrassed now and decided she should call a halt. She restrained Laura's approaching hand. "I think that's enough," she said, her voice surprisingly husky.
"What's the matter?" Laura asked innocently.
"Does my touch bother you?"
"No. Not really. But ... well, this doesn't seem quite right somehow."
"How do you know?" Laura replied, her eyes very bright and intense. "Have you ever been with another girl? Do you really know how that feels at all? Do you have any idea?"
"No." Jill's brow furrowed. "Do you mean that you ... that you like to ... make love with another woman?"
Laura smiled, though she was far from cool. Her excitement was plain to Jill, and this served further to heighten Jill's own response, and her curiosity as well. "Yes, I do," Laura admitted. "Well ... don't look so shocked. There's really nothing unusual about that. In sophisticated places, there are lots of women who prefer other women to men. We're not monsters. We're not even strange, really. We just have a different preference."
Jill stared at her and felt the excitement rise and spread, in much the same way as if she were with a man. Even more strongly, perhaps, for the experience which Laura offered to share with her was one which Jill had never really thought about before. This was something new, and therefore especially stimulating.
"Why not try?" Laura asked, touching Jill along the arm very gently. The older woman's fingers did things that Jill didn't want to admit to herself. But what could she do? She couldn't deny the way she felt.
"We shouldn't ... " was the only objection Jill could raise, and even this was spoken in a tone which made quite plain that she was considering doing what Laura had suggested.
"Why not?" the other girl argued. "Who will be hurt?" She hesitated. "If you're a virgin, this is one kind of love you can enjoy completely without having to worry. You'll still be a virgin when I leave here. That I promise."
Jill found herself unable to resist this argument.
The truth was that she wanted to try. She wanted to see what this was like.
And she was tremendously stimulated by the excitement which was displayed on the face of the other woman. Heretofore Jill had seen such a reaction only on the face of a man ... and men were dangerous; they could hurt a girl. But with another girl, there was nothing to be afraid of.
Jill and Laura sank to the bed and the older girl guided Jill's fingers to the top of her dress. As Laura removed Jill's shorts and the gossamer panties which she wore beneath them, Jill lowered the top of the other girl's dress. She lowered Laura's brassiere. And she began to toy with the smallish, brown-tipped breasts which were unveiled.
Laura had to instruct Jill every step of the way.
And Jill found every step exciting.
There was not only the excitement of Laura's desire for her; there was Jill's own physical response which, surprisingly, seemed to be awakened even more strongly by this woman than had ever been the case with a man.
After they were both completely nude and had caressed one another for just a few minutes, Jill found that she was so passionately aroused she could hardly wait to carry the game to the fulfillment which beckoned her.
She kissed Laura hungrily ... on the lips, on the nipples, everywhere. And then Laura guided her to a special arrangement of bodies which was unlike any Jill had ever imagined.
The girls continued to kiss, now more passionately than ever.
When fulfillment reached her, Jill virtually exploded with ecstatic delight. Warmth enveloped her and she trembled for minutes as every last bit of passion was spent.
Afterward, as they lay side by side caressing gently, Laura asked, "Well? That was pretty good, didn't you think?"
Jill had to struggle to find her voice even then: "I ... had ... no idea..."
Laura laughed gently. "No girl does, until she finds out. What a pity so many don't have the chance to learn."
"I thought I could feel that way only with a man ... or when I thought about a man."
Laura raised herself on an elbow and looked down at the other girl. "But you've never let a man go all the way."
"I know. I was always afraid."
"So you've found the perfect answer," Laura told her gently. "There's no reason to be afraid with me ... or any woman. A woman can't hurt you. She can only make you feel good and happy and free from tension all over."
Jill snuggled close to the older girl. "Oh, Laura ... you're so wonderful. I . ... " She stopped.
"Go ahead. Say what you were going to."
Jill laughed nervously. "I ... can't. That would sound so sort of funny."
"No. What you were going to say wouldn't sound funny at all. I've heard that very thing from other girls, and I've said that to them, too." She took one of Jill's lovely breasts in her hand and began to caress the nipple gently. "Do you want me to show you?"
"Y-yes."
"Very well." Laura smiled warmly at her. "I love you. Now, that didn't sound too peculiar, did it?"
"No. That didn't sound peculiar at all."
"Then you tell me. Go ahead."
She clutched the other girl and pulled her close breast to breast, cheek to cheek. Her lips were at Laura's ear:
"Oh, darling, I do love you. I love you so!"
"Angel . ... " Laura breathed and began to caress Jill's satin-smooth back.
From there the two girls set out upon the passionate journey again.
That first evening with Laura Preston brought a change to Jill's life which the nineteen-year-old would not have thought possible.
What she had learned of particular significance was that she didn't need men at all.
Jill could derive all the satisfaction from a girl she had ever had with a man ... and more. She could do everything with a girl without fear or anxiety of any kind.
There was no sense of guilt, for Jill had long been resigned to the fact that she was somewhat different. So loving a woman was just being different in another way.
From that first evening, she lost interest in men altogether.
The men of Fruitvale, however, did not lose their interest in her. Not Jack Able.
Or Pete Larrabee, who remembered the one peculiar date they'd had and whose longing for another chance with Jill had been growing from week to week until this had become something of an obsession.
Not Mort Hopper or the other men who saw her men who worked in the plant or had other jobs around town. She was a favorite topic of conversation for all of them, and they all shared a common wish: To get her under the moonlight on some warm evening and work out with her desire which gripped them every time they saw her walk by, twisting her lovely bottom and jiggling her breasts as her high heels clicked against the sidewalk.
Even her Uncle Lou entertained such thoughts.
Now that he was living alone (for his wife still had not returned) he thought of his lovely niece more often than ever, and in a far bolder way. He now not only admitted to himself that he wanted her, but he nearly had reached the point where he was ready to do something about it. In the large house by himself most evenings, he had begun to drink more heavily than he used to do. And when he drank, his brain came alive with visions of luscious young Jill dancing in the nude, swinging her naked breasts before him and teasing him with the firm young legs and backside which he had longed for since that first evening in her hotel room.
But on these occasions in his liquor-nourished dreams she didn't only tease him. She gave herself to him. Fully. Passionately. And he took her ravenously. He was a young man again in these dreams ... and Jill might have been his childhood sweetheart instead of his niece.
Still, when he was sober, he didn't dare say or do anything which would give his secret passion away. This would be unthinkable, unforgivable, an affront to Nature and to the sister who had trusted him with the care of her most precious treasure. He couldn't face himself were he to do such a thing. He couldn't go on living.
So Big Lou Rombaugh brooded and drank, and only when he'd been drinking did he dare entertain such sinful thoughts only then when his personal censor was drugged into insensibility and the animal within him had free rein.
As for the other men in town, they had no compunction about thinking ... or talking among themselves. But they were restrained from action by the admonitions of Big Lou.
No one could stand against Big Lou Rombaugh in Fruitvale and survive. Not only did he wield a lot of economic power, in several forms, but he was almost universally respected. This remained true in spite of the breakup of his marriage and what had brought this about. Men understood. And women ... well, so long as he wasn't their husbands, they could be tolerant of what he had done. So Big Lou's status in Fruitvale had not suffered materially.
Lou had made the point crystal clear to all the men in town, either directly or by word that was passed from one to another, that his niece was strictly off limits as far as they were concerned, and they knew Big Lou would enforce this "diet by every means available to him. So they kept hands off.
But they talked.
"A bunch of us ought to get together," Pete Larrabee was telling a group of cronies at the Red Apple Bar. "If there was a bunch of us, we could make her come across, and what would Big Lou be able to do?"
"Are you nuts?" one of his friends retorted. "The guys who broke into her hotel room tried that and they're still running ... that is, if they haven't been caught by this time."
"But we could get her out into the country; one of us could lure her and the others would be waiting."
"Rape's rape, man!"
"Yeah, but she wouldn't holler ... not after the whole business was over and done with."
"T wouldn't bank on that."
Pete stared morosely at his glass and guessed that maybe she would. Tf she didn't holler to the sheriff, she would probably whisper in Big Lou's ear and that would be as bad or worse.
They talked at the grocery store, too, when there no women around and a couple or three of the guys had the place to themselves:
"Man. I got close that first night," Mort Hopper was saying. "I mean, the first night she was in town. She was just as warm and friendly as you please. The only thing was, I didn't want old Wilbur to know what was goin' on. Shoot, I should've bedded down in her room and let Wilbur go shinny up a lamp post!"
"You really think you could have made her, huh?" one of Mort's close friends asked.
"All I had to do was reach. Why, I've tumbled broads in the back room here who haven't smiled at me half that nice."
"Too bad, Mort. You really missed out on something good there."
"Maybe I haven't missed out yet," he said. "There still might be a chance."
"Not after Big Lou said what he did. You're just dreamin' if you think you're gonna get anywhere with that babe now."
Jack Able didn't talk about Jill. But he did a lot of thinking. He couldn't get her out of his mind, and he couldn't forgive her for the fact that she was indirectly responsible for the social ostracism he was suffering. Except for the way she had led him on that night when they'd gone out and then refused him, he wouldn't have gotten caught loving Linda Samuels in her bedroom, and he wouldn't have landed on the don't-date list of every decent girl in town.
Of the ones who were available to him, Marjorie Steck had proved the most satisfactory, but she was darned near old enough to be his mother.
Why he didn't move on to another town, Jack Able didn't know ... unless perhaps this was because he still entertained some hope of getting Jill.
Hope was all the men of Fruitvale seemed to have.
And by this time Jill herself couldn't care less. She had found a form of excitement and satisfaction far better than that which she'd gotten from any boy or man.
She had Laura Preston.
Laura had given her a new outlook on life.
Jill didn't need men any more. They could all take a flying leap, as far as she was concerned. She had what she wanted what she had always wanted, she guessed.
She only wished that she and Laura could be together all the time. As things were, Laura was out on the road a lot. But as soon as the summer and the year's apple harvest were over, perhaps they could get a job in the same office.
In Southern California, maybe.
Jill had talked with Laura about this, and the older girl had said it might be possible. She had been a little indefinite, but Jill would keep after her.
They could have their own apartment in Hollywood and be together all the time night and day.
They could spend every night in the same bed. What could be more wonderful?
As for her mother, Jill didn't care what the old lady thought. Jill had never cared, really. She had been dependent upon her mother as long as she lived in Portland, but now that she had proved she could take care of herself, she wasn't dependent on anyone.
She could go where she wanted to go, do what she wanted to do, and live with whomever she chose
And the person she wanted to live with was Laura Preston. Only Laura. No one else. Ever.
A new happiness had come to Jill, and a new pride, too. A deeper sense of meaning had entered her life.
She couldn't give this up. Regardless of what happened, she had discovered what made life worthwhile, and such an understanding, once acquired, could not be lost.
All of Jill's thoughts were devoted to Laura and to planning ahead for both of them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The culmination of a lot of planning and thinking and hoping, on the part of a number of people, occurred during the last week in August, at the height of the prune harvest and when the apples were just acquiring their final gloss of ripeness.
This came about because of two factors which happened to coincide: Big Lou Rombaugh became very drunk one evening, and his niece picked this particular time to pay him a call at his house.
She had wanted to find out if he had heard from Laura that day and, if so, when she would be back to town. For some reason Laura hadn't called her in more than forty-eight hours, and this was unheard of, ever since they had become good friends. Even when the older girl was on an extended stay in the eastern part of the state, she had always called once a day ... until this time.
Jill couldn't wait any longer, and she thought that her uncle may have heard from Laura.
She walked to the front door of his house, pushed the bell, and waited. At first there was no answer, then she heard a thumping sound from somewhere and her uncle's shout, "I'm coming." This was followed by a curse which was spoken with slightly less volume but still plainly audible outside the closed door.
She wondered what was the matter with him.
She had her answer promptly.
When the door was thrown open, he stood there, a giant of a man with no shirt on and his suspenders hanging in loops at either side of his sagging trousers His hair was mussed, and his bleary eyes were reddish-tinged.
He roared at her, "What do you want?" Only after he had squinted did he realize who she was.
Jill wondered if she should turn around and leave.
Big Lou laughed suddenly and held the door wider. "Come in, honey! Come in!"
Jill eyed him apprehensively. "Uncle Lou, if you're not feeling well, maybe I'd better wait until tomorrow. I can talk with you at the office."
He reached and grasped her arm. "Come in, Jill. Confound it, what's the idea of standing out there?
Don't you know you're always welcome in this house? I'm happy to see you any time, baby ... just any time at all." His voice was thick and he swayed a little from side to side.
She moved into the house timidly and he swung the door closed. He turned to face her, smiling in a peculiar way. She didn't like the way he was looking at her.
But, then, Jill hadn't liked the looks of any man recently. Nowadays she didn't like anyone's looks but Laura's.
Big Lou took a step closer. "You sure are pretty, Jill! I just can hardly believe how pretty you are. You know, if you weren't my sister's daughter ... " He grasped her arm again and this time his fingers hurt. He had tremendous strength.
"Please, Uncle Lou!" Jill suddenly was afraid. She wanted to leave as soon as she possibly could. "The reason I came over was to ask about Laura ... whether you'd heard from her today."
"Laura?" he echoed loudly. "Laura Preston?" He laughed. "Say you two have been thick as thieves lately, haven't you?"
"Please ... " she murmured again, this time closing her eyes. She could hardly stand to look at him, and his breath stank of whiskey.
"Funny she didn't tell you..."
"What?" Jill's eyes blinked open.
"Laura," her uncle repeated. "Funny she didn't tell you she was quitting."
"No! She couldn't."
"She did tonight. Called me from Twin Falls. Said she'd taken a job in the Middle West and she was gonna leave right from there. No advance notice or anything. That's the kind of courtesy a man gets nowadays. Why. when I was starting out in business .
He talked on but Jill didn't hear. Laura had Quit. Laura wouldn't be back. This was all Jill could think about. The truth kept hammering in her brain; she wanted to cry out. Worst of all. Laura hadn't told her. She hadn't said a thing when she left.
"...told me to tell you," Lou was saying, and she listened dully. "She said she hoped you'd understand that she didn't have time to call you herself. She had to catch the next plane going out."
Jill stared without speaking, and Big Lou broke into a sudden smile. "Well! No use just standing here like this. Come on into the living room." He moved close to her and became very confidential: "How about a little drink, huh? Just a teensy one?"
His breath almost nauseated her and she pushed at him. "Leave me alone, you old drunk!" She tried to sidestep past him to the door.
Big Lou grasped her arm. "What did you call me your own uncle?" t
"Never mind," she muttered. "Just let me go I want to get out of here."
"I won't let you go," he said. "I don't want you to go. You're all I've got now, Jill honey. Now that Fanny's not coming back, you're all I've got in this town. We don't see one another often enough." lit leaned close to her again. "Say ... how about a kiss for your old uncle, huh?"
She swung her right arm and struck him across the side of the face.
The blow didn't hurt, but it made him very angry. Jill could see the fury rise in his face. She tried to get away, but he grasped her with both hands, his fingers bruising her arms.
"I'll scream," she threatened. "You let go of me or I'll yell my head off." She felt desolate anyway, after hearing about Laura, and she certainly as not going to put up with this.
"Why, you ungrateful little ... " He began to shake her by the shoulders.
She was wearing a low-cut dress and, as her body tossed back and forth in the grip of his massive hands, the exposed tops of her lush breasts wobbled. They wobbled and shook and nearly leaped from their flimsy confinement.
Big Lou, staring at this sight, suddenly was engulfed in a torrent of lustful desire. All the lascivious thoughts he had ever had about his niece now seemed to return to his mind en masse, swamping his senses. He forgot himself completely who he was, who this was in front of him, what he mustn't do.
He saw only a sweet young girl with luscious breasts a girl he longed for, a girl who could fill the emptiness in his life.
He embraced her, pulling her against his huge body and wrapping his arms about her back. His wet lips sought hers as she struggled desperately with him. Her small fists pounded at his chest and upper arms, but the blows were like hailstones against a wall of concrete. He laughed and pulled at her all the more. Her dress became twisted, partly from the pressure of his arms and partly from her own twisting efforts to escape.
A shoulder strap broke...
As one of her fresh young breasts leaped to naked freedom, its pink nipple pointing arrogantly, Big Lou lost every last bit of restraint he had possessed. He grasped the top of her dress with one thick hand and yanked toward him. The dress split to her waist.
Now both her breasts were bare and they bobbed naked before Lou's eyes. She clutched frantically at what remained of her clothes, but Lou continued to pull at them, causing her dress to drop and her half-slip also.
She stood before him now in nothing but panties sheer, pink panties that concealed none of her loveliness.
He pulled her into his arms, twisting to try to get her down to the floor. As she fought him, he lost his balance. Jill pulled free and her uncle tottered, striking his head against the wall. He slumped.
She was out of the house and running across the lawn without giving a thought to her lack of clothing. Terror was clutching at her heart and, beyond that, there was the terrible hurt of Laura Preston's leaving a hurt that she somehow knew would never heal.
When Big Lou awakened a long time later, during the early hours of the morning, he stared at the evidence of what had taken place during the evening.
He picked up Jill's dress, her slip, her bra. He remembered she had been there and that he had wanted her intensely. He remembered their struggle and that he had torn the clothes from her.
At this point, Big Lou's memory failed him. But he didn't have to remember any more. Wanting her as intensely as he had, for such a long time, he was sure he knew what had happened next.
He had raped her.
He had raped his own niece his sister's daughter.
Desolation claimed him, made even more intense by the physical effect of his hangover.
Big Lou kept a rifle in his house, for he was a hunter of sorts on the rare occasions when he had an opportunity to get away from his office. He stumbled through he house to where the rifle was kept.
He didn't take time to think over what he was about to do. Why think? He had thought and brooded too much already about his wife whom he loved and had lost, and about his niece whom he had lustfully coveted and finally defiled.
There was nothing more to think about.
There was something he had to do, and then he would never have to think any more.
The news of Big Lou's suicide spread through the community that Sunday morning, and nearly everyone was shocked. Nearly everyone grieved.
But there were a few men who viewed his death as a tragedy which was not without its beneficial side
... to them, at least.
Jill Marshall was surprised when she heard, but she felt neither sorrow nor satisfaction. Emotionally she was incapable of feeling anything but an intense sense of loss over the departure of Laura Preston. Nothing else mattered at all.
Jill had run nearly naked back to the hotel the evening before, dodging from building to building, up back streets and alleys. She didn't think she had been seen, but she didn't care if she had. What difference did anything make?
She let someone else telephone her mother in Portland and inform Sarah Marshall of her brother's death. Jill received word back that Sarah was leaving for Fruitvale right away.
This meant that Jill that she must leave town immediately. She didn't want to face her mother. She didn't want to stay for Uncle Lou's funeral, either. She just wanted to get away.
As soon as she gave her notice to the manager of the hotel, the word spread. Certain men in town, who long had hoped and talked about the opportunity to have her some day, realized they must act now or forever lose their chances. And now, they felt they were free to act because Rig Lou was no longer around.
One of these men knew Jack Able had dated the girl once. He thought Jack knew her better than anyone else, because they had been working together every day. This man had a talk with Jack.
Plans were set.
That afternoon, as Jill was packing, Jack called on her at the hotel.
Persuading Jill to go for a ride with him in his car wasn't easy, but finally she agreed because she had skipped lunch and now found she was hungry. If he was willing to buy, why shouldn't she take advantage of the fact?"
They went to a cafe at the edge of town. Afterward, instead of heading directly back to the hotel as he had promised, Jack aimed his Plymouth toward the country.
Jill turned to him: "What's the idea?"
"You'll see," Jack said tightly.
He didn't relish the idea of treating any girl this way, but if ever there were one who deserved such treatment it was Jill. She had teased nearly every man in town; she had been instrumental, Jack suspected, in breaking up her uncle's marriage and later in causing him to take his own life; and she had caused Jack himself to suffer with frustration. What was more, there was talk that she had turned Lesbian and was having an affair with Laura Preston.
So she deserved what the boys intended to do with her.
Jack felt sure there was no risk, because she had come with him willingly and she was of age, Anyway, she wouldn't talk. Not her. She was too anxious to get out of town before her mother arrived to take her back to Portland.
When Jack reached the spot which had been selected by the others a large hayfield some distance from any house he noticed their cars parked in a grove of trees along the road. The men were not in the cars, however. They would be hiding behind the hay sack where Jack was to take her.
She didn't want to get out of the car, but he insisted. "I think we should have a talk before you leave Fruitvale," he said.
Jill felt that to give in and listen would be easier than resisting, so she went along.
They strolled across the sunlit field and, when they reached the haystack, she turned to him: "Well? Please say what's on your mind so we can get out of here. I want to catch the four o'clock bus."
Jack didn't say anything.
He didn't have the chance, for at that moment Pete Larrabee leaped from the hay and grasped Jill from behind. She cried out, but there was no one to hear.
Pete Larrabee had no sooner wrestled her down into the edge of the haystack, than the other men appeared Mort Hopper and a couple of others, one from the Rombaugh office and one from the plant.
They began to tear at her clothes.
Jill's frantic shrieks were to no avail, and she couldn't resist the men. Terror filled her. She knew that this time she would not be rescued as she had been in the hotel. As the certainty of this became more apparent, her dread gave way to a strange kind of numbness. It was as if she couldn't really feel anything, as if she were standing somewhere to the side and watching the men do this to some other girl.
Her dress was up around her waist now, along,-with her half-slip, and the men were pulling off her brassiere. Her naked breasts bobbed and shook as she continued to struggle, her back deeply imbedded in the hay.
The men were crouched all around her, saying nothing. Their eyes were hard and their hands rough as they pawed at her breasts and reached up her legs to grasp the elastic at the top of the pink silk pants silk pants which Laura had given her.
Jill's pants came away and then the final phase of the drama began.
Jack Able took her first, with the other men holding her securely.
She screamed at the first assault, and then she reverted to her previous state of feeling nothing. Jack worked and worked, his passion soaring,, but Jill felt nothing at all. Her breasts rolled against him and he paused a couple of time to capture her nipples between his lips. Then he went on.
He achieved his release in a shuddering spasm of intense pleasure which, in some measure at least, paid him for the weeks of frustration she had brought to his life.
After Jack was Mort Hopper. Jill closed her eyes and ceased to struggle.
Come one, come all, she thought giddily. What was the difference? What did anything matter?
After Mort there was the man from the plant whose name she didn't know. Then there was one from the office a salesman n-rnd George Hartley. Come on George, she thought lurry up and finish. Finish and get out of my life, all of you! I'll never see one of you or this stupid town again!
The last was Pete Larrabee, and he took longer than any of the others ... or perhaps this was just the way the time seemed to Jill. He insisted on kissing her a lot and playing with h:r breasts, and then he rolled her onto her face so that he could have fun with her buttocks.
What did that matter, either? she thought. Let him have all the fun he liked.
As he took her, she stared, grabbed fistfuls of the hay stuff, then held her eyes tightly closed until he was finished. She hadn't felt a thing.
Only after she was dressed, when the other men had left and she was on her way back to town with Jack Able, did she realize that the warnings which her mother had drummed into her brain during all the years that she was growing up hadn't proved out at all. There had been no real hurt.
But her sister, Edna, hadn't been right, either. There had been no pleasure.
Jill had felt absolutely nothing.
She rode morosely at Jack's side, not talking, but staring blankly at the scenery which moved past. All of her senses still seemed numb.
"Would you believe me," Jack said, "if I told you I was sorry?"
"No." The word sounded to her own ears as if it had come from someone else.
"I am ... as strange as that may seem. I wanted to treat you that way. I wanted to, as much as anyone else. But now I'm really sorry. Honest I am. I wanted to say that even though I suppose it sounds foolish."
"Yes, it does."
"You and I could have meant something to one another, Jill. We really could have." She didn't say anything.
"Maybe ... maybe we still could, if you could somehow forgive me."
"Please, don't talk any more," she said evenly, without turning to face him. "Just drive me back to the hotel."
He sighed. "All right."
After a little while, he asked, "Are you going to report this to the sheriff."
"What do you think?"
"I don't think you are," he said frankly, "If I had thought you'd do that, I guess I wouldn't have done what I did."
"You're a bright boy," she said bitterly.
They were back in town by that time and they rode silently up Main Street. When Jack pulled his car to a stop in front of the hotel, he said again, "I'm sorry."
Jill turned on the seat to look at him. And she laughed. She merely laughed and that was all. Then she got out of the car and walked into the hotel without looking back.
As soon as she reached her room, she lav out fresh clothing, then went down the hall to run water for a bath. She felt unspeakable filthy. She wasn't sure if soap and water would help, but she wanted to try.
The bath made her feel quite a bit better.
She slipped into her robe, returned to her room, and got dressed. She felt more nearly herself, now, but still there was a terrible emptiness.
Her lips twisted in an ironic smile as she completed the process of packing her things. Now that she'd had the ultimate experience with a man with five men all at once she wondered what all the fuss and worry had been about.
Except for a slight initial hurt, which passed quickly, what had happened had been less than nothing. She hadn't felt any of the excitement she used to feel when boys petted her, or when she lay alone in her own bed and imagined she was being loved.
And she certainly hadn't felt anything like the kind of ecstasy she had known with Laura.
She wondered if she would ever know that kind of happiness again.
At this moment, this was hard to imagine, for Laura was gone and Laura was the only one she could care for. But perhaps ... some day...
When the four o'clock bus pulled out of Fruitvale, Jill Marshall was aboard. There was no one there to see her off.
But Pete Larrabee was standing on the sidewalk, a little ways down the street. He had been in Bailey's Tavern, hoisting a few and watching a Sunday afternoon baseball game on TV.
He stared as Jill stepped onto the bus.
Mort Hopper moved up behind him. "Well, there she goes."
Pete looked at the other man. "Good riddance, too. She turned out to be cold as day-old mashed potatoes. Why, a five-buck hooker will show a guy a better time than that."
"But do you think you'll ever forget her?" Mort asked.
Pete shook his head as he watched the bus pull up the street. "Not-likely."
