As in Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, the protagonist of this novel has the surface veneer of herself scratched, and finds that anthropological reality lurks very close to the polish and mores acquired through societal guidance and taboos.
A woman who has been patterned in false swirlings and rigid convolutions imposed upon her true self, by pressures not of her own making, has long been trapped, as have been so many quietly unhappy and silently frustrated individuals, in the modern press of obligation and conformation.
When she is forced by circumstances to flee familiar surroundings, she finds herself in a situation totally new, one where force and dominance is the new law. Degraded and overwhelmed by brute strength, semi-paralyzed by fear and the unknown forces beginning to unleash themselves within her newly awakened body, she is at last forced to draw strength and substance from within herself, where all true power lies.
At first buffeted from all sides by a seemingly irresistible and implacably cruel fate, she is in danger of being de-individualized, of losing her former identity, however unhappy, to the horrors of the imprisoning situation in which she finds herself. She has fled from one form of social retribution only to plunge into a morass of moral quicksand from which she cannot extricate herself.
Too, she is carrying an added burden besides that of her own guilt-the responsibility for another, younger life. Struggling to maintain a grip on sanity, she must also be responsible for the safety and well-being of another girl.
Forced to accept the sensual realities of herself, she begins to understand her own body, her own mind. Through a form of shock treatment, she feels a new concept of herself growing stronger by the hour. She learns to look deeply, to feel deeply, and realizes that the primary guilt has been society's, not her own, except in the sense that she has allowed herself to be manipulated and controlled by other people.
Gathering courage through insight, and via the introduction of yet another ingredient in the form of a real and Randian-selfish man, she slowly but positively becomes whole. A brighter life is in the offing for her, and because she has learned through experience, she will be ready to take this life in both hands, to live and enjoy it to the fullest.
This novel appears as a study in both personal relationships and the dimly understood workings of the human ego, symbolizing the villain forces of society in the person of a savagely dominant antagonist. It also shows how an individual can and may resist the shapings forced upon her, if she can but discover and tap the wellspring of her true identity.
-The Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
Heather stared in shock, in utter disbelief, unable to reconcile what she'd heard with what her mind told her could not be so. Stiff-lipped, she asked, "W-what? What did you say?"
The man showed his teeth at her; at the younger sister by her side. "Said I mean to fuck you, city woman."
Hands shaking, Heather reached for her sister. "Come on, Honey. This man must be insane, and we'd better get away from here."
That's when the man slapped her, suddenly and viciously along the cheek, and Heather staggered, almost fell off the sagging porch. She caught the rail for support and spread her feet. Her eyes were out of focus and there was a buzzing in her head, but she heard her sister squeal, and heard the ominous rumbling of the big hound in the yard.
"Don't," she said. "Oh, don't hurt the girl.. . . "
And as he dragged Honey by on the wooden porch, the man struck Heather again. This time she fell to her knees on the rough boards, her head swinging and her mouth open. It was some kind of crazy dream, she thought, some wild nightmare that couldn't last forever, that would soon end and allow her to wake up.
The hound snarled in the yard, deep and menacing, and the threat echoed around inside her head. Clinging to the porch rail, Heather fought to clear her eyes. She wanted to scream, to yell for the police, for anyone who might help-but there was nobody to help this far out in the piney woods. There was only the snarling hound, and the man who seemed more animal than his dog.
Slowly, Heather came to her feet again, and saw the man looping a piece of rope around her sister's wrists. Another loop, and Honey was tied to a porch post.
The man said, "You just set there, little woman. You can watch how I fuck the other'un, and see what you got comin' afore long. Might tell you, do you try to run, ol' Bigdog yonder will tear your little ass off."
Heather said, "I-I have some money, some travelers' checks I can sign. . . . "
He moved toward her, pale green eyes holding to her throat, licking at her breasts. "I 'spect you'll sign 'em, all right. But right now ain't the time for that; it's the time for takin' off that city dress and gettin' yourself ready to fuck."
"Wait," she said, "please-I don't understand. I mean. . . . "
Snakelike, unexpectedly, his lean hand flashed out and hooked into the front of her thin summer dress. Heather gasped as the material ripped away, as he jerked again and held the filmy green dress in both hands. He watched her reaction as he shredded the material, as he tore it without effort into rags and let them fall to the porch.
"You got some fine titties there," he said, showing the long teeth at her in a wet smile. "Let's see 'em in the light."
Trembling, Heather reached around and unhooked the bra before he could tear that off, too. Although the hot, muggy air clung to her exposed skin, she felt pin prickles arising. She tried again: "I-I can get you a lot of money."
He pointed a fingertip at her panties, and Heather hurried to peel them down, her very-soul shrinking within her taut body as she exposed her secret places to his lascivious stare.
"Well, now," he said, licking at his lips, "always wanted to know was a redheaded woman red on the pussy, too. Sure is, ain't it? Looks like it'd burn a man's pecker clear off. City woman like you knows all the tricks, I reckon."
Heather took a backward step, feeling with her left foot. Behind her, the dog growled deep in its black chest and she flinched. She couldn't run off and leave her sister to this brute, anyway. Even if she could get past the hound, she was still responsible for Honey's well-being, as she had always been.
"Go on in the house and take a quilt off'n the bed," the man ordered. "Never mind peelin' your eye at the gun over the fireplace, neither; it ain't loaded. Move, woman!"
His eyes touched her as she walked past, and the feel of them upon her buttocks was a terrible intimacy. Heather hadn't even liked to be naked with her husband, not naked right out in the open, and walking nude before this stranger was a revolting thing. But she was afraid and she was still in a state of shock. Pausing at a rumpled bed inside the shadowed clutter of the cabin, Heather lifted the patchwork quilt and turned.
Better her than her sister, she thought, at least she had been married and knew about men. Honey was only sixteen years old, and innocent. But this terrible man meant to-to have intercourse with the child, too. Maybe Heather could find some way to stop that-bribe or tempt the man somehow or, failing that, get Honey and herself away where they could find police, find help.
Her face hot with shame, Heather moved back onto the porch of the weather-beaten shack, carrying the quilt in front of her body, grateful for its shelter. The man said, "Spread it yonder, where your sister can watch good."
Honey said, "Heather-don't worry, we'll be okay."
Heather glanced at her sister bound, sitting tied to a post as if she were some lower form of life. Then she spread the quilt as she had been commanded, laying it smooth across the uneven boards, blushing again as she realized that the man was standing behind her and eyeing her buttocks.
If only she hadn't taken the other man's advice and come up this back road looking for a cabin to rent; if only she hadn't yielded to impulse and run to earth here in this backwoods country. She should have kept going, traveling anywhere out of the country, even. They might have made it fine, even though she felt the Company had people checking airports and bus lines. That's why she hadn't driven any farther than Memphis before switching rental cars, leaving the second one in Jackson. The Company would be nosing around rental agencies, too. But its thugs wouldn't know where to start from Jackson; there'd been an ancient train, then a dusty bus, and a cheap car bought from a lot in Meridian.
"You got you a fine ass, too," the man said behind her, and Heather sat back on her heels. He put a bare and dirty foot against the small of her back and shoved her flat on her stomach. "Yes, sir, a mighty fine ass, all soft and shiny. Sure glad ol' Artis headed you this way, but I 'spect he's frettin' over it some himself. Ol' Artis always been a cunt chaser, but I reckon he never got none good as yours."
Heather rolled over and drew up her knees protectively, crossing her arms over her breasts as fear bit deeper into her heart. She forgot that her younger sister was forced to watch her shame, forgot the other fear that had driven her from her home up north; now there was only the man taking off his overalls, the horrible hillbilly man who meant to-to rape her.
Even with her husband-her dead husband-Heather had never been exactly comfortable about sex. It had always been something under the sheets, a quick and hurried thrusting that had never quite completed the promise of her body. But now, now with the strange man stepping out of his clothing here in the bright hotness of a summer day, she knew that all her nightmares were about to come true, that a brutal, debauched man was just about to stick his evil and ugly penis into her-her thing-and soil it.
"Look here," the man said, "look here at this piece of meat; ain't many city men got meat like this, I 'spect. And I ain't put this pecker into no woman for so long, it's about forgot the feel of hot pussy. Reckon it'll remember soon enough."
Ugly, Heather thought, staring mesmerized at the man's outthrust penis-so ugly and threatening-a penis was bad enough in the dark when it felt for her pubic mound, but out in the light like this. Heather shuddered and drew into a tighter ball. The head of it was a deep pink with little bumps scattered over its surface. There was a slit in it, a blind mouth without eyes over it, and-oh no!-something shiny was oozing out of the slit.
The shaft of it was thick, long; it had veins curling up and around its pale white flesh, and it rose menacingly from a nest of corn silk hair in the man's crotch. It was too big, she thought, her husband's penis hadn't been that big, and since Vic's thing was the only one she had ever taken inside her unwilling body, there was the chance that she couldn't stretch enough to fit something larger. So big and so ugly this one was, and she wondered fleetingly how it was possible for some women to actually like having a thing like that pushed into the privacy of their inner bodies.
He was kneeling upon the quilt now, the heavily tanned portions of his neck and hands odd against the whiteness of the rest of his body that had never been open to the sun. He was holding his penis in his right hand, fondling it with obscene affection, while his left hand reached out to touch Heather's buttock. She flinched and shivered, and a scream gathered itself deep within her being, but she dared not let it burst forth. This depraved man would beat her for screaming, she was certain.
Breath caught in her tense throat, Heather clenched her hands as he stroked her haunches, feeling and caressing in a way that made her feel dirty down below the skin.
The man said, the words rasping out of his throat in a growing excitement, "I never screw no woman without she knows who's puttin' the pecker to her, every whore in the county knows me by name and never makes no complaint. I'm Arley Santee, and I been wantin' to fuck me a genuine, high class city woman all my life. Been wantin' to stick it to a redheaded woman, too, and I guess I'm just pure-D lucky you're a redheaded city woman. I got to thank ol' Artis for tollin' you up to the house."
Heather's eyes were distended, and her mouth went dry as a pulse beat heavily in her throat. "P-please," she said, "oh, please don't do this to me. I-I don't like it. Oh, please!"
His hand clamped down on her buttock and Heather groaned at the sudden pain. Arley Santee said, "You'll like it from me. You're agoin' to get fucked by a farm boy for a change, and you'll like it so much you're going to be hollerin' for more prick. Just because you're some kind of high class city bitch, don't try and act shitty around ol' Arley, 'cause I'll just tear up your ass for it."
With that, he flipped Heather over onto her back and slapped her arms away from her breasts as he forced one knee between her legs.
"Them nipples is near about long as a Jersey cow's," he said. "I purely appreciate good titties on a woman, I sure do." And Arley put both his lean, tanned hands upon her breasts.
He kneaded them, pushed them down with his palms and let them spring up again. He rubbed the nipples between thumbs and forefingers and Heather felt them turning stiff, felt them hardening. She bit her lips in disgust at her own body, and knew the reaction for what it was-nothing sensual, but only a response to stimulation.
Forcing herself to look at the man, she saw again his cornsilk hair, the old paleness of washed-out green eyes, the sunbrowned face, and the teeth long and sharp as those of his vicious hound. Arley, he said-Arley Santee-and Heather wondered if many victims of rapists knew the names of their ravishers.
"Big, solid titties," he was saying as he worked his knee up between her thighs. "Good titties all round and full." Arley dipped his body suddenly, and Heather writhed at the impact of his face upon her breasts.
Oh, no, she thought, oh, no, no! He was snuffling at her nipples, mashing them with his hands and rubbing his whiskery cheeks against them. Bestial, she thought, childish and animal-like and, oh, lord, wet and suctioning! He was mouthing her nipple, drawing it between his teeth and lapping it with his hot, wet tongue. Nobody had ever done that to her before-not her husband, and not the two boyfriends she had before Vic.
The sensation was maddening, a jarring, violent feeling that swept through her body, spreading quickly from the hot, pulling mouth upon her nipple. Heather's body squirmed, heaved in reflex, and she caught at his head to try and pull him away from her breasts before-before something she didn't know but was afraid of.
Arley Santee wouldn't let go. She let out a noise of pain as he bit down upon the tender flesh of her breast, and he chose that very moment to shove his hand between his knee and her pubic mound. Her eyes flew wide at the shock. He kept sucking at her nipple while he played with her mound, while he violated the sanctity of her vulva. It was wrong-wrong-and the sinful whiplashes of her guilt stung Heather as this man, this stranger, this rapist roughly fondled her crotch. Her legs shook and her feet kicked gently against the quilt beneath them.
Suddenly, brutally, he let his teeth rake across her nipple and jerked his face up so he could fasten his mouth over her own. Oh, lord, oh, help, she thought helplessly, futilely-and his thick, wet tongue pushed irresistibly through her lips and into her reluctant mouth.
Heather made strangled noises, hurt sounds, as he tongued over her teeth and the roof of her mouth, as he licked and pushed the extension of himself into her unwilling mouth. Then he was drawing upon her own tongue, sucking it back into his mouth, chewing lightly upon it, then harder until her body bucked in painful outrage below his.
Arley's hard hand clamped upon her sensitive mound, and Heather moaned, twisted, in an effort to get away. But there was no chance, no hope, and when his finger pushed violently up into her quivering labia, up into the lips of her entrance, Heather could only recoil in outrage. It went inside and it felt around and it tickled-but she would concentrate upon the invasion, upon the force, the unwelcome entry of it. Still, there was a tickle that she struggled valiantly to deny.
"Hot and tight," he panted into her gasping mouth. "Yeah, you redheaded city slut, it's all hot and tight and just turnin' slick for me-get-tin' all ready for ol' Arley's hard prick to fuck it."
His hand slid under her back, moved to the small of her back, and levered her lower body up, her thighs veeing apart from the weight of her own legs. He was prodding at her vulva with the head of his penis, pushing the blunt end of his thing against the resilient and dampening lips of her mound.
No, she thought, something had to happen to stop this; someone had to appear and drag this animal from her body-police, a neighbor, some stranger coming up the twisting dirt road-oh, no, no-not inside her labia, not pushing cruelly and steadily up into the lips of her thing, her vulva.
Inside her. It was inside her, the knobby head of his penis shoved savagely up into her vagina, moving deeper and -deeper as his pelvis thrust forward and his penis lifted. Heather felt the man's crotch push against her own, felt the sac that contained Arley Santee's testicles as it came against the cleft of her buttocks.
"Clear to the root," Arley panted, "got it stuck up this red, hairy pussy clear to the root, and it's fine, hot cunt, like satin inside."
Heather closed her eyes and tried to lie supine as Arley drew the length of his penis back, back to the distended head. But his hand in the small of her back hiked her toward him, and now his other hand cupped the cheek of her rear end. Arley moved her lower body to suit himself, and when he stroked his long, thick thing back into her shuddering vagina, she felt the driving force of it all the way up into her body.
Another man's penis was moving within her sheath, a man not her husband, a man who didn't love her or even pretend to. This one had slapped her and bitten her tongue, he would beat her senseless if she tried to resist him. Yet he was doing it to her, slaking his lustful, animal need with her slack and shamed flesh. He was stroking his hard, swollen thing into her private little cave, and she tried very hard to divorce herself from the sordid reality of what was happening.
But the rhythm was solid, deep-there was a movement primeval to the thrusts, a pushing of hard flesh within soft flesh, a greased and titillating sliding of male cupped by female, and some dark racial memory forced Heather to throb with the rhythm.
Her head rolling from side to side, her hands turned into fists that desperately grasped the guilt beneath her back. She was conscious of sweat sliding over her skin-her own and Arley's-and somehow that slippery mixing of body juices was just as bad, just as sinful, as the blending of their flesh.
Heather reached up to push weakly at his shoulders, but he was kissing her again, sucking at her lips and tongue, and she didn't have the strength to fight him off. His penis lunged into her, backed out, only to hammer deeply once more, and each successive thrust shook her entire body.
Against her teeth, he said, "Layin' the meat to you, city cunt, fuckin' you good, you city bitch. Roll that fine, smooth ass woman! Shake your ass while I pump the prick into you-you hear me, bitch?"
His fingernails bit into her tender skin and Heather squirmed in pain, wiggled in reflex as much at his awful language as at the digging of his fingers into her butt. Oh, she thought, as Arley burrowed his penis into her rippling vagina and withdrew it some more, oh, she hadn't thought of her buttocks as her "butt" for years. It was his vile talk, his bad words-his, not hers.
"That's it, woman! Yeah, that's the way to go to town-shake your belly and hump it up to ol' Arley. You got a fine, sweet ass, and you're grind-in' it like a fresh-fucked bitch dog-yeah, yeah."
But she wasn't grinding; it was the way he used his hands, the way he was lifting and shaking her torso. That's what was making the movements-those things and the pounding, piercing surges of his male thing within the recoiling walls of her clinging vagina. "Oh!" Heather gasped as a wave of pleasure crashed into her body. In spite of her conscious effort to control herself, Heather felt her passion mounting. She could feel his balls crashing against her asscheeks with each deep thrust and they felt like hammers driving nails of joy into her flesh. His penis so completely filled her that it threatened to tear her cunt mercilessly apart.
Then suddenly, as a riptide were overtaking her, she screamed, digging her nails into his back and kicking his raging buttocks with her heels as if she were spurring a horse on. "AAAAAA-IIIIIEEEE!"
And Arley, unable to control his pent-up passion, unleashed a white hot load of viscous cum into the very shadowy depths of her ravenous cunt. "Hottest piece of ass I ever screwed," Arley grunted, and started to back out of her body.
Heather clung to him, tried to keep him inside her cunt, but he only laughed and jerked his cock from the silken meshings of her flesh suddenly so rich and so feminine. "The hound's growlin', " he said. "Means that somebody else might be sniffin' down the road. Don't you worry none, city woman, you and me is goin' to fuck some more, right soon. But you don't want to get all that greedy, little sister there needs some prick, too. I swear, I never seen such wigglin' around and pussy grabbin' as she done while I was stickin' the meat to you."
With that, Heather subsided, too guilty to turn her head for the expression upon Honey's face. All her repressions came roaring back, and all the shalt-nots echoed in her brain, and Heather realized that she was a loose and abandoned woman. What she had just done, the things she had just felt, were far worse than taking her dead husband's money and fleeing to the deep south with it. At least she could rationalize about that, even though the Company wanted it back and said it had been stolen. Heather couldn't find a single excuse to justify the pleasure she had felt on being raped.
And in front of her own teenage sister, too. Before Honey she had writhed and bucked like some sex-maddened prostitute, and she hoped fervently that her sister could find the goodness to forgive her for the transgression.
Arley Santee lied in his animal's teeth when he said that Honey had been holding herself and squirming in passion; the girl had only been trying to get away.
The man was back into his overalls, straps on his lean shoulders, and he had gotten the gun from above the fireplace. Heather watched him jack a shell into the chamber, watched him stand listening intently to the big, mean dog in the swept-clay yard.
Looking anywhere but at her sister, her baby sister, Heather pulled the quilt around her sweaty body, trying too late to hide it from other eyes. She saw the hound standing stiff, alert, one paw lifted from the ground. Then he relaxed, went droopy all over, and up on the porch, Arley San-tee laughed.
"Reckon it was just somebody passin' on the country road down yonder. Ain't much travelin' up this way, and when they is, it's more'n likely some scutter don't want to be seen, neither. Folks run a little whiskey hereabouts."
Swinging the rifle back over one shoulder, Arley grinned down at Heather. "You don't need no corn to make you all hot and heavy. I swear, back there a spell I thought sure you was goin' to make that red pussy bite off my prick. But I can use a drink, and I 'spect your sis there can, too. She didn't get her nooky off like you done."
The hound turned around twice and lay down under the chinaberry tree, baleful, yellow eyes fixed on Heather. She would never be able to get past him, even if he fell asleep.
"I'll loosen your hands, sis," Arley said. "Just take you a big swaller out'n this jug, and it'll fix you right up. Go on, I said, drink it!"
How could she, Heather wondered, how on earth could she have responded in kind to the bestial sensuality of this woods' runner? But, then, how could said Heather Hyatt Luther be trying to hide from men who were after the rest of Vic's money, and who might kill her when they found it?
CHAPTER TWO
A slow breeze made its way up from the turgid river below the shack, and Heather was glad for the stirring of air. Heat from the wood cook stove made the inside of the shack unbearable, and, even on the porch, sweat gathered on her nearly nude body and her hair felt sticky against her head.
She still didn't enjoy meeting her sister's eyes, and instead stared down at the piece of corn pone she didn't really want to finish. But she needed its strength; Heather meant to get away from the shack and the brutal, lewd man, so she ate the coarse bread and drank from the gourd of spring water.
Arley Santee said, "I'll bust us a rabbit tonight, and maybe scrabble up a big ol' mudcat for you to cook. And you, baby sister, how you like that stump juice?"
Honey nodded her head, and Heather could see that her sister was well on the way to being drunk. Santee was forcing that awful moonshine whiskey upon the girl, and she wasn't used to alcohol.
Heather looked at their suitcases, sitting yet on the first step of the porch, where they'd first put them down. She wanted a dress, something to replace the one Arley had torn from her body, anything to cover up her semi-nakedness, but he had come close to stopping her from putting her panties and bra back on.
"Might's well take off your shirt, sis," he said to Honey. "Let's see what kind of titties you got on you."
Heather cut in, "Please-look, if you'll only listen to reason, I'm sure we can work out some. . . . "
"Woman," he said, "I ain't talkin' to you; me and sis here are workin' up to a good screw. That's the way, sis, take that shirt right on off."
Heather said desperately, "She-she's only a child. If you have to-to force yourself on someone, take me."
His pale eyes glittered up at her. "Oh, I aim to take you some more, woman. But I mean to fuck this 'un, too. You might's well get used to the idea, and shut up 'til you're spoke to."
A slight giggle escaped Honey Hyatt as she peeled off her shirt to show that she hadn't been wearing a bra. Heather stared in shock at her baby sister's bare breasts, and saw that they were neatly, tidily modeled. They were high and cone-shaped, and the light brown circles in the centers were offset by darker brown nipples that were standing shamelessly erect.
"Honey!" Heather said sharply, and Arley Santee swung a casual backhanded slap that rocked her head. In the yard, the black and tan hound growled a warning thunder, and Heather put a hand to her burning cheek.
Honey said, "Can't help it, got to-to do like the man says. Can't hide it any longer. Right, Arley?"
"Reckon so, city girl. Them are right pert titties, so now let's take a look at your pussy."
"Can't help myself," Honey said, her brown head lolling, her mouth a little slack. "Can't be a little kid forever, because the man says get it off."
Watching her sister rise unsteadily to her bare feet and work at the waistband of her shorts, Heather blamed the reaction on the bootleg whiskey. Surely Honey wasn't such a hussy, the girl had always been obedient and never wild. It must be the alcohol, for Honey ,was now swaying as she unzipped and worked the shorts down over her slim legs. Heather saw that she did have panties on, and that even though her sister had always seemed somewhat delicate, that Honey's body was well-shaped. The thighs weren't lush, but dainty, and even if Honey was on the tiny side, she was put together with jeweled precision, it appeared.
"Yes, sir," Arley said, grinning around his jug of whiskey, "that there is real pretty hide, all young and tender-like. But get to the pussy, sis, get to the pussy."
Hooking thumbs into the elastic band of her sheer panties, Honey pulled them over her squirming hips, down her thighs, and over her knees; then she lifted one slow leg at a time, to step out of them entirely. The pubic hair on her sister's mound was a deep, rich brown, Heather saw, a match for her hair, and Heather had a fleeting gladness that Honey had not been cursed with red hair, that she'd taken more after their father.
Her sister was beautiful, Heather thought, and felt a pang of guilt for not having protected that loveliness better. Now the poor child was about to be raped, as Heather herself had been raped, and nothing, nobody, could stop it.
Unless-and Heather steeled herself to the thought-unless she could attack Arley Santee, hit him with something when his back was to her and he was busy despoiling the girl.
She looked away from her sister's nude flesh, looked around the shaded porch to find a weapon in its clutter. She'd seen Arley hang the rifle back over the mantelpiece, but she knew it couldn't possibly be reached before he reacted. She didn't know how to work it anyhow.
Past the end of the porch there was a chopping block with a hatchet sticking into it. Heather shuddered, she couldn't strike a human being with that-even a man so depraved as Arley Santee. A piece of stove wood would be better, something to stun him with, so they could flee back to some kind of civilization.
"Like-me?" Honey asked, and Heather caught her breath as the girl rolled her bottom suggestively, like one of those obscene dancers on TV.
"Like you fine," Arley answered. "I'll just lie back here and take me another swaller of bust-skull while you come over and straddle me. You ever been fucked afore, sis?"
Swaying boozily, Honey said, "Not yet, but it's about-about time, I guess. Is it going to hurt?"
Heather slid down the porch, moving on her heels, crouching. If she could reach the woodpile and get a big, long stick. . . .
"It'll hurt good," Arley promised, and Heather stared in awful fascination at the lifting of his penis, that thick and meaty thing that had only recently loosed its spurting inside her vagina. Now it was readying itself for an assault upon the virginal mound of Honey, and Heather couldn't allow it to happen. She just couldn't. Backing away, she reached the end of the porch and slid one foot down for the yard where the woodpile waited.
Low and throaty, the rumble sounded right at the calf of her leg. Heather snatched back her foot, trembling so hard she could barely breathe. That damned monster, that hound! He was blocking her way, as cunning and evil as his master. She clung to the rickety porch railing, a sob building in her throat. Poor Honey; she couldn't help her sister now.
"A pussy looks funny when you look right up into it thisaway," Arley said. "It's made passin' strange-them little soft lips hangin' tight together, and that there hood up front. Right pretty hair you got over it, and a fine ol' ass, I swear. Come on, sis, kneel down over me with one leg to each side. Take hold of my pecker, too."
Heather bit her lips and closed her eyes; the scene was too painful to watch. Poor little Honey would lose her virginity here, with this uneducated, animalistic man; she'd have a more difficult time getting married, even though this horrible assault would not be her fault.
It was Heather's fault, she should have taken her sister to a different place. It was only a quirk that had brought her to the deep south, anyway-some left over legend she had heard at her grandma's knee. Grandma had been from around here, from this very part of Mississippi, but surely she hadn't been like Arley Santee. No, Grandma was aristocratic and genteel, and Heather had learned many of her moral values.
"Just play with my cock to your heart's content, sis," Arley said, "because I'll pull it back, do you try to make me come by jackin' me off."
Hideously, the dirty words jolted upon Heather's ears, and she did her best to reject them, as she hoped Honey was also doing. The girl was numbed with liquor, frightened by the ugly power of Arley Santee, but maybe when it was over, Honey could keep the event from becoming traumatic.
"Just steer it to your pussy," Arley commanded. "Guide it on into them pink cunt lips and kind of wiggle around until the head of my pecker gets set solid to your hole."
Heather couldn't seal out the language, and her face turned toward them as they posed starkly there together; she was drawn by something more compelling than the weakened fabric of her moral values. She had to watch them because she could not help herself, even though a part of her recoiled in distaste from the sight of beginning copulation.
Her baby sister sat astride of the nude man, one knee on each side of his body. Arley was stroking the knees, the upper thighs, and watching avidly as Honey pushed the glistening head of his penis into the soft wealth of her brown pubic hair. Heather stared at the girl as she held her upper body poised erectly, the small mounds of her breasts outthrust with nipples stiff. It was as if she was going to stab herself in the crotch, Heather thought, as if the girl held a dagger she had to work into her tenderly giving body. There was fear, of course, and something elsea determination, perhaps.
Clenching her hands upon her own thighs, Heather sat immobile except for the pulse beating wildly in her throat and the heaving of her breasts. The moment was at hand; her little sister was going to be deflowered.
Honey shivered. Heather could see the ripple that passed over her sister's flawless skin, and she could also see the meaty pole of Arley Santee as it buried its head into the girl's tender vulva. Honey was lowering her body, inching slowly and uncertainly down upon that upright shaft of maleness. Honey's face contorted and her eyes closed, and Heather thought, it's hurting her; it's tearing up into her hymen and hurting her, the poor, innocent child.
"Uhhh!" Honey moaned. "Oh-it's-I can feel it sliding up and up inside me and-oh, oh, I'm stretching, stretching. . . . "
The girl's polished haunches moved farther down, their sweet roundness so young and so beautiful. Honey leaned forward as her hips came lower, and her firm breasts pointed downward for Arley's hands. He reached up and held to them, and Heather watched him roll his belly, saw him hunch his crotch upward as the entire head of his penis vanished into the silken lips of Honey's young labia.
"Ooohh!" Honey sighed, her chest coming down and down, her tail riding, squirming, wiggling down and down. Another inch of the man's heavy tool disappeared into the vulva, and Honey's butt hesitated, seemed to try and lift itself away from the thickness of the thing penetrating her unused vagina.
The head of it must be poking against the hymen, Heather thought, that distended glans must be shoving insistently against the barrier of
Honey's virginity-pushing, poking, demanding entrance to the sensitive depths beyond. It had happened to Heather once-after nights of sweaty, clumsy attempts it had finally happened, and her husband acted apologetic for weeks afterward.
"It's in you!" Arley grunted. "It's stuck clear up into your pussy, sis, and damned if you ain't just as hot and even tighter'n the other cunt. Just shake your ass, girl, wind it up and shake it so's you can enjoy your first fuck."
Heather stared at his hands as they clung to the cheeks of her sister's tail. She saw Honey shake her head and throw her hair from side to side, and she saw Arley scrunch down so that he could take one of the girl's adorable little nipples into his suctioning mouth.
Honey lay still atop the man, lay quietly supine as she felt the length and thickness of the man's rod buried inside her vagina, as she knew the feeling of his pelvis against hers, and the strange pressure into the hood that protected her clitoris.
"Fuck away," Arley directed. "Just do what comes natural to you, sis. With a hot, juicy pussy like you got, it must be you're just a born piece of ass so just turn it loose!"
The girl moved, lifted her shapely buttocks slowly and with care, and Heather could see Arley's penis being exposed, all shiny with Honey's inner lubrications. Up, the girl's butt-her asswent, until almost all his thing-his cock-was gleaming in the open. Then Honey slid back down upon the shaft, moaning as she did so, and Heather's fingers clawed into the skin of her own thighs.
Her mouth was pulling at the humid air, and Heather's nipples ached. She felt dizzy, all soft and limp, and fought against the urgency that was rising darkly, violently within her own feverish body. No, she told herself savagely, no! This was wrong for Honey, and twice wrong for the older sister, for the one who'd had to play both mother and guardian all their lives.
Rocking back and forth upon her heels, Heather fought the badness within herself, and watched the sexual scene before her as she might watch a movie she had not meant to see, the action fleet and repetitive but never quite the same. Honey was moving faster now, wiggling with each hike and drop of her ass, her hands clutching Arley's shoulders, her mouth fastened to his. It was good inside her vagina, Heather realized, the girl was discovering the sensuous joy of having her clitoris stroked by the rhythmic passage of Areley's prick. Honey was riding it as if every touch were magic and she had to hurry before the enchantment went away, had to hurry to reach the peak before the witching hour.
"F-Far out!" Honey cried. "Oh, yes, lover man, oh, do it to me, darling! Stick it deeper and deeper, and-oh-oh, yes, baby! I'm-it's happening to me-it's happening!"
Honey's slim ass jerked and shuddered, and she clawed at the man's shoulders, bit at his tanned throat as she went wild in the throes of her first orgasm. The girl was coming, Heather thought, and envied her sister the sweet, hot rush of torrid sensation that was bursting through her vagina-her womb-that was vibrating that young clitoris.
"Hang on, you cunt! I'm shovin' it to you, fuckin' you right good now-yeah-ahhh, yeah! Grind that pussy on my cock, sis, I'm about to come!"
The girl shook and bounced, as if her body was out of control and hunching itself, twisting itself, in a mad hunger for more rapture. Heather's glazed eyes saw Arley's balls leap upward as they flexed, and knew that the fountaining of his hot semen was splashing into her sister's tightly clinging cunt.
Thighs squeezed tightly together, tits aching and throbbing, Heather cupped one hand over her own tremulous mound, fighting the impulse to slide a finger into the dewy lips of the pussy itself. She would not do such a thing, could not-but oh, oh-the temptation was great.
Her sister collapsed atop the sweaty form of the man who could no longer be called a stranger to either of them, for he had fucked them both, had pumped his hotly flowing juices deep up into their cunts, and saturated them with his forceful manhood.
Quaking inside and out, Heather gnawed her lip and watched the little sexy ripples that passed over her sister's ass. The girl had gotten her climax the very first time out, the first time she had taken a man's penis into her sheath, and Heather envied her for that.
But then she passed a hand over her eyes and shook her head to clear it, and she knew by all criteria that Honey wasn't to be envied, but pitied. The poor kid had been raped, had lost her cherry-her maidenhead-to that backwoods animal who could have no concept of even the word love.
At least Heather had once known that much, for Vic had loved her in his weakly fumbling way. She could never understand how he could be so unsure at home and so sharply concise in his work. It took an efficient man to be what her husband had been, a very good CPA. If he hadn't been the best available back in New England, the Company wouldn't have used him, and she wished now that he had been only mediocre. She wouldn't be running and hiding if he'd never done the Company's books, she and her little sister would never have suffered the ultimate indignity of rape.
It was all on the recording her husband left in the safety deposit box, and she'd felt weird, listening to the voice of a man already buried. But Vic had it set up for her to live comfortably; he had been milking the Company slowly and carefully for almost a year, covering his tracks as only an adroit accountant could. And he told Heather in the tape where the hundred thousand dollars was. He also warned her that she'd have to leave quickly.
"Pick up the money and run, Heather," his voice said. "Go far away to some place where nobody knows you, and hide. In a year or two you'll be able to start spending the money. But don't let them get to you, or they'll kill you for it. It's--it's all I could do for you, Heather, and, look, don't worry about the money not being honest. There's no way you could give it back; it came from gambling and prostitution and dope, all the stuff the Company is mixed up in. So I only stole from thieves. Keep it for you and for Honey, and -and good luck."
The tape had ended, and Vic had never once said "I love you" on it. But Heather thought he had; she was certain of it. He'd gambled his life to buck the gangsters of the Company, just so she could take care of her little sister. His insurance had been good, but nowhere near the hundred thousand dollars hidden in the frozen food locker Vic rented by the mouth downtown. So she took the money and she ran, just as he said. The trouble was, she ran to the wrong place, to a shack she hadn't even known existed before today.
"Climb off me, sis," Arley Santee said. "I got to get my strength back afore screwin' you some more, or your sister there; I'll decide which gets the meat, later on."
Definitely the wrong place, Heather thought.
CHAPTER THREE
"You got to stay quiet," Arley said. "You don't, ol' Bigdog yonder might chew off a leg. Course, I don't 'spect you to bust outa' them ropes, but just in case, remember that Bigdog's watchin' mighty close."
Heather's wrists ached where the ropes bit into them, but she didn't complain. She watched his back, covered now by the old blue shirt, and the crisscrossing of his overall straps. He had some kind of lamp on his head, fastened to a billed cap, and from the white flame that hissed in the reflector, he could see his way into the deep, thick woods. Heather watched him out of sight in the blackness and, when he was gone, whispered to her sister, "Honey, can you wiggle over here?"
Honey said, "No, he's got me tied to a post, too. Besides, there's that dog."
"We've got to get away from here," Heather said sharply. "We just have to. He-he may even kill us, rather than let us get back to the police and turn him in for rape."
Honey said, "I don't know how we'll get away. I mean, all tied up like this, while Arley is out hunting. Besides, even if it wasn't for the dog, I'm not all that sure how to find the road again, are you?"
Heather struggled with her ropes, but they only bit deeper into her skin, and she stopped twisting at them. "N-no, I'm not sure, either. There were so many twists and turns, but we have to do something, we have to try."
"I'm just glad Arley left the rags burning," Honey said. "They don't smell very good, but they're keeping most of the mosquitoes off. I'm kind of glad Arley let us put on some clothes, too."
Heather said, "Don't call him Arley-Arley-as if he was a friend!"
"Well," Honey answered, "he got pretty friendly with both of us."
"That-that's nothing to make jokes about," Heather snapped. "You could get pregnant and. . . . "
"Not unless your pills don't work," Honey said. "I've been taking them for a couple of months, just in case. And, what do you know, I did get raped."
"You're-you took my pills? Honey Hyatt, you're not the girl I've known all these years! I don't know what's happened to you, but this is no joke; we're in a very serious position. He-this man is brutal, savage. We should never have asked that other man in the truck; we should have just kept walking, looking for the cabin to rent."
"Arley called him by name," Honey said, "called his Artis. They must be brothers because the names are too freaky for them not to be. He really goofed us up, all right. I mean-leading us most of the way through those woods and carrying the bags and all, as if he was being a real polite you-all type of gentleman. The bastard, he knew what would happen to us here."
"Honey! Such language. I'm surprised at you."
"Well," the girl said, "that's what he is, but I'm not all that uptight about Arley doing it to me. It had to happen sometime, and it felt pretty good. Now I know I'm not frigid, or unable to reach an orgasm, or any of that stuff they scare you with in school."
Heather worked at her bonds again, tugged without much hope at the post that held her at one end of the porch. "Aren't you even trying, Honey?"
"Okay," Honey said, and dutifully twisted at her own ropes.
The girl wasn't nearly so frightened as she ought to be, Heather thought. Did losing her virginity do that to Honey, somehow numbing her better feelings and making her more a creature of the senses? Arousal was still too new to Heather to be dissecting its motivations and anticipating its goals. If she couldn't control her own topsy-turvy emotions, how could she expect a child like Honey to do so?
"I-we can just put all this unpleasantness behind us," Heather said. "When it's all done, we won't ever mention it again. It wasn't our fault, and nobody can possibly blame us for-for participating in such an orgy. You and I were both forced into it."
Honey stopped working at her ropes and just sat calmly on the porch, her legs crossed under her in Indian fashion. She said, "Tell me, Heather, did you and Vic ever make it like that? Like you did with Arley, I mean? I heard you groan and kind of scream with Arley, but I never heard a sound back in the apartment when you and Vic went to bed."
"Honey!" Heather felt blood darken her face. "Honey Hyatt, that's a terribly thing to-to ask anybody, much less your own sister! I'm ashamed of you, really ashamed. Just because you've been raped, that doesn't mean you have to turn into a dirty-minded girl."
Honey said, "You really don't have to answer. I'll bet you never swung with Vic."
"If I could reach you," Heather said, "I'd slap your face."
Honey giggled. "But you did swing with Arley, just like I did. So maybe it's not all that bad for us here. I mean, we're hiding out, like we came down here to do. For sure, nobody would ever think of looking for us out here on the edge of the swamp. And we're getting some kind of education out of it, so why not go along with the guy? If we're really nice to Arley, he's bound to ease up sooner or later, and then we can cut out-if we still want to."
Heather shifted her legs to get more comfortable on the porch. "Of course we'll still want to. I can't even pretend to-to enjoy sharing his lust. That was something freakish today with him. It must have been some kind of combination of fear and my protective instincts and-and-well, a lot of things."
"Sure," Honey said, "and I was pretty smashed."
Heather sat quietly, listening to the noises in the woods. A breeze moved off the river she could not see from the house, and a nighthawk cried mournfully from some hidden clearing. Marching almost up to the yard, water oaks and pines were so thick they made a solid black shadow. Scattered among them would be chinquapin and magnolia trees, she knew, remembering the hours at her grandma's knee, and the tales Grandma told of aristocrats and woods' runners, of honest folk and white trash.
There'd been other stories, too, creepy things whispered of moonshine stills and lynchings, legends that seemed far more real here and now, as Heather sat bound helplessly upon a cabin porch and stared into a night peopled with terrors and garlanded by the gray ghosts of Spanish moss.
When her sister spoke, Heather flinched. Honey said, "Arley lives off the land, he says. Grows vegetables in back, and hunts, fishes in or out of session. He makes whiskey, too."
"I don't care what he does or how he lives," Heather said. "I only want him to let us go. Honey, you didn't hear the stories Grandma told, the things she said about the red-necks down here. They're dangerous, bad, they can kill people without the slightest compunction. You saw how he slapped me, and you know he'd have hurt you if you hadn't done exactly as he said."
Honey moved her feet, crossed slim legs. "I don't even remember Grandma, only what you've told me about her."
Heather felt the chasm between them, a generation gap as wide as that between present-day daughters and their mothers. Yet her sister had always been a good girl-a responsible, reasonable kid who did well in school and stayed home nights. She'd been a virgin until Arley Santee forced her to do it with him, and that meant something in these days of corrupted morals. But now Honey seemed to be letting go, to be sliding downhill into a morass of carnality. She was so very casual about being raped, about admitting that she had known a sexual climax.
The girl had been nearly as casual about having to leave the north and flee down here, she'd helped to buy the travelers' checks, five hundred here a thousand there, while Heather was doing the same thing on the other side of town. It had actually been Honey's idea on hiding the Company money again and a good idea it was. People who might be following them wouldn't find the money now and Vic's insurance was more than enough to carry them for a while.
An eerie sound came from the trees, and Honey whispered, "What's that?"
"A screech owl," Heather said. "Grandma used to imitate its call perfectly."
"Wow," Honey said. "I thought owls went hoot-hoot; that damned thing sounds like a ghost."
"Don't curse," Heather said, and they went quiet again, hearing the buzz of mosquitoes, the movement of trees in an unseen wind. After a while, the hound rumbled low in his chest and got up to pad across the hard-baked yard. Big-dog stood at the edge of the clearing, and Heather could only make out the faint outline of him against lighter brush. A moment later, the dog came back to the porch and lay down across the lower step.
Watching, Heather saw the spot of light dancing about in the woods, a quick specter of white moving across black, over green. The carbide lamp on Arley Santee's head, she knew, and was conscious of dual emotions. She was sorry he'd come back before one of them could work loose and free the other, but she was somehow glad that he would be here to protect them from things that might lurk in the dark.
The man came silently across the yard, rifle swinging from one hand, a big, shiny fish from the other. The fish was so big it looked prehistoric, some monster swum up out of a place where dinosaurs stalked the marshes. Catfish, her mind told Heather, one of the huge mudcats that Grandma was always bragging on, but that huge? Its tail touched the ground when Arley had the wide, ugly head against one hip, and it had whiskers like the moustache of a dead Chinaman.
"Good 'un," Arley announced. "Scrabbled him out'n a cypress stump fore he knew what had him."
The lamp on his head bobbing, Arley kneeled and propped his rifle against the porch steps. He lay the fish on the edge of the porch and made a swift, deft motion with a knife that had suddenly appeared in one hand. Then he stood and threw the guts of the big fish across the yard and into the brush.
Climbing the porch, he stooped and used the unclean knife to free Heather's hands. "Get some matches and kindlin', light you a fire out yonder under the iron water pot. Water gets to boilin', dip this here old mudcat into it and his skin'll fall off pretty as anythin'. Then chop his head off with the ax and bring him in the house. We'll soak him in water with some bakin' soda, and fry some of him for breakfast."
Rubbing her wrists, Heather climbed to her feet and moved into the house where she'd seen a box of wooden matches on the mantelpiece.
Feeling in the dark she found them, struck one, and lifted the glass shade on a coal oil lamp to light the wick. Then, moving stiffly and afraid, she went back outside to do exactly as she was told, even though the very touch of the fish would send cold shivers through her body.
Honey was probably right about being nice to Arley Santee, so they could lull him into not watching them so closely, make him believe that they liked being kept as slaves or squaws or whatever his evil mind could contrive for them.
She saw Honey standing on the porch, saw Arley stroking the girl's hip before turning to find his quart fruit jar of colorless corn whiskey. There was a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, and she saw that he needed a shave worse than ever.
Gingerly, she moved pitch pine kindling under the old iron pot propped on crumbling bricks, and the thin pieces burst into immediate flame at the touch of the match. Peering into the pot, Heather wanted to dump out the water already there, but was afraid she'd have to draw some more from a dark well. When it boiled, it would be sanitary, she thought, and carefully avoided looking over at the monstrous catfish.
"Doin' right good for a city woman," Arley said, and she didn't look at him, either. He was working on the whiskey, and she was fearful of what the liquor would do to him. Surely, she thought, he wouldn't be all that eager to-to do it to one of them again, not so soon.
Her husband had a schedule of twice a week -less if she wasn't feeling well, and only after both of them had fresh baths. This woods' runner had already had sex with two women within the space of a few hours, and it just didn't stand to reason that he would be able to do it again tonight.
"Take a spell for the pot to boil," Arley said. "Come over here and get you a drink."
"Didn't ask what you wanted," he said. "Told you to get your ass over and swaller a drink of this here good corn."
Drawing a deep breath, Heather walked across the yard and saw the yellow eyes of the big hound dog following each step she took. The dog and the man were two of a kind, she decided; both were lean and hungry looking, and both were dangerous.
The corn whiskey was nearly without taste, but when it hit her stomach, it burned furiously, and Heather coughed, choked, and gasped for air. She tried to turn away, but Arley grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head to him. "Take you another 'un," he ordered. "Good for what ails you."
Struggling against nausea, she swallowed, swallowed again so that the stuff he was pouring into her mouth wouldn't choke her. He let her go then, and she grabbed the railing for support.
Arley laughed. "Get you some strength up for fuckin'. I aim to really tear up your pussy tonight, city woman, figure to let HI' sister's pussy rest a spell, seein' as how she was cherry and must be sore clean to her asshole after the screw-in' she give me afore. But you got some lovin' to do yourself."
Heather pulled air into her lungs and felt the sudden onslaught of the whiskey as it spread insidious tendrils swiftly throughout her nervous system. She'd never been a drinker, and this potent stuff went right to her head. The water, she thought, and made her way to the pot to check it. When she held the huge fish by the tail and dipped it into the bubbles, she was glad for the courage the liquor gave her. She only shuddered a little bit as she carried the catfish into the house after Arley chopped the ugly head off.
Scrubbing at her hands in a washbasin, she felt him come up behind her. He put both hands under her arms and caught her by the breasts while he shoved his swollen penis against her buttocks. He was already stripped, she thought, and her head spun as much from shock as from the heady swirling of the whiskey there.
"We'll have us a genuine good fuck," Arley Santee said, and she was so numbed that the word didn't cut as deeply into her senses.
CHAPTER FOUR
One man was sleek and dark, the other bald, chunky, and of no particular shadings. The dark man was younger by at least ten years and, even though he seemed not to enjoy it, did everything the older man said.
He came back to the car and put his head inside. "They picked up another car here, just like you figured, but there's four ways out of town. So which way would they pick?"
Scarpo rubbed his hand over his bald head, hating the heat, the mugginess, hating having to sit in it with the air conditioner turned off while the big car was parked at the curb. He said, "They been coming on south all the time. Stands to reason they'll keep on that way. The broad is smart, though, she thought if she turned in the rental car here, that we'd figure she was at the end of the line and start chasing around this goddamned hot town looking for her."
The other man stood up again, looked up and down the street. "Cost us a whole day, anyhow. What now?"
Rubbing a handkerchief over his head, Scarpo said, "Geech, we just keep going. Next big town, we got it all to do again, check out the agencies. She can't leave that car in no little town, only one big enough for rental cars." He grunted and climbed out of the Continental, a wide, rumpled man obviously uncomfortable in the climate. "I'll go in the bus station and call north, have 'em check out the broad's background some more, see if they can't tell us about where she'll land when she stops running. You sit in the car."
"Okay," Geech said, "I can take the heat out here."
Scarpo looked at him. "We don't find Mrs. Luther and her kid sister, there's going to be some heat we can't take, from the Company."
CHAPTER FIVE
He brought them inside, behind the screen door that kept out the mosquitoes, that held back the night bugs trying to fly to the coal oil lamp. Arley jacked a handful of shells from the rifle and put them into a drawer in a rickety dresser, then hung the gun on its pegs above the fireplace.
"You all hungry, or fillin' up on the corn?"
Honey giggled. "I'm okay."
Heather wasn't all that okay, the whiskey was buzzing in her head and racing through her veins. It was hot, so hot.
Arley said, " 'Spect we'll wait for breakfast, then; fried mudcat and hush puppies, good ol' coffee. Have another drink, you women."
Honey reached for the jar and drank, wiped her mouth, and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the man's next order. Heather started to shake her head at the liquor, caught a glimpse of Arley's hard, pale eyes, and took the jar instead. She didn't even dare fake a swallow with those eyes watching, so she choked down a gulp and shuddered.
"Good enough," Arley said. "You all get naked, now, and we'll have us that fuck."
There was no use protesting, Heather knew, no need to say 'oh, please don't make us strip in front of each other'. He wouldn't listen, and it might make him angry enough to slap her again. She was almost grateful for the numbness of the alcohol, because it made her care a little less that her baby sister was about to see her humiliated and degraded again.
She undressed and stood slumped over, hands crossed before her mound, looking down at the shack's rugless floor. Heather heard the bed-springs creaking and, from the corner of her eye, caught the flash of Honey's bare legs as the girl wiggled out of her clothing. She also saw Arley Santee's legs, white and disgustingly hairy. Would the man never be glutted with sex, never have his debauched appetites satsified?
"You two look fine," Arley said, "real fine. I'm right sorry my brother ain't here to get him some of this fine nooky, but I reckon I can't wear it all out afore he comes home. Artis ain't never had him no city ass like this, neither."
Grabbing at any excuse to delay what was going to happen, Heather said, "Artis, your brother? Was that the man who stopped his truck and carried our bags up into the woods? We only asked the way to a cabin, one that people in town told us was for rent."
Arley put down his jar of whiskey and moved to Heather. He put his hands on her waist and began running them up and down her body. He stood so close that the swollen head of his penis touched the skin of her tummy, and Heather flinched.
He said, "Now ain't that slick of ol' Artis? I mean, he seen two city pussies just a'standin' in the road, and he figured to send 'em right to his brother. I owe Artis for that."
Heather squirmed beneath his hands, trembled when he mashed her breasts and fingered her nipples, and she silently cursed those nipples for responding, for going stiff at his touch. Eyes closed, she swayed, and prayed to faint, but blessed blackness wouldn't come. Heather felt the man take one haunch in his hand, and he pulled her even nearer. With the other hand, Arley guided the head of his thing between her thighs and shoved the length of the meaty staff along the lips of her vulva-not into the labia as yet, just along it, and the upward pressure of the bent-down staff was powerful. It was also somewhat tantalizing, but Heather wouldn't admit that. She stood with her hands limply at her sides as the man rubbed his hairy belly across her own, moved his pelvis insinuatingly, so that his penis pressed against her mound, slid over her labia.
A great, shuddering breath broke from her, and Arley caressed both cheeks of her butt as he teased her vulva with his rod. Then he said, "Get up on the bed. And you, sis, you just slide that tight ass on over by the wall. I'm goin' to screw your sister here, but I want you right to hand, maybe to feel up some. Whooie! I 'spect ain't a man in this here whole county had him two naked women in his bed afore."
He let her go, and Heather's legs carried her stiffly to the bed. She sat down on the sagging mattress and started to lift her legs, but Arley Santee shoved her over-turned her over-and said, "On your hands and knees, like you was a bitch dog just comin' in heat. Just stick that fine ass right on up in the air, so I can come around behind and mount you like ol' Bigdog would, did I give him the chance."
The room seemed to rock as Heather got on hands and knees. She felt dirtied already, felt ashamed of her breasts hanging down, and her naked butt thrust high. She hoped beyond hope that her sister wasn't looking at her, hoped that little Honey's drinks were putting the girl under. But a quick glance to her left told Heather this wasn't so. Honey was turned on her left side, nude and staring with obvious interest as the bed creaked under Arley's added weight.
Heather looked down at the hand-stitched quilt beneath her spread hands and wished that she had gone straight on to California, maybe even to Japan. Running from the possibility of one trap, she had only put her sister and herself into a worse web, an entanglement of flesh and passions that it seemed impossible to break out of. Yet she had to try, and soon, before poor little Honey became as debauched as the evil man who was using both their bodies for his selfish lusts.
"Got you a ass like a good mule's," he said, fondling her exposed cheeks, rubbing the head of his terrifying penis up and down in the very cleft between her buttocks, teasing the ring of the anus itself. "All round and slicky, and them red hairs curl all up the crack. Just you stay braced while I get the knob of my pecker up to the lips of your pussy."
Heather wobbled a bit when he set the blunt and seeking end of his thing to her vulva, when he pressed it to her labia. The lips were damp, and streached to take him inside, and the hands on her waist urged her backward, pulled her lower body down over the hard length of his penis.
"Uhh!" Arley grunted. "Got it jammed home clear to the root. Got it stuck right on up into your tight, hot cunt, city woman. Get the cheeks of your ass up to my belly and my cock shoved home in your redheaded pussy."
He stroked it into her vagina, and Heather hated the response of her fevered body, for her thing seemed to go all steamy, to turn itself liquidy inside in order to better oil the man's lunging penis.
"Get hold of them tits," Arley said, "use 'em like they was hand grips. Shake that thing, city woman, oh, shake that thing!"
His hands cupped her pendulous breasts, and his fingers dug into their dangling softness. Arley clung to them, and his belly was against her ass now, his chest down upon her back, his knees up between her spread thighs. He was steadily shoving his stiff prick in and out of the eager sheathing of her aroused cunt, drawing the length of it far back, so that only the flanged head of it was retained by her pussy lips, then driving it deeply with a strong heave of his pelvis.
Each solid thrust jolted Heather's down-hanging head. Every powerful slam made her entire body bounce, for Arley Santee was fucking her harder this time, much more savagely than he had screwed her before. His prick hammered into her flexing vagina, the head of it a battering ram that shook her womb, and from time to time she could feel the flying sac of his balls as it swung high up to touch her pubic mound.
"Fuck you hard, woman!" Arley panted, his fingers chewing into her tender tits. "Grind my ol' dick into your high class pussy so you won't never forget it. All you goddamn stuck-up city bitches-you been against me all my life, you been laughin' at he for bein' a country boy, and I had to put up with it-but no more, you hear! Me an' ol' Artis got us a bunch of money now, and we aim to fuck all the stuck-up city pussy there is. Uh-uh-uh!"
He pounded her cunt, ripped his hard staff up into her shuddering cunt, laid the meat hard and mean into her while she moaned and rolled her ass, while Heather flinched and gasped and took all he had to give.
The bed leaped and rattled, and Arley's prick made sloshing, sucking noises as it churned around inside her maddened pussy. Heather was blind, and her tits ached under the gripping of his hands, but she rocked her ass around and hunched it back to him. The hotness blazed within her body, and the animal-like position they were in made their fucking more primeval, made it a basic, wild need that broke foaming throughout the core of Heather Luther. Her core was her cunt, and the pinwheeling insanity of her cunt was her clitoris, all throbbing and thrumming.
"Fuck me, fuck me!" she cried out. "Oh, keep on fucking me, you hard-cocked bastard!"
And, in the echo of her cry, Heather faintly heard her sister say, "Wow." Ass heaving, she rode back upon Arley's meat, and the sweet craziness bubbled, frothed, and made his prick slippery, made his balls wet and slidy.
"Shootin' off!" Arley muttered. "I'm shootin' off in you, blowin' my come all over your pussy!"
She felt it explode far back into the cup of her womb, knew the sticky juice that was squirting spasmodically in her vagina. Her own orgasm surged and waned, lifted and fell again, as her cunt luxuriated in its bath of semen. When his hands slipped weakly from her tits, Heather reached way back between her thighs to fondle the wrinkled sac that held his testicles, and her hand also knew the sensitive, lathered lips of her pussy.
"Damn," Arley sighed, "but you shake a mean ass, woman. Like to tore off my pecker."
He backed out of her, pulled back so that his penis slipped greasily from the reluctant grasp of her labia. Heather let go of his balls and, when Arley climbed off the bed, she unhinged at knees and elbows, so that she collapsed upon the coverlet.
Panting for air, the sweat running in rivulets off her body, Heather burrowed her face into a pillow with a flour-sack pillow slip, and fought down the terrible emotions that had taken control of her. Horrible, monstrous emotions they'd been, viciously lascivious and insane. The liquor, her mind said, seizing upon the nearest available excuse, the raw corn whiskey had shaken her mind and weakened all her moral fiber. Heather Luther couldn't have said those things, could not possibly have reacted so orgiastically, like some woman of the streets. The whiskey and the nervous strain she'd been under-those things, and the heat, the tropical lushness of Mississippi where the sultry air itself was sensuous.
She rolled over and looked up just as Arley leaned over and patted her sister's crotch, rubbing his fingers into the profuse brown hair of Honey's mound. "That about does it for me, I
'spect. Got to put off your HP pussy until tomorrow, I reckon. But don't you worry none, sis, you're bound to get your fair share of prick."
Heather watched the man's bare butt as he went to the shelf and stood drinking over the water bucket, drinking from a long-handled dipper. Then she glanced away, angry with herself, solid inside and out, needing a bath and a douche.
There'd be none, at least until tomorrow, she realized. Then they'd have to wash in the river, but that was better than remaining grimy and sweaty. And maybe she and Honey would get a chance to run away from this perverted sex monster.
Arley walked out onto the porch and said something to the big hound always vigilant in the yard, then she heard the tinkle of liquid as he relieved himself over the wall. Animal, she thought, just an animal.
Honey said, "Heather? You all right?"
"I'm okay," she answered. "I was-a little drunk, I guess."
"You were a little something," Honey said. "Wow! Do I act that farout when I'm screwing him?"
"Don't say that!" Heather said sharply. "I-we can't be blamed for things we do under the influence of alcohol. We're not our true selves then. You and I are not common, even if we're in a strange situation where we have to do the best we can. So stop using those filthy words."
"Me?" Honey asked, and rolled onto her back to stare up at the cobwebby board ceiling.
Arley came back in and took another quilt from the foot of the bed. Spreading it on the floor, he said to them, "Leavin' the lamp on, and I sleep right here. Don't you all forget that ol' Bigdog's in the yard, and he sleeps even lighter'n I do."
"Please," Heather said, "won't you let us go now? We promise not to say anything to anybody about-about anything at all. We'll leave the county, the state, even; nobody will ever know."
"Oh, shit," Arley said, "now you got to have better sense than that, woman. I can't trust you all a lick, and both of us know that. You'd be hollerin' to the law, time you got out on the county road. Besides, I got to stay busy doin' something 'til Artis gets back with all that money."
"I'll give you some money," Heather said, as he kneeled naked upon the quilt and took another long pull at his fruit jar before screwing the cap back on and setting the bottle aside. How much, she wondered, she couldn't touch the caches they'd spread along the route. There was only about a thousand dollars hidden in the lining of her suitcase, and less than that in travelers' checks in her purse. But even half that much should seem a fortune to somebody who lived in a shack like this.
Arley grunted. "Time I get ready, 'spect I'll take what you got anyhow, but I'm talkin' about real money-more'n me and Artis ever seen in our whole life, enough to shake this ol' red dust off'n us and go to the city. You hush now and go to sleep. You goin' to need your strength tomorrow."
Heather felt along the mattress and took her sister's small hand. Honey said nothing, but she didn't try to draw away. Heather watched the ceiling where the oil lamp cast softly dancing shadows, and she felt the sweat drying at last upon her skin. The night was a bit cooler, but not much, and the noises of the dark grew louder, more frightening. A whippoorwill cried mournfully in the forest, and something yapped shrilly in answer.
The rifle, she thought; if Arley Santee slept deeply, it was possible they might reach the rifle and the ammunition. She didn't know how to load the gun, though, and he didn't seem like a man who would bluff easily.
Even if they got by him, there was always the vicious hound, and beyond Bigdog, the forest itself, where deadly snakes slithered and quicksand bogs waited for things to drown.
CHAPTER SIX
"This fuckin' heat is going to kill me," Scarpo said. "Every time we have to get outa' the car, this fuckin' heat comes down on me like a thick, wet blanket."
"You're getting old," Geech said, hands light upon the steering wheel of the Continental. "Maybe you ought to fly back and let me handle this by myself."
For maybe a half mile of highway, Scarpo didn't answer. Then he said, "Maybe you ought to call up north and tell 'em that idea. Me, I think you'd have trouble finding your ass with both hands, and I think you'd screw up the hit if you did stumble across the broads. But maybe the man up north changed his mind about sending me to handle things, and you as a backup. Call him up and ask him."
Geech's lips went thin as he pressed them together. "Just putting you on, Scarpo. Hell, we work good together. Look, man, I'll get out and check the towns, while you keep the motor going and the air conditioning on. Okay?"
Scarpo looked out the window for a while, and Geech said, "What you figure they did with the bread?"
"I don't know,"' Scarpo answered. "The way Mrs. Luther is playing this, she may be too smart to have it with her. Mailed it to herself, maybe; put it in a safety deposit box in any one of these goddamned hillbilly towns we been through. How the hell I know? But I tell you this-we find her and we find out where the money is. I guarantee you she tells us and shows us."
Geech nodded, slowed the car as they came to a town. "I never figured different."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The water felt so good that Heather didn't even care that they were all naked together. She didn't fret over the murky, brown color of the river, nor the turtles and fish and certainly the water moccasins that lived in it. She splashed water over her shoulders, dug her bare toes into the sandy bottom, and sighed in pure bliss. Then she lowered her tail and sat in the water, feeling it flow coolness and cleanliness over her flesh, and it was luxury.
Arley Santee's rifle stood upon the bank, propped against a tree within easy reach, and close by lay the black and tan hound, its yellow eyes fastening first to Heather, then to Honey, as if it had placed them in order of danger.
Honey played girlishly in the river, ducking her head below the surface and sputtering up again, laughing and skylarking as if she were in some civilized swimming pool. Heather shook her head, wishing that Honey would take their situation seriously, seeing the girl's slim, diminutive body flash wetly, intriguingly, in the early morning sunlight.
The small but shapely breasts were now diamonded by a spray of water droplets, now dipped from sight, and, when Honey stood up, moving her hands voluptuously over her wet skin, they seemed to linger in the deep, rich curling of her pubic hair.
Her sister was a beautiful girl, Heather admitted, growing so swiftly toward ripeness, but budding more quickly now that her sexuality had been aroused. She could hardly fault Santee for staring so hungrily at the young and tender loveliness that Honey exposed. And, of course, Arley's thing began to lift, the head of it swelling, turning darker, the long shaft getting longer, stiffening even as Heather looked at it. She tore away her eyes, thinking that he must indeed be some kind of super-male to remain almost constantly in a state of erection like that. If her dead husband had been even half so amorous, he'd never have had time to get any business done.
She moved regretfully from the cool caress of the river, feeling the water surface lap at her buttocks, at the round fullness of her thighs, at her knees, and its touch was somehow masculine. Maybe Vic would have been better off, maybe alive today, if he'd paid less attention to juggling the Company's books and more attention to making love to his wife.
Had Vic gotten so much raw delight from doing it with her? She glanced at Arley as he moved toward her baby sister, his long penis arching at Honey's nakedness. Vic never seemed so excited, so anxious to do it and keep doing it, and she would have bet that her husband had never changed over to another woman. Vic just lacked the energy-the drive-for that.
He'd taken care of them, though. Loyally, she stuck up for Vic in that department. He had made a good home for his wife and sister-in-law, and played a dangerous game with the Company's books, with the illegal money that passed through his hands. Vic had risked his very life to provide Heather with a financial windfall, and he'd have made it even bigger if the tragic accident hadn't happened.
Arley Santee said, "I got me a wish, I got a need to do it like I heard about. Sis, you ever eat a man's cock afore?"
One foot on the bank, Heather turned, a chill shock slamming through her. The words burst out of her, "W-what? You-you mean that perversion-that deviation-that-that filthy thing? How dare you, Arley Santee? Damn you, youyou . . . "
Honey only cocked one eyebrow as she moved to shore, and there was a half-smile playing about her small mouth. Heather caught her breath in horror, and leaped in desperation for the rifle propped against the tree trunk. She never reached it.
The hound's paws struck her violently in the ribs, and, with her arms flailing, she was tumbled off the bank and back into the river. As the brown water closed over her head, the echo of the dog's snarl was in her ears, and she kicked against the sand to thrust herself up again. The damned animal might have torn out her throat!
"Might's well stay there and watch while you keep cool," Arley said. "Me and sis here will get to it right on the bank. I've heard tell how you city women will suck a man's pecker, suck him right on off, but I never got the chance to find out the truth of it 'til now. It don't look like sis minds at all. So I tell you what, sis, you just kind of hunker down so you can work my toes into your pussy and get your gooders thata-way, while you chew on this here ol' pecker."
Standing waist-deep in the flowing water, Heather felt cold, felt her skin go taut and icy. For the first time in her life, she knew what it was like to want to kill another human being-if Arley Santee was human.
"D-don't do it, Honey. Please don't lower yourself to-to such perversion. Dirty-filthy . . . "
Arley said, "You want me to put Bigdog on you there in the river? Be a pure-D shame to tear up such fine ass, but I'll flat out see it done, you don't let sis alone, and quit runnin' your mouth."
The dog rumbled, the hair standing up along the back of its neck, the long, curved teeth showing. Heather stuffed her fingers into her mouth and bit hard upon them, quaking from head to toe, goose bumps racing along her exposed skin. Helpless-she was so damned helpless. It was as if she were the captive audience for a movie-a dirty movie-with the film rolling and light shadows moving provokingly upon a gigantic screen. She could not change the plot nor stop the projector; even though, when the scene was done, none of them would ever be quite the same again -not herself, not her baby sister kneeling now between the legs of that brutal man, not Arley himself.
He was pushing his toes into the brown pubic hair between the girl's thighs, and Heather saw her sister squirming upon them, saw Honey fitting her labia to the penetration as if she were highly experienced at such a shocking performance.
"Take hold of my pecker," Arley ordered, sitting back on a log and spreading his knees wide. "Kind of roll my balls around in your soft hand, sis. I swear, if you ain't the hottest pussy I ever saw, especially for just losin' your cherry only yesterday."
Horrified, Heather watched as Honey played with the penis, the hairy sac, and even rubbed her fingers across Arley's penis and over the shiny head of his thing. Without further command, the girl lowered her face toward the throbbing meatpole, and Heather gasped when her sister kissed the blunt end of it.
"Love it up real good," Arley said. "Lick it all over, like a bitch dog."
Mesmerized, Heather stood in the moving waters of the Chickasawhay River and stared at her baby sister doing the most perverted thing Heather could imagine, kissing and licking the head of a man's sex organ. How could she? Why didn't she dive back into the river, scream, run-anything to get away from such a horribly degrading act?
But Heather knew why not-for the same reason that Heather wasn't swimming off right now. There was the rifle and the savage dog, and one of them couldn't leave the other sister behind. They were trapped so completely that they had somehow become each other's jailer, locked into this continuing nightmare until the dreaded warden tired of his vile games with them.
The girl cupped the man's testicles and fingered along his shaft, gyrating her body upon his foot as she did so. Her open mouth came down upon the glans, and her red tongue flicked out to lap the distended head. Heather trembled, and discovered that her hands had lifted from the river and were now squeezing hard upon her breasts. But only for comfort, she told herself as her sister's tongue moved teasingly all over Arley's upright penis-the end and the rod and even down to the pale-haired balls.
Honey was no doubt faking it for both their sakes. As the girl had said previously, they had to keep this sex maniac happy and satisfied, so that he wouldn't hurt them more. They should lull his suspicions and make him believe that they actually liked the awful things he was forcing them to do with him and for him.
"Your mouth is near about hot as your pussy," Arley said, putting both hands on Honey's head and pushing her face right on down, so that the head of his stiff penis slid into her open lips. "Eat my cock good, sis, show ol' Arley how you can suck him off."
She took it between her pink lips, and Heather saw the swollen and veined shaft move partway from sight inside her sister's mouth. Heather pressed her palms down upon her aching nipples, and beneath the cooling flow of the river, her groin contracted.
"Ummm," Honey moaned, and Arley dug his fingers into her hair, hunched his pelvis up and out, so that his prick fed deep into the girl's mouth.
He'll strangle her, Heather thought, he'll shove that long meat so far back into her throat that she'll choke on it. Helplessly, her own mouth opened and her lips moved, but no sounds came out, only the ragged gasping of her breath.
Honey began to suck; her cheeks dipped in and out as she sucked his prick like a lollipop, pulling upon the spongy head, letting it go to do things to it with her quickly racing tongue-so pink and so hotly wet. She clung to his balls, to the root of his pulsating cock, pumping her fingers as if she were milking an inverted cow's teat.
Arley was making grunts and groans and wet sighs, he was rolling his ass and humping his crotch into Honey's busy face. He ground at her and stroked at her, all the while holding to her head, as if he were afraid she might take it away before she shot his load.
He wouldn't do that to her, Heather thought -oh, no, no-he couldn't possibly let the semen go right into the poor girl's mouth! Just before the orgasm, Arley Santee would surely pull his prick out of Honey's mouth and spurt the thick stuff onto the river bank. Not even a man like him would be so cruel as to flood Honey's throat with such a fluid.
Her eyes went wide, for he wasn't pulling out He was hanging to Honey's hair and screwingactually fucking-the girl in the face, his balls flapping, and his shaft sliding wetly in and out of her mouth, and by the violence of his strokes, Heather could see that he was just about to come.
"S-suck it, you hot little bitch!" he yelled hoarsely. "Suck my come right on up from my balls-eat me, eat it-swaller it when I let it go -let it go!"
Honey's cheeks went in, and she made moaning noises around the cock in her mouth, her lips extended all the way to the root of the rod, and pressing against the pubic hair.
"Comin'I" Arley shouted. "Comin' in your mouth and down your fuckin' throat! Swaller my come, you little cocksucker, swaller!"
Honey kept sucking, and Heather realized that the spurting juices were slipping down the child's throat, that Arley's hot thick semen was flowing in spasms from the head of his prick, and being gulped down because Honey could not help herself. She would have to swallow the oyster-like releases or not be able to breathe.
But she didn't have to keep pumping her head on the prick, and she didn't have to continue to play with his balls, Heather thought. Pretending was one thing, but taking the act too far was different. Honey couldn't be so wanton, none of the Hyatts had been like that. They were all churchgoing, moral women who only did their connubial duties because their husbands expected it of them. As Heather's mother had said, sex was only necessary for the breeding of children, and for keeping a certain amount of harmony within the home. No good woman enjoyed it, only fallen women like prostitutes.
"Ahh," Arley sighed. "So that's what it's like, to be sucked off by a woman. We got to do some more of that, sis, seein' as how you like it most as much as me." Turning his head, his softening penis sliding obscenely from Honey's mouth all shiny and drippy, he said to Heather, "You can come on out'n the water now. Best we get on back to the house in case ol' Artis comes home or sends a message."
Honey strode back into the river to wash her tail, her legs, again. She had a satisfied look about her, Heather thought, smirking, know-it-all look. The girl was falling swiftly into the lustful life, and would have to be gotten free at the very first opportunity that presented itself. Heather knew perfectly well that the girl had used Arley Santee's foot-his toes-to masturbate upon while she was sucking-while she had been doing that to him.
He was getting into his overalls, the rifle close at hand. The hound raised his black head as Heather stepped up onto the river bank. Arley said, "You watch close to see how sis done it? Your turn's acomin', woman, and I 'spect you better be good as your sis at suckin'. You know, one time I heard tell there's some men suck on women's pussies, but I don't know how much stock to put in a tale like that. Seems right unmanly to me, and I know, for one, I wouldn't push my face in the same pussy where I push my pecker. Any of them city fellers ever suck on your cunt?"
Heather shuddered and felt the blood rush to her face. The man was impossible, his mind so wraped by perversions that he could think of nothing else. "No," she said, "I wouldn't allow such a thing, no more than I'd do it myself."
"Oh, you'll do it," he said. "You got no pick. When I say froggie, you get down and hop; when I say suck my pecker, you open your mouth and smile. Uppity goddamned city woman, think you got gold asses, but you ain't."
Closing in upon herself, Heather took the light summery dress from the down-hanging tree limb and slipped into it, pushed her feet into open sandals whose bright colors were out of place in the woods. Honey came up from the river, humming under her breath, and Heather knew a sharp stab of anger, for the girl should have washed her mouth and spat herself dry. She shouldn't be acting so-so downright bitchy!
"Watch for snakes," Arley warned. "This time of year, they's always a bunch down by the river -cottonmouths, water moccasins, a few copperheads, and some timber rattlers. Don't see them lil' coral snakes much, but they're here, all right, one of 'em bit a feller over to Shuba Creek last week, and it killed him afore he could even split the leg with his knife to suck the blood."
Heather shivered and put one foot carefully ahead of the other as she preceded him up along the twisty path. Honey was right behind her, and the hound between them and Arley Santee and Arley's rifle. He'd deliberately reminded them of the deadly snakes, Heather thought, to show them how little chance they had of escaping, even if they could find their way back to the far-off county road.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Scarpo came out of the public phone booth, his face red and perspiring. He wiped a damp handkerchief over his bald head and put his sunglasses back on, then crossed the sidewalk and went into the air-conditioned restaurant where Geech was already having breakfast.
Sitting down at the counter beside the slim man, Scarpo said, "Whooo," and tipped up the sunglasses to read the menu.
Geech said, "It's not bad, maybe it sounds crappy, but this grits and sausage with eggs, it's not bad. What'd they say up north?"
Scarpo looked up at the girl behind the counter. "Prune juice, corn flakes and milk, coffee after." And, when she went away, he said to Geech, "They found a broad knew her a long time back, knew her family, especially a grandma."
"Corn flakes and milk," Geech said. "You oughta' try these hominy grits and red-eye gravy. What's a grandma got to do with it?"
"Grits," Scarpo said, picking his shirt-front away from his barrel chest and flapping it for extra coolness. "Grits sounds like they got sand in 'em, and red-eye gravy like you drain it out of a car. The grandma come from a little town over in Mississippi, over next door from right here. Shuba. Sounds like something you'd put on them grits. They figure the broad's running for the old lady's home town, because she don't know where else to run to."
The girl brought Scarpo's cereal, and he poured milk over it, sugared the bowl. Geech said, "Hick town, probably no more than one fuzz in it, if that many. A lockup, man, a lockup."
Scarpo waited until the waitress was down the counter, then said, "We find the broads, hit both of 'em after we get the money, and then it's a lockup. Not before."
Geech cleaned his plate and drank a cup of coffee. He glanced often at Scarpo with quick, darting looks, and once his lip curled before he could control it.
CHAPTER NINE
Arley said, "Takes a right good man to go scrabblin' for a mudcat that size."
Heather turned a fish steak in the frying pan, sweat making a little stream down her backbone and between her buttocks. At the table, eating, Honey asked. "What's scrabbling?"
Arley said, "You watch around for places where them big ol' cats likes to stay-up under a mess of roots, like, or ahint a stump stuck in the river bank. You can do it daytime, but nights is best for scrabblin'. You ease up on the bank so you can feel your hand slow and easy up under the roots, and there he is-a fat ol' mudcat, just lyin' still in the dark water. You don't make no sudden moves, just ease your hand on back and feel him under his belly. He'll hang there sleepy-like, if you tickle him light on his belly, and then you work your hand on up and slip your fingers quick into his gill, or maybe in his mouth, do you get the chance. Oh, he'll fight you then, thrashin' around and tryin' to bust loose, but a good man can jerk him out'n his hole every time."
Honey said, "Ooh. I'd be scared silly to try that. I'd be afraid I'd grab a moccasin or a turtle or something like that."
Heather slid a spatula under the cornmealed fish and lifted it to her own plate. Strength, she reminded herself, she would need all her physical strength to withstand him.
Laughing, Arley said, "Happens, I reckon, but not to ol' Arley. I been scrabblin' out'n that river all my life. Now them folks in town, they act like me and my brother ain't got no right to catfish and deer and possums, and like that, except when they say a man can fish or hunt. Which is sheepshit. Me and Artis been livin' right here since our folks died, and doin' right good, mostly. We ain't imagine like them in town, and we sure ain't high class like city people, but we make out. And we're goin' to make out a whole heap better, soon's Artis brings back all that money."
Heather sat down at the table, looking down at her fish and turnip greens. She took a piece of corn bread and began to eat, even though she felt as if she would melt with the heat inside the cabin.
"Where'd you get all the money?" Honey asked.
Arley said, "Never you mind. Folks around here said me and ol' Artis wouldn't never amount to nothin', call us woods' runners and razorbacks and try to jail us for makin' a little whiskey. But we got us some money, all right, or will have, time my brother sells them things we got." He broke off and got up to drink water from the dipper. "Never you mind."
The fish was good, Heather found, and the greens fresh. The bread had been baked from coarse ground meal and had no eggs in it, but it was surprisingly tasty. She looked over at the frying pan still hot on the wood stove, and thought that it might be possible to hit Arley with it, or to throw boiling grease in his face. Her mind recoiled from the image of such violent action, but she forced herself to think the idea through. It could be done at almost any time, after she learned how to work the rifle.
Because the dog would have to be shot. Like the vicious wild beast he was, the dog would have to be gunned down before she and her sister could get away. If she had the gun and the dog was dead, Arley probably wouldn't dare follow them to the county road. He'd run away to hide before she brought back the police for him.
That made her feel much better, just picturing Arley Santee running through the woods, no longer arrogant in his strength and his ignorance, just scared. Heather finished her meal and picked up her plate, carrying it to the pan of water on the stove. The primitive conditions of this shack were also beginning to wear on her-no running water, no indoor plumbing, so that they had to use an outhouse, with that damned hound of the Baskervilles pacing them to and from that private bodily function.
Once she had liked dogs, Heather thought, but that was before she saw this monster, before she had seen so many unnerving things here, and the hound was only a small part of it all. Never, never had it even crossed her mind that she would actually see a man doing it to a woman, much less that woman her own kid sister. And, of course, in her wildest, most erotic dreams-and sometimes she did have those-Heather had never imagined watching an act of perversion such as she had witnessed at the river: Little sixeen-year-old Honey, eating away upon a mans' thing, his penis, his-his prick.
There, she had thought the word clearly, brought it out in the open to look at it mentally, to examine it from all sides with cool logic
Prick.
That was no worse than saying penis, or thing, or sex organ, or pecker. What was the difference in calling it a prick or a cock or any other of the lewd descriptive terms? Nothing was changed by a variance in terms, except for some inexplicable reason, Heather felt more sneaky, more sort of passionate.
She shook herself and scraped table leftovers into a tin plate for the hound, thinking that there might also be some rat poison about the house, thinking she might slip some of it into Bigdog's food. Maybe she could also put some into Arley's.
Damn the man for stirring her up with such vile urgings, for tempting and luring her into debauchery, double damn him for corrupting a virginal child and turning her into a wanton. Not a wanton, a bitch. Tell it like it is, Honey would say. Okay then-bitch and prick and cock-sucker, and she was going to murder that goddamned dog. If it cost her a front seat in hell, she was going to shoot or poison or hot grease the hound and the man, who was such a son of a bitch that he must be closely related.
"There," she said aloud, and felt better.
Honey brought in another pan of water and set it on the stove. "When it gets hot, dip the dishes in there and I'll dry."
"Thanks a lot," Heather said.
"Look," Honey said, "don't go blaming me. It was your idea to come all the way down here, when we could just as well have gone to Europe to get away from those . . . "
She stopped, but when Heather looked around, Arley Santee was staring at them with his pale green eyes. "Get away from what?" he asked.
"Relatives," Heather said quickly. "I-I was having some trouble with my husband and . . . "
"Europe," Arley mused. "Takes a heap of money to go clean off to Europe, I 'spect. You all got that kind of money?"
Heather didn't let her sister talk. She said, "It doesn't cost much to fly there from New England-a tourist class ticket costs about two hundred."
He nodded, climbed up from the table and stretched, his lean arms reaching nearly to the grimy ceiling. "And you'd spend that much run-nin' from your husband? Takin' baby sis along, too?"
"Of course," Heather said, and to Honey, "The rinse water's getting hot, suppose you lend a hand here, young lady."
Arley grunted, moved toward the porch and a possible breeze. "He mustn't be much of a man, lettin' you traipse off that away; not much of a screwer, neither. Else you wouldn'ta been so edgy about gettin' fucked."
Heather spun around, a soapy pan in one hand. "Why you-you red-neck! My husband was a good man, a decent man without perversions or-or . . . "
His lip lifted at her, not in a hound dog's snarl, but like a sneer. "Was?" he said. "Reckon you be a widow woman. Now, you tell me who you runnin' from, widow woman, and tell it true, else I'll turn that fine ass black and blue with my razor strop."
And Heather said, "Shut up. I-well, my husband took some money from some people, and left it to me when he was killed in a freeway accident. They-they would have hurt me-and Honey, too-if we hadn't got out of townAnd that's the truth."
"Uh-huh," Arley said, speculatively.
Getting an idea, Heather said, "They're dangerous people-gangsters. They might even be chasing us all the way down here, and if they are, they'd hurt you, as well. If they find us here, that is."
Arley rummaged around on the cluttered top of his dresser, and when he turned back to them, he held a black razor strop in his hand. "How much money did your husband steal, woman? Enough for them gangsters to trace you clear down here from away up north?"
Heather watched the strap swinging back and forth, and swallowed the lump in her throat. "A -he took a thousand dollars. I have it all, in travelers' checks. I have to sign them before they can be cashed, and show identification, too."
Arley slapped the leather against his palm and Heather flinched. Beside her, Honey caught her breath. Arley said, "A thousand dollars! Now you're startin' to make some sense. Why, ol' Artisll only get two, three times that much for the old lady's stuff. But I don't know-all the way down here . . . "
"They don't like what he did," Heather said rapidly. "It made them look foolish, and it's likewell, as if they have to get the money back andand punish me for running. Like a-a feud; that's it, a feud. You can understand that, can't you?"
"Sure," he said, "like bad blood atween folks. I ain't stupid, widow woman. And soon's my brother gets back, you'll go into town and cash them travelin' checks. But sis will stay right here with Artis and Bigdog, while I follow ahint you in town."
Heather bit her lip. One more gamble lost, but at least the ploy might help keep them alive a bit longer.
Honey said, "Can we go back to the river? It's so hot and sticky here, and you can leave a note for your brother, telling him where we are."
He looked across at her. "You don't much give a hoot, sis, just so you can keep on screwin'. Got your belly full of catfish, and now you want your pussy full of meat, too."
The girl shrugged. "Your fault, you know. You started me doing it."
Arley laughed. "You was purely ripe for fuckin'. Hadn't been me, it would of been the first horny stud to lay a hand on that hot HP pussy."
Heather stacked the plates on the table, think-in that at least Honey had diverted the man's attention, although the talk was dirty. She hadn't wanted to admit the reason that had driven her down south, but Arley Santee scared her weak. He was so damned casual about violence, and certainly had no consideration whatsoever for the rights of anyone but himself and his absent brother. He'd said something about his brother selling "the old lady's stuff, and the thought of that frightened Heather more. There was no sign of a woman in the shack, no feminine touch, and there hadn't been in many years. Who, then, was the old lady, and why or how could the brothers be selling her things?
"Well, can we?" Honey persisted, "go back down to the river where it's cooler? I could bring a quilt to spread on the sand, and you can bring some whiskey, and we might all have a lot of fun."
Arley moved around and picked up a fruit jar filled with the powerful, colorless corn whiskey, and also picked up his rifle, and dropped a handful of shells into his front overalls pocket. His eyes touched Heather's, and he showed his teeth at her, the way the hound might. "No cause not to take it easy, maybe get in some different fuck-in'. Besides, we can talk some more about that there money your old man stole."
Heather's shoulders sagged, he hadn't forgotten anything, and she had better not keep underestimating his animal cunning.
"Come on, city woman," he said, and touched her butt with the end of the gun barrel to urge her onto the porch and across the yard.
Her sister skipped ahead, skylarking, going on a picnic, and Heather wondered how much of that was false, and how much the child's natural good spirits and youthful exuberance. Heather trailed after, watching Honey's dancing feet and the slim quickness of her legs, seeing the taut shapeliness of her rear end, snugged by the cutoff jeans. If Heather didn't get the kid out of here before long, she'd be lost to herself, and to all the morality Heather had tried to instill in her. Here she was being overwhelmed by sensuousness, by the so-easy rationalizations of helplessness and, therefore, guiltlessness.
And for herself-Heather walked slowly down the winding path that led through the trees to the river bank, realizing that she too was thinking almost constantly of sex, that she was being forced to think of it through Arley Santee's obscene dialogue and insatiable appetites. Never had she been so conscious of the movement of her heavy breasts beneath the thin material of her blouse, never had she remained so constantly aware of the brushing as her thighs kissed each other in passing. And Heather could sense the curlings of her pubic hair, knew the pouting softness of her mound in warm concealment.
All because she had been raped and had reached a tremendous orgasm, her body was betraying her with its new awareness, its erotic stimulation, and since Arley Santee was the only male at hand, she could not even claim that she was in love.
He said from behind her, hissing it, "Hold up. You, sis, hunker down right where you at, and you do the same, woman. Stay right quiet. You try to holler and I'll blow a hole clean through you, then roll you off in the river."
Heather dropped to her knees. "What . . . "
"It's Bigdog," Arley said. "He heard somebody comin' to the house. You, Bigdog! Hush that growlin' now, I know what you tellin' me."
Turning her head, Heather saw him moving back up the path, his rifle at the ready. The ugly hound dog sat directly in the path, his yellow eyes fixed upon Heather, his fangs silently bared.
Arley's whisper drifted back, "Wouldn't try to run, woman."
The damned dog. Heather moved carefully around on her knees and whispered to her sister, "Go ahead, sneak on down to the river and swim across. When you get out, just keep running back toward town. Find a policeman, tell him . . . "
"No," Honey said. "I won't leave you; I won't! He-he'd kill you."
"Do as I say!"
"No, I can't, Heather, I just can't."
The hound growled low in his throat, warning them to silence. Heather crouched in the woods and waited to hear something from the direction of the shack. For the longest time all she could make out was a mockingbird trilling from the very top branch of a sweet gum tree, and, then, the murmur of the river across a sandbar below where they all crouched-she and her sister and the watchful hound.
Then the gun went off. Its echo was startlingly loud, reverberating through the pines and water oaks, bouncing noisily out across the flowing waters of the brown river. When the sound died, Heather heard Arley Santee calling to them.
"Come on back, you women! Bigdog, bring 'em on home. Home, Bigdog!"
Heather stood up and waited until Honey came to her. Then, holding to her sister's hand and walking carefully as the damned dog herded them like frightened sheep, she went back up the trail to the house.
Once into the clearing, onto the hard clay surface of the yard, they stopped, and Heather clamped hard upon Honey's fingers. There was another man sprawled upon the porch, lying face up and with his arms out flung. It wasn't Arley's brother, because he'd been shot.
There was blood over his face, over his eyes, and Heather caught her breath in a ragged gasp. The man looked dead, looked terrible in his well-scrubbed khaki shorts and pants and boots. His straw cowboy hat had fallen off to one side, and his black hair was matted with his own blood. He wore a wide black belt and a pistol holster, empty now. There was a badge pinned to his shirt, and, as Heather stared in horror, she saw his chest rise and fall. He wasn't dead then, only dying.
"Goddamned deputy sheriff," Arley grated. "Goddamned Grady Cordell that's been bother-in' us for years, but this time I got the son of a bitch!"
CHAPTER TEN
Geech drove the used car off the lot in Meridian, Mississippi. He turned right when Scarpo said to, and drove with all the car's windows rolled down, for this one wasn't air-conditioned. The car was clunky and vibrated, a seven-year-old Chevy that had seen better days.
"We could have rented a smaller car," he said. "Right there where we put the Continental in for a checkup. The Hertz job would be with air, and it'd have a local plate, too."
Scarpo said, "I can take this fuckin' heat, you can, too. I didn't rent no car because that meant we could be traced the same way the broad got traced. She turned in the car here and since there ain't no trains, they took the bus. Shuba, where else? It's about forty miles south of here, her grandma's home town. It's good that broads are sentimental."
"But what the hell we do with this clunker after we find the chicks? Sell it back?"
Scarpo leaned his head out the window so the air could blow over it. When he pulled it back in he said, "Yeah, but not to no used car lot; to one of them blacks for a few bucks-few enough so he thinks it's hot and keeps his mouth shut. That's better than runnin' it into a river or something. Man, only forty miles to go."
Geech said, "It wasn't all that tough, finding them. I could have done it by myself."
Head back on the seat, eyes closed, Scarpo didn't say anything. The wind felt good on his face and he thought of flying back with the job done and the money in hand, on a different plane than the one this mouthy kid would ride.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
His name was Grady Cordell, and he wasn't dead or dying, but for all the help he might ever be able to give them, he might as well be a corpse, Heather thought. He was blind.
The bullet Arley fired at him clipped the bridge of his nose and did something to his vision. The cut was nasty, and Heather cleansed it as best she could with whiskey, and made a dressing and bandage of old flour sacks torn into strips. While she worked at the wound, Arley Santee sat in the yard with Honey by his side and the jar of whiskey in one hand. His back was propped against the chinaberry tree, and so was his rifle. The dog sat alert near the porch steps.
"Shit," Arley said. "Thought I had him right between the eyes. But it's better this way, now I think on it. The son of a bitch is blind as a mole, and might be I'm goin' to need him, anyhow."
Heather tied the bandage around the man's head and said, "Can I get you some water?"
"I-I'd appreciate some," he said, his voice deep and slow and brushed with honeysuckle.
"Give the bastard some corn, too," Arley commanded. "I got me some questions to ask him, and I don't want him faintin'. "
Obediently, Heather brought whiskey and water, guiding the liquor jar into Grady's hand first, then taking it back and giving him the water dipper. The deputy drank deeply of the whiskey and finished the water; she brought another dipper and he drained that, too.
"Enough," Arley said, tapping his own whiskey. "You-Grady Cordell-how come you sneak-in' around my place?"
A big man, broad in the shoulder and narrow of hip, Grady said slowly, "Reckon you know why I'm here, Arley."
Arley drank again, spat on the ground. " 'Spect I do, but you ought to of come with help, or maybe you didn't figure on gettin' shot."
"Didn't at that," Grady said, and Heather saw the seepage of blood through the makeshift bandage across his eyes, "but knowin' I was right about that old wider woman means something."
Arley grunted. "Means you're goin' to be a long time dead, you son of a bitch."
"What'd you get from old Miss Martin?" Grady asked. "A few dollars, some costume jewelry? The poor old woman didn't have much."
"That's a flat-out lie," Arley said, and bought himself another drink. "Why, me 'n Artis found nigh to three hundred dollars cash money, and all them jewels, and some old gold watches, to boot."
Blindly, big hands clenched, Grady said, "Why'd you have to kill her, then? You had it all; she never owned no big store of gold or nothin' like that; Miss Martin was just an old widder woman waitin' out her time to die."
Arley chuckled. "She don't have to wait no longer. Me 'n Artis purely had to knock her in the head after she told us where she kept the plunder hid. She knowed who we was. Just like you know, Grady Cordell."
"And I might not be the only one who knows," Grady said, then put his head into his hands as best he could, sitting there on the porch with his feet tied and his own handcuffs on his wrists.
"What you mean by that?" Arley asked. "Come on, what you mean by that."
"My head hurts. I-I didn't mean nothin', " Arley drank deeply of the fruit jar and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "You police bastard, I didn't figure you had the guts to walk up on our house by yourself. The sheriff come with you ? How come he ain't already bustin' in here?"
Grady rocked back and forth. "My-my head hurts."
"You didn't even know these women was here," Arley said thoughtfully. "The sheriff hisself would of throwed down on me time I pulled the trigger, so he ain't close by. What puzzles me is where he is-and the longer I figure on it, the more I 'spect he's out somewheres asettin' a trap for my brother. That's it, ain't it?"
Grady groaned, and somehow Heather sensed that the pain in him wasn't as great as he was pretending; he didn't wince when she cleaned the wound with whiskey, although that must have burned terribly. He was bluffing Arley in some fashion, trying to keep himself alive.
And possibly she and her sister, too. An old woman had known who Arley Santee was, and had been killed for knowing. Wouldn't he do the same to Honey and herself?
"You ain't so fuckin' smart," Arley said, slurring his words a bit. "I reckon I won't blow your fuckin' head clean off-not for a spell, anyway, not 'til after ol' Artis comes home. If he don't come back, and right soon, too, you're goin' to wish I'd killed you right off. I'll skin you like a goddamn coon, you po-lice bastard."
A reprieve, Heather thought. The officer had another lease on life, for as long as it took Artis Santee to return home from his trip to sell a murdered woman's jewelry. Then the deputy and two unlucky women would find graves in the riverbed.
"Well, now," Arley said, his head wagging, and Heather could see that he was more than a little drunk, "well, now, seems I got me a heap of company, for a little spell, at least. Shame you never got a look at these here two fine city women, Grady; fanciest pieces of ass I ever run across. One of 'em was cherry afore I busted it. Never figure ol' Arley to have no real pretty, high-class city women away out here in the woods, now would you?"
"Uh-uh," Grady Cordell answered, because he was expected to.
"Oldest 'un's a pure-D redheaded woman, and the littlest 'un's got brown hair on her pussy runs two inches deep and right springy. You ain't never had you no ass like they got, Grady. It ain't no countrified ass stall, but imagine city cunt, and you know somethin' else? They purely enjoy suckin' on a man's pecker, like it was striped candy." Arley laughed, a grating noise of cruelty and a promise of further degradation. "Course, they claimed they didn't want to stay around and fuck ol' Arley none-but they did; they sure as all billy hell did, and they're goin' to fuck him some more, too."
Honey said into a moment of silence, "I-I will, Arley."
"Sure you will-but when I say and like I say. And right now, I mean to screw your big sister, but you might just as well get bare assed, too. Might be I'll change off on your pussy. Never had me two naked women laid out side by side afore."
Grady Cordell lifted his bandaged face. "Look now, Arley, you don't have to pick on the women just to get back at me."
Arley got up off the ground, whiskey jar dangling from one hand, loaded rifle in the other. He strolled barefoot and gangling to the porch where he put down the jar. Then he slapped the deputy hard across the mouth.
"You damned right I don't have to do nothin', " Arley said. "I don't have to put up with your mouth, nor have to work in no fuckin' sawmill, nor have to stop makin' whiskey. I don't have to do a goddamn thing I don't want to do. So, right now I want to fuck these here two city sisters, and it makes me right glad that you don't like the idea. Makes me right happy to have you tied up yonder like a hog ready for the knife while I fuck me two pretty girls so close you can hear the sloshin'. "
Grady didn't answer, even though blood from a cut lip seeped from one corner of his mouth. Heather had never hated anyone the way she now hated Arley Santee. She watched the big man's hands clench and knew he was in pain, knew that the fear was in him of blindness more than of death. While her sister was taking off her clothes and walking to the porch, before Arley ordered Heather to remove hers, she took the opportunity to lay her hand upon his, to tell him tacitly that she understood and hoped he would also understand what she would have to do.
"Show your ass," Arley said, climbing out of his overalls.
Heather stood up and obeyed, because there was nothing else she could do, and her belly curled up inside. This was going to be even worse than being forced to have sex before her baby sister, worse than having to watch little Honey perform fellatio upon a man. There was another man present now, and even though he couldn't actually see them doing it, he could certainly hear what was going on. Arley would make sure of that
And now Heather was going to have to share Arley with her sister, or at least be touching while one or the other of them was laid.
"Yes, siree," Arley said, swaying a little, his pale eyes reddened from whiskey and his sharp teeth showing in a sneer. "Yes, mister po-liceman, this here is a outstandin' idea. I'll work on it some, and make it so you hurt all over, 'stead of just your thick head. Ain't nothin' would make me no madder'n to have to see or feel a woman gettin' fucked right by me, and knowin' I couldnt get my turn at her pussy. 'Spect you're goin' to get you the stone ache, time my brother gets home, account of I'm goin' to fuck these here city girls and all you'll have is a big ol' hard-on that you can't do nothin' with."
Heather stood in the gathering twilight, hearing the katydids in the brush, and the deep bass call of a low-flying bullbat. She felt the slightly cooler air of early evening upon her bare skin, j and the nipples of her breasts lifted.
"Just lie down right there where Grady can feel you next to him-but just your arm, or your hand, maybe. I ain't about to put my head in reach of them big fists when I'm screwin' you, woman. And, sis, you climb on up on the porch and lie down with your legs spraddled out, right there next to your redheaded sister. Hey now, Grady, you ain't never seen nothin' like this afore-even afore your eyes got shot out. The redheaded woman's named Heather, and she's got this here real fine white skin, all milky so you can see the blue veins down deep in her flesh. She's got red hair on her pussy, too, and big, soft tits.
"And the little 'un-like a little filly-tits ain't as big, but they taste just as sweet, And all that and she ain't old enough to vote, but she's sure old enough to fuck."
Heather glanced up at the deputy's expressionless face and saw the faint knotting of his jaw muscles. Oh, how she wished he could see again, that he could manage to reach out and tear off Arley Santee's head. Grady seemed big enough to do just that, powerful and strong. Maybe his sight would return, she hoped, the eyes themselves didn't seem to be injured, only the deep slice across the bridge of his nose had done something to a nerve. Maybe he could see again, and soon.
And maybe not. She was grasping at straws again, for now she was more certain than ever that Arley would never, never let them go, not alive.
"Got my pecker in my hand," Arley chorted. "Head of it shinin' like a new moon, and I'm puttin' one knee down between Heather's legs and the other 'un between Honey's. Sure wish you could make out these two fine pussies a-lookin' up at me with the hair on 'em and the pink lips ready for my prick. Got four titties pokin' up, and I'm feelin' all over 'em."
His right hand fondled Heather's breast, kneaded it, pushed down upon the nipple, and from the corner of her eyes, she saw his left hand doing the same thing to Honey's young-mounded breast. Terrible, she thought, so degrading to have to suffer his handlings, to be only a toy for his twisted lusts.
And Honey was shivering. Honey's hip brushed against Heather's, and she realized that her baby sister was squirming in passion. That was awful, too.
Arley said, "Goin' to stick my prick into the redheaded pussy now, goin' to run my fingers up into the little 'un's cunt and give her some finger fuckin' while I put my meat in her sister's hole."
Arley's body lowered to hers, and Heather shifted her thighs to accommodate him. The sooner she took him inside her vagina, the sooner the obnoxious act would be done with, she thought. And she denied the rising of excitement within her, because such a wanton response wasn't for her. Maybe for her gone-wild younger sister, but not for her.
"Feels good against her pussy," Arley grunted. "Feels all hot and soft and juicy on her cunt lips, Grady, too bad you ain't never goin' to get to screw it. Pushin' my cock right on in there now, Grady, I swear this here city pussy is sewed together with silks and satins and little pieces of hairy velvet."
Heather felt the slow, steady intrusion of the penis into her labia, felt the stretching of those outer lips and the giving of the inner ones as Arley's thing worked into her vagina inch by strong, meaty inch. She resisted, she kept her legs stiff and held her breath, but the juices flowed within her awakened vagina, and, as he thrust the full length of his penis into her sheath, the walls of it rippled sensuously upon it.
Heather's breath hissed out from between her clenched teeth and she rolled her head to one side in reflex. She saw her sister hunching upon Arley's hand, upon the two fingers buried to the knuckle inside Honey's small mound. Heather rolled back her head and closed her shocked eyes; she'd seen how Honey's right hand was locked upon Arley's wrist, how the girl was grinding upon the inserted fingers.
Lifting her arms, Heather spread them to keep from grabbing onto Arley's shoulders, for his strokes were stimulating her thing now, exciting the clitoris, and she fought not to be swept up in the urgency.
Her right hand came down atop Honey's left, and their fingers intertwined before Heather could pull back. Then Arley began to ram home his penis-his cock-he shoved his prick to the hilt and jerked it back only to pound it to the roots once more. Heather squeezed her sister's hand and her breath gusted out in noisy gaspings.
"Fuckin' her long and fuckin' her strong," Arley Santee panted, his crotch sledging against hers. "Hot and juicy inside-oh, yeah-soft and hot and wet-shakin' her ass and makin' her city cunt eat up my pecker now-oh, yeah."
Heather couldn't help herself any longer; flailing out with her free hand, she knew the lascivious rolling of her ass and the humping of her sweaty belly. She took the driving prick and reveled in its length, in the striking of the knob against her cervix, in the heft and thickness of the shaft plunging back and forth in her slick pussy.
The deputy held her hand, the one her sister wasn't clinging to. She'd stretched it that far out, feeling for comfort, for something else to hang onto. Grady Cordell's big fingers closed warmly over her hand, and his gentle grip was understanding.
The madness raked through her body, and with the cheeks of her ass clenching and loosening in rhythm, Heather held to the hands of two people while a third one fucked her, while she fucked Arley back in the most abandoned fashion, hiking her belly and pulling with her eager cunt.
"Fucks like a bitch with the pack after her pussy," Arley gasped. "Fuckin' me hard and mean, shakin' it like a snake-uh-uh-goin' to shoot it off up into her cunt, Grady-hot and slick and humpin' like a fool, and my prick's just a-swellin'-uh-uh--! "
He let it fly into her vagina, released the hot thick semen with a tremendous spewing of the stuff. Violently, insanely, Heather reacted by twisting and seesawing, by heaving her crotch up to his, and by moaning, hissing as her cunt pumped furiously up and down upon his suddenly stilled prick. She clenched the two hands holding her own, twisting them and shuddering as she climbed so quickly to her own maddened orgasm.
"I-oh yes, yes-I'm coming, coming! Oh, keep that meat up inside my pussy-grind it up my cunt and fill me full of your cream! Oh-oh! I can't stand it, can't stand . . . "
A convulsion rocked her vagina, its core her vibrant clitoris. Her labia writhed and her asshole tightened, Heather's head flew back and her eyes rolled whitely. Ripple after spasming ripple moved through her belly, and the hot gush of her love juices blended with his, mixed with his to ooze out of her pussy and over his limp balls and onto the boards of the porch. Her thighs were wet with more than sweat, and so was the crack of her ass.
Heather couldn't think, she could only feel. She wallowed in the feeling, in the slidy, slippery feeling of his prick moving slowly within the confines of her tremulous pussy. She loved his prick-any prick-every prick that had ever been hung on a man. She wanted them all, one at a time, or even tied together and stuffed like one gigantic sausage up her slit, spreading it and stretching it until it was at the point of exploding like a too-full balloon.
Glady would she blow up with it, scattering the wiggling little pieces of her cunt far and wide over the universe. There could be no better way, for that would not be dying, only turning into a searing nova.
Honey took away her hand, but Grady Cordell left his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Shit," Geech said. "This can't be it, man. Two, three stores and a post office."
Scarpo climbed out of the old Chevy. "Got a couple gas stations, too. And this is it, says so on the post office-Shuba. You got your cover story, so when we go in, you do most of the talking."
"Yeah." Geech passed a hand over his black, wavy hair. "I'm the dumb husband let his chick run out on him, came all this way to find her and say I'm sorry. You're her old man, come to help me. We don't know where she and her kid sister are, but we'd really appreciate help finding them."
Scarpo nodded. "You got it cold. Try in there first."
"You think they got a cold beer anywhere in this ten-cent town?"
"After," Scarpo said, and led the way into the semi-cool of the post office. He stood aside while Geech ran through his story, and put in a word from time to time.
But when they ran down, the hillbilly behind the grilled window said, "Ain't seen nobody like that and can't help you none."
Out on the sidewalk again, Geech said, "Think that bastard's lyin' ? I can go back and ping-pong him off the wall a few times."
Shaking his bald head, Scarpo said, "Down the street-the grocery. Get a cold beer or a coke; act a little more worried. Maybe your wife's got a sick kid back home that needs her bad."
In one of the general stores, they practiced the new story on an old lady clerk, and she said, "Seen two women a spell back get offn the Greyhound. Didn't come in here, though; maybe they went across the road to Ebben's. Sorry I can't help you no more'n that."
"Come on," Geech said, "let's go over there; now we know they stopped off here."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Heather said, "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything as long as he's got my baby sister with him. I mean-I realize that we're all in danger, but I just can't gamble with Honey's life."
Grady nodded, the bandages white against the deeply tanned skin of his square-jawed face. "You can get that ol' Arley figured on that, too. Just like he counted on me bein' blind and on that hound dog watchin' over us. Didn't leave anything hang loose; knows a man could sink in half a dozen mud holes and quicksand pits between here and the country road, did he take a wrong turn off the track. And the only way you could bust me loose of these handcuffs would be to saw off the post."
She came closer to him. "I'll take off your bandages, and bathe your wound again. There's not much in the way of medicine in the house, but I found a box of aspirins and I'll do the best I can with whiskey and some fresh rags."
When she had the wrappings off, he winced at the light and she said, "That's a good sign. Can you see anything but the light?"
He shook his head slowly. "Just bright and dark. Reckon I'm blind for good?"
"I only had some first aid courses," Heather said, her hands gentle upon his face, sponging lightly at the crusted cut, hoping that she wasn't hurting him. "But there were some things about shock-it could be that your sight will come back just as before. I hope so. Oh, I really hope so."
"How'd you and your sister get trapped by
Arley?" he asked, and she told him about the storekeeper in town who'd given her a lift to a crossroads, and told her of a little house that might be for rent. She described the man who'd stopped his truck and said he'd take them almost to the place, which turned out to be here.
"From then on," Heather said, bathing his wound and his face first with water, "it was hell. He-he raped us both, and neither of us could run because of that-that damned dog. And because he always had it fixed so no more than one of us could possibly get away. I-I'm very sorry you had to be subjected to that scene last night. I'm not-well, things have been so changed for us here, and I've been so scared that I don't react the way I normally would. I don't mean to come right out and say those terrible things, and I never said them out loud before-never."
Softly, Grady said, "I guess maybe I know how you feel. People can't always help how they feel."
"I don't care for him," Heather said sharply. "In fact, I hate the man and everything about him. But-when he makes me d-do it with him, I go kind of crazy. My husband was never-I mean, we didn't really make it together, and I didn't know what it was like. I-oh, I don't even know why I'm telling you all this intimate stuff, but I have to talk with somebody, and my sister has gone kind of wild with the newness of sex."
He nodded. "Helps to talk things out, sets 'em where you can see 'em clear. And don't you worry about last evenin', Heather. Flesh and blood is just that, and I got to admit that Arley was sure turnin' his knife in me when he mounted you and you held my hand."
Heather felt the blood rise in her face. She was talking about sex to a perfect stranger, and she hadn't even had a drink of the corn liquor. She changed the subject, although she enjoyed the chance to look him over without him knowing it. That broad chest, she thought, with the black hair curling up through his shirt collar, and his strong legs. Down there at the joining of his muscled thighs with his lower belly would be a thick patch of curly dark hair, and rising from it, thick and powerful and very eager for its first taste of her body, there would be his thing.
Voice shaky, Heather said, "I don't know what we'll do. If he killed some poor old woman, he'll kill us, too, when his brother gets back."
"He's off huntin' now," Grady said. "Likely as not, with all our mouths to feed, he'll be cat-fishin' tonight."
"Scrabbling," she said. "He showed us how to do it."
As she wrapped the bandages over his head and upper face, Heather felt her breasts brush his arm, his shoulder. She drew back guiltily, her heart beating wildly. What was wrong with her, she wondered. All the forced sex, all the pressure on her, and her overwhelming sense of sympathy for this poor, hurt man.
The man who suffered because another man had been doing it to her last evening, the man who clung to her hand when she bucked and heaved so sensually under Arley's stiff strokes. Would he-could he feel very deeply for her, after knowing that about her, after hearing the bad words she had spoken in the heat of her orgasm?
She'd better be worrying about getting them free, rather than dreaming silly things about a man she didn't even know.
"Funny," Grady said, "I wouldn't of thought he had the nerve for scrabblin' under roots with conger eels and water moccasins, big ol' loggerhead turtles, sometimes-big enough to take off a man's hand-maybe even an alligator gar. Set hook fishin' is more the Santee speed, and trap-pin', and chicken stealin'-things like that. Your hands sure feel soft and cool, Heather. That's a pretty name, too; never heard it down here before."
She said, "My grandmother came from here. She was a Mixon, but that was a long time back, when she was a little girl."
"Some Mixons over to Clark City, but none left around here. You got a nice voice, too; it pours sweet over a man."
"I-" Heather was flustered, shaky as a schoolgirl. She moved back from him and her thigh inadvertently brushed his. "Can I get you some more water? There's some biscuits left from breakfast."
"I appreciate your help, Heather. And try not to fret; soon as my eyes clear up, I'll figure a way out of here."
"The sheriff," she said. "Won't he miss you and come after you?"
"Not for two weeks or so," Grady said. "I just started my vacation yesterday. I come by here on my own time, just to see had the Santees got a hand in old Miss Martin's death. Arley shot me afore I knew he was anywhere close by."
"Oh," Heather said, the hope going out of her again. "I see."
He felt blindly out, and she took his hand, shivering at the warm touch of it, remembering how she had clung to it while she screwed Arley Santee. Grady said, "Don't worry too much, but do you see a chance, tell me about it. We may not have all that much time until Artis gets home."
Heather said, "It's comforting to have you here-even if you're hurt and tied up. I'm sorry you got shot, but I'm glad you're here."
His hand snugged hers. "Me, too, and I'm lookin' forward to the time I can take a good look at you, and see for myself if you're as pretty as Arley described you."
She pulled away, shaken, stirred in spite of her determination not to be. She said, "I-maybe it'll be cooler for you, if I can take off your boots."
"I'd appreciate that," he said, "and if you could loosen my belt, unbutton my shirt. This time of year, it's purely hot here."
Heather controlled her fingers, made them take hold of his low leather boots and slide them down, work them off his feet; his socks were next, and she could not help the trembling as her fingers touched his skin and brushed the hair on his legs. Her head swam, and she found that her breath was coming faster. She didn't know what was wrong with her, but whatever was causing her excitement, she wanted it stopped. She wasn't like her sister, going all passionate at the simple touch of a man-any man. She wasn't Honey, she was Heather.
And she still had to unbutton his shirt. Leaning over him, she reached shaking hands out to his open collar, and the chest hair tingled against her fingertips. There was a scent to him, too--something deeper than the odor of the whiskey with which she had bathed his wound-it was male and sweaty and provoking. Heather flared her nostrils at it, and got a button open, then another, and another.
Hesitating, her fingers strayed through the rich, dark hair on his upper belly, and she was fascinated by the matting of it upon his wide, deep chest. His nipples peeped out at her as she opened the shirt and spread it so that he could be cooler-and so that she could see more of him. Heather grew dizzy, touching him, feeling the richness of his curly body hair, and she slumped forward.
Grady Cordell couldn't put his arms around her, but his face reached blindly up as her breasts came down, and he nuzzled into it. She was wearing only a thin cotton dress, with nothing under it, and his mouth probed through the material for her nipple. Heather was against him, lying heavily upon him, bracing her hands on either side of his chest to keep from bearing too much weight down upon him as he lay stretched upon the porch, his hands cuffed around the solid post above his head.
Moaning softly, Heather sat up long enough to whip the dress over her head and discard it, then she guided her nipple into his hotly suctioning lips again. His tongue licked over her, and she shuddered from head to foot as a burgeoning need pulsed deeply within her flesh. When Grady opened his mouth so wide and tried to pull in all her breast, his teeth ringing the tender mound, Heather pulled gently back and took her wet tit away from him.
But only because she had to zip down his pants and draw them off, because she needed to see and feel and caress the wondrous new meat lifting there between his muscled thighs. It rose tall before her staring eyes-long and immensely thick, veined, and heavy, and the head of it was a deeply purpled knob so huge she could not believe it.
Heather couldn't believe she was doing what she was, either; it was as if her body was moving ahead on its own, preparing to make love to this man she barely knew. Her head insisted that this was wrong, sinful, but her flesh said how sweet, how warm, how exciting. So she straddled the hairy male body with the gigantic throbbing penis, and rubbed her belly against the meaty pole.
It was resilient, but hard at the core; it was silken outside and iron inside, and big-so very big. She writhed against it, loving the feel of it as it was pinned between her belly and his, sliding the taut nipples of her tits across his hairy chest and working her pubic mound wantonly to his, feeling the pelvic bone and the swollen sac that held his testicles.
Then she was surprised; he lifted his knees behind her back and used them to urge her upward upon his body, so that she slid across his belly. But that felt wonderful, too, so sitting erect, Heather wiggled her crotch into his tummy, and he did it again, pushed her with his knees so that she edged even higher. Now she was sitting upon his chest with her thighs spread very wide.
The silence between them stimulated her even more; she didn't want to talk about what they were doing. The tacit acceptance was more than enough, and she heard only the sounds of their breathing. Staring down at his bandaged eyes, Heather wondered why he wanted her to keep moving up his body. Already, she was very close to his chin, to his handsome, tanned face with the mouth slightly open and his even white teeth showing, and the tip of his tongue that moved slowly between the teeth, in and out.
The idea struck her then, and she thought, oh, no, oh, no! But his knees pushed her back again, and this time he had to reach so high with them that his face slid down, and suddenly she was against it.
Her mound was pushed against a man's face!
Her pussy was there, shoving its red hair into Grady Cordell's face, and she saw his nose vanishing into the depths of that pubic hair, saw her white thighs against his cheeks, and flinched because she was afraid any additional pressure would hurt his wound.
Grady made his first noise then, the first since they had come naked together like this; he said, "Ummm," into her pussy lips, and her labia twitched in response. He darted out his tongue and pushed the tip of it through the shielding hair, shoved it into her quivering lips, and they turned immediately damp at his touch.
His chin was against the crack of her ass, and Heather lifted ever so slightly so that she wouldn't smother him. One part of her mind-the logical part-told her that this was wrong and dirty and impossible for her to do, her of all people. But that part of her head was overruled by that which insisted she would soon know the most loving, the intimate caress a man could bestow upon a woman. And she couldn't bring herself to miss it, she didn't really want to miss it, so she quivered and wobbled, but did not back her crotch away from his mouth.
And, oh, but his mouth was hot and soft. His tongue slid right on into her pussy, wet and thrilling, probing and searching her softnesses. She could feel the gentle raking of his teeth along her cunt lips, and knew the hot breath stirring in her pubic hair.
His mouth-oh, lord, his mouth! Pushing into her pussy, gnawing, nibbling, making love with his lips and tongue and teeth, he nuzzled her cunt, rubbed his cheeks into her thighs, kissed and licked inside her steamy vagina. Heather could not help but grind tenderly, sweetly, upon his face, fondling his mouth with her humid pussy.
Lost in the throes of her lust, moaning through set teeth, she was still glad he could not see her face, that his eyes could not look into her own and see the furious desires churning there. For she wanted him to go on, needed him to continue, and she could not let him stop now.
Grady's tongue found her clitoris. Heather quivered and gasped, and he licked, prodded, with his hot, wet tongue, making her tingle, making her rock back and forth upon his dear, adorable face. He burrowed deeper, caught her clit between his teeth, and the sweet, wild nip of pain made her crazy, sent mad tremors racing throughout her vibrant cunt.
Then he began to suck her. Sighing, groaning into the folds of her wet labia, Grady sucked on her clitoris, drawing it into his mouth and tongu-ing it back out again. The sensation was fantastic, insane, and Heather swayed precariously upon his head, balanced upon the verge of fainting, but wanting more, more of this wonderful feeling.
"Oh, Grady, oh, lover," she wiggled on him, rubbing her dripping pussy into his mouth, his teeth, his chin. "Oh, darling man, please don't stop. Oh, kiss me and lick me-and eat my cunt! Eat my pussy, Grady! Chew me up and suck me down and swallow me-eat me, eat me!"
Hunching and quaking, Heather came. The magic flooded through her, spread to every nerve end and made her belly soft, turned it warm inside. More of her lubricating fluids seeped down, dripped out, and Grady kept sucking it down his throat, kept swallowing it as if the stuff were the finest of nectars. Heather went weak, melted, and, although his loving tongue was still lapping her juices, she regretfully drew her cunt away from him and slid her crotch tenderly down his hairy chest, leaving a trail of her love fluids.
She kissed his cheeks, kissed his mouth still wet with her own liquids, tasting the flavors of her own pussy and reveling in the sharing of them upon and in his panting mouth. Still, Grady had said no word, and she loved him more for that. As she moved down his sweaty body, her slippery pussy came in contact with the distended head of his penis, and Heather ground gently upon it, tried to steer the great knob into her labia with only the movements of her ass.
Failing that, she reached around and took hold of his big cock. It felt solid and hot in her fingers, and she didn't even hesitate about guiding it into her torrid cunt lips. The labia stretched to accommodate it, but since they had been softened and greased by his oral love, Heather absorbed the huge glans easily.
It moved into her cunt as Grady gave a little hump of his crotch, and as she wiggled her ass to make it fit better. In and in, deeper and wider, and, oh, lord, oh, mercy-it filled her vagina as no man's prick had ever filled it before. His cock packed her cunt from one end to the other, the blunt end of it nudging her cervix, and the root of it stretching her pussy lips as they began to slowly stroke together.
His balls were tight against her crotch, and his hips rolled as he thrust up into her sheath. Strong and thick, long and heavy, his prick worked solidly within her wet glove, and she used every muscle she had in her pussy to caress his driving meat. Lifting her ass and pounding her belly down, Heather rode that behemoth cock, ground and churned her blazing cunt upon it as it slid in and out.
"Oh, lover," she panted, "oh, Grady darling, dearest-oh, sweet man! Your cock's so big-so thick-ahh, lover-stick it deep-cream up to the balls-oh, feed it to me hot and heavy-fuck mefuck me-oh, fuck me! Make me come, Grady! Use that big prick to make me come-ooohahhh . . . "
Her pussy went slosh-squish, and his prick swelled its head inside. Heather gyrated her ass wildly to match his gathering orgasm, to catch up with his goodness about to burst forth from the mouth in the end of his lunging pole.
She made it, for as soon as the head of his cock flexed, she came against his pistoning shaft, riding her clitoris feverishly upon the rod. He came a heartbeat later, hosing his mighty discharge far up into her pulsating cunt, spraying her womb with his hot, thick semen. It kept jetting out in spasms, and she felt each release as it added to the flood of come that was saturating her pussy and leaking out of her shivering cunt lips to wet his groin and bubble over his balls.
They sighed together, and she kept kissing his mouth until he whispered, "They're comin' back through the woods. Hurry-get my pants back on before Arley Santee catches us!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Climbing out of the old Chevy, Geech walked back to the dirt road and looked up and down it; then he came back to the car and helped Scarpo pile some more brush around it.
Scarpo said, "Drag a bush over the tire tracks, too. Then we check over the guns and figure how we're goin' to come up on them."
"Regular little old cowboy, ain't you?" Geech said. "You learn' all these hillbilly tricks from the Indians?"
Bringing a suitcase out of the back seat, Scarpo opened it and took out a short leather case. Putting the bag on the hood of the car, Scarpo opened the case and took out a gunstock. Working deftly, knowingly, he fitted the stock to a blued receiver and barrel; next came the telescopic sight, its delicate lenses covered by soft leather protectors. He swung it to his shoulder, checked the balance again, lowered the short carbine to load its clip. It took thirty rounds.
Geech said, "I never saw a guy use no carbine before," when the other man didn't answer, dug out his own luggage. He found his pistol, a forty-four magnum with a six-inch barrel, and stuck it into his belt, pulling his summer shirt out over the butt. "A hundred thou in bills-how much of a bundle does it make?"
"Smaller than you think," Scarpo said. "Now all we got to do is cross the road and move along in the trees to some kind of path. The grocery guy said somewhere along here. Shit-what's somebody want to live away the hell out here for?"
"Maybe they never rented no cabin."
"They never come back into town, did they? They're out here, and we're going to find 'em."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The big hound's hackles lifted, and he rumbled a warning, but he kept his eyes fixed warily upon the porch, and upon Heather as she finished redressing Grady Cordell. She pawed for her discarded dress and snatched it back over her head, smoothing frantically at the wrinkles.
Arley and her sister came out of the woods, and she saw the bloody squirrels dangling from his hand. Honey had the cat and cream look on her face, and Heather knew very well that the girl had been playing sex games again, just as she knew that the man didn't have to force Honey anymore. The kid was becoming impossible.
And how about herself? What about the older, wiser sister whose duty it was to keep them both out of trouble? Heather chewed at her lip and held out a reluctant hand for the gray fox squirrels.
Arley shook his head. "You'd just screw up the skinnin' of 'em. You look a mite flushed, city woman. You ain't been playin' games with the po-lice?"
"Just took off his boots and opened his shirt," Heather said. "It was so hot."
He took the squirrels to the chopping block and dropped them there. Rifle slanted over one shoulder, Arley came back to the porch and took hold of the handcuffs to give them a savage jerk. Grady's mouth tightened, but he didn't cry out, and Arley said, "Reckon you didn't fuck around with them cuffs, neither. Fire up the stove, sis, your turn to cook dinner."
Honey pouted. "But I can't cook as good as Heather, and after we . . . "
Propping his rifle against the woodpile, Arley flicked out a knife; its blade was thin and sharp. He slipped its point into the belly of a squirrel and drew it up. He said to Honey, "Don't get the idea your ass is made out'n gold, sis. You got other things to do besides screw."
Honey stamped on across the porch and into the house, and Heather frowned after her. As Arley skinned the squirrels, he said, "You, Grady-I ain't done with you, by a long shot. But, you know, you just about the luckiest man in the county. I got me six fox squirrels here, and all of 'em head-shot clean. I swear, I still don't see how that bullet only grazed you. All you Cordells must have cast-iron heads."
"Hard enough," Grady said, his bandaged head swinging toward the other man's voice. "I'll make you a trade, Arley-and you know me for a man of my word. You take off, soon's your brother gets back-if he gets back-and I give my word I won't come after you for a full day. That ought to give you time to get a far piece from here."
Arley chuckled, the noise not a cheerful one, but arrogant. "And leave you and these here city women alive? I ain't no flat-out fool, Grady. More I fuck these girls, the more I'm decidin' to take 'em with us. Ol' Artis will sure appreciate ass like they got, and I ain't never been above sharin' with my own brother. But you, Grady, I 'spect the river'll hide you right good. If I don't have to swap you for Artis, that is. The sheriff trap Artis, I'm goin' to toll you out like a Judas goat, so you can lead him back safe. And I always got the women for boot."
Grady shifted his arms, and the handcuffs rattled against the post. "Never been easy to fool you, Arley. Else I'd got you a long time back for makin' whiskey."
Grinning, Arley brought the skinned meat to the porch and handed it to Heather. "Don't you forget it, Grady. I always been too slick for you, so if you hopin' to slip out on me, just remember you ain't been able to catch me all you life. City woman, carry the meat in to sis and bring me a jar of corn."
Inside, Heather said to Honey, "Do you have to act like the perfect bitch?"
"Oh, nobody's perfect," Honey answered. "Not even you."
Flushing, Heather hurried back out with the whiskey and the dipper filled with water. Arley took the jar and screwed off the top, he gulped a huge drink and she gave him the water for chaser. He drank that off, too, and said, "You're learnin', redheaded woman. You tell the law here all about how your husband done run off with some money? I mean, ain't no sense in ol' Grady thinkin' you just a HP innocent woman. Why, hell, policeman, this here city gal has got her a whole thousand dollars hid, and there's some real gangsters after it."
Drinking again, Arley kicked off his brogans and propped his bare feet on the porch steps. Instinctively, Heather compared him with Grady; she had done it with both these men, although she'd never thought to see the day when she'd come to that. So she had something to go on, a pitting of one man against the other, at least in their styles of lovemaking.
She corrected herself hastily-not lovemaking where Arley was concerned. With him, it was more a hate making, a put-down of all imagine city women, the kind who had evidently scorned his crude ways and obscene approach. But with Grady Cordell-she glanced quickly at the bound man and felt warmth in her face, felt the instinctive tremble of her nipples as they went erectile.
The gratification she had gotten with Grady was as big as his penis, deeply fulfilling and all-encompassing. It had been more for her than the simple assuaging of passion, although that had been tremendous, too. But it had also been tender and powerful. She thought of the precious intimacy of his tongue licking over her stiffened clitoris, of the incomparable thrill his ardent mouth had given her.
It hadn't been dirty; it had not been a thing of shame, nothing to hide or deny. Heather felt very proud of it, and even now there was a leftover tingle in her thighs, a residual delight that nestled within the still-damp confines of her mound. Had Grady been shocked by the dirty words she had hurled at him while he was mouthing and chewing upon her pussy? If so, he had given no sign of it, but she wished she could see his eyes.
His seeing eyes, she thought, not a blinded, expressionless pair of useless windows turned one way. Oh, please, she prayed, let Grady Cordell regain his sight, just let it be shock that's keeping him blind now.
Arley said, "Me and sis had a real fuckin' down to the river, so I can't do much 'til after I get some lead back in my pencil. Fried squirrel and corn whiskey ought to do it. Too bad you can't get you none of this here city ass, Grady."
"Too bad," Grady said, and turned to try to get comfortable.
Heather said, "Can't you let him free of the post?"
Arley cocked his head and squinted. "Come dinner time, reckon I might. I'll run a string to him, though. Never figured to get snapped by your own cuffs, did you, Grady?"
"Never did."
Taking another swallow of liquor, Arley said, "You mighty damned agreeable, all of a sudden. Gettin' your eyes shot out do that? Or it could be you're plannin' something with Heather here-like tryin' to save your hide. Never mind, Grady, never mind. Blind as you are and citified as she is, the quicksand or the mud holes will get you sure as ol' billy hell if Bigdog don't get you first."
She wanted to take Grady's hand, to comfort him as best she could, but she knew better than to reach for him. Not with Arley Santee anywhere near, not now and not yet, but Heather was conscious of a new determination building within her. Before Grady came, she had been without hope, and it seemed odd to have it rekindling in her heart now, especially since he was helpless in his blindness and only an added burden.
But he was something else. He was love and he was tenderness, and together they could think of a way out for themselves and for her sister.
Arley was laughing, and she pulled her mind back to concentrate upon what he was saying, as the odor of frying meat wafted from the house and engulfed them. He said, "Never figured no Chicago gangsters to be after a whole thousand dollars dropped in my lap just like two fine pieces of ass done, neither. Where you reckon they at, with them machine guns and all?"
Heather watched Grady's face, but the man didn't show anything. Something else for him to accept about her, she thought, a thing more than some personal idiosyncrasy like using bad words at the height of her passion. Grady was a cop, and if he knew that the thousand dollars was really a hundred thousand. . . .
"Food's done," Honey called from inside the house, and Heather sighed in relief at the change of subject. She was ravenous, too, despite the heat of the day and the mugginess in the air. All the sex, she thought, it stimulated the appetite, among other things.
Arley was eating heartily, tearing the meat off bone with his long, sharp teeth, when Heather filled two plates and asked about feeding Grady. "Might's well," he answered, and still gnawing at a leg bone, rose and followed her to the porch.
He unlocked one side of the handcuffs so that Grady could sit up, then he snapped them again and ran a length of rope through the chain and back around the post. "You ain't goin' nowheres like that," he said, "even if you could see good. You got to piss, I'd say do it off the end of the porch, 'cause ol' Bigdog won't cotton to you out in his yard. Feed him, city woman, go on and feed the pore ol' blind man."
After Arley went back inside, Heather sat on the porch edge and put a piece of meat into Grady's hand. When he finished that, she fed him greens and field peas a bite at a time, and guided his fingers to the corn bread, the extra bit of squirrel.
He said, "A blind man ain't much, that's for sure."
"You won't be blind," Heather said. "I'm wishing too hard."
He dropped his voice, "The stolen money Arley was talkin' about; a trick to keep from hurtin' you girls anymore?"
Heather said, "N-no; it's true enough, and I'll tell you about it when I get the chance. But it might help us all, when the time comes." She couldn't help lifting her hand and touching his cheek then, to comfort him. She still had it there when Arley came out.
"Ain't that pretty?" he said. "You gettin' horny, Grady? Must be this city pussy is gettin' to you, but don't you worry; I'll take care of it for you." He pushed a bare foot against Heather's breast, and she shrank back. Frowning, Arley said, "Might be you two been fuckin' already, while I was down to the river huntin'. I'll see to that after I nap a spell. And, Grady, don't get no wild hairs up your ass about jumpin' on me. "I'll be sleepin' out there by my dog, with one eye open and one hand on my gun."
He shoved his toes hard into Heather's breasts again, and she flinched. He said, "Go on in the house and help clean up. If you ain't gettin' enough screwin', I got somethin' in mind for you."
She watched him go across the yard and lie down in the shade of the chinaberry tree, head propped on his arm and the rifle under his hand.
Bigdog bellied down on the clay beside Arley, watchful, hating them all with his yellow eyes.
After she and Honey tidied up the dishes and came out for cooler air, her sister said softly, "How is he? Looks like he'd have a big one."
"Honey!" Heather said, outraged.
"Don't put me on," Honey said. "You're not all uptight about sex any more, and I'll just bet you and the fuzz made it while Arley and me were swinging down in the woods."
"Hush," Heather warned, glancing at Arley asleep in the yard. "Grady-well, he'll help us to get away."
"How?" Honey asked. "Bigdog isn't a guide dog."
"Never mind, he'll help. And, Honey, I wish you wouldn't be so free and easy."
"No choice, big sister, when Arley says frog, I make like a top. If he really decides to wipe somebody out, I don't want it to be me-us."
"Shh," Heather whispered, as Arley muttered and turned onto his back. "He-he must be planning something awful for me when he wakes up."
Grady said quietly, "If you toll him over close to me, I'll get my arms over his head and around his skinny neck."
Honey giggled. "Tell you what-I'll get him to mount me, and then when he's pumping away, I'll keep sliding my ass over closer and closer, until you can mug him. How's that? Are you kidding, mister? Arley's too shrewd to get caught like that."
"Have you a better idea?" Heather asked. Honey shook her head and looked thoughtful. "I don't want to make him mad, Heather. Hehe likes me a lot, and maybe if I can keep him happy, he won't hurt us when his brother gets back. I mean, we can screw them silly, and after they get all calmed down, we can sort of sneak away together."
"And Grady?"
Honey got up and went to the far end of the porch, where she stretched out in the shade and turned away her face. Heather said, "I'm sorry, Grady, she's very young, and more frightened than she'll admit."
"It's all right," he answered in a whisper. "Could be she'll keep Arley busy most of the time."
Heather said, "I-I hope you won't hate me for anything I have to do with Arley. What-the thing you did to me-I never knew how sweet and wonderful that could be. It was my first time, and I think you were very nice for doing it. I don't want to do it with him, I want it with you."
"I understand," he said. "I can't think hard of you, Heather, no matter what you have to do."
"Thank you," she said. "Can you get some rest now? If he lets me, I'll bathe your wound again this evening and clean you up, maybe give you a sponge bath."
He touched her hand and lay down on the porch. His eyes hurt, she thought, the poor man was in such a mental strain, so worried and in pain. And she had practically hurled herself upon him for sex, making things even worse for him. Or had it? She had taken his mind off his injury, his possible lifetime of blindness, the distinct possibility of his upcoming death. And the deaths of herself, her sister. Heather was nowhere near so certain that Arley would take them along, or leave them unharmed.
She looked at the dog, and the big hound stared back. Pulling her dress away from her body, Heather blew down into the valley between her breasts. Such a body, she thought, all these years of being nothing, and then to suddenly turn into a vessel of rapture. Men thought she was desirable now-Arley-and Grady, too. Certainly she thought of men in a different way than she had before.
And now she wondered what kind of devious sexual tricks Arley would have in mind for her when he woke up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They were a hundred yards along the brush when Scarpo saw the snake. He froze, the automatic carbine at his hip, and the sweat that was running down his cheeks turned suddenly chill.
The snake saw him, too. It lay coiled in the path, its copper-colored head wedge-shaped and deadly, its tongue flicking out and in, the black diamond eyes steady upon Scarpo.
"Jee-sus!" he whispered, and Geech moved behind him, saying, "What's the matter, man? What the hell's the matter?"
"Back up," Scarpo hissed. "Goddamn it, baek up and let me get outa' here before that fuckin' snake bites me!"
The carbine trembled at his hip, and Scarpo backed into Geech, stumbled, then crashed into the brush as the moccasin struck at the sound, at the flurrying.
"Son of a bitch!"
"Blow him apart!" Geech said, whipping out his pistol as the snake recoiled and swayed its evil head.
"No-no!" Scarpo stumbled in the bushes, waving one hand at Geech and watching the snake every second. "No-don't shoot, you'll let 'em know we're coming'. "
"But that ugly bastard-look out! He's about to strike again!"
Stooping, Scarpo found a dry branch, a length of wood mostly solid. He sidled around and handed his carbine to Geech, then advanced upon the copperhead, poking the branch. The snake struck, hit the branch, and angled off. Scarpo's breath whistled from him as he jabbed the wood, lifted and slammed it down. Again and again he beat on the writhing snake until it was pulped.
"Jes-sus." Sweating, shaking, he flung the stick into the trees and took back his gun from Geech. "I never seen one of them bastards outside a zoo, and I didn't want to see it then. That bastard bit at me twice. I damned near stepped on it. Jee-sus."
Geech followed the other man as Scarpo headed straight back toward the road, but slower than he came, watching every place he put his feet. When they were out in the white dust again, Geech said, "How the hell can we sneak up on 'em like this?"
Patting his handkerchief at his cheeks, Scarpo said "Look, I don't give a shit. Them trees could be full of them fuckin' snakes. There ain't no traffic on this road, anyhow. We'll walk up it to the corner-to where the road forks, like the old lady said. Snakes-Jee-sus! It's not like cuttin' through an empty lot."
Tucking his magnum back into his belly, Geech said, "No, it's not," and grinned.
Scarpo caught him grinning. "Listen, you son of a bitch, anybody with good sense is scared of snakes! But that don't mean I'm copping out. I never quit on a job yet. Come on, let's go find that cabin."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was drunk and he was meaner than Heather had seen him before. His pale green eyes turned red, and his mouth was slack, the stubble on his chin and cheeks standing out prominently in the early evening light. Arley Santee was drunk, but he wasn't careless, he held the gun muzzle on Grady and had Heather open one cuff, then hook him around the post again.
He said, "All right, city woman-widder woman. Reckon you and him slipped around and fucked, so you're goin' to make it up to me."
Grady said, "Don't hurt the woman, Arley."
Reptile quick, Arley struck him along the cheek. Grady's head slammed into the post and Heather cried out in fear for him.
"No!" she yelled. "He's hurt, and you-the blood's starting again, staining the bandages!"
"Ain't that a fuckin' shame," Arley said, and backhanded Heather. She staggered back and caught the porch rail. On the ground below, the hound threatened her with a low growl.
"Get your asses out'n your clothes," Arley commanded. "Both you bitches get naked, quick as you can."
Head reeling, Heather pulled her dress over her head, and as she hung it over the rail, saw that Arley was stepping out of his overalls. His penis was erect, poking out and up as if the violence he'd indulged in had stimulated it, and suddenly Heather realized that Arley somehow equated sex with hurt, or with mastery.
It wasn't like that, she thought numbly, staring at the fresh stain marking Grady's bandages. With Grady it was tender and loving, and neither of them had dominated the other. They had shared their bodies, not submitted them, and certainly not used them as weapons with which to attack, to destroy.
"Can't tell which looks the best," Arley said, fondling his rod and grinning wetly at them-at Heather and Honey, "The widder's got the biggest tits, and I can't fault a pussy with red hair on it. But sis is so young and tender, and her little cunt's always ready to take meat in it. So I guess I'll just set here and play with my pecker 'til I decide which to fuck."
Heather gave a little sigh of deliverance, and wanted so much to go to Grady, to see how badly he had been hurt. He hadn't even groaned, and she could see his big chest rising and falling evenly, so she knew he wasn't dead. That had been cruel of Arley to hit him, when Grady's hands were tied like that, and if she ever got the chance to pay him back . . . .
"Reckon you better lie down on the quilt with your legs spraddled, sis," Arley said, and Heather saw a faint smile of derision play over Honey's lips as she'd been chosen.
But she didn't envy Honey; she pitied her. Honey hadn't known the huge and gentle penis of Grady Cordell, and probably never would. For that, Heather pitied her sister.
"Look at that fine pussy," Arley said. "All that shiny brown hair and them tight pink lips that flat eat a man's cock up. Too bad you can't see it, Grady. That ass is somethin' to watch, account of sis wiggles it so good. Not much bigger'n a minute, she ain't, and it's kind of like fuckin' a child, but that makes it good, too. You ever wanted to screw one of them HP tight-assed kids you see goin' off to school every day, Grady?"
Grady didn't answer, but Heather noticed that his lips tightened. Arley said, "Widder woman, you get on down there on your knees and take you a good, close look at sis's pussy."
Heather said, "I-what do you mean?"
"I mean if you don't move your ass quick, you goin' to get it kicked up between your shoulders! Get down there," I said.
Trembling, Heather stepped over to where her sister was lying and dropped to her knees. Blushing, she forced herself to stare down between Honey's legs at the luxuriant growth of rich pubic hair nestling so lavishly between the slim, young thighs. It was the first time she had ever had a close-up of the female sex organ, and the sight was revealing, if not just a little shocking.
The labia peeked from its heavy nest of hair, pink and puffy, and down at the far end of the half-concealed slit, there was the little dark ring of the anus. Honey's thighs were shapely, and her buttocks nicely rounded, Heather saw, her kid sister's breasts were not large, but wonderfully molded, and the nipples were hard.
"Like that pussy?" Arley asked, and she could feel his drunken breath fanning against her naked shoulder blades. "Lean on over, woman, get closer to it-a heap closer."
Obediently, wondering what it was all about, Heather leaned over and put her hand upon the wooden flooring between Honey's fragile ankles. The girl's crotch loomed larger, and Heather could make out the faint dampness that was beginning to glisten along her sister's swollen labia. Why, she thought, the girl was almost squirming in passion, as if she simply couldn't wait for the thing Arley was going to give her.
His hand pressed against her neck. "Closer, city woman, get closer'n that."
Heather struggled against the pressure of his hand, but Arley clamped his lean fingers into her neck and shoved her head lower, pushed it down, down until she was practically touching her sister's mound!
"No-no!" Heather groaned. "You-you can't mean-not that-not me and my sister-oh, no!"
"Oh, yeah," Arley grunted, and gave her neck the final shove. "Stick your face right on down into that fine cunt, widder. Do it good, 'cause I catch you raisin' your fuckin' head afore sis there gets her nuts off, I'm goin' to whip your ass with this gun barrel. Then I'm goin' to make you eat that pussy anyhow, so you might's well do it good the first time."
Eyes closed tightly, holding her breath, Heather turned her face so that only her cheek lay against the moist curls of Honey's mound, and her lips moved across the inside of the girl's silken thigh. Heather was stunned so that she could barely think; she was so shocked, so disbelieving that she could not imagine that she was actually in such a position, that she was really nuzzling into her baby sister's crotch.
She had only heard the barest evil whispers of such a thing, of two perverted women making a twisted kind of sex with each other, but she hadn't really listened to the wild stories, brushing them aside with the logic that they couldn't ever possibly concern her. Now they did, and in the worst possible manner.
There was no bad odor; somehow, she had always believed there would be a nauseous odor, but all she could discern was a faint musk, a spice that wasn't at all distressing. Grady must smell something like that, when he moved his mouth close to her own cleft.
Maybe Honey would help her fake this awful thing, Heather thought. Surely the girl wouldn't actually participate in this monstrous affair, even if she'd gotten out of hand lately. It was one thing for Grady to use his mouth on Heather's organ, but a different thing altogether for Heather to do it to another woman, and to her own kid sister, at that. Somehow, it smacked of incest, besides being homosexual.
Something whipped across her up-ended buttocks, and Heather gasped in outrage, in pain.
Arley said, "Get on with it. Put your mouth onto them pink pussy lips, and then shove your tongue right on inside. I've heard tell how city women do it french to each other, but I sure never thought I'd see me the day when I could set and watch. Wish you could see it with me, Grady, I swear. That redheaded woman's got her face stickin' in there atwixt her sis's legs, and she's just about to start eatin' pussy."
Mind spinning, Heather put her hands on Honeys' thighs. They felt very soft, all sleek and polished. Must fake it somehow, she thought, Honey will help to pretend. She lowered her mouth and brushed her lips across the girl's palpitating mound, just touching the hair.
Honey's hands came drifting down and nestled upon Heather's head, and the girl said softly, "Ah, yes, darling, oh, that's sweet."
She's going to do it, Heather thought wildly, Honey's taking up the act just as if she knew my exact plans. And Heather dipped her face a little more, moved it slowly up and down upon the far fringes of the pubic hair so abundant and sultry.
"Kiss it," Honey purred, and her hands urged Heather's mouth deeper into the plush forest, so that Heather's lips came in contact with those other lips-softer and longer and quivering.
For just a fraction of a moment, she hesitated, her mind whirling. The musk rose attractively, and the flavor was light, salty-sweet. Honey pushed her hands down and her crotch up, and suddenly Heather's mouth was crushed into the girl's mound.
Her teeth scraped the labia, and they parted damply for the intrusion. Heather clung desperately to her sister's thighs, but the heaving of Honey's belly was too powerful for her, and the lifting, the twisting of the vulva rubbed over her chin, her lips, her nose.
The whimper that broke from Heather's lips was muffled by her sister's pussy. Her tongue somehow slid into the wetly caressing labia, and before she knew it, Heather was lapping, dipping, into the satin-lined hole, pushing her mouth hungrily into the torrid slot, gone completely out of her conscious mind and reacting only by instinct. And her primitive instinct was to devour this delicious meat spreading itself so invitingly for her ministration.
"Ooh!" Honey moaned, from somewhere above her. "Oooh, Heather, that's wonderful! Oh, my sister, lick it deep, feel around in my pussy with that hot tongue-yes, darling, you're doing fine. Now find my clit-ahh! Suck me, darling, suck me!"
There was hotness and a wet lunging, a soft encompassing and a hairy caress upon each cheek. Nose deeply into her younger sister's lower groin, Heather chewed tenderly but avidly into the cunt below, probing with her tongue, worrying the lips with her teeth.
"Eat my pussy, baby! Oh yes, Heather-eat my cunt!"
And Heather obliged, burrowed farther into the perfumed and sugary vagina, tickling as far back as she could reach. She slid her tongue, her slippery teeth, up, up, searching for the rubbery nub of her sister's clitoris. When she found it, Honey arched her back and clawed in a frenzy into Heather's long hair. The girl's hips rolled and her belly trembled, and now the sweat slid oily down along Heather's cheeks, and the other fragrant juices lathered her tongue, her questing lips.
Digging her own fingers into Honey's ass cheeks, Heather lifted the succulent cunt to her mouth, sucked and sucked upon the clit until she had it distended so that she could lock it between her teeth and hold it there as a pulsating captive.
"You're killing me!" Honey screamed. "Oh darling, kill me like that! Eat me alive, swallow me down-oh, Heather-Heather-I loveyou, love you! Eat me up-I-I'm coming coming coming!"
With a surge of her thighs and a driving blow of her pelvis, Honey shuddered her pussy against her sister's teeth, and Heather forced her mouth as deeply into that lovely hot cunt as she could possibly get it, gulping and sucking all the way.
Honey writhed and humped, and it was as if she were fucking Heather's face, as if she were using it the way she would screw a man's prick. And as her convulsive swiveling slowed bit by bit, the girl moaned softly in the rapturous agony of her completion.
"Ain't that somethin'? " Arley crowed. "Now ain't that purely somethin' ? I mean, watchin' two pretty girls do that-one of 'em lappin' into her sister's pussy and makin' her come. Your gal friend done the eatin', Grady. Maybe you ain't all that anxious to be kissin' her now."
"You go to hell," Grady said strongly, and Heather's heart leaped within her hot, sweaty body, for fear that Arley would hit him again.
Lifting her face swiftly from between her sister's trembling thighs, she said, "Arley-can we do it together, kind of?"
His head turned to her, and he said over his shoulder to the handcuffed man, "I'll bust your head later. Right now, I got me some business with this here bitch woman."
And to Heather he said, "I figure you and him screwed, but knowin' how delicate you act about things, I don't figure you sucked him off yet. So I'm goin' to fix you up right good, widder woman. I'm goin' to let you suck me off, but just to show there ain't no hard feelings, sis there can eat your pussy at the same time."
Wide-eyed, Heather kneeled there on the porch and stared at her tormentor. "Oh, no-oh, please, Arley, don't do this to me, I beg you."
"Shit," he grunted, and used one hand to wave the club of his penis at her. "Beg all you want to, but it ain't about to do you a speck of good. You eat pussy and you'll eat prick. But sis's tongue up your gash ought to make it good for you, make you suck me fine as she done the other time."
"No!" Heather said, up on one knee and turned to face him. "D-damn it, I won't do this dirty thing. I won't!"
Arley said, "shit," again, and poked the muzzle of his rifle hard into her belly. Heather clasped both hands over the agony and fought for breath, swaying and sickened. Black spots buzzed behind her eyes and ricocheted inside her head.
"Come on, Heather," Honey said, tugging at her arm. "Oh, please, Heather, don't try to fight him, don't make him any madder than he is right now. Let's do as he wants; and, look, going down on him isn't bad. I've done it, and it's not bad. I-I'll keep you so stirred up, you won't even realize what's going on at the other end."
Arley laughed, the sound like a rusty file across a nail. "Hell she won't. I'm goin' to stuff my pecker down her throat like it was a big ol' sausage, and she can't hardly ignore a thing like that, now can she, sis?"
Honey clung to Heather's arm, squeezing the muscle hard, bringing her out of her daze. Honey asked, "How-how do you want us to do it?"
"I figure you can lie down on your back and kind of slide your face in there atwixt the widder's legs while she kneels there just like she is. She can sit right down on your mouth so you can stick your tongue up it, and I'll just take her by the head and ram my cock into her mouth. Everybody can just do what comes natural, until they come."
Shuddering in disgust, Heather rocked on one knee, with the other leg bent and braced. Arley dragged up a hide-bottomed chair and sat down in it, his knees spread wide. He reached out and took her by the head, drew her down to where his ugly penis throbbed with its drop of pre-seminal fluid. She closed her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The wizened woman said, "No, sir; no, sir, mister, I never seen no two white women come up my road. Not this here past week and not never. Onliest white women I sees is them church folks, when they brings me a little somethin'. "
Scarpo looked at Geeth, then back at the old Black. "Storekeeper in town said your cabin was for rent; that right?"
She bobbed her head, and sat on the edge of her rocking chair on the sagging porch of her small house. "Yes, sir, cap'n. Guess so.'
"Any other cabins to rent around here?"
"Not that I know of," she answered, wrinkled face intent upon his, rheumy eyes squinting. "Wouldn't rent mine, save for I'd purely like to visit my brother in Jackson, yes, sir. Wouldn't rent to no white women, neither-did folks say maybe I oughtn't."
Geech said impatiently, "You got any neighbors, old woman ? "
She craned her neck around to look at him. "Don't lay much claim to 'em, but they's them Santees down the road a piece."
Geech said, "They might of got the wrong turn, man." And to the woman, "These Santees-they live back the way we came, maybe up the other fork of the road?"
"You right, sir, right and proper. But was I you, I wouldn't go messin' around there none. You ain't lookin' for whiskey makers, is you?"
Scarpo made a face and wiped his soggy handkerchief over his head and cheeks. "Jes-sus-stills and revenuers; would you believe it?"
Birdlike, cocking her head at him now, the old woman said sharply, "Trash they is and I ain't ascared to say it: trash. On top of that, they's bad, bad. Always slippin' around with them guns."
Scarpo said, "Okay, lady. Thanks for your help."
"They ain't even got a proper road up to they place; twists and wobbles every whichaway, and they's potholes."
"Okay, lady." Scarpo turned from the porch and walked heavily across the swept yard and back onto the dusty road. He kept staring at the grass on either side, and moved gingerly into the shade where he'd left his carbine hidden.
"Back to the fork in the road," he said. "We missed it."
Geech said easily, "Been a lot of screwin' up on this job."
Scarpo stared at him for a second, then cradled the carbine and plodded away, not really giving a damn if the younger man followed or not.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Arley Santee was still drunk, maybe drunker; he'd been through two pint mason jars of volatile corn liquor, but Heather couldn't see any appreciable change in him since the afternoon. He hadn't stumbled on the path, and he wasn't a bit careless with his rifle. The dog hung back as he ordered, too, padding guard behind them, a terrible sentry in the humid night.
The carbide lamp wobbled on his head as he sat down on the river bank and turned his face toward the water. He wasn't worried about Grady Cordell because one end of the rope that passed around Grady's ankles was tucked into Arley's overalls. If Grady moved quickly, Arley could simply jerk his feet out from under him.
Where could a blinded, handcuffed man run to, Heather thought. Arley had only hauled him down here to further torture him, to belittle and degrade him-as he had done to Heather and to Honey. Remembering, she rubbed her hand across her mouth and grimaced. No man should force that kind of thing upon a woman, not even a man so lacking in all the human mercies as Arley Santee.
"Lawman," Arley said, "if you had your eyes back, you'd of seen that big ol' loggerhead slippin' his eye under the water yonder. Biggest son of a bitch turtle I ever seen on this river, and I 'spect I'll bust him one-if I got me the time, after Artis gets back with all that money. Might be busy, though; might be makin' the widder there go get me her money she has to sign for, might be makin' her suck me off some more, like she done back at the house. You like listenin' to that, Grady."
"No," Grady said.
Arley moved his head, moved the spotlight of the lamp across the river surface. Watching, Heather made out a stump, a log hung up on the far bank, and a short forest of cypress trees growing out of the night black water near this shore. Would the man actually make Grady go into that river, where there was so much chance of him drowning? She hoped not; she prayed not.
"Reckon you didn't," Arley said, and Heather caught the gleam of the fruit jar as he drank from it again. "Reckon when you go to swap slobbers with her again, you'll recollect how she sucked a cunt and my pecker, too. Can't never trust these city women, Grady; they ain't decent, honest country folks like you 'n me."
His giggle was obscene, a half-mad sniggering that frightened Heather silly. When it died, Arley said, "Around to the right, and out yonder some, there's a water oak blowed over next to the bank. Them roots makes a good hidey hole for mudcats, most nights. Reckon you can scrabble one good as me?"
"Guess so," Grady said. "Man don't need his eyes to feel under roots."
"Man needs his feet, though. Couple of dropoffs out yonder, too. You fall in one of 'em, I might not be able to haul you back with this here string, seein' as how you won't be doin' much swimmin' in your handcuffs."
Heather said, "Arley . . . "
And he said, "Shut up, woman. Your mouth's best used for suckin' cocks."
Face flaming, grateful for the cover of darkness, Heather sank back. There was no use in even attempting to reason with the man, he was going to do just as he wanted. Here among the three others, he was the kingpin, the boss man, the emperor; his word was law, and his punishment swift and perverted. That's why he had Grady down here on the blackly flowing river, to punish him for screwing Heather. He had already doled out chastisement for Heather on the same charges.
Arley said, "I got the rope on you, Grady. Just ease on out there and bring us back some mudcat for breakfast. If you can scrabble a stall."
Grady stood up, a big shadow in the white flicker of the headlamp, and Heather caught her breath, not wanting to see him risk his life on Arley's evil whim.
No more than she had wanted to take his penis into her lips, back there at the shack. She couldn't back away now, and she couldn't then. He had her head pinned between his cruel hands, and when he shoved his pale-haired belly forward, the swollen, purplish head prodded her lips and she had to open them or have her skull crushed in his grip.
His penis slipped into her spread lips, passed softly scraping over her bottom teeth, and Heather had shivered like a young tree in a high wind. Fighting the impulse to upchuck, she had steeled her body to accept whatever indignity he could pile upon it-or into it. And when his prick slid over the roof of her mouth and moved to touch the velvet cup of her throat, she had managed to take it without becoming violently ill.
"Step right on out in the water," Arley called to Grady. "Might be you'll stomp on that big ol' turtle, and he'll snap off a leg."
The bastard, she thought, mind unflinching at the curse, for it fit him. He'd worked his penis in and out of her lax mouth, snarling instructions as to what she was supposed to do with her tongue, and she had obeyed, trying to get it over and done with.
"That's the way," Arley said. "If you miss that drop-off, you can turn to the right and feel along them roots. Might not be a water moccasin in 'em tonight; was the other night, though."
She couldn't have done it without the thing that Honey was doing to her at the same time. Kneeling over her sister's face, Heather felt the quick, hot darting of the girl's tongue, and knew the caress of her lips. By concentrating upon her own excitement, she could continue to work upon Arley's lunging cock, using her tongue and teeth, sucking with lips until her cheeks dipped in, pulling upon his penis head while he groaned and bucked in the chair.
"Swim on off, if you can," Arley said. "See can you out-pull me on this rope."
Honey had probed swiftly into Heather's vagina, reaching full length with her tongue, stroking it around and about inside as her lips nibbled at the labia and her fingers teased lightly over the cheeks of Heather's ass and down through the crack.
Heather pulled on Arley's cock, sucked it and laved it with her tongue, tasting the saltiness of its head and the oozing seminal fluid, knowing the hairy thrust as his pelvis came against her lips, as his balls swung rhythmically to her chin.
"That's the place," Arley called. "Right in them roots and on back in the mud bank. If you lucky, there's a big old cat up under there, but if you ain't-maybe you can snatch out a conger eel afore he eats your thumb clean off."
She couldn't help squirming on Honey's face; the sensation was different from when Grady had used his mouth on her, for a woman seemed to know all the nooks and crannies of eroticism. Her sister ate her cunt with delicacy, with a sensuous concentration that made Heather go wild. In turn, she sucked madly upon Arley's slippery prick, so that when it swelled its head and prepared to ejaculate, she was caught by surprise.
Arley's breath hissed between his teeth and the carbide lamp held its bright spot upon the head and shoulders of Grady Cordell as the deputy dipped his cuffed hands beneath the black surface of the river.
Heather remembered that he had hissed just that way when he started to come in her mouth, and she couldn't get away from it. He clamped her head savagely in his hands and stroked his spitting cock far back into her throat. The hot semen geysered into her throat, against the roof of her mouth, over her tongue. Arley hissed and churned his ass, half-lifting from the chair to feed his flood of juice into her face.
"Got him," Grady said exultantly, and Heather stared to see him lift dripping from the water with a big fish thrashing violently from his doubled fists. Spray flew and Grady turned to wade back to shore, water pouring off him, off the catfish he held.
If she hadn't swallowed the stuff, she could have choked on it. And just about that moment, Honey's tingling suction got to Heather, too. Her entire being suffused with a glow of ecstasy, and when Arley drew his wet penis from her mouth, Heather trembled in an exquisite orgasm brought on by her sister's hungry teeth and tongue.
"Bring him on in," Arley ordered. "I just as soon keep you on my string, anyhow, leastways 'til Artis gets home, case I have to trade your worthless ass for him. Then I'll think of some-thin' to do with you, Grady; I'll think hard on it and come up with somethin' real, real good."
When Grady stumbled on the steep river bank, Heather moved to help him, but Arley shoved her back. "Tote the fish on home, boy; you a big, strong policeman, so you can make it all right by yourself."
They trooped back for the house, Grady moving ahead in the dark, with the big hound ranging ahead of him, crisscrossing the trail from side to side and keeping an eye on him. Then Heather and Honey came next, closer now than they had been in their lives, and after them prowled Arley Santee and his rifle. Because the light was behind the others, they moved clumsily, following Grady's lead. Heather sighed with relief when they reached the bare yard, because she knew that snakes hunted at night, and any of them could have stepped on one.
She only wished they could step on Arley Santee as well, and break his back like the reptile he was. Somehow, by some stroke of good fortune, they would soon have to try it. The man's absent brother couldn't be gone much longer, and when he came back, the odds would be astronomical against any kind of escape. Another gun, another carbon copy of Arley-it would bar them from any lingering hope they might still have.
Another gun, she thought, and wondered where Arley had hidden the pistol he'd taken from Grady. A pistol wouldn't be so difficult to work; just point it and pull the trigger. But Arley had tucked it out of sight somewhere in the cabin, and it might not be all that hard to find. She'd look, Heather decided; every chance now, she would search for that other gun.
"Take care of that fish," Arley said to her. "You know how."
She took the catfish from Grady and saw that he'd killed it, for which she was thankful. She got the fire going under the pot and waited for it to heat the water. Looking over at the porch, she saw Grady being chained to his post once more, and her heart sank. Heather didn't think she could just shoot Arley outright-even though he was a confessed murderer and a perverted rapist, and a kidnapper, too. She would need Grady's help.
But Grady was blind, and handcuffed to the post.
When she was done with the catfish, she carried it into the house and placed it in the pan of water with baking soda in it. She poked through a table drawer and looked behind the wood box, but the missing pistol wasn't in either place.
Arley came up behind her and she flinched. The coal oil lamp was burning on the kitchen table, throwing its soft light over the shack's interior, and the heat of the day had abated somewhat. It should have been a time for resting, for gentleness, but not with Arley Santee standing so near.
"M-more whiskey?" she asked. "I see some jars over there."
He put both arms around her waist and reached up to cup his hands over her breasts, pulling her back into his body. Heather felt his stiff penis shoving against her buttocks. He said, "You suck a man's pecker real good, woman. Makes me think what else you can do, besides use your pussy like a fresh-fucked mink."
"I don't understand," she said.
"You ever been corn-holed?" he asked, rubbing his hard into the crack of her tail.
"You-you mean back there? No, of course not, that's depraved! You don't mean to-to . . . . "
Heather bit off her words, knowing by now that begging this animal, pleading with him, only whetted his appetite for the sadistic. But her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands as she considered his latest deviation, and rejected it for the vile thing it was. Maybe he was only tormenting her, threatening her with an act that he knew would be unacceptable to her.
But he meant it. She knew that as he kept pushing the length of his rod against her cheeks, as he continued to fondle her breasts.
"Won't hurt none if you don't fight it," Arley said into the back of her neck. "I corn-holed three, four boys when I was young, and it didn't tear 'em up none. Might be we could grease my pecker and help it slide right on up your ass. Thing is, you can loosen up your hole or tighten it-and if it's tight, it's goin' to hurt."
"Let me do something else," she suggested. "Let me do something to Honey while she gives you a good time."
He ran one hand down from her breasts and pushed the fingers between her thighs, wiggling the middle one up against her labia. "Thought I'd let sis get her nuts off with your boyfriend-seein' as how you sneaked and fucked him. Could be he'll like her little pussy better'n yours."
"All right," she said, feeling beaten again. "All right, Arley, anything you say."
He giggled against her ear and squeezed her mound, squeezed her tit. "I say we go on out yonder and watch sis get Grady's dick up."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Greech squatted down and peered closely at the sandy loam of the turnoff road. "Look here, man! Women's tracks, and two sizes. They turned in here."
"Keep that flashlight covered," Scarpo said. "We don't know how far the house is."
Straightening up, Geech spread his hand over the lens and moved it around, using only a small portion of the spot. "Road runs out up there, just a dead end with a path."
"Too damned dark," Scarpo said. "Must be a lot more of them fuckin' snakes around at night. We better go back and spend the night in the car."
"Or in town," Geech said. "I'm hungry."
Hesitating, Scarpo said, "I don't know. We're pretty close to 'em now, and if we hang around town, the hick law might want to talk to us. People shouldn't remember our faces, Geech. We last the night out in the car, then move in early, when we can look for snakes."
"Hey," Geech said. "There's a car up in the trees there. No-a jeep. Scarpo-it's a jeep!"
They went to it and moved the light over it. Scarpo said, "It's a hillbilly squad car. Look at that two-way radio. Over here-yeah, like I thought, sheriff's department, it says. Son of a bitch."
Geech climbed into the front seat of the open vehicle and opened the dash, turned and rummaged in the back seat. "Chow call, man. Canteen of water and emergency rations. Climb in."
"What the hell is a cop's jeep doin' parked away the hell out in the woods ? "
Geech popped open a can. "Who knows? Hey, man-jerky and hardtack, like in the cowboy movies."
Scarpo went around and got into the jeep. He flicked on the radio and heard only the buzz of static. "Now we got to stay right here and see what about the cop. If he don't show by morning, then we fuck up his motor and bust the radio, let air outa' the tires. Then we go on up that path and find them goddamned women."
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
When Arley pushed the jar of corn at her, Heather took it gladly. She swallowed a big drink, sputtered, swallowed another one. She'd need all her strength and energy for this next degradation that Arley had planned, but she wanted to be numb when it began.
"Whole lot better thisaway," Arley said, taking back the jar. "Never watched a woman fuck somebody afore, all I ever seen was some of the boys corn-holin' each other. Don't give a shit if it is ol' Grady lyin' there with his pecker up, neither. Thing is, I get to see sis take that studhorse cock up her tight HP pussy."
Heather reached for the whiskey, tapped it and said, "I wish . . . "
Arley cut in with, "You wish you had all that big meat for yourself, don't you, bitch? Well, you can't have it no more, not less'n I decide. And if sis there gives it a better screw, then you just up shit creek."
Heather blinked watery eyes at her sister stripped to the buff again, at Grady lying helpless where Honey had peeled off his pants and opened his shirt all the way. Arley had placed the lamp strategically, and she could see every movement, but she didn't watch as avidly as he did.
He said to Honey, "Get with it, girl. See can you give this stud a better fuck than your sister."
Moving slowly, Honey climbed over Grady's still body. Only his penis was erect, that huge, club-like thing so long and so thick and risen from the forest of his black, curly pubic hair. Heather knew something of what her sister felt, knew the fright and compulsion of staring down at that tremendous organ, fearful of its size and yet needful to try it.
Was she jealous that her own sister was going to take into her vagina something that Heather was already beginning to classify as her own? Yes, in part, and no, in part. Heather's mind had been a jumble since she had been forced to give oral gratification to Honey, and since her sister had returned the favor. So different-not disgusting at all, even beautiful; now she couldn't look on Honey as a child, or as some kind of disturbed wanton, either.
So neither could Heather blame her even obliquely for what she was about to do with Grady Cordell; in fact, Heather felt a surge of warmth for them both-for the naked, lovely girl and the eye-bandaged, handsome man. She wanted to call out something to them-a toast, a benediction, perhaps.
"Guide it to your pussy, sis," Arley said. "Blind man can't see, only feel."
His own hands drew Heather close, took the whiskey jar away from her, pushed her over into position upon her hands and knees. "While we're watchin' them, might's well get at our own fuckin'. "
She waited, focusing her attention upon Honey and the other man, feeling the liquor numbness moving over her own naked skin, trying to forget Arley as he sat rubbing an oily liquid over the head of his distended penis.
Her sister straddled Grady, one hand feeling down to touch delicately along the expanded knob, the hard and throbbing staff. Honey moved as if she were mesmerized, and the nipples on her tits stuck out like elongated raisins; the light picked up the gleaming of her lavish pubic hair, the sleekness of her shapely thighs.
Grady's monster glans rose to nudge her mound, and Honey gave a tremulous sigh as she used her hand to steer it to the slitted entrance-way. Heather stared in fascination as her sister settled her crotch upon that flanged bulb and began to let down her weight, so that it would be forced into the tightness of her little-used pussy, where only Arley had been before.
"Right pretty sight," Arley said from behind Heather. "Sis purely enjoys her fuckin', since I learned her how."
He fondled the up-tilted cheeks of Heather's ass, and she shivered in response, more from fear than passion, although the sight of Grady's prick sliding up into Honey's stretched cunt was beginning to excite her.
Grady's thick meat vanished inch by round, fat inch into her sister's pussy lips, and when Honey was at last seated upon the man's pelvis, Heather saw the look of bliss that spread over the girl's face as she took all that lovely cock and realized its enchantment.
Heather winced when Arley poked a finger at the ring of her anus, but remained posed upon hands and knees when he started to grease her there, pushing some of the slippery stuff inside. Relax, she reminded herself; if she was loose and non-resistant, she wouldn't be hurt-or hurt any more than usual-whatever was usual, being screwed in back, in the ass. After this, there was no other step down, she thought, and quivered when the warm, oily end of Arley's rod prodded at her hole.
Look at Honey, she thought; stare at Gradysee them make love, for there is so much gentleness in that big cock, so much tenderness coiled lovingly down within his testicles, waiting to be fountained forth in love. And Honey was feeling it, fucking it, gyrating the trim and fragile-looking cheeks of her girlish ass upon that huge prick, making the head of it move around inside her sizzling cunt.
Arley had both hands braced on Heather's hips, his thumbs hooked back to stretch the cheeks of her ass apart. She felt the point of his cock shoving, pushing, thrusting-and the tightly puckered hole of her anus resisted, so she pushed back with her inner belly muscles, trying to open for it so she wouldn't be hurt.
There was pain as the head worked its buttery path into her ass, but she denied it by watching her sister slide up and down on that other prick, that great and adorable prick.
Arley's thing crowded into her channel, and she heard the sound of his animal panting. He pushed again, forcing the length of it into the narrow sleeve of her rectum, and Heather bit her lips at the quick edge of agony. Watch Honey and Grady, she thought; he's not hurting Honey, he's only loving her, pumping his cock wet and shiny in and out of her sweet young pussy as she lifts her ass and drops it, wiggles it and hunches it. Oh, how lucky they are, how beautiful they are.
"Got it to the root," Arley rasped. "Yeah, city bitch-I got my pecker shoved clear to the balls inside your asshole. How you like this, widder woman? How you like ol' Arley to corn-hole you thisaway?"
"F-fine," she moaned, trying not to let the sob break free. Then his hands slid around her body, one to maul a dangling tit, the other to fumble into her hairy crotch.
Arley pulled back, and she thought he was going to tear out her anus, but he pushed forward before anything ripped, and Heather grunted as his prick reached up into her bowels again. His fingers played into her strangely wet labia, and he squeezed her tit.
Across from them, Honey said down to the man between her legs, "Oh wow, man! It's like riding a barber pole-ooh, baby-ooh, darling-every time I grind it, my clit nearly explodes. Oh, don't come yet, Grady-please hold it back so I can just fuck and fuck."
Heather quaked as Arley's fingers moved into the lips of her cunt, as he rubbed her own clitoris and stroked his cock in and out of her ass. The feeling built crazily within her, and she made wild, moaning noises, bestial sounds, rocking her ass back upon the driving prick to get the full effect of it.
Mouth sucking for air, tits flopping, Heather humped her ass and shook it, ground her pelvis and felt his fingers inside her vagina, felt them stimulating her center of excitement. His pole worked in her tight crevice, and before she had another moment to wonder how she could possibly reach an orgasm in such a way, she had.
Jittering upon his slippery finger, vibrating upon his cock, Heather knew the bursting of sensation from two directions, and the implosion was a searing one, an earthquake of flesh and membrane that made her head jerk up and down.
"C-comin'! " Arley grunted. "Y-yeah-comin' up your ass, woman! puttin' it to you-shootin' it off away up inside your tight asshole-uhhh! Uhh!"
The discharge gushed into the throbbing tube of her anus, streamed hotly, heavily from the bulge of his flexing prick to soak the cavity he had filed to capacity. His balls sapped against her thighs, and Heather came very near to collapsing upon the boards of the porch as her elbows and knees weakened.
Eyelids fluttering, she swayed from side to side until Arley extracted his drippy penis from her hole with a loud plop. Then she let herself down and curled into a fetal ball, eyes closed and her heart hammering like the hooves of a runaway horse. She lay like that for an eternity, before she at last remembered that others had been screwing, too, before she thought of Honey and Grady.
Opening her eyes again, she saw them clenched closely, and realized that her sister's vagina had been flooded by Grady's semen. It all would have been something special, if Arley Santee hadn't laughed.
Whinnying, he slapped his naked knee and hooted at them all. "Boy howdy-if you all ain't a mess! Women a-playin' like your asses made of cake and you scared to crack the icin', but turn you loose on a couple of stiff pricks, and go flat out'n your heads. I reckon ol' Artis is goin' to be mighty proud to have cunts like this all primed for him, time he gets home."
Arley drank deeply of the corn, slopping some of it over his chin and down onto his chest. Heather sat up, suddenly ashamed, sad that he had dirtied the moment for them, especially for Honey and Grady. She got to one knee and saw her sister lifting slowly, rising carefully, off Grady's still hard and erect penis. As it became fully exposed, the length of it glistened with the juices left upon it, the blended stuff of her inner lubrication and his ejaculation.
Subdued, Honey found her shorts and slipped into them, then moved out of the circle of light toward the outhouse.
The jar rattled against Arley's teeth, and he coughed. "Too bad you ain't goin' to be around after tomorrow, Grady. Guess you best figure that to be your last piece of ass-less'n you can coax Heather here into givin' you some more. Artis is due back by mornin', and he ain't one to dally. If the sheriff don't catch him, then I don't need you no more-and if the sheriff does catch him, then I work up a trade. But you and me both know that you ain't goin' to leave here alive, swap or no swap. Hell, boy, you ought to thank me for makin' your last night on earth a good W
He drew on overalls but no shirt, and stood wobbling with his gun in one hand, the whiskey jar in the other. "Hey, sis! Carry us some quilts out here and we'll make a pallet in the yard. Do I wake up with a hard-on, I aim to work it off in your hot HI' pussy."
Honey came out of the dark, still quiet, and went into the house for quilts and pillows. She brought them out and made a bed of sorts on the ground beneath the chinaberry tree, ignoring the big hound that stalked beside her.
On the bottom step, Arley turned. "Go on and fuck him, widder, if you're woman enough after that corn-holin' you got from me. Ain't nothin' left cherry to her, Grady, less'n it's her ears."
He laughed out into the yard and patted Honey on the ass. "Take you a good drink of this here bust skull, sis, and the skeeters won't bother you atall." To Heather and Grady he called out, "Last night; better make it a belly whopper."
After he had settled down on the pallet with Honey, and she had listened for any more noise, Heather whispered to Grady, "When I'm sure he's asleep, I'll go search the shack for your pistol. It's in there somewhere, I'm certain of it."
"The corn has him in a pretty good mood," Grady said softly. "Maybe you could change my bandages and wash my face."
"Of course. Oh, Grady, I'm sorry we didn't get to it before," and she went to dip water into the pan, to bring the rest of the torn flour sacks and a jar lid filled with whiskey.
Glancing often at the place where Arley, her sister, and the dog lay in the shadows, Heather worked the strips of stained linen from Grady's face, wincing as the freshly dried blood stuck and had to be soaked away with water.
When they were lifted off, she looked anxiously at the ugly wound across the bridge of his nose, but it seemed none the worse for Arley's rough treatment earlier in the day. Carefully, delicately, Heather bathed the gash with whiskey, peering closely in the light from the flickering lamp.
Grady blinked, closed his eyes and opened them wide once more. She saw the lamplight reflected in his black eyes, and-something else. She saw recognition.
Grady Cordell could see!
She pressed the back of one hand fiercely against her teeth to keep from screaming the wonderful news. Her skin prickled, and she suddenly realized that she was stark naked, that the tips of her breasts were only inches from this man's face, and that he could see them now. Heather shrank upon herself, covering her breasts, feeling at once wildly delighted and also embarrassed.
When he was blind, she had screwed him and accepted the adulation of his mouth upon her vagina, but now that he could see her, she was very unsure of herself. Grady might not even like her now.
Whispering softly as a drifted leaf, he said, "Take it easy, Heather. I've been thinkin' I could see ever since Arley slammed my head against this post. There was sort of a click, and I guess the nerves got straight again, or out of shock, or somethin'. "
"Oh-oh I'm so glad; so very, very glad!"
Shifting his weight, he inched up on his shoulders and changed positions of his hands; the handcuffs clinked faintly against the porch post. "I'm a long way from bein' loose. I've been workin' at this post, and it feels like it's gettin' wobbly; guess it's about half rotten, like everything else on this place. You're a beautiful woman, Heather, you look every bit as good as you feel."
Blood rushed to her face, even though she told herself it was ridiculous. She had already done it with this man; already, they had known an intimacy that few people are lucky enough to attain, and there was no reason to react so childishly to him now.
"He-Arley keeps the key to those handcuffs in his overalls pocket. We can't get to that, but if I find your gun . . . "
"It will be something," he said. "Meanwhile, I'll keep tuggin' at this post. If Artis Santee shows up in the mornin', they won't waste any more time on me. Maybe you'd better turn down the lamp, in case he sits up and looks this way. And, Heather.. . "
"Yes?"
"About your sister. I can't deny I enjoyed makin' it with her, but it was like you and Arley in a way. I couldn't pick which one of you I wanted."
She said, "I understand. And the funny thing is, I didn't mind. At first I thought I was jealous, but then I just wanted the two of you to be as happy as you could. Is that kind of crazy?"
"A good kind of crazy, I guess. Be careful, Heather. Don't wake him up and let him catch you lookin' for that pistol."
She drifted into the dark house, finding her way by feel, as if she were as blind as Grady had been. Had been, she thought, and the change of tense was sweet. Under the matress, behind the bed-nothing; all through the kitchen and its pots, the pans, and the jars of vegetables-nothing. No gun to be found, and she was getting desperate, thinking of the dawn to come, or another man like Arley.
A sugar can, a flour bin, behind the water bucket-no pistol. And once she put her hand upon a many-legged thing that scuttled away, but not before it had almost stopped the beating of her heart. At the shabby dresser, she went through it drawer by drawer, feeling among rumpled clothing and tattered socks. The mantelpiece, and the fireplace-even sifting through the ashes left over from last winter-no pistol.
It was only by accident that she came upon it. Stumbling over an old pair of rubber boots sagged against the wall, she felt for them to set them straight again, and touched the cool steel of the handgun. Her fingers played over it, barrel and cylinder and stock, for she couldn't believe she had actually found it. Then she held tightly to its butt and put it behind her still naked body to bring the pistol out onto the porch.
Finding her dress in a puddle by the porch rail, she watched the space below the chinaberry tree, and saw only shadows without movement, so she chanced slipping the dress over her head, so she could hide the gun in its folds.
Squatting by Grady, she put her lips to his ear and whispered, "I've got it."
He smiled at her. "That give a fightin' chance."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The rattly old pickup slowed, raced its motor, turned into the short road with a clatter and stopped. A lean man in faded overalls got out and kicked the door shut.
Scarpo said, "Go across there and see who he is."
Geech slid out of the jeep in the early morning light, and stepped out onto the white sand clearing before pulling the magnum from his belt. That was a mistake.
The man was quick and handy with the long shotgun. Its muzzle swung up to cover Geech before he could do more than cuddle his pistol in his hand.
He said, "Let it fall."
Geech hesitated, and that was his second mistake. The man pulled trigger on the shotgun, and the blast knocked Geech back into the trunk of a water oak. He tried to lift his pistol, but when he got it about hip-high, the shotgun slammed another load of pellets through him. Geech bounced off the tree trunk and fell over onto the ground.
The man jacked another shell into the shotgun and looked around. When he turned the white target of his face full toward the jeep, Scarpo centered the crosshairs of the scope upon it and stroked the hair trigger of the carbine. He didn't need a second shot. The man in overalls spun around and the shotgun flew off into the brush, and the man turned over like a kid's top that had run out of spin.
Scarpo came out from behind the jeep and went to stand over the stranger. He toed him over onto his back and looked dispassionately into the face with its staring eyes of pale green, and the hair so washed-out blond that it seemed white. The bullet had gone in at the left cheekbone and come out the back of the head; the white sand was soaking up a lot of red.
Squatting beside him, Scarpo fished out a wallet, thumbed through it, read a name aloud from a driver's license: "Santee; Artis Santee." A few dollars in the wallet; Scarpo took it and stuffed the cheap plastic back into the man's pocket, then took hold under his arms ad dragged him into the brush to drop him out of sight.
On the seat of the pickup was a brown paper bag half full of jewelry. Scarpo spilled it out, poked among it and grunted. The guy must have been a freak for costume stuff; all of it was dime store. Only after he'd gone to the jeep and found his ejected cartridge casing, only then did he walk over to Geech.
"And you thought it was a lockup, you dumb bastard."
He dragged Geech off into the brush, too, being careful where he placed his feet, watching closely for snakes. Wiping his sticky hands on the grass, rubbing them dry in a spot of sand, Scarpo checked the ground around the jeep, scuffed over footprints, and set about disabling the vehicle.
Straightening up, he used his handkerchief to wipe over the steering wheel, the dash, the canteen. He wiped his bald head and sighed, then cradled his carbine and plodded up the trail that led from the clearing. He still had a job to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Heather came slowly awake, stretched and yawned. She felt cool, but warm; she felt wonderful, for it had been a wonderful night, and she lay snuggled to the man who had made it so, loving him.
Opening one eye, she looked out across the yard and saw the alert head of the hound, the tangled lump that was her sister and Arley Santee under the covers. Just coming dawn, she saw; in a few hours, the summer sun would broil down upon them all, banishing the cool comfort of now.
Dawn. Arley's brother was supposed to come back today, and they'd get rid of Grady Cordell. Oh, lord, she thought, and felt beneath her skirt for the pistol. It was still there, and she let out the breath she had been holding. The gun gave them a fighting chance, Grady said.
Poor love; he couldn't be very comfortable with his wrists locked around the post like that. But he had done just fine last night, anyway. Managing to turn over onto his side, he'd been able to stroke his big thing deeply and strongly into her eager sheath, once she got a leg over him and helped him stick it in.
Beautiful, it was, the thick meat of it moving hotly and superbly within her clenching cunt; lovely and magic and gorgeous, and she had swished her yearning pussy around in it, gyrating her ass shamelessly and nibbling her labia on the slidy shaft.
And she had whispered against his hairy, sweating chest, hissed the bad words, the exciting words, into the base of his throat, "Oh Grady--fuck me, darling. Push that big cock so far up into my cunt that it can never get back out again. Oh Grady, oh, my love, oh, my tremendous, darling prick."
Because she had been so stirred by feeding him her nipples one by one, Heather thought it might be a good idea to suck upon his, and it was. Grady bucked and heaved at the wet caress, and almost shoved his thrusting cock through her. It was so great to luxuriate upon the length of it, to fondle her fingers into his hairy balls, to know the pounding of that splendid rod as it probed far up into her belly.
"Yes, my love-yes my glorious, loving fucker -oh, screw me until I can't catch my breath. Ram that huge prong up my pussy, make my ass shake-ahh, my darling-ooh-I'm about to come and I don't want to come yet because fucking you is so good, so goood."
But of course she had come, trembling and swiveling her hips, bitting at his nipples and squeezing his flailing balls in her hand. And she had kissed him to keep herself quiet so Arley wouldn't wake, kissed him with thrusting tongue and raking teeth, while that lovely monstrous cock stroked and stroked into her shuddering cunt.
Surprisingly, she'd come again, reaching another almost immediate orgasm when he let go that magnificent jetting of sperm, of hotly flushing semen that sprayed her cervix and saturated the walls of her vagina and came flooding stickily out through the rippling lips of her stretched pussy.
Then she'd said it into his panting lips, whispering it so that no one else could hear, "I love you, Grady Cordell."
And he said back, "I love you, Heather."
She hadn't asked him then if he was married, though the idea had crossed her mind. She didn't ask because it didn't really matter; she was Grady CordelPs woman, and would be, wherever he went, anything he did. If she had to share him with a wife, so be it. She'd share him with Honey, too. A little bit of him was better than all of the other two men she'd known.
Breathing the male scent of him, smiling her lips into the hair of his broad chest, Heather fought to bring herself back to the hard reality of the blooming day. The pistol, the handcuff keys, and now she thought she could steel herself to shoot a hole through Arley Santee, so that Grady would be protected for now and forever-more.
Moving up his relaxed body, she kissed the corner of his mouth and the fake bandages she'd placed over his eyes last night before they made love. She put her lips to his ear and said, "Wake up, sweetheart, it's daylight."
He moved his face and she knew he was no longer asleep. Heather said into his ear, "When he comes this way, when he's away from Honey and that dog, I'll point the gun at him and make him toss the key to the handcuffs over here on the porch."
"Aim it low," he murmured, "at his belly.. Cock the hammer back and aim it low."
"I will," she promised. "I won't let him hurt you, darling."
That's when the faint echo of shots reached the house and the yard-two deep sounds, a pause, a lighter noise.
The hound leaped up and growled, hackles rising the length of its back, teeth showing yellow in the early light. Arley Santee came up a moment later, staring around, rifle lifting to the ready before he fully realized where he was.
"Shots," he said. "Them was shots from down to the county road." He came to his feet with one bound, strode lean and rangy for the porch. "Shots -and Artis due back this mornin'. You son of a bitch lawman-they was a trap laid, wasn't it?"
He had one foot on the bottom step when Heather sat up and pointed the barrel of the pistol at him, aiming low and for the belly, like Grady said. "D-don't come any closer, Arley!"
When her thumb clicked back the hammer, the sound was as loud as the far-off shots had been, and as threatening.
Arley looked at the pistol, then at her face. The rifle hung low in his right hand. He said, "You hunted up that handgun in the house. You white trashy city bitch-you thought you could slip one by me."
"I'll shoot," she said. "I swear, I'll shoot you."
"Believe you would," he said, peeling back his lips and showing his long teeth at her. "Looks like you got some iron shoved up your ass to make you a backbone, and I purely believe you'd shoot ol' Arley-if I hadn't took all the shells out'n that thing."
Grady said, "Heather!"
And she pulled the trigger. The gun snapped. "You cocksucker!" Arley said, and swept the barrel of his rifle up and across as he leaped up the steps. It caught her high on the side of her head and Heather saw fireworks going off behind her eyes. The pistol flew off somewhere and since the rifle had stunned her, she only felt a thump when Arley kicked her in the belly.
Heather couldn't see very well, but she could hear plainly. Arley said, "I'm goin' to tear out your pussy, widder woman. But first I got to know what happened to Artis."
She shook her head and pushed herself up from the porch and tried to tell Arley that he shouldn't kick Grady, too. But Arley kicked him again, and yelled down at him, "Bastard! How come they shot at Artis? Whyn't you tell me there was a trap set? You big po-lice bastard."
Heather made it to one knee, and her head throbbed agony. Her hands felt over the boards of the porch for a weapon, for something, anything.
And Honey jumped up the steps straight for Arley's back; her bent knees caught him low in the spine, and her hurled weight drove them both across the porch and into the wall of the shack. The crash rocked the house, and a tin pan fell clattering off the wall. Clawing at his face, hissing, Honey tried to take him apart, but Arley rolled over and got the butt of the rifle into her belly to throw her back and away from him.
The tin pan rolled to Heather's knees, and she caught it up in time to swing it viciously at the dog's head and he came lunging open-mouthed and fanged at her sister. The clang turned the hound off stride and he hit the edge of the porch, snapping at air.
Honey bounced up with an empty fruit jar in one hand. She flung it at Arley and it splintered against the gun barrel as he got it up in time.
Heather ran at him with her head hound and arms folded across her stomach. She hit him in the ribs and knocked him staggering down the porch, and jerked a brush hook off the wall to chop it at the hound when he leaped again. It fended Bigdog off, up-ended him into the yard on his back with his legs kicking.
Arley fired the rifle.
The bullet kissed just past Heather's cheek, and she stumbled backward. Her sister's hand caught her elbow and kept her from falling. Together, they stood and stared at the crouched man with the pale green eyes who held the gun muzzle on them.
Bigdog rolled over and came back up the steps, jaws slavering. Arley stopped him with a shouted word, and the hound dropped back reluctantly into the yard, panting and exposing his teeth.
Arley said, "I might just let him rip the bellies out'n you cunts. You no-good bitches, turnin' on me thataway. But first, they's Artis, and I got me three live hostages here. You, Grady! What's the sheriff goin' to do, slip up on the house now that he's got Artis? I swear, boy-if my brother's dead, I'll make you all wish you was nice and cool in hell, 'steada' here with me!"
Heather saw Grady's big arms soften, the muscles easing from the struggle he'd been waging with the post he was cuffed to. He said, "I don't know what they'll do."
"Get up," Arley snarled. "All you cock suckers get up. Here's the key, woman-unlock him. We're all headin' for the river."
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The paths went this way and that, most of them no more than rabbit trails in the woods, most vanishing into the marsh, but some continuing over ground that looked pretty shaky to Scarpo.
The fucking women, he thought, they naturally had to screw up things. This should have been a nice clean hit, a simple contract uncluttered by no more than finding out where the money was. But the fucking women had to run to a lousy place like this, away the hell out in the jungle where snakes crawled around, where there were no roads, no phones.
And where crazy farmers got out of trucks ready to blast with shotguns. Not that it mattered much about Geech; the kid was too hungry. He wouldn't have lasted long in the Company, anyway. But Scarpo worried a little about what it meant-the farmer with the shotgun, and the costume jewelry. Could that cheap stuff have been for the broads? Did they have guards around the fucking place?
He moved slowly up a twisting trail, only to see it end in some tall swamp grass. Looking over the waving stuff, he could see the river, brown and ugly, moving like a snake itself, turning through stumps and logs.
A jay screeched behind Scarpo, and he whirled with the carbine snapping up; only the flutter of bright blue through the treetops stopped him from loosing a full automatic burst. Hands shaking, he lowered the gun and made his way back to the forking of the path.
Which way now? Gray moss hung low in the trees, and bushes grew everywhere. Scarpo tried to line himself up by squinting at the sun, but all it did was damned near blind him. Sweating, he slapped at a mosquito that bit his neck, and looked down to see dirty water oozing up around his feet, coming right up through the ground where he was standing.
"Jee-sus," he said, and backed warily down the path again. Something moved in the tall grass, swaying it, and he kept the carbine pointed that way. Sweat got in his eyes and he leaned back against a tree to wipe the moisture away.
A big green locust whirred off the bark just at his head, and Scarpo leaped out, swinging the carbine like a club. The blow pulled him off balance and he went to his knees in a wet spot. Panting, fumbling for the lens caps he'd knocked off the scope, Scarpo cursed, erect again with mud down his legs, sticky, viscous mud that clung when he tried to wipe it away.
And a little red centipede stung him out of the mud. He slapped it against the carbine stock and squashed it, but the base of his thumb began throbbing right away.
"Son of a bitch," he said, and moved up another trail, mumbling to himself. "Fuckin' jungle-bugs and goddamned snakes and swamps. Nobody lives in a fuckin' jungle."
He was scared. For the first time in many years, Scarpo was scared, and he knew something of the flavor of fear that had been felt by the people he'd carried contracts on. But facing up to a hit man wasn't anything; everybody had to die sooner or later, and if a guy screwed the Company, he knew what to expect and took his chances.
But out here, in this stinking hot jungle where snakes wiggled right next to a guy, where they bit at him-Scarpo shuddered and looked carefully at the weeds before he put a foot down. If fear rode him now, fear also drove him onward, because nobody missed out on a contract for the Company. That's what the kid Geech had been hoping, that Dominic Scarpo would back down on the hit and let him take over.
Geech was dead, and Scarpo was watching for snakes.
A blunt head stretched out, tilted up at him. Scarpo fired. He clung to the trigger of the carbine as if he didn't know the weapon was on full automatic, and half the clip pounded out to smash bullets into the ground turtle, to hurl the terrapin's shattered shell bloody through the cattail grasses.
In the rolling echoes of the shots, birds shrieked and something furry crashed off through the brush. Scarpo gibbered and fired another burst that way, chipping bark from trees and cutting down a bearding of gray Spanish moss.
He backed away, stumbling back, eyes wide and staring at the gray-black thing that came hesitantly from the undergrowth and stared with red rodent eyes at him. It was the biggest fucking rat he had ever seen, its long yellow teeth bared at him, its naked tail curled over its back. The goddamned thing was big as a dog, and when it growled, it sounded like files rubbing together.
"S-shit," Scarpo said, and fired the last of his clip at it, so frightened that he missed by six inches, and only chewed up the watery turf as the opossum waddled off.
Turning, Scarpo fled blindly, axing the carbine barrel at thin vines that curled down from the trees like snakes. He splashed through the muddy slough and out into it as the water rose brown to his hips.
He stopped then, staring back over his shoulder at the rushes, the reeds still waving and bobbing from his passage. Down the slough, something moved swiftly through the water, rippling the surface. Feverishly, Scarpo thumbed the magazine release and dropped the empty clip into the water. When he fumbled a full one into place, the water had risen to his belly, and the underwater thing had disappeared.
He had to get back to the land, out of the water, but when he moved his feet, they had a lot of trouble getting out of the mud that clung to his ankles. The more he kicked down, the deeper the mud got, and when the water was to his chest, Scarpo panicked.
Struggling, Scarpo sank deeper in the stuff, and flailed with his free hand, trying to pull through the fluid mud, trying like hell to make it to shore. He actually made about a yard, but the slop had reached his throat by then, and the carbine weighed a ton because he had to hold it above his head to keep it clean.
No, he thought, goddamn it-he wouldn't throw away the gun. He'd need it when he got out of this fucking mess. The broads-the women had to be hit, soon as they told him where the money was. They had to be hit, because the Company said so.
The mud lapped his chin, and Scarpo threw back his head to keep it from his mouth. He screamed then-hoarse and loud and long, and when the mud got in his mouth, he fired the whole clip of ammunition at the surrounding jungle, killing it back for killing him.
And when he went under, Scarpo still held onto the carbine.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
They were in a knot at the edge of the flowing river, and Arley told them to stay quiet while he listened. Heather clenched her sister's small hand and sent a silent message of comfort to Grady. Listening, too, she heard only the soughing of the morning wind in the tops of the pines, and the murmuring of the river as it passed around the fallen tree close by.
She looked across the big eddy and when her glance came back to the tangled roots of the tree, Heather drew a sharp breath. The head sticking above water there was huge-leathery skin, hooked beak, unblinking eyes. Her fingers tightened convulsively on Honey's hand as she stared at the monster. The big turtle Arley had talked about-the loggerhead, he called it. The thing looked like something reptilian out of the prehistoric past. She never thought one could be so big. As she watched, the head drew beneath the brown water, and the surface swirled after it.
"Down there by them willows," Arley said. "Got me a boat under the branches. Go on down and drag it out, Grady, haul it up here."
"He can't see!" Heather said. "He might fall in, or . . . "
"Shut up," Arley hissed at her. "You shut the hell up, widder woman."
"I'll find it," Grady said, and moved slowly, feeling each foot out in front of him. Even though Heather knew he could see a little through the slits she'd left in his new bandage, Heather's entire being yearned to help him.
"Slip across the river," Arley said, watching the handcuffed man move along the river bank. "Let the boat go downstream, and do they ever find it, they'll figure we climbed out there, not up here."
"Let us go," Heather said. "We can't do you any good now."
Cocking his head, Arley said, "Do me the best now. They come after me, I'll have me some swap -and if I'm pressed too hard, I'll just leave the law a body to hold 'em up some."
Honey said, "He-he'll do it."
"Hush!" Arley said sharply, and they all heard the rapid firing of a gun some distance away. Arley rubbed his chin, looked over to where Grady was awkwardly wrestling the boat from its hiding place, and said, "I be dog; reckon they ain't got ol' Artis yet. Still shootin' down by the slough. Hurry it up, Grady, I got to haul ass out'n here."
Knee-deep in water, Grady hauled and tugged at the wooden boat, fighting it to the bank near them. Heather saw that it was small, that it might not hold all four of them, and her heart rose in her throat. Grady, she thought-he meant to leave Grady here, and meant to leave him dead!
"Climb on in," Arley directed Honey, and the girl let go Heather's hand to step into the wobbly boat. "Widder woman . . . "
And Heather said, "No. You'll have to shoot me here, and have all the deputies hear the shots. I won't get into that damned boat until Grady's in it. You're not going to leave him behind."
"You smart-ass bitch," Arley said. "I can knock you in the head, well as shootin' you."
Grady climbed into the boat, his weight lifting the bow so that the whole thing threatened to drift out into the current. "Come knock me in the head, Arley." He held out his manacled hands, big and powerful.
Arley shoved Heather at the boat. "Bunch of cocksuckers. I mean to make you all pay for it."
Dangerously low in the water, the boat eased out when Arley pushed it off the bank and stepped in; he sat down quickly, rifle across his knees, staring hate at Heather, at the others facing him.
Closer, louder, a burst of shots rang out over them, and Arley's head jerked around. That's when Grady yelled, and rocked the boat so hard that it turned over and spilled them all out into the water.
Fighting up in the darkly swirling waters, Heather's head broke surface and she saw Grady battling to take Arley's gun away. They went under and came up again, grunting and splashing, and Arley must have been kicking Grady in the belly all the time. But the rifle came away in Grady's cuffed hands, held by the barrel, and whipped itself on up and over in a dripping arc to land with a shower of droplets, in the edge of the tangled roots.
Heather swam for shore, shouting for Honey, and got her mouth filled with muddy water. Then she saw the girl climbing out on the opposite bank and knew a surge of relief.
Arley sputtered, and when she gained the bank, she looked back and saw his arm rising and falling. He was cutting at Grady with his knife! Sunlight winked off the wet and wicked blade, and Grady dived underwater. His handcuffs, she thought-oh, lord, he had to swim with his hands chained together. He could drown-he could tangle in the roots of some sunken tree and never come up. Shaking, climbing out, Heather leaped for a tree limb and brandished it as a club.
But Arley wasn't coming at her. He was churning furiously toward the downed tree, the tangled roots where Grady had scrabbled the catfish -and where the rifle had landed! She could barely see the butt of it, standing above the surface.
Running around the shore, Heather tried to make her way out along the tree trunk, but rotten limbs made such a barricade that she could never reach the gun before Arley did. She sobbed out her defeat, and fell to her knees. He'd win after all; Arley Santee would get his gun and shoot them before he ran. There was an insane look to his wetly straining face that said he didn't care if anyone heard the shots.
"Grady!" she screamed. "Stay away-stay away! He's getting the gun! Honey-run, Honey -oh run, run!"
Arley tugged at the gun butt, found the barrel stuck, hung up in the roots, and bobbed his head under water, yanking at the weapon. His head broke the surface again, his pale yellow hair plastered to his pink scalp, his mouth open wide, stretched ugly wide in shock and terror.
Arley's head went under and swapped ends with his feet. They kicked furiously, throwing water wide. Then he came up again, spitting dirty water and screaming, but there were no words in his screams now-only the cold horror of the monstrous thing that had his hand and was dragging him down into the depths of the river.
Migod, she thought-the dog!
Skidding around on her knees in the dirt, Heather poked out with her tree branch, but the growling had stopped, and she saw the big hound lying motionless and strangely flattened out. She saw Grady Cordell's big, wet body bulking tall and wide above it, the bandages ripped from his eyes. He must have caught the hound in mid-air, clubbing it with his great fists, battering it down and unconscious, if not dead.
Arley screamed again, this time through a throat full of water, and Grady came trotting to the tree, went crashing and slipping out along the trunk to the netting of twisted roots. He couldn't climb through them, not with his cuffed hands.
Arley Santee's agonized face broke water just once more, but only in a momentary wave of bubbled river, and as it hung there in awful dread, a red stain lifted from below and spread around him.
Then he was gone, and the blood spread itself thin on the moving river to also vanish.
Grady backed down the tree trunk and leaned to help Heather to her feet. "Come on, girl-can't anybody help him now."
She swayed against him, feeling his hairy body wet and slick, feeling a letdown in herself that unhinged her knees and turned her weak clear through. Eyes fluttering, she hung precariously upon the ragged precipice of fainting.
But it wasn't over yet. She saw the hound move, saw him roll onto his belly and get his legs under him. Light came back into the fierce yellow eyes.
"G-Grady! The dog."
He turned, his manacled hands out, then cocked to one side, as if he were holding an invisible bat. Feet spread, he waited for the dog to move.
Bigdog rumbled deep in his massive chest, came up to all fours and trembled there.
Grady said, "Get! Bigdog-get!"
The hound growled, hesitated, swung its head from side to side, seeking something and not finding it.
"Get!" Grady said.
The dog stopped growling. He backed along the river bank, gathered his back legs under his belly, then whirled and trotted up the path toward the house.
"Wow," Heather sighed.
"Yeah," Grady said. "Hate to have to kill a dog just 'cause he's a good one; most dogs don't get to choose a master."
"I'm coming!" Honey called from the far bank, and took a running dive into the water.
They waited for her to reach them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Grady Cordell wasn't married, and had never been in his twenty-eight years. But his home was well kept by a visiting maid and the house had the feel of happy people in it.
Heather came out of the shower a new woman, hair washed and skin scrubbed to a healthy pink-ness. She reveled in her cleanliness and in the air-cooled comfort of Gady's home. Picking a light green robe that was saucy and see-through, she slid her feet into heeled slippers and found a bit of ribbon to hold back her damp hair.
Listening, she heard her sister singing in the shower, and smiled because they could both be safe and happy. The ugliness and the terror was behind them, left at that awful shack in the river marshes. Heather shivered, so many dead menthe drowning of Arley in the river, the bodies of his brother and a strange city man found shot near the road.
And Grady said that someone else had disappeared, whoever had been doing all the shooting. Plenty of sinkholes and quicksand to fall into, he said, if a man didn't know the country. Heather had considered telling him about the money, the hundred thousand dollars that had started her running, and she'd decided to go through with it.
In a little while, when the three of them got together and were able to relax, to think and move freely after their ordeal. She looked into a mirror and touched up her lips, brought a vial of perfume from her suitcase and scented her underarms, behind her ears, her navel.
In the bathroom, the shower was turned off, but Honey continued to sing in her small, clear voice. Heather put the perfume bottle on the dresser and stared into the mirror; the bruise at her temple didn't show with her hair hiding it, and none of the horror had left an outward mark. The inner scars would heal, she was certain, Perhaps Grady Cordell didn't know it yet, but he would help the healing.
Honey bounced into the bedroom, only a towel wrapped about her slim hips, her dainty breasts jiggling and her face all aglow. "Wow-I feel great after all that sleep and food, and getting cleaned up. And you look great in that sexy robe. Nothing under it, is there?"
Grinning, Heather said, "I may never wear panties again."
"Right on," Honey chortled, and plopped onto the king-sized bed. "Hey, the whole thing did us some good, right? I mean, you're not hung up on sex anymore, and I know what it's all about now, with my whole life ahead of me. If Arley hadn't made us do it, we'd have never even tried going down on each other."
Heather felt her face go warm. She hadn't forgotten that, either, but it was an effort for her to discuss it. But in her newfound honesty, she said, "Did-did you like it, dear?"
"Didn't you?"
Nodding, Heather admitted it. "Yes, I liked it very much. It was-so intimate, so close and giving. It was different than when Grady did it to me."
"Oh-Grady? When was that?"
"The first time on the porch, while you and-Arley were in bed. I-it never happened to me before, and he kept urging me up his chest with his knees because his hands were tied and-and, well, when he put his mouth on me, when he flicked his tongue." Red-faced, Heather stopped talking and turned from her intent sister.
"You freaked out," Honey finished for her. "Who wouldn't? And, wow, that big prick of his."
Heather swallowed, all her old reflexes, all her previous programming reacting to shout out at Honey, to reprimand her for using dirty language. But the memory banks were weaker now, the old tapes shaken up by the events of the past few days. She took a deep, steadying breath and said, "Yes, his prick. Isn't it just wonderful?"
He knocked at the door of his own bedroom, a difficult tapping that told them he was now uncertain, also caught up in all the rules and regulations, tangled again in the mores of the past. Heather glanced down at her younger sister sitting pertly on the bed with her breasts exposed, and Honey nodded, so Heather said, "Come in."
When Grady entered the room, his eyes went first to Heather standing tall and shiny in her appealing negligee, then dropped to Honey and widened at the sight of her modeled breasts with the impudent nipples. He looked firmly back into Heather's eyes.
"Ah-you girls ready for something long and cold? A julep, maybe?"
Honey smiled innocently up at him. "I think we're more ready for something long and hot-and stiff. Aren't you all rested up yet, Grady?"
He swallowed, looked helplessly at Heather.
"I-look, girls, we were trapped back there at Santee's, and you were forced into some things you'd never do on your own, and . . . "
"And they were pretty good," Heather said, surprising even herself. "I said once that I couldn't really be jealous of Honey, and now I'm more certain of it. She and I have more between us than just the bond of kinship now, a new closeness, and a love. If you don't want to lay us, because we made oral love to each other and liked it. . . "
"Lord, no," Grady said hastily. "I like to do it myself, to go down on a woman; you know that, Heather."
"I don't," Honey pointed out, and eased the white fluffy towel away from her thighs. All the rich vee of her furry mound gleamed up at him, and at her sister. "Isn't it nice that you're a king-sized man, so that you have this handy king-sized bed. The three of us will fit very nicely together on it, don't you think?"
"You're damned right," Grady Cordell said, and began peeling out of his clothing.
Heather walked around to the other side of the bed and took off her robe, letting it drift to the floor as she kicked out of her slippers and stood for a moment proud and naked. She lifted her fingertips to her nipples and caressed their erect hardness, delighting in the thrill of giving in to her impulses.
She lay down and watched him approach, his beautiful big cock reaching out like a thick and shapely club. He said to them, "How are we goin' to get about this? Leavin' it all up to me?"
"No way," Honey chuckled. "Ladies first, to coin a phrase. I want you to eat me, darling; just like you ate my sister-only with a refinement. I'd like her to ride that gorgeous cock at the same time, while I watch her face and ride yours. Think you'll dig that, Grady?"
"Sure," he said. "I'd be a fool if I didn't."
So he lay full length and bulky on the bed, and Honey kneeled over his face. Shivering a little in anticipation, Heather climbed over his body and kneeled erect above his up-thrust prick. She reached down and held its throbbing power in one hand, running her thumb over the bulbous head with its small and sticky mouth.
"Together," Honey sighed, and lowered her ass gently downward as he slid his arms between her thighs, brought his hands up and around to cup the sleek and provocative cheeks of her ass as they came toward his face.
Heather tried to time her own downward motion with Honey's setting the spongy-hard tip of his cock against the hairy trembling of her pussy lips and pushing against it. Her labia spread, opened with a damp and eager elasticity, and the knob worked itself into her vulva. It was wonderful and filling; it was meat in her cunt, where man-meat belonged, where she needed to have it and hold it.
"Ummm," Honey moaned blissfully, and Heather stared as her sister pushed the heavily fleeced mound into Grady's chin, covering his open mouth with her pussy lips, wriggling the crack of her sweet ass right down into his forehead-but delicately, because it still had a bandage across it.
"Oh, Grady-oh, darling-shove your tongue right on up inside my cunt. That's it, baby-oh, yes, that's the way to eat my pussy!"
Heather ground her own ass, and the heavy shaft slid thrillingly up into her hotly clenching vagina-up and up until it struck her cervix. Her sheath was bulging with his cock, and the thick, mossy root of it nearly flattened her pulsating clitoris.
"So big," she said, her breath catching in her constricted throat, "oh, Honey-it's so big that it fills me up, fills my cunt from one end to the other. When-ooh!-whenever I wiggle even the slightest, it rubs my clit and drives me crazy. Ahh-ahh-fuck me Grady, darling-fuck me strong and deep."
"Darling," Honey breathed, gyrating her belly so that her crotch slid over Grady's cheeks and chin, so that his teeth could rake the length of her cunt lips. "Darling-Heather, darling."
Honey reached out, and her small fingers skipped like quick butterflies over Heather's breasts. Heather gasped and pressed against them, lifting her own hands up and under her sister's arms to fondle her sister's lovely young tits. Rocking upon Grady's stiff rod, loving the sensation of it sliding greasily around inside her tightly packed pussy, Heather caressed Honey's tits, rubbed her palms over the taut nipples, kneaded the little mounds.
It was marvelous to feel Honey doing the same to her own tits, to stare entranced into her sister's hot eyes and know she was making love with all she had. They shared the same man and the same wants, and Heather leaned toward the girl, her eyes shining and her lips opening.
Their mouths met and, with a groan, Honey shot her tongue into Heather's mouth, sliding it between her teeth and tapping the tip along the roof inside. Heather sucked upon it, glorying in the taste and texture of the vibrant thing.
They kissed and clung to each other's tits; they gave themselves up to the outpouring of sensation in them and on them and around their shuddering bodies. For all the while, Grady was eating at Honey's cunt and pouring his huge prick up into Heather's pussy.
Honey's teeth raked Heather's, and the girl gasped, "Oooh-c-coming, coming!"
And Heather sighed, "Yes-oh yes-I'm coming, too!"
His prick thrust strongly, solidly, up into her cunt, and she clenched upon it with all her strength, tried to have her rippling sheath devour him as she was devouring her sister's mouth and lips and throat. The magic feeling burst into her, fanning out from the vibrancy of her clitoris to fill her vagina and tie her asshole into a pulsing knot.
Grady lunged again, arched his back, and pounded the head of his cock into the cup of her womb. His spraying semen jetted into her twitching pussy, splashed hot and thick over the rippling walls of her vagina, and came flooding out to wet his own spasming balls.
Gently, clinging to each other with mouths and hands alike, they rolled off the man and lay sobbing for breath while the tender waves of ebbing raptures washed them. Quietly and in love they lay with each a leg over his body, and he kissed the calf of Honey's leg, drew his lips warmly over her ankle, and moved farther to take her toes between his teeth and worry them.
His knee slid seeking until it found the wet warmth of Heather's pussy, where it snuggled and rocked slowly, sensuously, arousing her again before her blood had really stopped its racing. But then he abruptly pulled himself away and slipped off the bed. Heather turned starry eyes up at him and he said, "I don't know about you girls, but I sure as hell need that long cold one now."
With his oiled and glistening prick waving at half-mast before him, Grady marched from the bedroom, and Heather heard the clinking of ice in the kitchen. She lay warm and still, soaking his semen within the adoring confines of her cunt, her lips only inches from the passion-swollen ones of her sister.
Honey murmured, "Do you want me to eat you now?"
Heather kissed the girl. "Of course, and I want to suck your sweet little pussy, my darling. But we can always do that later-after we've worn out poor Grady."
"Yes," Honey agreed, "after we've fucked him until he's helpless. So let's go have a couple of drinks with him."
Naked and stimulated by their unabashed nudity, they sat at the kitchen table and drank deeply of the dark, minty juleps, both of them loving the man with their eyes and yearning to him with their flesh.
Grady mixed another round in tall, frosted glasses, generous with the rich, brown bourbon, and held his glass to them, "To us-and all the bad behind us."
Heather drank and said slowly, "Not quite oil the bad, Grady." He looked a question at her, and while she still had the courage, she told him rapidly of the flight they'd made from New England, the money her dead husband had taken from the Company, and how she had come here to escape the certainty of gangland vengeance.
"It's a hundred thousand dollars," she said. "We stopped and rented a post office box in that little town about a half hour north of here. De-sota. It's a combination box, and I wrote the numbers into my telephone notebook to hide them. I just put the money in an envelope and put the envelope into the box."
Grady grinned incredulously at her. "A hundred thousand, and you just-hell! You couldn't have picked a better hiding place; that old postmaster knows every rule in the book by heart and he wouldn't even bend one by lookin' into a lawfully rented box." He stopped smiling and frowned. "Then that man Artis Santee shot, and the bullet that killed Artis-gunmen sent after you by the Company, I guess. They got that close."
"What-what will we do with the money, Grady? I thought it should belong to me, but now I'm not so sure. I'm afraid to keep it, afraid they'll send more men after it, and after us. If they found us once, they can do it again, and I don't want any more trouble. Not now."
He thought about it, turning the glass in his big fingers. "You know the address where your husband picked up the books he worked on? Could you maybe mail a package there and be sure the right people got it?"
"I think so," Heather said. "They probably haven't moved because of just me. They're not really afraid of me hurting them."
"But they're in business," Grady said. "They think in terms of profit and loss, just like any legitimate business. And there's a good chance they'll take a deal that cuts their losses. They already lost one man down here-two, I reckon, if we don't find the man that shot Artis. We got their old car, and we backtracked somebody off into the swamp, only the footprints didn't come back out. So if you send them a package with-say half the money, and I was to slip in a dead man's drivin' license from up there-I'd say they'd take it pretty good and check off the rest."
Heather gnawed at her lips. "I suppose so, and yet . . . "
"The rest would get you a good start somewhere." Grady said. "And there's Honey. And it ain't like you could give the money back to the numbers players and the kids who bought dope."
"I'd like to start right here," Heather said, and Honey added, "Right on!"
"I don't know," Grady said, and finished his drink. Burly and hairy and splendidly naked, he walked to the sink and poured himself another one. "This here is a little bitty town; the sheriff only checks me about once a week. Folks hereabouts like to gossip a lot, and it wouldn't look right for two imagine women to be just livin' with me, and me an officer of the law."
"Why-" Honey said, jolted. "Why, you bastard."
"Not unless the widow woman was married to me," Grady went on, unperturbed. "That way, wouldn't anybody dare talk about her baby sister stayin' with us. That would be plumb acceptable to everybody, right on down to the church deacons."
Honey said, "You lovable bastard."
"Speakin' of which," Grady said, and when he moved back to the table carrying his glass, Heather saw he had a full erection again, "bastards and lovin' and such like, I reckon I get to pick my way now."
"I don't know," Heather said, "since I'm paying about fifty thousand dollars, maybe I should be the boss."
"It's worth it," Honey said. "Don't haggle over a few bucks. What's your pleasure, man?"
He led them back into the bedroom, and motioned at the bed as he slowly drained his glass. Then Grady said, "You on the bottom, Heather, since Honey is the littlest. And Honey, suppose you just kind of snuggle down on your sister with your belly up and that cute lil' pussy shinin' at me. One pussy on top of the other, like, and both of you spread your legs wide, 'cause I aim to screw you good, both of you."
"Hey," Honey breathed, "he means to change over on us, take turns fucking us."
"I'll be fair and square," Grady said. "Five strokes in one cunt and five strokes in the other--no more and no less."
Heather laughed. "Good trick, if you can do it."
She lay down on the bed with her feet wide apart, and her sister backed her delightfully shaped ass up to Heather's crotch, wiggled against it for a second or two, then hiked herself to lie upon Heather's body.
Heather cupped the girl's tits in both hands, and Honey's fingers strayed down to tickle into Heather's mound, parting the pubic hair and dipping tantalizing into the dampening pussy lips.
"Now that's a sight to make any man climb a wall," Grady said, staring down at them. "One pretty pussy on top the other-one of 'em red and the other brown, and both of 'em with sweet pink lips all ready for the screwin'. "
He crawled between their veed thighs and set himself, fondling a crotch with each hand, rubbing his knuckles gently into their mounds and fingering the cracks of their asses. Heather clung to her sister's tits and kissed the back of her neck as Grady guided the blunt end of his eager cock into her labia.
"Bottom one first," he sighed, and as he pushed the thick pole into Heather's ready vagina, he also pushed his hairy belly into the wetly throbbing vulva of the girl above. When he sent home his prick to the hilt, and rolled his pelvis to make the spongy head of it feel around inside Heather's steamy box, his belly ground sensually into Honey's gash.
"Three-four and-uhh-five!" he said, and Heather writhed as he pulled out and lifted himself slightly up on his knees to set his prick, all slippery with her juices, against the hunching pussy of her sister.
"Shove it to me," Honey cried, and rolled the clenching cheeks of her smooth, warm ass against Heather's groin as her excited cunt accepted the length of Grady's oily prick.
His balls came swinging against Heather's crotch as he fed the meat to Honey, and she found herself counting the thrusts-four, five!
Honey cheated. She threw one leg over his back and tried to hold his cock within her gulping pussy, but Grady firmly shoved her back down, and lowered his drippy rod to slip it into Heather's willing cunt again. She wiggled violently upon it, grinding her ass and feeling Honey slide around on top of her heaving belly.
But only for five long, deep pushes, and she let Grady out of her fevered body so he could fuck her sister some more. It went on for only two more round trips, and Heather gave him credit for staying power when he was into her hotly swiveling well again. She felt his strokes grow ragged, felt them fall off the steady rhythm, and knew he was about to come.
On the fourth thrust, she jerked back her ass so that his prick whipped out, and with a help from her hands on her sister's belly, she guided the girl's quivering cup to the head of Grady's flexing cock.
He got it into Honey and trembled it there. Heather felt the lifting and falling of his balls as they let go their load of newly manufactured semen. She felt quite unselfish for letting Honey have his come, since she had taken the last ejaculation he loosed.
"Oooh!" Honey cried out, threshing wildly upon the deeply buried prick, her sleek ass bucking and humping. "Ohhh, my love, my love-I'm coming with you-coming and coming and coming!"
Tenderly, Heather held her sister as her orgasm subsided, until Honey went softly and sweetly limp. Heather felt like the big sister, and the mother, and the lover, too. It was a wonderfully mixed feeling, and she kissed Honey's ear, cupped
Honey's tits to keep the sensation alive and flowing.
Grady backed out of Honey, and his dripping prick left a trail of adorable stickiness on Heather's pulsing mound. She lay quietly until Honey rolled from her body, and then changed positions with the girl, changed ends so that when she stared hungrily down into Honey's freshly screwed vulva, her own cunt was poised above Honey's panting mouth.
"Go to it, girls," Grady said. "I'll just set back here and watch my wife and my sister-in-law go sixty-nine. I always wanted to be with two pretty women who loved each other much as they both loved me. Ain't many men that lucky."
The position was different, and the wet steam rising from Honey's slit was mucky, intriguing, so Heather plunged her anxious mouth right down into it. Hot and slidy, trembling and creamy; the well was deep and saturated, and her tongue probed it as her teeth raked and her lips locked over the cunt lips. Sucking, rolling the distended and shivering clitoris, Heather ate blissfully into her sister's pussy, luxuriating in the fluids that washed her cheeks and chin.
And she groaned into the fragrant cave when Honey took her own cunt into her mouth. Her sister was more practiced now, and ate tenderly of the tissues and membranes, licking and lapping and giving such ecstasy that Heather could stand it not a second longer.
Heather came. She clamped her thighs strongly about her sister's head and thrust madly against her sister's mouth and teeth and came in an upheaval of passion and lust and crazily lascivious love.
And a scattered string of heartbeats later, Honey twisted and squirmed in her own convulsive cresting, biting the insides of Heather's thighs and raking the cheeks of her ass with clawing nails.
Then Heather let go of herself completely. In a softly gathering blackness, she turned her face for air and snuggled her cheek to Honey's glorious young pussy.
Somewhere in the tender clouds above her, she heard Grady Cordell say faintly, "Soon as we can get the license."
And in a voice like a small silver trumpet, she heard her sister say vaguely, "We'll mail all the money back. No sense taking a chance on losing any of this."
"Talk about that," Grady said.
Heather went nicely and warmly to sleep, knowing that she no longer cared about money or anything else. Only Honey and Grady; and she slept securely, knowing that they both cared as deeply for her.
