enovel The Girls Came C.O.D. J.J. Montague [Future Story Codes]

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The Girls Came C.O.D. ....(88k)    by J.J. Montague

CHAPTER ONE

"Well, what kinda mess we got here?" homicide detective Al Hicks asked the trembling little motel manager as they approached room seventeen.

"We got ourselves murder, that's what," the old man answered, waving his arms in the air. "Why they have to come to my place for it?"

"Well, they gotta go someplace for it, don't they? A motel is as good a place as any for a body to get itself killed."

Hicks had come over from Louisville when the murder was reported. In the investigation ahead he would learn that this was a crime of passion. He wouldn't learn all the passion that led up to the crime. Detectives deal in facts, not emotions. Had Hicks been a more sensitive man, he would come to know that this crime began months before, on a night when Bob Birmingham drove over to Kiwasi....

Bob Birmingham was drunk. Not falling down drunk, but nervy drunk. He'd been drinking since 7:00 p.m.-bourbon with a beer chaser-and now it was 10:30-time to go upstairs and see the girls.

He slumped over the bar. and sent a wizened smile at Mae, who was seated at her customary station in the gloom at the end of the bar to see that nobody got upstairs without her say-so. Now he looked back to his drink, chuckling thickly. He felt a yearning in his loins and slid his hand down the front of his trousers to appraise the throbbing meat he found there.

Dear Lord, he thought, feeling actual pain, if I don't get this into something tender and juicy damned soon now. The things I heard me about these gals of Mae's!

He sloshed the Kentucky bourbon in his shot glass and mused over the pretty amber color. Ardis--if she ever found out he'd driven to Kiwasi-

It was a little twist in the road, composed of a few stores, a filling station, some ramshackle houses. But still there was always a crowd in Kiwasi come nightfall. Cars drove in from every corner of southeastern Kentucky-all after some of Mae's good booze-after a taste of something even more satisfying.

No sweat. You paid your ten and went up. Out of that ten Sheriff Amos Greedle got his cut. Bob couldn't help but wonder what the poor whore, who did all the work, got. Unless her Johns left her a tip.

Lust bubbled hotly in his guts. I'll give the little dear a tip, he thought eagerly. Be right glad to. All she has to do is treat me right. If she's just the least bit good to me-

Better than some cold ass I know.

Instantly a picture of Ardis, his wife-plus an unsettling guilt-was back again.

And how come? Where did she get the power to put the fear of God into him? He wasn't afraid of Sheriff Greedle, or of Mae-even her uppity whores. But, just thinking about Ardis, he got the sweats.

He shook his head and swallowed the rest of the whiskey, sighing pleasurably as it burned his throat. Another sip of his beer.

Fool, he told himself. How's Ardis to know? Or care even. She's at the temple of hers, probably writhing and caterwauling by now-in the arms of her everlasting Lord. Once she gets like that the whole damned world could tip over and she'd never notice.

Even if she waits up for me. Tell her I was down at the gristmill. Played cards with the boys. The cards alone'll make her see red. The whiskey on my breath she won't even notice. And as for suspecting I'd drive thirty-five miles just to stick this aching tusk of mine into somebody new-

His head-bobbing reveries were interrupted as the bartender touched his arm. "Mae's wondering if y'r plannin' on goin' up, friend," he muttered. "She don't cotton to no drunks mauling her girls. Better pay y'r money and go up. Whilst y'r able. The sheriff usually comes by around midnight He-likes things quiet by then."

Bob grumbled inwardly. He didn't take to having a bartender tell him what to do.

As quickly his mood changed. Again his fingers grazed the hard, burning length in his trousers. He laughed to himself and pushed himself away from the bar. He saw Mae-fat and frumpy, perhaps forty-five, dressed in a baggy dress, a bulky sweater-glaring at him.

Again that sense of pride and self invaded. He might be driven to whores for his satisfaction, he conceded, but he was still a man; he could still hold his liquor. He drew himself up to his full six feet. His steps were slow and steady as he advanced to the table where she sat playing solitaire, a frosted glass of some pinkish-colored goo to one side. She paused in her card playing.

"Wanna go upstairs?"

"You know I do." Suddenly he found his heart beating fast. He was afraid of the idea of going upstairs, hopping in bed with some woman he'd never seen before. This, after all his horny dreams, his gut-knotting need? His mouth went dry.

The man who stood there in that indecisive pose was thirty-six and rangy. He was country stock, wiry, hard-muscled; his reddish-blonde hair was cropped close to his squarish skull. Hick though he might be, there was still something handsome about him, something animal and magnetic that got to a woman.

Even Mae, with the countless miles she had on her, suddenly found herself wishing she was fifteen years younger. With a stud like this one-

His arms were tanned from the spring sun; his muscles were like iron bands. His face looked like it had been carved from a block of stone. Those perfect, white teeth in that dusky-almost Cherokee-face. Then those unflinching brown eyes, the luster of his bushy, reddish-tan eyebrows.

He was a man. The kind of man who'd really give his woman a hard way to go.

Then there was an unmistakable spark of reticence in his expression. That reticence a real woman treasures. A reticence that denoted a singular sensitivity-a humanity-in the man's makeup.

There wasn't an ounce of fat on his body. Mae knew his hands would be hard and tough. Those white-fleshed, soft-handed men had never turned her on. Plowboys, wranglers, section crew studs-they were her meat.

The mercenary bitch quickly turned off the addle-pated thoughts. "That'll be ten bucks. In advance. You get a half hour if you need it." She snickered. "Or if y'r man enough. No rough stuff, hear. No weird tricks. We got a couple chappies on the premises who come running if anybody makes a fuss."

She took the ten-dollar bill from Bob and tucked it in the voluminous folds of her sweater.

"What..." Bob stammered foolishly. "I mean ... what...? "

"Hell, ain't you never been to a house before?" she snapped. "Up those stairs there. First door on the right"

Bob muttered a muffled thanks and clumsily started up the risers. There was a turn in the landing, and he saw a dim light glowing ahead. His heart suddenly hammered uncontrollably. It didn't seem real; none of it seemed real. Him? Bob Birmingham? In a whorehouse this May night? In a goddamned crib?

But it was real, all right for now a luscious, long-legged brunette appeared in the doorway and stared mockingly down at him. "C'mon up, lover, Don't be shy. Nobody here but us chickens." Her smile was grossly sensual.

The room was smallish, no more than ten-by-twelve. It was unimaginatively furnished. Chairs, a davenport, a long coffee table, drapes and blinds, a badly worn beige carpet on the floor. Some cheap pictures on the wall. He might have been in any middle-class living room in Kentucky.

Except for one thing.

Four girls stood and sprawled in various, insolent poses about the room. The brunette, who now stood close to Bob, deliberately pushed her petite, oddly sharp-pointed breasts toward him, almost as if inviting him to duck his head and suck the tempting tits right through her sheer sweater. The redhead was in black also, but with stockings and imagine garters. The dusky-skinned, raven-haired doll-Mexican or Indian certainly-was sprawled on the davenport, her legs blatantly spread to expose her thick, curly mat of dark fur that went halfway up her belly.

But the girl who really made him gulp, all but swallow his tongue, was a dainty blonde who stood near the window, the heel of one silver lame shoe seemingly dug into the wall. Her knee was provocatively cocked and gave a wicked flare to her legs, her hips, and belly.

She was in red bikini panties and a thin scrap of matching nylon passing for a brassiere. The latter item lifted her breasts to a high, saucy tilt, made them resemble melons on the verge of spilling from their basket. Her mound shone dully through the nylon.

He wanted that blonde bitch. If he couldn't have her, he didn't want none of the cheap whores! And now, as she deliberately licked her lips and sent him a lascivious come-on, he felt his cock throb involuntarily and a coolish trickle of his semen slithered down his leg.

The blonde's eyes were fixed on his crotch. "What's the matter, stud?" she taunted. "With your pants, I mean? You smuggling axe-handles or something?"

The other girls giggled. And taking in that massive length of meat, the animal maleness he possessed, they all wanted him. It wasn't just the money involved, either. They wanted him for himself; they wanted to drain a truly horny specimen, to hear him gurgle and curse while he pumped into their slots. But then as they saw the way he stared at their blonde sister in sin-

"Forget it, girls," the redhead snapped. "Mamie's struck again." She grimaced. "Christ, it's enough to make a gal get a bleach job."

"Go ahead, Romeo," the Indian sneered. "Take her outta here. Get it over with."

Bob stared about him confusedly. It was his first time in a whorehouse. He didn't have the least idea about protocol. "You mean, I just go off with her? That's all there is to it?"

"Oh, Mamie," the brunette snickered, "did you win yourself a plowboy this time."

Mamie's sneer matched theirs. She beckoned Bob by sauntering sexily toward another door. "C'mon, honey. This way for the sack race."

"Better take a pail along," Red hooted. "He probably ain't been milked in a month."

Moments later, Mamie leading Bob down a murky, door-flanked corridor, he followed her into a smallish, neat-as-a-pin room. It contained only a dresser, several chairs, a small bookcase, and the most important piece of furniture of all-a massive, sway-backed bed, relic of a thousand lust wars.

Bob should have known what he'd won the minute the door was closed behind her and Mamie matter-of-factly began tugging at her brassiere clasps. "Well," she snapped, "how do you want it? I sure's hell hope you don't want nothing special. It's been one of them nights."

His expression became stricken, and he made a pathetic, pleading move toward her. "Please, miss ... Mamie. Don't do that. Not so quick. I'd sorta like to look at you if I might. If you aren't the prettiest thing I ever saw. That underwear ... it's so nice ... so exciting."

Mamie's hands froze, then slithered down her side, mission unaccomplished. Her venal mouth curved into a sly smile, making her pinched face-in Bob's eyes, at least-more devilish and seductive.

"Oh," she smirked, "so you're one of those, huh? I suppose you'd like to take my frillies off yourself. Cost you another two bucks. Don't like my tricks handling me any more than they have to. Fucking's one thing. This other business..."

Momentarily Bob's heart sank, and in that instant he could have sworn that it was Ardis, not a prostitute, who stood before him, taunting and denying him. As quickly the notion fled, and, in a voice phlegm-blurred, he said, "be proud to pay the extra, miss. Small enough for the pleasure."

Mamie smiled and advanced on the bed, where Bob now sat. She stopped before him, tolerated his hands as they reverently meandered up and down her fair, smooth flesh her legs, her thighs her buttocks and back-as they worked up to touching her belly and breasts. Any other female would have flowered, softened under the man's gentle, adoring touch. But not Mamie. She only saw it as opportunity to coax even more dollars from the poor, red-necked hick.

"You like Mamie, don't you?" she trotted out the tired refrain. "Maybe you'd like Mamie to really give you a going over. She will, you know. But it'll cost you, lover."

Bob's tongue seemingly glued itself to the roof of his mouth. "I'm willing to pay, miss.

Within reason. I'm no rich man, you know ... I do like you. I think y'r the loveliest creature I ever laid eyes on."

Now his fingers finally dared to touch her turgid nipples through the flimsy nylon. "Do tell, honey," she sing-songed. "How you do go on." She collapsed one knee so he could get at her tits more easily. His fingers worked avidly, and she didn't miss the yearning, trembling pout of his lips.

"I've always wanted me a blonde girl," he stammered. "Always had it in the back of my mind to have one. But I never got the chance. Oh, Mamie ... y'r so blasted pretty. I could eat you alive."

"Go ahead," she giggled, "try. Start with my titty bumps. Go ahead, chew them if you like."

Bob Birmingham was in the tart's power; it was as if he had no mind of his own. Groaningly, he affixed his lips to first one tit, then the other, he clamped his ham-like hands around her waist, held her closer. And still closer. In a mindless frenzy, he deserted her breasts and let his lips slither down the silky surface of her tummy. Around her navel they went, headed toward the undulating, smallish bowl of belly. They stopped just above the hem of her bikini panties, where her hair protruded slightly.

He shuddered, raised his head, and then looked at the whore dazedly. "I reckon that wouldn't be very manly, would it?"

"I reckon not," she mimicked him gravely. She was becoming impatient "But it would be womanly if I did something for you. Would you like that, sugar? Five dollars. Ten, if you wanted me to go all the way. You ever had a woman do that for you? Ever had a woman blow you?"

Embarrassment, mixed with overwhelming lust, transformed Bob's face. "Can't say as I have. I've always hankered on it though. Are you sure...? I mean if you..."

"Show me your money and I'll be sure. I'll give you a lovin' like you've never had before." She moved away. "But first, I'll shed this underwear ... "

"No!" Bob lurched. "Let me. Is that too much to ask? If I could just say I'd undressed me a blonde woman..."

Mamie moved back and proceeded to dig the knife in still farther. "If that turns you on," she slurred, "just think of what it would be like to have a ... blonde ... woman ... go down on you. To see her blonde head goin' up and down on your big, fat prick." Deliberately she reached out and caressed his meat through his clothes. She smiled when her fingers encountered the place where his goo Had soaked through. "Ooh, he is a beauty! See, he really wants it"

"I don't know, Mamie," the man muttered confusedly, at a loss for words. "I just don't know."

"But why not, lover? All men like to ... to be sucked off. You any different?"

"No," he choked, his face a bewildered mask, "it ain't that It's just that if you did me that way ... well, then I'd..." He fell into embarrassed silence.

Mamie hooted in delight "Oh, you're afraid you couldn't do me regular, is that it? You're afraid of wasting yourself, ain't you?" She leaned forward and began undoing his buttons. "You are green as hickory, ain't you? Hell, that's included in the ten bucks extra. I bring you back, get you ready for the main event right after." Her cackle became really ugly. "Double your pleasure, double your fun."

Everything happened very quickly for Bob after that And though he'd much rather have gone more slowly, savored things, he was awed by the aggressive female. Then the whore was pulling off his shorts, gingerly wrapping her fingers about his huge tube.

At last when he was totally naked-another first for him, being undressed with the lights on-Mamie permitted him to undo her brassiere, to peel her panties off her. And then and there, not making the least move to turn off the lamp, she began dragging his head to her breasts, poking first one tit, then the other between his noisily sucking lips.

Bob surrendered himself and began to chew her nipples fanatically. Whore or not, he wanted to bury his face in that blonde muff of hers, to root and snort between her legs. But Mamie was still in charge, and every time he tried, she stalled him by jamming his face tighter to her breasts.

Then, even before he'd had his fill of her luscious, writhing body, of her stagy, sibilant pantings, she was climbing all over him, pushing him back on the bed. He groaned and went limp as he felt her hot breath, her velvety lips coursing down his belly. Then the devilish tongue was twining around his flesh like some searching serpent, climbing its rigid length to the head.

He wanted to bellow with pride and joy as he felt her mouth go down, as he realized that-for the first time in his life-a woman was actually sucking him off! It was so! She had him in her mouth; she was going up and down on him, her teeth and palate grating, her cheeks bellowing in and out in as erotic a display of lust as he ever hoped to see.

Dear God, but that was a feeling! So hot, so soft, so completely enveloping. So wringing. So exalting! This beautiful blonde sucking him.

Now, the no-nonsense whore truly latched onto his dick, pumping like some demented machine. And now he knew frustration; he wished she wouldn't suck so hard, run her teeth on the underside of his glans so cruelly. He wished she'd move more slowly, give him a chance to savor this most exquisite of all sex experiences. Bob wished she'd be gentle, let him get used to it. Only when she knew he was ready-then should she bear down, then should she-

But now Bob groaned and suppressed an agonized yowl. He found his hands in her hair, his hips pumping up reflexively to meet her mouth. He was possessed of the most insane urge to fuck her mouth, to rape her goddamned throat! "Oh, Mamie!" he groaned. "Please! Not so hard! Not so fast! Y'r hurting me ... y'r taking all the fun out of it."

If the whore heard him, she didn't let on. Her head continued to piston up and down; her lips and teeth and palate became even more merciless.

And what should have been the ultimate ecstasy was pure hell. He came all right, hot and hard and jetting, making Mamie choke and groan. But it wasn't ecstasy, it wasn't fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Instead it was pain and frustration. Pain piled on top of pain! And where she should have waited a stroke or two, let him spurt, let him enjoy that spurting, she continued to drag her teeth across his corona, to literally cut gashes in his flesh with them.

She had him hard again in minutes. "There! Ol' johnny's up. Plug old Mamie silly."

Almost reluctantly Bob did as he was told. This time he'd much rather have had the lights out. Suddenly fucking became a duty, a tiresome chore, and he had to see it through to prove his manhood, if not-as he strongly suspected-merely to get it over with so he could escape this corrupt hellhole.

A stranger thing happened then. Suddenly overcome by fatigue, guilt, liquor-by the very unnaturalness of the situation-Bob couldn't make himself come a second time. And there were times when he could jack off three times in a row-supreme testament to his eternal horniness.

In the first place, despite Bob's prodigious size, the whore seemed to be sloppy and loose; there were moments when he didn't feel the sides. After his own wife's narrowness (tight because of misuse) it seemed impossible to maintain contact, let alone enhance friction. He pumped vigorously, groaned, and thrashed.

"What the hell?" Mamie grumbled when it had gone limp. "Don't tell me you're fizzling on me. God, you are a plowboy, after all. You should go back home to your sheep. Fuck, will you? Concentrate, you sad-sack excuse for a man!"

The taunts stung terribly. Grabbing Mamie by the buttocks, grinding his chin into her neck, he used her cruelly. He gloried in the slam, in the electric fire of their colliding pelvises. And now-at long last-he came.

Mamie was a pure bitch. Even after humiliating him so grossly, she angled for a tip. "I earned it," she spat loudly. "All that work you put me to. The way you held me. I'll be sore down there for a week."

Bob became equally stubborn and mean. Ten for the fuck. Ten for the blow job. Two for the privilege of skinning off her undies. Twenty-two dollars. Only he didn't have change. And he wouldn't give her the twenty-five until she produced three ones. "Y'r no woman," he cursed her. "Y'r nothing but a rotten, money-hungry machine. I reckon there's more'n a little of lesbian streak in you."

"My, my," she sneered. "So the plowboy's learned himself a new word," She snatched at the money and tore it from his grasp. "I'm paid. Thanks for the tip. Now get the hell outta here before I let out a yell, bring the guys running."

Bob should have known he was licked. But embittered, furious, feeling curiously tainted, he wouldn't let go of it. Now he had Mamie by the hair; his fingers twisted it. "I'll tip you," lie snarled. "Right on y'r dirty, slutty ass. Here's a tip f'r you!" He tugged her hair until her eyes bulged and her mouth gaped open. His limp penis dropped into the yawning orif ice; he jammed his hips at her mouth.

When Mamie broke free momentarily, made that first move to bite him, he slapped her viciously and sent her spinning across the room. She began to scream at the top of her voice. Shortly, Bob heard male voices-the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairs.

Somehow he managed to get his trousers and shirt on before they got to Mamie's door. Stepping into his shoes, he bunched his underwear and jammed it inside his shirt. He held the door as long as he could, almost relishing the thought of the fight. It would clean some of the filth from his soul.

The first man who broke into the room received a staggering blow to the side of his head. He groaned and went down like a bag of stones. Mamie screamed from the corner. The second man was ready and clobbered Bob good. But Bob recovered and buried his fist in the intruder's belly to the wrist. The goon went down in a heap, gasping and hawking. The second man was up by then. Bob carried him, hanging and kicking, all the way down the stairs.

The bartender was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Bob was ready for him also. He reached up, caught the other man's wrists and locked them together. Then, with a contemptuous whirl of his powerful body, he brought his rider around like some sort of a bolo, his feet catching the bartender under the chin. Bob let his human pendulum free then, and he went sailing across the room, crashing into a table and a chair.

Before any of the others in the bar could gather their wits, he was out the door, running across the street to where his car, a 1970 Buick, was parked. A moment later he kicked it to life and tore out of the sleepy village at ninety.

He cursed himself all the way home.

Ardis was waiting for him when he got in. He attempted to sneak past her door, reach the guest bedroom-his "dog house bedroom" but, as she flung her door open and stared hatefully at him, it was obvious she'd been waiting.

"And where, Bob, have you been until this late hour?" There was some of that prissy, infuriating, schoolteacher edge to her tone. "It's after one."

He lied as best as he could. Falling back on his alibi, he told her there'd been some cheating in the game, and a fight had resulted.

Which was exactly what the self-righteous woman wanted to hear; it indicated all her presupposed beliefs about her wayward husband's whereabouts. Bob hadn't been married to the sanctimonious creature for eight years for nothing.

"I told you, Bob," she sighed, "that you'd come to no good, hanging with that gang of outlaws. The Lord has found a way to punish you ... to deliver a warning. Won't you ever learn? His way is the righteous way and..."

But Bob heard no more. He whirled away and headed down the hall. But he didn't reach his own room without first pausing to look in on Marcy and Craig. The cover had fallen off ten-year-old Craig, and he leaned, picked it up, and recovered the boy. He was about to kiss Marcy, but decided against it. He stunk of whiskey and beer. Among other things.

Softly he closed the door and went to his own room.

In the distance he could still hear Ardis muttering to herself. He washed, doctoring his gashed hands as best he could. Finally he fell into bed. Even so, after the wearying events of the day, he couldn't sleep. He stared into the darkness.

"What'n hell's the matter with you?" he groaned aloud, bewilderment clogging his voice. "Why'd you go and do a damned fool thing like that? Why, why? You fool, you miserable fool! Ardis is right. There ain't no hope for you. You got yer filthy brain between y'r legs."

CHAPTER TWO

Everyone who came by Bob Birmingham's shop the next day-customers and hangers-on alike-had something to say about his puffy, blue-black eye and about the cut on one cheek. And, of course, his gashed knuckles didn't help much either. Bob, his head still full of wool from the heavy drinking, laughed, bobbed his shoulders, played the clown as usual, opting for the timeworn "ran into a door" alibi.

"Ah shore would lahk to see the shape'a that door," his helper, Aldus Wells, hooted. "After you got through with it." But then, in a quiet moment, the two of them alone in the blacksmith shed, he confidentially muttered: "Had t'r be some idiot coot from outa town. Nobody around here'd tangle with you. Tell me, Bob, how'd it happen?"

"Y'r seein' hants where there ain't any," Bob good-naturedly replied, surprised at his friend's perception. The last thing on earth he wanted anyone in Garrett Park to know was that he'd been over to Kiwasi last night. "I bumped into the doorjamb, I tell you."

"More'n-likely Ardis clocked you with something," Aldus wasn't as stupid as he might look; he'd long sensed that things weren't right between his hard-working boss and his wife. "A cast-iron skillet from the looks of it."

More in self-defense than real pique, Bob put on a stern face. "We had best git at that cultivator of Skip Martin's. At least six discs to be fixed before noon. Then there's those stake plates fr Jess Grant's wagon. Pete Yancy's truck's ready. Somebody oughta deliver that before he comes stompin' down here." He grabbed a handful of wrenches.

Aldus Wells-short, spindly, slightly 'bow-legged, the town drunk before Bob had straightened him out-ducked his head deferentially. He gathered his tools and together they attacked the maimed cultivator which Skip Martin had seen fit to drag through Devil's Gorge from the looks of it.

BOB BIRMINGHAM-BLACKSMITHING AND GENERAL REPAIRS-the sign above the door of the sheet metal shed said. It was perhaps the fifth enterprise which Bob had started in his lifetime. There had been a spray painting rig which he'd bought and operated as a green-as-grass kid fresh out of high school. He'd sold that business when he was twenty-three. Then it had been short-haul trucking. He'd ditched that operation when it became more and more long haul, and it interfered with his evenings of fishing, his weekends of hunting. A stint in the car shops of the Nashville and Tennessee Railroad had followed. He'd only lasted there a year or so. Fiercely independent, he'd hated the confinement, the idea of having another man for a boss. Next he'd worked a going-to-seed roadside market into prosperity. Again pressure had got to him, and he'd sold out and looked for something new to do.

It had been while he'd been running the road-Side market that he'd married Ardis. She had complained bitterly when he'd sold out. It had meant leaving Winslow, fifteen miles to the north, where her family and closest friends lived. But if anything Ardis was prudent and, with the vision of a $10,000 profit before her, she saw the wisdom of accepting Jake Hundley's offer.

Bob had sold all his businesses at a profit. He was, by local standards, a wealthy man. Forty thousand in the bank and a prospering business like his blacksmith shop made him a Croesus in a smallish city like Garrett Park. He might not be bright in certain matters, but when it came to turning a dollar, he was as shrewd as a Yankee trader.

Of course, the real key was the fact that Bob Birmingham hadn't been afraid of hard work. And when all was said and done, he liked keeping busy; work had turned out to be his salvation, more than once. Especially since his marriage to Ardis had gone sour. What else was there? Work helped a man forget.

Thus it was easy to understand Bob's anguish this morning, the eviscerating fury he felt toward himself. Just what gets into a man, he lashed, to make him do a damned-fool thing like last night? I risked everything, put my ass, my family's reputation on the line for a stinking piece of tail. By rights I should be in Sheriff Greedle's jail this morning, talking to Ardis from behind bars.

The thought of a humiliation like that curdled his guts. The thought of giving Ardis the upper hand like that chilled him. She was bad enough the way things were now.

He hammered at the balky disc more fiercely just then and caused Aldus to look up questioningly.

The thing was, he concluded, taking his spite out on the twisted steel, that this wasn't the end of it God knew, he couldn't ever show his face in Kiwasi again. But there were other

Kiwasis. It might take a little more driving, but he knew where to go. Sure, last night had been his first such experience. But if things went on like they were at home now, it wasn't his last.

And, dear God, if he'd botched up so badly last night, what would it be like if he was given enough time, more hellholes like Kiwasi?

He vowed never to get that hard up again.

He knew it was impossible. It would happen, as screwed up as his life had become lately.

His heart lifted slightly. If things came to the worst, there was always that other thing. That little catalog, that newspaper he had hidden in his office.

He crumpled inside. Please, Ardis. Don't make me go that way. If you'd only try. If you'd only give me a chance. That's all I ask.

Again, fight it as he might, his thoughts went back to the previous night, to the fiasco at the cathouse. He was thinking about Mamie again. Remembrance of her beauty, of her sexy body, of the eternally longed-after blondeness made him feel weak inside. His heart ached, and he actually wanted to cry out. Why had she been like that? So cold? So cruel? Again that jarring similarity smote him. It was almost as if Ardis had been there, taunting him, denying him.

The image was too strong. Once more he was sitting there, stroking the whore's beautiful body, her breasts, her pussy, her belly through the tantalizing underwear. Then the picture of both of them naked, with Mamie crouching over him, her mouth full of meat, not minding for a minute that he avidly watched, gorged himself upon the forbidden act.

Her cheeks puffing in and out, her eyes rolling. The smack and click of her lips, the muffled grunts when he lurched up, put dents in her larynx. The pagan looks she gave him as she pulled off completely, let her tongue curl lazily around his hardened shaft.

"Hey, Bob," the scratchy voice cut in on his thoughts, "is something wrong? Y'r lookin' so queer."

Bob caught himself. "Ain't nothing, Aldus. Don't trouble yourself. Mind gets to wondering at times." Again he hammered the disc unmercifully, gave Aldus a frown that warned him. Moments later, only the forge work left, he deliberately made himself scarce. Wandering down to the end of the cavernous shed, he popped the acetylene torch to life and began cutting heavy gauge sheet steel into strips for the stake frames.

Bob returned to his daydreams. Nightmares would be more like it. For now it wasn't the flaxen-haired Mamie who pumped up and down on his begging-for mercy prick. Instead it was Ardis, her dark-haired head working just as cruelly as Mamie's had. Instantly Bob felt his

SO cock stiffening in his trousers. Hound! he scolded his irrepressible member. Is that all you ever think of?

He faltered in his work, fell back, caught his breath. Moments later he was adrift in an even more potent reminiscence.

Once more he was back with Ardis during their courting days-nine years ago. An eternity, it seemed, and his heart kicked, bemoaning a happiness that was gone and would never come again.

He was originally from Garrett Park, and it had been in Winslow, making regular deliveries at a dry goods store where she worked, that he'd first caught sight of her. Only she'd been 'married then, to a man named Ken Thelen.

He'd always admired Ardis. She was a beautiful woman, clean, upright, virtuous. Joshingly, he'd suggested she step out on Ken once or twice. She'd cut him dead, hadn't spoken to him for weeks afterward. At that time she'd seemed the ideal woman-the greatest bounty a profligate heaven could shower down on a worthless, undeserving male.

He should have been warned, he supposed. For after Ken had been killed in an automobile crash, and he'd asked her out-after an appropriate mourning period-it had been to church-The Temple of The New Christ-that they'd first gone together. It had become a regular thing with them. Bob had never put much stock in church and such, but he'd humored Ardis because he wanted her so terribly.

Which wasn't to say that churchgoing was all they did. No, there were movies in neighboring towns; there were dinners and sodas. There was even a small square dancing club they joined as singles, and he was positive that this was an admirable balance-equal parts of solemnity and fun. He was so crazy to marry Ardis, to become proxy father to her two kids, that he couldn't see straight.

But the most amazing thing of all to the unexperienced man was Ardis' sexual passion. And where he'd always thought of her as cool and reserved, above fleshy lusts, he soon discovered otherwise. All that churchgoing, all those prissy comments about not being that kind of girl, seemingly went out the window the minute Bob's serious intentions were made known.

In fact it had been Ardis' suggestion that they find a dark country lane and park that first time. They had been to a square dance in Dolton, twenty miles north, and the evening of fun and constant body contact had got them both worked up. Ardis more than Bob, as it turned out.

There had lately been little good-night kisses, respectful, fleeting pecks as he'd seen her to her door. But that night, the car parked off the road, completely hidden behind bushes and trees, it was something else again.

Excited by her willingness to park, he'd put his arm around her, had held her more tightly than ever before, while he kissed her. Right away Ardis had amazed him by falling apart, panting and moaning, grinding her lips, her breasts-her whole body-wantonly against his.

Bob had been stunned; he'd thought she was sick or something and he hadn't responded in kind. Ardis had become that much more aroused. Pulling away with an impatient whimper, she'd said, "Unloosen, Bob, will you! You can muss me ... I'm not made of glass, you know."

Bob had mussed her, all right. Unable to believe his luck-a passionate, sensual woman in addition to her other virtues-he had gone a little berserk. The kisses and caresses had become very wild indeed. But when he'd got carried away, had attempted to cup one of her luscious, sharp-pointed breasts, to slide his hands on her nyloned legs, she'd pulled him up and kissingly cut the evening short.

But the impasse had been of short duration. After a movie date several nights later, she'd almost jumped at his suggestion that they take a little ride before going home. She'd been in his arms the minute the engine was killed and the lights went out. In their safe hideaway, she was again all flesh and fire. The wild kissing and heavy breathing had given way to plaintive sighs all but begging for Bob to once more assert himself, do those things to her that a man should do to a woman.

Her perfume, the luminous sheen of her eyes and face, the provocative gown she'd worn that night, all contributed, and before the night was another hour older, he'd been helpless to keep his hands from roaming again. Only this time there'd been no rebuff. Ardis' breath had hissed, her legs and hips had jittered as his timid fingers had brushed her breasts through the filmy material, the slide of nylon on nylon inflaming them both.

"I'm sorry, Ardis," he'd apologized shortly, drawing away upon achieving minor control. "I know I shouldn't act this way. Forgive me. I just lost hold of myself for a minute there."

She'd drawn him back impatiently, angrily. "It's all right, darling. I wouldn't let you do it if I didn't like it, if I didn't want you to do those things. Oooh, wild, it makes me feel so wild! You are a lover, after all. Touch me, Bob. It feels so darned good!"

Things had truly gone haywire after that Less than fifteen minutes later they were in the back seat together, their bodies writhing, their mouths locked. "Oh, yes, darling," she gasped when his hand had invaded her skirts, had tickled and clutched her crotch through her drenched panties. "Yes, yes! I love it! I love it so much. Touch me. Hold me. Do whatever you want to me!"

Which she hadn't quite meant, for when he'd attempted to undress her, she'd balked. Only her shoes and stockings, the panties and garter belt. There wasn't time for all the rest. It had been quite enough, for when the sex-crazed male had seen her ivory belly, the dark delta of her snatch-her vagina all glittering, liquidly-he'd torn off his trousers and shorts and had come over her.

Even so, Ardis had had still other surprises in store for him. Her greedy fingers had been waiting for his rod as it had zeroed in on her crotch and she had sawed his cockhead on her clitoris, swirled it in the mouth of her vagina-seemingly tasting it-before finally piloting it into the channel itself. She'd moaned piteously, raggedly, like he was giving her the greatest gift any man could confer.

Her slit was tight, fantastically runny, and he was a goner from that moment on. He had to have this font, this soaking hole, forever and ever. He was positive that life with a wanton like this would be eternal ecstasy. And while he still couldn't believe his good fortune, he wasn't about to ask questions, rock the boat. Love-physical communion-that was all that mattered. Who needed more assurance than this?

Ardis' hole had been astonishingly narrow; she'd had a glorious way of constricting her inner muscles, of seemingly milking his rod from base to tip. Right away, her hips had begun to grind expertly. She'd groaned and gulped and hissed, had quickly torn one, then two orgasms from his plundering tool. She was in the process of stealing a third one when Bob could hold back no longer and jetted what felt like pints of hot, thick come into her.

And though Ardis wasn't given to talking, to articulating her pleasure, there was no doubt in his mind that she was beside herself with joy, amazed at the copious splash of maleness he'd given her. Her hips ground more frantically ; her cunt wall clung and massaged, got out every last drop.

Then, suddenly, it was late. It was time to go home.

Two more roadside surrenders occurred before another roof came crashing down on Bob. Ardis was absolutely nutty about al fresco fucks; there was something about the danger element, the discomfort, the hurry-up quality of them that turned her into a virtual hellcat. But there came a time when she needed even more. He had hardly believed his ears when upon dropping her off at her house-she'd said, "Come back, Bob. After you drop the sitter off. Park around the block. I'll leave the back door open for you. You know where my bedroom is."

Bob had dazedly done as he was told. Groping through the darkened house, he'd found Ardis seductively posed upon her bed. Totally naked for the first time, the dim light from outside making her belly a tempestuous, furry promise, she was a she-devil. Her breasts were heaving; the tips were hard-delectable nuts he was insane to get his lips around. He actually wanted to fall upon her body,, kiss it from head to toe, to concentrate on that lush, velvety belly-on that musky forest

But afraid that he'd disgust Ardis, he'd resisted the impulse. Quickly undressing, he'd contented himself with caressing her glorious body, with sucking those tits to flowering softness.

And finally, the whole length of her sensuous body beneath him-the luxury of privacy, a room, a bed all to themselves-he'd fucked her into a whimpering, sated stupor.

Their love had taken a curious pattern from then on. During the few months between the announcement of their engagement and their marriage,, he'd been in her bed almost every night. He'd come in stealthy darkness-it was one prissy propriety Ardis insisted upon; there must be no neighborhood gossip-service her for hours on end, then leave in the wee hours of the morning, often missing dawn's first grayness.

Their love had been incredibly good. Bob was insane about the incredible sexuality he'd unleashed within Ardis; she could turn him into a raving madman at times. Especially those times she chose to tease him, withhold sex from him for a time. Then she was Cleopatra and Jezebel all in one-she was the eternal courtesan.

Prick-teaser was the word that came most naturally to Bob's mind. And though she'd never once denied him, there were chilling moments when he wondered if that wasn't exactly what she was working up to.

He always remembered that one night when Ardis had made Bob pull her vanity away from the wall and tilt the mirror so that she could watch their reflected images while in the throes of a holy fuck. It had given him a funny feeling to see themselves that way, to see the wicked, almost psychotic light in her eyes as she watched from start to finish.

While Ardis was pure wanton, while she permitted such bizarre sidelights to sex, she would not, however, permit any of the oral delights. Bob had wanted only to be permitted to kiss and suck between her legs, testament of his undying love, but she wouldn't hear of it. "But, Ardis, honey," he'd plead. "I ain't askin' nothing of you. Just let me, will you? I'm crazy to do that f r you."

"No, Bob. I can't. It isn't right. It's perverted ... against God's will. The rest of it, all right. But don't ask for that."

Though disappointed, he'd relented. He'd been satisfied for a time in the plentitude of sex otherwise. No other man in the world had ever been so richly blessed. Perhaps, in due time, she'd change her mind. It was worth waiting for.

Just then Bob woke up from his reverie to find himself standing stock still before his forge, a hard-on, big enough to choke a horse, distending his trousers. And with it-a frustrated, gut-tangling ache that threatened to floor him. His eyes filmed suddenly. Dear God, he raged bewilderedly, where'd it all get to? What'n hell went wrong, anyway?

Luckily there was a clatter and a roar at that moment and Tush Willingly drove his decrepit '49 Ford into the shed for a muffler repair. Though he generally turned away auto repairs, he was grateful for Tush's appearance just now. Before he'd gone off his head again. He'd saved him from outright tears.

Ardis knew exactly what Bob had on his mind tonight; she knew he was itchy. Eight years of marriage gives one that intuition. Furthermore, Bob knew that she knew he was hurting. And though he hated to give in, to crawl before her, it had to be. Solitary hand drills wouldn't do it for him tonight. The real thing. He had to have Ardis, even if she didn't want him, even if she never would.

Ten days had passed since the ill-fated trip to Kiwasi. Ten days of the silent treatment from Ardis, with her reveling in it, pinning him with contemptuous sniffings every time he tried cozying up to her. But lately she'd softened somewhat, and there was cause to hope.

There were night, like tonight, when he actually believed he still loved Ardis, when he thought they could still work things out. Seeing her sitting across the tidy, sparkling living room from him, engrossed in her readingTV's corrupting influence would never have a chance at her children's minds-while he finished going through the paper, he was twisted with longing. She was lovely and desirable, her body vastly tempting despite her shapeless, figure-concealing dress, the total lack of makeup. She was his wife, his woman, no matter what anybody said.

She was a lot of woman. They would rediscover the joys of love again someday. If and when they got their heads right again. He wouldn't backslide again. All Ardis had to do was give him the least chance.

Briefly he backtracked, remembered how pretty and clean the kids had been tonight as they'd lovingly come to kiss their mother and father good night. He remembered the sincere love that had flooded him at that moment. Now he thought of the fine meal Ardis had prepared for him, the care she'd taken with his torn shirt just yesterday. He did have a good life. So they weren't compatible in bed; what of it? Was that so important?

A frustrating anger boiled up in him. Damn you, God! Why did you make me such a horny animal? Why won't you give me any peace? Why can't I be happy with what I have?

His confusion was increased as he focused his gaze on Ardis again, saw her reading her Bible, comparing certain passages against one of the countless tracts she was forever getting down at church. Despair rose. He most certainly wouldn't get any tonight. Not after she worked herself into one of her holier-than-thou states. Once more fury raced through him.

Why? he agonized. Dear God, why?

At exactly 10:30 Ardis rose from her chair and went directly to her bedroom. He heard her in the bathroom. Then she was in the bedroom, undressing, getting into her nightgown. Bob sat in his chair, waited. It was an unwritten rule that he never invaded the bedroom while she was undressing. Still, he waited. When he was sure it was all clear, he rose, locked the doors, and extinguished the lights.

When he entered the bedroom, he found Ardis on her knees on her side of the bed, praying. He backed out of the room, quickly, but Ardis heard him, opened her eyes, glowered at him. It was a bad blunder.

"No privacy at all," she grumbled when he let himself in the second time. "If you won't pray with me, at least you could do is leave me alone with God."

"I'm sorry, honey. I was sure you was finished." Even so he couldn't help looking at the way her body was outlined beneath the gown. Sanctimonious or not, he wanted her. Meat, if nothing else. A place to bury his prick, to empty his load.

According to routine, he went to the bathroom with his pajamas. Where, after seeing to things as quietly as he could, he put his pajamas on, then walked softly back into the now darkened bedroom. He slid under the covers with as little fuss as possible.

When he inched toward her stolid body, gingerly placed his arms across her warm, comfortingly voluptuous body, she hissed: "No, Bob! Not tonight. I still haven't forgotten that last thing you pulled. Besides, I don't feel very good tonight."

Anger choked him. "How long, Ardis?" he growled. "How long you aim to make me pay f r that? I ain't gone back with the boys since, have I? Please, honey, I need you. I'm a man ... flesh and blood; there's jist so much I can endure. You don't know what y'r driving me to."

"More of that wife-swapping drool, I suppose. Well, go ahead, if that's what you want. I'm not interested, God knows. I've still got penance enough to pay ... for the slut I let myself become when I first met you. More filth I don't need, thank you."

"Aw, Ardis, I wish you'd fergit all that. It wasn't sinful; it wasn't filth. We were in love ... we are in love."

"Love? Is that what it was? It was fornication, pure and simple. We broke God's most sacred law."

Bob saw there was no point in riling Ardis further; he tried changing the subject. He continued pulling, her toward him, his hands strong, but gentle. "Please, Ardis. I need it tonight. I need it worse than I've ever needed it before. It's not wrong. We're man and wife ... married in the eyes of God. In your own church."

"Another abomination. That I could take you to my own church, let Reverend Milton perform the ceremony. Shameless slut, that's what I was."

Still Bob continued to caress her, to force her to endure his touch. "Please, please, baby," he said, hating himself for his sniveling tones, "I need you. I need you so much. I'm all twisted up inside."

Abruptly Ardis shifted, humped her body and came down on her back. "All right," she snorted, "go ahead! Do what you want with me. Only stop that damned whining."

Bob hated himself even more because of the eagerness with which he came over her, fussed with her nightgown. He felt mean and dirty because he was willing to have her on any terms whatsoever. "Oh, Ardis, honey, thank you," he sighed. "I'll be good to you. I won't keep you long."

"No!" she snapped when he tried to pull off her nightgown so he could kiss and suck her lovely breasts. "That's enough. What you need's right there. Stick yourself in. Get it done with."

"Please, Ardis," he pleaded. "Don't be like that. Don't ruin it f'r me. If you could jist see your way clear to..."

"To act like I'm enjoying it? No, Bob. Why should I when I don't? When I'm dying inside all the time, just for thinking of what I'm doing. That I'm denying my Lord still another time? For a man I don't respect because of his craven appetites? Please, Bob. Don't talk. Just do what you have to do."

Even though he loathed himself for it, Bob quickly peeled off his pajama bottoms and discarded them. The next moment he was crouched over Ardis' rigid body, fighting to stick his rod into her. Sticking was the proper word, because that's all it was. A limp, cold, impassive piece of meat. A crack that made no sound, made no move as the gross indignity was committed upon it.

"I hope you remembered to put your thing on," she snapped even as he buried himself to the hilt. "If you haven't, you'd better get out."

"I've got it on," he snarled, fighting the impulse to pull out of her, race for the bathroom, churn it into the toilet instead of into her emasculating twat.

"Good," she sniffed. "I certainly don't want any of your rotten spawn taking hold inside of me. That would be the last straw."

"Goddamn you, Ardis, don't!" he spat. "Ain't it bad enough you don't help me? Don't cheat me of what little I have. I've got it on. I've got the damned rubber on!" He froze in midstroke. "Here, you wanna feel it?"

She didn't answer. If anything, she went even more stiff and cold. She withdrew from the scene of sin, sat in judgment in some far, remote place.

Bob froze inside himself. He changed into a robot, into some unfeeling, pistoning, pile-driving machine. It wasn't bad enough that the rubber minimized contact, robbed him of that blessed friction. No, Ardis had to castrate him with her caustic comments. He slammed her harder, knew that it was the only way he'd get it off now.

Now he felt that dull ache build up deep in his guts; it backed into his scrotum, made his balls feel tight and swollen. Now the fire en-flamed his anal sphincter, and he tightened the muscle, felt his anus pucker. A hot fire grew behind his tight-pressed eyelids.

Then he let fly. Insofar as there was any sensation at all, his sperm latex-entrapped as it was, it was a good shot. He pumped harder, was determined to squeeze out every last gram. God knew when he'd be granted audience with the queen again.

Finally he was still. "Didn't you feel anything at all, Ardis?" he asked when he could breathe again. "Nothing at all, like it used to be?"

"No!" she snapped. "You ask that every time. I don't ever want to get like that again, understand? I'm fighting it! Won't you ever get that through your stupid head?" She shifted her hips. "Now, if you're quite finished, I'd appreciate it if you take that filthy thing out of me, so I can go to the bathroom to wash myself."

"Wash?" he snapped. "What for? I sure's hell didn't put nothing into you."

"You entered me, didn't you? Isn't that enough? I feel dirty and tainted."

Slowly he pulled out of her and fell sideways. "And if you don't mind, Bob," she continued. "In the other bedroom, please? I don't think I would sleep if you stayed ... after this. I think I should pray now."

He jumped angrily from the bed, stared down on her, his limp cock grotesque with the rubber still hanging on it. He was possessed of the urge to rip the sheath off and fling it into his wife's prissy face. But he thought better of it and merely dropped it on the floor just before closing the door behind himself. It would serve as a jolting souvenir the first thing in the morning.

He clicked the door softly and went toward the other bedroom. His rage threatened to consume him, and even after his grisly trick, he still felt empty and defeated.

He wondered why he even tried.

CHAPTER THREE

Things were no better for Bob. In fact, if anything, they were worse. Especially after the fight they'd had the morning after their last parody of sexual love. And the other fights since, the one transpiring just two nights ago still rankling strongly. And this Wednesday morning in May, alone at the shop (Aldus Wells was gone in the pick-up) there was again time for broodings.

Even more aggravating was the constant passage of comely female flesh of all descriptions, from sixteen to forty (age made no difference to Bob in his present, agitated condition) passing his shop. Dollar Day in Garrett Park, and every woman in town was seemingly right out there on the march.

By rights, he should have been inside, hard at it. There was work coming out of his ears. But he didn't have any stomach for it. Other things were nagging him.

Things like his marriage. Things like his growing preoccupation with sex. One would think that at his age the drive would be withering. But no, it got more compulsive and overpowering by the day.

Thus the monstrous hard-on in his trousers at that moment, his satyr concentration on the pretty young chicks going past. Chicks like that gorgeous, red-haired Polly McKinney, a teenage beauty who was, so far as Bob knew, unspoken for as yet. His eyes narrowed, and the pain in his gut nearly felled him as he ogled her. Her flimsy cotton dress was plastered to her skin; it showed off her tawny, lithe legs, and hard rounds of her buttocks, the material-straining cones of her boobs.

Bob actually groaned, making a sound like a male dog in rut. And God, but wouldn't he love to teach the dumb little kid what love was all about? Wouldn't he love to sample some of that? Wouldn't he love to see her eyes widen when she saw his majestic whang? Wouldn't he love to hear her whimpers of inter-mixed pain and delight as he drove himself into her virginal gash?

It wasn't just the sex part, he concluded. If he could just have someone soft and warm and lovely like Polly to love, someone who'd love him back a little. That's all he asked. If he could buy her all sorts of pretties-sexy shoes, lingerie, expensive, clinging dresses, even sparkly gew-gaws from Hotlander's jewelry store downtown. If he could dress her in the lovelies, then undress her. If he could only kiss that white, writhing body, if he could-

He turned the sex fantasies off as Polly finally faded out of sight. Suddenly he found his throat dry, his undershorts runny from his. excitation. , He thought of Ardis just then, and that killed the dream very swiftly indeed. He'd tried that with her; he'd purchased sexy gifts of underwear, shoes, sexy gowns a hundred, times prettier than Ardis ever wore 'way back When. In every instance she'd made him return the gifts, she derided them as harlot's rags. She'd spewed forth her tiresome tirades about "Vanity being the devil's own device." In time he hadn't bothered anymore.

He thought of Ardis, of the incredible change in her over these past few years. Then remembrance of their last screeching argument put the capper on it. Deliberately, lest he make a dozen more kinds of fool of himself, he quit his girl-watcher's station and lurched into the blacksmith shop.

Almost as if driven to his secret niche, as if it took on the importance of final salvation, he reached back into a corner of his old, roll-top desk, drew out the clutch of newspapers and brochures, some tattered and grimy, others spanking new. Assured that Aldus would be gone another hour at least, he moved closer to the window, studied them eagerly, pathetically.

They were swap club leaflets. Somehow, he'd got on a mailing list, and they'd started to come. He'd applied to several, and was now on their regular list, the contraband being delivered to a post office box in Yarrow, fifteen miles down the line. Judging from the tattered condition of the lot, they were his only form of escape.

Feverishly, he scanned one of the bulletins, a thin, photo-illustrated leaflet with provocative ads by the hundreds. His eyes fled to particular favorites:

KY. PR 122-Young woman of thirty wants to hear from anyone eager to swing. Husband available. Answer with photo and frank letter, and we'll get together. See photo of blue-eyed blonde.

OHIO PR 200-Attractive, broadminded couple, she age twenty-eight, tall, green-eyed brunette, interested in modern way of life, wishes to hear from other Polaroid clubs. Also couple's clubs and all kinds of wild parties.

WIS. PR 206-Modern young couple in Madison, both blue-eyed, she hour-glass figure, are interested in learning to swing with other couples. Both willing to try anything. Revealing photo a must. Let's get together.

Bob sighed heavily, putting the leaflet aside momentarily. Why did he go on torturing himself like this? The ads said couples, didn't they? And he had no partner, that was certain. Unless he bound and gagged Ardis. But the idea was tempting; it made his heart race. Dear God, to have a woman who liked to fuck again! A woman who moved and moaned and gasped with delight, instead of lying there like some damned stick.

He put the leaflet aside, took up the tabloid newspaper, and went immediately to the back where the personals ads were. It was an old issue and he knew just which ads he wanted to reread.

ATTRACTIVE BLONDE, thirty-two, green eyes, 5'7", 126 pounds, has had unhappy past. Wants to learn to love a man again. Will you help? Seeking a sincere man who wants more affection than he can stand. Object: marriage. Write Box 406.

PRETTY REDHEAD, twenty-seven, trim figure, home of her own. Husband dead. Seeks to share love unending. Will be faithful and attentive always. Send photograph and details. No phonies, please! Box 220.

The blonde seemed tailor-made, Bob thought, instantly, itchy again. It seemed so good to know that there were still women like that somewhere, women who wanted to be loved, to have a man touch them, enter them. Women who were crazy to love in return.

He put down the tabloid and took up still another swap club bulletin. Immediately his eyes fell on some very intriguing items indeed.

MO. D 213-Half a couple. Husband disinterested in sex, wife must find fun where she can. Interested in meeting men with cold wives. Photo a must. All inquiries answered.

ILL. D 128-Passionate but bored young housewife seeks interesting men and couples. Will try anything. Brunette beauty, thirty-one, 5'8", full of old Ned. Husband knows of this ad. Write soon, send picture. No fatties, please.

TENN. D 140-Half a couple. Hubby has pooped out, will give me free rein. Interested in singles, but will try couples. Am twenty-five, black-haired chesty. A tigress in bed. Soon, somebody? Can hardly wait!

These ads seemed ideal to Bob and he wished he had nerve enough to reply to them. Granted, there might be a catch; they might be out seeking to rook some dumb male. But then a person never found out until he tried, did he? Nevertheless, he was wary. He couldn't bring himself to fool with a woman in such a situation. The idea of a husband somewhere in the background instantly cooled his ardor. There was no telling what mean developments could come of a thing such as that. He'd look elsewhere.

He went back to those personals in the back part of the tabloid. There was one that particularly intrigued him. Even as he scanned the newspaper, he was reminded of the bitter showdown he and Ardis had had a few nights previous, when he'd had all he could do to keep from throttling the priggish bitch then and there.

It had all started because he'd wanted sex, of course. She'd taken it as an excuse to rehash all his other transgressions, the spiteful and foolish thing with the condom. "Sex, Bob?" she railed. "Again? After what you did to me the last time? You filthy pervert! Is that all you ever think about? Maybe if you attended prayer meetings with me more often, you'd get your mind on other things. More uplifting things." Her face was a mask of hatred.

"Don't start that again, Ardis!" he'd stormed. "I go to church with you on Sundays. I'll be darned if I'll go two, three nights a week, too. I tried, remember? I tried to please you. But when it was y'r turn to please me, what happened? You made all kinds of promises. Only you never kept y'r end of the bargain."

One-thing had led to another, and in due time they were back to the same old stalemate. What had happened to her? Why had she changed? Why couldn't she be the warm, loving woman he'd married?

And then she'd gone off on that same tangent, had tongue-lashed him for wanting a slut for a wife, a Jezebel and a hussy. She had sinned; she had surrendered to the temptations of the flesh; she must exorcise those devils from her nature once and for all. And if that was the kind of woman he really wanted, he'd best find himself some prostitute. Decent women weren't meant to act that way, to wallow, to lend themselves to their husbands' sick fantasies.

"Go find one if you can," she'd finished, that sardonic edge to her voice. "See if any of the pigs'll have you. An ignorant plowboy like you. A horny-handed redneck. You make me laugh sometimes. You and your talk about going to one of those swap clubs ... to another woman. What woman in her right mind would have you? You're my cross to bear ... mine alone!"

In the end he'd risen and left the room. Two minutes more and he was sure he'd have started swinging. And though he seldom surrendered to that luxury-once? twice?-it had happened. He didn't need it again. It sure's hell never helped.

Again Bob Birmingham's mind meandered still farther-to that time in his life when Ardis had been all the woman he'd ever wanted, all the woman any man could ever want. A strangling frustration filled him. He wanted to scream, to batter his fists against the wall. Why? Where had that good time gone?

In rational moments he reasoned that he'd done something to Ardis, something to go against her sensibilities. There, during those first weeks of marriage, when-despite their premarital experience-he'd been an insatiable boar and hadn't given her a moment's rest.

And yet Ardis had seemingly enjoyed his constant attentions; she'd never once refused him. She was always passionate and eager. At least until they returned to Garrett Park, and moved into the new home he'd bought just for her and the kids. There had been gradual changes. Within six months, he was virtually cut off. Every time he wanted sex, it had been a big deal; he'd been reduced.to begging her to submit. Baffled as he was at the swift change in her, he bargained with her, babied her, thought that eventually she'd change, become the woman he'd married-passionate and loving-again.

But it never happened. It was as if that wild version of Ardis was gone, would never return again. And he'd grown desperate. In time he came to believe that it was all part of a long-planned, carefully thought-out plot. Ardis had never really been passionate, he deduced; she'd merely been putting on a show for him in an attempt to trap him into marrying her, into taking care of her and her brood the rest of her days.

Could it have been that Ardis had seen a weakling in him? Had she actually thought that once he was chained in the bonds of matrimony that she could totally tame him, change him into some sort of a prayer-chanting eunuch? Had she believed she could turn him into an eye-rolling, arm-flailing holy roller like she was?

Those first years had been hell on earth, and little by little, imbued with a fanatic vision, Ardis had prevailed. His sex urges denied, he'd channeled his energies elsewhere. To forget the cringing, emasculated caricature of a man he'd become, he threw himself into his work. He could be a man in that respect. He could care for his family, build a mock facade of prosperity and indulgence around them; he'd have that much, anyway.

Only lately things were getting worse. The work, the growing pile of money in the bank, his many investments, weren't enough. A man's basic sexual nature can be suppressed only so long; eventually it must surface, run rampant. And that was what was happening lately. That thing at Kiwasi, his last act of defiance with Ardis, his growing interest in this swap club thing-all were symptomatic of impending disaster. If he didn't get hold of himself soon-

An ugly leer crossed his features. I sure's hell been doing that enough lately, he mused. He touched his penis through his trousers, felt it hot and hard, wondered if he should. Aldus was gone. It'd only take a minute, considering his present state. But somehow he fought the impulse. And again he thought of Ardis, of those really bad times.

There was that one night, when, partly drunk, he'd come home to demand sex from her. And not passive, stone-cold sex, either. She'd put some zip into it, or he'd kill her. But when Ardis had spitefully rejected him, all but laughed in his face, he'd gone berserk. Slapping her, flinging her against the wall, he'd systematically commenced to reduce the house-the furniture, the lamps, the pictures on the walls-to shambles. He'd cursed and howled; he'd brought the children screaming and crying from their bedroom.

And when Ardis had gathered them up, herded them back to their bedroom, had returned to plead and rail at him, he'd truly gone off his nut. Then and there, treating her like the cock-teasing garbage she was, he'd ripped her clothes off her where she stood. He'd struck her repeatedly, had eventually floored her.

Then and there, in the midst of all the wreckage, he'd dragged out his penis and wiped it all over her belly, on her arms and breasts. In a last fit of rage he'd even gone so far as to make threatening moves toward her face. His very guts had bubbled with the desire to inflict his weeping penis against her lips, force it into her mouth.

But something in her eyes, imperious and deadly, had frightened him off at the last minute; he'd fallen back in terror of what might happen to them both if he crossed that thin line of sanity. The hysteria still with him, he'd forced her legs open brutally, had jammed his tool deep into her rebellious belly like some posthole digger. He'd all but shoved himself through her. If ever there was rape, Ardis had been raped that night.

The days and weeks following had been horrible. Contrite, frightened, living in perpetual shame, he'd been put through hell on earth. Not only had there been the expense of replacing all the ruined furniture, repairing the walls where he'd slammed lamps, tables, and chairs against them, there were the nonstop tongue lashings he'd been subjected to whenever the children were out. He'd been forced to accompany her to prayer meetings every night of the week for months; he'd knelt beside her during bedtime prayers for endless hours besides.

But that hadn't been his worst breakdown. Hardly. Perhaps eight months later, his transgressions fading into the past, he'd run amok again. Once more their lovemaking sessions had gone into that forced, rationed, cold-as-stone status. Consent to penetrate her body was grudgingly, sparingly given. Twice a month. Then once a month. She was talking about every two months, eventually breaking off entirely, so they could live in pure, Christian marriage, as brother and sister, when he flipped.

There was no warning. They sat together after prayer meeting, the children long since put to bed. Something snapped. Tired of the ceaseless masturbating on the sly-at home, at the shop, sometimes even in gas station rest rooms-he wanted the real thing. It was a man's right, he'd reasoned. A husband deserved to have a wife who was responsive, who returned his love. Wasn't that in the Bible, too? Something about a woman honoring her husband, showing him love within the bonds of matrimony?

Poor Ardis never knew what hit her. One moment she was smugly seated in her chair, reading one of her tracts, the next she was writhing on the floor, her face a purplish red where he'd slapped her-entirely Out of the blue! Before she could suck enough air into her lungs to scream, he was upon her, stuffing one of her handkerchiefs into her gaping mouth.

Almost trance-like, as if he wasn't responsible for his actions, he found himself lifting Ardis off the floor, carrying her, kicking, into the bedroom. Again he methodically ripped her clothes off her body. Then he slapped her to submission again. Rummaging in her dresser drawer, he produced some of the shoddy, cotton hosiery she insisted on wearing-"harlot's rags," she called nylons-and commenced to tie her ankles and wrists to the corners of their four-poster bed.

When Ardis was firmly trussed in spread-eagle position, her legs and arms tight as a bow string, her vagina gaping in obscene vulnerability, her tits whanging up like miniature volcanoes, the nipples hard as rubber, he calmly began to undress. The sight of her helpless state further incensed him, as he was positive that tonight he'd see it through to the end, make all his middle-of-the-night eroticisms come true.

As before, he took great delight in pumping his semen up, dribbling it all over her body-her legs, belly, breasts, even her face and eyes-then massaging it into her flesh. He humiliated her body with his fingers, opening her gash still farther, fingering her hole, sticking another digit up her anus. He plucked and pulled her tits until she hissed, went red in the face with pain and outrage. So great had been her fury that she'd fainted, come to, fainted again several times.

She'd been especially infuriated when he'd crawled between her legs, had sucked and licked her there, a no-no he'd always wanted to perform. She groaned and thrashed fiercely when he began, but later, as he'd peeled back her cunt lips, had made her clitoris stand up like a ripe, red cherry pit, had affixed his lips to it, had lapped and tugged at it, she'd sunk into a docile swoon. For a moment there he thought she'd actually surrendered, that she was enjoying it. He could have sworn her torso had spasmed and humped in orgasm.

But when he began sucking her again, she fought desperately. By then it was time for the final mortification, anyway. Kneeling over Ardis' face, he'd waved his penis before her eyes, had seemingly threatened her with it. "See, damn you," he'd wheezed in pinched, sick tones, "what all your prayin', all your goody-goody ways have come to? You can deny a man jist so long and he goes to pieces. Now, you'll take y'r medicine. like a good girl. You'll do as I say."

As it had turned out, Ardis had won again.

For when he'd removed the gag, had attempted to feed his tool into her mouth, she'd snarled and nipped him so viciously that he'd been sure he'd lost an inch of his pecker. He'd slapped her again, but reading the cold fury in her eyes,, he'd known better than to try again. Instead, he'd contented himself by clamping her jaws shut with his hand, merely sliding his penis head along her lips, in the cleft, sometimes even risking the rippling play of them upon the surface of her teeth.

By then he'd been so incensed that he'd jammed the gag back into her mouth, had once more piled onto her belly, plowed his dong into her vengefully, fucked her like some bulldozer clearing brush. Once, twice, three times he'd emptied into her. At the end, drained by fury, by the exertions of love, he'd fallen upon her naked body and had slept upon her until shortly after dawn.

When he'd untied her, she'd spat in his face and had run to lock herself into the bathroom. Suddenly Bob awoke from his vile reveries to find himself trembling. Cold sweat beaded his forehead, the backs of his hands. His swollen penis was so hard and aching in his trousers he was sure it would rip the inseam any minute. And he knew that he must surrender to his base needs again. There was no other remedy for it.

A moment later he lurched up, headed for the smallish, tidy washroom at the back of the shed.

Then he was seated on the toilet lid, his pants down, his stiff cock in his hand. He thought of Ardis briefly, knew regret and maddening frustration at what he'd once had and lost. Then slowly, luxuriously, the head heavily slicked from his daydreams, he began working the skin back and forth. He applied pressure with his index finger; he fretted his penis like a virtuoso violinist. The ugly picture of Ardis tied to that bed again danced before his eyes and supercharged the dirtiness in his loins. Again his penis head was slithering over Ardis' teeth. He actually wished she were here now, so he could spit his load down her throat.

He looked down at his huge, heavily veined penis. It was stunningly hard and long and fat, the glans a magenta color, each stroke bringing forth more of his juices. He knew agony when he remembered the long-ago times when Ardis had actually held him, had pumped him, marveling at his flow, at the size. "It's so pretty, Bob," she'd exulted then. "Such a fat one! So long! Oh, quick, I can't wait to get it in.

He groaned, closed his eyes. It was an irony of ironies. He couldn't bear to remember those glorious days. The hot, spine-kinking pain backed up into his belly. Bob groaned, felt like his brain was frying, was bubbling behind his eyelids. He ached in every bone in his body; his arms felt feverish. Now his hand flowed faster, more rhythmically. That small death hovered. He sank into a mindless, helpless trance. He groaned muffledly, let fly. He felt the hot splashing on his thighs and on his knees.

He sighed heavily, slumped, savoring the total sensation. Then the letdown afterward. Finally he tore off some toilet paper and began to clean himself off.

Once more he was in his office, dressed and washed. Once more he was going through the tabloid personals columns. He had decided. He would write to this woman in northern Ohio, near Mansfield. It would be a fair stretch of driving, but if she was as good as she claimed in her ad, she'd be well worth it. His taste for blondes was still unsatisfied. Certainly that Mamie whore hadn't amounted to anything. He poured over the ad several more times, tried to visualize how she'd look. He'd ask for her picture, of course. Which one of himself would he send?

And when it was arranged, he'd tell Ardis there was a generator distributor he had to see in Toledo. Some generator dealer that'd be. And if it worked out, if they hit it off, he could go often. Every other week even. He could cook up some alibi; Ardis would never suspect. That is if she cared at all. He expected he could screw another woman in the next room, and it wouldn't faze her.

Now Bob's eyes narrowed; his brain spun faster. And still faster. He'd do it! Damned if he wouldn't!

CHAPTER FOUR

It was on a coolish, cloudy day in early June that Bob hopped into his '69 Ford pickup and headed toward Mansfield, Ohio. It had taken that long for him to finally iron out the details between himself and the pretty blonde named Gail Turner. And now, at long last-

If Ardis had suspected anything when he'd packed his best suit, some ties and dress-up shirts, the new pair of brogues, she hadn't let on. He'd be staying over the weekend, after all, and he'd need something fit to wear to church on Sunday morning, wouldn't he?

He would dicker for a new generator on Saturday. And if he and the dealer got together on something, he'd return in a couple more weeks to haul it back. A major purchase like a heavy-duty generator took time and careful judgment. Ardis was sour about his being gone over the weekend, but then, when wasn't she sour lately?

If he pushed the truck hard, he'd most likely get into Gaspar, forty miles north of Mansfield, by late afternoon. He was to check into a motel called the South Wind by six. Gail had given him a number to call so he could tell her which room he was in. "Make it imagine, won't you, honey?" she'd wheedled via long distance. "A pretty room, a nice bottle of Scotch or something, huh?"

They'd have Friday night, all day Saturday and Saturday night together. By then they should damned well know if they could hit it off or not.

And their next meeting? Bob smiled smugly to himself. That would take care of itself. For once Gail had a taste of the tool on him, once she'd had a bellyful of meat like this, there'd be no doubt that she'd want seconds. Eternal seconds.

Abruptly he turned off the thoughts. You sound like a damned hound, he scolded himself. Sure, lust featured importantly in his plans. But even more important was compatibility, a rapport beyond the sex part of things. A sweet girl, a gentle and compassionate girl, a girl he could talk to, pour his heart out to. A girl he could love, who would love him back.

And granted, there'd been times when he'd had his doubts whether or not Gail was that kind of woman at all. It had certainly taken him long enough to pin her down. She wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to go through with this or not. At first, when she'd received his picture, had found him so handsome and all, she was positive she wanted to. But lately she'd had second thoughts.

In the first place, she hadn't counted on things costing so much. She didn't exactly live in Toledo; she lived farther north, in Michigan. The trip, hiring a sitter for her children for the weekend, would cost more, than she could afford. And the picture Bob kept insisting upon. She didn't have a good recent one. Her last studio portrait had been taken when she was twenty-two. She was twenty-seven now. She just wanted to look her best for him. If he should take a look at the picture and turn against her, she'd be heartbroken.

Bob had been slightly suspicious, but Gail had sounded so innocent and up against it that he'd sent her $100 to help out. Even then she wouldn't commit herself. She was a poor widow. Her allowance was pitifully small. She didn't have a dress or shoes-as well as other unmentionables-that were fit to wear for an intimate weekend with her first lover. Another $100 money order had gone through the mail.

Even then Gail had tried to stall, but Bob had become impatient, had threatened to call the whole thing off. A very frightened, insecure Gail had finally consented to meet him at Gas-par. He would be kind and understanding, wouldn't he? If she turned out to be innocent about things, a dumb bunny about motel room assignations with a man she'd never seen before?

Bob's suspicions had melted like spring snow, and he'd been sorry he'd even suspected Gail. He was sure he'd be able to put her mind at ease; already he thought he felt those first tremors growing within him.

His mind fled ahead to their meeting and already he wished he was there. He felt worldly and sophisticated; he felt like he stood ten feet tall. As quickly there was a letdown. In the form of remembrance of his shrewish, cold-assed wife. Things were certainly no better between them. Seemingly she'd forgiven him his last outrage-the thing with the sperm-filled rubber, and they had returned to the same old impasse once more. There had even been a feeble breakthrough of sorts.

It went without saying that Bob had (since early in their marriage) hunted the sex novel and marriage manual racks in certain drug stores and smoke shops which carried them. When his marriage suddenly went to hell, he'd immediately blamed himself. It was something he'd done to affront his sweet wife's vaunted modesty and femininity. And since she wouldn't discuss it-he was forced to look somewhere else for help.

He'd read dozens of sex instruction books; he'd devoured hundreds of the erotic novels dealing with the sexual hang-ups that can threaten a marriage. It was, in fact, in one of these novels that he'd come upon wife swapping for the first time. For a while there he hadn't been able to read enough about the rapidly spreading phenomenon.

And yes, redneck though he was, Bob knew all the words, all the endless sexual practices used by inventive and/or jaded lovers. Fellatio, cunnilingus, soixante-neuf, sodomy, pederasty, annilinctus, ancillary practices, sadism, masochism, urolagnia, coprophagy, flagellation, fetishism, bondage, incest, frottage-all were grist for his mill. He was willing to use any or all of the sex variants in order to bring about his wife's sensual rebirth, should she but give him a chance.

There had apparently been a crack in the wall one night just two weeks back. Perhaps Ardis had read something about a wife's obligations to her husband in one of her tracts; perhaps Reverend Milton had said something to rock her smug complacency. For that night, when he'd cravenly begun his sex sniffings, she'd been almost receptive to his overtures.

"I'm sorry, Bob," she'd muttered in the darkness as he'd kissed her clumsily on her face and throat, the only adorations she ever allowed these days, "really I am. I haven't been a good wife to you. I want to be, but something inside just won't let me. I can't help it. Just be patient with me a little longer; I'll try, I swear I will."

She'd become still more agitated. She was verging on as much passion as he'd seen her exhibit in years. "I don't want you going off and drinking with those no-goods no more. I don't want you to get like you were that night ylou wrecked the house ... that night you ... tied me down." Her voice had actually snagged in honest grief and regret. "Please, Bob?"

"What, Ardis, honey?"

"Be kind to me. Teach me how to love you again. I do want to learn. But you'll have to be patient. A little at a time. You mustn't expect too much ... no overnight miracles." She'd trembled violently. "Tonight, Bob! Oh, please . ... "

Then and there, wonder of wonders, she'd gone limp in his arms, had actually allowed him to kiss her upon the lips, to work her nightgown up around her shoulders. She'd spasmed involuntarily as his lips had careened down her belly, but had made no move of rejection. And then, for the first time since that night he'd lashed her to the bed, she permitted that ultimate reverence. She'd even forced her legs open, steepled her knees of her own free will; she'd endured it stoically when his mouth had closed on her warm, moist vagina, when his mouth had invaded and commenced a fiery tonguing.

Finally she'd stopped him. "No more, Bob. Please. Do it to me now. Before I lose my nerve."

Gratefully, his heart threatening to burst his chest from hope, from gratitude, he'd come atop Ardis. In a last attempt to return her to the living once more, he'd made a move to bring her fingers to his penis, to have her guide it in, but she'd frozen up at this, couldn't do it.

Then he'd slowly eased his penis into her unusually wet slit, had commenced his slow plundering.

But in the end it had been the same as always. She'd lain there like a rock, had made no motions with her own hips, with her inner self. Not once did a sigh of passion, a gurgle of enjoyment pass her lips.

After his too quick ejaculation, he was once more defeated; he should have known it would never be any different. "Oh, Ardis," he'd groaned, his bitterness greater than words. "Oh, no! God, what's wrong with us? Ardis..."

"Don't blaspheme," she hissed. "I tried, I tell you! What more can I do!"

"You didn't try," he'd snarled. "You went back to y'r Old ways. You froze up again, you..." But it was hopeless.

Again the customary fight had commenced, both of them driven by different devils. As usual, it had ended up with her telling him to go find some slut somewhere. And, as usual, she'd ended up with her eternal taunt:

"Find a trollop if you can, Bob! I dare you. There's no other woman on God's green earth'll have you. Not a clumsy hillbilly like you. You make me laugh, Bob. That's a fact. You really do. Go! Go! Find your rubber-legged slut if you can!"

Abruptly Bob .woke from his humiliating reverie, blinked his eyes against the film of outraged tears. Ardis, he groaned inwardly, If you just knew! If you just knew!

Now he pushed the pickup harder. Gaspar was still 300 miles away.

He had been in the motel over an hour now. There had been time enough to call Gail Turner. There had been time for a hasty shower, time to change into his dude clothes. Everything in the super-plush room was in order, from the bottle of J&B, the ice and glasses, to the small bouquet of long-stemmed roses he'd bought. Now, his heart thudding madly for fear she wouldn't come (for fear that she would!), he heard the timid knocking on his door.

He swayed where he stood and sucked in a ragged breath. Now he fought back panic as he went to open the door.

The girl who stood there-blonde, and no mistake-wasn't as pretty as her photograph had made her out to be. She was a trifle plumper, more mussed than he'd expected. But she was still pretty enough in a faded way, and immediately Bob rationalized, made excuses for her. She was tired from her trip; she was every bit as nervous about this as he was.

"Bob? Oh, my, you're so much taller and stronger than I thought you'd be."

They didn't kiss, as Bob had fantasized a thousand times beforehand. They didn't even touch. Instead they stood apart, awkwardly assessing one another. Suddenly transformed into the village idiot, Bob could only gulp, take up the box of flowers, push them into her arms.

"Oh, Bob," she murmured, "You shouldn't have. Oh, they're beautiful." But even as she cooed over the flowers it seemed to Bob that her eyes covertly fled about the room to see if there wasn't something more expensive by way of welcoming gift. Her eyes fell on the Scotch, and her smile broadened. "Oh, Bob, you did remember, after all..."

Normally Bob didn't care for whiskey; it did things to him. But Gail was seemingly used to it. She wouldn't dream of spoiling good Scotch by diluting it with anything more than ice cubes. Still they sat apart, in separate chairs.

The interlude gave him time to inspect Gail further, and he was hard put to squelch the suspicion that she was older than twenty-seven. He wondered if she'd used the money for a new portrait, or had the one she'd sent had been taken years ago. And her dress, it certainly didn't look new.

The Scotch did its work expertly, and within another half hour the tension lifted, and they were joking and laughing with each other. Her face was pretty when she laughed, and her hair-though somewhat brittle and stiff-caught glints of light that Bob found exceedingly lovely. His doubts faded, and he was positive that they were going to get along just fine.

"Don't, honey," she protested, when he came to her, attempting to pull her up from the chair to kiss her. "Please? Not so soon? A girl needs some time ... to get used to a man. Don't hurry me, Bob? In due time. I'll be good to you. I promise."

He backed off slightly. He should have known better. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Here, let's have another li'l drink. Here's looking at you, darlin'. To the wonderful time we're gonna have."

She made him go down to her car 'to bring her bags. Again he was stopped dead. It was a new Chrysler, hardly the kind of heap a penniless widow would own. When he got to the room and asked her, she gigglingly said she'd borrowed it from her father. "Now, honey," she slurred, her hands seductively sliding on his chest, her blue eyes flirty and trusting, as big as cornflowers, "why don't you just take a little walk around the block while I change into something pretty? So you can take me someplace special for dinner. That's a good boy." Suddenly, confusedly, Bob left the room.

CHAPTER FIVE

By the time Bob had put down two (or was it three?) martini cocktails that Gail insisted on having before dinner-at El Segovia, the city's most sumptuous restaurant, no less-he was no longer in any condition to suspect Gail's cute tricks. Landing atop of the Scotch as they did, the cocktails cut in with a vengeance; he was quickly flying.

He kept looking at Gail's lovely face, at the sexy, black gown which brazenly revealed her firm breasts. He took in her fairly trim waist, her cute pooch of belly, the flaring line of her calves in the old-style pumps she wore-the heels thin, the toes wickedly pointed-and he was filled with lust.

And God, but didn't he want her? Didn't he want to sink his raging bone into her sweet gash? Wouldn't he give almost anything to get into her? After all the waiting? The going without?

When the cigarette girl came through, Gail casually beckoned her over and took a pack of smokes. Then she spied the souvenir cigarette lighters, gold-plated things that went for fifteen dollars. "Please, darling?" she wheedled. "Buy Gail one? A momenta Souvenir of our first night together?"

Without a moment's hesitation, feeling very generous, Bob peeled off the required bills. Gail oohed and aahed over the trinket, and for the first time put her arms around him and kissed his face. "You angel, Bob. You're so good to poor little Gail."

They had the best steaks in the house. He balked a little when she ordered a special bottle of champagne, but when she gigglingly whispered into his ear, "Better buy it, baby ... champagne always makes me passionate..." he quickly gave in.

Then, dinner over, she still dallied. It was almost ten, and he was anxious to get back to their room to take care of the murderous ache in his trousers. But Gail wouldn't hear of it As he paid the bill at a little gift boutique, she spied a compact to match the cigarette lighter. Suddenly she had to have that matching accessory also. He bought it. Anything to get her back to the motel.

But that wasn't the end of it. Dragging him into the adjoining bar room, she excitedly said, "Oh, Bob, a dance combo. I just love to dance." The minute they were parked at the bar, she ordered a brandy Alexander. "You try one, too, baby. You're such a Iamb. The fun we're gonna have."

Though Bob told her he was a terrible dancer, Gail dragged him onto the floor just the same. Patiently she pushed him through several slow numbers. Naturally, getting her into his arms at long last, he was further aroused, and couldn't help but snuggle close, grind his engorged tool into her belly. "Ooooooh," she squealed, "Bob, you naughty boy. You do have it bad for Gail, don't you?"

"You damned well know it, darlin', " he rasped, almost afraid he'd go off then and there.

But still Gail dallied; she wheedled drink after drink from him. If he hadn't known better, he'd have sworn she was deliberately trying to get him drunk so she might sabotage his lust drives once they got back to that damned motel room.

It was 11:45 before Gail finally relented, and they left the imagine cafe. She became kittenish and coy once they were behind closed doors. Wouldn't he put the lights out? All of a sudden she was shy and unsure of herself and wondered whether they should see the thing through. Would he still respect her if she surrendered herself the first night out?

Somehow he managed to convince her. If Gail had thought she'd done Bob in, she was in grave error, and now, as he sat over her on the bed, made a great, prolonged show of peeling her pretty gown, her lacy slip off, she made an act of forestalling him. "You will be kind and gentle to me, won't you, Bob? You won't hurt me. You are such a big man." Her eyes drifted down to the monolithic outline of his tool in his trousers. "So much bigger than I expected."

Instead of inhibiting Bob, her pathetic mewl served as a maddening goad to him, and taking in her body, he was wild to taste her ripe, sensuous flesh-in more ways than one.

"Oooh, Bob," she purred as his hands whispered over her silk-glossed body, as his fingers tickled her swollen tits, her belly, the moist vale of slithery flesh between her legs, "that feels good. I like it when a man plays with me, loves me up before..." Abruptly she caught herself.

Then, as his lips slid across the nylon of her bra, of her panties even: "You're one of those, huh, lover?" Gail blundered further. "Brave ... Gail's brave man," she hissed, purposely flung her legs wide to welcome his exploring lips; her fingers fluttered in his hair, actually guided him to her crotch. And as the sex-obsessed man licked her through the panties, as he gnawed her vagina through the slickly coated second skin, she lost more and more control.

"You like my undies?" she gurgled, slapping her thighs on his head again and again. "The sexies I bought with the money you sent me?"

The lingerie didn't seem exceptionally new or provocative to Bob, but he said nothing. There were more important things at hand just then. "Gorgeous, baby," he groaned, clumsily, eagerly undoing her brassiere, sucking, pulling lips to her fat, puffy tits. He rolled the flimsy panties down her hips at the same time. They caught about her knees, and he couldn't resist digging his fingers into her. Gail squealed.

She went ape when he'd finally divested her of every single stitch, when he'd dragged off his own clothes as well. And briefly, as he re-attacked her with a wild tongue, with sucking lips, he lapsed into a maudlin torpor. Gail was beautiful, she was warm and kind and giving. She was the girl he'd been waiting for all these unhappy years. If he could have her, forever and ever-

His tongue went to her like some anteater's; it literally swabbed the inner walls of her cunt. A woman with fire in her, a woman who really liked to be fucked and loved! Who wanted to love in return! Now the panties came off; the carter belt and hosiery quickly followed. Once more he was crouched between her legs, supping at her vagina.

In his delirium, he was sure that Gail was just as eager to reciprocate his self-sacrificing love. And thinking to accommodate her, he turned partially on the bed, so that all she had to do was reach out for him, wrap greedy fingers around his penis, drag it to her famished lips. Already he could feel the liquid-hot slide of that exotic flesh; he could feel the caress of her palate, the slippery graininess of her tongue.

When, in reality, he felt absolutely nothing. "Gail?" he asked confusedly. "Don't you wanta, too? Ain't you of a mind to love me a little that way, too? I'd love to have you..."

Her voice was blurred, liquid. "I couldn't, darling," she protested. "Not just yet. Give me time. A girl isn't like a man. She just can't up and do it so easy. Please, honey, give me a little longer? Tomorrow? We've got all day tomorrow..." And in a further effort to decoy him from the odious concession: "The other now, Bob. No more! Don't lick me down there anymore. Just you. Your thing." A wracking spasm shook her. "Your penis, darling! Your big penis!"

It was smokescreen enough. After not hearing such incendiary talk for years-that Mamie whore didn't count-it was altogether too much. Suddenly his penis throbbed and spilled rich gouts of his semen on the sheet and in her feebly clenching palm. Wild horses couldn't have kept him from her hot, runny vagina.

If he didn't bury his damned penis that very minute-

With a groan he was over her, driving his vagina-slicked lips into hers, at the same time scrambling and positioning himself between her legs. He sensed, rather than felt, her vague recoil as he ground her vagina dew into her own.lips. But still, as Gail regained control, forced her lips to answer his slithery kiss, he was reassured. After all, her first time-with a strange man-Then there was another groan-a shrill, chuckling, self-satisfied one-as he expertly placed the bulging dome of his penis into her crevice and slowly began funneling it deep into her hole. "Oh, God, God, baby," she choked as he went deep, deeper, deepest, "it's so big, so fat and hard. I just can't believe it. I never dreamed men grew this big." Her breath caught in her throat dramatically, and she withheld him momentarily. "Are you sure, Bob, it'll go into me? It won't hurt me, do me no permanent damage, will it?"

Her words thrilled Bob to the core of his being. He felt like he was a stallion, a bull. This glorious hunk of female! A question like that! "I won't hurt you, darlin' ," he chuckled. "Not on your life. I'll be careful, real careful. Never met a girl yet who couldn't handle all this."

"Are you sure, Bob?" she continued the parodied lust. "It's just that I've never seen a man who was so ... so . . , "

"Who was hung like me?" he prompted.

"Yes, baby," she forced, " ... hung like you."

"Well, jist wait'll you get it all, Gail." And then, with a phlegmy, gurgling wheeze, he slowly threaded his tool into her tight, oozy vagina. Gail's awe-filled cries thrilled him further.

And did something else to him. He was no sooner buried to the balls in her wringing vagina that he felt an urgency in his scrotum. Oh, God, no, he wailed inwardly. Not so damned fast! After all this waiting, all this workup! It can't be! Give me time, a little time. Time to enjoy every bit Of this, to milk it of all the hot sensation in the damned world!

If anything, Gail chose to make it still worse for him. "Gorgeous," she gulped in thick cries, as if she were literally chewing the words out, "it's simply gorgeous. Ooh! The way it fills me up, stretches me! God, Bob, it feels a mile long, a yard wide."

"Am I hurting you, baby? I don't mean to..."

"Hurt me, hurt me, Bob. That big prick! That prick and a half! In, damn you, in! That kind of hurt I'll never get enough of."

He was startled, slightly turned off at Gail's pleas. He'd never dreamed that she or any woman could let herself go like that, such vile, self-revealing things. At the same time he was thrilled beyond endurance. He felt like he was going to pin her right to the mattress and come right out of her back.

"Hurry, darling!" she encouraged. "Already! I'm coming, you sweet fuck! God, Bob! Go, oh, go! Ram that sweet thing right through me. I'm here, I'm here ... Quick, sugarcock, quick. You, too. Spit it in there. Sock it to me!" She nearly choked on her cries. "God, dear God!"

And yet, even as Bob shot, as he literally splashed into her grinding, masticating vagina, there was something that didn't quite ring true about her cries, about her wildcat-writhing body. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it was there just the same. He couldn't help but feel he'd been taken, cheated somehow. Suddenly the whole thing seemed as phony as a three-dollar bill.

His suspicions were further reinforced, when, a few minutes later, regaining his breath, he tried to bring his penis back to life in her slit. "No, Bob," she protested, freezing beneath him; pushing him back with sharp nails. "Enough for tonight. I acted bad enough as it was. If you're going to have any respect for me ... Oh, what happened to me? How could I have said those awful things?" .

He tried to pump a few more times, but she became harsh. "They weren't awful," he mumbled. "They were wonderful. All woman. If you just knew how long I been waiting f r the gal to let herself go like that ... Please, Gail. Just once more. I won't be such a damned jackrabbit this time."

She giggled, twisted away and fled for the adjoining bath. "No," she called, "there's time. Tomorrow. Rest for now. Besides ... I've gotta wash. You wouldn't want me catching no babies, would you?"

Lying in a frozen trance, listening to her splashings behind the closed door, Bob tried to pinpoint the source of his disappointment at that moment. Just what had gone wrong? Why did he feel so sick, so unclean just then?

At that moment the realization hit him squarely between the eyes. He knew what their love-no matter how vocal and frantic it had been-reminded him of. He couldn't help but think of Ardis at that moment. The sounds had been different, but the mechanics had somehow been the same. There'd been no real love, no speck of humanity in their coupling.

He turned his face to the wall and didn't speak when Gail finally came out of the John and eased herself into bed. He pretended he was already asleep.

He was further chagrined, upon waking the next morning, to find that Gail was already up and dressed, already gone. Immediately he thought the worst, and groped in his trousers for his wallet, But his billfold was still there, every bit of his money untouched.

Then he saw the note on the dresser. "Out shopping," it read. "Meet me at the coffee shop at eleven if you're awake by then; Love, Gail."

He fought back a burning rage and snorted in disgust. He hadn't expected anything like this. He'd thought that there would have been a frisky romp this morning before getting up. He'd even thought they might shower together, the way the hero and heroine were always doing in those sex books he'd read.

Sullenly he rose and hopped into the shower. Strange, he mused as he washed. The soap didn't seem to help. He felt like he wanted to scrub himself inside as well.

But if Bob expected to coax a quickie from Gail when they got back to the motel room around 12:30, big brunch behind them, he was again disappointed. She had made a hair appointment down at the hotel beauty salon; there wasn't time. Could he meet her at 2:30? They'd go shopping together; there were a few things she had to pick up. And after that, cocktails, a nice dinner somewhere intimate and cozy. And after that? The diabolic glint in her eyes made Bob's penis stiffen in seconds.

Needless to say, Bob slipped her ten dollars for the beauty shop. He wandered aimlessly while waiting. like a damned fool, he. spotted some pretty shoes he thought would look good on Gail, thought to bring her back to buy them later.

Needless to say, Gail loved the shoes, and managed to wheedle a matching purse, a new dress to go with them before she let him out of the exclusive women's shop. It was only 4:30 p.m., and she was already into him for another sixty-five dollars. But nevertheless, he shrugged it off. All part of it. Once we get things settled between us, she won't be that expensive.

Again she took forever over cocktails, over dinner. Again there was the champagne and clumsy dancing. It was 10:30 p.m. by the time the weary, frustrated couple finally were in their motel room. And still Gail procrastinated and insisted that he fix her another drink.

It was a half hour later, Gail in a frilly nightie, Bob in just his tee-shirt, his penis up like a ball bat, when the other shoe fell. And when she recoiled as he moved closer, touched her-

"What the hell, darling," he complained. "Don't make me wait no more. I been dying to get at you all day long."

"Please, Bob. Try to understand, darling. Would you hate me awfully, darling? If I told you I can't tonight? I want to something awful. But I just can't. I really didn't expect my troubles this early, Bob. They surprised me. It's that certain time of the month, angel."

She felt him stiffen and immediately sought to placate him. "Now, Bob, honey. Don't be that way. There'll be other times. We'll get together again. And then..."

Bile gathered in his throat and threatened to choke him. Then and there, Bob knew that he'd been taken, that Gail had been stringing him along ever since they'd met; she'd put out last night only when all else had failed. She'd kept him hanging to bleed him of more gifts. He'd bet his right arm she'd put the bite on him for more money before they split tomorrow.

He didn't'say anything. He didn't have to. The rage in his eyes and his maniacal expression was more than enough. And when he wordlessly flung Gail onto the bed, methodically shredded the flimsy gown from neck to hem, when he began scrambling over her, she knew that the jig was up. The country hick had finally tumbled; he was beyond soft words and cajolery now. She'd played her sucker too long.

She tried to scream, to claw him when he humped himself up to her face, drove his drooling tool into her face. But he cuffed her once, twice and she whimperingly submitted. He dug his thumb and fingers into her throat, cut off the air, and she docilely opened her mouth.

He fucked her-raped her-in the mouth. He violated those pretty lips, that aristocratic throat. He mussed her high-fashion hairdo. He dug his fingers into her flesh, holding her while he fucked her in the face. Very quickly his penis recoiled, unloaded. She tried to turn her face, spit it out, but he held her to her job, forced her to swallow every last drop.

"All of it, you gold-digging little cock-sucker!" he growled. "Every fucking last drop."

Afterward, he still knelt above her, making her suck and lick his balls, his anus even.

A minute later he was on her belly, his penis commencing to iron the furrows out of her sluttish vagina. She screamed and bucked and fought, but to no avail. Once again it was like that time with Ardis. Once again he was avenging himself upon her for the ruin she'd made of his life.

He came once. But he didn't stop. Instead he dug his fingers deeper into her buttocks, holding her in place while he humped himself hard again. This screw seemingly took all night; Gail was limp and helpless by the time he finished.

Bob made her suck him clean a last time. Five minutes later he was dressed, standing over the sobbing opportunist.

"You filthy whore!" he spat, verging on tears. "Are you all alike? Promising everything but giving nothing? God, ain't there a decent, honest woman in the whole fucking world?"

Another minute later the door slammed behind him, and, suitcase in hand, he streaked toward his truck.

He drove nonstop through the night and was in Garrett Park by 8:30 the next morning. Deliberately he waited until he was sure Ardis was at church before he dared go home.

CHAPTER SIX

If Bob Birmingham was anything at all, he wasn't a quitter. Otherwise, how could his marriage to Ardis have lasted as long as it had? And sure, the remembrance of how Gail Turner had gulled him still rankled, served to make him hold back. But in good time (it was two days into August now), he'd licked his wounds clean. Ardis' unremitting priggishness was still the same; he had to do something or go insane.

Thus, once more, he found himself on the highway, heading north. Once more he was in search of a new generator and would be gone for the weekend. He hadn't found what he'd wanted in Toledo last time. And now-Indianapolis. He could hardly wait.

The girl's name was Samantha Earle. She was in her early thirties, a tallish, long-haired brunette. At least so the photographs she'd sent of herself had attested. Once more it had been one of those ads in the back of the swapping tabloid to which he'd applied.

He was wary of Samantha. He'd tested her in every conceivable way. This time there were no catches that he could determine. Not once was there any mention of money for traveling expenses, for photographs, or clothes as there had been with Gail. There had been others he'd written to also. And yes, the other two correspondents-Bob was getting cagey, all right-had started that "poor-me" angle. He'd dropped them instantly.

There'd be no motel assignations with Samantha, no imagine meals or shopping trips to spring for. Samantha was a widow; she had her own place, a house situated on a rural route, twelve miles outside of Wrightstown, a small town located twenty miles south and west of Naptown proper. Samantha was a country girl, innocent and unaffected, and Bob was sure she was the woman he'd been looking for all along. Those meals she'd described, the pastoral pleasures-Samantha was the answer to his prayers, all right!

Thus Bob whistled with expectation this Friday morning as he tooled his pickup north. If he kept up this pace, and didn't get lost in that confusing welter of back country roads Samantha had drawn for him, he'd most likely be knocking at her door by mid-afternoon. Freshly-made biscuits, country ham, ice cold buttermilk she'd promised him, no matter what time he arrived. Yes, he sighed happily, this was the girl of his dreams. Even if she was only half as pretty as her photo made her out to be-

Now it was I:30 and, having made even better time than expected, Bob was slowly cruising Country Trunk SSS, looking for the Hick-ham Road turnoff. Now, minutes away from confrontation with Samantha, his heart hammered painfully in his chest; his hands suddenly felt clammy on the wheel. Dear God, please make this one right for me. I can't go on much longer like this: Nothing's any good between me and Ardis these days.

Now his heart jammed up high in his throat. Hickham Road, the sign said. He swerved right, went two miles due west. Now he read the faded legend on the ramshackle letter box: Harvey Earle. He turned in and drove perhaps a half mile on a dusty road. Already, surveying the lush, rolling farmland, he was making plans in his mind, cataloging the repairs he'd make to the fence, to the tilted mailbox standard. He scoffed at Samantha's clumsy attempts at cross-tilling, let his mind race ahead to the time when he'd be riding that plow instead of her, or whichever fool she'd hired to contour her land. It would be good to be a farmer, to work in the soil once more.

Then the house, white frame, solid as a ship, a shaded veranda sweeping its eastern side, came into view. Bob saw where the lawn needed mowing and trimming, where the outbuildings needed a fresh coat of paint. But as quickly the thoughts of repairs were routed. For at that moment, Samantha, looking even more beautiful, more radiant than her picture had foretold, stepped out on the porch and waved shyly at him. She wore a ruffled dress; her hair was pulled charmingly back on her head, tied with a girlish bow. There were white sandals on her feet. Even more important was the unmistakable thrust of her sharp-tipped breasts in the gown's bodice-a bonus that the photographs hadn't promised.

His heart ached. He suddenly found it hard to breathe. Pretty, his mind refrained, so pretty. If she wasn't something-really something!

Then he was out of the car, his Stetson in his hand; he was slowly advancing toward her.

He wanted to die when Samantha bypassed all awkward formalities, immediately rushed into his arms, kissed him hotly and prolongedly. Her eyes glittered with warmth and affection as she broke the kiss, held him at arm's length and appraised him from head to toe.

"Oh, Bob, you are big! You weren't kidding when you described yourself, were you?"

And though Bob couldn't be sure, he would have sworn her eyes were riveted to his crotch with bawdy delight, that she was taking in the seam-straining hard-on that had grown there.

"C'mon in, Bob!" she hooted in a earthy, folksy way. "I'm so darned glad you made it early. I've got everything ready to go. Just give me fifteen minutes with the biscuits and..." She stopped, put her arm around his waist, and stared up at him admiringly. "You must be starved."

Bob's heart felt big as a melon as, arm in arm, they proceeded up the stairs, their hips bumping in salacious contact every step of the way.

Now, at long last, the delicious meal was finished, and Bob was stuffed. But still they sat at the table, chattering like long-lost friends. She was all woman, natural and easy, and when she wasn't touching his face, stroking his back in passing, twining her fingers in his, she was pressing her cheek against his, giving him loving pecks on the lips. "I can't believe it," she repeated again and again. "Y'r all you claimed y'rself to be."

The meal, the quick confidence and caresses, the fact that she asked absolutely nothing of him at all, further lulled Bob. There was no catch here, no tricks up the sleeve. Samantha was a simple girl, without a man, starved for love. They'd be in bed before another half hour.

It was cool and refreshing in the house, despite the bright sun of the day. Idly his gaze went about the kitchen,-peered into the other rooms, and he liked what he saw. Substantial furnishings, no great clutter. And everything in apple pie order. Here and there were small breakdowns and patch-work jobs, all denoting the need of a man's hand.

"Tell me about Ardis," she said now, pulling her chair closer to his. "About Garrett Falls. I'm so glad you told me the truth in your letters, Bob. I feel I know you so well already ... even before we..."She faltered, blushed. "Ain't I the brazen cat though?" She giggled so charmingly it made Bob ache to reach out and pull her into his arms. "I'm sorry, honey. Can't help myself. like I said in my letters. ... It's been so long since I ... with any man at all."

"Y'r fine, Samantha, jist fine," he soothed her. "A man knows where he stands with a woman like you."

"Call me Sam. Everyone else does."

"I'd rather ... if you don't mind ... call you Samantha. It's such a pretty name."

"Samantha suits me fine. Now, about Ardis. Are things still as bad between you? I don't know what on earth ails that woman. With a handsome man like yon." She caught herself. "I mean, if you want to tell me. I hope you won't think I'm prying."

"No," he assured her, "not at all. I think ... if we're ever to become serious ... you should know what y'r up against." Then he unburdened himself .completely to Samantha, gloried in the good feelings, the comfort she inspired. like some weepy drunk, he ran ahead of himself, talked about the possibilities of marrying her once they'd decided this was for real.

"Money won't be no problem. I've got a hefty chunk ... forty thousand or more ... in the bank. Some Ardis don't even know about. We'll do fine ... jist fine..."

It was here that Samantha shushed him. "I didn't mean f r you to talk about money, Bob. That don't concern me. I'm fair-well fixed myself. We'd never have to worry on that score." Then, abruptly, she was up, sliding onto his lap, wrapping warm arms around his neck. "Forgive me, Bob," she purred, kissing him passionately, her tongue dipping into his mouth. "I can't help it. It has been a long time. And if we're ever gonna get at it ... "

Bob took her in his arms and rose from the chair. He felt dizzy, like a giant among men as he carried her out of the kitchen. "Where, darling?" he husked. "Tell me where."

She tore her lips from his mouth and gasped, "Down the hall. First door." Then her mouth clamped to his. She sighed as his fingers found her Vagina through her skirt and commenced to caress and pinch it.

"You can open y'r eyes now, Bob," she murmured after they had made it to the bedroom where Bob was now seated on the bed's edge.

He turned and opened his eyes. Samantha, stark naked, the sun making her tanned limbs glisten like silvered honey, stood in a sexy pose before him, one hand on her hip, the other lazily stroking her gorgeously voluptuous breasts. His mouth dropped; his eyes bulged; he couldn't look everywhere fast enough. The long, svelte waist, the trim, athletic legs, the dark brown pubic mound. Then her dark brown nipples, polished brown caps, that looked like blunted cones. He's always wanted to try a girl with tits like that. Just like blondes-it was another long-denied fantasy of his.

"God, Samantha," he husked. "You are beautiful. Much too beautiful f r the-likes of me."

"Not too beautiful at all," she sighed, coming close, drawing his fingers to her breasts herself. "Just right. Just right for a wonderful man animal like you." She hissed, pushing her hot belly against his chest. "Oh, yes, Bob! Touch me, kiss me, lay with me like that. If you just knew how long if s been..."

Moment by moment, she turned into a writhing and panting wildcat. He took her nipples into his mouth, tasted their firmness, sampled their shape. His fingers slid up and down her back and buttocks, grazed the rich hair of her snatch. She whimpered, then meekly surrendered the whole of her femininity to him. He wanted to bury his face in her tawny, undulating belly and break into thankful sobs. But he did not. Instead, he sucked the caps all the harder, drove her into even greater paroxysms of lust. His lips tugged at her nipples; his hands clenched and probed her vagina feverishly.

Then, abruptly, Samantha pulled away and stared down at him with hazy eyes. "You now, darling," she gasped. "I want to see you ... have you naked."

Before he could make any move to forestall her, she was upon him. With whoops, she attacked his shirt buttons and undid his zipper. She fell at his feet, untied his shoes and drew off his socks. While he pulled off his shirt and tee-shirt, revealing his hard, earth-brown musculature, she tugged down his trousers, her other hand manipulating his stone-hard penis throughout, making it burn. Now the shorts were coming down.

There was no shame, no embarrassment in Samantha's face as she knelt before him, regarded his monstrous penis with amazed yearning eyes. Her voice caught piteously. "Oh, Bob, darling. Please, I have to. I must have..."

Without a moment's hesitation she wrapped her fingers around the swollen head and drew back his foreskin. The motion made Bob start, made his penis throb, and a great, glittering pearl of come formed on the tip of his penis-head. He groaned. She calmly reached up, spreading the sticky goo all over his glans with a playful finger. Another drop miraculously appeared and she also massaged it into the purplish-colored crown.

Bob wanted to scream, to stop her as her lips opened hungrily, as a pink, serpentine tongue emerged, calmly began to float over the slippery penishead. But he only groaned, permitting the enraptured female to have her way with him. The realization of another lifelong fantasy! What man in his right mind could have turned the penis-sucking little wanton off just then? And now, as the hot silken sheath affixed completely to his throbbing penis, as it began pumping up and down-exerting pressure like a murderous collar-from base to tip, he gasped like a gored bull and lent himself freely to the attack. He had never felt anything so exquisite, so thrilling in all his life.

Both of them sprawled on the bed and the fuck-crazed woman slowly turned and took a very sexy position. A smooth arc of one leg, and her drooling, tempting vagina was poised above his gaping eyes. Now, inch by slow inch, it began to descend, the slippery, livid lips splitting, stretching of their own will as her legs spread to their apex.

Then her vagina was there, a luxurious, wet feast, the materialization of yet another dream. A woman who loved to suck cock! A woman who loved to have her vagina sucked in the bargain ! It was too much, altogether too much at one time, and Bob fell into a frenzy, snorted and gurgled as he chewed and sucked her. Samantha yelped, almost bit him off when he jammed her still closer, swiveled his tongue in her very ass-hole, managed to get an inch up her.

He was slurping and gnawing and groaning insane gibberish when Samantha abruptly pulled him away. "Enough, darling," she gasped. "God, a gal can stand just so much of that. You are a lover, aren't you? A regular madman." She playfully worked her mouth. "My jaws ... they ache something awful. Oh, so big, so fucking big. I'm glad I waited. I'd wait for cock like that all my life."

She fell back in a lovely, tempting heap, her brown-furred vagina seemingly winking and smiling at him, a film of her vagina juices forming over her opening, popping like a bubble. "Oh, I want that beauty in me! So bad. Oh, love me, Bob. It's been so long since a man's touched me. Anything, lover ... just say the word."

For long, happy moments Bob hovered over

Samantha and tormented her unique tits. If he'd thought they would soften, he was mistaken. Now, as he'd learned in those sex manuals, he palmed both breasts from each side, compressed them until the nipples touched. Then his lips closed on both of them simultaneously; his tongue lashed and figure-eighted around them. The sensation was new to Samantha and she hissed and flopped on the bed, crying out brokenly: "Oh, God, baby, that's good! So damned good. I've never had a man suck me like that."

Then, when he slid one hand down her belly, inserted a finger into her snatch, lubricated her clitoris, and commenced to strum it in earnest, the woman flopped and gurgled as if she was suffering an epileptic fit. "Good, Bob, good!" she wheezed. "I love it, I love it. Suck harder, rub your finger harder ... go around and around..." Her own hand dropped. "Here, I'll show you..."

A few seconds later, her hips churning and pumping fantastically, her moans growing, she shrilly announced her first orgasm. "You devil," she babbled, "you sweet, filthy devil. And your .wife doesn't dig your style? She's gotta be crazy or something. Oooh, you fuck, you!"

Bob seemingly couldn't get enough of Samantha, especially when he made her come repeatedly with his swirling finger. He was starting her up the magic mountain still another time, when she called a halt.

"Stop, oh, stop!" she mewled. "That's too much, altogether too much. Something else now."

Again, following the examples in the sex books, he roved her body with his famished, vibrating tongue; he laved her sweet flesh from head to toe.

Samantha became more possessed, became the epitome of all the wantons the world had ever known then. She couldn't squirm, squeal, praise, or accommodate Bob enough. She climbed atop him, mischievously sitting on his stone-hard penis. With her own fingers she opened her vagina lips, guided the fat tool into her womb. She aahed as it went deeper and deeper into her. And when it was finally buried, she slowly began to ride up and down upon Bob, bringing secret muscles into play.

But no sooner was he adjusted, beginning to enjoy it, than she pulled away, demanding still another variation. He must fuck her from the rear, while she knelt on all fours on the mattress. Now he must lick the backs of her legs, slurp in her vagina. He must make a great show of licking her ass-hole, of fighting to squirm his tongue into it. At the end, Samantha actually held her buttocks wide, exposed the hairy, puckered star completely. The forced enlargement allowed him to get his tongue in.

Deeper and deeper, while Samantha vowed she'd never felt anything so thrilling in all her life. Then she tired of that and got out of the bed, stood beside it, her palms on the mattress. A last imploring look at Bob, and she slowly sank her head and let him have his own way. Holding her tits in his hands, he fucked her madly.

"Please be careful, Bob," she whimpered. "Don't miss. You're so big. You'd kill me if you did."

He stood behind her, exulted in the gutty filthiness that filled him as he rammed her from behind with all his might. Shortly he tired of that. Turning her on her back, he slowly gravely sank his penis into her. She pulled him back onto the bed and locked her knees over his shoulders, as his forward charge lifted her rear right off the bed, balancing her on the nape of her neck and shoulders. Again his penis drove home.

"In," she gloated, "are you in! I've never had such a big one, felt such a huge, fat, slippery penis. Do it! Don't be afraid. Shove that cock home." She recoiled. "It feels like you're denting my heart! I'll never get enough of you, Bob! Never, never!"

Even then she wasn't willing to end this first fantastic fuck session; again, she insisted that Bob suck her vagina once more, tongue her to still another orgasm.

He complied without hesitation and did a beautiful job on her. Then-a madman, insane to have her one moment, content to wait the next-he was upon Samantha again, his penis digging deep into her hot folds. She dragged one of her breasts up and urged him to suck it in cadence with his penis thrust. She began to come like some sort of firecracker.

Then Bob felt that great booming, felt that life pulse, like someone was swinging a mighty mall against the solid steel gate to the universe. He felt that murderous, scalding pain building in his testicles. He felt the hot flood back up in his stomach, gather in one thick, creamy mass. He felt it pop its seal, go careening down his pipe into Samantha's pulsing, milking vagina, into the depths of her bowels, where it splashed and spurted. Still his penis throbbed and spurted. Still his animalistic gruntings abraded his throat.

Bob never knew where the man-tall, thin and ferret-like, his smile a smug smear on his sallow face-came from. He jerked away from Samantha. "What the hell!" he spat. He wanted to charge the man, bowl him over, knock the living shit out of him.

At least until he saw the mean, blue steel of the .45 automatic in his right hand and the expensive camera hanging around his neck. The guy waved the gun menacingly at Bob, who fell back with a defeated whimper. Immediately

Bob knew the meaning of the intrusion. His stomach knotted painfully; despair crushed him, and he knew that once more-rednecked hick that he was-he'd been taken.

His eyes focused next on Samantha as she stood beside her partner in crime, her sweaty body still glistening, a derisive sneer twisting her features. In that instant Bob wondered how he could have ever thought her beautiful. She was a rotten vampire, a bloodsucker.

"I reckon you know what this's all about, plowboy," the man snickered. "Don't try anything, unless you want your head blown off. Camera, see? Pictures? Get it, stupid? We've got your address, your letters. You stupes are all alike. You think you're in love; you blab everything you know to a perfect stranger." He waved the gun at Samantha. "Get his wallet, baby. We'll see what his first payment's gonna be."

Samantha leaped with glee to Bob's clothes, extracted his wallet which revealed 200-plus dollars. Her friend chuckled mockingly. "Really thought you were gonna have y'self a time, didn't you, plowboy?"

He gestured with the gun and herded Bob toward his clothes. "Well, that's the end of it, rube. That's all you get. Just a sniff. Get dressed, get outta here. Skedaddle for home if you know what's good for you."

He turned to Samantha. "God, talk about guys going ape for snatch! Really turned my stomach. He ain't had any for a month. God, the pictures I got! His precious Ardis'll shit when she sees these." He threw the wallet at Bob. "You got your credit cards. They'll get you home."

"What ... what...." Bob stammered, "do you intend doing with those pictures?"

"Nothing, you dumb hillbilly, unless you miss a payment." He turned to Samantha. "What do you figure? Two hundred a month? We don't want to be greedy."

"Sure, he's good for it. Got a mint. Unless you'd rather arrange a lump sum. Say ten grand, lover?"

"Let him think about it. He's got our box number. He can write us whenever he pleases. Two hundred, Bob. The first of the mouth. Don't mess up. 'Cause if you do ... your wife's gonna get the nicest pictures in the mail. Either that or I'll send them to that Reverend Milton you kept harping about. That'd do you in real nice."

Bob was dressed by then. And feeling mortified and smaller than he'd ever felt before in his whole life, he skulked toward the door.

"Don't try running, Bob," the man taunted. "We'll find you. Sam and I have processed dozens of suckers like you; we know all the tricks. Now move! Get in that truck and make tracks."

The woman and her lover stood in the doorway, watching Bob's truck raise thick clouds of dust as it streaked down the drive, hit the highway, then turn back the way it had come. "Did you see the moron's face?" the man chortled, pulling Samantha back into the house, cruelly digging his fingers into her right breast. "The poor dope never knew what hit him." He pushed her toward the kitchen. "Now, how about some supper? I'm starved. It's been a long afternoon."

Bob Birmingham cowered in the thick hedge to the east of the house. Cautiously he slapped at mosquitoes and flies while he waited. It was nine o'clock; he'd been keeping vigil for almost five hours now. A light still burned in the living room, and he cursed the conniving duo. Weren't they ever going to get to bed?

His thoughts drifted to the turn-in where he'd concealed the truck. He recalled the mile-long, cross-country trek to backtrack to Samantha's house. What would he do now? He didn't rightly know. Kill them? Just maim them a little? It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, only the fact that he must avenge himself upon them. What good was living when a man's honor had been so basely violated? If they thought they were dealing with another docile redneck, they had another damned think coming.

Abruptly he froze; the light had gone out.

Now, suddenly, another one came on in the rear of the house. They were in the bedroom. It was safe now. He picked up the two heavy rocks and started sneaking toward the house. He carefully opened the cellar door and let himself into the musty, cluttered vault. He fell against a wall until his eyes became accustomed to the deeper gloom, then he picked his way through the junk, making his way toward the stairs. The muffled, sugar-sweet intonations of the two lovers were beacon enough for him.

How long Bob stood outside their door, watching Samantha lovingly suck her boyfriend's penis, he didn't know. But it was just long enough for the man to get far enough along so that his reflexes would be slowed. Then, when he began to grunt and wheeze, when Samantha's head went crazy on his swollen penis, Bob burst, into the room and made a crashing lunge for the automatic which lay on the dresser. The man made a jump also, but he was too slow. Bob kicked at his naked shanks and sent him flying. Another kick in the ribs and the man rolled over, groaning. His groans turned to full-fledged screams when Bob deliberately whirled back from the dresser, gun in hand, and calmly stomped his right hand into the floor. There was the sound of crunching bones, a new intensity to the victim's cries.

Before he knew it, he was being dragged to his feet. Bob merely had to point the gun at him and he dissolved into a cringing, blubbering hulk. "Blackmail, huh?" Bob snorted. "Pictures y'r planning on sending to my woman?" He clubbed the man with his left hand and kept him from falling with his right. Bob shoved the gun in his face, seemingly to push it into his mouth and unload it there. The man gagged, howled, tried to fall away as Bob jammed the nose of the .45 against his teeth, breaking them off at the gums. Bob grunted and drew the gun away. Then he released the greasy, dark hair and delivered a solid haymaker to the man's face. His nose was pulverized this time. He huddled in a sobbing heap on the floor, great bloody bubbles coming out of his face when he looked toward Bob again.

Samantha broke from her horrified trance and started to scream. Bob openhanded her, sending her flying against the wall. Before she could recover, his pants were open, his penis out. "Here, you dirty cheating bitch," he growled. "You like to suck cocks so much, suck this one." His fingers twisted in her hair and held her to the bestial task; his torso bucked at her face like an oil pump. Her gaggings and wheezings were music to his ears, as were the choking gasps that broke from her ravaged throat when he began to unload into her mouth for the second time that day.

Bob turned into a virtual madman after that. He showed Samantha no mercy. He dragged her back to where her lover still groveled on the floor. "Spit on it, you rotten bastard ! " Bob commanded. "Get it all juicy so I can fuck your girlfriend's ass." He raised his fist a little and lover boy strained up, pushing his mouth at Bob's penis. He spat and spat-a mixture of blood and drool.

"No, no!" Samantha shrieked as he flung her at the bed again and came at her from behind. "You'll kill me, you'll ruin me for life if you put that thing into..."

Her cries were unheard. Bob wasn't about to be stopped now. He jammed her buttocks; he drove his shaft into her anus as brutally, as swiftly as he could. He felt hot blood fleck his loins; he gloried in Samantha's gagging screams. Then he was in her, pumping like a dog. His fingers dug into her hips, came away with bloody flesh. He moved faster and began to scream himself. Sharp pain almost ruined his pleasure.

Afterward, he forced the man to give him the film and the money. He made him open a specially constructed safe and produce all the letters he'd written to Samantha. He smashed the expensive camera against the wall. Then Bob took the gun and advanced on Samantha a last time. "It's all drippy again," he rasped. "Dig it out. Suck it clean, like you did before." When she haggardly complied and was done, he pulled back her head and spat full in her face.

A minute later he was out in the darkness, loping toward the road.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The woman's name was Edna Gurley, and she was thirty-five, only a year younger than Bob Birmingham himself. The choice of age was intentional. None of those young, grasping tarts would have a chance at humiliating him, wiping their feet on his love again. A mature woman this time, a woman who needed true affection and understanding as he did.

He'd pored over his various brochures for days before he'd finally decided on Edna. Or E-126, as she was coded in the New York printed leaflet called "The Living Torch." Her ad had seemingly been an answer to his prayers.

E-126-Kentucky-Lovely young woman (thirty-five) is tired of living alone, seeks a new life. Passive, loving, she seeks a strong, masterful man who can teach her a woman's real role in life. Willing to travel. Please send frank letter and a photo. No sissy boys need apply. See my photo.

Bob had sought out her photo from the dozens of other named males and females on the page. He found E-126 to be everything she promised. Pretty, neat, raven-haired, slightly plump, she exuded a charm and yearning that carried through even in the tiny, slightly blurred snapshot. Dressed in black lingerie, a garter belt, and tight boots that came halfway up her calves, she appealed to some unknown need in Bob's psyche right away. Instantly he found his tool stiffening in anticipation. After much soul wrestling, he'd written a week later.

Now, in an elaborate apartment building in a bustling section of Nashville, the furnishings tasteful and expensive, they had at long last come together. Most important of all, there were no concealed voyeurs in Edna's closets. Bob had looked almost immediately, had explained his suspicions to the amused female as best he could.

When he'd briefed her on his last unfortunate experience, she'd laughed, and had reassured and comforted him profusely. "You poor baby," she'd cooed during those first awkward moments of confrontation, "no wonder you're so jumpy. Sit down, Bob. Make yourself comfortable while I get us something to drink. A martini? I just love martinis. They help make things easier all the way around." And though Bob had misgivings about martinis, he accepted.

It was late August now; almost three weeks had passed since the thing with Samantha and her bloodsucker boyfriend. There had been no trouble after that, nor had Bob expected any. After the drubbing he'd given the two leeches, he doubted-that they'd ever bother anyone again. He could be a mean man when crossed, and though he afterward regretted the way he'd gone berserk, had abused Samantha so badly, he concluded that she'd had it coming. More than-likely they were still picking up the pieces, glad to have escaped with their lives.

But what was the use of dwelling on past history, on sad times? Eternal optimist, he was sure that this bubbly, warm creature would be the answer to his prayers. Edna was earthy, simple; she put on no airs. His kind of woman, and no mistake.

They talked away what remained of that afternoon, neither of them making a move for greater familiarity. They would have cocktails in Edna's apartment. Then she would change and they would go out for a imagine dinner. After that, the apartment again. Soft music and dim lights. And then-

Bob was particularly pleased with her dinner gown, a clinging creation made of some leather-like material, black, glowing dully. Again he got that dirty itch in his guts, that hot tightening in his balls. To be able to slither his tongue along those shapely, smooth legs, to run his face between those opulent thighs. Were her panties made of that leathery stuff, too?

Though Bob should have been warned as to the true nature of Edna's sexual leanings, he was not. Caught off guard as he was, he forgot some of his more esoteric sexual readings; he took the kink-ridden female at face value. He was proud to escort her into the classy restaurant; he took the sly, knowing looks some of the other diners sent after them not as suspicion, but as envy.

Then, when Edna began sliding her hands on his legs under the tablecloth, when she slithered her booted feet and her nylon-glossed legs against him, he became possessed with passion. It seemed that the meal, the drinks afterward, would never come to an end.

In the darkness they sipped still another drink, a sweetish, potent, Greek brandy, while they hugged and caressed, ground greedy lips into each other's mouth. Using her intoxication as an excuse, she sighingly, unabashedly clenched his penis through his trousers, exulted in the feel of his juice where he'd long since wet his trousers and shorts through.

"Oooh," she exulted throatily, "you do want Edna. You've got it bad, real bad, for her. Oh, Bob, he's so big, so damned big. I can hardly believe..." Another coarse chuckle. "You're hung like a goddamned horse."

The next minute she was apologizing all over the place, begging his forgiveness. "I'm drunk, baby. I don't know what I'm saying." But this didn't keep her from continuing to maul him, from guiding his hands to her knees, her breasts, to her hot, humid crotch.

Then, all at once, the expectation, the long self-denial became too great to bear. There was no pretense any longer. They were what they were-wanting, lusting, hurting beasts. Animals yearning toward that ultimate fusion of flesh.

"This way, you horny bastard," Edna finally groaned, taking his glass, pulling him up. "Into the bedroom. Stick that thing into me before I go crazy. I need it so bad I can taste it." Her eyes glittered demonically. "You will, won't you, angel? Let me taste it?"

"Edna," he groaned. "Oh, don't ... That kills me."

Then they were in her bedroom. Suddenly muted, concealed lights in the valance circling the ceiling were turned on and gave a pink, unearthly glow to the room. "Sit there," she commanded. "Watch. I love to have a man watch me while I undress. When I see their eyes get big as saucers..."

Her brassiere and the girdle, with its wide garter tabs, were made of a shimmering, opaque satin. A satin that caught the rose glow from the valances and glittered evilly with her every movement. She stripped to her undies, no farther. Now she slowly turned toward him, her arms poised yearningly. Her hands came up, cupping her great, pointed breasts in an outrageous offering. "You want me, Bob?" she whispered. "Say yOu want me."

"I want you," he groaned, in actual pain. "Goddamnit, I want you!"

"Oooh, lover," she gurgled, her belly writhing in convulsive spasms, "that gets me. That gets me bad." She squirmed closer. "Go ahead, Bob, do something about it."

Before he could stop her, she pulled his one hand to her tit; the other she snuggled between her legs. "Play, Bob," she seethed. "Pinch me there. Make me wild. Hard, pinch me hard!"

And Bob found himself possessed of a grinding lust; he pinched one nipple through her undies. He pinched her harder than he'd ever pinched a woman before. What strange spell was this vampire exerting over him, to make him act like this?

Even so, it wasn't enough. "Harder," she grated, her eyes rolling back into her head. "Hurt me. Pinch me until I scream ... until I pass out."

It was then that Bob got inkling of what her peculiar hang-ups might be. But even then it didn't really register. Not until his continued pullings and pinchings ignited a primal sadism within him, until he found himself actually enjoying the inflicting of pain.

But Edna didn't faint. Instead, she slowly, whimperingly sank to her knees before him. Both his hands held tit now, both tugged and pressured the rubbery nibs through the fiendishly designed brassiere. Almost in gratitude, Edna dropped her head and drove it into his crotch. Her gaping mouth found his swollen penis in his trousers, clamped on it, ran back and forth on it.

"What ... " she gritted " ... if you could have it, would you ... like ... most ... right now? To have me suck your cock? To have me suck the piss right out of it?"

Bob felt like someone had rammed a hot poker up his urethra and was stirring its cauterizing tip in his scrotum, in his bowels. Any minute now it would come poking out his ass-hole. "God, Edna," he groaned. "God, oh, God..."

"Say it," she wheezed, a wild intensity to her voice. "Tell me to do it. Damn you, Bob! Are you stupid or something? Don't you know what I want? Command me! Command me to suck your cock!"

Reduced to helpless, dazed hulk by then, Bob couldn't do otherwise. "Please, Edna. Suck my cock."

"No!" She bit him viciously. "Don't ask! Command me!"

"Suck my cock, Edna," he rasped with as much force as he could muster. "Suck it, do you hear?"

"Tell me," she chanted, lapsing into an even more demented frenzy. "How I must do it? With my fingers? Should I unzip you with my fingers? Or...? " She paused, her eyes hopefully pleading. " ... with my teeth?"

Bob went out of his mind then. This was the realization of his dirtiest sex fantasies. To have a woman at his mercy! To have her do all the filthy, depraved things in the world for him! "Yes," he gasped. "With y'r teeth. Unzip me ... drag my cock out with y'r teeth. Wrap y'r dirty, cocksucking mouth around it. Suck me off. Suck me off like you ain't never sucked a man off before." He grew even more bestial. "Take it right down y'r filthy throat."

The woman crooned, swaying ecstatically before him. "You darling..." she moaned, "you sweet darling." Then, her fingers wrapped around his swollen balls to stabilize him, she dug her face into his belly and got his zipper tab between her teeth. The next minute she was doggedly working the stubborn gadget down.

But it was nothing compared to the way her mouth burrowed into the sweaty, dank depths of his crotch once his fly was open. Her tongue swirled in his hair, slithered beneath his penis, tickled him intolerably. She hummed and gurgled at the taste of his sweat. And where he'd thought it utterly impossible for her to dig his penis out without using her hands, she somehow managed it.

He thought it was the most beautiful, most depraved sight in the world to look down and see Edna's ghostly, plump flesh outlined against her black lingerie. To see her satin-bound ass wriggle and squirm, to see her lovely legs-still in glittering, witchy hose, in the kinky boots-play and flex for a better position in the carpeting. While, all the while, her mouth, her lips slid up and down on the underside of his penis. While her devilish pink tongue flicked at his penishead, feathered and tried to rape his penis' opening. Her fingers were like talons around his testicles by now, and the multiple sensations maddened him.

"Am I pleasing you, darling?" she grated, never stopping once. "Tell me if I don't please you. Tell me! Command me. Hit me, curse me when I fail you..."

Where the short, leather whip came from, Bob never knew. He suspected that Edna had planned this excess from the start, that she'd had the whip beneath the bed all the time. Little by little, his glimmerings of recognition became stronger. Then when Edna started pleadingly up at him, his penis jammed in her throat, and said, "Hit me with it, you sweet prick! Whip me! Make me suck you good!" he remembered.

Masochism. The desire to be hurt and humiliated. Often sadomasochistic tendencies revealed themselves where simple masochism prevailed-the textbook phrasings came back to him. There was a thin dividing line, and often, when the masochistic urges were sated, the sadistic ones came to-play. He shuddered. "Edna, let's stop this. We mustn't..."

"We must!" she snarled. "You must! Ooh, you greasy dick, lay it on me. Cut me good. Make me dance and yell. Make me do every dirty thing in the book!"

What man living, under similar circumstances, could have resisted an entreaty like that one? Especially a man like Bob, who, more than most other men, had old scores to settle with the deceitful female of the species?

Suddenly he went berserk. All the way. Anything and everything! He brought the whip down on Edna's tempting buttocks in a steady, slashing cadence; he gloried in her happy yelps and jerking; he found pleasure in the intensified pressure, a vacuum cleaner suction, as she truly went insane on his tool. Never had any woman sucked him off the way she was doing. Any minute now and he'd be coming.

"Enough, you fucking pig!" he grated. "My balls now. Dig 'em out. Suck 'em. Get 'em both in y'r mouth if you can. Yes, like that. Suck it deeper. Get all the sweat off it. Oh, you bitch! Good! So fucking good!" A slash of the whip again. "The other one now."

And then: "My pants, my shorts. Drag them off. Pull off my shoes. My socks. Kiss my stinking feet." He watched raptly, wanted to scream at the sight of the female groveling at his feet. "Lick them, you slut. Lick my toes." The sound of Edna's grateful slobberings further incensed him.

And then: "My balls again. Suck them until I tell you to stop."

And then: "My ass-hole, baby. Get y'r tongue in there as far as it'll go. Yes, like that. Arrgh! You pig. Deeper, damn you. Fight for it!"

And then: "My prick. It's all drippy again. Here, in y'r eyes. The other one now. That feels good? Y'r nose. Now, in that fucking mouth of yours. Oh, hot, so hot. I'd like to shove it all the way down past your tonsils."

Then it was time. Bob could wait no longer. He wanted this one in her vagina; he wanted to splash the come he'd saved up for a week against her womb. He wanted to hear her groan with every scalding spurt. "Get those harlot's rags off," he choked. "Fast. I want to sink this bone where nobody'll ever find it again."

But Edna was once more ahead of him, and, with a quick tug at her crotch, she opened a special panel there, revealed a gaping slit in the special panties. Her vagina glistened wetly, invitingly. And when Edna sprawled on her back in the bed, waved her legs enticingly at him, her vagina opening and closing, he tore the rest of his clothes off and piled on.

She screamed when his great truncheon was buried in her; her cries were part pain and part rapture. Immediately, her arms came around him; her legs clamped behind his thighs, the slide of silk on his fevered flesh, the smooth and clod slither of her boots on his flanks serving as an irresistible spur. "Oh, God!" she screeched. "What a monster. Feels like a tree trunk's been shoved up me. Shove it, you prick! Shove, do you hear! Shove!"

Bob shoved. He shoved as he'd never shoved before. A monster, a superhuman battering ram, he slammed Edna without mercy; he would seemingly kill her with his weapon, and, failing in that, he'd drive her right through the bed.

Edna came. Then she came-again. And still again. She was building to her fourth, when Bob could hold back no longer, and let it fly in thick, rich, molten gouts. His penis ached. Edna encouraged him grossly. "Come," she crooned, "thick, hot come. Oh, fill me up. Shoot your jizz into me."

There was the briefest of respites after he finished. Edna didn't allow his erection to go down. Immediately she was churning again, working her vagina muscles around his penis. He felt a painful intrusion and realized she had crammed the butt of the whip into her hole alongside his tool. She twisted it. Then it was wrenched forth. Bob cursed, groaned, and bucked as he felt her press the well-lubricated butt to the stretched portal of his ass. He tried to break free, fight her, but her teeth clamped cruelly to his throat; she dug the dagger-like heels of her boots into the tender flesh at the back of his knees.

He was rendered helpless. The whip was stalled momentarily, but then, with a savage poke and swirl, it broached the rebelling sphincter. It was inside his ass, slowly, vindictively being corkscrewed deeper, still deeper. Miraculously, he felt his penis spring to instant attention.

In that instant Bob was transformed. A filthiness filled him. The pain and the mortification became part of the sex act. He wanted her to hurt him; he savored the tearing pain. And another hidden facet-a frightening one-was revealed to him.

This fuck lasted only a brief time. Edna's heels digging into his flesh, the butt-of the whip tearing the tender recesses of his rectum, seemingly tamping his next charge of sperm into his penis, made him react like a bull, like a stallion, like a raving maniac. His climax this time was a thing of molten stars, of a million screaming bats battering and shrieking inside the cavern of his brain.

They both sank into a torpid swoon afterward, Bob still lying atop Edna. When he awoke, he groaned softly at the pain in his ass. Then he recalled the whip and found it still imbedded there. Painfully, agonizingly, he drew it out. Suddenly he felt mean and debased and very sick.

In utter bewilderment, he disengaged himself from Edna, wondering how he could have behaved so depravedly. He wondered what he would turn into if he made common practice of such things. Terror chilled him, and he stifled a curse. He got out of bed without waking Edna. He dressed and escaped the apartment without her knowing of his furtive departure.

He got to his car and groaned as he sat down. It was going to be a long ride back.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was something about the woman's letters that got to Bob the worst way. It was almost as if she were truly sincere, as if she was just as desperate as he to reach out, to find someone to love. She was seemingly as frightened as he was that life would pass her by without once revealing that ultimate promise and bounty it was supposed to hold.

But then Bob had been conned before. Much to his dismay and painful disillusionment, he'd discovered that such depth of feelings could be faked. An unsuspecting man could be easily deceived. Backwoods simpleton he might be, but once burned was twice shy. Deliberately, he delayed in setting up an assignation with Penny Duquaine. Had she once-in the almost four weeks of intense correspondence-attempted to force him to quick meeting, to bilk him of incidental "expense money," he would have dropped her flat in a minute.

But there were no such damning giveaways. Instead, there were long, warm, yearning letters; there was openness and an understated revelation of a ravaged heart. There was a frequent exchange of pictures-Penny, again the eternally elusive blonde, petite and pretty, her physical endowments adequate, no more. Life had battered her to the point where the slightest indication that she delighted a mana real man-was enough to make her drunk with a long-lost sense of worth. Once again she was a woman, invested with stature and purpose.

Granted, she implied all this to Bob simply and timidly, but the meaning was there. And though she seemed perfect for him, the answer to all his prayers, he still wouldn't let himself believe.

Penny Duquaine was twenty-nine, married four years, the mother of two tiny daughters. She had waited as a virgin for marriage. Her heart overflowing with a boundless love, she had made that mistake so common among those of the truly loving nature: she had accepted the first man who'd paid her any heed at all; she'd mistaken infatuation for enduring love.

A year later, her second baby already on the way, the seals had been lifted from her eyes. And where she'd suspected that her handsome husband, Crane, had been seeing another woman on the side, she wasn't quite prepared for the ugliness of the truth. Had Crane ignored her, abstained from sexual relations with her for another woman, she could have borne it somehow. But when she found out he was homosexual, that he'd married her only out of a desperation of his own-she could not endure the pain.

Had it been another woman, perhaps she could fight for Crane, but this-

It was akin to tilting with dragons made of smoke. Impossible.

They hadn't divorced. Each living in his own part of the house, they'd remained together for the children's sake, for the security of Crane's high-salaried position in one of Lexington's most prestigious architectural firms. So the years had passed, until the day when she had to break out or go mad!

Bob had found her pathetic half-a-couple ad in his mounting pile of swap club brochures. "Affectionate, clean, and loyal," the ad had read, "with much love to share with the right man. Incompatible husband knows of this ad. Is there a man somewhere whose situation is the same as mine?"

The plea seemed too good to be true. It had been for this reason that Bob had proceeded so warily.

Now, an eternity later, sitting across from Penny, a white damask tablecloth separating them-the imagine supper club again-it seemed his heart was hammering so fiercely that it threatened to tear free from its moorings. She was right; she was perfect. She was what he'd been hoping for, praying for, but had never expected to find.

Because of their many letters, because of the long and reflective interim, it did seem they were friends, that they had known each other for a long, long time. A man and woman should always be friends before they become lovers, Bob thought, the ache in his heart terrible at that moment. When his expression betrayed him, when his hand went forth in search of hers, Penny's warm, twining fingers were waiting. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to touch, for their fingers to lock for all the world to-see. The twisted, crooked smile on her lips, the sudden wetness to her large, luminous eyes was almost too much for him to bear.

In that moment he wanted to take her into his arms, to kiss her, to hold and protect her. But he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he withdrew his fingers and forced his face to cautious impassivity.

Instantly, Penny sensed the invisible gate that had clanged down between them. "What is it, Bob?"

"Nothing, Penny," he lied, baffled himself by swift turnabout. "Nothing at all."

"You've been looking a long time, haven't you, Bob?" she said hollowly. "You've been burned too many times. That's it, isn't it? You don't trust me," a fervent pleading exploded in her eyes. "Do you think you're the only one?-I've gone through it too."

She swirled her after-dinner brandy in her snifter. "I know what it is, believe me. A person doesn't just snap his fingers, find love someone to care about ... just like that. It should be the easiest thing in the world, but it isn't." She grimaced. "Although my experiences couldn't possibly have been as grim as yours. I went through my hell via the U.S. mails. A man, being the aggressor ... Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not especially, Penny. Just let it go at that. Y'r right; I am what you'd call gun shy, I guess. How about you? You wanna talk about y'r experiences?"

She laughed nervously, her blue eyes dulled by a look of hurt. "If you'd like. So you can make whatever judgments of me you have to make." She sighed deeply, peering into her brandy again. "There isn't that much to tell. I've only been seriously looking for a year now.

I've advertised twice. I've written to perhaps a dozen different men. They were fakes ... all of them until you."

His heart leaped, but Bob still warned himself. "Fakes?"

"Yes, fakes. Kids, immature and greedy. Operators, all so glib and knowing. Then the older men ... pathetic and whimpering, reaching out, grabbing at straws for the last time. I only answered a few of the letters. Once I even made an arrangement with one man. like with you ... "

"And what happened?"

"He was too old. He'd sent me a picture of himself taken twenty years before. I felt sorry for him, really I did. But I couldn't go through with it."

"Must have been awful," he sympathized.

"That's what I mean about you, Bob. It came through in your letters. Your sincerity. I sensed it from the first. And as much as I wanted to rush into it, I still held back. If you were everything you claimed to be in your letters, if you'd survived the hell you'd described to me. Then I knew we both had something to give to each other. I knew if nothing more could come of it, that we'd at least stick to our bargains, no matter what. Weak as Crane is, he still needs me, whether he knows it or not. He loves the children, really he does. And you love your children. Ardis is not right. There's going to come a time when she's going to need you so desperately."

"And in between?" he said tiredly, his heart dying momentarily in expectancy of her answer.

"In between we could make a life for ourselves," she replied gravely, her eyes locking, burning into his. "We could find whatever it is we've missed all these years. Jessup isn't too far from Garrett Park. A two-hour drive. We could meet often. I could even drive your way since Crane knows everything anyway. It could become our escape, our Shangri-La. A place to run to when things got too bad for us."

"Shangri-La?" Bob puzzled.

"It's a mythical Tibetan valley in a book I read once. A place where no one gets old, where it's eternal spring, and people are always happy."

"I ain't much on books," he said apologetically.

"It doesn't matter. I didn't mean to flaunt anything. Women tend to have more time for reading, you know. I'm no brain, if that's what you're thinking. I got through high school, and that's about all. I was a secretary for a while. Until I met Crane." She forced a wry smile. "End of biography. Some life story."

Again her fingers sought his; her hand closed on his. "How about it, Bob? Can you trust me? If I can trust you..." Her eyes became wet all at once. Her expression softened.

"Yes, Penny," he husked, wanting to bellow with relief and thanksgiving. "I think I can trust you. I think I want the same things you want."

Her gaze met his; their eyes held in fiery resolve. "Then what do you say we get out of here, go back to our motel, Bob? Haven't we wasted enough time as it is?"

He rose but waited while she drained the last of her drink, almost as if drinking courage. "Yes," he said softly, "I reckon we have."

A minute later they strode from the restaurant into the balmy night. Anyone looking at them would have taken them for honey-mooners; the way they smiled, the way their eyes locked in radiant yearning.

The motel, located in Jessup, a mere ten miles south of Lexington, reminded him too much of his first swap sortie-the time with the gold-digging Gail Turner. And yet, with Penny, warm and submissive, it was altogether different. Now, if it didn't blow up in his face the way it always had before.

"Do you mind, honey," Penny whispered as they clung and kissed feverishly, all too quickly delivered to rushing, roaring passion and need, "if I take care of it myself? I have a thing about that. Please? Bear with me? For the first few times anyway?"

Bob had attempted to unzip her gown down the back, to undo the snaps at the nape of her neck. Famished for the real thing, he'd wanted to taste her flesh so terribly that he'd become clumsy, rough in his attempts.

"Just turn your head, Bob," she whispered from behind him. He heard the squeak of the bedsprings when she sat to remove her stockings. "You undress too. Then come to me."

He thought it was the strangest thing in the work! that now, of all times, his penis should be so lax, should hang at a semi-rigid droop when, inside, he was afire with lust for her. Then, thinking it would be up by the time he went to Penny, he began undressing.

She lay on her back, her blonde hair loose, flowing around her head on the pillows. Her arms were spread in artless grace at each side. One knee was slightly steepled, and, all in all, her naked pose was one of the most provocative, thrilling things he'd ever seen.

But still he hesitated. Old suspicions die hard. It was to this that he accounted for the continuing flaccidity of his penis. And when he faced Penny straight on, and her head rolled over, when her eyes slowly wandered over his body-

"You're beautiful, Bob," she intoned, her body frozen ivory in the dim light. "So hard and rangy. Those shoulders, that waist, your bel-" Then her eyes widened, and before she could catch herself-"Bob? What is it? What's wrong? I thought you'd want me ... that you'd be wild to have me by now. What ... V

"It's all right," he lied. "I get that way sometimes." His panic mounted; he wished he might crawl into a hole somewhere and hide. How could it be? For all those other whores, filth who hadn't, for a second, really counted, he'd been hard as a rock. But for Penny, whom he was sure was the greatest woman ever to cross his path-God, he cursed, don't play tricks on me!

She opened her arms. A moment later he fell toward her in slow motion grace. Momentarily he balanced himself on his fingertips, letting his head hang between his shoulders. Reverently, he kissed Penny's tummy; he let his lips graze her flesh; he let his tongue meander in her dense thatch. And when he allowed the fiery, hard keel to cleave the puffy, dewed, hairless petals of her vagina proper-

Penny started, writhed, gasped. "You mustn't, Bob. I'm not clean. I..."

"I must, baby," he intoned, never stopping for a moment. "You are clean. The cleanest, most holy woman I've found in a long, long time. If I don't thank you ... worship you ... this way ... then what good's prayer anyway?" He burrowed his face deeper, letting his tongue execute long, sloppy strokes; he swirled deeper; he teased her clitoris.

"God, Penny! I've wanted to do this to a woman f r so long. A woman who wants to be loved, really loved..."

She spasmed convulsively. Then she went limp; she surrendered herself completely to him. "Oh, Bob, Bob ... Yes, dear God, yes! I do want that. I do. I've wanted that for so long. I never thought a man would really ... that a man would want to do that for me. Lord knows, Crane was never about to..."

"No, baby. Don't talk about him now. Forget. Forget everything. There's just us. There's just this." And with a howl he buried his face deeper in her folds; he strained to piston his tongue deeper into her hole. He gloried in the agonized whimpers and grunts which broke from her as he swirled his tongue around her clitoris. She bucked and jittered. Long wails abraded her throat. Once more her thighs pressed his ears, shut out sound; her legs twined behind his head; her heels slid and drummed on his back and shoulders.

In that exquisite captivity he heard the clockings of his tongue, the liquid stirrings of her folds. Her pantings boomed down from a great distance, widened in concentric circles' of lust, and he went berserk and actually fought to burrow deeper.

There was a brief respite after Penny experienced her first orgasm. One moment her churnings were haphazard, wild; the next, they were controlled. It was as if his tongue was a miniature tool, a tool which she held stationary by placing her hands alongside his face. Then, when her motions became frenzied, when she pumped her hips in exact cadence. "God, oh God!" she gasped between clenched teeth. "It's good, so good! So very good! I never dreamed ... I'm coming, darling! Coming! like I never came before! Oh-oh-oh-ohhhh! Sweet, so goddamned sweet. I'm dying! I'm-"

She fell away finally and fought to dislodge him. "No, baby," she pleaded. "I can't stand anymore. I must rest. Please, give me a moment's rest."

He drew his mouth away and contented himself with licking around the edges of her vagina, working his tongue into her crevice, exploring her lush pubic mat, even going to her perineal area, flirting with the puckered velvet of her anus itself. She writhed when he did that.

"Please, darling," he said. "Let me. Again? I've wanted to do that to a woman f r so long. Jist once more? I'd be so proud. You liked it, didn't your

"Like it?" she snorted. "God, that doesn't begin to describe it. I loved it! I'd love to have you do that to me all night, if I could stand it. But it's so intense; it makes me feel all crazy and dirty ... like I want to do everything, say everything. Dear God, Bob! And Ardis doesn't want you to..."

"Shhh, baby. We weren't going to mention them, remember?" His tongue laved the perimeter of her vagina again; it vibrated in the tiny indentation of her urethral opening. "Oh, let me, Penny. Just once more. Can you stand one more?"

She squirmed. "I'll try. I'll be as brave as I can. If that's what you really want."

His adoration was slow and slavish this time. And gradually, as Penny once more commenced to huff and puff, as her hips began that exciting swivel and lurch, he was more confident. He felt her fingers flirt timidly with his belly, his hips. And now they tickled his fur, ventured down the semi-rigid phallus. With a proud, jubilant sigh, she wrapped her fingers about it and began to squeeze and pull his flaccid penis. And yet she made no move to rearrange her own body, to pull his member to her lips as those other whores had done. There was no need for theatrics. There was time for that part of things. And when the moment was right-He felt his heart swell. Then something else began to swell, and Penny's flawed, astonished murmurs were the ultimate praise. A hot spasm went through him, and his penis bucked involuntarily in her fist; a drop of his come splashed his thigh and ran trickling down his leg.

"Oh, Bob," she said, her voice filled with awe, "it's so big, so beautiful." Then she took him completely by surprise. "Such a big prick! Such a gorgeous, horny prick! He thrills me. He makes me ... afraid."

Bob couldn't explain the feeling of intermixed elation and disappointment he experienced. It seemed that Penny had stepped down off her pedestal at that moment. He wouldn't have believed that she'd ever use language like that. Then he damned himself for being a prude. God, you're getting more like that damned Ardis every day.

Penny sensed his chagrin. "What's the matter, baby? Did I say a no-no? You don't like me to talk like that?"

"It's all right, I guess. You surprised me, that's all."

"Don't you think I haven't been reading those books too, honey? Don't you think I haven't been held in check far too long? There's nothing wrong with it, really there isn't. Why should we be coy, play games? You can use those words with me; I won't mind. Treat me like a whore if you like. I think I'd like it."

She stirred, drawing his face up from her Vagina. Her eyes Were molten as she stared down at him. The words came out evenly, slowly, almost as if she was challenging him. "I love it when you suck my cunt," she gritted. "I love to hold your cock. I'll love it even more when you shove it into me. When I'm full to bursting with fat, cunt-stretching prick. Try to understand, Bob. I've gone without for so long! You can't know how hard up I am!"

She fell back and crowded his face to her vagina again. "Please, Bob. Tell me what you want. You use the words, too. Tell me you need me!" Her voice snagged, trailing off into a wail. "Good God, somebody must need me!"

"I need you, darling," he choked. "Just feel how much I need you."

"Feel?" she taunted. "Where should I feel?"

"Please, baby. Don't. With some other woman, maybe. But not with you."

"Where should I feel, Bob?" Her tone became feral, almost vengeful.

"You know where. You've got it in your hand."

Her fingers tightened murderously. "Where, dammit! Where should I feel you?"

"My cock," he forced the words. "My prick."

She sucked in her breath. "I'm feeling your prick," she chanted eerily, "your gorgeous prick. Where do you want me to put it? After you're done sucking me and ... making me come again, I mean."

"Between y'r legs ... In y'r..."

She dug her nails into his testicles. "Say it, damn you!"

"In y'r cunt. In y'r beautiful, hot, slippery crack. In this dirty clam, here. Oh, God, Penny

... I didn't mean..." He was blushing!

"Mean to," she snarled. "I want you to talk to me like that. Dirty and low down. Just the way I feel inside now. Just the way I feel up inside of this pussy of mine."

Her fingers came down, driving his face into her folds again. "But for now," she grated, completely out of it by then, "some unfinished business. I want you to suck the skin off my cunt. I want you to lick my clit. I want you to make me come, to turn me inside out. Lack, damn you! Lack my begging cunt!"

Bob, stunned, thrilled to the core of his being, did exactly as Penny commanded. He licked. He licked as if his life depended upon it. He licked with a fantastic, unerring skill, a skill that shortly had Penny flopping and gurgling like a flounder on a spear.

"You devil!" she shrieked. "You dirty devil! It's here, oh, it's here! I'm coming, coming, coming! Oh, heavenly, heavenly! Put it out with your tongue! That fire ... put it out! With that lovely ... cunt ... lapping ... tongue! Oh, it's so good. I can feel it all the way up between my eyes!"

Finally she expelled him from his slippery, hot lair. She dragged him atop her. She drove her lips onto his, made a dedicated rite of licking her own juices off them. Now her tongue darted into his mouth, twined in serpentine frenzy about his. She wheezed and bucked and swiveled beneath him, her fingers sliding up and down his raging penis, sliding it in the vestibule of her vagina. He knew if he didn't slam his penis home at any moment now-

Then his fat penishead was over the narrow sphincter of her vagina. He paused. He knew a brief moment of fear. What if he should prove too big for her! The same apprehension must have haunted Penny also, for now, she said. "Quick, lover. In! No matter how much it hurts. Before I lose my nerve!" Then, in a last vainglorious scream, "Fuck me, damn you! I want to be fucked so terribly!"

Slowly, determinedly, he guided his penis into her. He hissed and gasped; he marveled at the tightness of her vagina. Mother of two she might be, but long months of neglect had made her tight-excruciatingly tight. Slowly, slowly he went into her. Deeper, and still deeper!

"Tell me!" she rasped. "Am I goodT?"

"Y'r good," he groaned viciously, "y'r damned good. Y'r cunt ... wrapped around my prick..."

"Tell me! I want to hear it all!"

"Y'r cunt, angel. It's so tight, so blasted tight! I ain't never been in one as tight as yours. It feels like I won't never be able to get it out"

"Try," she slurred delightedly. He drew back, dazzled at the wetness of it. Then he was pumping into her, her slot more flexible than before. But still there was that wringing, glans-scalding sensation, that fire that sizzled back into his guts, into his balls. "I'm sorry, baby," he said, beginning to slam her more swiftly, more ruthlessly, as if he were battering the gates of the city, "but I can't wait. It's been too long already. I have to come. I have to..."

"Come, darling," she crooned, her torso moving in perfect cadence to his, her pelvis slamming and twisting and rocking and pulling. "Oh, come! It's been so long since I've felt a man unload in there, since I've felt a prick boom and throb inside of me. Yes, come..."

A delighted yip broke from her. "Oh, darling! I do think I'm ... Yes! It's happening! I'm coming too! That cock of yours! That monstrous, delicious cock! Oh, slam it!"

She went into an even deeper frenzy. "You prick!" she gloated as one, then two quick orgasms smashed her, shook her like a rag roll. "You sweet prick!"

Which was all it took so far as Bob was concerned. He sprang forward and shot a thunderous charge into her. His balls boomed shot after shot of thick, hot come into her womb. His come slimed her font, douched her belly.

He groaned, clinging to Penny. He buried his face in her throat. He kissed and chewed and clamped his teeth in her soft flesh. He snorted unashamedly. Then, as that kaleidoscopic play of lights in his brain went dark, as that intense sense of relief and fulfillment and rightness filled him-

He was as amazed as Penny was to find himself sobbing into her shoulder. Great, hawking sobs of gratitude and relief. He sobbed as if his heart would break.

Penny hesitated only a moment. Then her arms gathered him in; she held him painfully tight. Seemingly she couldn't hold him closely enough. Now she began to cry also. "Let it come out, darling," she blubbered. "Let it all come out. Get rid of it once and for all."

CHAPTER NINE

"Divorce?" Ardis yawped, jerking back in her chair as if someone had lashed her across the face. "What in heaven's name are you talking about, Bob? Is this some rotten game you're playing? Don't tell me you're drunk again?"

He fixed her with a hateful, unflinching glare. "No, Ardis," he spat, "I'm not drunk. This is no game. It's for real. I've had enough. I want out."

And just as he and Penny had agreed during their last idyllic hours together, he made no mention of another woman. Ardisand Crane, on Penny's end-must be made to think it was simply a matter of the human spirit being able to endure so much and no more. If they thought there was someone else, they would get mean; they would hang on. For spite, if nothing else.

He hadn't meant for it to come out quite this soon. But the moment had been right; an opening had presented itself. The first faltering overtures were made before he knew it.

And now, as Ardis mocked him, hacked at his most vulnerable weak spot, he forgot his resolve. "Divorce, is it?" she sneered. "What in the world will you do with yourself? A clumsy fool like you? You can't cook for yourself. You don't know how to mend or pick up after yourself. You'd be utterly helpless."

Her lips curled in disdain. "One thing is certain-no other woman in her right mind would give a lout like you a second look."

It was as if she'd known just which button to push. And the male ego being what it is, he blundered right into her trap. "Is that right?" he snapped. "Well, we'll see about that too. You'd be surprised what a man can find once he sets his mind on it."

"What, some of your Ashland streetwalkers? Is that what you'd trade me ... the kids ... for? You talk like you're struck with the heat, Bob."

"No!" he flared back. "Not some streetwalker. A good woman. A clean, pretty woman. A woman who knows what it's like to love a man ... really love him!" Almost as if he was. striking out at Ardis, he finished with a proud flourish. "I've found her, Ardis. I have, I tell you. And nobody ... not you, not the law, not that silly-assed God of yours ... is gonna keep me from her. I want her. I am gonna marry her, hear!"

Suddenly Ardis' face twisted and went white with panic. "Don't blaspheme," she hissed. "I'll stand most anything from you, Bob. But don't you dare take the name of our blessed Savior in vain." Her eyes rolled confusedly. "Another woman, Bob?" Recognition of the truth registered in her gaze. "Then you have been with someone else. All those nights? Them weekends? I thought ... "

"Never mind what you thought." And now, deciding to make a clean breast of things, and consequences be damned, he said, "I want a divorce, Ardis. I'll do right by you; I'll see that you and the kids are taken care of." His face twisted in disgust now. "Though I sure's hell hate to leave them with you. I pity them. I pity the mess you'll make of their minds."

"You're the last person on earth to talk about twisted minds! Who? Who is she? Is she anyone I know?" Desperate terror and disbelief froze her features. And for the first time Bob realized how sick she was in her head; he realized the low esteem she truly held him in. She'd actually believed he'd been with his men cronies those nights; she'd thought those weekends were spent in aimless, doddering, male wanderings! The existence of another woman had never really crossed her mind. His guts bucked and kicked. Cold fury flooded him.

"God!" he groaned, more to himself than anything else. "Dear God! You do despise me! How you must despise me!"

That fanatic panic still remained. "I don't despise you, Bob," she said, a strange pleading invading her tone. "I just don't understand you, that's all. I don't know what it is you want from me."

"You don't know what I want?" he groaned. "How many ways can a man tell you? All those nights of crawling and begging? Could a man make it any plainer?"

"I know, Bob," she said bewilderedly. "I know. But you have to try to understand. I've tried, really I have. I can't help it if I'm not a sensual woman. I'm made different, that's all." Her expression actually became contrite. The craven terror became more pronounced in her eyes. She was afraid of losing him. Or was she?

"I've tried, Bob," she singsonged again. "Really I have. You don't know how much it cost me to give in to you those nights." She paused. "I'm willing to try again, Bob. Anything, just so you'll forget this foolishness. Divorce! You know that's impossible. It's against God's rules. 'Cleave ye unto one man so long as ye shall live', " she intoned.

Her voice became more shaky by the moment. "I don't know who she is or what she is. I don't care. Go on with the slut. Go on shacking up with her, if you must. Only don't make it a town scandal. Don't disgrace me; don't disgrace the children. Anything you say, Bob. I'll do it. Only don't do this to me. Divorce ... it's unthinkable."

"No!" he groaned. "None of that. A clean break. A divorce. That's the only way. This ain't a marriage. This is a prison. This is a rotten cell ... where a man's got no self-respect, where a man can't hold his head up. You've stolen my balls, Ardis. You ain't gonna do it no more..."

"Please, please," she cut him off, her voice actually breaking, real tears flooding her eyes. "If you'll just forget this divorce foolishness. I couldn't hold my head up in the community; I couldn't..."

"No!" he groaned. "To hell with you! Shit on y'r damned reputation. You ain't gonna chain me down no more, Ardis. I'm going. I'm breaking free and clear. Once and f'r all, hear!"

He couldn't believe the transformation that was taking place within Ardis. Gradually she became a grotesque caricature of her former self. Her eyes rolled wildly; her mouth was coy and simpering. "Please, please, Bob," she pleaded. "Another chance, that's all I ask. I never realized ... until now ... just how much all that meant to you. I'll try, I swear I will. I'm your wife; you owe me that much. I'll be better. I will! If it kills me."

She rose from her chair; turned off the lamp as she did so, leaving only the foyer light glowing. She advanced on him, predatory and sly in her movements. "Try me, Bob, that's all I ask. Don't turn me out without another chance. Your other woman. What does she do? Tell me? I'll do it, too. I swear. If that's the price a woman's got to pay..."

Then she was actually twining her arms around Bob's neck, actually grinding her body-her breasts, her belly, the firm-yet-soft mound of her pubis against his. "See," she whimpered, "see, honey? I'm still a woman. I can learn. I can be like I once was. Kiss me, Bob. Try me. See if I'm not good. Oh, please, Bob..."

He was actually ripped by desire; he felt his penis harden in his pants. He wanted to rip Ardis' clothes off, to rape and ravish her. Her voice became still more sultry and teasing. "See, honey? You do want me. I can feel it. You're getting hard. So nice and hard."

He gasped and recoiled as Ardis' fingers forced themselves around his penis, as they tightened and tugged playfully. How long, he agonized. How long since she's touched me that way? God, it's good-so good! Moment by moment he weakened. And when her lips closed on his, began to kiss and gnaw and flutter, when her fingers became even more adventurous-

He shuddered convulsively. "Ardis," he choked, his bewilderment crushing. "Oh, Ardis!"

"Yes, baby, yes ... that thing you've always wanted ... that thing I couldn't make myself do. Tonight ... I will. I promise. If you'll just tell me you'll stay ... that you'll forget this divorce nonsense. Any way you want it. Go see her, be with her. But come home to me ... be my man..."

Everything was happening too fast for him, both of them were moving and reacting as if in some trance, and he found Ardis sliding down his body. Her arms around his shoulders, now his waist, now his buttocks, and, at last, around his thighs. Her face actually burrowing into his crotch, her hot breath on his stone-hard phallus.

No man in his right mind could have resisted that. When Ardis began unzipping his fly, when her fingers groped inside his trousers, brought out his dripping penis-

He froze, groaned, arched his body, buckled his knees, the better to accommodate her. He wanted to scream with agony and rapture when he heard her clicking tongue, actually felt-for the first time in their married life-her hot, liquid mouth at his penis.

How Ardis made herself do it, how she made herself take him in her mouth, to house and suck him, he never knew. And then, when she began to piston herself back and forth on his jawbreaking tool, when she took him down her throat as deeply as she could, when she gagged and coughed-

He didn't know what to think. Torn between love and this manifestation of sexual lust in its grossest form (on both sides), he was deprived of reason.

He took Ardis then and there. Right on the living room carpet. He had but to command her to undress, and, like some crazed, mindless robot, she complied. Tearing at his own clothes, he watched with disbelieving eyes as she tauntingly, lasciviously exposed her still beautiful, still maddening body before his eyes. The first time in how many years-since the night Of the rape?-that she'd let him see her totally naked. He gaped, felt his heart hammer insanely. No man could have behaved differently than he did.

"Again..." he grated, that grinding sense of power over Ardis too much to resist. "With your mouth ... your lips. Do it! Or else..."

Without a moment's hesitation, the lovely, white-bodied creature floated up from the floor, licked the tip of his penis, and enveloped as much of it as she could in her mouth. Bob groaned brokenly; he had all he could do to keep from clutching his wife's head, working it on his penis, forcing her to take his churning, molten load down her throat.

Somehow he resisted the impulse. Instead, he pulled away from Ardis, fell onto the floor beside her, flung her onto her back. His fingers groped between her legs, found her hot, juicy-ready. Just like the old days, when they'd first been married. like those days before they were married. With a cry, he fell upon her, guided his penis into her vagina, squirmed it deep into her belly. A second later he was pumping himself into her like some sort of a machine. He gasped and wheezed; he groaned and exhorted her.

"Please, baby!" he choked, the old terror and frustration suddenly back. "Don't change now! Don't stop. Finish it! You can; I know you can! You knew how to, once upon a time. You were all the woman any man could ask for."

"Please!" she snarled, her mood suddenly reversed. "Don't talk about that. Just do it. Use me, take your pleasure with me. Get it over with. Only..."

In that moment he wanted to kill Ardis. He wanted to batter her face to a pulp with his bare hands.

It was the old Ardis, cold and disdainful. "I can't, Bob," she called, her voice flat and cold. "I tried. I'm trying. Only there's something that just won't..."

"Fuck you!" he howled. "Don't talk if that's all you've got to say. Be still, you lying bitch! You rotten prick-teaser! Lay there like a lump! Take this. And this! And this! Every fucking drop!" His voice broke. "For a minute there, I really believed you ... I actually thought that for once ... there was a chance, a chance..."

Afterward, he took her underwear and wiped his penis off with it. His hate bubbling, he stood away from her while he dressed. He paused at the door, looking back.

"You will stay with me, Bob?" she called in a cracked, pleading voice. "No divorce? It's against God's bidding, you know. It's..."

He spat a last curse at her and hurled himself from the house's hateful confines. This time he did go down to the mill. He hammered the door until he brought old Saul Ephraim out of a sound sleep. He gave him two dollars for a pint of his most devastatingly potent "white lightning."

He sat with his back to the barn wall, listening to the rats and mice whisking in the quiet night. Otherwise he heard only the gurgle of the throat-searing moonshine. At that last moment before he passed out, fell face down into a pile of straw, he remembered fighting to formulate garbled words.

What did it mean? What did any of it mean?

Then he was falling, tumbling through a thousand miles of black, terrifying emptiness.

CHAPTER TEN

Bob went on with his sleepwalker's existence, his only salvation being those nights and weekends when he fled to the solace of Penny's arms, of Penny's loins. There was always his job at the blacksmith shop, where he worked off his frustrations. At home, he ate sullenly, read his newspapers, saw to other minor needs. He still slept in his own bed, even though Ardis still persisted in the nightly ritual of moving her pillow into the guest room. In the morning, she was up before him; his breakfast and his lunch pail were always ready when he entered the kitchen. Once or twice he'd restated his ultimatum, had told her to get a lawyer, to start divorce proceedings. He was giving her ample grounds-infidelity, blatant and unremitting-she must make the first move. If he lost everything he'd worked for all these years to her rapacious demands, so be it.

But each time he mentioned divorce, Ardis glared venomously at him. There would be no divorce. He could play his adulterer's role to the hilt; she would abide in hers as the wronged, steadfast, and loyal wife. Divorce was an abomination in the sight of God. She wouldn't risk His wrath by being party to such sacrilege.

Other than that, there was no other intercourse. Only the hateful glares, .the silences that drove him from the house night after night. Sometimes he went to Penny. Other times there were the card games with other married men who were solving their problems by ignoring them. This escape was better than none at all.

And yet there was an eerie, unaccountable change in Ardis, something he couldn't quite put his finger upon. Though he never touched her after that night, he was possessed by the uncanny feeling that if he would, Ardis would not rebuff him. Were he to insist on his conjugal rights, she seemed to say, she would honor his desire. Granted, she most definitely wouldn't wallow and writhe, become the passionate woman he wanted, but he could take his pleasure with her to at least that limited extent.

There was another glaring change in her temperament. Where she'd once been sanctimonious and holier-than-thou, her actions now became more demented than pious. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, there was a subtle aura of sexuality about her these days.

Unless Bob was wrong, Ardis was fussing with herself more than before. And while she still didn't affect makeup, he did notice that she'd started wearing some of her old clothes-pretty, figure-revealing items. She bought some new minor items-sheer, dark hosiery, two pairs of modish shoes, even seductive lingerie-and Bob couldn't help but feel a certain pity for her. Was she actually trying? Too late, of course, but wasn't she actually waiting, expecting him to make the first move?

At times, the concept jarred him, and he thought to take her up on her bid. But then, recalling how she'd deceived him the last time, gone cold at the crucial moment, he quickly quashed such lust. How could he even think of such a thing when he loved Penny, wanted Penny as much as he did?

Day by day, the fanaticism became more rampant; it seemed she talked to herself aloud more often, that she shot lunatic glances every chance she got, as if she were bargaining, making peace with an angry savior. She seemed downright loony at times.

The hideous, unexpected crisis came one night in early October. Indian summer was at its peak and even after sundown the temperature still held at a balmy eighty degrees. Ardis, strangely coquettish, had suggested they drive to Dolton to take in a movie. Bob was well aware of her low regard of motion pictures. And Dolton? Twenty miles away? When there was a perfectly good movie theater in Garrett Park?

She was doing it for him, she alibied. She thought it was time they did something together for a change. Plainly agitated, she finally blurted the truth out. "I don't want anyone from the temple seeing me going in there. Please, Bob?" she wheedled. "Can't we go?"

It was a dull night. He was restless, and he finally relented. Ardis had dressed prettily, even wore perfume.

They reached Dolton in time for the second show. It was a Western, of all things, an epic strongly laced with violence and innuendo, and he was sorry he'd brought Ardis. Strangely enough, she didn't sniff at the film's heavy sex content, if anything, she was excited by it, and, as they came out of the theater there was an unnatural pallor to her flesh, a dark glitter to her eyes.

It was eleven by then. The evening had cooled somewhat, but it was still extraordinarily warm. A thin sliver of moon hung in the sky, giving the night a hazy translucence. It was as they left Dolton behind them and headed down the new highway for home that Ardis said a very strange thing.

"It's nothing like that old road. Remember, Bob? Before we were married? Remember how we used to park? The things we used to do?"

He was almost embarrassed. "I should think that'd be the last thing you'd wanna remember."

A spooky smile curved her lips. "A woman can change her mind, can't she? Do you think, Bob ... if you tried ... you could find that country road again? Could we go back there?"

A shudder ran down his spine. "Ardis? You sure you know what y'r talking about? You wanna go there now?"

"Yes, now." She leaned forward, stared ahead, and in that moment she was transformed; it was almost as if ten years hadn't passed, as if they were transported back in time. Bob trembled uncontrollably; he found himself suffused with hot desire. His penis slowly unlimbered in his trousers. "Oh, please, Bob? This one last time?"

He drove like he was in a trance. His heart pounded and he dared to. dream the wildest dreams. He found the country road easily and veered right. Then he found the high, thick hedge to the left-a virtual forest now. The farmer's access road was there and, impulsively, he turned in. The lights were out; the engine was killed. He sat in the darkness, staring out, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dull glow of the moonlight.

"Do you suppose ... Bob? Could we get out?

There's a blanket in back, isn't there? We could ... sit on that a little while."

Bob got out, went to the back, and produced the dusty blanket which was wrapped around some steel tarp stakes. As he picked up the bundle viciously, he tried to clear his head, but the fever was too strong; he simply couldn't think straight. Whatever was going on in Ardis' mind, whatever this was all about-he had to find out. Moving like a sleepwalker, he spread the blanket on a flat, grass-turfed spot, using the stakes to secure the cover at each corner.

"Ardis?" he called softly. "You wanna come out now?"

The springs creaked. He heard the click of the door latch. Then the dome light came on and caught Ardis as she scrambled out. In that moment, catching a glimpse of white flesh, of contrasting black lingerie, he froze, didn't dare believe his eyes. But then the door slammed, and Ardis walked toward him, hesitant, ghostly, stripped to her lingerie-true harlot's rags.

Most curious of all, she still carried her white purse-a curious parody of a prim and proper female setting off on a morning's shopping trip. His breath caught in his throat; his jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. This apparition-cool as a cucumber? Ardis? His high-and-mighty wife? He must be dreaming this! He'd most certainly wake up any minute now.

She unconcernedly dropped to her knees on the blanket's center, rolling into sitting position. And still he couldn't take his eyes off Ardis. That underwear-jet black, shimmering, dripping with lace trim-where had she got it? It had to be new, purchased with but one purpose in mind-to drive Bob completely out of his skull!

"Your clothes, Bob," the words finally cut through. "Aren't you going to take them off? Seems to me, the last time we were here, you couldn't strip down fast enough." She turned her head and surveyed the surroundings. "It almost seems the same, doesn't it?"

A moment later, his fingers clumsy, frenzied, he was undoing buttons, forcing buckles, yanking zippers. His penis swung free, slapping wetly against his thighs as he dropped to his knees and crawled toward her. The next minute the abyss of the years was closed between them; they were in a hot, passionate embrace, their yearning lips meshed, grinding, devouring.

He moaned and sank deeper into baffled trance. Bob was in no mood to question the development. Greedily, he tore at Ardis with lips and teeth and famished fingers. Her flesh, her sweet flesh. Soft, yielding, willing, as it had once been. The velvety plumpness of her breasts, of her hard tits. The moist, crisp mat between her welcoming legs. The fat puffiness of her slick vagina. The sizzling, electric smoothness of her nyloned legs. The cold slipperiness of her pumps against his ankles, his naked calves. The odor of her mouth, of her nipples. Of her pungent, woman-rich vagina.

The shoes were flung aside. The sheer hosiery was unsnapped from her garter belt. The brassiere and the panties floated magically away. Now he undid her garter belt, whisked it into the gloom. Voraciously, his mouth was at her succulent tits. His hand was between her legs, his finger instantly, slickly invading her. He groaned, wanted to grind her into his arms, to crush her, pulverize her. But then gradually, his passion evened out. Not of his own volition, but mystically, almost as if Ardis had willed it.

"I'm afraid, Bob," she creaked, vestiges of her old self breaking through. "I'm afraid of how I'll act. I'm afraid I'll disappoint you again. Please, honey? like you did that one time? Tie me down. Don't give me a chance. Make me do those things! I will, I swear! Only you have to be boss. You have to force me! No matter what I say, no matter how much I fight ... you must be strong." Her eyes rolled crazily. "You must master me! Make me every evil thing you've ever wanted!"

For an eternity he was frozen over her, his eyes bulging, his spine shrinking inch by inch in his back, each shortening making him twitch and gasp. "I don't have anything, Ardis," he blurted, "to ... tie you with."

Then the prim purse made sense. "In my bag, darling. Some old stockings. I brought them along ... just in case. Oh, please! You will, Bob, won't you? You will! You must! I need that so. I've been so cruel to you. Now you must be cruel to me."

Five minutes later, he had pounded the stakes firmly into the ground and trussed Ardis in a spread-eagled X across the blanket, her limbs stretched to breaking point. He stood over her, stared at the luminously glowing body, the dark smudges of her nipples, at the patch of black fur marking the heart of that human cross. He assessed the addled glitter in her eyes, her pleading, gibberish dripping mouth.

"Do it to me. Begin. Master me. Make me do the things a woman ... a real woman ... should!"

It was then that a blazing spark ignited his brain. It was then that he finally recalled where he'd seen that crazed diabolic glitter in a woman's eyes before. Ardis' face seemingly melted and was replaced by the leering, babbling one that had belonged to-

The name, the name! Who was it! Where had their paths crossed before? Where?

Then the image clarified. Edna-his brain regurgitated. That apartment in Nashville. Edna and her leather whip, that same whip he'd lashed her with, the whip she'd jammed up his very ass.

He swayed, groaning sickly as the meaning staggered him. Dear God, No! Not Ardis! She wasn't like that! She wasn't a masochist, was she?

Or was she? Wasn't self-mortification, self-denial, self-denigration the uttermost touchstone of Christianity. Abuse the flesh, in Christ's name! Now images of the flagellants of Italy and Mexico, of monks who whipped themselves on pilgrimages until they drew blood, flashed before his eyes. Those exhibitionistic penitents who jammed crowns of thorns on their foreheads in emulation of Christ. The ones who bore crushingly heavy crosses for miles during Holy Week. Weren't there holy orders in which self-mortification of the flesh was basic ritual!

But Ardis? Was this humiliation and abuse what she really wanted? Had she been building to this moment all of their married life? Was she now to use him as an implement of that most incandescent of all religious ecstasies?

The thoughts were instantaneous, shattering; they came and went until, very quickly, they ceased to register at all. The only thing that remained was lust. Pure and simple lust.

like some blind, snarling beast, he fell upon Ardis. He hobbled upward on her body, his penis leaving a slippery trail on her belly and between her breasts. He paused to taunt her breasts. He exulted in the way Ardis flopped with ecstasy at the defamation. Moments later, virtually sitting on her heaving breasts, he was slithering his penis back and forth across her pleading lips.

His lips curled in supreme disgust. Ardis had been a masochist all the time, only he'd been too stupid to see it. Those other time she'd stopped too soon! He'd become terrified, backed off. When all the time, in her depraved heart, Ardis had been begging him to go on, to force her to accept what was, without her ever knowing it, her most basic nature-the drive motivating her entire life.

"Please, please," she howled now. "Don't torture me, darling." Her voice was guttural, thick, demented. "Give it to me. Shove it into me. Into my mouth. My dirty, sinful mouth. Rape me with it. Shove it right down my evil throat."

Again his stomach tilted as he recalled Edna Gurley.

Again lust overcame revulsion, and he adjusted and tormented Ardis further by working his tool over her eyes, her nose, back to her mouth, her teeth again. And finally, her head straining up, her lips smacking and popping as she missed capturing him in her mouth, he gave her that tasty gift He eased his tool into her slowly, carefully; he gloried in her contented, humming mutters of pleasure. He'd been sucked in his time by experts. But none of them could compare with the way this transformed slut was gobbling him, virtually drawing him out by the roots.

He stood it as long as he could. And for once in his life, he wanted to feel it spurt deep in her sanctimonious mouth; he wanted to feel her throat muscles constrict as she swallowed every drop of his. come.

But Ardis groaned. She clamped her teeth murderously on him. His hand lashed out, and he slapped her twice. "Open up, slut!" he spat. "Open that gate, or else." Another head-jolting slap. "Open up! Take your punishment like a good little girl. like the good little pig you are!"

Ardis' whole body exploded in an ecstatic spasm. The cries issuing from her throat reflected pure delight and gratitude. Her jaws fell open and his penis battered in, pausing only when it hit the depths of her throat. He adjusted his stroke and began slamming in and out of her in a steady cadence.

"Yes," he growled. "Yes, you cocksucking bitch! Chew it, suck it. Get it hard again so I can slam it up your rotten, diseased cunt."

Perhaps five minutes later, the world long since left behind them, his penis was restretching in her mouth. When it was hard and clean, sparkling wetly in the dim light, he yanked it away from her. A moment later he was between her legs, slamming his penis into her vagina with one, vicious movement. Ardis screamed with pain and ecstasy.

He called her every dirty, demeaning name under the sun. Ardis flourished beneath the perverted praise. She orgasmed-real orgasms; no one could fake climaxes like those-and orgasmed again. It was the first time she'd come in years. Then Bob was booming inside her.

Again he hung over her face. Again Ardis eagerly strained to suck his tool. Again she restored it to hardness.

What came next she didn't want, but she got it just the same. Reduced to bestial frenzy by then, Bob untied her ankles, bringing her legs up perpendicular to her torso. Holding her firmly by the ankles, he forced his penis into her ass. Ardis screamed and pleaded as best she could, but with her wrists tied, she was helpless. The crescendo of her screams climbed as he buried himself to the testicles in her anus. Then, as the pain was blunted, as the magnitude of her vilification registered, she sank into a grateful, slobbering oblivion once more.

The narrowness of her anus, the snuffling joy of her cries, coaxed still another charge-watery and hot-from him. He douched her bowels generously, brutally; he exulted in her filthy descriptions, in her sublime joy.

"So hot, darling!" she shrilled. "So scalding hot! I feel so dirty, so evil!"

But the travesty of love wasn't over yet, for now, miraculously, Bob found himself kneeling away from her, his leather belt in his hands. "Please, please, please..." she chanted fanatically. "I've been bad, very bad. I've been evil. I've broken God's most sacred laws. I've honored Satan. I've been a whore, a slut. You must punish me. As God will punish me! Oh, do it, Bob! Do it! Whip me until I bleed!"

He emerged from a trance to find himself hovering over Ardis, the belt rising and falling on her legs, her thighs, her belly, her breasts, even her face. He was punishing himself as well, taking out his self-loathing and disgust on her with brutality. But if Ardis was in torment, one would never know it. She was seemingly in sexual transport; she writhed and jumped on the blanket ecstatically.

One of the stockings tore loose from a stake and she managed to flop on her belly. She offered her virginal back and buttocks for the kiss of the lash. At the last he forced her to his penis again. She must clean him a last time; she must remove the residue from his rod. She did it willingly, eagerly, so long as he whipped her.

When it ended, Bob. couldn't quite recall. The next thing he knew, he was standing away from Ardis; he was crashing into the underbrush, where he finally stopped and heaved into the grass. He heaved and heaved.

Ardis was sitting in dreamy swoon on the blanket when he returned; she was rapturously daubing, the blood from her body, humming happily as she did so. An ugly welt on one cheek was bleeding, and her mouth was smudged with blood.

"We'll come again, won't we, darling?" Ardis said in a childish singsong. "You'll do this again, won't you? You'll punish Ardis for the unredeemed sinner she is?"

How they got home, into the house without being seen, Bob never knew. But they managed somehow and got the babysitter out of the house without her seeing Ardis or suspecting something was insanely awry. No sooner were they alone when Ardis flung herself at his feet again, clung to his legs, and tried burying her bruised, welted face into his crotch again.

He kicked her aside and left the house. He fought nausea all the way to the car. Then the engine roared. He sped into the night as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.

Halfway to Jessup, he stopped at a roadside phone booth to call Penny. "I've got to see you, darling," he pleaded. The desperation in his voice was signal enough, and she quickly agreed to meet him at their favorite motel.

The motor court owner wasn't happy about being awakened at that hour, but, when Bob flashed two twenties before his eyes, he instantly ceased his grumbling.

Bob fell to his knees before Penny and buried his face in her thighs the minute the door was locked behind them. A second later, her skirts were turned back; her panties were torn away. And in mock penitence of his own, Bob dedicatedly, noisily, desperately gobbled her vagina as if his life depended upon it.

"I love you, Penny," he proclaimed from time to time as he came up for air. "I love you, love you! I want and need you. We can't go on like this. Something good has to happen fr Us soon. Oh, God, if I can't have you, I simply don't wanna go on living."

Bob was never to realize just how prophetic his words would one day turn out to be.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The faces that peered out at Bob from the gates of Pima State Hospital were all the same. like the faces of lost children, heads swaying like heavy-headed flowers. He parked the car and entered the clinical white-tiled corridor of the main building, walked it with heels clicking then came face to face with a sea of vacant wicker rockers. A nut house, God!, he thought. And Ardis here? What have I done, what have I done? His imagination filled the rocking chairs with drowning faces that would sit and rock forever, staring at nothing, seeing only mixed-up glimpses of the past.

The phone call had come from the local sheriffs office. Ardis had been arrested-gone crazy or something-after she had taken all her clothes off in front of a church. She'd been dragged away in a sheet wrapped hastily around her by a not too calm deputy. He had only been a rookie, had never been trained for that sort of thing. He had handcuffed the hysterical woman, shoved her into the back of his patrol car and driven her to the women's jail. From there a judge had hastily committed Ardis for mental observation.

Standing in the corridor and staring at the empty chairs, Bob was confronted by a hairless man in a white coat and fish-eye glasses.

"Can I help you?" fish-eyes asked, sticking a pencil in his lapel pocket.

"Uh ... I was asked to come to see a Doctor Diamond. It's about my wife, Ardis Birmingham."

He was escorted to a small office in the rear of the building. The office was empty and he was told to wait, and, while he did, he thought about Ardis. What have I done, what have I done to her? kept echoing in his confused brain.

Doctor Kathryn Diamond entered her office, sat behind her desk, motioned for Bob to sit down. She was elderly, plump, with bright kindly eyes and a warm smile. She placed a folder on her desk, took out several pages of medical reports. She fanned them out on the desk as one would a deck of cards, topping them with a batch of handwritten letters. Bob recognized the writing as Ardis'. They all began: Dear God, Dear God, in bright blue ink. The writing was very neat, very steady.

Doctor Diamond changed glasses, then she examined the letters carefully, calmly. She said nothing and Bob felt he had to.

"What's happening here? I came home from work and..."

"We know all that," she said crisply.

"And?"

She paused for a long time. Dr. Diamond patted her gray hair into place. "These letters were in your wife's pocketbook when she was brought in. I ... don't think it would be good for you to read them at present."

"Is she sick? What the hell's the matter with her?"

"When she was escorted in, she complained of feeling a strong constriction in her throat. I examined her, could find nothing wrong. We even had a throat specialist look at her, and he reported that while there was nothing whatever wrong with your wife's throat, he sensed that she was carrying a heavy mental burden and suggested psychoanalysis. Your wife was desperately afraid, but would unburden herself to me only so far as to say she felt herself 'possessed. "

"Possessed?" Bob asked, an eyebrow raising. "By an evil spirit, do you mean?"

"Yes. She associated it with the pain in her throat. I examined her again. There was no vestige of inflammation of throat or larynx. Then she broke down crying, saying over and over again, 'There is evil in me. The evil was in him, and now his evil is in me and on me'. I can only gather from these letters she wrote to herself that she means you, Mister Birmingham."

"Let me see those letters!"

"Not just now. We must talk about her treatment. I think hypnotic therapy might work very well in this case. She should respond. There's no need for her to stay with us more than a few days, then she can take out-patient treatment. But part 'of that treatment will have to come from you ... at home, I mean."

"From me?"

"Yes. You must be very careful the way you treat her. She seems to associate sex with a sort of guilt complex she's nursing. A religious syndrome, I would say. So there must be no sexual contact for a while. It may very well deepen the obsession and she could rebel again."

"What the hell are you telling me, that I'm some kinda sex maniac?"

"Of course not. From her letters, I'd say you are very normally adjusted in your sex drives, but don't you see, she doesn't think so."

"Well," Bob said, "that' pretty interesting. Do you mind if I smoke, Doctor?" With the cigarette between his lips, he permitted himself a little laugh. "Ardis going off her rocker. I can't believe it!"

"I wouldn't put it that way. Just a temporary emotional setback. With the proper treatment, she'll be just fine in a few weeks."

Bob flipped the ash of the cigarette into the desk ashtray. 'Way in the back of his mind, an idea was beginning to take root.

"Lissen," he started. "I don't know nothin' about this headshrinking business. If Ardis got somethin' wrong in her head, maybe she oughta stay here awhile." Couldn't you get a divorce real easy if your wife was nuts and in an asylum? The idea loomed larger, and a new sparkle came into his eyes. Perhaps Dr. Diamond caught it.

"There is really very little for you to know. Sometimes a little knowledge can be dangerous. Just omit any sexual advances for a few weeks. Is that too much to ask?" She smiled.

"But if she's insane..."

"Whoever said that? I told you it's just a temporary..."

"I know, I know. But I know her too ... she ... well, this isn't the first time she's done something nutty."

"Oh? Tell me about it." The smile faded from Dr. Diamond's face.

Bob couldn't. He stuttered, put his cigarette out, shook his head. "It's all this religious crap," was all he could say. "You know...."

"Yes, the letters she wrote have deep religious overtones. But nothing serious, really. Now, I do have a heavy case load today, and if you will drive your wife home Friday, I'll see to her discharge. Of course, there will be the authorities that you Will have to deal with. Indecent exposure, I think the charge was. But I think with my report the charges should be dropped." Dr. Diamond smiled, a thin but steady smile.

His easy way out vanished in that moment. He would have to take Ardis home, and she'd be worse than ever after this.

He picked Ardis up on Friday morning. She said nothing, absolutely nothing. All the way home, she said nothing. He tried to make light conversation several times, but she didn't respond. Just stared out at the hills along the side of the road as he drove.

"You'll have a nice rest, Ardis."

Nothing.

"Do some sewing, mebbe; you'll like that" Nothing.

"It's nothin', ya know. People have little breakdowns all the time. A little rest, a little sunshine..."

Nothing.

"And I'll help you. Help you all I can. Mebbe git a woman in to do the cleaning."

Nothing.

"I'll take a few days off; you can go fishing with me. like we did when we were first married."

Nothing.

"Tell me what it is you want me to do and I'll do it, Ardis."

Nothing. Just staring out the window, staring, staring...

"No cookin' tonight. I'll git us some Southern fried chicken in a basket. We'll just sit and munch and watch television . ... "

Nothing.

And then he rode in silence too. He was thinking of the law; he'd have to get a lawyer for sure. What could they do to her? After all, she hadn't hurt anyone. Except maybe a few old stuffy women who were gossiping about the "dreadful exhibition." Shit. Well ... good. Maybe they wouldn't let her in that damned church again; that might cure a lot of things. And then his thoughts turned to Penny.

Penny was like another world, an escape from this madness. He would not give up Penny. He'd do anything to help Ardis. Christ, anyone would help a sick person-but give up Penny, no! She was the only sanity left on this rotten earth!

When they arrived home, Ardis walked into the living room as if she had never been there before. She looked around at the walls, the furniture, the curtains. Finally she spoke, saying something that left Bob completely befuddled. "The loving is easy; it's the living that's hard."

Then she went into the bedroom. Bob was actually afraid to follow.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bob hadn't, of course, told Penny about that night in the field, of his bestial breakdown. Instead he'd stressed Ardis' mental state; he'd begged for time to make the break as easy for her as he possibly could. If he could just have a couple more weeks-

All of which-after Bob's vehement outpourings of rage and hatred for his wife-was very hard for Penny to understand. But if love is not steadfast, it is nothing at all.

They were together every chance they had. Indeed, it was all Bob had. Without their runaway afternoons, their stolen weekends, he most certainly would have gone insane himself.

And since Ardis was in such a preoccupied, prayer-mumbling coma most of the time, since she never seemed to notice whether he was around or not. She wouldn't miss him.

And on a drizzly, chill Wednesday, the last of October, Bob and Penny once more reunited in their motel hideaway. By rights he should have been at work, but, the urge undeniable, he'd left Aldus Wells in charge. Taking the fresh clothes from their hiding place beneath the pickup's seat, he'd streaked away for the afternoon. Changing in the men's room at a gas station, he was in Haines by two o'clock. They'd have three glorious hours of love before it would be time to return to the harsh reality of the world-of Garrett Park and Ardis.

She had the Buick this afternoon. Seemingly in a better frame of mind lately, he'd coaxed Ardis into driving into town for some shopping. She should splurge on something pretty for herself. Ardis would be so preoccupied with her holiday that it would never occur to her to check on him.

"Oh, Penny, darling," he moaned now, both of them already naked in bed. "If you only knew how much this means to me, how I live for these moments with you." He made a slavish ritual of sliding his lips up and down her silky, fragrant thighs. He actually arranged her knees so her gold-furred vagina was a gaping, liquid wound. Then he slowly, tenderly bent his face to her sweet mound, let his tongue flick, lance the swollen boil of her passion, an obeisance that made her squirm and groan.

For an eternity, he cowered in her humid nest, probed her hole with his tongue. He made a reverent ceremony of swabbing her labia, tickling the soft down surrounding it. Again his tongue slashed her clitoris. Surrendering herself totally to him, she orgasmed, jittered, her pantings proud and unrestrained.

Then he was up, lying in her arms, his lips devouring hers, his tongue dancing in her mouth, His mouth dropped to her breasts, tugged and suctioned her tits, driving Penny to still more ecstasy. "When, when," she wailed, "When, darling? When will we be together for good? As man and wife? I long for it so desperately."

"I know," he mumbled, pulling his mouth from her tits momentarily. "I know how you feel. Don't you think I want it too? Don't you think I hate this sneaking around? I want to be seen on the streets with you. I want the whole world to know that this is my wife ... the woman I love. There are so many things we haven't shared yet, baby. Just the simple act of going to a movie together, on a picnic ... taking a trip somewhere. It's worth waiting for, angel. Soon now. Something's bound to happen."

"Oh, I want you, Bob! I love you so desperately. If I could only show you ... prove how deeply I love you. Please, darling? Today? This afternoon? That thing I've wanted from you? Please, baby? Won't you make love to my ass?"

"No, no, Penny," he gasped, a chilling recollection of that night with Ardis instantly seizing in his brain. "Don't ask for that. I can't. I just can't! I'd hurt you! I'd kill you. Maybe someday. Only not..."

"What if we never have that someday?" she pleaded. "What if something happens to us, and we never find the time ... the courage to do that? If I were to die without having done that with you..."

"Die? Don't talk about dying, Penny. We're going to live forever ... be happy forever and ever. Oh, God, I want to cry when I think of how if s going to be. You and me ... together."

"I want to suck you. To suck you until you come. I want to do so much for you, give you so much. Please, Bob! Let me! You must! I've been dreaming about it all week long. If that gives you pleasure ... then it gives me equal pleasure. You will, won't you, baby?" she coaxed.

He was thrilled. This angel, this sweet angel. Instantly his penis tingled and throbbed: he felt his juice boil. "If. ... if that's what you really want But then, how am I going to take care of you ... how'll I fuck you regular?"

Her giggle was evil, smug. "You just let me worry about that, huh? Mama's got ways."

Then it was her turn to arrange Bob on the bed, to place and spread his legs, to handle his balls, to playfully slap his penis, work his ooze into his glans with tender, loving fingers. And not much later, when he was thrashing and hissing helplessly-

Her mouth, hot and liquid, clinging fire descended upon his penis. Her tongue vibrated; her lips ringed him in choppy sucking mouthings. Slowly, she sank her mouth onto his penis. She crooned happily, gratefully, harbored as much of him as she could. Now her mouth began going up and down slowly, ritualistically, her lips a hot, stripping ring.

Both Bob and Penny were so far adrift in their self-sacrificing love that they never heard the slight click of the door. In their haste, they'd neglected to lock it. Suddenly, it was flung open. The glare of the light stunned them to frozen immobility. Penny, farthest into ecstasy, was the last to recover. Dreamily, her eyes still not focusing, she raised her head. It seemingly took her a century to turn her head toward the door.

Ardis stood with her back to the now closed door. She held up an ugly automatic in both hands, braced it as best she could.

"Ardis!" Bob bellowed. "Put that damned thing down!"

"Jezebel!" Ardis screamed, her voice insane. "Filthy rotten adultress! Did you think I'd let this go on forever? How stupid do you think I am? Look at you! Perverts, both of you! Slime dripping from both of you!" Her eyes rolled dementedly one last time, then settled, firmed. The automatic steadied in her hand, zeroed in on them.

"No, dear God, no!" Penny screamed.

It was the last thing she ever said. Bob leaped for Penny, wanting to protect her body with his own. But he was too late. Suddenly her face exploded. Blood was all over the bed, over the wall. He whirled toward Ardis.

"The Lord works in wondrous ways," she was chanting, her eyes crazed, filmed. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Vengeance is..."

Bob never heard the rest of it. For then the gun boomed again, and he was flung back. He felt like someone had just hit him with an axe. He fought for breath; he fought to get at Ardis. The gun roared again, and he was spun completely around. He fell face down on the bed, his torso on the mattress, his legs hanging down.

In that last instant of life, two things registered on his brain: One was the sight of Ardis jamming the gun into her mouth, pulling the trigger, splattering the door behind her with her own brains. The second was his futile attempt to climb toward Penny, to touch her, comfort her one last time. But he could not. No! Don't let it end now! So close-his mind thundered. So close to paradise, and yet so far. Penny-oh, Penny! I love-

He slid off the bed, fell onto his back. He stared unseeing at the motel room's ceiling.

The world spun crazily for Bob. That white ceiling became black; it oozed in from the outer edges, and the white dot in the centerlast glimpse into eternity-began to get smaller, still smaller. The black light enveloped the earth, plunged the universe into gloom. A moment later even that tiny pinprick in the doom of heaven, a glittering diamond now-last benign glance from a stern yet merciful God-went out.

A booming, deafening rush of wind sounded. Then there was an earth-shrouding silence. And Bob was gone.

In the days that followed, the police unraveled the mystery of the three deaths in the small motel room. They grilled Penny's husband and he was a prime suspect until the coroner verified that it was actually two murders and a suicide. Pima State Hospital defended themselves with the stiff statement: "The patient exhibited no homicidal tendencies during her confinement, and we judged her release to be perfectly safe."

In Ardis' desk drawer the police found dozens of slips of paper, all with the same message scribbled on them:

"The loving is easy; it's the living that's hard."

THE END
The Girls Came C.O.D. ....(88k)    by J.J. Montague





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