Brandon Ward steadied the big canvas with one hand. The other hand, gripping the charcoal, was interrupted halfway through a sweeping stroke. Six horsemen trotted down the bank of the small stream and into the picturesque glen, transforming the leafy forest from Sonoma County to some eerie medieval forest of long ago.
The six riders were clad in glistening black leather or nearly clad. The three women among them rode with exposed breasts, flaunting their femininity with voluptuous freedom. Brandon shaped his mouth into a whistle which never made a sound as he stared appreciatively at the trio of magnificently endowed women.
Two were flowing blondes, their gold and platinum tresses picking up the highlights of the morning sun; the third was raven-haired and regal with aquiline features.
Even at seventy-five feet, Brandon could see the care and expense that had gone into the tightly laced and splendidly fashioned costumes. They milled their horses for a moment, long enough for Brandon to snatch up his Polaroid and chance a long shot down into the shadowy glade. Then they were gone on downstream, and only the small, poorly lighted print convinced him he hadn't dreamed it all.
As he looked at the print, his nearly photographic mind began to recall impressions and details that had penetrated through his surprise. They'd carried riding crops in gauntleted hands, and there had been flashing, multi-spiked spurs on the high-heeled boots jammed into the English stirrups. He remembered how the regal brunette had seemed fantastically tall, due a little to the way the leather collar had poised her head high. Her beauty seemed supported by the broad expense of thick, rolling flesh popped out in lush audacity through the oval cutaway of her leather shirt. Studying the print, he cursed the decision that had made him set his easel and paints on this rocky ledge so far away from the quiet grassy hollow of towering cottonwoods.
Then it happened again! Brandon's surprise changed to intense interest.
There were two riders this time, coming warily across the glen from another direction. Both were naked; both rode bareback. The man was no giant, but he was big and muscular. The woman was slender and apple-breasted. The way her long, tapered legs gripped the shining bay horse made Brandon's spine twitch. They stopped the horse with light tugs on the hackamore reins. He could see that they were searching the woods, speaking to each other softly too softly for him to hear.
Brandon let go with the camera, pulled the film through and began to count. Without taking his eyes off the idyllic pair, he peeled his print and braced himself for some moment he felt would come. He had a distinct impression that they were hiding from the other riders, though why, he couldn't say.
The man swung one leg over his mount and slipped to the ground. He laughed and said something to the woman and she dismounted with the same Indian ease. As they moved together in a perfectly timed embrace, the horses began moving toward the stream.
Brandon watched the way the man's arms moved down, how his hands cupped firmly under the tight rounds of the woman's ass. Their kiss began gently and worked into a contest, heads rolling as passion inspired their lips to seek and drag.
They moved apart and the woman laughed at her lover's quick arousal. Brandon waited until she reached out and touched the man's cock, then he aimed the Polaroid at the excited pair.
His hands shook as he manipulated the camera. His own flesh had also turned to steel.
The couple moved to a grassier spot and the woman sank with fluid grace to the ground. She sat there, her hands raised to the arched hips of her companion. Brandon's blood pounded in his temples as he watched her pull the man's prod to her mouth. Even at that distance, the frenzy of her lips as she kissed him was obvious. She seemed to tease him, and the man sank both hands into her thick, chestnut hair and pulled her closer against his arched flanks.
At a moment when Brandon's artistic evaluation and the woman's lustful actions coincided, he snapped another picture. His hands were wet and clammy with sweat and he could feel the fever bursting out of his body like a volcanic fountain.
Gradually, the strain caused the naked man to bow forward and his legs began to sag. Across the distance came a triumphant male cry of excruciating ecstasy, and Brandon lived the moment when the man collapsed around the greedy woman, thighs gripping her rib cage, arms clasping her frantically.
They were now motionless together, but Brandon knew instinctively that there was a secret, demanding motion that he could not see from such a distance. The knot of arms and legs and bowed backs glowed white in the soft greens of the surrounding nook.
Brandon had the feeling of being suspended in the wings of a theater stage, witnessing a perfectly rehearsed scene from the Garden of Eden. Being pure male and only thirty-one, part of his mind cursed his inability to experience the abandonment of the passionate couple. Then the two horses reared and the woods rang with the thunder of hooves. Into the clearing came the six leather-clad riders, and, as they hauled their mounts around and leaped from the saddles, the two naked lovers sprang apart in panic.
The scene Brandon witnessed then made his blood run cold, even as it excited him to near vocal protest. The shouting, laughing riders surrounded the pair, and the whistle and snap of the vicious riding crops brought screams and cries of pain from the naked couple.
There was no mercy, no caution for exposed and tender parts. The three women were even more cruel than the men. Within seconds, the two bodies had huddled together, backs and butts turned to receive the lashing punishment as each tried desperately to protect the other.
As the first onslaught diminished, the whipping became more accurate and diabolical. The long quirts flicked and snapped, biting accurately at momentarily exposed tenderness -and sending new strident cries echoing through the woods.
Forcing his atrophied muscles to function, Brandon aimed the camera down at the brutal scene, hoping the tremble of his hands wouldn't ruin the exposure. By the time he had counted out the timing and snapped the print from the film backing, the group below had begun to quiet down.
He heard the tall woman with the straight back and the black hair say something to the others. Her voice was quiet but low enough that it carried far.
One of the men broke away from the circle and went after the two saddle-less horses, now grazing with the others close to the edge of the woods. Another man followed, but he went to one of the saddled horses and took a coil of white cotton rope from behind the saddle on the magnificent black stallion.
As if hypnotized, Brandon watched the men tie the welted, twisting body of the slim girl in a lewd spraddle over the back of her mount. Her bruised ass gleamed in the sprinkling of sun that filtered down through the trees. Her firm, darkly tipped breasts were mashed hard against the glossy hindquarters as they bound her, backwards, on the nervous animal.
The tall brunette was commanding the sensual operation, and when it was done, she raised her arm and the snap of the quirt came to Brandon's ears a second before the girl screamed.
The convulsion of her hips against the ridge of his mane was lascivious . . . erotic, and as she tried to ease the burn across her bottom, her legs squeezed hotly against the animal's side.
They tied the man in similar helplessness on the back of his horse. There were voices and once or twice, coarse laughter, but the single thought Brandon had throughout was the lack of real resistance put up by either the man or the girl. He had the feeling, again, that he was watching a well-rehearsed play . . . an erotic, brutally conceived drama in which all participants knew and welcomed their roles.
Now the riders remounted and, for a minute, they milled around their victims, the horses prancing and snorting for action. Occasionally a quirt lashed out, carefully avoiding horseflesh but resounding cruelly on the exposed bodies. At what he thought was the best moment, Brandon shot the last exposure on the roll.
His timing was perfect, because with a shout and a sweeping gesture of her arm, the satanic brunette led the group out of the clearing. Without being guided, the two horses carrying the spread-eagled victims followed along. The last thing Brandon saw as they headed downstream was the way the half-gallop of the horse made the naked girl bounce. Her head pounded helplessly on the jouncing hindquarters. In a few seconds they were gone.
CHAPTER TWO
The quiet was deafening. For a few minutes, Brandon sat in an exhausted slump, the vivid images still cavorting lewdly before his mental eyes. His tee shirt and washed jeans were soaked with sweat, and it wasn't much more than seventy-five degrees under the trees where he sat.
The half-finished sketch of the picturesque glen looked anemic now, a clever, well-executed sketch of a bloodless landscape. Brandon picked up the five prints so hastily shot. He had neither leveled the camera nor computed the lighting correctly, but they were surprisingly graphic. Under magnification, they would show him in detail what his excited senses had only partially absorbed.
He laughed at the incongruity of his position. He'd driven his VW thirty miles into the hills, following a dirt road that didn't even show on the map. He'd hiked at least a mile and a half from where he'd been forced to leave the bus. He'd been intrigued by the chapel-like structure of the trees along this stream. This and the peaceful glen with its green carpet of spring grass had caused him to struggle down the rugged mountain and then back up to the vantage point he finally chose.
No one, he thought, could have drawn a blueprint and come up with a superior place from which to witness the erotic opera he had just seen. Though he'd have liked to have been close enough to see their lust-contorted expressions or witness the way flesh welted under their harsh whips, he could not have gotten all of them in his viewfinder had he been any closer.
Brandon dumped his turpentine cup and closed his paint box. He took the partially marked canvas off the easel and then folded the stand into a compact handful. He couldn't have painted a barn door, let alone a decent, sensitive landscape after an experience like that. He could have painted a nude, or a mural of insane but exciting cruelty, filled with flashing contours and scarlet accents and swirling hair.
He wasn't sure what he'd seen, except that nothing in his life had been so vividly sexual, so completely abandoned to the rawness of lascivious intent. No nude party he'd ever attended (and he'd been to a few that ended that way), had ever brought about a feeling as intense as this.
As his virile reactions quieted, he decided that in an exotic, purely animalistic way, it had been beautiful. Perhaps that was it. Though they had been totally uninhibited, there was not a one of the eight that had seemed like a pig. They were brutal . . . wild . . . terribly free . . . and sensually and perfectly beautiful.
With his equipment distributed between big, brown-skinned hands, he made his way down the rocks and across to the glen. A strange feeling of fresh excitement came over him as he stood on the precise spot where minutes before, a naked man and a naked woman had been whipped into a pile of quivering, screaming sensitivity.
He looked at the marks of steel-clad hooves. He looked at the grassy place where two lovers, nude and impassioned, had collapsed in total abandonment only to have brutality lash out at them in place of fulfillment . . . or was it a fulfillment in itself? He wondered.
Neither naive nor puritanical, Brandon felt only appreciation for what he had seen, and then curiosity, like a furnace burning in the depths of his male being. Reluctantly, he headed back up the hill toward his bus.
In eight years of nomadic, unpatterned wandering, he had filled hundreds of salable canvases and seen a lot of beauty, but he had never run into drama such as he had just experienced. Even the horses were exceptional with their flared Roman nostrils and their well-bred slender legs. They were evidently used to screams and flashing whips, along with moments of no attendance.
As he approached the bus, he was sorry he hadn't brought Marj or Beth or any of the other classically proportioned models that he used in his Walnut Creek studio.
He'd planned this four or five day trip to build landscapes, not figure studies, and he was long past being frantic about sex. In the beginning, when he was unknown and half-starved, he had fought for sex nearly as hard as he had fought for brush technique. He ate food when he was hungry and it was handy. Up to an hour ago, he'd taken sex on the same basis.
Stowing his gear in the cleverly arranged van, he tried to control the urges in his massive, muscular frame. He managed pretty well until he spread the five prints on the foldout sketch board and pulled the five power magnifier from the locker under his bunk.
Within a minute, he was sweating again, though he continued to marvel with the half of his mind dedicated to line, curve, and shadow. The big brunette was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She sat a horse like a conquering Diana and her breast tips were blacker than Mediterranean plums. He could almost see the sensual fury flashing from her huge dark eyes.
It would take getting a little closer. Brandon Ward intended to do just that!
* * *
Where the stream broke out into the broad meadow behind an immense ranch house, Regina Lorde urged her horse on with hard slaps of her leather-clad legs. The animal leaped in pain as she dug in with her multi-tipped spurs. She brought him around in a tight arc, until he was at the back of the galloping column. Ignoring the other riders, she reined her horse in beside the shoulder of the animal carrying the pounding, agony-wracked body of Amy Carlson.
Hungrily, she stared at the way the working shoulder blades of the powerful horse twisted and undulated Amy's hips, crushing the delicate natal tissues and causing the lithe legs to cord around the stalwart neck of the horse.
Amy's head dropped and bounced, making her long red-brown hair ripple over the animal's ass. Regina's full lips drew back over her perfect teeth as she cut at the indelicately exposed rounds of Amy's bottom with her quirt.
When the cruel blow brought no delicious scream of agony, Regina reined slightly and dropped back to the horse carrying George Borel. He was alert, painfully so, his back arched to keep his less protected masculinity from being mashed and bruised by the galloping animal.
The muscles of his back were beautifully taut and Regina cut them with crisscross lash marks, laughing at his cry of surprised pain. He turned his head and cursed her bitterly, vilely.
"You bitch!" he muttered. "You're plain mad!"
The expletives that followed were drowned out by her throaty laugh. She'd thrown her head back, and her big breasts swung solidly, tauntingly.
Again she spurred her mount and when she regained the lead, she spurred again, and the column of bizarre figures were forced to whip and spur to keep up with her. The final burst of speed carried them through a high, arched gate in the seven foot wall around the huge house. In the patio, shaded by tall cottonwoods, the group reined their horses in, the dust filling the air from their skidding hooves.
Regina swung out of the saddle and stood with long legs planted in a strong stance. The brutal quirt swung from her gauntleted left wrist as she waited for the others to dismount.
"Cut him loose," Regina ordered her husband. "You and Matt throw him in the pool."
Lloyd Lorde seemed to merely step from his horse, his six-foot-four frame was thick and broad, and even in the heavy black leather, the bulge and contour of his muscles was graphically displayed. From a four-inch-wide belt around his lean belly, he drew a flashing knife and proceeded to cut the rope binding George Borel's feet to the lower part of the horse's neck. Then he cut the line binding the victim's wrists down under the animal's heaving belly. Without help from the slender, medium height man who stepped forward, Lloyd plucked the naked man from the back of the horse, took three quick steps, and tossed the half-limp body into the water. It flew through the air like a rag doll and the rest of them laughed as George flailed and kicked to right himself in the shallow depth. In shock, he huddled, his head bowed nearly to the water as the smart and sting of open welts brought fresh pain.
"Now her," Regina snarled, pointing to the limp body on the other horse. .
Lloyd cut the two bindings and pulled the naked girl off into his arms. Again he took steps, but one extra this time, and with some greater care. Then he tossed the unresisting girl into the water. For a moment, the hunters let their laughter rise; then it stilled.
The body of Amy Carlson did not kick, nor did it flail. It went under like something inanimate, then floated up again. With horrible slowness, the limp shape of belly and breasts and sprawled legs turned. One woman in leather screamed.
"Grab her, George," Lloyd Lorde yelled. "She's out cold."
Regina let fear catch in her throat as she saw George Borel come to life and seize the nearly submerged body of Amy Carlson. He turned her face up and lifted her head clear of the water. They could all see that she was unconscious. Her face was swollen and bruised from pounding on the horse's rump during the four mile ride from the grotto. Regina, momentarily forced out of her ecstatic trance, frowned with fear at the way no bubbles came from her slack lips.
"Doc, see if she's all right!" she snapped to the short, leather-clad man in the archer's hood. "She's hurt!"
Doctor Stanley Farley came forward and George half-lifted Amy's body from the water. Careful not to over wet his fine leather suit, the pudgy doctor pulled Amy out onto the broad tile apron around the pool. Stan Farley's practiced hands went from Amy's breast to her throat, then up to her face. He opened one eye, peered at it intently. Regina saw the color leave the doctor's face.
"Is she all right?" Regina demanded. "She's dead, Regina," the doctor said. "We've finally done it!"
CHAPTER THREE
Regina leaned heavily against the bar. It was three in the afternoon and time, plus several big hookers of Scotch had changed nothing. She still wore leather, but it was a strange garment, catering first to her passion for the tanned skin of animals, then to the uncompromising heat of the mid-afternoon.
The leather girdle was topped by coarse net which made her magnificent breasts even more sensual in the tracery of black, and from the skimpy panty-line of her cowhide hot pants, a short net skirt fluffed halfway down her strong white thighs. She wore boots with tiny sharp spurs protruding from the heels, and her entire outfit blended in with the black leather of the bar. She held her fifth Scotch and soda with a finely gloved hand. A short quirt dangled from a looped thong.
The shock had left her face, and the high arch of her black brows seemed to make her dark eyes larger and deeper. She shook her flowing, black hair to clear it from her forehead and looked at Matt Monahan. He wore conventional slacks and shirt, his enthusiasm for the bizarre obviously shaken.
"Who was she, Matt?" Regina asked.
"A would-be," he replied. "Been in Hollywood about nine months. No particular talent, no background. Just willing. She had to be willing to take two hundred and fifty dollars to die."
"It was an accident!" Regina snapped. "Stan says she had a heart attack. She could have got it crossing a street!"
"Sure," Matt agreed listlessly. "Only she got it strapped belly down on a horse on your ranch. Jesus, what are we going to do?"
"This George Borel," Regina pressed on. "Can he be trusted?"
"My God, Regina, how do I know?" Matt blurted. "Sure, he took money to come up here, just like Amy did. They both knew what they were hired for! They'd never have talked, any more than the other kids I've hired for you . . . but sex and a beating and some kicks are one thing. A dead broad is something else! I'm a theatrical agent, not a miracle worker. Who knows what Borel will decide to do? You better get Lloyd to talk to him."
"Lloyd?" Regina almost sniffed her husband's name. She'd married a twenty-one-year-old beach boy for his size and his sexual responses to any form of flattery. If a woman made over him, he was the world's greatest stud. If a man crowded him, he simpered and cavorted like a caressed kitten. Lloyd was an untiring, undefined animal with his sexual triggers attached to a narcissistic self-love. He couldn't even count his toes twice and get the same answer both times. Regina gulped down her drink and hung onto the self-control she felt to be one of her strong points.
"If George Borel can be made to see the problem," she said speculatively, "can you cover for Amy's disappearance? I mean, does she have a family or anyone who might ask questions, say if she were to take off for India with a retired businessman?"
"Regina, you can't get away with it!" Stan Farley said from the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
"A woman is dead!"
Adele Farley came across from the far side of the lodge-like living room as her husband made his appearance. She was gorgeously blonde, with long stiff breasts that pushed her flowered blouse out sharply over a slender waist. Fright had dulled her beauty, but it could do nothing with the flare of her lush hips nor the instinctive sensuality of her movements. She and Stan had been married barely a year. She had been one of the 'hunted' Matt had hired over a year ago. Unlike the others, she had remained in the select group, her body and normally quick wit having left more than a passing impression on the pudgy doctor.
"How is George Borel?" Regina asked, ignoring the protest.
"Lloyd is with him. He's beat and shocked and he may have a light hernia, but I've given him a sedative and he'll feel better in the morning. Regina, it's nobody's fault, but we are all responsible. Amy is dead. Any doctor will agree that she died of a fatal coronary, but any other doctor who takes one look at her is going to send us all to prison! She died on that horse's back. The marks of the rope on her ankles and wrists are very plain. She's beaten and bruised and mutilated by whip marks. Even if no other doctor ever sees her, any undertaker would call the police the moment he saw her. The condition of her body and George Borel's testimony would certainly convict us all of mayhem and manslaughter!"
Regina stared into her drink. She sensed rather than saw the approach of Con Sonalon, the cold-eyed Lesbian Matt lived with. She was used to violence, used to shock. No one, including the homosexually inclined Matt, knew exactly what Con thought about anything. Her bleached hair and vapid blue eyes gave her a hard look, even when her loose, lush body was frenzied by the passions she could generate over any female body from twelve to sixty. Nor did anyone know what the bond between Con and Matt really was.
At the moment, Regina didn't care what any of them thought. She faced them all, her sharp aquiline face hard and domineering.
"Listen to me," she said in her biting tone. "A little nobody lies dead in the Blue Room. She had a bad heart, which is not our fault. Adele, here, took three times the beating two or three different times and came up hot, alive, and ready! We left Con tied to a tree for two days and all she did was bite Lloyd when he cut her loose! We all got into this and we'll all get out of it. Matt can backtrack and cover for her disappearance if he tries."
"What do you mean?" Con asked throatily.
"She'll just disappear. That big lout of a husband of mine can put in some time on a pick and shovel and that will be that!"
"George Borel," Stan Farley said. "What if he doesn't want to go along with the program?"
Regina looked at them threateningly. "Then I'll have Lloyd dig a wider, deeper hole and Matt can tell the trade that Amy and George took off together, if anyone asks!"
"In fact, I recommend that idea!" Con put in.
"M-murder?" the little doctor gasped.
"Is that what you call it in the hospital?" Regina asked.
"My God," Matt breathed. "What a mess we're in!"
The moment of silence was suddenly shattered by the beep-beep of an automobile horn. Everyone but Regina twitched with a start.
"Christ! Who's that?" Stan Farley gasped.
Regina walked to the glass doors across the face of the living room. Squinting her eyes at the glare, she peered across the meadow to the south.
Regina had no idea why a delivery van should be beeping its way up to the ranch. Ordinarily Roberto Garcia, the ranch caretaker, made certain everything was delivered before the guests arrived. He'd been cautioned many time about chance intruders. Then the stubby square vehicle pulled around in front of the house and a huge, casually clad man wriggled out of the driver's seat.
"It's not a delivery," Regina said, measuring the handsome man. "Play it cool now. Matt, go see who it is while I find a jacket."
"My God, he's bigger than Lloyd!" Adele exclaimed.
CHAPTER FOUR
To Brandon's momentary dismay, he could not identify the dark young man strolling out of the house to meet him. The little plan of gentle intrusion which had seemed so simple once he'd outlined it was suddenly a bit more complicated. Brandon decided that the only ones of the crowd he could really identify would be the gorgeous dark-haired woman with the outrageous tits and the slender girl who'd taken the beating, and, if the angle were correct, the man with whom she'd nearly consummated the furious sex act.
"Hi," Brandon offered. "I'm looking for either Mr. or Mrs. Lorde. My name is Brandon Ward."
"Brandon Ward?" Matt echoed. "Not the artist?"
Brandon grinned. "It's flattering to have the name recognized. Thank you."
"You are him, then? Well! I'm Matt Monahan. I handled the talent for the opening of the Burrows Gallery. Your murals were superb. Come in, Ward. I'm sure Mrs. Lorde will be happy to see you. What are you doing way out here?"
"Just kicking around looking for some good country. This place was quite a surprise, out here in the middle of nowhere." He took in the house with a wag of his big head. "I had a hell of a time finding it from the directions they gave me."
"Why here at all?" Matt asked.
Brandon shrugged. "The only live stream in the county at this time of year is on the Lorde property according to the old timers at the county seat."
Inside the massive, rustic living room, Brandon made a casual but internally intense inventory. There were the two buxom blondes, he thought, and the little short guy. Then he was in the middle of introductions and he tried extra hard to identify the names with the faces.
He didn't feel really welcome, because after the first slight burst of enthusiasm at discovering a live, successful artist, they seemed to throw up a silent barrier of restraint.
"What can I get you that's cool and happy-making?" Matt asked. "Mrs. Lorde will be here in a minute."
"Bourbon over ice will do it, thanks," Brandon replied.
As casually as he could, he looked around the room in search of some exotic clue to what he'd witnessed that morning. There was a seminude over the handsome walnut and leather bar, and three sensually colored abstracts around the big room, but not a single erotic item. Then he took a second look at the furniture.
Everything was upholstered in black leather. Great oversized brass studs anchored the leather wherever it tucked and folded. In themselves, the ponderous overstuffed pieces meant little, but by half-closing his eyes, he eould match the furniture to the memory of the six whooping, brutal riders in the shadowy glen.
"Thanks," he said, taking the drink from Matt.
Then he saw her and the incipient case of hots he'd generated since first seeing her astride the big horse began to grow.
He was sure she wore nothing under the black sateen top suit. From where it tucked in her trim, high-heeled boots up over smooth, flaring hips, then in to grip her lithe waist and on up over the pushy, double contours of her high breasts, not one telltale wrinkle or seam marred the exquisite, curvaceous flow.
He looked at her boldly because she was the kind of a woman who would demand a bold appraisal, he decided. Her neck was proud, her head poised in a regal tilt, perfectly framed by a loose mass of jet black hair.
"Mr. Ward, I'd like you to meet Mrs. Regina Lorde. Regina, this is quite a famous artist named Brandon Ward."
"He just likes my stuff," Brandon laughed easily. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lorde. I don't believe I've ever met a more beautiful woman. I may throttle your husband."
"Another Irishman, by the blarney," the scarlet lips said. "Welcome to Hades Hollow, Mr. Ward."
There was polite laughter from the others, but Brandon was too intent upon devouring the glamorous woman to pay any attention to fatuous accord. She looked back at him blankly, knowing, he thought, that he was raping her with his piercing blue eyes, feeling of her body with his motionless hands. It was some time before he remembered that it was rude to stare.
"May I apologize," he said, leaving her to decide what for. "As Mr. Monahan said, I paint. I'm told that your ranch has some of the most typical land of California, plus a live stream which is a rarity this time of year."
"Our ranch is beautiful," she said. "Won't you sit down and explain the proposition I see in your eyes?"
Brandon laughed. "No, I won't explain that one," he said, "but what I would like to do is pull my van into the back country and do a few landscapes. I'm totally self-sufficient so I wouldn't have to bother any of you for anything."
He saw them look from one to another and he decided what he suggested might put a crimp in their charging around the acreage clad in exotic leather costumes, chasing naked nymphs and satyrs, whipping them into some sort of a sexual trance and hauling them off for some kind of mysterious orgy.
All that it would surely do, but he couldn't think of a more acceptable proposition, nor one he would have to lie less about.
There was a nervous shuffling of hands and feet, all except for Regina Lorde. She did something with her hand and Matt scuttled for the bar. Then she looked at Brandon, and again her eyes became bottomless pits with no expression at all.
"Well, I think that would be nice," she said flatly. "You may do that if you wish. I do suppose it would be well for you to tell us what part of the ranch you'll visit, however. The woods along the creek are very dense and we wouldn't want you shot for a big short-eared rabbit, would we?"
"Regina, do you think . . . ? " the doctor began.
"Why not?" she stopped him short. "I'm sure Mr. Ward knows exactly what he is doing, and we won't be using the woods for anything, will we?"
"I suppose not," the hard-faced blonde named Con put in. "Not me, at least!"
"None of us," the black-haired beauty said. "There's just the six of us . . . and the caretaker and two servants. My husband is sleeping off a bad stomach. None of us are hikers."
"Or hunters, I hope," Brandon chuckled.
"Nor hunters," Regina agreed.
Liars all, he mused. He traded talk through another drink, trying to seem blase about art, the countryside and the weather. He wondered if it were possible that the two absent wood babes had already left the ranch. It had taken him nearly five hours to circumnavigate the place and come in from the other side of the mountain. At the rate everyone had been going, it would have taken five hours for the whipped couple to recoup.
"Well," Brandon decided, "I've camp to make and a spot to pick. I think I'd better be moving on.
"There's a bridle path up along the creek, but if you find any place closer, feel free to camp and paint all you care to."
Brandon said good-bye and followed Mrs. Lorde onto the veranda. Close behind her, he could smell the wild perfume of her hair, and the rolling swivel of her voluptuous body on the stilted, spurred boots was almost devastating to his male control. Just short of where the sun beat down past the veranda, she stopped and looked up at him.
"You're not afraid to be alone in the woods," she stated positively.
"Should I be?"
"This was called Hades Hollow long before we built the ranch house here," she said. "Lucifer, himself, is said to walk the meadow at night, pitchfork, horns, even a three-pronged tail and all."
"All Irishmen are in league with the devil," he laughed. "Just ask an Englishman! You're kind to worry about me."
"I'm not kind at all," she replied enigmatically.
"You should never have to be kind to anybody," he said heavily. "People should have to be kind to you. If you ever decide to have a portrait,, for God's sake, give me a call!"
"You know, I've a feeling that, as hard as you've been staring at me this past hour, you could almost do one from memory."
"I could," he said, "only one thing is missing."
"I forgot to put on my nose?" she asked.
"You forgot to smile," he corrected. "Surely something must amuse you."
"The devil's advocate may leer, Mr. Ward," she said, "but she may never smile. Don't get yourself lost."
CHAPTER FIVE
George Borel lay like a dead man, sleeping deeply under the powerful sedation Stan Farley had shot into his arm. Lloyd Lorde stood looking down at the magnificent body, welted and bruised and still completely nude. The longer he looked, the greater became the strange, unmanly urge so incompatible with his grotesquely massive physical being.
Lloyd turned and checked the door of his bedroom. It was locked, as he had secured it after Stan left. In sudden petulant decision, he went into his dressing room and jerked a big suitcase from behind the row of expensive suits. He snapped open the catches.
With knowing fingers, he took out certain silk garments, caressing each momentarily as he selected matching panties and brassiere with a thick padding, garter belt, and hose, and finally from under the lush silks, a pair of big, brutally high-heeled pumps, fashioned especially to fit his size eleven feet.
With his mind racing, Lloyd piled the pretty things on his dresser and began to peel off his slacks and sport shirt. His fingers shook, but no more tremulously than his pouting lips. Completely naked, he posed in front of the full length mirror on the door to the bathroom.
He cupped one hand over his masculine parts, hiding them from view. Then he felt better. At times like these he despised his horrible appendages enough to whip them off flush with a sharp knife. He turned around and admired the high smooth out-curves of his rump. He felt of himself lewdly and giggled, feeling the transformation coming over him in floods of heat and excitement.
From another drawer, he took an athletic supporter which a seamstress had cleverly covered with flesh-tinted velour. Over the crotch strap was sewn soft, tightly curled nylon hair. When he slipped into the tight harness, the illusion was almost perfect. The sight of himself so camouflaged completed his mental surrender. His giggle of pleasure was high, hysterical and convincingly feminine. Feverishly, he smoothed his palms over his muscular belly, then grabbed up the brassiere and hastily fitted it around his forty-six inch chest. He was not able to see that it was ludicrous, but his eyes were attaining that mystical haze always induced by his inundation into transvestism.
Next he stepped into the garter belt, making sure the black waistband covered the straps of the supporter. The nylon curls showed now like an overripe, lascivious mount of love and Lloyd adored himself in the mirror a few seconds before donning the black opera-length nylon hose. He snugged the tops around his thick thighs and thrilled to the sensation that feeling of himself always brought. Then he stepped into the big pumps and he was so tall, he could hardly see all of his reflection in the mirror. Again he pursed a kiss at the half-feminine Amazon in the mirror and began to put on his make-up. Freshly shaven only an hour before, he needed very little pancake to smooth his handsome face into a velveted texture. Then he painted his eyes expertly, with the efficiency of a showgirl and he turned his petulant mouth into a scarlet challenge.
Satisfied, he reached up to one of the hatboxes on the closet shelf and extracted from it an expensively coiffured wig, precisely the tone of the tufts under the bellyband of the garter belt. This was not nylon, but genuine hair, and it settled on Lloyd's head with perfect fit, covering his ears, his high forehead and nestling around the base of his neck with a pleasant snugness.
Satisfied with his reflected beauty, he ducked his head and went through the door into his bedroom. He paused, looking down at the unconscious man, wishing he were conscious, but knowing this was the only way.
Arrogantly, proudly, Lloyd swiveled across the carpet and made a graceful pirouette around the bed, letting his hands run from bare midriff back to naked ass, then crawl upward to gently shape the bold falseness of the brassiere. For several minutes, Lloyd paraded in his finery, murmuring words of adoration to the silent figure on the bed.
"Look, you darling man. Did you ever see a more beautiful ass? And look at my pussy. Darling, I have the kind of twat men have wet dreams about. Mmmmmm, see what heavenly boobies I have. How would you like to lay that sweet pecker of yours between a set of grinders like these? A real meat grinder, baby. That's me."
Lloyd let his vanity tease himself until the pulse at the base of his thick throat pounded so violently that he could stand it no longer. Saliva flecked the red of his painted lips and the mist thickened over his mascaraed eyes.
With sudden surrender, Lloyd threw himself on the unconscious George. Clutching the thick, motionless shoulders, he rained kisses on the slack mouth. Lloyd's tongue darted, dipped, and pried its way into George's mouth. Hungrily, he sucked on George's lip, stabbing his tongue slowly in and out in a seductive call.
His hands grazed down over the still body, outlining his chest, toying with his hard nipples, then moving down to the flat, relaxed belly.
"Oh, God, but it's good to love a man," he sobbed. "Awake, sleeping prince!"
He nibbled at George's ear . . . tongued him, and nipped at the lobe, then he moved down to nuzzle into his victim's neck.
Even in repose, the smell of sweat and fear lingered on George's body. There was a musky, masculine smell that flared Lloyd's nostrils and inflamed his brain.
He squirmed, rubbing his false boobs into George's chest, and he shivered at the naughty thrill that raced through him.
His pulse pounded furiously and his tightly trussed log throbbed like a giant blister, threatening to explode.
Feverishly, he let his mouth drag red stained saliva over George's chest as he shifted his trembling love ever downward. Like a cat, he began to lick the welts and bruises his wife and the others had left on the strong, handsome body. The blonde wig bobbed and darted as Lloyd's tongue whipped and soothed the tortured skin.
Lloyd closed his eyes and he moved on down to seek new areas to conquer. Over the belly, the navel, the thighs, his smoldering mouth trailed its feverish way toward its flaccid goal. His cheeks nuzzled the cool organ. He sighed and then pressed his lips to the silky flesh.
"Oh, love . . . love," he breathed.
His lips parted and as his tongue began an irritating rasp, shudders of ecstasy shook him. When he could stand no more, he sucked the limp cylinder into his mouth.
Totally absorbed, he dreamed of responses that could not come and imagined a greedy, demanding lover in place of this unresponsive, sleeping flesh. Sounds of animal passion escaped his lips and he had to fight the urge to bite.
He pulled away, forcing himself to breathe deep and cool. Holding George's limp pecker in his hand, he gently skinned it back, examining even the most minute detail of the man's equipment. A second hand came into play, kneading and rolling George's balls.
He'd seen better stuff. His own appendages were immense, but these things did not get weighed in his present evaluation. To look and feel of a man . . . any man, turned him on strong! After a moment, he no longer cared about pacing himself, but buried his feverish face in George's nuts.
Let me suffocate in a man's crotch . . . drown in his cum . . . bloiv my brains out over his lethal gun.
Now the frustration began to set in. He wanted more and the dreams were not enough. Turning the big, unconscious man over onto his side, Lloyd pulled up one of his legs and burrowed his head into new hollows and dark, forbidden secret places.
As he rubbed George's balls and bat against his chin and neck, he pressed his face in against the man's crease. His head assaulted the drugged sleeper until his passion escaped his lips in short-breathed whimpers. He knew what he wanted to do, what he was going to do, and the time was close, crowding in his mind with every beat of his racing heart.
He lathed his way up George's crease until he came to the tightly puckered bung. Sniffing, letting his tongue whip furiously, he worked around it a moment and then began to probe demandingly. Then his head thrust hard and his tongue, like a rampant beast, forced deeply.
His nerves shrieked with excitement as he fucked his tongue into George's ass. His hands kneaded George's limp prod frantically, and his own tortured flesh threatened to explode.
Suddenly, he reached down and tore at the tufted supporter. In moments, he had freed his straining, passionate cock. Easing his own agony with delicate, tickling fingers, he lay back and let it blow.
It was a curious release, but a violent one for there was no violent pumping of his hand over the convulsing muscle or any dogging it with frantic thighs. While his tongue burrowed deep into George's bowel, he lay relaxed, his fingers barely skimming up and down the length of his flesh.
"OHHHHHHHHHH!" he bellowed, blowing hot air into his victim's ass. Then he lay quietly, letting the mad afterglow die gently as he relaxed his neck and let his face rest to the side.
Presently, he rolled to his feet and stood swaying with the aftershocks of unleashed passion. There was no name for it, and he didn't care. For once in his mixed-up, strangely unreal life, he'd done exactly what he wanted to do. Whether the man ever knew who had smeared him with lipstick or not was unimportant to Lloyd. His sex life was a secret, complicated entanglement with self-love and extreme sensitivity of body.
He went to the window and looked out, noting how low the sun was. He guessed George had been out for at least two hours.
Then he saw the van rolling slowly out of the yard. Lloyd didn't even question its presence. He went into his dressing room and disrobed, carefully hiding his lovely feminine garments before he took a shower to wash away his makeup. They would wonder what he'd been doing, and it was time for cocktails. He wondered idly how his domineering wife with her whip and her spurs would get them all out of the mess they were in. He was sure she'd find a way.
CHAPTER SIX
Doctor Farley looked at Regina with very little doubt in his sharp eyes. Despite his five-six, two-hundred pound look of cherubic good nature, he was a man of great professional success and a keen mind. At the moment, he'd completely turned off the spigot of sensuality that made him a willing member of the strange group.
"Regina, we have to make up our minds immediately," he said, nodding out into nowhere, but obviously referring to the new guest in the departing van. "Time of death is easily established by any medical examiner. We either call the authorities within the next few minutes or we never do. There'll be no excuse tomorrow morning for not having called the coroner today!"
"Why on earth didn't you tell that big brute he couldn't stay at the ranch?" Adele Farley demanded.
"And what excuse could you have dreamed up that didn't sound phony?" Regina countered. "Besides, the very fact that we were open and willing to have him would help allay suspicions. We may even be able to use him. Stan, could we say we picked her up on the bridal path after her horse threw her? I have some heavy silver bracelets that we could put on to hide the rope burns."
Matt came forward then, his eyes flashing.
"We could hook her foot in a stirrup and run the horse for a mile or so," he enthused. "That would really rough her up!"
"My God!" Con gasped. "That pretty body!"
Regina grinned harshly at the Lesbian's obvious mental processes. The pretty blonde could tear a girl to pieces with her teeth and her devilish fingers but the thought of destroying a lovely female shape without some emotional reward was distasteful to her.
"What about it, Stan? Could we get away with it?"
Stan considered the idea from a medical point of view. "Could be," he admitted. "Then the only problem would be keeping everybody's mouth shut. I think we're all pretty sure of each other, but there's George Borel to think of."
Regina took command. "We'll try it!" she decided emphatically. "Where's that big ox of a husband of mine?"
"I'll get him," Matt volunteered. "I know how to handle him."
"I'm sure you do," Con laughed grimly.
When Matt came back with Lloyd, now showered and neatly garbed in slacks and sport shirt, Regina outlined the plan.
"I'll put on a leather suit, then put one of Amy's blouses and a pair of riding pants on over the leather. I can take the bay stallion and run him through the woods till the outer garments are brush whipped and torn. Then we'll dress Amy and let the stallion drag her, as Matt suggested. It's four o'clock now. If we work fast, we can have it all set by five or five-thirty. Then we'll send Lloyd into town to notify the police or whoever he can find."
"Why me?" the handsome youth complained.
"Because, you overgrown pup, you're supposed to be the man of the house!" Regina barked. "Earn the goddamn title!"
Stan shook his head. "We'll have to hurry," he said. "Rigor mortis won't wait forever."
Regina nodded. "All right. Lloyd, go saddle four horses. Con, you come with me and get her partially dressed. We'll load her into a car and take her up to the edge of the woods. I'll make the run on Red Star and we'll hook her foot into the stirrup for a quick drag. If you'll all move, we can have it done in thirty minutes. While Lloyd goes for the coroner, we'll bring her in here and lay her out. It can look like Stan had worked on her. It will be our word against no other evidence."
"Except George Borel's," Adele reminded her. "How long before that sedative will wear off, Stan?"
"Another hour or so."
"You think he'll go along with us?" Regina directed her query to Matt.
"He's game for most things," Matt replied. "I'd say if we could keep him out of sight until after it's all over, he'll go along. A little green stuff wouldn't hurt, of course, if the argument gets loud. Anyway, he knows it was an accident, and he can't afford a messy spread in the papers particularly if I tell him I'm about to get him a part in a nice family-type picture. I'd say, take a chance on him."
"Then let's go!" Regina ordered.
Within minutes, Lloyd came from the stables with the four saddled horses. Regina appeared, clad in an overall leather suit with Army Carlson's blouse and riding pants pulled loosely over the expensive under costume. She'd lost some of her inner nervousness once the plan was under way. She directed her husband to follow her into the bedroom where Con and Adele were dressing the body. Adele wasn't much help, but the hard-eyed Lesbian was working without seeming to care about the feel of cold, firming flesh. She had put panties and brassiere on the slender form and Regina helped with the boots and spurs. The silver bracelets covered the darkening rope marks on the dead girl's wrists.
"Put her in the convertible, Lloyd," Regina told her husband. "Where are the servants?"
"Roberto has gone to check the pump at the spring. The women are fixing dinner in the kitchen."
"Move her, then, Muscles!"
Regina went out ahead of them all, her lithe body suddenly alive in the secret caress of the leather suit. From her wrist dangled the long, cruel quirt and her hair was bound tightly under an archer's hood. As she swung up on the bay stallion, she pointed to a place in the woods about two hundred yards from the bridle path along the creek. Then she spurred the big stallion into a mighty leap and went galloping toward the woods.
Just before she entered the brush, she looked back. Matt and Stan were galloping easily after her and Stan was leading the extra horse. As the fire brush slapped at her, Regina dropped the archer's hood over her face, and a cry of personal exultation escaped her lips. Like a demon, she spurred the horse into the thickest brush and her quirt and her cries made the strong horse fly.
Excitement coursed through Regina's splendid body, her arms and legs welcoming the thrash and whip of the brush as if some cruel lover were caressing her. She mixed high, shrill laughter with her cries of pleasure and she ran the big horse much deeper into the woods than she had planned.
Finally, she reined him around, and let him stand for a moment, his mighty chest heaving, his mouth blowing a foamy protest. In the nearly quiet moment, Regina's body screamed for love . . . for hard brutal caresses . . . for fulfillment of the terrific emotional hurting the headlong and dangerous ride had created in her aching breasts and lush hips. In a body that was all hard, soft breasts quivered and tender love lips cried to be loved. Then she spurred the horse again and deliberately sought to beat herself against every bush and low limb she could anticipate.
She burst into the clearing within twenty yards of where the men were waiting. She hauled the big stallion up short and slid back off his rump. Matt was standing by the convertible door, and Amy Carlson's body was a bright, seminude challenge propped up in the rear seat.
"Drag her out," Regina panted. "Hurry!"
She removed the torn and stained blouse, then the riding pants. They showed the effects of her frantic charge through the woods. There were some deep cuts and scratches on the leather suit, too. She and Stan worked rapidly, buttoning and zipping the corpse into the tattered garments. Then Regina went to the big stallion and led him over to the body.
"Twist the stirrup and hook her heel in it, Lloyd," she ordered. When he hesitated, she flicked her quirt and the lash cut across his right thigh. "I said, hook her up!" she reminded him icily.
Regina strode over to the waiting trio of horses and swung up on the black gelding. She raised the facemask of her hood to watch her husband fumble Amy's boot heel into a secure and deadly lock. Then she guided the horse to the stallion and gathered in the bay's reins in her left hand.
"Lloyd, head for town," she said imperiously. "We've had a riding accident. You know what to say. Don't try to make up a big story. Just tell them that she was tossed by a runaway horse and got her foot caught in the stirrup. Tell them we have a doctor here who thinks she had a heart attack, but don't be too positive. Just be your usual confused and stupid self. If you goof, I'll whip every inch of hide off your big beautiful body. Get going!"
The convertible leaped to life and raised a high feather of dust as Lloyd stabbed the gas to get away from the macabre scene. Regina's lip curled in disdain.
"I'll lead her through the brush and you meet me at the creek. Come on, get some guts in your bellies. Hi-yah, GO!"
She spurred the gelding who leaped forward. She felt the tug of the reins, then the stallion came with a jerk as he felt the bit tear his mouth.
At a dead run, Regina looked back and saw how Amy's body bounced and plowed and flopped and twisted in the rough underbrush.
A shriek of illicit passion filled the air, then they crossed a rocky path and Regina stared as the body bumped and raked along.
Regina thrust her legs out to the side, spreading her underbelly wide. For a quarter of a mile her throbbing flesh was battered hotly against the leather crotch and the unyielding leather saddle.
"Damn!" she muttered beneath labored breath. "Damn! Damn! DAMN!"
Suddenly she let go of the stallion's reins and stood up in her stirrups. Her body was a bundle of steel bands, and she rode that way for a mad, orgasmic moment.
"EYIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
The curl and throb of lust poured through her as her mind and body reacted to the uncontrollable sexual relief.
When the men rode up, she was curled over the pommel of her saddle, whimpering in confused misery and ecstasy. As they dismounted and loaded the mutilated corpse belly down over the wild-eyed stallion, Regina became violently ill on the grass. She wanted desperately for some one to hold her . . . pet her . . . soothe the fright her own explosion into raw animalism had created, but there had never been a man like that in her twenty-seven years of hectic life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun, slashing through the curtains, awakened George. He turned his head away from the bright intruder and the movement. Gingerly, he tested another muscle or two and the result was the same. He relaxed, his mind flooded with the sudden memory of the insane occurrences of yesterday.
Matt had not lied. He was going to earn his two-fifty. He already had, in fact. Then he organized his thoughts and sat up in the king-sized bed, stifling a groan of pain.
The hot broad with the educated mouth was dead. Heart, the doctor had said. Beat to death, scared to death . . . but dead, just the same.
George rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up. He looked at himself in the big mirror over the dresser. His jaw dropped as he saw the lipstick smeared from his nose to his knees. He labored to his feet, swayed for a moment, then staggered over for a closer inspection.
The first thing he understood was that the lipstick was exactly the same color that Regina Lorde used. Sometime after the shot the doctor had given him had taken over, that sexy creature had given him a first class mouthing. Evidently, dead girls didn't cramp her style nor dull her nymphomania in the slightest.
He grinned, wondering if her attentions had been sharp enough to counteract the shot. He looked down, and the sight of his pounded pulpy flesh made him doubt that she'd had much luck. There was some doubt, remembering the queer antics of the group, as to what the voluptuous woman would call luck, however. Maybe she preferred her meat on the tender side. A more insane gang of sadists he'd never known, and she made one hell of a leader.
George went into the bathroom. He wanted a hot shower and a chance to think. He managed the shower, but at the finish, he'd come to no conclusions. From his overnight case, he took fresh clothes, then he borrowed the electric shaver in the bath. It was just nine AM when he headed for the door.
There was nobody in the front room but the smell of coffee drew him into the dinette. There he bumped into a brown-skinned girl with a smile a yard wide.
"Good morning, Senor," she offered. "Coffee, yes."
"Yes!"
"Mrs. Lorde and the Senor medico by the pool. You go, Senor. I will bring coffee."
She raised one smooth arm and pointed toward the door. George took a second look at the way her upraised arm lifted her tight, conical breast under the loose, flowered dress. Then, grinning, he followed her direction.
The first sight of the pool brought bad memories. He'd been barely conscious himself, and the shock of lifting the girl's dead body . . . feeling her limpness . . . seeing the way her face had been hammered by the ride. Now he looked away from the pool and walked toward Regina Lorde and Stan Farley. They were sitting under the shade around a wrought-iron table. Coffee cups and a half-filled ashtray testified to the fact that they had been there for some time.
"Hi," he offered for starts.
"How do you feel, George?" Stan asked. "You're looking fine."
"Sore and tired," he answered, looking directly at the gorgeous woman in the brief sunsuit. She neither smiled nor nodded, but her hand waved him to a patio chair with something friendly in the flick of her fingers. She wore neat leather boots, even at this hour. Her hair was tied up in a white silk scarf and her lipsick was exactly the same red as the smeared, daubed mess he just finished scrubbing off his body.
"You were lucky," Regina said. "You slept through the whole unhappy commotion last night."
"What happened?" he asked.
Stan shrugged. "Lloyd brought out one of the coroner's men, and an ambulance followed. The police asked a few questions and by midnight, it was all over. They took my word for it that she died of a coronary, but of course, because of her condition, there will be an inquest and probably an autopsy."
"How'd you pull it off so smooth?" George blurted.
"Smooth?" the placid brunette echoed. "It was an accident, and the coroner's inquest will prove it."
"And that takes care of a beaten, wet body?" George asked incredulously. "Some coroner."
"Well, we told a little lie," Stan admitted. "We said she tumbled from her horse and got her foot caught in the stirrup. It was the best way we could think of to explain. It seemed best, under the circumstances."
George sensed the trap, recognized the moment, and knew that things were made for him. Regina Lorde was disgustingly rich. Doctor Farley and his lush blonde wife were important people, too. Matt Monahan was in a position to give him a real hand up the ladder if George could put the screws to him hard enough.
It was like the plot of a B picture, and George was the star single outsider, the star with the off-the-cuff script. All he had to do was keep from upstaging the others and keep his own part of the dialog cool. He pantomimed a rock.
"Wouldn't you have done it that way?" Regina pressed.
"It wasn't my party," he caged dryly.
"Oh?" she queried. "It seemed to me you were contributing something to her bad heart when we rode up yesterday morning!"
George grinned. "That never gave any woman a heart attack, I assure you! Don't misunderstand. I hired out for this bit, and I'm a fair joiner, but you guys got pretty rough there, and I can't be blamed for thinking."
"Weren't you enjoying it up to the end?" Stan asked.
George hustled his crotch like a truck driver. "That upside down bit on the galloping horse could be edited out, for my money. I don't think it did anything for the horse and it damned near ruined me! Anyway, it's over, and I'm sorry about the kid. She was quite a gal. I suppose the party is over and someone can take me back to town today?"
"Why?" Regina asked calmly. "Don't you like it here?"
"A few days rest wouldn't hurt you, George," Stan hurried to add. "We're sorry it happened, too, but . . . well, it wasn't like she was a close friend or relative. We hadn't planned to break up the group." He grinned wryly. "Doctors take a dim view of giving up the one vacation a year their patients permit them!"
"You mean, like nothing happened?" George asked in amazement.
"Not necessarily," Stan said. "But a day or two will dull the memory, and life does have to go on."
"You'll stay, won't you, George?" Regina asked.
For the first time since he'd met her, George saw her smile. He also saw how her eyes traveled the length of his bruised body. He vowed to himself that the next time she turned that wild, red mouth loose on him, he'd be a lot more help than he'd been last night.
* * *
Adele Farley filed her nails with nervous vigor. The force of her movements made her long conical breasts shake and quiver. When she looked up, she saw Con watching her in the mirror.
"I wish they'd hurry up," Adele said. "I'm going nuts!"
Con turned from making up her face and stood with her back arched, displaying the voluptuous hourglass of her nearly nude body. Unlike Adele, Con's body was firm and each exciting plane of her shape was a sensuous entity, exuding beauty and challenge. Her breasts were full, melon-shaped and tipped with perpetually hard coral buttons. Once a nondescript brown blonde, she'd bleached her thick wavy hair to a platinum gold. An electric shaver had removed every other telltale tuft leaving her body a completely lovely sex machine with very special talents.
"I know what you need, baby," she told Adele. "You need to be kissed and petted and told how beautiful you are! Look, baby, look at how I need you!"
Con leaned back, her hands on the dresser behind her. The strong arch made her housecoat fall to either side, baring the full sweep of her nude loveliness. Slowly, she began to gyrate her flaring hips, and her knees moved apart, giving the undulations a deliberate meaning as she displayed her naked cunt. Delicious abuse had thickened and pouted her natural puffy prominence and the velvet tones from pale pink to deep dusty maroon worked together in erotic, mesmerizing rhythm. Her pussy lips worked against each other, rubbing sensually and burning into Adele's brain.
"My God, Con!" she breathed in abrupt distress.
"I want to kiss you, honey. Kiss, kiss, kiss!"
Con tipped herself into balance without altering the lewd arch of her body and her tongue flicked meaningfully. She took two steps toward the excited woman sitting on the edge of the bed.
The moment was not a new one to either of them, but it had not lost one iota of potency and passion over the year they had been spasmodic lovers. Con ran her tongue out over her lips and made it dance and flitter like a snake's. Slowly, she opened her mouth and exposed the thick muscular base of her tongue. Saliva formed and flicked from the darting tip, and at the same time, her trembling body produced companionate moisture. Hands cupped to her puffy mound, then moved down to outline the inside of her widely spread legs. Around they moved to finally grab and cling to the taut cheeks of her ass. Con danced furiously, her breasts snapping and smacking in front of Adele, causing the doctor's wife to shiver visibly.
"You are a sexy bitch, darling," she whispered.
Con smiled. "And I know better what you want than any man."
Little by little, Con's knees bent deeper and deeper, and as her body lowered, Adele reached out and put her hands to the bouncing breasts. As she pulled Con closer, her quivering legs parted and stretched, then she pulled the Lesbian's body into her warm, sensual curve. Con closed her eyes, and all of her mind concentrated on the way her mouth and tongue formed the violent searching hunger. She let herself be moved, and the darting tongue found the jutting nipple of Adele's breast. Soon Adele was guiding her to the right to give equal time to the other breast.
Con's passion made her entire body writhe, scrubbing her knees on the carpet in a frenzy of emotion. She knew when Adele could stand no more because she felt herself being crowded down. As her avid appetite spurred her on, she went eagerly down the soft, pliant belly and into the silky bush.
Adele's juices were flowing copiously and her sweet passion scent filled the air. Con drew away and stared down at the lush delicacy, as wetly inviting as a juicy peach.
Her tongue skirted the cunt-rim . . . around and around as she teased her victim and goaded her passions on. Adele jerked and shivered as her need became unbearably intense.
"You filthy bitch," she whispered tenderly. "You dirty-mouthed, fucked up Lesbian . . . I love you, Con . . . I love how you love me . . . Oh, God! You're driving me crazy! Screw it in, baby. Screw it in!"
Con flicked at Adele's throbbing little bud, and her victim's body stiffened into a bow.
Damn little sexpot! Con thought.
Con was an artist, her tongue the brush, and a woman's sweet twat the canvas on which she created masterpieces of sensual excitement. Adele was good for hours of this sort of love play after she'd exploded a time or two. Only when she was confined to one round did Adele's bunny tendencies irritate her. If she touched her for even a moment with her tongue, it would all be over.
Pushing Adele back, Con raised up regretfully and lowered her body onto the sprawled and writhing Adele. Grinding her hips down brutally, she searched out and found the contact . . . the wonderful mating of softness on softness. Now there were two ripe peaches pressing together.
Her mouth found Adele's, choking off the whimper of passion as the strong, plunging tongue drove into the woman's throat. They mingled taste with taste, smothering each other's gasps of ecstasy.
Con felt Adele twist and hunch, then they were mutually mashed and mated in the final surging undulations. For a moment, the only sounds were the throat to throat gurgles of passion and frenzy, then gasps, as both bodies were wracked with rocking explosions, their lips separating as they sucked for air. With crushing force, they forced together in a lewd strain that bruised . . . caressed . . . satisfied.
"AHHHHHHHH!" Adele sighed with relief. "Oh, Con, that was beautiful."
Con laughed softly and relaxed, but not entirely because the great pile of dovetailed breasts they shared was beyond comfort. To go limp would mean to roll off, and it was too good to give up quite yet. Adele let her taut thighs go soft and they fell back like a weary, pink frog's.
"Someday I'll have a heart attack when you love me," Adele giggled. "What a way to die!"
"Better than the shoulder blades of a galloping horse?" Con asked.
Adele nodded, then closed her eyes. "I've been there. I know. I played the part four times until Stan nearly went crazy wanting me," she remembered. "He used to take care of me after each game.
He'd sweat, believe me! He'd spend hours rubbing me with sandalwood oil, cursing Regina and himself and all the rest."
"Do you love him, Adele?" Con asked wistfully.
"Of course I do! Why, he's the sweetest little fat baby you ever saw!"
"He doesn't care about you and me?"
"A little, I suppose, but then he's got a few side kicks, too. He always knows when we've been loving, of course. Being a doctor, he sees every bruise and swelling, but that's okay. I just bring him the sandalwood oil and he rubs me and then he's glad I've been bruised."
"He has to have the oil, though?" Con asked, her mind toying with the erotic image.
Adele nodded. "Just like Regina has to have the leather."
"I wonder if they've sold that big good-looking kid on the heart-attack-and-runaway-horse bit?" Con mused, raising away from the body she had so enjoyed.
"Go down and see," Adele pleaded. "If they have, send Stan up to see me, will you, baby?"
"If I didn't know you loved me a little too, I'd kill the fat little bastard," Con snorted. "Think he can get a hard-on after the scare he had yesterday?"
Adele turned her head away. "The oil is on the dresser," she said, "and I'm not going to move until he gets here!"
She lay quietly while Con slipped into a sun-suit. Women had been her life and love for five years. She'd hunted them in bars and in her exclusive hat shop . . . wherever she found them. She lived with Matt because he had access to all the lovely aspiring actresses in Hollywood, and because he was part woman himself. Con didn't hate men, but she did love the way she could make a woman scream in passion, and she loved the way she felt inside when she was creating this emotional breakdown. When she heard the peculiar adoration in Adele Farley's voice at the mention of her delightful husband, Con felt a strange feeling of loneliness.
She repaired her make-up and patted Adele on the belly, and headed for the hall. At the door, she looked back and thought how silly women were. With a body and a sex impulse like Adele's, she could have had a man like George Borel or maybe that huge handsome artist brute that had raped Regina with his eyes. Con wasn't entirely happy with her own lot in life, either.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Driving back from the little town of Boulder Creek, Matt felt reasonably proud of the way he'd smoothed over the girl's death. If Stan and Regina had been able to do as well with George Borel, then everything was going to be okay. What could have been a disaster, the final crushing end of those wonderful affairs Regina sponsored, had turned into nothing. Oh, they'd have to be more careful, he thought. Over the past months, they'd been getting rougher and rougher. There were other kinds of accidents that could happen, too. Riding breakneck through the woods behind Regina's bouncing, shrieking leadership could cause either horse, or rider, or both to take a bad fall.
There wasn't much problem with their indiscriminate sexual moments, however. They'd all overcome the tendency to be jealous or petty about the round robin lovemaking. The only real demand Regina made was to wear her leather costumes and play her game of hunt and whip. None of which was unpleasant to any of them, including Matt. It filled in around the edges of his lackadaisical interest in sex. He felt good in leather, savoring the odor, the constricting pressure of laces and the strange feeling of being different that he found in the bizarre costume.
Because they shared no other form of sex, he and Con had tried a number of exotic variants, but, in the end, he had no way of helping her and she found no pleasure in mauling his response-less body. She had dressed him in her clothes, those that would fit his tall, slender body, and they'd played at being two women, which neither of them believed. They had surreptitiously purchased obscene items from a Hollywood vendor and played at being two men, but in the end, Con had gone off to a gay bar and hunted a pouting, primping bitch and Matt had wandered down Hollywood Boulevard, eager, but afraid to identify his desires among the obvious homosexuals parading the pavement. Once in a while he found a secret, delicious companion, but it never lasted.
The thought of nearly having lost these pure escapes into sensual expression had been more frightening to Matt than the danger of newspaper and social exposure over Amy Carlson. Here he had Lloyd who could be a man when it was required. He had Stan Farley who would submit to Matt's strange hunger if Adele left him the strength. Then there was Roberto Garcia, the tall, handsome caretaker who was a true Mexican Macho, the Latin he-goat of traditional Spanish history. Of them all, Matt liked Roberto the best. His lusty body, his flashing smile and purely animal reactions seemed less personal, less accusing. He provided his marvelous body and bludgeoning sex in a spirit of undiluted lust, neither asking questions nor making up answers. He was a strong man, who often smelled of women and Matt didn't know why but this was exhilarating to his nostrils.
Thinking of Roberto, Matt slowed the big convertible and searched the road on either side. Sometimes Roberto rode the lower acres, watching for intruders. Matt was a little disappointed to see the last turn in the road. Then he saw Roberto, riding the familiar paint in a casual, easy canter along the high side of the valley. Matt braked to a stop.
He knew Roberto would see the dust because the Mexican's bright eyes missed nothing. Matt sat quietly, waiting for the paint to be reined around and, after a few moments, it happened just that way. From his pinched Arizona range bat to his sharp-toed boots, Roberto looked the part of a modern traditional cowboy. Matt felt a flutter in his belly as the rider came close enough for him to see the stout thighs in tightly fitted jeans. Then the flashing smile beamed and he swept off his hat in a gallant greeting.
Roberto dismounted and did a lewd thing with his hips, standing in close like a man ready to make water. Matt's emotions soared as he reached out and took hold of the hard bulge in the Mexican's pants. Just touching him there made Matt's fingertips burn.
"Will you get in?" Matt asked.
"Of course, mi amigo," the arrogant Mexican laughed. Then he leaned back hard in the seat, unzipped, and scooped out his immense, brown cock.
"Senor Monahan is hungry?" he asked.
Matt fell over the giant pole that he suddenly needed more than he needed breath. And, as usual, the insatiable flesh smelled of woman. Matt went blind with passion. Eagerly, he tried to gag himself with the burning stob.
While the Mexican leaned back in the seat, watching as casually as though he and his prod were going through a car wash, Matt did what he wanted to do. Roberto neither laughed nor spoke. He just watched. Even his feelings . . . the sensations that must have been shrieking through his body were buried behind the unfathomable eyes.
Mike savored the shape, the thick bushy base, and the long, uncircumcised foreskin. To peel back this flesh and slowly reveal the fragile, moist head. To smell and feel and taste this delicacy was excruciatingly exciting. When the Mexican began to labor for breath and shiver with excitement, each spasmodic reaction he caused made Matt more avid. He closed his eyes, sinking into a secret fantasy he loved so much. As he rolled the hard, rubbery flesh in his mouth, half of his tortured mind saw the way that delightful odor had come to Roberto, and he let the other half of his mind pretend that his own kiss was as vital to the virile caretaker.
The part of Matt that was man succumbed to the unspoken urge to be a woman, dreaming things about the physical shape of himself which he hated and the physical remodeling he could imagine as he devoured the hard-cocked Mexican prod.
The warm sun on his back and the hot, sweating body under his wet, hollow caress seemed to compress Matt and reform his being. He wished Roberto would turn him under and strangle him with furious lust, but the Mexican only coughed a laugh and swore softly in garbled Spanish.
The pulsating moment of total surrender sent frenzy through Matt, convulsing his straining body from knee to throat. As he gave passion, he felt it, and spontaneously he spent it for a blinding purple moment. In that moment, the confusions and frustrations of his life were lost in hot ecstasy. His cock throbbed, jerking about spasmodically at the very brink, and then he felt the Mexican shudder and then he was drowning in his seed.
"Ugh! Ugh! UNNNGH! Roberto grunted, and in Matt's trousers, still untouched, his lonely prod belched out its sticky load.
Roberto let him alone for a minute, seeming not to begrudge Matt the afterglow of happiness. Then his strong hands moved Matt away and the Mexican slid out of the car.
"Go, now," he said, "I see you again."
Dazed, Matt started the car and headed down the road. Glancing back, he saw Roberto standing with his back to the road, but there was no doubt as to what he was doing to the previously unpolluted creek.
CHAPTER NINE
Art was a profession with Brandon Ward. He painted rapidly, surely, and with complete understanding of what a finished canvas was going to look like before he laid a brush to begin.
In the forty-eight hours since Regina Lorde had given him permission to work on her ranch, he had painted more efficiently than ever before in his life. He'd eaten and slept when hunger and weariness forced him to abandon his work, and the low wattage fluorescents in the bus had burned late into the night.
By daylight, he'd done the broad sweeping scenes. By night, he'd detailed some of the exquisite internal forms. By using thin oils and Jap dryer, he'd been able to overlay and fill without dragging mud into the bright highlights and graying the balance of the structure.
Now he stood, unshaven and immensely pleased with himself, surveying the four thirty-by-forty-eight canvases drying in the midday sun. That he had violated one of his own rules in doing the quartet of startling paintings was beside the point. He'd long ago determined there was no value in painting what no one would buy, but he hadn't been able to not paint this particular group.
His groin ached. The four painting represented the longest, driest, most consistently unsatisfied sexual experience of his life. Even the trunks of the cottonwoods had taken on a phallic form or lewd texture. The horses, frozen in wild action, seemed poised in the charged atmosphere, rumps gleaming, necks corded with strain, eyes flashing with understanding of the forest orgies.
Brandon grinned at the masterfully rendered pornography. They say an artist must occasionally become involved with his work if he is to contribute anything of value. Well, Brandon had been one involved boy. He'd been horny for forty-eight hours straight. The work showed it. It was great.
He felt exhausted, as if his furious work had sucked his body dry of strength and vitality. He walked down to the little stream and hunkered on the bank, washing his face in the cool water. So they were done and they were good. What now, big man? He felt a little foolish about the entire episode.
Suddenly he wanted to get away. The woods and the stream . . . and his own thoughts were oppressive. There was nothing left here for him. He'd become insensitive to natural beauty. Any landscapes he might attempt now would be tainted with sensualism.
It took him only a few minutes to pack the van and get it headed down the rough bridle path. Driving the two miles downstream, he resolved to pass the ranch house and go on in. He'd already taken from them more than they might be willing to give, and he was not a man to accuse or deride. When he pushed the bus out of the woods, he stepped it into a better gear, aiming it directly for the highway.
Suddenly, the straining head and corded neck of a hard-running horse appeared at the right-hand window. Brandon slowed instinctively. It was Mrs. Lorde, riding like a Cossack, and as his speed slowed, she drew ahead of the bouncing VW and hauled up short in the road.
Brandon's body sprang to immediate response despite himself. She wore a completely fitted leather costume, different only from the one she had worn that first morning in that her unbelievable breasts were covered by a short pullover leather jerkin. She danced her excited horse, holding control like a bored jockey. Her high boots and leather clad thighs gripped the animal's heaving ribs in a way that made Brandon wince. He stuck his head out of the window. "Hi."
"You were leaving without telling me," she accused.
Brandon opened the door and eased his big, untidy body out on the grass. "I was through . . . maybe a little disappointed. You'd have gotten a thank you note in a day or so."
"Disappointed?" she asked, walking her horse closer.
"Bad mood, I guess. I didn't get anything done."
"You're a liar. My foreman says you've been working night and day. He calls you Pinturo Diablo for the way you're working."
"Your foreman is overdramatic. I'm sorry. Thanks for the courtesy you've extended. Your ranch is lovely. Now, may I go?"
"Show me what you have done, Brandon Ward!" she demanded, and she swung down off her horse. "I happen to think you don't look like a painter, so your work must have some special attraction if you're as successful as Matt says."
She was close to him, and Brandon fought the urge to rape her on the spot. Her eyes were deeper than he'd painted them and her skin was whiter than he had imagined. Despite the binding leather, cut carefully and beautifully stitched, the round shapes and lithe contours of her body seemed to be alive with sensual pulsations. He knew then that he'd not done her justice. He wasn't sure he or any other artist could.
"I'd rather not," he said quietly.
"I didn't ask you what you'd rather, she snapped. "Show me what you've done, damn it!"
"How long has it been since a man belted you in the mouth?"
He caught the up-flung quirt, twisted it and pinned her arm against her hip. She swung against him and his other hand held her caught between his huge body and the spread of his big fingers. He could smell the sun on the leather and even with his eyes barely inches from her upturned, rage-wrenched face, he could not find a flaw in the alabaster skin. He felt her struggle, not kicking and slashing, only fighting with the convulsion and strain of her muscles, as if she were going to burst.
"You smell like a goat," she spat into his face. Brandon turned slightly and let her feel what her beauty and fury had done to his cock. Pushing against her there, he was tempted to take her then and there. That she'd love it, he had not a doubt, but that he was a man given to rape . . . well, that was a different matter.
"Let's start over," he said, breathing heavily as he stared down at her. "We'll back off ten paces. You come at me with that whip and I'll go at you with the weapon I think is most likely to beat you? Ready?"
"Let go of me, you barbaric pig!"
"Barbaric?" Brandon laughed, and he shoved her away. As she gained a spraddle-legged stance, he turned and thrust one big arm deep behind the seat of his van. He found the right canvas and carefully drew it twistingly over the seat. He set it on the ground, leaning it against the side of the truck.
"Barbaric?" he repeated.
He heard the breath go out of her lungs and she collapsed to one knee, her head thrust forward in horror and fascination. In the middle of the canvas was a magnificent horse, bearing the brutally tied body of the girl. Her face was raised in sharp relief against the black-red of the horse's haunch and terror drew her mouth, pain bulged her eyes. Behind her, standing high in the stirrups, was Regina Lorde, bare breasts flung with the fury of her passion, her arm upraised brandishing the curled quirt. Across the perfectly rendered rounds of the bound girl's ass were vivid scarlet welts. The rest of the painting was mottled green, partial arms and hunks of horse, each fragment expressing the lust and cruelty of the moment. All it needed was a sound track to record the whistle of the lash and the scream of agony Brandon had almost put on the canvas.
"Care to try another category?" he asked the crouched woman.
"Help me up," she whispered huskily, and listlessly, she raised her hand.
CHAPTER TEN
Brandon stood with his back against the huge fireplace mantel and tried not to show his bewilderment. The four paintings were stretched edge to edge along the top of a long, low bookcase.
The six viewers crouched, strained, stared, and said nothing. Only Regina Lorde showed no facial response.
She'd been right, he thought. He did smell like a goat, but there'd been no time to wash. Regina had dragged him and the paintings into the house and summarily set up the one-man show in less than ten minutes.
Brandon was frankly baffled. They now knew that he'd witnessed their bizarre game prior to his first appearance, but no one questioned it. They just stared, and finally the pudgy doctor grunted to his feet, turning to stare at the painter.
"You're an excellent craftsman," Stan said.
"Thanks."
"Shall I wreck them?" the blond young man asked.
Regina turned and her elbow jolted her husband indifferently.
"Are they for sale?" she asked levelly.
Brandon shrugged. "Isn't everything?" he chuckled. "Of course, if you care to buy them. There are some things I have to paint, but once they're finished they have no permanent hold on me. They'll be dry enough for delivery in about two weeks. I can't surface them glaze, we call it, until the deep pigment in the greens and blues is perfectly dry. I'm flattered you want them."
"I'm scared," whimpered Adele.
"These four," Matt pointed. "That's all? You didn't do any others?"
Brandon was inspired to be taunting. "Not yet. I have several more in mind, though."
"That's blackmail," Regina snapped.
"You can't win in that category, either," he told her. "I don't think any of you were playing games for publication that morning, and I was admittedly a trespasser. I could have gone back to my studio and done these in perfect privacy, with no nasty remarks to go with it. Look! I'm a big boy and I've got a big curiosity. You were all very inspirational which is a word working painters dislike up to here! Still, that inspiration is very apt to remain as long as my curiosity keeps prodding it. In plain English, what gives with you people? I thought you were going to kill that girl and her boy friend!"
"Which obviously didn't happen," came a strange voice from behind. Brandon turned and there stood the man he'd seen on the grass, then tied and whipped and hauled off through the woods.
"This is George Borel, Mr. Ward . . . very much alive," Regina pointed out.
None of the other had bothered to shake hands but George did. Brandon liked him because he seemed different . . . more normal, perhaps, than the others.
"You sure nailed us," George chuckled, looking at the paintings. "Damned near a photographic mind, I'd say."
Brandon chuckled. "Aided and abetted by two hundred bucks worth of Polaroid equipment, and a very shaky hand!"
"Photographs!" Stan gasped.
"Come out into the patio, Mr. Ward," Regina suggested. "I think we ought to discuss the price of your art."
"Sure," Brandon agreed, then turned to face the angry Lloyd. "You know, son, what you're thinking could get you hurt."
"He'll behave, Mr. Ward," Regina assured him.
Brandon followed her out of the house but she didn't stop in the patio. He stayed just a bit behind her leisurely strolling, beautifully undulating body, his groin getting tight again despite his best control. The lashes of her quirt dragged in the dust, and he was amazed at the way she walked in the high heeled boots. She must have been made of ice to stand the confinement of her leather suit in the sun that beat hot and heavy on them, he decided.
Regina led him down to the stone apron cemented along one edge of the creek. There she stopped, peering down into the gentle pool formed by a rock riffle stretched across the stream.
"What do you do for sex, Brandon?" she asked without looking up.
"For the last two days, I've been pushing it around in my pants, soaking it in stream water so I could sleep and snapping it with my forefinger like a nurse once taught me. In my own bailiwick, I do pretty much like any other guy does when he has the chance."
"Would you like to go to bed with me?"
Brandon grinned into her suddenly upraised face. "Bed hell, I'll take you here on the rocks if you promise not to scream too loud." Then he shrugged. "What the hell are we talking about, anyway? This dialog is strictly from an off-Broadway flop!"
"That's what goes with us," she said. "We come here and live the kind of sex only a bad author dares put on paper . . . or a good painter! You, you are going to sell those paintings to me, aren't you?"
"If you want them, but I'm not a department store painter," he warned.
"Nothing that costs money is important to me."
"Pay me off and send me on my way, huh?"
Regina stepped back and turned. Then she jumped and Brandon marveled that she landed upright in a mud-bottomed creek and remained so in three feet of water. She unfastened the throat of the leather pullover and skinned it up over her head. She stood, shaking her hair back into place, letting him stare at her marvelous, sun-kissed boobs. The nipples were plum red. She tossed the leather pullover to the stone apron, then began to fiddle with the studded belt. That she threw after the jacket, and with it went the entire crotch of her leather breeches. She was left with leather leggings that were supported by the torso of her suit. Her nakedness gleamed in flickering distortion below the surface of the water.
"Well?" she asked tartly. "Are you going to let me ruin a four hundred dollar suit for nothing?"
Wild with desire, Brandon stepped off the edge of the stones and landed big and splashy and grabbing. Regina's wet, leather clad arms went around his neck and Brandon's huge hands cupped under her solid ass, lifting her up hard against his straining body.
Too late, he remembered his three-day growth of beard. Her kiss was open, demanding and hotter than fire, and when he sought to hold it, she let her head move to drag her sensitive lips over his bristly cheek and chin. Brandon felt himself sinking, and they went under, clasped together, clinging furiously. Brandon used one hand to drag them into slightly shallower water.
When he let go of her to get rid of his wet trousers, she lay back, breasts floating, hair swirling in soft eddies around her beautiful face.
"Be big," she pleaded. "Be . . . be a seahorse with the beard of Neptune and the strength of a shark! Hurt me, Brandon! Make me scream with hurt. . . and want. . . and hurt again!"
"Smile for me first!" he husked, drawing his half-naked body through the water to hers. "Smile, Regina!"
"I can't, Brandon! I've forgotten how! My life has been a tangled, horrible mess for too long." Then she squirmed under him and from her suddenly slack lips came a soft whisper. "Brute!"
He found her then, and once his cock was edged into her cove, he rammed it to her hard, the way she'd asked him to. The sensation was deceptive, wet, and dragging, but free and strangely cool. His broad back bowed high out of the water and she tried to arch up to fit her breasts against his chest.
His mouth crushed against hers and ground in the message he'd been trying to get over to her from the moment they met. Then he moved on down to take possession of her magnificent breasts. In the cool water, the nipple was soft and pliant, and it was big enough to make a satisfying mouthful.
Once or twice, her face went under the water, and he hunched, driving her bare ass along the silt on the creek bottom. The legs of her leather suit prevented her from cradling his driving hips, so she arched and strained to serve him her passion high, resilient and engulfing.
Brandon had never known he was capable of the lust he felt. When she began to moan and writhe and flail her arms, he let the hot sun on his back drive him down into the cool water to pin her to the mud and satisfy her plea to be hurt and hurt till the pain was ecstasy.
He reached her lips again and crushed them with his mouth just as her other lips were being crushed by his grinding pelvis.
"Hurt me! Harder! NOW!" she wailed, and her body shuddered convulsively several times.
Hoping one of her convulsions was significant, Brandon tumbled over the cruel edge of consciousness into the throbbing well of fire. All of the aroused sensuality of two frustrating days contracted, then spewed from his body in riotous fluid flame, the cum steaming through and then quickly cooling as the swirling water came through.
"Sweet Jesus!" he muttered with a horrendous sigh of relief.
He fell forward, his face going under water. He couldn't rise, so he held his breath and felt all the wonderful ripples and after-ripples of passion, Each one reducing his strength, each one bringing a cry of soft happiness from Regina. When he finally needed breath, he rolled his head over her pulsating breasts and sucked in air around the delectable hot plum she twisted into his mouth.
She was smiling when he opened his eyes. The unbelievable beauty, the searing warmth of her pleasure was like a transfusion. Strength and desire made him begin the wonderful movement again, but her hands pushed at his shoulders.
"Lord no, Brandon!" she gasped, her face suddenly contorted with pain. "The water it's going to burst my belly!"
Brandon raised up and lifted her, dripping, dragging the displaced leather pants. He struggled toward the opposite bank and stumbled over the dry ground.
She dropped from his hands and rolled. Brandon fell over the high quivering rounds of her marvelous ass, destroying the abstract pattern of mud on her white flesh. Since his staff was up and his mood victorious, he rammed her the way he found her, and it was great.
"You bastard!" she cried. "You're hurting."
"That's what you want."
"I . . . Ugh!"
Then she was pushing her ass back against him, imperceptibly at first, but then with all her might. Soon she was whimpering with delight.
Her huge globes weighted heavily in his hands, then one hand moved down to press against her puffy love lips.
"Harder! Gouge me! Hurt me!"
Brandon liked screwing it in a woman's tight ass as well as the next man but this begging to be hurt had to stop. With effort, he pulled out and shoved her hard onto the grass. With a jerk, he rolled her over and twisted around to where he could tickle her twat to death with his tongue. He was about to dig in when he felt her grab for his cock and pull it toward her mouth.
"You bite me once and I'll knock you broadside," he warned.
Then he bent over and began whispering delicate, teasing caresses over her arched cunt. His tongue traced her smoldering scarlet flesh, and he let her strain and thrust trying to heighten the contact, but he would not give her what she desired.
"You bastard!" she sobbed.
When he finally let his lips settle against her, she grabbed for his head with both hands, trying to rub his face in it. He took her as he wished. He would not be forced.
At last, she realized there was not strength enough in her body to force anything from him. Craftily, she took another tack. Twisting around, she reached for his cock again and this time got it in her mouth.
The moment she sucked him in, he gave her the pressure and fire she so desperately desired. While she gasped for breath, he burrowed into her snatch, eating in earnest.
If she had intended on biting him, the thought instantly passed, and though he did not bring her pain, as she had asked, he crushed her with greater, deeper passion.
He came before she, for her eager slurping mouth worked against him with a frenzy, nor did she hesitate when he poured his jazz into her siphoning mouth. She took it, and worked him for more. Then, when he pulled away, she fell back on the grass and gave herself up completely to his caress.
She whimpered. She moaned. She cuddled and massaged her own breasts, and in the end, when her body was thrusting up against him in a final crescendo of excitement, her head rolled back, she arched up and offered her breasts up to the sun in a fascinatingly lewd display.
"EYIIIIIIIIIIIII!" came her high-pitched wail.
Then she collapsed, and whimpering, she reached to be hugged.
* * *
Roberto tucked the five photographs into his shirt. He peeked out of the van, his eyes narrow with speculation. They were still there writhing in the grass. He looked toward the house and there was no sign of anyone. Like a desert puma, he slipped away.
He had seen the pictures grow on the canvas, and he had seen the painter refer to them constantly with his magnifying glass. Roberto knew the value of such pictures. Over the years he had taken many pictures of the weird goings on. He considered them a retirement fund. Still, one picture of a murder was worth a thousand depicting mere sexual perversions.
"They are still making love?" Marie asked as he came in. "Ah," she sighed. "Once, twice, and three times the great thing is done. Pet me, Macho mia, because I am like a spring ewe from peeking out my kitchen window at their lovemaking."
She dragged the loose neck of her peasant blouse to one side and thrust a round, full rolled tit up at him. The areola was thick and pulsating, the nipple tip drawn hard under his careless kiss.
He clining arms and hot breath soon transformed his inner excitement to obvious passion. Marie squealed with glee when her devilish fingers discovered his response, and she tipped back onto his lap. Roberto took a long pull at the beer can, letting her tease herself into a twisting, panting frenzy.
There was a better life ahead, but there was nothing too wrong with his present lot, he reflected. Regina had let him have his way with the women. He'd fired the two unpretty, too-old housemaids long ago, replacing them with Carlotta and Marie, neither of whom was yet nineteen. He drove them mercilessly in their work, and slept between them every night.
They sapped his virility not at all. Now he threw the eager Marie to the bed and unbuckled the belt around his waist. His jeans dropped with his strong thumbs hooked just so and the girl laughed at the sight of his rampant cock.
"Oh! You have been to the one with the greedy mouth!" she accused, pointing to telltale swelling and tiny red marks. "I have no use for a spent ram with a bent horn!"
She drew her quivering legs together and turned away, a look of flirtatious disdain crossing her pretty face. She was careful to turn just enough to expose her delectable plump bottom. Grinning, Roberto poured beer all over her bare flesh.
She shrieked and twitched violently, then laughed in lewd pleasure as he fell on her. His mind suddenly remembered the way his mistress had gotten it from the gigantic painter. For a moment, Roberto rooted blindly, causing the girl to cry out with pain. Then his strength and aim won out and she screamed loudly as she was impaled.
Closing his eyes, he added one last pleasure to his exuberant passion. He dreamed that it was he, not the painter, who had the privilege of loving the splendid, unobtainable Regine Lorde, and his lust made Marie sob and cry, and then she was terribly ill with the shock of his bestial rape.
He let her vomit into the bedclothes, using one hand to hide her head under the blanket of her own luxuriant hair.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Tell me about the girl in the woods, George," Brandon asked over cocktails. "Was she hired, too?"
Everyone but Brandon and George had driven into town, but though they were alone, George frowned and went on nervously sipping his drink for several moment before he spoke.
"You're a pretty levelheaded guy, Brandon," he said. "I can't blame you for hanging around when it's Regina that's doing the inviting, but there's a lot about this crew you don't know.
Maybe a lot I don't know, either, but I'm a little ahead of you, I think."
"You trying to tell me something?"
"No. I'm trying to warn you without telling you something."
"Warn me, then."
"Get out. They'll kill you if they can get up enough guts."
"Kill me?"
"George nodded. "Me too. I'm lucky to be alive, let me tell you . . . not from the ride on that horse. It's something else."
Brandon considered. "Which one would have the guts?"
"Regina of course," George replied. "The doc is tougher than he looks, and Lloyd is a potential for anything you can imagine. He's the fooler in the crowd. They're all a little queer, but he's tops, bottoms, and side pockets!"
"I thought you weren't going to tell me anything."
"That isn't what I'm not going to tell you," George laughed.
"I don't kill easy and I don't scare at all," Brandon said, "but I will agree that another day or two will do me."
"Go now! They'll never let you go if they can stop you."
"Come off it, man!"
"I'll give you even money that big Mexican is sitting a horse down the road with a rifle across his saddle."
"How do they hope to keep a guy my size around forever? Hell, in a pinch, I can always hike out over the hills."
"They don't want to keep you here forever . . . just for two or three weeks. They've waiting for you to make up your mind. If you be nice, you may live . . . if not . . . or if you get some ideas of your own, watch your back!"
"For a man who never saw this bunch five days ago, you have a remarkable insight into their intentions."
"That I do!"
"You're in the same danger?"
"Yep! Only I'm going to go along with them. Monahan is my agent. I got a soft career to think of. Anyway, I'm slightly involved, myself. I just don't go for murder . . . yours."
"I'm too bagged out to run," Brandon sighed.
"You got her, damn you," George laughed, "and I thought she was hot for me."
"Oh?"
"After that woods ride, I was so beat up that the doc gave me a sedative. I woke up with her lipstick smeared over me from head to toe. I mean everywhere, man! Well, I propositioned her last night. I figured she'd be jealous enough to give me a whirl, but she cursed me out and told me she'd never laid anything but a quirt to my butt in her life!"
Brandon snorted. "I haven't gotten near her since the creek bit . . . which everyone apparently watched! You know something, George? I've a hunch it wouldn't be worth the trouble a second time."
"Then why the hell hang around?" Brandon grinned. "Because some bastard stole my car keys."
"You see what I mean?"
"Maybe, But in the meantime, there's something I want to do."
"Like?"
"Like make a Lesbian," Brandon said. "I don't know anything about the breed, except the books I've read which I don't believe."
"I've never even seen you speak to her!"
"Psychology. If she's shaped like a woman, she has a little woman left in her brain. She intrigues me, friend."
George laughed. "You're as queer as the rest of them!"
"The guy with the whip marks on his butt is giving me a lesson in straight thinking?" Brandon asked.
"I like the hell out of you, Brandon Ward," George chuckled.
* * *
The others returned from Boulder Creek in a gay mood and howling for the Mexican servant to bring on the drinks. In thirty minutes, the entire group went emotionally insane. Slightly drunk himself, Brandon grabbed the pretty maid and jumped fully clothed into the pool.
Within a few seconds, everybody was in, except Regina. She stood on the walk, her eyes flashing, her inevitable quirt flicking from her right wrist, her dark eyes soaking up the antics with strange fascination. To Brandon, who'd lost the drenched maid within a minute or two, there seemed only half enough women, but he recognized the fact that he was still an outsider and of reasonably normal tastes. Remembering what George had said about Lloyd, now pushing Adele away from George, Brandon decided the group was probably compatible, in numbers if not in obvious sexual equipment.
When his wet clothing became a bore, Brandon climbed out of the pool. He stood dripping, watching Con splash and duck and play with the others. It was easy to see that she had something going with Adele, just as it was easy to see that Matt had something going with Lloyd. With an artist's eye, Brandon had to admit that, with the possible exception of the plump doctor, they were all beautiful people.
He glanced at Regina. She seemed restless, as if some energy or desire was charging through her lovely curves.
"Guess I'll go change my clothes," he said. "You can come help if you like."
She grinned. "I can't dominate you, painter," she said, as though that explained.
"Is that why you married the big kid?" he asked.
"I don't owe you any explanations, but I will say that he developed some of his latent talents after we were married."
Brandon grinned and went off to the van to change. He was instantly aware that some one had been in the truck. He looked around speculatively. Then he reached over and pulled out the small drawer where he kept the photographs. They were gone.
It irked him. They were all too unpredictable. One minute they were happy to "buy him off," the next they were riffling through the van. Yesterday Regina had boldly exposed her emotions and rolled in water and dirt with him, delivering her beautiful body in total abandonment. Today, she was again unsmiling, stern, and moody . . . and the cruel sexual implications of her costume and nervous manner were back.
The missing keys didn't bother him. He knew how to hot-wire the ignition. The photographs had no great meaning to him, either. He tried to figure his continuing interest in the place and decided that it was mostly artistic, a little personal because he was male, but mostly artistic. By their perverse loves, they'd created a mood, a human, undefined mood. Part of it he'd put on canvas, but not all of it.
He had stripped down to the buff and reached for a towel when he heard the voice.
"May I come in?" a low, feminine voice asked just inches from the crack in the partially open door.
"It's a gamble, but you can try," he laughed at Con.
She opened the door and looked directly at his dangling trunk.
"My, my," she laughed. "Look at you!"
Brandon moved to one side and did little to shield his nakedness from her as he made room for her to sit.
"All the comforts of home. I didn't think you were a man chaser."
"Just the same, hang a curtain over that, will you?"
He sat down and dropped the towel in his lap. Con grinned and scooted her shapely body to a seat beside him.
"Pool get too rough for you?" Brandon asked. "Nope. George Borel said you had a heat on to make a Lesbian," she said calmly. "So he talks too much, but he's a nice boy."
"And you followed me to prove what?"
He watched her think about it. He decided her face was not as hard as her bleached hair indicated. She was smooth and hippy and firm . . . blue-eyed, and maybe even vulnerable.
"I guess I wanted to prove I was a Lesbian," she said finally. "I watched you and Regina out there. We all did! You painted quite a picture without a brush, painter. None of us, except maybe Lloyd, knew that she ever used it for anything but a place to pee through. I got to wondering if you could make me do something I didn't want to do. Then George kind of kidded me about it.. . so here I am."
She looked at him, then down at the towel covering the beginning of an excitement that Brandon didn't try to subdue.
"I'm not getting the message," she added.
"No message yet," Brandon chuckled.
"What then?"
"I was sitting here thinking about a painting," he said. "I do paint once in awhile, you know. You being here, saying the things you've just said makes me think I could do a good job of it, too."
"What kind of a painting?"
He told her about the big wall, and his massive hands began to describe the position of certain groups, the sweep of motion and the insertion of raw humans here and there, their feeling and desires laid bare in vivid lights and dark shadows. He was suddenly aware of her eyes on his face, not the imaginative canvas he depicted with his expressive hands.
"My God," she whispered.
"What is it?"
"I've got to get out of here. It's too, too hot in here for me."
He watched her move fluidly out of the van, then hurry toward the house without a backward glance. He wondered if she'd proved anything, and he swore at himself for not having tried a little harder . . . for not having tried at all, actually.
* * *
"When are you going to start it, Brandon?" Regina asked when Carlotta had served them all liqueurs in the big living room.
"Start what?" he asked in return.
"The mural. Con told me. I want you to do it."
He laughed with a little derision thrown in. "Just like that, huh?"
"Why not?" she snapped impatiently. "You're a painter."
"Two reasons. One is a place," he said.
Regina waved her arm at the long wall across from the fireplace. "Thirty-eight feet, I'm told," she said.
"Ten pounds of pigment, a fistful of Fitch brushes and a month's time," he went on.
"Make your list. Lloyd will get the stuff for you even if he has to drive to Frisco."
"That wasn't the second reason," he told her.
"What is the second reason?" Con asked from across the room.
"I'd have to know a hell of a lot more about all of you than I know about any of you," Brandon told them quietly.
"You did quite a lot without knowing any of us," Stan reminded him.
Brandon shook his head. "I only did Regina," he said. "The rest of you were only playing her game, not your own. I know now that I didn't even do her as well as I might have."
Lloyd sniffed. "Well enough to make her pay your price for it," he said peevishly.
"This isn't a congressional debate," Regina said. "I say, paint the mural. You'll get paid enough to make it worth your time."
Brandon got up and went to the wall. He pressed his fingers over the plaster and could not control the excitement that he felt. Turning, he looked at them all. He suddenly felt like a doctor about to dissect a half-dozen cadavers. Only he was going to do it emotionally. If they resented Regina's command, it didn't show. Only her husband sulked.
"The wall should be covered with canvas," he said. "I'd hate to do the kind of job this deserves and have it burned down in a fire or sold to some Presbyterian who'd have it painted over."
"That will take time," Regina objected. "I want you to start immediately. Tomorrow!"
"Not that much time," he said arbitrarily. "Anyway, I have many preliminary sketches to do before I paint anything."
"Sketches of us?" Adele asked.
"From every physical and emotional angle," Brandon replied.
"Who is first?" Regina asked, her eyes flashing.
"Lloyd," Brandon answered without hesitation.
"Why me?" the young man demanded, leaping to his feet.
"Because of them all, you're the most complex, I think."
For the first time since he'd come to this strange house, Brandon was treated to a smile from the obviously flattered Lloyd.
"Well, I guess it's okay," he agreed.
"If somebody will give me back the keys to my van, I'll move it closer to the front porch where
I'll have easier access to the materials I'll need."
For a moment, the only sound was Con's breath as she exhaled. Brandon waited, believing the reaction would come from either Regina or Lloyd. Instead, it was the little doctor who reached into his side pocket and pulled out the keys. Brandon glanced at George Borel and the latter winked. There was still the matter of the stolen photographs, but Brandon decided they'd show up before long, too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stan Farley's wife wriggled deliciously, then frowned when her husband didn't notice.
"What's the matter, love?" she asked.
"I don't know. Worried, maybe," he said. "I don't like Regina's idea of keeping this party going another three weeks. It's dangerous. Remember when the painter said he thought we'd killed Amy? If she wasn't dead when he saw her, she was dying. And no one knows how much that skulking Mexican knows."
"What do you think we ought to do, baby?"
"Break this up. Go back to the city. They'll all forget a lot more back in their own environment. Even me I did a foolish thing taking his car keys."
"He's a big brute, isn't he, pet?"
Stan nodded, then looked again, catching the special tone in his wife's voice.
"Stan?" she whispered. "Would you wait while I go down there?"
"In his van?"
"Or on the ground or in the creek, like Regina! Stan, wait here for me, please?"
Adele stood up, pulling her housecoat around her trembling body. She checked her make-up in the mirror, and the little pangs of delightful jealousy in her husband's eyes made her shiver happily. He never dared question how much she really liked the necessary preliminaries to their strange lovemaking. At the door, she turned and smiled and he smiled back.
* * *
The side door to the truck was open to provide air to the restricted quarters. Adele looked in. Her eyes made out the half uncovered frame of Brandon Ward lying in deep sleep on the narrow bunk. She glanced around, then slipped out of her housecoat. It would be better on the ground, where his big body could grind her ass and back into the dirt, but there were corners and sharp things in the bus, and there were things she could do to make herself hurt. Adele stepped out of the haze filtered moonlight and up into the truck.
She shook the little vehicle enough to start him awakening through the fog of much liquor. He raised one arm and she went under it and rested her heavy left breast directly on his face. Then his big hands were on her trembling body and she tangled her fingers in his hair, tugging hard enough to bring him awake with a snort of pain. Adele found his mouth with hers and deliberately smashed her lips against his teeth.
"Adele?" he gasped.
"Why didn't you think it was Regina or Con?" she demanded.
He laughed and seized her singularly long breasts. "These," he said, "are different."
"Hurt it!" she pleaded. "Bruise it! Bite it, baby!"
"Bullshit!" he snorted. "You're all alike. Can't any of you just have sex?"
She threw her hips over the edge of the high bunk, raking the corner of the mattress across her low belly. She could feel the awareness of him under the rumpled sheet and his hands moved her shoulders to bring her into reach.
"Am I dreaming?" he chuckled, beginning to align himself.
"No, baby," she rasped, shifting her hips away.
"Brandon, I want you, but I want you to take it from me. Take it from me! Understand? No matter how I fight, take it don't give up."
He was awake enough now not to argue. His hands closed down on her back like iron bands. "Just how do you think you could get away in this rolling trunk?"
She curled her body like a big, velvet-covered spring and her knees walked up his thighs as she wrenched her shoulders free. She felt the rake of his fingernails bite deep as he tried to hang on. She rolled in pain and let her body fall to the tiny floor. The roughness hurt her knees wonderfully. It was dark enough that he had to grab, and instead of her shoulder, his fingers closed around her breast. She jerked free before he could check his strength and she moaned, throwing her legs out to kick and bruise them against the built-ins.
He rolled further to seize her out-flung leg and she doubled, dragging him off the bunk. Then she twisted and pushed toward the door and he was after her again. They tumbled out of the truck to the dirt and she heard him grunt as his bare hip hit the ground.
Now she coiled and scrambled to her feet, and he caught her ankle. She threw her arms out and let herself fall flat on her belly. The shock actually knocked the breath from her, but she squirmed ecstatically, feeling the way the little rocks and stubs of grass cut her belly and breasts.
He was laughing now, calling her vixen and teaser and bitch and Adele fought him on the ground. She broke loose because he was afraid to use his strength, and then kicked at him. He scrambled after her and she ran, feeling the sharp pain of the rocks and pebbles under her feet. She stumbled as she zigzagged to escape his clutch, then caught herself and ran along the house, thinking about the roughly cemented field stones by the creek, but she had underestimated the big man's speed. He caught one flying wrist and spun her around, and Adele slammed up against the stucco wall of the house.
He crowded her, and she let his weight grind her back against the rough texture of the wall. She felt herself deliciously cut.
She kicked and he closed his arms around her. There was nothing she could do but pant and squirm as he used his strength. He held her, and she felt his momentarily relaxed passion return. Then she bit his shoulder and twisted and he cursed.
"Give up, goddammit, before you get hurt!"
"Never!" she gasped, and with a fresh burst of fury, she twisted half out of his grasp. She took two steps and he was on her, flipping her flying body as she reached the veranda. He lit over her, hard and brutal against her writhing ass. The hewn beam between stuccoed supports bit into her belly and Adele knew this was where it was going to be. She raised and gave him what he sought, straining, arching up until his cock lay hard against her cove. When his prick cut through, his passionate lunge jolted her, and she let the corners of the beam cut deep into her tender skin.
Then she forgot to fight, forgot to struggle; she knew what had happened to Regina out there in the dirt . . . it was all coming to her. She was swifter than Brandon for in moments, she was shuddering through a violent crest but he was not far behind.
"My God!" he panted as he lifted away.
"Brandon, leave me here! Go back to the truck! Please!"
Still heaving for air, he stood over her. "You tear me up!" he gasped.
"Go!" she pleaded. "There's nothing more you can do for me now."
She heard him swear under his breath, but he left her. Adele slowly lifted her tortured body off the eight-inch beam. She found footing, her head throbbing with excitement and pain. After a moment, she moved slowly around the stucco posts and went into the house.
Inside the silent house, she made her way to the hall, then stopped. Walking back to a standing chrome-plated ashtray near the fireplace, she straddled it and then dropped hard against it. The pain made her gasp, and she nearly fell over. Then she straightened and hurried to her husband. She hurt so deliciously, she could hardly stand it.
* * *
Crying inwardly with sorrow and jealousy, Stan massaged his beautiful wife's tortured body with amazingly tender fingers. The sandalwood oil was like liquid velvet as he rubbed it into multi-myriad cuts and ugly abrasions. She moaned and twitched under his touch, whimpering with hurt. He whimpered softly, too, his mind feeling each wound, each huge strawberry of violent raw flesh. He'd never seen her more abused. His body reacted vigorously as he tried to imagine what Brandon Ward could have done with his Adele. The man was a beast, an animal, he decided, and then the feel of his wife's suffering began to build and build. Stan's hands slowed, and lay barely moving on her throbbing breasts. He felt her shift, and he pulled his naked body, a heavy, eager weight, over her suddenly mobile flesh.
She cried out as he found her brutally bruised and lacerated genitals. She struggled only a little before her pain made her give up the struggle. As her body cradled his prod, her legs spread as Stan clasped her shoulders and put his mouth to her breast.
"No, no, baby!" she pleaded. "It's killing me! It's tearing me to shreds! Oh, God, I can't stand it! I can't!"
He grunted but at that particular moment, he couldn't have helped the convulsive, shuddering explosion of his love, even if he'd thought she really wanted him to stop.
Later, he gave her a mild shot to relax her pain and make her sleep. As usual, he fell asleep himself, his worries and anxieties dissolved in the way Stan Farley loved his lovely wife.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Roberto was tired of waiting. Cautious investigation in Boulder Creek had it obvious that the matter of the dead girl was settled as far as the police were concerned. Now, the wild ones had found a new interest in the form of the painter and what he was doing. Most significant was the fact that the Senora Lorde, she of the wild eyes and the lush body, had not demanded he saddle the horses for her to ride through the woods with her band of leather clad friends, nor had she taken one of her solitary rides.
That was what he was really waiting for. Somehow, he felt that he could make his bid for money better if he confronted her alone in the woods. He had the faint hope that she would make him some kind of personal offer . . . in fact, he'd about decided to ask for it whether she suggested it or not. A roll with his beautiful employer and then fifty thousand dollars to retire on. It had a nice ring to it.. . fifty thousand.
He was opening his third beer when the Senora walked in.
"Roberto!" she called.
"Ah, si," he exclaimed, leaping to his feet in embarrassment.
She waited until he tucked in his sweaty shirt and swept his thick wavy hair back in some semblance of order.
"Saddle the stallion," she ordered. "I wish to ride."
She saw him straighten and settle his mouth. Then he smiled and stepped forward.
"There is a small matter I wish to discuss, Senora. It is of great importance to you and to me, I am sure."
"I'll decide what is important to me," she snapped.
He grinned and wigwagged his head as if he had other ideas. "Is not murder important to everyone who commits it?"
"What are you talking about?" Regina demanded but the curl of fear in her belly showed.
"These, Senora," he replied. She watched him go to the dresser on the other side of the bed. He felt under some clothing, then came back. She stared at the photographs he held.
"Where did you get these?" she gasped.
"No importance," he laughed. "I have them."
Regina moved like a snake to snatch them from his hand but he quickly moved away. Seizing her wrist in an iron grip, he held her hand high, more to show her how strong he was, she thought, than to protect the hideously graphic prints.
She struggled, then kicked out with enough twist to rake his shins with the long, sharp spur of her boot. Then a cry of pain escaped her lips as he spun her around and hurled her to the bed. She raised to her elbows, too furious to speak, too frightened to scream.
"You animal!" she finally managed.
"Si."
"You blackmailer."
"Si."
"I'll have my husband beat you to a pulp!"
She curled forward, her own words bringing strength back into her body. She saw his arm swing, but her forward leap couldn't be stopped. His palm caught her across the face and, for a moment, she thought she was going to pass out, then pain nullified the shock and she fell back to her elbows. Her eyes searched his face, and it was a face she had never seen before. His sensuous mouth was drawn in a devilish smile, his white teeth looked wolf-like, his eyes black holes in the tanned maze of his wind-worn face.
"You will listen, Regina," he said familiarly. He reached down swiftly and slipped the quirt from her wrist, then he flicked it experimentally, letting the lashes dance on her leather clad thighs. "I do not hate you, Senora. You pay me well and life is pleasant here, but I do not wish to spend my life as a ranch hand. I have been to school, and the world offers much to an educated man if the man has money!"
"Blackmailers never win!" she hissed. "Besides, the girl died of a heart attack. An autopsy proved it."
"So? And she fell from a runaway caballo and was dragged very far, no? With you leading the caballo, Senora! I saw it all."
Regina had never before felt trapped. In twenty-seven years, no one had ever tried to trap her like this. Her beauty, her money, her blatant sex had always made life pleasant and easy. Now she was threatened by an odorous, hulking Mexican.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"Fifty thousand dollars," he replied. "You're insane!"
"So? I will be a rich, crazy Mexican," he laughed.
"And that is all?" she asked brazenly, though she was shaking inside.
Like a striking snake, his right arm snapped around her waist and he slammed her up against his belly. He made no effort to kiss or fondle her, though his sensuous mouth was only inches from hers. She could see the fine moisture springing from his forehead and upper lip. Deliberately, she let her hips move.
"Puta!" he laughed, letting her go. "The whore in you does not fool Roberto! The money. By tomorrow noon, or I shall tell all and show all to the police!"
"I thought you were a real man," Regina breathed.
"It will be easier to be a real man when my pockets are filled with gold," he laughed. "Tomorrow at noon!"
"It isn't easy . . . that much cash," she told him dubiously.
"You will manage," he laughed confidently.
Halfway to the pool, Regina remembered he'd kept her quirt. She strode like a marching soldier, her fury and fright mingling indiscriminately. The sight of Matt and Stan and the two blonde girls restored some of her arrogance, but she missed the dangling quirt.
"Where's Lloyd?" she asked Matt.
"He and George and Brandon went up into the woods," Matt replied.
"What the hell for?" she demanded.
"Sketches, George told us," Con laughed. "All the backgrounds have to be woodsy. I'll give you three guesses as to why Lloyd needed George!"
Regina accepted the inference, but she glared at Con anyway. "Who are you going to take along when it's your turn, Con?"
"You volunteering?" Con countered smacking her lips lewdly.
"Stan, come on in the house. I want to talk to you."
"I thought you were going riding?" Stan asked, getting to his feet. He tossed his towel at his curious wife, then met Regina's eyes. "Something up?"
"Something's up, all right," she replied and whirled on her heel. She could hear him skipping and half running to keep up with her. Lloyd wouldn't be much help, anyway, she decided. In the living room, she went straight to the bar and poured herself a shot of Scotch.
"What is the matter with you, Regina?" Stan asked.
Regina told him. As she spoke, she watched the pudgy face change from cherubic passivity to scowling solidity. He neither sagged nor shivered. He stood like a shaped rock, his nostrils flaring enough to tell her his well-controlled temper was aflame.
"I can get him the fifty thousand," she concluded, "but I'm afraid that won't end it. That dirty, ungrateful bastard!"
Stan turned away and went to perch on the edge of the divan. He sat with elbows on his knees, leaning forward, eyes on the rug, fingers working gently together. After a moment, he looked back at her.
"So we've the decision to make all over again," he said.
"What decision?"
"To kill again or turn our bellies up," he said. "Kill Roberto?" she let the words ride a gust of breath.
"Before tomorrow night!"
Regina poured herself another shot. Momentarily, she hated herself. For ten years, she'd worn spurred boots and bullied and barked and domineered both men and women. She'd ridden a half-dozen horses to death and left scars on human hides that no one could outlive. One greedy, sweat-and-beer soaked Mexican had frightened her, collapsed her make believe world. The only defender she had was this pudgy, soft-bellied doctor who could not be a man to his wife unless she came to him cut and bleeding from another lover's arms. A cry of defeat escaped her lips and she fled to her room and fell on the bed sobbing.
When she couldn't cry any more, she got up and went to the long wardrobe. She pushed aside the heavy mahogany doors and her eyes feasted upon the row of beautiful leather suits. Each hung on a special hanger, and each one represented an ecstasy. Then, from a row of hooks at the end of the wardrobe, she picked a long, black leather quirt. She threaded her gauntleted hand through the thong on the plaited handle and when she flicked the vicious whip, some of her courage returned.
"That's better," Stan said from the door. "Come have another drink and let's do some figuring."
* * *
Brandon sat on his canvas stool, his broad back to a tree. On the ground was his Polaroid camera, on his lap he held a sketchpad. George Borel sat on the grass, his hands clasped, his arms hooked around his knees. Fifteen feet away, Lloyd Lorde stood tall and handsome, his magnificent shoulders bare. On the ground, beside his crumpled sport-shirt was a suitcase. Now the youth turned his head and looked blandly at the two men.
"I hate both of you," he said levelly, "but I want to go through with it. I hate you because I can't be like either of you, but I'm going to show you what I am and hope you hate me because I'm something you can't be!"
"What the hell am I doing here?" George asked.
"Since I've never before shown myself like this, I should be able to pick who I show myself to," Lloyd said stubbornly. "I'll want you . . . later."
He dropped his pants, peeling down to the buff without embarrassment. Then he arched his exposed tanned Grecian muscles. He was neither lewd nor ridiculous. Brandon marveled, even as he decided to use the camera. Any competent artist could draw Lloyd from memory, he was so classically perfect, straight out of the anatomy book. It was the mood and movement that changed too rapidly for any sketchpad to record. Then Lloyd turned for them to admire his deeply muscled back and high, taut butt.
"Christ!" George muttered.
Indifferent to their comments, Lloyd snapped open the suitcase, and without looking at his two observers, he took out the special supporter. They watched as he worked the elastic up over his hips, tucking his appendages, settling himself in the least conspicuous shape. Then he turned to face them, letting his palms sweep up his thighs, arching coquettishly at exactly the moment Brandon fired the Polaroid.
Next came the black nylon garter belt, the stockings, and the high-heeled opera pumps. Then finally, the huge brassiere.
Brandon felt a stir of sensuality in his belly, not because he approved but because this graphic transformation of mind was pure sexuality, intended to excite and display a hidden nature a secret desire. He glanced at George who was leaning forward now, completely absorbed by the spectacle.
When Lloyd donned the blond wig, the illusion began to be serious. He was too broad and too muscular to be feminine, yet he was too feminine to be dismissed as masculine. Brandon watched Lloyd kneel again and begin to make up his face in the mirror on the lid of the suitcase. He fired one more exposure, trying to capture the undefined personality now so evident. It was neither male nor female, but the mysterious mid-sex containing much of both. Brandon wasn't able to name a flaw in the masquerade, but he felt there was one. He didn't know what George felt, but it was definitely an interest more avid than Brandon's.
Now Lloyd began to pirouette and pose, and he managed the rough ground in his huge pumps with no trouble. As he walked and pivoted, the ripple of muscles under silk, the lithe movement of hips and shoulders created new sensuality. The obscenity of a big, perfectly formed male suddenly transformed into a big, imperfectly formed woman faded with each movement and step. Evidently satisfied with what he saw on the faces of George and Brandon, Lloyd went back to the case and removed a pure white sheath dress.
With a grace obviously attained through much practice, Lloyd stepped into the garment, shrugged it up over his shoulders and managed the zipper at the back with a purely feminine twist. Then he dusted the skirt, settled the shoulder straps to smooth out the little wrinkles over the deeply padded brassiere, and stepped out again. George turned and came slowly to his feet as Lloyd swiveled forward, tossing pure sex with each flip of his hips.
"It was you," George said in a low, tremulous voice. "It was your lipstick! I knew I'd find the girl someday!"
Brandon fired the Polaroid just as George grabbed Lloyd. For a moment, the pair stood frozen with surprise at their own actions. Then George's muscles bulged under his shirt and he forced Lloyd's beautifully gowned body down to the ground.
Brandon was sure Lloyd could have withstood the other man, even won out in a less erotic wrestling match. But Lloyd caved, hands fluttering, lips suddenly attacking George's mouth. There seemed to be a moment of indecision from George, then they sprawled out on the grass, kissing and groping like reunited lovers.
Brandon came to his feet, camera poised. He was shaking with his own reaction to the brutal sexuality of the scene, but he was fascinated beyond protest. He watched George handle the false breasts, move his furious fingers down the writhing, excited body. He heard the rip of cloth as George tore the skirt up over Lloyd's legs. There seemed to be no more strength in Lloyd. His nylon thighs fell out limply and George attacked the camouflaged supporter. It stretched under his talon-curled fingers, then broke as his big shoulder put power into his momentarily frustrated struggle. The snap made Lloyd cry out in pain.
Then Brandon knew what had been missing. Now there was no real masquerade. George was no longer attacking a big misshapen woman, nor was he attacking a man. He was making violent love to a trembling homosexual and as he tore his own trousers open, Lloyd rolled to one hip, baring his body for George to attack.
Brandon snapped the picture, his fingers wet with nervous sweat. The smells and sounds of the excitement filled the air. He moved around until he was barely six feet from the two heads. Then he knelt and aimed the camera directly into Lloyd's contorted face and half of George's showed, the rest buried in the blonde wig. Through the devastating emotion Brandon felt, he mentally counted his exposures and when he had only one left, he raised up and waited.
The camera pointed directly down, both struggling, urging bodies plainly visible. His ears heard the grunts and groans and murmurs of ecstasy, and when he saw Lloyd tense and twitch, he readied his shutter finger.
At the precise moment when Lloyd's passion delivered the contradiction to his role as a woman lover, Brandon fired the last exposure. George's hand was on his cock, and the cock belched up its load. Both bodies were shuddering convulsively, and Brandon stood transfixed by the sight of two men gone completely over the edge of sanity. He staggered back and dropped to the canvas chair. Blindly, he fumbled the dead roll of film out of the Polaroid and fumbled a new one in. Eight prints, scattered indiscriminately on the grass could be collected and varnished later. He sat on the stool and shot two more rolls of film before either George or Lloyd remembered he was there, their virility seemingly inexhaustible.
When they finally broke apart, Brandon stood up. He grinned sheepishly at the dazed pair, then picked up his prints, folded his camp stool and gathered it all under his arm. As he started to walk away, he stopped and looked down at their debilitated love.
"We'll have to try again," he said. "I don't think I'm up to painting what I've seen."
"Please try!" Lloyd pleaded. "It was the happiest moment of my whole horrible life!"
George just shrugged and Brandon walked on, leaving them clasped together on the grass.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One of the strange things Brandon noticed from the first was the ability of Regina and her sexually dedicated guests to return to normal so quickly after what he considered a deeply exhausting orgy. By the time dinner was over that evening, they were laughing and kidding each other, and Lloyd hardly looked at George Borel. Only Regina and Stan seemed reserved.
"Get anything wild today that we ought to see," Adele asked.
"No," Brandon answered. "You'll see it soon enough over there."
"Who's next?" Regina demanded.
"It doesn't matter," he told her.
"Do Con, or Adele, or both of them," Regina said peremptorily. "The rest of us have something we want to do tomorrow."
"Okay?" Brandon looked first to Con, then to Adele.
"If Regina says so," Adele replied in a low voice. "I'm ready," Con laughed.
Brandon could feel the tension after dinner even more. When he popped the top off the half-used gallon of white canvas primer, most of them made the excuse that the smell bothered them, and they left. He thought they'd gone out on the patio, but when he took a fresh air break, there was no one there. The cars were all there, but there were no people.
When he'd finished priming, he went out to the van and spent an hour studying the twenty-four sensational pictures he'd taken of Lloyd and George. He was sure George was no homosexual, but walking around in the super sex-charged setting without scoring was enough to make him an easy mark.
He flopped back on his bunk and coasted, thinking about what tomorrow held for him. Con and Adele. Based upon the way Lloyd and George had come apart at the seams, Brandon began to dream up scenes between Adele who'd been so completely she-animal with him and the admitted Lesbian. The pictures in his mind made him restless, so he got up and went into the house for a nightcap. It was a fruitless trip because no one was around.
* * *
George shuddered when the word murder was mentioned. At the very deadly 'conference' Regina called in her room, the problem with the Mexican ranch hand had been presented and a solution offered. Murder, he supposed, was a lot easier a second time around. True, Amy hadn't been murdered in the true sense of the word but they'd treated her death like murder. He continued to shudder every time he thought of the cold-blooded plans to do away with Roberto.
Being an outsider, he considered he might be next. "The hell with that!" he said aloud, and snapped to his feet, not knowing exactly what he should do. He could warn Roberto . . . or go to Brandon . . . or just start walking for that matter, but he should have done it before the go-around with Lloyd. If their house of cards fell, it would all come out, including that. No casting department would look at him then. Maybe Regina was the one to convince, and since none of the others seemed up to it, he slipped over to her room and rapped lightly on the door. "Yes?"
"Could I talk to you?"
"Keep your voice down," she whispered softly. "Lloyd is asleep."
"I wish I could," George admitted. "Are you all going through with your plans for tomorrow? I can't convince myself it's the best thing to do. There ought to be an easier way."
Regina put one hand on his arm and led him to the big walk-in wardrobe. He smelled the leather immediately, and when she closed the door he felt the heady odor close in around him.
He'd never seen her look so feminine. In a floor-length negligee of gossamer white, and her hair up in a white lace turban, she was all woman now. She stood barely three feet from him and he couldn't take his eyes off the way her big black breast-nipples showed through the white mesh.
"Baby, you don't make it easy to talk straight!" he said.
"This isn't a conference room, George. It's where I keep my beautiful leather things. Have you ever worn leather, George?"
He shook his head, wondering how to get the conversation back on the right track. "No. I . . . "
"Wait here," she whispered, and she slipped back into the bedroom.
When she returned, she smiled, one of the few times he'd ever seen her break the stern veneer of expression.
"Put this on. It's Lloyd's so it should fit you."
"Why?"
"Because I want you to. You may discover something when you put it on."
He looked at the garment, undecided.
"Put it on," she said insistently.
"What about you?" he asked, grinning broadly.
"You bashful?"
"If you can stand it, I can."
She helped him into it. Once in awhile her warm fingers touched his bare skin, and she stood close, adjusting the laces, smoothing out the leather with long, caressive sweeps of her palms. Oddly enough, George did sense a peculiar feeling of power, not unlike what a soldier might feel girding himself for battle. When it came time to drop his pants, he looked at the gorgeous, warm, and voluptuous woman and let them go.
"Lloyd would be crushed if he knew you were still able to produce that," she exclaimed. "He's so vain."
George put both hands on her shoulders, his fingers biting into the softness of her flesh. He stood in a bold arch but she wouldn't look down at him. Then a smile cut at the corners of her full lips.
"Doesn't do a thing for me," she warned. "Here, put these on and cover up that monstrosity."
It wasn't easy. George felt like a schoolboy under her disinterested gaze. When she knelt to tighten the laces, he had an urge to crowd his passion down on her but he couldn't take the possibility of a second rebuff.
Once he was snugged into the complete suit, he saw a new expression on her face. Her mouth was open, slack-lipped and moist. He could see the pulse at the base of her throat, and the black points of her breasts made mobile buttons in the white gauze. She stood back and looked at him, but he knew the adoration in her eyes was for the body in leather, not the man.
"Look in the mirror," she breathed.
His image startled him. He looked taller, thicker, formidably exotic. The bright brass studs and rows of lacing gave him a barbarically fierce appearance and George felt his blood race with strange thoughts of adventure and conquering. He stepped to one side and his hand went into the wardrobe. He felt the thick butt of a long, three-lashed quirt. He jerked it from the hook and thrust his wrist through the thong.
He was in a dream world of exhilarating excitement, and she was evidently in some dream world, too, because she had backed hard against the bedroom door. Her head was high, her eyes expressionless. Only the rise and fall and quiver of her breasts showed the violent reaction she was undergoing as George stared at her.
"You bitch," he hissed in a low, vibrant voice, and he cut her across the shoulders and breasts with the quirt.
Her gasp of pain only made him slash again, and she took the whip across the shoulders, ducking her head into her hands. Again and again the quirt popped and cut and Regina settled to her knees, back bowed, hair hanging. He could have cut her to ribbons and she deserved it, by God. He held in. It was enough to teach the bitch that she could not keep putting him down! He wanted her to hurt and cry out, but he didn't want to destroy her. His other want ached in his groin, and he knew how he was going to punish her for the scorn she'd hurled at him.
Grabbing her hair, he jerked her forward until she fell supine before him. He put one soft leather boot on the small of her back, and held her that way while he fumbled open the laces at the sides of his breeches. Once more he was exposed and rampant, and the thought of caressing Regina while he wore the suit made his blood pound.
He struck her once more with the quirt, a hard, stinging slash across her ass. Then he reached down and tore away the gossamer robe. The light red of several long welts marred her delectable flesh. Then, as he fell on her, he realized that she had not screamed nor tried to fight his vicious attack. Past thinking about her trick to get him into this state of fury and desire, he rolled her over and took her with no more resistance than if she'd been a corpse.
She helped him not at all, except to curl and arch, working the tips of her breasts against the leather. Her hands moved around his straining, lunging back, but she neither pulled him to her in passion, nor pushed him away when he made her gasp. He could feel her fingers caressing the surface of his leather suit, and then he became animal and forgot about Regina, leather, and the contest. More beautiful than most women he'd known, she was yet no better than any of them, and George felt nothing but lust, nothing but sensation as he spewed his passion into the unresponsive warmth.
"You're a cold fish," he observed when he finally rested heavily.
"Oh? Sorry, but I had mine the second you hit me with that quirt! You foolish man! You know so little about passion and feeling. You have only the instinct to breed! Under any other circumstances, I wouldn't let you touch me with a ten-foot pole, but I had to show you."
"Show me what?" he grunted drowsily.
"Why Roberto must die! Nothing must upset my world!"
"Queen Bee," he chuckled.
"King Bee," she countered. "What happened to you the moment you saw yourself in that lovely leather? Why did you reach for the whip? Why did you beat me? What do you think happened to you that hasn't happened to me a thousand times? Can't you understand why I'm the way I am in leather?"
George looked down at the perfection of fine thighs and softly curved belly. His eyes moved reluctantly up to wrap themselves around the still heaving shapes of her breasts. Then he looked into Regina's eyes, and despite the unbelievable beauty of her, he found no inner warmth, no personal loveliness. But he could understand what she meant because he had felt like a King Bee, himself.
"I guess I do," he admitted.
"Then you'll ride with us tomorrow?"
"Yes. Now, let me out of this narcotic suit!"
"Take it with you," she said. "Lloyd has another half-dozen. Wear it tomorrow, when its time to ride!"
* * *
Matt let the heavy drape fall back in place, then turned away from the window and ignoring
Con's questioning glance, he flopped out on the bed. Matt wasn't really curious about where Roberto had been, except that the one time he had really needed the never failing masculinity of the big Mexican, he had been out riding someplace on the ranch. Lloyd was shot down by his sessions in the woods with George and Stan was too shaken up by the prospect of tomorrow to have time to help Matt. There was no sense in trying the painter. He obviously wasn't interested.
"Ease up, honey," Con told him like the wife she was not. "It's going to be all right. I've a hunch Regina won't go through with it."
"Yes she will," Matt said, fingering his pink and blue striped pajamas. "Once she starts, she won't be able to stop."
Con continued to brush her hair. Matt tried to quell his nervous frustration by looking at the beautiful Lesbian. It didn't help because he'd seen her in every state of undress, in almost every state of passion with the wide-eyed and willing girls he'd brought home to her from the agency. There was nothing she could do for him, either.
They'd fooled around with each other in the beginning, but coupled with his basic disinterest in loving a woman had been her fundamental distaste for making love with a man. One or two of his chance 'pickups' had gotten excited at the discovery of a lovely, full breasted woman in
Matt's apartment, but in the end, they'd given up on Con.
"Con, when this is over I mean, when it's all on ice, I'm pulling out of Regina's coffee clatch," he said.
She turned around and put one melon-shaped breast in clean, pointed profile. "We should have cut it a long time ago."
"A lot of things," he added, turning his head away from her. "You and I are pretty far out, too. A Les and a homo sacked out together so we can hold each other's head when we hurt. Nuts!"
Con got up and slipped out of her robe. She moved, naked and soft and jiggling to the other twin bed. Matt looked at her again, feeling slightly unhappy at the way she made no attempt to be either coy or reticent. She flopped on the sheet, her legs akimbo, then dragged the covers up around her waist.
"Matt?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to go for a man. One time," she said.
"Brandon?"
"Yes. Do you care?"
Matt sat up in bed, looking at her with narrowed eyes. "Why should I care, Con?" he asked, feeling somehow warmed by her consideration.
Con rolled to one elbow facing him. "I always thought you had first claim if it was a man. I know it's dopey, but I thought that way. Just like I'd like you to bring it to me if it ever comes up you looking for a woman. No one has ever printed a set of rules for either of us, you know."
"We've tried, Con. You know that."
"Not for a long time," she reminded him. "I know you were looking for that big Mexican stud tonight because you're nervous and scared. I'm nervous and scared, too, Matt, but I'd feel better if you did. Maybe down deep I'm a little like you, baby. I'm scared and I want someone to love and pet me, just like you do."
"Doesn't Adele help you?" he asked.
"Have you ever seen a woman help me, Matt? Hell, I do all the helping! Adele just lays there like a stupid slut, hollering to give it to her and make it bleed! Then she takes the bloody mess back to Stan and I hate her for it! It's lousy!"
"I always thought you two got along pretty good, Con."
He watched her settle back on the pillow, her eyes on the ceiling. The usual hardness about her mouth and eyes was relaxed, and she was very soft, lying there. Matt felt a stir in his groin, but as he had done many other times, he doubted its meaning. And in Con's mood, she didn't deserve to be teased.
"Tomorrow we kill a man," Con said suddenly.
Matt sat bolt upright in the bed, staring at her, her chilling words making him quiver with apprehension.
"Let's back out," he suggested in a pinched voice.
Con turned her head and smiled. "Just like you and I have backed out of whipping twenty girls and twenty men? You know what happens to us when we put on that stinking leather. Bingo! We all belong to her. We do anything she says."
Memories tumbled through Matt's brain, and his face ached with the tension of his panic. Con had spoken the truth. He wouldn't back out, and none of the others would, either. If they did, in all probability they would become the hunted. He thought of Roberto's beautiful body being mangled and then destroyed. Con moved over and slipped into his bed. Then Matt felt her arm over his shoulder and her lips kissed his cheek repeatedly.
"Don't cry, baby," she murmured.
Matt turned and clasped her nude body to his chest. His fright wouldn't let him stifle the sobs, entirely, but Con's kisses and the warm encirclement of arms that cared helped. She moved awkwardly and then she was lying stretched out beside him. They clung together like children, but presently Matt didn't feel like a child and what Con's hand was doing in his pajamas was not childish either. For a moment, he didn't interpret it as something sexual. Her clever touch was soothing, in a strange way, though exciting in another. Her lips on his were different too, more demanding, more like some mad form of artificial respiration, pumping life into his body.
He didn't do anything because it didn't seem to him that she wanted him to do anything, and it was comforting to lie there in her arms, with her bulbous breasts on his chest, her hips to his and that marvelous hand displacing his pajamas.
"Matt, I'm going to I want to," she breathed into his mouth.
"Can you?" he didn't refer to her ability, but to his, and her laughter was soft and confident. He closed his eyes. Her body was a hot, heavy weight. He felt the wet enveloping warmth, and he wondered why she gasped until he remembered it might be her own reawakening to a man's strength. Because Matt was suddenly strong, demanding, hunching to complete the frantic twisting hammer of her sprawled hips. His hands moved up around her waist to guide her just the way he abruptly had to have her.
He opened his eyes, and to his surprise saw that Con had closed hers. Her mouth hung slack, and under her chin he saw how heavy her breasts were, bobbing and flipping when she let the twitch of her body ripple up and burst into a swirling rhythm of flowing hair. He heard their bellies smack and he sucked in his breath to stop the sound so the rush of her gasping lungs could continue to excite him.
"You're the only fucking one that cares," she sobbed and he knew that it was true for both of them.
He didn't know it was going to happen until it was happening. It was a different ecstasy than he had ever known with a man. This was happiness springing from deep inside, and with it came a strange urge to give and give. Con's laughter was low and breathless, then it choked off in her throat as she stiffened in his embrace. Her head raised as if she were drowning. Matt clung to her, illogically wondering if she were all right, and then she let her breath explode in his face and he knew she was fine.
"Oh, Matt!" she giggled breathlessly. "Like gangbusters!"
"I hope I knocked you up," he laughed.
Her kiss beat on his mouth furiously. "It takes three times for insurance," she warned.
Matt rolled her over, nearly off the bed. "I'll give it the old college try," he promised. "Never put off till tomorrow what is ready tonight!"
"Yes," she breathed. "Tomorrow will take care of itself!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Regina left for Boulder Creek right after breakfast. Brandon could sense the same air of tension and secrecy that had mildly interested him the night before. Normally, the bright mornings were full of laughter and conversation. This morning, they all sat quietly, and Matt Monahan looked like he was about to cry. George seemed preoccupied, too.
"Boy, what a happy little group of sourpusses," Brandon remarked. "Well, I'm ready for a day's work. How about you two?"
Adele looked up in surprise, having forgotten Regina's orders that she and Con should perform for the painter.
"Right now?" she asked, glancing at Con.
Brandon sat down and beckoned to Marie for another cup of coffee. "No hurry. Sex right after breakfast is like trying to eat cherry pie after a glass of beer."
"How far . . . do you expect me . . . or us, to go?" Con asked.
"I don't expect," Brandon replied, a little puzzled at her hesitant tone. "This is your show. I'm just going to use what I find."
"All that stuff yesterday," George put in. "You going to use it?"
Brandon shook his head. "Not the way you'd think, George. A mural, at least my idea of one, is not a true confession magazine, neither is it a moving picture. What I have in mind is timeless, not a progressive story of emotion nor sensual growth. I have two or three major group situations, being fed by various trends."
Stan laughed. "What you mean is that you're going to show six or seven different kinds of queers and what they look like mishmashed together!"
Brandon grinned. "So? Anyway, I think I'm able to determine some factors not evident on the face of things."
"But evident on the bottom?" Lloyd quipped.
Con stood up, her eyes flicking momentarily to Matt. She was clad in stretch bells and a loose sweatshirt. Even through the casual hang of her clothes, every inch of her flaring hips and gently curved belly communicated through.
"Come on, baby," she said to Adele. "Let's not keep the genius waiting."
"Be back by twelve!" Stan warned.
"All right, all right!" Con snapped, suddenly sharp. "I can give this guy a show in two hours!"
George whistled. "No cheap seats in the gallery I suppose?"
"I don't care if Adele doesn't," Con told him.
"I care," Brandon interrupted George's open mouth.
George grinned good-naturedly, then motioned him aside.
"I'm sorry . . . " Brandon said.
"No! It's all right," George whispered impatiently. "Listen. Do you trust me?"
"Sure."
"When you get back after you're through with the girls. Pack up and get the hell out of here?"
"Why?"
"Just go! Forget the goddamn mural . . . forget Regina. Beat it before you're in more trouble than ten men can take care of. Believe, Buster!
Believe!"
"I thought you said the Mexican was guarding the road?"
George shook his head grimly. "He won't be guarding anything today! Any time after noon, you can just mosey away . . . and are you lucky!"
"You won't tell me what's going to happen?"
"Nope."
"And you won't come along?"
"Can't. Go have fun, painter . . . and s'long."
He thrust out his hand as if it were good-bye and Brandon took it. He picked up his camp stool, and after a moment's thought, he stuck his hand under the wheel and brought out a snub-nosed thirty-eight. Leaving the holster, he tucked the gun under his shirt, inside his pants band.
Con was walking determinedly, with Adele a few steps behind.
"Hey, racehorse," he called to her. "Going to a fire?"
She stopped and turned. Already, she had a peculiar breathlessness and her eyes were misted with some emotion he didn't understand. Unless it was prematurely aroused passion.
"Her and her long legs," Adele laughed.
"Don't knock 'em," Brandon laughed. "I haven't seen many better."
Con waited until Brandon had planted his camp stool and assumed some kind of a professional attitude. Then she skinned off her sweatshirt and was deliciously bare to the waist. Arching her back, she showed her full-rolled and pink tipped breasts.
"What are you going to do when the going gets rough?" she asked. "You're not that much of a saint!"
"I never said I was," he laughed, "but I'll be a good boy and I'll keep busy."
Adele opened her blouse and shook her big breasts right and left to free them. She moved to Con's side and threw one arm over the Lesbian's shoulders. They snuggled together.
"What do we care what he does, baby?" she said, letting one hand curl around Con's breast. "I guarantee that whatever he decides to do, it'll be first class. I tried him."
Con turned her head and let her softly pursed lips press against Adele's cheek. She nibbled a little before she spoke.
"Faithless bitch," she husked. "Did he tear you up enough to make your little fat hubby happy?"
"I made him bounce me against a stucco wall and roll me in the rocks," Adele purred. "The wound he gave me Stan couldn't see or reach!"
They were performing, but he didn't know whether it was for his benefit alone. Con had been right on one thing. This wasn't the slightly abhorrent occasion yesterday had been. Their preliminary words and hugs were getting to him despite his intention to be a "good boy." Now Con cast a quick, taunting glance at him and turned into Adele's embrace.
They stood barely six feet away and Brandon's blood leaped like a fountain as he watched their lips and breasts and bellies mash in simultaneous passion. He had a sudden urge to jump up and thrust himself between the distorted curves. Instead he managed to fire the Polaroid.
Con let go of Adele and backed off a step, her body slowly drawing into a lewd curl. So arched, and knees slightly bent to maintain her balance, she began to peel down her pants.
The long muscles of her thighs were molded in hard relief and her belly was knotted under the soft layer of surface flesh. As her body started to vibrate, her tongue, pink and straight, darted out of her open mouth.
The lascivious suggestion made Adele cry out with desire. She unsnapped her pants and, with a flashing glance at Brandon, dropped them around her ankles. For the first time, he saw her puffy, oversized snatch. His hands were trembling so hard that he could barely get off a shot before she leaped forward and enclosed Con in her arms. Brandon didn't even see the other woman undress, but when Con pulled her to the ground, they were both totally bare.
He saw how Con sagged, dragging Adele over her, then turning up to Brandon all the sensual impact of her completely exposed charms. The sweat broke out on his forehead and his hands shook so furiously he was unable to steady the camera at all. He wanted to take the shot, not because it had anything to do with his mission, but because he had never seen a more beautifully lewd exposure in all his life.
It was Con who dominated the tangled mass of soft velvet flesh and clutching, clinging hands. She seemed intent upon drowning him in a sweat of his voyeuristic excitement. She shaped herself like a huge pink frog, forcing Adele to assume nearly the same shape as her thighs were pressured by Con's knees.
With a cry of hunger, Con curled her body and the smash of flesh on flesh was both beautiful and ugly to Brandon. He took the picture, jerked the film and counted. Then he peeled the print and dropped the camera to the ground. Taking the pistol from his waistband, he hid it behind his sketchpad, and he began to peel down.
His passion raged and he crouched on trembling legs, finding himself in the idiotic position of not knowing just where he was going to enter the erotic tangle. He went to his knees and fell over Con's urging humping bottom. Her head came up with a start.
"No! No! Not yet!" she cried and her laughter came like an hysterical cough.
Brandon hesitated, feeling the surge and undulations of the soft flesh of her ass brush deliriously against his feverish cock. Somehow, she rolled and wriggled under his huge body until Adele's ass was against him, only now, a third shape was below the delectable exposure. Con tipped her head back and pressed her lips to his prod. It was definitely not a Lesbian sort of kiss.
"Now, baby!" she panted. Her arms came up around Adele's hips and her fingers dug, parting and straining Adele's pussy open as she stuffed his aching log inside.
Brandon moved, barely able to breathe. He felt Con grab and her fingers skinned him back expertly, guiding him in and out. Working him into Adele's cunt, she'd force him back and stuff him next into her ass.
Adele shrieked, but it was less in pain than in surprise. She didn't try to evade him, but it would have been of little use, anyway. Brandon's powerful arms closed around her waist, his hands curling under Con's body to tie the three of them into one squirming, writhing whole.
Still Brandon controlled enough sense to keep from crushing down while the furious, incomparable movement of Con's blonde head was between them. His lust was boundless and in his mind, he hovered back there on the camp stool, seeing how they were.
He felt Adele relax, going totally limp. The devastating thing Con had been doing to caress and moisten their union was too much for her.
The minute Adele's passion was relieved, Con lost all interest in her and attacked Brandon's cock with all the vibrant sexuality at her command. He fell to one side, his eyes horribly fascinated by what Con was voraciously doing to him. It was a total greediness and it was so intense that he reached back and found the Polaroid. As hot as he was he snapped a shot of her head bobbing furiously up and down as she swallowed every inch of his oversized prod. For a Lesbian, she had a hell of a lot of talent.
She made wet noises, slurping as she worked his flesh and then he dropped the camera and let go, too fucking hot to think of anything but his imminent, and overwhelming relief. He tried to reach for her . . . to give her what she was giving him, but she wanted no part of it. Digging his head back into the ground, he arched up and let her go.
It was some blast.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Con sat up, her long tapered legs sprawled carelessly while she cradled Adele in her arms.
"Okay, honey?" she asked.
"Now, yes," Adele laughed, "but for a minute . . . ! "
"We nailed the big galoot," Con told her. "Nice boy, he promised too." Con looked at Brandon, wrinkling her nose with private glee.
"Get what you wanted?" she asked.
"Everything! Hey, I'm sorry I couldn't behave," he laughed.
"I didn't expect you to," Con told him. "I'd have been real unhappy if you had . . . but I meant for your damned old mural. Get it all?"
Brandon motioned to the two dozen prints scattered on the grass. "All!" he replied.
"That's good," she said, "because it was my swan song."
"Swan song?" Adele repeated, sitting up to face Con. They were beautiful sitting there nude and concerned with each other. "What do you mean, Con?"
"I'll never touch another woman again," Con said softly, "unless it's to smack her face for fiddling with my husband."
"Husband?" Adele gasped.
Con nodded and lowered her eyes. "Matt and I are going to get married and make babies, if we last this day," she said.
"My God!" Adele gasped. "I could kill Regina."
Brandon made the great effort that brought him to his feet. Gathering the snaps, he walked to the camp stool and retrieved his shirt, sketchpad, and the pistol, managing to get the gun back into his waistband while his back was turned. He saw that they could get back to the house by eleven-thirty or so if they went now.
When he turned again, Adele was holding both of Con's hands. He saw tears sparkling on Adele's cheek.
"You shouldn't have come here this morning," she was saying to Con. "It didn't have to be this way, just for Regina."
"No. I had to come," Con replied. "Last night I kind of forgot how it was with you and me. I had to see if it was better than Matt, or if I cared anymore. Now, I'm happy!"
Adele sprang to her feet and pulled Con up with her. "Let's stop her! There's time. I know Stan doesn't want to do it, but he's frightened. We all were! Oh, Con, why does it matter what gets into the papers?! We didn't do anything to her!"
"Do you think there's time to stop them?" Con exclaimed.
Adele hurried into her clothes and Con followed suit. Brandon watched with narrowed eyes, trying to make sense out of what they'd said. He watched them run down the bridle path without even glancing back. He was puzzled as he packed up to go, but more concerned. George had warned him, and to Brandon, this seemed exactly the thing to do.
* * *
Stan took a lazy sip of beer and nodded out across the open field. "There he goes," he said to the three men sitting by the pool. "We'll give him five minutes, then go get ready."
George shook his head, obviously distressed. "I don't get it! If we are going to kill the son-of-a-bitch, why don't we just do it and bury him under a tree and forget it?"
"I'm for that!" Matt agreed. "If it really has to be done."
Stan smiled grimly. "It has to be done," he assured them. "But because it's Regina's party, and always has been, we have to do it her way. She's led us for a long time, George, but we've liked every inch of this downhill path, believe me. We owe her something, not counting the fact that we have our own necks at stake."
"I love Regina's world, despite the fact that she hates my guts," Lloyd mused. "In spite of that, I'm going to say some thing and to hell with how it sounds. My wife is nuts . . . stark raving nuts, and I think you know it. She plays a lot of cute little games, in her own little world, and I'm not sure this isn't one of them. Are there any photographs? I know she says there are but I haven't seen any. Where did Roberto get them?"
"Stole them from the painter, probably . . . or took them himself," Stan suggested. "Are you trying to tell us this might be one of Regina's little setups?"
"My God!" Matt gasped. "She isn't above it!"
"Kill a man just for kicks?" George asked.
Stan stood up and wiped his florid face. "I believe her! If I doubt her for a moment, where's my own self-respect. It would mean that I'd agreed to help kill a man for a woman's whim! Lloyd, she's not that crazy."
"We'll know when we see the photos," Lloyd said.
"Let's go get dressed," Stan decided, but his voice lacked authority and his movements were not hasty.
* * *
Regina returned on schedule, the money wrapped in a tight bundle beside her on the car seat. Her body tingled with electric excitement as she thought about what was ahead. This was to be her greatest adventure in sexuality, the height of all her dreams, and it was coming at a time when she needed an emotional stimulus more than she'd ever needed it before. The past five days since the death of Amy Carlson had been disturbing ones for Regina.
First the death, then the frightening discovery that Brandon Ward had painted the entire episode. Then she'd lost control with him, and allowed him to roll her in the dirt like a country whore. On top of that, he'd exercised a subtle power over her friends, who had never recognized any power but hers. A sense of chaos had crowded in on her as she felt herself losing stature. Then the final insult of Roberto's disclosures had dropped her to her lowest ebb.
This was to be the day when she regained her throne . . .with vengeance! She'd subjugate her friends beyond the possibility of ever regaining their freedom. Brandon, too, for when he accepted money from her, he would, in fact, place himself in her debt. . . like a servant.
Regina moved her thighs to soothe the excitement her thoughts produced. She drove with one hand and massaged her throbbing breasts with the other. Within an hour, perhaps a little more, she would have her time.
Passion, the rich, soul-lifting passion only she could understand would place her above the puny thrill of Brandon's goat-grunting love-making or the hot-moment kind of thing she'd had with George. Those were woman moments, no different than a million sweating, straining women experienced every night. What Regina had was better!
At a quarter to twelve, she parked in the drive. Taking the bundle of money, she hurried into the house. She saw Brandon Ward sitting alone, relaxed and indifferent, by the pool.
The leather costume she'd laid out on her bed earlier sharpened her senses again. She peeled off her street clothes, her body trembling, then donned the high leather boots, lacing them tight. Then she stepped into the short flaring skirt which barely covered her strong thighs. The jacket was bolero length, fitted, with lacings up the front, pulled tight. It still left a two-inch gap all the way down the front. They only partially covered her flint-tipped breasts. Adding a sharply studded belt, there remained four inches of bare waist above, coupled with an expanse of bare thighs, calculated to drive Roberto crazy . . . especially if he happened to be dismounted when she rode up, in the short leather skirt.
Hair flipping, the bundle of money in her hand, she chose a lethal quirt tipped with lead beads, and she headed hurriedly for the stable. She dared not pause to look at herself in the mirror, or she would have broken through the thin reserve of sexual urgency.
Her black stallion was saddled and ready. Roberto's horse and four others were missing from their stalls. All was according to plan. A queen was regaining her power. Regina swung up into the saddle and gasped with pleasant shock as her naked pussy smacked down against the polished leather. She cut at her stallion with the vicious quirt and the animal leaped forward.
Regina couldn't stop what happened to her then. The excitement of an hour of anticipation, the feel of leather surrounding her body and rubbing, vibrating up from the galloping animal beneath her. She kicked out her stirrups and her cunt spread. Every part of her was hugging that hard leather as she catapulted over her first resounding crest.
She never slowed but rode bowed and slightly forward until the spasmodic convulsions died away. By that time, she had reached the woods.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Regina rode the high trail, her spurs and her quirt punishing the wild-eyed stallion into frantic speed. Her strong thighs gripped the horse, her body flowed with each mighty stride and she could barely" restrain the scream of exuberance rising in her throat. She let her nude hips grind into the saddle and as the branches whipped at her urging body, she reveled in the speed and pain and promise ahead. Once or twice the stallion stumbled slightly and her hand hauled the reins back, lifting his head, forcing him on.
The place she sought was high above the creek, close to where the woods broke and feathered into brush along the west edge of the valley. She came to it swiftly, hauling the stallion high in a dangerous pivot. He settled to a stop, dancing in excited fright.
Roberto stood leaning against a slender tree, his arrogance and grace like a blow in Regina's face. His horse was tied to another tree, and it sidestepped, catching the fever of excitement from Regina's mount.
Slowly she walked her horse toward Roberto, resenting his smile of victory, matching it with the merest softening of her own full lips. She was aware of how the short leather skirt wrinkled high over her lithe thighs. So was Roberto. He groped for the bridle of her horse, his eyes burning brightly up and down her body.
"Senora," he spoke softly. "Magnifico!"
"You're a charming thief!" she half-laughed, tugging the leather skirt down in false modesty. "Here's your blood money. Where are the photographs?"
She held up the bundle for him to see. He smiled. "But of course," he said and let go of her horse.
She watched him stroll over to his mount. The package he took from his saddle pack was about the same size as the bundle containing the money.
He walked only part way back, extending the package as if he wanted her to dismount to receive it.
She swung out of the saddle, knowing how her bare bottom and thighs flashed in the movement. Ground-hitching her horse, she walked over to Roberto.
"I must see what I'm getting," she said, holding the money down along her leg. For a moment, she thought he was going to grab her, but instead, he nodded and suddenly collapsed into a cross-legged seat on the sparse, dry grass. He looked up and his hand waved courteously, offering her a seat.
She could see what had happened to the arrogant man. His pants revealed that the deliberate exposure of her splendid body had done exactly as she had hoped. She stepped closer, but did not sit down. Leaning forward, she looked down at the packet as he started to open it. Suddenly, his strong hand seized her wrist and turned it slightly, causing her to tip off balance. He jerked her, dropping the pack of pictures to the ground as he caught her body. She found herself flat on her back, skirt high, and the broad, trembling body of Roberto Garcia poised over her. He was, she thought, surprisingly handsome.
"Con permiso!" he murmured and without waiting for permission, he kissed her fiercely.
She remained passive, feeling the way his eager mouth worked on hers, but forcing herself to go slow. When she began to respond, it was as if his charm and passion had broken her will to resist. This made Roberto more eager, and his hands changed from holding to pulling. Regina threw her legs out and stabbed her spurs into the dirt, giving her leverage to rise into his kisses.
"Querida mia," he gasped. "You drive a man crazy."
"You filthy Mexican brute," she breathed. "You animal!"
She threw both arms around his powerful shoulders and dragged his mouth into hers. Her eyes stared into his and made pain occur in his forehead. Then she closed her eyes and clung to his kiss.
She felt on huge hand move down her body. It curled under her leather sheathed breasts, hesitated only a moment, then swept on down her straining body. A strange thrill coursed through her as his palm smoothed around her hip and belly, down over the black fur-edged cunt. She held herself up, letting the vibration of her arch meet the abruptly hard greed of his fingers.
"Oh, Roberto!" she murmured, letting herself relax. "If only I didn't hate you so!"
"There can be no hate like this, Chiquita," he laughed.
She turned her head away, eyes closed, body twitching in obedience to the clever manipulations of his fingers. He had a way of fondling her pussy that was deliciously unique. She lay quietly, allowing herself to relish his touch, counting his heavy breaths as they quickened and intensified.
"I want you, Roberto!" she cried. "Be naked for me. I must see your great bull body."
Her fingers ripped at his shirt and he annoyed her with quick kisses. Then he raised to a crouch to remove his clothes. She held his log through his pants while he skimmed off his shirt, then he hurried down his pants. At the sight of his splendid Latin prod, Regina gasped and she unhooked the front of her bolero to give him full range. Cupping both hands under her pulsating breasts, she lifted them to him.
It was an effort to keep control, to remember what was to come for the abandonment she'd deliberately offered Roberto was telling on her own emotions.
There was no sound from the woods, and Regina let herself do what the passionate Mexican wanted her to. She dropped one breast and hooked her gloved hand under the thickly muscled thigh, pulling him into her kiss . . . letting his out-thrust thighs and curled torso blanket her in sweet proffering. She felt his hands stealing down her back, then under her arms to caress her breasts with a gigantic, milking, molding grasp, and she felt herself sinking into an unreasonable surrender. With a cry of self-pity, she threw herself back and he fell on her sprawled loveliness like an animal.
He couldn't have heard, she thought, and she had lost all sense of where and why until the four horsemen were upon them. She looked up as Lloyd's bay gelding reared and the whistle of his whip ended in a scream of agony from Roberto. Regina wriggled from beneath him. The four horses were clustered around them and as Roberto tried to rise, a tattoo of cracking quirts beat down on him. He buried his head in his arms and Regina crawled between the horses and sprang to her feet.
A vicious lash caught Roberto across the back and he arched up and screamed. From between the horses, Regina popped her quirt expertly and the passion he had known for her was suddenly bloody and destroyed. As he cried out in pain, Regina's high wail of ecstasy drowned him out.
She raced for her stallion. He danced and sidestepped, but she clung to the pommel of the saddle and swung into a high, vibrant seat. Her dirt-clogged spurs dug into the horse's flanks and she leaned into the group, her arms flailing as she let her passionate fury blend with the violence her men were pouring out onto Roberto's naked frame.
Once he broke away, staggering toward his horse. Regina laughed and spurred her horse forward. She cut him once, twice, and sent him to his knees. She knew what a horseman he was, and there would be no doubt as to his escape if he could climb into the saddle. She whipped down at the mass of welted brown flesh and discovered that she was alone in her frenzy.
She suspended her quirt high, looking back at the motionless horsemen. Then she hauled her mount around and tore at George and Stan and Lloyd, her quirt knifing into their leather suits.
"Kill him!" she screamed. "You bastards! I command you to kill him! Whip the bastard to death!"
She leaned far out of the saddle and cut at Matt. For a moment, the small clearing was a mass of excited horses and more than once Regina's quirt touched horseflesh, sending the stung animal into high, prancing terror. As Lloyd and Stan moved toward Roberto, Regina whirled her stallion and spurred around to lead them . . . but the Mexican was gone! Somehow, he had managed to limp and scramble and crawl into the brush.
"Find him!" she screamed. "He'll hang us all if he gets away! He can't get away!"
"He thinks he can," George exclaimed. "He took the money with him!"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
George was no horseman and he quickly fell behind. He could hear Regina's screams of rage and the sound of animals crashing through the underbrush. George pulled his excited mount to a halt and sat, breathing heavily. Suddenly, he was very tired.
She'd been right. Laced into the exotic leather suit, mounted on a horse, brandishing the brutal whip, something had happened to his civilized sense of right and wrong. Bursting in on the passionate couple had been so like before when he and Amy had been caught. He'd wanted to whip and cut and charge at them both until the Mexican actually went under the lash. Then his stomach revolted and the mesmerizing leather had lost its power. Now he was atrophied with self-accusation.
Dropping his quirt to the ground, he turned his horse and headed for the stable. Screw it! he thought. If Brandon was still around, he'd catch a ride. If not, by God, he'd walk.
* * *
Roberto crouched in the brush, his body stinging as the sweat trickled into his throbbing wounds. He was afraid to look at his bloody prick . . . afraid of how badly they had wounded him there. Though the rest of his body was slashed and bleeding it was his pecker that terrified him. The package of money was his only solace. Sucking in shuddering breaths, he tried to still the tremble of his body.
He was sure they meant to kill him if they could. He crouched lower as one of the riders galloped through the brush less than a dozen yards away. He heard another horse coming up behind him then and almost too late, his weary legs catapulted him into a stumbling run. Again he felt the lash and as it bit, he yelled. Turning, he ducked the big stallion bearing his mistress. He saw how she nearly tore the bit out of the horse's mouth in an effort to turn after him. He looked up at the terrible fury of her and his ears ached with the high, shrill scream she turned loose. Robert ducked and headed into brush too thick for a horse and rider. Running low, spraddle-legged to ease his groin, he clutched tightly to his little bundle.
Instinctively, he doubled back and sought out the dense areas. His feet were torn and bloody and he was beginning to stumble more often. Once he stopped and above the pound of blood in his ears, he heard the distant sound of horses. He went on, panting, hurting, and cursing.
He came to a stream and waded in, dropping to rest on his knees in the mud, his head barely above the water, his hand holding the package equally high. Then he opened his eyes and he could see his own blood in the water. Once he nearly passed out but as his face went under, he sucked in the cool water and straightened. He stayed there a long, long time.
* * *
Brandon was surprised to see a police car pull up in front of the place. They were State Patrolmen, neat and belted and comfortably big. They climbed lazily out of the car and waved.
"Hello," called Brandon. "The joint's pinched!"
The men grinned.
"Not today. Too hot. We're just out cruising the side roads. We have to once or twice a week. Your gate was open today so we thought we'd see if we could ass a drink of water. Name's Bronson. This is Haley."
"I'm Brandon Ward. I can beat water, if you promise not to snitch on each other over a cold beer," he laughed.
"Nice place," Bronson remarked as he looked around. "Beer sounds good to me and I outrank Haley."
Brandon beckoned to Marie who was watching from the kitchen door. She grinned and disappeared into the kitchen.
"Quite an unfortunate thing last week, wasn't it?" the sergeant remarked. "Too bad."
Brandon thought about that for a confused moment. "Must have been before I got here," he said.
"Woman died of a heart attack and got dragged by a horse just last Thursday," Bronson said. "Funny they didn't tell you about it. Girl named Amy Carlson. Sure was a mess."
"Maybe they didn't want to alarm me," Brandon suggested. "I just happened in . . . I'm a painter . . . and they let me camp down the creek a ways."
"They're a funny lot," the officer volunteered.
"I'm not up much on rich people."
A hundred vague impressions flooded through Brandon's mind as he sipped his beer and stared out at the valley. Then he saw Con and Adele come out of the brush. They walked close together, and he wondered what they were doing coming from that direction. The two police officers were looking at the shapely pair, too, and one whistled appreciatively.
The pair looked up then and stopped when they saw the police. Then they hurried off to approach the house from the other side.
"Not very pally," Haley remarked.
"Sensitive," Brandon suggested. "They'll have to fix their make-up before they meet any one. That's Mrs. Farley and Miss Sonalon."
"We know," Bronson said. "They were at the inquest. Hey! What's that?! "
Brandon stiffened. George Borel, clad from head to toe in a close fitting black leather suit had come out of the woods at the creek. He walked slowly, laboriously.
"Mr. Borel," Brandon said. "Must have been tossed. He's a city boy that does not understand horses."
"Funniest riding costume I ever saw," Haley remarked. "Well, thanks for the beer, Mr. Ward. We'd better get going."
"Come any time," Brandon said. "Sorry the
Lordes are out riding and missed you."
Bronson laughed. "I'm not sure we could take much more. Black leather in this heat! This place is too rich for me!"
Brandon watched them walk out to their car. Then he turned absolutely cold.
From high on the slope, where the woods thinned, came a galloping horse. It was Regina, whipping and spurring, riding like the wind . . . or some she-devil.
He let the air out of his lungs and sucked in a second breath as he saw the horse stumble. He and the police gaped as Regina hauled in the reins and the horse tried to regain his stride. Then he went down and Regina stayed with him, her body a strange, lurching shape of black hair and leather and flesh white in the blazing sun. As she started to fall, the horse regained his footing and came on. Regina's body hit the ground, turned over and skidded. Her right foot was hooked in the stirrup, and as the horse caught stride, her body bumped and raked and plowed up a great cloud of dust.
They all broke into a hard run. The big stallion saw Brandon and did a slow race-horse turn, and centrifugal force rolled Regina's half-naked body over. Like a homing pigeon, the animal headed for the stable. The three men reached the stable at the same time. The stallion reared and pawed and snorted. Regina's fantastic leather heel and long, spiked spur were still irrevocably hooked in the stirrup.
"Mother of God!" Bronson gasped. "Look at her!"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Regina Lorde died of a broken back before the ambulance could arrive. Brandon waited it out until the ambulance and the police car headed down the road. On the patio, the cluster of silent watchers mingled sobs and sighs. It had been a bad hour. Brandon headed for the bar. George was already there, his face furrowed with worry and confusion.
"I told you to blow," he said.
"You knew she was going to fall off that horse?"
"God, no! But what she'd planned was worse."
"You all went along with it. What a crew of bastards. Did they murder Amy Carlson."
"She died of a heart attack."
"Go on."
"That's all I know. Stan gave me a shot and I didn't come to until it was over."
"Suppose we compare notes," Brandon suggested.
"May I sit in?" Matt asked.
Brandon looked up at the newcomer with hard eyes. "This is a tell-the-truth session," he said. "You up to it?"
Matt nodded, his hand shaking as he poured himself a drink. "The funny thing is that it seems worse than it is, and it is worse than it seems!"
Brandon listened and it seemed like a straight story because George and Matt meshed narratives. When they got to the reason for the afternoon ride into the woods, Brandon leaned forward.
"You mean that guy is still running around out there whipped to a frazzle and stark naked?" he demanded.
Matt dropped his eyes. "He got away . . . actually I'm glad, and he has the fifty thousand. That'll buy a lot of bandages. I just wonder why Regina came back without finding him. It's not like her."
"Maybe she did find him," George suggested. "Maybe she rode him into the ground."
Brandon stood up. "We have to find him," he said sternly. "Seems to me this group just missed murder by the skin of their teeth. If he dies out there, they haven't missed it."
"I thought we'd had it when I saw the police car," Matt admitted.
"Lucky they were here," Brandon told him. "They saw her go down. No one would have believed two women could have died accidentally in the same way, on the same ranch, in the same week. Listen, Lloyd and Stan won't get back from town until late. Roberto could die before that. Let's go."
"On foot?"
"Better than on horseback," Brandon replied. "If he's hurt and hiding in the brush, he's not so apt to panic."
"Will the women be safe alone?" Matt asked. "He could come back and murder us all."
"For my money, he deserves the money and as much of someone's butt as he can get. Let's drive to the stable and then to the woods so we won't have to carry him so far."
* * *
Tired, dusty and defeated, they came back from the woods when darkness closed in. They had not only missed Roberto but they hadn't run onto George's abandoned horse, either. Brandon felt a little better. He hoped the two were together.
At the house, he told Matt and George to go on in.
"Where are you going?"
"Stables . . . and the servants' house. I want to talk to the maids."
"Stan and Lloyd are back," Matt said. "Be careful."
At the stables, he saw a saddled horse standing by the stall door. He approached warily and put his hand on the saddle. His hand came away wet. He worked his fingers together and held them, sticky and discolored to the light of the moon. It was blood. He did not try the maid's rooms but headed for the house.
They were all hashing over the gory details. Brandon had nothing to say, and the recounting of Regina's ugly death did nothing for him. Finally, he got up and started for the door. Stan stared at him curiously.
"What do you think, Brandon?" he asked.
"About what?"
"About what happened, of course!"
"Do I have to think of it? I wasn't in on it. I don't figure it's my problem unless you idiots decide to hunt me down in the woods!"
"How did you know about that?" Lloyd asked.
"I told him," Matt put in.
"It's still a problem," Stan admitted. "Dead or alive, Roberto is a threat, you know."
Brandon stopped at the door. "You're going to take over Regina's throne, I suppose," he snorted. "The only real danger you have to face is your own stupidity. Go home! All of you! Talk about real things and do something worthwhile. That big stallion gave every one of you a second chance. Don't miss it. It could be your last!"
Without another word, he strode out to his van. If they wanted to stop him, they'd have to shoot him in the back. He walked around the truck, checking out the tires, then opening the door, he slid inside. He started the motor, jazzed it to clear the cylinders of lethargy from four days of idleness. Just before he dropped it in gear, he started to turn for a last check of the interior. The point of a very sharp knife touched the back of his neck.
"No, Senor," Carlotta's low, vibrant voice warned. "You weel drive down these road muy pronto weeth no looking back!"
Brandon grinned and looked back anyway. Past Carlotta, he could make out the shape of a half-naked man on his bunk. Kneeling on the tiny floor, Marie was smearing something on Roberto's hide. Brandon chuckled as he put the truck in gear.
His laughter grew as he wondered which one of the sexy blondes would be elected to cook breakfast in the morning.
