Charlene stood motionless, feeling jolts of electricity race up and down her spine as the boy's lips touched the sleek white skin of her neck, pressed hard, then flicked open to let his glistening wet tongue glide hotly over the smooth flesh. She could feel her breasts aching, straining to press out against his hard, young chest, and deep in her thighs she felt a white-hot heat begin to consume her.
"That husband of yours must be nuts," Randy whispered. "Any guy who'd leave a chick like you so hung-up must have rocks in his head."
Charlene pulled away from him. "You'd better get out," she hissed, "before I start screaming."
Randy laughed and moved closer to her, backing her against a wall. "You're not going to scream, honey," he said. "Not the way you need it." Charlene's eyes flared with anger. "What--? " His sharp, sexual laugh cut her off. "Don't think you can hide it," he said. "Some things a guy doesn't need a college education to understand. I can see, just by looking at you, that the big clod you're married to isn't doing his duty."
He grinned and reached out his hand to stroke the smooth expanse of skin at Charlene's neck. His fingers brushed against her skin like red-hot pokers, searing the flesh as they traveled downward toward the deep cleft in the front of her dress.
"You aren't going to scream," he said again. "Because you know I've got something you want-and you've got something I want." His fingers cupped around Charlene's hot breast and squeezed gently. "What do you say, baby?" he whispered. "Should we give it to each other?"
CHAPTER ONE
Upstairs, in one of the rooms over the resident's apartment, Charlene could hear the loud blare of a phonograph, punctuated at regular intervals with the raucous, hearty sound of masculine laughter. She rolled onto her back in the bed and tried to pull the ends of her pillow over her ears, to block out the noise, but it still filtered through. Someone was having a party up there ... a wild party.
It was the start of a new school year at Hooper College, and the boys of the Beta fraternity were welcoming each other back to campus in what seemed to be an all-out orgy of wine and song. Only the women were lacking; Hooper was an all-male college-one of the best in New England, with over a century of standards and reputation behind it. At the moment, however, as Charlene lay tossing and turning on her bed, she had the feeling that every one of those standards was being broken by the crowd upstairs. They'd been going at it for more than three hours already, and Charlene's nerves were just about shot.
She debated, for about the dozenth time since the party started, going upstairs and trying to get them to quiet down. As she had each time before, however, she quickly discarded the idea. She could just imagine what their reaction would be to open the door and find someone like herself standing in the hall, demurely clutching a wrapper around her shortie nightgown. Their party would be complete then.
In spite of herself, Charlene had to laugh at the idea. Not that she couldn't put a little spice into the party. As a matter-of-fact, she thought with a smile, she could probably show those guys a few things or two about how a party really got off the ground. "I should," she laughed bitterly.
At twenty-two, Charlene Anderson was a veteran of parties. Since site was seventeen she'd been going to them, for a variety of reasons-most of them being to "entertain" in one way or another. And, like the one upstairs, most of these parties had been attended solely by men-most-likely many of the fathers of the boys in the fraternity house, all eager to watch beautiful young Charlene take off her clothes to music, and then prance around the room for a few minutes while the guests sampled the merchandise first-hand.
There had always been a great demand for Charlene's special talents, and small wonder. Even as a young girl she had the beauty and sensuality of a much older woman. Her hair was long and golden blonde, with the feel of silk when a man combed his fingers through it. Her face was petite, with high cheekbones, an almost tiny mouth composed of two glistening, ruby-red lips, and eyes that sparkled like two finely cut emeralds when she smiled. Her body was trim and compact, with ripe, high-standing breasts capped with dusky tan coronas and nipples that stood out like the last joint of a little finger when they were kissed to excitement. Her hips were flared out from a narrow waist, and dropped clown into full, sensual thighs crowned at the joint with a thatch of the softest blonde down.
Charlene shivered as another loud burst of laughter came from the room upstairs, and brought back a sudden memory of what those parties had been like. The leering, sex-hungry men with snapping fingers and prodding hands; the blue haze of smoke that stung her eyes as she danced through it; the howls of excitement as she revealed more and more of her soft young frame for all to see.
"Gene," she whispered aloud. "Please come home, Gene."
It seemed as though she was always looking to him for help. He was the one who had rescued her from the party circuit, treated her with a respect no man had shown her before, and eventually married her. Charlene loved her husband more than any man site had ever known-and even at twenty-two, there had been quite a few men she'd known. Gene was everything she had ever hoped to find in a man: kind, considerate, thoughtful, intelligent, handsome, and very, very good to her-in bed and out of it.
Sometimes, when Charlene thought about how lucky she was to have found a man like Gene Anderson, it made her cry with happiness and a profound sense of relief. Everything in her life up to the point when she met him had pointed to disaster for her: the childhood she'd known as one of eight children of migratory workers in the Southwest; the year she'd spent between ages fifteen and sixteen with Billy-Joe Murdock, a twenty-eight-year-old truck driver from Texas, who'd carted her through every state in the Union, and broken the Mann Act in every one of them; the year she'd tried to work as a waitress, but found there was more money to be made outside the restaurant, with traveling salesmen and lonely truckers willing to line a young girl's pocket in exchange for an hour or two in a dark car on some lonely road; and finally the four years she'd spent on the party circuit-stripping and offering herself wherever the money was high enough.
Gene had put an end to all of that. He was living in an apartment across from hers while he finished his work on a master's degree in college. He'd taken her out a few times, knew nothing about what she did for a living, and after one particularly romantic night of dinner and dancing, he'd popped the question. Charlene had been thunderstruck, and didn't know what to say right off. She asked for time to think about it, and after a few nights of tossing and turning, she decided to accept him. She was overjoyed, actually, when she'd given it thought. She was getting sick to death of what she was doing with her life and wanted out, but until Gene had proposed, she'd known no other way of making a living.
Now she had a man to take care of everything for her. Gene was ambitious. As soon as he got his degree, he applied to dozens of top colleges around the country for a teaching position. He'd received several good offers, but decided on Hooper. It was in a lovely part of New England, and was quite a feather in anyone's cap who taught there, particularly a young man looking for his first job.
The only trouble was, Gene wanted to pay off the loans he'd had to take out to finish his own schooling, and made arrangements to not only teach at Hooper, but to act as coach to the basketball team and resident director of the Beta fraternity house besides. True, he and Charlene got a lovely furnished apartment rent-free, and the additional money from his coaching duties would build a nice little savings account in the bank for them, but all this work was already beginning to have its effect on him. They'd been at Hooper for a month already, while Gene prepared his first lectures and got familiar with the college, and day by day Charlene had watched his energy dwindling, in the one area where a young husband should be most active. He was throwing so much of his time and self into the new job, attempting to prove that Hooper's confidence in him was not misplaced, that by the time he got home to Charlene, he wanted to do little more than put away a light meal and crawl into bed-where he was asleep within minutes after hitting the pillow.
And now that the school session had actually started, Charlene feared that Gene would become even more preoccupied with his work. Even now, on the first regular day of school, he'd organized a late meeting for anyone interested in trying out for Hooper's basketball team, and told Charlene not to wait up for him-he'd probably be home late.
She had waited up anyway, until-when it was almost eleven-she decided she might stand a better chance if she was in bed when he got home. Maybe then....
She sat up in bed, hearing the front door of the apartment open. "Gene?" she called hesitantly.
"Yeah, it's me, honey," he said. A moment later she saw the yellow glow of a light snapped on in the living room, then heard him walking toward the bedroom. She propped herself up in the bed and arranged the front of her nightie, so that the deep cleft of her breasts stood exposed over the top of the thin nylon gown. "Hi," Gene said, with a weary grin, as he pushed open the bedroom door. He came quickly to the bed and bent to kiss her tenderly on the lips.
Charlene wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth tighter against his, lifting herself part-way up off the bed and stabbing her breasts hard into his chest. She felt Gene return the pressure for a moment, then disentangle himself from her. "I'm all sweaty, honey," he explained, as he stood up to his full height beside the bed. "Let me get a shower."
He walked away a few steps, peeling off his shirt as he went, and Charlene's eyes followed his every movement. Gene Anderson was older than she-half-way past twenty-six-and had the maturity of an older man combined with the lean, hard body of a young boy. He had dark brown hair, close cropped, and matching deep brown eyes that flashed when he laughed. His skin was darkly tanned, and almost leathery from all the time he'd spent in the sun each summer at various outdoor jobs in construction while he worked his way through school. He had the muscles of a working man-rippling and broad across his back and shoulders, flat and rock-hard over his stomach, and knotted like heavily twined rope in his thighs and forearms. Even for as many times as Charlene had seen her husband nude during their year of marriage, she still felt her heart beat a little faster as she watched him drop his pants and shorts and parade completely naked in front of her as he went toward the bathroom. He was all man; every inch of him, and Charlene felt a deep ache inside herself as she watched his gently-swaying nakedness and thought of how much she needed him, how much she wanted him that night.
"Honey?" she said softly, looking up at him with pleading, doe-like eyes.
He stopped just at the foot of the bed and turned toward her.
"Come here," she growled.
Gene smiled and walked around to the bedside, then sat down next to her. Charlene leaned up to him and wrapped one arm around the width of his flat, hard stomach, the other around his neck. She pulled down on him and felt his body press against hers as their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. As she felt his tongue snake across the bridge of their lips and probe deep into her mouth, Charlene moved her hand down his stomach, rubbing the tips of her fingers through the steadily thicker patches of dark short hair until she found him and grasped him tenderly in her fist. She heard him moan and try to push back from her, but she held him fast with her other arm around his neck. Gently at first, then with more rapidity, she moved her hand up and down against him, beating furiously as she attempted to rouse his passion to such a point that he would take her right then and there.
He did need a shower-the strong masculine odor of him was heavy in Charlene's nostrils as she rubbed her body close to his-but she did not want him to go. His aroma, just as the taste of him when she made love to him in a special way she sometimes used to please and surprise him, had a very pleasant, comforting quality for Charlene. It was the scent of her man-her husband-and one that she knew by now as intimately as she knew the rest of his body.
She felt a slight tremor of response against her fingers and tightened her grip. But when she did, she felt the power that had been generating suddenly fade and collapse right within her grasp. She pulled her lips softly away from Gene's and kissed quickly at the cleft in his strong jaw, then pressed her cheek against his rough beard. "Honey...? " she murmured.
She felt his strong hands lift up and take-hold of her shoulders, gently urging her away. A moment later his hand was oh top of hers, unfastening her fingers from himself. "Let me get that shower," he whispered, as he kissed her quickly on the tip of her nose. Before Charlene could protest further, he stood up from the bed and started back toward the bathroom. "What're you doing up so late anyway?" he asked. "I thought you were going to get some early shut-eye?"
Charlene laughed, a bit shrilly-with the nervousness of thwarted desire. "How could anyone sleep?" she said, pointing up to the ceiling, where the party was growing steadily louder. "With that going on."
Gene smiled from the bathroom door. "They're just blowing off a little steam before the new grind starts, honey," he explained. Then, seeing that Charlene did not hold with his views of the commotion, he added, "I'll have a talk with the boys tomorrow, and tell them to hold it down during week nights. Okay?"
"Sure," Charlene muttered, but Gene was already inside the bathroom. A moment later she could hear the sound of the shower running, and then Gene's baritone ringing out in song. She ran the palms of her hands quickly over her face, wiping away the nervous perspiration beads. Her body felt on fire, and she knew there was only one cure for it. Gene had to make love to her tonight-even if he wasn't up to it himself. It was his duty, after all; just as it was her duty to satisfy him when he needed her. And Charlene always complied-no matter how she felt. Even when nature made it impossible for her to enjoy the fullness of a sexual encounter with her handsome young husband, she knew ways to insure that his satisfaction would be achieved, and used all of them on Gene.
She kicked back the sheet until it dropped over the foot of the bed, then sat up on the mattress. She grasped her nightie by its hem and pulled it up over her lush body-off the sleek-velvet surfaces of her thighs, beyond the soft pillow of her stomach, across the firm expanse of her breasts-laughing a little as the nylon rustled against her semi-aroused nipples-and then over her head. She bundled it into a ball and dropped it over the side of the bed. Then, propping herself up on both pillows, she stretched out her lithe white body and waited for Gene.
As Charlene lay there, listening to the shower die out and Gene's whistling take the place of his singing, she experimented with several different postures-trying to see which one would be most tantalizing for him when he walked back out into the bedroom. She drew her knees up high on the sheet, spreading them wide so that her lower body looked like two huge mountain peaks with the most delightful of valleys between them. Deciding that this might be too brazen, she dropped her legs and crossed her ankles demurely. She raised her torso up on her elbows and peered down at herself. The sharp v at the juncture of her thighs was barely visible with her legs so tight together, so she loosened them a little and rolled half onto her side, so that one breast pointed down into the mattress. She brought one leg slightly up, so that her lush nakedness was clearly visible, but not lewdly displayed. She fluffed her long golden hair out on the pillow and waited for Gene.
After a few minutes more, she heard the bathroom door open and Gene pad across the bedroom floor. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth-waiting for the feel of his body on the bed next to her. She smelled the fresh soap-and-shampoo aroma of him first, then felt his fingers reach down and brush a lock of her hair away from her forehead. "That's it, honey," he whispered from above her. "Try to get some rest."
Charlene felt a knot tighten in her throat and opened her eyes wide. She raised herself up onto an elbow and tried to smile at him. "I'm not tired," she said. She held out her hand to him, but he drew back slightly from the edge of the bed. "Gene?" she coaxed. "Don't you want to come to bed, too?"
She watched him shake his head no. "I've got a mountain of work to get ready for tomorrow yet, honey," he explained. "All the guys who checked in today have to be registered with the dean's office, I have to make an accounting of their room key deposits, and I'm still not too sure about the opening of that lecture for the eleven o'clock class tomorrow."
Feeling the rush of panic well up stronger inside her, Charlene raised herself to a sitting position on the bed and grasped for her husband, catching his fingers and squeezing hard on them. "That can all wait until later, honey," she pleaded. "Come to bed ... please?"
He smiled tenderly, sadly, and shook his head again. "I can't, baby," he said gently. "You know I'd like to, but I wouldn't be any good to you even if I did come to bed. This thing's got me all worked up into knots." He returned the squeeze on her hand. "After this first week is over, I'll be more like myself."
But will I? Charlene wanted to scream. Instead, she scrambled quickly across the bed on her knees and pressed her cheek against the slightly damp skin of his lower belly. "Let me see if I can't work something up," she whispered, snaking her arm around his back and pulling his body closer to her as she shifted her head and prepared to lower her lips against him.
Gene groaned as she captured him, then stood beside the bed, running his fingers through her hair as she moved against him. Suddenly he grunted and pushed her gently away. "No, baby," he said firmly, pulling back from her.
"Gene!" she cried. "Gene, I need you! Please-at least give me a chance!"
He shook his head and started to walk away. "Not now, Charlene. I just can't; that's all there is to it. Now you lay down and try to get some sleep. Next week, when this is all over...."
She didn't hear the rest of it. The first part was enough. He was rejecting her once again; given her just a small taste of love, when she was hungering for a feast. Next week! It might as well be next year, she thought bitterly. I need him now!
This past month had been hell for Charlene. For the first time since she was fifteen she found herself going for days-and now weeks-without a man. The feel of a man in bed with her had come to be as natural, and as necessary, a thing as drawing breath or eating. She had to have a man; it was inhuman of Gene to deny her.
She heard the bedroom door close softly behind him as he went back into the living room, then she rolled onto her back once again. Instinctively her hand went down to the center of her hurt and pressed softly against herself. It was like biting hard on an aching tooth. She felt the pains of her own pressure shoot throughout her loins like wildfire in the flesh, and threw back her head on the pillow.
Upstairs she could hear the boys laughing again, as they grew more drunk. What would it be like? she thought. There must be twenty of them up there....
"No!" she cried aloud, and flung herself over onto her stomach. "Don't even think like that."
But as she bit down into the pillow, trying to drive away this horrible longing deep in her thighs, she knew that things could not go on as they were for much longer. Sooner or later, unless Gene did something to stop it, she was going to bust wide open-and when that happened, she would not be responsible for the consequences.
CHAPTER TWO
Gene had an early class the next morning, and was up and out of bed before Charlene awakened. She rolled over onto her side and pressed the Hat of her hand on the hollows left in the mattress by his body. She could still feel the warmth of him on the sheets, and closed her eyes-imagining that it was his skin, and not the smooth percale, that she was stroking. As her mind created more and more vivid fantasies, she felt her loins begin to tingle and the points of her breasts start to stir against the sheer nightie she wore.
"You've got to stop this!" she cautioned herself, as she pulled away her hand from the sheet and sat up in bed. And yet it was easier said than done. She had wanted Gene last night-needed him desperately-and just thinking about how close she had come to possessing him set her body stirring with desire all over again. Tonight, she promised herself, as she swung her long, sleek legs out of bed and padded across the room to the window. Tonight he can't say no.
She pushed back at the curtain and peered outside. It was almost noon, and a gorgeous late-summer day. The grass outside the fraternity house shimmered with rising heat waves, and as Charlene watched them she felt a sudden impulse to go outside and let that warmth seep into her body. Maybe that was what she needed to sweat out all the inner frustrations and let the sun burn out the torturous desires. Gene had warned her against sunbathing on the lawn once the boys returned to campus, but Charlene knew there was a way of getting to the flat roof of the house and decided to go there. Far above the rest of the campus, she could relax and stretch out by herself in solitary peace and quiet.
When she had washed and brushed her teeth, she peeled out of her nightie, then dug into her dresser drawer until she came up with her bikini. It was a slender black affair that Gene considered a bit too daring to wear at Hooper, but Charlene loved it and decided to put it on. It showed off her light skin and curvaceous figure to perfection, and although she did not plan on having anyone see her in it, she knew the suit would offer her the maximum exposure to the sun.
She wiggled her legs into the bottom piece and tugged it up over her hips. It was tight, and when in place it was little more than a triangle-shaped strip of cloth resting between the inner surfaces of her thighs and the bottom of her soft belly. If Charlene had not been a natural blonde, in fact, anyone seeing her in the suit from a distance might have thought the dark patch was part of her lush womanhood.
The top piece of the suit was little more than a two-inch strip of black cloth that guarded not much more than the dusky circles of her aureoles. When she had secured the straps behind her, she looked at herself in the mirror. The top part clung so tightly to the twin mounds of flesh that it was possible, with just a little bit of scrutiny, to make out the buttons of her nipples pressing against the suit. Charlene smiled to herself, pleased with what she saw. Maybe she would wear the suit again, later that night, for Gene-and let him undress her, as he used to do when they went to that secluded beach last year. She remembered the eager way his hands had fumbled with the straps of the bikini, pushing them down and seizing upon her with his lips the moment her hard young breasts were exposed to him.
She fished a terry cloth robe out of the closet and slipped into it, then stuffed the pockets with sunglasses, lotion, cigarettes, a transistor radio, and a paperback novel which she'd been reading off and on during the summer. Satisfied that she was ready, she left the apartment and headed upstairs.
Most of the fraternity house was deserted, with the boys off to register, buy books for their new classes, or find out who all had come back to Hooper for the new year. Here and there, however, she could hear a radio playing behind the closed doors that lined the second floor hall, and when she passed the door to the bathroom she could hear the shower running and the robust singing of one of the boys. Charlene quickened her pace, not wanting to be discovered in the hall. She had a right to be there, of course, as Gene's wife and-technically, at least-co-resident supervisor, but she felt instinctively that it would not be a wise idea for her to begin mingling with boys so close to her own age-especially when she was wearing a costume .as brief as the bikini.
She pushed against the heavy wooden door to the outside and stepped onto the roof. The heat reflecting from the tin sheeting hit her immediately, and as she walked to the middle of the roof she could feel the soles of her feet burning from the hot metal. Selecting a spot where she felt she would get the most sun, and still catch a little breeze now and then, she spread out her beach towel and lay down. The warmth of the roof seeped into her back and buttocks instantly, and she squirmed on the towel, adjusting her body against the hard surface until she was as comfortable as possible.
Then, fishing into her robe for the transistor radio, she flicked on a rock-and-roll station and closed her eyes. After a few moments she could feel the sweat begin to bead on her skin. The sun was fierce that afternoon, and Charlene realized that unless she applied lotion to herself with extra caution, she would be lobster red by nightfall.
Swaying in time to the music from the radio, she squirted out gobs of the creamy white ointment into the palm of her hand and began to smear it up and down her long tapered legs, then rubbed it around in slow, lazy circles across the flat of her stomach. When she had completely covered herself, she lay back down again, but in a few moments she sat up once more. Because of the angle of her body to the sun, she knew that she would have to apply lotion to her breasts as well. Otherwise they would be scorched and painfully blistered, making it impossible for her to enjoy the feel of Gene's hands stroking against her.
The roof was high above the rest of the campus, and protected from other rooftops by tall trees on the lawn. Charlene knew that nobody on the ground could see her if she slipped off the top of her bikini for a few minutes, and quickly undid the ties between her shoulder blades. She felt the thin black strip drop to her lap, then squeezed out some more ointment and began to softly caress herself, oozing the white cream over the full curve of her breasts and spreading it heavily around the nipples-even though she knew they would be fully covered by the bikini strap. She enjoyed the feel of her own hand against her breasts, relishing the slick gliding motion of her fingers and imagining that it was Gene touching her. She thrust her back out, so that her chest arched far in front of her, and closed her eyes. The sun was soaking through the lotion, warming her breasts and gently caressing them with heat.
"Ummm, nice ... nice!"
Charlene let out a little shriek of fright and wheeled about in the direction of the voice that had suddenly spoken out behind her.
The boy was standing about four feet away, staring down hard at her naked chest. He was tall, and darkly handsome-almost too handsome-with sharply defined features, dark flashing eyes, and a mop of long-ish, unruly black hair which fell down over his forehead as he smiled at her. He was wearing a pair of shorts made from cut-off blue jeans, a sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off, and a pair of grimy tennis sneakers. He couldn't have been more than twenty, and yet there was something in the way he looked at her that seemed to say he'd already proven himself a man many times over. He seemed to be devouring her with his eyes, reaching down to her naked breasts and seizing them, to do with what he would.
"Who-who are you?" Charlene stammered, as she twisted away from him and tried to cover her nakedness with the palms of her hands. "What are you doing here?"
The boy ambled over closer to her with the slow, sure grace of a young panther. He stopped right in front of her, his hard young body looming directly above her. Charlene was confident that her fingers offered scant protection against his searching eyes. '
"My name's Randy," he drawled, his voice rich and mellow, with just a trace of a Southern accent to it. "And maybe you'd better explain what you're doing here. This is a fraternity house, you know."
Charlene looked up at him and saw that he was nonchalantly stripping off his sweatshirt, revealing a flat, hard stomach and a chest that rippled with muscles. His skin was a smooth, golden-brown color and except for the dark patches she saw under his arms when he lifted them to peel the sweatshirt off his head, his body was void of male fleece.
"I-I live here," she stammered. She found it difficult to speak. Her throat was constricted not only with the fear of being so unexpectedly discovered, but also by the rapidly quickening beat of her heart as she watched this handsome young boy undressing in front of her.
"Oh?" he said with a smile, pausing with his hands on the zipper of his ily. "Who's the lucky guy who drew you as a roommate?"
Then, staring directly into her eyes, he slowly pulled down his fly and parted his pants. Charlene caught her breath for a moment, believing the boy was completely naked under the shorts. As he stepped out of them, however, she discovered that he was wearing a skin-tight, flesh-colored bathing suit-no more than a posing strap, actually-that molded itself to his muscular young body. The suit was so skimpy that little tufts of black wool poked out from the top and the two sides, and so revealingly close to his body that she could discern the perfect outline of his young manhood.
She gulped again and pressed harder on her breasts, feeling the swelling of her nipples against her palms. "I didn't mean that," she said in a rush. "I-I'm Mrs. Anderson, the director's wife."
"Oh?" The boy continued to stare at her, then dropped into a crouching position on his haunches, biting down softly on the corner of his lower lip with his teeth as he surveyed her. "Some improvement over last year's," he grinned. He picked up the tube of ointment which Charlene had dropped when he surprised her and squirted a small pool of the white cream onto his hand. "Want me to help you?" he said softly. He reached out toward her breasts, his tanned, muscular arm drawing closer and closer with each second.
"No!" Charlene shook her head quickly and scrambled to her feet. "No, I don't," she snapped. Then, turning on her heels and scooping up her bikini top and robe, she dashed for the doorway to the inside.
By the time she got back down to her own apartment she was visibly trembling, and her skin was covered with gooseflesh. "Gene," she whispered shakily to the empty room. "Tonight!"
CHAPTER THREE
The rest of that day was sheer hell for Charlene. As she wandered about the apartment, puttering with a dust cloth and re-arranging dishes in the already neat cupboards, she could not get the image of the boy on the roof out of her mind. He had wanted her; she was positive of it. And even worse, she realized that from the look in his eyes he knew that she was interested in him as well.
There was something about Randy that left no doubt he'd had his way with a good many women. Just the way he moved, and the manner in which he displayed his hard young body in the skimpy bathing suit, seemed to say that he was aware of his own attractiveness and looked upon every woman he met as a new conquest. Just in those few minutes they'd been together, Charlene felt that this boy had sized her up as thoroughly as if he'd been a psychologist to whom she'd spent hours revealing her current marital problems. He seemed to know, instinctively-like a young buck who catches the scent of a doe in heat-what she needed, and in the flashing glint in his eyes as he'd pulled open his fly, he was telling her that he had the solution to her problem. All she had to do was ask for it. That was why, Charlene realized with horror, he'd been so confident of himself, had moved to touch her breasts with the sun lotion so quickly. He could tell.
She rushed to the mirror over her vanity table and stared hard at her reflection. "Is it that obvious?" she asked aloud. She tried to examine herself objectively, but it was impossible. The tense, anxious look she found in her eyes, the little twitching of a vein in her neck, the dry look of her lips all said only one thing. And she was sure Randy had heard the message loud and clear.
Charlene stood up from the vanity table and tried to get hold of herself. This wouldn't do at all, she realized. The last thing in the world she needed was to have every boy in the fraternity house know that she had the hots-that she was a pushover for anyone with enough guts to knock on her door.
Charlene decided to give Gene the full treatment that night. She spent the rest of the afternoon making his favorite meal, then took a long hot bath and soaked herself with sweet-smelling bath oils. She put on one of her sexiest dresses, then set the table with their best dishes and silver-adding one long white candle and a rose in a bud vase for the final touch. Then, drawing the drapes and turning on soft music on the phonograph, she sat down to wait for Gene to come home.
Around six she heard his key in the door, and scrambled up off the couch. She quickly doused the overhead light and lit the candle on the table, then went into their bedroom to wait until he'd come inside and got the full effect. When he had, she would slink out to him-wrap her arms around his neck-kiss him softly on the lips and press her body up next to his. Charlene could feel her heart hammering in her chest with expectation.
The door to their apartment opened, and a moment later she heard Gene's voice. He was talking to someone as he came inside, but what he was saying made Charlene's heart sink. "Hey, what's going on in here?" he called. "Did we have a power failure or something?" Charlene closed her eyes and bit down hard on her lower lip as she saw the harsh overhead light in the living room Hash on. "Charlene?" Gene called. "You home, honey."
"Yes," she said weakly. "I'm here."
"Sit down, Ron," Gene said, then he called for Charlene to come out of the bedroom.
Shakily, feeling as though she would either cry or collapse, she opened the door and stepped out of the bedroom. Gene was opening two bottles of soda, and chattering excitedly to someone seated on the couch in front of him. The candle on Charlene's beautifully set table flickered unnoticed in the unnatural brilliance of the lights Gene had turned on.
"Ron, I really think you should consider entering that election," Gene was saying. "The guys need responsible student leadership, and I don't think they're going to get it from...." He paused, suddenly aware of his wife standing mutely behind him. He wheeled about, a broad grin on his face. "Oh, hi, honey," he smiled, reaching for her and planting a quick, meaningless kiss on her cheek. Then, stepping aside, he motioned toward the boy who'd risen from the couch. "I'd like you to meet Ron Sarcota. Ron, my wife, Charlene."
"How do you do, Mrs. Anderson?" the boy said, offering his hand.
He was tall, a few inches over six feet, with a lean but powerful build. He had caramel-colored brown hair, with darker brown eyes set in a boyishly-rugged face. like Randy, he was probably no more than twenty, but unlike the black-haired boy, Ron looked his age. He had the clean-cut, wholesome look of a perpetual Boy Scout, which-in its own way-was as attractive at first glance as the more sophisticated good looks of Randy. His voice was soft and mellow, and when he talked it seemed almost as though he were embarrassed or shy to be in the presence of someone as physically striking as Charlene. She noticed that as he shook her hand, his eyes wandered momentarily to the deep cleft of her dress, then darted away as though lie were ashamed to have taken a peek at something forbidden.
"Ron's the new captain of the basketball team," Gene explained, clapping the boy on the back with a hearty gesture. "I think he's going to lead us to victory this year-or I'll have his hide for it!"
The two men laughed in friendly comradeship. Charlene attempted a weak smile, but the corners of her mouth hurt when she did.
"Gene," she said softly, "that soda's going to ruin your appetite."
He grinned sheepishly and winked at the young basketball star. "See what happens when you get married, Ron?" Charlene's expression dropped, and she felt hot tears only inches away from breaking through. Gene must have sensed that something was wrong, for he moved away from the boy and put his arm tenderly around Charlene's shoulders. "I don't have time to eat right now anyway, hon," he said. "We've got to get over to the gym for practice. Our first big game's next week, you know, and these jokers still have a lot of kinks to work out before we'll be in shape to offer much competition." He squeezed her arm affectionately. "Ron and I'll grab a burger or something after the practice."
"But, Gene," Charlene wailed, "I've made a ragout-your favorite."
He shrugged sympathetically. "Gee, hon, I'm sorry," he said, "but we really don't have the time. I just stopped off here on my way to the gym to pick up my jacket. Maybe you could heat it over for tomorrow night?" He patted her arm and broke away.
"Gene...? " she started to protest, but he was already motioning to the boy that it was time to go. She felt her husband's lips peck at her cheek once again, then watched through tear-misted eyes as he walked toward the door, already engrossed in the conversation he'd been having with Ron before Charlene interrupted.
As the door closed behind the two men, Charlene slumped onto the couch and buried her face in her hands. Tomorrow night, she sobbed. Warm it over for tomorrow night. He hadn't even noticed the table, or the dress she was wearing especially for him. He hadn't noticed anything-not even the pleading look in her eyes that had begged him not to go, to call off practice for one night and stay home with her.
The more Charlene thought about it, the angrier she became. Her tears dried quickly as she realized that Gene was acting as though she didn't even exist. She could already predict what it would be like when he came home. Sorry, honey, but I'm all bushed from practice. Maybe tomorrow night.
"Sure," Charlene spat aloud, pounding one of the couch pillows with her fist. "Warmed over ragout and warmed over wife!" She jumped to her feet, wanting to start throwing things, or screaming, or burning down the whole damn fraternity house. It just wasn't right, she told herself. True, Gene wanted to get ahead, to prove himself, but what about his obligations to her? Wasn't a man's duty first to his wife-his family-just as a woman's was?
Charlene's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of the doorbell chiming. She lifted her head, her eyes glistening expectantly. For some ridiculous reason she thought it might be Gene. Perhaps he'd thought it over and decided to stay home with her-then realized he'd gone off without his key, or wanted to surprise her.
Charlene wiped the tears away from her eyes and fussed with her hair for a moment. Almost laughing with happiness, she raced toward the door and flung it open.
"Hi. Mind if I come in?"
Charlene stared in open-mouth surprise as Randy, the dark, handsome boy from the roof, grinned down at her and stepped into the apartment. He pushed the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
"What-what do you want?" Charlene stammered, as the boy brushed past her in the narrow hallway and walked confidently into the living room. She felt her heart begin to pound inside her chest.
"You ... forgot your radio this afternoon," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and taking out Charlene's transistor. He held it out to her, clasping it so tightly in the palm of his hand that it was impossible for her to take it from him without touching his fingers.
"Put-put it on the table," she said.
Randy stared hard into her eyes, then the corners of his mouth turned up in a slow, sensual smile as he put the radio down on the coffee table in front of the couch. He seemed to be undressing her with his eyes, and relishing what he found in under the tight black cocktail dress she wore. "You going somewhere?" he asked.
Charlene found it difficult to speak. A dry ball of something hard and prickly was caught in her throat. "My husband and I are having dinner at home tonight," she said, trying to underscore the word husband, so this impudent boy would remember where he was and who he was talking to.
Randy grinned again and loped over to the couch, where he sprawled his muscular frame out lazily. "Huh-uh," he said, shaking his head from side to side. "I just saw him going to the gym. He won't be back for a long, long time. Will he?" He winked so quickly that Charlene could not be sure if he really had.
"That's not true," she tried to say forcefully. "He's coming right back." She moved further into the living room, so that she stood directly in front of Randy. He had his both arms up on the back of the couch, and his long, lean legs stretched out in under the coffee table. The muscles in his flat, hard stomach rippled as he breathed, and he was slowly lifting his buttocks up and down on the couch, so that his thighs opened and closed in suggestive rhythm. Watching him, Charlene felt her blood begin to course more hotly through her body. Being in a room with this boy was like walking into the den of a wild animal. At any moment he might spring up and attack, devouring his prey and ruthlessly possessing it. What frightened Charlene was that she was not at all sure she would resist if Randy sprang at her.
"Good," he said, grinning again. He fished into his pocket for a cigarette and lit it casually, talking with the butt stuck in the corner of his mouth and breathing slow swirls of smoke through his nostrils. "Then you won't mind if I stay here until he gets back, will you? There's something I'd like to talk to him about-a problem."
Charlene felt as though her legs would give out in under her if she continued to stand much longer. Slowly, hesitantly, feeling her heart hammering all the way, she moved to the opposite end of the couch from Randy and sat down. "A problem?" she asked, aware of the strained sound in her voice.
The dark-haired boy grinned and shifted his body so that he sat almost sideways, facing Charlene. "Yeah," he drawled. "You see, there've been rumors about some of the guys on the second floor playing fun-and-games with each other in the showers." He waited a moment, seeming to enjoy the shocked blush that spread over Charlene's cheeks, then continued. "I wanted to mention die problem to Mr. Anderson."
"I-I-" Charlene stammered for words, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.
Randy moved closer toward her on the couch. "Not that I blame them, you understand," he said softly. "I'm a pretty broad-minded guy, myself." Then, chuckling suggestively, he added, "I mean, that's just it-I'm broad minded." His body inched closer, his strong hand crushing out the cigarette butt in the ashtray as he advanced. "But at Hooper, with nothing but guys around all the time, some people forget what it's all about. You know what I mean?" His warm fingers reached out and touched Charlene's arm.
She jumped as though she'd been prodded with an electric coil, and stood up quickly from the couch. "Randy," she said, her voice dry and tight, "I think you'd better leave until my husband gets back. There's nothing I can do to help you with ... with that."
"No?" the boy got up from his side of the couch and started to walk slowly around the coffee table toward Charlene. She stood rooted to the floor, unable to move if her life depended on it as he advanced. "That's where you're wrong." He stopped directly in front of her and raised both arms, squeezing her shoulders in his strong young hands. "When I saw you on the roof today I thought to myself, 'Randy, they're never gonna see you in the shower!' " He grinned wickedly. "You know what I mean?" he whispered, as his lips came down toward Charlene's neck.
She stood motionless, feeling jolts of electricity race up and down her spine as the boy's lips touched the sleek white skin of her neck, pressed hard, then flicked open to let his glistening wet tongue glide hotly over the smooth flesh. She could feel her breasts aching, Straining to press out against his chest, and deep in her thighs she felt a white-hot heat begin to consume her.
"Do you know what I mean?" he whispered again, and then his hands left her shoulders and traveled slowly down the broad expanse of naked skin where Charlene's dress was cut in a sharp v at the back. His fingers pressed against the full cheeks of her buttocks, drawing her closer to his hard young body as once again his lips rubbed the side of her neck.
Charlene felt all control leaving her in a rush of desire. It had been so long since a man had held her in this way, had made her tingle with such expectation. It would serve Gene right, she thought to herself. He made this happen; he left me like this.
Then, almost as though he'd been reading her mind, she heard Randy whispering, "That husband of yours must be nuts. Any guy who'd leave a chick like you so hung-up must have rocks in his head."
Charlene pulled away from him, feeling suddenly defensive for Gene's sake. What right did this boy have to criticize something he knew nothing about? "You'd better get out," she hissed, "before I start screaming."
Randy laughed and moved closer to her, backing her against a wall. "You're not going to scream, honey," he said. "Not the way you need it."
Charlene's eyes dared with anger. "What--? "
His sharp, sexual laugh cut her oft. "Don't think you can hide it," he said. "Some things a guy doesn't need a college education to understand. I can see, just by looking at you, that the big clod you're married to isn't doing his duty. I could see it up on the roof ... and I can see it now." He grinned and reached out his hand to stroke the smooth expanse of skin at Charlene's neck. His fingers brushed against her skin like red-hot pokers, searing the flesh as they traveled downward toward the deep cleft in the front of her dress.
"You aren't going to scream," he said again. "Because you know I've got something you want-and you've got something I want." His fingers cupped around Charlene's hot breast and squeezed gently. "What do you say, baby?" he whispered. "Should we give it to each other?"
Charlene lifted her arm to slash out at him, but he seized her hand at the wrist and pinned it back against the wall over her head. He moved forward sharply and rammed against her thighs with his, then brought his mouth down on her lips. His hot pressure was like molten lava as he fought to keep her mouth in place, darting his tongue out and jabbing at Charlene's tightly sealed lips. "Come on," he moaned impatiently, ramming at her hips. "Come on, honey. Loosen up."
As Randy's searing tongue jabbed at her mouth, his hands locking their bodies together, Charlene felt her last reserve of strength break down. She grunted heavily in her throat, then flung her arms around the boy's strong young back and stabbed at his chest with her aroused breasts. As her lips parted to admit his eager tongue, she knew that there would be no stopping now-she had to have him. It would mean nothing, she tried to convince herself, as she heard him respond with a grunt of his own and lift up the flesh of her buttocks so that their thighs were fused as one. She would just use him to relieve the awful ache inside herself. It would never happen again, but it had to happen now. She couldn't go on for another minute with the desires inside herself bubbling at the point of bursting.
"Randy," she moaned. She felt him take her hand in his and bring it down between their bodies, wiggling it against his thighs until she could feel his hard, pulsing manhood beating out from inside his pants. She sucked in her breath and closed her fingers over him. "Yes," she sighed, "yes, yes, yes!"
And then he pulled away from her, a flushed smile on his face. "Let's go to the bedroom," he whispered harshly.
Charlene followed him, willingly, as expectantly as he. The light was off when they stepped inside, but Randy flicked on the tiny vanity light.
"I like to see what I'm doing," he grinned. He motioned her toward him, touching her bare arms as his hands ran up and down the length of her. Charlene clung to him tightly, pressing her lips against his as she felt his hands work on the zipper of her chess, urging it slowly downward until he could wiggle his fingers around both sides and cup her naked breasts in the palms of his hands. "Ummm," he moaned, "they feel as good as they look."
He parted his body from hers and grasped the dress by the top, pulling it down around her waist. "How do they taste?" he whispered.
Charlene closed her eyes as she saw him bend his head toward her, then felt his warm, soft lips close over the dusky bud of her right breast. He sucked gently at first, running the flat of his tongue over the aroused nipple and teasing at it-flopping it from side to side in his mouth. Then he widened his lips and moved further down on the steep slope of white flesh. Charlene cried out and dug her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer against her. His mouth felt so good-so hot, so wet, so demanding.
Randy moved his fingers up in under his chin and squeezed hard on the underside of her breast as he sucked down hard. Charlene could feel him tugging at her nipple with his mouth, drawing the flesh in and out .with rough but wonderful-oh, so wonderful-suction. His fingers pressed in and out, as though he were trying to milk the life fluids out into his mouth. Charlene arched her back, to thrust more of her breast out at him, then screamed with a sharp loss of feeling as his mouth slid away.
"Let's try this one," he said hoarsely, and then his young eager mouth was on the other nipple, applying the same drawing power on it that he'd applied to the first. She could feel the warm saliva dribbling down from his mouth, racing with excruciating pleasure to the end of her breast, then dropping off like a small trickle of stream over a fall.
She called his name aloud, her voice sounding as shrill as a scream, and pulled his head away. She wanted more from him now; her agony was at fever pitch. She had to have him. "Please...." she moaned, backing toward the bed and pushing her dress down over her hips. "Please ... now. Now!"
The boy lifted his head and stood commandingly in front of her. Slowly, his hands went to his jacket and pulled it off his shoulders, then unbuttoned the front of his shirt. As he slipped it down his arms, he grinned at Charlene, and thrust out his hips at her. His pants were so tight that they seemed about to burst from the strong pressure inside them. With the same slowness that he'd stripped out of his shirt, Randy opened his belt buckle and slid down the fly of his trousers. He parted them, and the hard pressure of himself sprang out against the tin cotton underpants he wore.
"Randy!" Charlene moaned. "Please ... for God's sake, hurry!"
"You want to help me?" he said softly, advancing a step toward hen
Charlene hissed sharply as her hands flew out to him, grasping the top of his pants and shoving them down to his hips. His underpants came half-down at the same time, and the first patch of black wool peeked over the top of them. Grinning, Randy stepped back from her and lifted the white cotton shorts out from his body, to free himself from their tangle. Then, covering himself with his hand, he kicked his legs free of pants and shoes to stand, before her completely naked. His hand sheltered most of his young manhood, and he moved in front of Charlene, taunting her with it as he moved his other hand down to softly stroke the exposed flesh. "You like it?" he grinned.
Charlene closed her eyes, feeling as though she would explode at any moment. "Yes!" she moaned. "Yes!"
Randy reached out for her hand and brought it to his waist, pressing the fingers deep into the thick fleece of his belly. "If I let you see it, will you treat it nice?" he whispered.
Charlene dug her fingers into his rock-hard stomach in reply. Then, as she opened her eyes slowly, she saw him lift his hand away from himself. His turgid flesh sprang out at her with such force that she gave a little cry of surprise.
"Well?" Randy said tensely. "I thought you were going to be nice."
Sighing heavily, Charlene bent forward on the bed and ran her hand down the length of Randy's belly until she'd captured him in her fist. She squeezed hard, finding the width and weight of this strange, handsome boy so exciting she felt ready to faint.
She bent him down, then moved her head close to him. She touched him lightly with her lips, then felt his hand come sharply behind her head and thrust her closer. Charlene lost her balance on the bedside and toppled off, with him still in her mouth. Randy laughed and steadied her, then took a step closer so that the penetration of him was full and complete.
"That's nice," he whispered, stroking his fingers through Charlene's long, blonde hair. "That's real nice. Keep it up for a little while, honey."
Charlene thought of nothing but what she was doing. Gene never existed at that moment. Only this boy-this handsome masterful boy with his demanding, exciting body. She moved her lips and tongue in furious rhythm up and down the length of him, varying her pace so that when she heard him moan or cry out with pleasure she shifted to a slower or faster motion.
She dug her fingernails into the cheeks of his naked buttocks and pressed him closer still, surrendering herself completely to the task. Even when she'd done this for Gene she'd never felt so strangely excited. Perhaps it was because once again she was giving pleasure to a stranger-to a man who meant nothing to her and whom she would most-likely never see again in this way. It was like those years before she'd married Gene, and the excitement of them came rushing back to her with the force of a kick in the groin. What she was doing with this boy was wanton and shameless-she knew that full well. But it was exciting, too, and at the moment the deep pleasure she got from knowing she was sending thrills of ecstasy up and down his length was the strongest emotion Charlene felt.
Suddenly the boy was gripping hard on her shoulders and urging her away. She left him reluctantly.
"Easy, honey," he laughed. "I like that, but I like something else more. And if you keep up like you were doing, we aren't going to get to the main event!"
His strong hands pulled at her armpits and lifted her to her feet. His fingers stroked down her naked sides as his mouth met hers, his tongue prodding far and deep into her, until she felt him touch the thin black panties she still wore. His thumbs pulled at the elastic waist on both sides, then his hands slipped in and drew out at the panties as they raced downward.
Charlene moaned as she felt his strong thumbs seize her inner thighs and pinch tenderly, then travel upward until they brushed against the slick, glistening intimacy of her womanhood. Pressing against her from both thighs, Randy slowly opened her with his thumbs, then wiggled one hand around until he could reach her with his thick middle finger. Charlene gave a terrible little cry as she felt the blunt end of Randy's finger prod at her.
She brought her mouth down hard on his, biting at his lower lip and sucking it across the bridge of her teeth as he wiggled further-higher-deeper. She opened and closed her thighs on his hand, feeling the thrills of excitement shoot the length of her legs. He was bringing her closer and closer to the point of no return-and the delicious feelings he made inside her were so intense Charlene could not have stopped them if the roof had begun to fall on them both.
"Randy," she cried, letting go of his mouth and clamping down hard on his finger. "Please ... now! Now, Randy. Now. I can't want any longer. Now!"
The boy's own excitement was as intense as Charlene's. He pulled out his finger and jerked roughly at her panties, tearing them as he pulled them off her legs. He shoved her down to the bed, then yanked open her thighs. He hovered above her, clasping himself in position, then rammed down hard, pinning her flat to the mattress. "Don't worry, baby," he grunted, as he began the slow, frenzied rhythm with her body. "Your waiting's over."
CHAPTER FIVE
When Charlene woke up the next morning she had a strange, tingling feeling deep in her belly. She sprawled out on the big double bed, not even conscious of what time Gene had come in during the night or when he'd left that morning. She felt alive again-wholly and completely alive.
She had decided, after Randy left the night before, and while she cleared off the table she'd set for Gene, that what she'd done was wrong-there was no denying it in her mind-but under the circumstances, she felt it was excusable and resolved that she would not feel guilty about it. Hadn't Gene, after all, forced her into just such an act, by his constant inattention? Yes, she'd decided. He'd left her with no other choice. However, what had happened with Randy was not going to develop into a permanent arrangement; of that Charlene was equally sure. She still loved Gene, and was confident that once the semester got under way and his problems began to iron themselves out, their marriage would return to a normal state and she would never again have to look to another man for love.
If Randy came around again-and Charlene was sure he would-she was determined to tell him that last' night never happened. It was something you dreamed, she would tell him, and if he attempted another round with her, she would threaten him with telling Gene. She was confident that the boy would be frightened of her husband, and that would be the end of it.
Still, Charlene thought, as she stretched her legs wider in the bed, it had been exciting. Randy was quite a man-even at his age. True, he didn't have quite the experience that Gene had, or that some of the other men Charlene had known possessed, but he knew enough to make what they did thoroughly satisfying. She closed her eyes and felt again the pressure of his hard young body atop hers-his eager manhood ramming at her as they both raced toward their separate, then mutual, pleasure.
Yes, and what they'd done afterwards had been fun, too. Covered with the sweat of love, they had padded hand-in-hand to the shower, where they lathered each other to a new point of excitement and then, as the jet of water streamed down over their locked bodies, Randy had taken her again, right there in the shower stall, standing up, with her back pressed hard against the nozzles of the tub. There had been a wild, carefree frenzy in that second fusion-something that made Charlene think for a second time about her earlier life. It had been exciting-a joyous release for a few hours from the bonds of respectability which had kept her animal passions in check for the twelve months or so she'd been married to Gene. She knew that he would never have done to her what Randy did, in a shower. Gene's love-making, for the most part, was confined to one or two basic positions-which, while exciting in themselves, did not fully satisfy Charlene's previously uninhibited desires.
She had to laugh to herself as she thought of Randy's face, contorted with passion, yet sputtering to keep the stream of water out of his eyes and nose.
Fun. It had been fun. But no more, she thought resolutely. She valued her marriage to Gene far too much to get any more involved with the dark-haired boy than she already was. Once might be excusable; twice was a willful abandoning of the marriage vows she intended to keep.
During the next week, however, Charlene found that resolution more and more difficult to maintain. Gene was never coming home before midnight now, and when he did, he would sit up in the living room doing any number of things: talking with boys of the fraternity who'd come for his advice on various matters, going over plays with members of the basketball squad, or just pouring through his books and notes to prepare for his next day's class.
There was no doubt that Gene was well-liked by almost everyone in the school-particularly the members of the Beta fraternity. He was always willing to give them a hand with problems, suggested ways in which they could improve the house, and was even getting more and more involved with the up-and-coming election to choose officers for the year. His time belonged to anyone who wanted it-with two exceptions: himself and Charlene.
The situation began to get worse for her. She had little doubt that if Randy hadn't come along when he did, she would have raped Gene, if necessary, to relieve the tension inside herself. But once those desires were momentarily quenched by the night with Randy, Charlene began to find that her need for love was getting more demanding in the days afterward. She had hoped that one night would carry her through until the time when Gene would once again be a proper husband, but-like a taste of delicious food to a starving man-it only whet her appetite for more.
It was futile to try to get Gene to cooperate. The few times that she had Hung herself at him following the bout with Randy, Charlene found her husband physically incapable of satisfying her. She'd read about such things, but until now she'd never believed it possible. It was beyond her understanding how a man's work could tire him to the point where arousal of his manhood-under any kind of stimulation-was wholly impossible.
One afternoon, while Gene was at class, Charlene was pacing nervously about the apartment, trying to decide what she could possibly do to make her husband respond. Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knocking at the door. She answered it a bit hesitantly, afraid-following that night with Randy-to let anyone inside when Gene was not there.
She felt her heart sink as she saw the grinning, golden-tanned face outside the door. She tried to close the door against him, but Randy forced his way into the apartment.
"Hi," he said casually, squeezing playfully at Charlene's breast as he brushed by her and walked possessively into the living room. He was already unbuttoning his shirt when Charlene finished locking the door.
"What are you doing?" she snapped, tightening her arms protectively about her breasts as she felt the old tingling begin to well up inside herself.
Randy grinned and peeled out of his shirt. The sight of his hard, bronzed young body made Charlene take a deep breath. She could' almost feel that golden skin against her own lush white softness, and as she saw him move his hands toward his belt, she had to swallow hard-knowing what would be momentarily revealed to her. "What do you think I'm doing?" he said with a cock-sure smile. "The old man's got a class now, hasn't he?"
"Yes, but...." Charlene sputtered.
Randy grinned and walked toward her, taking her shoulders in his hands and pulling her body close to his. "Well, then," he said softly, just before his lips came down on her neck and sucked roughly at the soft fold of skin just above her shoulder blade, "what's the problem? We've got a couple of hours, at least, and baby, I've missed you."
Charlene grit her teeth, trying to fight down the rising passion she felt stirring deep in her groin. She pushed Randy's head away from her neck and backed out of his reach. "Get out," she hissed. "I don't want to see you again."
The boy smiled confidently. "I figured something like that," he said, "when I didn't see you out on the roof this week." He grinned suggestively. "As a matter-of-fact, you haven't been outside this apartment since ... we saw each other last." He started toward her. "What's the matter? Don't trust yourself?"
Charlene started toward the entry hall, a grim, angry look on her face. "You'd better get your shirt back on and get out of here in one minute," she warned, "or I'm going to have you thrown out."
"I wouldn't try that if I were you." His voice was suddenly so hard and cold that Charlene stopped in her tracks, feeling a little chill run down her spine.
"Why not?" she snapped, hoping that her sudden fright would not show in her voice.
Randy parked on the couch and patted the seat beside him. "Maybe you'd better sit down for a little while. You and I've got something important to ... discuss."
"I have nothing to discuss with you," she said. "Not now or any other time. Will you please leave, before my husband gets home and you get in trouble?"
Randy laughed sharply, bitterly. "No, baby," he said easily, "if your husband gets home before we've finished our little talk, it's you that's going to be in trouble." He fished into his trouser pocket and brought out his wallet, then dug in the billfold section for a few moments before he pulled out a fistful of bent, dog-eared photographs. "Did he ever see any of these?" Randy drawled.
Charlene felt the skin on her back begin to crawl as she saw the boy extend his hand, holding the pictures out to her. Instinctively, even without looking at any of them, she knew what they were.
"Where did you get those?" she hissed.
The boy laughed confidently. "Oh! You recognize them, huh? I thought you might try to pretend it wasn't you." His smile disappeared instantly, and was replaced with a sardonic little twist of his lips. "But it is you, honey, and we botli know it."
He stretched his legs possessively on top of the coffee table and leaned back in the couch, flipping the pictures in front of him with a slow, studious motion. "You know, I had the feeling, the first time I saw you-up there on the roof-that I knew you from somewhere. But I couldn't place you. I was really bugged by it, you know?" He laughed to himself and shook his head slowly from side-to-side. "Funny how tilings like that get to you. It's like trying to remember the name of some movie you saw long ago. You can't sleep or think about anything else until you think of it.
"Well, the other night it came to me. I used to have a pal in prep school-a real kook named Eddie-who used to get a kick out of showing dirty pictures around in guys' rooms at night and watching what happened when people looked at them. He had this one set, especially, that really used to get the reaction Eddie liked-every time." Randy smiled up at Charlene. "That's quite a compliment, honey," he grinned, "because Eddie had some pretty hairy pictures to show."
Charlene could feel the blood draining out of her cheeks. "Give me those," she whispered harshly, lunging for Randy. The boy leaped out of her way, however, and raised his arm high up toward the ceiling, dangling the pictures out of Charlene's reach. "My favorite's this one on the top," he said. "The one where you and those two guys are...."
Charlene's hand struck him hard across the mouth-so hard that the imprint of five fingers stood out instantly on his cheek.
The boy lowered his arm slowly, as Charlene-seeing the horrible look in his eyes-backed away from him. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could, his fist came down with twice the force of hers and knocked her head back against the wall. He grabbed her roughly by the throat and shook her until she felt as though the air was gurgling out of her lungs.
"Now you listen to me," he said, so low and menacingly that his words were like daggers of ice jabbing into Charlene's bloodstream. "You try anything like that again, baby, and I'm going to have to change my mind about what to do with these little candids. You understand? No broad puts a hand on me. Get it?"
Charlene nodded her head and gasped for air as his hand left her throat.
"Good," he hissed. "Now you listen, and listen good. These snaps would make mighty interesting conversation at the next faculty meeting the dean calls. Do you want that to happen? Would you like to have your husband explain how it is that he's married to a cheap little hooker who prances her fanny around at stag parties and poses for pictures like these?"
He grinned, knowing full well that he was now in absolute control of the situation. "Good. Because I wouldn't like to see you kicked out of here. You're a nice ... fixture, if you know what I mean." He reached out and squeezed at Charlene's breast. "But if I have to, I won't hesitate in the least to put these snaps in an envelope, write the dean's name on it, and let him have a peek, too."
Charlene moaned as the boy's fingers kneaded her breast through the thin fabric of her blouse. Even in the nightmare of the last few minutes, she could feel herself beginning to respond sexually to the feel of Randy's hand playing with her sensitive flesh.
"Don't do that, Randy," she begged, not fully conscious of whether she meant carrying out his threat or continuing to squeeze her bosom.
The boy dropped his hand and stared hard into her eyes. "like I said, you're a nice fixture around here, and it seems to me we could work out a nice arrangement for the rest of the year. You help me-I'll help you. It's as simple as that."
"Help you?" Charlene whispered.
"When I need you," he said with a smug grin, "be there-ready and willing, for whatever I might want you to do. If you do it, and do it well, in June when it's time for me to graduate, you'll get the present." He waved the photographs under Charlene's nose. "Get me?"
She nodded her head weakly. "I get you, Randy."
"Good," he said. Then, stepping back from her, he dropped his hand once again to his belt. "We can start right now." He jerked open the belt buckle and fingered the catch of his fly. "You did something the other night that felt pretty good. Want to try it again?" His fingers slid the zipper open all the way and he parted his pants for her.
Charlene felt her insides qtiivering as she stepped closer to him, then got down on her knees in front of him. As she reached for him, she heard him whisper, "This time we'll go all the way, baby. Just for a change of pace."
She fished her hand inside his underpants and withdrew him, then stared at the raw flesh of him in wonderment for a long second. Why? she asked herself. Something that looks as funny as this-why do I have such an attraction to it? She half-closed her eyes and opened her mouth to admit him, but she had no sooner started than she felt Randy's hands pull her head roughly away.
"Someone's coming!" he hissed sharply, trying to tuck himself back into his pants.
In that split second, half-dazed by the suddenness of it all, Charlene heard the-door of the apartment rattling and Gene's voice calling to her from outside. "My husband!" she cried, feeling fully like a wanton wife in an old melodrama. "Randy, he can't find you here!"
"You think I don't know that?" he barked sharply. "Where can I hide?"
The door was rattling louder now, and the sound of Gene's voice rang through the living room.
"In the bedroom," Charlene whispered. "Get in the closet-quick."
She heard a key insert into the door lock and start to jiggle. Randy dived toward the bedroom door. Charlene heard the lock turn, then spotted Randy's shirt lying on the carpet. She scooped it up and ran after him with it, shoving both him and the shirt into the closet simultaneously. Just as she pressed the door closed, Gene entered the apartment.
"Charlene? Honey?" he called.
She walked on rubbery legs to the living room.
"Hi," he said, giving her a strange little frown. "Where were you?"
"I-I was resting," she said lamely. "I didn't hear you knock."
Gene's arms were loaded with basketball equipment, as were Ron's, who stood beside him. "Just dump this stuff on the couch, Ron," Gene said, unloading his own bundle. "You don't mind if we keep this stuff here for a while, do you, honey?" he asked Charlene. "The bus will stop here tonight before the game and we can load it on then."
Charlene's face froze with sudden panic. "Is there a game tonight, Gene?" she asked. He nodded yes. "Do you have to go?"
Gene nudged Ron's arm and jerked his head in Charlene's direction as he rolled his eyes. "Listen to that. Do I have to go!" Then, seeing the hurt look on Charlene's face, Gene went to her and hugged her affectionately. "Of course I do, honey. I'm the team's coach. Without me, these knuckleheads wouldn't know how to dribble a basketball!" He laughed again and squeezed his wife close to him, but Charlene felt no warmth in his arms.
Cold chills were running up and down her back. Gene was saying he would be gone all night-or the major portion of it-and Randy was overhearing every word.
Gene let his arms drop from Charlene and turned to Ron. "Would you like some coffee, champ?" he asked. The boy nodded, and Gene asked Charlene if she'd mind making a pot for them. "We've got some important things to discuss, honey," lie explained. "It calls for levelheaded thinking, and all that."
She tried to smile, but the effort failed dismally. She trudged into the kitchenette enclosure of the apartment, and as she mixed some coffee for the two men, she could not help overhearing their conversation.
"So listen," Gene said, "you've made up your mind to enter the election, right?"
Ron fumbled for a moment. "I guess so," he said.
"Guess nothing. If you don't, you know Randy Howard will be the only guy in the house who could pull enough votes to be elected president. And I think you want him to be president of this fraternity about as much as I do."
As the two men laughed, Charlene felt her blood turn to ice water in her veins. She knew that Randy would be able to overhear the entire conversation, and although she had no idea what they were talking about, she could sense instinctively that there was going to be trouble as a result of it-big trouble-and for no one but herself.
"Randy's the kind of guy who's ruled fraternities for too long," Gene continued. "In this day and age we need guys like you, Ron. People who have a head on their shoulders and who know there's more to being elected president of something than seeing that your group throws the wildest parties or does the most drinking. If Randy gets into office, that's just what's going to happen to the Betas, and you know that the potential here is for far more than that."
"I know," Ron commented. "I'd like to see us do something meaningful here."
"So would I," Gene said. "To Randy, being president isn't going to mean more than having a nice status symbol on his record when he goes looking for a job next year. But for someone like yourself, who's interested in going into politics, the experience would be invaluable. You'd get a feeling of leadership and swaying a group for things that are going to be worthwhile."
Ron laughed heartily. "Okay, you've convinced me. I'll put my name in the hat first thing tomorrow."
"Good boy," Gene said, and Charlene could hear her husband clap the basketball star on the shoulders. "I'll do everything I can to help you win that election, too." After a brief pause, he called, "Hey, Charlene! How's that coffee coming, hon?"
With trembling hands, Charlene poured two cups and brought it in to them. She sat on the couch and watched them drink it, listening to Gene outline plans for Ron's campaign. Be quiet! her mind screamed, but she knew there was nothing she could say or do to interrupt their conversation without arousing Gene's suspicions. There was absolutely nothing to do but sit there and listen until they were finished.
When the two men left the apartment, Charlene waited for several minutes more, then went into the bedroom. Randy was already out of the closet and sitting on the edge of the bed. His brow was knit in a mean, angry scowl and when he looked up at Charlene his eyes flashed with hatred.
"Didn't know you were married to Big Brother, did you?" he spat contemptuously. He pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Dammit!" he cursed. "I had that election in the bag."
"Randy...? " Charlene started, but he cut her off sharply.
Getting to his feet, he stared at her for a long, hard moment, and then a slow smile crept over his face. "All right," he said softly, "two can play this game." He walked toward Charlene and seized her breast in the palm of his hand. "If your old man wants to help Ron, let him. It won't do him any good, though. Know why?"
Charlene knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she did, but she wouldn't dare admit it. "No," she said weakly, shaking her head back and forth.
Randy laughed openly and pinched her nipple through the blouse and bra. "Because you're going to help me!"
CHAPTER SIX
Charlene sat on the edge of the couch, watching a late movie on television. As far as she could tell, it had something to do with an overgrown pizza that a mad scientist had trained to conquer the world, but her interest was not with the show. She filed nervously at her fingernails, and kept watching the clock, but no matter how many times she looked, the minutes never seemed to be going any faster. It would still be hours before Gene was home from the basketball game, and Charlene knew that in that time anything could and might happen.
She tossed away the fingernail file, believing that if she kept with it long enough she might rub right down to her finger itself-and even beyond-before she realized what was happening. All of her mind was preoccupied with the way Randy had stormed out of the apartment that afternoon, and the final threat he'd made just before leaving. "What had he meant?" she wondered. You're going to help me. How?
Charlene had a suspicion or two as to what Randy might come up with, but the thought was too horrible for her to entertain for any length of time. She wiggled her bare feet deeper in under the cushion next to her on the couch and parted the fold in the top of her nightie. With trembling hands, she uncovered her breast and tilted it up so that she could examine the faint purple splotch at the tip, where Randy had squeezed it with his fingers. The sensitive flesh around the nipple ached, even under the tender stroking of her own fingers.
She cursed herself for ever having gone up onto the roof that afternoon-then, as her sense of frustration increased, she cursed Gene for having accepted the job at Hooper. In the back of her mind, however, she knew that none of it could be blamed on anyone but herself. If she hadn't been what she was before meeting Gene, there'd be nothing to fear from Randy Howard now. There would be no pictures-no threat to hang over her head.
Charlene felt a sour taste in her mouth as she thought about those snapshots. However Randy's friend had come into possession of them was beyond her. She knew that on occasion men brought cameras to the parties where she entertained, but she had never believed they were for anything other than taking pictures for personal mementos. Obviously someone had sold a few of those shots to a commercial pornographer, and knew where copies were now circulating. If Randy's friend, a boy in prep school, had them-who knew how many others did-how many other times she would be confronted with them, and forced to pay all sorts of blackmail in order to keep them from Gene.
Charlene knew full well that if Gene were ever to see some of those pictures, their marriage would be at a definite end. He'd never suspected what she did before they met, and the shock of discovery might even kill him.
The pictures were lewd-and very, very explicit. In those days Charlene had done everything and anything-with women as well as men-and most-likely the amateur camera bugs had captured it all for the camera's eye: the special contraptions she'd worn; the time she'd posed with a lit fat cigar and then a flashlight; the chains of flesh she'd been part of-where she and as many as a half-dozen men had linked their bodies together in every imaginable way. The close-ups of her lips, her womanhood, her buttocks receiving the male organ. All this, and more, would be part of the collection now in Randy's hands.
When the pictures were made, Charlene hadn't bothered about disguising herself with a wig or mask. She'd had nothing to lose, no reason to care, if anyone identified her. She had been on the long road down to depravity and had little hope for salvation. As long as the money was good, she was anyone's girl-game for anything.
But then she'd met Gene, and now there was so much at stake. Not just for herself, or even for them as a husband and wife, but for Gene, personally. Charlene knew that if Randy ever sent those pictures to the dean of Hooper College, Gene's career would be over for life. He would be blackballed from every college and university in the country-and it would all be her fault.
She squeezed roughly on her nipple, enjoying the feeling of pain it gave her. "I need to be punished," she muttered, digging in harder with her fingernails. "I need someone to chain me and whip me senseless-to make up for everything I've done."
And yet, Charlene also wondered, was that necessarily true? Isn't it possible for someone to change-to make up for what's happened in the past? she questioned. There was no forgiving what she'd done before she married Gene, but didn't that year of total fidelity to him-of walking the straight and narrow-amount to anything? Cotdd it all be washed away by something as innocent as taking off a bikini top to apply sun lotion?
She slammed her fist down into the couch. It just wasn't fair! Why did someone like Randy Howard have to be alive in the world? But even in her anger Charlene knew there was no explanation. No more than there was a sound answer as to why she had allowed him to make love to her that first time. Maybe that was why Randy was at Hooper. like the snake in the Garden of Eden, he tempted Charlene and she fell from grace. She sinned, and now she knew she would have to pay for what she'd done.
She flicked off the television, unable to stand its constant din in her ears any longer, and strode nervously about the living room. Her sheer nightie rustled against her legs as she moved, seeming to whisper strange, accusing words in her ears. Suddenly she stopped, hearing a tap at the door. She hesitated, then stood perfectly still, trying even not to breathe. She knew who was outside.
"Charlene?" Randy's voice came too loudly, too boldly. She knew that unless she answered him, he would have everyone in the fraternity alerted to the fact that he knew her well enough to knock on her door late at night and call her by her first name.
She moved quickly to it and pressed her cheek against the cold wood. "What do you want?" she whispered.
"Let me in."
"No. Go away," she snapped.
His loud pounding banged right next to Charlene's head and she jumped with fright. "Randy!" she pleaded. "Please--go away!"
But he would not stop.
Hesitantly, Charlene slipped the bolt on the door and drew it back. She felt him pushing against the other side as soon as the lock was open. His face bore the same wicked, smug grin she had learned to associate with his handsomeness.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he asked, pushing past her and striding toward the living room.
Before Charlene could protest, she realized Randy was not alone. Another boy stood in the doorway, looking bashfully at her semi-nakedness in the nightie.
"Come on in, Eric," Randy called, and motioned to the other boy to come into the apartment.
Charlene stood back dumbly against the wall as the second boy moved past her, then she shut the door and locked it tightly. "Randy," she started, as she joined the two boys in the living room, "just what's going...."
But he cut her short. "Charlene, this is Eric," he said briskly. "I think you know him; he's an exchange student from Sweden."
The boy extended his hand and Charlene took it hesitantly. She had seen him around the fraternity house before, but they'd never been introduced.
Eric was a year or two older than Randy and the other members of the fraternity, and a few inches taller. He had long, almost white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes. His skin was pale, but not because of any ill health. Eric had rippling muscles and a strong, sharply defined character to his handsome European face. When he spoke, his English was heavily accented, but his voice was strong and clear with a timbre that seemed to come from the very depths of him. His pressure on Charlene's hand was strong and warm.
"I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Anderson," Eric said with a bashful smile, his eyes again wandering to Charlene's breasts. The fabric of her nightie was so sheer that the full outline of her bosom could be seen through it-even to the dusky brown nipples and haloes surrounding them. She wore a pair of thin panties in under the nightie, and so although the two boys could see the soft flesh of her upper thighs and belly, Charlene's ultimate nakedness was covered.
"Randy," Charlene started again, wondering just what he had in mind. "Perhaps you and your friend could come back another time-when my husband is home." She turned to Eric with a pleading look in her eyes, and saw the blonde Swedish boy exchange a quick, puzzled look with Randy.
"Sit down, Eric," he said, motioning to the couch. "Charlene and I have a few things to discuss." He stood up from the couch and walked quickly to Charlene, grabbing her roughly by the arm and propelling her into the bedroom. He closed the door firmly behind them.
"What is the meaning of this?" Charlene demanded, her voice a harsh whisper.
Randy smiled. "Eric and I were discussing the differences between colleges in Europe and those in America. He said he was disappointed in Hooper-he hadn't expected it to be all male." The handsome boy shrugged. "So, I told him that Hooper wasn't as bad as it seemed. Well, one thing led to another, and ... here we are."
"Here you are?" Charlene sputtered. "Just what in hell is that supposed to mean? Where are you?"
Still smiling, Randy's grip tightened on her arm. "We're where the action is at Hooper-where Eric is going to be shown a good time by a fun-loving American hostess. Get it?"
Charlene's eyes widened. "You mean--?" She laughed abruptly and shook her head, trying to twist free of Randy's grip. "Oh, no. I'm sorry, buddy, but that's where you're wrong. If you think I'm going to entertain your friend out there just to settle a point in an argument, you're sadly mistaken."
Randy squeezed harder on the soft flesh of Charlene's arm. "That's not the only reason," he said in low, dry tones. "You remember what I said this afternoon about your helping me in this election?" Charlene shook her head dumbly yes. "Well Eric's vote may mean a lot to me. He's promised to vote my way it' I help him feel at home. I told him I'd fix it with you."
Charlene's mouth dropped open. "You what?" She couldn't believe this was happening. It just wasn't possible that this boy fully intended to do what he'd said. And yet, there was Eric, sitting outside and grinning bashfully as he eyed the merchandise. "You can just unfix it, Randy," Charlene protested. "I'm not going to have any part of something like that."
Randy shrugged and dropped his hand from her arm. "Okay, if that's the way you want it."
Charlene nodded her head confidently, unsure as to why her opponent had backed down so quickly. "That's how I want it."
Randy whistled to himself as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "Got an envelope, Charlene?" he said casually.
She saw him fishing in the billfold section until he'd lifted up the corners of several of the photographs. Then his head lifted and his eyes held hers. After a moment he winked and grinned meaningfully. "Shall I tell Eric it's okay to come in now?" he said.
Charlene swallowed a hard lump in her throat. "You slimy little...."
"Uh-uh!" Randy laughed. "Watch who you're calling names, honey. That's not my ... well, that's not me you've got hold of in this picture." He grinned broadly. "But that's quite definitely your cute little fanny." He slapped the wallet closed. "Shall I tell Eric it's okay to come in now?" he repeated.
For a long moment neither of them said a word, then Charlene turned and walked silently to the bed, slipping out of her nightie as she went.
"Show him a good time," Randy laughed as he opened the bedroom door. "I'll be right outside," he added, with the hint of a warning in his voice, "so you'd better not try anything cute."
Charlene glowered at him from the bed and rolled onto her side. She listened to the door close behind him, and from the living room she could hear the soft buzz of conversation between the two boys. She closed her eyes and wished she were dead.
A few minutes later, as she lay in the dark of the bedroom, Charlene heard the door open and a strip of harsh light from the living room shone momentarily on the sheet in under her. Then it slowly narrowed until, when the lock clicked shut, it was gone and once again the room was plunged into shadowy blackness. She tensed, listening to the sound of Eric's feet moving toward the bed.
He stopped about a foot away, and as Charlene breathed deeply she could hear the soft rustle of his clothes as he undressed. He had not as yet made a sound; it was almost as though Charlene didn't exist and the boy was simply preparing for bed in the privacy of his own room. She heard the sharp whistle of his fly opening, then the clomp of his shoes as he took them off and dropped them beside the bed. One more rustle of cloth and she knew he was naked. She tensed, feeling herself begin to tingle inside-even against her wishes. A man was going to go to bed with her-a boy from a foreign country, whose very words of love wotdd be in a different language from her own, and whose technique might be unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life.
Charlene felt the tips of her breasts begin to throb, and she drew her legs tighter together, suddenly aware of a hot flashing in her thighs.
"Mrs. Anderson?" the boy said softly.
Charlene rolled onto her back and stared up at him as he stood alongside the bed. A sharp hissing sound escaped her throat as she saw his nakedness.
Eric was one of the most gorgeous men she had ever seen in her life. Strong and tall as a Norse god, he towered above her-the flat hard muscles of his body tensed and taut, the glorious pride of his manhood rising stiff and straight out from a nest of golden, luxuriant curls. He smiled almost timidly at her and seemed to wait for her assent.
In that moment, seeing the beauty of this handsome blonde boy poised above her, Charlene knew that she wanted him. Not because of any threat Randy might make, but because the sight of his rigid readiness turned her insides to water. He was a man-all man-and she needed him, wanted him, had to have him. She reached out her hand to him and in a flash he had clasped her fingers tightly.
He moved the few steps remaining toward the bed and put one knee down on the mattress. Charlene moaned and wiggled over to make room for him. She closed her eyes as she felt the bed sag in under his weight, then cried out in bliss as his body came down on top of her.
His chest pressed heavily into her high-standing breasts and his lips sucked avidly at her mouth. Un-like Randy and Gene and the other men who'd made love to Charlene, this boy did not use his tongue when he kissed. He kept his mouth open, but when Charlene tried to wriggle her tongue inside he pushed it back out.
"No," he laughed low in his throat, "my way."
Charlene didn't know what it was he did, but she had never been kissed like that before. Eric seemed to apply suction from the depths of his being, his mouth pulling on Charlene's until she felt the air being drawn up out of her lungs and into Eric's. And then he returned the pressure, blowing hot air from himself down into her throat, sending it coursing through her mouth in hot waves of sensuality with his lips fused fast to hers all the while.
When he took his lips away, Charlene burst out with a loud groan of disappointment, feeling as though her very breathing itself had stopped.
Eric's mouth was now working on her throat, sucking down hard at the space between her breath cords. She felt the flesh swelling up and into his mouth, hurting with exquisite pleasure. Then his mouth moved lower, to the buds of her breasts.
Charlene shrieked and grasped her hands into the boy's hair as his avid lips went to work on her nipples-sucking them so strongly and so fiercely that she felt they would pop off and into his mouth if he didn't stop. She wiggled and squirmed on the bed in under him, driven crazy by the hot flickering of his tongue, the biting nips of his teeth, and always the constant wet hot pressure of his lips.
Suddenly he was off her and rolling onto his side. She felt his hands urging her up from the bed, attempting to roll her toward him. Her body moved clumsily against his and he laughed, hugging her around the neck with his strong arm and kissing her ear quickly. "Get down," he ordered softly, as he rolled flat on the mattress, his maleness stabbing up straight at the ceiling. For a moment Charlene believed she knew what he wanted, as she felt his hands urging her shoulders down toward his loins. But she had no sooner put her mouth to him than he cried out, happily moaning something in Swedish and pushing her further down so that her soft belly grazed over the prodding readiness of him.
"Lower," he urged. "A little more."
And then Charlene could feel him rubbing against herself, the hot hard skin of him like a stiff abrasive against the glistening smooth center of her need. She whimpered and moved her thighs around him.
"Sit up," she heard him command from the bed, and she got onto her haunches, her knees straddling his body. She saw then what lie wanted-the position he desired.
She reached down between her legs and seized him tenderly in her hand, pausing for a moment to admire once again his beauty. It seemed different to her, somehow, and as she moved her hand against him she saw the skin of him glide high up and down-realizing, then, that Eric had not been tampered with in his natural male beauty by doctors, as had Gene and the other men she'd known. Somehow Charlene found Eric's beauty so much more appealing than the others.
Hearing him moan with anxiety, she ceased her examinations and raised herself up on her knees, leaning slightly forward on her haunches as she brought him back and into position in under her. Then, gritting her teeth for the sharp stab of pleasure she knew would be hers, she settled herself down on him.
The first jolt made her feel as though she would be rent in two. Eric was quite a man to begin with, and in this position Charlene was getting every inch of him. Slowly, relishing the feeling as he moved deeper into herself, Charlene settled her body steadily downward until at last she felt her buttocks wiggle against the soft fleece at the base of Eric's belly.
She gasped openly, feeling him captured to the hilt, then clamped shut her thighs to increase the pressure all the more. She felt him reach up with his torso until he'd wrapped Ins arms around her breasts, then she settled back on him, lying flat on his chest with his strong fingers stroking and playing with her nipples.
They lay motionless together for a long moment, each savoring the feel of the other's body. Then Charlene felt him urge gently upward with his hips, and she responded by lifting herself from him and clamping her thighs open and shut. He gasped loudly and drove up hard and fast, replacing himself where she had let him so slowly and deliciously slide partially out.
This was heaven for her now. She thought of nothing else but the feel of this boy within her, his body driving up in under her, the possession she had of him. Her loins were on fire from him, and as she rocked and twisted against him she felt the sharp stabs of pleasure rocketing all up and down her body. His hands pressed in hard on her breasts, teasing and pinching at her nipples and stroking the soft mounds of flesh as they thrust up and down together on the mattress, each of them grunting in pleasure as they reached one new pinnacle after another and passed it to move on to a higher, a greater one.
Eric was murmuring indistinguishable words in her ear, biting fiercely at the skin of her neck as he bucked and reared in under her like a wild stallion fighting the saddle. Charlene clung to him for all her life, not wanting to miss one of his deep lunges, and responding to each of them with a grinding, twisting, clamping movement of her own. She reached her hand down between her legs until she could touch him with her finger-feel him as he plunged in, then trace partially along the length of him with her fingertip as he pulled out. She wiggled her fingers down lower and cupped his weighty plums in her hand, jiggling them lovingly back and forth as he rose and thrust, rose and thrust, rose and thrust.
Charlene writhed her head against his, screaming and crying out his name. Every part of her was burning out of control with intense desire and fulfillment. She could feel the hot flames of release tickling against her inner thighs, begging to be free, and suddenly she could stand this steady, gradual pace no longer.
Throwing off his arms from around her breasts, she sat up on his lap and slid back her knees so that their fusion was at a sharp but direct angle. Then, knowing that there would be nothing to impede his thrusts into the very core of her, Charlene reared forward, then jammed back hard with her hips, pulling him deep into her right to the hilt. They cried out together at the violence of this new, deeper penetration, but barely had Charlene's first cry left her lips than it was replaced by a second, louder one as once again she lifted herself up and came down hard on him, impaling herself on the rigid pole of his love.
Up and down, again and again, clamping the muscles in her thighs open and shut and feeling the squeezing pressure wrap around him with sweet agony as he moved within her, Charlene rocked and writhed on the bed like an animal gone mad with lust. She reached down and clasped onto his kneecaps for support, gripping hard into them with her fingernails as she drove down again and again, bringing the fire of her release so much closer with each piercing thrust.
And then she heard him cry out sharply in Swedish and thrust his hips inches up from the mattress. The force of his jab burst open Charlene's mouth and she wailed incoherently, then felt the release deeper within her burst open and seep down like hot lava to spread over Eric and increase the fury of his own throbbing twitches of release.
They cried and rocked together for what seemed like an eternity, and then subsided together. Charlene lay back against Eric's chest, feeling the sweat of him glide against her shoulder blades. He wrapped his arms around her breasts and kissed the base of her neck. He was moaning something, but the words meant nothing to Charlene. She was in another world and didn't want to leave it for a long, long time to come.
CHAPTER SEVEN
An eternity later, Charlene felt Eric's strong hands squeezing on her shoulders, gently urging her up off his chest. She rolled lazily, crying out with a sharp little whimper as she felt him slip completely out of her, then curled next to him on the mattress. Her hand reached out and stroked the sleek, damp skin of his chest and stomach, then her fingers worked their way down to his lap and curled around him, squeezing him affectionately.
"You like?" he murmured.
Charlene's lips pressed hotly against his shoulder, nipping playfully with her teeth. "I like," she answered, emphasizing the point with a tighter squeeze of her fingers. Even as she said the words, Charlene realized that she did like what had happened. She'd enjoyed it immensely-this strange, but thrilling, encounter with the handsome Swede. Throughout their wild love session she'd not once given a thought to Gene, or what this second infidelity might mean to their marriage. She had simply lived for the experience, relishing every inch of it as it happened.
"I am glad," Eric whispered, squeezing his arm around her. "You are very good in bed-just as Randy told me."
Suddenly, hearing those words whispered close to her ear, Charlene felt a cold chill run through her. What, exactly, had Randy told him? What was this boy thinking of her now? For that delicious half-hour they'd been together, Charlene had almost forgotten how this encounter had been arranged, and for what purpose. Recalling it now, she suddenly felt dirty and embarrassed by her nakedness.
She rolled out of Eric's arms and sat on the edge of the bed. Her head felt dizzy, and in her chest was a wild hammering of her heart-almost as though she'd just run up several flights of stairs.
"When can I see you more?" Eric whispered, stretching out his arm to touch Charlene's back.
The feel of his warm fingers on her skin made her jump, and she stood up from the bed. "I don't think you can, Eric," she said firmly. She walked around the bed to retrieve her nightie, and heard the Swedish boy rolling on the sheets to face her.
"But why?" he asked.
Charlene stared down into his searching blue eyes, at the quizzical expression on his beautiful face. How could she explain it to him-when she didn't understand it herself?
"Isn't that the deal you've got with Randy?" she asked, more tersely than she'd planned. "One roll in the hay for one vote?"
Eric blushed and looked down sheepishly. "Is that how you feel about what we did?" he asked softly.
Charlene slipped her nightie over her head, feeling on the point of tears for some unexplainable reason. "Eric," she said patiently, "I don't know why we did what we did. I just know it can't happen again. It mustn't."
He scrambled up to a sitting position on the bed and held out his hand to her. "Come here," he said gently. Charlene walked hesitantly the few paces between them. Eric wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face against her stomach, kissing her soft skin through the thin veil of the nightie. Then he looked up at her. "You are beautiful," he moaned. "You are made for love. You must not deny it to yourself."
"Eric," she said, stroking her fingers through his hair, "I'm a married woman."
"You were a married woman when we made love," he said softly. "Why do you remember it now-when it is finished for us?"
"I don't know," she said, tearing herself away from him. "I don't know."
The boy stood up from the bed and began to slip back into his clothes. "I would like to make love for you again," he said, as he pulled up his fly and tucked in the tails of his slwrt.
"So would I," Charlene said, before she had a chance to stop the words. Eric stared expectantly at her for a long second, then Charlene shook her head back and forth, tightly clenching her eyes. "But we can't, Eric. We can't again."
She heard him laugh sharply, dryly, then felt his hand squeezing on her arm. "American women," he said tenderly. "I will never understand you."
Then kissing her softly on the cheek, he walked quickly out of the bedroom and shut the door behind him. Charlene slumped down on the mattress, listening to the sound of muffled conversation between Eric and Randy. After a few minutes, the front door closed. She got up from the bed, feeling her legs weak in under her, and went to the living room. She jumped in surprise as she saw Randy sitting on the couch.
"What are you still doing here?" she snapped, angry that he'd not gone with Eric.
"I wanted to congratulate you," he smirked. "You really must have put that horny Swede through his paces. I never saw anybody look that good after a romp!" He stood up and swaggered toward Charlene. "How about if you show me what you did for him, huh, baby?"
Charlene cringed as she felt Randy's hand touch her breast and pulled away from him. "Get out," she said, her voice filled with the contempt she felt for him.
Randy stepped back and widened his eyes in mock surprise. "Hmmm," he grinned, "looks like Eric knows his stuff, too, if he was able to cool off your hot pants!"
Charlene struck out at him, but before her hand reached his cheek, Randy had grabbed her wrist and twisted it back, hard. She screamed as he applied rough pressure.
"What did I tell you about that?" he hissed. "This is your second and last warning. Try something like that again and you'll have a black-and-blue scar to explain to your old man." He jerked sharply on her arm and Charlene dropped to her knees on the carpet, cringing in pain. Randy tugged once more, then released her.
"I didn't know you were going to get so worked up about all this," he snapped. "You'd better get over it, quick. I don't intend to go through a scene like this all the time."
Charlene's eyes widened with fear. "Randy," she said, reaching out for him, "you won't make me do it again?"
He laughed sharply and brushed her hand away from his leg, then struck a match to his cigarette and blew a jet of smoke down at her. "What do you think?" he said flatly. "Big Brother's going to be waging a hot campaign for that cruel Ron Sarcota. I've got to make sure my campaign gives the guys something they want right now-before the election."
Charlene's head was spinning dizzily and she felt for a moment that she might fall Hat on her face. "How many others?" she asked weakly.
Randy shrugged casually. "This is a big fraternity-there's maybe fifty guys living here...."
"Fifty?" Charlene gasped, her eyes wide with horror.
The boy laughed and patted her on the head. "Don't worry, honey," he said assuringly, "you won't have to romp for all of them. Some of them have already pledged their support to me, some of them I couldn't win over no matter what I offered-and others, well, like I said the other day, they've got little things going among themselves and just wouldn't be interested in your seductive charms." He paused for a moment to reflect elaborately.
"All in all, I'd say that leaves about twenty guys who're in doubt for the election," he concluded.
Charlene closed her eyes and gripped her fists tightly together. The thought of having twenty boys from the fraternity know her as intimately as Eric had just known her was appalling-and at the same time, she realized with even greater horror, it excited her just to think about it. Who knew what things they would want her to do for them-what old cravings they would stir up inside her once again ... cravings that she'd tried so desperately to hide since her marriage to Gene.
"Randy," she pleaded, "no ... please ... don't make me do this anymore."
He stared hard into her eyes. "Then get your old man to make Ron withdraw from the election."
"I can't!" Charlene wailed, clutching out for the boy's leg once again. "He won't listen to me!"
Randy shook his head in mock sympathy. "That's too bad," he said. "Because I want to be president of this fraternity. I want it more than I want anything else-and I'm going to get it, too." He patted Charlene's head once again, then shook his leg free of her. "I'll see you tomorrow night," he said flatly, and started toward the door.
Charlene scrambled to her feet, crying out to him to stop, but before she could get to the front door Randy was already going down the hall toward his room, whistling happily.
When Charlene woke up the next morning, she had a sour taste in her mouth and a dull ache in her head. She dressed and wandered aimlessly about the apartment, picking up objects and putting them back down again in nervous agitation. She had to do something to stop Randy-but what? She had tossed and turned in bed half the night trying to think of some way out of the trap she'd fallen into, but she had no more ideas now than she had then.
She was trapped. Randy could fully have his way with her-do anything, make her do anything, because always when site balked there was the threat of the pictures he possessed. Charlene slapped hard at her thighs, furious with herself for all the mistakes she'd made in her life. Maybe the best thing wotdd be for her to go to Gene and make a clean confession, tell him exactly what was happening and beg him to help her somehow. Maybe he could threaten Randy-perhaps even beat him physically, if necessary-to make him surrender the pictures and stop Ids vicious threats.
Involuntarily, Charlene laughed to herself. "Yeah," she said aloud, "I can see it now." The image of how Gene would react to what she'd have to say seemed grotesquely funny at the moment. He would probably have a heart attack, and with his dying strength he would choke the life out of her. There was just no basis for hope that Gene could understand how and why she'd fallen into such a pit. "Who could?" Charlene thought bitterly. She wasn't even sure she did herself.
No, telling Gene would never work. She had to protect him from the truth-at all costs. If she didn't, her marriage would be a total ruin, and she'd be right back where she started before she met him. And, she realized more strongly than ever, right now she wanted her marriage to last, more than she'd ever wanted anything else in life. She'd been a fool to let Randy make love to her-to have thrown away that wonderful year of happiness and respectability with Gene for the satisfaction of a moment.
And where had even that got her? Her sexual demands were increasing daily. Now that she'd tasted the joys of sex with Randy and Eric, she craved more-had to have more. The encounters with the two boys had been like that first drink a confirmed alcoholic takes after being on the wagon for a long time-there had to be more.
In addition, she realized that by allowing the two boys to make love to her, she'd sunk deeper into Randy's trap. Perhaps-just perhaps-Gene might understand about Charlene's past ... if she carefully and patiently explained to him all the circumstances that led up to her doing what she did. But how could she defend herself from the charge that she had willfully and purposefully been wanton with two college boys-in the very bed she shared with her husband? And worse, that with the exception of the possible recriminations that might come as a result of having slept with Randy and Eric, Charlene felt no regrets-she enjoyed what she'd done while it was happening, had thrown herself completely into it.
She stopped pacing, trying to get a grip on herself.
Ron. That was the only way out; the only way she could end this nightmare while it was still possible to wake up. If she could only get Ron to agree to drop out of the election, she might stand a chance of keeping Randy in line.
She had to try-do anything necessary-before it was too late.
CHAPTER EIGHT
An hour or so later, Charlene stood at the door to the gymnasium, intently watching the .Hooper basketball team practice. She was fascinated by the sight of their lean young bodies moving so surely, so gracefully, about the court-their hard muscles straining as they went up for the ball or tensed for a set shot. She felt a stirring inside herself as she picked out various members of the team and studied them. The silk shorts the boys wore whistled as their legs rubbed together, and every now and again one of them would pause and make a quick, squeezing motion between his legs-unconsciously adjusting himself inside the uniform. Each time this happened, Charlene would feel a sharp little stab at her heart, and hard as she tried not to, she found herself watching the boy as he moved among the other players to see if he would repeat the gesture.
She had never before seen so many semi-nude males grouped together like this, and the sight was intoxicating. The boys were of all ages between seventeen and twenty-one, with as many variations in build. The older ones dribbled the basketball with a brawny, cock-sure grace-their bodies tall and strong and heavily muscled. The younger boys were like bandy roosters-almost men, but with decidedly boyish clumsiness that Charlene did not find at all unattractive.
She stood transfixed at the doorway, breathing in the heavy smell of masculine perspiration, watching the lithe young bodies prancing around the basketball court, and feeling her heart steadily beating faster. Suddenly she jumped, as a heavy hand came down on her shoulder. She wheeled about, and looked up into the dark blue eyes of a rangy basketball player, a shock of long, blonde hair brushing down almost to his eyes.
"Hi, baby," he grinned, leaning out with his arm to support himself against the door as he bent closer to Charlene. "Looking for anything special or just window shopping?"
Charlene felt a slow rush of red rise to her cheeks. She was positive the boy had seen the way she was watching the team work out, and even now could tell in her eyes that she was upset by the skimpiness of his uniform and the hard muscles of his body which seemed to leap out at her everywhere she looked.
"I-I'm looking for Ron Sarcota," she stammered, and was about to add that she was Gene Anderson's wife, when she stopped herself. It would be best if as few people as possible knew about her visit to Ron this afternoon, she reminded herself. If things worked out right, even Gene wouldn't suspect she'd been to the gym. His afternoon class wouldn't let out for another half hour, at least. Plenty of time for her to....
"Sarcota?" the blonde-haired boy laughed easily. "What do you want him for, baby?" He leaned casually against the gymnasium door, closing it slowly so they stood alone in the deserted corridor.
"Come on," the boy smiled, grazing his hand down to Charlene's shoulder. "You don't want to fool around with a wet blanket like Ron, do you? He's all show-no action." He grinned and showed a double row of dazzling-white teeth. Charlene could feel her heart hammering as this handsome, confident boy's hand became bolder, gradually moving down from her shoulder until he'd begun the slow journey toward the rise of her breasts-which were now trembling with a mixture of excitement and fear.
"Take me now," the boy smiled. "Maybe I'm not the star of the team, like Sarcota, but I've given some pretty good showings of myself."
Charlene held her breath, feeling the boy's fingers move almost to the base of her breast. Let him! a part of her mind whispered. Who's to know? He doesn't even know who you are-nobody would ever be the wiser.
Feeling the basketball player's warm fingers on her chest, Charlene had the sudden picture in her mind of what it would be like if she did let the boy continue-of going someplace with him ... under a stairwell, in a doorway, in a deserted training room ... and letting him possess her. She could feel his hard young body coming down on her, pinning her to the floor, and almost sense his weight on her chest.
Who would know?
"No!" Charlene suddenly cried out, and the startled boy jumped back in surprise, his eyes wide with astonishment. Charlene tried to get a grip on herself. "Where can I find Ron?" she asked meekly, not daring to look into the boy's eyes. "I have to find him, please. It's ... important."
"Sure, baby," the boy said slowly, giving her a strange, guarded look. "Sure. Anything you say." He shrugged and pointed down the corridor. "I think he's still in the locker room, waiting for the coach to get here. The team doesn't start practice until four."
"Would you mind calling him for me?" Charlene said.
The boy shrugged again. "Why not?" he flipped, then ambled down the corridor toward the locker room.
Charlene followed close behind him, then waited outside the door while he went inside. "I've got to get hold of myself," she murmured. Only through a great effort of will had she been able to keep from succumbing to the blonde boy's advances. Another thirty seconds and she would have been in the boy's arms-his willing slave-ready to do anything he demanded of her.
That was the whole problem, she realized. This business with Randy had awakened too many old yearnings inside her; she was no longer able to control her own drives and desires. It was getting to be just like it was in the old days, when she was a slave to her own flesh, willing to take on any man who touched her in the right way. like a firecracker, set to go off from the slightest touch of a flare.
It had to stop ... and soon. What she was prepared to do with Ron, if necessary, wasn't much better, Charlene realized, but it would be for a purpose. It would be the last time-the way to hold onto whatever little bit of her marriage was still intact. If it would give Randy what he wanted, and set her free of his domination, it would be worth it.
Charlene ran her hands quickly down the front of her blouse and skirt, nervously smoothing the unwrinkled cloth and adjusting it to her body. She took a deep breath and stood back as the door opened and the blonde boy stepped outside. Right behind him was Ron.
The other boy nodded silently, stared at Charlene for a long moment, then shrugged to himself and went whistling up the steps toward the gymnasium. Ron stared at her quizzically, a faint smile on his lips.
"Hello, Ron," she said softly. "Could we talk for a few minutes?"
He shrugged. "Sure. What about?"
"Not here," Charlene said; "Isn't there someplace ... private? Where we won't be interrupted?"
Ron's mouth turned up at the corner, as though he were trying to figure out what this was all about, then he nodded toward a door to their left. "The supply room's over there. I guess we could talk inside for a few minutes."
"Good." Charlene stood back to let Ron lead the way.
He moved slowly toward the door and opened it, then stood back to let Charlene pass through. The room was dark and slightly damp from the basement walls. It was stacked on all sides with boxes and bags filled with athletic equipment and uniforms for various sports. Overhead the steady thump of the basketball on the gymnasium floor tapped out a rhythm as fast as the beating of Charlene's heart.
She heard Ron click the door shut, and turned slowly to face him. It was not hard, seeing him leaning casually against the closed door, for Charlene to understand why Ron created such a stir whenever he appeared on a basketball court. He was a giant of a young man, with the handsomeness of a piece of classic sculpture. Staring at the clean-cut lines of his face, Charlene was once again reminded of a Boy Scout recruiting poster, and yet-seeing him there in the strange half-light of the supply room, Charlene also realized that in Ron's face and body was the throbbing sexuality of a grown man.
She stared long and hard at him, from the mop of curly brown hair to the knotted muscles of his upper arms and shoulders. His stomach was flat and hard, tapering into hips that were almost slender, then flaring out into meaty thighs and long, hairy legs that looked as though they could bound a yard's distance as effortlessly as anyone else took a step.
His blue and white silk basketball trunks clung tightly to Ins hips and poked out provocatively in a heavy bulge at the front. He grinned, a bit nervously Charlene thought, and motioned toward a chair further back in the room. "Want to sit down?" he asked.
Charlene nodded that she didn't, and moved closer to Ron. She saw his body tense immediately, as though he had been suspicious of her from the start and her sudden movement had confirmed everything he'd been thinking. The trouble was, Charlene didn't know whether Ron was pleased or displeased. She decided to proceed cautiously, until she'd sounded him out. Maybe it wouldn't be necessary to go quite as far as she was prepared to go.
"Ron," she said softly, looking up into his dark brown eyes with a look of pleading, "I wanted to talk to you about this ... election." She saw the basketball star's eyebrows arch questioningly, but didn't give him a chance to interrupt. She plunged right in with the first part of her speech-which she'd so carefully rehearsed most of the afternoon.
"You see, Ron, my husband is a very ambitious guy, as I'm sure you've noticed. He's trying his best to get the right impression of himself in the minds of the administration, and he's taking on as many things as he possibly can-so they'll be sure to notice what a fine job he's doing." She twisted her hands together, nervously rubbing them back and forth. "But, you see, I'm afraid that he's just taking on too much right now. It's beginning to affect his health-our life together. Do you know what I mean?"
Ron shrugged nervously. "I guess so. But I don't see what this...."
"Has to do with you?" Charlene finished. She took a step closer to the boy. "I'm afraid it has everything to do with you, Ron," she said. "If Gene takes on the job of handling an election campaign for you, in addition to all his other work, I'm afraid of the consequences." She stared at him in silence for a long moment, letting the words sink in deeply. Then, continuing to hold his eyes with Iters, she said ilatly, "That's why I want to ask you to withdraw from the election-now-before it's too late."
Ron closed his eyes and shook his head quickly from side to side, as though he were trying to wake up from some strange dream he'd suddenly found himself having. "I don't get this," he mumbled.
Charlene took another step toward him, so that now only a matter of inches stood between the points of her breasts and the boy's chest. "I'm begging you to drop out of the election," she said, her voice tight with emotion. "You don't realize all the things that might happen if you don't, Ron. It's impossible for me to tell you, but I know that...."
"Mrs. Anderson," he cut in, shaking his head again, "I'm sorry, but I just can't. Not now. Gene's counting on me to stand up against Randy Howard. He'd be awfully disappointed if I backed down now."
Charlene grit her teeth and reached out quickly for the boy, grasping him by both shoulders with her hands and shaking him. "Don't you understand?" she said, her voice just on the edge of hysteria. "Terrible things are going to happen if you don't! To Gene, to me, to everybody. Ron, you must drop out!"
He shook his head slowly, his eyes staring at her quite strangely now. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I gave Gene my word that...."
"Oh!" Charlene hissed angrily, stamping her foot. "If you told him you'd jump into a vat of hot tar just because he asked you to. does that mean you have to do it? Gene's no god, you know. He won't strike you dead with his wrath if you change your mind about something."
Ron continued shaking his head, as though he didn't hear a word she was saying. Charlene pressed her body up tight against him.
"Ron," she murmured, "this is for Gene's own good. Don't you see that? I love him too much to let him get mixed up in this thing. I'm ready to do anything to see that he stays out of it." She dug her breasts hard into Ron's chest and stared up boldly into his face, her lips only inches away from his. "Do you understand, now?" she whispered. "I'll do anything-if you'll back out of this election."
The basketball star began to shake his head again, but Charlene stopped him. She flung her arms up and around his neck and pressed her mouth tight against his. She felt him resist, struggling to break her hold on him, but she pushed at his tightly-closed lips with the sharp point of her tongue-stabbing and biking across his mouth to find the slightest hole which she could wriggle through.
"Ron,..." she murmured, low in her throat, and began to rotate her hips up against his semi-nude body, feeling her skirt whistle against the silk basketball trunks. Still clasping hard on his neck, she wiggled her fingers up into his hair and tightened them in the thick curls, pulling his head even closer to her. Her lips worked on his with rough suction, smacking and grinding against him as she tried to work him up to the point of response. As she shifted her thighs against him, she could feel the first stirrings of arousal inside his basketball shorts, and tightened her grip in his hair.
Suddenly, so quickly that Charlene was completely unprepared for it, a heavy croaking sound burst from the boy's throat, and he Hung his arms tight around Charlene's back, pulling her to him with such force that she felt the breath squeezed out of her lungs. His mouth was open as lie mashed his lips back down on hers, and instantly she could feel his heavy tongue prodding into her mouth-ramming at her own wet, pink tongue and chasing it inside her mouth. His hands ran up and down the length of her back, squeezing and pressing at the soft llesh as he continued to chaw her closer.
She felt his knee stabbing at the web of her skirt, trying to separate her legs as he rubbed up and down against her. She dropped her hands from his hair and raced them quickly down his back, feeling the dampness of him already seeping through the sleeveless undershirt he wore above the trunks. She clawed her fingernails in at his skin, digging them in to emphasize her need and respond to his own, which she felt growing steadily heavier against her stomach as their bodies rubbed next to each other.
Charlene's fingers reached the waistband of his basketball trunks and spread out, then pressed inward against the top of his buttocks. She heard him moan as she pulled out on the elastic waistband and slid her fingers inside. She was startled to feel bare flesh against her hand, and as she dived down deeper toward his buttocks, she thought for a moment that he was completely nude. Then she felt two thin straps running over the hard cheeks of his behind. She trailed her fingers down to the cleft of his buttocks, grasping at the heavy strands of fleece that covered both sides and pulling lightly on it before she ran her fingers back up to his hips.
She felt him jump against her as her cool hands began wiggling around his sides, then he pulled his mouth away from her-a sharp gasp breaking from his throat. "God," he moaned. "We shouldn't do this ... we shouldn't."
Charlene slid her hands slowly out of his basketball trunks and squeezed at the flesh of his stomach. "Lock the door," she whispered.
The boy's face was almost white with fear, but he turned and slipped the bolt in the lock. When he turned back to Charlene, she could see his hand trembling, his lip twitching nervously. The front of his trunks stuck far out from his body, seeming at the point of rupturing from the strength that was throbbing inside.
Charlene spotted a wrestling mat on the floor of the supply room and went to it cpiickly, dropping to her knees and holding out her hand to Ron. "Come here," she growled, low in her throat. The boy walked weakly toward her, and as he did, Charlene knew without a doubt that she had to possess him-if she had to rape him to do it, and even if he made no promise to drop out of the election, she hud to have him!
Ron dropped to his knees on the mat, covering the front of himself with his hands, as though he were ashamed to have Charlene see how much she had excited him. She brushed away his fingers.
"Don't," she whispered. "Don't hide it. I like to see that I please you." She stretched out her hand and touched the still uprising of silk and felt him throb against her fingers as she closed about him. The boy moaned and tried to pull away, but Charlene held him fast. It was unbelievable! She ran her fingers up and down the front of his trunks, unable to imagine that all she held could really be him alone.
"Take them off," she ordered. The boy closed his eyes, but when Charlene reached for the front of the trunks-ready to tug them down-he brushed her hand away and stood up. Hesitantly, not looking at her, he wiggled his legs out of the silk uniform. Charlene gasped.
Her hands Hew to her blouse and she nearly ripped the buttons open. Wiggling back on the mat, she slipped the sleeves down over her arms and thrust out her naked chest to the boy. Her nipples felt as swollen as they looked. She could see the tips of her breasts quivering-actually shaking as the nipples filled with the rush of excited blood and throbbed in and out-begging to be touched and caressed and kissed and possessed fully.
She lifted her fingers up to the undersides of both breasts and arched them high up to the basketball star, offering them like succulent fruit for his lips to sample and bite into to taste the juicy sweetness. Slowly she squeezed in against herself, feeling her nipples harden even more-so that for a moment she feared they might burst from the pressure within and shoot across the room.
"Touch me, Ron," she begged.
The boy stared down at her, then fell with a heavy gasp beside her and-clasping both arms around her back-pulled her breasts toward his mouth.
Charlene screamed with anguish as she felt his teeth come down too quickly, too roughly, too passionately, and sink into her skin. For a moment the end of her breast throbbed with pain, but as he kissed softly with his lips and stroked her with his tongue-trying to soothe away the hurt-she felt it disappear with the warmth of ecstasy replacing it. She arched her spine far back and jabbed at Ron's mouth with her breast-offering him as much as he could stuff between his lips. The boy sucked avidly, his mouth making great smacking noises as he fed on her flesh. His tongue was darting crazily around the soft mound of skin-stroking first from the underside, as the nipple stabbed up into the roof of his mouth, then drawing out and down along the side and racing in wild circles around the halo and stiffened bud inside its aroused center.
Charlene dug her hands into his hair, pressing his face down farther on her, until she could stand his teasing no longer. She pulled hhn away and lowered herself to the mat. "Take me, Ron," she begged. "Please ... don't wait another minute. Take me now!"
He growled and pulled away from her, jerking off his undershirt, then rising to ptdl down the support from his hips, Charlene moaned and rocked desperately as she saw him spring out at her.
She had always heard that basketball players-particularly young ones-were built like mules, but she'd never had first-hand experience until now. Staring up at Ron's towering length, at his formidable width-the size of a baby's arm-she felt a shiver run through her. Could she take it all?
But there was no time for asking questions; they'd gone too far already.
Ron hoisted her bottom from the mat as he worked his hands at the top of her skirt, unfastening it and sliding it down her body as quickly as he could. Charlene squirmed and wiggled to help him, crying out at each brush of his white-hot fingers against her skin. She felt him pull the skirt off her ankles, then slide his fingers up slowly inside her legs until both hands met at the juncture of her thighs. She could feel the dampness of her panties against his prodding fingers, and bucked her hips to urge him to hurry-hurry before it happened then and there. She hadn't felt so excited in years-if ever-and the thought of the formidable power yet to come set her whole insides twitching with expectation-and trembling fear.
She felt Ron's hands work up to the tops of her panties and grasp them securely. Then, urging her to lift up her fanny once again, he slid them down-slowly, tantalizingly, kissing at each spot of exposed skin as he uncovered her. Charlene was howling now, crying out for him to hurry, and yet finding the wet kisses from his mouth too wonderful to give up. The panties came down around her lower thighs, and she felt his lips brush against the soft golden fleece of herself. He and she both moaned at the same time, then-while one hand shoved quickly at the thin panties and the other wiggled between her legs to spread her wide-she felt his lips come down on her.
It was like a jolt of electricity racing through her. His tongue was eager, anxious, exploring-and ever so thick and wet as it plunged into her. She screamed, grasping onto his hair as she felt him devouring the beauty of her womanhood, probing so far he was driving her out of her mind.
She squealed again, feeling the hot rush of release so close to the explosion point that she knew if he continued a moment longer it would be all over for her. She grabbed him roughly by the ears and tugged him away. He didn't want to let go, and she had to pry him from her. "Ron!" she begged. "I want you now-I can't stand it anymore!"
And then the boy was hovering over her, gasping and trembling as he supported himself on one elbow and arched up his buttocks to put himself in place. Charlene felt the heated tip rub against her wet desire and howled, knowing now it would be the moment of truth.
As Ron lowered himself, Charlene bit down on her lip to keep from screaming. The pain was terrific at first, as the beginning of him prodded roughly inside. For one horrible moment Charlene felt as though she could not take it-she would have to stop him and finish him some other way before he ruptured her for life. But as he sunk gradually deeper and deeper, the pain decreased and she felt her body beginning to tingle with the deep, powerful acceptance of him. Lower and lower his body came down on her, and still he was not all the way there. Charlene gasped again and again as he plunged onward and upward. Never-never in her life-had she known anything like this.
Ron was unbelievable!
She heard him grunt, then felt his entire weight collapse on her-at the same time he plunged all the way home. Charlene felt as though she'd just rammed with an electric cattle prod. She screamed and tried to lift her legs up from the floor to wrap them around his buttocks, but it was impossible. She could not lift her thighs-could not even buck them up and down. He had truly nailed her to the floor. His need had gone so deep that he had pinned her motionless in under him.
"God!" he whispered against her ear. "God ... I didn't think you could take it. No other girl could."
"Honey!" Charlene gasped, laughing nervously and hugging him. "I didn't think I could take it either!"
Then, as their lips met in another furious kiss, she felt him lift up with his buttocks and it seemed-as he began to slide out-as though he were taking all of her insides with him. She moaned and squirmed against him, but could do no more than sway her hips from side to side against him. The power was entirely his; there was nothing Charlene could do but lay there and feel him jabbing and withdrawing, ramming and plunging deep and deep, and setting her on fire all along the way.
She cried out his name against his ear and wiggled her now-sore breasts into his chest as she felt him ramming down again and again. His body completely covered hers; his skin pressed hotly against hers at every point.
Again and again and again and again he pounded, driving and nailing into her as she screamed and howled and felt the end drawing nearer. And then, suddenly, she saw his face tense, and knew what was going to happen.
"Ron!" she cried, and pushed him up and away from her, holding him in suspension above herself for several inches, until she could lift her hips from the mat. Then, as he hovered over her-only half of him still filling her, but that half more than most other men she'd ever known-Charlene began a frantic up-and-down clamping motion of her own, arching and bucking to move against him-hearing him moan and sigh as she increased her own friction and pleasure and drew closer and closer to the end.
It was coming-almost there-and she jammed and arched and slid over him, impaling herself on him gladly. Then, knowing that the end was only seconds away, she flung her arms around his back and pulled him all the way back down to her.
As he slid all the way home, she could feel him throbbing and just as their bellies ground together, she heard him grunt heavily and felt the white-hot heat of him shoot far into her. At that same moment, her senses reawakened by the total possession of him once again, she felt herself burst and pour out her sweet hot love to mix with his and ooze around and over them both.
They lay motionless against each other for a long moment, Ron panting heavily against her neck. Then he started to pull away, and Charlene had to grit her teeth once again-feeling the total withdrawal as painful as the entry had been. When he was up and away from her she felt as though half of herself had been pulled out, too. Ron slumped down against her, kissing at her breasts in gratitude, and as Charlene stroked the back of his head, she whispered, "It's all over. It's all over!"
CHAPTER NINE
Gradually their bodies eased apart, and as Ron stood up and began to slip back into his athletic support, Charlene smiled at him. Even in a state of rest his physical beauty was enough to make her heart beat rapidly.
"Thank you, Ron," she whispered. The boy averted her eyes. "You don't know how much this means to Gene and me." Again Ron turned away from her, and something in the way he hung his head sent a sudden chill down Charlene's back. She scrambled to her feet and touched his arm. "Ron?" she said. "You are going to drop out of the election, aren't you?"
The muscular basketball star said nothing. It was all plainly stated on his face.
"Ron!" Charlene snapped. "You...."
"I'm sorry," he said dryly, shaking his head from side to side. "I told you we shouldn't have done what we just did. You see, I just can't let Gene down. He's counting on me."
Charlene had a sudden wild impulse to laugh-seeing this brawny boy wearing nothing but an athletic support, the marks of her lipstick still smudged on his face and body, and giving her a sermon about not betraying her husband's faith!-but she restrained it. Her eyes narrowed to cold slits as she tightened her fingers on the boy's arm.
"What do you think he'd say if I told him you just raped me?" she hissed.
Ron's eyes widened with surprise. "You-"
"You bet your life I would," she snapped. "It means that much to me, Ron."
Charlene felt him reach down and pull her arms away from him. There was now a grim determination in his eyes, too. "Get dressed," he said flatly. He bent to pick up his silk basketball trunks, but Charlene made no move for her clothes.
"I swear it, Ron," she said, although her voice was losing its confidence with each passing second. "I'll scream if you don't give me your promise."
"Then scream-" he started to say, but suddenly the quiet of the supply room was shattered by a jiggling of the door handle from the outside. Both Ron and Charlene stood frozen where they stood, listening to someone muttering outside, then begin a persistent hammering against the wood.
"Who's in there?" the voice from the outside called, and both Charlene and Ron knew instantly that it was Gene's.
"Do you still want me to scream?" she whispered sharply.
Ron's face was ashen. He jerked his uniform up his muscular thighs, turning his head back and forth from the door to Charlene with the wild, desperate look of an animal caught in a trap from which there is no escape.
"Do you?" she hissed again.
"Get on your clothes," he snapped. Then, hearing Gene's pounding increase, he shook his head and grabbed her by the arm. "No, there's no time for that. Get over there ... behind those boxes, and hide."
"I'm not moving until I hear you promise you'll get out of the election," she said resolutely.
"All right, all right," Ron said, giving her a shove toward the boxes. "Just get over there-quick!"
As Charlene gathered up her clothes and scrambled to the shelter of the supply boxes, Ron hastily slipped into his undershirt. A moment later, glancing once more about the supply room for any visible trace of Charlene, he went to the door and opened it.
"Ron!" Gene's voice called. "What the...? "
The boy's laugh was nervous and a bit shaky. "I guess you caught me, Gene," he said. "I was up late last night, and I thought I'd sneak a few winks before practice."
Charlene could hear her husband laugh easily and clap Ron on the back. A few moments later, the door to the supply room closed and the room was deathly quiet. She waited for several minutes longer, then hastily slipped into her clothes and left the gymnasium as quickly and as quietly as possible.
Charlene stood close to the stove later that afternoon, whipping up a pudding that she knew was Gene's favorite. "Tonight will be different," she thought to herself, as she dipped the spoon down into the thick dark sauce and tasted it. Tonight she planned to have another big meal for Gene, and afterwards they would make love. She was sure of it. Tonight would be a celebration, of sorts, although Gene would never know the reason behind it.
Charlene felt oddly at peace with the world now, even though she realized that what she'd done with Ron had been terribly wrong-both the act itself and her reasons for doing it-because now Randy's hold on her was broken. With Ron's promise to drop out of the election, there would be no more meetings with fraternity boys and no more pressure from Randy. It was even possible, she hoped, that what she'd told Ron might be true: without the election to worry about, Gene might have more time to spend with her. If so, the price she had to pay for a resumption of their happiness in marriage seemed a small one indeed. "One more slice from a cut loaf," site thought, with grim humor. "And certainly no worse than if I hadn't done it-and entertained another of Randy's pals."
The thought had no sooner gone through her mind, when she heard the doorbell ring. Her heart stiffened and she stood motionless beside the stove, afraid to answer the door and yet, as the bell sounded a second time, afraid to not answer it. She knew, instinctively, who was there. Something of Randy's self-assured, cocky manner was reflected in the very way he pressed on a doorbell.
The chimes sounded a third time, and then rapidly a fourth. He knew she was inside the apartment; there was no hiding from him. Randy seemed to have eyes that could see through walls.
Charlene turned off the stove, not wanting her pudding to boil over, and marched grimly toward the door. She opened it only a crack, but he was inside instantly, wearing a broad grin on his face.
"Hi, gorgeous," he said, patting her delicate rump with the back of his hand. "You ready for some exercise tonight?"
Charlene closed the door, but stood against it, with her hand still on the knob. Site wanted to be able to open it again at a moment's notice, in case the boy started anything with her. "I'm staying home tonight," she said curtly, "with my husband."
Randy leered at her in the shadowed hallway. "Wanna bet?" he drawled. He drew closer to her. "I've got something lined up tonight that might prove to be a little bit different. You might get a big kick out of it, being an ex-performer. Kind of a comeback, you might say."
"Randy," Charlene said firmly, "I said I'm staying home tonight. I'm not going anywhere with you. Not ever again."
The boy's smile remained on his face, but the expression in his eyes instantly hardened to a cold, cruel stare. He put out his hand and ran his hot fingers down the sleek length of Charlene's arm. "You have a pretty short memory, don't you, doll?" he said. "I told you the last time that we were through playing games. Now you're starting to make me mad. If you're not going to...."
"Ron is dropping out of the election," Charlene said flatly, staring him hard in the eyes.
Randy's forehead knit into a deep furrow and he stared at her mistrustfully. "Where did you hear this bit of news?"
"From Ron himself, this afternoon."
Randy grinned suddenly. "Ah, you've been doing a little work behind my back, I see!" He chuckled deep in his throat as his fingers reached out for Charlene's breast and tweaked it gently. "I never thought you could get to old Sarcota!" he laughed. "Somehow I just didn't think he had it in him ... or should I say, in you?"
Charlene turned the doorknob as she pulled back from the boy. "Get out, Randy," she said. "We have no more business together."
He shrugged. "We'll see," he said. "I'm not going to start planning my victory celebration just yet. We'll wait and see if what you told me about Sarcota is really true."
"It is," Charlene snapped. She pulled the door open and stood back to let him pass through it without brushing against her.
"We'll see," he grinned again. Then, just before he stepped out into the fraternity house lobby, lie chucked her under the chin and winked. "But I'll hold onto my pictures for a little while yet."
His laughter echoed in Charlene's ears long after she'd slammed the door on him and gone back to the kitchen, her cheeks white and her hands trembling as she returned to her work.
The pudding was dished and chilled. A couple of trout were baking in the oven; the lights were low; soft music came from the phonograph. Charlene sat carted on the end of the sofa, her hair done up high on her head in an alluring style, her body decked out in one of her prettiest dresses. She'd bathed and soaked in sweet-smelling bath oils, then applied her favorite-and most expensive-perfume to all the vital zones before dressing. Only one thing was wrong: Gene was already an hour late.
Charlene smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting one from the end of another. She gripped the cushion of the sofa hard in her fingers, trying to keep from getting up and resuming the endless, pointless pacing which she had been doing off and on for the past hour.
"Where is he?" she asked aloud, looking yet again at the big electric clock over the television set. Basketball practice, she knew, let out at six-thirty, and it was almost eight now. Granting even the time it would take for him to shower and change his clothes at the gym before coming home, he was late. She didn't want to think, couldn't bring herself even to imagine, that it might have something to do with the news Ron must have given him sometime that afternoon. And yet, deep inside herself, Charlene knew that Gene would put up an argument in protest to Ron's announcement that he was dropping out of the election. Maybe even now he was arguing with the boy, trying to talk him out of what he would feel to be a rash and foolish decision.
Unable to sit still any longer, Charlene bounded off the couch and went into the kitchen, looking at the fish in the oven for the tenth time in as many minutes. If it stayed there much longer it would be burned to a crisp, and if she turned it off before Gene was there to eat it, the meal would be ruined.
She was almost at the point of tears, when she heard a key in the lock. Her head picked up immediately and she stubbed out her cigarette in the sink. She was just about to cry out her husband's name and rush to greet him at the door, when she heard his strong voice bellowing out, and then another, more timid voice, answering. Her heart sunk. Ron was with him.
Charlene stood by the door to the living room and listened as the two men came into the apartment.
"That's just nonsense, Ron," Gene said, a trace of anger in his voice. "You know as well as I do that you'd find the time to be president. I still think there's something about all this you're not telling me."
"No, Gene," the basketball star protested, "I just don't want to get involved, that's all."
Gene made a snorting noise in his nose. "Just like everybody else in the world, Ron," he said accusingly. "That's why things are the way they are today-because all the right people don't want to get involved. They're too willing to stand by and let the Randy Howards of the world walk all over them-and then, when they've got broken backs and find their noses are pressed so far down in the mud they can't breathe anymore, they wonder what happened to them."
"Gene...." Ron started to protest, but the older man would not let him finish.
"No, you listen to me," he said. "I put my faith in you, Ron. I thought you had the guts to stand up against somebody like Randy and prove to this college-and everyone in it-that a fraternity doesn't necessarily have to stand for nothing but fun and games ... that it could do a helluva lot of good for a college, and the town, too. I thought you went along with that idea-that you were willing to stick your neck out a little, if necessary, in order to achieve something really good here at Hooper." He laughed sharply, humorlessly. "Funny how first impressions are deceiving, Ron," he said, his voice as cold and sharp as the edge of a knife.
Charlene felt it cut through herself as well. She gripped onto the door frame, trying to take deep breaths of air. It was a nightmare-a never-ending nightmare.
"Gene, will you listen to me for a minute?" Ron protested. "You haven't given me a chance to explain."
"All right. Shoot. I'm listening."
Charlene held her breath. Don't tell him, she prayed. Please, don't let him find out like this.
"What you say about not being willing to stick out my neck and all is a lot of hot air. I'm as anxious to see the Betas do some good for this college and community as you are, Gene, but...." The boy fumbled for words, and his agony was Charlene's.
"But?" Gene said dryly.
"But other things sometimes have to take precedence."
"like what?" Gene demanded, slamming his fist hard against the top of the table. "Just tell me one concrete reason why you should so suddenly change your mind about this election and I'll concede the argument. So far all I've heard from you are weak-kneed excuses that don't amount to a hill of beans."
He waited, but Ron said nothing.
The awful, awesome silence rang through the tiny apartment for what seemed an eternity. Then Gene's voice cracked out like a whip.
"You're a coward!"
Charlene closed her eyes, feeling the sting of Gene's words rip through herself at the same time they must have torn through Ron.
"That's it, isn't it, Ron? You're chicken to go up against somebody like Randy Howard, because you think you might get beat."
"That's not...."
"What then?" Gene insisted.
And then Charlene could take no more of it. Gene was pushing the boy too far. In another minute lie might force him-either in self-defense or in the heat of anger-to blurt out the truth, and there it would be ... like some vile mess on the floor. She also realized what Ron must be going through to hear the man he felt such a close kinship to speaking in this way to him. It wasn't fair, Charlene realized. Not at all. Ron didn't deserve this; she'd got herself into the mess and she would have to get herself out of it. There was no point in creating more bitterness than was necessary.
"Hey!" she said, stepping into the living room with a broad, forced smile on her face. "What's all this about?" She looked from one man to the other, surveying their faces.
"Hi, honey," Gene said, barely noticing her. His chest, like Ron's, was heaving in and out with the deep strain of nervous energy.
"Sounds like you two were really going at it," Charlene said. "Mind if I ask why?" She noticed that Ron's head snapped in her direction, his forehead creased in a quizzical frown.
Gene shrugged. "Oh, our boy here has suddenly got cold feet about the election, and I'm trying to get him to change his mind."
Charlene looked innocently puzzled. "Why, Ron?" she asked softly. "I thought you wanted to be president."
He made a titch sound in the corner of his mouth and turned his head away from her.
"Ron?" Charlene said, going up to him and touching him lightly on the shoulder. "Why don't you stay in the election? From what Gene's told me about it, I can see that you'd be the best candidate. I'd hate to see somebody less qualified win."
He whipped his head up, his eyes flashing, but when he saw Charlene's face, he stopped-frozen in his expression. Her eyes were closed, her lips pursed tightly together. With her back to Gene, she held the pained expression for just a moment longer, then opened her eyes and looked up at the boy's face. Little tear buds were forming in her eyes, but she tried to bat them away.
It's all right, she mouthed silently, and then again, when Ron didn't seem to understand what she meant the first time.
He blinked, then looked over Charlene's shoulder to Gene.
"Well?" he asked the boy. "Did my wife do any better a job than I did convincing you?"
Ron looked back at Charlene, as though he couldn't trust or believe that she was letting him off the hook so easily. Her tears had slid down from her eyes, now, and were running slowly over her cheeks. She gently nodded her head, so subtly that Gene could not see even a strand of hair bob.
"I-I guess she did," Ron said hesitantly. Then, as though his body were suddenly returning to life from a long, trance-like sleep, he repeated the words again, his voice rising in pitch and intensity. "Yes, I guess she did!" he almost shouted.
"Good boy!" Gene cried, and came quickly to him and clapped him heartily on the back. "Good boy, Ron!"
He stared suddenly at Charlene-at the way she was furiously wiping at her cheeks with the tips of her fingers.
"Hey, honey," he said tenderly, reaching out for her. "Is something wrong?"
Charlene twisted away from him and tried to laugh, but it was low and dry and harsh in her throat. "No," site said, sniffing at her nose, "it's the onion I used for the fish." She turned away from the two men and picked up her purse from the table. "I made a nice dinner for you both," site said, "and you'd better eat it before it's spoiled. I waited as long as I could for you to come home, and you're just lucky you arrived when you did."
"What about you?" Gene asked.
"I-I've got to go out, honey," Charlene said, already moving toward the door. "I've got-something I've got to doin town." She sniffed again, and wiped at her eyes, which were now streaming with tears.
"Are you sure--? " Gene began, but Charlene cut him off.
"I'm sure I'm going to give you two guys a rap if you don't get that fish out of the oven before it's ruined," she said. Then, as she saw Gene begin to move hesitantly toward the kitchen, she added, "I might be late, honey. Don't wait up for me."
She was out the door of the apartment and running through the lobby before another word could be said. The cool night air hit her like a smack in the face, but she kept running-all the way to the telephone booth at the next intersection of campus roadways. She scrambled into the booth and slumped on the seat, then buried her face in her hands and let all the tears of rage and frustration and humiliation pour out of her.
Later, when only a dry ache remained in her throat, she fished in her purse for a dime and stuck it in the telephone. She dialed and waited until the ring was answered at the other end. She spoke quickly, then waited again. A few seconds later she heard the phone picked up a second time and the all-too-familiar voice drawl a deep, "Hello?"
"Randy?" she said, her eyes tightly closed, her lower lip trembling. "This is Charlene Anderson." She paused for a long moment, listening to him breathing into the receiver at his end. He was waiting for her to say the words; he knew why she'd called, and now he was going to torture her right to the very end by making her say the words.
At last she could keep silent no longer. With a heavy sigh, she whispered, "Where do you want me to meet you tonight?"
CHAPTER TEN
Charlene moved cautiously toward the semi-darkened building, wondering once again if Randy had given her the right directions. As closely as she could determine, she was at the far northern tip of the campus, standing outside what appeared to be an old storehouse. Not a light could be seen from the inside, yet as she drew closer, she could hear the sound of voices-heavily raised-floating out through the propped-open front door.
She moved up the concrete steps and slipped inside. Immediately in front of her stood another set of double wooden doors, and from behind these she could hear the voices-louder now, and rising with intensity. There was something strange about them, however, and as she drew closer she held her breath and listened.
Sit down, and thou shall see all the Seven Deadly Sins appear in their proper shapes, one voice said.
That sight will be as pleasing unto me, as Paradise was to Adam the first day of his creation, a second voice replied.
Charlene drew back from the door, as suddenly the room beyond filled with a weird music and a great moaning and clattering sound accompanied it. "What is this?" she asked herself, and was just about to turn and leave when suddenly a dark, masked figure leaped out of the shadows behind her and jumped forward. Charlene screamed, and lifted her arm to protect herself. The figure was horrible-dressed all in black, with a hideous painted mask bearing horns and tattoos and other facial disfigurements. The figure pranced about her for a moment, then suddenly ripped away the mask.
"Randy!" Charlene gasped, seeing his leering face in the semi-darkness of the lobby. "What in the hell--? " She was furious with him now; for bringing her there in the first place, and then for scaring the wits out of her with his stupid little joke.
"Scared you, huh?" he grinned. He twirled the mask on his hand in front of her face. "This, my dear, is the face of Lechery!" he announced in a highly dramatic flourish, as he bent low at the waist. Then, grabbing for her hand, he started pulling her toward a staircase that ran upstairs alongside the set of double doors. "Come on up and meet the rest of the gang," he announced, in his natural voice.
Charlene held back, more afraid now than ever at what she might be getting into. But Randy tugged harder on her arm, and she soon found herself following him up the steps. When they reached the top, they stopped in front of another wooden door. Randy raised his finger to his lips for a moment, then slowly and quietly opened this door. A strange orange light seeped through the crack, and as Randy opened it further and they walked inside, Charlene realized that they were inside a campus theatre of some sort.
From the balcony where she now stood, she could look down upon the stage, and the spectacle going on there. Amid gloomy surroundings, a number of colorfully costumed figures with masks similar to the one Randy had been wearing pranced around two men: one dressed in long, black robes; the other in a strange style tunic. The masked figures writhed and undulated their bodies in front of the two men, in time to the strange music that came from a loudspeaker overhead.
"Come here," Randy whispered, and motioned for Charlene to follow him down to where he sat in the first row of balcony seats. She walked hesitantly, uncertain of her step in the strange orange light from the overhead spotlights shining down on the set and actors.
"What's going on?" she whispered, as she slid into the empty seat next to Randy. She felt him reach for her leg and tried to brush his hand away, but he squeezed it tighter.
"Rehearsal," he said. "For the Skull and Mask's first show. They're doing Doctor Faustus." He held up the mask and twirled it in front of her again, grinning wickedly behind it so that for a moment Charlene had trouble remembering which was the boy's face and which the mask. Both seemed lined with evil.
"What are we doing here?" she inquired, wiggling in the seat as Randy's fingers began to move higher on her leg, walking their way toward the soft web of her lap.
"Keep your eye on the guy in the black robes," he said. "His name's Phil-he's playing Mephistopheles." He turned his head away from the stage for a moment and winked, just as his prying hand found its target and his fingers began to wriggle downward into the thin cloth of Charlene's skirt. "Need I say more?"
And then Charlene knew. The boy on stage, the one Randy had called Phil, was the one she'd been brought to "influence" for the election. There was no doubt of it.
She stared hard at the stage, trying to see what the boy looked like in under the costume and actor's make-up he wore. His hair was dark, raven black, and his skin seemed to have a very unnatural pallor to it-almost milk-white, even with the artificial coloring applied for his stage performance. His build was average-a bit on the slender side, perhaps-but his voice was deep and fully resonant throughout the little theatre. He moved with a manly grace about the stage, and when he delivered his lines his eyes flashed with an inner fire that Charlene believed was not entirely due to the character he was playing. She had the distinct impression that there was something satanic about this boy, although as yet she could not put her finger on what it might be.
"Randy!" she whispered harshly, as suddenly she was jolted back to the there and now of what he was doing with his hands. He'd managed to slide her skirt all the way up to her upper thighs, and was now running his fingers and thumbs in under the lacy leg band of her panties, inching toward the soft warmth of her with the speed and determination of a conquering army.
He grinned and leaned forward to kiss her. She tried to pull away from him, but when she did he released her panties with one hand and grabbed her roughly by the back of her head, pulling her close to him. As their lips met, his other fingers went to work on her lap, ripping through the thin nylon gauze and plowing the golden fleece-trampling it under his fingertips as he moved steadily closer. Charlene tried to push his mouth away, but his tongue prodded out at her-stabbing and slapping wetly at her lips. And all the while his fingers wiggled closer and closer.
Finally, feeling him touch her, Charlene gasped in her throat, and when she did, Randy rammed his tongue through her lips. She tried to fight him off, but she felt her head, begin to spin under the assault of pleasure he was giving her with his lips and fingers. He was inching into her now, with his two thickest and longest fingers, pushing gently-then withdrawing-then wiggling back in a little bit deeper. Even against herself, Charlene felt her thighs beginning to respond to his feel. Her buttocks were lifting up off the chair, and her legs clamping together against his fingers, trapping them against her and holding them locked in position. She could feel herself stirring deep inside, beginning to tingle and get the achy feeling in the base of her stomach.
"Randy, please...." she moaned, as their lips parted and his mouth brushed over her cheek to nibble on her ear. "Don't do this to me ... please."
His only answer was a soft little laugh against her ear, and a persistent wiggle of his fingers-sliding them even deeper past the rapidly moistening walls of herself. She could feel him playing and tickling in there, and he was driving her wild with lust.
Before much longer, she found herself openly responding to him, widening her legs and slouching down in the seat, so he could get his hand into better position for the upward attack. As he drove further, she sighed, panting heavily, and clamped and opened her thighs against him-feeling his tight fist hot against her. His other hand had left her neck, now, and was working on the front of her dress-pinching and squeezing gently against the full thrust of her breasts, rubbing at the nipples and thwapping against their hardness as Charlene's body responded at every point to his caresses.
Charlene knew it was futile to fight him. He knew her weaknesses, and was taking full advantage of every one of them. The more she let him continue, the hotter he was making her-and they both knew it. In another few minutes she would be ready to sprawl on the floor for him and let him take her right then and there-with the crowd below and all.
Suddenly a loud voice from the ground floor boomed out, "Okay, let's cut for tonight."
As a murmur went up from a dozen other voices and the little theatre filled with the sound of doors opening and slamming and loud footsteps on the stage. Randy lifted away his hand and leaned over the railing. Charlene was moaning softly to herself, begging him to continue what he'd started, but Randy was no longer paying attention to her. His eyes were glued to the goings-on below.
"Randy," she sobbed, reaching for his hand-her skirt still twisted high on her thighs, her legs spread wide-open, her panties almost pushed off her legs.
He slapped her fingers away roughly. "Sit up," he hissed sharply.
Charlene closed her eyes. "It's time," she whispered to herself. Slowly, feeling the full shame of the desire coursing throughout her body, yet powerless to keep it in check, she sat up in the seat and tried to get herself in order.
For several minutes more the bustle of activity from the ground floor continued, then suddenly all was quiet. Randy listened intently, his breathing coming heavily as he watched the empty stage. A moment later, Charlene saw the curtain rustle and the boy named Phil stepped onto the stage, still in his costume and make-up from the play. He walked cautiously toward the footlights, looking up at the balcony.
"Randy?" he called softly.
"Up here, Phil," the boy called back. He turned and nudged Charlene. "Ready?" he whispered. All she could do was nod her head. She felt too weak to trust her voice.
"All set?" the boy on stage asked.
"Check," Randy replied. He nudged Charlene again. "Go on. honey," he said, "you're on."
She stared at him without understanding.
"Get down there, baby," he ordered, grasping her arm and half-lifting her from the seat. "That's your cue."
"Here?" she whispered, her voice tight and filled with sudden fear.
Randy shrugged. "That's the way Phil wants it; that's the way it'll be. Right?" He waited, and when Charlene made no reply, he squeezed tighter on her arm. "Right?"
She winced with pain and quickly nodded her head.
"Good," Randy said with a wicked smile. "This better be a good show, too, honey. I'm a tough critic; you'd better give it your all."
"You-you're going to watch?" Charlene gasped.
The boy laughed again. "Come on, doll. This shouldn't be anything new for you-not for a girl who's posed for such mighty fine pictures as the ones I've seen."
Charlene blushed and turned away from him, jumping in surprise as she felt him crack her sharply on the cheeks of her buttocks. "Get going, honey," he said, his voice half-amused, half-threatening.
Slowly, Charlene walked toward the door from the balcony and down the steps. It took a great deal of courage for her to open the door to the theatre and go inside; even more to walk the long center aisle and climb up onto the stage.
The boy had brought out a couch and positioned it in the center of the stage, right where two of the strongest floodlights shined down. Charlene's eyes hurt under the glare as she looked out toward the rows of empty seats. She knew that somewhere in all that blackness was Randy, but the glare from the lights was so strong she could not make him out.
"Is the door locked, Randy?" Phil asked.
Out of the mysterious blackness came a loud yes.
Phil smiled and seated himself on the couch. "Ready?" he called out toward the empty theatre.
Again Randy's voice came back affirmatively, but this time it seemed to come from a different location than before. Charlene had no idea where he was, but at the moment all her fears were concentrated on the boy looming next to her.
He looked frightful. With the costume of Satan on, his features were proportionately larger than normal, and the black beard and mustache he wore on his face gave him a terrible, underworld quality. His eyes flashed with that same intensity Charlene had noticed from the balcony as he reached his hand out to her and brought her closer to him on the couch. She came toward him as hesitantly as she would if he were the devil himself. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest; her throat was bone dry, but her palms and forehead were dripping with nervous perspiration.
"Go ahead," the boy whispered. "Start."
"Start what?" she asked, looking first at him, then out into the glare of the spotlights again, as though she could hope to see Randy's face and learn from it what was expected of her.
The boy laughed nervously. "You know-what Randy told you I wanted."
Charlene shook her head from side to side. "He didn't tell me anything."
"Randy!" the boy called angrily. "What is this? I thought you said she'd be willing to...."
"Charlene!" Randy's voice boomed out of the darkness beyond the floodlights with such force that it made her jump. "Get going!"
"To do what?" she wailed, flinging out her arms to the empty void and feeling completely helpless, as though she were at the mercy of some mysterious captor who was using her in this sordid and private amusement.
His dry harsh laugh rang throughout the theatre. "You know, baby," he said. "What you do so well."
Charlene turned back to the couch, and suddenly looking at the way Phil was smiling and lying back on the couch-she knew what he wanted. The boy had his back pressed against the cushions, but his legs were extended straight out in front of him, his costume folded back so that his upper thighs were open and exposed to her. She felt a catch in her throat, and slowly shook her head back and forth.
"Come on," the boy on the couch said, a bit roughly, but with a pleading tone to Ins voice. It was obvious that he was already aroused and ready for her; the thin black leotards he wore in under the robes lifted high from his lap. In under the strong theatre lights, Charlene could tell that in under the tights he wore nothing.
"Come on," he urged again, lifting his buttocks off the couch in a gesture of eagerness which thrust out his thighs toward her.
Slowly, feeling her legs move her closer toward the couch but knowing they were responding like a robot's to a control from her brain, rather than from any desire of their own, Charlene came closer. When she stood in front of the boy, she dropped to her knees on the stage and reached out her hand to him. She felt him jerk and throb against her instantly, and she felt a strange thrill race down her back.
Again. It was starting all over again. Just like the times before and just like it might always be.
The boy sighed, and lifted his buttocks from the couch once more, motioning to Charlene to take down his tights. She reached hesitantly for the waist and pulled on the thin material. As she slid it down, revealing more and more of the boy's nakedness, she could feel her heart beating like a trip-hammer. Suddenly, hearing him sigh and buck forward, he stood exposed to her and she had to shut her eyes to keep from fainting. The sight of his enormous readiness was overpowering. She felt herself starting to swoon, and had to hold onto his knees for support.
She could feel Phil shifting his weight, and when she opened her eyes she saw that he'd lain back lengthwise on the couch, lifting his legs up and spreading them wide for her. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily, expectantly.
Charlene edged toward him on her knees, her fingers grazing lightly across his bare torso and down to his lower belly, where they tangled in the coarse mat of pure black wool that spread out like a bear rug over his entire lap. She could feel him tense as she touched him, and found the response oddly stimulating to herself.
Slowly, hesitantly, yet with increasing desire, she brought her head down to his leg and nuzzled her cheek against his outer thigh. She heard him moan, and felt his legs begin to rock up and down as she turned her head and brought down her wet lips on him. Then, her own passion increasing in direct relation to the boy's, she began a slow trail of kisses across his legs until she felt the fuzz of him tickle at her nostrils. She stopped and pressed against his hot flesh with the side of her cheek. Instantly she felt him throb against her as he responded with a violent thrust upward.
She wiggled her hand over his lap until her cautious fingers found him, then held him while she lifted her head and prepared for the final assault. The boy's stomach was Hat and stiff with tension, as he awaited the consummation of his desires. Just before Charlene closed her eyes and went down on him, she looked up the length of his body. His head was rolled toward the empty theatre, and his eyes seemed to be frantically searching in the darkness for someone or something. Seeing this gave Charlene a cold shiver down her spine, but in the next second-as Phil jolted his hips upward and made contact-she had only one thought on her mind: what she was doing to him.
His first thrust had been so sudden and violent that she almost gagged, but as she pressed back down on his legs with her fingers he receded and she found she could handle him easily-with far more agility and control than she'd first imagined.
She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the strong masculine scent of him as she raised and lowered her head-slowly, at first, then with a steadily increasing tempo that soon had her driving down and lifting up with such quickness that all motion soon became a blur before her eyes. Nothing but the whiteness of the boy's skin and the blackness of his robes stood before her eyes, and as she drove herself harder and faster with each second, these, too, soon became lost in a blur of gray.
She could feel Phil arching his legs up against her, his hands wrapping down into her hair and pulling her up and down against him even faster than she was doing herself. He was grunting heavily, moaning and writhing on the couch as Charlene brought him nearer and nearer to the end. She was afraid of what she knew was about to happen-but she knew there would be no pulling away. This was a date for everything, and if she tried to cut corners now, she knew Randy would make her perform a second time-and do it right, even if he had to hold her head in place.
Charlene's own throat was beginning to moan, as the muscles of her tongue and mouth began to ache with the constant pressure of suction.
And then, so suddenly that she didn't even have time to think about it, she felt Phil jolt up from the couch, and dig into her hair with his tense, cold fingers. A moment later Charlene gulped in shock, and knew the white-hot sweetness of the boy's love.
Again and again he arched up from the couch, and Charlene stayed with him until the end. When he had finally subsided, she slowly moved oil of him and let him fall away with a soft, wet little plop. She nuzzled her head against his thighs and closed her eyes.
From beyond the footlights she could hear the slow, mocking sound of clapping, mixed with the dry, humorless chuckle of Randy's laughter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Gene?" Charlene wiggled closer to him in the bed, wrapping her arm around his side and pressing against his hard stomach muscles with her fingers.
"Huh?" He opened one sleepy eye and stared at her. "What's the matter?" he said suddenly, flopping over onto his back and attempting to rise.
"Nothing, silly!" Charlene laughed. "I just wanted to say hello."
Gene twisted his head and looked at the clock. It was just a little after eight. His first class didn't start until ten, and Charlene knew he had nothing else to do before then. He flopped his head back on the pillow and smiled up at her. "Hi," he said softly, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her close to him.
Charlene felt a shiver of excitement run through her body, feeling the warmth of his chest spread through her breasts and stomach.
"Hi," she breathed sexily, bending down to nibble at the side of his ear.
"You came in late last night, hon," Gene said, as he squirmed under the tickling insistence of Charlene's tongue and lips, which trailed down from his ear to the side of his neck and then lower still, to his shoulder and even to the little button of his male nipple, where she traced a slow wet circle around it with her tongue's point. He laughed and pulled her away, then hugged her close on top of himself once more. "Where'd you go, anyway?"
Charlene avoided his eyes. "Oh, you know," she said, trying to affect an off-handed manner. "I just wanted to get out of the house for a while."
Gene's brows knit in a mock-serious frown. "Oh?" he questioned. "I think you're up to something-some dark secret you don't want me to find out about."
Charlene's throat constricted, and she nuzzled her face in the crook of Gene's neck and shoulder. "Don't be silly," she murmured.
She felt his warm hands rubbing down the length of her nightie until they reached the hem, then slowly slipped in under and rubbed across the delicious curves of her dimpled backside.
"No, I think you're secretly meeting someone," he said jokingly, as his fingers tightened, then started the slow journey back up her naked spine.
Yet another cold chill raced through Charlene's body, and she pressed tighter against Gene. "Don't talk like that, honey," she whispered. "You know you're the only man for me." The words hurt as they came out, but Charlene knew in her heart that they were said honestly. The others, the things she'd done with them, didn't mean a thing. It was Gene, and him alone, that she cared about. It was for him-to protect him from the truth about herself-that she was doing what she was in the first place.
"I wouldn't blame you if you did start messing with other guys," Gene said. His hands had reached the point on her back where her sides sloped around to form the full mounds of her breasts, and he was gradually tracing his fingertips toward those twin peaks, now somewhat flattened against his own hard chest. "I guess I haven't been too much of a husband to you lately, have I?" he said softly.
Charlene lifted herself up from him just a few inches, giving his strong arms room to fold around her sides and cup her breasts in the wide palms of his hands. Then she settled back down on him, tingling with the pressure of skin against skin. She brought her lips up to his and kissed him, long and hard. "You've always been wonderful to me, Gene," she whispered, when at last their lips and tongues separated. "I don't deserve you." She felt a tightness in her throat once again, and felt that at any moment she might burst into tears and confess the whole sordid business-take her chances on Gene's understanding and offering his forgiveness.
"No, baby," he whispered, clenching his fingers in on the soft mounds of flesh he cupped in his hands, "I'm the one who doesn't deserve you." He lifted up his head so that he could plant a wet kiss at the base of Charlene's throat, then flopped his head back down on the pillow. "I think if I ever lost you to another guy I'd kill myself. I don't know why someone as special as you married a guy like me in the first place, but I think I'm the luckiest person in the world that you did."
"Gene," Charlene sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder. She couldn't take much more of it. He was so good to her--and if he only knew....
"Hey, hey, baby," Gene soothed, lifting away one of his hands from her breast and running his fingers through her hair. "What's this all about?"
"I love you so much," Charlene sobbed.
"I love you, too," he answered softly.
And then Charlene felt him lifting up his body from the bed and pushing against her as he attempted to roll the two of them over. She flung her arms around him and flopped onto her back, gasping as the full weight of him came down on her. She could feel his hips moving against her thighs, and knew from the heat and the pressure of him that he wanted her then. She almost cried out with the sheer joy of release as she felt him lift up and push against her nightie with his hands, urging it further up her body. Slowly, he slid the thin nylon all the way up her thighs and belly, over her breasts, then bunched it around her shoulders.
"Lift up, honey," he said, his voice tight and hoarse, the way it always got before they made love.
Charlene raised herself from the bed, the lower part of her body still covered with the weight of him. "You too," she said, as her husband drew off the thin nightie and tossed it over the side of the bed. She tugged at Gene's pajama top, helping him lift it up and away from his body. Then, while he pulled his arms out of the sleeves, her hands flew to the drawstring on the bottoms and jerked it open. She pushed at the cloth, unbearably anxious now to have their skin pressing together at every possible point. She felt as tense and excited as a young bride on the first night of her honeymoon.
Gene rolled over onto his elbow as he pushed at the pajama bottoms, kicking them off his legs and ankles. When he rolled back onto Charlene she cried out from the heat and hardness of him against her.
"Gene," she sobbed.
She felt his lips trace a quick path down her neck and over the blades of her shoulders, as he moved his mouth to her breasts. He slipped a ripe, hardened nipple inside and gently closed his lips on it. Charlene stroked the back of his head as she felt his tongue stroke gently at the aroused bud, then take up a hard suction on it as he moved his lips in and out, smacking against it with hungry desire. She murmured his name and tried to reach her hand down for him, but the distance was too great. She settled the flat of her hand against his back, her fingers playing and tugging at the patches of fleece close to his buttocks.
Gene's mouth became more ravenous, and his body began a slow up-and-down motion against Charlene. She could feel him rubbing on top of her, antl cried out with anticipation. He lifted his head and quickly brought it to her lips, where he kissed her long and hard, then returned to apply the same wet suction to the other throbbing nipple.
By the time he had given the same loving strokes with his tongue to this breast as he had to the other, Charlene was nearly wild with lust for him. She was bucking her thighs up and down from the bed, trying to capture him naturally as she moved in under him, but Gene continued to elude her. He had always wanted to be the dominant partner in bed, and even though Charlene knew-by the pressure of his body so close to her-that he was as anxious to begin making love as she was, he was pacing her, building her heat to its highest point before he seared into the roaring flames.
Gene lifted his mouth away from Charlene's nipple, and a charge of electricity raced through her, for she knew that he couldn't delay any longer now, either. She cried out his name and hugged her arms around his neck as he positioned his body flat atop hers, then reached down between their bellies and clasped himself, arching his aroused need to the point of contact.
Charlene squealed, feeling him against her, and tried to thrust up and seize him immediately. But Gene teased her. He pressed forward just a bit. then drew back, so that only the slightest touch had been made. Again he did it, and then a third time.
"Gene!" she screamed. "Please-now! Don't do this to me!"
She heard him grunt, and felt him trembling as he got ready for the final lunge that would truly fuse their hot bodies into one mass of molten flesh.
And then the doorbell rang.
Charlene tensed, seeing Gene's eyes open and feeling the sudden rigidness of his body as it hovered above her, less than an inch from total contact. They listened together in silence for a moment, while Charlene thrust up with her thighs, trying to finish what was already so near. The bell rang again, and she felt Gene start to pull back from her.
"No!" she cried, thrusting up her legs and wrapping them around Gene's buttocks. "No, Gene, please!"
He hesitated for a moment, then seemed about to resume where he'd left off, but the bell rang a third time, and then quickly a fourth. This time when Gene tried to pull away, it was with a genuine effort.
"Gene!" she screamed, feeling her legs parting as his body broke through their lock. "Don't go now! Please!"
His body was covered with sweat, and his eyes seemed glazed. "I have to, honey," he said hoarsely. "It might be an emergency. Something might be wrong with one of the guys."
"To hell with them!" she screamed, clutching at his shoulders and feeling her long fingernails break the surface of the skin.
Gene stared sharply at her, then, without a word, he pushed her hands away and got up off the bed. Charlene moaned and rolled onto her stomach, clutching at her thighs and hugging herself to fight back the awful shooting pains racing through her. She could hear Gene move quickly to the closet for his robe, then pad out of the bedroom and down the hall to the front door of the apartment.
Charlene rolled onto her back, her cheeks streaked with tears, and listened.
"Ron," Gene said hesitantly, then more heartily, "what's got you up so early?"
The basketball star laughed nervously. "Don't you remember, coach?" he said. "You told me to stop by this morning so we could go over the campaign plans for the election."
"Oh!" Gene said. Then he, too, laughed. "Oh, sure thing, Ron, boy. It slipped my mind, I guess. Well, look, sit down or help yourself to some coffee while I get into some clothes, okay? Then we'll get right to work."
Charlene rolled back onto her stomach as she heard Gene moving into the bedroom once again. She closed her eyes and grit her teeth. Gene moved close to Che bed and touched the naked skin of her back.
"I'm sorry, honey," he whispered. "I forgot all about asking Ron to come this morning."
Charlene pulled away from him and buried her face in the pillow. His touch felt coltl and distant on her skin now, with less feeling than even the boys Randy had led her to had stirred. She bit down on the pillow to keep from screaming something at him that she knew she would regret the minute the words were out of her mouth. Gene hovered near her for a moment longer, then quickly went to the closet and got dressed. A few minutes later, he and Ron were sitting together at the breakfast table, completely engrossed in their conversation and completely oblivious to the sound of Charlene's muffled sobs in the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Charlene stood in the middle of the dimly-lit room and stared at the two boys who were leering at her from their separate beds.
"Come on, baby," one of them, a dark-haired boy named Mike, who Charlene had been told was a lineback for the Hooper football squad, said. "Randy told us you were a real live-wire."
Charlene smirked at him, and at his grinning roommate, a tall, equally muscular boy named Tod. They were waiting for her to begin the show-start the activities which they wanted in exchange for their promise of voting for Randy in the election. Charlene had balked, at first, when Randy told her that he wanted her to go up to the boys' room and entertain the two of them at once. But then, remembering the cruel way in which Gene had rejected her that morning, she agreed.
"Two for the price of one, honey," Randy had laughed, and Charlene had nodded her head in grim amusement. Maybe that would be the best way, she told herself. Better still if Randy were to organize every boy in the fraternity house, have them stand on line outside her door, and get it all over with in one long, exhausting night. That way it would be all over. Randy would have the election in the bag, Ron would be defeated, and he would get out of Charlene's life and let her have her husband back.
"He told me you two were live-wires, too," Charlene quipped. "Looks like somebody short-circuited you, though." The boys' eyebrows arched, "Oh, yeah?" Mike said, rising from the bed and standing with his legs spread wide, his hands on his hips. "What gives you that idea?"
"Well," Charlene said, lowering her eyelids in pretended coyness, "a lady-likes a man who's brave enough to undress her, you know."
The two toys roared with laughter. "Is that all?" Tod sang out. "Come here, then, honey, and you'll see how brave we are!"
Charlene moved demurely across the room until she stood between the two twin beds where the boys slept. She turned from one to the other. "Well?" she said, feeling a little shiver of excitement race through her as she read the hungry looks in their eyes.
Mike reached up and put a meaty hand on the outside of her blouse, cupping her breast between his heavy fingers and squeezing on it. She felt him fumble for the buttons, and stood motionless as he opened them all. He licked the outside of his lips with his tongue, then pushed down on the material until it dropped to the floor at Charlene's feet.
"My!" she taunted. "You are brave!" She turned toward the other boy, sitting behind her. "Your turn, Tar-zan."
The boy got up from the bed and stood in front of her, his eyes widening as he glanced down at the full thrust of Charlene's breasts encased in the skimpy brassiere. He raised his hands tentatively, and when he rested them on Charlene's shoulders she had to jump they were so cold.
"Scared, honey?" she teased. An angry scowl crossed the boy's face, and he ripped at the hooks behind her, tearing at the bra and ripping it away from her. She felt his hand snake around her side and cup one of the weighty mounds of soft flesh, squeezing with hard pressure and rubbing the flat of his thumb against the nipple, stirring it to even greater life. "No," she sighed, feeling herself beginning to respond to the boy's touch, "I guess you're not scared, are you?" He grinned, and squeezed harder.
Charlene jumped as she felt another pair of hands slide around her waist and begin tugging at the zipper of her skirt. She wiggled her head around and saw Mike on his knees on the floor between the two beds, rapidly pulling down the skirt zipper and rubbing his hands against the sleek expanse of thigh that came uncovered before his eyes. She saw him press his head close to her, then jumped as she felt his wet, hot tongue stroke the tender skin just above the line where her panties clung so seductively to her hip. She ran her fingers through his thick black hair, hugging his face closer to her. "Ummmm," she sighed. "You're no coward either."
The boy grinned with gratitude for the compliment, then pushed at the skirt until it fell down around Charlene's feet. She stepped out of it, wearing only her panties, garter belt and nylons, and her high spiked heels. Behind her she felt Tod's hands clasp the waistband of her panties, and begin to urge them down, but she pushed away his hands.
"Huh-uh!" she taunted, moving back from their hungry hands and mouths. "This isn't fair. I haven't seen you two do anything yet."
The boys grinned and winked at each other, then began to unbutton their shirts almost simultaneously. Charlene could feel her heart begin to speed up as she watched the two of them undress. Mike was hairier than his roommate, his stomach and chest so covered with thick black fleece that she could barely see the darkly tanned skin underneath. Tod, however, had broader muscles, and his build seemed more massive than his friend's without clothes to cover it. His chest was like a thick barrel wrapped around with golden flesh.
Mike's hands dropped to his fly, then he stopped and looked up at Charlene.
"Well?" she said tightly, suddenly anxious to have him continue and expose all of himself to her eager eyes.
"A gentleman-likes a woman who's not afraid to undress him," he grinned.
Charlene laughed nervously and stepped closer, reaching out for his pants zipper with slightly trembling fingers. She touched it, then brought it down to the bottom. As her eyes stared at the opening, she widened the trousers and pushed them down Mike's thighs. She could tell, even through his underpants, that he was going to be some force to reckon with when they got into bed.
"Now you?" she asked, turning to Tod. He grinned and thrust out his hips. Charlene quickly unzipped him, too, then stood back. The three of them now wore nothing but their underclothes.
"Well?" Mike said.
Charlene shrugged. "Well?" It seemed clear that they were all waiting for the other to make the first move. The two boys looked at each other, then back at Charlene. "Okay," she said, "I'm not afraid." She pushed at the waistband of her panties and felt the slick material glide all the way down her hips and fall in a soft little pile at her ankles.
The two boys' eyes bugged open as they stared at her lush nakedness. Charlene pranced in front of them for a moment, enjoying the response she could see she was getting, then sat on the edge of Mike's bed and crossed her legs, gently swaying one atop the other as she cupped her fingers on her kneecap. "You two going to stand around like that all night? If you are, I've got better things to do with my time."
Mike and Tod laughed nervously, then-again in unison-pulled down their underpants. Charlene had to tighten her grip on her knee as she saw their eager readiness. Both of them were built like bulls-in all areas.
"That's better," she said with a little laugh. Then her hands went to the top of her garter belt, about to slide it, too, down her thighs.
"No!" Tod said quickly, coming to Charlene and stopping her hand. "Leave it on," he said, a slow blush coming to his cheeks.
"The high heels, too," Mike chimed in.
Charlene stared at the two of them. Randy had told her to be sure to wear her highest heels and a garter belt, but she hadn't known it was because these two boys went that route. She sighed to herself. It wouldn't be the first time, she thought with grim amusement.
She looked from one of the brawny athletes to the other. Even with the visible proof of their manhood staring her in the face, she could not help thinking how much they looked like little boys. They hovered near their beds, waiting for Charlene to make the first move-to tell them what to do. But that's the tuay it always is, she reminded herself, thinking back to the times before she married Gene when she'd run into men with similar desires. She knew what they wanted, and she was in just the mood to give it to them.
"All right!" she snapped, spreading her legs wide as she got to her feet and stared the two boys down. "Get up."
Remarkably, amazed all over again at how willingly they were waiting for her to take command, Charlene watched as the two boys got to their feet, exchanging a quick, secret smile between themselves. She moved closer to them, between them, and reached out with both hands-one on each side-and grasped both of them roughly, twisting sharply and hearing them cry out with the jolt of pain she'd given them both.
"Now!" she said, sitting her naked buttocks on the side of the bed. "You know what I want-and you'd better do it right." She brought her hands up in under her breasts and cupped them out to the two boys. Once again they exchanged quick, happy smiles with each other, then dropped to their knees, one on either side of Charlene.
She continued to hold her own breasts until she felt them take over. With Mike on the right and Tod on the left, she watched them pry away her fingers and replace them with their own. A moment later, she felt Mike's hot lips take her nipple into his mouth and begin sucking on it. Almost instantly thereafter, Tod began working on its mate. The two boys, she observed, were staring at each other, rather than her, as they nursed.
"Harder!" she commanded, slapping each of them on the back of the head and urging them nearer. She gasped as they responded with greater speed than she'd anticipated. Each of them stuffed his mouth with the delicate fruit of her flesh, working their tongues in sharp rhythm against her nipples and driving her mad with the double stimulation. Charlene had to close her eyes and grit her teeth as she felt the slippery lips racing up and down her breasts, driving against her as though they truly wanted to devour the skin. She'd forgotten what it was like to have two men doing this at the same time, and felt her thighs quivering as thrill after thrill raced from her bosom down through the entire length of her body.
"Enough!" she snapped, kicking at each of the boys with the sharp tip of her shoe and pushing them away from her by pressing the point into their lower bellies. Mike and Tod fell back, their eyes glazed with excitement. Charlene was giving them exactly what they wanted-more, in fact, since she had learned everything she knew from men who'd practiced such things for more years than either of these two boys were alive. She was truly their mistress, and she knew they were loving every minute of it.
She swung her long, sleek legs up onto the bed and spread them wide. "Now," she commanded, looking hard into both their faces. "I want you to pay homage."
The two boys exchanged secret looks, but made no move from the lloor.
"Pay homage!" Charlene cried, louder than before.
Slowly, she saw Mike rise from his knees and move toward the bed. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and leaned close to Charlene. She closed her eyes as she felt his wet tongue glide across her nylon-encased leg, inching higher until he was brushing against the snaps of the garter belt. "Don't make me wait!" she ordered, and pulled on the boy's ear.
She had to bite sharply on her lip to keep from giving out with a scream that would have brought down the fraternity house as Mike paid the homage both he and she wanted.
"Good," she grunted, thrusting up from the bed to make closer contact. "More! Harder!" As he responded, she sank back into the bed, her heart hammering out of control inside her chest.
As she felt herself reaching the danger point, she reached down and pulled his head away roughly. She saw the disappointment in his eyes, and laughed bitterly, mockingly. He would like that, too. She knew he would. "Now, you," she said, twisting her head toward Tod.
She braced herself as this boy replaced his friend, and took up where the black-haired boy had left off. Charlene bucked and squirmed on the bed, then pulled him away, too, when the intense thrills he was giving her brought her once more to that peak of danger.
She sat up on the bed and looked at their somber, yet ravenous, faces, then burst into hysterical gales of laughter. She kicked out at both of them with the sharply pointed heels, digging the tips into their broad chests, then scrambled off the bed. N
"Get down," she said, pointing to Mike. He rose hesitantly from the floor and lay flat on his back. Charlene had to grunt with amusement. He knew the score, too, and just what she had in mind. After all, she reminded herself, it's what they all want.
She pushed Tod away from the bed, then walked around it, staring hard at Mike's full nakedness and muttering degrading comments about his most prized possession. They liked that, too, she knew. They all did. She heard him start to protest, but she silenced him with a string of abuse even more mocking and belittling than before. She saw his eyes clench shut, but knew it was only so she could not see the happiness dancing inside them.
Charlene moved to the head of the bed, where Mike's massive chest and shoulders nestled comfortably in the mattress, then with two quick bounds she got up onto the bed and stood towering over him. Slowly, trying to keep her balance in the high heels, she squatted down on top of him. She heard his muffled grunt as her body pressed down on him, but in another moment she felt his responsive kisses and settled herself further, straddling him and digging into the mattress with her knees.
She let him continue for a few minutes, then lifted up from him to slide her body further down his length. She trembled as she felt her naked breasts-already raw with the suction of their mouths and the throbbing need inside the nipples-glide through his thickly matted wool. She grasped onto his hips, staring down at his thrashing legs and quivering need, then settled her own legs back into position on him. Only when he had resumed, did Charlene reach out for the boy and hold him while she lowered her mouth. She heard him grunt with sharp pleasure as she wetly enveloped him, and felt him bite a little roughly at her as she began working against him.
Their bodies arched and thrashed together, jolting as one flesh, returning favor for favor, each trying to outdo the other in the amount of thrills being communicated.
And then Charlene felt a thrill of another sort, as Tod's hot hand came down on her buttocks, rubbing gently in the tight cleft, slickly moving in with an ointment of some type which he'd taken from the night table between the two beds. Charlene grit her teeth. She should have known this would be coming, too, she told herself. It always was a part of it.
She felt the mattress sink down as Tod, also, climbed onto the bed, then groaned as she felt his body cover the length of her, his teeth biting roughly into the side of her neck as she continued her movements against Mike.
Her eyes clenched tightly shut as she felt Tod adjust himself, then she had to swallow hard to keep from crying out as he lowered himself against her, driving home and making this weird sandwich of flesh complete.
Together the three of them rocked against each other, their private groans and grunts mingling into one loud melee of orgiastic rhythm. And then Charlene felt Tod's rhythm increase, faster-harder. Mike, too, arched higher and responded to her increased tempo with a faster pace against her. They all knew the end was rapidly approaching, yet Charlene knew something was missing-something that always before, when she had been part of something like this, had happened. Perhaps these two boys were different from the others, or maybe they just hadn't thought of it, she speculated, even as she felt herself melting closer and closer to the point of total release.
But then she felt Tod's hands reach up and grasp her head roughly, attempting to push it away from the boy in under the pile.
Charlene had to laugh to herself. No; nothing was different. They were following true to course. She lifted her head away, then rested her cheek against Mike's thigh. She didn't want to watch; she knew all too well what was happening now. All she wanted to do was wait for the finish-not only of this, but of the whole sordid business. But would it ever come?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The finish, for Charlene, seemed nowhere in sight during the next two weeks, however. Virtually every night Randy arranged some new romp for her, usually with only one boy, rather than a repeat performance of what had happened with Mike and Tod. Gene never suspected a thing, since he was busy while all this was going on with basketball practice or away with the team at a game.
Charlene could not help noticing, however, that the longer Randy continued to use her, the less respect the boys in the fraternity showed to Gene. When he would give them a directive, an increasing number of boys would laugh to his face and continue doing exactly what he'd told them not to do. Discipline in the fraternity house became nothing more than a word, with no basis of fact. The boys did what they pleased, when they pleased, and nothing Gene could do or say made any difference to them.
He was upset by this strange turn of events, and Charlene could tell he was blaming himself. He would sit up late at night, wondering aloud what he was doing wrong to lose the boys' respect, and what he could possibly do to regain it.
Charlene herself didn't budge from the apartment. The one time she had, she'd found herself quickly surrounded by members of the fraternity, who put possessive arms around her and openly made lewd suggestions for repeat performances of what she had done, in turn, with each of them. She was mortified, but there was no way of calling a halt to it. As the election grew nearer, Randy's demands grew bolder-asking her to do things she'd not even done before marrying Gene, and at any hour of the day or night-whether Gene was around or not. On several occasions, Charlene had found it necessary to sneak out of the apartment while her husband was in the shower, because Randy had lined someone up for her and threatened to expose her that instant unless she complied. She was getting scarcely any sleep at all now, and the only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that the election would be held on the coming weekend. Perhaps, she dared to hope, it would all end, then. If Randy kept his promise and gave her back the pictures after he won the election, she might stand a chance of living down the taunts and suggestions of the other boys. Perhaps, however, was a big word.
Two days before the election, Charlene was alone in the apartment when she heard Randy knock at the door in his usual, self-assured manner. She felt sick to her stomach as she went to let him inside.
She could tell immediately that he was angry, and knew that she would be the one to bear the brunt of it.
"I had a talk with some of the guys today," he said, as soon as the door was closed and locked. "Mike, Tod, Frank, and a couple of the others. They tell me they won't be able to give me their votes, anyway."
Charlene's eyes widened and she felt a cold lump in her stomach. "What?" she gasped. "Why not?"
Randy grunted sharply. "Why not? Because of your old man, honey. He's gone to each of them and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that if they don't cast their votes for Sarcota he'll make it rough for them during the year-both on and oil the field."
Charlene gasped again. "I don't believe you! Gene wouldn't do something like that!"
The dark-haired boy snorted. "No? Maybe you don't know him as well as you thought. He's determined to win this thing for Sarcota, and he's using every dirty trick in the book." He stopped for a moment and grinned, realizing that he was suddenly the pot calling the kettle black. "I think he's got some idea of what's going on," he added, "so he's using tactics of his own to combat mine."
"What?" Charlene's face was terror-stricken. She grasped the boy's arm roughly, squeezing in with her fingernails. "Randy, you told me that Gene would never find out about this!"
He laughed wickedly and pried her fingers away from his arm. "I didn't say he knew-I said he suspected that everything's not. exactly on the up-and-up. I guess he got to wondering how guys who were never particular fans of mine suddenly were on my bandwagon." He winked quickly. "He doesn't know about you ... yet." He let the last word hang in the air for a long moment.
"You don't want him to ever find out, do you?" he added softly.
Charlene shook her head vigorously. "Of course not! Why if...."
"That's what I thought," Randy interrupted. He was suddenly crisp and business-like again. "That's why you've got to make sure f win this election."
Charlene stared at him with apprehension written all over her face. "How?" she asked hesitantly. "What more can I do?"
"Seduce Sarcota."
"What?" she gasped.
Randy shrugged. "You've done a good job of it with practically everyone else; what's so difficult about one more?"
"Randy, I couldn't!" Charlene protested, remembering the last incident she'd had with Ron, and knowing that he had been on his guard around her ever since.
"Why not?" he asked. He winked again. "From what I understand, you're a real pro at this. You can haul any-body's ashes-no matter how they want 'em hauled. I'm sure it won't take you long to get the bead on Sarcota. I might even venture a guess or two myself about what might appeal to him most."
"You don't understand!" Charlene wailed. "I just wouldn't be able to get close to him to even try!"
Randy stood up from the couch. "Well you'd better try," he warned, "because the way things are now, this election is anybody's ballgame-and I don't like to play that way. I want to win, baby, and when I don't, I'm a mighty sore loser." He stared grimly into her eyes. "Get me?"
Charlene wanted to kill him at that moment. But all she could do was shake her head dumbly up and down. "Yes," she muttered. "I understand."
"Good," he said, clapping his hands together. "I saw Sarcota going into his room a little while ago. I'd suggest you get your cute little butt up there right now, and get this over with as soon as possible."
"Even if I did this," Charlene protested, "how would you be sure Ron woidd keep his promise and drop out?"
Randy laughed bitterly. "He's not going to make any promise, sugar. He's going to drop out; no questions asked." He smiled wickedly. "You're going to make sure the door's left nice and unlocked when you go in there, and when I hear everything proceeding nicely, I'll just amble inside with my trusty little Brownie flash and take a few candids of our buddy Ron."
Charlene covered her mouth with her hands. "No," she said firmly, shaking her head back and forth. "No, Randy, I won't go along with that."
"No?"
"No." She stammered for words. "Why-why I'd be a fool if I did! Then you'd have something else on me-two sets of pictures!"
"Smart girl," Randy chuckled.
"How would I know you wouldn't turn around and use those against me, too?"
He shrugged. "You wouldn't, honey. You wouldn't. That's the chance you'll have to take." He grinned wickedly. "You'll just have to trust me."
Charlene laughed sharply. "Gentleman's word?" she said bitterly.
Randy flashed her a broad smile. "Something like that." And then the smile faded. "Now slip into something cozy and amble upstairs, before our friend decides to go out for a nature stroll or something. I want this wrapped up by this afternoon."
Charlene stared at him with pure hatred in her eyes. Then, realizing that it was futile, she turned away from him and started toward the door which would lead her to Ron's room.
Charlene stood outside the door, her hand raised to knock, but finding herself unable to bring her knuckles down against the wood. Her stomach was tied in knots, and she felt powerless to move.
"Get going!" Randy hissed. Charlene turned her head and saw him poking out from a doorway several yards further down the hall. He shot her a grim, warning look, then waited.
Charlene lifted her hand a second time, and closing her eyes, brought it down on the door. She rapped sharply, and after a moment's wait, she heard footsteps approaching the door. She wanted to turn and run, but it was already too late. Ron opened the door, then stood back in surprise as his eyes met Charlene's.
"Hello, Ron," she said softly. "May I come in?"
He stepped back hesitantly from the doorway and let her inside. Charlene noted grimly that he did not lock the door.
"What can I do for you, Mrs. Anderson?" he asked. As Charlene moved further into the room, toward Ron's single bed, she noticed that he stayed close to the door, apparently not wanting to get into another compromising position with her.
"I came to apologize, Ron," she said, deliberately keeping her voice down because she knew Randy might be listening outside the door.
"Apologize--? " he said.
Charlene tried to smile, but the effort hurt. "You know. For-for what happened in the gym."
Ron looked down at his shoes. "Don't mention it, Mrs. Anderson. I don't even think about it anymore."
Charlene looked up sharply. Did it mean that little? "Ron," she said softly, "what I want to say is that I do think about it; and that's why I want to apologize." He stared quizzically at her, and started slowly toward the bed. "You see, Ron, what I did to you was rotten. I used you, and I had no right to do that. What's worse, I cheapened something wonderful that happened between us."
The boy looked puzzled, as though he couldn't understand what she was saying.
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I enjoyed what happened, Ron," Charlene said, swallowing all pride and hating herself for the words she was saying, "and I'm so sorry that it turned out the way it did. I wanted you to know that-that what we did wasn't just so you'd drop out of the election. It was part of it, but not all."
Ron stood next to the bed, staring down at her with a funny expression on his face. "I-" he began, but Charlene would not let him finish.
"No, Ron," she said softly. "Don't say anything. I came to make that up to you." She had to close her eyes, feeling that if she didn't, the boy would be able to read all the deceit and lies behind them. She held her breath for a long moment, waiting for Ron to say or do something. The silence in the room was so heavy that it could have been cut with a knife.
Suddenly she jumped with surprise as she felt Ron's strong arms fold around her waist and pull her body to his. His lips were pressing hard against her neck, kissing her furiously. "I know," he murmured, "I know. I feel the same way. I tried to forget about it, but I couldn't. I never had anything so wonderftd in my life, Charlene. I tried to stay away from you-" And then his voice broke and he was sobbing against her shoulder. "It's wrong. I know it's wrong. Gene's my friend-you're his wife...."
Charlene folded her hands tightly against his back and murmured low in his ear. "Don't, Ron," she said softly. "Please, don't."
She felt her insides quivering as she took his hand and brought him to the bed. As she lay there, feeling his eager fingers lifting up her skirt and working to pull down her thin panties, her head twisted toward the door. The lock was open. She wanted to cry out to this boy to secure it, to make sure that Randy would not come in-but she couldn't. She was as powerless to warn him about what was going to happen as she was to free herself from Randy's hold on her, or to stop Ron's hungry mouth and hands from re-discovering the intimate parts of her body.
He was in a hurry now, too ready for her to bother with unlocked doors, or even with taking off all their clothes. He rumpled her skirt up around her hips and pulled her panties down around her ankles, then dropped his own pants and hobbled onto the bed.
Charlene closed her eyes as she reached down to help him, to guide him. Maybe if they didn't make noise-if they hurried-they could be finished before Randy came with his camera. But where would that leave her?
She twisted and thrashed on the bed, knowing that there was no way out for her. Whatever she did would be wrong. If she let Ron continue-and she wanted him to so very much-she would be putting him in the same trap she was now in herself. If she stopped him, and gave Randy no evidence to use against the basketball star who was his opponent, she would be sealing her doom with Gene.
She flung her arms around Ron's neck and pulled him down to her. "Love me, Ron," she whispered. "No matter what happens-love me!"
And then, with one mighty thrust that sent her jolting upward on the bed, he fused their bodies together and Charlene cried out with pain and pleasure and the agony of knowing that at any moment Randy might come bursting through the door.
As Ron began his frantic rhythm against her, lunging and probing hard with his powerful body, Charlene whimpered, feeling that she might lose her mind at any moment. It was all too much-too much for anyone to bear.
As Ron's pounding increased, his driving lunges getting harder and faster with each passing second, Charlene knew that all she could do was make it as enjoyable for him as possible. It would surely be the last time they would make love, and she owed it to him-for what she was doing to him.
She arched her spine on the mattress, taking even more of him, then began a series of quick, clamping motions against him, rocking him in the cradle of love from side to side, turning and writhing with her hips on the rumpled bed as she shimmied and bounced in under him. She heard him moaning with pleasure, sobbing as the end came nearer and nearer for them both.
He was biting her neck, his hands grabbing at her breasts and squeezing them hard as he lunged with all his life, driving that last mile to the end of the road.
And then, just as Charlene felt herself beginning to burst, she heard Ron grunting heavily and staying with her all the way as she rode up and down against him. She could feel him pulsing and pounding as wave after wave of joy washed through them both.
Suddenly a loud bang shot through the room and they both turned their lust filled faces toward the door. A blinding flash filled the room, then another and another.
"That's it, folks," Randy said from the doorway, "smile for the birdie!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Randy, please!" Charlene snapped, trying to push the door closed on the boy that Saturday night. "We don't have anything else to say to each other. You got what you wanted-you won the election-now get out and leave me alone."
The boy pushed harder with his shoulder and sent Charlene stumbling back into the hall. He stepped quickly inside and bolted the door closed. A strange smile was on his face. "Honey," he said, his voice dripping with a sweetness Charlene knew was false, "I just want to thank you for all the help you gave me." He laughed lightly. "Why, without you, I don't think I'd have made it."
Charlene cringed, remembering the stricken look on Ron's face a few nights earlier-just after Randy had sprung into the room with his camera. He'd looked so hurt at first, and then so coldly distant. Even after Randy left, and Charlene tried to explain why she'd been forced to do what she'd done, he hadn't listened. He'd walked away from her without a word and stood staring in grim silence out at the dark campus beyond his window.
Gene had nearly popped a blood vessel when Ron told him for the second time that he was dropping out of the election, but this time no matter what he did or said to Ron to goad him into reversing his decision, the boy stuck to his guns. He told Gene that it was his decision, his conscience, his life-so would the older man kindly leave him alone? Gene was hurt by this and sulked around the apartment without saying more than two words to Charlene all the while. It was as bad, she thought, as if he did know the truth, and couldn't bear the thought of staying in the same apartment with her. But it was over!
Charlene had cried that afternoon, when the results of the election were announced. With Randy as the only strong candidate on the ballot, his election was almost unanimous. Finally, she'd thought to herself, it was all over and she could pick up the pieces of her former life and marriage-if there were any left to be picked up.
She had planned to have a long talk with Gene that night, and try to explain at least some of the things about her past life to him-the parts that happened before they were married. She felt she had to tell him at least that much, and-judging by his reaction to what he heard-possibly all of the story, right up to the present. She was sick to death of lies and deceit and hurting innocent people. She wanted the slate to be as clean as possible, because she believed that if they were to continue living at Hooper they would have to have a tight bond between them. Otherwise, when word began to filter down to Gene-as Charlene was positive it would-the blow would be all the worse for him.
But Gene had taken the results of the election differently. He'd known, of course, that Randy was going to be elected president of the fraternity, but until that knowledge became fact he'd managed to control his emotions. That night, however, after pacing around the apartment like a wounded lion, he stormed out-telling Charlene that he was going for a long, long walk, to try to work everything out of his system. And now Randy was back again.
"I don't want your thanks," she spat, reaching for MO the doorknob to throw him out of the apartment before Gene got back. "Just give me those pictures, and clear out of my life. I've had about all of you I can stomach for a lifetime."
A flicker of anger crossed the boy's eyes, but he maintained his smiling expression. "Now, honey," he said softly, "is that any way to talk? Of course you can have the pictures back. That's what I came down about." He made an elaborate gesture of searching in his pockets for his wallet, then shrugged. "Well, what do you know about that?" he drawled lazily. "I must have left it up in my room." He pretended to concentrate for a few moments, then raised his head and smiled at Charlene. "Tell you what: why don't we go up to my room now and get them?"
Charlene shook her head. "Nothing doing. You bring them down here."
Randy laughed. "No, honey. You come up and get them if you want them. If you don't want them, I'm sure I could find somebody to give them to."
Charlene took a deep breath. "All right," site said. "I'll go upstairs with you." She gave him a warning look. "But if you try anything, Randy, so help me...." She stopped, knowing there was absolutely nothing she could threaten him with. That was the whole trouble; until she had those pictures safely away from him, she was still at his mercy.
"Good girl," he grinned, patting her on the rump. He opened the apartment door and they slipped out together, then walked quickly up the stairs to the second floor and Randy's room. Even as they approached, Charlene could hear the sound of music and laughter coming from one of the rooms around where she'd seen Randy a few days earlier. She stopped in the hall, feeling suddenly cold and apprehensive.
"Come on," the boy urged, positing against her shoulders and propelling her forward. He moved her slowly toward the door where all the noise was coming from.
Charlene stopped again, a look of fear written all over her face. From the sounds coming through the door, the boys inside had been heavily drinking and were in quite a rowdy, ready-for-anything mood. She dug her heels into the carpeted hall and wouldn't budge when Randy tried to force her forward. "Who's in there?" she asked, her voice shaking in her throat.
The boy smiled and shrugged. "Just some old friends of yours. Nobody you don't already know-well."
Charlene shook her head violently, trying to release her arm from the strong grip of Randy's fingers. "No," she said, "I'm not going in there. You bring out the pictures for me."
Randy continued to smile, a strange wild fire dancing in his eyes, but his voice was tight and grim. "You're going in, baby," he said through his teeth, "one way or another." And then he pulled on Charlene's arm, jerking her forward and slamming her body hard against the heavy wooden door of the room. His hand fumbled for the knob as Charlene squealed and kicked against him. Suddenly the door was jerked open from the other side, and the overpowering odor of cigarette smoke, liquor, and heady masculine bodies hit Charlene like a blow in the stomach. She stared ahead of herself into the dimly lit room. Everywhere she looked were boys from the fraternity, and they had all suddenly stopped talking and were staring with hungry, eager eyes at her.
"Go on, honey," Randy hissed sharply from behind her, and shoved with the flat of his hand. Charlene stumbled and fell into the room, landing on her rump. The boys roared with laughter and started to close in on her. Charlene tried to scramble to her feet, but slid and landed once again on her buttocks. She twisted her head around in all directions, more terrified with each moment.
They were all there-all the boys Randy had made her sleep with: Eric, Phil, Tod, Mike, and all the others. Even some whose faces were completely unfamiliar to Charlene, and who, she suspected, weren't even members of that fraternity. There were close to forty boys packed in the small room, and she could see the sexual hunger in each of their eyes. They had been drinking, and mingled with the stale cigarette smoke, Charlene could also detect the acrid, sweet smell of marijuana. In their condition, the boys might do anything to her-and Charlene knew it.
She opened her mouth to scream, but just then Randy pushed his way through the crowd of boys. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" he shouted in a good-humored way, turning to the mob around him. "Please-try to restrain yourselves." Charlene listened with rapt attention. Was it possible, she wondered, that Randy would keep them away from her? Her heart sank in the next instant, as the newly-elected president of the fraternity added: "We have a little bit of business to attend to first."
First, Charlene thought grimly. He wasn't going to do a thing; he would let the whole mob-all forty boys-pounce on her and do with her what they would. This was the reward, the thanks he was going to give her. Charlene never hated anyone more than she hated Randy at that moment. She felt like leaping at him and tearing open his throat with her raw fingernails. As she crouched on the floor, with the boys in a tight circle around her, she vowed one thing to herself: if they were going to attack her, she would give them more of a fight than they were looking for. They'd have to beat her unconscious; she was through being a pushover for anyone and everyone.
"As the new president of the Betas," Randy announced, "I have it in my power to admit new members to our fraternity. I am about to make history by announcing that I have decided to admit the first woman to our ranks!"
The boys howled with laughter, poking and nudging each other and leering down at Charlene. Someone in the back of the room called out, "Hey! That's not possible! The rules for membership say any gentleman of good character!" Again the boys howled, and Randy raised his hands for silence.
"No, no, gentlemen!" he announced. "I didn't mean this young lady would be a member. She'll be our mascot-our pet!"
All hell broke loose in the room as the boys doubled over with laughter, and tried to outdo each other with obscene comments about Charlene and what they would do when she officially became the fraternity pet.
Charlene herself sat huddled in a tight little ball on the cold floor, her arms wrapped around her bent knees, her heart pounding wildly in her throat.
"Initiation!" someone screamed, and like wildfire the other boys took up the chant, until the room thundered with the dreadful word. INITIATION!
Charlene tried to cry out as she felt three of the boys grab down at her, loosening her arms and pulling her to her feet, but her scream was drowned out by the roar of laughter and excitement coming from the fraternity boys. Site felt herself being propelled toward the far end of the room, and as the boys cleared a path for her, she saw that they were taking her toward the bed. She fought with them, trying to kick herself free of their grasp, but two more boys took hold of her legs and carried her the rest of the way. She felt them flop her face-down against the bottom of the bed, her breasts and head pushed roughly into the sheets, while her buttocks stuck out in the air from the way they'd bent her body over the mattress. Two boys held her hands and two more her ankles.
From behind her she heard Randy calling, "The paddle! Who's got the initiation paddle?" The boys murmured, and soon a cheer went up from their midst. Charlene's heart pounded and she tried to scream, but another boy pressed her face down into the bed so that the cry was muffled even to her own ears.
She jumped in terrified surprise as she felt hot hands seize her skirt and shove it up around her waist, then pull at her panties. She could hear more than two voices arguing, and felt several hands running across her buttocks as they apparently fought for the privilege of taking down her pants. The matter was quickly settled, however, when Charlene felt the thin nylon being ripped away. The boys cheered, and passed the pieces of torn panties over their heads and distributed them among the crowd.
Suddenly a hush fell over the room. Charlene could hear her heart hammering in her chest as she heard someone step close to her. She knew, instinctively knew, it could be no one else but Randy. She held her breath, waiting for what she knew was going to happen. She'd seen fraternity paddles before. Common to all fraternities, and used during initiation hazing, they were several inches wide and at least an inch thick and made of sturdy walnut or birch, polished over the years from being applied to the seat of many a sophomore.
Site squirmed on the bed, terrified and covered with shame at having her nakedness so boldly exposed to all these boys. And then, hearing the paddle whistle down through the air and land with a sharp crack against her delicate cheeks, she bit into the mattress, screaming as the red-hot pain seared right through her. The boys howled with glee, then came suddenly and deathly quiet once more as Randy raised the paddle for a second swing. Charlene bit into the sheets, knowing it was coming and finding herself tingling in expectation of the sharp jolt of the wood against her naked buttocks. When it came, once again she howled, but this time the pain was almost sweet-spreading through her legs and warming her with the strangest feeling of pleasure.
Yes, she thought to herself, do it to me. It's what I need ... what I deserve. Do it to me hard!
As though he'd read her mind, Randy complied. This third crack was stronger than the other two combined, and Charlene felt as though the top of her head had been blown off. And yet, when the paddle lifted away, her buttocks tingled with an ever-increasing excitement!
The boys were chanting now and clapping their hands with such loud rhythm that Charlene could no longer hear the crack of the paddle when it struck against her skin. She could only feel it, as it swung and struck, swung and struck, swung and struck.
She felt her head spinning, and knew that unless they let her up she was going to pass out. She rolled her head on the mattress and tried to look at the boys who held her, but black dots swam in front of her eyes. Let it happen, her mind screamed. You won't feel it then-you won't know what they'll be doing to you.
Feeling close to the brink of unconsciousness, Charlene was aware that Randy had put the paddle away and that the boys were lifting her from the bed. She could hear the roar of their voices in her ears, but none of the words were distinct. Through the swirling black clouds covering her eyes she could pick out leering faces, and hands as they reached for her. She could barely feel them as they began to strip away her clothes.
Her blouse went first-jerked and ripped off her shoulders. She had the vague feeling of pain as they tore off her bra, not even bothering to unfasten the snaps first. And then, as she felt pinching fingers grab out at her breasts from all directions, she knew they were also taking off her skirt.
It's going to happen! her mind screamed. They're going to rape me! All of them!
She could hear herself screaming, but it seemed to be coming from far, far away and muffled through a foot of blankets. She could feel hands trying to clamp down on her mouth, felt herself being carried back to the bed, knew there were hands plunging and digging at her from all directions, and still the blackness hovered away from her. She was slipping fast, but her consciousness was still with her-and drugged as she felt, she was still aware of what was about to happen.
She saw the first boy-a towering giant of a man, already stripped to the waist and undoing his pants-approach the bed. Again she screamed, but he kept coming closer and closer, his mouth drooling with expectation as he readied himself.
And then it stopped.
Everything. The noise, the pinching, the screams, the swirling. Everything stopped, and the room was so quiet that Charlene felt she had suddenly gone deaf. Then, as she struggled to regain her hearing, she could detect another voice shouting at the crowd of boys. She fought to sit up on the mattress, and as she focused her eyes, she could see Ron standing in the doorway, his arm outstretched and pointing at the bed, his face contorted with anger.
"I said let her go!" Charlene heard him shout. She saw Randy step forward. "Get out of here, Sarcota," he yelled. "If you know what's good for you."
"Not until you let her go."
"She's happy right where she is."
"Let's ask her."
Charlene saw Ron push his way through the crowd of boys and approach the bed. "Do you want this, Charlene?" he asked.
She shook her head numbly from side to side. Great hot tears ran down her cheeks as she flung herself at him, begging him to protect her, to take her away with him.
"All right," Ron shouted to the roomful of boys. "Get her clothes. Now!"
The drunken boys stood motionless, their faces suddenly bearing dark, foreboding scowls and resentful anger that their fun had been spoiled so soon.
"I said get her clothes!" Ron shouted again.
Someone moved to pick Charlene's skirt up from the floor, but another boy stopped him. "What's the big idea, Sarcota?" he demanded. "When did you start protecting sluts like this?"
Ron let Charlene go and pounced on the boy. He grabbed him by the front of his shirt and punched him, hard, in the stomach. The boy doubled over and fell to the floor.
"You guys make my stomach puke," he spat at the rest of the mob. "You think you're such gentlemen! Forty guys against one girl; that's some odds!"
"She can handle us," another boy murmured.
Ron's face clouded with darker anger and he scanned the faces around him to see who'd made the remark.
"From what Mrs. Anderson tells me, she didn't have much choice about what happened. You gentlemen used her any way you wanted, and now you're condemning her for what she was forced to do."
The boys murmured and stepped back slightly, as Randy came to face Ron.
"I think we've had enough speeches, Sarcota," he said. "Now how about you getting out of here before I get mad, huh? Unless you've got a mighty short memory, you're in no position to be giving orders to anyone. Get me?"
Ron hissed sharply in his throat and advanced on Randy. "Yeah, I get you, you little bastard," he snapped. And suddenly he had caught Randy by the throat and was flailing out at him with his strong right fist, pounding and beating at the boy with all his might, landing blows in every direction. Charlene shivered on the bed as she watched the blows fall one after another, and heard the terrible cries of pain coming from Randy as he struggled in vain to protect himself. She saw Ron pound him to the floor, then swing back his foot and aim it at Randy's groin.
"No, Ron!" she screamed.
The muscular" basketball star stopped and turned to her, his chest heaving, his face dripping with sweat. He held her eyes for a long moment, then slowly dropped his foot. Randy was sobbing and holding his stomach, rolling on the floor at everyone's feet in pain.
"I think you've got something that belongs to me," Ron shouted down at Randy.
The dark-haired boy moaned and writhed, but when Ron grabbed his hair and jerked up his head, ready to land another blow to the boy's jaw, Randy hollered, "In the desk! The top drawer!"
Ron pushed his way through the crowd of boys and yanked open the desk drawer. Inside he found two soiled envelopes, flipped quickly through them, then jammed both inside his pants pocket. He turned back to the mob.
"Anyone else want to tell me the lady isn't going?"
The boys murmured and said nothing.
"All right," he breathed heavily. "Get dressed," he snapped at Charlene, then turned back to the boys. "What you just saw Howard get is what anyone in this room is going to get if so much as a word of any of this gets back to Gene. You understand? Just one word to him, and I swear to God I'll come after each and every one of you. You'll have to kill me, because I'll keep coming until I've got every one of you. Understand?"
The boys murmured, but Charlene could tell they were clearly impressed by the display of sheer strength Ron had just shown. They shuffled back and forth, and some of them began to filter out of the room.
Charlene's clothes were in tatters, but when she was dressed as best she could, she went to Ron's side and he led her out of the room. When he slammed the door behind them, not a sound came from the mob. Their party was over.
Ron walked in silence back to Charlene's apartment with her. The lights were off when she went inside; Gene was not back yet. "Ron...? " she said hesitantly, as she stood inside the hall and stared up at him, tears clouding her eyes. She reached for his arm, but he pulled back.
His hand dug into his pants pocket and he fished out the two envelopes. "I think these belong to you," he said, then turned and walked quickly toward the stairs.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Several hours later, Charlene sat alone in the dingy, dimly-lit bus station that serviced Hooper College and the surrounding community. In her fingers she clutched the handle of her weather-beaten suitcase, containing most of her clothes and small personal belongings, as well as a bus ticket to New York-one way.
Back in the apartment, carefully folded and lying on the pillow where Gene would find it when he came home, was the ten page letter Charlene had written him. She had confessed everything-every last detail-in as gentle a way as she could. At the end she explained that she realized she'd ruined her own life for good, and by staying with him there at Hooper all she would do would be ruin his life more than she'd already done. She begged him to forgive her, told him that she loved him, and added that she wished she had her whole life to live over-so she could be the kind of wife to him that he thought she was, and wanted her to be.
Charlene had cried as she'd written the letter, and wavered several times about leaving it. Perhaps, she'd told herself, it was foolish of her to write it and leave. Maybe Ron's threat would hold up, and Gene would never learn about what she was. But no, she then told herself. Someday, in some way, he would find out-and until that day came, Charlene knew she would live every minute with the heavy cloud of exposure and deceit hanging over her head. Better to confess everything, and leave before she hurt Gene more than she had.
She scuffed her foot on the hard concrete floor. So now it started all over again. I've had my fling at being a responsible wife, she told herself, and I failed miserably. The only direction she could go now was down-back to the party circuit, the slow steady descent into depravity. Only this time there would be nobody there to pull her out, as Gene had done. She would have perhaps ten years left before the wrinkles and signs of age started to show, and then she would find herself on street corners, hustling for two dollars with anyone who had the money to spend.
Charlene buried her face in her hands and began to cry. It could have been so wonderful, she sobbed to herself.
Suddenly she jumped, feeling a hand on her shoulder. Already it was starting. She turned angrily, ready to strike out at whoever had touched her, then froze on the hard bench. Her eyes widened, her lips trembled, and she felt her breath coming in a hard rasp.
"Gene!" she finally burst out. She wanted to fling her arms around him and bury herself against him, but she held back.
"Hi, honey," he said softly, squeezing hard on her shoulder. His eyes looked red and tired, and his face seemed drawn and haggard.
Charlene lowered her eyes, unable to hold his penetrating stare. He seemed to be looking right into her very soul.
"Why did you come here?" he asked.
The tears began to slip down Charlene's face. "Gene," she sobbed, "didn't you ... didn't you read the letter?"
He nodded slowly. "I read it." He squeezed again on her shoulder. "That's why I want to know why you came here." He turned her around on the bench so she sat facing him, then slowly lifted her head with his hand under her chin until their eyes were level. "Did you think I loved you so little that I wouldn't want to help you?" he said softly. "Have I been such a stupid fool that I haven't let you know how much I love you, how much I need to have you with me?"
"Gene," Charlene sobbed, "how could you?"
"Baby," he soothed, running his fingers through her hair, "do you remember the marriage vow we took? For better or worse? Well as far as I'm concerned, nothing's changed between us. I just wish you'd had enough faith in me in the first place, to tell me what was going on so none of this would have happened."
Charlene could barely see his face through the tears that misted her eyes. She reached out and touched him lightly on the cheek. Her throat was too dry and sore for any words to come out-even if she'd been able to think of some that were appropriate.
"It's my fault, too, you know," he said. "If I hadn't been such a damn fool, I'd have seen how unimportant all those other things I was doing were." He pulled her close to him, rubbing her cheek against his own. "You're the only thing I should be concerned with, honey," he said, "and from now on that's how it's going to be."
"Gene," she sobbed, "I can't go back there; I just can't."
He shook his head slowly. "You have to, honey," he said. "That's part of the trouble, too. We all make mistakes, some of us bigger ones than others, but we've got to have the guts to admit we've done wrong and try to show people that we're able to make up for what we've done. You tried to hide the shameful things in your life, instead of trusting that I'd believe you wanted to change and give all that up. The girl I married is the most wonderful person in the world, Charlene, and in my eyes she always will be.
"We're going to go back to Hooper and we're going to stare everybody right in the eye and show them that they're wrong about what they think." He hugged her close. "And we'll make them change their minds. You know why?"
Charlene shook her head gently against her husband's chest.
"Because there'll be two of us, not just one. That's how it should have been all along, and it damn well is going to be that way from now on. The two of us, together, ready to fight anything that we come up against." He lifted away her head and leaned down to kiss the tears from her eyes and cheeks. "I love you, baby," he whispered. He kissed her again, then got up from the bench and pulled her with him. He reached down and picked up her suitcase, then put his other arm around her shoulders, hugging her tightly, protectively, to his body.
