As in common with people awakened from a sound sleep, it took her several seconds to get her bearings. The jostling of the train became the stabilizing factor. She had left New York City at seven o'clock that Saturday afternoon and was on her way home to Scarsdale.
The interior of the coach was extremely warm, and darkened; either the lights had been partially extinguished or the bulbs at her end of the coach had burned out and not been replaced. She pushed her mink coat off her shoulders and peered out of the window at the passing lights. She could tell by the thinly scattered houses that the train was no more than halfway to her destination. Her exhaustion had caused her to fall asleep even before the train had left the station. She was not accustomed to nights without sleep followed by a full day of shopping.
Still, her trip had been successful.
Her thoughts turned to Michael, the major reason for her trip into the city, and she smiled with satisfaction. Tomorrow he would arrive in Scarsdale, an innocent applicant for the position of chauffeur, and her life would never again be dull. She knew she had made a good choice in her selection of a stud. He had pleased her beyond her wildest expectations. Even remembering the weight of his body on hers was enough to cause her to twist in her seat. A familiar sensation shot through her loins, and she wished she had not put off his arrival until the following day.
"Did I awaken you?"
Valerie turned and stared into the semidarkness of the facing seats. She could make out the vague shadow of a man.
"If I did, I apologize," he said. His voice was low, masculine, and pleasing. "I've been sitting here watching you for the past ten minutes."
"Then you have cat's eyes," she said. She lowered her legs from the seat beside him and tugged at her skirt which had worked its way up about her thighs in her sleep.
"Perhaps it was forward of me," the man continued, "considering that the coach is almost empty, but when I saw you lying there I couldn't resist sitting across from you."
He's trying to make a pickup, she thought. Well, why the hell not?
"I like forward men," she admitted, wishing she could make out his features. "They're becoming a rarity."
He laughed. "I guess that depends on what circles you run in."
She liked the sound of his laughter. In fact, the sensation created by thoughts of Michael seemed to increase. She lowered her hands to her lap and felt the contact on her Mound of Venus through the woolen material of her dress. Without taking her eyes off the shadow of the man's head, she returned her feet to the seat beside him and allowed her skirt to fall back about her thighs. She wondered how well he could see in the darkness. Her own eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim lighting; she thought she could distinguish the whites of his eyes and the movement of his hand in his lap. With sudden foresight, she took a cigarette from her purse, fumbled for a match, and struck it.
In the sudden glare she saw that her suspicions had been justified. The man's fly had been opened and his stiff joint drawn free. It stood upward, white against the darkness of his trousers. His hand, wrapped about the thick base, was moving slowly up and down the solid shaft.
She felt a sudden dryness in her throat and her heart skipped a beat.
"I think that goes beyond being forward," she said. She lit her cigarette and dropped the match to the floor before realizing her attention had been so riveted to his loins she had neglected glancing at his face. He could have looked like Attila the Hun for all she knew. Still, the image of his erected cock had been burned into her memory.
The man remained silent, waiting, she supposed, to see if she responded to his exposure by summoning another of the passengers. When she did not, he reached out boldly and lay his hand on her leg, moving it instantly upward to the soft flesh of her thigh. He felt her shiver and mistook her reaction for fear instead of pleasure.
"I won't hurt you," he whispered.
She wanted to break into laughter. Only deliberate restraint was keeping her from pulling him forward onto the seat beside her. Her body was aching with need. She bit her lip and savored the feel of his hand on her thigh. His face was suddenly unimportant; she wanted the sturdy cock she had seen protruding from his open trousers. She glanced nervously about. The other Saturday travelers seemed to have gravitated to the lighted end of the coach.
He seemed to understand her thoughts. "We're quite alone," he said. "They were afraid to sit in the dark." He laughed again. "I'm glad you were not."
"I didn't even notice it in the station," she admitted.
His hand had reached the fork of her legs. She felt his fingers probing at the elastic of her panties to gain access to her quivering slit. Sliding down in her seat, she slightly lifted one leg. His fingers hooked about the narrow band and the lace gave way to his pressure. She groaned as his fingernails scraped across the swelling lips of her cunt.
His hand began to move frantically, pressing and poking at her body.
"Easy," she moaned.
He dropped to his knees on the floor and lifted one of her legs over his shoulders. The other he pushed roughly aside to spread them to their fullest.
"I have to hurry," he mumbled. "We haven't much time. I get off at Scarsdale."
"A Scarsdale commuter," she said with humor. "Are you typical of the rich set's husbands?"
"Not typical," he snorted. His fingers had expertly parted the lips of her cunt and had plunged inside in search of the inflamed bud.
She stiffened and perked on contact, and her hips lifted from the scratchy seat. "Oh, my God," she whimpered. "I need to be fucked!"
"And I need to fuck you," he groaned.
He drew her down into the seat, but its shortness prevented him from straddling her. He cussed beneath his breath and tried another position that proved equally as cumbersome.
Valerie's breath was coming in quick gasps. Her head was jammed into the hard metal of the armrest and her right arm was twisted behind her back. She struggled to a sitting position and thrust her loins forward into the man's face.
"But I ... I want to fuck you," he complained.
"And you shall," she assured him.
His head came forward until it was wedged between her thighs; his tongue darted out and he traced the lip line of her cunt with a quick movement.
Valerie was filled with desperation.
"You sit," she demanded; and leaping to her feet, hoisted her skirt about her waist and placed one leg on either side of his knees. Reaching down, she clutched at his swollen cock and aimed it upward toward her hovering cunt.
He was quick to understand her intentions. Sliding forward until his buttocks were balanced on the edge of the seat, he grabbed her about the waist and guided her body downward toward his impaling spear.
Valerie dipped her body twice, letting the heavy cock's head come into brief contact with her body before pulling back.
"Goddamn you, don't tease me!" the stranger moaned. Clutching at her breasts, he pulled her down roughly and felt her cunt claim his solid member. As if moved forward along the constricted walls of her vagina, she deliberately tightened her internal muscles to increase the sensation.
With her entire weight pressing against the man's thighs, his entire length was buried within Valerie's body. She began to twist and squirm on his buckling loins, her head thrown back and a continuous groan of pleasure filling the darkened end of the coach.
His hands clasped the neckline of her dress forcing it down to expose her breasts. When his mouth came forward and the warmth engulfed her nipple, Valerie was driven wild with excitement. She began to raise and lower her body with quick, abandoned motions; each downward plunge drove his cock to the hilt.
"You're one hell of a fuck," he panted as he probed the depths of her passage.
She could hardly hear his voice above the roar within her head. Clutching at his hair, she returned his head to her breasts, and he bit and chewed at her nipples. The pain at her breasts mingled with the pleasure received from his priming shaft.
Suddenly, he withdrew his head from her breasts. It slammed back against the seat cushion, his mouth open and the groans of his climax coming tike a bellowing bull. He grabbed her about the waist, trying to lift and lower her body even more rapidly.
Valerie's own climax was approaching; she felt it like a rumbling in the depths of her being. She screamed as the dam within her broke and she felt the love fluids ooze into her quivering passage about his priming cock. Her hungry hole sucked greedily about his cock as the waves of spasms shook her body. Lacing her fingers through his hair, she clung to his head. Then raising herself until his cock's head almost slipped free, she slammed down on him brutally. She felt his body stiffen as the load of his passion shot into her body. Then he went limp beneath her, slumping sideways until his head was resting against the window.
Valerie felt drained, satisfied, but drained. She had needed this stranger and he had not disappointed her. All the tension and exhaustion she had felt from the New York trip seemed to vanish. She had been appeased until tomorrow when Michael would arrive. Struggling to her feet, she forced her exposed breasts back into the neckline of her dress and lowered her skirt.
"Next stop Scarsdale."
Valerie turned away from the door and the stream of light let into the coach by the conductor. She pulled her mink coat about her shoulders and began to collect her packages. She heard the man moving weakly behind her and knew he was stuffing his satiated cock into his trousers.
"It's our stop," she said.
His tension at learning their destination was the same was so intense that she could almost feel it.
The train began to slow down and eventually came to a jerking halt. An escape of steam rose about the windows and almost hid the lights of the stationhouse.
Valerie turned toward the stranger. The light coming through the dirty window revealed him as a handsome man of about forty, with greying hair at the temples and a squared-off jaw. She almost sighed with relief to discover that she had never met him socially.
His sudden smile told her that he felt the same relief. "It's been one hell of a ride," he said. "I hope we meet again."
"It's un-likely," she told him. With Michael to satisfy her, she would have no need of strangers. Struggling with her packages, she left the coach without a second glance at the man.
As she waited on the snow covered platform for her chauffeur, the man emerged from the train and moved past her without a word. He was met by a young women who opened her arms eagerly for a greeting kiss.
Valerie smiled to herself. She doubted that the simple little bitch would ever suspect that her husband plagued the commuter train each night for a strange piece of ass. She wondered how he explained his Saturday work.
"Games people play," she sighed.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Armstrong."
She stared at the aging chauffeur who was collecting her packages. He had been employed by her husband for almost twelve years, a loyal bastard who had never once forgotten his place. "I said I'd like to talk to you in the car," she told him.
"Certainly, Mrs. Armstrong." He moved ahead of her and she followed slowly, formulating the proper words for his dismissal.
Moments later as they drove toward the house, she had no difficulty launching into the subject. "I'm sure you're aware of the tight money problem of today," she began.
He nodded and saw his eyes watching her in the rearview mirror.
"It's affected all of us," she continued. She assumed a troubled expression in the event he could see her face clearly. "Even we have to start cutting comers. Naturally my husband is in no position since his stroke to take care of such matters." She sighed to show how disagreeable she found her task. "What I'm trying to say is that we find ourselves forced to dismiss you." The limousine decreased in speed as his foot was lifted from the pedal.
"It's going to be a great loss to us," she said hurriedly. "Naturally I'll give you the best references and a month's severance pay. I think it's advisable for you to leave tomorrow morning." She leaned back against the cushions and lit a cigarette. "And I'd prefer you not to speak to the other servants. There's no need to alarm them at this point."
"Yes, Mrs. Armstrong. I think I understand."
She did not detect the suspicious tone of his voice. She was too occupied thinking of Michael and how well he would look in a chauffeur's uniform; that is during those times when she did not keep him naked.
Her thoughts went back to the night before when they had been alone in her hotel room and she had decided that he was the sex slave she had come to Manhattan to find.
Valerie pulled back the drapes and stared out of the window of her fourteenth floor suite in the Delmonico Hotel. A light snow was still falling and she could hear the slushing sound of automobiles on Park Avenue below. The steam on the window pane and the darkness of the room behind her created a cloudy mirror and she found herself staring at the naked reflection of her body.
Her breasts, despite her age of forty-two and the fact that she had had two children, were still firm, the nipples definitely tilted upward as if defying time. Unconsciously, she cupped them in her hands and squeezed them until they began-to ache. The dim lighting prevented her from examining the darker areas she knew were evidence of the hungry mouth of the gigolo she had hired for the evening.
Hearing him move on the bed behind her, she turned and stared down at his sleeping form. He had kicked away the sheets and lay with one leg raised and the other stretched across the mattress. His flesh was dark against the whiteness of the linen. Her eyes followed the sinewy lines of his body from his shoulders and solid chest to the narrow hardness of his waist. When they settled on his loins with their thick forest of triangular hair and half-hardened shaft, she caught her breath and sighed gently.
I've never seen a cock like this young bastard's, she thought. Even in its half-hardened state it was gigantic, the bulbous cock's head bigger than any she had known in her heyday, and she had known many. She judged its present length to be a good eight inches. It was no wonder that her pussy had been aching since he had laid her. Marriage and sex life limited to one man for so many years had put her paining cunt out of commission. Then, too, she had to consider that since Herbert's stroke she had not been laid at all; almost seven months without more than her own finger exploring that demanding recess of her body.
As she stared down at the youth she felt a familiar sensation passing through her loins. One piece of ass had only awakened her desires. It was past midnight and sleep would be impossible unless she awakened the youth for a second adventure.
She crawled between his legs on her knees and bent her head over the dark triangle of pubic hair with its sexual sword stretching up his stomach almost to his navel. As she felt the saliva filling her mouth she pressed into his scrotum, licking at one and then the other of his testicles and finally drawing them into her warm, wet cavity. As she moved them about against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, he began to moan and thrust his hips gently upward from the mattress. His excited cock jerked and expanded to even greater dimensions.
"Lady, you're something else!" he groaned.
He clutched at her head, pulling her away from his testicles and raising her so that her mouth was hovering over his throbbing cock's head.
"Suck me," he mumbled.
She did not want him in that manner. She wanted to feel the lips of her cunt stretching to receive his gigantic manhood, to feel it driving in and out against the constricting walls until she had been primed to an explosive completion.
But her lips opened obediently and her tongue darted over the inflamed knob, tracing the ridge and probing at the minute opening. When she took it into her mouth she felt his hand pressing her head downward, forcing the knob into her throat inch by inch until it lodged firmly and she was gasping for air. Her nostrils flared and her breasts were heaving with the struggle of attempting to draw oxygen past the pulsating blockage.
He withdrew the pressure of his hand and she pulled her head free, gulped for air, and then once again attempted to swallow his sexual sword. As she worked her head up and down, her throat muscles began to relax and each downward plunge claimed more of his excessive cock's length. She became obsessed with the need to swallow his entire length.
Slowly, her head began to move back and forth, so that his swollen knob would appear, vanish and reappear rapidly. When the knob would almost slip from her lips, she would gasp for air; then draw his shaft quickly back into the caverns of her mouth, each time claiming more of his long tool. With sudden determination, her head shot forward and she swallowed him to the base.
He groaned from deep within his throat as he felt the tight compression of her throat and her teeth clamp about the soft tissue of his upper scrotum. She had brought him to the heights of pleasure, and he could feel the volcanic pressure building within his body.
Valerie, too, must have sensed his approaching climax. She began to moan, to attack her task with more intense strokes. Her head shot back and forth rapidly. He began to thrust his pelvis upward, driving himself in and out of her oral cavity, holding her head firmly with both hands so that she was at his mercy. Each savage thrust struck the back of her mouth as his cock was driven downward into the depths of her throat. Her own hands were probing the lips of her vulva. Her fingers moved in and out quickly in an attempt to reach her own completion before his climax came.
"Here it comes!" he suddenly cried.
The spasms shook his body, and her throat worked frantically to swallow the semen spraying from his cock's head. He had clamped her head down firmly on his firing shaft. Now, as the last spasm faded, he released his grasp and she slipped off of him, gasping for air.
She lay on her back for a moment, panting; then rose and moved weakly into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and climbed beneath the cold spray.
Because of the water striking the plastic curtain she did not hear the creaking of the mattress as he rose, nor the snap of her purse as he opened it to check the contents.
Michael Santos was no thief, at least not where small amounts were involved. The contents of Valerie Armstrong's purse consisted of a wallet filled with credit cards, one hundred and twenty-five dollars in small bills, and miscellaneous feminine paraphernalia. One hundred dollars would be his as his fee for the evening; there was no incentive to steal the remaining twenty-five. It might be his for a tip, providing, of course, that he had satisfied her.
As he closed the purse, he found himself puzzling the woman. She was not the typical client who called the agency for a male escort. Although he judged her to be in her late thirties, she had retained her good looks and her body would have been the envy of women half her age. He prided himself on his sensitivity to women; after all they were his bread and butter. He had caught her watching him with a quizzical expression. It was almost as if she were testing him, dissecting his personality like a potential employer considering an applicant.
As he leaned against the bureau, he wondered if that could be the case. Several of the men at the agency had been employed by lonely women for several months at a time; some as escort for European trips, cruises, or long winters in abandoned Maine lodges. As much as he had tried, he had gotten nothing out of Valerie Armstrong during their evening together. She was as closed mouth as a clam whenever he had switched the conversation from trivia. When he had asked if she was divorced, she had smiled and commented on the bitterness of New Yorkers.
He wondered if he had pleased her. He had detected a hesitance when he had persisted in forcing his cock down her throat. Perhaps she had wanted him in the so-called normal manner. Then why the hell hadn't she said so? It was her night; she was footing the bill. He glanced at the partially opened bathroom door. Steam was billowing through the crack and filling the bedroom. If she had been considering him as a permanent stud, he could have muffled his chances.
It was not too late.
He moved to the bathroom door and peered around . the frame. The contours of her body were visible through the plastic curtain. She was soaping herself, lathering her breasts and loins with slow, massaging motions. The curtain brushed against her thigh and clung to the wet flesh.
He felt his limp cock throb and begin to jerk into hardness. Crossing the tile floor, he pulled back the shower curtain, and stepped into the tub with her. The water was scalding, and he stepped back to prevent burning his legs and thighs.
"Damn!" he said.
She turned and looked at him, obviously amused. "I only feel clean when it's very hot," she said. Her eyes moved down his body until they riveted on the swelling shaft between his legs. The smile faded from her face, her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but they closed suddenly, and she handed him the bar of soap. "You do it for me," she said; and slightly lifted her arms.
He worked up a heavy lather on his hands and covered a firm breast with each, closing his fingers until they squeezed her nipples between them, framing the pointed tips to meet his hungry mouth. She lowered her arms limply to her sides and made no effort to touch him. She did not even speak or attempt to push him away when his teeth bit into the sensitive flesh.
He bit again, this time harder.
A tremor passed through her body and she bit her lip.
He lifted his head and smiled. "The other times were only to wet my appetite," he said. "This time I'm going to fuck the be-jesus out of you!"
Her eyelids lowered and he thought he detected a moan of anticipation from her lips.
His hands traveled to the mound between her legs. He rubbed his fingers along the creases on either side and then pressed between the lips of her cunt to search for the inflamed bud. He was completely aroused, almost panting. His fingers seemed to develop a will of their own, plunging in and out of her moist cavity until she suddenly pulled away. She stepped completely under the spray of burning water so that he would hesitate to move after her. There was a teasing smile cm her lips. The water had matted her dark hair about her face and ran in streams from her nose and chin and breasts.
"You're trying too hard," she told him. "Relax. There's no rush. If we're running out of time, I can afford a second day." Her voice was edged with bitter humor.
He felt as if she were insulting his masculinity. If there was one thing he prided himself on, it was his sexual ability to please his customers. He bit his tongue. "It's just that I want you so badly," he said.
Her hand moved from under the spray of water and closed about his throbbing cock.
"That's sweet," she said. "Do all gigolos know exactly what to say to their customers?"
Michael felt his temper begin to build. The bitch was insulting him. He had obviously failed to please her and she was getting back at him without allowing him another chance. He moved his loins forward gently so that her hand moved back on his cock.
"Have you decided you don't like me?" he asked in a wounded tone.
She laughed. "Who could possibly dislike a stud built like you?" she asked. "You're the most fitted person to your profession I've met."
He felt himself relaxing.
"I like you," she said. Then, quietly so he almost did not hear her above the water, "It's myself I'm not too fond of."
He ignored her suggestion of self-contempt. He was professional enough to know to stay away from that line. Slowly, he began to push his hips back and forth. The movement of his cock in her hand had immediate effect.
"Take me!" she said. "Fuck the be-jesus out of me and earn your money!"
Releasing her grasp of his hard cock, she turned suddenly and leaned down with her hands against the water spouts, her narrow buttocks hoisted upward, her slender back arched and her feet spread as much as the limited space would allow.
He stepped forward behind her and gently spread her cheeks to reveal the mystery between her legs, the wet lips unfurling pink against the mat of her pubic hair and flesh. Cautiously, he positioned the knob of his cock against her cunt's opening and pressed forward until he had pierced his mark. Her internal muscles gripped the swollen pyramid and sucked it inward.
"You're definitely the one I'm looking for," she groaned.
He thought again of spending a winter in the warm climate frequented by the rich. What else could she mean by saying he was the one she was looking for? His mind flashed to travel posters of the South Seas, Florida, even Hawaii.
His dreams were forgotten as the pleasure surging through his cock was realized. He gritted his teeth with pleasure of the sensation as he plunged slowly up her molten passage until his belly was pressed against her buttocks. He held the penetration while she rotated her hips around the cock, raising him to sensual heights of ecstasy.
He forgot the hotness of the water springing off her back to sting his chest and belly. He stared down at her buttocks pressed firmly against his abdomen. They were flattened against him and it appeared as if his flesh had been joined with hers.
"Fuck me slowly!" she moaned.
Obediently, he pulled back and pushed in again, advancing inch by inch along her rippling walls. When he again reached full penetration, she took command by rocking back and forth on her toes and the balls of her feet, setting the rhythm, pulling away until his cock's head was ready to slip from her cunt before slamming back against his body and burying him to the hilt. Each time her lower body pulled away and crashed back against him, it was with a more frantic pace. The slowness she had begged for had been forgotten.
He knew that she was staring up between her legs, watching his thick cock being driven in and out of her stretching cunt. She endangered her balance by taking one hand away from the water spouts and grabbing his swaying sac. As she squeezed his testicles, he felt them grow full beneath her touch.
Then she uttered a deep-throated groan. He felt her cunt twitch and tighten, aware that the juices of her passion were seeping along the melting walls. He felt it ooze about his priming cock, and she suddenly ceased to rock her body. He once again took command of the rhythm and drove himself in and out of her body with a soaring rage. After the spasms ceased to pass through her body, she seemed to go weak, to be suspended in her slumped over position like a creature without a spine.
His own climax came quickly after hers. His organ seemed to expand to the point of bursting, orgasm hovered in the pit of his loins for the eternity of an instant and then erupted. She tightened the grip of her internal muscles as he emptied himself into the smoldering depths of her body.
"Oh, God," she cried. "Baby, you are definitely the stud I came to New York to find!"
He thought what a lucky bastard he had been to have taken this call. The other studs at the agency would turn green with envy.
Michael was reclining on the bed smoking when Valerie Armstrong came out of the bathroom. She had a towel wrapped about her head and another covering her body. There was a smile of contentment on her face. The smile faded as she looked down at him.
"You're good," she said. "Too often a man with equipment like yours never learns to use it." She sat at the dressing table and stared at his reflection.
He stretched and crushed out his cigarette. Of course, he knew he was good. Hadn't numerous women told him so?
"You're good too," he conceded. He wanted to say; don't play with me. Make your offer, but he dare not push her.
She turned to face him as if reading his thoughts.
"Shall we discuss my proposition?" she asked.
He nodded, trying to conceal the excitement he felt.
She crossed her legs and he had a sudden glimpse of the downy patch between her legs. Coyly, she rearranged the comer of the towel to conceal her nakedness. She reached for a cigarette, lighted it, and inhaled deeply. As she blew the smoke above her head her eyes never left his face.
Finally, she rose and moved to the bed, sinking to the edge of the mattress beside his feet.
"My life was running smoothly until about seven months ago," she told him. "I married well, have two teen-age children and a husband, who if not perfect, was satisfactory after the lights were turned out at night. In Scarsdale I'm considered a model of a wife and mother. If only those bastards knew the truth." She took another puff on her cigarette and passed it to him to extinguish. "Appearances are extremely important among some classes," she said, her voice tinged with irony. "In Scarsdale, they are everything. If you belong to the right committees, belong to the country club and are never caught sleeping with anyone other than your spouse, you become a pillar of the society."
Michael pulled the pillow up behind his head. It was a familiar story. He had heard it several times from his clients. Now, he supposed, she was preparing for a divorce. She was running away and she was going to ask him to join her to insure herself against loneliness. Well, he reasoned, what did it matter a damn? All he was concerned with was his own comfort.
"Of course, I've known other men during twenty years of marriage," she said. "What woman wouldn't? They were discreet affairs, most of them in Europe. Herbert always combined our vacations with business so I had plenty of time to myself. Italians make the best lovers," she said. Her eyes became glazed as if she were remembering pleasant experiences. "Are you Italian? You could be."
"No," he said. "What about seven months ago?"
"What?"
"When it changed," he said.
"Oh." She pushed herself off the bed and returned to the vanity. "Herbert had a stroke," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "He's thirteen years older than I, and he'd been pushing himself toward it for years. It left him partially paralyzed ... from the waist down."
"I see," he said.
"Yes, I thought you would." She pulled the towel from her head and began to run a comb through her hair. "The truth of it is that I've been playing a role for twenty years. It had its compensations. Herbert is rich and I live in comfort. Soon the poor bastard will cross over. That's spiritualistic jargon for kicking off." Her hand slowed to a stop with the comb poised in position. "The doctors tell me he could go at any time, or he could live another ten years as he is."
"Where do I fit in?" Michael asked.
"You?" She laughed. "I want you to supply what paralysis has made impossible for my husband."
Michael's hopes sank. There was no winter in the Bahamas, or Florida, no Caribbean cruise. She wanted to drag him back to Scarsdale as her private stud, her sex slave. He felt himself coloring with anger, anger at himself for having expected more.
"For appearances sake," she said, "you'll have to masquerade as our chauffeur." She continued combing her hair. "I'm sure some of the other ladies have established the same arrangements."
"Your husband has agreed to this?"
"Heavens, no!" She laughed loud and lay her comb aside. "Herbert is as proper as the society he represents," she said. "He believes a wife's devotion should last beyond the grave." Her smile faded at the concern on his face. Rising, she moved back to the bed, stooped and kissed him gently on the lips. "He'd never suspect your charade," she assured him. "He's had no reason to question my fidelity in the past."
Michael turned his head away.
"There are, of course, the children," she continued. "They'll both be home until after the first of the year. Then back to college until the spring. The servants are faithful to me. We'll be able to last out the winter with comparative freedom."
"You've planned it all, haven't you?" he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. "Better than you realize," she told him.
He did not question her tone of double meaning. He was calculating the advantage of a permanent client until spring.
"What have you planned on paying your stud?" he asked.
"We'll negotiate," she said. "You'll find that when I'm pleased I'm a generous woman, most generous."
He felt her hand on his chest, soft and warm. It moved down over the hard muscles of his abdomen and her fingers laced in his pubic mat of hair. Despite himself, he felt his limp cock twitch and respond.
She was leaning over him, her firm breasts only inches from his face. "Are you interested in the proposition?" she asked in a whisper.
Her warm hand had cradled his cock. The fingers were kneading the swelling flesh into full erection.
"When ... when would we leave?" he asked. His mouth felt dry. He swallowed; then extending his tongue, flicked it over the nipple of her left breast. It hardened instantly and she lowered herself to receive the caress of his mouth.
"Tomorrow," she whispered. "I'll leave tomorrow and you follow me the next day."
Good, he thought. He needed a day to take care of his arrangements. He would have to put most of his clothes in storage, sublease his apartment, and then there was Madelaine, his fiancee. He'd have to come up with a reasonable excuse to leave her for the winter. Regardless of if she left him, he knew he would accept Valerie Armstrong's offer. A winter as a permanent stud would be far less hectic than living off an occasional rich bitch furnished by the agency.
"Now," Valerie said, "I need you again." Aggressively, she straddled his head, a knee on either side of his neck. As she pressed her cunt down into his face, he wondered if perhaps she were not as insatiable as he.
CHAPTER TWO
When Michael reached the fifth floor of Madelaine's walk-up apartment, he was panting and aware of his exhaustion from the night before. Valerie Armstrong had allowed him little sleep; if she had not been demanding him sexually, she had persisted in keeping him awake to talk. An hour before he had seen her off in a taxi with a promise to join her the following day.
He needed twenty-four hours to clear up things in New York, and the first matter of business was Madelaine. Although he had never considered her as a permanent addition to his life, she was as regular as any girl he had known. He owed her something, even if it were an easy brush-off.
He let himself into her apartment and closed the door quietly. Madelaine's small living room was a mess of empty glasses and over-flowing ashtrays, and he remembered with a sudden sense of guilt that he had missed the party she had thrown for his birthday. He had been so involved with Valerie Armstrong that he had even failed to telephone. Slipping out of his shoes, he crossed the room to the closed bedroom door. Although he expected Madelaine to create a scene, he did not doubt his ability to handle her. If there was one thing he was confident of, it was his way with women. He had never met one that he couldn't have eating out of his hand within a few minutes. And Madelaine was extremely susceptible to his charms. They had fought before, but he had always brought her out of her anger.
He pushed the door open an inch and peered into the semi dark room. His inflated ego and his assurance of Madelaine's devotion burst like a pricked balloon.
Madelaine was not sleeping alone.
Beside her on the bed, the sheets kicked down about .his feet, lay a young Negro. His head was hanging half off the mattress, his eyes closed and his mouth open in sleep. One leg was raised and resting against Madelaine's thigh; the contrast of his dark skin against her pale flesh gave her the appearance of complete vulnerability.
Michael found himself rooted to the crack in the door. A strange sensation filled the pit of his stomach and his vision seemed to become blurred. He knew his face was flushed with rage and he realized he was experiencing jealousy for the first time in his life. He knew he should slip out of the apartment, go to the corner and telephone Madelaine, but he felt as if he had been mesmerized by the sleeping couple.
The Negro moved, returning his head to the pillow and laying one massive hand across Madelaine's breasts. She groaned and her eyes fluttered open. Unaware of her audience, she turned and stared down at the man beside her, blinking her eyes, Michael told himself, as if she could not believe the man beside her was a stranger.
But then her lips parted in a smile and she lowered her head onto his chest.
"Wake up," she whispered. "You've got to leave." The tone of her voice made it obvious that his leaving was not her main concern.
Her hand moved gently over the muscles of his stomach, pausing to poke at his navel before traveling down to the nest of pubic hair at his loins.
"Wake up," she repeated; and her fingers closed about the base of his limp cock.
Michael felt his heart pounding wildly in his chest. The sensation in the pit of his stomach made him feel weak and he leaned against the door frame to prevent his legs from buckling beneath him. He fought the urge to push the door open and storm into the room like an enraged husband. Only the size of the man on the bed held him at the crack. A voice in the back of his head kept repeating: "So what? She doesn't belong to you. You've come to say goodbye."
Madelaine's hand began to work back and forth along the Negro's elongated shaft until it began to expand with jerking motion. "That's it, Black Beauty," she moaned. "Get it up for Madelaine."
The Negro reached for her head, pulling it roughly up to receive his kiss. When their mouths parted, Michael saw that his cock had become rock hard, stretching along his stomach almost past the point of his navel.
After me, he told himself, it would take a cock that size to satisfy her.
Despite himself, he felt his own cock growing with excitement and aching within his constricting undershorts.
Pushing Madelaine back on the bed, the Negro raised himself to his elbow and stared down at the soft flowing lines of her body, her heavy breasts with the nipples hardening in the crescents and the silken patch of blonde down between her legs.
"You're one hot little honkey," he told her.
She clutched at his neck and threw one leg over him. "I'm so goddamned hot," she moaned. "I want you to fuck me like last night. Make me forget that thoughtless bastard."
"Anything to oblige a lady," he said.
As he lowered his head and covered her left nipple with his mouth an electric current seemed to pass through her body. She began to jerk and twist, digging her nails into his back and pressing her cunt against his thigh.
His mouth left her breast and his head moved downward, his tongue leaving a trail of saliva in a thin line down her middle as he worked his way slowly toward the quivering mound of flesh between her legs. His hand caressed the inside of her thighs and he drew his fingers deliberately across the Ups of her cunt to tease their softness and make her jerk and lift her hips.
"You're driving me crazy," she whimpered. "Stop teasing me! Fuck me now!"
But he continued the slow journey with his tongue.
When he reached the line of her pubic forest, he spun around suddenly, crawling between her legs and forcing them even further apart with his knees.
"I'll fuck you!" he groaned. "I'll fuck the hell out of you!"
Michael watched as he pressed the bulbous cock head against the lips of her vagina, and he felt the vicarious thrill of contact.
Madelaine pressed her head deep into the pillow in anticipation. She closed her eyes as he moved his solid knob up and down over her aching slit to lubricate her for entry.
Michael flinched as the Negro drove his cock savagely forward. It appeared to enter her like a ripping blade and move steadily inward along the constricted walls. Its length seemed endless, capable of probing unexplored depths, and he felt his jealousy returning. He was standing in the doorway with an erection while another man was driving his cock into Madelaine's body.
Madelaine cried out with a mixture of pain and pleasure.
The Negro laughed. "You know you're getting fucked," he said. "No honkey's going to fuck you like this!" He pulled back until his cock head almost slipped from her cunt and then stabbed in again, slamming her raised hips brutally back against the creaking mattress.
"No," she mumbled breathlessly. "Even Michael can't fuck me like you do!"
Michael felt a shiver of anger pass through his body. The color of rage returned to his face. "The rotten bitch!" he wanted to scream, but he bit his tongue and remained silent.
Madeline began to buck and squirm and arch her body to meet his thrusts. She squealed like an alley cat each time he drove his cock into her to the hilt.
"That beautiful blonde pussy feels so good," the Negro groaned. He arched his narrow buttocks until his cock had almost slipped from her tunnel. "So goddamned good," he repeated, and plunged into her again, sliding easily up her lubricated passage until their loins crashed together.
"Easy!" she pleaded, but her tone was not convincing as a protest. Michael was familiar with her pleas. They all meant exactly the opposite. She was loving every moment of his savageness, aware that a pretense of fear would only turn him on more.
But even Madelaine did not appreciate what happened next.
The Negro unwrapped her legs from about his middle and pulled back, rising to his knees between her legs and staring down at her with a sneering smile.
Michael felt satisfaction when he recognized real fear in her eyes. He hoped the bastard would split her apart.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded.
"Take you the way I want you," he told her.
Without hesitation, he grabbed her thighs, lifted her half off the bed as if she was weightless and spun her around so that her face was buried in the pillow. She automatically arched her buttocks and spread her legs thinking he was going to enter her from the rear.
Only Michael, watching from the doorway, knew what path the Negro's passion was going to take. He could not help the smile of approval from spreading across his face.
The Negro suddenly clutched at the fleshy half moons of her buttocks. As he drove his cock into her sensitive anal cavity, she cried out with agony and clawed at the bed in an effort to crawl away from the pain. But she was held firmly. Using his weight to press her against the mattress, the Negro thrust his loins forward with brute force and his gigantic cock plowed past the tight sphincter muscles of her rectum.
"You black son-of-a-bitch!" she screamed. "You ... you goddamned....Oh, Michael! Michael!"
Michael felt the anger leaving him. She was getting what she deserved, and he was satisfied.
The Negro began to hump her urgently, brought to a new pitch of passion by the tightness of her anal walls. His hands, still wedged beneath her, forced their way downward until they cupped the mound between her legs. As he pulled back, his fingers were inserted into her cunt. When he crashed into her buttocks again, his fingers were buried roughly to the knuckles.
The Negro suddenly threw his head back and bellowed like a bull. All the muscles in his body became tense as he shot the load of his lust into her bowels. Again and again he pulled back and drove into her in short jabs until each drop of semen had been drained from his cock. Then he slumped down on top of her, a dead weight crushing her against the mattress.
Michael quietly closed the door and returned to where he had discarded his shoes. As he slipped into them he thought with satisfaction that Madelaine had gotten what she deserved. He knew how she hated backdoor lovers. He had once tried to take her as the Negro had and she had succeeded in evading him. "No man will ever take me that way," she had told him.
As he moved toward the door of the apartment, he heard movement from the bedroom. By the sound of the feet padding across the floor he knew that Madelaine had managed to escape the bed. He distinctly heard her sobbing.
Before he moved into the hallway, he broke into a deliberate peal of laughter. There was enough hate still left in him to make him want her to know that he had witnessed the entire scene.
Madelaine had been the first woman to wound his ego. She had told the Negro that he had been a better lay. He would never forgive her for that ... never!
Madelaine closed and locked the bathroom door and leaned against the basin with her face close to the mirror. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but they were not the result of the Negro's brutality. Although her body was filled with the aches of his unnatural assault, she knew that pain would soon pass.
Michael's laughter as he had left the apartment told her that her plan had worked. She had seen him in the doorway, his eye pressed against the narrow crack. She had lain awake all night watching for him to return. When she had heard his key in the lock she had closed her eyes, peering between the lashes until he had looked in. Then she had gone to work on the Negro.
The pounding on the bathroom door startled her. She turned away from the mirror.
"Go away!" she said.
The Negro laughed. "Are you sure you don't want to try it again?"
"Get the hell out!"
"Ok! You know where to reach me."
She heard him moving away from the door, fumbling about the bedroom for his clothes. She knew she'd never call him. He had served his purpose, and that had been to drive Michael away.
She sat on the edge of the tub, the porcelain cold against her naked flesh. She felt a hollowness inside of her.
"Michael's gone," she said aloud. "He's gone and he won't be back."
Her reasoning told her that what she had done had been right for her. In time she would adjust to his absence. She had known that she could not go on devoted to a man like Michael. Aside from being an ego maniac, she had feared the violence struggling for release. Although he had not given himself up to it yet, she felt he would become an evil bastard.
"Then why," she asked herself, "are you so goddamned much in love with him?"
She heard the door close behind the Negro, and she came out of the bathroom into the silence of the apartment. She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes. The smell of the strange man and the odor of sex stung her nostrils, but she soon slept and dreamed of Michael.
Michael rolled onto his side and stared at the woman beside him. She was, he judged, in her late forties, her body beginning to show signs of age. Her breasts were flecked with small areas of discoloration and the excess flesh sagged under the arm she had folded beneath her head.
It was his last night in New York and the woman would be his last customer for the winter. Starting tomorrow his time would be devoted to Valerie Armstrong, and if he played his cards right he'd get enough out of her to keep him going for a long while.
The woman stirred and her eyes fluttered open. As her lips parted in a smile he noticed that her lipstick was smeared, giving her a demented expression. She was trying damned hard to appear seductive. Her hand came forward and caressed his neck. "I'd like to have you again," she said. "You felt so good on top of me."
"It depends," he said.
"On what?"
He bent his head and kissed the nipple of her left breast, running his tongue around the crescent and feeling it grow more firm. When he lifted his head and met her gaze, his eyes were cold. "You only paid for one time," he told her.
"One hundred dollars for one time?" She seemed to be hurt that he should mention money; like most of his customers, they tried to force themselves to forget they were paying for every word of passion and every thrust of his cock.
"Love is expensive," he said.
"Love," she snorted. "I can get that from a poodle. It's not love I'm after. I want sex, and more sex."
"Then you'll have to pay for it," he told her. He knew that his coldness and the anger he felt toward the woman were because of Madelaine. It was his vicarious way of getting revenge. He felt the urge to not only hurt her with words, but to physically injure her.
"How much?" she demanded.
"Fifty more."
She continued to smile as her eyes moved down the lines of his naked body. She was examining him closely as if trying to determine if he was worth the price of a repeat performance.
He knew she would come across with the fifty. It was a case of supply and demand; he could supply what she wanted and she could afford his demands.
"It's robbery," she said, "but I want to be screwed again." Her hand tightened around his neck and she pulled his head back to her breast.
He shifted his body so that his ramrod straight cock pressed against the soft flesh of her stomach. She reached to the hot member like a child being teased with candy. Wedging her hand between their bodies, she wrapped her fingers about his shaft and moved them up and down tightly.
"I want you inside of me," she whimpered.
He pulled away and forced her legs apart, crawling between them on his knees. She raised her arms to him and clutched at his back as he lowered himself on top of her. Her legs were widely spread, the firmness of her mound lying hot and inviting to his touch. He ran his fingers along the swollen lips and then hunched his buttocks upward so that he could grab and position his cock for entry. His entire weight was supported by one hand beside her neck. She had turned her head and was nibbling at the flesh of his forearm, her teeth tearing at the growth of hair.
"Don't be gentle," she moaned. "I want you to screw me senseless."
"My intentions exactly," he said.
He pressed the tip of his cock against her vagina lips and moved it back and forth a couple of times more to tease her than to lubricate the moist passage. When he drove forward it was without concern for anything except his passion. .She cried out as he pierced her and his cock drove inward along her rippling canal. She moaned and her hips jerked. She began to squirm, to claw at his arms with her fingernails. He humped and thrusted into her, driving himself as deep as the length of his cock would allow. Each time he pulled back, he felt her constrict the muscles of her cunt, felt the pressure against the ridge of his expanded knob.
"Faster!" she pleaded.
He obediently increased his rhythm, crashing down against her body until he thought he would break her bones. Each time he crashed into her, the air was forced suddenly from her mouth and nostrils in a loud gasp. Despite the coldness of her hotel room, he felt the perspiration standing out on his forehead and running down his face. Some caught at the comer of his mouth and he tasted the bitterness of body salt.
"Now!" she suddenly cried.
It was too quick. He was not content. He felt unsatisfied because his roughness did not seem to hurt her.
She lifted her hips to meet his downward plunge and he drove her buttocks flat against the mattress with such force that he heard the springs creak and threaten to break. She lay totally winded, unmoving, whimpering as if she were in pain. Her body convulsed suddenly, and he felt the stickiness of her fluids oozing about the head of his cock.
Again and again, he thrust into her with force.
"Please," she begged. "Easy! Take it easy!"
He felt contentment at her displeasure. Imagining the women beneath him to be Madelaine, he began to hump and slam into her savagely, each thrust his anger seemed to melt more.
When his climax came, his body went rigid. His arms stiffened and held his upper body in an arch away from her. Only their loins touched, driven together so tightly that their flesh seemed to join. He threw his head back, his mouth open as the waves of sensation passed through his shaft and sent the spray of semen into the deep recesses of her body.
His muscles relaxed after the last discharge, and he pulled back, feeling her tighten the molten walls about his cock to drain him of the last precious drops of fluid.
Her eyes were closed and her face peaceful and soft Her arms, limp now, hung over his neck. She smiled, and the smile angered him.
"It reminds me of some passage in the Bible," she said without opening her eyes.
"The Bible!"
"About saving the best wine until last." Her eyes opened and she stared into his face. "You saved the best lay until last," she said. "It was unbelievable."
He pulled off of her, hearing his cock slip from her body with a popping sound. As he rolled onto his side, he said: "Was it worth the fifty dollars?"
The smile faded from her lips. "You are a monetary minded bastard," she spit out.
"This is all in the line Of duty with me," he said.
He heard her slip off the bed and move across the room. He could tell by the quickness of her steps that he had made her angry. He opened his eyes when he heard the catch on her purse snap open.
She was removing a wad of bills big enough to choke a horse, peeling off his wages for the night. "If I were a man I'd shove these up your ass," she cried, and flung the bills onto the bed. "Male whore!"
Michael laughed. "Whore monger," he said. He continued chuckling to himself as he collected the money.
"You weren't even a good fuck!" she cried. "I'll tell my husband I donated this cash to charity. That's what it is, charity."
The smile faded from his face and he flushed with anger. All the rage he had felt toward Madelaine returned to be vented toward the woman. He glared at her, at the sagging flesh of her arms, her hanging breasts and fleshy thighs.
She cowered as he leaped to his feet and backed toward the vanity. Her eyes filled with fear. "Don't hit me," she cried. "Get out! Just get out!"
He grabbed at her head, catching her by the hair and spinning her around to face the mirror.
"Look!" he bellowed as he shoved her face against the glass. "You're a hag! An old hag! And you tell me I'm not a good lay! What man would screw you for anything except money? I'll bet you can't even give your husband a hardon." His face was twisted with hate, his lips curling away from his teeth as he spit out his words. "Look at yourself!"
She opened her eyes and stared at the reflection, at the smeared lipstick and running mascara that made her face appear even older and uglier.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" she cried. "You rotten bastard! I'll get even with you for this so help me God!"
He flung her backward and she crumbled to the floor. Opening her purse, he pulled out the roll of money. "We'll call this a tip," he said. He moved to the chair where he had discarded his clothes and began to dress.
The woman was sobbing uncontrollably. He did not see her getting to her feet, or crossing to the vanity. He was only aware of her behind him when the hand mirror came crashing down against his skull, He stumbled to his knees, dazed and cussing.
She struck again; this time catching him a glancing blow on the shoulder.
"Goddamned bitch!" he hissed. Spinning, he leaped to his feet, his fist clinched.
He ducked as she threw the mirror and it shattered against the opposite wall. The violence in Michael that Madelaine had so feared came to the surface. As he moved toward the woman his face was contorted with hatred, his eyes blazing and his skin flushed.
The woman screamed. Turning on her heels, she ran for the safety of the bathroom. Safe behind the locked door, she began to scream:
"Help! Police! Rape!"
Michael froze in his tracks. He knew her cries would soon attract attention. The anger faded from his face and was replaced by panic. He dressed hurriedly and ran from her room.
Outside, he turned his coat collar up against the coldness of the wind and walked hastily toward his apartment.
He would be damned glad, he thought, to get out of New York City for the winter even if it was only thirty five minutes away. If he was clever he knew he would be able to get enough out of Valerie Armstrong to take him to Europe in the Spring.
And he was a goddamned clever bastard; of that he had no doubts.
CHAPTER THREE
When Michael stretched out on his bed in the upper west wing of the Armstrong mansion he knew he would be unable to sleep despite his exhaustion. His mind kept going over and over the riches he had seen upon entering the home. He had known Valerie Armstrong was rich, but he had not expected how rich. If the home and its contents were a good representation, then he must truly have attached himself to a multi-millionairess.
Even the chauffeur's quarters to which she had had him brought was elegant, furnished in genuine antiques. The bedspread on which he sprawled must have cost over a hundred dollars. As if from second thoughts, he kicked off his boots.
His reception had been cold, but then he had expected that. How could she treat him otherwise in front of the servants? He had, however, detected the pleasure in her eyes, and relief as if she had doubted his arrival.
He knew he had made the right decision in accepting her proposal. If he couldn't get additional money from her aside from his wages, he could always steal and hock some of the accessories.
Europe in the spring, he thought. I'll teach those Roman whores how to hustle a rich American.
He slept, and he dreamed.
In his dream, he was at the mercy of probing hands. He was tied to a bed and the hands, slipping beneath his clothing, were squeezing his nipples and exploring the hardness of his cock. They were urgent, demanding, and seemed to be drawing his masculinity away with their aggressiveness. He wanted to fight but he could not; imaginary chains bound his wrists and ankles.
Then he was awakened to reality.
Valerie Armstrong was leaning over his bed. She had unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped his trousers. The hands were indeed real, her hands. She pulled away now as he opened his eyes.
"I need you," she said. "I need to be screwed."
Michael glanced at the clock beside his bed. He had only been in the house less than two hours and already she was demanding services for her wages.
"It's not even dinner time," he said sleepily.
Valerie laughed without humor. "Maybe it'll give me an appetite. Come on, darling, take off your clothes."
Michael rose to his feet. His legs felt numb and he almost slipped back onto the bed. He watched as she slipped her dress over her head, and stood before him in only a thin pair of bikini pants and a bra. He could see the dark area between her legs through the material and he remembered their night in the Manhattan hotel.
She had already parted his fly while he had been sleeping, and his throbbing cock, having escaped through the leg of his undershorts, stretched painfully down the leg of his coarse trousers.
"What are you waiting for?" The impatience in her voice made him want to delay even more.
But she was the master and he the slave.
He pushed his trousers over his hips and they settled about his ankles. As he removed his shirt, she stepped forward, slipping her arms about his waist and pulling herself into the curve of his body.
"We're going to have a hell of a time," she whispered. "You'll make this house bearable for me."
His senses seemed to reel with her touch. The rich, heavy fragrance of her perfume filled his nostrils. The softness of her stomach pressed tightly against his straining cock. Her hands slid down his back, cupping his buttocks and forcing him even tighter against her.
"Are we safe here?" he asked; not really caring but testing to see if she would show concern.
"Safe? Of course we're safe." Pulling away from him, she removed the bra straps from her shoulders, unfastened the catch and pulled it free. Her heavy breasts sprang forward and he noticed that they still bore the marks of their last night.
Or did the blue bruises of teeth marks belong to another lover? She could be an nymphomaniac and he just one of many studs. For all he knew she could have a dozen men hidden in back rooms of the mansion.
"I hope you don't turn paranoid on me," she said. She stepped out of her pants, and naked, the fading light from the window reflecting across the paleness of her buttocks, she climbed onto the bed and motioned him to her. "Come on, darling. Earn your money."
The admiration in her eyes fed his ego. He knew that his body was well-developed, strong and powerful; it had to be in his profession. No one was going to pay for a scrawny male. Still, it always pleased him to have them pay proper homage. He stood, hesitating, preening like a peacock. He-even forced his erected cock to bob its swollen head.
"You're beautiful," she mumbled. "I made a good choice."
She stretched her arms up to him and he sank between her widespread legs, lowering his body onto hers carefully and burying his face in the cleavage of her breasts.
His hot tongue probed the division and traveled from the nipple of one mound to the other, sucking and biting with increased urgency. Her fingers were locked in his hair and she pulled his head roughly against her, savoring the pressure of his mouth as she twisted and jerked beneath his weight.
The bedspread was rough against Valerie's sensitive flesh, and she made a mental note to have it changed. What would the maid say to putting a satin bedspread on the chauffeur's bed? The hell with her; she wasn't paid to think.
"Do it, darling," she whimpered. "Go in me now!"
Pulling himself to his knees between her legs, Michael lowered his head teasingly and felt her body go rigid as he traced the lip line of her cunt with his tongue.
"Inside me," she moaned. "Not that way! Not this time!"
He raised himself until he was hovering above her, his elongated cock standing directly away from his loins, the cock's head throbbing with anticipation.
Valerie lifted her head and stared at the size of the cock about to be implanted in her body. She watched as he wrapped his fingers about the base and positioned the knob for entry into her quivering slit. As it pressed against the swollen lips shivers of pleasure ran through her loins.
"You're so big," she sighed. "You're big enough to rip me apart. Maybe that's what I like about you. I've never had a man with a cock like yours."
Despite the belief that she was deliberately flattering him, he enjoyed the admiration. He pressed the inflamed cock head tighter against her cuntlips, pressed forward until they were about to part to receive him, and then froze to the sound of someone moving beyond the closed door.
"Damn!" he moaned in alarm.
Valerie had clutched at his back, digging her nails into his flesh. She was too lust-crazed to have heard anything above the pounding of her heart. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, as she waited for him to plunge into the tightness of her cavity.
"There's someone outside the door," Michael whispered.
Her eyes snapped open. "You are paranoid," she said. "Christ! The door is locked. No one's going to catch us." She squirmed beneath him with impatience. "Besides, let me worry about discovery. What have you got to lose?"
A meal ticket, Michael thought, but he remained silent.
He pushed forward again, gently pressing between her cuntlips. Greedily, she thrust her hips upward and felt herself impaled by his thick cock's head. The muscles of her molten passage clamped about the swollen flesh, constricting, sucking him inward until he was buried to the hilt, the weight of his hairy sac pressed between her thighs. Moaning with pleasure, she felt him retract and then thrust inward again and again in rapid succession. She was no longer aware of the roughness of the bedspread. All her sensation seemed to center in her loins. His mouth had returned to her right breast and he was chewing on the nipple.
"Oh, fuck!" she mouthed.
Lacing her fingers through his hair, she held his head even tighter against her aching breast and felt the pain mingle with the pleasure of his pumping cock against the walls of her vagina.
He released the grasp of her nipple and struggled to free himself from her hold. His head was lifted, the perspiration standing out on his forehead. He pumped savagely, groaning.
Valerie's own climax was approaching; she felt it like a rumbling in the depths of her being. She screamed as the dam within her broke and she felt the love fluids break into the quivering passage about his priming cock. Her hungry vagina sucked tightly about his shaft as the waves of spasms shook her body. She bit him and clawed at his back as he pulled back. Then he slammed into her brutally and his body stiffened as the load of his passion was released into her. She had difficulty breathing and she felt she was being crushed by the weight of him. She struggled to free herself, and he rolled over, slid off her and lay on his back beside her, his eyes closed and his chest heaving.
Valerie felt drained, satisfied, but drained. He had not disappointed her. He was as good this time, if not better, than he had been the night she met him. She thought of an entire winter of his company, sex at hand when needed, and she felt remarkably pleased with herself. Rolling onto her side, she propped her head on her elbow and stared down at Michael.
"I love your body," she said. "I love the way the hair on your chest seems to form a kite." She ran her finger along the thin line of hair joining the forest of his chest to that of his groin. "And this is the kite string." She clutched at his ebbing cock. "And this is for me. I can reach the height of the clouds with this."
The long lashes of his eyelids fluttered open.
"How often?" he asked. "How many times a day are you going to fly your newly bought kite?"
Valerie shrugged her naked shoulders. "As often as I can. Or you can? I've been left hungry too long. I've got a lot of time to make up for." She rose and began to dress. "And now for the formalities of a wife and mother," she said almost bitterly.
"When do I meet the family?" He took a cigarette from the bedside table, lit it, and lay back looking at the ceiling.
"Whenever they need you to drive the car," she told him. "For appearance's sake, darling, you are still the chauffeur." She slipped into her dress and ran her fingers through her hair. "The children will be back in school after three more weeks. We'll have even more privacy then."
"Doesn't your husband ever leave his room?" He wished she would go quickly. Sex had left him ready to return to a sound sleep, and if he judged her needs correctly, he would need all the rest he could get. "Rarely," she said. "Either myself or one of the children have to wheel him around. Or, Jacob. That's his personal servant. The only one, I might add, you will have to beware of. He's as nosey as an old lady, and not ... not overly fond of me."
"I'll watch out for him," Michael assured her.
She moved to the door, stopped and turned around. "Naturally you'll have to dine in the kitchen with the other servants."
"Naturally."
She stared at him, admiration still in her eyes for the sight of his nakedness. For a brief moment, he thought she was going to return to the bed for a second bout, but she visibly shook herself.
"Any questions?" she asked.
"Yes. How soon can I get a raise?"
Valerie sat at the head of the long, laden table and pretended interest in her food. No one was particularly talkative and for that she was thankful. She was aware, however, of Herbert's eyes on her. Why, she asked herself, did he insist on coming to the table? His condition was so that he could hardly feed himself, soup and salad slopped all about his plate. She knew this depressed the children; it irritated her. He should be thoughtful enough to take a tray in his room. Jacob could help him eat; she wouldn't.
"I ... I understand ... we have a new chauffeur," he stammered. Even through his slurred speech she detected the tone of accusation.
"Yes," she said. "Bigalow quit suddenly. Something to do with his health." She forced a smile and sighed. "But I suppose the new one will be satisfactory. His references were in order."
"He's handsome," Margaret inserted.
Valerie glanced at her daughter. The girl was nineteen, not particularly attractive. The finishing school she had been attending for the past year had not, it seemed, managed to smooth out her rough edges. She continued to wear sloppy sweaters and pleated skirts. Her breasts, if indeed she had any, were hidden behind the loose-fitting wool pullovers and her hair was shamelessly tangled.
"He's handsome," the girl repeated.
"Is he? I hadn't noticed." Valerie pushed her plate aside and rang the bell for coffee.
"I saw him from my window," Margaret continued. "Wow! Aside from being handsome, he's young. A great difference from Bigalow."
Margaret's words were directed across the table to her brother. The two seemed to share some secret, and this irritated Valerie.
"I'm sure your brother isn't interested in the handsomeness of the servants," she said sharply. "Coffee, Duane?"
Her son was looking down at his plate. "Yes, please." When he looked up, she saw that his face had slightly colored.
"Duane and I are interested in all beautiful people," Margaret continued.
"I'm not," her brother answered, glancing apologetically at his mother.
"Of course you're not, dear," Valerie agreed. But she wondered if Michael had been correct in thinking someone had been outside his door earlier. She visualized her two children stooping before the keyhole and could not prevent the perspiration that came to her forehead. Thank God, they would be going back to school soon.
"I ... I must ... write to Bigalow," Herbert managed. "Been with me ... for ... many years."
"He'll write to us," Valerie lied, "when he's settled. He didn't leave a forwarding address."
After the children had gone, there would always be Herbert to contend with, but he could not sneak around the halls in his squeaking wheelchair without being detected. Jacob, his servant, was her only threat. Somehow she would have to get on the good side of him. She didn't understand why he hated her so. She had always been civil to him. He couldn't be dismissed as she had dismissed Bigalow. Herbert would then be suspicious.
"... and you're such a coward, Duane," Margaret was saying. "There's nothing wrong with being...." Duane pushed his chair back from the table, rose and left the room without a word.
"What have you said to him?" Valerie demanded. Margaret shrugged her shapeless shoulders.
"He's too sensitive," she said accusingly. "He wants to be modern, but the old ways of our heritage are in conflict."
"Well, I suggest you be kinder in the future."
She would have to have a talk with Duane if she could find the time between Michael and running the house.
PART TWO
-THE PEAK
CHAPTER FOUR
Because he had gone to sleep as soon as Valerie had left him, Michael was awake before daybreak. He showered, shaved and slipped quietly out of his room.
The house was still, quiet, and he decided it would be as good a time as any to explore. He wandered through room after room on the main floor, measuring the dollars and cents value of the furnishings and marveling at the grandeur of the drawing room with its fine wood paneling, french furniture and elegant accessories. Pausing before the mantle of the fireplace, he examined the gold-framed photographs, recognizing one as a youthful Valerie Armstrong. There was also an assortment of carved statuettes made of a green veined stone. He studied one, an intricately carved torso of a male, and on impulse slipped it into his pocket. He knew it would be valuable and salable to a New York fence. He would have to discover a hiding place for the treasures he intended to steal.
But there would be time, the entire winter to sack the house of objects that would most likely go unmissed. When there was so much, how could they miss so little?
He moved on in search of the kitchen. He had not eaten dinner and his stomach was demanding food.
The kitchen was warm, evidence that he was not the only early riser, but it was also deserted. Whoever had put the kettles to boiling had gone off to another part of the house on an errand.
He ate peaches and a piece of cold turkey from the refrigerator and left the dishes on the counter for the maid. As he was about to leave the room, he heard muffled sounds from behind one of the doors. Curious, he opened it slightly and peered through.
The room was a combination scullery and storage place for food. It rose two stories high with a small balcony running about the second level. There were shelves crammed with cooking utensils on the first level and canned goods on the second.
The couple were on the second level.
The girl, perhaps twenty with long, brunette hair, wore the uniform of a maid. She was leaning against the iron railing of the balcony, supporting herself with both hands. Her position and movements were not at first revealing, but on closer inspection Michael understood the situation.
Her back was arched and her plump backside hoisted upward. Her dress and petticoat were pulled up about her waist and draped over her back like a shawl. Her pants rested about the ankle of her right foot; her legs were widely spread.
Undetected, Michael slipped into the room and concealed himself behind a wooden crate. From this new position, he had commanded an uninterrupted view of the brown, silky triangle of the maid's cunt and of the thick cock protruding from behind, its swollen knob stretching the lips of her cavity.
The man, possibly the butler, had not bothered to remove his trousers. His stout organ had been pulled through the open fly for a morning feast before attending to the needs of the family.
"It's hurting," the girl whimpered.
The man ignored her complaint. Slowly, he pressed forward until his cock head had been claimed by the tight, sucking muscles of her cunt. Then he pushed forward until his entire length had been buried. Despite the enormity of the length and thickness shoved into her, the girl, no longer complaining, pushed backward as if demanding more. Her eyes were glazed and her nostrils dilated.
"Cleo," the man gasped, "you're one hell of a fuck!" Michael felt his own cock stiffening within his trousers. It pressed painfully against the constricting material. He thought of pulling it free and finding his own release while he watched the couple above, but decided against it. His sex was his occupational tool and masturbating was the same as throwing money away.
"Faster," the girl groaned. "Fuck me faster." Obediently, the man built up the speed of his thrusts. His cock glistened with the moisture drawn from within her stretched cunt. Leaning forward against her back, he reached into the neck of her uniform and grasped a melon breast in each hand. As he began to squeeze and caress the lush mounds, his head appeared over her shoulder and Michael saw that he was older, the heavy lines of his face deepened by his expression of lust.
The girl still demanded more speed. "Faster!" she cried. "Oh, God, Jacob, it feels good!"
Michael recognized the name. Valerie had warned him against Jacob. Well now he had some blackmailing power against him should it be necessary.
Jacob abandoned his grasp of her breasts and, placing a hand on either side of her narrow waist, began to slam into her brutally, drawing her upturned buttocks roughly to meet his savage thrusts.
"That's it," she whimpered. "That's the way I like it."
He groaned with the knowledge that he had achieved the method and rhythm that pleased her.
Then her cunt seemed to visibly twitch and tighten, her expression froze into agonizing pleasure, and Michael knew the juices had begun to seep from the melting walls of her cunt in a series of spasms. The man bellowed suddenly like a stuck pig as his climax ripped through his groin.
The unsuspecting couple seemed to remain suspended without animation for a moment. Then the girl shook herself.
"Take it out," she mumbled. "I've got work to do. They'll be up soon."
Jacob pulled back, his limp cock slipping from her cavity and falling back against his dark trousers to deposit the residue of the act on the material.
Before lowering her skirt, the girl fumbled in the neck of her uniform and brought out a handkerchief which she used to wipe between her legs.
"You'd better clean yourself, Jacob," she said. "The old man may be an invalid but he has a quick eye. He'll spot that ... that stuff on your trousers." She handed him the used handkerchief which he rejected.
"I'll change," he said.
The maid pulled up her pants and adjusted her skirt. "And clean them yourself," she said sharply. "I've enough to do already and now with that new chauffeur in the house...." She broke off with a weary sigh. "She tells me to put a satin bedspread on his bed. Can you imagine that? You'd think he was a guest instead of another servant like ourselves."
"Will I see you later tonight?" Jacob inquired, ignoring her rambling.
"Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps not. It depends on if I'm too tired or not. You and that new chauffeur will have it easy, but not me. Cleo, do this. Cleo, do that. I may be too exhausted to see you."
"Suit yourself," Jacob told her flatly. He stuffed his limp cock back into his trousers and zipped up the fly. It was obvious that he wasn't about to plead with her. Except for the new chauffeur he was the only male she could turn to.
Michael smiled to himself. Later perhaps he'd give sweet little Cleo a ride for her money. As for now he had better make a hasty exit before either of them discovered him hiding below.
He slipped back through the door, closed it, and returned to his room to find a place to conceal the statuette in his pocket.
It would be an interesting winter, he told himself for the twentieth time.
Since there was nothing else to do Michael decided to act like a chauffeur. Valerie had come to his room for her midmorning trip to the clouds and had then locked herself in her room with a book, or as he imagined, with a sack of money to count.
Pulling the sleek, black limousine from the garage, he filled a bucket with soap and water and connected the hose to the faucet. Despite the season it was warm and the exertion made him perspire. He removed his shirt and worked half naked.
A girl, Valerie's daughter, he assumed, came out of the back door, gave him a casual glance and then sat down on the steps with a book open on her lap. Her pretended disinterest did not fool him. He knew through experience when he intrigued a female, and he knew the girl was intrigued.
He performed for her, stretching and flexing his body as he scrubbed the surface of the limousine. Sucking in his stomach, his trousers slipped lower on his hips and the spreading line of hair about his groin was visible. His limp cock, satisfied only a short time ago by the girl's mother, jerked into a state of semi hardness and pressed against his trouser leg. When he was certain the girl was looking, he half turned so she'd have the advantage of a profile view of the sizable lump.
But she kept to the sanctuary of the porch, her head bent over the book although her eyes were following his every move. She was not attractive, but she was young, perhaps, he thought, a virgin; and she would have excess to a sizable allowance. His only challenge was to force her to overcome her shyness.
He finished soaping the limousine and walking back toward the porch to turn on the water, he pretended to notice her for the first time.
"Good morning."
She looked up and nodded.
Michael refused to be dismissed. He stood with his weight resting on one leg, his wet hands on his hips. "My name is Michael. I'm the new chauffeur."
"I know," she told him. Her voice was pleasing, although he detected a tone of superiority. "I'm Margaret Armstrong. Do you always go around half naked?"
He laughed at her frankness. "Only when I can't be entirely naked," he said. "Do you object?"
She shrugged with forced indifference. "You'll be the one who catches cold," she said. "Are you as sexy as you look?"
Michael stared down at her dumbly.
"I only mean you look like you'd be fantastic in bed," she added. "Duane and I were discussing it this morning."
"And who is Duane?"
"My brother. He digs men although I don't think he's ever been in bed with one."
"Have you?"
She gave him a sophisticated sneer. "A couple of times," she admitted. She closed the book and got to her feet. "I suppose we'll eventually be getting around to going to bed together. That is unless you prefer Duane."
Michael ignored her references to homosexuality. "Do you want to go to bed with me?" he asked, deciding to be as blunt as she was.
Margaret gave him a lingering appraisal, her eyes moving from his head to his feet and back again.
"Yes," she said. "I'd like to find out if you're as good as you look."
Michael smiled. "It'll cost you," he said.
She looked startled.
"Well, it's not included in the chauffeur's salary."
He had pierced her facade. The sophistication left her face and she looked almost child-like.
"I could have you fired," she said.
"Could you?" His tone hinted of doubt.
"But I wouldn't," she finally admitted. "Our next driver would probably be as old as Bigalow and twice as dull." She came off the porch and stood directly in front of him, her chin tilted defiantly. "How much?" Michael stooped and turned the faucet. "I'll leave that up to you."
"After I've sampled the merchandise?" She snickered slightly. "I may refuse to pay then. You'd have gone through all that lovely fucking for nothing."
"I'll take the risk," he told her.
She walked back to the porch, stopped at the door, and glanced over her shoulder. "Mother said she didn't notice your handsomeness, but I think she was lying. The last chauffeur lived over the garage. It's not nearly as nice, but it's private."
"What time?"
"Around three o'clock. Mother naps then and Duane goes off to one of his daily hunts for wildflowers or mushrooms." She lowered her eyelashes in a flirting gesture. "It's exciting," she said. "Paying for it, I mean. The girls at school will consider me particularly outrageous, and they'll be jealous." Her voice rose slightly with the excitement of the idea. "Can I bring my polaroid along?"
"Well...."
"I know, it'll be extra. Like popcorn at the movies." She opened the door. "See you at three."
Michael carried the hose back to the limousine and washed away the soap. When he glanced back toward the house he saw the curtain in an upper window moving and he wondered if the household spy had overheard his conversation with Margaret.
The weather suddenly seemed cold.
Margaret arrived at the apartment above the garage before Michael.
"Damn him," she muttered. It was quarter past three and he had deliberately waited longer than she to make her feel her eagerness more acutely. Nothing else, could be holding him; her mother had retired to her room at two-thirty and Duane was off on one of his mysterious mushroom hunts. Her father and Jacob were going over the account books and Cleo, the fool maid, was dusting the seldom used drawing room.
Margaret stared about the familiar room. She had been here before as a child to spy on Bigalow's quarters, convinced that he was an escaped Nazi criminal and she would expose him to the authorities. What a ridiculous child she had been, caught up by the news of the Jews hunt for war criminals. She had been more of a boy than Duane. He, although she loved him for it, had been contented to sit in his room with a book of poems or the latest Judy Garland record. On Christmases they had always exchanged presents; she taking the rifles and sports equipment and he her books, records and colognes.
The room was dingy, already giving the appearance of having stood unused for months when in fact Bigalow had only been gone two days. The bed was unmade, the bureau drawers standing open, empty. Coat hangers lay about the floor and discarded newspapers were stacked in a corner.
A fitting place to buy your sex, she thought. Of course, in her story at school she would make it a cheap hotel room in Manhattan. That would add more glamour.
Crossing to the bureau, she began to undress, glancing at her reflection in the foggy mirror. She unbuttoned her blouse, removed it, and then attacked the straps of her bra. Naked to the waist, she stared at the blossoming mounds with interest. She could imagine Michael's greedy mouth sucking at the nipples. The last boy, a senior from Columbia, had driven her wild by chewing and sucking and kissing. She liked that part far better than the actual sex.
She wondered if Michael would like her breasts.
Cupping them in her hands, she squeezed them forward and together to create the deepness of a false cleavage. Her fingers brushed the sensitive tips and she felt them become solid to the touch. Her entire body seemed to tingle and her loins became the core of her being. She stripped her skirt away; then, hooking her fingers on either side of the elastic of her panties, she pulled them down about her legs and let them fall to the floor.
She was standing completely naked in front of the mirror when she heard the door open and saw Michael's reflection. His amused surprise made her giggle, but she smothered it.
"I've been waiting," she said, turning, trying to copy the tone her mother used with the servants.
"I can see," he said. His gaze traveled up and down her naked body, pausing at the triangular path of silken down between her legs.
"I was almost ready to leave," she lied. "Do you think it's good business to keep a customer waiting?"
He crossed the room slowly; his arms slipped about her waist and his mouth hovered close to her small, firm breasts.
"I'll make it up to you," he said. His head pressed between the two mounds and his tongue darted into the cleavage.
Margaret pushed his head gently away.
Michael looked hurt, almost like a child himself. He was not accustomed to be pushed away. Rejection was his Achilles heel; he wondered if in her naivete she had the insight of his weakness and was intending to use it against him. He reached for her again, but she moved away, crossed to the bed and stretched out on the dingy sheets.
"Michael," she said thoughtfully, "how do you expect to lay me with your clothes on?"
He laughed with the realization that she was only teasing him, thinking herself seductive, which, he would agree, she was. As he stared down at her, he was conscious of the hardening cock creating a pyramid of the material of his trousers. He hastily unfastened his belt and pulled the trousers off his legs.
Margaret stared at the lumped undershorts through half-closed eyelids. Then, as if to prolong the mystery of the sight about to be revealed to her, she turned her back to him.
"Hurry," she said.
Michael peeled his shorts away and stood with the hardened shaft of his cock protruding between the tails of his shirt.
"I am hurrying," he said, deliberately delaying in order to return her teasing.
When he climbed into bed beside her she did not turn to meet his embrace. Instead, her body seemed to go rigid, and he knew she was afraid, her bravery had only been a front. Turning around in bed, he began to kiss her soft buttocks, running his tongue along the crease and burying it in the small, moist opening of her rectum. His hand plowed between her legs and his fingers teased the lips of her cunt.
"My breasts," she moaned. "I want you to suck my breasts!"
Instead of waiting for him to obey her wishes, she turned herself and pressed her breasts into his face. As his mouth closed about the right nipple, she threw her head back in ecstasy. He began to lick at the nipples like a cat taking milk and she felt them harden and ache. Shudders of passion shot through her body. She lifted one leg, laid it over his thigh and felt the solid, hot flesh of his cock press against her abdomen. She reached for it, grabbing it about the base and moving her hand up and down the thick shaft. Her cunt was quivering with anticipation, anxious to feel the heavy knob stretch the Ups of her cunt, but afraid also because it was so much greater in size than any she had known. She thought of the pain and wondered if she could bear it with the same sophistication she had been determined to bring to the act.
Pushing her body back, she stared down at the pulsating organ in her hand, at the mushroom shaped knob and the thick vein that seemed filled to the point of bursting. Breathing heavily with passion and fear, she placed her hand against his chest to push him back and was fascinated how fragile and small it seemed against the mat of black hair on his chest.
Michael looked at her questioningly. She recognized the lust in his eyes and knew he would never allow her to back down now. She imagined him on top of her, his gigantic cock buried inside her body and his weight crushing her.
"I'm going to give you your money's worth," he said.
"I'm afraid," she admitted and wished she had not. "The first time it happened I thought it would kill me. And you're so big."
"It's too late now, my sweet," he groaned. He pushed her onto her back and was between her legs in an instant. They were spread before she could resist and his cock head was pressing against her cunt.
"Please be gentle," she whimpered.
He pressed further and she felt the sheering pain as the lips of her cunt stretched to receive him.
"Relax," he demanded. "Relax and enjoy it."
"I ... I can't!"
She could feel the thick cock moving steadily inward along the rippling walls of her vagina. Then the heavy sac of his testicles came into contact with the hot flesh of her thighs and he became motionless. She knew he had miraculously managed to wedge his entire length into her body.
"Oh, Michael," she sighed.
The ridge of his cock's head began to pull back and she tightened the internal muscles of her passage to heighten the sensation. When he stabbed into her for a second time, his body fell against hers and his mouth returned to suck, to chew and bite at her breasts.
She jerked and squirmed beneath him, raising her hips to meet each downward plunge of his love stick. The curls of her hair became matted to the sides of her face and the thin lipstick she had worn became smeared across her mouth and chin. Her own actions amazed her; she was urging him on to even faster thrusts. Her legs were wrapped about his thighs and she was using her feet to force him deeper into her cunt by pounding them into his buttocks as he came into her.
And yet even above her passion she was aware that something was lacking. But what? Was it gentleness? Love? Forget it, she told herself. Just give yourself up to the moment.
And she did.
She began to toss her head from side to side as she moaned with pleasure. His thrust began to come with such force that they winded her, causing her to gulp for needed oxygen between each clash of their bodies. She felt a wave of dizziness, the sweet dizziness of the dam breaking within her. The creams of her completion oozed down the walls of her vagina and covered the head of his priming cock.
Then he pulled back so far that his entire cock was withdrawn from her melting passage. When he stabbed forward he plunged to the hilt and she screamed as the hot spray of semen was emptied into her body.
Again and again the spasms shook him. His body became rigid, as solid as steel as his passion was drained away. Finally, he collapsed onto the bed at her side and lay panting, his slimy cock losing its power and ebbing back toward the protection of his loins.
Margaret continued to whimper. Her emotions were confused. It was as if the assumed glamor of the experience had been chipped away and she was made aware of how shabby and cheap it all had been. She glanced about the tiny room once again, at her clothes and his lying scattered about the floor with the coat hangers and old newspapers.
"And how much do you think that was worth?" he asked suddenly.
It was like a blow to her person. She sat up and covered her nakedness with the yellowing sheet. "What's your customary charge?" she asked, forcing the hardness back into her voice.
"I told you, you could decide," he reminded her. "Did you bring your camera?"
"Yes."
"What about the picture for the girls at school? Do you still want to take it?"
"Yes." She told herself she would never confess her feelings of confusion after the act had been completed. The girls wouldn't understand. How could they? She didn't understand herself. She climbed out of bed, still clutching the sheet about her, and went for the camera "How do you want me to pose?"
"I leave that to you," she said. "With an ego like yours, you'll know how you'll look best."
"Forget it," he said with irritation.
But she lifted the camera and snapped the picture, catching him rising from the bed. She pulled out the negative and positive, and handed him the camera.
"This is your payment," she said. "You can keep it, or sell it. It should cover the expense of your time." Michael took the camera and quickly examined it before setting it aside. When she peeled away the covering of the photograph, he glanced over her shoulder.
"That should prove your point to your friends," he said.
"Yes. It pretty well covers the size of it." She laughed. "No pun intended." She lay the photograph aside and began dressing. Being naked in front of him now seemed to bother her. She wanted to escape, to return to her room and sort out her feelings.
"Will we be meeting again?" he asked.
"Perhaps." She stared at his reflection in the mirror as she dressed. He was so goddamned handsome. How could her mother not have noticed? "How long have you been a chauffeur?" she suddenly asked, remembering her mother mentioning his references.
"Is it important?" He had taken a towel from the bathroom and was rubbing it between his legs.
She watched his half hard cock flopping about with the movements. He paused and looked up to meet her gaze.
"Why? Is it important?" he repeated.
She tied her hair at her neck. "I was just thinking what a waste it is for a man like you to be a servant." Her lips formed a cruel smile. "You could go far with your ability."
"Perhaps I will," he said.
She had noted that her answer had relaxed him. He had thought she had suspected something completely different. But why? Again, she felt like a child, suspecting Michael of something as she had suspected Bigalow years before. Maybe, she thought, she would end up one of those people who never trusts anyone on face value.
Still, she would keep an eye on Michael. He didn't seem to fit comfortably into a chauffeur's niche.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Naturally you'll be expected to help out," Cleo told Michael with an air of authority. "Bigalow always did. These parties are rare and Mr. Armstrong refuses to hire additional help."
"What's the occasion?" Michael asked. He resented being expected to serve at a party. How could Valerie have expected him to do so?
Cleo shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows? It is not ours to question why, only to serve." She took a step closer to Michael, looking flirtatious. "You'll be handsome in the uniform," she said.
He met her stare with a smile. "Your compliment falls on deaf ears," he said.
"I was thinking," she said, "the party ends around eleven. Perhaps after I've washed up, we can get together for a ... a chat."
Michael moved toward the kitchen door. "Perhaps," he said unsurely.
He wasn't about to encroach on Jacob's territory, not until he found out if it would be profitable.
Michael, despite his lowly position as a serving man, found himself enjoying the party. The guests were the cream of the social set and he was claiming his share of attention among the females. He also received a few disapproving glances from the males and he understood their reasoning.
As a form of rebellion he had chosen the tightest trousers in the servants' wardrobe. Then, deliberately removing his undershorts, he had adjusted the bulk of his cock and testicles along one leg in a tell-tale bulge.
Valerie had noticed immediately; her face had flushed and then she had turned away. He knew she would reprimand him later, but he didn't care. Now, as she moved graciously among her guests, Michael watched from the sidelines. He had had his first glance at her husband. He was a good ten to twenty years older than she, almost pathetic in the confined world of his wheelchair. Even then with his lifeless legs and the frozen right side of his face, he made an effort at the social graces, nodding when he found it impossible to speak and listening intently to his guests.
Duane, the son, was also present, but only in body. His spirit was elsewhere. He stood to the sidelines on the opposite wall, as removed as if he, too, had been in service. He was a good-looking youth with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, curly black hair and chiseled features. His eyes were very deeply set and their expression moody, and his hands seemed to be bothersome appendages; he was constantly clasping them or folding them behind his hips.
Margaret was surprisingly a social butterfly, flitting from group to group. She consciously ignored Michael and, although he would have expected as much, it stung his ego.
"Valerie is holding out on us."
The statement came from a rather plump woman approaching at his side.
Michael turned and stared down at her. His eyes immediately took in the diamonds glittering on her fingers, the pendant of clustered emeralds at her neck and her dangling earrings. She reeked of money.
"You must be a new addition," she said; her voice low and her head slightly turned so no one could say she deliberately spoke to servants. The tone of her voice was suggestive. "You must be Bigalow's replacement."
"Yes," Michael said. "I believe that was the chauffeur's name."
"Don't talk directly to me," she mumbled, and turned even further away from him. "Let them say I'm batty and talk to myself, but don't destroy me by making it obvious I'm talking to servants. It would shatter their precious principles." She glanced quickly at him and away again. "Are you offended?"
"Not in the least," Michael mumbled. He knew her type well. How many women like her had he escorted to New York functions, then laid afterwards for an additional fee? He knew what her body would be like without seeing it, flabby and milk-white, with blue veins erupting on her calves and thighs.
"That's good," she whispered. "I don't mean to offend. Are you happy here?"
Michael said weakly, "I've only just begun."
"Well, when you become unhappy, come and see me. My name is Mamie Lawrence. You'll find me in the telephone book." She began to move away. "I'd give you a better position than that of chauffeur," she said. "You could be my top man."
Michael could not hide his smile of satisfaction. He noted that Valerie had caught the scene out of the comer of her eye. She had motioned Cleo to her and was now whispering in the maid's ear. Cleo glanced in his direction and he looked quickly away.
He caught Duane's eye. The youth had been staring at him. Caught in the act, his face colored. He pushed himself away from the wall, awkwardly crossed the room without getting engaged in conversation, and departed.
"Mrs. Armstrong says," Cleo said at Michael's elbow, "that you won't be needed any longer." She sighed with weariness. "I say to hell with it," she said in her Brooklyn accent. "I'm getting damned tired of cleaning up these messes by myself. Oh, what about later, lover?" She winked. "My room or yours?"
"Neither," Michael told her. "I'm going to be busy tonight."
"With that Mrs. Lawrence?" Geo hissed. "She's a hot one, that old bitch. If it wears pants, she tries to put the make on it." She turned abruptly to leave him. "Don't think she'll pay for your favors either. She thinks men actually dig that grotesque body of hers." Michael watched Cleo drift in among the guests with her tray of drinks. She moved with a bounce, the fleshy cheeks of her buttocks bobbing against the tight material of her skirt. He wondered if Cleo suspected his reason for being employed by Mrs. Armstrong. She had mentioned pay for your favors. No, he decided. If she had suspected she would not have been quite so anxious to get him to bed. Becoming competition with her employer would be no way to keep her job, despite her complaining, he knew she was happy as the Armstrong maid.
Of course, he would eventually get around to Cleo, but much later.
First he had another conquest.
Slipping unnoticed from the drawing room onto the veranda, he walked around the side of the house and across the lawn to the summer house.
Inside, he stood against the lattice door and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. He knew the one he sought was inside, perhaps watching his silhouette against the lights of the distant house.
"What are you doing here?"
The youth's voice was not demanding, only quizzical.
Michael saw him sitting against the opposite wall. Before explaining his presence, he moved forward until the distance between them had been shortened. "I've seen you coming out here twice," he said gently. "I knew you'd be here.
"It's my private place," Duane told him. "I come here when I want to be alone."
"Do you want me to go?" Michael turned as if about to leave. If the boy had been more experienced, he would have known it was an act.
"No, don't go." There was a moment of silence in which they stared at each other in the darkness. "I mean don't go unless you want to."
"You're unsure," Michael told him. "It's entirely up to you. Do you want me to go, or to stay?"
Duane laughed bitterly. "If I knew what I wanted ... if I understood myself, I wouldn't be in this agony." Michael moved forward until he stood directly in front of the youth. He put his hands on Duane's head and laced his fingers through the soft, curly hair.
"I want to stay," he said. "Perhaps I can relieve you of that agony."
"Why should you care?" Duane demanded. "Neither of my parents care. I can't talk to them. And Margaret thinks it progressive, cute to be tom apart as I am. If she only knew the torment I go through. I know what I want to be, but I'm afraid."
"Maybe you should learn to be less serious about yourself," Michael suggested. If he had let himself be tormented about his actions, he would have been insane the year he became a gigolo, a favorite young stud for the rich New York dowager set.
"Do you think it's modem to have queer tendencies?" Duane asked, laughing again with bitterness.
"Why fight it?" Michael mused. "As they say, it takes all kinds."
"As they say," Duane mumbled. "You know what else they say about homosexuals." He lifted his head and the moonlight caught him full on the face. He had the appearance of a cherub, a being of undetermined sex. "Maybe I just don't know if I'm strong enough to hold up under all those titles. Fairy! Fruit! Cocksucker!" His voice had risen as he spoke.
Michael looked back nervously toward the house. "No one will hear," Duane said. "At least, I won't even be missed. I never am. I think my mother is more comfortable when I'm out of her sight. She unconsciously knows she has a son who's a fairy but if I'm not present she doesn't have to face it."
Michael decided he would have to take a different approach.
"You're feeling sorry for yourself," he said sternly. "Do you think your desires make you unique?"
The boy's head shot up again. He had taken the statement as it had been intended. "You," he mumbled in amazement. "I didn't ... I would never have...."
Michael was smiling in the darkness. Although he tried to force the smile from his face, he knew he was safe. The boy couldn't see him clearly. How easily people accepted their own oddities in others.
"Why else do you think I followed you out here?" he asked. "Why do you think I have my hands on your head like this?" You little bastard, he thought. I'm going to catch you in a trap from which you'll never escape. I'll be your mother's slave, but you'll be mine, it's poetic justice. He pulled the boy's head forward into his crotch and felt the pressure of Duane's nose against his limp cock. "I want you to take me," he said. Pushing the head away, he brought down his fly and pulled his growing cock into the open. "I want you to suck me."
"I ... I never have ... no, I can't!" Duane moved as if to pull away, but the hand on his shoulder held him fast.
"You know you want to," Michael told him.
"I'm afraid."
Michael persisted. "It'll end the agony," he promised. "After you've done it, there'll be no question in your mind, no doubt. We'll experience the things together that you've always dreamed about. We are in a position to help each other. I'll be gentle with you and you'll be generous with me."
"I do want you," Duane cried.
Michael forced his head forward again, his free hand directing his cock toward the youth's mouth.
There was a sob, a final groan of protest, and then Michael felt the hand fumble between his legs, cupping his testicles and awkwardly kneading them into fullness. For an instant he wished to push Duane away, but he had become an expert at denying his kinder judgments. This was an easy mark; a rich young fairy would go to any extremes for his first trick. Submission would be to his best advantage. He steeled his jaw and waited.
The warm mouth covered the swollen head of his cock. He felt the teeth along the ridge and then the constriction of the throat as he attempted to wedge himself past the blockage. When the cock head lodged and would go no further, Michael pulled back, hesitated, and pushed forward again. After several futile attempts, Duane's mouth moved steadily forward and Michael gasped with pleasure as he felt the knob plunge into the constricted throat and the boy's lips press together around the thickness of the base. Locking his fingers through Duane's hair, he clutched at his head and increased the rhythm.
Duane began to struggle. He gagged and saliva poured from the comers of his mouth and dribbled off his chin. In an attempt to free himself, he pressed tightly on Michael's testicles, but although he felt the reaction to pain, he did not gain his release.
Michael was groaning softly in the base of his throat; a burning sensation shot through his arms and legs toward his loins.
And then a remarkable thing seemed to happen to Duane. He seemed to rise above the actual sex act as if he had the ability to stand to one side and observe himself on his knees before the handsome chauffeur. The-scene he visualized appeared perfectly natural. There was no guilt involved, no fear. It was what he had feared most about himself but now that it was taking place he wondered why he had feared it so much. He pulled his head away with his startling realization and stared at the cock in his hand. The moonlight, although dim coming through the lattice, fell across the moist shaft. It glistened pale and unfrightening. He remembered reading of the phallus worshipers of Pompeii, of glancing at the photograph hidden in his room. In them the phallus had been grotesque, but now he told himself he began to understand their strange homage.
"Don't stop now for Christ's sake!" Michael pleaded. "I'm almost there!"
He would have understood the urgency without hearing it expressed. His hand groped about the base of the shaft, bending it downward so that his mouth could again claim the knob. His head shot forward once, twice, and then the explosion came. Spasm after spasm, each matched by a loud groan from Michael, sent the spraying semen into his mouth. His throat worked frantically, claiming each precious drop. The bittersweet taste stung his tongue, and he did not like it. He gagged and coughed and his nostrils dilated in their effort to draw air into his lungs.
But then the pleasure was gone.
He felt the cock growing limp within his still sucking throat. He reverted for an instant to the old, familiar Duane. His mind raced with doubts, with guilt. He began to sob uncontrollably.
He felt strong hands lifting him to his feet.
"Stop it! Stop it!" Michael demanded.
He forced himself to become still, willing the tension to leave his body. He slumped against the older man's chest, his face buried in the warm crook of his neck.
"It wasn't that bad, was it?" Michael was whispering. He sounded almost curious. "You ... you were a natural," he said. "Not even your....not everyone can perform as you just did."
Michael pulled weakly away and forced his ebbing cock back into his pants. He knew Duane was staring at him but he could not see his face well enough to evaluate his expression.
"Is that all there is?" the boy suddenly asked.
Michael laughed. "No, there's much more, but we'll save that for another time." He walked toward the open door. "Don't be too anxious. We have a couple of weeks." Before he vanished into the night, he added, "I've been an instrument of pleasure for you. Now I'll expect you to be generous with me."
"But what do you want?"
Michael had gone without answering, and Duane was left alone once again in his secret, private place to contemplate the exact problems that had driven him here from the party. The only difference was that he had experienced the act he had desired and yet feared. He was not sure that Michael had been the most understanding teacher. When he had asked, "Is that all there is?" he had meant something other than another method of sexual expression.
He wondered if he should tell his sister about his experience, but decided to reserve his decision until he had considered it further.
"What have you done all day?"
"A little of everything and a lot of nothing," Michael answered.
It was past midnight. Valerie, he assumed, had waited until her husband had been put to bed and was asleep before coming to his room. She wore only a thin silken nightgown, the crescents of her breasts visible under the material.
"This party was a necessity," she explained. "I had almost forgotten it until someone called to cancel. Don't look at me like that. I'm not senile. It's just that I've had nothing but you on my mind, darling." She paused in front of his mirror to check her reflection. "You did give me a start at the party," she said. "I was outraged at first when I saw you wearing those revealing trousers." She leaned her elbow against the bureau and looked at him, smiling. "But then I realized you did it deliberately to revenge yourself for my neglect this afternoon. Such a spoiled young man you are." She glided across the room and sank to the foot of his bed. Her hand rested on his naked leg, and moving, explored the heavy, black hair and muscles. "You must realize that I will be with you every moment I can get away." Her hand reached his thigh and her fingers stretched until they touched the sensitive sac draped between his legs. She bent and pressed her lips against his limp cock. She kissed it; then pulled her head away, rose and began to remove her nightgown. "Forgive me for neglecting you," she whispered. "And your first day here too."
"I wasn't offended," he told her.
The nightgown fell to the floor and she stood above him, letting him admire the beauty of her nakedness before crawling into bed beside him.
"I don't want you to become bored," she said.
He pulled her against his body, feeling the hotness of her flesh.
"Oh, I wasn't bored," he told her. "There's enough here to keep me occupied."
CHAPTER SIX
"Oh, the splendor of a family at breakfast," Margaret quipped as she entered. "Good morning mater. Duane." She stooped over her father's chair and kissed him softly on the cheek. "Good morning father."
Herbert Armstrong mumbled his reply. The food clinging to his chin fell onto his lap and his eyes took on the helpless expression of an animal caught in a wounded body. He let his fork clatter to the table and sat moodily, staring at the child-like scramble of his plate.
Why, Valerie thought, doesn't he take his meals in his room? Watching him always destroyed her appetite.
"You're very cheerful today," she said to her daughter. "Are you going to share the reason with us?"
Margaret slid into her place and helped herself to the tray of eggs. "I doubt that you would derive the same pleasure from it," she said.
"Well, as long as you're happy." Valerie stared at her daughter, curious as to the visible change in her appearance. She had taken care with her hair, was wearing a fresh dress instead of her usual slacks, and had even made an attempt to apply make-up to her face. "You're so much more attractive," she commented, "without those sloppy sweaters."
Margaret continued eating without acknowledging the compliment.
Valerie pushed her plate aside and leaned back in her chair. There was also a change in Duane. He looked almost relaxed this morning, the usual lines of depression about his eyes faded away. His lips were not pursed in their usual pouting manner and he had not withdrawn himself into his own thoughts. He had made an attempt to speak to his father and had even inquired of her health. To what, she wondered, did she owe this miraculous change in her children?
"I ... I want ... to ... go to my ... room," Herbert stammered. He wedged his hands against the side of the table and forced his wheelchair back.
"Jacob will take you," Valerie said. "Jacob!"
Her husband's personal servant stepped through the double doors and immediately took possession of his charge.
When her husband had been wheeled away, Valerie poured herself fresh coffee. "I'm going into the village this morning," she said. "Can I get anything for either of you?"
"Are you using the chauffeur?" Margaret asked quickly.
"Of course."
"Oh." Her disappointment was obvious.
Duane was also watching her, disappointment also expressed on his face.
"Did the two of you have plans?" Valerie asked.
"Well...." Margaret went back to her plate of eggs. "I was going to have him drive me over to Mrs. Lawrence's."
"For heaven sakes, why?"
"Oh, she just asked me to visit," Margaret said.
"And since when did you give any time to Mamie's invitations?"
"I had nothing else planned. But forget it. I can always take my own car."
"And you?" Valerie asked, turning to Duane.
"Me?" His face slightly flushed and he looked nervously at his empty plate. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all."
"Hmmm." Valerie finished her coffee and rose front the table. "The two of you are acting peculiar this morning," she said. "Is there something I should know?"
"No," they both answered in unison.
"Then I'll see you when I get back," Valerie told them. "Have a pleasant day."
By their expressions neither of them were hopeful.
Michael reached forward and cupped Valerie's full breasts in his hands, drawing himself closer and pressing his lips against hers in an awkward kiss.
"Isn't this classified as dangerous?" he asked as he pulled away. "The respectable Mrs. Armstrong getting banged in the backseat of her limousine might raise a few eyebrows."
"Don't concern yourself with raised eyebrows," Valerie laughed. Reaching behind her neck and unfastening the snap of her dress, she pushed it forward off her shoulders until the full moons of her milk-white breasts were exposed. The nipples were hard, pointed, the crescents the size of a silver dollar. Still laughing, she pulled Michael's head forward until his lips had clamped about her right nipple. She let her hand travel down his stomach and into his crotch. She squeezed the hardening bulge in his trouser leg gently, feeling it stiffen even more beneath her touch.
"Oh, God," she moaned. "What a magnificent obsession you are becoming."
Michael's had moved his head away from her breast. "Your slave intends to please," he said mockingly.
He buried his face in her cleavage. His tongue was hot, but not as hot as her flesh. Her hand continued to squeeze the desirable bulge of his cock until it seemed ready to tear through the material of his uniform. She could feel a spot of moisture on the material near its swollen head. Her eyes closed to pleasure, she found the zipper of his trousers and brought it downward in one quick movement. He wore no underclothes. His inflamed cock leaped free; hot and as solid as steel in her hand.
Michael pulled back and reaching under her skirt, fumbled with the elastic of her pants in an effort to reach her quivering cunt. His fingers plunged upward, entering her with such unexpected roughness that she cried out and shied away.
"You want to be fucked, don't you?" he mumbled. "You want your slave to jam his big, hard cock into her hungry cunt."
"Don't talk crudely, Michael," she demanded. Her expression softened. "But do fuck me." She slid down in the seat and allowed him to pull her skirt about her waist. He tore away her pants and she felt her naked buttocks sticking to the heated leather seat.
Michael hovered above her, his hands resting on either side of her head, looking down at her naked body with the dress pulled about her waist and her breasts exposed.
"Sometimes I get the feeling that you're the slave and I'm the master," he said.
"Don't talk, darling," she whimpered. "Enter me now!"
But Michael was in no hurry. Spinning around on the seat, he buried his face in the triangle of her legs, his tongue tracing the lip line of her cunt. The heavy fragrance of her sex and cologne stung his nostrils and his senses seemed affected. He knew his cock was shoved into her face.
"Suck me!" he demanded.
Valerie's eyes widened as they always did when she realized the enormity of his cock. The swollen cock head was deep red, mushroom-shaped, the shaft widening greatly near the base. She hesitated taking such a morsel into her mouth.
Michael began to move his hips, searching for her open lips.
"Suck me!" he repeated; and he drove his extended tongue into her cunt to tease the hardening bud.
Valerie opened her lips and slid them gently over his cock head only to have it suddenly thrust into her mouth and down her throat. She gagged and tried to squirm free but his thighs were locked on either side of her head. She knew she had no choice but to submit to his passion, and the submissiveness oddly made her feel even greater lust. He had spread the lips of her cunt and was driving his tongue in and out with masterful precision. Almost instantly she could feel the explosion force gathering within her loins.
Michael, too, was quick to approach his climax. He drove his tongue even deeper, and at the same time thrust his cock so brutally into her oral cavity that she thought she would faint from the lack of oxygen. His fingers stretched at her flesh to allow a deeper passage for his tongue.
Valerie was moaning, squirming from alarm and pleasure. The leather beneath her buttocks was pulling at her naked flesh. Their movements were so rough, so speedy that she felt pain, pain as intense as if needles were pricking her soft thighs. Her eyes had filled with tears, the perspiration was pouring from her forehead and wrecking her attempts of dressing her own hair, but she did not truly care. Nothing mattered, not even the fact that she heard cars passing on the nearby road and knew any one of them would recognize her jostling limousine and guess the action taking place behind the drawn curtains.
Michael thrust himself deep into her throat and his body seemed to freeze. Her own senses began to whirl as she was lost to her explosion of completion. Only seconds afterward she tasted the bittersweet juice of his climax gush into her throat. Her throat muscles worked frantically to swallow the load of his passion and prevent her choking.
Then, the spasms forsaking his body, Michael rolled off her onto the floor of the limousine. He continued to moan, deep and contented, and she turned onto her side to stare down at him. His throbbing cock was jerking slowly up his leg, leaving a trail of moisture on the black wool of his trousers. The interior of the limousine smelled strongly of sex and sweat. It made her more dizzy than alcohol. She extended her hand and clamped her fingers over his dissolving erection.
"My God!" she sighed. "Where you're concerned I have no shame. I'd lay you in the middle of a busy street if there was nowhere else for us to go."
"Maybe someday I'll ask you to do just that," he mumbled.
Valerie looked at him quizzically. "Do you want so badly to prove your hold on me?" she asked.
"I think you're the only one with a hold at the moment," he told her, glancing at her hand wrapped about his ebbing cock.
Valerie looked longingly at the organ in her grasp.
"I want it again," she said. She released her grasp and pulled herself up in the seat. "But that would be pressing our luck."
While Michael shoved his cock back into his trousers and returned to the driver's seat, Valerie made attempts to correct her appearance. Fortunately, she could use her mink to hide the mess of her dress.
"Do you really want to go into the village?" Michael asked. "Or was that only an excuse to get away from the house?"
"I had both you and shopping in mind," she said.
In the village, Michael waited dutifully in the limousine like a proper chauffeur, climbing out to open the door when Valerie returned with her arms laden with packages.
When they were once again on the road back to the Armstrong mansion, Michael heard her rummaging through paper. Then a small package was shoved next to his shoulder.
"A little present," she said, "to show how pleased I am with you."
Michael wanted to pull immediately to the side of the road to examine the gift. He had never been able to resist presents.
"It's only a token of appreciation," Valerie continued. "There will be more." She pulled a case from the bag and snapped open the lid.
Michael glanced down at the wristwatch. It was gold with Roman numerals painted on a malachite dial. It was obviously expensive, just the sort of token of appreciation he had expected to receive. Now, he thought, if her son and daughter were only equally as generous.
As they pulled into the driveway he noted four shiny black limousines parked before the front door. "Another party?" he asked.
He saw Valerie's concern in the rearview mirror. "No, just business associates of Herbert's," she said darkly.. "I had thought they would let him retire after his stroke."
"What kind of business is your husband in?"
"Never mind, my darling. You stick to your business and leave Herbert to his." She sat back in the seat and visibly relaxed. "He's perhaps as good in his as you are in yours."
Michael felt a tinge of jealousy.
He parked the car outside the garage, held the door open for his charge, and after watching her enter the house, walked around the back to the kitchen.
Jacob was inside, looking extremely happy and efficient as he prepared a tray of foul-looking hors oeuvres for his master's guests. He glanced up and his expression soured.
"Later," he said, "I want to have a talk with you."
Michael nodded, smiling, but behind the smile was concern. He wondered if one of the Armstrong brats had confided in their father's servant.
Michael lay stretched out on the bed in the apartment above the garage. He was fully dressed except for his shoes; those he had kicked off just inside the door. Margaret, arriving shortly after to keep their appointment, gathered the shoes up and placed them neatly under the bed. Leaning over him, she kissed him childishly on the forehead.
"I didn't think you'd ever get back from the village," she said. "It almost made me jealous of my adoring mother."
"I've my job to think of," Michael told her.
"Ah, yes. Your job."
Michael turned his head and looked up at the young girl. There was something in her attitude that caused him to become alert.
Margaret smiled down at him. "Do you think Mother finds you attractive?"
"I don't know," Michael lied.
"You men try to play it so cool," she said. "Don't tell me you haven't attempted to use your charm on her."
"I haven't. She's not my type."
Margaret clapped her hands together like a child delighted by a surprise gift. Then her face became serious.
"Don't misunderstand me. I love my mother. It's just that in these days of competition a girl has to look out for herself." Stepping up suddenly onto the bed, she straddled Michael's middle and sat heavily on his thighs. "You like me, don't you, Michael?"
"Very much."
"Then say it."
"I like you," he said mockingly. He could feel the heat of her body penetrating his trousers. The fleshy parts of her thighs rubbed against his limp cock as she moved about on top of him. She knew what she was doing, he thought. The little bitch was turning him on, teasing him into an erection.
"You don't sound convincing," she mused. Placing her hands on his abdomen, she pressed down firmly. "You're solid. I like that. I hate men that let themselves get flabby about the middle." Her fingers found the catch of his trousers. She pulled until the dull snap broke the silence and the zipper had parted to the swelling bulge of his cock.
"I like that about you too," she said. She lifted his cock through the opening of his fly and pulled it upward until it stood straight away from his loins.
Michael made as if to twist free.
But she held firmly to his cock and clamped her thighs more tightly to hold him in place beneath her.
"I brought you something if that's what's worrying you." Her eyes again took on that devious expression. "I want to be as generous to you as you are to me," she said. "That's important, isn't it, Michael? People being generous with you?"
"What the hell are you getting at?" Michael demanded.
Margaret laughed. Lifting her skirt, she showed him that she had come prepared. She wore no underpants and the downy triangular patch between her legs caused a sudden shiver of excitement to surge through his loins. She saw the sudden throbbing of his cock, felt its surge of power between her fingers, and she laughed again.
"I still think you're wasted as a chauffeur," she told him. "If you had enough people to be as generous with you as I am you could become rather well-off." She stared at him through half closed eyelids. "But you're not that sort, are you?"
Michael refused to answer. Margaret was teasing him as Madelaine had so often done in the past. She had something to say but instead of coming out with it, she had to play around like a cat with a mouse.
Holding his cock so that it was pointed skyward, she raised herself to her knees and shifted her body forward so that the cock head was directly beneath her hovering cunt. She lowered herself until contact was made; then she pulled back, smiling.
"You want to fuck me, don't you, Michael?"
"Yes," he admitted. "As much as you want to be fucked."
She lowered her body again, this time enough for his knob to pierce the tight lips of her cunt.
Michael moaned with the sensation. He pressed his head deep into the pillow and attempted to thrust his loins upward, but she refused to let him take command of the situation.
"Easy," she said. "It's my money. Let me do it the way I want."
"Don't tease me," he snapped. "Let's do it, or take your goddamned money and get the hell out."
Margaret laughed. "You're an interesting contradiction," she said. "I knew from the moment I saw you that you would prove a mysterious stranger." She lowered her body again. This time his cock head and half the length slipped into her cunt. She gasped, her eyes closed as If in pain, and then the smile returned to her lips.
"I like mysterious people," she whispered. "That's why I was watching you so closely at the party last night."
Michael thrust his body upward and groaned as the remainder of his cock penetrated her body. When he sank back onto the mattress she lowered herself with him to hold the penetration.
"I even followed you when you left the party," she continued.
Michael felt himself fill with alarm. "You followed me?" he stammered.
"Yes. All the way to the summer house. It was my intention to whisk you away to this little room, but alas...." She lifted her body and slammed down again with such force that he felt a sharp pain in his pelvis. "I'd never watched two men together before," she said. "My poor brother. I'd been hoping he would get around to an affair, but I'm not sure you're the kindest partner he could have chosen."
Michael lifted his head and raised himself to his elbows.
"Listen," he said, "I felt sorry for the kid. He acted as if he was in pain and it was obvious what he needed."
"You flatter yourself," Margaret said angrily. "I think what he needed had nothing to do with you." She suddenly lifted herself, threw her knee over him and leaped off the bed. Her skirt stuck about her waist and she pushed it down angrily to cover her naked body. Her eyes were flashing as she glared down at him. "You're nothing but a cheap whore," she cried. "You don't care where you stick that goddamn tool of yours as long as you're well paid."
Michael pulled the dingy sheets up about his waist. She was like Madelaine in more ways than one. He had gone through this same scene on many occasions in the past. Now, however, the stakes were higher. He had his soft touch with Valerie in jeopardy.
"Don't think you're going to get away with this," Margaret warned him. "I'll have your job before the day is out."
Michael sat up, took a cigarette from his pack, and lit it.
"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Tell them you're jealous because the chauffeur you were laying had a fling with your brother?"
Margaret's face flushed with frustration.
"That's it, isn't it?" he demanded. "The psuedo modern girl you pretended to be has an old-fashioned case of jealousy. It sticks in your gut that I wasn't so fascinated by you that I could give your brother a taste of what he wanted but didn't have the balls to get."
"You're disgusting!" Margaret spun around and made for the door. "I hate you!" she cried. "I hate you enough to kill you!"
"But you won't do anything," Michael informed her calmly. "You know what it would do to your parents if they found out you're such an easy lay."
She turned to face him, her eyes still blazing but the truth of his statement mirrored on her face.
"News like that would probably cause your father to have another stroke," Michael told her. "That could be fatal for him." She crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray and lay back against the headboard. "And how would it affect your mother?"
"You're an evil bastard!"
"Tell that to the girls at school you wanted to impress," he snapped. "It'll add color to your stupid story."
"I'm warning you," Margaret hissed. "You stay away from my brother. And stay away from me!"
"I can't do that," Michael told her. "I think your brother and I are going to become fast friends."
"Only if he remains generous with you," she said accusingly. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Duane is very sensitive," she said. "Someone like you could destroy him."
"You're overly dramatic." Michael rose and stuffing his now limp cock back into his trousers, began to adjust his uniform. "Don't fool yourself about your reasons for warning me away from your brother. Maybe I didn't go to Columbia or any other university, but I know my personalities. When the jealousy fades you may even begin to like me again."
"I seriously doubt that." She opened the door, moved through, and then turned again. "There is a lot you don't know about this family," she said. "Maybe I should be more concerned for you than for Duane." Michael smiled at her. "Now you're going to try to frighten me off with hints of black demons and insane relatives locked in the attic," he said.
"You'll learn what I mean soon enough," Margaret said. "By the way, my father has Jacob looking for you. He wants to see you in his study." She slammed the door and her footsteps echoed down the stairs.
Michael sat on the edge of the bed. His hands were trembling. It had all been a stroke of bad luck. He should have taken care that he had not been followed from the house when he had gone in search of Valerie's son. He knew Margaret couldn't report what she had witnessed to her parents, but she could, he feared, somehow put him in an awkward situation that might get him fired even over her mother's protests.
And the summons to Herbert Armstrong's study.
What could be behind that?
He smoked another cigarette before getting into his jacket and hurrying back to the house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Herbert Armstrong looked even more crippled behind his massive oak desk. Although his coloring seemed better than the night before when Michael had seen him at the party, it was still an obvious effort for him to speak. When he did speak, he was forced to press his' hand against his throat as if the pressure eased his pain.
"Where ... where did my wife find you?" he asked of Michael.
Michael, standing in front of the desk, glanced from Herbert Armstrong to his servant Jacob who stood behind the older man's wheelchair.
"From an agency," he lied without thinking.
Jacob took in a chest full of air which gave him the appearance of a rooster. "In New York City?"
Michael could feel-the perspiration beneath his arms. He hoped his nervousness was not obvious. "Why the questions?" he asked. "I'm sure your wife has filled you in on the details of my employment."
Jacob started to speak, but his employer held up his hand for silence.
"My wife," the older man managed, "went ... beyond herself in hiring ... you. I ... I am still capable of hiring our servants." His voice broke off and he began to cough. When he had regained his strength, he met Michael's eyes and continued; "My chauffeur has to ... to be of a special caliber."
Michael felt himself relaxing. The old man obviously knew nothing of his escapades with his wife and children otherwise he would have immediately launched into the subject with rage.
"You ... you saw the guests who were here today?" Herbert Armstrong asked. His eyes narrowed as he waited for an answer.
"No," Michael admitted. "I drove Mrs. Armstrong into the village. I was busy when they left."
The older man seemed to be pleased. "Business associates," he said quite clearly. He glanced up at Jacob as if to give him permission to continue the interview.
Jacob stepped forward until his thighs were pressed against the edge of the desk. "Mr. Armstrong has something special he wants to ask of you," he said. "Under other circumstances what he wants you to do would be my responsibility." Jacob looked pleased at finding himself in a position to 'speak for his master. "I don't personally agree with his choice in selecting you."
"Enough," Herbert Armstrong said sharply.
Jacob flushed at having been put down in the presence of another servant. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and stepped back behind the wheelchair.
"My ... my children have only a ... a short time before their vacations have ended," the old man said. "For reasons you ... don't need to concern yourself with, I want them away from this ... house."
Instantly puzzling what those reasons could be, Michael nodded his understanding.
"I need you ... to escort them." He opened the middle drawer of his desk, removed some envelopes and tossed them across the desk at Michael. "Take them to Puerto Rico."
Jacob stepped forward once again. "The tickets and your reservations are in the envelopes," he said. "Also enough money to keep the three of you comfortably."
"Should you ... need more," Herbert Armstrong added, "cable Jacob."
"But you're not to be wasteful," Jacob said hurriedly.
The old man tossed him a glance of disapproval; then seemed to dismiss him.
"Have you ... no ... questions?" he asked. Michael's mind was racing furiously. He knew he was expected to question the reasons for getting the Armstrong children out of the house. He was clever enough to connect their sudden trip to Puerto Rico to the black limousines that had been parked in the driveway, the guests that had filled Valerie's face with concern. Several remarks flashed through his memory; Margaret only a short time before saying there was a lot he didn't know about the family and that maybe she should be concerned for him; and Valerie's remark about thinking they would leave her husband alone after his stroke.
"You've beep asked if you have any questions," Jacob reminded him sternly.
Michael, having slipped the tickets out of the envelope, glanced at them and then back at the old man. "There's no time or date on these," he said. "When do we leave?"
Herbert Armstrong smiled, the paralyzed side of his face distorting the smile into a grotesque grimace.
"My ... my wife chose well," he said. "You leave tonight at midnight." He folded his hands on the desktop and looked up at Jacob. "Now we'll have a ... a drink," he said. "Sit down, Mr. Santos."
Michael sank into a leather chair, aware for the first time that his knees had been trembling. To avoid the eyes of his employer, he watched Jacob walk stiffly across the room and pour two strong brandies. He couldn't help from wondering if Valerie Armstrong had been informed of her husband's decision to send him away with the children. Still, he dared not ask. He knew such a question would only arouse suspicions.
"I would ... have thought you would ask about the pay for this special assignment," Herbert Armstrong was saying.
Michael forced himself to laugh softly. "I'm getting a vacation in Puerto Rico," he said. He raised the envelope with the money. "All expenses paid. I'm not a greedy fellow."
Jacob tossed him a disgusted glance over his shoulder as he lifted the brandy glasses. Michael knew he had an enemy in the personal servant. He wondered if he could somehow use Cleo to keep her lover in line. "Well," Herbert Armstrong said, "you'll be ... paid double your regular ... salary." He pulled his hand away from his throat and reached for the brandy glass Jacob handed him.
Michael felt the smooth liquor reach his stomach and somewhat settle his nerves. He noticed that Jacob was not drinking. He lifted his glass in a mock salute and drained the contents in one quick gulp. Rising, he bid farewell to Herbert Armstrong and left the two men huddling together in whispers.
Free of the study, Michael removed the money from the envelope and quickly counted it. Three thousand dollars. He whistled softly. Three thousand dollars, double salary and an all expense vacation in Puerto Rico. Latching onto Valerie Armstrong had been a stroke of pure luck. Of course, he would have to face her fury at losing him temporarily.
He stuffed the two envelopes into his jacket pocket. He would have to pack. Suddenly he wondered how the jealous Margaret would react to the news of her vacation companion. Duane, he was certain, would take the news with delight.
Passing down the hallway to the stairs, Michael noticed the door to one of the side rooms slightly ajar. He could hear voices inside, male voices that brought him up quickly. He had noticed that all the limousines in the driveway had been gone when he had come from the garage. Someone had obviously stayed behind.
He moved to the cracked door and peered inside.
Two men, their backs to him, stood talking quietly, the smoke from their cigars created a haze about their heads. Their cheap shiny suits told him they were not social guests. From their stance and the few scattered words in broken dialect, they could have been no more than common hoods.
Bodyguards, he thought; and the sudden mystery into which he had been hurled deepened.
"Goddamn luck!" Valerie cried. "The son-of-a-bitch won't let me go. He says he needs me at his side." She paced back and forth across Michael's room, her face drawn with anger.
Michael, folding the last of his clothes and placing them in his suitcase, sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her.
"It won't be for long," he told her, trying to make his voice show disappointment at their separation.
"One day away from you is too much," Valerie said. She stopped and looked at him and her anger began to wane. "I've grown accustomed to you, my love. You've become an obsession." She sighed helplessly. "But I guess this separation has to be. Herbert knows best when these things are concerned."
Michael decided to press his curiosity. "I don't even know the reason I'm being sent away with the kids," he told her. "It must be pretty serious. I saw those two hoods downstairs." He struck a match to his cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Are they bodyguards?"
Valerie looked at him through the cloud of cigarette smoke. "The less you know about Herbert's business the better," she said. "All of this could just be a false alarm. It's happened in the past. But Herbert doesn't take any chances where our children are concerned."
"Are they truly in danger?"
Valerie smiled. "Curiosity killed the cat," she said. "And I don't want it to kill you. I have plans for you."
"I'm just concerned about you," Michael told her. Valerie crossed the room and sat behind him on the bed. "How sweet," she said. "It makes me feel that you really do care about me, more even than your financial gain from our relationship." She kissed him on the cheek and ran her hand into the opening of his shirt, caressing the hard pectoral muscles. "We have time before you leave," she whispered. "One last thrill before I have to live without you."
As much as he would have liked to deny her, Michael knew there was no escaping her demands. He pushed her back on the bed, lifting her skirt and struggling with her underpants. They gave with a ripping sound and he pulled them down her legs as she lifted her hips from the mattress. His mouth found hers as his hand began to explore the hotness of her cunt.
"Michael," she whimpered. "I'll go mad without you. Stark raving mad!" She bit his lip and he felt the warm blood ooze onto his chin. "I wish the sonofabitch was dead." Then, as if regretting her statement, she sobbed slightly and pulled her head away. "I didn't mean that. Honestly."
"It doesn't matter," he said. He knew it had been true if only for the moment. He forced her legs apart and crawled between them on his knees, noticing that the triangular patch of hair had been closely trimmed. He could see the unfurled lips of her cunt.
"Make it good, Michael," she moaned. "I don't want to forget this until we're together again."
Michael was no longer listening. He had pulled his hardening cock from his fly and was positioning it against her moist slit. Pressing forward slowly, he felt them stretch to receive him. The cock head had not entirely vanished into her cunt when she suddenly thrust her hips upward to claim the greatest percent of his shaft.
She murmured softly, her head pressed deep into the pillow. "That's so good, so goddamn good."
As her hips sank onto the mattress, Michael sank with her, driving down roughly until he had buried his solid cock to the hilt. Slowly, he began to pump, to retract himself along the tightened walls and plunge forward again. He felt his cock expanding even more within her molten cunt. Her daughter had turned him on early and then had left him without release. The urgency he felt now matched her own.
"Faster!" she whimpered. "Fuck me faster!"
Michael began to pull back and thrust forward in rapid succession, driving her hips deep into the soft mattress when his body crashed into hers. His mouth found the peak of her breasts and he bit at them through the material of her dress. This increased her lust until she was bucking and squirming beneath him like an animal in pain.
"I'll never get enough of you!" she groaned. "I've never known a man who fucks like you. You're the greatest." She wrapped her arms about his neck and dug her nails into his back. Bringing her legs up, she wrapped them about his waist (and used them to increase the pressure with which he was slamming into her.
Michael's climax came so quickly he was hardly aware of the tensing of his muscles. As he pumped and spurted, he was aware of her almost spasmodic convulsions. Suddenly arching and slamming her stomach against him, she groaned and clamping her mouth about his ear, bit at the lobe until he thought her teeth would tear it to pieces. Even after she slumped back lifelessly against the mattress, the muscles of her vagina continued to contract and pull at his cock, draining the last drops of his passion.
They were both panting heavily. Her eyes were closed, the mascara smeared at the corners.
Michael rolled off of her, placed his feet shakily on the floor, and rose. There was no need to wipe his ebbing cock before stuffing it back into his trousers; her tightened cunt had drawn every bit of semen free. He zipped up his fly and stood staring down at her. Her hips were still jerking periodically as if the muscles could not relax. Beads of moisture on her pubic hair glistened under the naked lightbulb.
She rose then, pulling her skirt down over her fleshy thighs. Her underpants she pulled over her feet and tossed into the waste can. Standing, she pressed into the curve of his body and kissed him gently on the neck.
"I'll have to remember that until you return," she said. "There won't be another man for me. Only you." She kissed him again, and then moved toward the door. "Now I have to act like a wife and mother," she told him. "But I'll be thinking only of you, my darling." She blew him a kiss and slipped quickly through the door.
Michael snapped the lid of his suitcase. He felt as if she had drained the last of his strength away. He could have slept easily had it not been near time to leave. But tomorrow, he told himself, he would be sleeping in the Puerto Rico sun.
He began to sing to himself as he straightened his clothes and tied his tie. The three thousand dollars in his breast pocket felt warm against his body. He had it made, he thought. All he would have to do was keep those two goddamn brats from being extravagant. Duane would be easy to control. Margaret might give him a little more trouble.
If she did, he would spank her ass like the child she was.
The thought amused him and he laughed at his own reflection. But the laugh died quickly, and leaning forward like a woman to inspect his image, he noted the fine lines beginning to appear about his eyes.
"Crows feet," he said aloud. "Jesus Christ! I can't get old! Not yet! Who's going to pay for a middle-aged gigolo?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Michael lay basking in the warm Puerto Rico sun. In three days since their arrival, he had tanned to a golden bronze. The women on the beaches and in the hotel dining rooms were giving him an interested eye. Like a strutting peacock, he took longer and longer to dress each evening, making sure he and his two charges arrived in the dining room at the height of dinner hour. The attentive glances cast in their direction bloated his ego until, with great surprise, he discovered that much of the female interest was directed at Duane.
Now as he lay with dark glasses shielding his eyes, he stared at the youth with interest. Duane was, he had to admit, a striking figure of a male. The sun had taken away his pallor and had emphasized the strong lines of his jaw and deep-set eyes. His natural moodiness gave him the impression of brooding, an air of indifference that was a guaranteed success with the opposite sex, and few of them realized that the indifference was genuine. He was tall and his body was lithe, sinewy.
Michael felt a tinge of jealousy. He was not accustomed to sharing the spotlight with another male. Only the fact that he knew he alone controlled the youth kept his jealousy from consuming him. Still, Duane had made no advances since their arrival. He had his own room and as far as Michael knew he stuck to it at night. Michael wondered 'if his hold on the youth was less than what he imagined.
Margaret had behaved typically.
She was uncommunicative, spending her time with them in silence. On the beach, she always set her chair up behind and slightly away from them, watching them like a faithful watchdog. In the evening, she left them immediately after dinner. The first night she had given the excuse of a headache, but after that had not even bothered to excuse herself. She would merely disappear and show up the following morning dressed in her beach clothes.
"She's always been a little strange," Duane had told Michael. "Don't let her get you down."
Michael sat up and reached for the suntan lotion. As he opened the lid and poured the oil into his palm, he heard Duane stirring beside him.
"I'll do that for you," the youth said.
Before Michael could protest, he had taken the bottle of lotion, poured some into his hands and was rubbing it on Michael's arms and chest. His hands moved slowly, caressingly, and Michael, glancing back at Margaret, was pleased that she was witnessing the scene. Her brow had furrowed and her lips had curved downward in a disgusted grimace.
Michael looked back at Duane. "People are going to become suspicious," he said. "You're doing that like a lover."
"Do you object?" The youth's dark eyes met his and held them as he waited for an answer.
Michael smiled. "No, not if you don't. All those adoring females might, however. Have you noticed the way they look at you? You could have any of them you wanted."
"I don't want them," Duane said flatly. His oily hands had reached the top band of Michael's scant bikini trunks. They hesitated as if considering tearing through to what they concealed. His eyes were fixed on the giant bulge.
A woman with heavy hips and a brown peeling sunburn passed them on her way to the water and giggled.
Duane immediately pulled away. His face had flushed even through his deep tan.
"I hope you're satisfied," Margaret said from behind them. "Now everyone knows my brother has the hots for the chauffeur."
"Shut up!" Duane snapped.
"Oh, Christ!" she hissed. "Can't you reserve that sort of horseshit for the privacy of your rooms? I don't mind having a queer brother, but you don't have to humiliate me."
"If you'd keep your mouth shut, no one would know you're with us," Duane said. He sank back against the canvas back of his chair and closed his eyes.
Michael continued oiling his legs. His own touch seemed to arouse him, and he thought how unaccustomed his body was to going without sex for three days. It took all his concentration to prevent an erection, knowing his cock would force its way beyond the band of the trunks if he did. Finally turning, he lay stretched out on his stomach with his half hard cock pressed into the hot sand. He could feel it pressing past the elastic band and the thick knob being pricked by the sand. He rested his chin on his hands and stared at Margaret. She was deliberately sitting with her legs spread, the narrow band beneath the skirt of her swimming suit barely covering her feminine flesh. Reaching down, she ran her fingers under the elastic, pulled the material out and let it snap back into place.
She knows I'm hot as hell, Michael thought. The little bitch would love to get fucked.
"I thought you would have ... have tried to be alone with me," Duane suddenly said.
Michael turned and looked at him. He had rolled onto his side and his hand lay close to Michael's body as if it wanted to touch him.
"We only have a few more days together," Duane continued. "Then I won't get away from school until the spring vacation." His voice cracked, making it obvious that he was finding the conversation difficult.
Michael kept himself from smiling. He was determined not to make things easier for the youth. Why should he?
"It's up to you to take the aggressiveness," he said. "I did my part that night in the garden."
Duane frowned. "I remember you said I should be generous with you."
"That's right."
"You made it sound almost like a threat," Duane told him.
"Did it?" Michael lay his face against his hands and closed his eyes. The turn of the conversation had destroyed his erection. His cock was now crawling painfully back into his trunks. He lifted his loins and absently stuffed his cock into the elastic band. "I didn't mean it to sound like ... like a threat exactly," he said into his hands.
"What then?" Duane asked.
Michael turned his head and looked at the youth with one eye.
"Everyone has to live," he said. "Your life is easy. You've got all the goddamned money you'll need. I don't. Is there anything wrong in your making things more comfortable for me? If I give you what you want, then I expect you to return the favor."
"You make it sound so sordid."
Michael grunted. "Now you've begun to sound like your sister," he said. "That's the way things are. Sordid. The sooner both of you realize it the better off you'll be." He lowered his head again. "That is unless you intend to let your parents arrange a nice comfortable marriage for you. A socially acceptable marriage with some sallow-skinned little bitch. Isn't that the same thing really? Marriage for the sake of the social standing? It really makes a whore, or a whoremonger out of you." He laughed. "And you probably wouldn't be able to screw her anyway. She'd have hired herself a chauffeur like me before the honeymoon was over. So don't tell me it sounds sordid. Take me under my conditions, or don't take me at all."
When there was no answer, Michael looked up to see Duane hurrying along the beach toward the hotel. He had heard very little of Michael's speech on modem morals.
"It looks like you're losing your second meal ticket," Margaret said mockingly. "Maybe your style has gone sour."
"Fuck you!" he said.
"Fine," she laughed. "Only this time you pay me!"
Duane didn't slow his pace until he reached the patio of the hotel. Then, not waiting to shut himself away in his room for the balance of the afternoon, he sat on the stone wall overlooking the ocean and tried to organize his thoughts.
Michael, he decided, had made one error in judgment. He had assumed him to be a homosexual, no possibility of having normal sexual desires. In that, Duane was uncertain. Even his first experience in the garden had not convinced him. Perhaps, he thought, he was what the text books described as bisexual, loving both sexes with equal passion.
But then he had no way of knowing the truth. Except for some childish playing around in grade school, he had never been with a female. He remembered that child's play in detail; the kissing and caressing of the girl's hairless cunt while she had fingered his morsel of a cock and giggled. Her giggling had gotten them caught. The teacher had peered under the painter's drop cloth and her face had frozen in screeching horror. He had been expelled, dishonored in the eyes of the school and scoldingly skyrocketed in his father's mind. His school had been changed and from that point he had developed a nagging fear of little girls and the mystery of their sex. With so much emotion to lavish on someone and denied by his busy parents, he had begun to look on athletic stars as heroes and love objects. He had collected Oscar Wilde and Jean Cousteau. He had, in short, convinced himself that he was different. He belonged to the secret cult of the social degenerate.
But was that true?
Michael made the whole thing seem sordid.
There, he thought, he would say I am sounding like Maggie again.
" He shifted his legs sq that they hung over the stone wall. Leaning forward, he stared down at the rocks below as the waves twisted the kelp about them, leaving it and then gathering it up again in fits of indecision.
"If you fall, you'll break a leg at the very least."
Duane turned to look into the face of a young and very pretty blonde. He had seen her before in the lobby of the hotel. She had always been in the company of an older woman.
"A broken leg might be just the thing I'm looking for right now," he told her solemnly.
Her face broke into a spreading laugh. "Are you that down? Puerto Rico is suppose to' be fun. God knows it costs enough." She hoisted herself up onto the stone wall, sitting opposite to him with her legs remaining on the stone patio. "I've seen you around the hotel. Are you with your brother and sister?"
"My sister," he admitted. "The man is our chauffeur."
"Wow!" He had obviously impressed her with this truth. "I've never seen a chauffeur who looked like that." When he made no effort to speak, she continued, "I'm with my mother. She says she brought me to enjoy the sun, but the truth is she's dangling me in front of potential husbands. I guess she means well, but it's a bore."
"It must be," he agreed.
"It's not as if I was a virgin," she told him bluntly. "I've been choosing my own men for the last five years, but she doesn't think I'm capable of selecting a husband. A typical Jewish mother. He's got to be intelligent, manly and rich. Mostly rich." She moved closer to him, her arm brushing his.
Michael could smell the heady aroma of her perfume, the saltiness of the ocean water on her skin. He felt his shyness returning, his inability to become aggressive as Michael had demanded.
But aggressiveness was unnecessary.
"She's out shopping now," the girl said suggestively. "How about you and me going up to my room?"
"Yes," Duane said firmly. "I'd like that. I'd like that one hell-of-a-lot!"
Duane rolled off the girl with a cry of anguish and lay facing the wall. Clinching his fist, he slammed it hard against the rough plaster.
"Hey, calm down," the girl said. "I've heard that men can't always get it up. There's nothing freaky about it. It's never happened with me, but maybe I just don't turn you on."
"It isn't you," he groaned. "That's what's so goddamned hard to take! It's me!"
The girl moved behind him, placing her hands on his shoulder.
"Maybe you should see a doctor," she suggested. "I mean if it happens all the time, there must be something that can be done. A sex pill, maybe. They have pills for everything now. God, if they didn't, I wouldn't be spreading my legs quite so often." She brushed her lips gently over his back, her voice telling him his inability was all right but her touch revealing her need, her disappointment that he could not lay her. "Maybe next time," she said.
Duane turned and looked at her. She was beautiful, her slim body tanned by the sun except for the narrow bands of whiteness across her breasts and around her loins. He tried to find fault with her as an excuse for his inability, but he could not. Any man would have leaped at the chance of laying her. She was what his college chums referred to as a super lay.
She was smiling, not mockingly as he would have expected, but with a gentleness, understanding.
"Are you sure you're not gay?" she suddenly asked softly.
Duane felt his body stiffen. "I'm not sure of anything," he said. He lowered his eyes unable to meet her gaze any longer.
"But you're trying to find out," she suggested.
He felt a pang of guilt.
"Look," he said, "I wasn't intentionally using you if that's what you mean. I thought I could make it with you or I would never have come up here."
"It's all right," she assured him. "But I think you'd better leave now. My mother will be back soon and if she caught you here, well, she's so marriage minded she might get out a shotgun and drive you to the altar." She laughed, and slipping off the bed, reached for a flimsy nightgown. "Aren't mothers strange creatures?"
Duane thought of his own mother. He had never considered her strange. She was beautiful, sophisticated, a model of a mother and wife.
"I suppose," he said for her benefit.
The girl continued her idle chatter, more to relax him than for the need of conversation. Sitting with her legs pulled up in the seat of a chair, she watched him as he dressed.
"It is a pity," she finally said as he stuffed his limp cock into his pants. "You're handsome and well developed in the important departments." She sighed and rose to see him to the door. "If you find its working properly later tonight," she said, "I'll be on the patio until around midnight."
Duane smiled weakly.
"I'll remember," he said. He gave her a long, lingering glance, noting the dark areas of her nipples beneath the thin material and the lighter shade of blonde between her legs.
The girl followed his gaze, and sighed again. "I'll see you around," she said, and opened the door.
Duane hurried through and escaped into the hallway, his face burning with humiliation and anger with himself. God, how he had wanted to lay her if only to prove his masculinity to himself.
He returned to his room, locked the door and refused to answer even when Michael and Margaret tried to rouse him for dinner.
It was nearing midnight.
The casino was almost deserted, only small clusters of gamblers surrounding each table. They placed their bets almost soundlessly, so that the major noise came from the spinning roulette wheel and the tossing of the dice.
Michael had already brought his winnings to over three hundred dollars. As he stared at the stacks of five dollar chips, he knew he must quit soon or he would become careless and lose it all. Gambling always bored him after a few hours. Glancing around, he noted the buxom blonde perched on the stool opposite his. As she leaned forward to place her chips on the numbers, the front of her dress sagged with the heaviness of her breasts and the nipples almost played peek-a-boo with the overhead light. She was pretty in a rough sort of way; the beauty marks painted on her left cheek obviously were to accentuate moles, and her lipstick was very heavy and too red. Her hair had been bleached so often it had taken on the appearance of straw. Still, without picking her to pieces her overall look was one of sensuality. She would be, he decided, a worthwhile piece of ass.
He smiled to himself.
It was the first time in months he had thought of a piece of ass for pleasure. Always before it had been connected with his financial gain. Three days in the Puerto Rico sun must have been turning him soft.
The blonde met his gaze, and smiled invitingly. He also noted that her eyes had taken in the pile of chips on the felt before him. A hustler, he thought, and shrugged. Why not? He had charged for it so often, there was no harm in paying a little out; besides, it wasn't his money. It was part of the three thousand Herbert Armstrong had given him to take care of the two brats. Without taking his eyes off the blonde's face, he counted out six of the five dollar chips and pushed them to one side.
She understood. Thirty dollars was an acceptable price. Collecting her own meager amount of chips, she moved around the table and sank onto the empty stool beside him, her heavy thighs almost sagging over its edge.
"Can we wait until I've played these?" she asked. "I'm a sucker for gambling. That's why I moved to San Juan." She laughed. "That and the New York cold."
"You're a long way from Forty-second Street," Michael said. He scattered a few chips on the board.
"Forty-second Street? Is that what you think?" She curled her lips back from her teeth. "Shit, baby, I'm no street hooker." She nodded toward the thirty dollars in chips he had pushed to one side. "On a good night you'd have to triple that."
"I'm sure," he agreed. Sitting back on his stool, he gave her hips a closer inspection. Definitely Forty-second Street, he thought. But that didn't keep him from gently brushing his hand across them and feeling the shock of the satin material to his touch.
"You'd better play it cool until we get out of here," she whispered. "This isn't Las Vegas. These spicks want you to play it straight."
"Mr. Santos."
Michael looked up to see one of the pages approaching him. He lifted his hand.
"Telephone, sir." The page handed him the telephone and stooped to plug it into the outlet.
Michael was not surprised to hear Duane on the other end.
"Make it quick, huh, kid?" he said. "I'm a little tied up at the moment.
The hooker gave a hoot as one of her numbers came in. "You've brought me luck!" she cried as she greedily drew the chips across the table to the safety of her breasts.
"I've been ... thinking," Duane said. There was a silence in which Michael waited patiently for him to continue. "You were right, I guess."
"About what?" Michael demanded.
"About what you said on the beach. Listen, I want you to come up to my room. Now."
"I told you I'm involved," Michael reminded him. He gave the blonde an affectionate pat on the ass. He had already decided to let the kid stew.
"I said now," Duane cried. Then his voice softened; "I'll pay you. I'll pay you what you ask."
Michael dramatically let a few seconds of silence lapse.
"Ok," he finally said. "I'll be up in a few minutes." He hung up the receiver before Duane could say any more.
The blonde had overheard his conversation. "What about me?" she asked. "We've already made a deal."
"Yeah, well the deal's off," Michael told her. He gathered up the chips, including the thirty dollars he had pushed to one side. "This is business. Strictly business."
"Well, fuck you, creep," she hissed. "A decent guy would have left me the thirty anyway."
"Maybe he would have," Michael agreed. "Maybe he would have."
Duane's assurance changed after they were stretched out in bed. This was another first for him. Last time they had been hidden in the darkness with only the dim light of the moon, but now the lamp was burning and Michael had insisted he not turn it off.
"What are you waiting for?" Michael demanded. He was stretched out on his back, his arms folded behind his head and his attitude one of let's get this over with.
Duane's eyes were riveted to the narrow strip of whiteness untanned because of his swimming trunks, his thick cock laying back against his abdomen in a state of half-hearted erection. He started to lean forward, then stopped, groaned and turned away.
"I can't!" he cried. "I can't do it!"
"Why the hell not? You've swung on it before." He knew that he was deliberately being cruel to the youth, but he couldn't stop himself. The jealousy he had felt because of the attention Duane had attracted irritated him and he felt the need to have revenge. Also, he had not willingly left the blonde bitch in the casino. He was hotter than hell and he needed release.
"Please don't make me," Duane groaned.
Michael recognized the quirk in his voice that was so common in women who could not overcome their guilt in the face of desire. They pleaded not to be forced and at the same time were hoping with all their will that he would ignore their objections.
"You're going to have to pay me anyway," .he said, "so you might as well get what you want."
"That's just it," Duane mumbled. "I'm not sure it is what I want."
Michael grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him flat on the bed. Hoisting his leg over his middle, he sat squarely on his stomach.
Duane was too shocked to resist. He merely lay there, his eyes wide with surprise.
"I'll introduce you to another method," Michael said sharply. "Maybe that will be your thing." He slid backward until he was between the youth's legs and lifted them onto either of his shoulders. "When I'm finished, I'll guarantee you'll know if this is what you want or not."
Duane felt his lower body being lifted until his weight was supported on his arched back. He felt the knob of Michael's swollen cock press against the tight opening of his anus and he began to squirm and try to pull himself free.
"Don't," he pleaded, but strong hands held him down and prevented him from rolling away.
Then he felt the cock's head press in, felt his anus contract about it as the pain shot up his spine.
"Stop! It's killing me!"
"Then relax!' Michael snapped. "You're only making it difficult on yourself."
Duane tried to relax his body as he felt the rock hard cock continue its journey. The large, inflated knob plunged deeper until he feared it would enter his bowels and split him into pieces. Try as he might he could not force his sphincter muscles to relax about the intruding cock. The pain increased and he found himself clutching at his own legs in an attempt to spread them even further to make entry less painful.
Then the cock was buried to the hilt and he felt Michael's loins come into contract with the cheeks of his buttocks. He was gasping for breath, covered with perspiration.
"You've taken it all," Michael informed him with a bitter laugh. "You've taken it like an old pro brownie queen."
Despite himself, Duane felt his own cock hardening. The swollen cock buried within his rectum pressed against and stimulated his prostate gland. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at his own swelling cock. His lower body had been raised so that his weight was mostly on his shoulders. The red lampshade gave everything an eerie, unreal quality. If it had not been for the pain tearing through his torso, he would have thought that this was merely another one of the erotic dreams he frequently experienced, the dreams from which he woke with an oppressive feeling of guilt...."I can't take the pain!" he bellowed. "Please, stop!'
"Stop, hell!" Michael' cursed. "I haven't even started!"
He pulled back until the knob of his cock was almost drawn from the constricted cavity; and then thrust forward brutally. Again and again he repeated this process.
Duane groaned, hoping the pain would leave him. On each outward stroke, he felt the large, fat cock head rub against his prostate. The pain began to ebb and a familiar sensation to build within his own loins. He could feel his climax approaching and the noticeable tightening of his anal muscles around the priming cock. He even imagined he could feel his prostate gland enlarging, becoming harder and more sensitive. And then the climax began. He could feel the heaviness leave his testicles and rise up along his hardened cock. It spurted out, the hot, sticky fluid covering his stomach and chest in forceful jets.
After his climax, the continued thrust of Michael's cock in and out of his body became almost intolerable. He wanted to scream with the pain, to strike out no matter what the retribution would be. His hands clamped into fists. He drew back ready to rock forward and send his fists crashing into Michael's drawn face.
But at the moment he felt the cock within his body swell suddenly and the sperm spray into his bowels. Again and again the spasms came, and then the swelling began to dwindle, the cock to retract. He felt it leave his anal cavity and he felt his legs being lowered to the mattress.
"You're one hell of a piece of ass," Michael moaned.
"We should have tried that in the beginning."
Duane felt his head swimming. His dizziness seemed to consume him, to cloud his thoughts. He feared he was going to pass out. He pulled himself to a sitting position, hanging his head over his knees. Reality had been the same as his dreams. He was already beginning to feel shame for what he had' allowed to happen with Michael. If he had fought, if he had really put up a struggle, he could have prevented it.
But now that the pain had begun to ebb, he was not so sure he had not enjoyed it. It had been a contact, something shared with another human being. And with sex in that manner he never need fear he would be incapable of performing. There would never be another experience like the one with the girl that afternoon.
"Well?" Michael said, breaking into his thoughts.
Duane looked up and met his eyes.
"I still say there must be more," he said. "There should be some sort of affection attached to it. You ... you have sex like a machine, a sex machine."
Michael threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat staring back at him over his shoulder.
"I like sex for the sake of sex," he said. His anger with the youth had vanished with his release. There was no longer any tension in his body. Now he merely wanted to get back to his own room and sleep. He bent down for his socks and began pulling them on. He sighed wearily.
"Won't you stay here tonight?" Duane asked from behind him.
"No."
"Why not?"
"No reflection on you, kid," he said, "but when I have a luxurious suite of rooms of my own, I like to spend some time in them." He rose and slipped into his trousers. "You won't understand how the other half lives, will you? This is all old stuff to you. But to me it's ... it's the way I want to live, the way I intend to live for the rest of my life."
"Your money is on the nightstand," Duane said coldly, and pulling the sheets up about his head turned his face to the wall.
Michael smiled to himself. He was now assured of his hold on Duane Armstrong; it was as strong as his hold on the youth's mother. By the time he finished with the family, he would have enough to live the way he wanted.
The telephone jangled loudly.
Without thinking, he picked up the receiver and muttered, "Hello."
There was a short silence. Then Valerie Armstrong's surprised voice came over the line. "Michael? What ... what are you doing in Duane's room? Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing," he said quickly. "Your son and I were just having a man to man ... discussion."
Duane turned and was watching him. His face had flushed with the knowledge that it was his mother on the other end of the line. It was as if he had been caught.
"That's nice," Valerie said unsurely. "I've been trying to reach you most of the evening." There was the tone of a reprimand in her voice. Her personal stud had not been at her beck-and-call.
"I was out," Michael said flatly.
"Yes. Well, things are straightened out here. 'You can bring the children and come home." Her voice rose and he knew by her tone that she was not calling in private.
He glanced at Duane. "I'll tell the children," he said. "I think they'll be pleased. They're a little bored with Puerto Rico."
"And you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Thank you," she said without emotion. "We'll expect you tomorrow."
Michael hung up the receiver.
"The easy life of a companion comes to an end," he said. "Now it's back to being a chauffeur." When he laughed, Duane stared at him quizzically, not understanding the humor of his statement.
PART THREE
-THE FALL
CHAPTER NINE
Michael knew that Valerie had missed him; he had seen it in her eyes when he had entered the house behind her two children. It had slightly panicked him because Herbert Armstrong and Jacob had been watching. But neither had seemed to detect any difference in her attitude or expression. If they had, they had attributed it to the reunion with her children.
Now, almost twelve hours later, she seemed less anxious. She had slipped into his room without a word and had begun to undress.
Michael lay watching as she slowly unhooked the catch of her bra and slipped the straps off her shoulders. Leaning slightly forward, She let the garment slip away and her breasts hung free. She straightened then and turned to glance at her own reflection in his cloudy mirror.
"Tell me you missed me," she said. "I'll know it will be a lie, but I want to hear it. I need to hear it."
"It's true," Michael assured her. "I missed the hell out of you."
Her face brightened into a smile and her eyes glowed with pleasure.
"You know just the right things to say, don't you, Michael? You must have been one hell of a gigolo, telling all those lonely women you loved them and making them believe it for a night." She moved to the edge of the bed, knelt and pressed her lips against his hungry mouth.
One of his arms circled her neck while the hand of the other cupped her breasts, squeezing them. When she pulled her head away, he brought his face forward and fastened his mouth about her right nipple. She felt the small bud hardening against his tongue.
"Are you also going to tell me there were no other women while you were away from me?" she whispered.
"No more than thirty," he said.
"Beast," she teased. "La Belle Bete! Beautiful beast." She made as if to pull away, but he held her firmly.
"I won't let you get away," he whispered. "I want you as badly as you want me."
"More professional conversation," she mocked. "At least let me finish undressing."
"I'll finish it for you," he said. His hand found the zipper of her skirt and undid it.
She helped him pull off her panties. Then he pulled her onto the bed and buried his face between her legs. She fought at first to resist the hands attempting to spread her thighs, but her struggle was only momentary. She spread her legs willingly and shuddered as she felt the moist, warm tongue tracing the lip line of her cunt. His buttocks were slightly arched and turned so that his enormous cock was only inches from her face. She stared at his stiff cock, at the pulsating cock head and the thick vein that ran. along the entire length and disappeared in the hairy covering of his testicles.
She felt him spread the tips of her cunt with his fingers, and his tongue darted forward searching for the sensitive bud. He caressed it, rolling it from side to side until she thought she would go mad with the pleasure. Then he pulled his mouth away.
"Come on, baby," he said. "Get with it!"
Despite the fact that she had a different manner of sex in mind, her head moved forward obediently. She moistened her lips and ran them along the vein of his shaft until she reached the hairy forest at the base. She returned her tongue along the same vein, ticking about the ridge of his cock head until he was squirming and thrusting his hips forward in an attempt to bury himself in her mouth.
Michael's head returned to her sex, and she clamped her thighs on either side of his head. While his tongue darted in and out of her cunt, massaging the inflamed clit, she closed her tips over the knob of his cock and felt him force it forward until it lodged against the back of her mouth. Wrapping the fingers of one hand around the thick base, she moved them back and forth to aid her oral stimulation. They moved frantically, wildly; she was near the edge of the mattress and feared she would be tossed onto the floor. She clutched at him, accidentally burying her fingernails in the tender flesh of his rectum. She sensed that this excited him even more and she carefully worked her fingers into the opening, feeling for the nut-shaped prostate gland.
Michael was groaning; she felt the vibration of his lips on either side of his priming tongue, and she opened her mouth to cry out with the ecstasy. He seized upon the opportunity to thrust himself forward. She gagged as the swollen cock pressed into the deep recesses of her throat and pulled her head back to gasp for needed air. It was at that moment that she felt the cock head expand to even greater dimensions and the warm, sour discharge struck the roof of her mouth.
Even after the last spasm shook him and she had managed to swallow his semen without choking, he continued driving his tongue in and out of her quivering body with unfaltering fury.
"Please, Michael!" She wedged her hands' between their bodies and pushed at him. "The other way. I want you to fuck me. I need it."
She expected him to object, but he pulled away willingly, and turning, climbed between her spread legs.
"When you were away I thought I would go mad," she moaned. "And now you're back and you're driving me truly mad." She bit her tip. "Michael, I think I'm falling in love with you."
Of course, you are, he thought. It's all part of the karma, my good fortune. You and your son, and eventually your daughter.
"I love you, baby," he lied.
He ran his fingers along the saliva moistened tips of her cunt and then hunched his buttocks upward so that he could position his still rock hard cock for entry. His entire weight was supported by one hand beside her neck. She had turned her head and was nibbling at the flesh of his forearm, her teeth tearing at the growth of hair.
"Don't be gentle," she whimpered.
Michael pressed the tip of his cock against her cunt's lips and moved it back and forth a couple of times in a teasing manner. He liked the idea that she had begged him not to be gentle. It gave him the opportunity to, unleash the savageness of his passion. He drove his cock forward without concern for anything except his own gratification. She groaned as he pierced her and his cock drove inward along her rippling tunnel. She groaned and her hips jerked. She began to squirm, to claw at his arms with her fingernails. He began to hump and thrust against her, driving himself as deep as the length of his cock would allow. Each time he pulled back, he felt her constrict the muscles of her vagina, felt the pressure against the ridge of his bulging cock's head.
All restraint removed at her request, Michael realized as he drove in and out of her that his brutality was due to the opposite emotion of the love he had so carelessly mouthed. He hated her for her control over him, for her wealth and for his own weakness of easy submission for the sake of a buck. As he screwed her, he was hoping she would cry out in pain and beg him to be gentle. He wanted to hear her whimpering with pain instead of lust.
But Valerie moaned, "Faster!"
He obediently increased his rhythm, crashing down against her body until he thought he would break her bones. Each time he crashed into her, the air was forced suddenly from her mouth and nostrils in a loud gasp. He was perspiring heavily. He felt it standing out on his forehead and running down his face. Some caught at the comer of his mouth and he tasted the bitterness of body salt.
"Now!" She suddenly cried.
She lifted her hips to meet his downward plunge and he-drove her buttocks so hard against the mattress that he heard the springs creakingly threaten to break. She lay totally winded, unmoving, whimpering as if she could not stop. Her body convulsed suddenly, and Michael felt the stickiness of her fluids oozing about the head of his priming cock.
Again and again, he thrust into her.
When his second climax came, his body went rigid. His arms stiffened and held his upper body in an arch away from her. Only their loins touched, driven together so tightly that their flesh seemed to join. His head was back, his mouth open. A continuous groan escaped his throat as his cock sent sprays of semen into the deep recesses of her body.
Drained, he fell' on top of her, his face buried between the two mounds of her breasts.
"Welcome home," she whispered breathlessly.
He could feel her tightening the muscles of her vagina about his still captured cock.
"Rest," she said. "Then I want it again and again. I want it twice for every day you were away from me."
Michael lifted his head weakly and stared into her eyes. Now he thought would be a good time to question her, now that she had been drained and was relaxing.
"Why did I have to take the kids away?" he asked. "What is your husband into that he has to have bodyguards?"
"Shh," she sighed. "Not now. Some other time perhaps." She wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled his face back to her breasts.
"Is he somehow involved with the rackets?" he persisted.
"I said not now," Valerie told him more firmly. "I'll tell you everything you want to know tomorrow ... or the day after."
"You don't trust me," he said poutingly.
"Of course, I do," she assured him. "Yes, he is involved in the rackets. He's very involved. He sent the children away because there was talk that his competitors were going to get him while he was down." She sighed. "But they didn't. A truce was arranged. Now, no more about it tonight." She hugged his head and kissed his forehead. "I don't want to think of those things on your first night back."
Michael's mind was whirling. He was suddenly more wary of Herbert Armstrong, but he was also oddly excited. Whatever the rackets Valerie's husband was involved in, there might be a place for him. He was sure the old man liked him; he had showed it that day in his study when he had told him to take the children to Puerto Rico. He wondered about Jacob. What was his position other than personal servant? But he dared not press the issue, not now. Valerie had warned him in the voice she used with the other servants. It meant she would stand firm, no bending even to his persistent inquiries. He shrugged and nestled his face deeper into her cleavage, knowing his unshaven chin was scratching at the sensitive flesh.
It was the sudden draft of cold air that made both their skins crawl with icy fear. Michael's head snapped around, and Valerie, despite his weight, pulled herself up on her elbows with alarm.
The door was open and standing in the frame, his face twisted with surprise and agony, stood a trembling Duane. His chin fell down as he comprehended the scene into which he had stumbled.
"Oh, God, no!" he cried.
Michael leaped off Valerie and bounded across the room, but he was not quick enough. The boy slammed the door and his footsteps could be heard running down the hallway. Michael flung open the door, but stopped suddenly, aware of his nakedness. His karma, it seemed, had some surprises in store for him.
"Oh, Christ!" Valerie sobbed behind him. "Why didn't you lock the goddamned door?"
Michael turned on her, his face twisted with fury. "Why the hell didn't you?" he bellowed.
His anger smothered her sobs. She pulled herself up in bed and pulled the sheets about her naked breasts as if suddenly made aware of the ugliness of the scene her son had witnessed.
Michael tried to calm himself. The, fact that he had lost his hold on the youth wasn't even considered in his racing mind. His only concern was for the boy's actions.
"What do you think he'll do?" he mumbled.
Valerie gasped as if considering this for the first time. She got out of the bed, the sheet still clutched about her.
"Michael, do you think he would go to his father? Do you?"
"How the hell should I know? He's your son. Don't you know him well enough to suspect how this will affect him?" He reached for his pants and pulled them on over his legs.
"Don't yell at me!" Valerie cried. "Oh, Christ, if you only had locked the door." She began to dress quickly, skipping all her underclothes in her rush.
These she gathered up and treating them like unwanted evidence, shoved them under the mattress. "You!" she said, suddenly turning. "You go to him!"
"No!" Michael knew he was in no condition to face Duane. Even if he had no involvement unknown to her, he knew he was too shook up to explain to a son the reason he had been laying his mother.
"You have no choice," Valerie told him. "Do you know what Herbert would do to me if he knew about our little escapades? Do you know what he'd do to you?"
Michael stared at her, fear beginning to crowd its way into his eyes.
"Herbert's an extremely moral man," Valerie groaned. "He deplores anything he considers degenerate." She began to wring her hands in a fit of nervousness. "He'd kill me!" she cried. "He'd kill you! Oh, Michael, find Duane and try to talk to him."
"I think you should do...."
"No," she interrupted. "At times like these a stranger is often more convincing. You're almost a stranger, Michael." She was now pleading with him for both their sakes. "Please try."
More of a stranger than she, Michael thought. He doubted that. He knew more about her son than she had ever bothered to learn. Regardless, some attempt had to be made on their behalf. He at least had to find out what Duane would do. Neither of them would be able to live with the suspense of just waiting.
He dressed quickly.
"Remember," Valerie told him, "you'll have our lives at stake."
When he left her, she was still mumbling;
"If only you had locked the goddamned door."
The house was quiet, too quiet, Michael thought. It was not yet midnight and even the light under the vindictive Margaret's door was not burning. Careful of the creaking floor, he moved along the outer edge of the hallway where the boards had not been weakened.
At Duane's door, he paused, lifted his hand to knock and then decided against it. It might attract attention and how would he explain his late night sojourn to the youth's bedroom? He pushed the door open and moved inside.
The room was dark, but his ' eyes, already accustomed to the darkness of the hallway, easily picked out the figure of the boy on the bed. He was sobbing quietly, almost undetectably.
"Duane," he whispered. "It's Michael. Please let me talk to you. Let me explain."
"Go away!" The voice was muffled.
Michael moved forward. "I can't. I won't until you've let me talk this out."
The figure on the bed moved, sat up and reached for the lamp.
"Talk then," it said more clearly, and even before the room was filled with light, Michael knew the figure was not Duane but his sister instead.
Margaret laughed at his surprise.
"A lover's spat?" she asked bitterly. "Well, my queer brother isn't here. I came looking for him and naturally when the room was empty I assumed he was with you. I was about to come looking for him when I saw you sneaking down the hall like a common criminal." Her eyes narrowed. "If you've done anything to hurt him," she hissed, "I'll have your balls cut off and your body thrown in the East River."
"Don't get dramatic," Michael said sourly. He was relieved that the inquisitive Margaret had not also showed up to witness her mother's shame.
"I could do it," she said. "And I would too if the silly bastard hadn't told me he thought he was in love with you." She pulled a cigarette from the nightstand drawer and lit it. "But, my sweet chauffeur, it's only puppy love. When he falls out of love with you then you'd better watch out. You'll have me to contend with then and I'm a bloodthirsty bastard just like my father."
"A regular vampire," Michael said. There was much more he would have liked to have said to her, but he was in deep enough as it was. There was no sense in making a worse enemy of her. He backed casually toward the door, hoping she had not spotted the urgency and fear lurking behind his eyes.
"If Duane's upset," she called after him, "you'll find him in the summer house. He always has gone there when something is bothering him regardless of the goddamn weather." She laughed. "He's queer in more ways than one." She laughed again. "But you know all about the summer house, don't you, Michael?"
Michael left without answering. He would tend to Margaret later. Right now there were more pressing problems ... like insuring his life and the continued success of his position.
Michael stood just inside the lattice of the summer house door. The rain had soaked him and he felt frozen to the core. He cussed beneath his breath, his anger rising at Duane for having stumbled into his room while Valerie had been there, at the youth's control over his position and at Valerie because she had not made better arrangements for their privacy. He blamed everyone for the stroke of bad luck except, of course, himself. He was merely a pawn in the drama. Pawns are easily sacrificed, he thought, and a shudder not caused by the cold ran along the length of his spine. He was more frightened than he would even admit to himself.
It was a pitch black night and he could not make out any form inside the small room.
"Duane," he whispered and realized his voice had broken. "Duane, are you here?"
A deep-throated laugh came from the far comer of the darkened room.
"I've been expecting you," Duane said slowly.
Michael turned in the direction of the voice. "Listen, kid," he said. "We've got to talk."
"I don't think talk is necessary." There was a moment of silence in which nothing could be heard except the rain on the roof and the wind howling about the open door.
Michael moved forward a couple of steps, his arms extended like a blind man. "I know you're hurt," he said. "I'm sorry. Truly I am."
The laugh came again, only louder.
"There's nothing about you that could be mistaken for true," he finally said. "I understand a lot now. More maybe than I want to understand."
Michael's eyes were blinded as the youth switched on a flashlight and threw the beam in his face.
"I think I hate you more than anyone I've ever known," Duane moaned.
"What are you going to do?" There, Michael thought, I've come out with it. He waited, his heart pounding with dread.
"You mean, am I going to go to my father with my little discovery?" He moved forward, lowering the beam of the flashlight. "He'd probably have your throat cut from ear to ear," he said. "I wonder what he'd do to her, to my mother. The poor, dumb son-of-a-bitch really loved her. Before his stroke he treated her like some kind of goddess."
"You can't hurt her," Michael cried. "If you go to your father, think what will happen to her even if you want to have revenge on me."
"I've already thought of that," Duane said flatly. "It's amazing how much thinking you can crowd into a few minutes when everything falls apart. I don't want her hurt, although God knows I shouldn't give a damn. She's as low and cheap as you are, Michael. You're two of a kind." He lay the flashlight on the beam of one of the supports and the light filled the room with a glow.
Michael stared at the youth. There was something different about him. The softness of his face was gone, so was the sensitivity that had always shone out of his eyes. They were now cold and filled with hate. Michael knew he was not going to get off Scot free. He cursed himself for having been so greedy and tried to weave both Valerie and her children into the web of his scheme. He could almost feel the cold steel of a knife at his throat.
"There must be something I can do ... something I can say," he mumbled.
"All is not hopeless yet, my friend," Duane told him coldly. "I've thought of that too. My retribution. I think I understand now exactly what you were trying to do to me. You spotted my weakness and forced it to grow for your own advantage. If I wasn't queer, I was of no use to you. Am I right?"
Michael didn't answer.
"It was a low thing to do to me," the youth said. "At a time when I was struggling to find my way, you pushed me in one direction." He sighed, then laughed. "But forget about that. Why do I want to save your rotten skin? Ask me?" he screamed.
Michael cursed himself, but he had no choice but to play along.
"What ... what do you want?" he repeated.
Duane began to walk back and forth in front of him like a warden about to give punishment to an unruly prisoner.
"You've been good at playing the big shit," he said. "You had me, and obviously my mother, at your mercy. Both times when we had sex it was yourself you were thinking about. We had to be satisfied without question." He stopped and faced Michael. "I wasn't."
I'll be goddamned, Michael thought. You screwed up little fairy. You loved every moment of it. And don't speak for your mother. She's twisted around my little finger.
"Is that hard to accept?" Duane demanded.
Michael lowered his head. "Stop playing around and give it to me straight," he said.
"That's exactly what I intend to do," Duane assured him. "But it's my show now. I'm in no hurry. I leave here tomorrow to return to school. The question is do I leave you and my mother to your bed of pleasure, or do I go to my father with the story?"
"You want me to plead with you," Michael suddenly realized. "Is that it?"
"On your knees," Duane hissed. "Take yourself off that pedestal on which you've placed yourself and grovel like the pig you are." His voice rose as he spoke until he was almost screaming. "I want to see the great stud squatting on the floor and pleading with me for mercy."
"I'll never do that!" Michael bellowed. "Me on my knees in front of you? No goddamned fairy is going to pull me down! Not you! Not anyone!"
A smile played across Duane's lips. "Perhaps my father can pull you down permanently," he said, and turning moved toward the door.
"Wait!" Michael was amazed at the obvious fear in his voice. His chest ached and his knees seemed to have turned to putty. He would either have to humiliate himself for Duane's benefit, or he might end up in some country ditch with his throat cut. "If I get down on my knees and plead with you as you ask, will you go back to school and leave things are they are?"
"You're afraid of me, aren't you, Michael?" Duane asked with amusement. "Not only now, but since the beginning. Why is that?" He walked back across the room until he stood directly in front of the cowering chauffeur. "Is it possible that deep down in that worm eaten brain of yours you are also questioning your masculinity? Is there fear hidden in all that rot of your heart?"
Michael's instinct was to strike out, to drive his fist into the boy's face to silence his biting tongue. His fingers clutched at the wet material of his trousers and clung to it tightly so his hands would not obey his impulses.
"I'm pleading with you," he said. "Leave your mother and me in peace. Forget what you saw. Please!"
"On your knees," Duane said. "I told you I wanted to hear it on your knees!"
Michael dropped to his knees. There in the damp summer house, his head bowed over his chest, he faced Duane's first moment of retribution. He had never known such defeat, nor had he expected that a boy of twenty would be the victor.
"There," he begged. "I'm on my knees and I'm pleading with you. Don't go to your father."
He heard Duane moving, saw his feet come a step closer. He could smell the wetness of the wool of his trousers and see the mud on his shoes. There was a sound that he immediately recognized, and his head snapped up in disbelief.
Duane stood with his cock drawn through the open fly of his trousers.
"Now eat it, you son-of-a-bitch! Eat it, or die!"
CHAPTER TEN
Valerie sat nestled in the comer of her seat, her forehead resting against the double-paned window of the train. The snow had melted and the trees had begun to show bits of green. Some of the houses along the tracks had already been given' a coating of whitewash and Saturday husbands were working in their yards.
She had never been so eager to meet the spring. It had been a usual winter. It had had its high points with Michael and its moments of near disaster like the night Duane had caught her with Michael. She had not seen her son since. Their first meeting would be in two weeks when he and Margaret returned home for their spring vacation. At first, she had worried about meeting him, but now the dread had vanished. If he had intended revenge for her betrayal, it would have already shown its ugly face.
Michael had saved them. He had never told her how, or what he and her son had talked about that terrible night. And she had not pressed him; she had been too thankful for the reprieve. She had paid him a handsome sum to show her gratitude. Money was the only thanks Michael could understand.
But he had changed.
As the winter had worn on he had become more and more irritable. He had even taken to avoiding her by taking long walks in the evening when he knew she would come to his room. She had been angry at first, but then, realizing that his attitude had begun to depress her when they were together, she had almost looked forward to his empty room. She had gone to him only when her needs had dictated, when her desire was stronger than her will.
Yes, she thought, it had been a long winter.
Herbert had somewhat recovered. He could stand now for short periods of time, even walked across a room without Jacob at his elbow, and he could talk without slurring his words. He continued to com? to the dinner table even though there was only the two of them, and he continued to fumble his food. It was almost as if he continued it because he knew it irritated her so much. Their conversations were short, polite and avoided as often as possible. She knew she should be kinder, but she could not bring herself to react to him in any other way. He was a cripple, a shell of the man he had been, and she secretly resented his surviving his stroke to saddle her with such a husband.
Valerie closed her eyes and let the jostling of the train coach quiet her. The shopping trip into New York City had been her first since the time she had gone searching for a stud and had found Michael. The city was its most pleasant during this time of the year. People's personalities seemed to be emerging with the change of the season. Even the department store clerks and waiters seemed to make an effort at friendliness. Soon, however, the summer humidity would return them to the same state as the winter cold.
It was an endless cycle.
Now, in the peacefulness of the train, she almost dreaded her return home. She would have to tolerate Herbert and put up with Michael's bad moods. You made your bed, she thought, so learn to live with it.
"We meet again."
Even before she opened her eyes, she recognized the warm, masculine voice.
"Do you mind if we share the same seats again?"
He was older than she remembered, taller, and his face was deeply tanned. She remembered seeing the young woman rush into his arms that night at the station and she wondered if she would ever see him again.
"We're such old friends," she said, "how could I refuse?" She pulled the tail of her mink coat from the seat as he sat beside her.
He was smiling, showing straight white teeth, and his eyes sparkled with good humor and a hint of suggestiveness.
"Of course, it won't be the same as last time," he said. "It's still daylight and the coach is almost full."
"That's a pity," she said, and meant it. Aside from Michael, he had been the only man capable of lifting her to the extreme heights of sexual gratification.
"I've looked for you often," he said.
"And you've found several substitutes," she mocked. "Commuter adventuresses."
"None like you," he flattered, and he sounded so genuine, she believed him.
"You're quite the Don Juan," Valerie told him. "I've thought of you often, too." It was a lie; she hadn't thought of him until she had climbed on the train in Manhattan.
His hand brushed her thigh and she felt a tingling sensation shoot up into her loins. The hand then returned boldly, rubbing her leg and trying to dig into the material of her dress at the point above her cunt.
"There's one stop before ours," he said. He was breathing heavily, excited by her calm acceptance of his hand on her body. "We could get off. There's a small hotel not far from the station." He swallowed and wet his lips. "We could have one hell of a time for ourselves and then take the next train."
Valerie smiled and looked thoughtfully at the scenery rushing past the window. She could tell Herbert she had missed her train and had had to wait for the later one. And Michael? He had been furious with her for going into the city without him. Let him stew. It would serve him right for becoming so moody.
The man took her silence as a rejection. He pulled his hand away.
"Well, perhaps some other time," he said with disappointment. "We could have had a good time."
The train began to slow, the wheels screeching on the rails.
"We still can," Valerie said quickly. "I need a good time. I need one badly."
He had gathered up her packages before she had finished speaking.
Valerie rolled onto her side, propped her head up on her hand, and stared down at the semi erected cock that was lengthening quickly. Gently, she began working her hand up and down the swelling shaft, pausing occasionally to press her fingers into the mushroom shaped knob.
"I'm glad we met," he said. His head came forward and his mouth fastened about the nipple of her right breast.
Valerie, not speaking, looked down at the now throbbing cock in her hand and thought how tiny it made her hand appear, how fragile. Her consuming need to feel his cock inside her, tearing at the walls of her cunt and driving her mad with lust was almost more than she could bear. Something, some unexplained feeling she had lost with Michael, returned and she felt like an animal intent only on satisfying its instinctual urge for sex. The pressure of her hand increased until he pulled back, stared into her eyes for a fraction of a second, and then reached for her. He lifted his body, and pulled her beneath him.
"Enough of the preliminaries," he mumbled. "Let's get down to business. We haven't much time until the next train."
His haste annoyed her, but she did not voice her objection. She felt the head of his cock press against the lips of her cunt and the desire burning within her loins blotted out all else. She felt her body straining to receive him and raising her buttocks from the mattress, she met his first hungry thrust. As the lips of her cunt stretched about his thickness, he began to shove forward and pull back teasingly, denying her the full thrust of his enormous cock.
"Don't tease," she whimpered. "Fuck me like you fucked me that night on the train!"
He grunted and pushed into her and she could feel his huge cock slicing deep into the very depths of her sex. Forcing his hands beneath her buttocks and cupping her fleshy cheeks, he pulled her lower body upright to bury himself even deeper. Valerie caught her breath and locked her arms about his neck as she felt his chest bang down roughly against her breasts. The dingy hotel room, the registering under the suspicious eye of the clerk, all these things were forgotten.
She wanted to call out his name in her passion, but she had failed to ask it. He had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lewis of San Francisco, but she was certain his name was not Robert.
So she cried, "Baby, you're wonderful!" It was personal enough under the circumstances.
He began to slam into her like a man gone crazy, humping his narrow buttocks so that his thick cock was withdrawn to the very tip before driving back into her burning cunt.
Then almost immediately after he had begun he sucked in his breath in a gasp, grunted, and rammed deep into her and froze. For one panic stricken moment she thought he had reached a rabbit climax. Then slowly he began again and she heaved a sigh of relief.
Pulling himself up and supporting his weight on his hands, he bent his head and stared down at his cock driving in and out of her cunt. Valerie, too, lifted her head. Sight of his thick cock stretching her flesh excited her more. She began to squirm, to clamp her internal muscles tighter as if to deny him the ability to retract his priming cock. As the friction increased, he threw his head back, his mouth open, and bellowed like a bull.
"Suck my breasts!" she pleaded.
His mouth obeyed with quick obedience. He bit and chewed and she thought for an instant what fury the bites would create in Michael. He would stare at the fresh bruises and know he had not made them. The young bastard would be beside himself. He would doubt her for the first time since he had come to live at the house. She clamped her hands around the stranger's head and forced it even tighter against her.
"Don't be gentle," she cried.
And he wasn't.
She thought she had never met so obedient a sex partner. He instantly obeyed her every whim. If only Michael had remained like that.
Forget Michael, she told herself. You're being screwed by a very nicely experienced stranger. Even Michael would have trouble matching his performance.
She could feel the gathering force of completion.
"Oh, Jesus!" he cried; and she. felt his huge cock swell even more as it drove the fluids of his climax into the depth of her cunt. Again and again the spasms shook his body. On the last surge, she felt the dam within her break and the lust ebbed out of her as it oozed about his spurting cock.
He lay on her for some time, spent and weakened, his breath coming heavily with a wheezing sound. Then as if with renewed energy, he rolled off her and climbed off the squeaking bed.
"If I don't get away from you, I'll want you again," he told her. "You're great, lady. The greatest!"
Valerie stretched and hoped she looked provocative with her hair and make-up in disarray.
"Why not take me again?" she moaned.
"I'd like nothing more," he said, "but it's out of the question. I don't know what your circumstances are but I have a wife waiting at the next station." He reached for his trousers and sat at the foot of the bed to pull them on.
"I see," Valerie mumbled, her disappointment obvious. She poked at his naked thigh with her toe. "A stop along the line," she said. "Wham ... Bam ... thank you, lady. You're the greatest!"
He turned and looked at her, his face serious.
"Don't spoil it," he told her. "You are the greatest! And I should know." He stuffed his shirt tail into his waistband and stooped to search for his hastily discarded. shoes.
"I'm sorry," Valerie said. "I don't mean to spoil it. I like your frankness." She, too, rose and began to dress.
"We'll go out the back," he told her. "There's no need getting the clerk's suspicions up anymore than they are. We may want to use this place again."
Valerie smiled at him. "Is that an invitation for a return match?"
"It is. And I hope to hell you accept it," he said. "I'll give you my card. Call me when you're free and we can meet here." He reached into his breast pocket and handed her a small white business card.
She read; Robert Lewis, Systems Analyst.
Perhaps, she thought, he was too truthful.
But she opened her purse and dropped the card inside. Michael would not always be around. There might be a day or some lonely night when she would think of this afternoon and wish she could contact Robert Lewis, Systems Analyst.
Michael not around!
It seemed an odd thing to consider. She had already begun to take his presence for granted. She realized he had become something to contend with, like Herbert or two grown children who always reminded her of her aging. But she would not always be able to hold onto Michael. He would eventually sneak away from her. Then there would be no more convenient sojourns to his bedroom at midnight. She would have to rely on men like Robert Lewis, men who took her for occasional lays. Such thoughts made Michael suddenly seem so vulnerable.
The train whistle sounded in the distance.
"Until next time," Robert said.
And she threw her mink over her shoulders and followed him quietly down the backstairs of the hotel.
As soon as Valerie entered the house she had the strange feeling of something amiss. She stood just inside the door, her coat still on and her purse in her hand. Perhaps, she thought, it was only the silence that had alarmed her. The soft music that usually filled the house from the drawing room had been shut off. Although it was nearing dusk, no lights had been turned on.
She stepped to the door of the hallway leading to the kitchen and called, "Cleo."
But there was no answer from the usually alert maid. She could hear no pots and pans rattling even though dinner should have been in progress. Herbert could have given her the day off, but it was unlike him.
Shrugging, Valerie removed her mink and passed on into the heart of the house. She had spotted the limousine in the garage, so she knew Herbert had not gone out; that also meant Michael was somewhere, probably brooding in his room. She remembered the bruises on her breasts and smiled at the scene she knew would face her when he saw them.
She was still smiling when the door to Herbert's study opened suddenly and Jacob stood in the frame.
"Mrs. Armstrong, your husband would like to see you," he said flatly.
She could see Herbert beyond Jacob's shoulder. He was sitting at his desk, his hands folded before him and an ill-advised cigar smoking in the ashtray.
"I'll be with you as soon as I put this away," she called, ignoring Jacob.
"Now!" the burly servant told her.
"Yes, Valerie," she heard Herbert add. "This will not wait."
"Very well." She dropped her mink and purse onto a chair.
As she moved toward the door, Jacob stepped back for her to enter. There was a mysterious smile lurking in his eyes and about his lips. It reminded her of how much she hated him and of how often she had tried to have Herbert dismiss him. But Jacob, her husband had sworn, was a necessity to a man in his business. She gave him the cold stare of a displeased employer and expected him to exit the study as she entered.
But he did not. He closed the door' gently and remained.
It wasn't until she was completely in the room and halfway across the floor to Herbert's desk that she realized there was a fourth party present. Turning, she saw Michael, and she gasped slightly.
He was sitting in the far comer, slumped down, his head over his chest and his arms dangling almost lifelessly from the chair arms. He looked up and she recognized the sheer horror in his eyes.
"What is it, Herbert?" Her voice sounded remarkably calm for the panic thumping in her chest Still acting the lady of the house, she crossed to the one straight-back chair and sat down. She realized her gloves were still on, and needing time to compose herself, she made a production of removing them.
Herbert waited patiently until the procedure had been completed and she had sat back to meet his gaze. Then he leaned forward, his face flushed but his voice steady.
"I had news from our children today," he said.
Valerie tried not to let Michael enter her gaze. She knew that sight of him would only cause her panic to return and take control of her.
"About when they'll arrive?" she asked.
"No, dear." Herbert picked up his cigar and stuck the darkened saliva covered tip in his mouth. When he continued, he spoke through clinched teeth. "It was rather interesting news. Not from the children themselves. But from the school counselors."
She let some of her genuine alarm creep through. "Is anything wrong with them?"
Herbert smiled, distortedly because of the cigar. "We'll get to that," he said. "But first," he turned to Michael, "have you no greeting for your lover?"
Duane, Valerie thought immediately. The little pig! "You see I've known for sometime about your relationship," her husband continued. "I'm not an unreasonable man. I knew you were a physical woman. You always have been. I also knew that when I was incapable of satisfying your nighttime needs you would go elsewhere."
"Herbert, I...."
He held up his hand for her to remain silent. "Let me finish. When this handsome young man was suddenly hired to replace the unfortunate Bigalow ... speaking of Bigalow, I found him and have offered him his job back. He was a loyal chauffeur. Anyway, when this young man suddenly showed up, I had him checked out. It wasn't difficult. The agency for which he worked as a gigolo kept an adequate file on him. I believe they even had a notation about his ample endowment." Valerie glanced at Michael. He had gone completely white. His eyes dept darting toward the door as if judging his chances of escape. They were slim; Jacob was holding down the fort. She turned back to Herbert. "Is all of this necessary?"
"It is." He dropped the foul smelling cigar into the ashtray and again folded his hands on the desktop like a professor lecturing a rebellious student. "When you brought your lover into my home I was enraged at first," he told her. "Then I adjusted. I reasoned that it was better to have him here instead of meeting you in some cheap motel where people might see and gossip. You know how I deplore gossip." His eyes narrowed.
"I was jealous also, but I learned to swallow that. It was more difficult to live with than my impaired speech and twisted body. But all things pass."
Valerie stood suddenly. "Why are you telling me all of this? If you know, you know. What can be gained by throwing it in my face?"
"Sit down!" he said firmly.
Valerie noted that Jacob had taken a step forward. She knew he matched her hatred. He would have loved to be let loose with her. She sat. Her gloves had slipped to the floor when she had stood. She stared down at them, oddly noting that the fingers were smudged with lipstick and dirt.
"Because I want you to know the entire truth," Herbert said, "I have been holding your lover until your return. We've been waiting patiently." He sighed. "I suppose you missed your train."
He knew, she thought. He had had her watched. She continued to stare at her gloves without answering.
"Whatever," Herbert said. He stood, and without the slightest show of difficulty moved around the desk and sat with his legs stretched out on the floor. "Now for the news of our children. Our daughter is pregnant." Valerie's head shot up.
"Yes," Herbert told her. "Pregnant. She says that your lover, Michael Santos, is the father!"
"It's not true!" Even as she screamed it, she knew it was the truth. Her eyes met Michael's and he looked quickly away.
"But that is not all," Herbert said. "Now there is the problem of our son."
"Duane," she mumbled absently. Her head was whirling, her chest aching. She slumped back in her chair.
"It seems our son has been expelled. Would you like to know for what? Let me tell you. Or would you prefer to give her the news, Mr. Santos?"
Michael whimpered. "Please! Please let me go!"
"He hasn't the guts to tell you," Herbert hissed. "Our son was caught sucking off another student in the public showers! He's a fairy! A goddamned faggot!" His voice cracked and he clutched at the edge of the desk to support himself.
"You can't blame me for that!" Michael suddenly cried.
Herbert glared at him. "Can't I? It's strange that my son blames you. You tipped the scales, I believe those were his exact words." He turned back to Valerie. "So you see, my dear, what harm you have done by bringing your ruthless bastard of a lover into his house? Our daughter has a bastard growing in her stomach and our son's a fairy. And, by god, I want justice!"
Valerie was struggling to keep herself from fainting. She knew how Herbert hated such feminine weaknesses. If she fainted, he would only become more infuriated.
"What are you going to do?" she asked weakly.
"To you?" He reached for the silver tipped cane leaning against the desk and began to move around the room. "Nothing. Or almost nothing," he finally said. "You're the mother of these two Frankensteins who are our children. You cap damned well spend the rest of your life trying to help them. That's your debt to the Piper. That and the fact that when I die I intend to see that you don't get one penny more than the law requires."
"You wouldn't!"
"I would and I will! And if you think you'll sue for divorce to change that fate, I'll ... I'll see to it that you suddenly become accident prone." He turned and motioned toward Jacob.
The burly servant moved into action. Crossing the room, he grabbed Michael roughly by the arm, pulled him to his feet and half-walked, half-dragged him to the center of the room where he stood cowering in front of Herbert Armstrong.
Valerie stared at Michael. She noted his terror and she felt no compassion. Her daughter and her son! She shuddered and tears of anger filled her eyes.
"And you," Herbert said to Michael. "What fate do you think you deserve?"
Michael made one last attempt at bravery. "You're not God," he cried. "You can't deal out punishments like this!"
Herbert laughed. "An ironic statement," he said. "I'm not God. True. Neither are you, my oversexed stud! And what were you being while you played around with the lives of my family? Answer me, you slimy son-of-a-bitch!"
Michael's lithe, muscular torso that Valerie had so loved suddenly seemed to be without backbone or solid frame. His shoulders slumped, his head fell back and he bellowed, "Please don't hurt me!"
Valerie buried her face in her hands. An overgrown child, that was all Michael was. She didn't understand why, perhaps her motherly instinct to protect, but she found herself screaming, "Leave him alone!"
"Shut your fucking mouth!" Herbert screamed back. He motioned to Jacob.
The servant, waiting impatiently, suddenly drew back his fist and slammed it into Michael's stomach with as much power as he possessed. Michael, clutching himself, threw his upper body forward, in agony. As his head came down, Herbert Armstrong's cane flew through the air to meet it.
Michael felt and heard the splintering of breaking bone as his nose was split open. He sank to his knees as the blood gushed out over his uniform jacket and the carpet. "Not my face!" he begged.
Valerie felt she was going to puke. She grabbed at her throat and swallowed the bile that rose up at sight of the blood splattered over the carpet.
"Herbert, please," she pleaded. Despite her repulsion, she felt an odd sense of appeasement at Michael's fate. It was so like him to face death and show concern with damage to his face. Even now she knew he was thinking of his own handsomeness, how he must protect it at all cost. But she also felt guilt because her punishment had been so slight in comparison to what she suspected Herbert had planned for him.
Jacob, enjoying his taste, drew back his foot and kicked Michael hard in the side. He toppled over, falling on his back clutching at his stomach with one hand and trying to cover his face with the other. His screams of agony filled the room.
"Hold his hands," Herbert said coldly.
Jacob bent, grabbed both of Michael's hands, and stretched his arms above his head. Valerie thought he looked like a butcher preparing to drag a slaughter pig away from the chopping block. She found her voice and rose screaming, running at her husband.
But she did not reach him before his cane came down a second time in a crashing blow across Michael's face.
"Stop it!" she screamed. "What are you going to do, tell your grandchild how you killed its father?" In her desperation, she knew instinctively where to attack her husband. She knew his moral views, knew that he would never allow Margaret to have an abortion. He believed too much in the old-fashioned views attached to a mother and child. How often he had told her how he wished all the angel makers would be sent to the gallows. It was one of the secrets she kept from him, the fact that she had gone to an abortionist when she had found herself pregnant with a third child and had not wanted it. He might have forgiven her anything but that. Margaret would have her child and he would love it as if it were legitimate. "How will you ever be able to face your daughter's child if you do this!" she screamed.
Jacob grunted his disapproval of her interference. He continued to hold the arms of the unconscious Michael, waiting for a continuation of Herbert's beating.
"You're right," Herbert groaned suddenly. "My God, you're right!" He dropped his cane and moved doggedly back to his desk. "I can't kill the son-of-a-bitch," he moaned. "I can't even have that satisfaction." He literally fell into his chair. Bringing his arms to the desktop, he buried his face in them and his back began to shake with sobs. After a moment, he composed himself slightly, and lifting his head, said to Jacob, "Take him to the hospital. Tell them he had an accident and you found him."
Valerie added, catching the gleam in Jacob's face, "I'll call the hospital. If he should arrive in worse condition than he is now, I'll call the police myself."
"I can follow orders," Jacob told her coldly. "I'm loyal." He glared at her with contempt and hoisted the bleeding Michael up in his arms.
The last Valerie saw of Michael he was being carried from the study, his arms dangling limply, his nose and face pouring blood onto Jacob's jacket, and the big man handling him as if he were no more of a burden than a lifeless doll.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was night and snowing, the blanket of whiteness concealing most of the dirt and filth of the Manhattan streets. Even the whores and derelicts trudging along the Forty-second Street sidewalks seemed to be coated with a purifying whitewash.
Michael stood in a doorway, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his head pulled down into the collar of his coat. His fingers were holding to the change in his pocket, enough to buy him coffee or a subway ride to another section of the city. Neither would have been of much comfort. The coffee would only keep him awake and another section of the city would offer no better chances of finding a mark for the night.
He leaned his head against the crumbling plaster of the building and stared out at the street. His eyes were watering from the cold and his feet were frozen from the snow blowing in about the bottom' of the door's arch.
My world, he thought as he watched the hookers and potential customers moving along the street. He knew he would be here late tonight as he was most nights. He would get only the dregs of the sexually hungry, the customers the other whores and fags had refused. Only then, when desperation was at its peak, would the buyers convince themselves that his face was of no consequence. They would put up with the grotesque scar that ran from the corner of his right eye to his jaw; they might even question him about it later after their urgency had been relieved. And he would tell them the story he had come to recite like the script from a Broadway play, embellishing some points such as his success as a gigolo and leaving out others like his cowardice when the scars had been received. In his story, he was, of course, the hero, the man sought after by a nymphomaniac another, sex-starved daughter and fairy son. He had tried to ignore their persistence, had fought against them with all his strength, but in the end they had worn him down. He had submitted and had suffered the wrath of the husband and father when he had discovered. The customers always cried, "Injustice!" And he was generally given a little more than his customary charge. The women were the most moved; understanding, they said, the evilness of such a woman as he had painted Valerie Armstrong.
Since he had returned to Manhattan, Michael had seen Madelaine on the street. He had been walking and had found himself outside the village apartment. When he had seen her, he had known his unconscious had brought him to her building. He had meant to approach her, but when she had come gaily sauntering down the steps, he had thought of his face and her reaction to its deformity, and he had turned and run.
He knew he would never attempt to see her again.
"It's a lousy goddamned night!"
Michael lifted his head and stared down at Gertie, the plump prostitute who shared her apartment with him. She was hatless, the collar of her rabbit coat pulled up about her ears so that her hair seemed to become a part of the coat that could be removed or worn like a hood.
"I'm about to pack it in," she said. "You had any luck?"
-Michael shook his head.
"Too bad. Well, we've had nights like this before," she said. "Say, I was reading the paper at the drug store. You know that broad you told me about? Well, her daughter's getting herself married. Real society wedding."
Michael smiled to himself. Margaret married, that pleased him for some reason. Maybe it was the knowledge that his kid would be getting a father. He thought of Valerie as a typical grandmother, constantly called upon to babysit with his child.
"Life is one fucking ironic soap opera," he said.
"Yeah," Gertie agreed, not knowing or caring what he meant. "Listen," she said, "let's both pack it in. We'll go home. I'll open a can of beans and you can tell me that story again."
"You've heard it a thousand times already," Michael reminded her.
"I know, but I like to hear it. Come on. You're not going to catch anything here except a cold." She took a few steps, stopped and waited for him.
Michael stepped out of the doorway and they picked up each other's pace as they hurried toward the one room apartment above a deli. He knew exactly what lay ahead for the evening. He would tell his story, Gertie would listen wide-eyed. In the end, she might want him to lay her.
But she'd have to pay like a regular customer. It was part of their agreement.
The money went into his savings for plastic surgery. In a few years he would have enough to have the scar removed.
"Then," he would say, "I'll get back on top. I'll find me the richest broad in New York City. I'll be back on Easy Street and all of this will just seem like a bad dream."
But he knew it was just a fantasy.
He had had his chance and his greed had spoiled it. He would never get another.
But the fantasy was the tranquilizer that let him sleep and he clung to it as desperately as he did to life itself.
