Meet Chance, a beautiful black girl who's trying to make it in New York. Chance has come a long way from the hot, crowded tenements of Harlem...but she still has a long way to go.
Follow her adventures into the wild and way-out world of men's magazines, porno films and topless dancing. Take a Chancel
CHAPTER 1
Think sexy."
The photographer softly coached Chance while his assistant took a couple of instant Polaroid shots to check out the lighting.
Chance moistened her lips. Think sexy. Man, I'm thinking nothing but dollar bills in bundles of one hundreds. That's all this deal means to me. The right to degrade myself so I can get money for this college semester.
Luis, the photographer, checked the Polaroids. "Lighting's okay but the pose is stiff. Can't you loosen up? I've heard the most marvelous things about you, Chance." His voice was insinuating.
You heard nothing but lies, man, Chance thought to herself. I'm sexy from my black skin out. What in hell do you really care about what goes on under that skin?
She felt the black scowl pucker her eyebrows under her Afro. Caught the look of apprehension in the eyes of the assistant magazine editor, the fashion coordinator, the hairdresser, the make-up man. Even the assistant's assistant who was a glorified fetch and carry dog for last minute items, containers of coffee, sandwiches.
Hell, she couldn't afford to blow the job out of sheer anger. Had to curb that black temper of hers. The Hasselblad became a mask in front of the photographer's face; his second face. His lips moved under the luxuriant brown mustache.
"Come on, baby," he purred. "You're on a bed with pink satin sheets." In fact, she was standing on a sleek roll of satiny finished paper which reeled up behind her for background. A glossy excuse for a pink slip covered her magnificent breasts, her sleek ebony carved loins. "Feel that bed. So soft, so slick, so sexy."
Chance felt it, mesmerized by Luis' voice with the Spanish slur. Felt the sheen of satin against her own satiny skin. Felt herself going all soft flesh inside, sexy and panting down through her gut and into the soft, slick sheath of her pussy.
"That's it. Now you're getting the mood." Luis caressed her with his words. Her skin prickled with the sound of his verbal lovemaking. It assaulted her senses.
Chance shut her eyes briefly, the long dark lashes brushing the highlights on her ebony cheeks. Her lips parted, her head tilted slightly up, feeling the heat of the floods on her, warming her, melting her anger and her resistance.
"That's it, that's it," Luis murmured.
She heard the click, turn, click, turn, as he methodically shot a picture, snapped the film wind handle.
"Loosen up that bod, baby. Give."
Chance opened her eyes, saw the apprehension gone from the faces of the small crew now breathlessly watching her silent performance. Luis stalked her a foot to the left, a foot to the right, his upper face hidden by the camera, his lips, delicate and curled, directing her pose. He was tall and pencil-thin. Lithe as a tiger.
Chance wondered if he were a faggot. So many of these damn photographers were. Maybe they had to be in self-defense. Otherwise they'd go sexually mad, having to photograph breasts and ass and pussy for hours, day in and day out. Keeping hands off. Would be a hell of a strain on a normal man's cock.
Chance let her eyes wander down Luis' body, down the slender rib cage under his skintight shirt, down the flat abdomen, the narrow hips to that very noticeable bulge in those unnecessarily tight pants.
Her tongue tip made a wet circle about her lips and her body undulated slightly, unconsciously responding to the sexual challenge. Faggot, hell, what did it matter one way or the other? He had all the parts necessary to make him a man. Whether he used them on other men or on herself was immaterial. Could be he was AC-DC.
Chance smiled, a slow, seductive, inviting smile, her eyes straight on the cocky bulge in Luis' pants.
"Great. Perfect You're one seductive female. Keep it up. . . . "
Chance felt her sensuous nerves coming alive in a delicate swarm of sensations at the tip of her throbbing mons Veneris. Her insistent clit swelled, raised itself from its hiding place, demanded physical contact.
Chance pivoted her body, leading with her live, warm pelvic tip, reaching out toward the bulge in Luis' pants. Moving gentle and soft, this way and that, getting ready for a good hard fuck.
"That's it, keep going, keep going," Luis murmured. His body bent, turned, rose, dipped, aiming the black mask of his camera from different angles at her sumptuous body.
Her pelvis moved in an intricate rhythm to the slight twists and turns of his body.
"You're gorgeous, beautiful," he urged her on, keeping her in the lens of his mechanical eye.
Chance smiled, a slight sensual curve at the corner of her full lips. His saying the words made her feel a sense of her own beauty. Her hand stole up under her breast, cupped it briefly, feeling the full juicy weight of it.
Luis licked his lips under his thin mustache.
Gently, Chance ran the palm of her hand over the fullness of her globe, the tight erect nipple brushing against her fingers. As she played with the perfection of her own body, her secret smile flirted around her lips.
"You're hot, baby, keep it up." Luis moved agilely, his shutter clicks beating a steady metronome rhythm through Chance's body. She felt somehow his answering response.
Her two hands flowed down over her breasts, over the thin sheen of the pink slip, flowed caressingly along the surprisingly narrow cage of her ribs on which her ripe breasts swung lazily, flowed over the rich voluptuous flare of her hips.
The flesh under the slinky material was warm and full, arrogant with desire. She felt the anonymous eyes upon her as she stood under the floods, soaking up their heat until it pulsated in her body. And the hypnotism of Luis and his camera focused on her, exposing her, invading the privacy of her sexual desire and response.
She didn't give a damn. Let them see. Let her sexuality hang out, dripping with honey, drawing the envious eyes of frigid women to her, drawing in the turgid cocks of men as her pussy swelled under the pink slip, almost reaching out, wanting to draw in Luis' manhood.
Was he responding? She sent a sly, provocative look from under her long lashes.
"Ooohhh, that's it, Chance. You're getting to me, baby," Luis murmured, never moving the camera from his face. His whole body was one agile, swollen prick, tantalizing her as he moved on the floor around her.
She clasped her two, slender hands, snaked her arms seductively up in the air, slithered her body from side to side, feeling the rub of her hot, swollen love lips caught between her thighs, the slow drip of honey.
The camera clicked in the still of the studio.
Chance almost felt Luis' hands clasp around her, slide down the slope of her swinging tits, slip around the flesh of her hips. She groaned, brought her hands before her face to hide the sudden torment of unfulfilled passion.
"Suffer, baby, suffer." The words came out of Luis' barely moving lips.
The hell with suffering. A hot fight of rebellion shot through Chance's eyes, and she suddenly swung around, presenting the long naked line of her back to the photographer, and the rich full swell of her perfectly shaped ass. The pink satin sheen covering it only made it more tantalizing.
Chance lowered her queenly black hi-rise hair, lured Luis with a come-here look sent over her shoulder. Her full lips just barely showed.
"We get the message, baby, keep sending."
Chance smiled lazily, bared her teeth. Teeth that wanted to bite ever so softly, ever so deftly, his cock which pressed against his tight pants. Bite the tip just enough to hurt a little, tantalize a lot until he bulged with the urgent demand to shove into her, penetrate her.
Chance groaned, her head falling back slightly like a flower on a broken stem, feeling the sudden, insinuating impact of Luis' manhood sliding into her pulsing cunt.
Her hands and arms moved restlessly in front of her, her eyes half-closed; she almost felt the muscle and bone of Luis' slim body as her hands caressed in the air.
I'm getting to you, beauty," Luis said tightly, his camera focused on her long, lithe back as her hips undulated in the slow ancient rhythm of passion.
Her ass moved slowly; she could feel Luis' hard cock imprisoned in the tender sheath of her cunt. In imagination she held it there, tight between her thighs, not letting him move. She the queen, and he the slave doing her bidding.
And he was obedient, deliciously obedient, as he bent and moved and swayed to the slightest change and thrust in her body, his camera almost glued to her, unwilling to let go of a single sexual image.
Luis moved in for some close-ups, standing on a stool brought him by a soft-footed assistant. He was now so close, she could reach out and touch him, run her fingers almost down his face, tenderly around the back of his neck, down his sides and flanks, finally to cup the magnificent thrust of his manhood.
Chance groaned, wanting to feel the heft of his balls, warm and furred, in the palm of hands, wanting to feel the hard, alert thrust of his prick.
She felt herself go weak as though her bones had melted. "Let me lie down, Luis," she panted.
"I'll check it out with the editor," Luis whispered. He went into a huddle with the assistant magazine editor watching the proceedings while the hairdresser came over, gave a few quick combs through Chance's Afro and the make-up expert touched up the highlights on her cheekbones, dusted with powder the slope of her breasts. A sensation went through her and she shivered. "Cold?" he asked. "No, hot, you dummy."
The errand girl from the magazine came over, offered Chance a few grateful sips of hot coffee from a thermos.
Chance gulped them down and smiled. "God, I needed that. Substitute sex on your feet is more tiring than the real kind."
The girl gave a timid little smile.
Probably hasn't tried it yet, not so it matters, Chance thought. What's wrong with these white girls? They're out of touch with their feelings. Too much civilization and nicey-nicey manners.
Luis and the assistant editor came out of their huddle, Luis with half a Swiss cheese sandwich fn his hand.
"Okay, well try it," he smiled at Chance, a proprietary smile. "They've got you back in shape all right." His eyes roved expertly over her from top to toe.
The editor and a couple of assistants quickly arranged hot pink satin cushions on the floor, a white fuck rug.
"Sexy enough for you, Chance?" Luis asked.
She patted him on the cheek. "Gives me three orgasms just looking at it."
But she'd already lost part of the mood, the sexiness. It would have to be recaptured. That was the trouble with these coffee breaks.
She lay down, sank into the sensuous feel of the fuck and the satin. She let her long, lithe torso twist around the cushions, one leg stretched out, the other bent with the foot tucked under the calf. Her skin felt like coolest ivory even to the sole of her own foot. She rubbed her fingertips along the smooth clean line of her brown skinned arm. Wondering how a man experienced the skin in his fingertips, his body.
"That's it, Chance, now you're picking up the mood again." Luis knelt beside her. He had the lean, tensile strength of a tiger, not an ounce of fat on him.
Her eyes caressed his muscles, the flatness of his abdomen, the bulge of his thighs as he bent over her. She wanted to put her arms around the yoke of his shoulders, draw him down on top of her, feel the aroused slender hardness of his prick slide into the dark moist tangle between her thighs.
Luis called the magazine assistant for more pillows "small ones", and deftly slipped them under Chance's shoulder blades, the upper part of her back.
Her head fell back into a pink cushion, her breasts rose softly on the new mound of pillows.
Quickly, Luis smoothed down the pink slip over the soft hills of her breasts, thrust upward toward him, his dark eyes glittering. In the wake of his hand, her nipples rose up hard and thick, darkly circled under the pale pink material.
"Luis." Chance bit her hp. Automatically, her hand wanted to reach out and hold his manhood captive.
"I don't know what you're thinking, baby, but keep on thinking it," he smiled, slipping past her reach.
I'm thinking fuck, Luis. Fuck you.
Luis got his Hasselblad, reloaded, and put his second, more perceptive eyes in front of his own. The camera made him seem impersonal yet almost superhuman at the same time. As though the lens really could penetrate right past her skull and skin, and photograph the emotions alive inside her, the sex flashing like a thousand neon lights on Broadway. Brightening up a dark world.
Luis shot from close range, the elusive lover, always nimbly just out of her reach, tantalizing her.
With her own hands live as animals, Chance caressed the smooth flat of her cheek, the dark warm hollows of her long neck, the fine collarbone and silky flesh that, farther down, swelled into quivering mounds of breasts. Her hands merely flitted over the erect nipples and a dark lightning of pleasure shot down into her womb, opening the gates until the moisture poured out even as far as the small thick lips that guarded the entrance to her sex. Chance turned and twisted her torso, seeking for the weight of a man to press down on her, crush her, smother her, pound her body, slide into her sex channel with the vulnerable yet cruel-hard prick.
She felt her empty cunt open and receive it, slide around it, enfold it, engulf it, draw it in rhythmically.
The click-click-click of the camera shutter, like the sexy, stimulating challenge of Spanish castanets in a wild flamenco, spurred her on, drove into her sexual consciousness with the fervor and harshness of a man's rod.
Chance moaned, moistened her lips, flung her head this way and that, her hands barely daring to alight on her dusky skin before flying away to another part of her body. She wanted to grasp her own tits, grip and squeeze them, press her fingertips into the soft mounds. She wanted to clutch her belly, press her fingertips down, down to the hard rise of her pubic bone where the sexual nerves bunched and sent their messages through her inmost hidden parts.
Wanted to slide her hand over the love mount, slither her fingers through the small dark tangled bush under her silly pink satin slip, feel out the love juices flowing over her sensitive membranes and plunge her fingers into the depths.
She moved the tip of her mons Veneris ever so slightly. Half opened her eyes. Luis seemed to be standing almost directly over her, legs spread for balance, bulge of manhood cresting from his fashionably tight pants, camera a black magic mask in front of his face, evoking all the dark, hot, bright feelings in her.
Luis, you damn fool, you dumb fag, throw that damn piece of mechanism away, leap on me and shove that wanting prick of yours up the dark slope of my mysteries. Come on, Luis, come on, baby, you know that's what I want, what I really want. Give it to me, honey, please, give it, give it, give it. Chance tried to control herself, felt herself in the grip of a power far greater than her will, a power she could never resist, never deny. Felt her pelvis gyrate and move among the pink slippery pillows, reaching, always reaching up and toward man the marauder, the dominator, the tool of her pleasures. Reaching, searching, wanting to hold and hide in her secret depths, to experience his hardness with all her soft wetness. Never to let it go.
Her head fell back, her eyes shut, and all her life energies flowed down, flowered, were concentrated in the hot, wet, hungry channel of her cunt.
Now, Luis, now, please, please, please.
The walls of her hot channel tugged on emptiness, pulled against each other, the thick fluid pouring down them, gushing over nothingness. Through the slit of her eyelids, Chance dimly saw Luis, dark, slender, self-contained, the master of his emotions, just out of reach, hidden behind that mechanical monstrous other face, clicking, clicking, clicking into space.
Damn you, she thought, damn you, damn you. And her cunt pulsed in longing and rage to her curse.
And suddenly she lay still, utterly drained, beyond caring and beyond feeling.
There was complete silence in the studio. Maybe they had all gone away a long time ago. Maybe there'd been only Luis and herself for hours.
As though the effort were almost too much for her, Chance opened her eyes. They were standing there, the nonentities, in the blackness beyond the circle of the floodlights. Hushed. Luis stood limply, his Hasselbad hanging in his hand, his unmasked face pale and wan. Dark stains of sweat circled his shirt.
"Wow!" he said. "That was an experience. You're out of this world, baby. Beyond any man's wildest sex dreams. I think we've got a great cover."
"I couldn't care less." Chance stood up, a tall, magnificent, untamed creature of nature. Covered with a fine coating of sweat but still proud and dignified.
She moved out of the floods, into the welcome coolness of the studio.
"Chance, it's going to be a beauty." The magazine editor hovered over her solicitously. "Can I get you something?"
"A gin and tonic. That's all I want. And a long nap." Chance suddenly felt weary, used, and dirty in front of all these people. People using her natural sex to sell magazines, sell products, sell herself as though she were merely just another product, a sex product, instead of a human being with feelings and tears.
And yet I let them, she thought, as she stood naked in the tiny dressing room, pulling the slip off over her head. I don't have to, but I let them. But, yes, I really have to. I need that money for college. Money you don't get growing up in the ghetto as child of a black family. And I'm going to finish college if it's the last thing I do, get my degree, and pull myself up into the world where I can make something of myself, be the human being I really am under this black skin.
Chance came out of the dressing room, wearing a leather vest with fringe over a short skirt that hit her just below the round of her buttocks.
The assistant's assistant shoved an ice-cold gin and tonic into her hand. Chance stared at it. "I thought you were kidding."
The magazine editor, a hard-looking career girl armored in the latest style from head to toe, said: "I never kid. You deserve it. I know our readers will love you all over our cover. You're the sexy woman every woman secretly wants to be."
Chance took a long, cooling sip of her drink. Right now I don't want to be sexy, she thought. I don't want to be laid. I just want to crawl off in a corner by myself.
But she knew she'd been good, that her quality of sensuality would come across in the photographs. And if that's what it took to make money-at least for the present-good. Even if it did make her feel like a public-performing whore.
Her long legs scissored down the three flights of stairs, her toes barely touching the steps. Out on the city streets, the sun poured hot, hot liquid over her. The air was stifling with carbon monoxide, with the cries of children coming home from school.
Chance took in a deep breath. It was polluted, thick with the steam of humanity, but it was good. It was alive. It was real.
She figured she'd walk downtown, through the East Village, and over the Brooklyn Bridge to her college apartment. She needed the vigorous exercise after five hours of posing in a space no bigger than her tall body.
She stared over the heads of the crowds streaming on either side of her, proud as the prow of a ship cutting through turgid waters.
"Hi, gorgeous, how about a quick fuck?"
"Hmmm, I've always wanted black pussy."
"You turn me on, honey. I'll give you $25. In no more than 10 minutes. I'm a quick come."
"Wow. Let me grab those tits."
The men. The dirty, evil, filthy men. It was always like this. The minute she walked down a public street. Anywhere. Big city. Small town.
As though they saw something in her. Something she didn't see. Didn't feel.
Whore. The eternal whore.
Young guys. Kids who'd never shaved. Fat, short, pot-bellied men. Tall guys with tight beautiful muscles. Black men. White men. Puerto Ricans hissing their sexual invitations in Spanish. Men sleek with the look bred in town houses and Cadillacs. Men bewhiskered and blowsy with booze. Men with eyes far on the distant dreams of pot and horse.
Men, men, men. Thick with their unwanted pricks shoving against her, raping her, defiling her as though she were to be had by anyone.
She hated them, despised them, spat on them.
I'm not a whore, she wanted to scream, her feet picking up speed as she saw the bridge sit chunkily over the East River.
I'm me, me. A woman. Chance. Black and beautiful.
Not your whore.
CHAPTER 2
"You look like you've had it." Reba looked up as Chance entered the college apartment they shared with Sue. Reba was sitting cross-legged on the big double bed in the apartment bedroom. Whoever had a current lover was the one who rated the single bedroom. The living room, divided by a back-to-back high bookcase and desk combination, held a bed on one side for Chance, and on the other for Sue.
Chance flung her bag disgustedly across the narrow living room toward her bed. It missed, skidded on the floor, up against the window wall looking outside onto the parking lot and playground.
"You're damn right I've had it. I'm fed up with these goddamn pricks who think they own the world. Think they own me."
"Wow. And I thought you were having a splendid day, earning all that lovely money." Stark naked, Reba sat with a large pad on her crossed feet, a piece of charcoal skimming across the page.
"Yeah. I need that bread. But I sometimes wonder if I really need it so bad I have to let my cunt hang out for all the world to see. There's got to be better ways to make money."
"You could go into private business," Reba said thoughtfully, squinting along the stick of charcoal she suddenly held up in the air in front of her face.
"Yeah, I've thought of that, too, Reba, believe it or not. Plenty of guys offer me money. Why the hell am I so proud? Why the hell don't I take it? There's worse things than prostitution. There's marriage, and getting houses and cars and clothes when you don't even come across with something which makes it worthwhile for your husband to spend an hour in bed with you."
"You sound real down, Chance. I've never heard you this bad. How about some whiskey?"
"Could use it." Chance made a wry face, took off her Afro. Her own hair was cut short, a short bob cupped around her splendid skull. She went into the kitchen, got two glasses from the mess of dishes standing in the sink, washed them, brought them in to Reba's bedroom.
Reba fetched the bottle from beside her bed. Poured. She held up her glass to the late afternoon sun streaming in the window, admired the gold and amber.
"Cheers, Chance. Yours for more free sex enterprise by women."
"That's for me, Reba." Chance drained her glass dry, cocked her head at her roommate. "I hate to sound nosy, but how come you're sitting here naked as a jay bird? And sketching yet."
Reba smiled up at the black woman through her own thick mane of brown hair, naturally streaked with amber and honey. "My newest assignment for Drawing, would you believe. We've all been told, men and women alike, to sketch our own bodies in the altogether. Both blindly, without looking, just by how our bodies feel to us. And by doing realistic studies from the mirror. I'm starting with the mirror image." Reba nodded at the large, square mirror on the built-in bureau shelf running the width of the wall facing the bed.
A short, rather chunky, fully-fleshed woman faced her, two heavy breasts tipped with brown aureoles, the round soft belly, two thick thighs opened, exposing a lush, wildly thatched mesh of hair matching that on her leonine head.
"I think our professor just wants a cheap hard-on, and figures this is the easiest way to get it. Some class assignment, if you want my opinion. Why can't he be honest, at least, and just ask us all to line up in front of him, nude?" Reba swished a mouthful of whiskey around inside her cheeks and swallowed, making a sour face.
"Yeah, men! They make me sick." Chance ripped off her vest, wriggled out of her skirt. "I'm taking me a shower. Wash off the feel of their eyes. I swear, Reba, sometimes I think their eyes are pricks, poking at me."
"Invading your privacy." Reba nodded her head, her mane of hair f ailing helter-skelter about her round golden eyes, lashed in dark brown. "Me, too, I get the same feeling. You'd think the jerks would have the decency to ask first if you minded being eyed up and down like that. It never seems to occur to them that they're being insulting. I wonder how they'd like it if we went around staring at their damn pricks boldly. As if they didn't have any clothes on and were free for the staring."
Chance shrugged. "Don't know. It might make them mad but then again, it might just turn them on." She dropped her pantyhose on the floor of the hall and went into the shower opposite, not bothering to close the door.
Under the rat-a-tat-tat of the needle sharp shower, she started singing an old blues song.
"You have a terrific voice," Reba yelled out above the water.
"Don't tell me it's because I'm black," Chance answered, "Or I think I'll puke. I just happen to be blessed with some kind of a voice, and I been hearing music like this all my life."
She stepped out of the bathtub, turned off the shower, rubbed every inch of her mahogany body briskly. Then she wrapped the towel deftly about her body, knotting it over a breast. She came into the bedroom, dropped down on the low bed beside Reba, cocked her head in the direction of the sketch pad.
"I'm curious to see what you've done." Her photographers eye took over.
Reba had drawn herself with a very thick, dark rounded line, trying to be realistic but exaggerating her curves. Everything was there in detail, the hanging swinging breasts, the large eyes, full pouting mouth, the wild hair, the chunky peasant thighs. Everything clear and sharp and true except for a kind of smudged effect between the thighs.
"What happened there?" Chance pointed.
"Oh, that." Reba blushed in spite of herself. She drew one foot up closely as if to hide from view her sexual secrets.
'What's wrong, ashamed?" Chance asked, catching the small, tell-tale motion.
"Well, I can't say I feel too happy about letting it all hang out in front of a whole class. Remember, Prof Daley is a guy who likes the whole class to give stringent comments on each other's work. I don't want a whole bunch of strangers staring at my...my . . . "
"Go ahead and say it. Cunt."
"Yes, well. Whatever. And then giving me the eye and wondering about it."
"You mean it's okay for me to let it all hang out in front of a camera but you're too precious for that, being white," Chance said bluntly.
"I resent that," Reba bit her hp. "I think no matter what color my skin was, I'd resent it. I don't know why the damn guy had to give an assignment like that in the first place. I really don't like it." A hot flush rose up on her olive skin, and on impulse, she crumbled up the drawing in her fist
"Come on, Reba, don't take it so personally," Chance reached over her roommate's foot and took the crumpled ball of paper, smoothed it out. "I didn't mean to needle you."
"I know you didn't, Chance. But I really hate this whole assignment. I don't like having to look at my body so closely, down to the last little flaw. And I don't want others looking at it, studying it, right in front of me, like I'm a piece of meat."
"Look, maybe we're both over-sensitive on the score. Now, look, as one artist to another, this really isn't bad for a beginning, Reba. You've got most of you down authentically."
They both looked at the charcoal sketch, Chance tilting her head to one side. "I kind of see what you're trying to do. But you've rounded all of your curves more than they are." She stared candidly at Reba's bare body.
Reba flushed, ducked her head as though to hide her breasts in the long sweep of her hair, brought her arms protectively around the ripe fruit.
"It gets me, just having you look at me that way, Chance, even though I know you're doing it objectively."
"Why did you make your tits hang so much lower than they really do?" Chance frowned. "And your belly is like a mature woman's in the sketch, although you really have almost a flat abdomen." She laid her hand briefly across Reba's exposed belly.
Reba flushed, bit her lip, turned her head away.
"See, you're really almost as flat as I am." Chance ripped off her towel, dropped it beside the bed, showing the rich polished mahogany of her skin. She pressed her hand against her own belly. "Come on, look at me, Reba, you don't have to be shy about my naked body. God knows, to hear the magazine editors speak, millions have already stared at almost everything I've got."
"Doesn't that give you the cold chills?" Reba shot a quick, shy look up at Chance from under her hair. "It would petrify me, walking down the street, knowing any minute somebody might recognize me from a photo they'd seen in a magazine.. . . "
"And say, hey, gal, I recognize you by those brown tits." Chance threw back her head and laughed. Reba allowed a smile to come out on her face.
"It really doesn't throw you, does it, knowing hundreds of people in this city alone know your bare body?"
"Man, if I worried about small things like that, I'd never survive this life." Chance shook her head. "My bare ass is the least of my worries. You know, that's the trouble with white people, you're so hung up on things that don't even begin to be important. You're all tight, huddled inside yourself. Just look at you, Reba, turning all kinds of colors on the face, worrying about who's going to look at your naked skin and think this, that and the other. So afraid, you've got your arms bound around you right this minute merely because I'm looking. I'm your sister, gal, not a man out to rape you."
Chance reached over, took Reba's hand, cool at the fingertips. "What the hell's so scary about your body? Or mine? Touch. Feel."
The black girl took Reba's hand, laid it gently against the belly she'd been trying to sketch, then brought it over to her own belly, taut with well-developed muscle.
"Just skin and flesh. Ain't so scary, is it?" she asked softly.
Reba shook her head, her eyes shining through her flamboyant mane of dark hair, a plum flush coming up under her olive skin.
Chance guided her roommate's hand to her own cheek, flat surfaced, peaked by the high shiny cheek bone. "Just a face," she said. "An ordinary face."
"A beautiful face," Reba breathed.
"No different from your own, baby," Chance said huskily, guiding their meshed hands to Reba's cheek. The cheek burned hot, the skin glowing with internal combusion.
"Now you got your face down pat in the sketch," Chance said gently. "I really do."
"Why can't you treat the rest of you like your face? Tits, belly, ass, cunt. No difference. All of you is sexy. Your face is the sexiest in a way; no matter how you try to hide it, it all hangs out."
"What?" Reba said fearfully, weakly.
Chance could hardly breathe, her voice soft and mild like she was gentling a high-strung horse, her chest drawn in with an implosion of the unreleased forces in her.
"You know what, Reba. Don't play innocent. You're one hell of a sexy broad. Don't the guys ever tell you that?"
Reba smiled ruefully. "All the time. But I don't believe them."
"Why not?"
Reba looked down at her hand, twisted in Chance's long, slender fingers. Looked at the silver ring with jade on the third finger, right hand, that Joel had given her. Joel, her most recent, her current lover.
"Why not?" Chance urged again, trying to nudge an answer out of Reba.
Reba hung her head lower. She couldn't explain. Didn't want to explain. Not to Joel, not to any man, certainly not to Chance.
There was a long pause between them, the two naked girls on the bed, reflected in the mirror on the shelf opposite; one tall and slender, lithe, and skin stained the color of wood; the other soft, plushy somehow, squat, almost with the full dimensions of a peasant woman, earth mother.
And as the silence lengthened, the space between them filled up with a warm rush of feeling. They swam in it, afraid to move, afraid to talk, almost afraid to breathe. Not knowing what they were feeling, not daring to give it a name, beginning to drown in it, get lost in it.
"You are sexy, you know," Chance said huskily.
"I know." Reba's voice barely made a sound in the silence. "But how did you know?"
'Your skin. So hot. It's burning. Like fire, caged fire." Chance guided their entwined hands down Reba's cheek, down the warm column of her neck under the flowing veil of her hair, down the slope of breasts burning hot, hot as sun-ripened tomatoes. Down the belly softly rising, falling, breathing.
Reba drew in her breath sharply, gasped, her head falling back on her shoulders, her eyes tight.
"Chance," she protested weakly. "We mustn't. It's wrong."
"What's wrong?" Chance croaked.
Reba, for answer, took their meshed hands, rolled them down the panting near-white of her belly and jammed them against the dark mat of hair hiding her sex.
For a moment, the shock of what she had done held them both motionless. Reba peeked through the strands of her hair with frightened eyes.
Chance's breath quickened as she felt her knuckles being pressed into the hidden pad of flesh under the bush. She had never felt it on any woman other than herself.
They sat there, frozen, not wanting to pull back, afraid to go forward.
What the hell, Chance thought. It's no big deal. My God, just a strait-jacket on the mind. All experience is valid.
Boldly, she stretched out on the double bed, pulled Reba down beside her, one hand still at the mons Veneris concealing man's paradise, and the other sliding down Reba's full-fleshed back.
"My God, your skin's burning, it's so hot, so hot," Chance murmured.
Reba put her face in the corner of the taller woman's neck, buried it there, breathing fire into the hollow at Chance's shoulder. The soft brush of her hair, feathery, lighter than the flight of butterfly wings, stirred through her breath, fluttering against Chance's shoulder and face.
They lay there, close, still not daring to come completely close, their eyes closed.
Chance ran her hand over and over down Reba's back, feeling the heat trapped in Reba's body. She caressed lightly with the tips of her fingers over the hip, around Reba's sturdy hip bone, down the valley of her loin. Her fingertips made the trip over and over while Reba lay softly breathing against her.
And still her flesh burned with the heat of banked embers. Lightly, ever so lightly, Chance let her fingertips venture over the mound of thatched dark hair, downy as a nest, and then quickly away again, tracking over the hip, down the flank. Then coming to rest for longer spells on the mons Veneris, caressing the silky pubic hair. Suddenly, her fingertips were emboldened to slip beyond the forbidden precincts, and with her forefinger, Chance probed into the thicket until the slick wetness of the sex flesh was suddenly exposed to her seeking finger.
"My God," she said. "You're so soft, so soft."
No wonder men went mad for cunt, hungered for it, searched for it, and were not satisfied until they found it. Again and again.
Reba's sex was exquisitely tender, full-fleshed, dripping with moisture. Chance rubbed back and forth, at first delicately, then firmer and firmer until she felt the hard little rise of the clitoris under her fingertips. She slid her fingers back and forth, over and down.
Reba moaned.
Chance looked at her briefly-Reba's face closed in and tense, as though she were concentrating on the fires burning deep inside her, unaware, uncaring of all that was happening around her.
Chance shut her own eyes again, letting her senses drown in the warm, naked wanting of Reba's sex, feeling her own answering passion.
She was getting turned on, feeling a man's wild desire to plunge into the forbidden territory. Her fingers hesitated, then slid back, found the entrance to the mysterious passage. Ripe, swollen, covered with the honey of desire.
Suddenly, Chance drove her fingers into the hidden depths as they were enveloped with the swollen tissue, the heat of an inner flame, silky yet so intense it was almost like a furnace.
"You're a hot cunt," she whispered into Reba's ear, "A hot cunt."
Reba groaned, flung her leg over Chance's bare body, pulled herself closer to the naked woman.
Chance's fingers dug into the boiling sex channel, far in, feeling the soft swell of the tip of the cervix. Her fingers dripped with the flow of sex moisture from Reba's cunt.
She ran her fingers at the ring of muscles at the entrance to the secret tunnel, around and around, feeling the muscles widen and open and expand at her touch.
She could almost slip her whole hand into Reba's inner sex which had widened, expanded like a vault in a dark church-hungry, feeling the thrust of the other girl's fingers, riding her naked vulva on the palm of Chance's hand.
Chance was almost frightened, fearful that her fingernails would rip the tender membranes. Yet fascinated, unable to draw away from the mysteries of womanhood, mysteries she had never experienced with another woman before.
Her body rocked and undulated as Reba wakened to a kind of frenzied passion, digging sharp fingernails into her flesh, her hip, her back.
Reba half climbed on top of Chance, her cunt still greedily sucking at the black girl's fingers, her pelvis moving up and down. Chance put her other hand on Reba's ass, sinking into a perfect globe that was both firm and pillow-soft at the same time. So unlike the tough, hard, compact buttocks of men. Her hand roved and gripped, biting into the enticing flesh.
Reba panted, her pelvis going mad and frantic, her cunt a cavern that could never be filled or satisfied. Not even by two pricks.
Chance dug her hand in with frantic rhythm, twisted her hand around, cupped the ridge of down-covered pubic bone in her palm. Reba bounced on her, bit her neck, the heat flowing to her skin, burning her like tinder, her face dark and flushed like a wine-sodden bacchante. Her passion was pain to her, inner torment, desire beyond endurance.
Chance wanted to see her clenched in the spectacle of an orgasm, driven to the heights, abandoned to her frenzy. Reba's body tore at her, flagellated her.
She bent her face into Chance's warm neck, gasping and crying. "I can't stand it, I can't stand it."
"Let yourself go. Just relax and let yourself go. Stop fighting. Stop being angry," Chance crooned.
With each lunge, each shudder of Reba's famished cunt, she was sure the final lunge, the final shudder would happen.
"I can't, I can't." Reba was crying. Cries of rage and passion.
"But it's so natural, just let it happen."
"I don't want to." Reba's face set in a determined frown. "No. I won't let it happen. I don't want to have an orgasm." A sly look peeping through the slit of her partially opened eyes, her face swollen with the flood of passion, Reba stared down at Chance's face, then boldly and skillfully shoved her fingers up into the slither of the black woman's sex.
Chance sighed, a sigh of pure peace, her mind withdrawing far away from Reba, sinking down into the inner recesses of her own body, her body undulating in the graceful flow of fucking rhythm, effortlessly and naturally.
She let her feelings all flow down, down to where Reba's hand, as though it had known the how and the why and the way for many years, brought her body skillfully to a peak.
Abruptly, Chance was calm under Reba's weight, at peace and relaxed. Reba still burned with unrequited passion.
"What's the trouble?" Chance asked sleepily.
"I don't know. I just can't make it. Can't come. I've never been able to. I don't want to."
"That's the trouble. You don't want to." Chance could sense it, the terrible struggle not to let go, the will dominating the natural ease of the body, building up an intense heat under the inhibiting prison of not letting go, a heat so intense it burned the victim instead of spilling over onto the sex partner, a heat so intense it consumed Reba.
Chance ran her hands like cooling water down over Reba, pressed on top of her, over her back, her ribs, her buttocks, over and over, until the fire inside died down, the skin returned to a normal cool and dry.
Sleepily, they lay with each other. Temporarily at peace, temporarily close in the late afternoon sun that slanted across the room.
They drowsed in the warm, pleasant heat of the sun and their bodies, worn out by the day's doubts and struggles, two young women at odds with themselves and with the world. Drowsed until they were partially awakened by the slam of the apartment door, and the sound of quick footsteps.
"Ugh, it's disgusting. You...you animals!"
They looked up startled, into the wide blue eyes of their third roommate, Sue. Her face, cowled by the long blonde hair, grew wan and green, and she fled into the bathroom opposite, slamming the door shut.
They could hear her crying and retching.
CHAPTER 3
Sue sat on the bathtub, her forehead pressed against the cold enamel of the sink. She felt wrung out, white.
"Sue, for crissakes, open up."
"Is she all right do you think? First she carries on like a nut and now I don't hear a whimper."
"She's just hysterical. I think." Chance knocked on the bathroom door again.
"Go away, please go away," Sue moaned.
"We're not going away until you come out," Reba said. "We're worried about you, kid, can't you get that through your head?"
"Just go away. I'll be all right. All right," the words dribbled out of Sue's mouth. She reached for her pink washcloth, held it under the cold water and pressed it against her forehead. Why didn't they just go away from the door and leave her alone? All their hammering and whispering about her and calling out made her feel worse, shook her up more. If she could only have peace and silence, bit by bit the darkness and fury and sickness inside her would subside, settle down, and then be forgotten.
"Please, Reba, Chance. Go away. I'll be all right in a little while. I.. . get these spells sometimes."
"You've scared us half to death and now you want us to forget about it and disappear. Well, that's just great!" Chance snorted.
Oh, you two should talk, Sue thought weakly to herself. It's not bad enough what happened this afternoon, but then to come back to my room and find the two of you . . .
She shut her eyes tight, but the awful images squeezed right through her closed eyelids and she could not get them out. They danced in front of her vision in bold, vivid colors, as though they were outlined in neon brilliance.
Chance and Reba lying together on Reba's bed, naked. Reba's long hair falling in strands over Chance's dark features, her soft breasts mounding over the black girl's ribs as she lay on top of her, both of them three-quarters asleep.
And Chance's long, dark slender fingers clutched into the round, warm live globes of Reba's bottom, denting the springy roundness.
Ugh.
Two females making love.
How could they? How could they?
Sue felt the nausea rising up inside her again and she tried to blot the image of those two naked, still sweating bodies out of her mind. She had to, or she'd lose her sanity.
"Sue, let us in, we only want to help you," Reba cooed on the other side of the door.
Sue, began to moan and whimper.
"O Lord, there she goes again," Chance groaned. "I think we ought to run down to the office and see if we can get hold of the campus psychiatrist."
"No, oh, no. I don't need anything like that," Sue started up suddenly.
"Well, we're going to have to do something drastic unless you start acting reasonably mature and come out and tell us what's wrong. Or at least let us help you." Reba sounded soothing.
"Promise you won't get a psychiatrist. There's nothing wrong with my mind," Sue whimpered.
There were whispers on the other side of the door and then Reba called out, "We promise."
Shakily, Sue got up and unlocked the bathroom door. She closed her eyes as she opened it, unwilling to look at her two roommates. But they were dressed now, Chance in her leather mini skirt and Reba in her denim jacket and blue jeans.
They looked perfectly normal, reassuringly themselves, as though that horrible scene on the bed had never taken place.
"My God, you look like death warmed over!" Chance gasped.
"Yeah, you look pretty rotten, kid. Whatever it was, it must have been pretty awful." Reba took Sue by the hand, led her to her side of the living room.
Sue stumbled into bed, falling on top of the blanket. Her bed was usually the only one that was made, the covers neatly tucked under the mattress, the sheet immaculately clean and neatly folded over the blanket
"It was...it was...pretty awful," Sue whispered. She caught Reba and Chance casting a knowing glance at each other.
Reba cleared her throat, remembering Sue's shocked face at the open door of her bedroom, with she and Chance lying naked together. "We...hope we didn't upset you, Sue."
Sue let her head sink gratefully back into the soft goose down pillow her mother had so carefully sent down to college with her. "No...it...it was something else that happened to me this afternoon. After class."
Reba sat down on the bed beside her, took one of Sue's icy hands in her own. The warmth of hers brought a little bit of life to the fear swirling around inside Sue. Something tight and dark and terrible began to loosen up inside her. She breathed a little bit easier.
"Maybe you want to tell us about it, kid," Reba said gently. Sue opened her eyes wide.
"Tell you about it? Oh, no, never. I couldn't. I couldn't tell anyone about it. It was too...too . . . "
"Nothing is ever "too-too" to talk about," Chance said briskly. "That's how come you get all up tight. Let it all hang out, Sue, and then it won't seem so awful. Instead of hugging it tight to your bosom almost as if it's too precious to let out."
Too precious! Sue's eyes flung wide open again. My God, it was the most horrible, disgusting...No, how could Chance accuse her of...actually liking it?
Sue shut her eyes wearily. It was no use explaining. No use explaining anything to anyone. They never understood anyhow. That's why it was better to write, why she'd wanted to be a writer since she was a little girl. Then maybe someday, somewhere, someone reading her words would understand and feel kindred for her. Even feel love.
But most people she knew were so coarse, so brutal, so savage, they trampled over the tenderest of feelings and never even seemed to notice the feelings had existed.
Sue felt Reba's hands at her skirt. "Here, why don't you loosen this up, take it off, so you'll feel better?"
Sue gulped, seeing those bare female bodies again. "No, that's all right," she said feebly. "I feel so cold. And I can't stand being touched."
"I'll bet you can't," Chance said briskly from the kitchen. "That's probably just what you need. A good dose of touch therapy, nude encounter . . . "
"Chance, how can you say that? It's...sick."
"Oh, for crissakes, I'm just making a funny, Sue.
Why do you take everything like it's a matter of life and death? Here, have a sip of this tea."
Chance shoved a cup of hot tea under Sue's nose and Reba propped Sue up while she took three quick little sips.
The tea went down her smoothly, burned in a hot little ball in the pit of her stomach, chasing out the icy fear and horror. "Mmmmmm, that's good. But it tastes...funny."
"That's a drop of rum. Just what you need to get over the horrors," Chance said. "Have more. You're getting a little color in your face."
'Yeah, kid, for a while, Chance and I were afraid we were going to be stuck with an embarrassing corpse to bury."
Sue sipped more tea, enjoying the unfamiliar flavor of the rum, the heat it spread through her, chasing away the memories...the memories that clung and burned and lived in her flesh.
The memories of Dr. Vero. Short, dark saturnine Dr. Vero with the bulging black eyes and the short black hairs on the back of his broad, brusque, masculine hands.
Her English professor Dr. Vero.
No.
She didn't want to think about it. Didn't. Wanted to throw the memory away. It wasn't precious. It was awful. Awful.
Sue felt herself drifting helplessly down, down into the whirlpool of sleep, her head floating onto the soft goose down pillow, her body a warm coal. Maybe she was drunk. Maybe this was what drunk was.
She felt Reba's body leave her bed, Reba's warm hand patting her own. "That's it, go to sleep," Reba said, like a good Jewish mama. 'You'll feel better when you wake up."
"She'll be okay now. I hope." Chance moved back into the kitchen. Dimly, Sue heard them both moving about in the kitchen, the sound of plates and pots and cans being opened. The smell of soup.
And then she was in the dark under tangle of sleep. Seeing herself as she'd been that afternoon, pausing just outside Dr. Vero's office, unsure of herself, afraid to appear before the important head of the English department. And yet having to know what he thought of her writings, if he took her seriously as a talent, if she had a chance to make her dreams come true.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror at the landing of the wide circular staircase of the old mansion, donated by the founder of the institute and now used as administration and faculty headquarters.
The long blonde hair, pale as buttercup, the round child eyes with the upsweep of dark lashes, like startled stars. Her pale face sprinkled with freckles.
Alice in Wonderland. That's the name they always gave her. There were worse things than being Alice in a fantasy wonderland. Far worse things.
With her manuscript under one arm, Sue knocked on the ornate dark oak door that closed in Dr. Vero's office.
He came to the door, opened it, stared at her a minute as if she'd just landed from outer space.
"Ah, yes, Miss...Miss . . . " he said vaguely.
"Sue Stilson. I brought you my novel," she said timidly. He stood in the doorway, short, not much taller than herself, squat, almost bulging in his dark suit, like his pronounced eyes bulged in his sleek, heavy, handsome face.
She wanted to turn then and run. He looked so much like a toad, the ugly toad about to pounce and turn into the handsome prince.
Maybe.
Quickly, she thrust the manuscript into his hands, the big hands reaching out towards her, almost as if they were going to scoop into the little valley made in her pale blue skirt by her thighs. She pulled her pelvis back.
Dr. Vero smiled. Slyly.
"Come here, Sue, sit down here while I glance through your manuscript." Dr. Vero shut and locked the door.
Sue heard the grating of the catch with a tingle all through her flesh. She couldn't stand to be alone in a room with a man. Any man.
Dr. Vero walked back to his old-fashioned huge rolltop desk, indicated a leather armchair next to it He sat down in his leather swivel chair at the desk, laid the manuscript open in front of him.
Sue sat down gingerly, hearing the breath sigh out of the leather seat.
She noticed with a jolt of fear that the Venetian blinds were three-quarters closed to the third-story window looking out over the small campus enclosed by old brick buildings. Dr. Vero had only a small lamp, shaped like a miniature oil lamp, on his desk with a dim light.
He read swiftly, barely seeming to notice her golden and powder blue presence in the dark room. So dark. Dark as dreams. As nightmares.
Sue looked around timidly, shuddered. Even Dr. Vero was dark and brooding.
The sound of the turning pages was the only noise heard in the professor's office. That and the ticking of a banjo wall clock. Dr. Vero wet the tip of his finger each time he turned a page. Glanced up at her briefly now and again with a knowing smile on his full lips.
Sue stirred uneasily in her leather chair.
Dr. Vero reached out and pulled at the arm of her chair. "Come closer," he invited, smiling.
"Closer?"
"Not so far away, my child. There's nothing to be afraid of." He smiled again, and his smile was unctuous, oily like the lotion on his shaven cheek. "Closer. Closer. Thaf s it."
Their knees were almost touching and he patted her exposed little child's knee. A tingle went up and through her thigh, lodged in darkness.
Sue wanted to pull her knees together but was afraid that would draw his attention only more closely to her. She sat, taut and tense, her body quivering.
Dr. Vero, his slick black hair glistening in the little sunlight that sifted through the blinds, began to comment, almost as if she weren't there.
"Not bad, not bad at all. Good imagery here. Fine piece of description. You have the talent, the gift of writing. No doubt about it. Very fine-spun. Gossamer. Almost like a spider's web in the sunlight. With dew-drops on it."
Sue nodded her head. Yes, yes. He understood. He caught the quality of her writing. Felt what she was trying to put across.
A warm feeling for him began to glow in her body.
Dr. Vero paused, looked at the top shelf of his roll-top desk, pursed his full lips thoughtfully. "Yes, dew-drops," he repeated, his tongue ricking his lips in a circle.
Like a snake's, Sue thought. A sudden fear chilled her skin.
Dr. Vero looked at her. Like a frog, a toad. All of him bulging. His dark glistening eyes. His face. Even his nose seemed longer and full of blood and turgid.
Sue looked at him, fascinated, feeling herself caught in some intricate invisible, dangerous web.
She licked her own lips which were dry and wan. Her fingertips went cold.
He was so dark and smooth and large. So big and she was so frail and fragile. He could crush her with one hard embrace of those arms against that big barrel chest.
She shut her eyes briefly.
"Come closer," the professor said in a smooth, wooing voice. Automatically, not wanting to, Sue inched her heavy chair closer, until his outspread knees clasped her two together. She didn't dare pull away, feeling the warmth of his flesh pour through the material of his suit.
She had never physically been touched before by a man.
The warmth spread up, up along her legs, making them glow with a golden light in that dark office, reaching up into the mysteries and privacies of her personal body.
"You are very talented, Sue, very original. You have very rare perceptions." Dr. Vero's face was close to hers; she could almost feel his breath moving on her skin.
His hand flicked over a couple of her pages. "For instance, this delicate imagery you have. The garden, flowers," his tongue licked around his full lips. "So...sensual. So phallic."
"Phallic?" Sue stammered.
He glanced at her, almost amused. "Yes. Sexual."
Sue felt the blood rush into her face. Her head swam. "It.. . it was just meant to be a garden. Innocence. Like the garden of Eden."
"I am sure," her professor said, even more amused. "Just as you are Eve, yes? Innocent Eve. Innocent little Sue from upstate New York." His black eyes roved over her body, denuding her, raping her.
Automatically, one of her hands flew to her small breasts, covered them under the pale blue sweater.
"Take your hand away, Sue," Dr. Vero commanded.
Obedient, scared, she complied, and he took his large hot-palmed hands and tucked her two hands in her lap.
"Innocent Sue. Your imagery so full of sexuality. The swollen red petals of the tulips. The erect stiff stamen gold-tipped with pollen. The probing bee . . . "
"Please. Please stop, Dr. Vero. I can't stand to hear somebody read my writing."
"But it's all down there, little Susan, in black and white. All your repressed sexuality hidden in the fantasies of bees and flowers and gardens. All the fucking . .
Susan sobbed. She had never heard anyone, any man, say that word before. Her offended eyes had always skipped over it in books, and her ears shut when Chance or Reba used it in cursing.
The professor's eyes became filled with fake concern. "I've shocked you, haven't I, little Sue? Why, I'll bet you've never been screwed. I'll wager you're still a virgin, a virgin with a tight little cunt well-protected by an untouched maidenhead."
Another sob escaped Sue. How could he torment her like this? Play on her fears and her terrors. If only she had the nerve to get up and unlock the door and run away. If she were Chance or Reba, she'd know what to say. Her anger would catapult out of her.
But she was Sue. Simple, quiet, terrified Sue. Glued to her seat, sweating in the hot leather, while this strange man, her professor, oddly attractive and repellent at the same time pressed his obscenities on her.
"That's it, isn't it, Sue?" his deep voice murmured on, soothing her and stirring her up. 'You've never dared let a man get near that precious cunt of yours, either with his fingers or his cock."
Again the blood rushed to her face, flooded it. She didn't know where to look with her eyes. She glanced at his face, handsome and yet swollen with some kind of poisonous power. Glanced at the Venetian blinds, almost completely shut.
"Never touched your own cunt with your own fingers, have you, Sue?"
Her lips shut tight. No, she didn't want to confess, to admit anything. Not to him, not to anyone. These were forbidden things he was talking about, insinuating into her imwilling ear, her unwilling blood.
"Never felt that sublime, tender, wet softness with your own fingers. Those lovely lips. Fresher and sweeter than the lips on your face. Tasted the sweet juices of your own cunt." Dr. Vero's voice went off into a daydream.
Sue shut her eyes, the tears oozing out from under her lids. Oh, stop, stop, she begged him silently. Let me go away. I can't stand this.
But still she sat, glued to her chair, her hands neatly folded in her lap, just as she'd been taught by her parents to sit in church, in class, in strange homes. To sit and be polite and quiet.
And now, this coarse, rough, brutal man was raping her with his words, his voice, his eyes. Raping her because she'd trusted him enough to bring her novel to him for his judgment and his criticism. And now he was flaying her clothes from her body, her shame from her nakedness. Speaking about things she had never even dared to put into words to herself.
She sat in the low westerly sun, her knees trapped between his, sweating against each other, her eyes tight shut, her ears drinking in the slow poison of his words, her body stirring to the forbidden words and thoughts with fear and anxiety.
"Sue. Sue? Are you frightened, sweet simple little Sue?"
She nodded her head briefly, miserably. "Don't be frightened. I would not harm you, would not physically hurt you for the world. I like you, Sue.
You're as sweet and pure as a wild cornflower beside the road. And God knows, we have little enough sweetness and purity in our lives."
Her eyes still shut, Sue relaxed a little bit, feeling reassurance in his words. Maybe he didn't intend to really harm her. Maybe this was only his way of talking. She had always heard from her mother that most men, unlike her father, were unbelievably coarse and crude. She would have to forgive the professor his faults and try to forgive him. Perhaps he really did not understand the fear and trembling he was causing deep inside her.
"Sue. Are you all right, Sue?" His voice was so gentle now.
Sue nodded her head, still not daring to open her eyes, afraid the tears would flow.
She felt the professor's warm hand cover her own, pry her right hand loose from her left hand. It felt so good to rest her hand in his large, protective, fatherly hand. So safe. He carried her hand through the darkness.
'Touch me," he urged in a whisper.
Sue felt the heat of his body as he brought her hand close to his pelvis, felt him force her open hand shut around...something. Something hard and turgid, covered with soft vulnerable flesh, alive with blood.
Sue wanted to scream, pull her hand away. Her eyes flew open. She was holding his naked manhood, stiffly erect and pointing at her from his unzipped pants.
"No. No!" she whispered in horror. His hand around hers wouldn't let her tug away.
"You've never seen a man's naked prick before, have you, Sue?" the professor purred, his bulging eyes watching the slightest move of muscle on her face, his lips in a flat, fatuous smile.
She whimpered. She stared at the...the thing in a land of fascinated horror, feeling its warmth from one end of her palm to the other, its hot, smooth, round, ugly, purple head staring at her through its single slitted eye.
"Describe it to me, Sue. Tell me what it looks like to you, what it feels like. Your first grab at a man's prick. Tell me, little Sue. You're so marvelous with words." Dr. Vero almost pressed his smooth, preened, lotioned cheek against hers.
Sue pulled back.
"No," she whimpered.
"You mean it's too overwhelming a sight?" Dr. Vero smiled. "That big hard prick of mine."
It reminded Sue of a horse's genitals. Horses she'd seen in meadows near her home. Beasts. Surely men didn't attack women with those big things, rip through them, bury them in a woman's delicate tissues!
"Imagine this inside you," Dr. Vero gripped Sue's hand even tighter against his prick. "Worming its way up your little girl cunt. Does that give your cunt a hot tingle hearing me talk this way?"
Sue shook her head, amazed at her courage. She wasn't even sure she knew where her...her...was; if it had any feelings at all. She only knew that a queasy, frightened little feeling was fluttering around in her abdomen.
"Rub your hand up and down my cock, Sue," Dr. Vero ordered.
Dutifully, Sue obeyed; moved her hand slowly, tentatively up and down the hard rod of his manhood. The skin slid over the hardness. Queer. It felt queer. And down at the root, the edge of her hand rested briefly on something soft and hot. Were those what they learned in high school biology were testicles? Sue wondered. Her hand stopped.
"No, no, no," Dr. Vero said briskly, almost disappointed. "You must keep rubbing. Up and down. Up and down. Like this." His huge hand still wrapped about hers, he forced her captured hand to circle his bulging manhood in vigorous movements up and down the whole length.
Dr. Vero shut his eyes, his breathing came harder and faster, and a strange little look of concentration came over his face as though he were departing this world and entering some strange, private world of his fantasy.
Sue stared at him, fascinated at the changes wrought in him by the simple, physical movement of her hand up and down his genitals.
With his hand, he forced her movements to go harder and deeper. The purple head of his manhood bulged over her fingers. Engorged beyond belief.
Dr. Vero groaned, bit his lip, his pelvis beginning to move slightly in tempo with her hand.
The fear slackened in Sue as she watched him absorbed in this private world which she could not enter. He seemed to be in some kind of pain. And yet he seemed to be enjoying it.
And that hot, hard thing encircled by her cool hand seemed to have a life and existence all its own. As though it belonged to Dr. Vero and yet was not fully a part of him. How could rubbing that round rod bring such amazing changes throughout his whole body?
He was panting now, his tongue moving round and round his lips, his heart visibly pounding under his shirt. Like a motor was set loose in him, about to give way.
Sue smiled. She was no longer afraid. She was no longer the timid victim, the hunted. Now she was the one in power. She exulted in it.
Of her own free will, she tightened her grip on that vulnerable living rod shoved up toward her, gave a couple of hard squeezes. Dr. Vero opened his mouth, gasped.
"Oooh, you she devil," he groaned.
What would happen if she gave a pinch, the slightest of pinches just where that round purple knob topped the throbbing rod? Just once?
On the next up movement, Sue let her thumb and forefinger come to a life of their own, and quickly pinched the flange of flesh overhanging the thick staff.
For answer, the professor, the sweat spreading under the arms of his shirt, bucked his prick harder through her circling hand. He was completely at her mercy. She could do what she wanted with him, make him move any way she wished.
She felt suddenly free, liberated, floating in air like a balloon. And yet part of it all. Gripped and fascinated by the internal power she had awakened in him, controlled in him. She stared at that...that.. . yes, prick, rising and shoving up through her hand again and again. Its dark glowing head almost ready to explode with sensations. It was like...like a poisonous, hooded snake. A snake in the garden of Eden.
Dangerous. Yet strangely helpless. As long as she kept her hand on it, controlled it.
Sue began to enjoy the feel of her hand gliding up and down, felt the spurts of blood that enlarged it under the ministrations of her hand.
Why, there was nothing to fear after all.
Dr. Vero looked at her from under his eyelids, his eyes glinting.
"Sue. Come here, Sue."
It was both a plea and a command.
She pulled her chair closer to him, leaned close to him until the rhythm of his cock shoving up into the air almost caught her under her pale baby blue skirt.
"Sue," he said. "Beautiful, fragile, lovely Sue." With his free arm, Professor Vero caught her close around her light ribs. The breath was crushed out of her as her face came against his.
The warmth of his skin spread heat through her cool cheek. His mouth brushed against her ear, sending tingles down through her flesh, deep, deep under her clothes and her skin and her tissues until a strange little feeling she'd never experienced before came alive in the darkness of her gut. She began to feel a throbbing, a swelling. Began to be caught up in the rhythm of his pelvis as it rocked more and more powerfully, shoving the hard root of his manhood through her fingers.
She closed her eyes. His mouth moved around the side of her neck, her chin, along her cheek, making her flesh part of his flesh.
Sue sank into a kind of darkness, unlit by familiarity. His soft mouth opened and closed wetly over hers. She was shocked. Shocked into a sigh of astonishment and relief.
Her mouth opened slightly, bemused, curious. He shoved his thick, wet, probing tongue through her lips into the darkness of her mouth. The outside world was forgotten as her thoughts and feelings sank deep down inside her.
She was aware of the hard thrusting of his manhood, now so close to her body as almost to enter it. Even as his tongue was sliding into, invading, exploring her mouth.
From the base of her throat, a groan issued.
It sent a jolt of excitement through him.
He became frenzied, lurching up against her furiously, his arm an iron band holding her close.
Sue felt her whole insides widen, soften, want to enclose him. Suddenly, he went rigid, stopped moving.
Something warm and wet and sticky jetted out over her hand. And again and again. And with each jet, her hand felt his genitals go softer and weaker.
He jammed his teeth up against her soft lips, bruising them. A long, deep groan came out of him.
Sue wondered if she imagined the sensations she felt, the wet, sticky fountain spraying up into her interior darkness, lighting it like a thousand sparks of fireworks. And then dying, dying into quietness.
They were both still.
Dr. Vero finally took his mouth from hers, pushed his chair back from her a bit, smiled down at their hands still entwined about his diminishing prick.
Sue stared. Stared at the strange, white stuff, like milky lava, dripping out of the single eye of his manhood, mounding all around her hand.
She looked at it with a sick feeling of horror at the pit of her stomach.
"It's all right," Dr. Vero said, his voice getting back to normal. "I've got a handkerchief in my pocket. I'll wipe it up."
Carefully and thoroughly, he wiped away all the traces of his orgasm from her hand.
But Sue still saw it there, a stain that couldn't be wiped out. The image of it lingered in her sensitive mind's eye. That horribly strange sticky substance that would never leave her now. She was no longer the same. No longer the untouched girl she had been when she had walked into her professor's office.
She was stained for life.
Sue put the back of her hand against her mouth. She was going to be sick. She had to get back, back to her apartment, shut the door on the horrible filth of the world. The blood pounded at her temples.
"I've got to go. I'm late," she gasped. She scooped up her manuscript, unbolted the office door clumsily.
"You'll be back," Dr. Vero said hastily. "I'll want to see you again. Discuss your work with you. You're unusual, possibly a genius."
No, never, never, never, Sue thought, as her bare legs flashed down the wide old-fashioned staircase. I'll never go back to that dark office again.
Or would she?
CHAPTER 4
"Well, kid, you really flipped. You were talking and tossing around all night." Reba drove her green VW up the thruway northwest of New York City. Chance was strapped in beside her and Sue huddled in back, her plaid suitcase with her manuscript in it comfortingly at her feet.
Chance turned around to a still wan Sue. "Yeah. We thought you were tripping."
"Tripping?"
"On LSD. Did someone maybe slip you a dose and you not know about it?"
Tripping. Flipping. It all sounded like something out of a drug addict's nightmare lexicon.
"No. I didn't have a thing. I never take anything unnatural. It contaminates your mind."
Chance threw back her Afro and roared. "Your mind couldn't have been more contaminated if you'd had an overdose. Wowee, you should have heard the crazy things you were talking about. . . . "
"And screaming in the middle of the night," Reba added, her eyes still on the road.
"I was just...dreaming. That sometimes happens to me. I have funny dreams." Sue tried to shrug it off.
"Funny, they were a scream." Chance shook her head. "I've seen people tripping and I've been on some bummers myself. But, girl, this was the worst.
You ought to do something about it if you can get that way when you're not even high."
"Do something?" Sue stammered. She felt the walls closing in on her. The pryings, the probing. She just wanted to get home, home to Mom and Dad, to her clean scrubbed bedroom upstairs with the bright flowered curtains and matching bedspread and the rug her mother had braided.
"Sue, you know what we're talking about," Reba said. "If something's troubling you, why don't you get it all out of your system. I'm sure you could make an appointment with the campus psychiatrist."
"No, oh no, I don't believe in that. All that meddling around in the mind by strangers who have no business being there. I know you two think I'm a nut of some sort. But I'm still old-fashioned enough to believe in privacy." Sue clenched and unclenched her hands. And in a still, small embarrassed voice, she added, "And in God."
Chance hooted. "Well, if this is the best your God can do, you're in trouble. I tell you, Sue, you had us really scared last night. I'm sure your Mom will be worried, too, when we tell her."
"Oh, please, don't tell Mom. She...she's used to my having spells of nerves and nightmares."
"Well, if you aren't from the darkest times!" Reba was disgusted. "Is this what you learn in backwoods America? Thank God, I was born and raised in the city. . . . "
"Me, too," Chance chimed in.
"Where we believe in some good new-fashioned 20th century approaches to life and human troubles. For God's sake, Sue, we all have troubles to more or less degree. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"But you see," Sue said in a very small voice indeed. "I don't have troubles. What you saw yesterday, that's just me. I know I'm a little high strung. I've always known that. So has my family."
"I suppose you all put it down to artistic temperament," Chance said sarcastically.
"Well, something of the sort," Sue wriggled uncomfortably in her seat.
Reba snorted. They drove on in silence for awhile, the road speeding past wooded hills, meadows, here and there a farm, here and there a raw housing development spilling over hills or cut into woods.
"Did you ever think that maybe all it is you're suffering from is sex repression?" Reba finally asked gently.
Sue's mouth dropped open like a fish. "Sex?" Her word groped in the air.
"Yeah," Chance turned around and smiled at her. "You know. Sex. Screwing. Fucking. You've heard of it, haven't you, in upstate New York? My God, you're blushing. Reba, for crissake, she's red as a beet. I swear to God, I bet she never did hear of it. They must've stopped with the Immaculate Conception."
"Sue, tell us honestly, we won't snitch. Are you a virgin?"
Sue felt a spurt of anger add blood to her face. "So what if I am?"
"My God," Chance breathed and subsided in her seat.
"May I ask how old you are?" Reba said, even more gently.
"Say, what is this! Are you playing psychiatrist with me? Because I won't play, I warn you. My feelings are sacred and I won't have anybody tampering with them."
"I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, Sue. I'm your friend as well as your roommate. So is Chance. Why can't you just confide in us as though we were all sisters?"
"Because some things are private matters."
"Oh, come on, Sue, that idea is so old-hat!" Chance sprang up again. "We're all human beings. We just want to share experiences."
"I'll bet," Sue said angrily. And then flushed, unwillingly remembering the two of them, naked on Reba's bed, Reba lying on top of a darker Chance, Chance's long fingers still clutching Reba's rounded buttocks. That's the kind of filth they believed in, in a place like New York City. Pot and heroin and LSD and queer sex of all sorts.
Sue wished she'd never heard of sex.
"Look, you must be at least 18 or 19. . . . " Reba said reasonably.
"Nineteen," Sue said reluctantly. There had been one bad year, her first year in high school, where her nerves had gotten the better of her and she'd spent most of her time at home. That was the year she began menstruating. Maybe that had something to do with it.
"Don't you know that sex expression is natural? Certainly by the time you're nineteen," Reba explained. "You've been a full-grown woman for several years now."
"I don't believe in giving yourself away until you're married." Sue wished they'd both shut up and let her alone.
"Oh, man, I can't believe my ears. Suppose you never get married, girl, what you going to do then? Remain a pure and noble virgin all your life?" Chance laughed loudly.
"Maybe she'll just continue masturbating," Reba squinted into the rearview mirror.
Sue felt a horrible red squirt all over her face like a fountain.
"My God," Reba's eyes opened wide, I'll bet you never even do that much."
Sue bit her lip. "It's...wrong to...touch yourself down there."
"Oh, Lord, listen to that woman carry on," Chance groaned and leaned her Afro on the back of her seat. "I can't believe my ears. How come you never touched yourself, felt your own cunt?"
"You're disgusting, both of you," Sue cried out, clenching her fine white little hand into a fist. And then the hand suddenly remembered, as though the red hot fountain were pulsing through it again, the hard hot fountain of Dr. Vero's manhood. Sue shut her eyes and moaned.
"Boy, have you got hang-ups," Reba shook her head. "And I mean hang-ups. No wonder you have nightmares. You are, to put it bluntly, Sue, and I don't mean to hurt you, just to shock you out of your shell, you really are one hell of a mess."
Sue shut her eyes, despairing of ever making these two women who were really trying to be kind, understand what she was all about. "I'm perfectly normal. Don't you understand? Just because you two happen to have been brought up in a freer atmosphere in the city doesn't mean you're right and I'm wrong. Tm like millions of other girls. I'm perfectly normal."
"First of all, you're not a girl, you're a woman. Now just get that through your head." Chance turned around and glared at Sue angrily. "Second of all, there's nothing normal about woman managing to ignore her body until she's nineteen years old. Aren't you curious about your own body? Don't you have any sex feelings at all, any natural sex desires?"
Sue kept her eyes shut. Remembering unwillingly the strange sensations she'd had, locked against professor Vero, almost feeling the rocking of his genitals as though it were happening inside her. She'd never experienced that before. Maybe that's what was meant by sex feelings.
"You got a brother?" Chance asked suddenly.
"No, I'm an only child."
"No wonder you managed to stay so sheltered until this age," Reba threw in. "Me, I've got two brothers, an older and a younger. And let me tell you, the first thing they seem to grab hold of is their cock. The minute their baby arms can reach down there. I know because my younger brother was born when I was 10."
"Yeah, they grab on young and never let go," Chance laughed. "Sacred prick."
"Must you use that gutter language?"
"What do you mean, gutter language?"
"Well, there are the proper words for sexual parts. I don't know why you have to be deliberately crude and...and...talk like a man and try to embarrass me," Sue said.
"Hear her, Reba? I swear, I can't believe my ears with this girl. Sue, you are an education to me. Now what in hell kind of language do you think men and women use with each other. How about a little intercourse? Or would you like to have coitus with me tonight? Man, I can't think of anything would turn you off quicker. Oh, Lord," Chance laughed and wiped her eyes.
"My mother and father never talk dirty like that. And they have a beautiful marriage," Sue protested.
"How the hell do you know how they talk to each other in bed? Are you there with them?" Reba asked.
"No, but I know they are decent people."
"Oh, so now I suppose Reba and I are indecent."
Sue kept silent.
Reba and Chance shot a look at each other, remembering Sue's green face when she caught them in bed together.
'You know," Reba was using her extra gentle voice again, "Nothing done in love or kindness or affection between two people, and I don't care what sex they are, is indecent, Sue."
"Yeah. And all those great words, like prick and fuck and cunt are sexy. They turn you on. They're real. Not like that screwy Latin shit you were taught was proper to use in bed," Chance added. "I like the sound of those words. What kind of kook would use any other?"
"You really have got to learn where sex is at if you want to make it in this world," Reba said. "Where you and sex are at. Sex isn't some kind of strange, weird thing way out there. It's you. Starting with your hair and eyes and tits and cunt."
Why can't they use words like vagina, Sue thought. Why must they persist in degrading everything?
"Like, I can understand how you might feel about your cunt," Reba continued. "When I think of all the hang-ups I had about it. When my art instructor insisted we draw ourselves nude as a class lesson, I couldn't bring myself to even look at my own cunt in the mirror, much less draw it so other people could see it clearly. I left it all kind of a blur, as Chance noticed."
Reba sent a fond look over to her roommate. 'It was really Chance who helped me get over my hang-up. Maybe she's the freest person I've ever met. But suddenly I could look, really look at my own cunt, the lips and the ridges and the hair and the color of it, like dusky fruit, and draw it without being ashamed. I admit it took a lot of guts. But if I couldn't accept my own cunt, how could I believe anybody else would like it, male or female?"
"Why are you making such a big thing of it?" Sue asked faintly. She wished they would stop using those horrible words. It set up an awful buzzing and heaving and fluttering in her abdomen. Something that a good medical word like "vagina" never did.
"Because we're trying to help you, Sue," Chance said. "Can't you see that? We've all been through it, just like we're trying to get you to go through it. With our help. Sure you got a hang-up about the damn thing. Who wouldn't, in this culture? We're brought up to believe, thanks to crazy things in the Bible about unclean women, that cunt is something dark and dirty 'down there'. It smells bad, boy, and if it smells bad, who wants to have it? But you notice how the guys make sure we all think that prick is a marvelous and holy thing. Shit! Cunt is as good and clean and sacred as prick any day. You believe that, girl?" Chance turned on Sue almost angrily.
"No. I mean, I don't know what to believe. I...never think about it."
"Well start thinking," Reba said grimly. "Start thinking cunt and get to know it, what it's shaped like, how it feels, yes, even what it tastes like. It's got sweet juices. It doesn't have to be covered up with deodorants and vaginal sprays and all the rest of that stuff. We're not skunks you have to cover up the smell of. Even blood doesn't look or smell bad. We're glad when blood flows in the rest of the body; we think it's good and healing and sacred. Well, female blood is good, too. And until you and me and all the rest of us stop hating and despising and trying to hide our most intimate bodies, we'll never be real women. If you can't love your own body, how can you believe a man would?"
"I.. . never thought about it," Sue said faintly.
"That's because you've never been screwed. Never had to worry about should you douche or are you going to be menstruating when some joker wants to screw you or half a dozen other idiotic things," Chance said. "I don't know how you've avoided being fucked so far. You're not bad looking. Kind of on the quiet, pale side, but some men go for that."
"As a matter-of-fact, I've got a boyfriend back home. We're not exactly engaged but.. . "
"But what in hell do you do when you're together? He's never screwed you? Has he ever touched you, touched your cunt?"
"Oh, Reba, he respects me. He wouldn't dream of doing a thing like that."
Reba groaned and shut her eyes. "Oh my God."
"It can't be all that hopeless, Reba. Somewhere there's got to be a live, warm woman inside Sue. We just gotta keep after her, break down all these silly defenses she's built up over her whole life. I don't think I could go through many more crazy nights like Sue gave us last night. Bad enough when you're tripping and make a bad scene. But to do it when you're normal . . . " Chance shook her head. "Girl, I'd hate to see you when your mind really flips. Because, believe me, if you don't get your mind together one of these days, you're really going to shoot out into nowhere."
"You're just trying to scare me," Sue was near tears.
"No, we're faying to help you," Reba said.
"But I'm not in trouble."
"You are. You're so deep in trouble, you don't know how far gone you are, girl. Just pay us some mind," Chance said sternly.
"Oh, the hell with it. What's the use," Reba gave up. "Just don't let me drive past your home, Sue."
Sue's home was a comfortable white two-story house set behind huge maples in a village no bigger than the palm of your hand. It had the settled look of an old shoe that's been worn a long time but kept in good repair.
Sue's mother was a comfortable middle-aged woman, her taffy hair streaked with gray, and her first words to her daughter as she took her in her arms were, "Sue, I hope you're not in trouble. I didn't expect to see you home this weekend."
Chance shot a disgusted look at Reba who shrugged. What can you expect of a mother?
"No, I'm not in trouble, Mother. Not really." Sue looked small tucked into her mother's bulk.
"Sometimes freshmen have a bit of difficulty adjusting," Reba said. "Especially if it's their first time away from home."
"Well, I can understand that, being a teacher myself," Sue's mother said briskly. She looked up at Chance, up to the top of her Afro, and after a brief pause, said, "Won't you please come in for a cup of coffee and a sandwich?"
It was obvious not too many Afros had passed over that well-worn doorsill.
For Sue, the day passed in a haze. She was exhausted. She couldn't believe that a scant 24 hours ago, she was trapped in Dr. Vero's office, sharing the darkest of secrets with him. She just wanted to sleep and forget, forget.
But even her sleep was troubled. She dreamed and awakened with a start, her heart beating strongly. But the dreams escaped her, like salamanders slyly leaving their tails behind in her hand and slipping away under the leaves and rocks.
She lay in her nylon nightgown between the clean ironed sheets, stared at the wallpaper of her beloved bedroom, white with tiny sprigged pink and purple flowers. And the matching curtains. It all seemed so strange and faraway, from a different existence.
As though she and her body were lying here and had no more connection with that past. Something dark and evil had come between and driven her away from the sweet familiarity of her childhood.
She felt herself going down again into that dark frightening sleep, gasped, gripped her soft comforter to keep from falling but sleep gripped her in its sharp-toothed jaws, sucked her into its bowels.
Darkness.
Shape.
As though she were the darkness. Mounded, hillocked, valleyed. As though she were the earth itself, the warm soil, living, soft. Her hands moved over herself, over her forbidden self which she never dared look at either directly or in a mirror, which she always flipped over quickly through the protective covering of a washcloth or a towel.
Now in her dream, her hand explored herself, discovered herself. Ran over the tiny mounds of her breasts, felt the intricate structure underneath the warm skin. Her fingers floated over the soft little bumps of her nipples, feeling a tingly excitement at the unexpected point in the otherwise smoothness of her breasts.
Her hands crushed down on her breasts, rocking them, and a sharp new feeling raced through in the hidden caverns of her body. What was that feeling?
Her hand slipped down over her ribs, fine-boned under the satin of her skin. It felt so good. Gently her hands caressed the skin over and over. She began to feel electricity vibrating in her skin bringing it to a life she'd never felt before. She sank her fingers into the soft flesh of her belly, deep, deep, and groaned.
She heard the groan in her ears as she pulled out of the dark well of sleep. She opened her eyes. It was dark, dark all around. The shades were drawn. It must be well into the night. Her mother must have come quietly, pulled down the shades, smoothed her pillow.
The room was strange. Her body seemed so much there. She could feel its nakedness under the cling of the nylon nightgown. Feel the sensations, alarmingly alive, bunched...down there...under the smooth bush of hair, like the prow of a ship seeking to plunge into a violent sea.
Sue heard the groan again. Muffled. No, it wasn't her own. It came from another room. Her parents' bedroom.
"Charlie."
That was her mother speaking to her father. But in a low, husky, throaty voice that Sue didn't even recognize.
Sue wanted to pull the comforter up about her ears but she listened, fascinated in spite of herself. "You're beautiful, Midge."
That was her father, laughter in his voice. Which was funny because he was such a sober, serious man. Humorless, really.
"No, Charlie, I'm middle-aged and fat and the shine has gone out of my hair."
"You're crazy. Your hair hasn't changed since the day we married. It still drives me wild."
There was the sound of her father's laughter again and her mother saying "Charlie!" in almost a squeal of mock outrage and amusement.
With a blush, Sue suddenly realized they were talking about her mother's pubic hair. Horrible. Horrible. Her parents were about to make love, to do that terrible thing. No, she mustn't hear, mustn't listen.
Sue pulled the pillow over her head, crushed it against her ears. She couldn't hear their voices any more but she could hear with razor-sharp clarity the steady jounce of her parents' bedsprings.
She recognized the rhythm for the first time in her life. Recognized it from the movements Dr. Vero had made in his chair, his penis shoving up through her hand.
Her father was inside her mother.
Fucking.
Horrible.
And all the crazy sensations intensified at the prow of her pubic bone, crying out for...something. Waiting.
Sue forced herself to drown out the sounds and thoughts in sleep, as she had done all her life.
I don't want to hear, I shouldn't hear, she almost sobbed to herself. But the sounds pursued her, even down into the well of her dreams.
Darkness again, but a warm gray billowy darkness. Full of substance. Something soft on top of her, warm and heavy, faceless and body.
She lifted up her arms and put them around the thing. Man thing, naked against her. With a sigh she gave in to the pressure of the body on her. She felt a warm cheek against hers, scratchy, turned to it gratefully.
A mouth closed over hers, wet, the tender tongue forcing itself between her teeth. She rocked her head from side to side, resenting the invasion. But the man persisted, his mouth sucking on hers, his tongue searching for hers.
Like a five...no, she wouldn't think of it...but the thought popped into her head and stayed there. Like a five snake, probing, persistent, delicious.
She pushed back with the tip of her tongue and with delight, his tongue curled around hers, sensing it, tasting it. Her whole body began to feel like the inside of her mouth, awakened to strange and delicious sensations, as though it were a deep cavern covered with the most delicate feeling of membranes. Down, deep, deep down the feeling sank, beneath her breasts, her soft belly squeezed under his, down into the wild recesses of her pelvis where she'd never been aware of life before.
She was all just one deep wanting cave, wanting him to probe and invade.
Between her thighs, he thrust something hard, hard as bone yet covered with a sheath of warm vulnerable skin. Instinctively, she reached down, felt for it, wrapped her hand around it. Lovingly.
Felt the skin move under her fingers as she slid her hand up and down the hard rod. Felt the blood pulse once, twice, thickening the rod, heating it.
Felt the smooth round head and a drop of substance squeeze out of the slitted unseen eye. Rubbed it with her thumb, all over the dry tip, moistening it.
Hmmmm. He murmured in her ear, sending shivers down through the black cave of her body.
She became aware of the moisture pouring out of her crevasse between her thighs, the throbbing of her lips, waiting for the harsh thrust of his rod even as her mouth hungered for his tongue.
He withdrew his tongue, tantalizing. She felt the emptiness in her mouth, even as her body was empty.
Timidly, her tongue slipped past her own lips into his mouth, shyly touching the tip of his tongue. With a sudden savage movement, he sucked strongly on her tongue, pulling it into his mouth. For a moment she fought him, resenting his forceful demandingness.
Then she let go her resistance, letting him do as he wished with her. Her hand fell limply away from his cock, grabbed his hip, her fingers digging in as she felt the final invasion, his prick sinking deep into the slithery moisture of her sex.
She pulled her legs out from under him, flapped them open, welcoming him into the center of her being. She felt full, stuffed from head to core, as though all her life, without realizing it, she had been empty and waiting for this moment.
Her whole body rode to the rhythm of the man prick, churning and digging inside her. His body pounded hers, his belly slapping against hers, his pubic bone grinding hers, his cock sliding into her greased tunnel.
Sue gripped him, moaning, her fingers digging into the flesh and bone of his ribs. Again and again, his thick cock plunged into her. Her sex pulled and tugged at it, sucking it in greedily, wanting it, filling up with a sweetness, a pleasure beyond belief that rippled in waves through the tissues gripping him.
Lone brave blind torpedo, shooting into the black space that is woman.
Her flesh rocketed off into spasms that shook her whole body. Shook her awake.
The mattress gave under her as her body thrashed about. Her hand was clutched to the hair-matted slippery wet membranes of her vulva. Her fingertips felt the grasping clutch of muscles at the gateway to her sex, trying to pull her in. The greedy grasping clutch of her...her...cunt.
Fucking.
That's what it was.
Deep inside, she had known it all along.
CHAPTER 5
"My God, she'll never get over her hang-ups. Did you ever see such a backward, bigoted, small, petty, narrow-minded bunch of people as her parents? Poor kid." Reba fumed, driving herself and Chance back to college.
"Come on, now, it's not all that bad. Cool it. You'd think prejudice had been invented yesterday. I got to tell you, Reba, small-minded people have been around a long time. Maybe you have to be black to appreciate it. Sue's home and her folks are no worse than most."
"The hell they're not. I bet they never had a black in their living room before. You really threw them, Chance. Did you see the look on her face when Sue's mother invited you in?"
Chance kept her face straight. "Don't rub it in. I see looks like that every day of my life. Everywhere I go. If it hasn't broken me yet, it's not about to break me now."
'Yeah, but it's indicative of the kind of background Sue comes from. No wonder words like fuck and cunt scare the hell out of her. I'll bet her parents never use words like that. Or actions to match."
"Don't be sure. They have one daughter, at least."
"One helluva screwed up daughter. She's hopeless. Hopeless." Reba shook her brown mane disconsolately. "The perpetual virgin."
"Could be worse things."
"Not much."
"Sex isn't everything, Reba. If it were, I'd be sitting on top of the world. If I took on a fraction of the guys who want me, I wouldn't have a spare hour to study. You got to see this thing in a more balanced light. There's sex, sure. It's great. But there's also friendship. And learning. And getting somewhere in life. And getting your head straight so you know where you're
"And there's sex," Reba laughed. "God's greatest invention. Or man's greatest gift to womankind. Or vice versa."
"Maybe yes, maybe no. Can cause a lot of pain and unhappiness, too." Under her Afro, Chance's face thinned, her cheeks hollowed out. Aged, even.
"Now we're talking about sadomasochism."
"Bullshit. We're talking about just plain old ordinary pain, the kind people dish out to each other every day."
Reba drove silently for a few minutes in the twilight. "Well, I guess you might have a pessimistic viewpoint like that, Chance. Being black. But I really think people could be better if they'd just stop doing everything ass-backward."
Chance smiled to herself. An indulgent, wise smile.
It was dark when they reached their college apartment building edging the campus.
Reba turned her key in the lock, and the light-flooded apartment made them blink their eyes.
An ultra tall, slender man with a bush of a black mustache and sideburns unfolded himself from Reba's bed.
"Joel, what are you doing here?" Reba sighed. He strode over, wrapped her figure, dwarfed next to his, in his arms.
"Waiting for you to fix me supper. I'm famished."
Joel bent down, mouthed her lips with his. Reba pulled away, mad and tired. "Wait a minute, now. I'm exhausted. We've had one hell of a day."
"Doing what?" Joel took her rejection with a twinkle of his surprisingly deep blue eyes.
"Driving Sue upstate to her home."
"Whatever for?"
"She's having a nervous breakdown, I think. And Fd rather her mother took responsibility for it than Chance and me."
"Oh, come on, Reba, don't exaggerate," Chance moved into the kitchenette, opened an oversize can of baked beans.
"Well, if you think that screaming fit she had last night was anywhere near normal.. . " Reba turned on her roommate.
Joel pulled her close again. "Maybe she's having her period. Just a form of monthly hysteria."
Reba's frown went dark, she whipped out of his arms. "You know so damn much, you should have been here last night with Chance and me, trying to calm her down, what with her crying jags and her nightmares."
"Maybe she just learned she was pregnant," Joel said reasonably.
"Pregnant, hell," Reba spat at him. "She's never even been screwed."
"That makes no difference." Joel followed her up to the door of the kitchenette, slouched in the doorway as the two women students prepared a quick dinner. "You know, if the man ejaculates even close to the vagina, or in the girl's hands and she touches her vagina, the sperm can travel up and into the Fallopian tubes. As long as they hit that warm, moist channel fairly quickly, they can survive for 24 to 48 hours."
"Are you sure you shouldn't be taking pre-med instead of engineering?" Reba said sarcastically, slapping three dinner plates down on the tiny table.
Joel's blue eyes widened and went tender. He grasped her hands. "Here, here. What's troubling you, love?"
"Would you believe, you?" she snapped up at his face, standing on tiptoe. "The least you can do is get yourself some food together to shove down your mouth. You know where the refrigerator door is. You do know how to open it, don't you?"
'What brought this on?" He stepped back a moment, "I'm dead tired, you idiot, after a four-hour drive. And you expect me to be here, not even knowing you were coming, to serve you dinner." She plunked two frankfurters on his plate while Chance scooped out the beans. "Male chauvinist pig."
Chance smiled. "You're going to make some wife," she said mildly.
"Who says I'm going to marry the dude? I'm just going to bed with him."
Joel sat down at his place, patted her hand paternally. "At the moment, that's all I'm asking for."
"Well, you better not ask for more. Because that's all I'm prepared to give." Reba slammed the pot back on the burner. "I don't need a husband. What I need is a good-looking male model who, for the privilege of posing for my paintings will also iron my clothes, cook my meals, and scrub my floors."
"Reba, you're going off the deep end." Chance bit off a mouthful of hotdog.
"The hell I am. Male artists have had this great racket for hundreds of years. It's time we women artists wised up."
"I'm with you there," Chance said, winldng secretly at Joel. "Speaking as a photographer, that is."
"Don't count on me," Joel laughed. "I'm a lousy male model."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Reba bent her head, her sun-bronzed mane of hair hiding her smile. "I was thinking of asking you for what I suspect will be our next project. Our current one being to sketch ourselves nude. In faithful realistic detail. And you've got a gorgeous cock, Joel. I thought maybe I'd sketch it for posterity."
"The hell you will. If I see you with a piece of charcoal around me, I'll break your neck."
Reba shrugged her shoulders, sending a helpless look across the table to Chance. "See how they are? It's okay for us to be naked all over the place, from magazines to billboards to nightclubs. But they protect their own."
"You can say that again," Chance agreed. "Sometimes, picking up all that bread for modeling, I feel more like a whore than if I were a decent hard-working prostitute working the streets, one man at a time. This way I know thousands or millions might be looking at my nude picture at a time. Jerking off. It gives' me the cold creeps sometimes. But I got to make money for college expenses."
"Now, what's wrong with good, honest photographs of naked women?" Joel looked from one to the other. "Perfectly natural."
"Okay, then tonight I draw your cock. Up or down. And bring it to class Monday."
Joel lunged across the tiny table with his long arms, seized Reba. "You do that and I'll break your neck."
His hand scratched at her bosom, naked under the ribbed sweater, and seized her by the shoulder.
A lightning jag of pleasure streaked through Reba's body. Her eyes glared. 'You big gorilla, get your hands off me. Just like a man! The minute reason doesn't work, he uses brute force. Well, I'm in no mood to take crap tonight. Get your hands off me, you lame brain."
She tried to thrust his hands away, half rose from her chair, kicked at his ankle under the table.
"I hate a woman who lacks." Anger darkened the blue of Joel's eyes.
"Sure, you want us to be meek and mild and submissive. Well, I'm out of the bag. Forever. You meet me on my terms, or else. . . . "
Joel stood up, facing her, his hands still biting pain into her tender shoulders. "Or else what? I warn you, I'm losing my temper."
"Big deal," Reba sneered.
"Listen, Reba, don't turn things sour. They've been great for us the past four or five weeks."
"Sure, but now I know what you're really like. Under that deceptively mild exterior."
"Bullshit! You're no innocent baby, either." ' "Cut the crap, Joel. I've had one hell of a couple of days."
"No excuses. I don't like it when women beg off from their share of the blame with backaches and headaches and all the rest of that crap. Fight fair."
Reba's eyes narrowed, her glance raked him from head to toe. He was a huge brute, taller than she by more than a head. Still and all, with that slender build, and not as athletic as she, she might just be able to tackle him safely.
They panted, glaring at each other.
"Cool it, you two," Chance said tartly. "Or else go into the bedroom. I've had one shit of a day, too."
Reba scarcely looked at her roommate. "Okay. Leave the dishes there. We'll clear them tomorrow."
"Forget it. I'll clean up and run down for a couple of beers. I'll be back later." Wearily, Chance pulled herself up, started piling dishes in the sink as Reba and Joel shut themselves into the single bedroom.
Joel stood, back to the door, so huge he almost had to duck his head to keep from hitting the ceiling. Under his bush of a mustache, his sensual mouth was grim.
Reba's breasts under her lavender sweater heaved with her ragged breath. Her hair fell over her eyes. Impatiently, she brushed it aside. Her back was to the bank of windows.
Tm fed up with your bossiness," she spat at him.
"Oh, come on, is that the best you can do? Bossiness is the farthest thing from me." His tone softened.
"There! See what I mean? Playing the part of the cool, reasonable male, always in control of his emotions while the crazy female has hysterics. Do you know how lousy that makes me feel?"
"For chrissakes, Reba, you're being unreasonable."
She mimicked him. "For chrissakes, Reba, you're being unreasonable." She advanced on him, her fists clenched. "Can't you understand that I find your arrogant male superiority insufferable? Don't you know you're as full of shit as the next one, only you're too smug to admit it?"
Joel's eyes shot sparks. "Oh, so now I'm full of shit. I thought you loved me. All that flattery, about how intelligent I am and what a kind guy. And what a gorgeous cock I have."
A wicked smile lit up her face. "Maybe I'm putting you on. Maybe it's all just a line I'm throwing you, to get what I want."
His face underwent a kaleidoscope of changes-astonishment, disbelief, outrage.
"You wouldn't do that! Lie to me. Make me feel good only to tear me down again. That's a cheap rotten female trick!"
'You see? You see? Under all that nicey-nicey air, you're as much a woman-hater as the rest of them." Reba crept up to him, thrust her fist under his nose.
"What the hell are you doing? Threatening me, you little bitch?" Joel grabbed her fists, twisted her arms behind her back.
Reba was rammed up against his body, jerking her head back to keep from having it pressed against his chest. She felt the spurts of rage jab into her arms, her torso, her pelvis. Even her legs twitched with absolute fury.
He was strong, the son of a bitch. Stronger than she'd ever suspected. Under that meek, mild, reasonable manner of his was a physical strength that could rip her in two, destroy her.
"You bully, let me go," she hissed through her flung-about hair.
"Ha, you don't like it, do you?" His lips curled with contempt and his eyes spat rage. "You thought I was some kind of namby-pamby you could step all over. You don't like knowing I could mop the floor with you."
Her heart pounded and she could feel the sheer fury swell her head, threatening to burst her skull. It was that, always that-the brute strength of a man pitted against her.
She struggled to free her arms from his grip.
"No, you won't get off that easily." He pinioned her arms all the tighter against her back.
"Son of a bitch." She stamped on his foot.
His blue eyes glinted. "That won't work."
Her golden eyes grew wicked, narrowed. "How about my knee in your crotch!"
Joel smirked. "What? And ruin that gorgeous cock you need so much?"
"Why you lousy, smug, self-satisfied ape! Who needs it? Who? I can get a dozen cocks as good as yours...or better. Just strolling around the block for five minutes."
"I believe it, you whore!"
The sweat rolled in huge drops from her armpit, spreading in a semi-circle on her sweater. Sweat poured under her weighted bare tits, oiled the skin underneath.
She lunged against Joel, rocked and wiped her body across his, trying to release her wrists from the chain of his hands.
"That's what you really think of me!"
"That's what you are, Reba!"
"Damn you. Damn you. Damn you." She was panting hard, her hair a frenzied mass about her face. There was nothing, no insult she could hurl at him that would hurt a fraction as bad.
In the end they had every defensive weapon-the strength, the cruel words. There was no beating them. Stupid, rotten men!
Her body thrashed against his, feeling the heave of his chest, the flat of his belly, and yes...damn it, the worst insult of all, the hardening jut of his prick. Thrusting against her, searching her out, knowing the way, determined to find it and establish his mastery.
With a groan, Reba darted forward and sank her teeth into the naked flesh of his upper arm. Deep, deep, wanting to tear and bruise and destroy.
Joel yelped, instinctively leaped back, dropping his hold on her wrists.
Reba stood there, panting, drooping, too momentarily exhausted to move, her raw, numbed arms hanging loose in front of her. Not completely helpless yet. As long as she had an ounce of strength in her body and a pound of wit in her head, she could still protect against, save herself from, his superior force.
Joel stared at his arm, frowned, ran his hand over the blood oozing out of the teeth marks.
Reba smiled.
There was always a way to get the better of them. Had to be, or women wouldn't have survived this far.
Joel pulled down the sleeve of his shirt, smeared up the blood. "God. You're impossible. You stop at nothing. You don't care what you do to me."
"I don't give a shit." Reba flung back her head and began to laugh, her laughter hitting the ceiling like golden pellets. "God, the look on your face! It was all right when you were bullying me, wasn't it? But you can't stand to see yourself losing."
Her laughter was cut off in the middle. She went back on the bed like a football dummy as Joel tackled her with a forward fall. His body fell straight on her, a tangle of arms and legs in the middle of her unmade bed.
Her bronzy hair lay in streaks across her outraged face. "Now what are you planning to do? Rape me?"
He shoved his face so close, his luxuriant mustache brushed across her lips. "Rape you? That's great. No man ever had to rape you in your life. You're always wet and ready."
"The hell you say. That's your goddamn male vanity.
This time his mustache brushed deliberately across her lips and cheek, awakening in them the familiar tingling response.
"Is it?"
He stared down at her with a proprietary smirk on his face, one arm across her chest, holding her immobile against the bed sheet. The other hand suddenly hiked up her skirt. Abruptly he rammed two fingers up to the hilt in her cunt. Her muscles gripped around them.
Reba groaned.
Why did she give in? Why the hell did she give in? No matter how her head felt, her body always betrayed her. It never lied. Joel was right. That's all she was...just a warm, wet, waiting cunt, waiting for any prick who'd have her.
"See what I mean?" his mouth murmured next to hers and then he covered her lips with his. His breath sent fire through her, his tongue a living creature forced against the closed gate of her lips.
No, she wouldn't let him. Goddamn it, his fingers were invading her, that was enough. His tongue licked across the cleft of her lips, dripping, forceful.
Reba kept her mouth tight shut, but her cunt vibrated to the sweet pressure of his tongue, glided rhythmically to his fingers rudely thrust in her.
Damn it, she cursed to herself, and with an act of will, forced the muscles of her vagina to remain still, held them tightly, tightly.
"You're made of iron, you little bitch. Why don't you do that around my cock?" Joel rimmed her cunt hard with his fingers, around and around.
Reba's face turned against his arm, she felt for the bare skin, opened her lips and pressed them against the muscle of his upper arm, sucked like a vampire.
The delicious sweet pleasure of sex arose in the perimeter of her sex channel as his fingers pressed in a circle, widening, ever widening it.
Her cunt sucked greedily. His fingers weren't enough, not hardly enough to fill her up.
But she wouldn't give in.
'You're just like all the other guys. No different. Just a damn prick."
"What's so special about you? You can't give it up, can you, Reba? That adorable spoiled little girl, Daddy's favorite crap. You think the whole world is going to bow down to you, make a fuss over you. You think you're hot shit. Because you've got looks, but so do millions of girls. Because you've got a hot cunt, but so do they. Because Daddy's a doctor. Big deal You can't spend the rest of your life wiggling your butt and minking, the whole world will come running. Because you're just not that important."
"I'm nothing. Just nothing as far as you're concerned. Just a cunt for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Or whenever the hell you get your nose out of a book long enough to want it. You've got to be-little me because of all your own masculinity hang-ups, your own doubts and fears. So you have to tear me down."
Reba bucked her pelvis, trying to throw him off, jarred his hand loose from her slippery sex. "You jerk."
"You still care about me."
"The hell I do."
"You care."
"I could care less. If you fell seven stories right through this bedroom I'd never notice you were gone. Never cry for you."
"Liar. You care. You care." Joel thrust his pelvis against hers cruelly.
"I don't care for any man." She collected a few drops of spittle in her mouth and shot it out at him, catching him on the side of the face.
His hand shot up, rubbed his cheek in surprise. "Bitch!" Suddenly, his hand went to his pants, unzipped, and deftly slipped out the hard demanding thrust of his cock, shoved it between her thighs, slippery with her own sex juice.
"You care. You care for something. You care for this much at least." He shoved his prick masterfully in the soft bunching of her thighs.
"The hell I do," Reba grunted.
Joel took her arms, held them flat on the bed above her head, rocked his body on hers.
Reba shut her eyes. Tried to shut her body's memory of that rough, lusty rocking. Twisted her pelvis this way and that, but his pelvis was equally adept, kept glued to hers. And moving, his rod, glistening with her moisture, kept up its slow, steady pace, teasing the sensations all along the length of her vulva lying dripping under the pubic hair. Drew a groan from her as it bowed along the high tilted rise of her hard little clitoris, standing like a miniature figurehead at the prow of her swollen cunt lips.
Joel opened his mouth on hers, and this time she received the thrust of his tongue. Even as her sex longed for the thrust of his prick merely cresting at the outside, tantalizing her beyond endurance.
Her whole cunt was one dark haunting, wanting.
Joel drew his mouth back from hers. "You see, you care. At least to some extent." He arched back his pelvis, drawing up his manhood out of her reach.
Instinctively, her pelvis lunged up toward him, her craving sex searching, moving in the dark, trying to locate the object of her desires.
"You want it?"
Even with her eyes closed, she sensed his triumphant smile.
"Yes. Give it to me, damn it. Fuck me. Fuck me, Joel."
He bent, and shoved up her sweater, and licked across the hard nipple of her trembling breast. His arms still held her arms back against the bed.
Reba rotated her breast, wanting the warmth of his breath to sting her to life, the wetness of his mouth to clamp over her nipple. Joel let one arm go and she brought her hand down, scooped up her full tit and held it lovingly up to his mouth. He sucked, greedy as a baby. Her cunt rippled in rhythm to his sucking.
"Fuck me, fuck me," she sobbed.
He jabbed the full length of his rod into her, deep, deep until his pubic bone touched her, mashing against her clit, and she felt the warm rhythmic slap of his heavy balls behind.
He leaned on his elbows, crushing her shoulders, webbed his hands in the tangle of her flowing hair and twisted her head from side to side as he lapped the column of her neck, along the ridge of her jaw. Pleasure flicked along her nerves. She arched her neck, throwing her head back to the wet caresses of his mouth, as she arched up her pelvis, sucking in the angry thrusting of his prick.
His tongue invaded the delicacy of her ear. It sent a hot surge of lust clear down through her. Opened up the cavern of her sex. His hand, twisting her hair until the pain rimmed her forehead, merely added to the intensity of her desire.
"Bitch!" he whispered into her ear. "Hot little bitch."
His tongue fucked the recesses of her ear. Her belly heaved and drew in, pounded by his belly. Sweating. On every downward motion, his warm balls were crushed against the sensitive small space separating her vulva from her anus.
"Whore!" he whispered into her ear, the words trailing down into her gut on the hot wind of his breath.
She hated him, despised him for his contempt. Her arms tightened around his back, her sharp fingernails scratched his skin maliciously until she felt the drops of blood ooze out.
She could feel the hatred prickle along his back; his prick swell even more with the pulse of blood.
"Damn bitch, I'll get the best of you yet," he cursed in her ear, and the words tunneled down through her darkness, driving her cunt almost wild with lust.
She couldn't get enough of the driving piston of his manhood. Never had her cunt been so alive, so sensitive. It felt the very shape of his cock, the flange rimming the smooth head that drove blindly against the soft cushion of her cervix.
She tipped up her pelvis, clear off the bed, catching his pounce in midair. She swirled her hips, her cunt muscles tightening. Pinching his prick.
He groaned.
"I'm hurting you," she smiled.
His answer was to speed up the jabbing of her sex.
She felt she couldn't endure the ecstatic glow any more, pulled her pelvis away from him, edged across the rumpled sheet.
"Damn you!" He flung himself over her in the dark, arms and legs trying to find her sweat-dripping body, enclose it, imprison it.
Reba clenched her teeth, flapped her body this way and that from the aggressive grabbing of his arms and legs, the masterful, demanding, hard jut of his cock.
I'm going to win, she swore to herself. You won't get the best of me, you prick.
She wanted him more than she'd ever wanted him and that drove her wild, too, with rage. Somehow, there had to be a way not to want him, not to need him, not to be his slave.
His hand clamped over her breast, squeezed it until his fingers dug into her delicate tissues, bruising her.
"Get the hell away from me," she snarled.
"You're not going to leave me like this. Not in the middle of screwing."
"The hell I won't!" Reba almost slipped off the bed.
Joel seized her, wrapped his mouth around the erect point of her nipple. Bit hard.
Reba tore at his head, shoved it away from her.
His mouth trailed down her body, nipped at the flesh between the edge of her ribs and her hip bone. Her mouth jerked open; her head slid partly over the mattress. He bit and nibbled his way over to her lush belly, pressing his chin and mustache into it, nosing about. Her belly writhed in response; her hands held his head close to her.
His mouth strayed farther down, rounded the rich bush of hair protecting her pubic bone and slid over the vulnerable clit, breathing warm air and fury into her body.
Reba panted, grabbed him by the hair and pressed his face into the hot wet hole of her cunt. He circled his tongue around the dark abyss, sending shivers throughout her body.
"Fuck me, fuck me," she begged, scarcely letting him tear his head away.
She felt as if she'd die of the exquisite pleasure if he didn't put an end to it soon. Her body felt more alive and wide-awake than any single cock could satisfy.
Joel dragged her back onto the bed, spread his full length over her and with a harsh jab re-entered her cunt.
Reba bit her lip. "Hurt me, hurt me," she commanded.
"I can't, I can't." Joel's voice went all tender. "I don't want to."
She hated him when he went all soft and mushy like this, as though he didn't have a bone in his body.
Suddenly, she was adrift in the night, her cunt, so aching a moment before with frenzied desire, suddenly went numb, ceased to feel. It happened every time. Every time. When she thought she would explode with painful pleasure, the feeling suddenly ebbed away, her cunt went blank.
She was aware of Joel pushing and shoving inside her, aware of his mounting excitement, his breath beating a tattoo, stirring the hair wreathed about her face.
But it was an excitement happening a long way away from her, not deep inside her at all.
"I'm coming in a minute," Joel gasped. "Are you almost ready?"
"I can't," Reba said, her voice clear and cold and sober.
"What's...wrong? You were so close."
"Nothing's wrong, dammit. I just can't. Aren't I permitted?"
"You never can. I can't hold out much longer."
His body rocked on hers. She felt it with a cold distaste. Almost with hatred.
"Go ahead and come. Forget about me."
She felt his fingers grip like talons in the soft flesh of her butt, heard him groan, go rigid on her and felt the involuntary finishing thrust of his manhood.
Damn, damn, damn. It was never any good. Never.
Gasping for air, Joel rolled off her, lay on his back, his arm over his eyes. "It's never any good," he said bitterly, echoing her thoughts.
"I'm not a good lay, huh!"
"I didn't say that, Reba. It must be something wrong with me. Maybe I'm just the wrong man. You're so hot, you're the hottest woman I've ever had, but I just can't seem to get you over the edge. You never come with me."
Reba lay there, staring up at the ceiling. "I never come with anybody, if that's a comfort to you."
In the dark, his hand reached out, found hers, entwined. They fell asleep that way. r
CHAPTER 6
Chance sat laughing and drinking at the Night Owl, the students' favorite hangout two blocks from campus, until 2 in the morning.
A chunky redhead named Mitch latched on to her and she let him walk her back to the college apartment. Fearless as she was, even she didn't feel like taking chances at that time of the night. Not as high as she was.
The cranky self-service elevator finally answered the call of their ring. They went in and the door slid shut behind them.
"Wooowee, this elevator makes me feel I'm gonna shoot up clear through the ceiling. Fly out into the night under that full moon." Chance flung back her head, eyes shut, almost sensing the night air on her face; reached out her long, slender hands, wanting the freedom of flight.
The beer from Mitch's breath hung over her face. "You're a free spirit," he said with a touch of admiration.
"Ain't nothing can hold me down. Nothing. I'll smash it out of my way if it tries to."
"Nothing?" He put a hand on her arched neck, slid it down caressingly, his thumb touching her small Adam's apple.
Chance looked up at him with mocking hazel eyes. "Nothing," she said softly. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
The freedom to be was the most precious gift life had to offer her.
Mitch's eyes twinkled at her. Sea-blue. Sky-blue. 'Toothing?" he repeated tenderly.
Chance smiled, a slow, mischievous smile with a curl at the corner of her lips.
Hand still on the slender brown column of her throat, Mitch bent down and kissed her smile, his mouth just barely open on hers, the tip of his tongue resting on her smile.
Chance put her hands on his neatly ironed lavender shirt, flat against his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heart. She pulled her face aside, grinned wickedly up at him. "Nothing," she repeated flatly.
"I don't believe you," Mitch said, as the elevator creaked upwards.
He bent to kiss her again, one arm sliding behind her back to hold her closer. Chance received his open mouth with a little moan in her throat. She felt her body, so sure of itself a moment before, so self-contained and ready to take lonely flight into space, turn to water.
Her tongue edged out of her mouth and into his, teasing his tongue to come forward and engage in combat with her. Mitch suddenly leaned against her, mashing her up against the elevator wall, and she felt his prick, still hanging down, begin to stir against her. To move and thicken.
Man!
She tried to push him away, her hands shoving back his chest. He simply held her closer, moved his lips over her mouth.
The elevator door opened with an old man's complaining. "My floor," Chance said breathlessly.
"Ignore it. Let's go up and down and couple more times." Mitch quickly yanked her out of the cramped box. "Come on, where's your room?"
Chance's body all flowed back together again, hardened inside her safe limber skeleton. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not invited."
Mitch slid his arm around her waist, pulled her close. "You want me as much as I want you."
"Hell, yes, but what's that supposed to mean? We just met."
Mitch laughed softly.
Chance glared at him. "Man, if I went to bed with every guy that wanted me, and asked me...and woman, too...I'd be flat on my back day and night. I've still got some right to natural selection. Besides, I got a project to work on tomorrow for one of my courses-photographing city scenes."
"I'll go with you."
Chance reached up, patted his roundish cheek. "Maybe yes, maybe no. By 10 a.m. tomorrow, I may have forgotten all about you."
"I'll call and remind you."
Chance stood at the door to her apartment, shrugged her shoulders. "We'll see. Don't tie me down. I don't appreciate it, Mitch."
"You really mean it." His eyes went sober.
"You better believe I mean it." Chance inserted the key in the lock but deliberately did not turn it.
"Now be a good boy and go on home to your parents. Your mother's probably sitting up waiting."
Mitch grabbed her angrily. "Don't 'good boy' me." His teeth bit into her lips as he kissed her, and he rammed his pelvis harshly against hers once or twice before letting her go.
"My, my, you were so sweet and gentle-natured, I didn't think you had any anger in you," Chance smiled.
"There's a lot you don't know about me. You'll have plenty of opportunity to find out, though. So long, Chance."
Mitch turned and walked down the hallway to the elevator. Tall. Tall but solidly built with a good swing to his hips.
I like that, Chance thought. I like that very much indeed. I could go for him if I let myself.
She let herself into the apartment, dark on her side of it. Heard the shower going. Undressed and went to the bathroom, the shower running full force and steaming up the untidiness-cans of talcum, hairbrushes, combs.
Chance stood at the steamed-up mirror, wiped a space clean with the flat of her hand, looked at herself with a cold professional eye while brushing her teeth.
Not bad, not bad.
Like sculpted mahogany, polished, gleaming. The proud head set on the long neck, the smooth roll of chest falling from the wide, fine shoulder bones, the breasts small and plump with the dark mysterious tips.
You could do worse than be Chance.
"Hey, Reba," Chance called over the noise of the shower. "Guess who I met tonight? Guy by the name of Mitch. Mitch Handler. Goes to Brooklyn College. Senior majoring in social sciences."
"The name's Joel," a deep voice called out from behind the shower curtain.
"Oh!"
"That all you got to say?" Joel, hair streaming water, peered around the shower curtain.
Chance blinked, her hand automatically covering her breasts.
"What's that? A pose for maidenly modesty?" Joel nodded in the direction of her breasts, his glance sliding down her flat belly, her black tangled triangle of hair.
Chance laughed uneasily. "You caught me by surprise."
Joel winked at her. "I didn't hear or see anything I haven't seen or heard before."
"That so?" Chance was miffed, tried to hide it. She usually liked to choose who favored looking at her, listening to her. She liked her privacy. Then she laughed at herself. Some privacy. A million people would be seeing her nearly nude in just a couple of months on a magazine cover. And that was far from the first time.
Even so, in the naked flesh it was different.
Chance pulled back the shower curtain slightly, the water glancing off her face. 'Turn about is fair play," she twitted, staring boldly at him from stem to stern.
"See much?" Joel laughed uneasily, covering up his genitals with the sudsy washcloth.
"Just about all I want to see," Chance grinned.
"Well?" Joel looked a little nervous.
"Well, what, baby?"
"Well.. . how do you like it?"
"Like what? That gorgeous cock of yours, as I heard Reba call it? I don't know, honey, you'd have to pull that washcloth away and let mama see."
"For chrissakes, Chance, this joke has gone far enough," Joel sputtered as she calmly stepped into the tub with him, one long lithe brown leg following the other.
"I'm not joking, honey. I never joke. Much." Chance stood facing him, under the jet stream of the shower.
Joel backed up toward the faucets. "Now, cut it out, Chance. Really. I'm not kidding. You'll wake up Reba.. . . "
"And so what? She'll catch us in the tub together. Me quietly soaping you. Don't worry, I'm not trying to catch her man. I could care less."
Joel flushed. "Thanks. Thanks a lot" Chance scooped up the bar of soap, got her hands slick with lather and headed for Joel. "Cut it out, Chance.. . . "
"Shut up, or I'll wipe it all over your mouth," Chance grinned. "Now I'm not going to harm you. Just help you get all nice and squeaky clean, from your head right down to your big overgrown feet."
"I don't like this," Joel glowered at her, the water bouncing off his black hair, the ends of his robust mustache. He clutched the inadequate washcloth even tighter to his genitals.
Chance fluttered her soapy hands down his neck, across his large shoulders, around his back, her bare body touching him as she bunched up the muscles of his back, half massaging him, half soaping.
"You're a pretty tall gal," Joel said, his eyes having to look not too far down into hers.
'You're a pretty tall guy. I like them tall. And you're getting a pretty big cock," Chance added calmly.
Joel flushed. "Look, fun's fun. But you know Reba and I.. . "
Chance smiled lazily, feeling the good warm pong of the shower needles all over her naked body, sliding down her like a waterfall, relaxing her, making her feel all soft and quiet inside.
"I don't give a shit about Reba and you," she said. "That's between you and her. Right now, I'm just enjoying myself. And I have a sneaking suspicion so are you. So, enjoy, enjoy, Joel."
Her lathered hands slid up under his arms, swirled slinkily in his armpits, slid down his sides, back and forth across his chest. Joel closed his eyes briefly.
"Mmmmm. That feels good."
"That's better," Chance crooned. "I don't like it when you keep fighting me."
She pulled close to him again, admiring the strong masculine width of his chest, the black hairs flaming across the nipples, marching in a line down to his navel.
Her soapy hands followed the line, teasing the hair, twisting it around the tips of her fingers. "Cut it out," Joel mumbled. "Shut up. You love it."
Chance reached down, ripped the washcloth from his hands.
"Wow!" Her eyes went large as she stared at the proud evidence of his manhood, pointing at her.
"Now you're embarrassing me. Give me back that washcloth."
"Can't begin to cover you. Come on, what are you hiding it for? Got to treat it right," Chance murmured, tilting her small plump breasts up against him as she reached for his cock, laved her sudsy hands all over it.
It was slippery to her touch. She ran her hands up and down and around, squeezed with just a little bit of a hurt in it, reached under and took his huge hairy swinging balls, rubbed soap all over them, pinched gently through the folds of skin.
Joel calmed, his eyes half shutting, his body beginning to respond to her touch against his will.
"See, it's not all that bad, is it, Joel?"
"Mmmmm."
"Like that? How about this?" Chance ran her finger smoothly behind his balls, along the tender skin and then in his anus, round and round. He tightened his muscles against her invasion.
"Cut it out," he growled.
"Nonsense. Just relax and enjoy it. Advice is as good for you as it is for us women. Come on, now, loosen up. That's it." He loosened the muscles of his ass, opened up to her touch.
His already stiff prick jerked, raised up a notch or two.
"See? You really dig that, don't you, Joel. Aren't you glad you tried?" Chance was flush against him now, murmuring in his ear.
"Mmmmm." Joel slipped a soapy arm around her dripping wet naked body. "What else have you got in mind?"
"Get the soap off you and I'll show you." Chance cupped her hands under the still running shower, let the water overflow onto Joel's young, taut, vibrant body, spilling over his chest, his shoulders, his belly, down his flanks.
He stood there, eyes fixed on her, lips red and sensual under his heavy black mustache. Cock uplifted and nakedly demanding.
"That's all right, baby, you'll get your turn again in a minute." Chance crooned to his cock, cupping her hands again, and pouring the water lovingly all over the soap suds. She held the washcloth until it was heavy with water, then squeezed it out carefully over the soap tangled in his pubic hair and testicles.
Then she went to her knees on the rubber mat in the bottom of the tub, arched her body towards him, pressed the ripe plums of her breasts until they clasped his hard rod.
"Almost home, baby," she smiled tenderly at his cock, its red purple head peering up at her from between her breasts. Abruptly, she sat her butt down near her heels, fingered his heavy cock, then ducked her head and slipped her mouth just over the tip.
Joel grunted.
He tried to shove it in farther, but she shut her teeth, smiled, her smile outlining his prick. With one hand, she gripped his balls, delicately feeling the nut-meats inside with her thumb and forefinger.
Meanwhile, her tongue was busy at his cock, giving it a thousand different sensations, licking it, swirling around the tip, poking gently into the slit of a hole.
Joel reached behind himself and turned off the faucets. He cupped Chance's head with his two hands, pushing his prick into her mouth with all the strength of his buttocks.
Chance unlocked her teeth, let his prick slide into the moist dark recesses of her mouth. The flesh tasted good-sweeter than sweet. She closed her eyes, sucking the full length of his huge prick, taking it into her mouth and letting him pull it out again. She heard the quickening of his breath, his sharp intake when she flicked her tongue in a spiral around his cock, bit the flange of flesh underneath and her own flesh began to turn luxuriously moist and thick and wanting.
She sucked vigorously, her mouth a willing cunt for his manhood. Kneeling before him, she felt her cunt lips become slick and throb with blood against her bare legs.
She was caught up in his rhythm as he fucked her mouth, her own pelvis rocking along her legs.
Joel moaned and it was hard to tell if it was pain or pleasure he was suffering, but she thrived on his moans. They only aroused her more.
Joel's hands slid down through her hair, teased at her ears, his fingers pried at her mouth, feeling his own rod sliding in and out.
Chance reached around his rocking ass, sank her hands and fingers into the muscles that tightened and relaxed. This is great, she thought, exulting in her power to take that small little curled up thing in its dormant state and turn it into a hard driving monster. Ready to rip her between the legs.
Ooohhh, that felt good, good, good.
Her cunt was almost deceived into sensing his prick as though it were lavishing hard sweet caresses inside it instead of her mouth.
Three cold drops of water splashed down from the shower head onto her forehead and nose, rousing her out of her sexual passion. She felt abruptly sobered.
Good God, what am I doing here, kneeling in the middle of this white bathtub, sucking off my roommate's lover?
She jerked her head aside. Unconsciously, Joel continued pressing his cock toward her mouth, his hands wildly searching for her face, her tongue between the, wet full lips.
Chance got up, bumping rudely against his gigantic prick stuck out in front of her.
"That's enough, baby," she said.
Joel opened his eyes, amazed, enraged. "What the hell do you mean, that's enough? You can't leave me like this, high and dry!"
"Who says I can't?" Chance smiled, flicked the tip' of his cock with her forefinger. "I don't go around robbing roommates of their boyfriends."
"What is this, some land of new generation fidelity? Why don't you let me be the one to decide? I think I'm old enough to make up my own mind."
Joel grabbed for her but Chance neatly evaded him, stepping out of the tub, and wrapping a huge peach-colored bath towel about her slender nakedness. . '
"I've got some say-so in this, mister. And I say I don't want to play dirty with Reba. After all, I'm the one has to live with her day in day out. You only show up when you want a screw or a good home-' cooked meal."
"Can the morality, Chance," Joel growled. "I'm in no mood for it."
"What man is with a hard-on?" Chance laughed. She did a shimmy in the rough terry towel, enjoying the rub of its caress against her silky brown skin. The blood flushed to the surface, making her feel fully alive and awake.
"Come on, Joel, where's your sense of humor? And your sense of decency. I think a whole lot of Reba. Why would I want to go around hurting her?"
"So what was that hot scene of passion in the bathtub?"
"I forgot myself for a couple of minutes. So what! It happens to men all the time. You never stop to think it can happen to a woman, too?"
"I just overwhelmed you with passion, eh? Well, I always thought black girls were more passionate and uninhibited than their white sisters."
"Oh, for God's sake, I need that tenth-rate social science philosophy like a hole in the head. We're no different than anybody else, Mister Joel. Some of us are hot. Some of the time. Some of us are frigid. Some of us have fears. Inhibitions. Bad experiences. Just like the white women. No difference under the skin. That's a crappy myth. Why don't you throw it away, like a good little liberal?"
Chance was mad now. Turned her back on him, the towel still draped around her, put one foot up on the toilet lid and began to dry the toes of her slender shapely feet.
"So you can lose your cool once in awhile," Joel said slyly, towering over her bent body. "And not just in your cunt."
Chance glared over her shoulder. "What would you know about my cunt."
"Just this."
Joel lunged for her, ripped the towel aside and flung it into a peach-colored pool on the bathroom floor, wrapped his arms around her torso bent over the closed toilet, and with one harsh movement, shoved his rod into her. Her buttocks backed with cool surprise into his belly and thighs.
Damn. Chance thought, her cunt making a smooth, deep, even channel for his manhood to ram.
Damn, damn, damn. No matter how on guard you tried to be, they got you coming or going.
She wasn't going to put up a fight, not caught off guard as she was in a funny stance. Not against a tall, stalwart guy like Joel. She was completely defenseless, her back vulnerable toward him, caught in the powerful grip of his muscular arms.
"Changed your mind?" he grinned in her ear.
I'll get you somehow, you bastard.
Meanwhile, his cock was sliding deliciously in and out of her gaping cunt, drawing melodies from it that tingled and vibrated throughout her whole body.
She liked it, dammit, liked what he was doing to her. His cock rammed her at a new angle, bunching against nerves that had not been played on before in exactly that manner, arousing a whole new set of harmonies and sensations.
That prick of his! He was like a stallion. A stallion mounting its more delicate rider.
But I love being ridden, Chance thought. Her ass began to move in tune with Joel, butting up against the flesh of his belly as she rode his cock like a handlebar.
"You're hot, you're hot," he murmured into her ear. "I always suspected you were."
"Oh, shut up," Chance growled, but her body kept on with the rhythm. Against her will, her desires, her good sense, her sense of decency and loyalty to Reba.
Just that rotten, deep-down, ancient, primitive rhythm that caught her in its spell, wouldn't let her mind clear or her will take charge.
No, it only wanted to go on riding, rocking, slithering along the hard bar Joel jabbed at her, her cunt grasping, and twisting and grinding around it.
The fine sweat began to dot her brown skin, drip down the small ripe fruits of her breasts.
Joel's hands became alive, now that he had her in his enchanted sex power. They teased under her jouncing, hanging breasts, pressed them up swiftly against her body, rolled them around. Slid down and caressed the cage of her fine ribs and then invaded the softness of her belly.
Chance drew in her breath sharply. The pleasure-pain fluted out from his gouging fingertips, ran in all directions around the lush flesh of her belly, dove deep inside down into her thighs and cunt.
He took his large hands, fisted them, and pressed the knuckles in the softness just above her pubic bone.
"Oooohhhh," she moaned.
All her sexual feelings crested toward his bunched knuckles, rose in a crescendo in her dark midst. Every inch of her body reached out for and loved his hands violating her nudity.
He began to beat her with a hard fast rhythm.
No, she wouldn't come. She refused.
That would be the final act of betrayal toward Reba. All right, she'd done a rotten thing, letting Joel take advantage of her so far. But to merge into him in the blind climax of passion would carry her over into a bond with him that would be disloyal, that couldn't be laughed over or undone.
Chance held herself perfectly still, almost rigid, against the battering Joel was giving her, his belly pounding rapidly against her ass, his cock drawing moisture like music from her cunt.
His knuckles gouged above her pubic bone and Chance gasped. So close to coming. I can't, I won't, she swore to herself. Held her breath. Bit her lip.
Just let him get it over with. Fast, fast, fast, before she lost control of herself entirely.
He was so close to it. She could feel his whole body tighten for the final assault.
Bathed in sweat and darkness, Chance felt a sudden rush of cool air on her body as the door flung open.
Heard Reba's shrill cry-"Damn you!"
Was almost thrown off-balance as Reba hurled her half-awake body against Joel who grunted in surprise, momentarily halting the movement of his fuck. But he was too far gone to slide back down the hill of orgasm. And as Reba tore at his bare skin with her long pointed nails, raking trails of blood on his back, her body clamped to his, Joel went into the final paroxysm. He gripped Chance to him with a giant's strength as his pelvis involuntarily sent his cock deep into her sex, cannonading the jet force of his love into her.
Chance received the first shot in rigid silence. But when the fine spray blossomed against her cervix, her control dissolved, and her cunt was ready to squeeze the last drop from the next gunshot of his prick. And the next. And the next. And the next.
CHAPTER 7
Chance dropped her head, exhausted. She felt the weight of Joel like a ton weight on her back, the taut-ness of his muscles all run out with his orgasm. She felt the size and hardness of his prick decrease in jolts, until it slipped out of her wet cunt like a chastised child. And Reba clinging to them both, alternately sobbing and cursing. Chance tried to stand up from her crouched position at the toilet, and heave them both off.
"Shut up," she growled at Reba. "And get off my back. Both of you."
"I can't stand it, I can't stand it," Reba sobbed, standing in the little hallway, her magnificent hair disheveled around her tear-streaked face. "I trusted you. Both of you. And look what you've done to me."
"Oh, can it," Joel said wearily. He loosened Chance from his grip, straightened up, and with innocent aplomb, ripped off two squares of toilet tissue and calmly wiped his prick.
Chance went into the living room which she shared with the absent Sue. Lay down on her bed by the window, cut off from Sue's side by a ceiling-high combination desk and drawer and bookcase. She pulled the sheet up over her still throbbing breasts.
Reba came out of her room, her hair still distraught about her crumpled face, a royal blue terry cloth robe wrapped around her. Joel trailed her, pants and T-shirt on now, the edge of his hair still damp with sweat from his strenuous fuck of Chance.
"Now, I'm going to be calm. I won't have hysterics. But we'll discuss this whole thing calmly," Reba sat herself down at the foot of Chance's bed.
"Oh, for God's sake, Reba. Not at this time of night," Chance groaned. "It must be at least 3 A.M."
"I don't believe in letting things mushroom. I believe in discussing them quietly and maturely. Joel, you too. Come here."
Joel hunched wearily at the door. "Reba, I'm in no mood for hysterics or for calm analysis. I want to get back to my room and get some sleep. I have some heavy studying to do tomorrow-rather, later today."
Reba swept to her feet. "That's right, you son of a bitch. You bastard. You've had your screw. Two, in fact, tonight. And now you want to slink into bed, triumphant, leaving a bunch of angry women behind you. You bastard."
"That does it." Joel's mouth tightened into a grim line, and he deliberately opened the door and went out.
There was a dead silence in the room to receive the finality of the door shutting.
"Just like a man. Just like them." Reba got up, swirled about the small space allotted to Chance, her fists clenched. "All they want is cunt and when they've had that, they don't care what kind of emotional mess they leave behind."
Chance shut her eyes. "So don't be emotional," she said evenly. Reba whirled around, stared at her. She walked to the edge of the bed, and her breath positively came out of her mouth like a dragon's.
"You're feeling no pain, right? You're almost as bad as he is. Took what you wanted without thinking of me. Your best friend. And now you he there, calm and quiet and...and sexually satisfied."
Chance wriggled her toes, smiled, still feeling the wet delicious, soothed feeling in her well-fucked cunt. "Yeah, why not?"
"That's a cheap easy way to steal a man from me, and you know it. You really came, didn't you? Had one hell of an orgasm, didn't you?"
"Pretty good." Chance smiled again, her eyes still shut.
"So now you think you've won him away from me. He'll go chasing after you for more and more of those glorious orgasms you have."
"So who in hell is stopping you from having them?" Wearily, her face suddenly grim, Chance turned toward the wall. She was fed up, fed up with it all. So after all, what was the big racket about? She really had tried to contain herself, to keep from having an orgasm but with Reba hanging on Joel's back, spurring him on, how could she help but receive the full jolt of his manhood? With gladness. Yeah, sure, why not? Isn't that what cock and cunt was all about? So why make a big deal out of it?
"Reba, you're blowing it up out of all proportion."
Chance could sense Reba standing still over her, the anger frothing in her eyes, fisting in her hands, streaking through her body. The sheer outraged rage.
Chance could sense the words forming in Reba's mind.
You black bitch.
Don't say it, Reba, don't say it, Chance ordered her mentally. There are lots of things I'll take; lots of things I've taken. But some things I won't take. Never again.
Reba stood quietly for a full minute or two, and then walked into her own bedroom on angry bare feet, slamming the door quietly.
Chance fell into deep slumber, her body sated. Entwined through her peaceful dreams, she heard the heavy sound of sobs. She dreamed on. Of sun-gold meadows, near-white sandy beaches, azure sky, azure sea. Happy dreams.
She was awakened by angry sounds-Reba slamming the bathroom door, flushing the toilet, running the shower full force, and alternately cursing and crying.
Damn, Chance thought lazily.
They ate breakfast in silence, carefully avoiding each other, drawing their bodies aside in the tiny kitchen while Reba poured herself a bowl of cold cereal and Chance fried two eggs for herself. The air was savage between them as they sat at the plastic-topped round table, chewing their breakfasts.
Chance still felt the unspoken words that had hung darkly over her bed the night before-black bitch.
Hell, I need this like I need a hole in the head, Chance thought. She washed her dishes in the sink, turning her head aside when Reba's blue robe gapped momentarily, revealing the full, bouncy body underneath.
Chance flung her 35 mm Pentax around her neck by its case, shoved several rolls of film into her leather saddlebag, and left the apartment.
Figured she'd go home for the day. Home to Harlem. She rode the subway out of Brooklyn up through the skinny flanks of lower Manhattan and into the broad fecund lap of Harlem. She breathed easier the minute she found herself among the familiar faces, the black, mahogany, cafe" au lait skins. The rich colors. So much more alive and real and warm and human than the pallid, washed-out, mushroomy skins of whites.
The main streets were broad and beautiful-125th, Broadway. They once must have been elegant, before the rapacious greed of the whites had cut up the gracious brownstones into rabbit hutches for crowds of black families. Dingy storefronts, soot-encased windows, peeling paint, could not completely obliterate the underlying grandness.
Chance stopped here and there, raising her camera to her eye, focusing it on familiar scenes-the sparkly eyes of black children peeping around iron balustrades, the Cadillac parked in front of the slum-deteriorated dwelling, the proud, brisk walk of the young well-dressed black male and female. She loved the life here. It was really home.
It was half past noon when she walked up the three flights to her grandmother's front apartment, spotless as always. The pots of philodendron and rubber plant were relishing the sunlight that poured in the high window. Frilly white curtains were pulled back at the window, and the smell of frying pork chops and collards filled the front room.
"Grandma!" Chance stood, slender as a sapling, enfolded the huge soft bulk of the black woman in her arms. Grandma Tucker was a good head shorter than her granddaughter but Chance still remembered what it felt like to nestle her head against the comfort of that ample bosom.
"You're just in time for dinner, child." Grandma Tucker had a husky rich voice. "Take that thing off your neck," she pointed a black finger at the Pentax, "and come and sit down with us."
Chance went into the small dining room, its table hung with a white lace cloth for Sunday, and the plates waiting for the meal. Her mother was there, sitting tall and black in one of the four old-fashioned oak chairs upholstered in leather.
"Hello, Mama." Chance went over, kissed her mother dutifully somewhere between the forehead and the dip in her beautiful straight nose.
"Hello, darling." Her mother's teeth were brilliant white in her bright smile. She touched her daughter briefly at the arm before they parted.
But not before Chance smelled the faint sharp smell of gin on her mother's breath.
She began to feel that tug down into despair. It was useless. Her mother would never make it
And yet she was a beautiful woman, proud, almost haughty, as tall and slender as Chance, her skin a flawless black. Circular gold earrings dangled from her ears, clanking musically as she turned her head swiftly this way and that. Almost too swiftly. Under the surface poise was also the nervous high-strung quivering, like a thorough-bred horse that is being tried beyond its fragile strength.
Grandma Tucker served out the chops and collards. Chance half-rose from her chair to help but was stopped. That's all right, honey. I'm used to serving in my own home. Besides you work mighty hard at college and a little mothering is good for you. Even if you are head and shoulders above me. Besides, I'm not weary since I retired."
Chance never asked what she had retired to, after a lifetime of housekeeping and cleaning for others. Maybe a combination of being on welfare or social security, or even pension benefits from her Grandpa, dead for nine years. He had been a postal worker. A small, dapper, quiet, hard-working man. Grandma Tucker overcame his death with the fortitude with which she met all the tragedies in her life.
She sat at the head of the table now, her daughter, Elizabeth, on one side, and her daughter's daughter, Chance, on the other. She bowed her white head in prayer.
Chance saw her mother's head go down with a perceptible quiver, as though it were fighting the force of gravity to bow itself. Chance tilted her head, but only barely, staring at the hot savory food on her plate.
"We thank you Lord for your bounty and your goodness and for this day and the privilege of serving you. We are eternally grateful for the life you have blessed us with and hope we may prove worthy." Grandma Tucker sighed to the very depths of her profound body.
Shit, Chance thought, restlessly moving her fork. Grateful, yes, but not to God or any other god. What she was, she owed pretty much to herself and to Grandma Tucker. She smiled down at the old lady. No, you couldn't rightly call her old. She was a young 67 or thereabouts. Nobody kept track of Grandma's age. Nobody dared to. Except perhaps the U.S. Government.
"Elizabeth, you're just picking at your meat. I swear, no matter how well I fed you, you were always skinny as a rail. I don't know, child, why you can't put some meat on your bones."
"That's all right, Momma."
Chance saw her mother flash that nervous smile. Flick, flick. On-off.
"Baby, you got to eat more if you want to keep your health. Now you know you been through a lot and want to stay on your feet this time."
"I will, I will, Momma. Don't worry about me so. I'm doing very well. Very well."
Her mother's voice trailed away to an unconvinced murmur. Even across the table, Chance caught the stronger whiff of gin. Sensed her mother's sudden intensification of fear. The fear hidden in that proud, vibrant, sexy reed of a body.
"How've you been, Mom?" Chance asked. Her mother lived in New Jersey, fairly near her older married daughter, Edith, who was a school teacher. Married to a psychiatric social worker who had a job in the decaying shambles that is Newark. The successful, middle-class members of the family. Integrating themselves into the white values and the white culture. Crap.
"Getting better." Her mother laughed nervously, gold earrings setting up a clattering dance at her fine-boned jaw. "The doctor says I'm improving. Slow, but he sees a steady improvement. Maybe one of these months I'll be able to hold down a job. Right now, I'm so nervous, I don't think I could last a day."
"Bunk!" Chance exploded, sawing up a pork chop.
"Bunk?" Her mother's smile disappeared, and she looked apprehensively at her own mother and her daughter and back again. Why do you say that, Chance? I'm sure my doctor knows what he's doing. I thought of applying for a job, a simple job in an office, last week, but he told me I wasn't ready yet to be in an office full of people. It might throw me. He's going to put me into group therapy soon so I'll get accustomed to being with people."
Her mother's hand, slender as her own, but a rich black, trembled as she lifted the glass of water to her dry lips.
"I don't see why there's anything wrong with you working among people," Chance said, her own hp going unconsciously into a sullen pout. "You've been a night-club singer; a hostess. You've been with lots of people."
"Yes, but that was long ago. Before...before my...nervous breakdowns."
"Well, he sure did you no good sapping your confidence like that. Why didn't he just let you try out for the job and then if it didn't suit, you could quit on your own judgment?"
"I really think my doctor knows best. He knows me better than you do. He really does, Chance." The smile came and went, not sure whether to stay a smile or turn into a determined grim line.
"Damn headshrinkers. They're full of theory out of books. They've got no experience with real life. Sit on their asses all day . . . "
"I don't like that kind of language in my house," Grandma Tucker growled.
"Sorry, Grandma. They sit on their...upholstered chairs all day listening to patients. What would they know about your life anyhow, Mama? Is your psychiatrist black? Has he ever been black?"
"He...he's very sympathetic."
"Hmmm, white and sympathetic. How do you know your whole treatment isn't just one big put-down on his part?" Chance sawed off some more pork chop savagely. Damn whites. Had more stupid theories about what goes on in black hearts and minds and lives than the Germans had about Jews. Her mother was shaky enough-as usual-without some smart-aleck doctor sticking more pins in her and deflating what little confidence she had left. All that beauty and charm and talent-a really warm singing voice and where had it ever gotten her mother, except into one broken down supper club after another, chasing the mirage of success; one lousy man's bed after another, chasing the mirage of love; one booze bottle after another chasing God only knew what. That was the trouble. Only God knew and he wasn't about to tell.
Grandma Tucker cleared the table, brought in the dessert plates and the sweet potato pie. She served it with a silver plated triangular cake server. Handed a wide wedge to Chance and sighed heavily.
"I don't know. I just don't know what's wrong with my family. Worked hard for them, did my best for them. Nothing turned out right anyhow. Elizabeth, you've just had one bad break after another. My only son, killed in the Korean War when he was barely a man. My husband died before his time. I sometimes wonder, didn't we believe in God hard enough?" Grandma Tucker shook her white bush of hair lugubriously.
"Oh, Grandma, don't begin that again," Chance sighed. "I don't see what God has to do with it. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all. Plenty of fellows get killed in war, whether they believe in God or not. Doesn't seem to make any difference. It seems to have more to do with enemy action than God."
"Trouble is, this generation has lost its faith."
"Grandma, how can you believe there's this superhuman creature up there controlling the craziness that goes on down here? Now you know that doesn't make too much sense. All the killing and wars and poverty and hatred . . . "
"That's man's fault, Chance. Lack of faith. I see it all around me in my work down at the store-front center. This younger generation, I just don't know how it's ever going to turn out good. The drugs, the knifings, the lack of will power, no wish to pull themselves up and make something of themselves. I hate to see it happen, Chance. My grandmother was a slave, and my mother moved up North to make a life for herself, and my husband, your Granddaddy, worked hard all his life to provide for us, and now these young kids just seem to want to fritter their lives away. Don't care all the years of effort we put into making something of ourselves."
"I suppose you mean me, Momma?"
Chance saw her mother's mouth quiver and felt the trembling start inside her, the smell of gin coming across strong again.
"Not pointing my finger at anyone here, daughter," Grandma Tucker soothed.
"I feel you mean me, Momma. You never were satisfied with me."
"Here we go again," Chance groaned, got up and cleared the table.
"I can't honestly say I'm not disappointed, Elizabeth."
"Well, I tried, Momma, God knows I tried. Maybe I've strayed so far from His path I'll never find my way back. I know I haven't lived like a true Christian, not like the daughter you brought me up to be."
Oh, shit, Chance muttered under her breath, putting the remainder of the sweet potato pie back in the tiny refrigerator. All these damn pious accusations. She loved Grandma Tucker, who'd mainly brought her up. But she couldn't stand this crazy religion like it was a buzzard sitting on your head day and night. No wonder Mama wanted to get out of that kind of life. So maybe she overdid it the other way but Chance could understand her desire to make life sparkle like a jewel. There was more to life than praying to God everlastingly. A helluva lot more. And she was going to find it. Without going overboard like her mother did.
They were still arguing when she came back into the dining room, Grandma strong and pious and straight as an arrow. Mama smiling and cringing and apologetic and close to tears.
Hell. No wonder she needed a headshrinker. Why didn't she just tell her mother to shut up?
Chance grinned. She really couldn't see anybody telling Grandma Tucker to shut up. Because somehow there was a Tightness and a dignity about her that prevented anyone from speaking to her that way. Maybe that was the whole trouble. Grandma Tucker was too special to be human.
Chance hung the Pentax around her neck, picked up her leather bag.
"Where you going, Chance? Leaving so soon?" Her mother looked up at her almost pleadingly.
"Out."
Out. Away from these muted arguments that seemed to have gone on in these rooms ever since Chance could remember. Her mama and her grandma never able to come to terms with each other. Grandma so sure of herself and Mama so unsure.
"You be careful, Chance," Grandma said tenderly as though she were still a kid of ten. "Special careful. I see that no-good Monty hanging around of late. Must've gotten out of prison not too long ago."
Monk!
Chance felt her heart leap with the powerful surge of a salmon. He kept coming back to this place, haunting it. Maybe he had no place else to go but Harlem. Maybe he felt at home here. And in prison.
She kissed her Mama on the top of the head, hugged her Grandma tightly. Walked carefully down the narrow flights of unpainted stairs, dark with the hopelessness of poverty, her hips swaying on the long slender stem of her legs. Paused briefly at the bottom of the second flight, remembering.
That's where Monty had first screwed her. Right on the third step from the bottom. When she was fourteen, old enough to know better, willing, frightened, eager, ripe.
The Monk had had his eye on her for a long time. He had his eye on every attractive girl in the neighborhood. A piece of ass. That's all he cared about. That and money.
He was a winner, Monty was. Not tall, but neat, narrow, and trim, built like a jockey, all speed and no spare parts. He was a sharp dresser, always immaculate although he was spewed out onto the streets of Harlem from a dirty, grimy apartment inhabited by three sisters and a younger brother and a slatternly mother ground down by poverty, illness and a succession of worthless boyfriends.
Yet to see him on the street was to see a sports car of a man-sleek, glistening, polished, souped up.
He wasn't going to let himself drown in the rat holes of Harlem.
He was six years older than Chance and had had his eye on her every since she was 12 and her tits began to make an indentation in her sweaters. Somewhere along the line, her hips picked up a rotating swing. Maybe in response to men's eyes, drawing her hips magnetically this way and that to the lust they felt.
And she responded. Dammit, she responded.
And knew her time had come when she ran into Monk that night. He stood cool and nonchalant on the second floor, blocking her way as she dashed upstairs from a Sunday evening meeting of her church youth group.
He smiled a cat's smile under his thin dapper mustache, reached out an arm and pulled her to him where he leaned against the banister.
"Uhuh." Automatically Chance flattened her hands against his chest, feeling in the semi-darkness the sheen of his jacket. She glared down a few inches into his eyes, black and round and dense as marbles.
"Oh yes, oh yes, baby," he purred against her neck. The warmth of his breath stirred shivers clear down through her.
Oh, no, she didn't like that soft melting feeling dissolving her flesh from her bones and her will from her knowledge of right and wrong.
"Let me go, Monk. Grandma's waiting for me. She'll be worrying." Chance squirmed away from him but his arm gripped like a bar of iron across her back. She jerked her pelvis loose from his.
'Let her wait," Monk said softly. "She won't have too long to wait. I promise you."
His other hand slid down the curve of her back, over the short skirt covering her rump, and with a quick, expert movement, dashed under her skirt and seized the plush globe of her ass. Clawed in, forcing her hard up against him.
The front of her felt his thick barrel rammed up between them and the circle of her live, tingling flesh welcomed it.
He hummed in her ear, palm rubbing and digging and crunching into her ass, awakening a desire to move with the rhythm of his palm. Chance recognized the tune-"Taking a Chance on Love."
She smiled at Monk, a slow, sensuous, wicked smile. This cool cat knew nothing about love, but he knew about survival. He had class, he had style, he had money, he had power. He had everything it takes to claw his way out of the depths.
Mrs. Morris from fourth floor back squeezed past them on the steps, already huffing and puffing although she had three more flights to go. She blinked in the faint light.
"That you, Chance?" she asked in a rumble. "Ain't you supposed to be home in bed by now? You got school tomorrow."
Monk turned partway around, hiding Chance's semi-bare behind, while he grinned a mouthful of shark's teeth at the squat woman.
"You run along now, Mrs. Morris, and mind your own business."
"I don't pay no mind to scum like you, Montgomery Hall."
His eyes took on a vicious gleam, and his voice dropped a couple of notes. "I said, run along now, or you may find yourself mighty sorry one of these days. Mighty sorry."
Mrs. Morris glared back, then her glance wavered. She reached out a puffy hand, yanked herself up by grasping the banister, step by painful step.
Chance could hear her muttering drift down the dark flight. About lousy no-good Negroes who had nothing better to do than sell drugs, get in trouble, and make it rotten for what used to be a good neighborhood of hard-working people.
Most of all, Chance felt the hand, Monk's hand, massaging, pinching, eating on the rich pastures of her brown buttocks. Slipped down the crease and with a sudden jab, found the sudden moisture of her sex, the lips full and rich with desire.
Chance gasped out his name.
"I know. I know, baby, just how you feel. The Monk's gonna take care of you. Good care. Excellent care. The finest."
He kissed her, and his mouth was as gentle as a hymn to God and his tongue as fervent. Chance opened her mouth to him and his tongue delved into her, insidious and tempting as the snake of evil.
She groaned and twisted in his arms, feeling a wild abandon wanting to erupt in her thighs and pelvis.
"That's it, baby. Hold it. Just do as I say and you'll be in Paradise."
Wordlessly, as though she were in a dream and sleep-walking, Chance followed his commands. He sat down on the third step, guided her down to sit on his lap. With a grunt of surprise, she felt the hard bare rod of his passion snake into her and the answering moisture of her cunt, the waters gathering to the river bank and then flowing down her sex channel, inundating his prick
Smoothly and evenly, he rocked under her, his whole pelvis tensing and shoving his manhood up into her. His hands were on her hips.
She didn't know what to do. A scared 14-year-old in a trance. He lightly pulled at her hips and she moved up. And then down. And then up again.
And abruptly the caged abandon inside her broke loose and she glided on hidden ball-bearings in her joints, rising and falling to the thrust and shove of his cock, grinding her ass into his thighs as she slewed her cunt around it.
"Aooh, baby, that's it, that's it." The Monk began to lose his cool. Began to pant and grunt.
And a sense of power as well as lust flowed into her pelvis, swelling it, encapsulating the invasion of his arrogant prick, taming it, driving it to a frenzy even as it drove her to a frenzy. The feeling kept building up, building up, and just when she thought she couldn't endure another notch in the crescendo, her feelings went over the crest. She hunched down hard on his lap, wild with the need to have that big, hard thing drive as far into her depths as it would go.
Surprisingly, the thing answered with a life of its own. Rammed and held in there, pulsed, rammed again, as Monk held her down with a talon grip on her hips.
She felt it with gratitude, her head far away from the drama that was pounding out in her sex. And then the feeling began to die away from the intensity of its peak, become softer and more distant, and her mind began to think again. She sat on Monk's lap, exhausted, limp as a rag doll, his hands at her tits propping her up, her head hanging.
Behind her, she could feel his own exhaustion as he drew in deep, ragged breaths. No longer the cool, sleek, self-controlled Monk she'd known and seen in the neighborhood for years.
"Wow, baby!" was all he said.
She could never walk up or down those three steps without a mixture of feelings being aroused in her breast.
AH those feelings. She wanted to run away from them, get away from them once and for all. She raced down the last flight of steps, her brown legs flashing in the sunlight as she moved outdoors, down the stoop and onto the sidewalk. Her eye sighted along the street, converted into a camera lens, automatically selecting for human action, composition, contrast.
She walked briskly, stopped, shot a few frames, walked again. Always pursued by the erotic eyes of men, the aura of their lusts. Approached, propositioned, sheered off from-a proud sleek ship clefting the waters. Here and there a voice recognized her from photos already published in some magazines.
"Hello, baby, I've been missing you."
Chance froze. That voice. It still sent shivers down her.
"Flake off, Monk. Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Yeah, yeah, I see. What are you into now?"
"Photography." Her lips barely moved, she did not deign to turn around and look down at him.
"Yeah, yeah, I remember hearing now. Going to some college or institute or something to learn?"
"In Brooklyn," she said shortly.
"Yeah. No wonder I haven't been seeing you around lately."
"That's a laugh. You've just finished serving time, again. How would you know whether I was around or not?"
"I got ways, I got ways, baby. Just because I get sent up now and again doesn't mean I don't have my finger on everything going on back here in my own territory. The Monk never loses touch with his people."
"They might be better off if you did. Some pal, peddling junk, blowing their minds."
"Don't get high and mighty on me, Chance. Don't give me a dose of religion. I don't need it. Had enough of that stuff when I was a kid. Who was it said religion was dope peddled to blind poor folks? Yeah. That's it. All that phony praying and fake optimism blinding black folks to the filth they live in. Kindly provided by the white folks."
"Always got a rationalization for your own faults." Chance quickened her step, her eye still cruising for interesting shots.
"Sounds like you think you're better than me. Than us black folk up here in Harlem."
"Maybe."
"Don't kid yourself, baby." A mean tone crept into his voice. "You're one of us and don't you forget it. Ever. Part of me and don't you forget it. We got a little black baby to prove it."
Chance felt her heart careen into a wild runaway beating. "That don't mean nothing, Monk. I'm not tied to you."
"You was tied to me once. Baby, you couldn't get enough of me, enough of my cock. It drove you wild. I was your first man. Now how you ever gonna forget that?"
"Easy." Her hands trembled as she leveled the camera to her eye. She held steady, shot a wide-angle street scene.
"Easy, hell. Every time you see your son, our son, you gonna remember."
"I don't see him that much, Monk, and you know it. Couple of times a year. Maybe at Christmas and his birthday. He belongs to Edith and her husband now, remember? They adopted him. They'll bring him up like their own, to a good life, better than this one."
"What's wrong with this one? Provided you have what it takes to get the better of it, ride it instead of being rode on."
For the first time, Chance swept him with a glance, a contemptuous glance. He was wearing a white crocheted racing cap and dark glasses.
'You look like a damn fool clown, instead of a man," she said softly. "How come you don't dress like a regular man? You playing some kind of a crazy part in a play?"
"I'm living, baby, really living."
"Yeah, half the time of it behind bars."
"Can't win them all." He grinned, shrugged his shoulders. Chance looked at him, analytically. How much taller she seemed than him today. Or had it always been that way and she'd never noticed before? He was like a puppet on a string, a dapper, well-articulated, clever little puppet that thought it had a life of its own and was so wooden, it couldn't even sense the tug of the strings pulling it, controlling it.
No, she was out of that bag, once and for all. What a hell of a lucky thing that her sister and brother-in-law had been eager to take her son. Eager because they couldn't conceive a child of their own. She would have put a bullet through her forehead if she had ever seen Darryl grow up in the image of his father.
"What's that you say, baby? I thought you made a sound like you was disgusted with me."
"I said, flake off, Monk, and I meant it. I've got work to do."
"Snapping those little old pictures?" He laughed sardonically under his thin mustache.
"I'm depending on them to pull me up and out of where here is. I've got some talent. I'm going to make use of it, make something of myself."
Monk let his eyes rove lasciviously over the curves and indentations of her body. "Baby, you've got something. And I've made it-plenty of times."
"Every woman's got cunt," Chance said coolly. "I'm something more than that. Lots more."
Monk stopped, fuming, his arms jerking angrily. "What's wrong with you, woman? You gotten so you think you're better than every one else?"
"Maybe I am."
"Goddamn it, you're just a piece of ass and don't you forget it. I know what the trouble with you is too much honkey prick getting it. Don't forget you is black ass, baby. Black."
Tm not forgetting it," Chance clamped her teeth shut. "I'm never forgetting it. But black and white, they don't make that difference to me any more. Peel off the skin, and we're the same underneath. I'm focused on the sameness, not the difference. I'm out of that bag and I'm staying out."
She walked a couple of yards down the street, focused her camera on a young black couple just ahead of her, the boy's broad hand just sliding down the fresh round rump.
Reminding her, reminding her of what she was determined to forget. She focused in close just on their pelvic area-the hand near the rump told all. Clicked her shutter. Clicked again. And again. One of them ought to be a fairly good shot.
She smiled to herself.
Heard dimly as though from another world, Monk muttering as he remained standing on the sidewalk while she moved ahead, "I'll shoot you down. Damn proud woman. Cunt!"
Chance stood in the outpouring of sunlight, drenched in golden warmth, a tender shoot striving up through the concrete pavement. She flicked an imaginary crumble of earth off her skin.
I'm gonna get out of it, she swore to herself, if it's the last thing I do.
Sue descended the stairs, her pink mules a ball of fluff flapping on the deep blue carpet. She smelled the familiar Sunday smell of late morning breakfast-bacon, coffee, scrambled eggs.
Her dark dreams of the night before still clung to her like burrs from a bitter meadow. Her hand slid down the polished banister.
Darkness, darkness, descending into a funnel of darkness. She shivered, pulled her pink quilted housecoat more tightly about her slender figure. She wore her bra and panties and white slip underneath, half-dressed for church.
Fresh as washed linen, the nine o'clock sunlight streamed in through the opaque curtains, drifted like dreams over the blue carpeted living room floor.
Blue. Ultramarine blue. Catching the fish of her fancies. Dark, terrible fancies, swollen, aggressive, wet, more than human. Superhuman and inhuman at the same time.
At the foot of the stairs. Sue stopped, hearing her father reading the Sunday papers in the kitchen to her mother while her mother prepared breakfast.
"Midge, listen to this. I swear, this paper has got its hatchet out for our police department."
Hatchet!
Visions of a hatchet drifted into Sue's mind, paused in front of her eyes. Erect wooden handle, glistening thick blade of steel, blood dripping red as a river off its cutting edge. She felt sick, closed her eyes, gripped the banister tightly to keep from falling. Only three more steps to the bottom.
Careful, you can make it, she told herself.
Her fathers voice cut through the buzzing in her head.
"We've got a perfectly good department. Fine bunch of men. But those damn editors aren't happy unless they're digging up a little dirt. Just to sell more papers."
"Careful, Charlie, watch your language. I think I hear Sue on the steps." Mrs. Stilson's voice was soothing as warmed honey.
Language.
Sue laughed a sour laugh to herself. And listened to it's acidity with surprise. Did that come out of me, she wondered?
She had heard so much language of late, plenty of language from Reba and Chance. Gutter language. Language she'd never read herself in the poetry of Frost or Yeats or Shelley. Language she had seen scrawled only now and again on the wall of some gas station bathroom. Language she'd never heard in her home; never heard her parents use. Or had she? Had it registered on some inner ear without her conscious knowledge, lodging deep in her mind and flesh waiting for the opportunity, the right moment to be born?
Fuck, for instance.
Her mind squeezed out of each individual brain cell but the word welled up inside her-hot and thick and sticky. Right up through every cell of her body.
Her mules hit the living room carpet, stood still a moment, neatly side by side, waiting for her next command.
No, she couldn't go in. Couldn't make that right turn to the corridor and down back to the kitchen. Couldn't face her mother and father.
What would they think of her if they knew about Dr. Vero and his dark, evil, indirect seduction of her-forcing his...his cock into her hand?
Sue shut her eyes against the suddenly blinding sunlight, gathered her forces, and walked stiffly down the hall and into the kitchen thick with the hot smell of perking coffee.
"Well, here's Sue," Mrs. Stilson said brightly. "Darling, how are you? Did you sleep well last night? You still look a little peaked."
Sue opened her eyes and looked at her mother, taffy hair loosely flying about a round face red from the heat of the stove and the percolator and the toaster. A rosy placid face just slightly marred by the worried frown between the eyes.
Midge. That was her mother's name. Her mother's real secret name whispered and caressed between the bedsheets late, late at night when even the owl had gone to sleep.
"Now, Midge, quit fussing like an overprotective hen," Mr. Stilson said with a false, loud heartiness. He was a mild, sober man, not really handsome, but with nice pleasant features; brown eyes deep with responsibilities that he took seriously, a nose that gave a little bump at the tip, and a chin that kind of disappeared into his collar. He wore an old brown plaid shirt and a crumpled pair of slacks. His cheeks were darkly unshaven.
Charlie.
That was her father. Charlie. His belly a little rounded and slack. His arms no longer strong enough to hold her up to the ceiling as he had done when she was a child.
Charlie.
Just an ordinary plain everyday variety kind of middle-American man.
Stretched out over her mother and hammering her into the mattress late at night, long past midnight, when good little daughters were sound asleep and safely in dreams. Beyond sound and imagination.
Charlie.
Her father who fucked her mother.
She stood there in the doorway, staring at them both. A buzzing sounded between her ears, and she saw her parents from afar, from behind some kind of inky hazy scrim. They were talking to her, their voices soothing, looking at her, their eyes concerned. But nothing reached her through the scrim.
And inside her rose the forbidden images that couldn't choke down and hide out of sight-the glorious, naked, wet, dripping bodies, slavering over each other, pleasuring each other. Man triumphant, woman grasping.
And the sounds of their private laughter.
"WelL come on in and sit down," her father said gruffly. But his eyes doubled their worry.
"Yes, dear, you look so formal standing there. I'm just ready to pour the coffee. A good hot cup will do you a lot of good, really wake you up." Mrs. Stilson poured out three cups full and carried them to the table.
"Now, Charlie, get that newspaper out of the way. You know I don't like it spread all over the table setting." Mrs. Stilson scolded her husband. But it had a make-believe air to it, as though she were doing it to pretend normality.
"There." Her father made a big thing of folding up the newspaper, flinging it into a chair in the corner. "I haven't even put a fork so much as an inch out of the way."
Sue's mind did her dirt again. Carefully, as though she were made of spun glass, she walked over to her parents-those two strange, secretive people-and sat down opposite her father. She avoided his eyes, but pulled her quilted robe carefully over her round naked knees under the table. She felt the hem quietly and protectively brush the tops of her feet.
"Eat," her mother urged, piling golden scrambled eggs, crisp ribbons of bacon on her plate.
"How's college going?" her father asked.
"Fine." Sue delicately forked (shut her eyes tightly for a fraction of a second), a mound of scrambled egg into her mouth. Let it slide down her throat.
Eggs.
Embryo.
Impregnation.
Penis and vagina.
No. Prick and cunt
Fuck.
The words glowed in neon in front of her eyes.
'Is something wrong?" her mother asked, eyes drops of acid over the rim of the coffee cup.
Sue turned to her slowly, realizing she had been staring into space, the fork still suspended in the air halfway between her mouth and her plate.
"Nothing, mother." Sue smiled. A wide, brilliant frozen smile caught between pale taunt lips.
My God, would these words never leave off dancing in front of her eyes. Damn Reba. Damn Chance. Yes, damn, damn, damn. To hell with them both. They had polluted her mind, brought the ugly wriggling words of sex, deftly inserted them into her mind. She loved words, lived by words, the sound, the look, the very feel and color of words. They were her life and her world. And now the beauty of her inner world had been invaded by the ugly words.
"Aren't you hungry, Sue?" her mother asked. "What?"
Yes, hungry. But not for toast and coffee and scrambled eggs. But for something-something un-nameable, inexpressible.
'You look as though you haven't been eating right," her mother said. "Don't you eat properly, you and your two roommates-what were their names-yes, Reba and Chance?"
"Don't worry so, mother." Charlie said. That was her father. "Sue's all right. She's on her own now. You brought her up to know how to eat, cook, dress, behave. Sue's a good kid. Why should anything be wrong?"
Were they always so worried about her, Sue wondered, looking from her mother to her father while she nibbled tastelessly on a piece of cool toast. Banded together against her by their mutual worry and concern. So she'd had a nervous breakdown in high school for a while. So what? Other kids she knew did worse-took drugs, had babies, did things in the back seats of cars. A nervous breakdown was a clean, healthy simple thing compared to those dark doings. Just...a little anxiety, dark days, a curious apathy and unwillingness to get up out of bed, to eat, to work. To do anything but think and dream.
Dreams spun into words and words into stories and even into a book Things she'd never shown to anyone until Dr. Vero.. . .
The images whirred around in her mind with the frenzy of a pinwheel. His bulging black eyes. Bulging purple...cock. His hand fisted around hers, gripping his massive manhood in a rhythm jungle tattoo of passion. And the white jet, like the last final outburst of Fourth-of-July fireworks in the stadium where she and her parents went every year.
Sue looked at her hand, the hand that had worked its magic on Dr. Vero's sexual instrument, the hand that had received the juicy testimonial to its cleverness. "Sue?"
It was her father's gentle voice, nudging her out of a dream. Sue looked up past her parents, her mother and father, their chairs unconsciously pulled closer together, their glances narrowed down to her, two runways ending at one point-her.
Sue felt hot, strange, and uncomfortable. She had always hated to be stared at. Funny, she'd never realized that until now. And yet, for years it seemed, her parents had been staring at her. Worried, loving, gentle. But nonetheless staring.
"What's wrong?" Sue asked boldly. "You act as if there's something strange about me."
"No, not at all, dear." Her mother hastily wiped her mouth with the paper napkin and moved her chair back, standing up in her deep blue corduroy housecoat. Sturdy, unromantic. "It's just that...you seem to keep forgetting we're here."
"Maybe she's just tired, mother."
Had her father always called her mother "mother" in her presence? Were they mostly Midge and Char-he to each other only between the sheets? Strange.
Did they ever think about her when they were tangled in each other's arms, their pubic hair mixing and snarling together? That was a weird thought. Maybe she'd write a poem about it. A couple of phrases came tentatively to mind. She mouthed them silently to herself.
Yes. A poem. Just right. A love poem-no, a sex poem-about her parents. Sue smiled to herself.
"You see, she's all right, mother." Mr. Stilson pushed back his chair abruptly as he got to his feet. His eyes scanned the yellow banded kitchen clock above the white refrigerator. "We better all hurry and get dressed or we'll be late for church."
"Wouldn't want to miss one of Pastor Harrow's sermons for the world," Mrs. Stilson echoed. "Did you get a chance to go to church much in college, Sue?"
"Church?"
Sue laughed, felt her eyes suddenly sparkled and come to life. Church? Who had time for church? Or cared enough about it any more? There were far more exciting things going on in the big world outside than church.
"You don't want to go too far away from the church," her mother said. "I know it's usual for young people your age to become skeptical for a while, drift away. I did the same thing in college. But religion has importance in one's life. Especially nowadays, with so many bad influences.. . . "
Midge Stilson finished piling the dishes in the sink, set the oven on yesterday's chicken leftovers in a casserole. "By the way," she asked, pretending to concentrate on the timer, "your roommates, are they religious? I mean, Reba seems...Jewish, but the other girl the...tall one . . . "
You mean, the black one, Sue thought to herself, watching her mother struggle with the words and the ideas.
"Yes, Chance," Sue said quietly. "Her grandmother's very religious, she told me once. Goes to a Baptist church in Harlem where she lives. And Reba's not religious, not really, but she wouldn't dream of marrying anything but a Jewish boy. For her parents' sake. Or so she says."
"They're interesting women. And different," Mrs. Stilson said, her eyes once again on Sue's face.
'Yes. Interesting and different." Sue echoed her, but inside her head, she began to unravel and investigate the interestingness and differences of Reba and Chance. There was something for her to learn in that.
And then the dark images again, like the sun retreating behind the rolling density of cloud. Reba and Chance. Embracing, one on top of the other, rich with curves of flesh, of breast, of buttock. Bare, naked, unashamed. Shocking.
And Joel. The presence of Joel. Tall, mustached, and with laughing blue eyes. And behind the closed bedroom door, the sounds of grunts and groans and bedsprings.
What would her mother think if she found out that one of her roommates regularly went to bed, two and three times a week, with a male student?
Shocking. Shameful.
There was nothing in her mother's and father's days in college to compare with it.
Sue turned the idea over curiously in her mind, fingering it, touching and testing it here and there, the fabric and texture of it.
Yes.
Sue looked at her mother and father again, and suddenly stretched her arms up over her head, yawned. She felt wide-awake now.
"Well. I'll run upstairs and get dressed for church. I wouldn't want to be late," she said.
She chose her lavender lightweight wool dress. Brushed her hair until it lay like strands of beaten gold down to her shoulders. Somehow, her eyes turned somewhat the color of the wool.
Alice in Wonderland.
She put just a hint of pale pink lipstick on her mouth. Ran the lipstick over the live flesh of her lips. Remembering Dr. Vero's mouth on hers, devouring her.
Her eyes darkened to purple.
Church was a simple, square white clapboard building settled on a side street. The bells in the tower were ringing for service as the Stilsons arranged themselves in a cushioned, worn pew in the middle of the small sanctuary.
The sanctuary was half full. A typical Sunday morning. Pale sunlight fell, muted, through the panels of pale gold stained glass on the faces turned up to the pulpit. The organ sounded valiantly under the mild hands of a teenage girl in blonde braids with braces on her teeth.
She was one of the few young people there. And Kenny.
Had church always been so full of old people, Sue wondered. White hair covered with little velvet hats in black or dark blue. Here and there a balding head. The men sitting rock solid-a sprinkling of them among the many women. A few younger couples shushing children seated beside them or on their laps. Learning the long, slow lesson of curbing their chattering tongues and their rebellious limbs.
Sue looked at the youngsters with interest as they sat squirming and giggling and whispering to each other. Had she ever been like that at their age?
Never.
She never remembered her mother and father having once to remind her to sit still and be silent. No.
Even as a very young child, she had found plenty to absorb her attention in the square light gold room. The patterns of the painted glass windows. The sounds of the organ, the singing, the prayers, the minister's voice. The faces and backs of the people-intent, vacant, hunched, empty, thoughtful. Waiting. Waiting for a message. For the message. The word. The key to unlock life's mysterious treasures.
Sue had always felt at peace in the church. Safe in the quietness, the accustomed ritual like a stone path worn so smooth you never had to fear falling and hurting yourself.
There were no unexpected surprises in church. No loud, rude, vicious, mocking, angry voices. No words or thoughts flung at you that pierced the sensitive skin and brought blood running out from your guts.
It was a safe place. A good place.
Sue's eyes fastened on the pale blue doves set in the windows high on either side of the central organ pipes. Reverend Harrow's face, strong and dark, hove into view as he stood up from his chair, almost hidden behind the pulpit stand, and took his place at the huge opened Bible.
A dark figure in his long, black flowing robes, the white of the stiff collar setting off his face in space.
Sue looked at his face in astonishment. She had never really noted before, although he had been their pastor for six years, how strong and dark and sensual he was. His wife was a timid little bird of a creature sitting in her blue robes with the rest of the choir. She had a voice like melting crystals.
Reverend Harrow's voice poured out over the congregation. Dark, oily, mellifluous.
What was he talking about?
Something about the Garden of Eden. The perfection of Paradise. The serpent. The sin.
What was it all about? It was hard to follow his thread of thought. The individuality of man and woman divided by sinfulness. Was it the sin of greed? Of sexuality? Of hubris-man's pride seeking to usurp God's omniscience?
Was he managing to weave some ecological message into it all? It was hard to follow.
In her mind's eye arose images of the Garden of Eden-Adam, dark strands of hair fanning out over the heavy musculature of his chest, thongs of muscle across his naked abdomen, the intricate dovetailing of muscles in his thighs and calves, and beneath the symbolic figleaf, the dark, warm, blooded mysteries of his manhood. And Eve, seldom slender and shy and girlish like a new peach tree but heavily voluptuous, her breasts almost...obscene...in their fullness, her belly a fleshy pillow, her arms-reaching out to Adam or to the apple-ripely mature.
A man in the full thrust of masculinity and a woman juicy with rich flesh.
And the serpent, taking on the qualities of both. The sinuous, aggressive thrust of the male combined with the undulation of the female. Subtle, suggestive, full-blooded, devious, yet always true to its mark. Entwining the man and woman as much as driving them apart.
Sue's imagination thrived in the lushness of this man and this woman, this garden threatened by the brooding grace of the serpent. Had these people sitting in church, like whitened bones too long in the desert, ever felt the power and beauty of that man, that woman, that snake?
The images crowded out the spare, sparse decorations of her little rural church. Sue got to her feet automatically, sang without heeding what she sang, prayed without hearing. At the end of the service, she drifted into the crushed tide of people moving out the back door to shake the pastor's hand.
"Hello, Sue, we're so glad to see you this morning."
"My, don't you look different."
Sue's hand flew to her cheek and she stared, startled. Did her difference show so easily.
"How is college?"
The questions came from all sides from gentle little old ladies to stooped middle-aged men.
Sue nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled, avoiding their questions.
She was swept by the tide out the door into the sunlight, and found her pale chilled fingertips wrapped in the warm chubby grasp of Reverend Harrow. His touch brought her back to herself and she stared into his eyes with mute interest. His eyes were round and brown and...furry in feeling. His mouth was sensual.
She suddenly wondered what it would be like to be clasped to that rather stocky chubby figure under the long black robes. She felt little five wires of charged feeling going back and forth between her and her pastor.
Yes.
He reminded her of Dr. Vero. Dark, attractive, dangerous.
Sue flushed and pulled her hand out of his abruptly. She felt his brief quizzical glance following her before he turned to his next parishioner.
Sue found her parents in the parking lot, standing next to the family car. Side by side, as usual, their worried looks honing in on her. What was wrong with everybody? They stared at her as though she were a freak.
Kenny was there, too. Tall, string-beany, with blonde thatched hair. He hung behind her parents in a different manner.
"Kenny is having dinner with us," Sue's mother said.
To cheer you up, her eyes said.
Sue looked at Kenny curiously, trying to see him through the eyes of Reba and Chance. All during the meal, he talked and her parents talked-gossip about town, meanderings about local events, comments on who was and who was not in church.
And Sue studied him. How pale and narrow he was. His face was, well, almost. . . pretty. She used to call it sensitive but now it just looked...pretty. Compared to, say, Joel's face which was unique, bustling with beard, intense of eye. Or to the faces of Chance's boyfriends.
What were they talking about now? Oh yes, Reverend Harrow's sermon. About how far we had come since the Garden of Eden. How far down, Kenny said.
But then he always said something bound to please the ears of her parents.
Sue could not imagine her mother ever having been an Eve. Or her father...or Kenny...as Adam. She smiled to herself.
"What did you think of it, Sue?" Kenny asked.
Sue blinked. "Of what? Oh, the sermon. Well, to tell the truth, in the middle of it, my mind got hung up on the Garden of Eden."
"Well, you always loved gardens and flowers," her mother said cheerfully.
"I wasn't thinking of flowers."
No.
Of nakedness, of lust, of temptation, of the serpent, that live, round, sinuous creature that was somehow so much more real and attractive than the distant, paternal, somewhat stern God stuck way up out of reach in Eternity.
The serpent was touchable. Knowable.
Maybe Eve sensed this when she listened to his seemingly innocuous words. He was on a level with her and Adam. One of them.
"What were you thinking of?" Kenny urged gently.
Sue's blue glance suddenly leveled to his own. Why, of how you'd look naked, Kenny, she wanted to laugh at him. But he would be shocked. Definitely shocked.
Suddenly, Sue blushed. She realized that she strongly wanted to see Kenny. Naked.
Her mother cleared the table, scraped the dishes, put them in the dishwasher. "Dad and I are going to the Bakers for the afternoon and supper. I know they'd want you over if they knew you were home, Sue."
"I'd rather not. I'd rather stay home." A gleam came into her eye. "Kenny can keep me company."
"Why, yes, that's a good idea," her mother sighed briskly, removing her apron and hanging it on a peg in the broom closet. "You and Kenny must have a lot to talk about."
Yes.
The smile on Sue's face lingered like the smirk on the Cheshire Cat.
After they left, Sue led the way into the family room off the kitchen, a cozy room with the Sunday papers and magazines spread on end tables and over the leather hassock. Sue curled up on the sofa, pulled the afghan her mother had bought at the county fair years ago up over her long legs. She sighed, tucking her hands under her cheek, and studied Kenny, crunched in her father's plaid-covered armchair.
"It's been a long time since we had a chance to talk."
"Yes."
"Do you like college."
"Yes."
"Are you learning a lot? I remember how scared you were to go. Afraid the city was too big and could kinda crush you."
"I'm uncrushable," Sue smiled.
"You're fragile," Kenny said huskily. "The most fragile person I've ever met. Like...like a perfect crystal vase."
You're full of shit, Kenny. I'm tough. And I've learned more than I could possibly tell you. Like...how to squeeze a man's cock until I could control him and make him feel almost anything I wanted.
"How's your English class going? I bet you're the outstanding student."
"My professor thinks I've got real talent." Oh, he's a ferocious frightening lusty one, Kenny, with a cock that could tear me to shreds if it wanted.
"You'll be somebody someday. You'll be famous, Sue."
You're a jerk, Kenny. I've got a long way to go and the competition is keen. I've got a gift but if I'm not careful, if I don't nurture and harvest it, it could be washed, down the drain like anyone else's.
"You write the most beautiful words. They're so sensitive, your images."
My professor says they're phallic, Kenny. You know what that means? My poetic words about flowers are cocky, Kenneth. You had better believe it.
Sue's eyes half-closed and she smiled, a wisp of a smile that was definitely not Alice-in-Wonderland.
"Why don't you come and sit over here, Kenny? Next to me." Her pale hand patted the edge of the sofa.
Kenny unfolded himself from the armchair and walked across the room, like a Tinker Toy poorly put together, as if he secretly disowned his arms and his legs and his body. The sofa bent under his weight as he sat down and Sue swerved toward him, her belly coming up to rest curved about his rump.
Kenny coughed and cleared his throat. "It...it's hot in here."
"Is it? I feel chilly. As though nothing will ever again get me warm. Why don't you he down beside me, Kenny. Like a brother."
The springs on the sofa creaked and protested as the overgrown Tinker Toy distributed his weight alongside Sue. She backed up against the sofa, making room for Kenny. He lay rigid, breathing self-consciously as though his very lungs protested this closeness to her. She tucked her face in the warm hollow of his neck, breathing onto his skin just above his collar.
Kenny cleared his throat, ran his finger around the stiff rim of his collar, loosened his tie.
"That's nice," Sue murmured. Her cool little hand opened a button of his shirt, slipped slyly inside, touching the equally cool bare skin of his chest.
His chest jerked spasmodically and his heart thudded against the taut prison of his ribs. She murmured deep in her throat, a sleepy, husky murmur.
"You're so nice and warm, Kenny. Just like a brother. I wonder why we never did this before. It's nice being close to you."
His neck smelled like a baby's skin, of purity and talcum powder.
"It's...ah...uh...nice to be...close to you. Sue." The words sputtered out of his mouth.
"Why don't you slip your arm around me? There. Isn't that more comfortable?"
"Ah. Yes. Lots more comfortable." Kenny cleared his throat again. He sounded positively miserable. "Hey, aren't your folks coming home soon?" he asked with abrupt cheerfulness.
"Not for hours," Sue said sleepily. "Hours and hours." Her hand moved, ever so softly, over the bare, youth-naked skin of his chest. She fingered the few hairs with her fingertips, tentatively and impersonally as though she were testing the weight of fine yarn.
"You feel so...lovely, Kenny. Like soft baby's skin."
"Baby's skin!" his voice squeaked. "That's a laugh." But his breathing deepened and quickened, and Sue could feel the temperature of his skin rising, rising almost visibly under the soft, slow movements of her delicate hand. She smiled to herself.
She let her lips just barely move in the warmth of his neck and felt his heartbeat run faster. "Just like a baby's skin," she murmured in a small voice. "I wonder, do your lips taste the same way?"
"Sounds like you're beginning to write a poem," Kenny said, his voice jumping unexpectedly up and down the scale.
"Could be," Sue said. "I get inspiration from all kinds of sources. And experiences."
"I'd feel funny ending up in one of your poems," Kenny twitched at his tie again, as though he were suffocating from lack of air. His legs began to twitch and move restlessly too.
You big, overgrown kid, you, why the hell don't you know what to do next, Sue swore to herself. Do I have to lead you step by step? Damn it. No wonder you never made passes at me. Maybe you've got no natural instincts at all, you dope.
She half rose on her arm, letting her glance sweep down over Kenny as she did, noting with pleasure the spire tenting his pants. Maybe he was a man after all. If someone could only get his motor going.
Gently, gazing deeply and innocently into his eyes, Sue touched her lips to his.
"You taste like...flower petals," she laughed lightly.
Kenny flushed. "I don't know how to take that," he growled.
"Take it naturally. Like this," Sue said softly, brushing her lips across his.
Kenny groaned, shut his eyes. Sue heaped herself over him, loving the feeling of power that surged through her body. He was her prisoner, at her mercy. She could do what she wanted with him. Provided she went ever so slowly, so carefully, creeping around his defenses one by one.
She kept her lips against his, loving the soft innocent feel of his mouth. She pressed her mouth against his. He tried to pull his arm out from under her body.
"Sue. Sue." He protested, squirming, trying to slip away from her.
"Silly boy," Sue smiled. "Silly boy. What are you afraid of, Kenny? I'm not going to hurt you. A woman can't possibly hurt a man. Physically. But oh, how you can hurt us. So brutally, so violently, tearing us apart."
"Why would I want to do that?" Kenny asked, his eyes opening a little slit.
"Shhh. Shhhh. Stop asking questions. Just let your mind go, Kenny. Don't hang onto it. Just...feel."
Sue bent over him, exulting secretly, put her open mouth over his closed lips. Automatically, his arm went tightly around her. Sue crushed her fine little breasts against his shirted chest and with the tip of her tongue, tantalized her way into his reluctant mouth.
Sue rubbed and rolled her breasts over him, feeling her own heart begin to thud in quickened rhythm with his. Her tongue became bolder, forced its way fully into his mouth, tasted sensuously and lingeringly the little-boy sweetness of his inner mouth. No dark, dusky odors of tobacco or liquor marred the sweetness of her pleasure.
Encouraged by the searching of her tongue, his own became alive. A live snake twisting and turning about hers, engaging it in sensual battle.
A low groan sounded and resounded in his throat. The groan sank into Sue's ears like a dream, a low hum of lust thrilling through her body. She became alive in every crook and cranny of her being, her cells, her nerve ends responding deliciously. Her blood thickened her usually thin lady-like vessels, bringing the hot flush to her face, her breasts, her pelvis.
Their mouths clung, their tongues exploring the dark wet caverns.
Kenny's hand moved up and down her fine-bone back, pressing, kneading her skin.
Sue slipped her hand between their bodies, unbuckled his belt and slid her hand under the edge of his pants. Oh, delicious, delicious. The warm breathing skin of him. She felt each curl of hair around his navel with delight, caressing the fine silk of it. Kenny tried to push her hand away with his free hand but she persisted, driven by a monster deep inside her body. She would win over Kenny, oh, she would win. She was determined.
Delicately, her fingertips pried into his abdomen, picked up small rolls of flesh and felt them slowly and luxuriously. Kenny's body began to come alive, to leave behind the shell of its rigidity and to move under the stimulus of her poetic fingers.
His hand tore at the fuzzy wool of her dress. He pulled his head aside from her ravenous mouth. "Take this...thing off," he said thickly.
Sue reared back, eyeing him from a height. "Do you really want me to, Kenny?"
"For God's sake, do it and hurry up." He put his forearm over his eyes, unwilling to look her in the face.
Sue noticed with satisfaction his risen manhood. Her hand wanted to seize it boldly. No, not yet. Kenny would only be frightened away. He was so young and innocent.
Sue smiled.
She leaned down, whispered in his ear so that the sound of her breath whooshed like a strumpet wind through him. "I will, Kenny, if you'll take off your pants."
"Oh, no, that's wrong, Sue."
Her eyes narrowed, grew icy. She sat up abruptly, drawing away from him. "All right, if that's how you feel about it." She smoothed her long hair into place, letting his arm drop away from her. She yawned. "We can always look at television. There's probably a funny old East Side Kids comedy on."
"Oh my God. That's just plain stupid, Sue." His hand came back timidly, caressed her side above the hip. She allowed it, letting it get bolder, more insistent. "At least give me another kiss. We can kiss at least."
"Oh, Kenny, that's kid stuff. I'm not a kid any more. Can't you see that?"
He reared up his head to look more clearly at her face. "No. Yes. Your face is different somehow. Did you...did you have experiences with men in college?"
Sue smiled enigmatically. "Well...not really. Not what you'd call real.. . sexual experiences." She bent low, whispered into his ear. Tm...still a virgin, Kenny."
"Sue, Sue, Sue. So am I."
"And I want to stay that way."
"Until we're married."
Married?
Marry Kenny?
Oh, no, not any more. That dream was from the past. An innocent past of sturdy maples in front of the house, little white-painted churches, and ice cream sodas with Kenny in the high school hangout. Why, even the high school students today exchanged marijuana cigarettes in front of the store rather than drink the ice cream sodas. How long could you stay a baby?
Sue slid her hand back down under Kenny's unbelted pants. Not too far down. No. Just to where the ribbon of fine hair banded out. She kneaded his belly with the heel of her palm, enjoying the live warmth of it, like good yeasty bread dough.
Kenny caught his breath, put his hand around her slender wrist, trying to restrain her movements. His pelvis stirred to her steady rhythm.
She did not dare approach the invitation of hard virgin prick. Yes. The word sounded right in her mind. She bent and kissed him again, open-mouthed, lascivious.
"Get undressed, Sue. At least down to your slip. My God, I hope I can control myself. I promise not to...to wound you."
Oh damn it, what a hopeless jerk he was. Couldn't he get it into his stupid head it was time to grow up?
Almost angrily, Sue ripped the purple wool dress up over her hair, a long blonde loop catching in the zipper. Damn, damn, damn. She ripped it loose, a ring of pain circling her scalp. It felt good, oh, how good the pain felt.
Kenny scrambled out of his pants and undershorts, keeping his shirt on, and when her eyes dropped to the naked lower half of his body, she drew in her breath.
"Oh, Kenny, you're beautiful."
His naked penis, jutting alone and vulnerable into the air between them, was almost child-like, a slender stiff tube rising from the nest of his pubic hair.
Kenny pulled her roughly down on top of him, her breast squeezed on his chest. His gruff hand went up under the slinky nylon slip, finding naked skin. Sue had flung her bra and panties to the foot of the sofa.
A wild beast, coiled like a spring within the slender boyhood of him came to life. This time it was his mouth that conquered, feasted, his tongue that roved into her mouth, engaging her wet tongue in combat.
Sue's hand worked its way over his body. Shyly, slyly, it moved closer and closer down to the sacred pinnacle. Kenny gave a small suggestive shove of his pelvis and her hand closed over his cock, warm and waiting.
She fingered it lovingly, no longer afraid, but eager and curious. She wanted to mouth it, to lick it.
She bent over it, her mouth poised, but the moment Kenny felt her hot breath engulfing his virgin prick, he said, "Oh, Sue, it's wrong. We shouldn't be doing this."
As if more than half believing him, his manhood began to lose its steam and sag.
Oh, shut up, Kenny, with your moralizing...shit. Yes, shit. Let's just enjoy ourselves.
"Oh, Kenny, you're so...sexy, I just can't control myself," Sue said with a little sob in her voice. A real sob. She was going out of her mind waiting for him to take the lead, to thrust against her and relieve him and herself of unwanted virginity.
Sue gripped his hard rod as though she were hanging onto a lifeline. She pulled up her clinging slip, squirmed her naked body as close to him as she could get.
Kenny's mouth followed in an instinctive fine down her throat, into the warm hollow, down to the tiny quivering mounds of her breasts and with surprising boldness clamped over her nipple. The pleasure shot through her body in silver streaks of pain. Her fragile hand gripped his gentle blonde hair, forced his head tight to her nipple. Her other hand played furiously with his jutting prick.
"Give it to me, give it to me," she gasped, fighting for breath. Oh, the stupid fool, why didn't he just ram that big hard gorgeous thing inside of her and get it over with? Why didn't he flush his goddamn Protestant morals down the toilet bowl where all the shit belonged?
She ran her thumbnail through the slit of his hole atop his flaming, bulging prick.
A long, shuddering sigh escaped him and he flipped sideways, pinning her naked exposed body against the back of the sofa. She turned up her face to catch his open kiss, her head following the fury of his gouging tongue.
He shoved his prick in the warm pungent canal of her thighs. Rubbed it against the downy silky pale pubic hair.
Instinctively, Sue reached down with her hand, parted the plump virgin lips hidden in the pubic hair, exposing the slippery hot secrets of her tenderest membranes.
Kenny's prick thundered back and forth across her sensitive vulva, drawing a wild sweet music that flooded her whole body. Sue's mind went down under, forgot words, forgot thoughts, and her body was flooded with a thousand wild sensations, each as sharp and brilliant as an icicle.
Her breasts, her nipples, her navel, her belly, her loins, her thighs, her feet-all were invaded with the overwhelmingly sweet poignancy of sexual craving.
Oh give it to me, give it to me, give it to me, her body throbbed. That big wild lurching creature caught between her thighs, violining the soft ooze of her sex.
Shove it, Kenny, shove it up.
Her body began to dance its own sexual rhythm across the bar of his cock, her pubis ramming with a vengeance against his. Oh, the big, glorious, stupid jerk, wouldn't he ever get the idea? Oh, Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. Cock, cock, cock.
Her mind sank down out of sight as her body burst with the abundance of sensation. The sweat poured from under her girlish breasts and her tender armpits. She gripped his hard man body to her with a strength she didn't know she had in her. The glory rose from her drenched sex up through her abdomen, her chest, her head, and burst in a dazzling golden splay of feeling, a fountain of pure joy. A glory.
Her thighs gripped the slender man-rod that was giving her the pleasure. Dimly, from far, far away inside her head, dark with primordial darkness, she was aware of the massive spurts jolting his prick wedged in her dark little triangle.
Felt the hot sticky blobs hitting her tender membrane, the insides of her thighs. Felt, as she rose high on the fireworks of brilliant white and blue glory, his magnificent tool diminish, weaken, withdraw, shrivel up, with each pulsating jet.
Oh glory.
Oh heaven.
Oh God, to have been denied the full glory, the final bliss, the feared and wanted invasion, the termination of her privacy.
The cruel shredding.
The bloodthirsty annihilation.
CHAPTER 9
Reba bounced down the steps of the Liberal Arts building-literally bounced, her breasts under the ribbed sweater jogging with each step. She was in the midst of a crowd of art students, men and women, hair and beards and talk flowing.
She clutched an armful of books, two sketchpads and her art supplies in a box to her liberated bosom. Her happy glance darted this way and that through the tangle of her streaky brown hair.
Puddles from the warm early November rains reflected the old sooted brick buildings in the college quadrangle. Her eye noted the colors, smudgy browns and ambers and ochres, bare tree trunks black with rain and silvered along a fine edge with daylight.
Animated, lively, she felt the faces of the others drawn to her, attracted, as she dominated the conversation. She enjoyed the attention. She was attractive, damn it. She knew it and used it to the hilt, enjoying it as much as she'd enjoy the feel of satin on her skin or the taste of a fresh peach in her mouth. If others were quiet and mousy and hungup-like Sue, for instance-that was their tough luck.
Hell, you were only young once and she was determined to make her youth last as long as possible.
She dreaded going back up to her dorm apartment, with pallid little Sue and dusky Chance, still angry at her, hiding her rage beneath a calm exterior. Hell, Chance had a nerve to be angry. She was the one who had turned a dagger in the heart of their friendship, practically raping Joel.
Women. You couldn't trust them a minute.
"Hey, let's go over to the Night Owl for a couple of beers," she suggested.
"Hey, man."
"Yeah."
"Sounds groovy."
"I don't know; I've got a lot of work to do for tomorrow."
"So scram, Lucile. We'll enjoy it without you," Reba said coldly. Yeah, yeah.
So what did she have to be afraid of? She had nothing to be ashamed of. Mad, oh yeah, she was mad all right. Furious.
"Hi, Reba."
"Hello." Her voice came out lined with icicles and she felt the smile go out of her face, aging it. Her cheeks sagged.
"Mind if I come along?" His blue eyes swept the crew of five from a great height.
"Yeah, man."
"Oh, shut up, Stu," Reba said impatiently. "I mind.
Why don't you just bug off, Joel, like a nice guy. Which you aren't."
His eyes flared, went gentle. "If you've got a gripe against me, let's go off and discuss it quietly somewhere."
Oh, no. There were some things unforgettable and unforgivable. Like your damn prick sunk deep into Chance.
Reba closed her eyes abruptly, feeling the knife edge of pain go into her gut. Oh God, God, God. How could he have done that to her? How could Chance?
Reba turned her face away from Joel, rejecting him. She smiled, turning all her charm on Stu. Fat, pimply, good-natured, idiot Stu. "Come on, Stu, I'm sorry I lost my temper. I didn't mean to bawl you out."
She slid an arm around him, feeling all the flab. Ugh. Stu flushed up to the roots of his sandy-colored hair.
It was dark in the Night Owl, a deliberately induced darkness, lit remotely by hooded golden lamps here and there on the dark paneled walls.
They drank their beers, the ice-cold steins making rings next to their stack of college texts. They got into a heated discussion of art-found objects, mixed media, textures. Stu was the purist. Naturally.
Reba stirred up the controversy, prodding each one to a heated defense. She liked controversy, anger, strong, violent emotions. She liked drawing attention, if only to be attacked and disagreed with. Now that she had put an arm around him, Stu wanted to defer to her opinion-which made her hate him-but when she pressed the attack against his purist views, he clung stubbornly and timidly to them.
"I think, if you're going to paint, paint. If you're going to sculpt, sculpt. And if you're going to use fabrics, take up tapestry or costume designing. I don't go for this stuff of fabrics stuck onto clay objects, and pebbles thrown onto a canvas of paint. It's just all confusing."
"I like confusion," Reba spat out, her yellow cat's eyes positively glowing in the dark.
"I know you do," Stu sputtered and subsided into silence.
Hopeless.
None of her prodding could get him to say another word. He drank his beer slowly and steadily in silence, listening to the others continue the debate, growing red in the face with anger, but holding his tongue.
Barrett, well, Barrett's views were far out. And he put up a good fight for them. But he was so-slight. His lank blond hair lay down to his narrow shoulders. He sat between Gloria and Art, a big untidy man with a bush of black hair ringing his head, thick and curly, and his eyes impenetrable behind thick, black-rimmed glasses. Art had his mind made up. Welded sculpture was his thing. He was demonic on the subject and touched with talent beyond all of them. If anyone would make it and become famous, he would.
Gloria was...well, a woman. Gloria. A solemn, studious face framed in mousy long hair, the counterpart of Barrett's. She wore sweaters and knee-length skirts, a spectacularly unsexy female. She tried her hand at everything-traditional, contemporary, life-size figures in plaster, colored glass soldered into metal frames. Very imitative, very sincere, very meticulous but without an ounce of originality or inspiration.
Gloria would settle down into marriage not so many years from now with some very stable, solid lawyer or dentist, spawn three skinny youngsters, join the League of Women Voters, and paint in her spare time. Ugh.
What a fate.
Oh, Joel, Joel, save me from that fate, Reba prayed. Pointlessly. She was through with Joel. The conflict of their egos was just too much. And yet, she dreaded the thought of marrying a soft, malleable ego, like Stu, to give an extreme. At the same time, she couldn't endure Art's self-containment, his egoism that shut out all but his own vision. Fanatical about his work. Maybe that's what you had to be to aim for success. Shut out all the distracting trivia of life. Like wars, broken love affairs, kids with stuffed up noses and stuffed up diapers.
Reba sank into a depression, half way through her second glass of beer. Life was looking lousy. Plain lousy. She missed Joel, that was the truth of it. Rotten, faithless Joel with his errant prick ready to sass any girl who'd have it.
Tough, tender Joel who knew when to coddle her, when to fight. There'd be no other Joels for her.
The hell with it. That was the romantic view of life. No Joels, maybe, but plenty of other men. Her eye roved around the table. Stu? Out of the question. Barrett? Too much sex uncertainty about him. His inner self hadn't yet decided whether to be feminine or masculine. Art? It would be like bouncing off the surface of one of his seven-foot high iron twisted creations. No one would ever really make a dent in Art.
Suddenly, Reba lost interest entirely in the group and sank her attention in the amber of her beer, reflecting the amber, glass-covered lights on the walls.
Golden fish caught in a black moment in eternity.
All of them so young, just on the brink of life, but already set in their patterns even as they thought they had all life's options ahead of them and the freedom to choose.
She could see them, 10 and 20 years from now. Older, but still the same. Only herself uncertain in quantity and shape. Except for her deep inner craving for attention, the violence and volcanic force of attraction and repulsion and sex.
Her somber eye caught Chance walking in the door with a stranger, a stolidly built red-head. Oh, yeah, someone named Mitch. Chance said she had met him one night right here in the beer joint. The night she lured Joel to screw her. In the bathroom, of all unromantic, utilitarian places.
Reba could see them. Clear as the bathroom tiles. Joel launched like a stallion, his hands clutching Chance's hip bones as her sleek ass rocked against his belly and thighs, she bent over the toilet.
A rush of blood almost suffocated Reba as it rose to her face and she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
Hell, she wouldn't cry. Not again. She had cried over and over, every time the scene rose into her mind, complete, rich with the odor of sweat and sex.
Reba snatched up her books and got to her feet.
"I gotta go," she said and slapped a dollar bill on the table top. "You pay for me, Stu."
Her eyeballs were hot with the dry heat of rage as she brushed within two feet of Chance and Mitch at the bar, engrossed in each other.
Chance shot her a look, her lips still in a seductive smile for the redhead's benefit; her eyes black with anger for Reba's benefit; her Afro proud as usual.
Damn the bitch.
Damn all females.
They were worse than men. Untrustworthy, competitive, emotionally unstable, small-minded. Reba stomped the two blocks to the college apartments, her booted feet kicking up muddy spray from the rain puddles. She felt black as a thunder cloud.
She rode up the dingy elevator, despising everything about women. Herself included. That was the worst of it.
Awkwardly, she unlocked the door to the apartment she shared with Chance and Sue. Sue was no doubt on some secret errand or other. Ever since her "nervous breakdown" weekend at her home upstate, she'd been away many afternoons on mysterious errands. A sly, secretive girl. Bursting with a deep-down sexual energy that never even began to reach the surface.
Those shy types were the most explosive.
At least, all my emotions are on the surface, Reba thought, kicking the door shut with her boot.
Take 'em or leave 'em.
A slow lazy swirl of smoke arose from Chance's bed at the other end of the 'living" room, near the window.
Pot.
Hey.
Reba dropped her books on the Formica top of Sue's desk and rounded the book shelves topping it. Hey.
A small skinny black man, dark glasses covering half of his face, lay, feet crossed, on Chance's bed. Smoking pot.
He grinned.
Teeth pure white enamel in his black face.
"Which one is you?" he said in a slow, lazy purring voice. His glance moved up once, down once, feeling all over her body. Reba shivered; crossed her arms in front of her bosom outlined under the skin-tight sweater.
"Which one what is me?" she asked suspiciously. "Are you a relative of Chance?"
"You might say that. We're mighty close. In a way." He puffed thoughtfully on the joint.
Reba stood there uncertainly at the foot of Chance's bed. She felt uncomfortable. She wished she had the nerve to ask him to leave. After all, he was a stranger. But he might just possibly interpret that as an anti-black remark.
"Am I interfering with your plans? Don't mind me. You just go right ahead with whatever you was planning to do." He waved a hand grandiosely. A beautifully tapered black hand.
Hell.
She really wanted to go to the John. Real bad. But not with him around. Hmmmm.
"Funny, Chance never mentioned she was expecting you." Of course, she and Chance had kept their conversations down to the barest minimum since that rotten scene with Joel.
"She ain't expecting me. I'm about to surprise her."
"Oh. Suppose she doesn't show up for, say, a couple of hours. Who will I say was here expecting her?"
"Me." He gave her a feline white smile again. "The Monk."
Hah. Stupid ass name. Must be some kind of a nickname.
"Are you playing some land of part in a play?" She was suspicious still. "With a name like that?"
He laughed. A thin squeal of a laugh that ended in a breathless wheeze. "Oh, my, oh my. You might say that." Quick as a tiger, he sat up, every bone in his small lean body moving with infinite grace.
"My real name's Montgomery, but feel free to call me the Monk. Everyone else does."
"You sound like some kind of a pusher out of an off-Broadway play."
"Well, I'm no cat from no damn play, but you can say I've earned many an honest dollar peddling that stuff. Everybody else does; why not me?"
"Oh, come on, there's decent ways to earn a living," Reba said automatically.
"What? Being a lawyer, a doctor? Me, a black man? I'm not speaking no dollars and cents like you get from an honest living when you're black. I mean the big stuff."
Reba was afraid to argue further. He might take offense. Well, maybe he had a point there. Pushing dope might be the quickest route out of the rat-infested slums of Harlem.
"Well, you can wait for Chance as long as you like," she said pleasantly. She gathered up her books again, went into her own room, shut the door. She wanted to change into something light. The dorm was overheated. Should she lock the door? No, he might think she was scared of rape. After all, she wouldn't act so cagey if it were some white student waiting to see Chance. Or Sue, unlikely as that was.
She stripped off her sweater and the door opened on oiled hinges. The Monk stood framed in the door, a slow grin on his face. He stood there, eyes hidden behind those ridiculously large dark glasses; his face and body radiating a lascivious energy.
"Oh." Reba flushed, grabbed for her nylon housecoat flung on the foot of the unmade bed.
"Don't go out of your way on my account. I'm enjoying the sight." He licked his lips with a surprisingly pink tongue. "Out of sight."
Reba's breasts, full and rich, floundered over the housecoat clutched clumsily to her body.
"Well, I'm really trying to get dressed," she said awkwardly. She began to feel fear in the softness of her abdomen. A stirring, buzzing feeling of fear.
Who the hell was this cat? He might be anyone.
Even a friend of Chance's-or a relative-was no guarantee.
"You're a great looking chick." He came close, quietly on cat's feet, every step a subdued arabesque.
Reba merely stood there, heart pounding, a nervous smile flicking at her mouth. "So I've been told," she stammered.
Oh God, why didn't she have the courage to tell this character to get lost.
She wanted to run, to hide behind her clothes, to slam the door in his face. She stood there, trembling, as he approached.
"Bet you never had to worry about a buck, did you?" His voice was softly insolent. "Them boobs. Look like you been well-fed every goddamn day of your life."
Reba nodded, her eyes fastened on his hands. They had a life of their own. She could almost sense them grasping her breasts, digging into the flesh. The fine hair rose all along her skin on the riffle of a chill.
"I...guess I haven't gone hungry," she laughed uneasily.
"Don't know what it's like to want for food. For good clothes. For heat. For a goddamn decent toilet not filled with other people's shit."
"I.. . guess I'm kind of spoiled," she said miserably.
"I guess you are, baby. But it done your body good. Me, I'm stunted from lack of decent food." He stood there, a few inches shorter than she, and his hands skillfully outlined his slight body. "But I'm a man, baby. A big man. You ask Chance. She'll tell you. Every inch a man. All eight inches of it."
A sweat broke out along Reba's forehead, under the massive mane of her thick hair.
'You scared of me, baby, ain't you?"
The Monk stood no more than six inches from her, his body almost dwarfed by her ample curves.
Scared? She was terrified shitless. Maybe he had a knife on him somewhere, one of those thin vipers of a switchblade, ready to sink into her breast. He looked like he had it in him to . . .
Her mind stuck at the word "murder."
Her eyes rolled around in a wild way, seeking out a plan of escape.
The Monk glided up to her, wrapped his arm around her, his agile hand on her naked shoulder. He grinned into her face, enjoying her discomfiture. "I wouldn't hurt you, baby."
If he had been a white man, she'd have shoved him away. Forcibly. No, that was a he. If he'd been white, she'd have no two minds about it. She would have welcomed his insolent embrace.
Because she needed reassurance that she was attractive. And besides, her skin prickled all over, beginning a subtle response to his almost pathological hold over her.
"Wouldn't you?" Reba asked dubiously.
"You doubt me, baby?"
"Well, I...sort of have a feeling you have it in you to be.. . rough."
"What man don't?" He smoked a couple of whiffs of his joint and blew casually on her cheek. "Ain't that what you like about us? Deep down? To be rough handled by a real man? Not your namby-pamby overeducated asses here in college posing as men. Never had to fight for a meal in their lives; what they know about manhood?"
"They are kind of weak and mushy." Reba eyed his face stealthily, his body, the slender line broken only by the huge bulge in his pants.
"Bet you never had a real man in your life!" The Monk spoke close to Reba's cheek, no more than two inches away. His breath ran down in a silver line to her gut.
"That's hard to say. How would I judge? I mean, of course I have."
"You're lying."
"I'm not," Reba protested weakly.
He squeezed her close to him abruptly, with a cruel insidious force, his fingers digging into the plump flesh of her bare shoulder.
"You're lying. You ain't never had a real man."
Reba was terrified at the black man's closeness, his face somehow sinister behind the huge dark glasses, his black lips mouthing the white cigarette roll reeking of sweetish pot.
"I have," Reba insisted, her voice sliding up and down the scale, vitiating the meaning of the words.
"You haven't. You ain't never had a good come, gal."
"What makes you say that?" she asked faintly, stalling for time.
"I can tell. You uptight. Real uptight. Tight ass, tight cunt, tight throat. Nice big bouncy tits but they the only loose things about you."
He moved down her dusky-skinned breasts with the flat of his hand, the joint just teasing along her skin, and gripped her nipple, giving a hurtful squeeze.
"Aow, God," she moaned, twisting, lunging toward him with pain, and finding herself in his embrace.
"Loosen up, gal," he purred, soothing as syrup. "Here, take a puff. Get rid of some of those hang-ups."
He shoved the joint in her mouth.
Reba clamped her teeth closed.
"Ain't you ever smoked pot?" He was amazed.
She turned her head aside. "No. It's bad for you."
"Bad for you!" He bubbled into wheezing laughter. "Oh, Lord. Who told you that?"
"My Dad."
'Your Dad," he mimicked. "A real square. Loves his booze, I'll bet, but don't know shit about the good times lying in a little joint."
"My father s an internist. A doctor."
"Oh, Daddy dear is a doctor. Well, ain't that nice. He practically as sacrosanct as God, say. Holy doctor. You ask him permission to screw?"
Reba flushed angrily.
"Naturally not," the Monk laughed mirthlessly. "Do as you damn please in bed. Only it don't please you all that much. Trouble is you ain't been fucked by the right man, a man who really knows how, a man with stamina and staying power. Only by some lily-white middle-class motherloving son of a bitch who doesn't begin to know where it's at. Take a drag on this. Come on. That's right. You gonna feel fine, shortly. You gonna fly. Cause Mary Jane really knows how to make your feelings turn on. Gives that extra thrill, baby, right in the cunt. Didn't dear old Daddy tell you that?"
The Monk gazed insolently at her lips. He put his black mouth over hers. His narrow chest crushed against her pneumatic bosom, her heart booming through the rounded flesh.
Her mind felt far away, ballooning off into the distance. Why fight him?
"Now get on that bed," he ordered. He undressed slowly, removing his large dark glasses last. His eyes were opaque and glittery, not even remotely kind. Simply judging her as though she were a superior portion of horse flesh.
Reba's eyes riveted on his rod as he dropped his pants and jock strap. He was beautifully built, his muscles slender but taut, like polished ebony. She closed her eyes, expecting him to fall on top of her, insinuate himself into her and give her a good hard bang.
The Monk mounted the bed, the springs giving not all that much under his weight.
Reba shivered. She felt like cold, dead mounds of flesh, completely without desire. Exposed in all her innate white upper middle class frigidity.
Cagily, the Monk moved over her legs, sat himself on the bed below her pelvis, a thin black Buddha-figure with a fertility symbol that could rip gladly through twenty bleeding virgins. Reba flopped her thighs open on either side of his body. His legs were pressed close together, the shiny black knees almost jutting into her vulva.
"I like a broad I can sink my hands into," the Monk purred seductively. "You're plenty of woman."
Nothing happened to her, absolutely nothing. Nothing turned her on. She felt like a sacrificial virgin, frightened before the strange black flesh of this strange black man.
Get it over with. That was her only thought.
She turned her head into her pillow, too ashamed even to look him in the face.
What she really wanted was to get up off the bed and make herself a good hot cup of coffee.
His hands brushed up along the inside of her cool white thighs. Nothing.
Slid up and down again. And again. Softly, insistently. Reba began to relax, her head sinking restfully into the pillow, her body into the bedcovers. For long minutes, the disembodied hands did no more but caress repeatedly the inside of her thighs until warmth crept into them, and life.
Reba slid her body down closer to him, the muscles in her legs tensed, and she wrapped her calves around him.
"That's it, baby," he crooned.
His hands dug a little deeper up her thighs and one hand brushed lightly across the top of her pubic hair. Brushed again. And again.
The dry tightness of her vagina relaxed; the sensations stirred inside and out. Reba smiled.
"I'm getting to you."
Reba didn't have to say anything. Her body spoke for her. She ceased to think.
His fingers found the wet funnel to her wet cave under the thatch of slinky hair.
Ummmnunm.
His fingers slid along the slippery vulva, rolled the thick hot lips hngeringly, found the tiny stiff clit and pressed against it.
Reba grunted, frowned. That hurt.
Without a word, he paused and then touched it again, ever so lightly. She smiled contentedly.
Her smile changed to a frown of concentration as his black fingers played melodies on the glistening pink of her sex. Her belly began to heave; her hands moved restlessly over her own body, plucking at her belly, crushing her own breasts; her pelvis began to rock almost imperceptibly.
Through a sliver of raised eyelids, she shot a hazy glance down at him, seated at the gateway to her dark sexuality. He sat there, imperturbable, his breathing barely quickened, his ramrod a hard cylinder. He was watching her intently with an expression of mixed arrogance and detachment. He was playing with her body with scientific objectivity and thoroughness.
Damn him.
She threshed at him, moaned, trying to awaken some kind of human response in him.
With a sudden jab, he sank three fingers deep into her cunt. Aayyyy, that felt good.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked coldly.
Damn him.
"Reba," she moaned, catching her lower hp in her teeth as he reamed 'round her vagina.
Traitor vagina that undulated around his probing, bold, ramming fingers. He worked the flat of his palm against the round of her pubic bone, where the supersensitive clit picked up even the faintest signal and transformed it into an acute, amplified radiation of pleasure so keen it fluctuated into pain and back again.
Reba clutched wildly at her breasts, pinching the nipples hurtfully. The speed of her rocking pelvis increased, meeting the thrusts of his fingers.
Oh God, oh God.
She felt the heat of her body rising as she bounced, bounced, bounced on his fingers.
Oh God. That was crazy. She wouldn't, would not, refused to be induced to orgasm by his fingers. That was stupid, a perversion, a copout.
Her mind went cold and dry and all the hot flush of sex drained out of her body. Almost all. Abruptly, she ceased to move. Ashamed. Embarrassed.
Her middle class hang-ups. Maybe...she scarcely wanted to think the thought...her body's innate rejection of the Negro. No, all men were alike. That's the way she'd been brought up, that's what she truly believed, through and through.
The Monk withdrew his fingers and artfully shifted his body so that he was on her and his prick in her cunt before she had time to think.
Her cunt widened to receive the immensity of his barrel. She felt it sliding in and out without feeling it, aware that it was there but her sex feelings remained dead and unmoving.
Oh hell, she'd been so close to coming. Maybe she shouldn't have quibbled between fingers and cock, and just plain come. But that was always her problem. At the vital moment, she couldn't make up her mind whether to flip over the fence or stay on this side.
The Monk shoved it into her, coolly, methodically, without any signs of animal excitement on his part. As though he were performing some kind of...mechanical service.
And she was just a big puddle of flesh underneath him, taking his weight and his damn sawing at the cunt.
Ho hum.
What a bore sex was, when you boiled it all down to that. Reba lay back, not even making the effort to respond. She was bored with it all, bored with the whole damn sex scene. With the needs of her flesh that forever led her into these unsatisfactory tangling alliances with men. With Joel. With the continual struggle to be the woman they all swore she was. Hot, passionate, demanding.
And always the ultimate failure. The failure to have this mysterious thing called the orgasm. Maybe the women's libbers...the extremists, at least...were right after all. That the vaginal orgasm was all a myth made up in the heads of Freud and Reich and all that damn bunch of psychoanalysts.
Why couldn't women go back to the good old days, when no man expected anything more of them than a strong back to wash clothes, carry infants around, lug in pails of milk, card the wool. Then there were women specializing in sex to cater to their rampant needs and fantasies.
Reba yawned.
The Monk looked down into her weary face.
"You real cool," he said admiringly. "Real cool. That's okay, baby. The Monk used to all kinds of women, deals with all kinds of women."
I'm not a woman, not a real woman, Reba thought bitterly. That's the root of my trouble.
She felt the Monk rooting about inside her, without interest or concern. It didn't seem to bother him. By now, Joel would have been in a towering rage, making all kinds of emotional interpretations of her failure to reach the acme of sexual joy. She was fed up with that scene, too.
Hell, if she didn't want to come, why should she have to? Just because a couple of crud psychoanalysts said it was woman's function to have an orgasm, thanks to the splendid treatment and massage of the male pride and joy, his penis?
Shit on that.
The Monk withdrew his prick and knelt beside her left breast. His black prick jutted over her naked pale olive shoulder.
She stared at it, knowing that's what he wanted.
It was huge, larger than huge. Reminded her of some damn sexy horse in a meadow out for a mare. She didn't think the damn things came so large on a man. She'd read in many learned books on sexology that the penis erect varied no more than an inch or two from man to man.
"Touch it," he urged gently.
Well, why not? Big black thing. Shut your eyes and it was no different from a red-purple engorged thing..
Reba caressed it, dreamily. It was slick with the moisture of her own body. Steely. Bold. Warm. Confident of itself and its powers. Cocky.
"Yeah," the Monk breathed proudly. "Chance is wild about it, too. Can't live without it. Been hankering for it and coming crawling after it for years. Ever since she was a gawk of a thing with no tits."
Reba smiled to herself, smiled genially at the black-blue head of his prick. Well, Chance, here's something I can take away from you. The same as you took Joel's from me.
The Monk rolled lazily on his side, his brute of a rod jamming against Reba's shoulder. He stared expertly into the thatch between her clammy thighs. Rubbed a finger along the trail of moisture. "Yeah, baby, your cunt is crying for me. Can't ignore it."
His cheek slid along her thigh. His hand, pressed into her soft downy belly, steadied him as he plunged his tongue boldly the length of her vulva from front to back.
Reba's body curled in a circle, half enclosing him. With a delicacy that far exceeded any unimaginative and brutally forceful prick, his tongue slid between her sex lips, lapped around her clit, darted into the rim of her sex.
Reba groaned, hand to her writhing lips, bit the back of her hand with her teeth, pulled her pelvis away from him and when she could endure the absence no longer, rammed her sex back toward his devouring mouth.
She twisted her head to the side, mouth open, gasping, and with a sly jounce, he slid his manhood into the hot recesses of her mouth.
No!
Her eyes shot open.
Black prick. You can't shove that thing down my throat. No. Arrogant. I'll take your loving and your hands and your tongue but you can't cut off the breath of my mouth with your huge sex.
She sputtered in frustrated rage.
The Monk coolly ignored her distaste and anger. He knuckled and kneaded her belly, rocking his fist around the rim, digging it into the sensitive nerves above the pubic ridge. It turned her sex into one craving, howling, seizing cylinder of wet muscle.
Fuck it, fuck it, she screamed silently to herself as his tongue, snaky, sneaky, slid into her sex. His cock in her mouth imitated the rhythm, sliding in and out past her teeth and lips. She tasted her own sex on it, sweeter and purer than honey.
Her hands rose up to his ass, dug and clawed and clutched and reamed out. She wanted to drive that black ass wild, even as he was driving her cunt into a frenzy. But it eluded her, keeping up its cool, steady beat, his cock a steel piston moving in and out of her mouth.
Her desires engorged and frothed to a frenzy, pleasure turning to pain and inside out to pleasure again. She wanted to hang onto it, get rid of it, shake it loose, drown herself in it, be flooded, annihilated, obliterated by the screaming roar of it.
And still it eluded her, just beyond her reach, her grasp.
His prick picked up speed, and through her own black hot lust she was aware of the Monk's increasing excitement. So controlled, but underneath the control, the beginning of his motor shaking loose.
Damn it, he was going to come. Come before she could reach the blissful peak, leaving her alone and lost like all the rest of the men.
He was going to come, insulting the privacy of her mouth. Black arrogance! Damned if she'd swallow that.
Sweating and gasping, Reba went limp, unable to take any more stimulation. She felt as though she'd go out of her mind in another minute. The pleasure was too much to bear, to contain.
The Monk pulled his manhood out of her mouth, caressed her thighs, her belly, in a wide circular sweep. Reba began to cry softly.
"That's all right, baby, that's all right," he soothed. "Nothing to cry about."
Oh, God, he was human after all. More than human. He showed a kindness and understanding none of the other men did. They always became angry or disgusted or disappointed or analytical as though it were a personal affront that she couldn't have an orgasm. Then, on top of her frustration, she always had their quarrels and sulks to deal with.
Damn stupid men. They could never hold out long enough.
Under the Monk's finely caressing hand, she subsided somewhat, no longer felt clogged and ready to explode.
"You're disgusted with me," she said miserably. "How come?"
"Well, because...well, I'm just a failure, I guess." She laughed uneasily. She hadn't wanted to confess anything to him.
"You just fine, baby. Full of heat. Don't you worry about it. The Monk will take care of you. Takes care of all his women."
Just another hunk of female flesh to him. He lay there, kneading her flesh, an impersonal distant look on his face. She could be anybody. He could care less.
Just an instrument he was toying with, playing on.
Chance was a better lay. That was the sad, bitter truth. A better lay than she'd ever be. Just a natural at sex. No hang-ups, no doubts, no inhibitions.
Reba flopped over on her belly, ashamed to let this , strange black man see the tears in her eyes.
It was all hopeless, just a hopeless struggle. Maybe the whole thing was a he, a farce, this jazz about womanhood and femininity and orgasms and transcendent experiences and all the rest of it. Just a whole rotten useless he. Maybe true for some people but not for her.
And that big lousy braggart, promising her the moon and giving her nothing. Now he'd probably give her up as a lost cause, too. Men always wearied of you, eventually, if you couldn't produce satisfactory orgasms to satisfy their egos.
This would probably kill his ego, or put a major dent in it anyway.
The Monk.
Stupid ass name.
Why did people professing to some intelligence and integrity and desire to be treated like somebody assume an obviously fake name like the Monk?
"Where'd you get that name? The Monk?"
'Tits my personality. In reverse." He laughed his eerie mirth.
"Been a lot of places. Done just about everything come into my mind to do. Including time, only that wasn't my idea. Was Whitey's."
"I don't get you."
"Thought I was speaking clear. Was sent up to prison. A couple of terms."
'What for?" Reba asked softly.
"Aahh, they framed me. Caught me for what a thousand guys in Harlem is doing. Peddling. Only you notice they never get the higher-ups, the real brains behind the drug racket. Always the small fry like myself pay the rap. The rest of them is protected by the police-them who aren't the police to begin with."
"Corruption."
"You said it, baby. From top to bottom of this city government. Depends on what side of the tracks you is born whether you safe from prison or not. Couple of years ago, one of the guys running for mayor was a big wheel in the drug world. That was a laugh."
"It sounds.. . sick."
"Sick, hah. It's where the money's at. That's what this nation is all about, baby."
"No. Really. We're concerned about poverty, and good housing for everybody and medical care."
"Shit," he said coolly. "Nobody's really concerned.
Not really. Except us has to do without. And we powerless to help ourselves. Today we powerless. Someday . . . " He fell into silence. And his hands began working, soft as cat's paws, on the rich fleshy curves of her back. Kneading, massaging, relaxing.
"Someday.. . what?" Reba asked breathlessly.
"Never mind. Never mind what. Only just don't never forget, you want us to be poor, rat-ridden, without enough food or opportunities. Just like people want wars and crime and cruelty. Otherwise there'd be none, according to the Christian ethic."
"I'm not Christian," she said in a small voice.
"Well, Jewish, Christian. Old Testament, New Testament. All the same thing. We is poor, baby, and stuck in those filthy tenements and without but a ray of hope to just lead up on, tantalize us into really believing you white folk really do care. Well, we been down that road of hope so many times, no use retracing our steps. We see, we wising up. And meanwhile, the Monk ain't going to be had. Ain't going to be screwed. I'll play the game along with them and have at least a fighting chance."
Reba was chilled. He sounded thoroughly heartless and unscrupulous. Maybe she'd feel the same way in his place.
And still his hands subtly and deftly smoothed the kinks out of her shoulders, her back. Knowingly but making no demands on her.
She became drowsy. Maybe he just wasn't her type. Why fret? She was tired of fretting. Her body began to feel a deep down ease, rocked slightly under the pressure of his fingertips. Sleepy, dozing, falling asleep.
The struggle given up.
When the Monk lay on top of her, her body greeted his weight with no surprise. It was almost like a mother wrapping her warmth around Reba.
She smiled to herself and snuggled under him.
His hands glided like smooth fish down her sides and flanks, his fingertips tingled at her full breasts flowing on either side, and curved up under her armpits. He rested his mouth quietly at her neck, merely breathing, his breath coming and going and riffling the nerves along her skin.
So peaceful, so warm. Wanting nothing, needing nothing. Like a baby being cradled.
His lips nuzzled at the nape of her neck, and she arched her neck to receive more.
"Mmmmmm, that feels good." Like brandy, it went on down through her deeper inner recesses. She began to be aware of the separate parts of his body, his heartbeat against her back, his belly looped over the slope of her buttocks, his genitals, heated yet soft, nested in the triangle where her crotch met her thighs.
His mouth opened and his teeth gently seized the nape of her neck. The skin of her whole back became sensitized, longed for the gentle nip of his teeth and the warm wet mouthing of his lips. She lifted her arms up around her head on the pillow. Deftly, he slid his hands under her breasts, felt for the hard stems of her nipples, rolled them between his fingers lovingly.
From the soft drag of his balls, his manhood rose into the barrel of a cannon thrusting a space between her sticky thighs. She made room for it.
His hands, under the weight of her body, slid down the ribs, explored the soft belly, the thick redolent nest of her pubic hair, and his finger skillfully caressed the tip of her nerve-rich clit.
Nice, nice, nice. She murmured in her throat, not bothering to talk or to respond.
Cleverly, he slid the head of his cock right to the juicy entrance of her sex. Unconsciously, Reba curved back her buttocks, making her sex available to him.
His full hard barrel slid up to his balls, the engorged head of his manhood nestling against her cervix.
Funny, it felt...almost...like she was a baby being fed a bottle of warm milk. Reba smiled to herself at the unexpected analogy.
His finger rubbed back and forth and around and down over her slick clitoris. The sensations bounced back and forth from her clit to her cunt, her body responding to the sexual rhythms of his hand and his prick.
Her body became accustomed to the regularity, the ebb and flow of sensations. She lay there, receptive, undemanding, content to take it all in without giving anything back.
She felt like she wanted it to go on forever, it was so pleasant, so comforting, so soothing. She sank slowly in a warm bath of sensations, gentle and deep.
Why, it wasn't even like being fucked. His cock was a live thing caressing and feeding the interior of her body. She felt her head going to sleep. Her buttocks jounced ever so slightly to the steady insistent rhythm of his body shoving in and out of hers.
She began to grunt with each little shove, her cunt laving his manhood with a stream of wetness. Her cunt awakened to a waiting feeling, waiting for each inward glide of his prick, trying to hold it as it pulled to the outer air, longing for it until it returned again, reassuringly stuffing her full. Satisfying her.
Each time it slid out of her body, almost away from her, she could have wept. She wanted it now. And again. In there. Filling.
Wanted it, wanted it, wanted it.
She held her pelvis to it, ass muscles tautened. When it left her, her cunt reached out for it, wouldn't let go, hung onto it until the last precious second.
Shove it, ram it, her mind silently commanded, and as if hearing its silent command, his prick came hard into her again, and again.
Oh, that was good, good, good, to be rocked to the very end of her channel, and beyond.
She wanted it to go on forever.
And suddenly, there was no forever.
Only now, caught frantically on the spike of now, hungering for the thick rod to ram in and hold-"Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me"-while her whole body clutched around it, squeezing every last drop of juice from it.
Gripped it with the unrelenting power of death itself, held it captive in her dark cave, rolled over it, caressed it, laved it, imprisoned it until her delight was done, over and finished.
She convoluted into her own body, into the darkness of death, losing all consciousness for a space of minutes. Feeling only as from far away, the propulsion of his jutting jet in her dark cave and the sweet silence of his prick as it continued to he there inside her, quiet and smiling, like a contented sleepy baby.
What was its name?
What was his name?
The Monk?
What was his real name behind that name? Stranger.
Get off my back, black man!
CHAPTER 10
Sue ventured beyond the confines of the college, beyond the four-story dusky brick buildings that hedged in the block-long campus, beyond the college apartments, new, brisk and wide-windowed across the boulevard.
She tunneled her way out of Brooklyn by the dark, frightful subways, a timid, pale blonde sitting with pained expression on the woven seats, her eyes shut against the terrifying roar of the trains racing underground.
She ventured as far as Greenwich Village, although she had a secret hankering to go 'way uptown to the Broadway district. That dingy crowded crossroads glittering with huge posters and signs of nudes. Nudity and sex everywhere. Pictures, books, films, massage parlors, live shows. Sex for the hungry where you could look and watch and feel and experience, one among thousands of anonymous people. She was attracted to it, drawn by it, but repelled and frightened. So she settled for Eighth Street, the heart of the fabled Greenwich Village.
She allowed herself to be pushed along with the crowd-students, drifters, working people, office clerks, seekers like herself. Jostled and shoved aside and edged off to the windows of clothing boutiques, lamp stores, tie shops, candy stores, bookstores, music shops.
The book stores fascinated her. She stumbled into them as though she had found the lost treasures of ancient Egyptian pharoahs in the tomb of Tutankhamen.
Art books, glossy and rich with photographs of palaces, ancient gold and silver jewelry, of tapestries, frescoes, paintings, of gardens, the heavens, the myriad world of vari-shaped fish and glittering plants from under the sea.
Plays, biographies of eccentric dukes and queens, artists and actresses. Novels of violence, of love, of hallucinations, of culled wisdom. Health books, sex books, philosophies from German pedants to swinging American believers in Zen Buddhism. Poetry, from the austere Greeks to the jeweled English mannerists and the modem cries of despair and small loves mixed with the smell of drugs and motorcycle grease and blood.
Riches, riches.
She spent hours there on some Saturdays, moving unobtrusively from shelf to shelf, dipping into this book and that. Enough for a lifetime of exploration. She didn't begin to have money enough to buy what her newly greedy heart desired. But, out of her strong Protestant conscience, she always left the store with a book. Maybe for one dollar or a dollar and a half. To spend as much as three dollars was a gross luxury.
She would trudge out into the sunlight, blinking as though she had indeed emerged from the dusky bowels of Tutankhamen's tomb into the shattering brilliance of an Egyptian sun.
Her mind was literally shattered by the images that attacked her, drunk on the words of poets and playwrights and novelists she had never even heard of.
Words that touched off explosion after explosion of her own words and phrases in her mind. Images that jarred, sensations that stepped over each other's feet, colors, phrases, faces, smells. She couldn't dump them out fast enough onto paper. Couldn't write that quickly, type that fast. Dozens of images were lost for every one she caught by the tail and fossilized on paper.
She spent hours in her room, scribbling poetry late at night, or typing it if it were afternoon and she had the apartment to herself.
How rare a pleasure that was. Chance was gone most of the time. Here and there. If not to class, with friends or boyfriends or a camera slung around her neck or God knows where. When she and Reba were there together, the air between them hummed and grew taut with unspoken tension. Sue sensed it and recoiled. She could not bear tension. It overloaded her already strained circuits of sensations.
Other afternoons she crept in after class, sat down at her typewriter at her desk, only to hear muffled talk behind the closed door of Reba's bedroom.
Talk and other sounds.
Fucking sounds.
Sue recognized them now for what they were. Typed loudly and furiously as though to shut them out but they crept into her ears insidiously. The movements of bodies on the groaning springs of Reba's bed, the laughs, mutters, sighs, slap of hot wet bodies, the rhythmic grunts, and Reba's muffled cries at the climax.
The sounds became mixed in with the words of her poetry, fucking sounds in the midst of her poems remembering the spare November hills of home, the white cool golden church, the high ceilinged classrooms in the college's old brick buildings, the shouts of children playing and darting about in the public playground seven stories below, beyond the parking lot for the college apartments.
Screwing sounds woven into the pictures and words of her poems-sudden dark recesses and wet tunnels, bulging thrusting space rockets that shot off fountains of glory over the scenes she painted with words.
Two, three, four, five, sometimes a half dozen poems a day. They burst out of her, short, abrupt, veiled. She neglected her studies, forgot about people.
When the Monk emerged from Reba's room, black and sleek and agile, in his ridiculous farcical clothes that were more theatrical than any circus show, Sue looked up at him curiously, as if seeing him from a far distance. He was totally unlike anyone she had ever met in her life. Totally outside her experience. A drug pusher with a jail record, so she had gathered from Reba who confided in her, in scraps, the ups and downs of her affair. Lacking the more sophisticated ear of Chance.
"Just don't tell Chance about us," Reba begged Sue to silence. Yes, but then why did her eyes glitter when she said it, and Sue get the definite impression that Chance was the first person Reba wanted to know, not the last?
Sometimes the Monk and Reba sat at the table and invited her to a cup of tea or coffee and some stale, broken pieces of cookies. Sue always looked dubiously at her cup, really scared to drink if it were a cup the Monk had drunk from. But that was crazy, yes. Drug pushers didn't pass along drug addiction by mouth, like syphihs. And yet Sue was afraid. Looked at him suspiciously.
Dark and slight. A black man. Spewed out of the novels of Harlem. She'd seen films on Harlem on TV newscasts at home, but she'd never been there. It was a mysterious land of sudden crimes and murders, of tattered-clothed black children with large staring eyes and overflowing garbage cans spilling garbage into the gutters.
Her studious curiosity about the Monk wound its way into her poetry. When she heard the fucking behind the doors, she sometimes closed her eyes, and pictured that polished black body on top of Reba's olive-skinned floppy, fleshy body. Images of Chance and Reba, belly to belly, came back unbidden, a ghost image, like double vision, repeating the first image.
Black and white. A mystery.
Were they the same, really the same?
Inside, black was as pink, and white was as pink and dark as black. The colors fascinated Sue, splashing on her neatly type-written pages, along with the images of thrust and grip, of wet and hard and dry.
She was full, so full, so full, that the real world receded from her. She pushed that so-called real world away because it interfered with the pell-mell rush of her inner visions.
But neither Reba nor Chance noticed, so wrapped up were they in their own affairs and concerns and worries. So she had freedom to flow with the riptide of her talent. Freedom for the first time in her life.
Sometimes, as though looking through the narrow tube of a kaleidoscope, she saw the years of her past-small, spare, precise, from school to church to Brownies and back again. A circumscribed world. Shut off from the incredible riches of the real world.
Kenny was a part of that.
Poor hopeless Kenny. Couldn't even bring himself to screw her right. Or at least try to. Like a real man.
Sue sat in front of her typewriter, hands folded in her lap, pondering that. And a half hour later had written a poem about it all wrapped it all up in sixteen succinct lines.
Dr. Vero stopped her after class one noon.
"The quality of your work has fallen down."
"Yes." She stood there meekly, hanging onto an armful of college texts.
"Is that all you have to say? Aren't you concerned?"
She lifted her gaze from counting the black hairs on the back of his hands, hands busily shoveling pencils and pens and papers from one disarrayed pile to another.
"Why should I be concerned?" She stared him clearly in the face.
"Well, I thought your grades meant something to you. You have talent. Writing talent. You don't want to let that slip."
"I have been writing."
"What?" The question popped out of him with more interest than he wished to show. "Poetry." She stared at his hands again. "May I see it?" he asked softly, seductively. "You may."
"I was...afraid you had been sick, were suffering from some kind of over-study or nervous tension."
"Why did you think that?"
"Well, because you were away from class several days after...the private consultation about your novel in my office."
"Yes."
"You were sick?" She nodded briefly.
"Upset? By me perhaps? I was too...abrupt in...my opinions?"
She shook her head in the negative, lifting her clear gaze up to his face again.
His black eyes were bulging, his face was flushed, fleshed out, his nose, somehow, oddly, thickened. Unconsciously, he moved a couple of inches closer to her, until their heads almost touched across the comer of his desk.
"I'm glad. You have a...marvelous talent. Clear, true. Deep. So deep that ordinary men might not discover it. Might not have the patience to find it, dig it out, reveal it. I can do that for you, Sue." His voice was a lover's voice.
Head still lowered, Sue gazed boldly at his pants. Yes.
"Will you...let me help you, Sue?"
She smiled to herself, an innocent Alice-in-Wonderland smile, the hot sticky fluid gumming between her thighs.
'Yes," she said softly.
"In my office? At three this afternoon?"
Oh, yes, yes, yes. She could scarcely wait.
At three she appeared at his office door. He drew her into the darkened room, his hand latched on her dainty arm swathed in the long-sleeved dress of wheaten colored wool.
Sue perceived him in the dimly lit room, the Venetian blinds drawn against the encroachment of the lessening day. He was like a huge, swollen, hairy spider. Bulging, bloated with some mysterious force, potency, poisonous liquid, ready to seize her in his hairy hands, rend her flesh delicately with his strong white teeth.
Dr. Vero.
Rapist of purity.
Murderer of the innocence of young girls.
Fascinated, she let herself be almost dragged to the leather chair she had sat in so few weeks before. He sat down at his desk, facing her. A dark flush rose up under his dark-stubbled cheeks, as his eyes roved boldly over her mild curves in her knit dress.
Sue stared back frankly, not even remotely discombobulated. Curious, yes. Eager, yes. Ready, yes. Frightened? No.
Her eyes roved as frankly and slowly over him, sensing the thick, dark bulk of him under his neatly ironed pale blue shirt and conservatively narrow, darker blue tie.
He was a bulk of a man. A man. Not a stretched out, timid, naive lad like Kenny.
"Sue. Little Sue. What have you been writing since I saw you last?"
"Poetry."
"Ah, poetry. The refuge of fresh unsophisticated minds."
"Why are you sneering at me, Dr. Vero? It's good poetry."
'Was I sneering, my child? I was unaware of it. I meant no insult. You know I regard your talent highly."
"Then I expect you to be respectful. Otherwise I shall not show you my poetry of any of my other writings." Her face was as shiny as a Christmas bauble. She added, her voice dropping a few notes, darkening like the deep blue winter twilight. "And I shall not come to your office again."
A sudden look of fear went across his features, blanching them, and was as suddenly gone.
He reached out a hand, the black hairs on the back almost standing at attention. "Ah, you wouldn't do that to me, Sue, would you? We understand one another," he said caressingly. His hand smoothed her knitted dress tenderly down the slope of her rather child-like thigh.
Sue sat transfixed, straight-backed. The loveliest feeling followed the line of his hand. The loveliest feeling. Her body began to loosen, feel all downy like a satiny quilt. Her breasts, her arms, her thighs softened. Yearned for him.
Dr. Vero smiled, his full sensual lips pulling back from his square man-teeth. "Well, Sue," he said briskly. 'Let us see what you have written since our last conference. I expect some kind of...improvement, some kind of development, of...maturity." He laughed, almost gaily, and it came out a growl in his heavy throat.
Sue carefully unclasped the large tan manila folder on top of her stack of college texts. With fingers so pale they seemed carved of ivory, she withdrew a sheaf of papers and laid them gently on her professor's desk top.
Almost automatically, he grabbed her fingers in a tight grip. Those hands," he muttered. "Remember . . . "
She remembered. Remembered the exact feel of his huge, throbbing manhood clasped in her hand, rubbed up and down.
"Please, Dr. Vero, don't crush my manuscripts. It takes so long to type them.. .
"Yes, yes, yes. Naturally. I didn't mean to crumple them, my child. Now let us see what we have here."
Frowning in concentration, his face focused on the white sheets of paper, some covered from top to bottom with thickly worded poems; others contained a few chicken feet of words, unevenly spaced lines.
Sue watched him intently, every flicker of expression across his face. There were few, so few. Far less than she needed. She began to be tense, anxious. Perhaps she had overestimated herself, her own talent. Perhaps it was all trash. All those hot, fervid hours at the typewriter or with pen working late at night under a single bulb lamp were merely the grandiose wanderings of her small, little egocentric mind.
All waste, trash, garbage.
God, maybe she was a nothing after all.
Ten, fifteen minutes ticked by.
She began to go leaden in the deep leather chair, began to despair. Began to feel like a fool spread out-her soul spread out on paper-in front of this very important, very learned man who had seen so many students come and go in his courses, so many little talents flicker out and die in the strong, uncaring winds of real life.
She felt hung out over a deep abyss, waiting for his criticism. His eyes, hot, black and shiny, traversed the lines, paused here and there and she could almost see him mouth the words to himself, repeat lines and phrases in his head.
He had almost forgotten she existed. His thick hands, with a deftness that surprised her, turned the pages one by one. That simple crackle was almost the only sound in his paneled office. Once or twice, reading the very amorous poems, his tongue ringed around his blood lips and he shot her a glance, penetrating and thick.
She took, received it, with a sense of fear in her gut. She glanced down at her ivory hands folded neatly in her lap, like the pale, ethereal hands of a Madonna.
She began to shake all around the perimeter of her skin. It had all been a mistake; she should never have shown him the poems, revealing her inmost dark, naked desires.
Dr. Vero read and reread the final page three times, then thoughtfully stacked the sheaf of poems neatly together, his hands lining up the edges meticulously. He stared at the top of his desk, faraway, his eyes shifting thoughtfully as though he were working something deep in his head.
Sue sat upright, her body visibly shaken by each jolt of her anxious heart.
"You're a poet," he said simply. 'You are a real poet."
The blood shot up out of her caged heart in one tremendous volcanic spurt and gushed throughout her body, flaming through her face, her breasts, her torso.
He meant it. He was sincere. He was earnest. He was, even, just a mite envious. He was no longer speaking to her as professor to pupil, as predatory male to victimized female, but as person to person.
She was...a poet. A writer. An artist. For real.
The thought was so new to her she turned it over and over in her mind like a rare medallion, hugged it to her bosom.
She was no longer Just Sue Stilson, odd girl, high-strung female, crazy one out, neurotic, pathologically shy.
She was a poet. Yes.
But she had known it all along. All through those lonely years of being misunderstood by her peers, coddled by her parents like some sickly hen that wouldn't lay eggs properly.
There was nothing wrong with her at all. Nothing. Her difference was that she was a creator. That was all.
A blessed difference.
She wouldn't exchange it for all the world's so-called normality.
"Am I...really good?" she asked in wonderment, testing him, testing the reality of it again.
He could not look her in the face. "You are...exceptional." He trusted himself to look at her then and she smiled, radiant. Impulsively, he reached out, turning his swivel chair, and clasped her two hands, no longer pale and cool, in his moist palms.
"You are going to make a reputation. You have the stuff. There's nothing shallow or faddish or coy in your poetry. It's not cheaply contemporary of shocking for the sake of sensationalism. It's very rough-hewn in spots, which is surprising, because you are such a delicate, sensitive woman." He flushed suddenly, caught off center. "But there's a toughness to it." He hitched his chair closer, and he became suffused with a dark, blood quality. "And there's sensuality to it. A deep-running sensuality. The imagery, not so disguised as in your novel, is richly...sexual." His hand moved from hers, ran with deep caresses over her arm.
A lush garden of sensations prickled through her skin. He breathed heavily, drawing her like a restless bee to the heavy nectar of his aroused sexuality. His hair, dark and shiny, each strand separate and alive, was close to her face, so close she could just unbend a couple inches and lean her cheek against it.
The touch unloosed the professor from his role. His hands reached out, roamed over the two tiny mounds of her breasts, hung high on her slight chest under the knit dress.
Sue groaned, her head rolling back on her neck, her body hanging limp as a rag doll's.
"Sue, Sue, Sue," Dr. Vero's full lips murmured against her ear, under the veil of her silky blonde hair. "You're beautiful. Fragile. A fragile vessel filled to the brim with sex. That cool skin. I'll bet it's hot underneath, hot deep inside where no one can see, no one can get at you. Virginal, passionate Sue."
His hands gripped her harshly, mashed her breasts, ravaged her hips and belly, poked at the indentation of her skirt, and frustrated by the wool and slip and garter belt and panties hiding her delicious treasures, finally plunged up under the skirt and ravaged the sanctity of her naked sex.
His blunt fingers found the honey moisture of her small, neat sex, hidden in the thicket of her hair. His knuckles pressed against her satin membranes roughly, cruelly, and she groaned, flinging her arms around his broad, heavy shoulders, while her wetness poured out over his fingers.
She loved the smell of him, a lemony shaving lotion, and his sleek hair, full cheek, thick fingers, solid muscles. A huge man to hang onto, be drowned in, crushed under.
Timidly, her hands began to explore his back, the thick, wide musculature.
His mouth sought hers, opened and devoured hers. For moments she was overwhelmed, her mouth drenched with sensations and disconnected from the rest of her body which faded away from awareness. Then her shy lips began to sense a life of their own. She rubbed her lips on his, sucked on his lower hp, played cat and mouse with his tongue.
The sweet soft runnings of her pelvis flowed down over his fingers, soaked them, while he slid over the quivering nakedness of her sex.
"Sweet, sweet, sweet," he muttered against her mouth. "Sue, Sue, take off these damn clothes. I've got to see that lovely little girl body of yours. Damn it, you're driving me crazy."
"Undress?" She was alarmed. "But...I can't. It's your office. There's no privacy," she stammered.
"The door's locked. Besides, it's late. No one comes in this time in the afternoon. I didn't plan to see anybody but you this afternoon, Sue. God, I've been longing for you, dreaming about this, since that last time."
"But why? Why me?" She was puzzled.
His hand slid down from her dripping sex, clutched at her inner thigh. "My God, this firm ripe flesh. Virginal Sue. Dripping and ripe. Waiting to be fucked. Aren't you, Sue? Aren't you? Aren't you?" He murmured over and over.
"Aren't I what?" She was hypnotized, her small lips partly open, breathing into his ear.
"Waiting to be fucked. Say it. Say it."
"I can't."
"You can. You don't want to."
"I.. . really.. . can't. It's...not my word."
"Every word is your word. Mistress of words. Fuck.
Cunt. Cock. Your poetry says them all...in other words...but says them all." His hands skillfully unmapped her garters from her stockings, rolled down the fine mesh of stocking, pushing up the constricting materials girdling her warm slight belly. "Stand up, Sue."
She obeyed. She was not too much shorter than he but she was lost in his breadth, his immensity.
He bent briefly, rolled her spongy knit dress up over her long slender torso. Obediently she held up her arms and he pulled it off and over her head, dropped it carelessly into the leather chair behind her. Her nylon slip, her small-cupped laced bra, went the same way. Garter belt and stockings were dropped to the floor until she stood in front of him, a carven, shy maiden. Her clear blue eyes searched his face, waiting expectantly.
He moved back a foot. His face went white and then as his eyes caressed each smallest part of her, flushed and swelled again. "My God, my God, you're so perfect." He moved closer, his heavy man's hand reached out and with surprising gentleness took the slightness of her tender ivory breast and hefted it.
"Perfect, beautiful," he murmured. "A small Juicy pear." Swiftly, he stooped and brought his wet open mouth to her nipple. Her flesh chilled, leaped back, startled from the intimacy.
His mouth closed over the nipple, a hungry man-child feeding at her silent teat. He mouthed it, nipped it, sucked it, his breath flowing out and over the breast, warming it to life and responsiveness.
Sue's hand spread on the back of his sleek head, held it closer to her body. Through clenched teeth, she moaned.
Dr. Vero stood up, pulled her slight body against his fully clothed one, slid his hands luxuriously down her narrow back and flanks, around the deep fullness of her ass.
Mashed up against him, she felt the prowling jut of his manhood. His pelvis moved, thrusting it against her rhythmically. She wanted it, oh, she wanted it embedded in her.
Dr. Vero, fuck me, fuck me; the words echoed strangely in the chamber of her inner mind.
He tore loose from her. "Come here," he said thickly, and led her to the darkened corner of his office, on the other side of three high sets of filing cabinets. He had a small loveseat partially hidden there.
"Lie down," he ordered.
Quiet as a child, she lay down on her back, awkwardly curved in the small loveseat, her heels up on the far arm. Her hands automatically folded over the sienna erect nipples of her breasts. Her blonde hair lay strewn about a velvety cushion propped against the other arm, her back slanted on two tapestried pillows. Fascinated, she watched Dr. Vero drop his pants and his undershorts and walk towards her, almost led by his thick purple rod pointing at her.
He stopped, poised it over her reclining head. She stared up at it, amazed. Could such a hard round cylinder really penetrate without damaging her delicate tissues? She shuddered at the fear of pain and blood.
"Touch me, Sue."
She raised her hand, clasped it around the blooded living vulnerability of his weapon. It jolted into her hand. She clasped it tightly, watching the engorged head turn purple. Dr. Vero shut his eyes, bending toward her grip.
"That's it, that's it," he urged her on.
She wanted it close to her, in her, filling her. He shoved it closer to her.
"Suck it, Sue," he commanded.
No.
That was dirty. Bizarre. Perverted.
He pressed it up against her lips. She tried to push him away, turned her face aside. He knelt down on the carpet and ran his tongue over her bare breast, tingled the teat, licked the puckering of her navel. His fingers dove into the tight little triangle of her crotch.
She cried out.
"Suck me, Sue."
Closing her eyes, she curled into a semi-circle, facing him. This time when he forced his threatening manhood against her lips, she opened her mouth to receive it. He slid it in, his fingers at the corners of her lips, feeling his prick plugging up her mouth. For a second, she felt as if she'd gag on it
"Take it in, all the way in," he crooned, his black bulging eyes above her, gleaming on the horizon of her consciousness.
No, it was too huge. It would choke her.
He slid it in and out slowly, his hand groping for and finding her child-like breast kneading the nipple tightly and rhythmically. The pleasure shot down to her most secret part, and she had the strangest desire to draw him into her secret lair, hold him there with the clutch of her thickening sex lips, hide him there, contain him, suck him dry.
Her mouth began to mimic the secret unexpressed desires of her cunt. She sucked along his cock as he shoved it in and out, licking it mouthing it, biting it teasingly, as though it were a large, ice-cold, tempting popsicle.
Skillfully, overcoming her surface timidity, her mouth and tongue wetted his vulnerable manhood to unusual delights and sensations. Once she bit the head, just as it pulled to the edge of her lips, too hard, and he swore bitterly. She turned it into an intense sucking and his whole body lurched toward her as he groaned and grunted and uttered weird cries of pleasure.
With the tip of her tongue, she could turn this sexual Machiavellian into her slave. Her eyes open, she watched his pelvis lurch toward her and away, toward her and away, at the command of her swollen lips. She felt the soft heat of his balls up against her mouth, tasted the sea-salty flavor of his manhood, and her body began to crave him, rock toward him, search for invasion by that savage, unrelenting prick.
God, how she wanted him, wanted him, needed him, craved him. She tried to pull him down on top of her; he protested, "Oh, no, you she-devil, you're not getting me to take that sweet virginity of yours. Let me feel that little bud of a breast. Move closer, Sue, shove that ass of yours as close to me as you can get. Let me feel that sweet hot soaking virgin cunt of yours. Oooohhh, that's it, that's it. You've never had a man's fingers up here, have you?"
Sue shook her head, her teeth in a bite near the very root of his manhood. She was beginning to lose consciousness, to lose sense of who she was, where she was. Cock and cunt. That's all they were, all that existed in the universe.
Finger-cock, slipping over the wet sensitivity of her brooding, nested sex, cock in her mouth, drowning in the saliva-gentle membranes.
Driving, driving, driving.
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
Her center was all dark and mysterious and filled with a savage need; her perimeter lit in silver and frightening flashes. Her mind dissolved and her body thrashed for fulfillment.
"You wild bitch!" She heard Dr. Vero's mocking, exulting voice above her, a thousand miles away.
Her body lunged out off the sofa, after him, just as his prick jolted its way deep into her mouth, jetting there, choking her. She coughed, turned her head aside, and was faintly aware of him pulling out his prick as her body heaved up into darkness, looking for it, wanting it.
Something warm and sticky hit her on the side of her mouth, hit her again on the bare, stretched nubbin of her tit. Wildly, her hands searched in mid air for that exlusive thing, that gorgeous cylindrical, soul-satisfying, body-satisfying thing that eluded her-always eluded her.
The professor groaned on a long intake of breath, his hand crushing down on her twisting shoulder as another jet leaped out of the air and onto her quivering belly.
Her pelvis bucked upward, searching, gasping. Some terrible, tremendous whirlwind had seized her, was whirling her about and about. She sensed that prick hovering over her, held in Dr. Vero's hand, jetting its precious juices down her naked body. Her head flung back and she was surprised to hear her own laughter bubble up-a muted, exultant laughter. Her hand caressed the length of her body, her palm wiped up the thick, small puddles of male sex juice and, fingers dripping with the mysterious, potent substance, she shoved them shamelessly into her sucking cunt.
Her cunt drew her fingers in, lapped greedily with a powerful sweep of muscle.
The tremors went even through the fleshy mound of her pubis, throbbing under the palm of her hand.
The throbs slowly diminishing, drying, dying.
Dr. Vero pitched across her frail body, his fist still wrapped about his manhood, now leaking a long, weak trickle that smeared on her belly. His fist gouged into her tender belly, and as she came back to existence on earth, her wild laugh still in her ears, Sue felt his manhood, a weak little creature now, withdrawing timidly and by degrees back into his fist.
CHAPTER ll
Sue drifted into the little cellar health foods store out of curiosity. Her college texts were clutched on her arm, her manila envelope of poems carefully atop the stack. Under her wool knit, her body felt quiet, bemused, wrapped in a cocoon of serenity.
She moved slowly from barrel to barrel, filled with strange seeds, kernels, grains. Brown, polished, beige, dark red. Beautiful in the dusky staved barrels in the dimly lit basement store, just a half flight down from the sidewalk.
It was a store Reba and Chance frequented, buying strange dark heavy breads, wizened unsprayed prunes, oily polished seeds. Sue felt these dark, heavy foods would overload her delicate stomach, damage her digestion.
But now she felt oddly drawn to the grains and nutmeats. With her free hand, she thoughtfully let the grains and seeds drain through her fingers like sand. Yes, they were beautiful. So rich and dark and full of character, so unlike the white, super-refined grains and breads she had been brought up on.
She moved dreamily from barrel to shelves to refrigerated food cases. Other students came and went, men with hair down to their shoulders and slightly wild eyes. Girls with unburdened breasts flopping in their blouses; earth mothers-to-be, unadorned, foursquare, sexual without being coy.
Sue soaked up impressions through her skin. Curiously, she held a plastic bag containing a substance called Granola. Yes, Reba and Chance often ate it for breakfast. Wheat flakes and seeds and finely shredded coconut. She ground the bag between her fingers, smiling as she did so, remembering abruptly the nutty, meaty richness of Dr. Vero's prick.
She went to the counter to pay for her purchase. Granola. It even sounded romantic. Gritty and flavorful to the teeth.
"Sue."
She turned her head slowly, blinking. Cocked her head to one side, birdlike. "Sue."
"Yes. Oh. Joel."
"You act as if you'd forgotten me."
"No, I remember you." She neatly placed the bag of cereal on top of her books and turned to go. Joel paced alongside her, tall, reaching up almost out of sight in the low-ceilinged store.
"I haven't been to your place in quite a while," he said with a short embarrassed laugh. "I wouldn't be surprised if you'd forgotten me."
She shook her head.
"You and somebody else." His face darkened. "Reba?"
"Yes. How.. . is she?"
They walked up the stone steps to the street. Sue frowned, tinkered with the answers in her head. She didn't quite know how to feel her way around this intricately enmeshed relationship.
"Reba's...all right."
"Missing me?" He blurted out. Then, "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I guess it's no longer any of my business."
"No."
He walked in silence beside her for a couple of yards, trying to shorten his stride to match her even, dainty steps.
"Does that mean...she's interested in someone else? Another man?"
Sue cast about in her mind, again trying to fish for and dredge up the right answer.
Finally, she said slowly, "I think she is."
"Damn." Joel's brows pulled together darkly over his intensely blue eyes. "That means she's sleeping with someone else."
Sue said nothing to deny or contradict. Of course, that was Reba, liberal, liberated, unrepressed. To be interested in a man was automatically to go to bed with him.
Sue watched thoughtfully the tips of her suede tan shoes as they scuffed through the dusty, paper-marred sidewalk.
"Who is he?" Joel blurted out again.
"I.. . can't describe him."
"Okay, okay, I'm being nosy; I have no right to. She's no longer any of my business. That was her decision, not mine."
No, I didn't mean that, Sue continued her line of thoughts in her head. She meant, literally, it was impossible to describe the Monk, or Montgomery, or whatever that strange little black creature's name was. He was a caricature of a human being.
"Is he a decent guy at least? Reliable?"
Sue gazed at Joel sideways, through the protective veil of her blonde hair glinting in the late November sun. The truth or a helpful white he? She hesitated a moment, than shook her head in the negative.
"Damn. Damn. That's what I was afraid of. Oh, that stupid, crazy woman. She's so mature on the outside, but mixed up inside. She's got no good judgment when it comes to men. She needs someone who's stronger than she is and not out to use her. Damn.
Just to prove she's feminine, she'll make herself submissive to some no-good wretch out to take advantage of her. Damn. And there's nothing I can do to help her. Nothing from a distance."
Sue looked at Joel speculatively. Why, he sounded as if he cared about Reba, really cared what happened to her. From all their bed noises and fights in the single bedroom of the college apartment they shared, Sue had always thought he was just out for his selfish sexual needs.
Well, there was nothing she could do. She was no Cupid. She didn't intend to get mixed up in other people's lives. She had enough trouble figuring out her own. She shrugged and her mind drifted back to a half hour ago. Was it so recently as that? That she was writhing, naked, under the sudden weight of Dr. Vero's body as his manhood spat out a drying rhythm on her bare belly?
So recent and yet already moving into the interior cave of her memories to be stored there, fingered curiously, studied, and ultimately worked somehow, in a way she could not possibly foresee, into some poem or story, fragment or novel.
She walked in silence with Joel, now far from him and his concerns. Curious. Perhaps he even loved Reba in his own limited man's way.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked finally.
"Nothing, Damn it, that's the trouble. There's nothing you or anyone else can do. And I can't go barging in on her when I'm not wanted, I'm afraid. That's the trouble. Afraid she'll bring harm on herself and nobody will be able to stop her."
Did he really care? Yes, he really seemed to care deeply. She was disturbed and put the feeling out of her mind quickly.
"Well," she said vaguely. "I'll keep it in mind. If I have the opportunity, and if she needs help, I'll do what I can."
"Thanks," he said miserably.
A half block later, he veered off in another direction. Sue barely noted his departure.
Her mind was full, so full. Her body bemused.
She opened the door to her college apartment. Silence. Empty. Sue slipped her stack of books off her arm and onto the Formica tabletop serving as desk, parallel to her bed. Chance slept on the bed on the other side of the high book shelves above the table surface, the shelves serving as room divider. As usual, Chance was out. Somewhere. In class. In the darkroom. Prowling the infinitude of city streets in search of the photographable. Or gregariously, hanging out with friends in the library, at the Night Owl.
Seldom here. And when she was, an inexplicable tension between her and Reba. Sue's head throbbed. She didn't want to think about it. She sat down on the edge of her neatly made up bed, flopped back onto the pillow, kicking off her slippers and putting her stockinged feet on the white chenille spread tufted with little pink rose-like clusters.
She plucked at them absent-mindedly. A bedspread out of childhood's own girlish dreams, fragile and pink-white and improbably romantic.
She heard low voices seep under the closed bedroom door. Reba and the Monk. An improbably non-romantic attachment. The attachment of the strange, the unlikely, the grotesque.
Sue closed her eyes, drifting into a mindless state halfway between wakefulness and sleep. Heard the rollicking, raging, teasing, giggling, gurgling sounds of fucking seep under the closed bedroom door.
She smiled, listening to the sounds with pleasure, feeling herself sink into the dream of their actuality, until it was herself and Dr. Vero in their dark, powerful, intense sexual struggle. Not Reba and the Monk-the light and the dark playing with each other. But her blonde self and the black-haired professor. Tangled. Mutually bound by their differences. Male and female. Pursuer and pursued.
She let the springy sounds of fucking close over her like water, roll over her like waves, lap against her with warm sensuality.
She was three-quarters asleep when she heard the key in the lock and a startled pair of footsteps halt on the threshold.
And then the door slammed. Sue shot up off the pillow with a little scream.
Chance looked at her with mixed annoyance and astonishment. "Sorry, I didn't mean to terrify you. I just thought I heard the sounds of screwing."
"You do," Sue said quietly and fell back, rigid as a log, on her bed.
"What?" Chance was startled, by her frank response, into laughter. "Oh. If it's not you, it must be Reba and some guy. I thought she and Joel had split permanently." Chance walked past Sue's cubicle to her own section of the living room near the window. She un-slung her camera from her neck.
"It's Reba and some guy," Sue said drowsily. It was quite easy to contemplate them, even talk about them calmly to Chance, now that she'd experienced what it was all about. Or almost all about.
"Who?" Chance asked, bored.
"Some strange kind of fellow called the Monk."
"The Monk." Chance froze.
"The Monk," she repeated the name, her voice welling up with spite and fury.
Sue opened her eyes, stared curiously at Chance, whose dark handsome face was twisted into a queer bundle of emotions.
"Stupid son of a bitch, I should have known.
Known he'd find a way to get back at me. He always does." Chance jerked her gadget bag off her shoulder, flung it onto her bed.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Sue was wide-eyed now, watching her roommate stalk about the tiny space with the caged fury of a tigress.
"Oh, forget it, Sue. Lie down. Go back to napping. It's too complicated to go into anyhow."
Sue lay down again, sensing Chance had no intention of explaining further. Chance stomped about the room in her high, narrow, black crinkle-leather boots. But her stomps didn't shut out the bed-rocking rhythm coming from the bedroom, the low moans and gasps and quickened breathing.
"Jesus, I wish to hell they'd get it over with," Chance muttered between her teeth. "There's nothing worse than listening to the sounds of someone else's fuck."
"You never minded before," Sue said sleepily, surprised at her own audacity.
"Who asked you to comment, Miss Ladybug? I'm talking to myself, see, and I'd just as soon you kept your opinions to yourself."
Sue did and didn't see. If Chance didn't want publicly expressed comment, she could damn well keep her mouth shut.
"Lousy bastard," Chance rammed open a couple of drawers and slammed them shut with unnecessary emphasis. "If he's not going to fuck up my life one way, he's bound to do it another. Can't shake that case of bad luck loose. Jesus, I've got to get rid of him some way or other."
Sue squeezed her eyes shut. Between the anger and the screwing, it was impossible to sink down into her emotions, capture the rich passion of the afternoon she had shared with Dr. Vero. It all seemed so far away somehow, a dark, glowering scene of passion in a sugar-spun Easter egg. She sighed heavily.
The sweaty, bouncing sounds of fuck abruptly stopped, and a few minutes later, the Monk sauntered out of the bedroom, followed by a blowsy-haired Reba, chunky in levis and a loose embroidery-trimmed peasant blouse.
The Monk spotted Chance first on the far side of the 'living" room, her Afro proud and haughty as she paced the boxed-in area.
"Chance. Baby. You look really funky in that outfit. But then you always was a sexy looking broad." The Monk grabbed at Reba as she drifted into the room, stood behind her, clasping his hands just under the flop of her ample bosom.
A couple of rolls of film in small red oblong boxes skittered past his ear and hit the front door.
Reba shrieked.
"That's all right, honey. Don't you be scared," the Monk crooned into her ear, his black face with the goggled eyes almost completely concealed behind her leonine mass of hair. "Chance has a wicked temper. A mean spirit. You got to know how to handle it."
"Oh, shit on you, Monty. Why don't you cut the crap! I mean, cut it. I've bad it up to here with you over the years. Quit haunting me." There was a note of anguish mixed with the outrage in Chance's near guttural voice.
"Why, baby, you just jealous. Green-eyed with it, that's all." The Monk's hands squeezed tighter, sheltered by the overhang of Reba's breasts under her translucent white blouse.
A wicked amused light lit up Reba's tawny eyes with the gleam of repressed fire.
She was enjoying it, enjoying Chance's pain,, Sue noted. Sue shuddered. How could people tear each other apart so?
Chance strode across the narrow corridor separating her from Reba and the Monk, stationed near the kitchen. She passed Sue's bed as though Sue didn't even exist.
She confronted her roommate and her ex-lover, tall body bent, shaking an enraged martial finger in their faces. The Monk flinched.
"Now you listen. You just listen to me, Monty. I could care less what you do. Except don't go around hurting innocent people who can't see through your low rotten soul. Like Reba here. Why don't you do us all a favor and get the hell out of here. For permanent!"
The Monk rocked Reba back and forth, a shield in front of him. "Oh baby, you just jealous. Jealous 'cause you ain't got it no more. Some other woman has it."
'Who the hell wants it?" Chance roared in their faces. Reba's hands came up and out like claws.
'Who wants your stupid big prick anyhow," Chance continued. Sue put her hands over her ears, lay back on her pillow whimpering.
"Yes, stupid big prick." Chance put back her head and howled up to the ceiling like a wounded animal pretending mirth. "That's what you are, Monty. That's all you are. Always hiding behind a woman. First your mother. Than me and other women. Hundreds of them. Now Reba, here. Hiding in them, I should say. Burying your big mindless prick in us like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand. Because he can't cope with the world."
"You just jealous, 'cause I don't put it in you no more." The Monk leaned his thin face over Reba's shoulder, spat the words at Chance. "Oh, Reba, honey, this Chance is just blind, raging jealous 'cause you've got what I won't give her no more."
Chance lunged for him and Reba slipped out of the way, her eyes widening into fear as well as with lust of combat.
"I don't want it no more, Monty, can't you und stand that?" Chance raked her fingernails across his face. His black fingers went up, touched the three stripes with awe, came away red-tipped. "I never did want it-any of your self-centered, evil, degrading . . . " degrading . . . "
The Monk stood there, eyes inscrutable behind the huge dark glasses, a smirk on his dark lips. "Oh, baby, how you wanted it," he crooned. "I couldn't give it to you fast enough, shove it up far enough, hard enough.. . . "
Chance hurled her tall self on him with a bloodcurdling shriek. "Can't you see? You deaf, dumb, and blind? Sex, sex, sex. That's all you think about. Sex and peddling drugs and stupid sniveling conniving crimes that are beneath contempt. Can't you see what I'm driving at? There's something more to life, Monty. Something more than clawing your way deeper into the ghetto like an ignorant ape."
"Oh, shut up, Chance." Reba thrust herself forward, heavy bosom first. "What are you flagellating this man for? The Monk's not a bad guy, he just hasn't had the right breaks."
"What would you know about it?" Chance stared at her slowly. Sue peered at the scene, her Alice-in-Wonderland eyes blue, stretched beyond the rims. "Stop it, stop it, all of you," she said desperately. But nobody heard her.
"I know plenty," Reba said. "Are you trying to put me down, Chance, the same way you keep putting the Monk down? Big, powerful, castrating, righteous black momma-that the part you're playing, Chance?" There was the hint of a sneer on her face.
"He's a bummer, can't you see that, Reba? Can't you see a simple reality like that? Or are you cloaked up to the ears in some kind of hberal, educated crap."
"I believe everybody's got some good in them. Lots of good until a bad environment squeezed it out of them, warps them."
"Crap, crap, crap!" Chance screamed in Reba's face.
"Oh, stop it, stop it, please, I'm going to be sick," Sue gagged, frozen to her bed.
"I got out of it. Clean. Why can't he, the lousy son of a bitch?" Chance jabbed her finger into the Monk's face. He nearly bit the tip of it off.
"You got out of it, yeah? Want me to tell Reba how well you got out of it? How clean? Talking me down! What about you spreading your cunt in photographs from one end of the country to the other?"
"That's different."
"Is it?" The Monk smiled a twisted smile, knew he had her now. "What's different about it? Just a high-class form of prostitution for wet dreams of Whitey."
"It's different," Chance's voice wavered. "Different, I tell you, different." She began to sob in desperation, grabbing him by the jacket, shaking him.
Sue sat bolt upright. "Shut up," she screamed, starting low like a siren and spiraling upward. "You're all pouring manure on me. Hot, live manure. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
They stared at her in awe in abrupt silence. The animal tension charged the air. Was Sue tipping over finally into madness?
CHAPTER 12
The world was a drizzle; a gray sky; a puddle of umber and black with silver highlights; a foggy muffled sound. A quietness.
The Christmas season. Season of birth and hope and red-crested merriment.
And the rain dripped down the trunks of bare trees, down the slide and the monkey bars in the playground, over the few cars in the college parking lot below the apartments.
Chance, wrapped in her peach-colored towel, stared through the lattice of the Venetian blinds. It was a gloomy day, halfway between Christmas and New Year's.
Chance drew her towel closer against a sudden chill from deep inside her. The rough terry felt good against her naked brown skin.
There was no merriment inside her; only a mirror image of the rain-drizzled world outside.
Christmas was just a memory, a quick glimpse of a fat conical Christmas tree glistening with silver rain, and her son, Darryl, a chocolate brown, black-eyed somber little chap with a heart-breaking flash of a smile for his favorite Aunt Chance. Edith was a protective, conscientious mother, and her husband, Sam, a stolid father. Darryl had a good home but it wasn't the home Chance would have given him-a home bright with sudden laughter and sudden tears.
But then, she had no home to give him. Had no home of her own. Grandma Tucker had been at Edith's house for Christmas dinner. And their mother, Elizabeth, fragile-tough Elizabeth. A winner-loser, teetering on the brink. Chilling her pain with quick gulps of wine whenever the family's attention was caught elsewhere.
Sister Edith was the most like Grandma Tucker-her feet firmly planted in the solid middle-class virtues of the whites. And me, Chance thought with a shiver, under the skin, I'm like Momma. Torn, torn, torn, a rift wide enough for a jet plane to fly through right down the middle of my soul.
Where am I going? What do I want?
"Chance. Why are you standing alone at the window?" a deep sleepy voice asked from the bed-Reba's bed. "Come here. I want you."
Yes, Chance thought with a wry smile. They all want me the same way.
Men!
Men! Men! Men!
Reluctantly, Chance turned and an indefinite smile flickered on her troubled face.
Mitch did not smile back. His face was clear, untroubled, his hair a springy curl of copper against the yellow pillow case. He lifted up the blankets invitingly as Chance dropped her towel to the floor.
Men!
Chance stared down at him, trying to fathom him. What did this new lover want of her, expect of her? They had been lovers only two days, since Reba went home to her family further into Brooklyn and Sue had gone upstate, almost wired together visibly against the dissolution that seemed to be threatening her very existence and being.
Chance felt drained, empty. So many people wanted-pulled her feelings out of her with greedy, sharp-nailed claws. So few gave back.
She slid under the covers, catching a glimpse of Mitch's chest, the matted hair amber-golden-copper against the heavy-soft chest muscles, and the matching hair a rug for his genitals fallen in peaceful disarray.
Chance lay her cheek on the arm he stretched out to her across her pillow and let herself be pulled against him, so deliciously warm and sweet-smelling from sleep. She slipped her lithe polished leg between his well-muscled thighs, feeling the soft crush of his genitals against her upper thigh.
"You look so sad." His hand brushed quietly at her cheek and in the corner of her mouth. His eyes were blue with tenderness.
Chance closed her eyes, the long black lashes a thick curtain against the tears that suddenly welled up. She lay wordlessly for a moment or two, trying to compose herself.
Sad?
There were times when her flesh felt ripped and torn and bleeding, pierced with pain. She quivered inside. She wanted to forget those times, not to feel them ever again. Too many times. The lightning tension between her mother and Grandma Tucker. The emptiness that entered in when Grandpa Tucker died. The Monk torturing her slowly, using her flesh, fingering out the weak spots in her soul and making brutal entry there. The lonely birth of her son, Darryl. She squeezed her eyes, forcing back the painful feelings until they retreated deep inside her, lay down, were still again. At least for a little while. An hour. A day. A month.
"Maybe it's the season," Chance said lightly.
Mitch continued caressing her face and her hair with his hand. "Sometimes sadness is worse in the happy seasons," he agreed.
"Mmmmmm."
Chance lay quietly, soaking up the warmth of his caressing hand. He was comforting to her. She tucked herself in closer to him. Inside, she melted. She permitted herself to feel like a child, a mothered child, a cradled child, a nurtured child.
Her limbs, her arms, her body, her hands went limp. Mitch pulled her closer. "You're a mystery," he murmured. "I have a feeling you won't let me close to you."
"Mmmmmmm."
Chance reached into the little cozy nest of their entwined thighs, felt for the soft, limp bundle of his genitals. She hung onto them, enjoying the blood-warmth of the naked skin, the heat of his hair-protected balls, the stillness of dangling prick.
"I'd like to spend every minute of my days and nights with you," Mitch gently mouthed her smooth forehead.
"Mmmmmm."
"The rest of my life with you."
Chance went still, stiller than death. She was frightened. "That's too much too soon."
"Not for me. I know myself. I know what I want. I know what I've been looking for. I've been looking for you all my life, Chance."
A wise smile curled the corners of her full lips. "You're young."
"No younger than you. No older than you. What does age have to do with it? Do you think I'll want something different ten or fifteen years from now?"
"Maybe. Men do."
"Some men. I'm not all men. I'm me. And I know myself. I won't change in my feelings for you."
"You barely know me."
"I know you as well as I need to know you. Or anyone." His hand slid down the taut skin of her chest, gliding over the ripe pear of her breast, the upper lying fully over the lower one, the two small perfections rather crushed together.
"Sex again." A frown creased her dark forehead.
'Tartly. What's wrong with that? Partly other things. What you are. What I am."
"You don't know me." The frown crease deepened.
'You only say that because you don't want to be known. What are you hiding, Chance?" His hand weighed and felt and caressed the small bulk of her breasts.
Tears. And pain. Doubt and uncertainty.
"I don't want to be tied down, Mitch." Almost unconsciously, Chance began stroking the soft dangle of his prick, gently and tenderly.
"I don't want to tie you down. Only to love you, Chance."
"It's one and the same thing."
"No."
His hand moved down her ribs to her belly, nesting, pressing, feeling, curling in the slightly ripened flesh.
His prick began to grow under the stroking of her hand. It rose, thickened, filled with blood in jerks. She held the flat of the palm of her hand so that the phallus could reach up and poke against it. She toyed with it, played with it, almost in a dream.
"Turn over," Mitch said huskily.
Obediently, Chance turned on her back while the heavy-set young man shifted his weight over her. She flatted out her left leg, raised her right knee, and smiled at him slyly. He lowered his pelvis onto hers, the sweet hard weight of his muscled belly and pelvis bones.
She tipped up the pelvic cage of her own body, presenting the matted cushion of her sex to the warm, thrusting search of his prick.
It slid into her slick channel with ease, and he rested on her, his balls a soft weight crushed between their tightly pressed thighs.
"That feels nice," Chance sighed.
"You like it?" He brushed the crinklv hair back from her forehead, gazed into her eyes curiously, gently. Reading them like sentences in a book.
"I always like the feeling when it first goes in."
"Do you?" Mitch's mouth, poised an inch or so above hers, smiled. He slid his cock in and out of her two or three times, very slowly, very sensuously. "Do you like that, too?"
"Mmmmmm." Her eyes began to close and she wrapped her arms tightly around his thickly built torso. The gentle rhythm soothed her.
"I notice you don't say very much when it suits you to be quiet. Mmmmmm isn't very expressive."
"I'm not much of a talker."
"You're a thinker. I can see it in your eyes."
"I like to keen my thoughts to myself."
He rode his prick into her, again slowly and easily, a couple of times. "Why? Wouldn't you rather share your thoughts?" His mouth, lips closed, grazed over hers. When he removed it, she said thoughtfully, "No, I think I'd rather keep them to myself. Most of them. Not very many people would understand."
He pushed his lips against hers, a little teasing-rough. "Try me," he said.
Her eyes studied his face skeptically. Should she? Shouldn't she?
"Maybe," she said noncommittally.
"Go ahead, try me," he urged. His pelvis continued to rock his phallus into the lubricated runway of her cunt.
Her hands roamed down his back, feeling and pinching and testing each bunch of muscles, getting the heft of him and the weight and the texture of him firmly implanted in her fingertips.
"Why you especially?" she asked, beginning to feel the pull of excitement in her cunt. "Because I'd understand. Because I love you."
"Crap!"
His lips tread lightly on hers, his tongue arched out and pried through her lips, loosely held shut.
"Do you mean love is crap?" His pelvis continued the rhythm of fucking on its own, without any mental direction or physical exertion. Her cunt lips began to cling each time the swollen phallus pulled away and out into the pocket of air between them.
"I mean you're full of romantic shit, Mitch. You just about met me. You barely know me. A few beers, a few superficial conversations-you call that knowing?"
"I call knowing someone in the gut knowing."
"That's fucking. Hell, anybody can do that."
"I'm not talking about what my cock is currently doing to your cunt. Both of which parties are thoroughly enjoying the activity while we talk. I'm talking about my feelings for you, my gut feelings."
"Which are?" In spite of herself, she sounded super-cynical.
"I have a feeling of compassion for you. You need taking care of."
"Hell I do. I can manage very well on my own."
"Naturally. We all can. When we have to. But why do it when you don't have to? I'd take good care of you, Chance." His full soft lips sought hers as she turned her face away from him.
"No."
"Yes. You know the answer is yes in your guts. I feel you needing me, wanting me."
"Shut up. Just continue doing what you're doing and shut up."
Mitch threw a little force into the next two lunges with his hard prong. Chance felt her attention shift from her brain and the words coming out of her mouth to the dark warm flesh-tunnel of her torso.
Need Mitch? The idea was strange, foreign. She flung it away from her like a dead cat into the gutter.
She shut her eyes, blocked out all conscious thought, let her hands feed over the muscles and bones of his solid body, let her mouth and tongue pasture on his resilient skin-his cheeks, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his shoulders. The feel of him sank into her through her nostrils, her fingertips, her mouth and tongue. And still he rocked on her like a huge, five fish, connecting her loneliness with his over the bridge of his erect cock, sinking in and out of the passageway to her interior. A dark, slick, gliding passageway.
It was nice, nice, nice. Friendly and close. Nothing hurried, nothing rushed, nothing ecstatic. A fuck like a steaming cup of coffee at breakfast, a hot tub after a strenuous day, a stretch on sun-heated sands at the beach. A comradely fuck.
Under his weight, Chance moved her lithe body, rolling and rubbing the jelly of her breasts against his hairy chest, her stomach sucking in and out with the approach of heated excitement, her pelvis bumping up and down, rising to meet the thrust of his cock, pulling back to the mattress.
Their rhythms matched perfectly, matched with the perfection of familiarity. Chance heard her own cunt make a wet, sucking noise as it received Mitch's prick in the moisture of its grasping embrace. It sounded good, good, good.
Mitch dug into her, his mouth over her ear as he tongued the convolutions of her shell. His hot breath and grunts drove Chance further into herself. Her hands clung to his back. She felt herself drowning, pleasantly and mildly, but drowning nonetheless. Sweat lubricated all the touching points of their bodies, from head to toe-face, chest, belly, thighs-and with an increase of speed and thrust, Mitch drove her into the pitch of orgasm.
Chance held her pelvis up, locked in position to catch the four thrusts of him coming. She felt her emit grip around his prick in perfect rhythm to his spurts. Milking him, wringing him dry.
She smiled to herself as Mitch ceased his physical efforts, came back to earth, the weight of his hefty body falling on her slight bones. Her hands roved soothingly up and down his sweating back as he wrestled air into his lungs.
A friendly fuck.
Mitch.
She took him along to Luis' New Year's Eve party although she knew he was too square to fit into the photographer's mixed bag of artists.
Mitch wore a deep gray-green wool turtleneck that brought out the copper of his hair. Luis greeted them at the door of his apartment in the East Fifties with a kiss on the cheek. Mitch, a half-head taller and several girths wider and more muscular than the slender photographer, almost dwarfed him.
Chance slipped out of her skirted Russian style boot-length coat trimmed with fake fur.
Luis' eyes widened at the sight of her. "Beautiful. A confection. A jewel." He pressed himself against her, naked under her brief gold lame dress that clung, glittered against the clefted pear breasts, the hips, the pubis. The hem of the skin-tight creation barely reached below the curve of her ass. She felt Luis light against her, his bones as slight as her own, the thick bulge of his manhood a tantalizing suggestion.
Fag?
Yes or no. Hard to decide.
He eyed the men as sexually, lustfully as he eyed the women. Embraced them both with equal fervor, moving light as a moth among the 20 or so people he'd invited to his midnight buffet.
Chance was enraptured by his apartment. "Not at all what I expected, Luis."
"What did you expect?" His Spanish slur was seductive as a physical caress.
"Oh, something in hard shiny plastic and inflatable furniture."
Luis made a wry face. "Not my style. I like what I have." He waved a hand into the living room and dining room, ornate with gilded mirrors and framed paintings of the traditional 18th and 19th Century European schools, the red flocked wallpaper, the red velvet drapes, the Persian carpet, the period furniture in red and gold and blue and green upholstery. Dark, lush, velvety. Like a womb, Chance thought delightedly, wandering into the welcome depths.
Her hand was caught in Mitch's as he trailed just behind her, a high bulwark at her back.
Men's eyes caressed her, women's glances wandered over her body no more naked than theirs, measuring, judging, competing, as Luis introduced them to the others. A short, vibrant, well-known actress with a mass of black, black hair and a deep, pervasive voice. A tall, New England-spare far out sculptor with a gray spade-shaped beard and sensual lips. A golden-haired youth, his locks lying in glory like some pre-Raphaelite angel's, down to his shoulders. He was a gifted young playwright. Everybody there was somebody.
Including myself, Chance thought with delight. Luis introduced her to all of his friends as his favorite model. Chance felt bubbles of delight rising up in her to meet the warmth and interest in the many pairs of eyes. So alive, every one of them. All creators. Makers. Doers. She had read their names in art pages, theatre pages of the newspapers and news magazines.
And whichever group she joined, she felt their eyes reach out, caress her, include her. Make love to her. Yes, even some of the women's eyes. Flowing over her dusky tawny body, the breasts dipping mischievously at the edge of her deeply cut V-neck, her buttocks bouncing the brief little skirt dangerously up to the visible line.
She felt all that sex reach out to her and she responded, feeling the hands on her, the caresses, the embraces. Feeling warm and loved and wanted.
She began to forget Mitch was there.
She drifted over to a small cluster by the marble fireplace. Yes, a real marble fireplace with a real small fire going in the grate, a fire almost as fastidious as the decorum of the apartment demanded. A small plastic container was being passed from hand to hand.
"Bad stuff."
"Throw it out. No point keeping it."
"Look at that. They even chopped up the stems. Ugh. Not worth smoking."
"Don't be too sure. Hey, Luis, you got some paper in the place? Toilet paper will do."
Chance looked in the container as it passed through her hands. Raw stuff. Probably not even cured properly. Pot. She was through with that scene. Thank God.
"Where'd you get this stuff, Luis?"
Luis, slender in an imitation snakeskin suit, entered the circle briefly. "Dear friend of mine gave it to me for Christmas. He grew it on his country home upstate."
'Tell him to do a better job next time. You might just as well throw it down the drain."
Mitch felt it curiously, let the small green pieces of chopped up plant run through his fingers, sniffed it.
"Ever try it?" Chance asked curiously.
"No. Might, though."
"Don't. Don't go asking for trouble. Stay your own simple, good, healthy self. That's what I like about you."
"You see, you do like me. I'm glad you admit it." Mitch wrapped them both together with his glance.
Chance felt the panic rise up in her. The old familiar panic. The jaws of the trap, the clutches of prison. "Forget I said it," she snapped, and walked away from him.
". . . his ass all over Paris." The bearded sculptor held his whiskey sour to the light.
"I loved his reply to the judge when the judge ordered him to tear down the posters. At his own expense."
"What's wrong with a man's bare ass?" Chance demanded. "A woman's they don't mind."
"I've done yours poetic justice a number of times. Publicly." Luis grinned wickedly at her, his arms around a young boy with square face, slate blue eyes, and brown page boy hair cut down to his jawline. He wore a burgundy velvet suit with white ruffled shirt feathering up the front of the jacket. Dana.
Chance grinned back. "Right on," she winked.
"Anyhow, it was obscene. It was just a publicity stunt to get a crowd for his next rock concert. Didn't you love those huge dark glasses.. . . "
No, Chance shuddered, they reminded me of the Monk and his fakery and cruelty.
". . . and his lacy chemise clutched up around . . . "
". . . a man's small ass. . . . "
"Yeah, you'd never mistake it for a woman's."
"Was he wearing a jock strap, Luis?" the sculptor asked.
"I think they airbrushed it out. He was wearing something."
"A sequined row of warts," someone said.
Everybody laughed.
Luis bent and kissed the ear of the young boy, held like a shield before him, straight and slender. Chance got the idea somehow the boy was his current amorata. The slate blue eyes penetrated her face, felt the cheekbones, the Afro nose, the Afro skull beneath the black skin. The eyes said everything; the youth said nothing. Silent Dana.
Possessive, clear, untroubled, honest eyes.
Hours later, after the buffet of sliced paper-thin moist turkey, ham, Swedish meatballs in sauce, holiday fruitcake, drinks and more drinks, Chance wandered into a bedroom down the corridor.
She was glutted. Glutted with words, ideas, conversation, food, drink, sensations. Glutted with aroused sexuality. With eyes that aroused her, hands that touched her briefly and awakened her sensuality with the merest touch. Sated without being satisfied.
The midnight kisses and caresses still lingered in her tender flesh. The wet mouth of the sculptor, a dripping washcloth. Mitch's brief mouth contact that merely slid across her lips before he returned his attentions to the short, fiery actress. The dry lips of Dana, boyish, but with a quick dart of his tongue between her lips.
And Luis, less lass than the press of his body flame against the length of her, his eyes lighting up as she felt the thick barrel of his manhood.
The bedroom was as lush as the living quarters-a conglomerate of textures, silky, satiny, velvety, in deep purples and the most fragile pink. The bedspread on the huge canopied sleeping couch was in satiny stripes of alternating purple, pink and white.
It pleased Chance. "Out of this world," she said, under her breath.
"Isn't it?" The husky voice of Dana, who was standing, half-hidden by the draped canopy, at a lengthy
Provincial vanity, combing his cap of Prince Hal hair in the mirror glittering across the wall.
"Gorgeous. I thought I was alone here." Chance began to back out toward the door. She wasn't about to rob the cradle, Luis' cradle.
"Don't go." The youth's voice dropped half an octave. He strode across the deep purple carpet and held Chance in his slender, surprisingly strong arms, pressed his dry hot narrow lips to hers. His tongue penetrated her mouth with a quick movement and Chance felt her body go limp. Gave herself up to the luxury of those fine, uncalloused square-cut boy's hands dipping into the wide V of her dress, handling her breasts with delicacy, sliding over the small ripeness, tingling the nipples with grasping fingertips.
She opened her mouth fully, letting the invading tongue thrust in, taste her mouth, her membranes. She sucked on it greedily and his arms pulled her closer.
"I've wanted to do this all evening," he said, as he rested his cheek against hers. His cheek burned with a fine, dry heat.
His hands roamed up under her lame dress, a muted gold in the dimly lit bedroom. Palmed and squeezed the fullness of her ass, fingered down the crease, found the small nest where the honey flowed and gave a deep sigh.
"Lie down with me," Dana said huskily, pulling Chance by the hand to the immense bed. The satin felt good under her bared buttocks. Her arms went around the narrow boy as he lay crushed on top of her, the thickness of his white ruffles bruising the tender skin of her nearly exposed breasts. He rubbed the velvet of his burgundy jacket across Chance's naked chest bone as if to heal the bruises.
His mouth came down over hers. His fingers found the svelte, wet slickness of her cunt lips, exposed, explored, and boldly thrust in. Chance grunted. Her eyes opened briefly. Concealed in the campoy frame overhead was a huge mirror. She saw the slender velvet burgundy body atop hers, the hips beginning to heave against her brown naked thigh. She saw with curiosity the hand caressing her vulva even as she felt the plunge of the fingers in and out of her cunt.
Chance let her hands flow down his back, closing her eyes, giving herself up to the luxury of sensation. He was so narrow, so fine and narrow.
Her hands moved under Dana's velvet jacket, pulled up the white shirt, felt the burning skin which so matched the burning lips pressed on her mouth, her neck, her naked breasts, sucking her taut teats.
Chance slid her hands under the pants, grazed with her hands over the hot buttocks, gripped and clawed. Groaned, thrusting her pelvis in the age-old rhythm, shifting this way and that to catch the wanted, needed jut of prick.
She took one hand away from Dana's ass, slid it down his velvet pants, searching for his glory. Her hand gripped pubic hair and slid undeterred to a neat little pair of aroused wet cunt lips.
"Wow!" Chance's eyes flew open.
"Surprised?" Luis stood at the bedside, watching them both with cat's eyes. Completely naked and with a huge prick spearing out of his dancer body.
"Come on, Dana, the masquerade's over. Take off your clothes," Luis ordered.
Dana sat up, the hot blood in her square-jawed face, her eyes fighting, lightening to sky-blue, deep blue, ethereal ultramarine as she gazed down tenderly on Chance. Boldly, she sat squarely on Chance's pelvis, her own trousered cunt riding and rocking on Chance's. She rolled Chance's golden dress up off her body, let it he by her head.
Slowly, she took off her velvet jacket, her intricately ruffled blouse and revealed her small, almost muscular breasts set on either side of a smooth torso. Chance reached up, tore gently at the tender fruits, pulled at the brown nipples. Dana arched her back, half shut the splendor of her glowing blue eyes, moaned. Her tongue circled around her lips, flooded with lust. She writhed on Chance's cunt.
"That's enough, you two dames. Time for my share." Gruffly, Luis pushed Dana aside, told her to kick off her pants while he mounted Chance's torso, sat Hke a general on her breasts and jabbed his prick to her lips.
"Take it," he ordered.
Chance took it, her mouth as wicked as her smile, rolled it in her mouth, laved it, loved it, lapped her tongue around it, bit it. She looked up to the mirror, watched herself adoring the rod of this man. The sight aroused her even more and she sucked it deeply into her mouth.
Luis bent over her, half shut his eyes, thrust it back and forth into her mouth. "That's the softest mouth-cunt I've ever had," he murmured and gave himself up to the sensuous pleasure with moans and panting.
His excitement was catching. That big prick in her mouth-when she wanted it to fill her lower emptiness.
"Where do you want it, baby? Where do you want it?" Luis gritted between his teeth, barely able to control the thrust into her mouth.
In my cunt, In my cunt. Fuck me in my cunt.
As if reading her mind, Luis pulled out his prick, shiny with her saliva, slid down her tawny belly, squatted between her legs and pulled her thighs up and around his slender waist. He sank his throbbing ramrod deep into her cunt with a single thrust.
Dana reappeared, a chiseled woman, her hip bones small and neat as a man's, her pubic nest a dark brown triangle. She crouched beside Chance, bent over her and sucked on the far breast. Her hot breath cruised down Chance's mounded tits, her chest, and buried deep in the gut, meeting the rocking lunges of Luis' prick.
Chance groaned, twisted, greedily grasped Dana's small dangling breasts, kneaded them, squeezed the nipples between her fingers, feeling the breath quicken and deepen from Dana's mouth over her breast.
Dana wet-tongued her way down over Chance's ribs, around the sensitive navel, greedily in the softness of her belly. The piston movement of Luis' manhood kept up a steady beat in her cunt while Dana's mouth played fantasias on her skin.
It began to drive Chance crazy. She felt Dana's mouth glide up her Venus mount, felt Dana's tongue snake wetly through the hair to find the tiny bud of her clitoris.
Dana sucked daintily on the bud, her wet heated breath flowing over the richly nerved tissues.
Chance gasped and sobbed. "I can't bear it, I can't bear it." But each rising, exquisite crescendo she bore, to her own amazement, was carried ever higher on the crested waves of pleasure-pain. Dana straddled her while slithering her tongue over the richly perfumed vulva. And still Luis reamed her thoroughly with his prick-cannon.
Convulsively, Chance seized Dana's thighs, was surprised to find them so softly resilient. She caressed them, dug her fingers in. Dana wiggled her butt, clenched Chance's face between her redolent thighs, lowered the rich pastures of her sex so close that Chance could peer into the lavender-pink mysteries.
Under the trim hair thatch, Dana's cunt lips were sculpted, small, lying side by side, barely swollen. But when Chance separated them with her fingertips, a long shiver went the length of Dana's body.
Lasciviously, Chance thrust out her tongue as far as it would go into Dana's slithery cunt, ran it around and around the rim, feeling the muscles loosen and widen.
Dana gasped and quivered, pushing her body closer to Chance's mouth, all the while quickening her own mouth-fucking of Chance's clitoris.
The mirror in the canopy showed their bodies hooked into a circle of sweating, fucking rhythm. Chance saw her own eyes, large and dark, nearly hidden beneath Dana's fleshy globes, riding and gripping and heaving over her face. Luis curved over Dana's back, her veiled hair falling heedlessly against his naked belly and thighs as Dana held her mouth clamped to Chance's heaving vulva. Luis rubbed his hands firmly down Dana's ribs, hanging on for dear life, his head flung back, eyes narrowed to slits, sweat pouring down his nearly hairless chest and shoulders as he shoved his prick in and out of Chance.
The sight coupled with the physical sensations magnified Chance's sensations ten-fold. Her over-sensitized clit tried to fling Dana's mouth away and just as tenaciously shoved into her mouth, craving more of that forceful yet soft, slithery wet tongue.
The agony was almost unendurable and yet Chance was driven to see it through to the bitter end, the sweetness of the melodies drawn from her cunt culminating in the frenzy of her laved clitoris. With a muffled cry, Chance gave her tortured body up to the mercies of her passions, letting her pelvis thrash about.
Her come tindered the flame in all of them. Luis rode into her cunt to the farthest depths, his balls jerking against her anus as his semen was jetted into her, meeting the copious down flow of her own love juice. Dana sucked rapidly on that tiny bud, sending a frenzy of ecstasy throughout Chance. She went under, lost consciousness, plunging her tongue into the soft folds of Dana's cunt which sucked inward. Dana's ass heaved up as though to draw Chance's tongue clear inside her. She mumbled and cried against the wetness of Chance's vulva, never letting loose her mouth until they were all spent and exhausted.
They fell in a heap on each other. Their bodies gleamed with sweat, the white, the black, the tanned. A tangle of arms and legs, dimly hearing each other fight to ger the breath back. They caressed each other lovingly.
Chance lay under them both, slightly turned to one side, feeling the soothing hands on her. Limp with satiation.
She came slowly out of her swoon, opened her eyes briefly. Saw Mitch standing, tall, solid, four-square, in the middle of the purple carpet, his hair a flaming setting sun in that somberly womb-purple room.
Mitch, staring at their sweating, twitching bodies.
Cool eyed.
Oh, look at me with hot, tender eyes of love.
CHAPTER 13
She knelt on the bathroom tiles, retching her heart out into the toilet bowl. Retching when there was nothing left to bring up but green scum.
The smell of instant coffee and frying eggs drove her into deeper nausea. And yet she couldn't ask Reba and Chance to stop eating.
She sat back on her heels, knowing she was as grass-green in the face as she felt. A mutilated thin blade of grass, the green chlorophyll running out, the green life blood.
Finally, she staggered to her slender feet, wiped a cold wet washcloth over the cold clammy sweat on her face. Bathrobe hanging, untied about her slight body, like a queen's gown gone awry, Sue floundered back to her bed in the living room, flopped on the crumpled sheets and blankets.
"So what's wrong, Sue?" Reba sounded almost maternal.
"I don't know. I must have a touch of the flu. It's been this way since I got back to school after the Christmas holidays."
"Yeah. Sick every morning," Chance said, sinking her white teeth into a piece of toast. "Every goddamn morning."
"Oh my God, morning sickness. You don't suppose you're pregnant?" Reba slapped down her coffee cup, coffee sloshing over onto the table.
"Pregnant! Why would I be pregnant?" Sue asked in a still small voice.
"How are we supposed to know? We weren't there when it happened."
"Nothing...happened. Ever." Sue's voice sounded far away even to her own ears. It wasn't the truth. She had done things, dark things in secrecy with their stallion...pricks. Vile things she didn't want to confide to anyone. "It must be flu," she added miserably. "Besides, I ache all over. Even my breasts. They tingle." Her hands roamed over the slight mounds of her little-girl breasts. "I.. . I think they're swollen."
"Let me see." Chance towered over her.
"No!"
"Crap, Sue, I'm not going to rape you. That's a man's game. But tingling, swelling breasts are one of the earliest signs of pregnancy. Sometimes even before you skip a period."
"How would you know, Chance?" Reba was sarcastic.
"Never mind how I know. Didn't you know? For a doctor's daughter, you can be awfully dumb."
"Don't fight, Please don't fight." Sue gagged slightly. Reba and Chance were staring down at her, their piercing glances coming to a point first at her eyes, then at her covered bosom, then at her belly. Just like my parents, Sue thought, with a spasm of resentment.
She shut her eyes. Her pale ivory hand rippled over her slender belly. Inside-a baby. Her belly would swell like she'd swallowed a melon.
Purple eggplant of a melon.
Melancholy.
She felt her belly gingerly. A swelling belly could destroy her, shatter her glass perfection like some dark, obscene mass.
"I've never...I've never...you know...with a man."
"Screwed? So what? I remember what Joel once said," Reba's face turned dark-red as she mouthed the name. "He said you could even get pregnant if some of the ejaculate got near your vagina. Those damn sperm sure can travel a hell of a distance with a vengeance. You better believe it."
Sue pulled a blanket over herself, huddled. Monstrous pricks bloomed and blossomed in her retina; dark red-purple pricks shooting sprays of golden glory into the air. Her hand went down and rubbed her slight belly, slide down farther, remembering the sticky white male substance that had wanted to find its way into her sex. Sprayed there near her sex entrance; smeared there with her own adoring hand.
She pictured the tiny sperm whip lashing their dry way up her lubricated crinkly vagina, leaping over the high ridges, across the dark chasms; up, up, up into the fine inner tubes where the large egg lurked, waiting to be awakened by the magic touch, penetrated. Sleeping princess in a glass coffin; glass shattered by the magic touch of her prince.
"I can't be pregnant; I won't be." Sue swallowed.
"You can always get an abortion," Reba shrugged. "Listen, kid, I hate to leave you, but I've got a class in five minutes."
"Me, too," Chance echoed.
Sue shut her eyes, listening to the sounds of dishes being put into the sink, teeth being brushed, books collected, the door opening and slamming.
Me, too, she thought. I've got a class, too. But she was so weary-wearier than she'd ever been.
Abortion.
The word sounded strange on her tongue. No.
It was the wrong word.
It was almost three before she found the energy to get dressed. She was doing well in her classes. She could afford a couple of cuts, a couple of days of sickness.
It was time for her appointment with Dr. Vero in his office. Her thrice-weekly appointment. Carefully, daintily she dressed, choosing a powder blue sweater and skirt. The same she had worn that first afternoon in her professor's office. The afternoon his cock bloomed lush as a tropical flower from the center of his mundane conservative pants.
Sue drifted across campus, climbed the three flights and stood for a moment outside Dr. Vero's office door, drained and panting. She'd never been so exhausted before. She knocked, entered, and then leaned against the closing door, a pale wraith wrapped in light blue sky.
"Sue." Dr. Vero approached her. Bulging eyes, sleek fat cheeks, thick neck, bulging pants. Fat frog.
"Sue, Sue, Sue. How I've waited for you. Wanted you all these hours." Her English professor fell against her, rammed her up against the hardness of the door. His hands ravaged her, tore at her body. His weight oppressed her. His prick rose and insinuated itself against her.
His mouth was a hot wet furnace descending on hers, washing her lips with, saliva. His tongue, a sadistic prick forcing its way between her little girl lips.
"Virginal Sue," he gloated. "After all these times, you're still virginal. Seductive virgin. Maddening virgin."
Sue stood there lifelessly, pinned against the door. Dr. Vero's hand grasped her tiny breast under the sweater, felt through the nylon slip and the lacy bra, pinched her baby nipples.
A short, low cry escaped her lips. His prick leaped to attention and he shoved his pelvis against hers.
"Does that hurt you?" he murmured soothingly. "It hurts, it hurts," Sue moaned. He laughed, a low, deep laugh in his frog throat. His black eyes glittered, coals in the steamy fullness of his face.
"Little Sue. Innocent Sue. It's always your first time, isn't it? Even your breasts-I feel them cringing from my fingers, retreating from me. But they can't get away."
His huge hand swallowed up the small neat mound of her breast Her little girl heart thudded into its palm a tattoo of fear and delight and enticement.
Sue felt surrounded, enveloped, penetrated, swallowed. She gave herself up to the engulfment, went limp and soft against the sleek massive body of her English professor. Let herself be kissed and licked and touched and handled. It was a luxurious experience. She was not mind, not thought, not past, not rooted to anything or anyone. She existed, merely existed in the dark engulfment of this man. Totally. Wholly. Completely.
She received him. Almost ceased to exist except for the response of her body to his delectable ministrations. Her body arched to meet his caresses, her head fell limply from side to side as he mouthed her, nipped her cheek, lips, chin, neck.
Her pelvis glued itself to the thrust of his prick which he had pulled out of his fly. It glided between her moist thighs, exposed under the blue skirt bunched up around her sloping, not-so-little-girl buttocks.
He became hurtful as his excitement increased. His hands squashed her breasts.
"You're hurting me. It hurts," Sue whimpered.
Dr. Vero grinned, his mouth still kissing her. "You love it. You always loved it. Why are you making such a big fuss? You know that only turns me on."
"My breasts feel all funny. Maybe because I think I'm pregnant."
The silence rushed in between them. His cock lowered abruptly like a flag, went limp. Cold sweat covered the palms of his hands.
"You're lying." His voice, too, was cold with fear.
"Oh, no, I'm not lying. I've got all the symptoms." A glint came into her eyes as she studied his frightened face, no more than two inches from hers. Terrified toad.
"It's not possible," he exploded softly. "Impossible! I've never penetrated you."
"Nevertheless, I've got the symptoms. And I've...I've missed one period." She felt stronger. Strong.
"I can't be the father. Damn it, I won't be. It can't be me."
My God, whose was it? Sue's mouth dropped open. Kenny's? But it didn't matter. The invading sperm didn't matter; didn't count what prick it had been shot out of. Only that it had lodged deep in her womb, and was now a membranous, veiled, tiny being, a bloated pig with primitive little balloons where the hands and feet, the arms and legs, would ultimately grow and lengthen.
Abruptly, Dr. Vero backed away from Sue, zipped up his pants with fury.
"You realize this is an impossible situation for me." Even his black hair was shiny with sweat.
Impossible?
'You've got to have an abortion!"
Murder.
No.
Sue started to cry, her skirt still bunched up about her naked haunches.
Dr. Vero walked up to her, shook her angrily, his hands biting into her thin upper arms. "Stop it! Stop it, I say," he hissed. "You're behaving like a child. My
God, what am I saying! But of course you're a child. Child-body. Child-brain. And now you're trying to trap me. You know that faculty is not supposed to mix with the student body. But you won't succeed. You hear?"
Sue's eyes went wide. He hated her! My God, he actually hated her. He wasn't going to save her. The pain burned inside her, hot coals burning her most precious soft insides.
And then the glass wall, the invisible glass wall came around her, shielded her. A glass coffin. Yes. She was the Sleeping Beauty protected from the brambles and thorns of life by a glass coffin.
She saw Dr. Vero, face bloated with rage, eyes full of black fear, saw him through plate glass. A little angry man. Far, far away.
Enclosed in her impermeable glass coffin, she trudged back across the campus to her apartment, climbed into bed and stayed there for five days without talking or eating.
Reba and Chance were first confused, then angry, then frantic. "She's so pale. Looks like she's in a coma. Do you think she's got some kind of epilepsy?" Reba hung over Sue's bed like a giant billowing brown cloud.
"Epilepsy, hell. I think she's nipped. Can't that doctor Daddy of yours do something?"
"I don't even want to tell him. I'm scared he'll get uptight and yank me out of college."
Eventually, they got the campus-connected psychiatrist to come up to the apartment.
"She's dehydrated and profoundly depressed," he said after an examination. "Let's get her into general admissions so we can get some fluids and some antidepressants into her. I think she'll be okay without more stringent methods. You'd be surprised how often this happens. Did she have any shocks of late?"
"Only that she seems to be pregnant. And she's still a virgin. Or so she says," Chance shrugged.
"It's medically possible," the psychiatrist answered.
The psychiatrist was nice. A tall, spare young man with a black beard and deep blue eyes.
"Maybe it's same kind of overwork or mental tension," Reba chimed in. "Sometimes she writes morning, noon, and night.. . . "
"Writes?"
"Yes. Poetry. Stories. A novel. I think she's on some level of being a genius. At least this English prof of hers, Dr. Vero, seems to think so."
Sue's eyes went wide with fright. But nobody noticed. Under her hand, under her coiled bowels, even now a small embryo throbbed in its translucent sac, the blood vessels raying out like so many ropes tying it, mooring it to the placenta.
The psychiatrist's blue eyes narrowed. "How long has she been this way? Has she ever had mental troubles before?"
"I think she said something once about some kind of a breakdown when she was in high school," Reba volunteered. "But she was never hospitalized; never saw a headshrinker. I gather they don't believe in the 20th Century where she comes from."
The psychiatrist nodded. "I think she'll be okay in a few days at the hospital. At least over the worst of it." He leaned down, said softly to Sue, "Don't worry, Sue. You're going to be all right."
There was a bit of a twinkle in his deep blue eyes, as though they shared some joke between them. The glass wall shielding her from the world thinned out a little. She liked his eyes.
At the hospital, she sank down mutely into the white bed-white breast, milk-white swan, white cloud-ship. White of purity, white of virgin love.
Her slight body sank into the bed. Slowly, slowly, it would swell, become large, soft, balloon-shaped. Belly immense. And tucked away inside, she was safely curled up, protected, growing securely away from prying eyes and prying fingers. And prying man-pricks.
Rocked ever so gently, she sucked on her thumb, her mind drifting, spinning fancies and phrases out of the safety of the deepest deep.
She was given pills and injections and put on intravenous feedings for a couple of days.
Merry Blue Eyes, the psychiatrist, stopped by to talk to her now and again.
"You're picking up," he assured her. "Sometimes, in maturing, I find students go through one or two of these episodes and then are okay for life. Sometimes it's just a simple problem a student is trying to work out. We all have these struggles in growing up. It hits some harder than others. Getting away from home for the first time, especially if you've been close to your parents, can be a shock to a sensitive nature."
His words pelted the glass walls of her coffin.
"And then there are the other stresses," he continued. "The new influences you may be subjected to-a heavy schedule, drugs, making it in a larger community than you've been used to, sex.. . . "
Sue turned her face to the window, saw with astonishment the sun was shining. Sex. Nol She didn't want to discuss it with anyone. How could she tell this nice, merry-eyed man about lying naked in her parent's house, feeling Kenny's hot rigid virgin prick spurt cream in a sticky mass against her pubic hair? How to tell him of the feelings she got in the pit of her being-the exaltation?
What words could she use to explain to him those secret meetings in Dr. Vero's office, making obeisance to his engorged manhood, fondling it, caressing it, sucking it, commanding it to passions that made a slave of her professor?
There were no words to explain. Even though words were her life, there were no words adequate.
No words to tell the glory and power and sexual passion she felt those afternoons as she sucked that massive hard cock, sucked it until his milky substance jetted down her breasts, her belly, ingested into her mouth.
The seed swallowed. The seed sliding down her dark esophagus into her stomach and now a baby was growing there in privacy. Just as all the fairy tales predicted.
Alice-in-Wonderland swallowing the baby pill and swelling, swelling so that her parents and Kenny and all the little old white-haired ladies in church would eye her with shock and astonishment.
Sue kept staring at the window.
"What is it, Sue? What's the problem?" the psychiatrist urged. "Maybe if you tell me, it will ease up; together, we can find some solutions."
The problem was creation and murder.
Baby or abortion.
Shame and discovery.
Sue shut her eyes. In a voice so small she could barely hear it herself, she whispered, "I can't move."
"Nothing wrong with your reflexes."
Sue shook her head despairingly.
"You mean, you can't move in any direction. You're stuck between the horns of a dilemma."
Yes. Caught, wounded by the horns. Dimly, she heard him leave her room. She dozed, dreamed of the embryo, monstrous inside her. She was trying to tear away from it, run away. But those eye-roots, those embryonic eyes, huge, ghost-like, stared at her accusingly. It knew the meaning of murder.
She awakened, hand to the fluttering of her heart. Slowly she turned her head, sensing someone by her bedside.
Dr. Vero! Sleek white shirt, sleek jowls, reproachful, black eyes, all transfixed her. Even the hairs on the backs of his hands held her hypnotized.
"Sue," he murmured. "Little Sue. You're looking so much better. And I have good news for you."
"Good...news?" Disbelieving.
"Yes. The best. These past few days, I have been in contact with a number of editors I know at publishing houses. Men of the finest reputation. Telling them about your work-some of the best writing from any of my students in years. Telling them about a real artist-you, Sue. And one or two of them are interested, which means your novel, your poetry will be published."
"Published!" Her voice stood back in wonder. She turned the word over in her mind. Somehow, the life juices began to flow.
"Yes." Dr. Vero leaned down, so close she felt the heat of his cheeks almost against hers-through the glass walls still protecting her. "It's a wonderful opportunity. And I can do it for you. Otherwise it might be years before you'd be published. Think of it, Sue."
"I'm...thinking of it." She almost felt the hard square covers of the books, her books, with her name on them for all the world to see. Something to be proud of-not like an...illegitimate baby. She flushed.
"Of course, I cannot do this for you if you could possibly do me...any kind of professional harm," Dr. Vero continued. "My reputation at the college, my tenure is at stake. You would have to get rid of the...the baby...immediately. I'd be more than willing to pay whatever it costs."
Sue stared up at him, frightened. "Get rid of the...you mean...abortion?" Her voice sank to the merest whisper.
Dr. Vero nodded his sleek black hair briskly. "Naturally. I can't do you favors if you...can potentially harm me. Now could I, Sue?"
She stared at him. A book or a baby. Those were the horns of the dilemma. She felt a sensation of hot vomit rise up in her throat.
Her elbows pushed her up from the softness of the white-breasted pillow.
She opened her mouth-wide, wide, painfully wide-stretched to its fullest circle; vagina giving birth.
The rasping, grating phonograph record of her voice went on and on, shrieking down the hospital corridors.
"Life is shit.. . life is shit.. . life is shit!"
A crazy stranger's voice.
The fine glass walls of her coffin shattered.
CHAPTER 14
It's all crap. A pile of crap! Education, men, sex.. . . She slammed her books about noisily on her desk.
Nothing happened in the room behind the closed door except a louder, more persistent sound of fucking.
Chance felt black as the ace of spades. Rotten. Mean. How the hell was anybody supposed to get an essay done for her photo-journalism thesis with those damn sounds seeping from under the shut bedroom door? Reba being bounced and trounced all over her bed at the tail end of the Monk's big stick.
For chrissakes, get it over with, Chance muttered under her breath. She was trying to get together a few thoughts to type to go with her photos of Harlem. This was going to be her final term paper for the course. She was satisfied with the photos-yes, really satisfied. She felt she'd really caught some of the family feel, the everyday up and downs, the minor joys and sorrows, as well as the squalor of her hometown of Harlem.
And now, when she had to put it in words to match her pictures, she couldn't concentrate, thanks to that big prick doing its stuff in Reba. And what in hell was wrong with Reba that she dragged the show on so long? Why the hell didn't she come-as she kept threatening to momentarily-and get it all over with?
Chance put on her platter of Aretha Franklin singing "Evil Girl Blues." Just how I feel, sister. Black and moody as the dregs in a cup of coffee the morning after. Hung over from too much girl craziness, spite, bad feelings.
I feel evil. Evil and rotten. What happened to that golden good feeling she'd had last fall, cruising the streets of Harlem, shooting young lovers and grannies, junkies and kids still only half-touched by the evil surrounding them?
Chance ripped up her lined paper for the ninth time, snapped her pencil in two and flung the mess on the floor in a rage.
"Oh, give it to me, give it to me," Reba was moaning luxuriously in her bed, under the steady violence of the Monk's cock.
Damn, I'll give it to you, Chance cussed under her breath. She hammered on the bedroom door with her fist.
"Cut it out, you two. Or get it the hell over with. I've got a paper due this afternoon and I can't get my head together with all that shit going on in there."
"Ain't shit, baby, it's fuck," the Monk laughed insinuatingly. "That jealousy got hold of you again."
"Goddamn you, stop telling me where to get off in my own apartment, you hear, you stupid black prick?"
Chance flung open the door. The Monk was looped over Reba's sprawling, sweating, olive-skinned body, her breasts falling over her ribs, nipples jutting up a half inch in the air. The Monk had his skinny pelvis pulled up, just ready to shove his horse's prick into her slick, shiny cunt.
Chance ripped the blanket off the foot of the bed, kicked the Monk in the ribs. Caught off guard, he sprawled on the floor.
"What the hell!"
Reba, her pussy still gyrating, opened her eyes in astonishment. "Monty," she panted. "I want it...I want it.. . I want it." Moaning now. In pain.
"What in hell for, Reba? Can't you see the Monk's gonna screw you one way or the other? Both ways?" Chance stared down at her coolly, at the sweating desiring body. "You poor sap," she said softly. "You think the Monk's a big hero, big as his prick. Well, I got news for you...he's not. He's a low-down rat. Just because he came from Harlem doesn't make him some holy object of worship or pity or...Shit! I come from Harlem, too, and you've had nothing but hate for me for months. And I'm your roommate. Your sister, Reba." Chance sat down on the crumpled bedsheets, pulled the top one over Reba, wiped dry her drenched, racked belly.
"Sister! That's a laugh! After what you did with Joel.. . . " Reba rolled over, sullen, turning her back on Chance.
"So what did I do to Joel? Your darling precious property, Joel?"
Reba leaped up, her ample breasts flopping against her ribs, her amber eyes wild as a tiger's under her mass of dusky air.
"Screwed him, that's what!"
"It was the other way around if I remember," Chance said coolly. "In the ass, to be exact My ass.. . . "
"That's right, your ass," Reba shrieked, seizing Chance's short hair, rocking and shaking the black head. "Where you deserve it.. . . "
Chance felt the blood rush through her body, the sheer animal rage. "Don't be a bitch, I'm warning you. Take that back.. . . "
"I won't I won't, I won't." Reba cried hysterically. She clawed at Chance through her clothes, pummeled her with fists, tore at her hair, her own naked body flailing.
"You losing your head, girl," Chance tried to grip Reba's hands, hold them out of harm's way.
"You had no right to take Joel from me. . . . " Reba sobbed.
The Monk stepped hastily into his clothes. "Now, don't fight, you broads. I can't stand to see strong women fight."
"You're just yellow, Monk," Chance spat at him. "And you can have your damn Joel. I never wanted him. He just...happened to be there.. . . "
"Handy, wasn't it?" Reba sneered.
"Goddamn it, he's as much to blame as me. It was him had the hard-on," Chance hollered. She shoved Reba back against the bedroom wall. "Now lay off."
Reba sidled up to her, her tiger eyes glinting, her hair shiny with sweat, her breasts huge and savage. "Well, I got back at you, see? You took Joel. And I took the only man you ever cared about.. . . "
"The only man . . . ? " Chance stared about wildly.
'The Monk." Reba's face was a study in triumphant spite.
"The Monk!" Chance threw back her head and laughed. "Oh my God. The Monk! You believe that shit he hands you? Lady, I don't need his prick to send me. He's a lousy son of a bitch.. . . "
"Come on, Chance, you make me 'pear ten times worse than I am." The Monk, fully dressed, dark glasses a smokescreen in front of his eyes, smoking a joint, watched the embattled women with amusement. "You know you never had a cock like mine; couldn't get enough of it. . . . "
"What, when I was a kid of 14?" Chance leveled her glance at the Monk over Reba's naked shoulder. "What the hell did I know at that age, you jerk? But let me tell you, when you knocked me up, I had enough of it. More than enough-for good. You left me with a kid you never gave a shit about, never gave a cent to.. . . "
"A kid?" Reba swiveled her head, looking first at Chance, then at the Monk.
"You tell her, Monty," Chance said challengingly.
"A kid. Yeah. So what? It happens every day. No big deal."
"Sure. Every day," Chance hissed. "Just like that. You didn't spend no nine months carrying it You didn't cry yourself swollen in the eyes wondering whether to keep your son, give him up. I did. What the hell would you know about it? You got the feelings of a snake."
Reba shuddered, her rounded bare belly and full breasts shuddering almost with a separate shiver. She held her arms close around her, rubbed her forearms.
"I...I'm scared. I don't want to be used and thrown away."
"Well, that's the Monk for you." Chance stood up, tall and proud. "That's the kind of man he is, through and through."
"Is it true?" Reba asked.
The Monk shrugged, smiled. "So what's a kid more or less?"
"Spawning them like...like so many mindless fish. Oh no, that's not for me," Reba said.
"The lady says you better get going." Chance's voice was low, threatening. "You've worn out your welcome. Crawl back into your hole, Monty. Where you belong."
"That what you want, Reba?" the Monk asked.
Reba nodded, mutely.
"Well, I'm splitting. Not gonna get hung up on two dumb broads. Remember me when you're hot and want it. 'Cause it'll be too late then. I won't be around no more."
"Good riddance. And who needs it?" Chance hissed at the closing bedroom door as the Monk did another of his disappearing acts from her life. "I hope it lasts this time," she muttered to herself.
But Reba flung herself into the arms of her tall black roommate, sobbing steadily like a rainy day in April.
"What am I going to do without him?" she moaned. "A damn sight better than with him. . . . "
"Oh, Chance, you don't know what he meant to me.. . . "
"Pure trouble."
"No, he was the only man in my life.. . . "
"Shit. All men are alike; what's he got they all haven't got?"
"I don't know, I don't know." Reba tumbled onto her bed, stark naked, unmindful of her bare breasts lolling about like ripe melons, her belly heaving with sobs. "But he gave me something no other man could."
"I believe it. Like what for instance that would make it worth your while to stick to a rat like the Monk? People like him give us blacks a bad name."
Reba stuffed a corner of her sheet into her mouth, trying to muffle her cries.
"O for God's sake, Reba." Disgusted, Chance sat down beside her roommate, naked and rolling in anguish on the crumpled sheets so recently deserted by her black lover. "Cut it out! What's eating you? You're not going to flip out like Sue? My God, one crazy roommate is enough, especially during finals."
"I.. . I can't help it, Chance. It's just that. . . well, the Monk is the sexiest man I've ever bedded down with...and you came charging in here in the middle of...of a . . . "
"Damn irritating fuck that was interfering with my studying.. . . "
"And...and...I was just about to come and now you've spoiled it all. The Monk was the only man ever made me come...the only person...and now he's gone for good." Reba turned over, showing her naked back, ripe with smooth flesh, to Chance. She began to sob hysterically.
"Oh, Reba, you're such a child. There's nothing magic about the Monk. If you can come with him, you can have an orgasm with just about anyone."
"No, I can't. And now I'm all alone."
"Stop this godawful crying and listen to some sense. Listen to me." Chance rubbed her hand lightly down the curves of Reba's lush side, lightly, lightly, over and over. Reba began to quiet down, her sobs gradually ceased.
Chance's hand went over her ribs, down the valley and then up over the mound hiding Reba's hipbone and over the huge curve of her flank.
Reba gave a shuddering sigh, turned over on her back and suddenly pulled Chance down to her. "Mmmmm, that feels good."
Chance found her face buried in Reba's hot neck, her hand plunged into the rich fullness of Reba's breast. She went all soft inside, passions abruptly aroused by the naked heat of her roommate. Almost unconsciously, her hand roamed the fleshy pastures presented to her, the heavy breasts, the hard erect nipples, the panting belly, the close thatch of pubic hair. Her fingers entangled in it, searched through the silky thatch and found the honeyed well. Reba's body humped up to meet her fingers.
"Oooh, you're so deliciously wet," Chance crooned. Reba's body ebbed and flowed, undulated to the movements, gentle yet sure, of her hand. Reba's excitement generated her own. Swiftly, Chance moved her face down, rested her cheek against Reba's cushy bosom, mouthed the tight nipple, sucked on it, cupping the breast fully into her mouth.
The nipple tasted sweet. Sucking on it drove Reba deeper into passion. Chance took her mouth away from the nipple, nipped her way down Reba's full flesh, over the belly, licked in the curve of her groin.
"Oooh, Chance, oooh, Chance," Reba moaned. She put her hand on Chance's hair, thrust her head down to her sex.
Delicately, Chance found the full sex lips only partially hidden by the dark thatch of hair. She opened them and stared at the dusky mystery, slippery and wet, with a drop of thick moisture oozing out of the engorged opening.
Suddenly, Chance bent, licked her tongue up the tender drenched membranes. Reba squirmed and bucked under the laving of her tongue. Chance found the hard, small jut of her clitoris, poured her hot breath on it, clamped her mouth around it, sucked softly and steadily. Reba gasped: "Oh, that's it, that's it, keep going." Her breath came out in tight jerks.
The smell of Reba's cunt was rich as red wine. Chance drank it in, thirsting for more. Her own cunt grew hot and swollen and sticky. She squeezed it between her own thighs.
Reba rocked her sex under Chance's tongue, slid along with it. Deftly, Chance slipped the tip of her tongue into the tight, honey-dripping entrance to her cunt, moved it 'round and 'round.
Chance felt the tense stillness in Reba's body, concentrating its unleashed passion in the small circle devastated by her thick, soft, wet insinuating tongue. Reba gasped and moaned, held her body still by sheer force of will to receive the greedy insertions of Chance's tongue.
Chance delved her tongue in again and again, felt the tight cunt rim widen to receive, the moisture, drip down liquidly into her mouth. Come baby, come on, baby, come baby, she urged with her mind.
And Reba came. Came with a sudden gasping sob, with a writhing thrust to her sopping wet vulva against Chance's tongue and mouth and face. Her hand shoved Chance face-down against her until the last clenching grip of her sex was quiet.
Chance moved her head, let it rest against Reba's pounding gasping belly.
"Wow, baby. Nothing wrong with you sexually. So what's the hang-up? You can come with me, you can come with anybody, once you got the mechanism going."
Reba's golden eyes fluttered open, and a slow smile suffused her mind-blown face. "Think so? You really think so, Chance?"
"I know so, honey."
"Then, if you don't mind...that is, if you won't be insulted...I think I'll call Joel and apologize. And test him out. That was three-quarters of our trouble."
Chance sat up and returned the smile. "You do that, honey. And I think I'll call Mitch. Just so I won't be lonesome."
In less than fifteen minutes, both young men appeared at the apartment and disappeared with their respective girls into their respective beds.
With a giggle, Reba made Joel keep the door to the bedroom half-open. "What are you expecting, an orgy?" he was disgusted.
"Well, not exactly," Reba giggled again. "But a little companionable duo work might act as an incentive. To all of us. Come on, kid, since when are you the one with hang-ups? I thought it was all my fault."
"Hangups, hell," Joel growled. "Come over here, you adorable cunt. I haven't had anybody like you since...well, I don't want to remember since when. I just know I'm horny as hell."
"That goes for me, too," Mitch whispered into Chance's ear. She raised her long, slender arms, wrapped them around his solidly built shoulders.
"You're not the only one." Her tongue darted out between her lips, skimmed like a bird across his closed mouth. He grinned at her wickedly. She shoved her tongue between his lips, ran it around his gums, pressed her teeth sharply against his resilient mouth. Just enough to cause him a delicious pain.
His prick responded with a happy hardening. His hand gripped her bare breast, fondled it, teased at the nipple. "You're a beauty," he murmured and bent down, licking her from her cheek clear down to her cunt in a long, sinuous, meandering passage.
Chance closed her eyes, feeling the flood of sensations rise up under her skin to meet the tortuous path of his hot wet tongue.
She opened her thighs to the approach of his hand. His fingers slid easily over the sheen of her wet vulva. With a sigh, Chance sank back into her pillows. His fingers played skillfully with the tense little bud of her passion.
Chance ran her thumb deep into the arch of his armpit, smoothed the red silky hair. Drops of his sweat fell against her knuckles. He was a good-smelling animal, this Mitch, clean but moistily sexy. Chance ran her hand down his well-muscled flesh. A good solid hulk of a man. Her hand slipped deftly through his pubic hair, felt for the hard jut of his cock, slithered up and down it. The skin moved under her ministrations.
Mitch drove two of his fingers into the hollow of her cunt. "Oh, man. Ooohhh, good," Chance murmured. She slid two of her fingers in beside his. "Two's company," she smiled.
"You hussy." Mitch grinned again, his eyes glinting like sun-struck clear sea.
Chance pulled out her fingers, slick with the sheen of her abundant moisture, and ran them lovingly over his cock, moistening it.
"Wow!" Mitch grunted, his eyes half-closing. "What are you going to think of next?"
"This." Chance ran the nail of her thumb deftly across the tiny slit at the head of his prick. Mitch fell back against her pillow, enjoying the sheer luxury of the sensation. She ran her fingers down and around the column of his manhood, dug them softly but firmly down into his balls where his rod was rooted. Deftly, she felt the firm kernels of the soft, haired balls, slithering them between her thumb and forefinger.
She bent her long, slender model's body over him, gripped one of his balls between her teeth, nipped ever so gently and sucked on the rich-smelling skin.
She brought her teeth around to the base of his cock which jumped against her lips. She nipped her way up the hard, veined evidence of his rampant manhood, brushed her tongue against the flanged underside, then all around the tower.
"My God, you're big," she said admiringly.
"It's yours...for life. You only have to say yes." He smiled at her, his hands under his head.
"Don't rush me. I'll think about your offer. Besides, I'm too busy doing this.. . . " She forced the tip of her tongue into his slit, then suddenly slid her whole open mouth down over his cock until it disappeared completely into that warm wet cavern.
Even as she sucked on his cylinder, she let her tongue wander around it and play tricks with his nerves that sent the iron through his blood-swollen prick.
Her fingers played at the mid-seam of his taut, warm balls, slid beyond to his anus and pried inside.
Mitch grunted, "You she-devil. Where'd you learn those tricks?"
Chance's mouth grinned around his cock. Never you mind, she thought. It all comes natural. Just following basic anatomy. It's a cinch. Slowly, she reamed around his tender anus, still sucking the prick he shoved into her mouth in slow, fucking movements.
She was getting hotter then hell herself; her unsatisfied sex aroused by the session with Reba still panting for fulfillment. The fluid poured out of her secret parts, drenching her heated smooth thighs with sticky honey. Her pelvis rocked in tune to Mitch's and she began to be frantic for the heavy thrust of his manhood inside her cunt.
She kept him just stimulated enough to send his pulse rate soaring but far enough under the wire so that he wouldn't shoot out before she was ready and had received her full pleasure. She had an almost subliminal sense of timing.
Mitch pressed both his hands down on her head, shoving his prick into her mouth as far as it would go. She loved it; man, how she loved it, but she loved it at both ends of her, and right now the nether end was the more passionately demanding.
With a quick little flick of her thumb and forefinger against the underside of his glorious manhood, she brought a quick grunt of half-pain from him and a sudden release of his hands.
She started to mount his handsome male body lying stretched out with all the thick intricacies of well-developed muscle and the glowing mat of coppery body hair mapping its way from his chest, down a thin line to his navel and widening to his pubis.
"What was that all about?" he demanded, angry at having his pleasure at her mouth interrupted.
"Never you mind. Just lie back. I'm about to fuck the hell out of you. Enjoy, enjoy," she murmured, bending close to his ear to send a little thrill down his nerves.
With a sudden heft of her shapely brown buttocks, she positioned herself over the rising tower of his manhood. With a little wriggle of her ass, she spiked herself on the engorged head of his rod, and wriggling still, slid bit by bit down its full length until she squashed her naked vulva flush against his balls.
She closed her eyes, sensuously delighting in the feeling of his thick cylinder cleaving her soft, slimy insides. She rocked and rolled on top of him, sighing and murmuring with pleasure.
She stretched her body along his, mouthed his neck, his ears, his chest, rubbed the dangling perfection of her breasts across his coppery hair.
Remotely, she heard the fucking sounds of Reba and Joel pierce her consciousness. Joel was a frantic, wild fucker, smashing Reba all over the bed, and she was like a huge, gaping, gasping, she-animal under him, urging him on, pleading with him, begging for fuck, harder and harder.
Wow!
Just hearing them made Chance feel hotter; reminded her of that night in the bathroom when Joel had shoved it up her, stallion-big, merciless.
Chance sat astride Mitch, her eyes half-shut, watching the absorbed look of besotted pleasure on his young face. Lightly, she began to bounce up and down, sliding up and down his greased pole, shifting from side to side.
"I'm screwing you, baby," she said huskily.
"Keep it up," he answered back.
"That's your department, lover. Keep it up, just like you're doing. Good and hard and up. That's the way I like it."
Ooohhhh, love it, love it, love it, Chance thought. She heard the jagged, rasping breathing of Joel and Reba in the next bedroom; the steady ramming jounce as he gave it to Reba. . . . "Deep in your cunt, you bitch," Joel laughed low.
Chance flew up and down Mitch's good stiff prick, faster, harder, so high she lost it once and came down against it, pressed it lovingly against her dripping wet, naked vulva. Her clit screamed silently for more.
For a minute or two, Mitch slid his prick up and down outside her and her hand cupped it to her body. It was slippery wet, inundated with the sweet moisture of her body, the precious fluid.
Chance began to lose awareness, just feeling prick, knowing prick, wanting prick. Wanting it so bad nothing else seemed worthwhile or more valuable at the moment.
Deftly, she hoisted up her buttocks and centered herself on Mitch's bursting rod, swallowed it up to the inmost depths of her cunt.
Her body alighted across her lover's, her mouth fastened to his, tongue wresting pleasure from tongue. Her cunt was a tight, greedy mouth sucking his cock to a fare-thee-well. Faster and faster she went, somehow, only half sensing him now, picking up Joel's rhythm of screwing in the next room.
Who was who and which was which became all smeared, mixed up in her mind. They were somehow just one conglomerate fucking welter of flesh.
Mitch played with her delicate, sensitively-tuned clit, streaking his hands lightly across it, increasing the pressure as she rode him harder with passion.
In the next room, Reba began to sob, scratchy sobs like her voice was a silken dress catching on a twisted barbed-wire fence.
"Oh Jesus, Oh God, I can't take any more. Harder, Joel, harder, I...I...I'm...coming.. . . " her voice let out on slowly descending, agonized cry, half sobs, half hysterical laughter.
Joel punched her viciously with his rampant manhood, pinioned her to the mattress, his breath shattering with the strain.
Mitch's finger pressed at Chance's tender bud, sending her up over the edge in a spate of darkness. Black, black, pitch, pitch black, blacker than any ancestor she'd ever had...her world a total blackness with nothing living but that hard Mitch cock shafted up her, coming inside her in a fine misty spray, while his talon fingers gripped her buttocks, ruined the sensitive ass flesh, held her down on that shaft while his clenched buttocks thrust his come up inside her.
With a breath that almost stopped with each powerful surge, Chance felt her hungry, gratified cunt seize, hold, and squeeze his enraptured manhood with all of its strength.
"Jesus, you're killing me, you're killing me," he moaned.
"Can't help it," Chance gasped.
And suddenly, she was flooded with peace, went limp in every muscle and joint and bone of her body, fell in an exhausted heap, pitched forward on Mitch's sprawling body. Her arms hung limply over the bed. For a couple of seconds, she blacked out, dimly aware that his arms were loosely about her, caressing her back.
"Wow! I can't live through too many more of those without going out of my mind," Chance murmured.
"Me neither," Mitch laughed into her ear. "Until next time. But what a way to go."
Next time.
Chance pulled up short, a cold blast of reality penetrating her warm, sweat-soaked, completely sated body.
It had been a stupendous, mind-blowing experience. But...but...she didn't want to get hung up on Mitch forever. Not yet. She'd barely begun to live.
Why sew herself up in a bag permanently so soon in the game? Much as she cared for Mitch. . . .
She knew what her answer to him had to be. Ultimately. Dreaded telling him but knew she had to be honest or she couldn't live with herself.
She wasn't willing to shut the door on other opportunities yet. Maybe never. Maybe she was a roamer at heart. Just...Chance.
She lay on him, drifting, feeling the hard violent thud of his heartbeat slowly come back to earth. She frisked her hands lightly down his sides.
Oh, Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, you're a wonderful hunk of man. But it's too early in life for me to say forever to anyone.
She heard bare padding feet on the floor, turned her head lazily to see Reba and Joel, naked, in the doorway.
"What are you two doing?" Reba flung her mane out of her eyes. Joel winked.
"Same thing you are...recuperating, man." Mitch lifted his head from the pillow, the rest of him inadequately buried under Chance's bare body.
A key turned in the lock. Four startled heads turned to see Sue walk in the door...gentle blonde virginal Sue, her eyes two circles of shock above her fur-trimmed camel's hair coat.
"Oh...I . . . " she gulped and shut her mouth.
"No point apologizing or withdrawing graciously," Joel waved a hand at her.
Sue fluttered her eyelids and then looked at them all slowly. She smiled, a weak smile. "Well, I guess...considering I'm pregnant...but quite sane, at least for now...I guess I can...take the shock."
"Bully for you, Sue," Reba applauded.
Naked as a jaybird, his prick still glistening wet from Reba, Joel walked up to Sue and planted a big kiss on her forehead. Sue blushed, then laughed, and gave him a quick hug, eyes averted from his all too evident masculinity.
"We're glad you're back with us," Chance said. "Now what are you going to do, baby?"
"Get an abortion. Get a book published. And . . . " her eyes boldly swept the four of them-naked Chance, Reba, Joel, and Mitch-"get started living. Really living."
The four of them leaped to her as with one impulse, hugged her close.
"Consider this a love-in," Chance laughed huskily. "As good a beginning as you'll ever get."
