Carol Hill was only seventeen, but she looked at least twenty. What men didn't know, Carol figured, would hurt them ... and that was exactly what she wanted! She had suffered brutal attacks at the hands of two men, and so she vowed to wreak lusty vengeance on every man who crossed her path. She was frigid in the technical sense of the word, as defined in Drever's Dictionary of Psychology: "absence of normal sexual desire ... in women."-obsessed with fear and-haired, a fixation defined by Drever as "emotional attitude ... interpreted psychosexually ... with difficulty in forming new attachments, developing new interests, or establishing new adaptations." But Carol could arouse men's passions-and she used all her feminine charms to bring heartbreak and tragedy to three men before she was able to combat her frigidity and fear-fixation and struggle into the world or normal sexual responses, finally casting aside all the degradation...
CHAPTER ONE
She saw she was going to have trouble with Herb the minute they got in his car. There was a look in his eyes that she'd seen only once before in a man's face; it had nothing to do with love, it was an expression of sheer lust. It had frightened her then and it frightened her now. Torrents of rain made gray walls of the windows, seeming to press her in against him.
"Round and round I go, down and down you go-"
"What, Herb?"
"Nothing." He turned, looking at her, that upsetting fire in his eyes. They didn't focus well. She'd suspected he'd been secretly drinking these past four hours, and now she knew it. "Just singing, Carol, that's all."
She tried to get the conversation on a safe plane. "You've a reason to sing all right, Herb. And a reason to be proud."
"You're right, baby." Herb laughed and put his hand on her leg far above her knee. "I'm about to burst with pride."
"The baby is beautiful. And Laura is a lovely mother, isn't she, Herb?"
"Oh, Laura's a great little mother all right."
"Did you ever see a lovelier baby? No wonder you're singing."
Herb laughed again. "Not singing about the baby, Carol."
He held his hand tightly on her upper leg, his fingers biting into her flesh. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. She caught at his fingers, clinging to them. He looked at her and laughed even louder. Then he glanced over his shoulder toward the lights of the Rockmount Hospital shimmering through the rain. "Baby's in the hospital. Laura's in the hospital. You and me, we're not in the hospital. That's why I'm singing, honey. I'm singing about you."
Carol shook her head. She tried to laugh. "Oh, Herb, don't be a kook."
"You think I'm kookie, hon? I been looking forward to this for a long time. You and me. Alone in that house together. Just sweet, juicy, seventeen-year-old little Carol and ole Herb. Lord, how I been looking forward to this!"
"Herb! Don't talk like that!"
"Why not? It's the living truth!"
"Herb, you've been drinking."
"AH right. I've been drinking. Don't preach, Carol! When you preach at me, you sound like your sister."
"Laura only wants you to be good, Herb. That's all I want, too."
"Well, that's too bad, because ole Herb is not a good boy. Don't worry, baby. Laura knew that when she married me. Laura knew ole Herbie liked to take a drink, liked to meet with the folks in the bars, liked a little variety under his belt once in a while."
"If Laura was aware of all that, she thought she could change you. She hoped she could change you that's why she married you." , "She married me for the same reason she's up in that hospital right now. Because she liked ole Herb and what he could do for her. She was three weeks late, and having hysterics "
"I don't believe you!"
He laughed, putting his head back. "What the hell do I care whether you believe me or not? It's the truth. You ask her! Tell her, Carol, that Herb told you about the time she thought she was pregnant, and she begged old Herb to marry her. You should have heard her!"
"I don't want to hear about it!"
"Seventeen, and still filled with dreams about a guy in a white convertible and a big church wedding, baby?"
"I don't know-maybe I am."
Herb laughed. "Well, it's time you got over that, too, because that ain't the way it is. But don't worry, ole Herb is going to teach you just how it really is."
She shuddered, drawing away from him. She had never seen him so drunk or so wild with unbridled passions during the three months she'd been living with him and Laura. His face was sweated, flushed. He was almost like a stranger, except that a few times when he had found her alone in the house he'd acted like this, and sometimes when Laura was out of the room he'd tried to make a few passes at her, but she'd never been afraid of him before. Always before, Laura had been somewhere nearby, and Carol had always half-believed he was teasing when he reached for her. What man would want her when he had a lovely wife like Laura?
Well, it looked as if she just didn't know much about men, or marriage or anything!
She said, "Start the car, Herb. Let's go home. I'm tired, and tomorrow is a big day."
"Tomorrow is a long way off, Carol, honey. It's tonight we're concerned with. And take my word for it, this is going to be a big night for both of us."
"If you keep talking like that, I'll get out."
"In this rain?" He laughed at her.
"I will, Herb."
He shrugged. "Walk home in the rain. Catch your death of cold. It won't matter, ole Herb'll be waiting when you get there."
"Herb, stop talking like that." She gazed at him in the overheated, steamed-up car, with the rain oozing down the windows thicker than syrup. She felt the perspiration break out on her forehead.
She shook her head. She admitted she was only seventeen and didn't know much maybe nothing, as Herb said, but she had not known men were like this. How could Herb talk to her like this, and move his hand on her leg, gazing at her with his eyes savagely afire while his wife lay in recovery after having his baby only a little while ago?
She tried to tell herself it was because he had been drinking. Laura had been a long time in labor, and Carol had gone with Herb to the hospital to wait it out. Laura had a bad time. The nurses said it was like that sometimes with the first one. "Like getting the first olive out of the bottle," Herb had said, talking louder than necessary. The nurses had glanced at him reproachfully.
Carol had seen him leave the waiting room several times. She saw that he talked more, his laugh was looser, his eyes became glassy. She supposed he was drinking because he felt so sorry for Laura and, as she felt, helpless to do anything to alleviate the pain or make the delivery easier for her.
He had gotten drunk while they waited up there in the hospital. But when they had gone in to see Laura and the new baby girl finally, he acted as if he were completely sober, and in the excitement Carol had forgotten all about his drinking.
"Come on, Herb," she said now, "Let's go."
"Sure. All I'm waiting for is you."
"What about me?"
"Where you want to go? We got to celebrate. You tell ole Herb where you want to go."
"I don't want to go anywhere, Herb. Just take me home. I've got to work tomorrow, and I'm tired. I'm too tired to go anywhere. But you can go out and celebrate alone, if you want to."
"Can't celebrate without you."
"I wouldn't be any fun, Herb, as tired as I am."
"Let me worry about that. We got to celebrate."
"You go celebrate, Herb. It's your baby."
"Cut that out, Carol!" Herb's voice hardened. "I told you forget that proud father business! That ain't me! Laura wanted a brat. Well, she got one. Fooling around with ole Herb she'd-likely have gotten one whether she wanted it or not. But that's what she wanted. And that's what she got. I don't want to hear any more about it. It's you and me I want to celebrate. You and me, Carol baby, and all the lovely time we've got together. Just you and me. Round and round. Down and down. Ole Herb's magic. We got to celebrate."
"Take me home!"
"Sure. We'll go home, if that's where you want to celebrate. Thought you might want to have a few drinks first, that's all."
She shook her head. "Suppose I told Laura all this, Herb?"
He laughed and shrugged. "Suppose you did? You want to know what would happen? First, Laura would raise hell with me, and I'd kick her the hell out. So you'd have wrecked her marriage. Second, I'd tell her you were a liar, that you went on the make for me and so if it didn't wreck our marriage, she'd kick you out, and there'd go your dear sister's companionship. You can't win, baby, except one way learning to love ole Herb, and what he's got for you!"
He pulled her over against him in the car. She fought at him but he pressed her head back on the seat. She twisted her head.
Raging, Herb caught her chin in his hand, held her cruelly. "Hold still, damn you! This is just like getting that olive out of the bottle, baby. It's real easy after the first one!"
"I hate you!"
"That's not too bad! Hate will do. It puts fire in those beautiful eyes. You know you got beautiful eyes, Carol? They've been driving me crazy all these weeks, and you know it. But you sit here and pretend you don't know!"
"I didn't know! I didn't know you were thinking about me!"
"Don't lie! You let me feel you when Laura was out of the room."
"I thought you were kidding!"
"Well, now you know! When I make a pass, I'm not fooling!"
"Let me go!"
"Not yet, Carol. I've been wanting this too long."
"Let me go!"
"You're repeating yourself! And oh, how you're going to hate yourself in the morning, for fighting me. You're fighting me now, baby, but before long you'll be loving me."
"Never!"
"Never say never, baby. That's a long time. And just try this on for size."
Still holding her chin in his hand, he crushed his mouth over hers. He pushed his tongue between her lips. She sobbed, struggling. He closed his fingers against her cheeks, pressing his thumb in viciously.
She opened her mouth to cry out. He laughed and thrust his tongue between her teeth, deep into her mouth. She gagged, fighting at him.
He probed with his tongue as if drinking the nectar of her mouth. He gasped, breathing wildly, his hands tightening on her.
He released her at last. "Oh, man," he whispered. "How I needed that. How long I've waited for that. I've been crazy for you, baby, since the first time I saw you. Right then, I knew I had to have you."
"That was the day you married Laura!" She shook her head, repelled.
"That's right, sugar! That's when ole Herb saw how smart he had been. What a bargain he'd gotten, marrying eager little ole Laura and getting two for one. All I been waiting for ever since was getting you like this alone with nobody to bother us, and nothing but time!"
"You're rotten and insane and dirty."
"Honey, you'll turn my head with all those nice words!"
She lunged across the seat, striking at the door handle. He laughed loosely and snagged her, catching at her dress and jerking her back.
Carol cried out.
He hooked his arm around her neck and drew her back, tightening his arm so she could barely breathe.
"Now you sit still, Carol. You ain't going nowhere, except with me."
He started the car now, put it in gear and held her against him with his arm across her throat. When she struggled he tightened his arm until she was gasping for breath. She stopped fighting then and lay still.
The rain continued to fall in blinding shafts as he drove them through the water-covered streets to his home in the new Heaven Heights subdivision. Her head held immobile against his chest, Carol stared out the window into the impenetrable wall of water, too filled with fear and loathing to think straight at all.
When she struggled, Herb went wild with rage and hysterical laughter, fighting her and forgetting the car and the rain. She had had no idea he was that drunk. The car skidded crazily, careening crab-like along the slick pavement.
Carol cried out. He grabbed the wheel at the last minute before they crashed. All she could think was that if Herb were killed in this wild ride, the new baby would have no father and even as she thought what a poor excuse for a parent Herb was, she knew her own life was not worth denying that baby the right to grow up cared for and Laura would have no husband. Carol knew now what a rotten husband Herb was, but Laura did not know, she was sure. She also knew that Laura loved Herb with all her heart.
She lay still, hoping that Herb would concentrate on his driving if she no longer struggled against him.
"Please be careful," she whispered. "Please."
"Sure, honey. Don't want anything to happen to you."
She drew a deep breath, hoping that no matter how many drinks Herb had consumed, he might listen to reason.
"You don't want me, Herb," she said.
"Don't I?" He laughed uproariously at this and she felt the car sway perilously on the street. "Tell me about that, Carol. Tell me about how all them dreams I been having about you all these weeks don't mean anything, and I really don't want you."
"You don't, Herb. You've been drinking-"
"Baby, I'd want you if I were stone cold sober and had three bullets in my chest."
"But I don't want you, Herb!"
"You will. You're just a kid. You just got ripe about day before yesterday. What do you know about it? You never had a man, you don't know what a man can be. You never had ole Herb, you don't know what a good man I can be."
"Herb, I'd only be good for you if I wanted you! But I don't! You're my sister's husband. My sister is in the recovery room after having your baby. If you'll let me out now, I'll just go away somewhere. I won't stay with you and Laura any more."
"Relax! Everything's going to be fine."
"Oh, Herb, I never wanted to come between you and Laura."
"Forget that sentimental jazz! This has nothing to do with Laura. This is between you and me. You, me, and them prize boobies that I been wanting to graze on all these weeks. You're the most exciting little wench I ever saw. I got to have you, so you quit fighting!"
"You you wouldn't want to rape me, Herb!"
"I wouldn't want to," he said. Then he laughed. "But I figure a good rape is better than nothing at all. Now it don't have to be that way, you know. All you got to do is to stop being so holy and righteous just relax and enjoy it!"
She struggled against him involuntarily. He cursed and grabbed at her. The car went out of control again, skidding wildly. The headlights danced crazily across the trees along the parkway. A horn blared loudly in warning, like a cry of terror.
Carol caught her breath and lay still, rigid, trembling all over.
"That's better," Herb said. "Nothing worth getting us both killed over. A little fun, that's all. You'll love it once you've tried it."
"Don't, Herb," she said. "Don't go on with this. If you do, I'll hate it, and I'll hate you."
"Lie still and shut up."
Then the car turned into their drive and she sighed audibly, trying to be thankful they'd made it through the wet, slippery streets. Herb stopped the car in the carport and Carol shuddered when he did not release his grip on her.
As he pulled her out of the car, Carol gazed around helplessly, seeing the other houses, a few of them with lights burning and TV sets glowing in the wet darkness. They all seemed so far away, so remote, as if they were on another planet. And she kept thinking that if she screamed there would be a scandal, and that Herb would not even really care only Laura would be hurt, only Laura's marriage would be destroyed. She felt the rush of hatred overcoming her and she tried to break away.
The thought struck her that this was the moment for flight. She had to elude that tight grasp on her arm and run. It was a long three blocks to the bus stop, but she could wait for a bus and spend a night in some hotel. She would stay away until Laura came home from the hospital.
"Stop fighting, Carol," he said. "Where do you think you'd get to in all this rain?" He laughed. "Besides, you go running around alone at night, some guy might attack you."
She shrank from his raucous laughter. She struggled, but his hand tightened and she soon found herself in the foyer of the small house that was almost identical with all the other houses out here. She wondered if all the other men in those other similar houses were like Herb.
She glanced at him, trembling inside. He was a monster. He looked so ordinary five feet six or seven, and weighing no more than a hundred and forty-five. His black hair was cropped close to his skull. There was a curious laxness about his mouth and a glittering in his red-veined brown eyes. His features were sharply hewn, almost delicate, but there was a fierce strength about him built up in the Marines, edged now by drink and desire.
He was good-looking; she'd always thought Herb and Laura made such a lovely couple. He was dark and intense, she willowy and blonde and Laura loved him so terribly!
Carol glanced about her, looking at the familiar rooms as Herb snapped on the lights. The rain battered at the roofing, drummed heavily at the window-' panes and the place was suddenly filled with dread for her. It seemed so crowded, even with just her and
Herb alone in it. He seemed to be everywhere, bigger than life, more threatening, without pity, beyond reason.. She wished she'd had sense enough to realize that something like this might happen if she were alone with Herb.
But she had not. She saw now that he had counted on this. She'd had no experience with men, other than the young boys she had dated and the one man whom she had known long ago, so long ago she'd almost put him out of her mind. She had been so filled with excitement over Laura's new baby and Laura's overflowing happiness. She had thought Herb would share that wonder and thrilling exultance.
How could she have known he would be like this?
He was drunk, and he was wild with lust, and he was unlike he had ever been before.
"Let's stop kidding, Carol! We've fooled around long enough. Laura isn't here for you to run to. If you want to run to her tomorrow, okay, you do that. But stop whining now. You're a big girl. That body of yours is seventeen going on twenty-four. You can't drive a man crazy with those boobs and those legs and that face and not expect him to do something about it!"
Carol stared at him, shaking her head, knowing there was no chance of ever getting through to his reason.
"Oh, Herb! How can you talk like this tonight!" Herb peered at her, a glittering light firing up his eyes.
"Because I been looking forward to this night so much! I've been sick with the dreams I've had. I've lain awake at night and thought about you." He took an unsteady step toward her. "I want some sweetness from you, honey. That's all. And I deserve it after the way I've been so patient, waiting until Laura was out of the house and all. You got to admit, I touched you a few times and you liked it."
"I hated it!"
"You liked it, and you know you liked it, but I waited until Laura wasn't around so she wouldn't get upset. I knew you didn't want to upset Laura. Well, now you can forget about Laura and start thinking about me."
Carol trembled. She wanted to run, but knew she could not get away from him. She wanted to scream, but knew no one would hear her in this rainstorm. And if anyone did hear her, she had wrecked Laura's chance at happiness! Tears welled up in her eyes.
"We're going to celebrate, sugar. Come on and I'll get us a couple of drinks to get you heated up. And stop that crying! You're no kid, and I want you to quit acting like one!"
She glanced at the door an impossible distance! She saw Herb licking his lips, seeing her measuring her chances of making it to the door and into the rainy night. Where would she go? What would Laura's neighbors say? What would they think? She would ruin this neighborhood for Laura if she ran to her neighbors with this ugly truth about Herb. She stared at him, seeing that he had been through all this in his mind. There was no answer, except for her to submit to him, and Herb had known this from the start.
If only she could think of some way to quiet him, and yet keep the neighbors from knowing somehow keep Laura from finding out what sort of man she had married.
She watched him walk toward her, his face flushed with passion, beaded with the raw sweat of the whiskey burning inside him.
She shook her head, feeling helpless against him. She heard him telling her what he was going to do and her face burned at the sound of the filth spilling out of his loose mouth.
She watched him laugh at her outraged reaction. She was giving him everything just as he wanted it, just as he had prepared for it in his lip-smacking, ugly dreams of her. She shuddered, seeing that Herb did not want her passive or willing he wanted her to fight him!
Part of the thrill for Herb was in her fighting him!
She had never suspected this truth about rapists. She had never even thought of this at all as something that could happen to her or to anyone she knew; it was always something that happened in far places, to strangers. But she saw now that this was for real. Herb wanted her to fight him, he wanted to subdue her, to overpower her, to conquer and hurt her. Nothing else was going to excite and satisfy his savage lusts.
"You want a drink before I get you, doll?"
She shook her head. "No, Herb, I don't want to drink at all."
Herb looked at her and shrugged. "Okay, I'll have another one."
It occurred to her that Herb was terribly drunk, and maybe she could delay him, keep him drinking until he passed out or until she could get away.
She knew she was grasping at straws, but there was nothing else left to her. "I guess I do."
Herb poured her a stiff drink in a glass, dropped in some ice and poured in some mixer. He held it out to her, and then drank from the bottle, watching her over the top of it.
"Well, come on, come on, drink up," he growled at her. "It'll warm up those frigid insides. That's all you need to get a little warmed up."
"Yes." Carol tried to smile, tried to deceive him with her smile. "That's all I need, Herb. Give me a little time."
He laughed at her. "Sorry about that," he said. "I would if I could, but I just don't have much time I been waiting too long for all these goodies."
"I can't drink it too fast, it'll make me sick."
He thought about this a moment, drinking again. "Okay, I'll be a good boy. But I'll have to have a little reward for my patience. I'll wait while you drink if you'll strip down for me."
"What?"
"You heard me. Strip. Get them clothes off. All of 'em. I want to look at them boobs. I'm tired of sneaking around trying to catch you in the bathroom, or before you got dressed in the morning, or lying around at night! Damn it! I'm tired of waiting! I want to look at them! Now, you heard me. Strip down!"
The ice clinked against the sides of her glass because her hands were trembling. But in her sick fear, Carol saw that even the hated idea of undressing would delay him and that he would drink more, the more excited he became.
"All right," she said at last, her voice quavering. "Only wait until I'm all undressed and finished with my drink before you touch me, Herb. Please! You can do that much for me!"
"Why should I?"
"You don't want me to hate you, do you, Herb? I've never done it with anybody. Can't you just give me a little time?"
Herb drew the back of his hand across his mouth and took another swig. His hands shook with the excitement mounting inside him. She shivered, seeing that reminding him of her virginity had been a mistake; it made him even wilder and more anxious to ravish her body.
"Then get 'em off. Take a big drink of that stuff and start stripping, sweetie, before I lose my temper and beat hell out of you!"
She stared at him as if he were some monster from a nightmare world and not the man who'd married her sister. She took a drink, almost gagging, but not daring to because this would enrage him more. She forced a smile, while inside she was cringing at the indignity and evil of what he demanded.
"You don't want me to tell Laura you went on the make for me the minute she got out of the house," he said, "you'll jump when I tell you! You'll do what I tell you."
"You can't tell Laura!"
He laughed. "That's up to you, baby. I won't tell your darling sister you tried to cut her out with me, as long as you don't push me. You remember to do what I tell you, and maybe I won't tell Laura the way you wanted to double-cross her with me."
She stared at him, seeing how smoothly he'd push-cu her into the position of being more afraid that Laura would learn what had happened here tonight than of what he might do to her. This wasn't strictly true. It was just that Laura was not here to stand between her and Herb tonight. By the time she heard about this monstrous night, only Laura could be hurt by it.
Herb had her exactly where he wanted her. He had manipulated her perfectly so that she was helpless against him. And this was well planned in advance, too!
The only thing Herb hadn't planned was the rain, and this only added to the heated closeness, as if enclosing them inside its high, wet wall.
"Take your clothes off!" he ordered. "Or do you want me to do it for you?"
"Please, Herb. I said I would." And she shuddered, hearing herself begging Herb to allow her to undress for him! She saw the excitement rise inside him like a fever at her words.
Herb smiled and nodded. "Then do it. Put that drink down and pull off that dress!"
Feeling numbness lowering down over her mind like a curtain, Carol set the glass down on the table. Closing her eyes, she unzipped her dress and reached down slowly to pull it upward over her long, slender legs, her supple hips, the full, high-tilted breasts that drove Herb wild, and then over her honey-blonde hair, snarling it. She didn't care how she looked!
"Lovely! Beautiful!" Herb whispered hoarsely, drinking and nodding, staring at her body revealed in dinging slip, bra and panties.
She watched him drink, seeing that he was drinking more in his excitement. She was terribly afraid of him, but nothing mattered except making him wait, making him drink too much. Only self-preservation had any urgency.
She resisted the terrible urge to fold her arms across the delicate rise of her firm, rounded breasts above the top of her slip.
Herb's veined eyes seemed riveted on those breasts, crawling across them like something loathsome.
"Don't just stand there!" Herb croaked. He drank from the mouth of the bottle. "Get that slip off!"
"All right, Herb. Let me have a drink?"
"Hurry it up! I'm about to burst with wanting you. You can't stall me much longer. No sense trying!"
She took up the glass of bourbon and soda in trembling fingers and took a sip of it, holding it against her mouth until she saw Herb getting restive and red with anger.
She set the glass down and loosened the straps of her slip over her shoulders. Herb was still a few feet from her but the sound of his breathing was the loudest thing in the night
She caught the lace hem of her slip and slowly pulled it upward, hearing the friction-whisper of fabric against flesh.
Carol stood a moment with the slip in her hands, frightened and quivering, fighting down the urge to press it against the bared flesh between her bra and the delicate webbing of her panties.
"Drop it!" He snarled the order, and almost in reaction Carol let the slip flutter to the floor at her feet.
"That's better. You're learning fast."
"One more drink, Herb?"
"You can have a drink when you get them boobies out. I got to see them before I go nuts. I want to see 'em now!"
She nodded, trembling. She reached between her shoulder blades and unsnapped her bra. Her arms seemed numb, as if they could not draw away the light fabric covering her breasts. Her heart hammered crazily, and yet it seemed as though part of her mind was numbed, shutting out all the ugliness of this forced act.
She drew the bra away and her breasts seemed to catch the light of the room, glowing golden, creamy perfection. Her small pink nipples, made erect by her fear and the chill of her nakedness, stood rigid.
Herb moaned deep in his throat and lunged for her. She cried out, backing away, but he was upon her. panting, sobbing, burying his face in the resilient glory of her breasts, kissing them, closing his teeth on her nipples, pulling her closer to him.
He held her with one hand at the small of her back, the other moving excitedly, wildly exploring her breasts, feeling the heat and firmness of them, squeezing, massaging, caressing. It was as if all these weeks he had been dying with hunger for her, stifled by his need, and he could no longer be denied.
She pulled her head back, watching him slobbering at her breasts, whispering as he nuzzled them. How she hated him! Not even what he was doing at one of the most erogenous zones of her body was enough to make her forget her cold hatred and loathing.
"Now then, baby, them pants!" He whispered it against her throat, barely able to speak at all.
She knew then that she had lost the battle, and the war. It did not matter how much Herb drank, he was more intoxicated by her. The bourbon was like so much water to him. Nothing was going to stop him until he had what he wanted from her.
Shaken, feeling lost, Carol tried to writhe free of his grasp.
Herb struck her across the face.
"Stand still, damn you! Nobody's going to hurt you, unless you try to get cute with me!"
His voice chilled her. She could look in his eyes and see that he dared her to oppose him. He would enjoying breaking her will.
She drew a deep breath, feeling the sense of numbness spreading through her mind. This was not real. None of it. It was not happening. It could not be happening. Not to her. It was not real. It was a horrible nightmare. It would end soon. Soon. It had to end.
He shook her viciously. She felt her teeth rattle against each other.
He motioned to her to remove her panties and he stood back, still bracing her with his hand on the small of her back. Sweat dripped along his face and it discolored his shirt. His eyes distended, following the downward roll of her flimsy pants.
Her hands slid the fabric over the rise of her hips, along her thighs to her knees. The panties fell to her feet and she stepped out of them, naked and shivering all over, her body covered with gooseflesh.
Herb stared in sick fascination at the bewitching sight of her fully exposed feminine charms. For a moment he did not touch her, as if hypnotized by the virginal beauty of her nude, perfect body.
She felt her stomach roil and she was afraid she was going to be sick. She would have been sick, except that her mind kept blanking out the whole scene, telling her it wasn't happening to her, it had no reality, it was a bad dream.
"Now!"
The word was ripped from him like the bellow of an animal in the rutting season. "Now, I'm going to have you I I'm going to have it all! I been wanting it like a man needs food and water and now I'm going to have it!"
It was as if the awe and desire bled from Herb's wide eyes. His hands moved on her like crawling slime, but it was his eyes that made her ill.
They were not Herb's eyes, they were the eyes of a man she had thought she had forgotten, wild and eager and crazed with delight and lust eyes that she saw she had not really forgotten, but had only put away in the dark crannies of her mind so she could live with herself.
With a wild cry, Carol tried to tear herself away from his grasp, but those arms circled her like hot, wet serpents, and those hands closed with a fierce, unbelievable strength. His mouth parted and smashed down over hers. Then he lifted her against him, carrying her to the bedroom.
She tried to scream, but she could not. She tried to fight free but he held her as if she were without strength. She beat wildly at him, but he did not even feel the puny blows of her fists. He dumped her on the bed and fell beside her
He thrust her legs apart and she felt him moving in between them and she wailed, knowing the sound was unuttered, lodged deep in her own mind.
"Hold still!" His harsh voice rasped at her.
She tried to shut it all out of her mind. She felt him thrusting closer and closer to her, felt the fiery burst of pain when he lunged down hard, taking her brutally with all his force. She wailed aloud then in agony and terror, but he did not even hear her.
He drew her body up close to him, moving upon her faster and faster, insensible to her weeping. He pressed her tightly to him and he was blotted out. Then it was not Herb with her, it was another nightmare creature with the same fierce reality. It rushed back over her from the darkness where she had kept it concealed these six years, even from herself ...
CHAPTER TWO
It was not Herb violating her, it was a man named Mort ... The memory washed back through her mind as though, as evil as it was, she could endure what Herb was doing to her in his lust only by forcing her mind to concentrate on something else excruciating enough to obliterate the pain of this present nightmare.
Carol Hill had hated and feared all adult men since she was eleven years old, though she had stubbornly refused to talk about it to anyone, her sister or her mother or even her best girl friends. It stayed inside her where, for a long time after Mort had ravaged her naked body, the agony and outrage festered; but finally it became a dull pain, and then just the memory of pain. Until tonight she had even put Mort from her mind to the extent that she had forgotten his name, and the lust darkening his red, sweated face.
Now it was all back in her conscious mind and she knew she would never forget any of it again.
When she was eleven, she lived with Laura and their widowed mother in a house that was too large for them in a neighborhood that was no longer very good. Her mother worked in a bakery all day. She and Laura went to school. Laura was in her last year of high school then, and she worked in a drug store in the afternoons. Anxious to do her share, Carol raced home after school, washed the dishes, made the beds, even the beds in the two paid guest rooms. Morton Engler was one of the paying guests whose rent money helped Ada Hill make ends meet.
"I don't know what we'd do without the money we get from renting those two rooms." How many hundreds of times Carol had heard her mother say that since the trucking accident that had killed her father when Carol was six. Roomers had come and gone in those five years. As a child, Carol saw them as faceless adults in whom she had no interest.
She had even less interest in Mr. Engler, who slept in the back room.
What interested Carol that year was the whispered talk about sex she heard at school and on the playgrounds. She asked as many questions as she dared, but it seemed to her that everybody knew more about sex than she did!
She was afraid to ask her mother, and Laura was much too busy to bother with such silly questions. One night when Laura came home late from the drug store, she was with a boy in an old convertible. Unable to sleep, Carol tiptoed to her window to watch and listen to Laura and her boy friend say good night a few feet away in the darkness.
She caught her breath. She saw that Laura had let him put his hand on her breast, inside her sweater, pushing it up over the top of her strapless bra. He took her right breast out and held it in his hand.
Shocked, Carol stared.
Her breath caught in her throat. She had never seen anything as lovely as Laura's firm, full breast, held in that boy's hand, with the faint moonlight touching it.
He had never seen anything as lovely, either.
He kissed it right on the nipple, breathing so loudly and excitedly that Laura laughed, warning him that someone might hear them.
"I can't help it, Laura. I never saw anything so gorgeous."
"You've got to stop now. I've got to go in."
"Let me kiss it once more, Laura. Just once more. I'm wild, I'll go crazy if you make me stop now."
"All right. Kiss it. Quick."
Carol bit her lip, staring. She saw Laura put her head back, the moon touching at her golden loveliness. Laura closed her eyes. Carol saw that Laura was excited by what the boy was doing to her breast. She was almost as wild as he was, but she could conceal her feelings better.
The tableau in the moonlight ended too soon for both the boy and Carol.
Carol was left puzzled, excited, confused. Was this all there was to sex? It did not justify the whispers she had heard.
She could give little thought in the next few days to anything except the wonder and excitement of a boy and girl together in sex. She had to know more about it! She couldn't go on like this. It was as if there was a perennial burning in her tummy, a bothersome and unsatisfied ache since the night she had watched Carol and the boy outside her window.
She almost asked Laura, in that first raw rush of need, for answers. But she was afraid Laura would be enraged to know she'd spied on her. The very nature of sex made it something personal, secret, forbidden. Perhaps this was part of the thrill. She didn't know yet, but she had to find out. Soon.
Carol was just entering puberty, noticing the soft, dark touches of down at her armpits, at the mound above her thighs. She had been shamed and angered at the swellings that started on her chest until she saw what lovely appurtenances they became in a boy's hand in the moonlight! Now she could hardly wait for them to swell and ripen like Laura's. She had no hope that she would be as lovely as Laura. Laura was so beautiful, no wonder she wanted boys to see her naked breasts!
Sex needed a boy and a girl for its ultimate fulfillment. Whispers had told Carol this, and seeing Laura and that boy in the moonlight had confirmed it. She could seek answers in all the books in her mother's room, and in Laura's belongings, but it all came back to basic facts you got together with a boy. What better way to learn than to show yourself to a boy in exchange for being permitted to see and explore the wonders of his equipment?
Boy and girl. Man and woman. Male and female. There was no quicker, better or more exciting way to experiment and to learn about life and sex, and Carol had the answer to this dilemma. She had found this answer one day while she stood nude before Laura's full-length mirror, examining herself. She began to think about David Miller.
She became more and more excited, standing there seeing her nakedness and thinking about David, who lived across the alley from her.
Now nothing could thwart her plans to learn the thrilling answers to the questions plaguing her innocence.
She looked at her nudity, the nascent breasts, the dark touch at her thighs. She wondered what David would look like standing naked like this before her. She had gone as far now, it seemed to her, as she could go without a boy, a male, someone to share the wonder and exultance of this discovery with her in secret.
Nothing could be easier.
It was as if nature conspired with her. She was alone in this big old house every afternoon. She could hurry the chores and she and David would have at least three hours to themselves every afternoon.
The anticipation was too much to be borne!
Blood throbbed in her temples. She dressed hurriedly, and ran to find David.
David was riding his bicycle, and at first he did not even want to stop to talk to her. At last he rode up to her back steps and sat on the bike, looking at her.
Instinctively, Carol leaned back on the steps, letting the round little knobs of her breasts poke out against the fabric of her dress.
She let her legs part so that David on his bicycle could look along them above her knees. She had never done anything like this before, or even thought of doing it, but it seemed natural and right, and she saw that it affected David. His face flushed red and he looked away
When he finally dared to look back she had widened her legs even more, pretending she did not even know what she was doing.
David stared.
She said, taking a deep breath, as if she were diving into deep, cold water: "That old Melinda Parker makes me sick."
"Why?"
"Always talking like she knows so much."
"About what?"
"You know about sex. I'll bet she doesn't even know as much as you do, does she?" She gave him an admiring look.
But David was young and honest. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know very much."
"Do you want to know?" she said. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
He shook his head. He stared along the inside of her legs a moment, blushing furiously. He looked away and then brought his gaze back. "Gosh, I don't know. My old lady would kill me. Once I just asked her a simple question about babies if they really grew in girl's stomachs "
'They really do," Carol said wisely.
"Gosh! But my old lady hit me. She said she would beat me if I even thought about anything like that until after I was married."
"She can't keep you from thinking."
"She can sure make me uncomfortable! It's like she knows what I'm thinking. She'd beat me."
"Not if she didn't know anything about it."
He drew a deep breath now. He saw the glitter of excitement in her eyes, and he began to share it.
"What do you mean, Carol?"
"I mean us. Why don't you come over here maybe tomorrow afternoon right after school? Don't tell a soul. If you tell ole Martin Gaynor, I'll never speak to you again. And get here right after school. Then you can park your bike out front and your mother won't even know you were over here."
He drew his tongue across his lips. "What do you want to do, Carol?"
In her mind appeared the hazy picture of the boy baring Laura's lush breast to the admiring moon. She thought of herself standing naked before the mirror in her room, of David's standing naked with her, each looking at the other to his fill.
"Maybe I'll show you something," she said. "Would you like to see a girl naked, David?"
He exhaled. "You?"
"Maybe. Would you like that?"
He nodded, unable to speak. "Will you really do it for me?" he finally managed.
"Maybe. Why don't you come here tomorrow afternoon and see?"
"Yeah. Yeah!" He leaped on his bicycle, unable to stand still or to contain the excitement flooding through him. He rode away as swiftly as he could.
Carol sighed heavily. She stood up slowly, a little disappointed. She had hoped that David would be so anxious that he would not want to wait until tomorrow. It was late and they would not have had much time, but there must have been a few preliminary explorations they could have made. David was so young. But she was excited by the looks of him, the way she saw him get excited at the thought of seeing her naked. He was the best she could find.
The feeling of anticipation was heated and troubling to her.
She walked up the steps, going into the house thinking that she needed to touch herself down there. The excitement had gotten to her, and she did not see how she could wait until tomorrow.
She drew a deep breath. Perhaps if she went into her room, locked the door and touched herself, she could relieve some of the agitation.
"Hi, missy!"
She jerked her head up. She'd been so intent upon her own inner emotions she was not aware that a man, one of the boarders, stood just inside the rear screen door.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Engler." A frightening thought occurred to her and she tried to make her voice casual. "You're home early."
He held the door open for her, looking at her in a strange way that upset Carol but had nothing to do with sex in her mind because sex had nothing too with the elderly, and Mort Engler must be at least forty. He was much older than her mother, and surely her mother never even thought about sex any more.
But the odd look in his eyes troubled her. Maybe he had overheard what she had said to David and would tell her mother! She smiled at him, "We were talking about our homework. I'm going to help David with his homework."
"Sure you are, honey." He touched her head, and she withdrew from him. "You don't have to be scared of me, honey."
She didn't have to be, but she was.
She moved away from him, going toward the front of the house. There was something unexplainable about him that upset her. She had never paid any attention to him before, and now she didn't like him.
"Don't run away, honey," he said. "Come here. Let's you and me talk. Maybe Uncle Mort can help you with your homework."
"Thanks. But later. Right now I've got to run to the store for Mamma."
She went out the front door, letting it slam. There was no errand for her at the store, but she wanted to get away from that old man and that silent house. She went to the playground and stayed there until time for her mother to get home.
Mr. Engler looked at her oddly, later, giving her warm little smiles, but she was thankful he said nothing about her to her mother.
At school the next day Carol and David barely dared to look at each other. They exchanged shy glances. Once Carol looked at him and found him staring at her. His face turned red and he glanced hurriedly away. At noon he gazed at her with a question in his eyes and she nodded. They did not speak to each other; they were so filled with guilt they were sure anyone could read it in them. It seemed the school day would never end for Carol, but finally it did.
She walked home alone, her books pressed against her breasts, her breath rapid.
The tension mounted inside her.
She raced into the house, did the dishes, let the dusting and sweeping wait for another, less riotous, time. She made the beds in her room, her mother's room, one of the boarder's rooms. Mr. Engler's door was locked, but this was not unusual. Boarders sometimes locked their doors for one reason or another. She didn't stop to think about it. She heard David's bicycle bump the front steps and she caught her breath, wanting to hide, wanting to run out and grab his hand and draw him into the bedroom in the silent, barn-dark old house.
She managed to walk sedately to the front door. She said, "Hi, David. Come on in."
He looked miserably uncomfortable. "You sure it's all right?"
Carol felt braver now, seeing that she would have to lead him the blind leading the blind! but it made her feel older, more sophisticated. Actually, David was a year older than she was, but he seemed younger in so many ways, and especially now, when he was afraid to enter her house though he wanted to more than anything. They had played together for years, and only once while they were wrestling had they realized they were not just fellows, made a little differently.
They knew better now.
All they wanted to know was how differently, in what exciting ways were they unlike?
She led him into her bedroom and closed the door. He stood awkwardly. She sat down on the bed. "Come here," she said.
"The bed's all made up."
"I made it up. I can make it up again."
The silence closed in upon them. It seemed to Carol she could hear mice skittering in the attic. She knew better. It was just that they were drawn tense, hypersensitive to everything, even sounds.
"Do you want to?" she asked, remembering that yesterday afternoon on the back steps she had asked if he wanted to see her naked. Today she could not quite use that word, though she knew that she was going to do it for him, she wanted to undress for him.
David nodded, unable to speak at all.
"Then come here," she said. "Sit down."
He obeyed silently. He sat rigidly on the side of the bed. She stood up before him, pretending she was Laura with her boy friend in the moonlight, wanting to show him what she looked like with no clothes on.
She slipped off her dress. She wore only a pair of panties under it. He stared at her small, rounded breasts when she bared them.
"Do you like me?" she whispered.
"Jeeze," he said, "what if somebody comes in?"
"Oh, stop it," she said. "Don't be chicken."
She was pushing her panties down now, and his eyes widened, looking at her. She saw that something was happening to David and he was pressing his hand over himself as if in a sudden agony. He squeezed hard, his face red.
She stood there naked, letting him look at her.
"Why don't you take off your clothes?" she said.
"All of them?"
"Unless you really are chicken."
"I'm not chicken, and stop saying that. It will just be terrible if somebody catches us my old lady will kill me!"
"All right. If you don't want to play with me, I'll get dressed."
"Play with you?" He repeated it numbly, as if this were more than he had dared dream, even in his wildest anticipation of this afternoon.
"Not unless you undress too."
"If I take my pants off?"
She saw that the excitement of a male was fettered under his belt, and she was too excited to argue. She nodded, staring at the way he held himself, thinking that in a moment she would see what was causing him such pleasurable agony.
"All right. Take them off. Quick."
She stood unmoving, watching him loosen his belt, then unzip his slacks and let them fall about his feet. He wore no underpants.
Carol caught her breath in a delicious ecstasy of astonishment. She'd seen pictures of males in doctor books, but none stood out as David did. He was pulsing with excitement and desire. She gazed at him as if she were the first woman to make this elegant discovery about a man.
She backed to the side of her bed and lay down on it with her legs parted so that he could see her clearly.
"Come here," she whispered, her eyes closed. "Touch me. Put yours against mine, David. Do that."
But at that moment she heard the heavy tread of footsteps in the hall, and David heard them, too. David had been stepping out of his pants. Now, groaning, he grabbed them up, ran to the window and opened the screen. He leaped out to the ground and went running across the yard.
For a moment Carol remained immobile on the bed as if rudely awakened from a deep sleep. It was as if her mind was still drugged, and she was able to contain only the restless feeling of loss and frustration. David had looked so beautiful! He was gone! He had run away and she had lost him!
As she sat up, the door of her bedroom opened and Mort Engler stepped inside.
She stared at him, shaking her head.
"What do you want?" she managed to say.
"Come on, honey, none of that innocent-baby talk. I heard you and the kid. I been listening outside your door ever since you came in here!"
"Get out! You've no right-"
"You want me to tell your ma what you and the kid was doing in here? No sense in this world lying about it, honey, I heard it all, and now I'm seeing it. You spreading your little body out on that bed for him to crawl to. You want me to tell your ma about that?"
She was sick. She shook her head.
He walked slowly toward her, as if she were a bird that he hoped to trap without a net.
She whispered, revulsion in her face, "Get away from me. Let me alone."
Mort Engler laughed. "Honey, I'm not going anywhere. I been waiting a whole day for this. Ever since I heard you talking out on them back steps."
She stared up at his face. She had never seen anything like it. Fright welled up from the deepest pit of her empty belly. All desire, all interest in sex, everything fled her mind and was replaced by terror. She didn't know what this man wanted from her. All she could think was that he was old and ugly and the light in his eyes would haunt her nightmares the rest of her life.
"Let me alone!"
He was standing in front of her now, trembling with the lusts racking him. His eyes were distended, fixed on the nascent loveliness of her, the promise of what she was going to be, the excitement of what she was at this moment, and what he had heard her saying to that stupid kid.
"I can teach you, honey," Mort said. "You want to know about it? I'm going to teach it to you all of it."
"Let me alone! I'll tell my mother!"
"What will you tell her? That you was with this boy naked with him and I happened to catch you at it? Is that what you're going to tell her? You want me to tell her how you was begging that boy to put himself to you? Do you?"
"Oh, no, no! Please don't!"
"Then you stop sniveling, and be friendly to ole Mort."
"I'm scared." She shook her head, trembling with chill and fright. "Please, Mr. Engler! Don't! I'm scared."
"Nothing to be scared of, honey. Just don't fight Uncle Mort and everything will be fine. Look. Look at this. See what I got for you? You thought that kid was pretty good. That was just a kid. Look at Mort. Look. Touch. Look at me!"
She shook her head, revolted. "No! No! No!"
"Oh, yes, you will. I'm tired of fooling with you!"
"You'll hurt me!"
"Why don't you try me and see? Now, if you want me to tell your ma what I found you doing and saying, you go on fighting me."
"No! No!"
"Then lie still."
She lay down obediently, staring at his eyes that had grown wild and livid with lust, burning, forgetting everything except the satisfaction of his abnormal cravings.
She closed her eyes to shut out the look in his contorted face. She held her breath to escape the odor of liquor on his breath. She held herself rigid for fear he would hurt her.
She could not relax, even when he cursed her.
She felt his hands touching her, lifting her, putting her legs apart, and then he was pressed hard against her.
Mort tried, but he could not budge her. He gave it up at last, and pulled her over on top of him. He lay on his back on her bed and clutched her small buttocks in his tightened fingers. He moved her thighs up and down on him, faster and faster. His breath grew louder and his fingers tightened like claws.
She tried to forget her agony of terror. He had not hurt her yet, and perhaps he would not. He was moving her against him in a way that pleased him, and the heat and friction might have boiled response from her, but nothing could melt that cold iceberg of horror and fear she felt toward him, the revulsion that went through her at the look in his eyes.
He went on holding her naked body upon him, wrapping her legs about him, working her frantically against his body. She squirmed upon him, feeling herself crushed against him, unable to breathe, afraid to cry out. She knew that what was happening to her was one kind of excitement adults had with each other, but it was nothing she wanted it killed in her all desire to experience anything like it, even with a boy her own age. With David this would have been wonderful, out of this world, fabulous. But with this old man it was revolting and disgusting.
And she would never want a man again. Never.
As for Mort, he went out of his ever-loving mind trying to ignite in her some of the unbridled lusts that shook him and drove him beyond reason. His chest heaved with the passion that rocked him. He crushed her body down upon his, moving her against it so that he held himself against every part of her. She writhed, fighting, but this only served to make him more animal-like, more berserk. She saw that the only way to end it was to lie docile and spineless, letting him use her as he pleased until somehow he was sated.
This happened sooner than she dared hope. He breathed faster and faster, his chest rising and falling, his trembling fingers closing tighter and tighter upon, her. And then he churned and spasmed wildly for a moment, then rolled away from her and lay still beside her on her bed.
She did not move. At last he got up and walked out of her room without looking back at her.
Carol stayed where she was a moment and then she jumped up and ran across the room. She locked the door, leaning against it, shaken with revulsion and loathing.
She breathed through her mouth, thinking about Mort.
He had acted ashamed; but she knew how, when she had touched herself, her reaction was usually shame, only this soon passed and the desire returned.
The desire would return with him.
He'd be waiting for her like this every afternoon.
It would be as if she were his slave around the house.
She shook her head with passionate resolve.
No. That ugly old man had caught her once and he had used her in ways that not even Melinda Parker had ever heard of. But he was never going to get her alone again.
She would tell her mother about it.
That was the only answer. She had to, or she would never be able to come home in the afternoon and do her chores. It would all come out anyway, because her mother would keep after her until she found out why she did not come home.
She would finally have to tell the truth, that she was afraid of Mort Engler.
She feared him as she had never learned to fear the devil himself.
She had to tell her mother the truth, no matter what Mort told about her and David.
She turned her head, her face fierce, speaking through the door toward Mort's room at the rear of the hall.
"I'm going to tell on you," she said aloud. "I'm going to tell. Everything you did, the way you looked, that ugly light in your eyes!"
She felt better, thinking that she would fix him for what he had done to her. To her eleven-year-old mind this seemed the way to find absolution and safety. She was afraid of Mort and afraid of all grown men. She barely remembered her own father, and the thought that one grown man would use a little girl's unripe body for satisfaction of his savage lusts made her fear them all. But she would tell her mother, and her mother would send Mort away.
Then she would be clean again.
Feeling a little better, she went into the bathroom, got in the shower. She stayed there for more than an hour, letting the water run on her, hot and cold, cold and hot. She felt as if her body would never be clean again. She tried in vain to wash away the revolting memory of that evil old man.
CHAPTER THREE
Carol came out of the shower finally, still feeling dirty. But she told herself that as soon as Mort was out of the house, she could forget.
Laura and her mother came home.
Ada was so tired that Carol wanted to delay telling her until after dinner; but Carol was so unusually quiet and uncommunicative that Ada noticed at once. "Are you all right, Carol?"
Carol drew a deep breath. She wanted to tell her, and somehow she knew that this was the ideal moment, none other would ever be so good, and when this one passed, perhaps it would be too late. How could her mother doubt that the boarder had attacked her if she came to her with it at once?
"I don't know," she temporized. "I don't feel very good."
"Have you started?" her mother asked. "What?"
"Menstruation, dear," her mother explained. "I know how upsetting this can be the first time it happens."
Laura laughed. "Heavens, mother, Carol is only eleven."
"I know how old she is," Ada said. "But she is maturing early. You did, and so did I. It must run in our family. Is that what's the matter, dear?"
"No," Carol said, "No. I "
"I hope you're not getting sick," Ada said. "You look pale. One more doctor bill! That's all I need."
Carol closed her mouth, drawing a deep breath. If she told her mother what Mr. Engler had done, her mother would be raging mad, and she would either call the police or send Mr. Engler away. Either way, they would lose the money that he paid every week for that rear bedroom. "I don't know what we'd do without the money we'd get from renting those two rooms." How many times had she heard her mother say that? And that room had stood vacant for a long time before Mr. Engler moved in. It might be even longer the next time.
But she couldn't keep silent, could she? She couldn't let that dirty old man stay in the house! She had to tell the truth, didn't she?
She trembled visibly.
"You are sick, Carol!" Ada said. "We'll have dinner and you'll go to bed right afterward. Can't afford to have you getting sick now."
They went in to dinner. Carol stared at her plate, unable to eat. She felt the beginnings of panic tying her stomach muscles in knots.
She pressed her hands against her eyes, knowing that time was running out for her. Her mother would believe only the best about her and every whisper Carol had heard until this moment had strengthened her belief that there was something shameful and forbidden about sex but her mother would believe that old Mr. Engler had attacked her, if she told it now.
She had to tell it now!
Putting it off would not make it any easier. It would make it worse, more difficult to do, and yet Carol kept seeing new reasons why she should not tell: because Mort would lie about her; because Mort would leave and they desperately needed his rent money. No, she thought, these were not good enough reasons for not telling. She had to do it now, at once, and without thinking any more.
She drew a deep breath, and Ada looked up, watching her, her eyes troubled.
At that moment Mort Engler entered the dining room. He did not eat with them; getting meals for the three of them was enough trouble for Ada after working in the bakery all day.
He smiled at Ada and at Laura. He gave Carol the same kind of smile, but only she saw something else in it she saw the challenge.
Mort was daring her to tell on him!
"How is everybody?" he said.
Ada smiled. "Pretty well. Won't you have a cup of coffee with us, Mr. Engler?"
"Might do that," he said. "I'm on my way out to eat now. But thought I ought to stop in and look at the three prettiest girls ever collected under one roof."
"Why, Mr. Engler, how nice," Ada said, getting coffee for him.
"It's a fact. Why you're the mother of lovely Laura and pretty little Carol here, and you don't look much older than they do. You look more like a sister, yourself."
"Thank you, Mr. Engler," Ada said. "Isn't that nice, Carol?"
Carol did not speak.
"Cat got your tongue, honey?" Mort said. He reached out and patted her head.
She lunged away, revolted, shaken. Her face turned gray. "Why, what's the matter, kitten?" Mort said, gazing at her with a strange smile on his face.
"Carol hasn't been feeling well," Ada said. "I'm putting her to bed right after supper."
"Yes," Mort said. "Might be a good idea. Probably she was playing too hard this afternoon."
"I hope it's nothing serious," Ada said. "Tight as money is, a doctor is one thing we don't need around here right now."
"I'm sure it's nothing serious," Mort said. "Why, I'll bet she'll be as bright and new and pretty as ever tomorrow."
Her eyes distended, Carol gazed at this hated man, seeing the duplicity that must be part of every man.
She found it impossible to believe that Mort could do what he had done to her this afternoon and then come sit calmly and chat with her mother and sister as if nothing had happened.
She felt her stomach roiling, and she was afraid she was going to be ill.
She let her gaze strike against Mort's for a moment, hating him. But she saw that he was daring her to speak against him. It was as if he felt confidently that he held all the aces. She saw that he was so sure of what he could say to her mother about her that what she had done would be considered infinitely worse by Ada than what Mort had done to her.
She shuddered, swallowing back the sickness. She even saw in his face that he would say that she had come to him naked, begging for it. He was a monster I There was no lie that he was incapable of! He would turn everything against her. He would make her mother hate her! Laura would despise her. None of them would believe her, and he would use her as he wanted to!
Daring her to speak when he had attacked her.
She heard him saying brightly, "Maybe you'd like me to come in and read to you after you're in bed, Carol?"
"No!" She wailed. "I don't want you near me! Stay away from me! Leave me alone!"
She leaped up from the table, upsetting her chair. Her face was pallid, her cheek muscles rigid. She was shaking all over.
She ran from the room.
Ada jumped up, calling after her, angrily, "Carol, you come right back here and apologize to Mr. Engler.
Now, young lady, do you hear me?"
"It's all right," Carol heard Mort's soothing, lying tone. "She's just upset, ill. I understand. Why would she want an old fellow like me around? It's the young boys she's wild for at her time of life, eh?"
So the chance to tell the truth about what Mort had done to her passed, and Carol said nothing.
She lived in fear after that day.
It seemed that everything she considered was filled with terror for her. The very fact of being alone in this house with Mort was more than she could endure.
She was afraid of Mort, afraid of seeing those eyes wild with that unreasoning lust again. She was afraid of all adult men, trembled when they came near her, even the male teachers at her school, and she ran from them when they spoke to her, even old acquaintances of her family. These men she feared as much as she did the strangers. Men were all evil and vicious, and the closer they were to the bosom of your family, the more reason you had to fear them. And she did fear them all of them with an unreasoning fear that made her ill.
But she had to hide her illness from her mother because Ada would force her to tell her what was behind it.
Now she was not only afraid to tell, she began to be afraid that her mother might find out the truth about what had happened to her.
As the days passed, it became a more and more shameful and secret thing something that she had partaken of and had remained silent about.
She saw now that this had been part of Mort's strategy that first night when he came in while they were eating, when there was still a chance that she might blurt out her accusations against him. He wanted to delay her. Time worked for him. And time was her enemy.
Mort was experienced, and Mort knew that the moment would come when it would be too late, and Carol could never tell on him!
This moment had passed now, and Mort had won that battle. If Ada heard about that afternoon now, she would believe him, because otherwise Carol would have spoken out at once against her attacker, wouldn't she? That is, if he had really attacked her, and not been offered her nakedness by an incensed and excited young mind, anxious to wallow in depravity.
That's what they would believe, that's what Mort would make them believe. He was too clever for her.
He taught her fear. Fear of himself, fear of the truth, fear of all men, fear of trusting any male.
But he never was able to get her alone again. She did not once come home again in the afternoon until her mother was there. Dishes stayed stacked in the sink, beds remained unmade, dusting was undone.
"Why?" Ada wailed at her. "Why are you suddenly refusing to do your share, Carol?"
"I won't come in this house alone in the afternoon!" This was all Carol would say. But she would become ill, even vomiting, when Ada pressed her too hard about it.
She did not say any more, but there was always the threat that she would, and this began to eat at
Mort Engler.
Now he was afraid of her. She grew thin and pale and taut, and her nerves remained finely drawn. She seemed ready to erupt, and he saw it, and he knew why. And he was smart enough to know that her outrage, when it finally did erupt, would undermine any clever lies he might have plotted to discredit her.
Mort became nervous and taut then, too. He walked wide around her, stayed away from the dining room for any of his little informal visits. And then one Saturday he moved out, regretfully. He was giving up his job, moving to another town, he said.
He told them all good-bye, smiling warmly, but he did not attempt to touch Carol.
Suddenly he was as afraid of her as he would have been of a lynx.
Then he was gone, and gradually the agony subsided, the fears diminished; but they never completely disappeared. Her mind put Mort away, deep in the dark crannies where the unpleasant bits of life were stored and forgotten.
Much happened during the next few years, and Carol was able to tell herself she had forgotten Mort, what he had done, the way his eyes had burned into her, the things he had said. She even forgot his name.
She got an afternoon job as a typist, working in a steno pool for a mortgage corporation. They liked her and promised her a job when she finished high school. She dated a few boys, but she was afraid of them. She could not relax, and only a very small minority ever came back a second time.
Few teen-age boys cared anything about dating a chick, no matter how pretty, who couldn't even give them a goodnight kiss without getting the jitters.
Her mother died while she was in her senior year at high school. She and Laura sold the old house, and the money was divided in a trust fund for them both. After her graduation, Carol continued working for the mortgage company as a stenographer. She lived in a small apartment, a room really, with kitchen, living room and bed in one. But she did very little entertaining, and none at home.
Laura married a handsome ex-Marine named Herbert Dearing, and Carol thought she had never seen anyone as lovely as Laura, or as happy.
Laura and Herb made such a good-looking couple. People always turned to look when they entered a hotel or restaurant.
One afternoon when Carol came home to her one-room apartment Laura was there waiting for her.
Carol laughed, "You look absolutely indecent. You positively radiate with happiness."
"I am happy," Laura said. "Or I would be, if I didn't worry about you."
"Me?"
"Yes. Living in this tiny little place . "
"It's all I need."
"You need to be in a place where you can have friends come in, entertain, and meet new people."
"I couldn't afford anything like that. And this place is fine with me."
"I don't believe you," Laura said. "And before you say anything, let me tell you about my idea. It's really Herb's and mine. We were talking about you we talk about you a lot, and worry about you, living by yourself like this. Herb and I want you to come and live with us, Carol."
"I couldn't! Two are enough in any newlyweds' house."
"It's not going to be two of us much longer, Carol," Laura said. "I'm pregnant. Well along. Herb and I didn't waste any time. Herb never does, I can tell you. He's wild about sex."
"He ought to be, having a wife as beautiful as you!"
"He's pretty good-looking himself."
"I suppose so."
"Carol! I'm worried about you. You really don't like men at all, do you?"
"Don't start that," Carol said. "I don't like those women with butch haircuts, either."
Laura laughed. "Oh, we're getting miles from the subject. Herb and I want you to come stay with us. And we won't take no for an answer. Look, Carol. Whatever you pay here, you can pay us ten dollars a month less. Wouldn't that be a help? And what you pay would really be a help to us with the baby on the way, and me having to quit my job. Herb is handsome and wonderful, but let's face it, he's no J. Paul Getty. We could use the extra money. You'd have a room of your own, and you could entertain as though the whole house were yours. Please, Carol, it would be perfect. Herb wants you there, too. And you could be such a help to me before the baby is born, and after, too!"
Carol sighed heavily and nodded. It was all agreed so easily, so smoothly with no promise of anything buy joy ahead and suddenly now it was not Mort Engler violating her, it was her brother-in-law. It was Laura's husband. It was Herb.
"Oh, Herb! Please stop! I'm a virgin, Herb! Honest I am!"
"Honest you were! Baby, I know that. I really know that! I got that sweet thing first, didn't I!"
"Please you're hurting me!"
He moved on her, building himself upward again to another climax, the sight of her nude loveliness exciting him anew. He sucked in his breath at the sight of her full-brimmed young body spread out helpless beneath him.
"You been begging for it around here."
"No! No!"
"Oh, yes you have." Letting me touch you, urging me on, then stopping me because Laura was around. Well, big sister is not here tonight, baby. Nobody here but us chickens and here's one rooster that's going to crow tonight!"
Herb held her down and drove himself upon her again, fiercely, uncaring.
"Oh!" she cried out, recoiling at the brutal way he used her.
He kissed her mouth until she whipped her head away from his roughness. Then he pushed his tongue along her cheek and down her neck to the full rise of her breasts. He took a nipple in his teeth, biting her, wanting to hear her cry with pain.
"Get it over with!" she wailed at him. "Take me!" Hurt me! Have what you want. I hate you! No one on earth ever hated as I hate you, and I'll see to it that you'll regret this. I'll make you sorry for this if it's all I ever do!"
There was a hollow clap as he brought his hand down resoundingly on her breast.
"Hurt me! That's what you really want, isn't it?"
"Hell, yes!" He gasped for breath, moving upon her, driven wild by his unnatural need to inflict pain upon her. He slammed himself at her, faster and faster, and all the time he was striking her with his hands, hitting her face, her breasts, her buttocks.
She cried, and then she stopped crying, hating him and hating what he was doing to her, but no longer feeling the pain of his raping her. She had no room for anything except the outrage, her savage hatred of him. Everything else was blanked from her mind as if covered by an occluding cloud.
"You love it!" Herb was shouting at her. "You know you do! You'll be following me around, begging for it! You love it. You love every minute of it."
She did not answer because it was as if he were receding from her, away beyond this thick, impenetrable cloud in her mind. Where she was now, he could not hurt her any more, he could not even reach her.
The storm raged beyond the windows, and Herb was like a wild animal, sating himself upon her body.
At last she tried to move away from him.
"Don't move until I tell you!" he warned her.
Carol caught her breath, but she lay still beneath him.
He gazed down into her eyes, bating her now because she no longer showed hatred or fear or pain. Her eyes were dulled, empty, fixed on him, as if she only waited now for when he would be through with her body.
Glaring at her, he shook his head. It was as if suddenly he hated her more because, no matter what he did, he could not rouse any efforts from her.
"You liked that, didn't you?" he yelled at her.
She shook her head, moving it back and forth.
This enraged him more. He clenched his fingers, clutching her tighter against him, redoubling his efforts to ignite her with the flames that consumed him.
He spoke breathlessly. "Say you like that! You do like it! Stop lying to me! Tell me! Tell me you like it!"
She only gazed at him with her eyes void of light. Her whole body was empty of everything except the crawling slime of her hatred for him, the need to be avenged upon him.
"Say it!" His voice rose quivering. "Say you like it! What's the matter, aren't you even a woman?"
"I hate you." She whispered it softly.
It inflamed him. He shook with the rage of it, and sobbing, he struck her across the face.
"You'll like it, you hear me? Before I'm through with you, you'll tell me how much you love it!"
"You can kill me," she answered in that same dead whisper, "and I'll never say it. I hate you. That's all you'll ever hear from me!"
He struck her across the face again. "We'll see about that, you little witch. We'll see."
He held his breath, concentrating on using her, on doing all the things that had made him so successful with all other women, the experienced ones, the kids like Carol, the girls like Laura. They all had loved him, they all wanted it at least, after they had him once, they were wild for him. What was the matter with this one?
He could not stand it because it was as if she ripped away the mask and exposed him to himself for what he was.
But he could not endure the thought of failure, of rejection, of hatred that lasted beyond the moment of his giving a girl what every woman truly wanted, in his mind, no matter what she pretended.
He closed his eyes, dragging her body up under him and flailing with his hips, rougher, harder, faster. More and more, whispering foul words in her ear, kissing her throat, holding her breasts. She felt him going beyond the point of control, and she thought that this could be ecstasy with any man except him with a man she loved not the husband of her hospitalized sister. How she hated him!
She held herself rigid and tense until he was through with her, and then he fell away, cursing her because he had not got any response from her except that with which they had started her cold hatred for him.
She pressed her fist over her mouth, biting back a sob. She hated him now as she had not known anyone could hate another, so that her whole mind was obsessed with her hatred.
CHAPTER FOUR
Everything that happened next had a red haze over it, as if Carol were seeing it through the occluding cloud that swamped her mind.
There was one awful moment when Herb slammed himself to her again, sobbing out his animal ecstasy. But then he fell away from her, too exhausted, his drinking and his previous exertions having finally caught up with him.
She waited, not daring to move, to see what he would do. He did not move.
She held her breath, staring at the hated young man's body prostrate, face down on the rumpled covers of the bed.
There was a stretch of time that she could never account for afterward, perhaps only minutes, maybe hours, while she lay waiting to see if he would move.
He lay as if dead.
She had time for the thought that if her desires would kill, he would be dead. Stone cold dead from the sick-sweet poison of her hatred. Dead! What a beautiful thought, when she gazed at him sprawled out there. But she knew better.
Herb was not dead.
That would be too easy.
Nothing was ever that easy. Evil persisted on this earth. The Mort Englers and the Herb Dearings, they never died. They lived to despoil and degrade and debase.
They were the killers, they did not die.
No matter if the names were different, they lived on to kill. Because it was she who was dead.
She was dead, and Herb had killed her.
He had killed in one savage orgy all she had planned and dreamed and believed. He had brought back from the ugly past a dirty memory she had managed to forget. She had nothing beautiful left, only the ugliness that he had brought her. He was the killer. He had killed everything else.
Holding her breath, she leaned toward him. She saw by the way he breathed that he was asleep, but in a deeper trance than ordinary sleep.
He had passed out.
The whiskey and his frantic flailing of her body had indeed taken their toll of him. He lay there unconscious, no longer aware of anything that went on around him.
She exhaled heavily. Now was her chance to escape him!
She stared at him. It did not seem to matter any more what he did to her, but she knew better about this, too. She could not endure being debased at his hands again. He would push her and she would kill him somehow.
Her mind whirled with the thought. It would be so easy to kill him now. He was as helpless before her as she had been earlier with him.
She could run to the kitchen, find the sharpest knife and drive it deeply into his body. She would make him pay for what he had done to her.
She trembled, thinking this, and for some moments she was unable to think of anything else.
"I've got to get out of here," she said aloud, "or I will kill him."
She got up, gathering up her clothing.
There was only one urgent matter. She had to get out of the house while he was passed out. She had to stay away until Laura was out of the hospital.
At the thought of her sister, some of the abject numbness lifted and she wanted to weep with the hurt Herb had done to her to both of them, and to all that had been holy between Herb and Laura.
What would she tell Laura? What excuse would she give for having cleared out of here, and staying away?
Carol dressed hurriedly, not caring how she looked, not thinking about appearances, wanting only to be clear of this house. She no longer feared the rainstorm. She would welcome its cleansing downpour.
Suddenly she was remembering the hour she had spent under the shower after Mort had attacked her, trying to wash away the feeling of dirtiness.
She'd never stop feeling unclean after tonight.
But even dressed, getting a few belongings together hastily in a small suitcase, she could not get Laura out of her mind.
Laura was going to be deeply hurt no matter what happened now. She would have to know why Carol could not stay in the same house with Herb.
She found her rain slicker, slipped into it. She considered calling a taxi, but she did not want to wait in this house a moment longer than she had to. She would go to the corner, catch a bus and go to a hotel for the night. Then she would plan what she must do.
What must she do? What could she tell Laura?
She let herself out of the house, her mind swirling with questions.
Her legs felt weak, and the wind and rain pummeled her. She was afraid she would fall beneath the force of it. But she kept hurrying forward, bent against its impact.
Nothing mattered except getting away from here.
She reached the corner, found shelter of a sort under the bus-stop shed. The rain swept in against her, but she did not feel the physical discomfort. She stared along the darkened highway, looking for lights of the bus.
The road was like a black void, empty, wet, cheerless.
It was the way she felt inside, she thought.
Standing there, she let her mind return to that house where she had lived these past weeks with her sister and Herb.
She shuddered at the thought of returning there, even when Laura was home from the hospital.
She stood, numbed with cold, her mind stricken with the outrage she'd endured. If she considered Laura's feelings and wanted to keep Laura from being hurt, there was only one choice she could make. She would have to go back to that house tonight. She would have to stay there, act as if nothing had happened between her and Herb and say nothing. She could never tell Laura what Herb had done, unless she wanted to wreck Laura's marriage, turn Laura against her, and break Laura's heart at the moment when Laura's marriage and life were most fulfilled and complete.
Or she could tell Laura that Herb had attacked her. She could say that perhaps Herb was out of his mind with his drinking, didn't know what he was doing. Only by somehow excusing Herb for this attack on her could she save Laura's feelings and Laura's marriage. This might put Laura on guard so that Herb would not be free to get at Carol again, to attempt to violate her as he had tonight.
Her stomach churned with sickness at the thought of staying in that house with Herb no matter what the conditions. She could not do it, even to spare Laura this undeserved heartbreak.
And this left the other choice, the one that she knew she must make: she could run away, leave town, tonight, go where Laura or Herb could never find her.
Let Herb tell Laura what lies he could make her believe.
It would be between Herb and Laura then.
If Laura's love meant anything at all to Herb, let him somehow make up this terrible night to her.
That was Herb's problem. And it let him off easy. Too easy. But it spared Laura the bitter, heart-rending truth, too.
She clutched her suitcase handle tightly, her knuckles white. She had to run away. She would leave Herb and Laura to settle their difficulties, but she could not face Herb any more, and she could not stay and see Laura destroyed.
And she knew one more reason why she had to run away. She could not tell Laura what Herb had done to her. It all went back to the horror she had experienced at Mort's hands. It was as it had been with Mort. She was afraid to tell, afraid of the shame, of being involved in such ugliness, of hurting those who loved her and who loved Herb, no matter what he was.
Fear. This was the story of her life since Mort. Afraid of hurting others she kept the hurt and fear inside herself until she was ready to burst with it. There was no room inside for love any more, only a place for the festering, cancerous hatred that fed on itself and spread, eating away everything else.
This town was dark and ugly and dirty with its memories of Herb and Mort. She wanted to hide from the people she knew. She did not want to have to face the ordeal of going to the office and meeting the coworkers she had come to know. They would see the shame in her face, or she would be reminded of it every time a pair of eyes settled on her. She wanted to get away ...
She lifted her head, seeing a distant pair of headlamps along the rain-stricken, dark highway.
She stepped forward to be ready when the bus came near, wanting to be certain she was seen in this shadowed night.
She moved out to the curb, holding up her arm. In the final moments before the headlamps reached her she stayed like that, even when she saw it was not the bus.
Exhaling heavily, she retreated a step. But she saw that the car had pulled in to the curb toward her, the lights glittering like silver through the rain.
She took two more backward steps to show the driver it was a mistake, but the car stopped anyway, a few feet from her.
The car door swung open and a courtesy light glowed yellowly in the warm, dry interior of the smart new car.
"Hi, there," the driver said.
"I'm waiting for a bus," Carol said in a flat, empty tone.
"Sure. I can see that. But there's no sense drowning out there. Might not be another bus along for hours in this storm. You tell me where you want to go and I'll drop you there."
"Why?" She eyed him coldly. "Why?" He laughed, seeming to be highly amused at such a question from a girl who looked like a drowned kitten on a stormy street corner. "Maybe because it'll be my good deed for the day. Get in, we'll argue about it where it's dry, at least."
Carol hesitated, thinking she as running away from one man the killer who killed all the decent things he touched and here she had already run to another one. She felt the hatred gorge up in her, hatred for all men.
She looked him over coldly. She saw, except that Herb had killed her vision for goodness in anything, that this young man might have been very handsome, with a warm, crooked smile. What difference did it make what a man looked like? It was inside where they were all the same breed of predatory animal, wasn't it? Inside, where you couldn't see what they were truly like until it was too late.
Despite her hatred, she was aware that he was lean, rankly made, probably tall, with wide shoulders, in a well-cut sport jacket, a subdued tie, a gleamingly white shirt. His dark hair was cut short and parted on the side. His nose looked as if it had met the impact of opposition footballers just once too often, but he was handsome in a rugged way. His eyes were deep-set and hazel. She felt fresh rage at the warm way he smiled. He was on the make, the way all men were, but his smile was so deceitful, such a lie.
She gazed at him another moment, but she no longer saw the twisted kindliness of his smile or the casual interest of his eyes: she saw Herb's face imposed on that face inside the car, and then Mort's face. She saw the three hated faces as one. And she thought, with a chill that raced through her, none of them could hurt her any more.
All the hurt that was going to be inflicted from now on would come from her. Let the men beware.
Let this one beware. She would make him pay for what Herb had done to her. They would all pay any of them who came near her now with their lying, deceitful smiles.
She nodded coldly and got in the car. He reached across her to slam the door and she waited for the way he would accidentally brush her breasts. He did not get that near her, but she assured herself it was only because he was playing it cool. The moment for the pass would come. It came from all men, didn't it? Even the man your sister married. It would come from this handsome younger stranger, too. He was no different from Herb or any other man. They were all alike.
They all wanted to play alike.
They would all pay alike. She would see to this. It was like a vow she took. They would all pay, from this moment forward.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Where are you going on a night like this?"
Carol did not reply, listening to the strong purr of the engine, feeling the warmth of the car heater restoring some semblance of life to her wet, chilled feet.
He laughed, "I'm not prying, just trying to make small talk."
"I don't know," Carol said.
"What?"
"I don't know where I'm going." She shrugged. "Anywhere. You name a place."
He laughed, thinking she was joking. "Running away from home, eh?"
She shrugged. "Yes."
He checked her, trying to guess her age. He pegged her as a teen-ager; then he said, "What's the matter, did your folks get upset when you and your boy friend came in late?"
"My folks are dead," she said.
He winced. "Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she said. "What difference does it make to you?"
"Oh, come on now! You don't have to be so cold just because you let me pick you up on a night that wasn't fit out for your worst enemy. And your folks being dead does matter to me. As a matter-of-fact, I'm a very sentimental type. I don't look it, but I get home to see my folks every weekend. I'm very close to them. I really feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have well what I have with them."
"Don't worry about it."
He drove a moment in silence, trying to figure her out. Then he smiled. "You're determined you won't be friendly, aren't you?"
"I thought you were the city bus," she told him. "On the bus, you don't have to be friendly. You pay your fare, and that's it."
He laughed. "You are in a hellish mood." He sighed, looking at her. "Maybe you really are running away from home."
"That's nothing to you, either."
"I know. On the bus, you pay your fare. No questions asked."
"That's right."
He was silent a moment and then he said, "No.
I won't do it."
She turned her head, looking at him coldly. "You won't do what?"
He smiled. "I won't take your dislike as anything personal. You got problems, you got a hate, you don't feel good, it doesn't have to be directed against me. You see, I have to think positive. I can't ever see dislike as something directed toward me. If I did, I wouldn't last five minutes in my racket.
"I'm a salesman. Drug products. I make a good living. A doggone good living. But part of my living comes from liking people, and getting them to like me. My name is Brad Livingston. I got. to walk in a new place and give them the smile and my name as if I've got a lot to offer them.
"Now sometimes when I come in, I walk into grouchy moods, a man after he's had a fight with his wife, when his car has broken down, when he's been cheated, defrauded, done dirt in some way. He doesn't feel good. I can see the hatred in him, but the minute I let it touch me, I'm dead. He will dislike me if I let him. He's in a bad mood, and he's looking for an object for his dislike. I can be it, simply by recognizing his dislike and accepting it. No matter how many times I came in to see him after that, I'd be the guy he didn't like, even when he'd forgotten the cause of it. When he'd forgotten everything else, he'd still remember I was the guy he had disliked that morning. But I can't have that. I got products this man needs. I can do him favors, but only if he-likes me, if he-likes to see me coming."
"You've got everything figured out nice and neat, haven't you?" she said.
He smiled, and she hated him because it was such a nice, friendly smile. She kept lookmg for the ravening animal behind it.
"You got to have everything figured out in this life, honey. Oh, pardon me. Miss Honey. Now, I can't keep calling you that, can I? I know about the fare and the bus, and you don't have to tell anybody your name. But I told you mine-what's yours?"
His smile was kindly and contagious, and although he could not elicit a smile in response, she did say, "Carol Hill."
"Carol. That's a pretty name. It's one of my favorites."
"I bet you say that to all names."
"Sure, I do. Don't you? Why can't each new name be your favorite? It's sure-likely to be the favorite of the people who own it, and they like to think it's your favorite, too. And it doesn't cost you a dime."
"Stop lecturing me on how to win friends and influence the suckers."
"What would it take to brighten you up, Carol? You don't really have to be so sour, do you?"
"I don't have to," she said. "But I am."
"You want to tell me about it?"
"No."
They drove some moments in silence. Carol sank deeper into the seat, overcome with fatigue and made drowsy by the warmth of the car heater.
She felt the car slowing and she looked up, puzzled. She saw they had entered the downtown area, the lights of buildings and streets glowing oddly green and purple in the rain. The whole world had a strange unreality.
"Where would you like me to drop you?" Brad said.
"What?"
He glanced at her, frowning. "Are you all right, Carol?"
"Yes. I'm all right. I don't care where you let me out. Anywhere."
"Anywhere? On a night like this? You must have some destination in mind."
"I told you I didn't. Just stop the car and let me out. I'll be all right."
"Sure you will. But I'd like to see you get some place where you'd be in out of this rain only, unfortunately, I can't spend too much time seeing to it, Carol, because I'm on my way to Bluetown."
"Bluetown?"
"Yes. I'm driving through. I have calls to make there tomorrow. I told you, I'm a salesman."
"Bluetown," she said. "That's where I'm going."
He laughed, shaking his head. "Oh, come on now!"
"I am going to Bluetown," she said. "You can let me out anywhere I can catch a bus, but that's where I'm going."
He shook his head. "When did you decide on Bluetown?"
She shivered. "What difference does that make?" He sighed. "None to me. Okay, Bluetown it is. It's your ticket."
There was warmth and silence in the car, and twice
Carol almost fell asleep before they got out of the city and onto the turnpike.
As they came off the ramp to the express highway, Carol saw the sign. Bluetown, 200 miles. She shuddered, thinking she was taking the first step to completely erase her old life and everything it had been up to now. A new town. A new job. A new life. And never trust a man as long as she lived, never feel pity for him.
Brad said, teasing, "I suppose you knew it was two hundred miles to Bluetown."
"I didn't care."
"Look, if you're in some kind of trouble, why don't you tell me about it?"
"I'm not in any kind of trouble. I just want to go to Bluetown."
Brad shrugged. "So be it. I just better tell you, I am planning to stop at a motel about sixty miles up the road for the night. Then I'll get up about six and drive the rest of the way. That gets me into Bluetown just about the time the buyers are arriving at their stores."
"All right."
He smiled. "You still want to ride with me?"
"You can put me out anytime."
"This is just a little too much coincidence, that I'd be driving along on a rainy night like this and find a girl standing on a local bus corner who's on her way to Bluetown."
"Does it worry you?"
"Nothing worries me, Carol. I'm healthy, twenty-six, and I can take care of myself. But I'll tell you the truth. I am a little concerned about you."
"Why?"
"Oh, it's part of the fare. You are a pretty young girl I figure somewhere under twenty, but you look ill, your eyes look strange. And you're pale."
"I'm just tired. I'll be all right when I get to Blue-town."
"You look beat, all right. Why don't you curl up and take a nap? By the way, you got money for a motel room?"
"Yes. Stop worrying about me."
He smiled. "Okay. Go to sleep."
Carol turned away from him and put her head down on the seat rest. She closed her eyes, but found herself going tense. She held her breath as if waiting for this man to reach for her in the car. He had delayed for some time-what, was he waiting for? Sooner or later the pass would come, why not now and get it over with? Was there any reason to think this man was any better than Mort or Herb just because he had an easy way of talking, a lopsided, kindly smile?
She felt her eyes brim with tears, stinging them. Men! How she hated them. They all had Herb Dearing's face the face of evil. She pressed her fist over her mouth, suddenly afraid she would cry out.
She knew she could not go on sitting like this, staring at her blurred reflection in the rain-swept window. She would be crying hysterically. She was afraid to cry. If she started crying she would not be able to stop.
She held her breath, refusing to think about anything, herself, Herb, Laura, Laura's new baby, her lost job, her life that ended in that town back there tonight.
When she finally got her tears under control, she turned, sitting up straight, her back rigid, her eyes fixed on the road ahead through the small cleared space made by the windshield wipers.
She heard Brad's warm laugh. "Well, that was a short nap, all right."
"I couldn't sleep," she said curtly.
"Don't worry about it. We'll soon be at the Beauty Sleep Motel. I always stop there. They have the most comfortable beds of any motel around here. You'll rest then. And tomorrow you'll feel better-unless you want to tell me what's troubling you now."
"I've nothing to tell."
Brad got out of the car at the office of the Beauty Sleep Motel. Carol saw that it was a beautiful place; at any other time she might have worked up some interest. Now she did not care: the whole world was dark and ugly for her.
The rain had let up and there was only a gray drizzle blown in on a chilled wind.
She watched Brad register inside the smartly furnished office. The proprietor seemed to know him and welcomed him warmly. She stared at Brad's tall, lean form, his wide shoulders.
Her mouth twisted. She wondered if he were going to register her in a separate room. She even prepared herself for his returning to say the place was sold out except for one room which they'd have to share.
She convinced herself this was what Brad would say, and she sat coldly, waiting to hear it. When he came out, he tossed a key in her lap. "You're next door to me. Okay?"
Carol nodded, thinking that Brad was a little more subtle than Mort or Herb, though not much. He would install her in the room next to his but how long before he came to call in the night?
He drove back along the line of parked cars. She saw that the motel was crowded and that they were fortunate to get two rooms at this hour.
He parked the car, then took her bag, led her across the narrow stoop, unlocked her door, pushed it open. He stepped inside and placed her bag on the rack.
She walked into the room, finding it nicely furnished, smartly decorated.
Brad went over to the bed, punched the mattress with his splayed fingers. "Plenty of give," he said. "Very comfortable. Most motels use solid wood for mattresses. I know. I'm in a different one almost every night."
"It's fine," Carol said. She remained rooted in the middle of the room, her arms at her sides.
Brad looked at her oddly. "You better get out of those wet things."
Now, she thought, here it comes. Here was the second man who'd force her to undress for him. Strip, Herb had said. I want to look at you naked. Oh, Brad was more subtle. Get out of those wet things. It meant the same, didn't it? It meant undress, strip down, let me have your naked body.
She saw the faint frown between his brows, saw the way he let his gaze touch at her face, the rise of her breasts, and down along the smooth lines of her body. Here it comes, she thought. "Are you all right, Carol?"
"Yes," she said. She hoped that this one would reach for her, demand her body, so she could repay him for all the wrongs Mort and Herb had inflicted upon her helpless flesh. There was no reason to be afraid to hit back at him Her mother needed Mort's rent money. Herb was Laura's husband, but she didn't know this man. and she didn't care what happened to him. Just touch me, she thought, go ahead, just touch me, "You look a little under the weather," Brad was saying. "I'm not supposed to prescribe my own drugs, but I could get you a sedative if you'd like."
She shook her head, seeing the way his eyes probed her. Sure, he wanted her to think he was troubled about her, but she knew what he was really thinking how much easier she would be with a sedative in her! "No. I'm all right."
He sighed, turning toward the door. "I got news for you, Carol. You sure don't look all right." He stepped out, then paused. "If you need anything, just call."
"I know," she said coldly. "You're right next door."
He frowned, staring at her, and then shrugged. "I hope you get to sleep all right." He was gone, the door closed.
Carol went across to the door and locked it. When she turned around she caught a glimpse of herself in the wide, full-length mirror.
She gasped. She saw what Brad meant. She did look terrible! She was bedraggled, her hair plastered down along her cheeks, her dress wet, her shoes soggy. But it was the empty staring in her eyes that made her shudder, and it must have been this that Brad noticed. Her eyes were bleak and dark in her gray, rigid cheeks.
Shivering, she turned away. She undressed hurriedly. She went into the bathroom, turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it. She stood nude under it for a long time, until she felt some semblance of life, and reason for living, returning to her.
She went into the other room, donned a gown and got in under the covers. The bed was comfortable. She prayed silently that she would get to sleep.
But then she thought about Brad in that next room. When would he come knocking at her door, suggesting a sedative, wondering if she was all right, anything to get inside this room with her and in this bed with her?
She sighed, remembering the frightening picture of herself she'd seen reflected in that mirror. A handsome, charming young man like Brad wouldn't get excited over a drowning rat even a female drowning rat.
She relaxed slightly on the comfortable bed, thinking that perhaps she might get to sleep, after all. She told herself that Brad wouldn't come near her she had looked awful, not inviting.
She closed her eyes, but when she did the evil memories of Herb erupted behind her lids, white-hot and sickening. She lay there sobbing into her pillow, thinking about Laura and the new baby, and her own life that Herb had smashed, and then her body was shaken violently in reaction to all Herb had done to her. At first she had been too enraged, too numbed with shock to feel anything, and then she'd been wet, running, frightened. But now in this warm bed it all flooded back through her and she chewed on her fist to keep from crying out.
She did not know how long she lay there, miserable, in agony; but at last, overcome with exhaustion, she fell asleep, hating Herb, wanting to be avenged on him for what he had done to her, hating all men, and vowing to repay them all for the terrible wrongs .jhe had suffered.
In her sleep, she saw Mort chasing after her. Only sometimes it was Herb, and then it was all men. Mort had despoiled her when she was a child, and Herb had broken her heart and smashed her life. She couldn't find Mort, and Herb was Laura's husband, but somehow they must both be made to pay.
In her sleep her mouth pulled into a bitter, vengeful smile. Her life would begin anew in Bluetown for the gentle, frightened Carol Hill was as dead as the life Herb had destroyed back there in Heaven Heights.
God help the man who touched her after tonight.
She would make them pay. All of them. No matter what they looked like, or sounded like, to her they would be Herb and Mort and they would pay for the evils Herb and Mort had done to her.
God help them all.
CHAPTER SIX
Brad looked at carol in surprise when she came out of her room at six o'clock the next morning.
"What's the matter?" she asked. She felt rested, better as well as she could feel after the nightmare she'd endured with Herb. Inside she was cold and dead, like a recording of hatred that went around and around on the same subject, unable to concentrate on anything except hatred.
"You," he said. He gave her a warming smile. "First, I hardly recognized you. Dry, you look almost human. And, too, I thought maybe you'd change your mind last night."
Carol frowned. "About what?"
He grinned. "About going on to Bluetown. No sense kidding ourselves. You made up your mind to go to Bluetown when I named it."
"That's still where I want to go."
Brad shrugged. "It's still your ticket."
"If you don't want to take me with you, you can leave me here. I'll catch a bus."
He shook his head. "Come on, I'll buy you a breakfast. You'll feel better after you've eaten. You might even feel half as good as you look."
She did not reply. She saw now that she had registered with Brad. He saw the rise of her breasts, the firm way they stood out in the pale beige dress she wore. He saw the slender tapering of her legs to trim ankles in high-heeled shoes. He saw the luster in her hair, brushed and held in place with a spray. He liked what he saw.
She followed him into the motel restaurant where he was greeted familiarly by the employees. She was thinking that he hadn't been impressed by her last night, but the way his gaze kept straying back to the softness of her lips, the high stand of her breasts, told her he was looking at her today.
She asked herself coldly, why not? They're all alike, aren't they like dogs with the scent?
She said she wanted black coffee and toast for breakfast, but Brad only laughed at her. Not after last night, Carol. I don't know what happened. I'm not prying. But I do know you need a good breakfast. It gives the world a better glow."
He ordered a breakfast steak, an egg, hash-brown potatoes, toast, orange juice and coffee for both of them.
"How do you think I grew to be such a healthy big boy?" he said. "Big breakfasts. My mom insists."
"I'm sorry you ordered it," she said coldly. "I won't be able to eat it. I don't want it."
He smiled and didn't answer. The waitress brought orange juice. Brad lifted his glass in a toast, "Here's to Bluetown."
She took a sip of the juice, and then drank the rest of it.
He talked easily, casually, about his job, his schooling, the things he liked to do when he managed to get a couple of weeks off every year.
"You ever go camping?"
"No."
"You'd like it." He launched into a long discussion of camping in the Maine north woods. He had done this once with his father and a guide, and he'd always wanted to go back. He talked about the smell of the pines, the lakes, the coffee and bacon cooking in the early mornings, the sun on the water, the way the fish struck, the way the deer and the other animals came down to water. He ate as he talked, and she nibbled at her food, too. Suddenly she was ravenously hungry, and she finished her breakfast long before he did, her plate cleaned up. He smiled at her but did not mention it.
She felt her heart turn over, thinking that if she were not so filled with hatred, Brad was the sort of man she could have loved the kind she had always dreamed of meeting.
She felt ill. She had to forget the warmth of Brad's lopsided smile, the excitement about him when he talked. She could never forget again what men really were like behind their smiling faces they were all Mort and Herb.
She shivered.
"What's the matter, Carol?" Brad asked.
"Nothing." She shook her head. How could she tell him that she was wishing he would hurry and make a pass at her, show her that he was no different from the others so she could get him out of her mind.
He carried her bag out to his car, and then went into his own room, got his own luggage. He stacked them in the rear of his car.
She saw that he was taking too much time because he was still waiting for her to change her mind and decide to return home.
"I thought you were in a hurry to get to Blue-town," she said.
He gave her an odd look, then got in the car. He started it and drove out to the highway. He turned toward Bluetown, stepping hard on the gas.
"You got people in Bluetown?" he asked after they'd driven twenty miles in silence.
"No."
"City of a half-million people. It's not a small town, not like the place you came from."
"You don't have to wory about me," she said. "No. I don't have to."
She clenched her fists to stop their trembling. Why did he have to pretend to be kindly? Why must he try to hide what he was really like inside?"
She turned a little on the seat, forcing her skirt to ride high above her knees. She glanced down secretively, saw the golden flesh of her thigh that would meet his eyes if he looked away from the road.
She left her leg that way.
It will happen, she assured herself. In a moment he will put his hand over on my leg, the way Herb did, and he won't stop as Herb had refused to stop.
She saw that he was aware of her leg bared to him, all right. He did not pretend that he wasn't human. It was just that he did not make any overt pass, though she saw that he was pleased by the loveliness exposed to him.
Come on, she dared him in her mind, prove to me what a monster you are. I don't want to remember you as a good guy when I get out of this car in Bluetown. I want to hate you, just as I hate Herb and all the rest. Look at me! Touch me! Make your play!
She saw that he was keeping both hands on the steering wheel, and for the most part he kept his eyes on the road ahead. She decided angrily that the challenge wasn't strong enough.
She smiled inwardly, thinking she would increase the pressure on him. Getting him and his kindliness out of her mind was as important as anything that could happen to her. She wanted to hate him because hating him would make him easy to forget.
"You mind if I take a nap?" she asked, making her voice sexy with sleepiness.
"No. Go ahead. You want to get in the back seat so you can be more comfortable?"
"No, this is fine," she said in that drowsy tone, "I like it up here by you."
She lay back, putting her head on the seat rest, keeping her arms at her sides. She closed her eyes and arched her back-just enough to make her upright breasts jut out that much more.
Pleased, she heard the whisper of sound as he caught his breath. She waited, but he did not touch her.
She began to hate him because he refused to respond to her bait. She shifted her legs, keeping her eyes closed as if she were asleep, but this time xposing more of the warm inner thigh to him. She let her head slide over against the door, lying with her legs toward him, her skirt high.
She knew he slowed the car. It was not an appreciable decrease in speed, but at least he had lost his anxiety to get to Bluetown by nine a.m. She parted one lid enough to peek at him, and she saw his face was faintly flushed. He was human, all right, and her pressure was having its effect on him.
She shifted her legs again for him, giving him a newer and better view than ever. Again the car slowed slightly and she wondered how long it would be before he suggested that they stop and spend the the rest of the day in one of the motels along the highway.
She made faint sounds, as if she were deeply asleep. She moved on the seat so that one knee was touching his leg. When he drew away, she whimpered a low protest. She moved her knee and touched his leg again.
This time he did not move away.
She kept her face expressionless, but inwardly she smiled in a cold way. She was getting to him.
She shivered, thinking that she was tempting him. The pressures on him were terrific: her dress was high along her thighs, her legs turned toward him, parted, her head back and her breasts drawing the fabric of her bodice taut. She had never done this before, never even thought of it, and there was no sense of desire in her there was nothing but the hatred that possessed her, that had possessed her since Herb had attacked her last night. She hated all men, and all she wanted was to make Brad behave as those other animals behaved, so that she could see that inwardly he was an animal just like them, and she could despise him, and detesting him, she could forget him.
She stayed like that on the seat beside him until the increase of traffic outside the car and the morning heat warned her they were entering Bluetown.
Brad had looked at her, his gaze had been awed and admiring, but he had not risen to her bait. He had not touched her!
She stretched, yawning, and sat up. She looked down at her dress, saw that it was high above her knees, and she caught her breath as if shocked. "Oh, my goodness, my dress," she said.
She heard his mild sigh, but he did not speak.
She looked all around, seeing the city ahead of them. "I feel ever so much better now," she said.
"I'm glad." His tone was low, flat.
She glanced at him, seeing that he was no longer smiling, that a chill had displaced the warmth that characterized him.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "You."
"What are you talking about."
"You don't know anybody in this town. It's not like that place back there ... "
"I hope not."
" ... and I don't think it's going to be as easy for you to get settled here as you seem to think it is."
"I'll be all right."
"Sure, I'll let you out at some street corner, and then I'm supposed to go merrily off to work and forget all about you."
"Why not? I'm nothing to you."
"Look," he said. "Will you do me a favor? Just one? After all, I brought you up here to Bluetown."
Here it comes, she told herself, the proposition. He's going on the make now.
"What is it?" she said.
Her fists were clenched in her lap. She was no longer even able to get excited or pleased by anything a man said or did, she was so devoured by her hatred.
"Well, I'd like for you to stay at this hotel where I stay while I'm in Bluetown. I'll get you a room there. It's a nice place, respectable, and I know the people who run it. They'll look out for you. Then tonight, after I'm through working, I'll take you out to dinner. You can stay there until you find a job, or get settled or decide to go back home."
"I'm never going back there."
"Okay. Is it a deal? You'll let me get you a room, so I'll know where you are? We'll have dinner together tonight?"
"Sure," she said in that sexy tone. "If that's what you want."
He knocked on her hotel room door that night at seven. She had been ready for an hour. He looked her over with pleasure. He took her down to the hotel dining room for dinner. They made a fine-looking couple, she saw. People stared at them.
"How do you like the town?" Brad asked.
"Fine. I'm going to be all right. I'm sure I can get a job. I'm a pretty good typist."
"Maybe I can help you."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"You didn't take me to raise."
"I'll feel better knowing you have a job."
"I told you. I'm all right. Stop acting like a big brother."
He smiled, looking her over. "Believe me, I don't feel like a brother."
"No man ever does," she said flatly. "Not for very long."
He frowned. "What is it, Carol? You're too young to sound so bitter."
"You're never too young. Men all believe that, too, don't they?"
"You really have been hurt, haven't you?"
She felt a sudden urge to burst into aching tears, but she said sharply, "I'm all right. I told you. Talk about something else, or I'll leave."
Brad grinned at her. "You're not going anywhere--at least, not until after you eat. I watched you at breakfast. I know what kind of appetite you have. One more question and I promise no more talk about you or your welfare."
"Then ask it fast."
"Do you have enough money to tide you over until you find a job?"
"Yes! I told you! I'm all right! Stop worrying about me."
"Okay. I'm going out of town tomorrow night. But I'll be back in a week. I want you to leave your address if you move out of town or find another place to stay here. You promise?"
"How many questions is that?"
"That's not about your welfare. It's about mine. I want to be able to find you when I get back here, and this is a big city."
"I'll leave my address for you."
"You're a lovely girl when you smile, did yon know that?"
"Did I smile?"
"Well, it wasn't much of a smile, but it was pretty good for a start."
When they had finished dinner, they danced to the music of the hotel orchestra. When Brad held her in his arms, Carol had to fight her emotions to keep from trembling or shrinking away from his touch.
"Want to go out somewhere?" he asked.
"I'd rather go back to my room," Carol said. "I'm too tired to go out anywhere."
"Oh? Bored with me already?"
"No. I didn't say that you couldn't come back to my room with me. Wouldn't you like that?" He looked at her.
"Well, would you like that?" she insisted.
"I'd like it, maybe too much," he said. "I better warn you, Carol, I'm only human."
"Are you?" she asked. "I'd begun to give up thinking that. That's why I asked you up there. You wouldn't ask me, and I was getting tired waiting for you to be yourself."
He smiled at her. "Come on," he said. "You haven't been out of my mind for five minutes all day."
"You haven't been out of mine, either," she told him; but she neglected to add that it was because he had resisted her, and because she didn't believe he was that noble, or righteous. It was all an act, she was certain, and she was tired of the act.
He put his arm around her waist when they were alone in the elevator. She told herself this was more what she expected of him, and she tried to relax, but felt herself growing tense as his hand moved slowly upward until it touched tentatively at the under-bulge of her high, firm breast. There was no excitement in her, only the cold chill that told her that soon now she would see Herb and Mort gazing out of Brad's eyes.
She trembled, wanting to scream out her hatred. It was not her fault she was not capable of loving, only of hating. She knew that if she could have loved any man, it would have been Brad. But she walked close beside him, not wanting to love him, wanting only to see him wild and bestial in passion, the way she had learned all men must be.
Brad escorted her along the corridor to her room. He unlocked her door and, when they stepped inside, he turned and pulled her close and kissed her. She would not permit her mind to dwell on the good, manly smell of him, the firm warmth of his lips. His mouth covered hers and the pressure increased, and his hand cupped her breast. She almost cried out as the horror of Herb came back to her abruptly, as if he were sharing this room with them.
"Why are you doing this?" he said.
"Don't you want to?"
"Are you just grateful? Do you think you have to?"
"Don't I?"
"Good lord, you mean you think this is why I brought you here."
"Isn't it?"
He laughed out loud. "Well, if that's what yon think, good night."
He released her, and she felt a sudden chill. Her body was betraying her. This was the first man she'd ever truly wanted even if her desire was all confused with hatred.
"No," she caught his hand, clinging to it. "Please don't go, Brad. I don't want you to."
"Well, that's better," he said, smiling down at her. "Now that I know, at least, that you really want me to stay."
"Oh, I do," she said, and she was honest enough to admit that this was only partly a lie.
He put out his arms to her and she moved closer to him. He put his hands under her arms, closing them around her waist, and drew her body up against his. He kissed her and she felt his hands gliding slowly down over the hillocks of her hips. He held her like this for some moments, his mouth over hers, his hands gently but firmly moving her hips against him.
Her breath quickened. He was like Herb and so unlike him! Brad knew what he wanted. He was experienced, all right, but he made the love-making something to be shared. He wanted her to feel the pleasurable tingling when he caressed her breasts. He didn't need to hurt her to get his kicks.
As Brad moved her body against his, he half-danced them across the carpeting to her bed. He pulled her tightly upon him, kissing her harder than ever. His hands closed on her breasts and she felt her head swimming. He released her and she toppled on her back across the bed. She lay there and stared up at him through half-lidded eyes.
She watched him remove her shoes, one at a time, and toss them behind him. Then he reached upward, moving his palms along the smooth warmth of her thighs. He loosened her stockings and rolled them down. He left her dress pushed high up on her thighs and for a moment gazed down at her exposed legs in enjoyment.
She raised herself as if he had spoken a command and she were acting obediently. He pulled off her dress and tossed it across a chair. She lay back then and let him admire her alluring breasts in the transparent webbing of her pale pink bra, and the inviting curves inside the matching panties.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "Even more beautiful than today in the car."
"What about today in the car?"
He grinned at her. "Let's not talk about that. Let's just say I haven't thought about anything except your fantastic breasts and incomparable legs all day. And suddenly here they are, and I can look at them."
He ran his hand up her legs and across her hips to the top of her panties, and she quivered.
"Don't you want me to take them off?" he asked.
"Isn't it a little late to wonder if I want my pants on or off?" she asked.
"It's pretty late," he agreed. "But it's speak now or never.
"I've got nothing to say," she told him. She was trembling, and she was thinking that this was what pleasurable sex should be, mutual enjoyment only she felt nothing of the sort. Pleasure was dead in her.
She felt the faint trembling of Brad's fingers as he caught the top of her waistband and drew her pink panties down, peeling them off her hips, along her thighs. He held them a moment in his fist, his face flushed, and then he tossed them away. She parted her legs slightly, letting him feast his eyes on her nakedness while she took off her bra.
"Are you glad you stayed?" she asked.
"Good grief," he whispered.
"You can have it," she said. "All you want."
She saw him respond to her brazen invitation, the wanton promise of all of his lusts fulfilled. He straightened and exhaled heavily, trembling with desire.
She was amazed at the way she was able to pretend desire for him. She had never behaved this way with any man, and the only two men who had ever had her would not let her enjoy it, they did not care about her. Now she had tempted this man, brought him up here, allowed him to undress her and stare hungrily at her nakedness. It was as if she had always behaved this way, and she even wondered if this was what Brad would think. She did not care. After tonight, he would mean nothing to her, less than nothing.
She watched him undress, and despite her cold hatred for all men, she was not thinking about Herb or Mort as he removed his clothing and she saw how terribly he wanted her, how magnificently he was built. She was excited at the sight of him.
She felt her hips squirm involuntarily.
Her face flushed red at the thought. She couldn't like this! She hated it!
But he had seen the way she wriggled with anticipation, and she saw the passion rise in him even more.
He moved to the bed and got in beside her. He parted her golden legs and snuggled closer, closer, until exquisite pain burned through her, and her head rolled back and forth on the pillow, and she cried out, "Oh, Brad! Take me! Love me!
It was agony and it was ecstasy, all at once. It was warmth that increased to boiling, and still grew hotter and hotter. The excitement in her would not be denied. The churning passions swirled around and around, catching her up in the spell. She flung her arms about him, pushing her hands up his back and digging her fingers into the flesh between his neck and his shoulders.
She tired, but she couldn't resist the delight that he was creating within her, loving her as no other man ever had, as she had never even dreamed she could be manipulated in her wildest and most secret fantasies.
She forgot where she was, or how she had come to be in this place. There was no reality about this hotel, or about this city of a half-million strangers where tomorrow she must begin her new life out of the wreckage of the old.
But for the moment she could not force her mind to care about yesterday or tomorrow. There was only this moment and the savagery of the passion he aroused in her.
He worked faster and she seemed to spin upward off the bed, off the earth itself, going higher and higher, faster and faster, through the clouds, beyond the pull of the earth's gravity, and then there was an explosion as if the rocket she rode had been blown apart in a million fragments and she went hurtling outward in uncontrollable ecstasy.
At that moment, though, she opened her eyes wide, staring up at this man who could use her body with such ease and so perfectly.
She caught her breath, gasping.
Brad was carried out of himself, too, lifted beyond the farthest reach of reason. He was made of lust and wild, unbridled craving at this moment, and they all showed in his face. This wildness made his face like Herb's had been, as Mort's had been so long ago full of lust, uncaring about anything except the satisfaction of that lust the flushed, savage face of a beast.
She cried out.
"What's the matter?" he gasped in surprise.
She pulled away from him, abruptly. "Nothing."
"Why did you yell like that?"
She shuddered and shook her head. She could never tell him.
"What do you care?" Her voice was cold again now. "You've had what you wanted, haven't you?"
He laughed. "No. Not yet."
"Then get it over with."
"What's the matter with you, Carol? You can't act like this an angel one moment and a witch the next. What have I done?"
"Nothing. Just get through with me. Take whatever you want, and then get out of here."
"I can't leave you like this."
"You've got to."
"This is a hell of a way to act."
"I can't help it. It's the way I am. If you're through you can get out now."
He stared at her, and his eyes darkened. He was human enough to get angry, too, she saw. The rage boiled up in him. It was nothing that he could understand, but if she was going to act like this, he could be just as hard to get along with.
"No," he said in a hard voice. "There's something else I want, and I'm going to have it before I go."
She shrugged. "It wouldn't do me any good to fight you, would it?"
"I'd even hope that you wouldn't fight or want to fight."
"Well, you can't have everything, can you?"
Brad drew a deep breath. "I thought I did tonight, until you started acting like this. I thought you might want to do something for me. But now I've made up my mind that you're going to, whether you want to or not."
His hands caught her head on each side of her face. He held her immobile in his strong fingers. He pushed her downward on the bed, edging himself upward at the same time to meet her What he wanted burned into her mind. It was what Mort had forced her to do, what Herb had done to her when he tired of everything else.
She shook her head. She had never been permitted to choose whether she would do this or not. And now again she was being ordered.
She whispered, "No, please don't make me do that now."
Stiffening his arms, he pushed her lower upon him. "I want it," he told her. "I'm going to have it."
"I won't do that."
"You will, too."
"No, oh, no, Brad, please."
"Take it," he said. There was no weakening in his tone. She struggled a moment, and then she stopped struggling and obeyed his command.
The following day, Brad returned to the hotel at seven o'clock. He was smiling in anticipation, wild with excitement. He had been unable to get Carol out of his mind. All day as he worked, he went back in thoughts to what she had done for him, and the way she had changed suddenly. He reached a conclusion about her. She had been deeply hurt, badly misused. She mistrusted love, and could not give herself completely because someone had taken her in savagery. He hated himself because he had forced her to do things to please him when she made him mad. Well, he'd tell her he understood now, and now he could be gentle with her.
He would teach her what love was. Because one thing was vividly clear in his mind. He was not going to forget her easily. He had had her one night, and he wanted her again and again.
This girl was habit-forming.
She was young, and she had been hurt. He would make her forget the hurt. He would help her to put the evil, whatever it was, out of her mind. There was no ceiling to how high they could soar together in each other's arms.
He rapped again and again on her door. There was no reply. He spoke her name against its facing, but he got no answer.
He touched the knob and the door opened slowly, swinging in on an empty room. Carol was gone.
His heart pounding, Brad strode into the room. All her belongings were gone. There was nothing left of her.
He picked up the phone, got the desk clerk.
"Did she leave any forwarding address?" he asked.
"I'm sorry," the desk clerk said. "She moved and left no forwarding address at all, Mr. Livingston."
As though terribly weary, Brad replaced the receiver.
He walked slowly along the corridor to his room, thinking about her, mixed-up, hurt, confused and alone in this big city. He had no idea where to start to look for her.
He inserted his key in the door of his room, but his door, too, was unlocked.
Astonished, he checked to see if it was the right number. A man's voice said. "This is the right room, Livingston. The hotel detective let us in to wait for you. Come on in."
Scowling, Brad stepped into his room. One of the men pushed at the door, closing it. He was short and stocky. The other man was slender, well over six feet tall. He said, "I'm Brenning, and this is Sergeant Dedrich. We're from the police, Livingston."
"What do you want with me?"
"A little matter of rape, Livingston."
"What?"
"Do you know a girl named Carol Hill."
"Where is she? Can I see her?" Dedrich laughed. "Seems to me you've seen that jail-bait once too often already, fella."
"Jail-bait?"
"She's only seventeen, or didn't you know that?" Brad stared at them. He shook his head. He did not say anything.
"You ready to go?" Brenning asked.
"Go where?"
"Maybe the electric chair, eventually, fella," Dedrich said. "That's the penalty for rape in this state. Or maybe if you're lucky, you'll get life imprisonment. Come on, let's go."
"This doesn't make sense! I didn't rape her!"
"She was raped, all right. She says you did it. Now, come on, let's go. Maybe you don't understand it now, but you'll have plenty of time to think it over where you're going."
CHAPTER SEVEN
John Jemson found his newspaper beside his plate, along with a steaming cup of coffee, the way Myra had learned to prepare it every morning. She had been hard to train, but he had done it, with patience and touches of refined cruelty.
"Isn't this coffee a trifle weak?" he inquired, sitting down at the breakfast table across from Myra.
His wife looked up, shadows flickering in her blue eyes. She was in her thirties, but she looked faded, wan, pale, spiritless. He liked this in her. When a woman married, she was no longer a woman, she was a wife. There was a difference in John Jemson's mind. She said, "I made it the way I do every morning, John dear."
He shrugged, pushing it away. "Maybe that's what's wrong."
Covertly, he saw that her eyes brimmed with tears. She jumped up, took the cup and hurried to the kitchen with it, Jemson sighed, pleased, because this was actually what he had hoped to accomplish. He wanted her in the kitchen while he read the paper.
He yawned almost helplessly. He'd been out late last night; he wasn't sure at what hour he had gotten in some time before his alarm screeched, that was all he knew for sure. The girl he had been with was a lovely little thing, so cooperative, willing, eager and grateful.
That was the ideal personality for a woman. He liked women with open minds and round heels.
Myra returned from the kitchen. He concentrated on his newspaper. He read about a young drug salesman, Bradford Livingston, charged with the statutory rape of a seventeen-year-old girl.
John shook his head, reading the news story with more than mild interest. He didn't blame a man for wanting that young stuff. He himself often had the urge, and this was why he had a rule; he never hired girls at the mortgage and loan company who were under the age of consent. You got more used merchandise, but at least you didn't get arrested for rape, statutory rape, which meant you went to prison even though the girl may have been willing and eager.
He shivered.
"What's the matter, John?" Myra watched him narrowly, never taking her hawk eyes off him.
John flung his head up angrily. He said, "Nothing is wrong, Myra. Where is my coffee?"
"It's not ready yet, dear. I only saw that you looked troubled. Did something worry you? You work so hard."
"Now, don't start that, Myra."
"Start what, dear?"
He laid down his newspaper, exasperated. "Look, Myra. You don't fool me after all these years. I've been married to you too long and that's the truth! I know you too well. You start off as if you're concerned over my welfare, but you're headed in only one direction: where was I last night? Whom was I with? Well, it's just as I told you yesterday, I was working."
"Until after three a.m., John?"
"No. As a matter-of-fact, I went out with a couple of guys and we got to drinking. I've explained to you, Myra in my job I can't punch a clock in this house. I'll get here when I can."
"I didn't mind so much when you were young the way you chased every woman you saw. Some of them were so ugly! They were not nearly as pretty as I was, but you wanted them. I thought you would cool off, calm down, and that we could grow older together gracefully."
"My God! I'm just forty years old! I'm not ready to become senile yet, gracefully, or any other way. If you want to grow old, you do it, but stop nagging at me. I'm a young man, Myra, still young, and I've got a lot of living to do."
"That's just it, John. I want to live, too, but you won't let me. You keep me miserable, sick, wondering which one of those girls you're chasing after! You think I don't see the contempt in their faces when they look at me whenever I come into your office?"
"If you think that, then I suggest you stay away from my office."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, John? You'd never have to see me at all, except a few moments like this at breakfast, and the rest of the day you could chase your women."
"Myra, that's all your imagination. I've told you a hundred times, in my position as personnel director of National Mortgage and Loan, I do have to deal with women, some of them young, some quite pretty but all of it completely a matter of business. I won't have you carrying on like a shrew because I happen to do my job well."
"You chase them, John! Don't lie to me! You take them out to lunch, to dinner. You spend most of the night with them!"
"Shut up, Myra. You're sick!"
"I am sick And you make me sick. I'm sick of sitting around here crying because you're no good. Don't you think I'd like to go out to some nice place for lunch, or dinner, or to a show? Do you think I like staying home alone like this?"
"Then go out! Go anywhere you like!"
"Alone, John? I want to go out with you. You are my husband, you owe me something."
"I don't owe you anything except what I give you. You have this house, and it cost me plenty."
"It's like a jail a cold, empty place."
"It's what you make it!"
"No. It's what you make it, John. You are wrong. You make a mockery of marriage. You expect me to be a slave, and to keep my mouth shut no matter what you do."
"I don't want you to be a slave, but I do expect you to keep your mouth shut if you can't do anything but mouth these insane accusations." He threw the paper down on the floor and stood up.
She jumped up. "John. What's the matter?"
"I think you know what's the matter, my dear. I'm getting out of here. I'll come back when you can show some restraint, when you no longer scream these baseless accusations at me. In the meantime, I suggest you learn some self-control."
He stared at her a moment and then turned on his heel, striding out.
She cried, "John, you're not going without your coffee ... "
"Shove the coffee, woman. I couldn't keep it on my stomach, after the way you've behaved here this morning."
She ran after him and caught his arm. "Oh, John, don't. It's just that I want you to be a decent husband!"
John backhanded her across the face. She toppled backward and then sprawled out on the floor. Her negligee parted, but he glanced at her with cold disinterest.
He spoke icily. "I am a decent husband. It's you who are a shrew and a witch. No wonder I don't want to come home at night. You scream lies at me, you nag...."
"If I do, you made me that way," she sobbed. "Oh, John, why can't you love me, or let me go?"
"Go," he said. "You can go any time you like, but just remember you won't get one cent from me. You'd need proof about these affairs of mine in order to divorce me and you know you can't get it, Myra, because you know it's all in your head!"
John went into the Pirate Room of the Parliament House Hotel across from the ten-story National Mortgage and Loan building. In the dimly-lit sumptuousness of the dining room, he ordered a breakfast steak, eggs and coffee. He sat and ate quietly, watching the women who entered, cataloguing them in his mind.
He had made a study of women. He was a psychologist with a master's degree and he had made a private inquiry into the minds and habits of women. He had learned that most of them fit a fairly ordinary pattern, differing in nonessentials such as personality traits, emotionalism, self-interest.
John smiled, thinking that you studied a woman carefully in order to determine, first, what sort of treasure she had locked up inside her. Was it worth the effort? If you determined that it was, that it would be rewarding to conquer her will and her body, to subdue her, you then searched for the key that would unlock her to you. There was always a key. What was she like? Emotional, immature, selfish, ambitious, strong-willed? Her personality offered the key to opening her up to you. You traded on what she wanted most. Few of them resisted this approach.
His smile widened. He had proved this over the years.
"What are you grinning about?"
John looked up and found Nathan Collins standing beside his chair. A graying man in his earliest fifties, Collins was one of the executive vice presidents of the mortgage firm. There was little about loans and banking and interest that Collins didn't know. But on one subject, Collins envied and admired the assistant vice president in charge of personnel: John Jemson knew how to get the pliable young chicks.
"Sit down," John invited Collins.
The tall slender man shook his head. "I've got to get to work. I've other things to worry about than whether I'll hire two blondes or two brunettes today."
John smiled easily. "Put in your order and I'll find a girl to fill it for you."
Collins shook his head. "Sure you would. And you'd use her yourself before you ever turned her over to me."
John grinned. "The fortunes of war. Nat."
Nat Collins laughed. "Those fortunes of war are going to catch up with you one of these days, Johnny. Myra is going to catch you with one of these chicks, and she'll take everything you've got."
"I'm not worried. She doesn't know how to start to check up on me."
"She'll get smart enough to hire a private detective, and then varroom! The end of old Johnny the harem-keeper!"
John laughed and shook his head. "She'll never do it. Not Myra. If she were that smart, we'd never have stayed married this long."
John walked into his office at the personnel section on the fifth floor of the Mortgage building. He was the only male employed in the entire department.
He smiled, pleased at what he saw when he entered the outer area. Some of the other departments had women who'd been employed for what they knew about finance, banking, auto loans, computers. But each girl or woman in his arena had been carefully chosen, hand picked for some delightful development of bust, thigh, ankle, or face.
He went into his inner office, walked around his desk and sat down, seeing the mail that had been placed before him for his attention. He sighed, thinking there were still a few of the women working in his own department whom he had not yet tested on a mattress, but these females knew they were expendable. Their jobs had less than total security. He gave them all time. They either came around, or they departed and were replaced.
He tilted his head, warm with the power it gave him to know that at almost any hour of the day, one of those women would come in here, close his door and practically plead with him to take her out some evening, a night that would end with his going to bed with her. If she pleased him after the trial run, he would continue to see her until she palled on him, or tired him, or started making demands.
He saw nothing wrong with this.
He had one scruple which he kept inside his own mind and never mentioned to anyone. He did not fire a girl after she had come to him. Even if she were less than exciting for him and he did not want even a repeat performance, her job was then secure, unless she fouled up in some way that had nothing to do with her relations with him.
What could be fairer than that?
Those girls could have job security. They could obtain it pleasantly enough. They were nice to him, he protected them in their jobs. It was that easy.
His private secretary opened his door and stood, her breasts silhouetted against the morning light behind her. She said. "There's a job applicant here that I thought you would want to interview personally."
He smiled at her, knowing she screened out the dogs. She was worth every cent he had been able get for her in yearly salary adjustments. "Thank you, Martha. Send her in."
He nodded, well pleased when the new girl came through the door She was a honey-blonde with the scrubbed fresh look that he fancied. Her breasts were magnificent, high-rising and full. A deep hunger stirred in him at the sight of them.
He stood up, looking at the curve of her hips, the supple lines of upper leg, calf and ankle. Altogether she was delightful. She looked as if she might be a trifle young. After reading about the statutory rape case in the newspaper this morning, he knew he was not about to take any chances on age, no matter how delicious and appealing the fruit appeared.
"Hello, my dear. Sit down, won't you?" He motioned to a chair beside his desk. She sat down and crossed her knees. He sat a moment, distracted by the dimples thus revealed through her sheer stockings. "What is your name, my dear?"
"Carol Hill," she said. She handed him the application she had filled out while waiting for her interview. The first thing he checked was her age. She had written down that she was twenty. He exhaled in a small sigh of relief.
"You're a stenographer, eh, Carol?"
"Yes. I can type seventy words a minute, almost error-free."
"I'm sure you can. Where have you worked? I know it's on your application, but we like to know our people here, eh? We want to be friendly." He winked at her. "It would certainly be a pleasure being friendly with you."
"Thank you," Carol said.
He frowned, seeing that she did not smile. But one thing pleased him. She did not quite lift her eyes to meet his. This was reassuring. She was not bold or forward. She might turn out to be quite pliable.
"References?" he asked.
"I've written to the company where I worked before."
"That will be fine. We can certainly hold a minor matter like that in abeyance, Carol, for a lovely young girl like you. The important thing is to see if we can't get you placed. Right?"
"That would be very kind of you."
"Oh, I want to be kind," he said. He laughed and patted her hand. "I think you're the sort of girl who would be grateful for kindness, eh, Carol?"
"Yes. I guess so."
"It's good if we understand each other," he said. "Now, my secretary has noted here that you've passed the screening tests in typing and shorthand. There remains only the matter of personality. How you will fit in to be part of our big family here. You understand?"
Carol looked at him, waiting.
"It's like this, Carol. We want our people to get along in harmony, without personality clashes. I don't think there will be any difficulty with you. But I might have to spend a little time with you maybe even after office hours some evening talking to you at first. What would you think about that?"
"If it has to be done."
"You don't sound very excited about the prospect."
Her head came up. "Should I?"
He laughed. "Well, my dear. I'm a psychologist and a business major. An assistant vice president in this company. If I can take the time to get to know you a little better...."
"Why, that would be fine," Carol said, and this time she forced a smile.
John nodded. "Well, we're going to give you an opportunity. It so happens we have an immediate opening, and you may have it at least until we see how you work out, eh? I'll keep in close contact with you for the first few weeks. We'll see. That all right with you."
Carol stood up and he caught his breath at the pert loveliness of her, the fresh complexion, the beauty of her eyes, the fullness of those lips, and that gorgeous body that set him trembling inside. He'd get to know this one well!
When Carol was gone out of his office, he sat smiling a moment, then he dialed Nat Collins on the private line.
"Nat. John Jemson. Remember you were finding fault that I never sent you the lookers? Well, I've got one down here for you today. A honey-blonde. Built like blue chip stocks. I thought about you right away, Nat. I want you to remember I'll do things for you, any time I can."
"If she's that good, why didn't you keep her yourself the way you usually do?"
"Nat! Is that nice? I told you, you wounded me at breakfast this morning. I'm trying to do something nice for you. Now, I'm sending her up to your steno pool. That's all I can do. The rest is up to you. From here on out, it's every man for himself."
"Oh, I see. You're going after her yourself?"
"I sent her up to you, Nat. You call her in, look her over. You'll see what a favor I did you. But I can't promise that I'm not human. I can't keep my hands off indefinitely. I'm giving you all the breaks. She's right up there where you can make your pitch, so do your best." He laughed. "At that, I'll bet you ten to one I'm in her pants before you are!"
Carol returned from Nat Collins's office and sat down at her desk.
She sighed. She had never been ogled the way she had been in that man's office. He had appeared so distinguished, in his fifties, at least, but he was like a schoolboy admiring her. And he'd stumbled in his dictation, as if he could not keep his mind on his work.
She shivered, despising him. She had hated the personnel man, too, seeing at once that he was on the make for her. This place was no different from anywhere else; all of the men were alike, all of them on the make.
"What's the matter, hon?" The dark-haired girl at the next desk smiled at Carol. She said her name was Dolly, and then she asked, "What do you think of Mr. Collins?"
"Yuk," Carol said. "He acted as if he had never seen a woman before."
Dolly frowned. "Why, I can't understand that. He's the very nicest boss in the place. Ask anybody. You're lucky to be up here. He's so distinguished and business-like. And he's good to us, too. Just be thankful you didn't have to stay down in personnel with old octopus!"
"Octopus?"
"Sure. That's what all the girls call Old Jemson. He thinks he's God's answer to starving females. He's after all of them. That poor wife of his, she's so jealous that she stays sick all the time. You ought to see her when she comes in here. She looks at all of us, hating us en masse because she doesn't know which one of us might have been out with him last night, or the night before. It would be funny, except she's so sad and so dumb for staying with him."
"Why does she?"
"Because she hasn't got sense enough to catch him with some dame and take him for everything he's got. Sometimes I think somebody ought to tell her how and when. But that's not your worry. Just keep out of Jemson's reach, that's all. If he decides he wants you, and you won't go out with him and go to bed with him, he'll get you fired. You just ask any of the girls. They'll tell you. Stay out of his sight that's the only way to get along without giving in to him."
John Jemson looked up and smiled when Carol entered his office at four-thirty that afternoon. She looked at his smile and she hated him as if he were Herb or Mort. She shivered, remembering Brad and what she had done to him. She would not feel sorry for him. He had had her just as Herb and Mort had and he had paid for it, just as all men would from now on.
She shook the thought of Brad out of her mind.
"How did you like your first day here?" she heard Jemson asking.
"It was very nice," she said. "I think I'll like it here."
"Yes. Well, that's what I thought maybe we might discuss."
Carol frowned. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing serious, my dear. Nothing that we can't straighten out. You and I, between us if you're willing to cooperate."
"What is it?"
"Well, my dear, we have a reply from our call to your last employer. They were very high in praise of your work; however, there was one other point that distresses me a little as it worried them. They were astonished to hear that you were in Bluetown. It seems that you simply walked off your job with them, without any prior notice."
"It was an emergency," Carol said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it."
"Yes. Well, I thought perhaps such an emergency, or a personality disorder, or an emotional problem, called for a closer scrutiny. T wondered if we might not have dinner together and discuss it purely as a favor to you, of course."
Carol bit her lip "I'm sorry, I can't have dinner with you, Mr. Jemson."
"Well, that's up to you. However, we take a dim view of ... "
"I might meet you after dinner, though, so we could discuss anything you cared to."
"That's better. Yes. Well, I believe that I might be able to get away for an hour or so. We'd need some place where we could talk privately. What about your place?"
"I'm living at the Regency Hotel at the moment," she said.
"The Regency? Well, if you wish, I could come up there to your room about eight, perhaps? We've a great deal to discuss, for your own welfare, my dear. As a psychologist, I'm sure I can help you."
"That will be very kind of you," she said.
She left the mortgage and loan building at five, walked along the crowded main street, and turned into the lobby of the Regency Hotel. She had moved there from the family hotel where Brad had installed her upon her arrival in Bluetown. She hated the place after she'd decided to have Brad arrested for rape. It was filled with tormenting memories and ugly recriminations for her.
In the lobby of the Regency she saw men put aside newspapers or magazines to ogle her as she passed. Their gazes seemed to crawl across her breasts, over her hip, along the lines of her legs. But this only strengthened her resolve, chilled the hatred that raged in her toward all men.
She stepped into a phone booth and closed the door. She checked the number she had written on a slip of paper. Drawing a deep breath, she dialed the number, heard a woman's eager voice answer:
"Yes? Hello."
"Is this Mrs. John Jemson?" Carol said. "Mrs. Myra Jemson?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
Carol tipped at her lips with her tongue. "I have some information for you, Mrs. Jemson. Tell me, is your husband at home?"
"Who are you?"
"You don't know me, Mrs. Jemson, but I may be the best friend you'll ever have. Tell me, please, is your husband at home?"
"What business is that of yours, young woman?"
"What business is it of yours, Mrs. Jemson? I know he's not there, and I know that he won't be later tonight."
"What are you talking about? Who is this?"
"Never mind who I am. You suspect your husband, but you can't prove what you suspect. I can help you prove what you believe."
There was a breathless silence. After a moment, Myra said, "What do you mean?"
"I mean if you want to catch your husband with another woman, why don't you bring a couple of witnesses, and arrive at Room 421, Regency Hotel about nine o'clock tonight?"
There was no answer. At first Carol was afraid that Myra Jemson had fainted. But after a long time she heard the click as the receiver was replaced.
Carol wore a nearly transparent white blouse and a sheer bra that night. Her skirt was tight across her hips and she did not bother putting on stockings. She looked at herself in the mirror and, though she appeared pale. He knew her beauty would please John Jemsen. He would not notice her pallor.
He arrived promptly at eight, and he barely noticed what she was wearing. She realized he had been drinking pretty steadily since he left his office and he wasted no time, but started pawing her as soon as he walked in and saw they were in a bedroom with no place to sit except one straight chair or the mattress.
Drawing a deep breath, Carol resigned herself to his man-handling and she did nothing to discourage him.
He lacked any finesse, but she saw that this was because he'd had one martini too many. His eyes were glazed and his breath was hot against her cheek. His trembling hands toyed with her breasts and she found herself remembering the way Brad had loved her, recalling the wonder of his caresses despite herself.
She had to bite back her tears, but she knew all she had to do was foul up with Jemson and he would get out of here before she was ready to have him leave.
"Honey," he said, "You feel even better than you looked, and I didn't think that was possible."
"I'm glad you're pleased, Mr. Jemson," she said.
He laughed and drew her into his arms, kissing her. "Come on now. You got to start right by calling me Johnny."
"Oh, Johnny," she said, laughing. "How you can love!"
He drew her harder against him. "And you haven't seen nothing' yet, honey."
"Maybe I've got some surprises in store for you, too, sweetie," she said.
He drew her down on the bed beside him. He wanted to move slowly, to savor each delicacy of this flesh-feast, but he was too hungry for her to wait. He was far too anxious to take his time. She let him unbutton the fragile blouse and allowed him to slip his hand between her blouse and allowed him to slip his hand between her shoulder blades and loosen the bra-hooks there.
She responded to him with a simulated passion that he did not recognize as completely phony, despite all his degrees in psychology and long experience with women. She breathed loudly, lying back while he drew away the thin wrappings of her blouse and bra.
When she lay before him, nude to her navel, he put his hands on her, his breath frantic. "I tell you true, baby," he said. "I've got to say this. I've had other women but there was never another as lovely as you are. You get me so excited, I don't know if I can enjoy it."
"Why not?"
"Haven't you ever wanted anything so bad that you couldn't wait to get it?"
She closed her eyes so he could not see inside them. She was thinking that all this that he suggested had been denied to her by men like him. But she did not say so. Instead, she pressed closer, wriggling under his hands so her breasts quivered in his palms. "That's the way you make me feel now, Johnny honey," she lied.
"Oh, baby, I hope I can wait," he whispered.
"You've got to, she thought. She moved over on the bed against him. She unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his tie. His chest was matted with hair and she scratched her fingers through it, tickling him lightly until he shivered in reactions.
He sat up, leaning against the head of the bed, staring at her lovely breasts while she undressed him, removing his clothing slowly, tantalizingly. He wanted to hurry her, but the delay was exquisite torture.
When he was undressed, wearing only a pair of white shorts, the soft life he lived showing in the relaxed belly muscles and the sag of chest muscles, she removed her own skirt and panties, kicking off her shoes.
"Do you want me?" she asked.
He didn't speak. His eyes trailed across her, almost seeming to bleed in their terrible need for her. She motioned him toward her, smiling, and lay down on the bed. He was rigid now, and breathless with lust. She reached down and held him and he sobbed out in his excitement, his whole body shaking. She was afraid he was not going to be able to wait at all. She saw that he did not even notice that she was without desire for him. She played her part so well that he was on fire now, past the point of waiting for anything; and he threw himself upon her, grunting loud, in a frantic driving of passion.
She stayed there under him and closed her eyes while he moaned aloud at her loveliness, at the wonder of her. But then he was gasping and working wildly, unable to control himself. Soon he fell away from her, and for the moment at least, it was all over for him.
She stared at his flabby body sprawled out before her there. She checked her alarm clock. It was not nine o'clock yet, but he was too exhausted to go anywhere for a while yet.
He lay on his back with his eyes closed, his arms out at his sides, and he was panting loudly.
She let him rest for some moments, until she was afraid he might become restive or sober up slightly. She got up on her hands and knees, dangling her breasts like tempting clusters of grapes above his face.
He gasped aloud and took a breast in his mouth, kissing her greedily.
She whispered over his face. "You want me to do something special for you, Johnny?"
"Yes, yes!" he gasped.
"I want to make you all excited again."
He nodded but he could not say anything. She kissed his mouth, and moved her lips downward along his throat to his chest muscles. He lay on his back, making encouraging whimpering sounds. She stroked her hand over his chest, down over the flabby muscles of his stomach and touched him, moving her hand faster. She felt his heart pounding swiftly against her face.
She had one agonizing thought as she drove him wild--was she never to feel the sweet pain of embraces like this? She wanted a man whom she could love, who would drive her wild, but she knew there were only the Johnny Jemsons in this world.
She brought his lust to a fiery pitch again. He was stirring, struggling to life on the bed, when suddenly the door was thrown open.
Carol heard Johnny cry out.
He jumped up. thinking at first it was the hotel detective. Then he saw his wife. He roared her name. "Myra! What the hell are you doing here?" He was ready to lunge at her to drive her away, when the flash bulbs popping told him the scene was being photographed, and the cold look in the second witness's face confirmed his worst fears Myra had gotten herself a divorce lawyer.
He sagged onto the bed, whimpering, seeing in that moment the ruin that cascaded around his head, taking everything he now possessed with it.
"How?" he whispered mindlessly. "How?"
Carol waited until the flash bulbs stopped popping and then she reached out and covered herself with a sheet. She heard Myra raging at John Jemson. but she could not feel pity for him. She could not help thinking that Mort had been repaid a little, after all. And Herb.
Every man who touched her would pay for what they had done to her!
CHAPTER EIGHT
"I have to guard my reputation every waking a minute." Nat Collins said to Carol across the dim-lit booth in the Pirate Cove bar. "With a man in my position, you see, where money is involved, there cannot be a breath of scandal."
Carol gave him an adoring look. All the girls in our department idolize you." she said. "They all think you're so distinguished, and so correct in everything you do. They think you're wonderful."
He touched at his small mustache with his fingertips, smiling faintly. "Do they, my dear? And what do you think of me?"
She lowered her eyes, afraid he might read in them that she really thought he was a dirty old man hiding behind a facade of dignity. She said in a low tone, "What do I know, a young girl like me?"
"You're old enough to know your own emotions, my dear."
She drew a deep breath, then and spoke with faked but warm-sounding sincerity. "I think you're one of the handsomest, most distinguished looking men I've ever seen. I wish my own father had looked like you."
"Thank you, my dear," Collins said, but she could see he was disappointed that she had equated him with her father. She thought bitterly that her father wouldn't even be as old as Nat if he had survived that long-ago trucking accident.
"I know that you could never do anything to jeopardize the wonderful reputation you've built up," she said. "I'm so proud to be working with you, instead of with that Mr. Jemson who was caught in that hotel room by his wife."
She bit back a smile, knowing that not even an executive vice president of the mortgage and loan company would know that she had been the girl with Jemson. He had not even returned to the office the next day, and his letter of resignation had been accepted. Carol had revealed her true age to Myra's lawyer and this grateful man, given additional ammunition to use against John Jemson in the divorce suit, had insisted that her identity be kept secret for the present because of her age. When the pictures were shown at the trial of Jemson vs. Jemson if they ever were her identity would be revealed, but until then she was quite safe in her job with National Mortgage and Loan.
"Poor Jemson," Nat said smugly. "But I'm afraid he asked for his troubles. He was very careless with his reputation. He ran after girls. I'm certainly glad, my dear, that you were never involved with him."
"Oh, so am I," she breathed. "The girls at the office warned me about him. They told me what a wolf he was, and the way he cheated on his poor wife. You'd never do that, I know."
"My wife has been dead many years, poor dear," Nat said. "But I assure you, if I had been tempted to step out of line as John was, I'd have been very discreet. No whisper of it would ever have reached our company or anyone else, I assure you."
"A wonderful man like you," Carol said. "I can't understand how you were not caught by some other woman a long time ago."
"After my wife passed on, another right one never came along," he said. "Oh, I've met many lovely women--t never quite the right one. That is, until lately...."
He did not finish this, though he gave her a warm smile and touched at his mustache with his fingertips. She did not say anything, but lowered her eyes demurely.
"A woman would be fortunate to have you for a husband," she said at last. "Just as a girl would be blessed to have you for a father."
Nat had just been reaching out to cover her fingers on the tablecloth. At the mention of his role as a father, he hesitated, reminded forcibly again of the irreconcilable difference in their ages.
"Perhaps I had better take you home, my dear," he said stiffly. "I realize you must be bored being with a man as old as I."
"Why, Nat!" she cried out impulsively. She spoke so abruptly and loudly that people at nearby tables turned to stare. She had never called him by his given name before, and she saw that he noticed, pleasurably. She caught both his hands in hers. You're not old. You're one of the most exciting men I've ever known why, you're young in every way that counts."
"Yes? Thank you." He was flustered because people were staring, and he always felt as though he wore a name plate on his jacket Executive Vice President, National Mortgage & Loan. "I appreciate your warmth, but let's not calloo much attention to ourselves, shall we?"
She looked as if she would cry. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I wouldn't do anything to compromise you, or distress you."
Now he did take her hands in his. "Of course I must guard against anything scandalous, but there's nothing scandalous about being in the company of a young and lovely girl like you, is there?"
Nat planned to say goodnight to her in the lobby of the Embers Hotel, but the lobby was deserted when they entered it. Even the desk clerk was in an inner office. Through a door to the right they could hear laughter and subdued talk from the hotel cocktail lounge. He got into the elevator with her.
Carol yawned sleepily, and he smiled because she looked like a drowsy child to him. He felt protective, and then his gaze butted head-on against the maturity of her breasts and he felt something else, too. He swallowed hard, thinking he had to be careful. A thing like this could get completely out of control. It would be too easy to throw over a lifetime of caution for something as lovely as this young girl.
The elevator stopped at the fifth floor. The corridor was gloomily lit and deserted. Carol leaned against Nat as they walked toward her room. He put his arm about her tentatively, feeling the charge of excitement that rose from her fragrant young body.
"I wish you lived in an apartment house," he said.
"Why?"
"I don't know. There is something about a hotel like this. A young girl alone. Have you lived here long?"
Carol did not answer this because she had no intention of revealing that the Embers was the third hotel in which she'd stayed since her arrival in Blue-town. She said, "I'm looking for a nice apartment, but I've been here such a short while, I don't know anything about which are the respectable sections of town."
"Perhaps I could find something for you," he suggested.
"Oh, would you? I know you could find just what I want."
"I'd love to do it, if you'd let me. I'll make some inquiries tomorrow. Perhaps by tomorrow night we'll have some places we can look at."
She caught both his hands, stopping outside her door. She kissed his cheek impulsively, and then withdrew, as if suddenly shy. "I don't know what you must think of me, Nat."
"I think you're a wonderful girl. The most wonderful I ever met."
"I wish you were my daddy,' she said in that same impulsive way.
He stiffened, withdrawing slightly. If she had one fault which annoyed him, it was her persistent way of reminding him at illogical moments that he could well be her parent.
"Good night," he said.
Her head came up and her widened eyes fixed on him in an artless way. "Aren't you coming in?"
He smiled, pleased that she'd invited him. "I think not, dear. We'd better be more discreet than this both of us."
Her face showed her disappointment. Then she brightened. "But after I find an apartment, you'll come and visit with me, won't you?"
He drew a deep breath, his heart pounding wildly in his hot anticipation. "I look forward to it, Carol, my dear."
"So do I." She squeezed his hands and then stood on her toes, giving him a chaste kiss.
In that moment he almost weakened, thinking perhaps he might go inside her hotel room for just a brief visit. But she whispered, "Good night, Daddy sweet Daddy Nat."
Something collapsed inside him, and he turned away. He walked briskly along the corridor.
Carol stood there, playing the little-girl role she knew he expected of her until he entered the elevator and was gone. Then her face relaxed into a sour smile. She went into her room, kicking off her shoes.
Alone in this casually furnished crib, she prowled from window to door, to bathroom, to bed, and back to the window again. She told herself she did not know why she should feel as she did, but it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to stay alone, in a room by herself.
Alone, she would think, and thinking caused her to remember, and remembering hurt her.
She prowled faster, not wanting to think, as if she could escape herself. She thought about Nat Collins and his twenty-five years of impeccable reputation in financial circles. A man had to be so careful. He was careful, and she couldn't help thinking that he was phony worse in his way than Johnny Jemson, who at least was honest enough to admit to his insatiable urge for females. She suddenly despised Nat Collins because he hid behind a false mask of dignity. The devil only knew what women he had debased in secret.
She shook her head, refusing to think about him any more.
She saw the newspaper laid out on the table beside her bed and she frowned. She had not bought a paper, or ordered one. She decided that a chambermaid had left it there by mistake, or else a bellhop had made a delivery to the wrong room.
She walked toward it, and stared down as the picture of Brad Livingston leaped out at her.
Her stomach churned. "RAPIST GOES ON TRIAL."
She shook her head, staring at the headline, at the picture of Brad.
She began to shake all over. She looked around wildly, knowing she could not stay here alone. She ran across to where she'd kicked off her shoes. She pushed her feet into them, found her pocketbook, hurried from the room.
She was still trembling as she waited for the elevator. It was as if it were more than Brad's picture in that room back there, more as if it were Brad himself. Brad's eyes, accusing, blaming, hating her.
And there was no lust in Brad's eyes now nothing to remind her of Herb or of Mort.
Carol had been sitting at the bar in the Embers Hotel cocktail lounge only a few moments when a man moved over to the stool beside her.
"Buy you a drink, honey?"
She turned and looked at him. He was in his thirties, and he'd already had enough to drink so that he had few inhibitions remaining. But when he smiled, she winced, because his smile reminded her of Brad. She had to get Brad out of her mind or she'd go insane.
"Why not?" she said.
He smiled again. "Why not, indeed?" He signaled the bartender. He didn't wait for the drinks to start telling her how lovely she was, how he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off her from the moment she walked in. But he said he knew she was a lady, real lady, and this was what he liked about her. His knee moved against her leg.
He kept talking and Carol sat drinking, barely listening. As young as she was, his story had a stale old ring to it. A wife that didn't understand the way men were, what a man needed, who pushed him away and then she got sore when he went out and had a few drinks.
"A man needs to feel like he's wanted," he said.
"A girl needs that, too," she said.
He bought them another round of drinks. "A girl like you could have any man she wanted," he said.
Carol turned her head slowly and looked at him. She said, "Would you want me?" But inside she was adding the rest of it, would he want her if he had any inkling what it was going to cost him?
"Would I?" He grinned.
She was watching his face and when he smiled like that, something turned over in her stomach because he looked so much like Brad. Suddenly she was breathless, feeling as if she would suffocate in here.
"Where can we go, honey?" he said.
"Nowhere." She stood up suddenly.
He jumped up, too. "What's the idea?"
"I'm getting out, that's all."
He stared at her. What's with you? You lead me on like this and then walk out?"
She gazed at him coldly. "Be glad I did," she said. "Maybe it's the biggest favor anyone ever did you."
The next morning at ten o'clock Carol was summoned into Nat Collins's private office. Dolly looked up, smiling. "You're spending most of your time in there. What is it you've got that the rest of us don't have?"
Carol only shrugged and gave her an enigmatic smile. She knew the other girls were becoming jealous of the attention Nat showed her. She carried her shorthand pad and pencils, walking past their desks, knowing they were watching her covertly. She couldn't care less. The assaults on her by Herb and Mort had completely alienated her, from herself and from those around her. She could not love any more. She could only hate.
She stepped inside Nat's door and closed it behind her.
"Hello, my dear," he said, "Come on in."
She came across the room, feeling the impact of his gaze on her breasts, her thighs. She felt as if she were so much fresh meat being inspected. It made her hate him more than ever. But the more rage she felt against him, the easier it was for her to smile.
"You have such a lovely smile," Nat said, standing up. "I'd like to see you smile all the time."
"Don't I?" She was only a few feet from him now, and she saw he wanted to reach for her, to caress her breasts and massage her buttocks, but he did nothing except stand there with that phony smile lighting his flushed face.
"I think you will smile when I tell you the good news I have for you."
She smiled again. "You're so good to me. You always have good news for me. You're always doing something for me."
Now he did take a step nearer her, as if there were some irresistible pull of magnetism in her for him. "I want to, my dear. I'd like to do everything for you."
"I know you would, Daddy Nat."
He winced slightly at that title she insisted upon giving him, but said, "I've found just exactly the right apartment for you."
"Oh, Daddy Nat!" She threw her arms around him, kissing him impulsively, flattening her breasts against him, clinging to him even when she felt him trying to withdraw.
Finally he did disengage himself and step back. "My dear!" he said breathlessly. "We must be more careful! Don't think I didn't appreciate your enthusiasm and gratitude, but what if someone came in?"
She said contritely, "Oh, I'm so sorry, Daddy Nat. But you do make me so happy and there's so little I can do for you." She laughed. "I don't care. You've been careful long enough!"
"My dear, what are you saying?"
She laughed in a little girl way and ran across the room to the door. "I'll lock this door," she said. "Then no one can come in here not until we want them to."
He protested weakly. "We are on office hours, and this is a business office, my dear."
She held her hand on the key a moment and jiggled it, but did not turn it in the lock. She moved away from it, but she saw that Nat believed she had locked the door. She did not say anything to disenchant him.
He waited until she returned to where he stood beside his desk. He put his hand on her upper arm, his thumb resting against the rounded out-thrust of her breast as if he could not resist touching her in some small way.
"We must be more careful," he said, but she saw that he hoped she would not be.
She laid her steno pad and pencils on his desk, seeing she would not be needing them. She looked up at him adoringly. "Where is the apartment you found for me, Daddy Nat?"
He bit his lip but managed to smile. "We'll go over there after work. I thought maybe we'd have dinner together ... "
"Oh, you're so sweet!" She threw her arms around him and kissed him again. This time he did not protest. When she drew away, his hands were still under her arms, braced against the swollen ripeness of her breasts. She did not pull away from him.
. . then, after we've had dinner, we can go over and look at your new place. I was so sure it was exactly what you'd want that I signed a lease for it."
"Oh, Daddy Nat!" Again she kissed him, and this time she parted her legs just slightly and lifted herself so she was pressed hard against him. She moved her hips in the faintest undulation, rotating them, and yet doing it so discreetly that he might almost believe it was not movement at all, but the spinning of his own heated imagination.
Nat was unable to disentangle himself this time. There was the delicious heat of her thighs upon him, the faint suggestion of movement that puzzled and confused him even while it delighted him? Was she really moving herself against him? Did she realize what she was doing?"
He had restrained himself as long as he could from touching those luscious breasts. His hands closed on them, and he felt the room wheel and skid under his feet. She was so young! So lovely! It was as if some kindly fate were repaying him for a long life of having done some good where he could. Surely this was repayment of some kind! He hoped he deserved it, because for the moment he could not endure the thought of its being taken away from him.
"Oh, Daddy Nat," she whispered against his face, her lips parted, lax upon his cheeks. "We mustn't....."
Nat straightened slightly, reacting to long years of rigorous, habitual self-control. "No, my dear, you're right."
She smiled up at him uncertainly. "Oh, you get me so excited, Daddy Nat. I hardly know what I'm doing."
"You're a lovely child." His throat ached with her loveliness. It was difficult for him to talk at all.
"Tell me about my apartment," she pleaded. She moved to him again, pressing her hips inward as if it were an unconscious, involuntary movement.
He pretended not to notice how she had fitted herself on him as if she were some delicate butterfly that might dart away on gossamer wings if he reached for her.
"Tell me about it," she pleaded.
"Well, it's in the very best neighborhood, and yet not too expensive. Less per month than you are making here a week, and that's good yardstick in renting, my dear. No more per month than one makes per week." His hands moved to the small of her back, holding her in place on him.
"Oh, you're so clever I"
"I'm not a clever man at all," he said. "I begin to see how cheated I have been, not to have had a girl as lovely as you all these years."
"It's too bad you didn't have a daughter."
"Yes." He sighed because obviously this wasn't what he had meant. Still, he enjoyed her artless simplicity and innocence. He was thinking there was so much he could teach her. What you did was, you got them young and you taught them ... "Well, it is small, only a living room-dining room, a small sunny kitchen with a little nook for eating alone when you must!" He laughed when he said that, but his laugher had phony ring. "And a bright and airy bedroom."
"It sounds lovely." Now he was certain that she unmistakably moved herself in that tantalizing circular motion upon him. His hands instinctively slid lower on her buttocks and he enclosed each sweet, tormenting globe in his eager palms.
"Oh, Daddy Nat," she whispered, and Nat was unsure whether this response was elicited by what he was doing to her with his hands on her bottom or by her gratitude over the apartment he had found for her.
His fingers pressed inward on the delightful crease between the cheeks of her behind. Lovely! The fingers of his right hand pushed lower, probing, seeking. She squirmed as if in some ecstasy of anticipation.
"There is one little matter," he said, smiling at her.
She gazed up at him. "What's that, Daddy Nat?"
He drew a deep breath. "Now, you must not misunderstand this. I want to do something for you. A little gift. I paid your first month's rent. I had to make a deposit on the lease, so I paid that. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind! Oh, Daddy Nat!" She kissed him again, this time full on his mouth, her own lips parted and her tongue pushing between his teeth.
Going wild with need, his inhibitions melted from him, Nat pushed his fingers harder into her and she moaned in a delight of sweet agony. He was certain she liked that and he probed one finger harder, deeper.
"Oh, Daddy Nat," she said. "You do so much for me, and I can't do anything for you. I just feel terrible. I feel so selfish, taking everything and not giving anything in return. Isn't there anything I can do for you?"
"You are doing it," he whispered breathlessly. "Letting me be near you, letting me hold you like this!" He thrust his finger deeper into the sweetness of her bottom and she pressed closer upon him.
"But that's not enough! I kissed you because I wanted to. Isn't there anything you want from me, Daddy Nat? Anything?"
He drew a deep breath, held it. Then he kissed her mouth, pressed his lips against her throat. "I'd like to look at you," he whispered.
"What did you say, Daddy Nat?"
"Look at you," he was hoarse. "You are so young! So beautiful! Your body. Nude. like a sculpture by some old master, or a classical painting. Oh, if I could just look at you! I know we mustn't! I know how old I am, that this is a business office, that I'm insane holding you like this; but that's what I want."
"Oh, and I want you to have that, Daddy Nat," she whispered. "I know I'm just a young girl. I'm nobody, really. Just me. But if that's what you want to look at-I couldn't deny you, Daddy Nat! I couldn't!"
He was gasping for breath. "Then don't deny me," he whispered. He tottered back against the desk, drawing her with him.
"Do you really want me to strip?" she whispered in a conspiratorial tone, like a little girl who knows she is being naughty and might be punished.
"Yes! I do want you to do it! Now! God knows, I do! I don't care. I have denied myself too many things, I won't miss the chance to have this. Go ahead, darling girl, undress for me."
"All right, Daddy Nat."
She stepped away from him, seeing that he was rigid with excitement, his face flushed and sweated, his gray eyes tormented.
She tilted her head, but then didn't quite meet his gaze, as if she were too demure; and then slowly she began to undress for him. Her blouse went first, unbuttoned, slipped off her golden shoulders, folded and placed on his desk while he simmered in an agony of impatience. His anticipation was heightened by the fact that her breasts were swollen provocatively over her bra.
She removed her skirt next, and he saw how lovely her upper legs were, beautifully proportioned like slender pillars of gold. Her skin was tinted with that gold and smoother than any rich fabric.
With the skirt finally folded over the back of a chair, she stood before him in shoes, panties and bra. With a sick sense of frustration, he was fearful that this was as far as she would go. But it could not be. He had to see it all. She had to go all the way now.
She looked at him.
"Is this what you want, Daddy Nat?"
He shook his head, whispering, "Couldn't you take them all off, darling? I need to see you. All of you. You have such a lovely body. It's a shame to cover it even with the flimsy fabric of lingerie. I want to see you in your rich, lovely nudity."
She frowned as if faintly troubled, but she nodded, agreeing to comply with his wishes.
She hesitated when she touched the hooks of her bra.
"Please!" he whispered at her, nearly going wild.
She loosened the bra, tugged it away in her hands.
He gazed, eyes distended, at the high-rise perfection of her firm young breasts and the innocent pink of her nipples. They were still like little-girl nipples on those magnificent breasts. Rather than deter Nat in his need, they drove him wilder with desire.
She seemed frightened and shamed by her nakedness, but this only added to his pleasure and sense of power. He was getting what he had dreamed of, but had never dared to hope for. And this was only the beginning. This luscious little body would be installed in that apartment where he would keep her feeling gratitude and a need to return the favors he would pile upon her. He saw how it would be. He would keep her there! He would keep her very well!
He wanted to laugh because he did not know what had happened to his long habit of caution. This girl had burned it out of him, destroyed it, along with all the other false values that he had paid homage to all his life. He would keep her as discreetly as possible, but to hell with the rest of the world. She was worth losing everything else for. In that moment he was sure of this.
She rolled her panties down her legs, let them drop to the floor. She stepped out of them. Then she turned, showing him what he wanted to see, standing with her hands at her sides, her head back and her eyes closed, and she was like some blonde Venus.
He stared for a long time, feasting his hungry eyes on the delights stacked before him. She was going to be his! She was his!
"Come here," he whispered.
She nodded and walked slowly toward him. He retreated until he was seated in the leather chair behind his desk.
She sat down on his knees, facing him. He nodded because this was what he wanted. He got himself ready. He heard her faint moan of protest, but she did not withdraw, and he told himself this was just her natural modesty asserting itself in a lost cause. He was going to have her now. His hands caught her on each buttock and he drew her up to him.
"Oh," she cried, the sound wailing out of her in a prolonged sigh.
"That's right, baby. That's the way. Oh, that's perfect!"
He drew her closer, and she put her arms around his neck. He lifted her hips in his hands and let her glide downward again. Then she lifted herself and came down upon him in a way that made him bite his lip to keep from yelling out his ecstasy.
"More!" he told her. "More, baby! Faster!
Faster."
He went wild, grabbing her to him, the chair hobbling, rolling on the carpeting. He sank his teeth into her throat, his arms closing on her.
When she screamed the first time he did not even hear it, though of course everybody else on that floor did. She screamed again and a third time before he cooled off enough to be able to hear anything, to know what was going on. What in hell was the matter? Her voice poured out of her, in wild screams of terror. He stared at her, his mouth open. He grabbed her and shook her but she only screamed louder than ever.
His head jerked up at the sounds of outrage and shock that struck him from across the room.
It was too late to move. Nat just sat there, stunned. It raced through his mind that she had not even locked the door. The room was full of people, clients and employees!
He still heard her screaming, but all he could think of was that she had not even locked his door. She had done all this deliberately!
His mind could not contain anything else for the moment.
She went on yelling, but it was some seconds before he could comprehend what she was shouting at the top of her lungs:
"I thought he was like a father to me! I thought he wanted to be a father to me!"
CHAPTER NINE
Carol walked slowly into the courtroom with
Detective Fred Brenning. He was the law officer to whom she had gone with her complaint against Brad. Now, she felt the walls of the room pressing in on her. She was too sick with self-hatred even to look up.
Brenning sat with her at the foot of the prosecution table. The room filled quickly with the curious and the morbid. She heard a whisper and when she looked up Brad was entering from a side door, between two detectives. Brad's arms were cuffed together at the wrists.
Carol trembled, her body shaking visibly.
Brenning whispered, "Take it easy. He can't get at you now."
Carol nodded, sicker than ever, not daring to tell him that she was not afraid of Brad; she never had been. She had been shaken by the awful sense of pity she felt for him. He was the first man who ever tried to be kind to her, and she had brought him here.
Carol tried to keep her eyes down but she knew that Brad was staring at her. Finally she could endure it no longer. Slowly she raised her head. Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment their gazes held. She felt the blood seep down from her face. Her hands knotted in her lap, but for that brief instant, she was powerless to look away from him.
His eyes were haggard, ringed. There was none of the old spark and healthy exuberance about him. His cheeks were thin, sunken, his mouth pulled down at the corners. It was hard to believe it was the same man who had tried to cheer her up that night in the rain.
He wore a white shirt that looked poorly ironed. She remembered the starched, gleaming white of the shirt he had worn the night she met him. He had been fastidious, neat and particular about his dress. He no longer seemed to care how he looked. It was in his face that he knew he was on a one-way street to the penitentiary for life or for a date with the hangman.
He wore a tie but it was loose and awry. The top button of his shirt was free; his collar was wrinkled.
Carol blinked back the sting of tears that welled into her eyes. She could not go on looking at the despair and agony in his eyes She had to look away.
But this was worse. Beyond the railing, she saw two people whom she recognized though she'd never seen them before.
Brad's parents were there. Even if the woman's face had not been tear-stained and the man's drawn with helpless compassion, she would have known Brad's mother and father. She remembered he had talked about them. He went home to visit them every weekend. He felt only pity for any child who was less than close to its parents.
Carol looked away quickly. That mother's face showed her heart was broken; every lesion was rejected in her pallid cheeks.
"Don't worry, Miss Hill," Brenning said at her side. "It will soon be over."
"I hope so."
A photographer tried to take her picture, but Brenning warned him not to. "She's under-age," he said, "and she's to get no publicity out of this. She's been hurt enough."
The photographer nodded and retreated.
Carol watched him snap pictures of Brad. Brad sat immobile and scarcely blinked his eyes when the flash bulbs popped. The photographer turned his camera on Brad's parents then. Brad was on his feet before either of his guards could move. He was almost upon the news man when the bailiffs overtook him. He was forcibly restrained and dragged back to his chair.
Carol stared at him, her face gray. For another moment his gaze struck against hers, and it was as if he asked her clearly if she were pleased with what she had wrought.
The trial began at last. There was no jury, since Brad had not insisted upon a jury trial. Only the judge would hear the testimony the judge and the roomful of onlookers.
The opening statements aside, the prosecutor called Detective Brenning to the stand first. Carol pressed her fist against her mouth, afraid she was going to be ill.
Asked to state in his own words how he came to be involved in this case, Brenning said, his voice flat as if he were reading from notes: "Carol Hill came to me on the night of ... " he paused and then named the date and gave the exact hour she appeared at his desk in the detective bureau at police headquarters. "Carol Hill, a female under eighteen, reported to me that she had been raped. I asked her for details, and she gave me the name of the hotel here in Bluetown where the forcible rape occurred, the time, and the name of the rapist."
"What did you do then?"
"I called a medical doctor and with a nurse and female bailiff present, the doctor made his examination."
"And what were his findings?"
The defense attorney objected, saying the doctor who made the examination could best give that evidence, but the prosecutor waved away the objection by asking, "Detective Brenning, were you told that Miss Hill, a female under eighteen, had or had not been raped?"
Brenning nodded. "I was told that Miss Hill had been repeatedly raped. I then had her make a disposition, and later followed up by going to the hotel where the accused rapist resided. I arrested him."
"Is he in this courtroom now?"
"Yes, sir, he is."
"'Would you point hire out, Detective Brenning?"
Brenning nodded and pointed toward Brad. "That's him, the defendant, Brad Livingston."
"Thank you, that will be all, Detective Brenning."
Carol heard Mrs. Livingston crying beyond the railing, but she did not look up. She kept her eyes fixed on her hands on the table. They were gray, damp with sweat, trembling.
The prosecutor then called Dr. Eva Taylor. Dr. Taylor stated that on the night in question he had been summoned to examine a young woman who had reported being raped.
"Would you give us your findings, doctor?"
"Yes. I'll attempt to make them as concise and uninvolved as possible. I found that there had indeed been forcible entry made upon the person of this young woman, not once but several times. There was evidence that she had been repeatedly and brutally misused sexually. I reported then, and I must repeat here that Miss Hill had indeed suffered rape at the hands of a male person of great strength and sadistic tendencies. She was most brutally assaulted."
Twice while Dr. Taylor testified, Carol had heard Brad's whispered protest, a sibilant sound. Now, suddenly, Brad threw off the defense counsel's restraining hand and leaped to his feet. "No! That's a lie! I never did that! None of it. That's not true."
The judge hammered frantically with his gavel. The two bailiffs forced Brad back into his chair.
His face livid, the judge leaned forward across his raised desk. "I warn you about these outbursts, Mr. Livingston!"
Brad leaped to his feet again. "Warn me? Must I sit and listen to lies?"
"Mr. Livingston!"
"You can stop pounding that gavel at me! What can you people do to me now but kill me? And do you think that's the worst thing that could happen to me after what you've done to my parents, to my career, to my whole life?"
"You should have thought of that!"
"I never raped her! I never misused her as this doctor is saying! Why do you permit that? It's my life I'm fighting for, and the things he is saying they are lies! All of them! They are lies!"
The judge nodded toward the bailiffs and Brad was forced back into the chair. Now his wrists were handcuffed to the arm rests. He sat, his face ashen. His eyes were wild like those of a caged, beaten animal.
The prosecutor waited until there was quiet in the room again, and then he spoke to the red-faced physician on the witness stand: "There is no chance that you could be mistaken in your diagnosis, doctor?"
Dr. Taylor's voice was low, grave, but unequivocal. "None. The young woman had been raped, brutally and sadistically. I merely state the medical truth."
"Thank you, doctor," the prosecutor said.
The defense attorney attempted to shake the doctor's story, but the physician was adamant, refused retreat a step from the diagnosis he had made at the time of his examination. "Brutal. Sadistic," he said.
Brad strained forward and his voice raged out suddenly. "Tell them, Carol. In the name of God, why don't you tell them the truth?"
A bailiff caught Brad's shirt collar and yanked him violently back into his chair. Brad sat there taut, panting, his chest heaving, his ashen face rigid.
Carol pressed her hands over her face. She felt the kindly touch as the prosecutor patted her shoulder compassionately, but she withdrew as if in terror of the touch of any mortal.
She was not called to the stand. The judge stated that the evidence in her deposition and Dr. Taylor's testimony was weighty enough to satisfy the terms of the laws dealing with rape. Brad was invited to take the stand in his own behalf. He raged out, "What good would it do? Who would believe me? I say I am not guilty. I say I could never do to any woman what you people have accused me of doing. Make her tell the truth. She's the one who should get on that stand. Only she can tell you the truth!"
Carol pressed her hands over her face, keeping her head lowered. The prosecutor assured her that Brad's outbursts only strengthened the strong circumstantial case against him. "The judge will throw the book at him."
Carol felt sicker than ever.
Finally the judge said, "Brad Livingston, will you come forward and face the bench?"
Brad and his lawyer approached the judge's desk. They stood waiting.
The judge said, "We find no mitigating circumstances, no conflicting evidence. The fact that this girl, an under-age female, did willingly accompany you to the hotel is the sole fact in your favor. But the brutal and sadistic assault upon her body must not go unpunished. We find you guilty of statutory rape and hereby sentence you to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary."
A woman screamed out, protesting. Carol's head jerked up. She sat as if in a trance, watching as they led Brad's mother from the courtroom. She was hysterical.
When Carol looked back at Brad, she saw that his face was cold and expressionless. There was savagery in his eyes but there was no longer any hope.
Carol sobbed suddenly, unable to endure the look of torment on Brad's face.
The prosecutor said, "It's all right. It's over. You can go out of here and forget all about it."
Go out of here and forget all about it! Carol shuddered, knowing better. She would never forget that look on Brad's face, that anguished cry of Brad's mother. Her sleep would be haunted by these nightmares as long as she lived.
Carol no longer had a job at National Mortgage and Loan. She went to her room in the Embers Hotel. She took a hot shower, but still felt covered with vileness. She could not stand the loneliness. She knew she had to go out and find a job some place where no one, knew her, but she could not even look ahead to this yet.
She lay naked across her bed. She decided that she would move to another town. She could not stay here in Bluetown where everything would remind her of what she had done to Brad and to Jemson and to Nat.
But that was still in the future. At the moment she could look no further ahead than a quick drink. A drink would help her forget. Enough drinks would make it all go away in an alcoholic fog. She dressed as rapidly as she could, and went almost running down to the Embers Cocktail lounge.
There were not many people in the lounge at this hour. The bartender recognized her and built her a martini, three to one.
"I like martinis," she said. "They're faster than anything else."
"It's the olive in them that does it," the bartender said.
She turned, seeing that the young man who had bought her a drink a few weeks ago was on the stool down the bar. His smile had reminded her of Brad. He glanced at her but he didn't come near her.
She finished off her martini. Her eyes glazed, a warmth settled in her forehead. She ordered another drink and then moved with it down the bar to the young man. The bartender was talking to him but moved away.
"Buy you a drink?" Carol asked.
He glanced at her without warmth and shrugged. "Why not? At least now I know it won't lead anywhere. I'm willing to drink with you."
"How do you know it won't lead anywhere?" She asked, signaling the bartender to prepare two more drinks.
He watched her down the second martini as if she had just come in off the Gobi Desert. He said, "Because, no matter what happens, nothing leads anywhere, and that's the way I want it. I prefer it that way. Look at me. Remember I told you my wife didn't care anything about going to bed with me?"
"I remember."
"Well, it seems she didn't want me, but she didn't want any other woman to have me either."
"That's a disease a lot of wives suffer from," the bartender said, standing with a newspaper across the bar.
"She divorced me," the man said to Carol, shaking his head as if he'd never heard anything so ridiculous. "She wouldn't go to bed with me. I told her I needed sex. So she divorces me for trying to find another woman. She took nearly everything I owned, and the rest will probably go to her in alimony. And for what? Because she didn't want me to have sex except maybe three or four times a year with her. You tell me the sense in that. You tell me!"
"Things are tough all over," the bartender said.
Carol said, "Maybe you need a girl to help you forget."
Now he drained his glass and stared at her. "Maybe I do, baby. But not you."
Carol caught her breath. "Why not me?"
He laughed savagely. "I'll tell you why. Because good ole Ed Bailey has gone down dead-end streets for the last time. And that's what it would be with you."
She stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You, sugar. I been studying you since the last time we talked together so cozy in here. And I've decided what's wrong with you. I know what's the matter."
She could barely breathe. "Do you?"
"That's right. Old Ed N. Bailey has figured it out. You can't love me, or yourself, or anybody. That's the trouble with you. You're so mixed up you don't even know how to love. I don't know why. I don't want to know. I just know that's how it is. You even make my wife look rational in comparison." He laughed suddenly. "No hard feelings, baby. How about letting me buy you a drink from one cripple to another."
She took the next martini the bartender pushed toward her. She sipped at it, watching Ed. "Maybe somebody could teach me to love," she said.
"Maybe. But not me. I couldn't take the chance. I had one kook. Luckily, I got rid of her. All it cost me was everything I had made up to the moment. But I couldn't afford your price, baby. I know that in advance."
The bartender laid down the newspaper, staring at them. "Hey, you two ever hear of a guy named Nat Collins?"
Carol felt her heart turn over.
Ed said, "Sure. I know him. Big shot in finance. One of the directors or something at the National Mortgage."
"Vice president," Carol whispered.
"Civic leader. A real go-go man," Ed said. "He's got the world by the tail, all right."
"Not any more," the bartender said. "He just let go of it. He committed suicide. Jumped off the tallest building in town."
Carol shook her head. She heard Ed Bailey and the bartender discussing Nat's suicide, but the words did not reach her. It was a clatter of garbled sounds.
The room spun. She heard the bartender say, "Looks like you've had enough, lady." But she could not answer. She pushed her martini glass from her, knocking it over. The bartender laughed. "Never mind wrecking the glassware."
"What's the matter with you?" Ed Bailey said.
She ignored him and stood up. He tried to catch her arm, but she shook free. "Let me alone," she said.
Ed Bailey laughed at her. "My pleasure," he told her.
She stared at the bartender, his face like a smiling mask. The bottles, the small signs, the beer ads, the faces of the people in the lounge changed places, whirling.
"You better go sleep it off," she heard the bartender say. "Sleep?"
Carol turned, walking out of the lounge. She did not go into the hotel lobby, nor even consider going up to her room. She couldn't stand it alone in there.
She walked the streets, thinking about poor Nat, who had tried to find romance when he thought the time for it was past, who had been willing to sacrifice everything he had believed in all his life in order to keep her with him. She had destroyed him. It had been so easy, so dreadfully easy you made a man believe you loved him, and then you could do anything to him.
Carol walked faster. She had casually destroyed everything Nat had labored fifty years to build; his reputation, his career. And it was not even Nat she hated, any more than she had hated John Jemson or Brad.
She saw suddenly that she had sown havoc in the lives of three men because she was a walking monolith of hatred unable to reach out to other human beings anymore in anything except that hate.
She had been racing toward this moment ever since that day when she, only eleven years old, had been forcibly held in the lustful clutches of Mort Engler. He had destroyed anything she might ever have been. Not even in her teen years had she been able to respond to love from other people. She had started then being withdrawn and turned in upon herself.
Tears spilled from her eyes. But was it her fault? Had she wanted Mort to use her as he had, to destroy everything lovely in his ugly lust?
She shivered, seeing that accidents happen to other people, other children, other girls. Somehow they learn to live with the wounds. But she had not been able to. She hated Mort and she hated every other man because to her they all had Mort's greasy face.
But Herb had hardened the hatred inside her, hadn't he? His evil was also partly to blame for the way her mind was twisted and obsessed with its hatred for all men now.
Wouldn't every other girl who ever lived have been just as full of hatred as she was if they'd had the terrible and degrading experiences with men that she'd had when she was growing up?
She couldn't answer that. She could only see that Herb and Mort had taken turns using her body and destroying her life leaving her good for nothing but hatred.
Every person learned to hate when he was hurt, didn't he? The difference was that her hatred had possessed her mind, obsessed all her thoughts.
She could not even see or react to the goodness in Brad Livingston until it was too late.
She could not think that despite the fact that poor Nat had loved beautiful girls, as art lovers might appreciate great classics of painting, he had spent his life in sacrifice, in civic and charity work, thinking of others before himself. He was a good man, proud of his record and his reputation. She had stripped it all away. She had let the people he worked with walk in and find him in a state of madness. He could not face any of them again. He could not go on living.
Her hatred had brought him tragedy.
Was even her need for vengeance against Herb this urgent? Wasn't it true that revenge can be uglier than the act one seeks to avenge?
Her mind touched at John Jemson. He had mistreated his wife, but who was she to judge his actions? What did she know of his life with Myra? How could anyone outside know what two people had between them, what hell Myra might have made of his life at home, what needs she never filled?
She wrecked Jemson's marriage, cost him his job. She did not know where he was; she only knew that Myra, alone, was even more miserable than she had been before sitting at home waiting for John to show up when life dulled for him outside.
The wreckage of that marriage was a bitter tragedy, and she alone was responsible.
She had not really thought about Myra's unhappiness. She hadn't cared whether Myra was unhappy or not.
She had not really wanted to repay John for chasing after every girl who came to his firm seeking a job. Those women could look after themselves; they could submit to him, or refuse him, or stay out of his way. All of that was up to them. They went to him because it was easier, or because inside they secretly wanted to. He took advantage only of women who could be used by anyone because they wanted to be used.
He was a man who relished life loved drinking and wenching. He worked hard, and he wanted to play hard. He was frustrated and denied at home. He tried to find happiness elsewhere.
And she had destroyed him without caring who he was. To her he was Herb, he was Mort.
Carol shuddered. She saw that in trying to avenge herself on Herb, she had become as evil as he was; worse, maybe, because she hid behind her facade of innocence. She led men to destruction. Herb was like a rattlesnake, at least; he warned of his intentions.
She hated him no less, but suddenly she hated herself more. She had dedicated her life to vengeance, and not even upon the two men she hated, but upon all men.
She had had enough vengeance, too much. Her mind and her soul and her body were engorged with it.
She had sent Brad to prison. She had taken a man full of kindness and laughter and she had lost him his job, broken the hearts of his parents, destroyed his reputation.
She told herself she had her revenge. She should have felt exultant, but she did not, and she never had. She felt low, as evil as Herb, as rotten as he was.
She was what Herb and Mort had made her. She was evil in their images.
She saw how wrong she was, destroying Herb, wrecking John, causing Nat's suicide. How could she live with herself? She did not want revenge, after all; she had been filled with a pathological hatred for men, but the tragedies she had caused cleansed all that away and she saw herself for what she was. All she wanted now was to do everything she could do set things right, for Brad, at least. She expected nothing for herself any more.
CHAPTER TEN
Carol walked faster. it seemed to her that a fog had moved in, obscuring the lighted buildings, leaving her in a kind of total darkness. She was lost in it. Lost and alone.
A man caught her arm. "Where you going, baby. Let's you and me go to bed, huh? How much baby?" She jerked free. "Let me go! Leave me alone!" She ran, hearing his wild, strange laughter in the fog-swept darkness behind her.
She ran faster. She told herself she did not know where she was going, only that she had to escape, from herself, from her overwhelming sense of guilt. She did not even know how she could do this.
She looked across her shoulder, her eyes distended, her face rigid. She saw no one behind her in the unreal fog. It was as if she had run off the face of the world she had known all her life. She was lost in the fog, chilled and frightened.
She saw a light glowing damply in the mists a-head of her. She smiled strangely, seeing nothing except this one dim beacon.
She stopped running and walked slowly toward that light. She breathed heavily across her parted lips, but she was less afraid now. There was a sense of peace that started deep inside her. She knew she had a long way to go maybe she could never undo the terrible wrongs she had committed in the name of revenge, but she was taking the first difficult step. And this made her feel better, even a little cleaner.
She stopped walking, stared up at the light.
She stood before the police station.
She remembered that other night an eternity in the past when she had come here after Brad had finally fallen asleep. She had gone in these doors knowing that afterwards her life would never be the same.
Now she saw that it would be worse for her this time. Whatever future she might have made for herself, all chance of this was gone. It did not matter. Brad was wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment. Nat was dead. The evil had to end.
She walked slowly up the steps. The desk sergeant on duty stared at her. She told him she wanted to speak with Lieutenant Brenning. The sergeant led her along the musty corridor.
The officer held the door open and Carol stepped into the big office of the detective bureau. It was almost empty at this hour.
Detective Brenning was bent over his desk, doing paper work. Carol stared for a moment at the top of his head. Her fists were clenched at her sides.
The sergeant said, "Lieutenant, a woman to see you."
Brenning tossed his pen aside and glanced up. He recognized Carol. He did not smile, and yet somehow she saw that he was not too surprised to see her there.
He nodded toward the chair at the side of his desk, but Carol did not sit down. She drew a deep breath, staring at him.
She said, "I lied."
"You lied?" The assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Brad for raping her glared down at her. He was a medium tall man in his early thirties, his hair clipped in a brush cut, his shirt sweaty. He shook his head. "That doesn't make sense, Miss Hill!"
"I don't care. I lied about Brad Livingston and I can't live with it. I've got to tell the truth."
She sat numbly in the hair in the prosecutor's cluttered office in the county building.
She was aware that the lawyer and Detective Brenning exchanged glances over the top of her head.
Brenning's voice had a shrug in it. "I thought I ought to bring her to talk to you."
The D.A. laughed. "Sure. That gets you out of it, but what about me? I got a conviction. On a perjured deposition!" He strode back and forth before Carol, staring down at her, his face puzzled. "It couldn't have been perjured. It must have been the truth."
"No," Carol said, "I lied."
The lawyer swore. He stared at Brenning. "Have you told her what the consequences will be for her in admitting that she lied, after that man has been convicted?"
"I tried to tell her. She didn't seem to care," Brenning said.
"I've got to make it right, as much as I can," Carol said in a flat, empty voice.
"Do you know you can go to prison for this?" the prosecutor demanded. "Do you realize, at all, the consequences of what you are doing?"
Carol nodded. She did not know, but she agreed because she did not care. Brad was in prison. He had to be freed. Besides this, nothing else had any importance.
"Brenning and I were in your camp before," the lawyer warned her. "You won't have anybody working for you now."
"I lied," Carol repeated, parrot-like. She went on staring at the floor, waiting.
The lawyer spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat.
Dr. Taylor paced the assistant district attorney's office, looking first at Carol, then at the lawyer, then at Brenning and back at Carol again.
"I could not have been mistaken! I'll stake my professional reputation on it. I examined this young woman, and she had been raped, brutally! Why would I give such a report otherwise? She may have had some reason for lying, but I didn't."
"Were all up the creek here," the lawyer said.
Dr. Taylor stood before Carol. He spoke her name. "Look at me," he said.
She lifted her head slowly. He spoke carefully, enunciating clearly, as if he were speaking to a deaf mute or a retarded child. "Carol, do you remember my examining you that night?"
"Yes."
"Clearly, you had been violated. Savagely. Why then do you now say that it never happened."
She sighed deeply, looking up at them. "That's not what I lied about, doctor. I had been raped. Only, not by Brad. Brad didn't rape me. That's what I lied about."
"Holy heaven, help us," the prosecutor whispered.
Brenning stood up. "What shall I do with her, counselor?"
The prosecutor stared at Carol, made a cutting downward gesture, with his hand, slashing at the air. "Put her in a cell. For questioning. I might end up demanding a psychiatric examination of her. I don't know. Put her in a cell. Get her out of here. Try to find her family."
"She says she doesn't have any," Brenning said.
The prosecutor laughed sharply. "You don't still believe anything she says, do you, lieutenant?"
"She's got a lot of egg on our faces, all right," the detective agreed.
It was late the following afternoon.
Carol lay on the cot in her cell, unmoving, her gaze fixed on the gray ceiling.
The cell door was unlocked, pulled open. Carol turned her head, watched the prosecutor enter.
She sat up, straightening her dress. She said, "Is Brad out of prison yet?"
The lawyer shook his head. "Let's not rush things. We've got some more talking to do. You must have more to tell me. Maybe you want to change your mind again."
"No." Carol shook her head.
The lawyer looked at her.
"One thing beats me, Carol. If this poor guy didn't rape you, why did you say he did. Why did you put him through hell like this?"
Carol leaned forward. Her face was gray. "I've got to tell you," she said.
"I wish you would!"
"I've got to tell somebody, or I'll go insane."
"You can tell me, Carol. That's why I'm here. You wanted to destroy Livingston, but then you changed your mind?"
"No. Not really. I wasn't even thinking about Brad. I didn't even know him very well. He had been kind to me. He tried to be helpful. But I was hurt. . . "
"We have the doctor's word for that. Do you want to name the guy who really fouled you up?"
She shook her head, twisting her hands in her lap. "No."
"You're in enough trouble without withholding evidence now."
"I won't tell you."
"The guy is a monster."
"I can't help it. I know now how many people you destroy when you try to hurt one person. The people who love him are hurt worse than he is. Sometimes he was so conscienceless that he felt nothing but the ones that love him, they are hurt. I've hurt enough people. I won't do it any more. I won't tell you about him, no matter what you do to me."
"You could spend a long time in jail."
"I deserve it."
The lawyer was silent a moment. "Maybe you do, Carol. Maybe you don't. You had reason to hate all right, it's just that you aimed at the wrong guy."
"Yes. I'm no good. No good at all."
"A kid like you? Seventeen?"
"I can't help it. A man attacked me when I was eleven. I never told anybody. You're the first one I ever told. But I hated him, and I was scared of all men after that. And then, when this rape happened to me, I went wild with hatred. I couldn't think about anything except hurting people."
He drew a deep breath, but he did not say anything.
"I've hurt too many people now." In that flat, dead tone, she confessed to the assistant district attorney about Nat, the way she had led him on, the way she had let him think she was crazy about him. "He committed suicide. I destroyed that poor, good-hearted man. I'm no good. I don't care what happens to me."
After a moment of silence, she told him how she had met John, enticed him up to her room, and then called his wife and tipped her off. "I didn't even hate these men not Nat, or John, and surely not Brad. I didn't even know them, or want to know them. I was wild with rage, and they came near me, so I destroyed them!"
The prosecutor went away. The cell block door clanged shut behind him. Carol was left in silence and loneliness. She did not move. It grew darker in her cell, but never totally dark. A small light set in the ceiling glowed continuously.
They brought her food on a tray and she nibbled at it, and they took it away. It was morning, noon, night. It was dark, it was light. She wandered about her cell, touching the bars, waiting, without even knowing what she waited for.
She was never sure whether it was three of four days later that the prosecutor and Detective Brenning came to her cell. The lawyer had papers he wanted her to sign.
"Will they get Brad free?"
"Just sign them," the lawyer said. After a moment he glanced at Carol. "I had Brenning check out the stories you told me about Collins and Jemson. They are substantially as you said. So, since that's true, the judge has agreed to go along on your disavowal of the charges in your deposition against Brad."
Carol nodded, thanking him.
They walked to the cell door. Brenning glanced back at her, his face pulled into a frown. "There's just one thing all this proves. God knows, this nails it down for once and all that you can't look at a girl and see what she's like inside."
Three months later, Carol was in the state penitentiary for women. She moved mechanically, obeyed orders quietly, worked without complaining. None of the other inmates ever saw her smile.
A police matron came into the laundry where she was working.
"You got a visitor, Hill."
Carol frowned. She felt her heart turn over, instantly afraid that Laura had learned where she was. She shook her head, her eyes wild. "I don't want to see anyone."
"Come on, Hill. Let's go. I don't give you permission to have visitors, or to refuse to see 'em, I just deliver you. Let's go."
Carol stared across the wire fence at Brad. He sat in a chair, watching her, his face troubled.
She looked at him, seeing that he had gained some weight. His clothes were tailored and he looked better; but there was a deep hurt in his eyes, a look of sadness in his face that not even time was going to erase.
He said, "I had come up here to see you, Carol."
"Why?" she asked flatly.
He shrugged. "I want to tell you ... I forgive you ... for whatever it's worth."
"Don't."
"They gave me a full pardon, Carol. It's a lot easier to forgive you."
"I lied about you. I just finally told the truth, that's all. I am glad you're free. But I can't ever make up the other things I did to you. Your mother, your job, your reputation there will always be people who will remember only that you were charged with the rape."
"I can't worry about them, Carol. You, I do worry about."
"Don't."
"Sorry. I can't help that. I talked to the prosecutor about you. You had your reasons for hatred. Nobody can deny that. You let them rule you, but no one can say you didn't have reasons for hating men."
"Hating them, that's one thing. What I did, that's something else. All I can say to you is I'm sorry for the hurt I caused you."
"I told you, Carol, I forgive you."
"Do you? Can you forget I cost you your job, ruined you when you had everything going your way?"
"Yes. It's like an auto accident, Carol. You were the victim of one accident it left you hating men so terribly that it blinded you to everything else. I met you at the wrong time, that's all like another car accident a head-on collision. I was a victim of that accident, but I'm out walking around again."
"Living with all the loss I caused you."
"There's one real loss I can't make up, Carol. Only one loss that I really regret, and only that one that I can't ever replace."
She frowned, staring at him.
"I loved you Carol." He said in a flat, empty tone, the loss making him sad. "I know I knew you only that one night and that next day. But you were such a lovely little thing. I knew something was wrong, but you were so brave about it. You were doing something about it. You were so tiny, so lovely, I couldn't stay away from you. I knew you were what I'd been looking for all my life."
"I'm sorry."
"So am I, Carol. I'm sorry for what might have worked out between us I mean, if things had been different."
"Yes."
"That's what makes it so evil," he said. "I could have loved you so much, and for all time. But I know now that even if I still loved you...."
"After all I did to you?"
"Yes, after all you did to me. It wouldn't ever work out. There's been to much hurt. Too much hatred, and the memory of hatred. I'm afraid that would always be there between us."
"Yes."
"I am sorry. I did love you that night I came running back to that hotel to you. I'd been thinking about you all day. I couldn't wait to get to you."
She exhaled heavily. "I am truly sorry, Brad, for what I did to you."
He shook his head. "It's you I'm sorry for. In this place...."
"A year?" She shrugged, not even bothering to look around her. "A year for perjury, with all the things I am guilty of? I'm getting off easy."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Honey, you're the loveliest creature I ever laid my eyes on."
Carol came awake suddenly, brought up from a dream in which Brad was drowning, pleading for help, but she could not save him because he looked like Herb, like Mort. She could not stand to touch him.
She was chilled. Her whole body was cold and for a moment she did not know where she was.
She opened her eyes stirring drowsily, stretching, protesting. Then she stared downward and saw the reason why she was cold. She was lying on her back, the prison sackcloth gown pushed up above the uprising mounds of her breasts and bunched under her armpits.
Her eyes flew open wider, and she saw her cell mate bending over her cot, staring at her nudity. "Maudie!" she whispered. "What's the matter?"
Maude Causey was in her twenties, but already going to fat because she no longer cared what she looked like. She had been Carol's cell mate for almost the entire ten months that Carol had been in the penitentiary for women.
"You," Maudie whispered. "Honey, let me lie down in your cot with you."
"You know what they'd do to us if they caught you in here with me."
"They won't catch us. If they punished all the gals that got together in this place, they'd be busy doing nothing else."
"What's happened to you, Maudie? You've never acted like this before."
"Let me lie down with you."
Reluctantly, Carol moved over on the cot. The stout girl lay down beside her, sighing. "I couldn't sleep," she said. "I felt like I was going out of my mind."
"If they catch you here like this, you'll wish you had gone out of your mind."
"Listen, honey, I know better than that now. I been talking to some of the other girls. Some of them sleep together from the minute after lights out. The guards know what's going on. But as long as there's no trouble, they don't check. They don't look, they don't catch anybody. And that's the way it is. All the girls say so."
Carol shook her head. "But Maudie, you've always said you'd never go like this. Remember the way you always talked about the girls who did, the way you called them man and wife?"
"I don't care. I've changed a lot since I've been in this place, honey. When I came here, it was you who talked about how rotten men were. Well, I'm in here because of a no-good fink of a man. At first I couldn't believe you that they were all no good. But I believe that now. The girls in this place are right stick with each other, and that way you won't get hurt so bad."
"Maudie, no."
"Oh, gee, honey, don't push me away. All I've said about men and hating them--that's just part of it. Lately, I've got to thinking about you, those lovely boobs and that firm little bottom, and I've been nuts just to lie close to you like this. Ohhh. This is so nice. Please don't push me away, baby."
"Maudie, we can't start this."
"Honey, what else have we got? What are we supposed to do in this place, just rot away? I can't stand it. I been lying in my bed every night thinking about you over here, wishing that you'd want me that you'd speak my name, call me, anything so I could come over here to you in the night finally it got so I just couldn't stand it any more without you. I had to come over here to you."
"Maudie, I've never done anything like this."
"Neither have I, baby, neither have !"
"I've never wanted to."
"I never wanted to, either, because there was always some no good rat-fink of a guy around wanting me. I never thought about whether I wanted this or not. But I know now, I do."
"But, Maudie, I don't."
"How do you know? You said you've never done it."
"I haven't."
"Then if you haven't tried it, don't knock it."
"Oh, Maudie, please go back to your bed."
"In a minute, baby. I'll go in a minute. Just lie still. Let me put my arm around you. Let me lie against your back, like this. That can't hurt, can it?"
Carol lay still, not answering.
Maudie's breath came faster. "You're so lovely. I'm the luckiest woman in this place. Not another girl here has got boobs as pretty as yours. They all sag, but yours stand up so lovely. I've got to touch them. Oh, I've got to, Carol, just once."
Carol tried to draw away, but Maudie's stout arm held her close. Carol felt Maudie's full breasts flattened against her back, felt the rise of Maudie's thighs thrust against her as Maudie vibrated her hips in a rapid circular motion.
Carol heard Maudie's increased breathing and felt the heat of her breath against the nape of her neck. But she could not respond to the excitement that was driving Maudie beyond reason, beyond caution.
Carol felt Maudie's hand push under her upper arm, seeking, almost timidly, for the resilient rise of her breast. The other girl's fingers closed on the soft globe and then Maudie was moving her hips faster, pressing herself harder upon the mounds of Carol's buttocks.
Maudie was talking, whispering, but the words were confused, breathless and incoherent. Carol recognized some of them, snatches of the things Maudie was saying it was like listening to a man driven to frantic poetry by desire.
Maudie's fingers worked swiftly, moving faster and faster upon her, manipulating her nipple, exploring the deep cleavage between her breasts.
Then Carol felt the other girl's right hand steal down across her hips and push between her legs. Maudie's fingers probed and touched and moved on her there.
Maudie whispered frantically, "Oh, you're so lovely, Carol. So beautiful. You like what I'm doing to you, Carol; say it, tell me you like what I'm doing."
Carol did not speak. She did not feel any excitement at what Maudie was doing, and she knew now that she never would.
She made no effort to stop Maudie or to discourage her in what she was doing. Maudie was sick with need and loneliness and frustration. Maudie had told her of the wild orgies she had had with her lover and once with several lovers. She was crazy for men, she said, and she could not even understand the frigid ones who did not like them. For ten months now, Maudie had been penned up in here, left where no man could satisfy her or raise her excitement. She had begun by viewing the lovers among the other inmates with contempt, but now she knew what drove them the need, the unsatisfied yearning.
Maudie's hand covered her breasts, pressing the nipples until at last they stood marble-hard for her.
With her other hand she caressed Carol's lower body, stroking with her fingers around and around, faster and faster, getting as frantic as if it were she who was being touched like that.
Carol felt her heart pound faster. There was at least some response in her. Maudie's desire ignited a spark within her and, when Maudie pulled her over on her back, she no longer protested at all. She lay still, her eyes closed and one arm across them. She breathed through her parted lips, aware of what Maudie was doing to her with her mouth and tongue, and knowing that she was being lifted out of herself, taken to that wild moment of fulfillment. She reached down suddenly, grabbing Maudie's head, and pressing her tighter against her while the entire prison seemed to explode into fire.
For a long time after Maudie, sated at last, had crept back to her own cot. Carol lay wide-eyed, staring into the darkness. Maudie had been able to elicit a response from her. She had been unable to let herself go with any man, though she had pretended the wildest kind of abandon and satisfaction.
She stared at Maudie's lumpy form in the darkness under the covers of the other cot. She knew that she would not go this way with Maudie again.
She had had enough of things that were wrong, that led down dead-end streets.
She knew she would never talk about this with Maudie. It seemed to her that she could see the way that Maudie would go. After tonight, Maudie would be happier in institutions like this than she would be in the world outside where the rules were different.
Maudie had started out wild about men, but she had strayed far from that. She hated them now, not as Carol had, needing vengeance, but coldly, contemptuously, because they were no longer what she wanted.
Carol shivered. At least Maudie's life lay straight ahead for her, even if it was a dead-end street.
It was her own life that remained confused, troubling, because though she had responded to Maudie, she did not want an affair with her, or any woman. But could she ever respond to a man?
Carol shuddered, colder than ever. She pressed down under the prison blanket and closed her eyes tightly, trying to shut out her bitter, hurting thoughts.
When Carol walked out of the prison, the first person she saw was Laura, waiting for her.
Her sister had brought her baby with her. Crying out, they ran toward each other.
Even as Laura gathered her in her arms, Carol glanced past her uneasily, apprehensively looking for Herb.
Laura seemed to read her thoughts. She said, "Herb isn't here, Carol. You don't ever have to be afraid, not of Herb. Not any more. When I returned from the hospital with the baby and found you were gone, I kept after Herb until he told me the truth. He had lied to me while I was in the hospital. He said you had caught a cold from the rain the night the baby was born, and that you were staying away from the hospital for fear you might give me your virus. But when I got home, I saw that you were gone, and that you had been for a long time. I frightened Herb. I threateaed to go to the police."
"Oh, Laura, I'm so sorry."
"No, don't be. I had to have my eyes opened to what Herb really was, sooner or later. I think I knew all along. It was just that I wouldn't let myself believe it."
Laura led Carol toward a late model Falcon parked at the curb. Laura said, "Herb knew you were only seventeen. He was so afraid that I would go to the police that he broke down. He was worried, too, because you'd run away in the storm. He told me everything that happened. Of course, he tried to blame you at first, but I told him I couldn't believe that. If you had led him on, you wouldn't have run away in a storm. You would have stayed with him. So again, I threatened to have the police question him. He told the truth, finally."
"I didn't want to break up your home."
"You didn't. You were the innocent victim, Carol. That's all. You must not blame yourself. Herb and I have been separated almost a year and we've been divorced for over six months. I feel like I live in a new, clean world without him."
Carol stood on the curb. Laura laughed and said, "Well, get in. We can't just stand here."
Carol frowned. "Where are we going?"
"Why, home, of course! I've met this wonderful man, Carol. In fact, I work for him, and we're going to be married. I've told him all about you. He wants you to come and stay with us, for as long as you want to."
Carol touched Laura's hand. "Thanks, Laura. You don't know how good it makes me feel to know that I have somewhere I can run for comfort, if I have to."
"If you have to? I want you with me."
Carol shook her head. "But I can't Laura. At least not now. Not yet."
"What will you do?"
"Try to find work. Try to make something of myself. Try to find out what I want, what I believe, if anything."
"Oh, Carol .You've been so unhappy ... "
"Part of it was my own doing. At least, it won't be like that any more. If I have any more emotional accidents, I'll at least recognize them for what they are."
"Where will you go?"
"I don't know. Some new place. A town where I don't know anybody, where nobody knows me. I've got to start all over, because it's like I'm being born all over again."
The bus pulled into the city of Carol's choice at ten o'clock the next morning. Carol sat a moment, looking out the window at the bustling metropolis. It was all new to her, filled with strangers. It wasn't as large as New York, but it was much larger than Bluetown, and she knew no one. She was completely on her own, and this was what she wanted.
She left the bus and claimed her suitcase. In it was all her worldly belongings, and she had fifty-eight dollars to her name. That wouldn't last long, and so it meant she had to move swiftly, find something to do.
In the bus station she inquired for addresses of quiet apartment houses that were not too expensive, and in less than two hours she had found what she thought she wanted, at least temporarily.
The way she was living now, everything was temporary.
She was doing it one day at a time. Each new day would have to take care of itself.
She intended to spend the first day looking around, but after she paid her first week's rent, the amount of money remaining frightened her. She took a shower, put on a dress that wasn't too far out of style.
In an hour she was downtown, the unseeing, uncaring crowds pushing past her on both sides. She entered a mortgage and loan company and applied for a job. They gave her a typing test. She sat nervously before a typewriter, flexing her fingers, frightened because she had been away from this kind of work for so long. But when the woman started dictating, she found it all came back to her at once. Soon she was working smoothly, fluently, the clatter of the keys reassuring. She was going to be all right. She did not know yet how she would make it, but she would.
The woman said, "That's very good. No doubt about it, you are experienced in this sort of work, and we can use a girl like you. When could you start to work?"
"Would tomorrow morning be all right?"
And then she was in the street again. One more hurdle had been passed. She had the security of employment, the promise of regular pay. Lack of finances was no longer a threat.
She put her head back, looking at the city. Everything moved at such a rapid pace, it was troubling after having been so long caged away from all this frantic hurrying.
She decided to celebrate. She went into the nicest restaurant she could find and ordered a steak dinner. She took her time eating it, luxuriating in the elegant atmosphere. She felt the eyes of men. touching at her admiringly. At least here was something that had remained constant while she was in prison. Men had not changed.
She shivered slightly, wondering if she had.
But she knew she was not going to force the issue. She had spent seven years of her life afraid of men, and several months obsessed and possessed by her fear. She was going to try to glide into her new life one step at a time, one day at a time, without forcing anything.
She walked to her apartment house in the early evening. In her room, she wrote a letter to Laura, telling her the good news and making it all sound even better than it was. On the streets she had noticed that the hems on all the skirts were at least an inch shorter than hers. She spent the evening altering her dresses and skirts so they would not seem as old and dated as they were. She set her hair, hoping she would look nice the next day at work in this new world she had found for herself.
She got into bed but sleep did not come to her. She could not say why she was troubled, only that she was. Her mind was whirling, sleepless, even though her body was tired.
What was wrong? She was doing what she wanted, wasn't she? She was making a new life where no one knew her, among strangers in a strange town. It was the chance she had to give herself and the people she met. She had to learn to like them all the men and the women. She had to begin by liking them, by not being afraid, by not thinking about hurting or being hurt. She must try to adapt as a stronger human being.
She was a different girl from the one who had gone into that prison a year ago. She was wiser, more mature, less ridden by hatreds. Still, this did not mean she could not foul up in this town. She knew in her heart that she was still afraid of men. Perhaps she always would be. She hoped not. She longed for love. It was only that she did not know where to find it, or how to accept it when it came. She was so confused about love, so completely ignorant. And so afraid.
She fell asleep finally, deciding only one thing. She would make the effort to build a useful life. She had destroyed a man named Nat Collins, a man who truly thought of others ahead of himself. She owed this much to him.
She was at the office the next morning at eight-thirty. The new day went smoothly. The people in the office accepted her casually, and they smiled in friendliness. She was frightened, but she smiled back at them, all of them.
In the next few days she wondered if it was not too smooth, too easy. She did not want trouble, but everything was like glass; there was an unreality about a world in which there were no problems, no men made passes, none even asked for dates. They were all friendly, but casual.
One night, walking out of the office alone, she saw a man standing near the front doorway. She frowned because at first she thought it was Brad. This was impossible, and yet there was something familiar about that smile "Carol."
She frowned staring at him. He came toward her a handsome man, smiling and that smile reminded her of Brad.
"Don't you remember me, Carol?" She stared at him. "Ed Bailey."
"That's right, the drinking boy from the Embers Hotel lounge in Bluetown."
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for you," Ed said. "What else?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Carol laughed at Ed, shaking her head. "WHY would you want to find me?" He grinned easily. He took her arm and they walked apparently without direction. He said, "That's a good question. I never had much luck with you a couple of drinks, a couple of refusals to my propositions. Why, indeed, would I come looking for you?"
"Why, indeed?" Carol tried to keep her voice light, but she was flattered that he had found her in this city, so far from Bluetown. A man she had known just casually but who had not forgotten her in the long year she'd been imprisoned.
She glanced at Ed from the corners of her eyes. His smile, the shape of his face reminded her of Brad, and this was good. It gave her something upon which to base her liking of him. He was older than Brad, and he had told her he'd been married, hurt, divorced. But he was a handsome and charming young man.
"May I take you to dinner, Carol?"
"If you want to. Only I'm not very hungry right now. Are you?"
"I'm hungry, all right," he said. His tone was cryptic. "But I can put off eating as long as you like."
She smiled. "Why don't we go somewhere and talk? I want to hear more about why you came looking for me."
"There are a lot of cocktail lounges along here."
"I don't drink any more."
"Oh? Reformed, Carol?"
"No. I just don't need it. I don't want it. I'm not running away from anything any more."
"Sounds promising."
"Oh, I don't know if it's going to work."
"We get no guarantees of anything, Carol. We just do the best we can, that's what I think. Tt works out for some of us, and for other back to the booze."
"How about you?"
"What about me?"
"You and the booze?" she said.
"I can take it or leave it alone. It's like eating, Carol. It's not what I'm hungry for right now."
"What are you hungry for, Ed?"
He glanced at her and gave her a broad smile. "I'll have to tell you about that. It's all mixed up in why I've been looking for you, Carol. But it just about simmers down to one point: I'm hungry for the kind of girl I hope you are or that you can be."
"That sounds mixed up enough."
"It's really very simple. After the last time I saw you at the Embers, I asked around about you. I found out plenty. In fact, I found out everything."
"Why?"
"At first it was just curiosity. I had had bad luck with my wife. I figured I knew what kept her from clicking I just didn't have the key to open her up. Maybe some other guy will. I hope so. But I wanted to know what made a mixed-up kid like you click. And I found out. I went to your home town. I met your sister ... "
"That's how you found me."
"That's one way. I would have found you, anyway, because by then, I knew I had to. By then, I knew more about you than anybody else did. I knew your true age the way you used to toss off martinis made three-to-one, a seventeen-year-old girl!-I knew how mixed up you were, and why."
"Why would that make you want to find me?"
"Because I figured maybe, with luck, the two of us could teach each other about loving. like you, I'm a one-time loser. I don't want to fail again. And I thought maybe you felt the same way."
"Oh, God, if you only knew!"
"So I figured, one cripple to another. The blind leading the blind. Me, I'm thirty-one. But you're so young no matter what you've been through you're still a baby and you could learn whatever a guy wanted to teach you, if you wanted to learn. I figured, if you'd even look at me, we could at least try."
She smiled. "I don't know if it would work, either, but you're right, Ed, I'd like to try."
"Now, shall we go have something to eat?"
"I'm still not hungry."
"My hotel is right there. We could have something sent up later, if you'd like."
"That makes sense."
Ed's hotel room was brightly painted, freshly furnished. Everything looked expensive, neat and new. Carol was glad, because this seemed somehow important and symbolic right now.
The bed dominated the room now that they were in it. There were chairs, a dresser, a large mirror, the gleaming bathroom; but once he had locked his door behind them, it seemed to Carol that the bed was suddenly huge, and one saw it no matter which way he turned.
She felt the trembling start deep in the pit of her stomach. She looked at Ed, and liked the looks of him. Her heart seemed to turn over and to sink from its moorings with the abrupt need that being here like this aroused in her. But along with the excitement and the desire there was the old fear. And now there was a new one, too. She had spent her life afraid of men could she ever overcome it? Now she was remembering the way Maudie had raised the first response from her on that prison cot. But suppose a man could not dispel her unnatural fears and inhibitions?
"Carol." She heard Ed's gentle voice.
She looked up. She smiled wanly, her heart pounding wildly. "I'm here."
"You sure are."
He put out his arms to her. She walked into them. She put her own arms up around his back, letting her hands close on his shoulders, aware they were tense and shaking. She was afraid of him, afraid of failure, but she would try to overcome her fear. He looked into her eyes and smiled, and she tried to match his smiling. His arms closed around her and he drew her against him. She felt the firm, strong outline of his body, aware of it as a man's body for the first time and not as an object for her obsessive hatreds.
She tilted her head and he kissed her. For a moment her lips remained cool, but he pressed his mouth harder, parting his lips, and Carol sighed, opening her mouth under his. His tongue played over her lips and she responded with her own, eagerly, in a way she believed was symbolic, too. She felt the warmth and excitement of the kiss flowing downward through her body, warming away the chill.
She felt his hand move to her breast, and for a moment he stood with his hand covering its firm opulence. Then his fingers were working at her blouse. He tried to laugh, but his tone was awed. "If I'm moving too fast for you, let me know."
"I'll write you a letter." She whispered it, trying to keep the fear and uncertainty from her tone.
He laughed, loosening the buttons, removing her blouse. He expertly unhooked her bra, peeling it away. Her breasts spilled free. His eyes were wide with admiration and awe at this full loveliness exposed to him.
"Unbelievable," he whispered.
"Why don't you believe it? It's just me."
"Honey, don't ever say that again." His hands were adoring her breasts. "Say what?"
"That it's just you. You're special. You're more than that. You're extraordinary. Fantastic."
"I don't feel any of that."
"You will, because I'll teach you."
Carol felt a delicious shiver course through her body. "Oh, yes," she whispered. "Please, Ed. Teach me."
He smiled at her. "It may take a long time."
"I've plenty of time, Ed all the rest of my life."
"I'll promise you just one thing. I'll do my best."
She moved against him, feeling the promising rigidity of him. "Yes," she said laughing. "I'm sure you will."
He covered her mouth with his again, hungrily, thrusting his tongue inside. She felt the small pleasure-bumps stand at the nape of her neck, and gooseflesh formed along her arms and legs.
His hand loosened her skirt and now she helped him. She wriggled her hips as he pushed downward and then she took a waltz-time step out of the skirt, which had fallen over her shoes. This brought them back against the bed.
For a moment she stood with the backs of her legs against the mattress, and as though her life flashed before her eyes, she found herself remember Mort and Herb and Nat and John and Brad-and Maudie. But now there was a difference, an earth-shaking dissimilarity For the first time since she had invited twelve-year-old David in to see her nakedness, she wanted to be where she was. She wanted Ed now more than she had ever wanted anything, and her greatest fear was that she would not please him, that something might yet be lacking between them.
Ed's slightly trembling fingers caught her panties and drew them down. She stepped out of them and kicked away her shoes.
She stood naked before him, seeing the fervent admiration in his gaze.
"Do you like me?" she whispered. She was thinking that this was as it had been in the beginning, with young David. She was all new, and she was starting all over again, fresh.
"Fantastic," he said.
He undressed then, standing before her, not taking his warm eyes from her. She watched him, feeling the churn of excitement at seeing a man a man whose thrilling, muscular body she wanted to see, wanted to love in every way she had ever learned. What a difference desire made!
It amazed her to think she had been with so many men, and yet had wanted none of them not even Brad as she wanted Ed. Partly, it was a reflection within her of his unbridled need for her. But she knew it was more than that. It was a sort of coming alive for her because she had never felt this way before, and suddenly it was all as natural as all the other good things in life. More natural and better. All the loving she could never express that had been denied her by her own fear and hatred, was open for her now, and her love welled up as if the floodgates had parted for her. She lay back slowly on the bed, presenting herself to him, waiting, letting him see and feel and know how deeply she wanted him.
She watched him finish undressing. He accomplished it speedily now, driven by his need for her, by the need he now saw in her.
She gazed in pleasure and rising passion and desire at his nakedness.
She moved her hips on the bed, pushing them upward.
"Oh, Ed, hurry, please hurry!"
"Here I am, my baby. You have nothing to fear."
"Nothing to fear."
He moved closer, leaning over her trembling form. Then she felt him collide with her, felt herself accepting him, welcoming him, loving him. She cried out, her legs going taut, her toes pointing toward heaven.
Excitement and pleasure overcame her. She felt herself unable to wait any more and she wailed with the ecstasy of total release. And then he began to move on her again, rousing her once more to the wonderful swirling exhilaration of delight.
Nothing to fear.
She knew that he had opened her up to love and passion, the joyous, sharing kind that made gods of the people who found the right mates. He manipulated her with such ease, raising her again and again to unendurable pitches of excitement.
He smiled, panting from the pleasurable exertion and body-wracking passion. "You've just been starved," he told her. "Starved for love."
She laughed. "Yes. Starved. But not any more. You've satisfied me well, darling! More than satisfied!
I was so afraid of love, but I'm not afraid any more. I was even afraid I might not please you, but now I know better, because now I know there's nothing I won't do to be sure you're pleased!"
He moved on her again. Harder. Faster.
"Please me!" he cried out, panting. "You sure can, darling!"
"I want to. Oh, I will. Oh, Ed, you're driving me out of my mind again! Not again, Ed, I can't stand it again."
