Blackmail and revenge are two of the most powerful themes in literature. Equally powerful is the theme of sexual attraction between two people. Author Lawson Collins has taken these three biblically inherent threads and woven a tale, almost moralistic in tone, in which the bittersweet fruits of blackmail, the desire for revenge and the promise of love, clash head-on in a battle that leaves every participant scarred.
We see in Elle Sutherland a personification of many of our society's young widows. She is lonely, unhappy and disappointed in a life that seems void of all hopeful promise until she is faced with the temptation of love and sexual gratification, a temptation she seems incapable of resisting. And there begins for her a thirty-six hour pendulum of alternating terror and love, of cruel sadistic submission and comforting euphoric bliss that irrevocably change her life.
Innocents such as Elle Sutherland are powerless to cope with the raw relentless outside world and easily fall prey to its monsters. And, yet, ultimately, there arises the question of any lonely young widow's personal responsibility in becoming so drastically enmeshed in depraved situations. Some authorities claim that, in the subconscious of the female, there is indeed a strong desire to become subjugated by brutal tyrannical men, a desire that exists in each and every woman.
We, the publishers, leave the question to you, the readers, intelligent and sensitive enough to explore the facts and arrive at their own conclusions. And, because the author has transcended the lines of strictly conformist behavior in an effort to capture the very real emotions of people under stress, some of the candid language and graphic sex scenes may offend a few of our more vulnerable readers. We would like to alert them in advance, for it is not our desire to offend anyone, merely to shed a little more light on the nature of the animal that walks erect and is king of all he surveys Man!
-The Publishers
CHAPTER ONE
He was a big, heavily built man in his middle thirties, with that well-weathered, tough look quite often associated with one who spends a great deal of time in the open air. He had sandy hair, sandy eyebrows and the smooth, full, tight, reddish-tanned face indicative of a devotion to the table and to a well-stocked wine rack. Yet, beneath the unbuttoned, nearly thread-bare gray sport jacket adorned with mismatched elbow patches, an expensive crew-necked pull-over bulged with muscle, an impressive physical development gained only through strenuous labor.
In his own rather arrogant way, he was a fairly good-looking character, but at that moment he wasn't looking his best. Not that anyone would be who had risen four hours earlier than his accustomed time in a strange bed, with a stranger, feeling like someone had deftly inserted white-hot needles behind his eyeballs and a nervous pigeon had slept in his mouth. So it was not strange, then, for him to stand for an overly long time staring at that innocuous walnut-paneled door with its flourish of ornate lettering that read:
BREHNER, DAVIS, FOLEY AND RUSSELL Attorneys-At-Law
After several moments the big man came to realize that he had indeed been standing there for a long time. Self-consciously, he twisted his head to check the hallway that stretched away to right and left in marble and walnut coldness, and wished he hadn't. Pain, intense and shudderingly nauseous, threatened to tear his head off, and as his gray eyes with their radiating lines of shattered red bulged from their sockets, he was forced to grasp the door-frame for support. What in the hell am I doing here he wondered as the anguish of too little sleep and too much gin slowly, ever so slowly, began to recede. Where the hell am I?
After a moment which seemed like an hour, he pushed himself away from the wall and the door's lettering swam crazily into view once again. He stared at it for only a moment, then, straightening his shoulders and running a trembling hand over his short-cropped sandy hair, he grasped the knob firmly, turned it, and pushed the door open with controlled but agonizing self-assurance.
He stepped in, closed the door firmly, forced a smile to his mouth and glanced with apparent distaste around him.
It was the sort of reception room that belonged to the President's suite in the largest of American corporations. It was of pleasant proportions, about thirty feet square. The floor was carpeted in the thickest of wine-red wools and the ceiling and walls were paneled and trimmed with expensive old oak. Colorful, original and tasteful seascapes were hung in groups on the walls and the lighting was indirect, soft and strangely warm. The atmosphere was rich and heavy, brazenly reflecting its owners' cultured tastes. And it made him sick!
To his right there were two broad oak desks with blue leather tops, handsome matching desk furniture and the most expensive of office equipment. A luxuriant-looking sofa and a half-dozen tall antique chairs waited for clients. Between each of the chairs and at each end of the sofa were squatty polished tables covered with neat rows of shiny magazines. On both the desks were tall crystal vases of freshly cut orchids that lent a slight, expensive fragrance to the room.
There were two women in the room behind each of the desks, each with a pen poised above an officious-looking document. Presently, the younger of the two, the one at the nearest desk, raised her eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles and smiled. Her eyes and mouth flashed the standard receptionist's smile of welcome bright, helpful, inquisitive.
The older one did not look up; her attention remained riveted to the black on white document before her. She appeared rather matronly, wholesome and bosomy, and had a slightly square, gleaming face.
When the man did not move nor speak, the young woman twittered conventional phrases of welcome as if he had arrived late at a party after being caught in a storm. She clucked softly, once he had croaked an answer to her question, then he was shown immediately and with a graciousness that bordered on ceremony, to the first of two doors that pierced the room's right hand wall. As he entered, he forced the plastered smile on his face to widen and inclined his head forward in a gesture of thanks. It hurt like hell, but, after such servile graciousness, he decided she deserved it.
The door slipped quietly shut behind him as he crossed the room and warmly grasped the offered hand of the man who had risen from behind another of those broad and expensive oak desks. For several moments, there were no words spoken, all communication being expressed through the pressure of their hands and eyes that misted almost imperceptibly. Presently, the man behind the desk (the senior law partner, despite his name's tag and appearance in the billing) D. Waring Russell, not trusting his voice, waved a thin, immaculately groomed hand in the direction of a richly stuffed chair and watched with emotion and concern as the younger man settled into it.
Finally, the older of the two men cleared his throat and spoke. His words, chosen carefully, delivered slowly, rumbled through the strained stillness like thunder heard from a distance.
"What are you calling yourself these days?" he asked, unable, despite his intent, to keep the irony out of his voice.
The younger man did not answer immediately. As his powerful body relaxed in the comfort of the expensive chair, his ever-moving gray eyes studied Ware Russell with the interest of intervening years. Six-foot-three and built to match, Ware Russell would never see sixty again, but his back was straight, his complexion as fresh and his eye as clear as a man thirty years his junior. He had thick, iron-gray hair, an immaculately trimmed moustache, gray eyes and the cleverest brain of any the younger man had ever met. And he could see that his father had been doing some thinking with this brain, and he wasn't too pleased with the conclusions it had arrived at.
"Desmond Sherwood, sir," he said, "Des Sherwood." The sir was said and meant humbly. It was not a word he uttered often, in fact, it was a term he had used to no other human being outside of the necessary occasions during his illustrious career in the military.
The older man said nothing, but began twisting the rather short tips of his moustache as his eyes, like those of his son's, moved restlessly. Finally, when the silence began to grow unbearably strained, he spoke, but the tone was so emotionless that a casual observer would have thought he was addressing an impoverished client rather than his own son.
"You know that I wouldn't have sent for you if I hadn't deemed it absolutely necessary?"
"Yes, I know," the man calling himself Des Sherwood answered crisply.
"And you know that I wouldn't have wasted either your time or mine if it hadn't been a matter of life or death or..."
"Yes, I know," the younger man interjected curtly.
Before he could stop the words, Ware Russell blurted emotionally: "Are you feeling all right, Des?"
"Fine." the younger man answered quietly and with just the slightest trace of warmth. "I could use a touch though."
"Ah..." Russell said as he simultaneously touched a button under his desk, and, with whispering quietness, the panel behind him slid back to reveal a recessed cupboard. It contained a small gilded sink and tap and a half-dozen glass shelves of varying heights lined neatly with the best potables money could buy, each encased in its own crystal decanter. Swiveling in his chair and without asking, Russell extracted two decanters, one clear, the other dark amber, set them on the desk, and then returned for two matching crystal glasses. After pouring both three-quarters full, he slid the clear one across the desk.
"To your health," he said.
Des Sherwood raised his glass in toast, said nothing and slid the entire contents of the glass neatly down his throat.
Russell sniffed at his glass appreciatively, let a small sip pass between his lips, swirled the amber liquor approvingly over his tongue, swallowed, set his glass down soundlessly, and said, "I have a favor to ask of you."
"Shoot," Des answered as he reached to refill his glass.
"I have a client who is in need of ... " he paused, choosing the right words, " ... of your rather special services." He rose from behind his desk, crossed to a shelf adorned with several plaques, an array of golf and handball trophies and a half-dozen photographs, selected a picture in a gilt frame and passed it to his son. "As you can see, she is quite attractive. Her name is Elle Sutherland. The man pictured with her is her late husband. There was some mystery concerning his death, but the inquest verdict was 'accidental death.' I was not convinced, and further developments have strengthened my suspicions so that, at this point, I fear Elle might be in some danger." He paused again, studying his son intently, then launched into a swift yet detailed chronology of his client's problems.
As he listened, Des studied the photograph thoughtfully, his perceptive gray eyes searching beyond its flat, one-dimensional surface for clues into the hidden depths of those two smiling faces. His first impression was one of wonder-wonder at his father's use of the term "attractive." Hell, she was gorgeous! His second impression, after he managed to pry his eyes away from the widow Sutherland, was one of curiosity, the curiosity of Mrs. Sutherland's choice of husbands. It was a definite insight into the blonde's character, one which he found both puzzling and disagreeable, and one which he filed away to be examined later. Unless his eyes had suddenly developed cataracts, the photograph revealed the lovely Mrs. Sutherland to be in her early twenties he put it at twenty-three or four, surely no more while Mr. Sutherland was obviously on the twilight side of forty. Curious, he thought. Oh well, to each his own.
For a moment, he studied the somewhat effeminate male face, concentrating more on the set of the mouth and the depth in the eyes than anything else. Years of patient observation matched these facts against similar traits, categorized the man accordingly and transferred this information into keenly attuned memory banks. Satisfied a more thorough examination was unnecessary because the man was already dead and, thus, of little further interest Des returned his scrutiny to the very alive, very intriguing Mrs. Sutherland, Elle. Silently, he tried it on his tongue ... Elle. It had a pleasant sound.
Here again, his perception was concentrated on eyes and mouth. Being younger, she was in some ways easier to read. But there was a depth to her, a flavor he could not catch. It would be interesting to know her, he thought, very interesting indeed. All that fluffy blonde hair and tall classic beauty. Ummmmm. For a moment his mind drifted, no longer curious, just plain fantasizing!
Slowly, his thoughts drifted back to the present, and his eyes focused on her face, lingering for a moment on the mouth that pouted in almost imperceptible sensuality. Finally, with a stirring of long dormant sentiment, he laid the picture face down on the desk and, like a jury of one, listened with no more or no less interest as his father summarized the facts he had been presenting.
Finally Ware Russell sipped thirstily from his glass, then leaned back in his chair, his features relaxed, expectant.
Des was not sure what the old man expected him to say. As yet, no clear-cut way of approaching the problem had burst enlighteningly in his mind. But a headache had. He needed time, time to consider the facts, time for his body to mend. He cleared his throat. "Your client's problems could represent an awful lot of leg work."
"I know," Ware Russell said, scowling. "And to solve it and protect her at the same, takes a special type of individual ... one who is respectfully loyal ... and reasonably sober. It's a ticklish problem and one that I've chosen to handle with a minimum of fuss. No police, no IRS. I want it handled quietly and discreetly and by someone I can trust."
"I see," Des said quietly.
Ware Russell paused only momentarily, then said with some degree of warmth. "Will you do it?"
Des looked up, trying to read those watchful eyes. Finally, with just a trace of a smile crinkling the corners of his mouth, he said, "Yes ... but on my terms."
"I'm willing to pay you any fee within reason."
The younger man stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Two thousand for expenses in advance. Twenty-five percent of what I recover." He paused for emphasis. "And I make all the decisions."
For a moment Ware Russell just stared at his son. Finally he said, "You haven't changed much, have you?"
"No, not really."
The older man shrugged, then, with both his eyes and the strength in his voice drooping, he said, "Brehmer's on vacation if you want to use his office."
"No thanks. Four walls give me the creeps."
"As you wish. Where can I contact you."
"The Flamingo."
"Ah! I might have known," Russell said, smiling wryly as he lifted his eyes. "I don't suppose you'd like to come out to the house for dinner?"
"Thanks, but no."
"Is there anything you need?"
"Yep. A check for two grand, your files on the Sutherlands and a couple of hours sleep."
They both rose. Their brief meeting their first in nearly ten years was over. The pain of memory was too great a gap to be bridged in one span if at all.
* * *
Exactly seven miles north of where Ware Russell now sat quietly in contemplation, Elle Sutherland just as quietly sorted through her late husband's personal effects. It was a task the lovely blonde had postponed for over three months and one which she now did grudgingly and with morbid distaste. Although she was nearly finished, Elle knew that completion would represent hollow satisfaction.
Outside of the single, five-by-eight photograph of their wedding .that perched remindfully on the mantle above the fireplace, the downstairs of the elegant but deteriorating old house was totally devoid of any indications of Tom Sutherland's physical presence. The upstairs bedroom and bathroom, too, had been cleared of his clothes and personal possessions; each item had been neatly folded or wrapped and carefully packed in moisture-proof storage boxes, then carried to the cellar where they were tidily stacked. All that remained were the contents of the antique roll-top desk in the spare upstairs bedroom that Tom had converted to a study. But, even when that task had been completed, when every material object had been removed, Elle knew that his spiritual presence would remain.
The old house was full of memories, memories that would constantly remind her of a happiness once shared. But happiness remembered meant sadness intensified, and, if she was to remain in that rambling old house, as was her wish, to remain and still maintain her sanity, then those memories had to be suppressed.
There was no doubt in her mind that it would be difficult. But it must be done. There was no other course. The house and a small monthly income were her total assets. like Tom, she had no living relatives. There was no one to turn to except Pamela Sutherland and Ware Russell, her late husband's widowed sister-in-law and his attorney. But Pam was in far-away Mexico, and, if it hadn't been for Ware, she didn't know how she could ever have managed.
For, after the initial shock of Tom's death, there had come yet another one. What she, as well as Ware, had thought would amount to a moderate estate turned out to be a pittance of their expectations. Ware had been at a loss to explain it he was just as shocked and mystified as she was. But, in that inexorable way of his, he had guaranteed her he would leave no stone unturned in his search for the mysteriously disappeared assets. That had been over a month ago, but, so far, he hadn't been able to tell her much except that over a hundred thousand dollars worth of blue chip stocks had quietly and slowly over the past few months been liquidated, sold and changed into cash, then "poof vanished. In order to aid his search, Ware had asked her to carefully sort through Tom's papers and she had promised him she would. But Elle had put it off. Now, with a feeling of foreboding at what she might find, the young widow slid the desk's roll-top up and back.
Outside, a sudden storm had blown up. Rain began pouring down the window panes that started to rattle in their frames with the gusting wind. The old house began creaking, making unaccustomed eerie noises in the gale, and an occasional chilly gust blew down the chimney of the unlit fireplace with a force that ruffled the neat stack of papers Elle had quickly made. Shivering with a disturbing feeling that unexplainably bordered on fear, she straightened the stack of papers, placed a paperweight on top of them and bent resignedly to her task.
It was nearly four hours before she finished. She had learned nothing new about the mysterious disappearance of the funds, but, nevertheless, she had carefully laid aside certain papers for Ware's further scrutiny. As neatly as she had packed all his other things, Elle filled two large boxes with the remainder and carried them to the cellar to join his other belongings.
The hated task at last completed, Elle went to the kitchen and filled the teakettle. With weariness dogging every step, she made three trips from the service porch to the living room, carting two pine logs and a small bundle of kindling. Carefully, she laid a fire and lit it. As she finished, the teakettle began to whistle cheerily, and she returned to the kitchen, fixed herself a cup of tea and carried it back to the living room.
The fire had begun to burn readily, slowly overcoming the chill which had spread throughout the house. Elle set her cup on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch in welcome relaxation.
Suddenly, her eyes began to mist, and then, with one agonizing uncontrollable shudder, she began to cry, great heaving sobs of pent-up emotion that surged over her like the inexorable tides of the ocean.
When the lonely blonde at last gained control over her sorrow-racked body, Elle found that her tea was cold, and this discovery irrationally set off a fresh wave of tears. Eventually, exhausted, and, with her eyes red and puffed, she drifted into a restless sleep before the crackling fire.
CHAPTER TWO
At that same moment, some eleven hundred miles away, the early afternoon sun beat fiercely down upon the Mexican village of Regalo del Santos. The village was not large, and, due to its inaccessibility, it had not, as yet, been subjected to the change that inevitably comes with the tourist's almighty dollar. Owing to this remoteness,and to its proximity to Mazatlan's Orient trading seaport, Regalo del Santos did, however, provide a haven for international refugees, and thus it was not uncommon to see a Far Eastern face intermingled amongst those of the natives.
The village itself lay in a narrow band, spread along a strip of land that curled almost elliptically out into the Sea of Cortez. It lay at the base of a jungled ridge that tapered down to the sea, a crescent band of whitewashed walls and orange-red tile that spread from a very blue bay up this ridge, over halfway at its zenith, all the way at its ebb.
Where the curling tongue of land touched the sea, a narrow rocky isthmus, which could be crossed at low tide, spanned the distance between the mainland and a conically shaped island that appeared from the air like a dot at the tip end of a misshapen and forever bowed "i." On this island, facing the blue bay, reposed seven separate villas, six of which belonged to the best of Mexican aristocracy, the last to a rich, brash and fun-loving American widow.
At the moment, a small white Fiat 124 Spider with blue racing stripes was slowly crossing this isthmus. Its occupants were both women one Mexican, one American. Once on the far side, the tiny car accelerated, leaving in its wake a swirling cloud of dust that slowly settled, turning the lush green tropical foliage on either side of the road a very dusty brown. With its tiny engine whining shrilly, the little car assaulted the ridge road which rose in one continuous right-handed curl as it followed the ridge's spine until it junctioned with the village's only street at a distance of less than one mile.
This jarring assault took less than a minute, and, at the crossroads, the American woman was forced to brake hard before making a left-hand turn that sent them hurtling down the ridge's far side. The little car disappeared almost immediately amongst a deep tropical foliage that crowded both sides of the narrow and only road that led away from Regalo del Santos.
Only moments after this exhibition of wild recklessness, a badly frightened Mexican, sitting atop his heavily burdened donkey cart, entered the crossroads and checked carefully to make sure no more crazy A mericanos were threatening to make his wife a poverty-stricken widow. Then he proceeded lazily down Regalo del Santos' only, but very long and zigzagging street.
From the crossroads looking down, the village appeared to be deserted. But it was only an illusion, for it was the hour of siesta, and, outside of the donkey cart, there was little activity in Regalo del Santos. No dust rose from its single street paved with mud and dirt. And, from the crossroads down the twisting street to the harbor, a distance of less than a quarter mile, and on along the bay to the isthmus, not a soul could be seen, save the Mexican merchant and his donkey.
At this hour the heat was moist and full of smells. In the village, the air was filled with the aroma of dead fish and greasy cooking. On the island, behind the walls of the rich American widow's villa, the air was filled with a rainbow of fragrance. A huge yellow and black bee wandered away from some well-cared-for rose bushes at the end of the garden. For a moment, it hovered in mid-air a few inches above the back of a naked man who lay sprawled on his face near a swimming pool. Several blades of young grass below the man's open mouth stirred and the bee darted away.
The garden in which the naked man lay was a sizable expanse of well-kept lawn surrounded on three sides by whitewashed walls. Behind the drowsy noise of the bees in the rose bushes, the sea boomed softly at the bottom of the cliff at the end of the garden.
There was no view of the sea from the garden no view of anything except the sky and the clouds above the ten-foot wall. In fact, you could only see out of the property from the upstairs windows of the villa that formed the fourth side of this very private enclosure.
The luxurious silence of early afternoon was broken by the sound of a rhythmic click-click-clicking. The naked man beside the swimming pool did not move, but his eyes for an instant opened very wide. In a moment, he identified the sound, and his eyelids with their fringe of short,-nearly colorless eyelashes drooped lazily back over very pale blue eyes.
A young Mexican girl of perhaps sixteen carrying a small leather bag and dressed in a white peasant blouse and a short denim skirt strode purposefully across the glazed tiles that stretched from the villa toward the naked man. A few feet short of where he lay, she set the bag on the grass, sat down and removed her cheap and rather dusty shoes. Then, standing up, she slipped off her blouse and folded it neatly before placing it beside the leather bag.
The girl had nothing on under the blouse her skin was pleasantly tanned and her slightly rounded stomach and full-blossoming breasts shone with health. She bent her arms and undid the side-buttons of her skirt, slipping it down and off and placing it neatly beside her blouse. She also wore nothing under the skirt so that her nakedly rounded buttocks and dark-triangled pussy mound were now exposed to the garden sunlight.
Opening the leather bag, she extracted a clear plastic bottle containing a dark amber liquid and went over to the man and knelt on her haunches on the grass, straddling his legs. She poured some of the liquid between his shoulder blades and immediately began to massage the muscles at the back of his neck, her hands working automatically, though her mind was filled with an instinctive horror at the awesome capability of that body.
None of this horror showed in the pretty impassive face, but the upward-slanting black eyes under the fringe of short black hair moved restlessly, alert for the slightest movement of the muscular male body. The animal inside her whimpered and cringed, and, once again, she wondered why she loathed it, and, once again, she vaguely tried to analyze her revulsion. Perhaps this time she would get rid of feelings which she felt guiltily certain were the result of a masochistic sexual desire.
As she worked, the pretty young Mexican girl studied the familiar contours and physical attributes of the man so many women and particularly the widow Sutherland found so attractive. She studied the wavy golden curls that reached almost to his shoulders, the bulging muscles that, even in relaxation, foretold a massive strength.
When she had finished rubbing his spine, the girl sat back on her haunches, giving her fingers momentary rest. The beautiful upper half of her body shone with sweat that trickled down between the swelling mounds of her ripely thrusting breasts. After wiping her forearm across her forehead, she poured more lotion at the base of the man's spine just above the cleft of his firm hard buttocks and began working her hands down to the two mounds of clenching ass-muscles. When she finished this, she sat back, then rose, and automatically the man turned over.
Averting her eyes from the man's genitals, the girl knelt, straddling his legs, and began applying oil to his golden-haired chest. As always, his eyes were closed. It was just as well, for they gave her the willies. The mouth, too, was closed and closed, it somehow appeared cruel.
She bent forward then to massage his shoulder muscles, her gleaming, hard-nippled breasts swaying only scant inches above his chest, her face close to his. Fearful that he might break precedent and open those fathomless boring eyes, the young girl shifted her gaze from his face and let it travel over his fantastically well-muscled body.
Suddenly, her eyes stopped! Her instincts told her something was wrong the skin over his huge biceps seemed too taut as if he were flexing!
Her instincts were right, for, in that moment, both his arms moved with the swiftness of a striking cobra, his hands grasping and pinioning her arms at the wrist. Before she could utter a cry of protest, the surprised girl felt herself being forced back onto her haunches by the man's weight as his back rose from the grass. Her mouth opened, but, as she stared into those now-open blue eyes, her words froze. And it was at that moment she realized a scream would have done her no good. There was no one who would hear her. They were quite alone her mother and Mrs. Sutherland were gone.
Strangely, after the first moment's shock, she was not afraid. She knew what was going to happen. She realized now that he had waited for just such an opportunity, and she knew she would not fight him. Some masochistic part of her wanted it to happen, had "been testing him for a long time.
Her eyes were still locked on his, and she knew that he knew she wouldn't fight him. Without uttering a word, he abruptly placed her slippery lotion-coated hands on his already rising penis as he relaxed his hold on her wrists. She understood immediately what he wanted her to do, and, with her eyes riveted to his as if hypnotized, she began to stroke his hard, menacingly pulsing cock.
His was not the first hard-on she had ever seen, but it was the first she had ever touched. Somehow, its sleek, lust-engorged thickness filled her with a wondrous power as she felt his up-thrust member harden between her gently stroking fingers. She would have continued her caressing attentions for as long as he wished, but he had other ideas.
His powerful hands suddenly grasped her around the waist and she was lifted clear of the grass. He held her there, her lushly contoured nakedness suspended like a rag doll above him, and then slowly ever so slowly he began to lower her. She knew then why he had her stroke his hotly swollen penis, and she watched with awed wonder as he lowered her slowly toward its oiled and shining blood-bloated head.
She was a virgin, but she had no romantic thoughts about her precious virginity being taken by the man she married. Until her mother had come to work for Mrs. Sutherland, a little over a year ago, she had been raised in poverty.
She had a sister who had taken to the streets when she was only fifteen to help feed the fatherless family.
Such moral turpitude was not the way they had been raised, for their mother was a religious and very upright woman, but the necessities of life came first. And she knew that from time to time some very strange things took place in the Sutherland villa. She also knew that her mother disapproved of her disrobing when she massaged Mrs. Sutherland's current boy friend, and the young girl, too, had at first objected to it, been embarrassed by it, but had finally grown accustomed to it, for, so far, nothing at all had happened. Mrs. Sutherland had commanded her to do it to appease his fanciful whim, and, after all, Mrs. Sutherland was God as far as she was concerned. If it hadn't been for her, the poverty-stricken family would surely have starved to death.
Suddenly she was drawn abruptly back to reality as her moist virginal cuntal lips made contact with that lewdly shining oiled penis. For a moment, she was overcome with fear, but, when there was no immediate penetration, her nakedly vulnerable body began to tingle with a new delicious sensation. Suddenly, her whole strangely incited being seemed to exist for that magical contact between hard thick penis and soft wet vagina! Her obscenely moistening pussy was alive with sensation a glowing warmth was spreading through her spasming quivering belly as his rampant hardness penetrated her tight velvety cuntal lips and nudged at her taut little clitoris!
She gasped, then felt his relentlessly advancing penis begin to slip up into her virginal vaginal portal, and, despite an inbred fear, the young teenager was overcome with a delirious ecstasy. Suddenly, her lushly ripened body was alive with want, with a need to be filled. Her eyes were still locked on his and he must have seen her silent plea, for, suddenly, his fingers holding her around the waist relaxed, and she felt herself falling through space...
CHAPTER THREE
Elle Sutherland awoke rapidly with the sickening assurance that she was being tortured. She nearly screamed in the microsecond that separated dreamy fantasy from consciousness, nearly screamed in terror at the clarity of the sudden stabbing pain. For a moment, the young blonde was sure that her belly was on fire, that a red-hot poker had been thrust brutally up between her legs. But, as her eyes, heavy with unaccustomed afternoon sleep, slowly focused and brought to her the familiarity of her own living room, she realized that the pain and terror were simply the products of her over-stimulated imagination.
The groggy widow sat up abruptly on the couch, realizing it had been a dream, a very bad dream of which she could even now only remember the vaguest of details. And, even as she tried to concentrate on those, they slipped quietly back into the secretive recesses of her subconscious, lost forever. But, in their aftermath, there remained a very real, very frightening premonition, a forewarning of the future, the-likes of which she had never in her life felt before.
Slowly, and with all too painful clarity, her world of consciousness returned, bringing with it the terror of remembrance, the terror of her lonely, grief-stricken existence the old house creaking in the wind ... the new, neatly cared-for plot of earth in the local cemetery...
* * *
In the sweltering heat of the garden the viciously impaled young Mexican girl opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. At the very last second, she saw in the naked man's eyes that that was what he wanted her to do. How she managed to keep silent, she later could not have said, for the searing, ripping cruelty of his ramming entry at the time was beyond description. Later, she was to remember it only as an initial stabbing pain much like a combination of being punched in the stomach hard by a balled fist while simultaneously being stabbed by an extremely long and dull knife. Only, in this instance, both sensations were delivered to the same sensitive spot and magnified a hundred times.
And, once she had refrained from screaming, there was not time for her to do it after the brutal penetration, for, like one squeamish at the sight of blood, she fainted dead away, held from toppling over only by the hard shaft of moistly embedded cock that completely filled her forever-stretched vagina.
When after a moment she regained consciousness, that initially remembered pain was gone, replaced now by an insufferable agony. She felt stuffed, filled to unbelievable capacity, her tender young cunt stretched beyond its elastic capabilities. And it hurt excruciatingly so. She dared not move, for she knew it would bring to her lips the cry that the naked man's cruel mad eyes desired.
like her ancestors before her, like the many women who had gone to the sacrificial altar and the many primitive women of history who had quietly slipped into the bushes to give birth to a child, she endured the excruciating pain in teeth-clenching silence. She would endure it. She had to. She would not weaken before this heartless man. That it had happened had been inevitable and she had not resisted, but she would not give him the satisfaction of complete domination, of cruel male supremacy on his terms and his terms alone. She would endure all he had to give her, quietly, and without sacrificing her dignity. And she did. But it nearly killed her.
The naked man read the defiance in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in the tightly clenched jaws. And he was not stupid in fact, far from it. A stupid man or one who was mostly bluff might have eventually tried ravishing her or beating her until she submitted to his will, or even given up all together. But not this man. This one was a grand master in the subtleties of torturous pain and in the understanding of the emotional condition. He was as skilled in his particular field as were his meticulous and forever patient ancestors and countrymen in their development of war machines, rockets and everlasting unforgettable human experiments.
And it was with this same meticulous patience that he quietly began to destroy the impaled young Mexican girl, to rob her of all pride, to use her for his own sadistic gratification until, like a lump of once useless clay, she had been molded in an image of his own perverted lust and then discarded for others to use as they would.
He began by raising the girl up, slowly lifting her by the waist with his muscular hands and arms until she was held motionless and poised above him, their coupling now but an infinitesimal millimeter of moist genital contact. And for one crazy moment the nakedly defenseless teenager thought that it was finished, that he would release her and she would be spared further pain. But she should have known better there was not an atom of mercy in the silent blonde man.
With nauseating swiftness she was drawn downward again, his throbbing, bone-hard cudgel tearing up into her tightly resisting cunt with an instantaneous, flesh-searing agony, followed immediately by the bone-jarring impact of his fat bulbous cock-head butting against her cervix. She thought she would faint again, but she didn't, and as the incredible pain burst upon her senses, spreading its breath-taking shock throughout her obscenely skewered body, she wished she had.
The helpless girl gasped, nearly cried out, but once again clamped her jaws shut, biting back the welling scream that threatened to betray her and give him his cruel victory. It took fortitude and a great deal of self-possessed determination, but she made it. She forced herself to blank her mind of the throbbing pain, to concentrate on something else. Presently, she opened her eyes, then her mouth, and took a huge lungful of air. It was hot and moist, but welcome. The pain had begun to diminish ever so slightly, but nevertheless perceptibly and this, too, was welcome. The feeling of nausea had passed, the pain was beginning to recede, and her head started to clear. She focused on his face those cruel and fathomless pale blue eyes stared back in unblinking watchfulness, then dilated slightly as the corners of his mouth spread ever so slowly upward until his expression reminded her of a very old and very clever Siamese Tom just before it pounces.
Immediately the naked teenager knew what was coming, even before she felt his fingers flex and tighten about her waist. Instinctively she tensed, preparing herself for the incredibly slow journey upward and then the pummeling, nerve-shattering fall. She prepared herself, but it was to no avail he was one step ahead of her.
Instead of lifting her slowly as he had done previously, he snapped his muscular arms forward, straightening them. One instant her full firm buttocks rested against the front of his powerful thighs and her wetly violated womb was completely stuffed with his lust-distended hardness, the next she had been propelled backward with a sickening rush. Her clenching ass-cheeks slid down his thighs until only the tip of his turgidly exposed cudgel remained in her shocked vagina. And in the next instant her unused cunt was once again fully stuffed painfully and unbelievably. Somewhere in between those violent thrusts, she gasped.
She was buffeted back and forth, forcibly thrust and rethrust on that massively impaling shaft of hard rigid cock. It was all so sudden and violent that her mind was swamped with one continuous overbearing swell of agony, though, somehow, she still managed to keep from crying out. Once again, she blanked her mind to the pain, forced herself to concentrate on the visual effect her wide dark eyes were perceiving.
And it was an incredible sight, their two naked sweaty bodies lashing to and fro in a frenzied blur of kaleidoscopic motion and color, their tanned flesh providing a glistening background against which was being played a violent and bloody assault. With each in-stroke, their pounding pubic mounds met, and, for a fraction of a second, there was a contrasting mingling of pubic hair, dark brown against the palest of blonde. And, on the out-stroke, there was a symphony of reds, angry red, bloody red and shocking, fluted pink. And there was sound and smell as well the fragrance of roses, of the sea, of the grass, but most of all, the aroma of sweet rutting sex the sounds of moisture and friction and the pounding surf the sounds of motion, the sounds of slamming smacking bodies.
She was so engrossed in her concentration on sight, sound and smell that it did not become apparent to the young Mexican girl for some time that the excruciating pain of moments before had all but disappeared. She only became aware of it when she felt herself begin to respond. One moment she was lost in wonder at what her senses were beholding, the next she was beginning to move of her own accord, beginning to meet each of his ruthlessly slamming thrusts instead of fighting them. In that moment, she knew she was defeated she was his to do with as he pleased. But she would not beg. Earlier, she had drawn a line, and she would not cross it. Besides, there was nothing humble or degrading in enjoying.
And she was enjoying. Her entire being was alive with sensation, with a delicious tingling feeling she had never in her wildest dreams imagined existed. She could feel, really feel and not with her hands, but inside her! She could feel every outstanding ridge of that marvelously hard shaft of pistoning cock-flesh, could feel it racing into her moistening cunt, pushing her tender inner dampness before it in rippling waves of ecstasy. That swollen turgid penis was a part of her, and, suddenly, they were as one, straining together in one great fiery ball of aching sexual hunger.
Then, without warning, he stopped!
Her eyes flew open as she squirmed shamelessly down against him and she saw a knowing sadistic grin spreading on his handsome face. She didn't care now. Let him grin in his sadist's triumph. Just give her that big marvelous cock. For a moment, she thought perhaps he wanted her to beg for it, but then he began to thrust his burgeoning member up into her again in slow rocking thrusts that began to intensify the magical sensation of skin-to-skin contact.
The dark-haired girl's head began to loll from side to side as her fully sculpted hips, beyond all conscious control now, squirmed sensuously down against his thick grinding penis, her lust-hungry vagina screwing itself down against his powerful loins in answering supplication as if she had been doing this all her life.
All awareness of her surroundings was lost as she concentrated on the tingling itch that started deep within her virginally penetrated womb and crawled maddeningly outward along the raw nerve ends of her heated writhing flesh. It rippled from deep within her, caressing her nakedly abandoned body with wanton desire as it marched ever forward, spreading its velvet-fingered touch throughout her churning pelvis, dancing like fire through her swollen pussy-lips, down along her golden-tanned thighs and then up through her hungrily contracting belly and on along her rib cage and out the tips of her hardened, aching pink nipples. Thin rivulets of sweat pearled down her full quivering breasts to drip shimmeringly onto the man's golden-haired chest.
Once again, without warning, he stopped. But she did not open her eyes this time her concentration on feeling and feeling alone was all that mattered and she continued to squirm against him with undisguised salacious desire. After a moment he began drubbing into her again, long hard slow strokes that brought her yet another new, heatedly tantalizing pleasure. Her steaming vaginal passage, wet with wanton acceptance, gripped his hard turgid member with unbridled fervor, and, when on the out-stroke, he withdrew until just the tip of his rigidly stiffened penis was inside her, she began to thrust forward of her own volition, completely taking the initiative away from her mistress's lover. Her womb flared passionately, and her hands clutched desperately at his massive chest, then began clawing along his ribs, her nails leaving a path of red-streaked welts all the way down to his straining flexing buttocks.
She pulled him deep and hard up to her, thrusting her wantonly grinding belly shamelessly down to skewer herself on his pumping penis, her greedy vaginal muscles sucking voraciously at his glistening hard shaft. Her motions became more frantic by the second, the tempo of her responsive thrusts more urgent, and he knew instinctively that she was straining to reach orgasm.
The grin on the blonde man's face widened, for he knew that now he would have his victory. Arching his back and holding his hips absolutely still, he let her grind down onto him with shameless trembling desire. Held thus, the bloated glans of his achingly distended penis pressed determinedly against her pelvic bone, and it took no more than six or seven solid strokes before he could feel the churning eruption begin in his cum-laden balls.
He came instantly, a searing volcanic eruption that sent an orgiastic paroxysm vibrating throughout his muscular body, causing him to jerk upward with harsh quivering rigidity. His balls emptied in great jolting spurts of hot ricocheting semen, and, as the young Mexican girl felt the fiery liquid inundate the whole of her virginally violated womb, she began to buck against him in feverish frustrated abandon.
She was almost there she knew that the elusive culmination of her efforts was within sight. She could feel the powerful buildup that was ready to explode within her furiously clutching cunt and bring her her first taste of true soaring sexual release. Her pace quickened, became a frenzied blur of shameless wantonness as she pounded and humped abandonedly, grinding her wriggling ass-cheeks against him with powerful staccato thrusts that set the blood bursting in her temples. She felt his arched back dip, and she followed it downward, never missing one precious stroke. And then she exploded.
But it was not the explosion she had expected. She exploded through the air rising, arching and then falling, hurled by his muscular body up and over his head to land with sickening force on the grass some ten feet beyond him. For a moment, she lay stunned, wondering what had happened.
As her senses slowly returned, the nakedly rejected girl craned her neck to stare with disbelief at the blonde man. He had rolled over and was looking at her, those fathomless pale blue eyes very still and unreadable. But there was no mistaking the grin that split his face from ear to ear, and, for the first time that afternoon, he made a sound a great belly-rumbling laugh that boomed maddeningly in the quiet seclusion of the garden.
The young Mexican glared at him with undisguised hatred and, in a fit of unbridled anger, scrambled to her feet. She paused only momentarily, trying to decide what part of him was the most vulnerable, but, in that brief moment, the telephone in the villa began to ring.
The sound reached impatiently out into the quiet garden, and, before she could launch herself at him, he was up on one knee like a runner waiting for the gun. Halfway through her first step toward him, the naked man was already running.
Hands on hips and in a most unlady-like gesture, the young girl angrily mouthed a single Spanish expletive, then spit violently on the grass.
CHAPTER FOUR
The naked man picked up the phone, spoke, listened for a moment, spoke again, then waited. After a moment a different voice came over the phone, its tone flat, hurried and echoing over many miles of wire:
"We've got problems."
"Not we. You've got problems," the naked man stated dryly. "You were told not to contact me here."
"I know. I know," the voice pleaded, "but this couldn't wait."
"So?"
"There seems to be a certain paper missing, a document that is ... detrimental to our project."
"Well? Get it! Can't you do anything without someone holding your hand?"
"You don't understand. This document ... is in the house!"
"So?"
"Well, I didn't know if....."
"Get it!"
"But ... if I get caught ... it's liable to raise suspicions."
"And if you don't get it, what will happen then?"
"Well ... yes, I see."
"Good. Now get it. No slip-ups, no goofs. Just get it. And when you do, contact me through the usual channel. No more phone calls. Understood?"
"Yeah, sure. I just..." he said, then stopped. The connection at the other end gone dead-abruptly!
The naked man stood motionless for several moments, his gaze steadfast on the recradled phone, his concentration so intense that for once he did not sense the movement at the patio doors, nor see the shadow that flickered momentarily there. Finally he turned and returned to the sunny garden. It was now empty.
* * *
The telephone rang, its shrill sound breaking the deep stillness of the old house. It startled Elle and she dropped the book she was reading. It startled her, not only because it did not often ring but because she was in the midst of the final, hair-raising climax of an engrossing thriller. On the third ring she was on her feet, and on the fifth she picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
A strange voice with a somewhat flippant quality said: "Is this the Tom Sutherland residence?"
"Yes, it is, but Mr. Sutherland has passed on. Is there something I can help you with?"
"Am I speaking to Mrs. Sutherland."
"Yes, I'm Mrs. Sutherland," Elle answered cautiously.
"Ah, the very lady I want. Just a word of advice, love. Be very careful. "
The receiver clicked. The strange voice, as if it had floated in through ether, had gone.
Elle was suddenly shaking, overcome by a feeling she had been trying to hold at bay all day. She could name it now. A feeling of menace and evil.
The panic-stricken blonde clasped her hands tightly together to force them to stop trembling. Only when she had succeeded in this was she able to dial Ware Russell's office.
The receptionist who answered stated politely that Mr. Russell was out at the moment, but would soon return. Would she care to leave her name and phone number?
Elle would, and did.
She replaced the receiver, then stood motionless for a moment, looking down at the phone as if it could tell her the reason for such a mysterious call. Be careful. Indeed! But who would want to harm her? She had so few acquaintances so little contact with other people. It just didn't make sense. Yet it had been very real. Too real!
She fought for control of her runaway senses. It took effort, but she managed it. There had to be a logical explanation ... It must have been a prank, a malicious joke perpetrated by some demented mind. Her own mind had just jumped to conclusions. The voice hadn't really been all that sinister, just strange. But there was something odd about what he had said. What was it? Oh yes, love. He'd called her love. How strange. And he'd said: Be careful. Now, what on earth did that mean? Be careful. No; Be very careful. Careful of whom? of what?
The telephone jingled and Elle scooped it up before it finished the first ring.
"Hello? Ware? I've just had the most extraordinary tele..."
"That isn't very nice, lady. Not nice at all," the strange voice interjected.
"Who is this?" Elle asked tensely.
She could hear breathing, but her question was not answered.
"Who are you?" she cried. "What do you want?"
"Relax, love," the voice said softly. "There's no need to panic. Just do as I say and no one will be hurt. No tricks, no cops, no anyone. Understand?"
"Y-yes," she stammered. "I-I mean no ... I don't understand what you want."
"Very simple, love. If you want to stay healthy, get out of that house. Now! Tonight!"
"But that's impossible, I..."
The telephone clicked. Elle stood with the purring receiver clamped to her ear. She was as hypnotized as a rat by a cobra. What could she do? Ware obviously wasn't back in his office yet. And the strange voice had said not to call the police. But why did he want her out of the house. What on earth could there be here that anyone would want?
Now stop it, Elle. That's just what he wants you to do. To worry and fret until you drive yourself bats. Get a hold on yourself. Relax. Relax. Relax.
At last the flustered widow put the receiver down and looked at the silent innocent shape of the telephone. There had to be a logical explanation. But she was incapable of reaching it in her present condition.
Present condition? Is that what she had thought? Yes, present condition. But what had made her think that? It sounded like something a doctor would say. Was her subconscious trying to tell her something? Was she going off the deep end? Was she getting a persecution complex?
People with those, she had heard, were suspicious of everybody and everything. They swore things had happened that hadn't. Their mania came from a secret profound desire for love.
Love. That was what he had called her. Love. But it meant so many different things to so many different people. Spiritual love, physical love.
Physical love! Was that what was the matter with her? God knows it had been a long time since she had experienced it. And even then, even with Tom, it somehow hadn't seemed complete. It was as if something had been missing, something elusive and unexperienced. But she had loved Tom! Had? Had? She still loved him! Didn't she? But that was different. That was, is a spiritual love not physical. Physical love was ... was...
For the first time in her young life Elle suddenly realized she did not know the real meaning of physical love. Well, God knew it wasn't her fault! There just hadn't been time. There had been no one before Tom, and after their marriage there had only been those few short months. They had hardly got a chance to know one another intimately before...
The telephone rang, and with a ridiculous feeling of apprehension Elle stared at it, wild thoughts racing through her mind. What if it was ... him!
Slowly and with a trembling hand she lifted the receiver from its cradle and raised it to her ear. She did not speak, for in truth she was not sure that she could.
"Elle? Elle? Are you there?"
The air rushed out of Tier lungs in one long audible sigh. "Oh, Ware," she gasped. "It's you! Thank God!"
"Elle! Get a hold of yourself! What is it? What's the matter?"
She told him. But she did it in a jumbled disorganized manner that left him baffled, and so he asked her to relax, to repeat it, every word, just as it had happened. The warmth and patience of his tone acted as a catalyst for the young blonde's fear, and she retold it emotionlessly and with clear details. And when she had finished she found to her amazement that she was no longer afraid. That was the kind of man her husband's lawyer was. She had known it from the very first time she had met him and she knew there was nothing she would not entrust to him. And she seriously doubted if any of his clients or friends felt differently. He was a wonderful man, and she felt extremely lucky to be able to call him a friend.
By the time she hung the receiver up, he had convinced her that her fears were for naught, that it was just a practical joke as she had at first suspected. He had assured her that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, that she should discard the incident from her mind. And if at any time she wanted to call him, she was to feel absolutely free to do so.
And with blind faith the relieved widow followed his instructions as she puttered around the house, purposefully keeping herself busy. Not that the incident didn't occasionally creep into her thoughts, but when it did she resolutely forced herself to think of something else. As she prepared herself a light dinner, she carefully weighed the pros and cons of an idea Ware had given her to occupy her mind. He had urged her to consider getting away from the old house and its memories, to consider taking a trip, a vacation away from her troubles. He had explained that she would then be able to see things in a new light, untainted by the burden of memories.
She had to admit it was appealing. But somehow it seemed disloyal to Tom, to his memory. It seemed wrong to leave just now. Maybe later, in a month, after the financial picture had cleared a little. She pushed her plate away from her, unable to finish the remainder of the leftover roast, pulled her tea cup closer, stirred it, and sipped thoughtfully. An idea had crept into her mind: As long as she could remember she had wanted a dog. She would prefer a puppy, but a full-grown male would not only give her companionship but double as a watch dog. A big dog, she thought a German shepherd or great Dane or Doberman. It would make her feel a little more secure, a little less lonely.
Lonely. It seemed she had spent most of her life being lonely. She could count the number of happy years on one hand. Five. The one during which she had met and married Tom and the first four years of her infancy when her parents were alive. But in reality those four didn't count, for she could remember very little of them. Then there had been all those years with the sisters sheltered and lonely years in which her only real companion had been a faith in herself. The sisters were sure that eventually she would become one of them, but as she matured she realized she was not cut out to be a nun. Even at a very young age she was not cut out to be a nun. Even at a very young age she knew there were powerful forces to work in her lushly developing body, forces which she could not deny no matter how venial a sin they might lead her into. She knew she had to escape, to at least give herself a chance to see who and what she really was.
From the day of her twelfth birthday, when the Sister Superior had told her about her family, about the accident that had taken her parents' lives and the life of her little puppy, Elle had wanted a dog of her own. It was possible now where it hadn't been before. She would give the possibility careful consideration.
Elle drained the last of the tea from her cup and pushed the kitchen chair back. As she carried her dishes to the sink and then began to wash them, she let her mind drift, trying to visualize what sort of life she might have had if it hadn't been for that accident. As she worked and dreamed she stared out the kitchen window at the quiet darkness and falling snow, her eyes unseeing as they turned inward...
* * *
Des Sherwood looked at himself ruefully in the bathroom mirror. Running a massive weathered paw over his jaw, he shrugged: To hell with it. If somebody minded a few stubby whiskers that was their problem. A hand was quickly passed through a shock of sandy hair and he was ready. He flipped the bathroom light switch off, quickly crossed the durable but gaudy bedroom carpet, shrugged into an expensive but slightly soiled suede jacket, then glanced quickly around the paper-strewn motel room to see if he had forgotten anything. Satisfied that he hadn't, he stepped out into the cold, snow-carpeted night.
Hunching forward against the light but bitter-cold wind, he crunched his way quickly across the Flamingo's snow-capped parking lot. Entering the warmth of its glass adorned lobby and bypassing the desk, he headed toward the beckoning darkness of the cocktail lounge.
For a moment the sandy-haired man stood motionless in the doorway, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. As he stood there, his head swung slowly round, drinking in the familiar room. It had changed. It was a little darker and there were a few more pretty faces and a lot more bare skin showing. But then, what the hell, a lot had changed in ten years. All in all, he thought, the changes in that room were a reflection of the problems that had befallen society. Wasn't it logical that there should be a few more pretty faces? After all, twenty-four million people had been born in this country alone during the past ten years. And the world was at times a very dark and terrifying place to be, a place where moral change was so dramatic that ten years ago those pretty faces could have been jailed for exhibiting so much pretty skin.
He slid quietly onto a bar stool, and in trying to attract the bartender's attention nearly fell flat on his face as he tripped over the stare of a gorgeous redhead sitting alone at the far end of the L-shaped bar. From what he could see she wore a wisp of clinging white dress and a lot of heavy eye makeup. A gold chain bracelet tinkled every time she raised her arm to either sip in measured slowness out of an amber-colored rocks glass or puff in controlled drags on a cigarette in a long gold and white holder.
And, of course, initially he had become aware of her because she wanted him to be aware of her. His mind was turning over several possibilities regarding the brazen young lady when the young bartender arrived with atrocious timing to not only block his view but bring his fanciful thoughts to a screeching halt.
"What'll it be, Mac?" he asked with Bogart flippancy.
Jesus! Des thought. They must be hiring this new generation off of Paramount's back lot or else weaning them on late movies. What has happened to the old regime? the breed of bartender who listened while you spilled out your problems, and then called you a cab when you could no longer sit on the stool.
Once, some ten years ago, this very bar had had just such a man, a man who had listened to a snot-nosed kid try to drown the sorrow of his wife's and mother's deaths. For a moment Des thought of asking the bartender about old Max, but his frequent exposure to bartenders over the years told him the chances of this guy's even having heard of him were about the same as winning nine straight bets on nine three-legged gray nags, each going off at better than a hundred to one.
"I ain't got all day, Mac."
Lordy be! It had a veritable repertoire of catchy little phrases!
"Tanqueray. Over," Des said softly. Then rising from the stool to tower over the other man by a good six inches despite the elevated wood planking behind the bar, he lowered his voice an octave and said very softly and with clear, precise emphasis: "Mac. "
For a moment the bartender stared at Des, methodically twisting a bar towel between his clenched hands, then slowly and deliberately he lowered his eyes, flipping the bar cloth backward with practicing ease to land on the narrow back bar. Slowly, one thick hair-covered hand was thrust forward in a friendly gesture.
"Martin. Martin Brady," he said. "Sorry if I was a bit gruff. Been a bad day. Sure was one hell of a good night, though." He grinned, flashing a set of extremely white, extremely even teeth.
Des took the hand, shaking it firmly. "Des," he said, "Des Sherwood. Back a few years I used to be a pretty regular customer here."
"Well, welcome back Des," Martin said,-flashing another of those gleaming smiles. "How long ago?" he asked with what appeared to be genuine interest.
" 'bout ten years," Des answered.
"You'd of known Max then, huh Des?"
Well, Des thought, I've been wrong before, and will be again. Who would have thought that this baby-faced ingrate would turn out to be a throwback to the old school? "Yeah, Martin, I knew him. A nicer guy never walked the face of the earth. Used to pack me into a cab and send me home. Or if I made it till closing he'd take me home in his car and tuck me in. Yeah, I knew him."
While Des had been talking Martin had moved down the bar and now he returned with Des' drink as well as one of his own. Martin raised his glass in toast.
"Strickly verbotten," he said, "but it's a sorry day when a man can't toast the memory of the guy who taught him everything he knows."
"Memory?" Des asked after he had slugged away a good two fingers of the gin.
"Memory," Martin repeated. "Good old Max went to that great cirrhosis in the sky nearly four years ago."
Des sat down hard, then knocked back the remainder of his drink.
Martin scurried away to refill the glass. For a moment Des stared in brooding concentration at the bar's polished surface, and when he finally looked up he noticed that the gorgeous redhead was gone. Then, as though hidden, she appeared walking toward him. Apparently she had been obscured by several patrons farther along the bar. As she strode purposefully and with just the slightest hip-sway toward him, Des' eyes followed every sensual movement. For a moment he thought she was going to stop, but she continued on and, as he swiveled in his seat to follow her posterior departure, his left elbow thrust into an unseen body. Surprisingly, it didn't yield, and when Des looked up he realized why. Standing next to him was none other than the powerful fit body of his father.
For a moment there was an embarrassed silence. Finally Ware Russell asked, "Mind if I join you?"
"Sit down, sit down," Des said quickly. "Sorry 'bout the elbow."
"Takes more than that to get a Russell down," the older man said coldly.
Immediately Des Sherwood's attitude changed. His voice took on an icy edge. "How did you find me?"
"That wasn't hard," the older man said. "It's not the first time I've come here looking for you."
The muscles around Des' mouth pulled tight, but he said nothing. After a moment he realized his fists were clenched and immediately he relaxed them.
They sat in silence until Martin came to take the newcomer's order, then the elder Russell said, "I'm sorry, Des. This won't get us anywhere. The hostility between us must be forgotten if we are to accomplish anything. Have you gone over the files?"
The old man was right, Des thought. There was nothing to be gained in useless squabbling. What had happened between them had happened a long time ago and, although the impasse remained, there was no need for it to effect their present business. He said: "Yes. As a matter-of-fact, I was just getting ready to call you."
"Have you eaten," Ware asked, his eyes carefully noting his son's slightly disheveled appearance and unshaven face.
"Not dinner, I'll get a bite later. Want to go to the room where we can talk? I've got a theory you might be interested in."
"All right," Ware said. He drained the remainder of his drink. "Let's go."
They crunched across the snow-packed parking lot and entered the room. While Des mixed them both drinks he told Ware about his theory.
When he finished, he said, "I can't be sure, but all the pieces seem to fit. All but one or two. If you can arrange an appointment with Tom Sutherland's accountant, I think we'll have the answer."
Ware studied his son thoughtfully. Finally he said; "I think you may be right, but we need proof." He paused, pulling at his moustache. "I'll arrange for you to see Harry Anderson, Tom's accountant, tomorrow early. Say nine?"
"If you insist. But why the rush?"
Ware told him then of Elle Sutherland's mysterious phone calls, concluding with: "My fears for her safety are now substantiated. I did not relay them to her, quite the contrary in fact, but there seems to be a very real threat, and before coming here I took certain precautions. I planted a germ of an idea in her mind, and tomorrow, when she gets a phone call from Pamela, her sister-in-law, I think she will be only too happy to accept her invitation."
"What idea?" Des asked.
"I phone Pamela and asked her to invite no order Elle to come to Mexico for a visit. Pamela is very persuasive as you will see. The two women have never met in person and it should be an interesting encounter for them both."
Des mulled this piece of information over for a minute, then said: "I'm to be her chaperone?"
"No, not exactly. I've arranged for you to have accompanying seats on the flight south. I do not want her to know you are . '. . protecting her. It is only necessary for you to make her acquaintance, to get her to have confidence in you. The rest is up to you. I don't think you'll have any trouble getting yourself invited to the villa. That way you can keep an eye on her."
"Sounds fair," Des said. "I won't find it hard to take Mexico this time of year. Particularly with a very beautiful young widow."
Ware smiled as he rose. "There won't be any problem about your appointment with Harry. I'm sure he'll gladly assist you in any way he can. He thought a great deal of Tom
Sutherland."
At the door the lawyer paused. A mysterious light was in his eyes, a foreshadowing of what appeared to be unspoken sorrow. "I probably won't be seeing you before you leave." He paused again. "Good-bye. And good luck. Take care of Elle she's something special."
The door closed softly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Elle went around to all the doors and windows with her usual care, turning locks and fastening bolts. The old house was the kind that got burgled, detached as it was from the county highway, down a narrow dirt road and over two miles from its nearest neighbor. But Tom had bought it for just that reason, for the quiet and solitude. It wasn't a rich-looking house, but elegant and prosperous enough for the petty thief who was looking for television sets or silver or unspectacular jewelry. Her husband had constantly emphasized that when he was away she must never neglect to lock up properly. When he had been home, naturally he would do it. But Tom was gone, and now every night Elle had to do it herself.
As she finished, the tired blonde widow turned off all the lights and climbed the stairs, heading along the hallway to her bedroom.
Reaching the bathroom beyond, the young woman began undressing in preparation for taking a shower. Unconsciously she watched her reflection in the full-length door mirror. Being careful not to mess her hair, she lifted her dress above her head, then had to search for a moment to find a place to hang it. With quick nervous movements she pulled off everything but her brassiere and panties, and before going on she hesitated a moment to really look at herself.
She was a natural blonde and her long baby-fine hair hung straight down to her shoulders where the ends curled up in a soft flip. The strands were shiny and framed her oval face halo-like, her features sharply defined as though etched in smooth unblemished alabaster. Her large blue eyes shifted downward, staring at the lacy material of her brassiere as she reached behind her back to unfasten the hooks holding it in place.
Her full, melon-shaped breasts virtually burst from her loosened brassiere, their bold nipples appearing like tiny pink buttons on the twin white mounds that stood out from her body proudly, pointing slightly upward. She cupped their swelling fullness in her hands, testing the response of the sensitive hardened tips. The contact of her fingers induced them to grow more erect, slowly turning them from pink to blood-infused coralline and their adjacent areoles a bold plum.
Slowly then she began moving her hands down across the smooth, slightly rounded plane of her belly and her gaze shifted to her lacy white panties the only garment still covering her nakedly exposed body. From her narrow waist her firmly molded hips flared out proportionately, a framing accent to the curving pussy-mound clearly apparent beneath the lacy material. The hollow arch between her inner thighs formed a beckoning portal leading to her innermost secrets.
As if enacting a ritual that had to be performed, Elle hooked her thumbs under the elastic waistband of her panties and slowly worked the filmy material down over her smoothly rounded hips and long shapely legs to remove them. In the diffused bathroom lighting the golden triangle of silky curling hair covering her pubic mound seemed to glow with a radiance of its own.
Standing naked finally, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and immediately her body began to reap the fruits of her narcissistic tendencies as insistent keening sensations stabbed at her loins and her taut pink nipples began to distend achingly. Unconsciously her hands moved up once again to cup and lift the fullness of her voluptuously up-thrust breasts, her hands feeling cool and prickly on their cream-white nakedness. She began to massage them then, kneading them with her fingers, the softly heaving flesh pliant and eagerly responsive. Her senses were suddenly swamped with a feeling of ever-increasing sexual need as tiny sparks of desire burst in her trembling loins and were swiftly boosted in voltage until they arced maddeningly throughout her release-deprived belly.
With attentive self-will she forced her hands down and away from those smooth white mounds of growing desire and stared in wonder at her young, vibrant and wanton image. But her surging desire was sweeping over her pleasure-demanding flesh and she found it impossible to keep her hands off her nakedly quivering body. Caressingly, they moved down across her firm taut belly and smoothed into the inverted curve of her waist, then out over the swell of her flaring hips to move in sensuous little circles on the smooth white half-moons of her provocatively undulating buttocks. Momentarily, she imagined they were Tom's hands and, uncontrollably, one of them crept to the golden triangle of her hotly aroused loins, cupping the sparse hair covering in its palm, squeezing tightly, her middle finger extended in search of the erect clitoral bud hidden deep up within the fleshy moist folds.
Instant flashing erotic sensation seared her heatedly provoked belly, forcing her to gasp as her mind reeled in abandoned erotic bliss. Damn! She had promised herself she wouldn't do it after she was married and she hadn't. But now Tom was gone! And she had not had release for three whole months! Oh dear God!
With a great effort of will, she pried her hand loose of her greedily tingling pussy-mound, then stepped into the shower and closed the glass door. The spray cascaded over her body and it felt warm and good ... too good! Her skin was alive with warmth, with renewed desire!
Aggressively she twisted the temperature dial and gritted her teeth. Her body jerked convulsively and her mind screamed in horror, but she forced herself to withstand the water's icy-cold grip.
Presently, when her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably, she gradually increased the temperature until it was lukewarm, then began to lather her lushly ripened body, running her hands in a business-like manner over her breasts, abdomen, thighs, buttocks and, finally, her pussy. Forcefully, she ignored the erotic signals her fire-incited nakedness beamed to her, but as she turned the pressure up to rinse away the lather, the stinging spray seemed to caress her and her aroused nerve endings came alive with renewed vigor.
Summoning the last vestiges of her will power, she finished rinsing, stepped from the stall and began drying herself with a large fluffy towel. As she moved the soft shaggy material briskly over her cream-white skin, her reflected image revealed her firm young breasts jiggling and bouncing from the quick toweling, their pinkly erect nipples darkening with hardness. Almost unconsciously, she began to dry her sensitive pubic area, passing the towel between her fully molded thighs and moving the fleecy material along her tender pulsing cuntal slit.
Once again she felt a flush of desire begin to spread upward as her phallus-like clitoris rose to instant attention.
The towel fluttered from her hands and the struggling blonde swallowed hard, fighting the wave of quivering arousal that seized hold of her heatedly frenzied body. Her mind was a turmoil of confusion and through it now swam the all too real vision of Tom's erect, blood-engorged penis. His lovely widow began to tremble and was forced to grasp the towel rack for support. In an instant the vision was gone, but not the desire. It was there real, unquenched and undeniable.
Without hesitating, Elle turned, then seemed to glide as she quickly covered the distance between the bathroom and her waiting bed. Hurriedly, the covers were pulled back and she slipped between the sheets, their soothing coolness feeling good against her naked skin. She began to squirm, seeking release in her sensual comfort, for her agonizingly tormented pussy-slit was the source of an unbearable heat.
Gazing into the empty room, she touched herself, first on the left breast, then on the right, feeling each taut ripe mound quiver under the stimulus, each responding nipple straining erect at the promise of impending sensual abandon. Then, lying straight and still, her back propped against a pillow, she put her palms under her excitedly heaving breasts, cupping them in a reverent cross, and listened to the tones and murmurs of her passion-deprived flesh, of her memory...
... Of the girl Elle Carlson who had never counted on love. The image that was her younger self had written off love so long ago it had not figured in the shaping of the woman she had become. The love she had observed displayed in others at least what they called love had seemed a poor thing upon which to base as much of your life as people seemed to demand.
Sexuality, she had discovered early through assiduous masturbation, was a far more firm foundation. The need for release, the act of release, the aftermath of release to say nothing of an ever-present anticipation was tangible, measurable, experienced in the flesh, and so a reality as flesh is a reality. Sexuality was transferable, negotiable, while love was a fleeting or fixed deteriorating asset.
But love had come unexpectedly to Elle Carlson, and through the most unlikely man. It had been so real that it held the concrete shape and form that, in her limited experience, only sexuality had assumed.
All this, the young Elle Carlson had never known. All this, Elle Sutherland now knew, alone in the empty room, in the empty bed...
... And in that emptiness, Elle Sutherland reverted back to the younger embodiment of herself as her hands began to slide along her smooth undulating belly, feeling with an utter sensibility the softness of her naked skin, the slope and slant of her lovely voluptuous flesh.
With trembling fingers then, she spread her full quaking thighs, exposing to the empty room the moistening folds of her heatedly pulsating vagina. Her fingers touched, then spread those moist cuntal flanges, and with the touch a feeling of aroused familiarity coursed throughout her eagerly anticipating body. Forgotten was her lost love, remembered was the hovering promise of release.
She was still propped half-erect on the pillow, and it was as though there were two separate halves of woman in the bed, the upper part prim and sedate, the other lustfully secret beneath the sheet.
It was as if she had tapped a suppressed well of memory and desire only that could explain the intensity with which she so desired her own caressing touch. The gusts of need blew through her every bared nerve ending so that her lips thinned, uncovering her clenched teeth as she waited for the coming penetration, needing it, demanding it with her lustfully gyrating ass-cheeks.
And so, she drew her knees up as far as she could under the sheet, separating the moistly heated outer lips with her experienced fingers. A warm fluid heat was suffused through her hungry vaginal flanges, full and rich with blood-engorged readiness and her tiny clitoris rose, eager and tense, out of its hair-lined pussy sheathing. The middle finger of her right hand touched the little distended bud, the other fingers stroking lightly the surrounding hot velvety softness. Lying quite still then, she began to gently rub her wet outer vaginal furrow, not needing this further self-preparation, but wanting the delicious taunting sensations to go on as long as possible.
She moved in a long slow sensuous writhe, sighing in a deep orgasmic moan as experimentally she quivered her middle finger and felt an answering shudder in the broiling depths of her lustfully trembling cunt.
Slowly, gently, the middle finger of her left hand merged up into her wetly sucking pussy-cavern and suddenly she could not rule her jerking, heaving body as her churning nakedness thrust upon that finger as if it were Tom's hard thick cock entering her like a plunging pole of rubbery male heat. The spasm passed and for a minute she lay quietly, her finger not moving in her moistly throbbing vagina, simply present as a wiggling promise of greater things to come. Then with careful preparation she parted her shapely long legs and lifted her knees slightly, positioning herself for further, deeper penetration.
Her wriggling ass-cheeks ground hot and wet down into the sheets as she inserted a second finger up beside the first. Groaning at this lewd further self-impalement, she lowered her legs, spreading her warmly trembling thighs in a wantonly abandoned gesture that somehow allowed an even deeper, more satisfying penetration.
All the depravedly self-manipulating widow was conscious of was the delicious feeling up between her legs, a feeling created by her own obscene expert attentions. Her hands were working slowly now, peacefully, her nakedly reveling flesh shivering with the titillating slowness as a great sigh escaped her lips and she closed her eyes in hedonistic delight...
... The girl Elle Carlson had always controlled her own destiny. The sharp bright mind hidden inside the beautiful lush body so desirable to men had seen to that. She had worked out by intellectual effort the philosophical necessities of life, and the woman Elle Sutherland had thought to give the benefits of her experience to her husband rationally, intellectually.
But it had been a futile dream. Tom had not known in his gut, as she knew it, the sensuous possibilities of the flesh. All the rational argument in the world had not served to alter, in his prim mind, those unquestioned conventions that were as much a legacy of his ancestors as the wealth that had maintained them in comfort. It was beyond his capabilities, and so the young wife had never experienced the joys that instinctively she knew lay hidden within her perfectly molded body. So sex between them had been a perfunctory exercise in which she invariably became the embittered loser and he the hollow victor. And until the last she never quit trying to change him, to make him see that there must be more to the act than they were experiencing...
... And as Elle drifted back and forth in the surging wash of memory, her finger-impaled body reacted to the acts of giving and receiving with all the old familiar knowledge. Her hand shifted so that a sudden, more intoxicating contact was made by her fingers deep inside her moistly seeping cuntal passage while with the other hand she continued to massage her hot palpitating clitoris. Staccato rippling sensations began radiating deep up inside her writhing belly with each salacious probe and her greedily clasping vaginal walls began to expand and contract, clutching at her lewdly exploring fingers until she thought she couldn't bear the excruciating pleasure any longer.
Her head flailed on the pillow, her wavy mane of thick blonde hair flying in every direction as she moaned and twisted with lustful abandon. And suddenly her mind was filled with the phantom-like vision of Tom's enormously engorged penis and then his entire naked body.
In the startling clarity of her mind's eye, his image seemed as real to her as though he were standing over her tremulous nakedness. His great cock was rigid and throbbing heavily, the blue veins standing out boldly, a single drop of obscene moisture hanging in its little eye-slit on the bloated head. The impact of the vision was so great that her mouth salivated suddenly and she parted her lips in an unconscious gesture to lick out that glistening drop of beckoning seminal fluid with the tip of her tongue, even though she had never touched her husband's penis with her mouth. Thrusting with swirling, rising fervor, she moaned softly in the emptiness of her lonely bedroom as though that lovely cock was doing the pummeling up into her palpitating need-racked womb, as though that lovely cock was bringing fiery surging satisfaction to her orgiastically denied pussy.
Totally concentrated on her writhing sensuality, straining as she had never strained with her husband, the young widow brought to life in her mind the vital image of fucking, the obscene confrontation of male-female copulation and the picture carried her to an even higher peak of soaring wanton enjoyment.
Her working fingers were fucking herself so hard now that with each thrust it made her gasp as she rode a snowballing wave of rising, ever rising sensual liberation.
Slowly it built in her ... until she held the fingers of one hand tight against her fluttering nakedness while with the other she encouraged her pulsingly heated pussy into sexual high gear as her unimpeded fingers closed over her hairy pussy-mound like a trap.
Then, in one great engulfing movement she lifted her kicking legs, tearing the sheets off her lust-racked body and she was cumming in a swooning surge of fiery completion, her seething love fluids pouring from her climactically clasping cunt over her impaling fingers and down into the lewdly gyrating crevice between her spasming ass-cheeks.
Her eyes closed now, and her full, cream-white breasts heaved as she slowly fought to regain her breath. She collapsed in a symphony of satiated completion, her body melting into the bed with the dead weight of exhaustion.
For several minutes she lay motionless, listening to her pounding heart, feeling her lewd cum fluids seeping along her thighs. Suddenly, her womb spasmed, and for a brief moment she was convinced that her phantom lover had ejaculated his seed up into her cock-deprived cunt. It was a moving, feeling thing that she was not soon to forget. And it brought to her mind a brutal fact she'd been trying to suppress.
Oh God! she thought. I've had that beautiful cock in me for the last time!
She was no longer dry-eyed the tears were coming and she touched the fingers of one hand wonderingly to her wet cheek. And then, helplessly, she let it flood, curling in on herself like a baby in the womb and weeping bitterly in misery of flesh and misery of heart, assuaging her grief in the great comfort of womanly tears...
CHAPTER SIX
Elle didn't know how long she had been asleep before she woke up. Or what it was that awakened her. One moment the blonde was deeply, dreamlessly asleep, and the next she was up on her elbow, wide awake in the dark. She stayed like that for a moment, listening. It was dark, so dark that the bedroom window was just a vague dim rectangle of slightly paler black. And it was cold, but there was no wind now, and it was very, very quiet, so quiet that she assumed it must be snowing, for it was that kind of silence.
The groggy widow frowned at the darkness, the cold, the silence. And then, from down the hallway from her bedroom, there came the slightest possible sound. She thought a door had been closed, softly and carefully, but the latch had clicked. She was sure it was that sound and no other, and she was sure that it came from the door to Tom's study. Someone had pulled it to, but the handle had slipped and the latch had gone home with a click. Right there! Down the hall!
A small shiver started at the base of her spine, where her naked skin was cold anyway, and ran lightly up her backbone like mercury through a thermometer. She made a small, high-pitched sound of terror in her throat, then quickly covered her mouth with her palm. After a moment the unseen fright faded from her eyes and she released her mouth as she swung her bare feet to the floor.
As quietly as possible she groped in the dark until she found the bedside lamp and turned it on. It made a clicking sound, but nothing happened. How could that be? Only hours before she had turned it off herself. Possibly the bulb had burned out.
She slipped out of bed noiselessly, her throat tight and constricted, and drew a warm woolen robe over her shivering nakedness. Cautiously, then, she moved to the partially opened bedroom door and felt along its jamb until she located the light switch, then carefully switched it on.
Nothing! Just the same startling click!
A tremor of renewed terror like the scurrying of a million rats' feet ran up her spine as she realized what that meant. There was no electricity! Either the wires had been cut or the fuse box tampered with. But why? Who would want to do such a thing?
Then she knew!
That strange mysterious voice on the phone. Be very careful, it had said. Get out of that house. Now! Tonight! Well, we'll just see about that, she thought with a rising wave of confidence.
Mindless to the dangers of her situation, the determined blonde stepped into the hall and crept barefooted along the carpeted, darkened hallway the study door. She thought there was just the slightest glimmer of light showing beneath the door, but she couldn't be sure. Her hand crept toward the knob, then touched it. The feel of its cold metallic surface against her sensitive skin shocked her, and her hand recoiled as if she had been struck by a cold slimy snake. And it shocked her into a new awareness: What on earth was she going to do after she opened that door? She had no idea, and suddenly she realized how foolish she was being. There was no telling what her intruder might do.
Her confidence had vanished like a morning mist, and once again she was overcome with the reality of terror. What was she going to do? She had to think logically, not rush into anything like a star-struck teenager. But what?
Get help! her thoughts screamed.
Help? She was miles from her nearest neighbor. There was no car Ware had sold it. Besides, she didn't drive.
The telephone you ninny!
The telephone! She couldn't use the one in her bedroom. He would hear her dialing! The one downstairs! She could use it! Now, she thought, now, while he's occupied run. Get to that phone!
But she couldn't run. Her legs were made of soggy oatmeal and her feet seemed to be encased in concrete.
Finally she simply forced herself to turn away from that door. On trembling legs she made her way back along the hall, moving cautiously as she searched for the stairs, and with each step away from that sinister room her confidence rose. She stayed as close to the wall as she could, and moved slowly and silently, straining her eyes to see into the dark. And at the same time, she could feel in her shoulder blades the presence of that man in the study.
The stairs, too, were carpeted, and she went down them close to the wall, lessening the chance of their creaking. At the bottom she halted and listened. But there was no sound and finally it was time to move.
In total darkness it was impossible to know where everything was her memory was good, but not that good. Slowly she worked her way along the living room wall, carefully testing the blackness with an outstretched hand. And miraculously she made it without upsetting anything.
Her hand inched across the telephone table and found the receiver, then carefully raised it to her ear.
It, too, was dead.
She stood there for a long minute, her thoughts once again swirling with indecision. The logical thing to do was run, to flee from the house and avoid a confrontation with her intruder. But in the snow and freezing cold with only the robe covering her nakedness? She would freeze to death. The nearest house was over two miles away.
What then? What could she do? If she had a weapon of some kind she might scare him off. There was a gun ... Tom had kept one in his night table. But she had packed all his things and put them in the cellar. No, wait, she remembered, now. She hadn't packed the gun. It must still be in its compartment in the back of the drawer. But it was in her bedroom, and she would have to go back upstairs to get it.
What other choice did she have?
Silently and cautiously she retraced her steps and once in the bedroom she located the gun with little difficulty. She shivered at the cold, metallic feel of it. Very gingerly, she ran her fingers over its sinister barrel. Well, she had it. Now what was she going to do with it? She'd never fired a gun in her life. She knew nothing of its workings. Well, it had a trigger that fired it and a barrel that expelled the bullet. Presumably all she had to do was point it. That seemed easy enough. But was it really that easy? There was only one way to find out.
She started across the room, then stopped, frozen. A new and quite different thought had entered her mind. Could she pull the trigger? Could she shoot a man? Maybe if she just threatened him it would be enough. Yes, that was what she would do. She would frighten him into leaving.
Once in the hall, she moved quickly to the study door. Pausing, she listened. There was a faint rustling sound, a sound like ... like someone shuffling through papers. And she saw then that there was the faintest trace of a light showing under the door.
Holding her breath, she quietly turned the knob inch by inch then slowly pushed it open.
Instantly the light, which she thought was probably a small flashlight, went off.
She knew the element of surprise was no longer hers and for a moment she was at a loss as to what to do. But she was committed the door was open, and she still held an advantage, the gun. She pointed it now, pointed it at the blackness, and then realized there was no target for it. She didn't have the faintest idea where he was!
Then she realized he knew where she was! What if he has a gun, too! She hadn't thought of that!
Quickly she slipped into the room and inched along the wall. She didn't dare go very far, for she knew that she would run into something.
Her heart was pounding wildly, and curiously she wondered if it could be heard. But that was ridiculous. He might be able to hear her breathing though. She knew from the many lonely hours of her childhood that breathing in a silent room could be heard. So she held her breath, then realized that too was ridiculous. One had to breathe. She began to regulate it as best she could while all the time her eyes were ever watchful, shifting constantly for the slightest movement. So far there had been none, not the slightest sound to tell her where he was. Why? she asked herself. Why hadn't he moved or said something? Perhaps he thinks I don't know that he's in here. Could that be it? Yes, she supposed that was what he was thinking.
She held her breath then once again strained her ears in search of any telltale sound. Yes, he was still there. She could hear him. But where was he? Was he moving toward her, trying to catch her unprepared?
Nothing happened then for a long while. She continued to stand there, hoping to hear a sound that would tell her what he was doing, what he was planning to do.
Finally there was a slight movement, a movement in silence, but a movement nonetheless, for against the vague rectangle of the room's single window there was a dim shape. She did not see the movement, but she knew the shape hadn't been there a minute before.
Elle pointed the gun toward the window, her hand trembling so uncontrollably she was forced to support it with the other one. It would have to be done now, this moment, while she knew where he was. She opened her mouth and for a fear-filled moment thought nothing was going to come out.
When it did, it was little more than a trembling squeak.
"I know you're in here," it said. No answer.
"I've got a gun," it said a little more brazenly. Still no answer.
"I'll shoot," she threatened, "unless you get out." Nothing.
"Now!" she said. "Out!"
The vague darkness at the window shifted.
And, surprisingly, Elle pulled the trigger.
Click! A very loud click.
But the intruder was already moving. Crouched low, he hurtled across the room.
She pulled the trigger again.
In the tiny room the gun exploded with a flash of blinding light and a deafening roar, followed instantly by the sound of shattering glass. For a moment, Elle could neither see nor hear.
She dropped the gun, knowing that any second now she would be set upon or if her shot had been lucky, she would see his bloody body.
But nothing happened.
Her hearing returned before her sight, and what she heard was a joy to her ears. The intruder was clambering noisily down the hallway, then there was a pause as if he had stopped or missed a step, and she heard him rolling down the stairs. For a moment she thought that he might have been knocked out and that she would still have to deal with him, but to her relief she heard the kitchen door bang.
Without conscious remembrance, she crossed to the shattered window and stared down. She could not see the intruder, but she could hear him running. The snow crunched like rifle fire as he sped out the driveway. After a minute she was once again aware of a silence. The only sound came from her labored breathing and the wild pumping of her heart.
She turned from the window and the floor rushed up to greet her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The dawn came, clear and cold and bright. And to Des's chagrin he had been forced to watch it come. But it was necessary-otherwise he would have been late for the appointment with the accountant, Harry Anderson. As he shaved, Des wondered how much light this stranger would shed on his mysterious assignment. He also tried for a mental picture of Harry Anderson. Would he fit his stereotyped imaged of an account? He supposed so.
Surprisingly, Harry Anderson turned out to be a likable guy in his early forties. He was slim, dark-haired and well tailored, with the strong features of a character actor.
"These reports," he was saying, indicating a neat stack of papers on his desk, "are the sum total of Tom Sutherland's financial dealings for the past year. He only had two months of activity in which to dispose of his holdings, and in that short time he did it amazingly well. But then, he was an amazing man, Mr. Sherwood."
"Please. Call me Des."
"As you wish," Harry Anderson said, one hand raising in a gesture as if he were a teacher dismissing a particularly annoying pupil. "As I was saying, he had such a short time, but still managed to convert over a hundred thousand dollars worth of securities into cash. Obviously, he didn't wish to attract attention, so he opened up checking accounts in four separate banks. He cashed in those securities at several different brokerage houses, and fed the cash through those four checking accounts."
Harry Anderson paused, diminishing the tidy stack of papers one by one. Laying it flat on his desk, he pounded a slim bony finger into it. "This monthly summary of the assets converted to cash and the cash withdrawals through the checking accounts is accurate to the best of our abilities," He paused, leaned back in his chair and smiled competently.
Des squirmed in his chair, wondering if his initial appraisal of Mr. Harry Anderson hadn't perhaps been a little hasty.
The accountant leaned forward again, picking up the piece of paper and turning it so Des could see the neat rows of figures that adorned the meticulously prepared report. "See, here is the biggest month for sale of assets, over sixty thousand dollars. And here. Over forty thousand." He transferred the paper to the side of the desk opposite the neat stack. "It's very puzzling, Mr. Sherwood, very puzzling indeed. He was such a respected man."
"Yes, so I gather, Mr. Anderson. "
"Frankly, we're a little dazed. We had the estate set up so beautifully. Residuary trusts, insurance trusts, all beautifully drawn up. And when the time came to put them into effect, we couldn't find anything except some very minor assets. It wasn't big money, you understand, but it was enough to be worth handling properly." He paused, frowning, then sighed. "I imagine the IRS men will think it was some sort of attempt to evade estate taxes."
"But you don't."
He looked shocked. "Of course not! Tom Sutherland was an honest man. And not a stupid one. I think he weighed all the alternatives and did what he felt he had to do."
"Which one of us is going to say the nasty word, Mr. Anderson?"
He shrugged. "Okay. Blackmail. But Ware Russell investigated that possibility with Mrs. Sutherland Elle and with the other one, Pamela. He also checked with Tom's associates. He drew a complete blank."
"I see," Des said. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said: "Where did Tom Sutherland's money come from, Mr. Anderson?"
"Well ... there was a small inheritance from the parents ... Tom and his brother Paul pooled their resources and over a span of ten or twelve years built a profitable company. It wasn't much in the beginning, you understand, and they were forced to take in several minor partners, but over the years they bought all of them out all, that is, except Ware Russell."
"Ware Russell?"
"Yes. Ware knew a good thing when he saw it. He stayed in. After Paul died that was just a little over two years ago Tom's interest in the company waned. Eventually he sold it. The missing securities are the result of that sale. Tom invested wisely and lived very comfortably.
There was more than enough money without touching his investment ten years of installment payments from the sale of the business plus dividends on his stock. Yes, I would say he lived very comfortably."
"Who bought the company, Mr. Anderson?"
"I thought you knew. Ware did."
"I see," Des said. "What about the other brother, Paul. What do you know about him, Mr. Anderson?"
He frowned. "Not much really. To tell you the truth, Mr. Sherwood, I didn't know him at all well."
"I take it you didn't like him very well?"
"That's putting it a little strongly ... but it's true, I suppose. We moved in different circles. Paul Sutherland's tastes were more shall we say more expensive than mine. Once he had a taste of money, there was no stopping him. You know, he had to have the best of everything. The best house money could buy, the most expensive imported car and..."
"And the best women, Mr. Anderson?" Des interjected.
"Yes. That too, Mr. Sherwood."
"Where does his wife, Pamela, fit into the picture?"
"Oh, she was just one of his ... ah, girls. One of the wilder ones. Somehow she managed to get him to marry her and from then on it was all downhill for Paul. Together they spent money as if there was an unending supply."
"How did he die?"
"It was a boating accident. He and Pamela were down in Mexico at the villa he built for her, and one morning he went out fishing an; never returned."
"They never found the body?"
"No. One of those sudden storms blew up like they have a habit of doing down there and all they found was his boat, the remains of it anyway, smashed up on some island."
Both men were silent and thoughtful for several moments, Finally Des said: "Getting back to the money, Mr. Anderson, could you tell me when exactly when you discovered the assets were missing?"
"Yes," he said, "I have all the reports here." He thumbed through the stack of papers. Extracting one he said: "He died on the tenth of September. It wasn't until early October we began to realize most of the capital asset value had disappeared." His bony finger trailed down the paper. "Let's see, yes, here it is, October seventeenth." He looked up. "Of course, by then the trail was cold, Mr. Sherwood."
"If he was turning the money over to someone, would you have any idea when or how it was done."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Sherwood, but I have no idea at all. I have thought about that. I found it surprising that the strain of what was happening didn't show in Tom. When Ware asked Mrs. Sutherland about it she told him that Tom had seemed happy and didn't show any particular signs of tension. Ware also said he thought she was hedging just a little. He could feel there was something she wasn't telling him, but what it is I haven't the slightest idea, Mr. Sherwood. Have you?"
"No, Mr. Anderson, I don't. But I will tell you this. Whatever it was that somebody had on Tom Sutherland must have been strong leverage. From the picture I get of the man he was essentially very tough. And somehow that leverage was used to squeeze him. My guess is that it was someone who knew him fairly well, because leverage like that could only come from something in the past where Tom and the blackmailer crossed paths."
"Yes, I think you're right, Mr. Sherwood."
"Another thing interests me. The man applying the squeeze apparently knew or had some way of knowing how much Tom had. Otherwise I think Tom would have come up with, say fifty thousand and then made the squeezer think he had it all."
Anderson stared at him with a curious expression. "Mr. Sherwood, a lot of people have done a lot of wondering about this things. And I've been involved in it one way or another almost from the beginning, but for the first time I'm beginning to see what it's all about. I'm beginning to see what kind of person is behind this. I did not question Ware when he asked me to see you, and I'm not sure just how you fit into it. But one thing I am sure of, Mr. Sherwood, Ware Russell has picked himself one helluva competent investigator."
Des knew it was a compliment of the highest order from this strange little man. Mentally he reaffirmed his original opinion of the man. Vocally he said: "Thank you, Mr. Anderson. And thank you for your assistance."
They both rose.
"Are you going to ... pursue your theories, Mr. Sherwood?"
"Yes, Mr. Anderson, I am. It's a favor for an old friend."
Anderson saw him to the door. They shook hands and Anderson said: "If there's anything else you need that I can help with anything at all please feel free to call on me." He smiled.
"Thank you, Harry."
"Good luck ... Des."
As the big, sandy-haired investigator strode across the reception room, Harry Anderson's pretty young secretary looked up and smiled. "Mr. Sherwood?"
"Yes," he replied, then winked.
Immediately a rosy flush spread upward from her pretty neck. "I have a message for you from Mr. Russell," she said, handing him a mimeographed message slip on which she had neatly penciled in the pertinent information.
Des scanned it quickly. "Thank you, Miss..."
"Evans," she supplied quickly. "Mr. Anderson asked that you not be disturbed, so I...."
"You were quite right, Miss Evans. Could you tell me where I might find a public phone?"
"Yes, of course, but you can use one of the office phones if you..."
"Thank you, but no."
"Well t.. the nearest public phone would be downstairs in the coffee shop, I guess."
"Thank you, Miss Evans. Have you a first name?"
She blushed again. "Lorie," she said demurely.
"Thank you, Lorie," he said, smiling broadly. "I'm off on a short trip, but when I get back we could..."
"I'd love to Mr...."
"Des," he said, then turned on his heel and left the room.
But Des Sherwood would never keep that date.
* * *
The insistent buzzing was broken by a chiming plink, the dial rasped fourteen times seven going, seven coming back relays kicked and clicked and a mile and a half away a second and a half of shrill ringing was heard, but from Des' it sounded more like a muted burrrrrr. The miracle of the dime presented Des with the melodious voice of Ware Russell's receptionist, the one with glasses, the pretty young one.
"Brenner, Davis, Foley and Russell," it said sweetly. "May I help you?"
"This is Mr. Sherwood returning Mr. Russell's call," Des said pleasantly. "But Des to you, sweetie."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Sherwood," the voice said unabashed. "I have a message for you. Just a minute please while I get it."
Des smiled into the unseeing hunk of plastic and waited.
"Yes, here it is," the receptionist crooned melodiously in her best professional voice. "Mr. Russell was called away on business but he jotted down a note for me to give to you when you returned his call...."
Get to the message and save your commentary for the paying customers, Des thought as she droned on...
" ... it reads as follows: 'Sorry to have missed you, but have gone to Elle's.' Stop." the melodious voice said, "Seems she had an early morning visitor, but is fine. Stop. Everything set. Stop. Didn't need much coaxing from Pam after this morning's experience. Stop. Will try to shake loose at airport for a report on your progress with Harry. Stop. "Till noon, Ware. Stop."
Des wondered if the receptionist's idea of an amorous adventure consisted of going to bed with a teletype machine. She may be pretty and smart and have a sexy voice, but he doubted if she was worth two cents in the sack. And he didn't think it was worth the trouble to find out.
"Was there anything else?" she asked.
"No thanks, sweets," he said caustically.
"Goodbye, Mr. Sherwood."
Des hung the receiver back in its cradle, and as he turned toward the lunch counter heard his dime slide home with a plink. Out of orneriness he turned and lifted up the little black cup. The dime in there wasn't his, but he put it in his pocket anyway.
As he slid onto one of the counter-stools his face beamed with a satisfied smirk. It wasn't every day that one could cheat a huge conglomerate. It was going to be a fine day, he could feel it in his bones.
He extracted a menu from its holder and as he glanced at it the memory of the smiling face in the photograph appeared before his eyes. What a helluva way to have to spend the next few days, he thought, then laughed.
The waitress who had come to take his order stared at him strangely.
"Steak," he said replacing the menu in its meticulously clean chrome holder. "Rare. Blood rare! The biggest you've got. Hell, it's not my money."
"Nothing else?" she asked.
"Coffee," he said. "Black."
The waitress turned away. Takes all kinds, she thought, shaking her head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The flight to Mexico took just over five hours, including layovers. Everything went according to plan, everything except for one or two minor items and one major one.
While awaiting the flight, Des found that the reservations Ware had booked for them included a forty-minute flight into Los Angeles International, then, after a short layover on to Mazatlan with three intermediate stops. From Mazatlan, they were to be flown in a small four-seater to a tiny airfield near El Dorado where a car would meet them for the journey to Regalo del Santos.
Des knew from previous experience that the first part of the trip would be first class, but that short junket from Mazatlan with a private pilot in a prop-job could be a little tricky, something like riding with the Red Baron on one of his World War I sorties. He had never been to Regalo del Santos, but there had been similar out-of-the-way places, and he half expected to be met at El Dorado by a rickety cart and a stubborn mule driven by a senile Mexican driver yelling uproariously at his charge.
Before the flight, there was a brief moment alone with Ware in which Des was updated on the early morning excitement at the Sutherland home and a few brief instructions. Then he had let Elle board the plane alone. He planned to stay out of her sight until they reached Los Angeles. It would do no good to arouse her suspicions from the start. He knew she was a bright girl and might put two and two together and come up with a smelly rat.
His first surprise came as he watched her board. He hadn't been prepared for the startling impact she made. Only twice before in his entire life had he been so affected by a woman ... one of them had been his wife, the other a complete stranger. His wife was dead and the other one he never met she had just come swinging along one fine autumn day while he was waiting to meet someone. He couldn't even remember now whom he had been waiting for.
But he remembered the girl! Entirely girl, a good five and a half lithe feet of her looking absolutely great in a conservative cut wool suit, swinging along on alligator pumps, one gloved finger hooked through a matching purse, her blonde hair gleaming with health, styled with no trickery, bobbing to her resolute stride, and on her mouth a lovely secret smile perhaps part anticipation of the day and part the easy self-assurance of being young and beautiful.
Seeing someone like that is enough to break the strongest of hearts, yet he had known he would never know her. But he had wanted it all to be good for her the love, the bed, the kids, and the growing old.
For him Elle had that effect immediately and irrevocably. But, unlike the girl of his memory, he was going to know this one. How well depended on two things no, one her.
And, as he slipped into his seat across the aisle and two rows back of her for the flight to Los Angeles, he began to let his mind drift. But even in that state, he was planning careful unhurried plans that led to only one conclusion...
After the short flight and the equally short layover, Des was the first to board the Aviones de Mexico jet. The enplaning passengers behind him queued to a complete standstill as he spoke softly to the stewardess. After a moment she nodded and, unseen, a carefully folded note was pressed into her lovely palm a twenty-dollar note with a promise of another if all went well. What the hell, he thought as he made his way down the jet's aisle and purposefully took a window seat it wasn't his money.
Presently, a tall stunning blonde was ushered to the adjoining seat and, after meticulous preparation, floated down next to him. Des looked up and smiled, the stewardess winked and departed, and Elle averted her azure eyes and began fumbling with the clasp of her purse.
"Would you care to have the window seat?" Des asked pleasantly.
Elle had her purse open and from it she extracted a small vial, then turned to meet his level gaze. "Thank you, no," she said appreciatively. "This one will be fine."
"No, really," he said, leaning forward as if he were imparting to her a secret of the utmost importance. "I've seen it all. Dozens of times."
Her eyes wavered briefly. "That's very kind of you, but it's really not necessary."
"Please."
Their eyes held for a long moment, then she smiled. "All right, since you insist. Maybe it will keep my mind off the flying." She paused briefly, as if determining whether he was a man to be trusted. Satisfied, she said somewhat sheepishly, lowering her voice which was already soft, "This may sound stupid, but ... it's the first time I've ever flown." She laughed nervously, then showed him the vial. "I picked this up in the terminal. I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone by being sick."
He laughed, a shared jovial laugh. "Not a thing to worry about," he said. "Dr. Sherwood at your service."
Her eyes widened. "A doctor?"
"No, not really," he laughed again.
"Oh." her voice trailed off.
"I've got a marvelous antidote for the jitters, though," he said quickly. "Better than any of those old wives' tales you've heard about flying."
She looked at him speculatively.
"Conversation. Nothing beats it. Besides, if you have someone to explain what is happening as it happens, there is none of that fear your mind can conjure up if you're alone."
Any reservations she still had about his character disappeared right there. His awareness of loneliness was all the proof she needed. Her reservations vanished, melting with the inevitability of winter snow under a gentle spring sky as her heart skipped a beat under the warmth and comfort of his knowing smile.
Des didn't know it then, but, in that moment, he was not the only one affected with a wondrous malaise of the heart, an ethereal feeling of immediate and irrevocable trust, of longing, of yes love. Right then a bond was formed, a lasting bond that bound them together spiritually and physically, a bond so strong as to defy all laws of human fickleness.
But Des knew by the time they reached Mazatlan. And so did Elle. And, by that time, a thousand words had been spoken, words that transcended vocality, words that flowed effortlessly from one to the other and back again with every expression and gesture, in every thought, even those unvoiced, and particularly with every touch no matter how slight.
Intermittently this bond was interrupted by necessity by a stewardess, by a meal, by drinks, by a trip to the John but it was never broken. Even the memories, the bad ones, the lonely ones, the ones wrapped in varying degrees of scar tissue, were examined in a new light. The memories of death, the memories of Des's wife's and mother's deaths, for which he held his father responsible, the memories of Elle's parents' deaths and Tom's death were told and reviewed with new and wondrous insight.
It ail began suddenly, happened suddenly, and, somehow, it all seemed to transcend time, for, suddenly, they were in Mazatlan, and the time seemed to have passed in an instant, yet it also seemed like they had had a hundred years together, a hundred days and nights of togetherness that passed in the suddenness.
But it was reality. The whistling roar of the jet engines was reality as they swung in a lazy arc out over the Sea of Cortez. And, despite the ethereal illusion of an immense orange ball kissing the blue-blue sea, the tropical sunset, although unbelievable, was real.
The yelp of rubber on cement, too, was real, and it brought to Des an awareness he was not prepared to accept. He stared into those eyes whose color looked so like that of the deep blue sea and hated himself. Elle was not a girl he wanted to lie to. His little cover story now seemed soiled and dingy.
She squeezed his hand, not understanding his dilemma, but, nevertheless, reading something in his eyes. Des managed a feeble smile, realizing it was too easy to visualize her dead, her soft blonde hair disheveled and lusterless against the damp earth in the coolness of the night. It shocked him with a stunning sense of loss and he found it difficult to fathom how she had come to mean so much to him in such a short time. But she did mean a great deal more than his wife, Carol, had ever meant. And he could not bring himself to tell her. Not yet.
In the terminal on the observation deck, they stood close together watching the sunset and waiting for their pilot. Surprisingly, it was quiet, and together they could hear sea birds and the far-off drone of an outboard motor. Their eyes locked once more, and Elle's perpetual smile faded as her mouth softened. There was suddenly a heaviness about the young widow's eyes, a look almost of drowsiness. They took a half step toward each other, and she came neatly, graciously into his arms as though it were an act they had performed many times. The kiss was gentle at first and then fierce and hungry. She strained upward against him, and his hands felt the shapely smoothness of her back as her arms lifted and crooked hard around his neck, They wavered in dizziness, and Des was forced to sidestep quickly to catch their balance. They parted awkwardly, shy as children.
"Des," she said. "Des, I..." Her voice was throaty, unfocused.
"I know," he said, "I know."
She turned away abruptly and walked slowly along the rail, looking out across the darkening sea.
Des followed her and put his hands lightly on her shoulders. He felt ashamed shamed by his lies and afraid of what might happen if she found out.
Just then the loudspeaker announced that their plane was ready. They turned and headed back along the railing, his arm tightly around her shoulder. He felt a new tension in her body. He knew she had sensed a difference between them. It was not going to be a pleasant trip to El Dorado.
It wasn't. But, for more than one reason. Des's earlier suspicions about the flight proved correct. A cheery little Mexican no older than twenty-one or two was their pilot and he took them along the coast in his sealing wax and chicken wire avion with a sickening, ground-hugging rush.
Elle's earlier fear of flying came slithering back with renewed and warranted force. Her hand clamped upon Des's with knuckle-whitening tension, her fingers icy, as tricky gusts tipped and tilted them, her eyes unbelievably wide as treetops streaked by.
Finally, they reached El Dorado and the Mexican kid swung the little plane farther inland, then literally dropped them toward an unpaved airfield and, with a very flamboyant gesture, set them down without a bounce or jar.
As they deplaned, Des felt like asking the kid which kamikaze pilot had been his instructor.
There were two cars there to meet them, one a very disheveled, very dusty DeSoto vintage unknown because it had lost most of its fenders and all of it ornamentation and a very racy-looking little white Fiat. Beside the DeSoto stood a wiry-looking little Mexican, hat in hand, mopping his brow. And beside the Fiat slouched a brawny well-muscled young American sipping from a beer bottle with one hand while, with the other, he scratched the pointed ears of a huge sleek black Doberman. The wiry Mexican scurried forward with placating quickness while the American slowly drained his beer, then flipped the empty bottle casually over his shoulder in a high arc that brought it crashing down on the dirt runway, shattering. With a sharp command to the dog, he moved with slow liquid ease toward them, the great Doberman obedient at his heels.
The little Mexican arrived to greet them with earnest platitudes in sing-song Espanol interspersed with a spattering of Ingles before the muscular American and his dog were halfway there.
The American could only be the current beach ass Ware had explained was Pamela's latest beau, come to fetch the visiting sister-in-law. And the Mexican must surely have been sent by Regalo del Santos' one and only hotel to fetch their gringo guest, who at that moment was trying to make himself heard above the incessantly chirping native.
By the time the American and his dog reached them, Des had opened his wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar bill and thrust it into the palm of the jabbering Mexican.
It was suddenly quiet, the Mexican staring at his open palm like it held a deadly serpent. Then his eyes lifted to Des's, turned back to his palm, up again, down again back and forth, faster and faster, questioningly.
"He is offended," the American said. Then "Sit Nicki!" The dog set.
"Offended?" Des asked.
"Puzzled and offended. He doesn't understand what the money is for. And for that matter neither do I."
Des took an immediate and deep-seated dislike to his countrymen. The pale, almost nonexistent blue of his eyes was only part of it. There was a feral aroma in the air, an aroma he was quite familiar with. "Do you speak Spanish?" he snapped.
There was a momentary pause while those fathomless blue eyes flicked from Des to Elle and back again, a pause of a second, maybe two, in which his eyes swept in all before him, digested the information, decided and acted. His mouth pulled taut at the corners, "Si. "
"Would you kindly explain to this gentleman, then, that the money is to cover his expenses for a needless trip," Des asked. "I don't understand."
"It is not necessary for you to understand," Des said sweetly. "But, seeing as how I will be indebted to you for delivering Mrs. Sutherland and myself to her sister-in-law's villa, I feel it only fair to enlighten you of that fact." He smiled broadly.
The prominent jaw beneath the blue eyes fell a quarter inch, then snapped quickly shut.
"Would you also explain to him that I will stop tomorrow and pay my bill in full."
There was an immediate bark of rapid-fire Spanish. At the end of it, the wiry little Mexican smiled, showing a set of very even but very stained teeth and began nodding in understanding. Then he tipped his hat and was gone.
Reluctantly, the muscle-bound beach boy helped carry their luggage to the little Fiat. Somehow the three of them, plus Nicki and the luggage, were squeezed into the tiny car and they were off.
From that moment the plane had landed until the Fiat was in motion, Elle had said not a word. She had watched the exchange between the parties involved in silence, her bright eyes perceiving in ever-widening wonder, wonder at the strangeness of her sister-in-law's boy friend, and wonder at the instantaneous change that had come over Des. There was an aura hovering in the air with which she was unfamiliar, an aura that frightened her. She could not name it, wasn't sure she wanted to. And nary a word pierced that aura as they sped toward the villa. Nary a word from any of them.
CHAPTER NINE
Unlike her current beau, Pamela Sutherland greeted her sister-in-law and her handsome companion with welcoming arms. She too was a tall woman, an auburn-haired beauty who radiated warmth and sexuality with a bubbling vitality that literally gushed from her presence. She seemed to float as she hurried across the drive to meet them.
"Oh, I'm so glad you could come," she said spontaneously, clutching the younger woman in her arms. "I hope you had a good trip." She stepped back then, holding Elle at arm's length. "My, but aren't you a beautiful one. Come," she said taking Elle's hand and giving Des a quick sly glance. "Let's get into the house and fix a drink. The introductions can wait until we're comfortable with one of my margaritas. Come on," she urged, pulling the slightly flabbergasted Elle after her. The lonely widow had never met her sister-in-law before and the boisterous reception was something of a shock, even though Pamela had sounded very forceful over the phone.
Halfway to the door their hostess glanced back and caught Des unloading the car. "Come on," she gushed, "you can get those things later. Come now, or your margarita will melt."
Des shrugged, and began to follow her like an obedient cub-scout, all the while out of the corner of his eye watching the retreating back of the blonde muscle-man who was taking Nicki toward the side of the villa.
What an effervescent hunk of woman, he thought as he trudged along the path. Not at all what he had pictured from Harry Anderson's brief remarks. But he knew women, and he knew this was likely only one of her many facades the public one. He knew too that there must be a sensual one and a scheming one. After all she had managed to get her late husband to build her this villa. The investigator looked around him. He was impressed, but more by taste than affluence.
Then a new thought struck him. There must be yet another facade to the alluring Mrs. Paul Sutherland a sinister one that would bear watching. Otherwise, why would she be tangled up with the muscle-bound beach boy? A sadistic streak perhaps? Could be. He would try to find out.
His answer came sooner than expected.
Later that evening, after drinks and introductions and gossip and dinner, Elle lay in the huge bed of her room on the second floor of the villa, listening to the exotic night sounds. After awhile her thoughts turned inward and, for the first time since she had met Des, the old familiar loneliness crept stealthily into her soul. She knew it was mostly fatigue but it was also a sense of loss that separated her from her exciting new acquaintance.
It had all happened so fast in less than twelve hours! Her whole world had suddenly been turned upside down. But it was wonderful
a swirling, crazy, mixed-up reality-dream. A true-life fairytale. And she was Cinderella, a marvelously excited and hopeful Cinderella! And she didn't want it to end, wouldn't let it end.
But out there out in the darkness there was a sinister aura hovering waiting. She knew it. She could feel it! But exactly what it was she had no idea. Somehow she was mixed-up in it. And somehow, so was Des.
And still the loneliness persisted.
She wanted to run to Des, to crawl into bed with him and have him hold her and comfort her. But she couldn't. He would think her childish. She must fight her fears, conquer them, then she could go to him, head held high, and give herself totally, completely and with pride
not with this silly childish loneliness and fear. But still the loneliness...
The room was awash with the silvery tendrils of a full moon, and in the light Elle could see clearly out into the garden through the open window. The fragrance of rose blossoms filled her nostrils. The air was cool and fresh and pleasant. And through the window came the mystical elusive shape of the other Elle the girl, the lonely one, Elle Carson...
... And with her came the familiar knowing memories of the flesh the insistent hungering fingers, the disobedient rising legs, the wildly humming nerve-ends screaming for enveloping sensual release...
Tears rolled down the lonely widow's cheeks, but still the hunger of her flesh was present. Her mind raced with all the old familiar need and want. As always, once she had summoned the other Elle, the one who had come last night to that lonely bed so far away, it became progressively easier ... and easier ... and easier...
It was wrong. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn't stop herself. Her fingers searched and her moistly flowering pussy begged.
And everything else was forgotten...
At that moment in the room next door, Des was slowly and laboriously shedding his clothing. He felt a heavy weariness descending upon him, but before he could stretch out in the beckoning comfort of the bed he had a job to do. There were questions in his mind that needed answering. Selecting dark pants and a dark shirt from his suitcase, he laid them on the bed, then with ever-increasing weariness bent down to change his shoes. He never made it a swift, all-enveloping darkness came out of nowhere and slammed him to the floor, his unconscious body hitting the carpeted floor with a dull crumpling thud that went unnoticed in the room next door...
OOOhhhh ... Elle sobbed, if only I had someone to put out the burning need ... familiarly she was spreading and lifting her long shapely legs and drawing them back up her nakedly trembling young body, her knees kissing the hardened tingling nipples of her lust-swollen breasts. Then she was slithering two slender fingers up into her seething moist pussy-crevice, raising her head to look down between her frenziedly throbbing breasts to observe through glazed eyes the obscene erotic sight...
It was at that precise moment that she saw Nicki. . . ! The huge dog was standing at the foot of Elle's bed watching her every move, and it was almost as if he were human and knew what she was doing to herself. What was he doing here? her brain screamed. How had he got into the room?
"Go away, Nicki. Please go away," the feverishly aroused blonde urged in a half-whisper.
In answer the sleek black Doberman growled, low and throaty, and bared his fangs.
Elle recoiled in fear: He had seemed so gentle before, so loving. What did he want?
Then, somehow, Elle knew!
Nicki's unflinching eyes were focused on her hand now lying motionless in her damp seething pussy, his keen animal senses attuned to her impatient terror at his presence. But he didn't understand why the terror was there. He had been trained to fill the she-human needs and his sensitive nostrils told him it was time!
And in one bounding leap the incited animal was up on the bed!
Elle lay immobile, frozen, wanting to scream, but the fear clenching at her throat kept the words from coming out: My God! she thought. What was he going to do? Icy fear gripped the trembling widow as the dog moved toward her, and slowly, ever so slowly, she started to lower her legs, but immediately froze again as the intruding brute unleashed another low warning growl. Then he was moving between her quavering uplifted legs, his huge head nuzzling between them, his inquisitive snout poised directly above the white half-moons of her helplessly exposed buttocks! Elle gulped in avid horror, not daring to move.
God! She had never been a coward, a whimpering female, not in all her twenty-three years ... but this ... this was unbelievable! She tried to think: To scream would bring Pam, but she couldn't let her sister-in-law see such a sight. No one could help her. If she moved he would tear her apart. She must ... must remain cool ... somehow charm him ... keep him at bay!
A potent unexpected sensation suddenly charged through her heated, self-aroused loins as Nicki's head dipped and his cold wet nose nuzzled against her seethingly moistening cuntal lips!
Oh ... oh God! Now ... now it was his tongue...!
In spine-chilling awe, Elle squirmed frantically, trying to escape the sudden lashing hotness of his wetly probing animal-tongue, but he was too quick for her and it snaked right up into the smooth-fleshed furrow of her steaming pussy. She sucked in her breath, holding it until she feared her lungs would burst, as the moist-licking tongue teased hotly against her nakedly defenseless vaginal lips.
"Oooooohhhhh!" she suddenly gasped into the watchful stillness of the room. Her mind was a whirlpool of confusion! But I've got to keep my head ... to stay cool. I mustn't scream...
"Oooohhhhhh nnnnnoooooo...!" she wailed, again, hearing the dog's simultaneous whimper as he wetly taunted the reluctantly proffered cuntal plane between her wide-splayed legs.
Her mind raced ... she must be dreaming ... this just couldn't be happening! But she knew it was!
And suddenly she no longer cared! Her lustfully contorted mind and body desired only one thing ... a desperately needed climax ... nothing else mattered now ... nothing...
Nicki's tongue continued to sear a flaming path along the hotly flushed lips of her excited young pussy and she began to tremble uncontrollably. Now his branding tongue was tracing a knowledgeable trail along her moist, hair-lined secret flesh probing first at her quivering rectal mouth, then tracing along the pink, passion-engorged lips of her pulsating pussy to the tiny erect bud of her excitedly throbbing clitoris!
She lifted her head then, gaping in wonder between her full leaning breasts and widespread thighs at the incredibly obscene spectacle as blinding sensations of new-born lust stabbed through her tremblingly naked loins. Again and again, the huge animal licked up between her legs, the thick length of his deliciously fluid tongue spreading deeply through her moist yielding pussy like a dull knife through softened butter, each breath-taking caress carrying her away from reality and onto a plane of total, lust-filled sensuality, She could only moan out her sensual delight as unceasingly the massive dog splayed open the smooth inflamed intimacy of her secret cuntal entrance with his lust-inspired tongue, its tip curling into her defenseless dampness with hotly teasing thrusts.
"Ooooohhhhh ... ooohhhhh!" Elle gasped, bucking spasmodically beneath his amorous assault. "Oh, yes ... yes! Lick it for me, Nicki ... aaaaggghhhh . . .like that, Nicki baby ... yes, like that ... put your tongue inside!" she pleaded wantonly, lifting her intensively sizzling loins and quaking buttocks up toward his frenzied ravaging animal tongue.
"Yes ... yes! Lick my pussy you wonderful lover! Yessss ... ooohhh ... ooohhhh...!
The desire-demented widow hardly knew what she was saying her overwhelming passion had reached peak intensity and what fear she had known in the beginning had fled with the salaciously titillating assault. Nicki's searing tongue had washed it away, sent her crashing upon the shores of unknown passion ... passion the sheltered blonde had never dreamed existed.
His fire-brand tongue shot up into her moist seething cuntal portal like a white-hot, cauterizing whip, his own animal whines matching the woman's depraved mewls as he zealously lashed and tongue-fucked the blood-flushed, glistening flesh between her obscenely splayed thighs and buttocks.
"Oh ... ooohhhhh Godddd ... you're driving me mad, lover ... madddd!" Elle moaned with raised head and lustfully gaping eyes. The forbidden bestial sight was all but shamelessly destroying her...! Never, never, never in her life had she felt like this!
The release-seeking blonde was mesmerized by the bliss of Nicki's pleasure-giving tongue, and she began to flail her head from side to side in her lewd, half-raised position, now holding the mighty animal's huge head between her spasmodically clenching thighs. The beautiful brute lapped maddeningly at her wetly flowing loins as she frantically tossed her head in cadence with her wanton abandoned groans. And it was then that she felt it!
She knew she was ready ... she knew it was finally going to happen ... and she gave herself over to the joyous sensations completely and totally. She could feel it starting!! !
Then she was cumming a mind-blowing orgasm that rocketed her in a tight ascending spiral straight up, and up and up, in convulsively gripping release, then with equal force slammed her back down in a mad, whirling, uncontrollable dive toward the beckoning arms of unconsciousness...
Two rooms away, separated by thick walls and heavy walnut doors, another Sutherland, the ever surprising Pamela, came across her bedroom very slowly sensually the perfect curves of her full white hips undulating so slightly she seemed to glide. On her moistened ripe lips curled the smallest of smiles, a reflected hint of hidden promise that to a discerning eye was more clearly evident in the fired depths of her liquid amber eyes. Behind the naked redhead, in premeditated disarray, reposed a trail of alluring elimination, a memorial path of discarded yellow silk and lace. Before her, in reptilian splendor reared the object of her stealthy seduction, the bulbous-tipped vertical extension of her reposed golden-bodied lover.
At the couch she knelt, gliding in graceful motion to the carpeted floor. Every complex, muscle-coordinated movement performed with the liquid ease and awareness of a gifted ballerina.
"Now?" she cooed hopefully.
"No!" came the stinging reply.
"When?" she asked with the pleading subservience of a scolded cowering child.
"As soon as I've finished figuring out how to do it."
The nakedly expectant woman remained kneeling, quietly watching, waiting, thinking.
After a moment she saw by her lover's expression an opportunity to speak.
"Walt?"
"Hmmm."
"How about the boat thing?"
There was no reply, but behind those almost colorless eyes his mind was turning the idea over, examining it swiftly, meticulously from all conceivable angles. His first reaction was one of immediate rejection, his second a cursory doubt. What the hell! It had worked once and without the slightest suspicion. It was simple, impossibly unprovable, and inexpensive. What other criteria were required? None. But it would provide him little joy it was too painless. There were, however, other avenues that could be explored beforehand.
His mouth, cruel when closed, opened a perceptible fraction of an inch, the small muscles at the corners vibrating with rigid control in what in him passed for a smile. Simultaneously, but only momentarily, his eyes shone with as much depth of blue as they ever achieved.
"Now," Pam hissed knowingly.
"Now!" he answered. One slim, long-fingered hand snaked forward, touched tentatively, then rapturously began circling the stiff object of her attention, wrapping with familiar expertise around the pulsing girth of hardened, blood-engorged cock. Gently she squeezed, and between forefinger and thumb an expanse of turgid shaft visibly throbbed with lust-inciting pleasure, palpitating perceptibly in tuned response.
The thin, amazingly pliable lids of the golden man's eyes slid closed with quickening ecstasy, the fathomless blue irises temporarily shrouded, yet even in hooded protection remaining unchanged. The mouth pursed, the nostrils flared as the barrel chest covered with profuse but colorless hair began to rise and fall with hastening desire.
Pamela remained quiet then, devoting full attention to her expert manipulations, waiting and watching for the arrival of one of those rare moments when her power temporarily surpassed his. With the first, nearly imperceptible twitch rippling across the flat plane of washboard stomach muscle, she knew the moment had arrived. Then, without changing the pattern of rhythm of her deftly stroking fingers, and only then, Pam voiced the unspoken desire that had begun with her guests' arrival and blossomed in runaway erotic fantasy with each passing second since.
"I want her first," she said. It was a declaration of supremacy.
In his mind the process of shifting attention from deep overriding sensuality to cognizant reality took no more time than was required for the hooded lids to flutter open.
"Be my guest," he said.
"How did she react to Nicki?"
He laughed one single short, flat sound. "Like a duck to water." He laughed again. "You should have seen her when I let Nicki in. The naive little bitch was fingering herself! Nicki was on her before she knew what was happening. She was petrified. It was so easy it wasn't worth staying around to watch. Especially since I had a prior engagement."
"What about him?"
"Out like a light. He'll never know what hit him."
"Good. Remember, I get her first."
"Your repeating yourself." He paused. "I suppose you've got it all worked out."
"Umm, hmmm. But I'll need your help."
"How?"
"By getting her down to the boat in the morning. I'll get down there ahead of her. With Nicki."
One of his infrequent smiles lit her cold lover's face. "Then I bring her along in the middle of your little scene, right?"
"Right."
"Then we all take a little boat ride. Five miles out there's an accident. End of problem. In two weeks the bereaved sister-in-law takes a vacation to forget her sorrow. To Europe via Brazil. With a stack of thick green. No more problems. Off we go."
"For sure we can go now ... I mean ... after I have a little fun..." she said in her low sexy voice. She moved her face close to his erect, blood-swollen member and, shaping her mouth into a sultry oval she breathed hot air over the bloated rubbery tip coursing the hard fleshy column of his achingly rigid cock, to jerk in her hand. "I'll bet the little bitch can't suck your big cock like I can!"
"OOoooohhh, I don't know," he teased, feeling his blood rushing sensorily through his lewdly throbbing penis. Nobody could suck cock like Pam, but he enjoyed getting her angry so she would show off her skills. "I'll bet I can teach that pouty little mouth a thing or two."
It was a challenge, and she flicked her moistly searching tongue out at the bulging, seeping tip, lashing the sensitive underside again and again until his fervently distending penis jerked in depraved response. Tucked just inside the dilated slit at the very tip was a rising drop of escaping seminal fluid, and she dabbed at it with her tongue-tip, tasting the pungently sweet liquid to increase her own arousal.
As always, his play worked, for he pinched her tiny inflamed clitoris hard, making her whole belly burn with mounting licentious excitement. She was going to show him what a real woman could do, and then she was going to make him admit she was the best.
Without stopping the continual provocative licking with her incitingly darting tongue over and around the hot fleshy thickness of his desire-hardened cock, Pam spread her long shapely legs wider, giving his fingers greater access to her wetly quivering vagina as she hunched her totally naked body over his arched hairy pelvis.
Damn! Walt thought as he tensed from the lust-inspiring sensations of her wildly lashing tongue. He stared at her voluptuously naked body, kneeling with smoothly rounded white thighs wide apart beside him, and he felt that in sexual proficiency there was just no one else like her. His eyes feasted on the sensually exciting details of her laboring body, marveling at the round firmness of her swelling, fully pointed breasts that held their magnificent shape in spite of their size. They were proud and close-set, leaving the narrowest of valleys running between their smooth white resilience.
He moved his eyes lower to where his exploring fingers played between the enticingly swollen pussy-lips hidden up between the firm long sweep of her quaking thighs. He could clearly see the soft dark pubic hairs covering her protuberant mound, and the fleshy pinkness of her gleaming vaginal crevice glistened wetly in the dim light. He smiled. He was more than ready for her.
"Are you just going to lick it. . . ? Or are you going to suck it?" he groaned impatiently, sliding his fingers at the same time along her dampening pussy-furrow eagerly trembling mouth of her dilating vagina.
With one final hungry caress Pam rolled her tongue teasingly around the throbbing glans of his lust-stiffened penis, then grinned up at him, a satisfied expression on her pretty face. It was part of the game, but tonight he was really impatient to have her warm, wetly sucking mouth around his aching hardened cock. Mewing with pleasure as he dipped two fingers farther up into her tight, hungrily clasping vaginal passage, she then turned her attention back to the thickly palpitating length of his bulging cock.
The warm smooth skin of her velvety cuntal channel seemed to pull at his fingers as he drove them deep up into her welcoming wetness, and he looked at her lovely face for a telltale sign of pleasured response.
Her luscious mouth had already formed a receptive oval and her amber eyes were glazed with answering passion as her fingers played excitedly up and down the achingly expanding length of his turgid penis. Then slowly she lowered her face back toward his rigid shaft as he thrust his powerfully quivering loins spasmodically upward into the warm moist pressure of her softly parted lips. As they closed caressingly around the throbbing sensitive head, her tongue moved like summer lightning around the bloated glans, her even white teeth closing with hungrily nibbling contact against his skewering thickness.
"Ooooo, yesss! Suck it like that, baby!" he moaned as he reached down with his free hand to tangle his fingers tightly in her auburn hair. He had intended to guide the rhythm of her bobbing head as she slowly took more and more of his pulsing hard length up into her mouth, but as the swirling warmth of her eager tongue and the vacuum-like pressure of her moistly sucking cheeks engulfed his swollen tingling cock-head, he arched his muscular hips up violently, driving his painfully stiff member to the very back of her throat. Lifting his head up from the couch, then, the blonde man was rewarded with a clear view of his girl friend's lewdly contorted face, and he felt a swirling surge of wanton excitement as he watched the impaling expanse of soaring penile hardness bury itself to the hilt inside her hungrily sucking mouth.
It always amazed him to see her take so much of him, for he knew he was ramming it all the way down to her tonsils, practically choking her. Yet somehow, she continued to mewl around his hotly plunging thickness as she increased the twirling of her wet teasing tongue over the pummeling piston of his blood-engorged shaft. Again and again she nipped at it with her teeth, her softly ovaled lips drawing maddeningly around the bloated organ sucking it, harder, ever harder.
Meanwhile, his fingers working in her hotly clasping, moist cunt moved in and out, beginning a rhythm that matched his hand guiding her head to his up-thrust cock-shaft. She knew he was nearly ready to cum in her mouth, and she gave in to his insistent force, eagerly bobbing her head up and down his obscenely dilated penis, sucking on the pulsating member with wanton frenzy.
"Suck it, baby! SUCK IT!" he hissed, shoving his lust-trembling loins up violently into her lewdly contorted face. His eyes were locked now in lust-glazed rapture on the licentious spectacle, the very sight of it causing his inflamed and aching loins to tense and jerk up into her face until her cheeks bloated out grotesquely.
Her fervidly darting tongue began to lick then with heated, nerve-tingling urgency, making his glans throb and pulse as though it was the burgeoning center of his sensation-filled body. He watched with sadistic fascination as the inner coral flesh of her slaving lips pulled out exotically, clinging to the rigid stem of his cock as she sucked him with mounting wanton eagerness.
His mind was alive with the salacious intensity of her lustful concentration, and as her full white breasts danced and quivered with the effort of her eagerly pumping torso, he ground his fingers more deeply inside her seething wet vaginal passage, reaming its claspingly possessive softness with demented, convulsing fury.
"Ohhhhh, yeh! Suck it baby," he groaned, his eyes closing with sensual images, his head flailing back against the couch as he shoved his quivering hips up even harder into Pam's avidly sucking mouth.
But his mind was not on Pam. The images that flashed before his lidded eyes were of the innocent youth blonde Elle Sutherland. He was going to make her suck his cock, an act he was sure she had not experienced. God, but it would give the cruel Adonis the greatest of pleasures to jam his hard thick cock deep up into the girl's throat or better yet, her ass, then pump her hungry little belly full of his steaming hot cum.
He could see it now: She would become wild, a bitch animal in heat in spite of her protests against his unnatural fucking and she would beg him to screw her greedily working little rectum until she was dry of all her insane arousal.
God! It was going to be beautiful. She would beg and beg and beg ... and then when she found out what was going to happen to her, she would beg even more and her relentless captor would really give her something to remember before she departed on that final journey...
"Come on, baby! Suck harder! Come on," he grunted as he returned from his sojourn into the future to the fiery present.
In answer, Pam bit down hard, leaving indented streaks the length of his throbbing cock, then plunged down again, taking the whole quivering length up into her slavishly engulfing throat.
Walt was ready to burst with the insistent pressure of his cum. His churning balls ached with the pounding need for release, and involuntarily his ardent fingers thrust and bored with renewed energy up into Pam's passion-clinching vagina, signaling her that he was near completion.
"Mmmmmmm!" she suddenly moaned around the hotly rigid member in her throat. Then he felt the fruits of her passion blooming around his fingers in orgasmically erupting waves of liquid heat. She was cumming and he shoved his hips hard up into her widely pumping lips, hearing her mumble of lust-filled joy as his own final, sensation-filled trip burst the length of his spasmodically pulsating cock. He gasped his lips bared back over strong teeth. Then he exploded!
His huge swollen hardness erupted in a wild staccato jerking as searing white-hot cum spewed from his orgiastically pulsing cock-head, bursting deep into her receptive draining throat. Her mouth was sucking wildly, flooded with gush after gush of sticky hot sperm that salaciously bloated her cheeks with each gigantic spurt as she attempted to swallow it, ravenously, frantically!
"Uuuuggghhh! Swallow it baby! Oooooo! Yeahhhhh! Don't stop! Keep sucking ... KEEEEEP Suckinggg..." he gasped, thrusting his writhing loins upward and ramming his wildly convulsing penis farther, farther, farther down her throat.
Finally Walt groaned then, falling back heavily onto the couch; he emptied the last of his passion-heated semen between her lips as she went on nibbling gently, sucking every last drop from his spurting gland.
After a few moments the satiated penis slowly deflated in her mouth, and he pulled his fingers from her still hotly contracting cunt. Pam remained kneeling beside the couch, her head on her lover's thigh, still sucking lightly at the limp useless penis. Then finally, she straightened up and smiled a knowing, feline-like smile of victory.
CHAPTER TEN
Elle frowned at her reflected image in the full-length mirror in her room. The voluptuous blonde cut a lovely, lithesome figure in the bold blue bikini, but her eyes perceived that figure with caustic disdain. Although it had not been apparent to others, Elle was filled with self-loathing and humiliating shame...
* * *
It had all begun when the confused widow awoke that morning, begun with the first raising of her eyelids for the proof stared her straight in the face!
Nicki!
Tail wagging, nose sniffing, the big Doberman had immediately jumped up on the bed. For another fear-filled moment, Elle had thought she was going to be attacked, then suddenly his ears had pricked straight up, and, in three giant strides, he was off the bed, through the open window and into the garden.
After several minutes in which she had lain there with shivering gratitude, Elle turned remorseful eyes to the bedside clock and gasped with incredulity at the time. It was nearly ten, and, after her great orgiastic extravaganza of the night before she had slept soundly without waking for twelve straight hours!
Scurrying out of the bed, she forced the debasing waves of memory from her mind as she quickly showered, dressed, brushed her hair and applied makeup. In fifteen minutes she had finished, and, still pursued by clawing self-doubt, she left the room and made her way quickly toward the garden from which she could hear muted voices.
Already the sun was bright and warm and immediately tiny beads of perspiration formed on the blonde's forehead. The cool darkness of the house had not prepared her for this unexpected brightness. After a moment of adjusting, her eyes began to sweep the expansive gardens in search of Des. They came up empty: only Walt and the housekeeper's young daughter were present.
"Good morning, Elle. Sleep well?" Walt asked with a knowing grin.
"Just fine, thank you," Elle said absent-mindedly, as she approached the muscular blonde, her restless eyes still searching fruitlessly as the young Mexican girl slipped soundlessly away toward the house. "Have you seen Des?"
Walt looked thoughtful for a moment. "Yes. I think he wandered down to the harbor," he said, sweeping one powerful arm in the direction of the pounding surf. "He was asking me about the yacht and I told him to go on down and have a look at her." He flashed one of his rare smiles.
"Yacht?" Elle asked, staring uncomprehendingly at the high, whitewashed wall beyond his outstretched arm.
"Pam's yacht," he said. "Down in the harbor. If you want to go down, follow the path on the other side of that gate over by the rosebushes. You can't miss it. She's the PAMELA S., the big forty footer." He smiled. "Des was wearing a swimming suit. Perhaps you might want to change first?"
Elle stared at him for a moment, digesting the information. "I-I didn't bring a suit along," she stammered in realization.
"That shouldn't be a problem," he said, scanning her lush rounded figure with an appreciative eye. "Pam's got dozens. "Let's see..." he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, his eyes unabashedly frank in their appraisal.
Self-consciously, Elle cringed under his enveloping scrutiny, feeling as if she were standing stark naked before the calculating man. A blush rose quickly in her cheeks.
"I think perhaps the blue one would suit your needs. Yes. Definitely the blue one." He smiled. "Maria!" he called loudly, glancing toward the house.
Presently, the pretty young Mexican girl appeared at the patio door. "Si Senor?"
There followed a one-sided torrent of words in rapid Spanish, then she disappeared.
"There. It is done. Presently, she will bring it to your room." He smiled, then with a mock bow, said, "If you will excuse me, Elle, I have some rather pressing business to attend to." He turned and hastened toward the villa, then, halfway there, turned and called back, waving one muscular arm. "Have a good swim." Then he too disappeared.
Elle made her way thoughtfully to her room. She was sure she wouldn't want to be left alone with that man for any great length of time, despite his outward graciousness.
As she entered her room, a new thought crept into her mind. She hadn't seen Pam. Hadn't even thought to ask about her. Oh well, she would see her later, after she had been down to the yacht to see Des...
The path down to the harbor was steep. Barefooted, clad only in the bold bikini, Elle made her way down it with carefully measured steps. In truth it wasn't really a path at all, but a descending series of rough, hand-hewn cuts in the solid rock of this side of the island.
On her way down Elle stopped occasionally to admire the breath-taking beauty, letting her eyes sweep across the magnificent tropical panorama, absorbing the lush richness of green ridge, blue bay and the white boats bobbing gently in the protected harbor. It had been nearly dark when they arrived the previous evening, and it wasn't until now that she was able to appreciate the relatively untouched beauty of the region.
Each stop was only momentary, for the bottoms of her feet would soon begin to smart from the heat that had already been absorbed by the rock, and then she would continue on. As she moved, her eyes were ever watchful for the figure of her new love, but at no time did she discern any indication of his presence either along the narrow strip of clean white sand or amongst any of the boats.
At the bottom of the rock wall she paused a moment, resting, and her eyes trailed over the sleek lines of the Pamela S. There was no movement anywhere. Perhaps he had gone below, she thought.
Quickly then, she made her way through the soft sand toward the narrow pier that stretched perhaps a hundred yards out into the calm deep harbor. When at last the bikini-clad widow reached the Pamela S. she scampered aboard with lithe quick grace, for she planned to sneak up on Des and surprise him.
From the open hatchway there came a slight sound, and Elle slipped quietly down the narrow-treaded opening to find herself in the dimly lit bowels of the handsome yacht. Then, feeling her way along the bulkhead of a narrow passageway, she stealthily inched toward an open doorway, from which emitted a stronger beam of light and a strange rhythmic, rocking sound. As she moved, her hand trailing along the bulkhead of fine-textured, expensive wood, she felt a pleasurable shiver of anticipation pulse through her body, and she was suddenly filled with a great longing need to be held and stroked by Des.
Just short of the open doorway, she paused, devilishly planning to throw her arms around her heart throb when he stepped through. She waited and waited, but he didn't come out. The sounds from within were strangely familiar to her ears, but she could not immediately identify them. Shrugging, her curiosity getting the better of her, she cautiously poked her head inside the opening.
The sight that greeted her eyes so astounded the young widow that she lost her balance. Her fingers grasped for support, caught momentarily, jarring some glass object loose from its mounting and sending it crashing to the floor, then slipped. She clutched at the invisible air, falling awkwardly toward the carpet of a lavishly furnished stateroom where her fleeting glance revealed a huge raised bed covered in satiny splendor adorned with the salaciously naked body of her masturbating sister-in-law!
Instinctively, Elle relaxed, letting her inertia work to her advantage and landed on one bare shoulder then rolled once, coming to rest on her stomach with no apparent damage.
The first thing that greeted her adrenalin-stimulated senses was a very close, sharp snarl, and, once again, Elle found herself staring at Nicki's sleek black head. Then, from above her, the blonde heard a softly crooning voice.
"My my. That was some spectacular entrance."
Elle looked up and saw the face of her unabashed sister-in-law staring down at her over the foot of the dais-like bed. For a moment the intruder was too winded to say a word, and she merely stared up at the sensually grinning face. Finally, she found her voice.
"I-I'm sorry ... Pam ... I didn't mean to ... barge in," she said breathlessly.
"Don't you think that's being a bit ridiculous, darling? Something like closing the barn door after the horse had gone...? "
"I'm not ... knocking it. Pam ... I just feel ashamed ... for barging in like this. I thought Des ... was down here. I was going to ... surprise him."
There was a soft slithering sound as Pam slid one arm along the satin bedcovering, then over the edge of the bed. "Here, honey. Let me help you up. Are you hurt?"
Elle grasped the offered hand and began pulling herself shakily erect, but her knees, gathered under her, were weak with the unaccustomed acrobatics, and she slipped. Then, with a painful wrench of her shoulder muscles, she was suddenly reversing direction, being lifted toward the bed.
With amazing ease that indicated a depth of hidden, powerfully conditioned strength, the older woman had checked Elle's fall and propelled her onto the bed. For a long moment, the startled blonde lay, too stunned to do anything but breathe raggedly. Then, turning onto her back, she stared in amazement up at her sister-in-law.
"T-Thanks," she finally gasped.
"Are you all right?"
"Sure ... just winded. I'm ... sorry about what happened."
"No apology needed. I come here sometimes when ... when I want to be alone," she said, her liquid amber eyes unwavering, challengingly defiant.
Her meaning was crystal clear, and Elle quickly averted her eyes, which immediately began to moisten.
Pam smiled. "I knew you'd understand, honey. It was in your eyes the first time I saw you. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Men are too damn quick ... and Lord knows we women need our release just as much as they do." She paused, her features taking on a new, concerned expression, then continued. "Roll over, honey. Let me check to see if you hurt your back."
Obediently, the bikini-clad blonde rolled over. Somehow Pam's words were comforting, and she knew she shared a deep secret with the beautiful woman. There was no objection, as Pam's hands trailed smoothly over her skin, lightly probing her muscles for a telltale response. But nothing hurt, there was no pain, and Elle found herself relaxing under the expert touch.
"Turn over now," Pamela said huskily.
Elle didn't want to move. Those hands that had been stroking her were too heavenly, washing away her cares and worries, dispelling all thought, as a sensation of luxuriant warmth crept over her almost naked body. Slowly then, she rolled toward Pam and felt the narrow strip of blue cloth which tied in the back and covered her breast slip away from her flesh.
Pam's face, hovering directly above her own, was inflamed with a knowing sensuality, and, as Elle gazed into it, she was barely aware that the bows of the bikini bottom were untied, barely felt the garment being carefully stripped from her loins. . .
Elle raised her head slowly to stare at the elegant face of the other woman, her own confused blue eyes moist in their bath of contained tears. A mixture of emotions began to frantically race through her ... the beautiful, deep amber-eyes of her sister-in-law were gazing hotly into her own, effectively mesmerizing her, causing the tempo of her breathing to increase! The naked blonde widow trembled in response to the slender gentle hand raising to pressure against her shoulder, urging her back down onto the bed.
Pam's smile a dazzling sight to Elle grew even more splendid as the older woman rose to stand in statuesque cream-white nakedness before her! The blonde was captivated by the sight of the auburn-haired woman's high-set, firmly rounded breasts with their hardened pink nipples, her slender waist and the smooth swelling curve of her hips. The thighs of her long shapely legs were full and taut, and, at the base of her flat belly, partially hidden by a sparse triangular shadow of dark silken ringlets, peeked the faintly pink inner dampness separating her pouting aroused vaginal lips...!
Her beautiful sister-in-law seemed to float down beside her once more until Elle felt the tender brush of her warm hand on her brow and in her hair. Fascination spread through the younger girl like wildfire as her belly and the soft inner sides of her white thighs quivered in empathy to the delicious forbidden caresses.
Still, traces of apprehensive repugnance tried to register in the startled girl's mind, but she blindly barred them. God...! She didn't want to resist, the sensually aroused young woman thought as she felt loving hands on her lust-swollen breasts! Then, the exquisite face moved closer to hers, its perfect, soft mouth closing down onto her own with a moist gentleness ... and, finally, with urgent affection!
Elle's lips responded of their own volition, and she sensed them being pressed apart by Pam's boldly darting tongue slipping up into her mouth in search of hers. Simultaneously, Pam's ripely molded curves stretched out against her own soft full breast against breast, belly against belly, thigh against thigh. Then, the auburn-haired woman began an intimate, delicately undulating motion as Elle excitedly brought her own tongue into caressing contact with her beautiful, pleasure-bringing sister-in-law's.
"Damn ... but you're a breath-taking creature, dear!" Pam breathed hotly into the younger woman's mouth. She kissed her again and again, torrid moist kisses of tongue-laving delight which were carrying the susceptible young widow willingly upward and away on a cloud of erotic wantonness she knew she must ride now to the end of its journey! Then Pam raised her bewitching face and gazed down at her. "You mustn't misunderstand, Elle. I'm not a died-in-the-wool lesbian. You do believe that?"
"It doesn't matter..."
"To me it does, darling," Pam whispered. "When I see someone whom I know I can and want to love, whether male or female, it makes no difference. Can you believe that?"
Elle nodded, knowing that yesterday she couldn't have accepted such a frank obscene statement, and that, even now, there were doubts inside her, but that none of it mattered a damn at this point!
"Was it ... Tom, baby?" the intoxicating, amber-eyed face softly questioned. "He couldn't satisfy you . '. . . ? "
"I don't want to talk about it, Pam ... please?"
"All right," the other quickly replied, lovingly grazing her fingers over the beautiful young widow's face, letting their tips trail down the satiny skin of her neck to her shoulder. "Just relax, darling, and give yourself to Pam. She's going to make you the most contented girl in the world...! "
"Ohhhhh ... yes ... yesssss ... I want you to...! " Elle ardently hissed, abandoning her inflamed young body to the forbidden depraved pleasures to come...!
Pam kissed her again, and Elle met the probing tongue with the heated wetness of her own, sensing the redhead's gentle loving hands fondly caressing her erotically tingling breasts and moving downward over her body with an intimate tenderness that filled her with a previously unknown ardor for her woman lover. She felt the clever hands stroking the ovaled mounds of her round naked buttocks, drawing her tightly into a strong, yet softly yielding embrace.
At the lewdly illicit contact, something objectionable again tried to make its unwanted presence known in the naive blonde's brain, and, more determinedly this time, the enraptured widow drove it away. Whatever it was so erotically captivating and sensually stimulating her desire-filled body, she wanted it to go on and on ... maybe forever and ever!
The svelte creature pressed close to her, massaging her hot nakedness against Elle's resilient young curves, their hardened, pebble-like nipples touching, their full breasts flattening against each other's, the juncture of their thighs meeting at their fleshy cuntal mounds, decorated with silken thatches of blonde and ruddy pubic curls...
Elle gasped with the vibrant tremor rippling over her nakedly aroused young body, while Pam's hand explored the rounded moons of her sensitive gyrating buttocks, spreading them apart and inserting an outstretched middle finger into the crevice to stroke her tight little anus with knowing expertise. Sensations of utter lust glowed in Elle's overwrought belly and in the hotly throbbing cuntal mouth up between her thighs.
Then Pam was gently pressing her onto her back, her willowy hand tracing the arched line of her full firm hip as she slithered down the younger woman's naked body and gently urged Elle's legs apart to her wanton manipulations. The young widow didn't look but lay there with eyes closed in unprecedented desirous anticipation, her panting breath causing her swelling breasts to heave in erotic arousal.
Elle felt the warm moist kisses against the extremely sensate flesh of her quaking inner thighs, each one planted higher and higher toward her spasmodically hungering pussy-lips.
Pamela's eyes glittered when they locked on the narrow pink crevice where a tiny drop of secreting moisture glistened from her victim's building sensual passion, and, unhesitatingly, she flicked out her tongue-tip, stealing the heady cuntal tang into her mouth.
A shiver of seductive lust rifled through Pam's undulating nakedness at its spicy taste, and she drew her wetly darting tongue from the point where the young girl's enticing pink cuntal crevice joined the smooth cleft between her rounded ass-cheeks, lightly tracing the thin vaginal line dividing its fleshy lips upward to its peak. She felt the excited tremor flutter over her maturely curvaceous body, and, with her thumbs, she brushed aside the wispy blonde pubic curls, spreading apart the young widow's clinging cuntal lips until her tiny hooded clitoris was revealed before her avaricious gaze. She licked the erect little bud greedily, raising a whimpering shudder from the hopelessly aroused girl lying naked beneath her.
Elle opened her eyes to the sudden sensations of inflamed delight raging in her wet pulsating pussy as Pam's intimately licking tongue slithered maddeningly along her exposed vaginal furrow. Abruptly, she felt her legs being raised and pressed back until her thighs were flattening the resilient mounds of her swollen throbbing breasts. She lifted her head to look between them, watching the auburn-haired woman's classic face nuzzle into the hot wet pinkness of her splayed-open cunt, then begin to lick it with wanton frenzy!
Rather than the revulsion she had always identified with such an obscene lesbian act, salacious rapture swept through Elle's luridly positioned nakedness! God, she'd never in her wildest dreams imagined she could be a part of such a depraved performance ... but there she lay, on her back with her legs lewdly raised and her thighs widespread in lustful desire beneath this wanton woman whose working mouth and tongue were filling her with intoxicating forbidden pleasure ... and she wanted it ... wanted it!
"Oh . , , . ooohhhh...! " Elle moaned, as the auburn-haired enchantress began nipping at her tautly quivering clitoris, the incessant nibbling of Pam's teeth sending violent spasms of burgeoning ecstasy spiraling through her white vulnerable nakedness. It was maddening ... impassionately maddening ... but ever endurably maddening!
From that brief instance of almost shattering sensation, Pam's knowing hot tongue drew downward to slide smoothly in and out of the hot liquid mouth of Elle's steamingly clenching vagina, rotating wetly against its sensitive inner walls, then thrusting deep up inside her desire-racked young cunt. She sensed her older sister-in-law's hands cupping the rounded cheeks of her convulsively writhing buttocks to raise her even higher, and Elle held her knees tightly against her own aching breasts as she felt the vamping little tongue lick hotly downward through her smooth pussy-crevice to her puckered virginal anus! Its tip pressed firmly against Elle's anal hole as it had her cuntal mouth, but hardly penetrated ... though the feverishly incited girl wanted it to!
Suddenly, it was back in her damp seething cunt, and nothing else seemed to matter as it curled wetly up into her, then flicked to the intricate little bud of her excitedly palpitating clitoris, while the ecstatic pressure mounted in her churning belly.
And then, Pam stopped!
Slowly, reluctantly, Elle lowered her legs as she looked intently down at her exotically smiling lover.
"Come down here and kiss me, darling!" the auburn-haired woman whispered.
She couldn't have refused if she had wanted to. Elle knew as she sat upright, and Pam got to her knees between her widespread legs. The blonde girl wrapped her arms upward around the older woman's neck and planted her lips on the other's wetly parted mouth, tasting the poignant flavor of her own heated vagina there! The reaction of her depraved libido was undeniable soaring abandon!
"Wh-What do you want me to do?" Elle gasped.
Pamela enfolded the young widow in her arms and held her, pressing the younger girl's cheek against the warm pliant flesh of her soft full breast. She ran one hand down over Elle's naked belly, then through the silken blonde tufts of her little pubic mound to her titillated pussy, drawing a finger between its flushed, heatedly moistened lips.
Elle whimpered, clinging closer, and the lithesome woman cupped her own breast, holding it to press the nipple between the young blonde widow's wetly receptive lips. Eagerly Elle began to suck as her own groping hand moved upward to lovingly caress and hold the firm full mound of heaving breast.
"You like that, darling?" Pamela whispered throatily.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmm!" Elle moaned, her avidly darting tongue swirling over and around the hard perfumed nipple she hungrily held and sucked in her mouth.
Momentarily Pamela watched in mounting passion, watched the sensual sight of her curvaceous sister-in-law sucking and nibbling in wanton hunger at her wildly tingling breast. God, she thought, what an absolutely fantastic time they were going to enjoy together!
She watched until she couldn't stand it any longer, then she pressed the susceptible naked widow down onto the bed and lewdly straddled her waist, moving upward over the voluptuous, satin-fleshed girl until her own lush buttocks sat back to flatten Elle's softly yielding breasts against her chest!
Elle looked up at her, not frightened, knowing exactly what was expected ... what was to come ... and ... and wanting it! Pam raised up until her wetly excited cunt hovered directly above Elle's mouth, saying nothing, only staring downward with lust-filled eyes, waiting!
The erotically fired young blonde licked out as if in unquestioning obedience, the enticing coral crevice of excitedly seeping pussy with its hair-lined flanges acting like a magnet to her as she laved her tongue through the hot liquid length of it. Subconsciously, Elle reached up and lovingly caught the auburn-haired woman's full flared hips, drawing her down closer while she ran her tongue feverishly through the pink velvet of Pam's cunt ... exploring her heated, lust-moistened vagina and at last, her rather large, almond-like clitoris, the total lewd experience firing her naked young body beyond belief!
Once again, Pamela surprised her, shifting back and away, then scrambling off her in an unexpected move! Elle raised to her elbows, gaping at her beautiful naked sister-in-law!
"What's wrong ... ? Wasn't ... wasn't I doing it right...?"
"You were beautiful, baby, and ... you're not done yet!" Pam whispered, a classic smile lighting her face. "But we have a male member with us, darling...."
Elle gaped at her, knowing yet not quite sure...
"Get up on your knees, baby, with your lovely ass high in the air if you want to know the ultimate!"-
"But ... Pam...? "
"Turn over!" the auburn-haired woman cut her short. "Do it! Now!"
Elle could have argued or, at the most, fought with her libidinous teacher, but she had no intentions of doing that. The lust-drugged widow remembered only too well Nicki's sensual talents and she responded slavishly by getting up onto her knees as commanded, raising her lush naked buttocks high as if she were moving in some sort of hypnotized erotic fantasy-world, the lustful sensations permeating her trembling curvaceous body more affecting than any addiction she could ever know!
"Come, Nicki! Now, lover! Up ... up!"
Elle felt the jouncing weight of the massive dog leap onto the bed, and her belly constricted in natural fright. She looked behind her and saw her nakedly gloating sister-in-law point toward her proffered buttocks!! !
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For what seemed an eternity, a quivering Elle Sutherland knelt upon the bed, resting forward on her elbows and forearms, knees widespread, the unprotected mounds of her nakedly upturned buttocks obscenely raised according to her leering sister-in-law's lewd instructions! The hardened tips of her passion-swollen breasts incitingly grazed the silken bedspread beneath and her long blonde hair tumbled down over her shoulders and cheeks in a golden veil that hid all facial evidence of the bizarre emotions of apprehension and anticipation that were charging fiercely through her desire-racked loins.
Suddenly the kneeling widow felt the huge animal's cool wet nose poking against her inner thighs as it had last night, sniffing at the fluid pungent heat of her lust-fired pussy. Brushing her hair aside, Elle twisted again to look at Pamela. The excited redhead was on her knees, closely watching the massive dog's lurid inspection of her pulsing unshielded cuntal entrance. The anxious urge to bolt from the bed and put an end to this depraved situation raced into her lust-confused brain, but instead she froze as his cold probing nose touched her anus, causing her to lurch reflexively forward and her mind to go blank!
Elle felt his hot animal tongue dart out and lick wetly up and down her smooth quivering pussy crevice, laving at her tightly puckered little ring as his mistress had done shortly before! Again the naked young widow felt a hot sizzling up within the depths of her feverishly aroused belly as Nicki began avidly licking her lust-inflamed cunt ... and then nothing else mattered!
"Wider, darling!" Pamela hissed excitedly. "Spread your legs wider! Open your pussy for him!"
Oh God ... he was a trained wonder all right! Elle wildly reasoned, inching her knees farther apart as the Doberman obscenely lashed its searing bestial tongue the full length of her tremulous buttock-valley ... from the dimpled hole of her tiny rectum to her passionately burning pussy ... even to the very base of her belly where it flicked and caressed the quivering bud of her spasmodically erected clitoris! Time and again the beautiful brute repeated his earth-shaking lickings, his maddening animal-tongue laving through her frenzied pussy and anal crevice with undeniable tutored skill, spreading her open in the most sensitive secret parts of her passion-possessed loins.
"Oh ... oh God, Pam...! " the young blonde widow reveled in the thrilling salaciousness of her naked animalistic position and the obscene act she was so eagerly taking part in.
"Do you like him, darling?" the voluptuous, auburn-haired beauty whispered, leaning down to slip a hand beneath Elle's nearest swaying breast, cupping and fondling its swelling warmth with knowledgeable affection. "Isn't he marvelous?"
"And the best is yet to come, baby! Watch! Now, Nicki! Up! Up! That's it, lover! Fuck her! Go ahead, Nicki! Fuck her...! "
With that shocking command, unexpected pangs of instant terror ripped through Elle's sensually overwrought body! Good God, there was a limit! She started to protest, intending to squirm away, but a fierce growl as the dog mounted her, his hard furry body crowding in toward her defenselessly trembling buttocks, quickly changed the young widow's mind! His strong forelegs were clutching at the flaring softness of her hips like the arms of any lust-driven man who was about to take her from behind!
"Damn it, Pam! Stop him!" Elle snapped in a voice distorted by fear ... and by mounting passion.
Her sadistically aroused sister-in-law merely laughed. "I don't believe you've much choice in the matter at this point darling ... and I assure you, nothing I could say would stop him now! He senses that beautiful heat of your sweet needing pussy, baby. Don't be frightened, and above all don't put him down because he's an animal. I promise you, Elle darling, you haven't been fucked until Nicki slips that wonderful cock of his up into your steaming cunt! Just relax ... relax ... and look what Pamela's got for you...! "
The frightened young blonde intended to say more! To struggle! To do whatever was necessary! Instead she moaned in masochistic excitement as her naked sister-in-law moved around her head, squirmed down beneath Elle's kneeling body and drew her long shapely legs back to her firm up-thrusting breasts so that her pink, wetly glistening cunt was completely exposed beneath the younger woman's face. Then Pam said: "If you want to watch, darling, we've worked around enough on the bed so that you can see in the mirror. Look...! "
Elle did, the power of suggestion demanding it, and she caught the entire obscene reflection of their lurid orgy: The bestial sight of Nicki mounting the wantonly spread half-moons of her wriggling white buttocks plus that of Pam lying nakedly on her back with her long legs raised in lascivious presentation of her exposed, hair-covered cunt. Added to that came the spectacle of Nicki's glistening scarlet penis slipping forth from its furry sheath, his cock-shaft long wet and hard, the needled end like a pointed taper dancing and slipping in the up-thrust crevice of her hotly seething pussy! God, its size was unbelievable! Then she felt his strong animal body lurch against her lewdly presented ass-cheeks as he tried to invade her throbbing vagina with the thick beveled spear of slippery animal hardness!
"Help him, darling! You want it ... you know you do! Can't you just feel its long thickness racing up into your excited pussy?" Pam taunted while she too gaped at the mirror, her searching hand moving downward between her raised spread thighs to slip a probing finger lewdly up between the wet lips of her own heatedly contracting cunt. "Do it, baby. Help him ... if you really want to cum like a cyclone!"
It was her enchanting sister-in-law's last promising words which prompted Elle into blind action. With an unrestrained moan, the golden-haired young widow shifted her lushly rounded buttocks in a searching effort to capture the dog's hard lengthening cock, the sensual tension raging within her fire-racked vagina mounting to an almost unbearable height. God yes, she wanted that long slippery animal cock racing hotly up into the concentrated inferno of her belly! She wanted to ... to cum like a cyclone!
She reached back between her quivering thighs, grasping the blood-filled wet length, raising a partial growl from the huge sleek dog as she guided the moistly pulsating tip of his ramrod penis to her lubricated cuntal mouth. Immediately the brute thrust, withdrew, thrust, withdrew, hammering up into her lust-moistened yearning vagina, spreading her wet cuntal passage ever wider as he buried his long thick cock deep up into her stretched pussy channel!
Pam gaped in lustful fascination as the lengthy red hardness slithered forward with a wet brutal hammering until it was sunk to its hilt in Elle's cunt, Nicki's black hairy balls swinging obscenely beneath the younger girl's golden pubic hair.
"Oh damn ... damn!" Elle choked, her eyes wide but momentarily unseeing as the massive beast fucked up into her fitfully clenching cunt from behind with a ravaging force she could compare mentally only to a machine-driven piston!
It was long seconds before the depravedly impaled widow was able to regain her breath which had been knocked out of her by the dog's fierce entry into the scorching liquid core of her wriggling young body. But gradually it returned, even beneath his brutal relentless animal fucking, and she stared down at Pam's fingers moving sleekly in and out of her own glistening pink cunt.
"Ooohhh ... ooohhhhhh ... oooohhhhh!" Elle began to chant in a new heavenly relief that compelled her to move backward in a lewd bodily rhythm to meet Nicki's powerful pummeling strokes fucking deep into the very innards of her spasmodically seething belly from his ass-mounting position!
Pamela Sutherland watched as if hypnotized, her frantic fingers skillfully penetrating her own heatedly excited pussy while her amber eyes riveted on her voluptuous young sister-in-law's lust-contorted face. She watched Elle's full cream-white breasts dance and sway beneath her writhing torso, keeping cadence with Nicki's long thick cock skewering deeper and deeper into her from behind, a merciless hammering of gleaming animal hardness sinking to its full depth in the gorgeous girl's greedily receptive vagina.
Finally, when she could no longer stand the mere watching, and the fingering of her cunt seemed poor satisfaction, the lust-driven, naked older woman entwined her fingers in Elle's long blonde tresses, urging her passion-slackened face downward to her own feverishly wet loins.
Immediately, Pam felt the enraptured young girl's smoothly probing tongue begin to kiss, to lick, to suck, to nibble at the sensitive intimate flesh of her lustfully grasping cunt. The fullness of Elle's wetly ovaled lips drew eagerly at Pam's hard little clitoris, then the tantalizing length of the kneeling girl's hot tongue speared up into the clutching sheath of the prone woman's smoldering vagina slashing, swirling, sucking voraciously! She felt the curvaceous girl's hot breath blowing against the sensitive inner flanges and watched her nakedly rotating buttocks grinding furiously back against Nicki's rapidly pistoning animal cock fucking into her greedy absorbing pussy from behind.
The lewdly erotic spectacle was more than even Pam could bear to watch, nor could she hold back the climax that was threatening to erupt in the volcanic depths of her wantonly writhing belly from the exquisite mouthing of her cunt which Elle was so ardently administering! She threw back her head and moaned deeply as the explosion burst in surging waves of ultimate fiery pleasure that rocketed through her entire lust-possessed being, causing her legs to jerk spasmodically, flailing out on either side of Elle's hungry face nuzzled in her wetly climaxing cunt!
Almost simultaneously, the impassioned young widow felt the erotically stimulated heat pressuring beyond control in her own abandonedly excited body as muffled whimpers tumbled from her pussy-moistened lips. She raised her beautiful face and Pam read her glazed, sultry eyes ... saw them grow round and wide as she cried out:
The blonde's voice died in a strangled choke, her head twisting from side to side, her long blonde hair flailing as she began the first ecstatic spasms of body-wrenching orgasm, screwing her smoothly rounded buttocks back hard onto the wildly fucking thick animal penis with frenzied fury!
Pamela watched in the mirror as Nicki's tongue lolled loosely from his mouth, panting and dripping its saliva obscenely onto the glistening flesh of his female's while he fucked up between her wantonly undulating buttocks from behind. Abruptly the writhing young widow moaned again, slamming her madly trembling buttocks back against the panting brute with frantic force as Nicki thrust forward, spewing his scalding animal sperm deep up into her clasping belly with long incessant spurts.
Once more she groaned brokenly, her writhing ass-cheeks beginning to contract convulsively while Pam watched the mirror in lustful anticipation to see the combined human-animal orgasmic juices explode from the lust-swollen lips of Elle's tightly milking cunt, which was still clenching and squeezing Nicki's long thick cock pruriently! Thin rivulets of the steaming white fluid ran down the full columns of Elle's tremulous satiny thighs as gradually she collapsed forward into the cradle of her sister-in-law's cushioning loins, giving one last sigh of ecstatic final release.
Without speaking, Pamela pointed to Nicki and immediately the big black dog leaped down from the bed. Gently, lovingly she ran her hand through the curvaceous young widow's beautiful, silken blonde hair. After a moment, she crooned in her soft sexy voice, "Satisfied, darling?"
In answer Elle sighed, then mumbled something unintelligible.
Suddenly from the decks above them, there came a dull thump, then another.
Pam smiled down at the spent, nearly unconscious form of her satiated sister-in-law, then rose from the bed, quickly slipped into a beach robe and left the stateroom.
In her euphoric post-orgasmic state Elle was vaguely sware of thumping sounds, but to her sensation-filled mind they were of another world. She was too spent to move.
The first realization she had that someone had entered the stateroom came as a pair of hands grasped her, one around the neck, the other under the juncture of her thighs, and lifted her clear of the bed in one powerful and effortlessly smooth motion. It was all so sudden that before she knew what had happened she was lying on her back on the carpet at the foot of the bed.
Standing over her, straddling her, was the immensely tall, completely naked golden body of Walt Ormsby. The startled blonde's eyes widened in horror and her mouth opened, but before she could scream a massive foot descended over her face, then with ever-increasing pressure began squashing her head against the carpet. She could neither see nor speak, but she heard the cold-eyed man's sadistic laugh!
"One peep, sweets, and your pretty face is going to look like a crushed grape. If you can hear me, wiggle your ears!" he commanded, then guffawed loudly.
She wiggled her head feebly in assent.
"That's fine. Now you just remain calm, cool and collected while Pam gets us underway. Once we're past the breakwater, I'll let you up. Understand?"
Almost immediately Elle felt a vibration under her shoulder blades and knew the yacht's powerful engine was turning over smoothly. And almost simultaneously she felt the pressure increase against her face, a pressure that felt like her head was being helplessly crushed in the jaws of a giant vise.
Elle knew by the slightly undulating, sideways motion that they were underway, but it seemed an eternity before the vessel made a quick sharp turn and the vibrating hum in her ears began to increase.
The yacht slipped through the breakwater, gathered speed and began plowing a wide furrow in the deep blue Sea of Cortez.
Then mercifully the foot lifted and the pressure abated on Elle's severely aching head. As her eyes focused, the blonde found herself staring up into Walt's cruelly twisted face.
"You can scream all you want to now, sweets. Nobody can hear you. Nobody except me and him," he said, nodding toward a corner of the stateroom and the inert, neatly trussed figure of Des Sherwood.
Elle stared with wide-eyed horror at her obviously unconscious lover slumped against the far wall.
"What have you done to him?" she shouted.
"Don't get your knockers up, baby doll. Your boy friend's just taking a little nap. For some reason he wasn't too keen on the idea of taking a boat ride and I had to help him make the decision. He'll be around shortly. Matter of fact, why don't we go on over there and join him. When he wakes up I'd kind of like to see the expression on his face when he sees me rippin' into your belly with old Elmer here," he spat, rubbing the half-erect shaft of his burgeoning cock.
Elle was too shocked to respond. Her senses seemed to be deluged with a flood of divergent impressions: the tightly trussed and unconscious body of Des, the implication behind Walt's cruelly stinging words, and the sickening sight of his hand smoothly stroking his throbbingly rising member only a few feet above her eyes.
But before she had a chance to question her fate, she found herself being dragged across the carpet by her long flowing blonde hair, then her head being dumped unceremoniously next to Des' slumped form.
Then quick as a cat he was on her, his hands pinning her shoulders as he settled between her forcefully parted legs and spread them ever wider. Almost instantly, the frightened widow felt the warmth of his insinuating hardness seeking her helplessly exposed cuntal lips!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Elle gasped aloud and tossed her head uncontrollably, a shudder passing through her body at the first electrifying contact of that smooth, blood-engorged cock-head against the moist sensitive flesh of her tightening cunt. She held her breath, not daring to move, paralyzed with the horror of what was about to happen. Tears of shame flowed unchecked down her cheeks.
"When I'm through with you, baby doll," Walt hissed, "you're gonna beg me for it! You're gonna beg me to put my hot thick cock anywhere I want to put it. In your cunt, in your mouth, up your ass, anywhere!"
"Please," the horrified blonde stammered, determined to make one last effort. "You're too big! You'll kill me with it!"
His only response was a harsh cruel burst of laughter as he nudged her unwilling thighs farther apart to better position himself between her strainingly separated legs.
The lust-captured widow quivered. Something perverse and evil deep inside of her shuddering belly now wanted this humiliation and disgrace. Some evil demon in her mind urged her onward, fighting against all the moral training she had received since she was a young girl. But when she saw the pale-eyed man take his huge throbbing cock in his hand and guide it forward toward her tautly cringing vagina, fear took over and once again she began to whimper, anticipating the pain it would cause when he thrust his swelling member deep up into her unprotected belly.
Using the thick rubbery head of his cock, Walt parted the soft, hair-lined lips of her vagina, as Elle turned her head to one side and closed her eyes, no longer daring to watch what was going on. She held her breath, knowing it was going to hurt but not knowing how much.
The muscular man flicked his hips forward slightly.
"Oooooohhh, God!" his frightened victim sobbed, in response to the painful pressure against the tight, futilely clenched lips of her resisting vaginal opening up between her thighs.
Levering up on her with his powerful shoulder muscles, he pushed again. Christ, she's tight, he grunted to himself, feeling the hard rubbery tip of his aching penis pop suddenly up into the narrowly stretched passage.
"Aaaggghhh!! ! God, it hurts!" she moaned again, feeling as if deep up inside her tender belly was being torn steadily apart.
Walt wondered if Pam had passed out yet from the potion he'd had to give her to keep her from interfering with his games. A pity, because he would have enjoyed it if someone could watch him fucking his way steadily up into this delicate little cunt. But he couldn't tolerate the redhead's sudden bursts of jealousy. The automatic pilot could take care of running the boat.
Elle murmured again with the continuous pain and he looked down at her fear-contorted face. He was making the little bitch suffer, there was no doubt about it, and he was enjoying every minute of it. When he finished with her she would never be the same again. Spread-eagled below him, she was writhing and panting, groaning and gasping for breath, reduced now to a helplessly quivering mass of fearful, pain-wracked hopelessness nothing more.
The blonde man grinned arrogantly and forced his cock up inside her another inch or two, feeling the hot moist walls of her tightly clasping cuntal passage yield unwillingly before the inexorable force of his driving hardness. There was no stopping him now and he flexed his buttock muscles tightly to shove himself home, burying his long thick cock up inside her protesting womb to the hilt and pushing the soft misused cuntal wetness before him in rippling waves of pain. With a heavy grunt, he slammed all the way into her, not stopping until his heavy, sperm-laden balls slapped flatly up against the helpless upturned cheeks of her vainly resisting young buttocks.
"Oooooh God!" the captive widow groaned beneath him in hopeless agony. It was a sensation unlike anything she had ever felt before in her life. Her belly felt as if it had been forced apart by the blunted end of a great log. His long, blood-engorged cock seemed to fill her aching cuntal depths completely, for she could feel every tiny ridge and indentation as it lodged itself snugly up in her cruelly stretched vagina.
Pam's muscular boy friend let his weight settle down on her, crushing her nakedly writhing buttocks against the carpet, flattening her white, coral-tipped breasts against his chest. He flexed his rock-hard penis tentatively, tensing it as hard as he could, curious to see what effect it would have on her.
"Uuuuuugh," she groaned in response, her normally beautiful face now twisted with the pain, and humiliation of lying widespread and servile beneath the brutal stranger.
"Like that?" he asked mockingly, flexing his moistly buried penis again to make her groan a second time. "You're gonna like it even better before I get through, baby doll. How does it feel to have a real man's cock up inside your snobbish little cunt? Huh?"
"Oh please," she cried, painfully. "Don't hurt me any more."
"Honey, you don't want to quit yet," he gloated over his cowering victim.
"The fun is just beginning!"
Seeing that her last reserves of resistance were almost broken, Walt began a slow gentle rocking motion back and forth up between her torturously stretched thighs. He could feel her tight young vaginal passage loosening up slightly with each successive stroke and he realized he was moving more freely now, meaning that her firmly-impaled pussy-walls had instinctively begun to secrete their natural lubricating fluids.
It won't take long now, he assured himself as he fucked slowly in and out between her open quaking legs. In spite of herself, the blonde was beginning to enjoy the feeling of helplessness and now, once the momentary soreness of her pussy, had passed, he would have her enjoying being fucked too.
For Walt it was not enough just to ravish and humiliate a girl something almost any strong man should be able to do with mere brute force. What he really wanted was to transform this terrified, pain-racked young beauty into a raw squealing mass of helpless desire! He wanted to see her squirming lustfully under him, her emotions reduced to a desperate uncontrollable desire, and he wanted to watch those white trembling breasts of hers swell up with sexual excitement until they threatened to explode on her chest. He wanted her long tapered legs locked voluntarily up around his back, urging him on to greater efforts, and he wanted to hear her babble out words like fuck, cock, and cunt when he emptied his balls deep up into her helpless, thickly filled cunt.
He had known somehow, the moment he had laid eyes on her, that there was a hot sensual streak hidden in the prim blonde somewhere just waiting for the right touch to bring it roaring out. Then last night when he had seen Nicki push his tongue up her involuntarily flowering vagina and saw the first slow, but certain, pulsations of excitement begin, he had known that he was on the right track. Now it was merely a question of time before she snaked her legs up behind his back and screamed for more of his cock.
Powerfully Walt stepped up the pace, raising himself up on his hands and knees and fucking almost straight down into her so that the long hard shaft of his rigidly distended penis would slide directly across the tiny, sensation-filled bud of her erect little clitoris.
She had stopped groaning in pain now, and he knew that the moment was approaching when he would have her moaning with pleasure.
Elle's female instincts told her quite clearly what was happening. The battle going on here was psychological as well as physical, and she knew she was losing badly on both fronts. This was going to be more than a mere rape of her body, and the young girl knew that Pam's brutal boy friend would not be satisfied until he had conquered her emotionally as well.
Even now she could feel her tortured mind and body slipping, no matter how much she tired to focus her thoughts on her hatred for him and what he was doing to her. There were lewd licking flames of building desire spreading to her fingertips and curling toes and she could already see where she was headed. Unconditional surrender was on its way and the thought sent chills up and down her spine as the man's heavy viciously jabbing cock skewered powerfully up into her progressively moistening pussy.
She sternly commanded her violated body to lay still and stiff, but her sensually tormented young muscles were no longer obeying her. Her thighs began to twitch and jerk inward slightly, despite her firm resolution not to submit. She groaned incessantly as his mouth slavored over hers, her tongue making tentative little return probes up into his tightly locked mouth.
The pain was gone now completely and her body felt alive, on fire, filled with strange, masochistically disturbing sensations unlike anything she had ever known before in her life. The pale innocent face which had been creased by lines of pain a few minutes before was now contorting and grimacing with her steadily growing passion.
There was a moment of great tension as if she were teetering on the edge of a cliff and then she completely tumbled over the side! The pain and fear down between her open legs seemed to have become only a dim memory. Uncontrolled abandon filled her long, sleekly straining legs as they jerked and quivered wildly on either side of his heavily plunging shaft of pile-driving cock. Her eyes were gently closed as if she were sleeping, but her firm full thighs were open wide in acceptance and her tongue worked its way persistently up into his mouth. Gone were the groans of pain and discomfort the sounds that spilled from her excitedly heaving chest now were bird-like cries of delight and increasingly intense pleasure.
Walt sensed what was happening every step of the way and worked like a madman to reduce her to a quivering mass of over-stimulated female flesh, subtly shifting the rhythm of his hard, piston-like strokes. He fucked into her with long smooth thrusts, withdrawing his heavily pulsating cock out almost to the lips of her now hungrily flowering vagina on the backstroke, and then shoving all the way to the depths of her womb on the in-stroke, sawing so far up into her that his bloated, sperm-filled balls slapped noisily into her nakedly spread anal crevice each time he lunged forward.
Her body began to twitch and writhe more strenuously as he fucked rhythmically into her and a fine light of sweat broke out over her skin, her nostrils flaring sensously as low hums of submissive pleasure issued from her throat.
Walt lowered his chest onto hers, delighted as he felt himself supported by the twin cushions of her soft, splendidly formed breasts, the two hard little nipples digging hotly into his skin. His hands were now free for other work and he slipped them gently down over her smoothly working hips to cup the firm tensed swells of her buttocks, taking one in each hand. The gyrating half-moons were flexing, moving sensuously between his fingers as he pulled her parted loins even closer up to him, opening the crevice between her kicking thighs wider and penetrating her torturously stretched young vagina to greater and greater depths.
As he explored the moist mysteries up between her legs with his hands, one of his fingers passed lightly over the tiny unprotected little circle of her fitfully clenching anus and a further thought occurred to his lust-driven mind.
Her anus was wonderfully soft and warm to the touch, and he ran his finger over it two or three times, feeling her body jerk away each time he touched the sensitive hairless little ring of flesh. Then, sliding his finger toward her frantically straining pussy and feeling the hardness of his pummeling cock thrusting up into her cunt, he moistened the finger slightly in the wetness of her now fully flowing vaginal lips and teased it down again to her spasming anus. Wetting the little hole slightly with the moisture, he abruptly ground his finger upward. He caught her off guard and penetrated her virginal rectum as far as the first knuckle before he felt the momentarily shocked sponginess tighten desperately around his finger.
"Oooooh God!" Elle groaned out, in protest, surprised by this new salacious source of torment. Her cries of pain were music to the big man's ears and he wormed his finger more insistently up into her, working it in as far as it would go and then rotating it around inside, widening and stretching the soft rubbery interior of her vainly protesting rectal depths. Another finger followed the first and once again he felt the resistance drop away from her like a discarded coat. She had no strength left to fight him. and he felt her anus gradually adjust to his unnaturally depraved invasion.
He grinned evilly to himself as he felt her slowly begin to react with pleasure to this twin ravishment of her doubly skewered loins. Reveling in the obscene debasement, she began screwing her circling ass-cheeks all the way back against the palm of his hand while her belly continued to writhe and twist in uncontrolled passion around the long impaling pole of his heatedly throbbing cock.
With the fingers of his other hand, Walt teasingly circled around the plunging hardness of his relentless penis thrusting deep up into her vagina to find the pulsating little bud of her desire-swollen clitoris. Pinching it softly between thumb and forefinger, he teased its resilient tautness back and forth, bringing new moans of animal-like ecstasy to her lips. He fucked into her with obsessed fervor as he felt her wetly clutching vagina opening up to him as fully as it would, as if she wanted to take all of him up inside her, to smother and drown his burgeoning member in the sucking warmth of her womb.
He knew she was ready to cum and the heavily sweating man increased the velocity of his strokes up into her flaring vagina, fucking wildly between her open thighs and worming his fingers farther and farther up into the hotly clenching depths of her rectum.
Moving of their own accord, her desperately straining legs climbed higher on his back as she unconsciously spread them wider and used the muscles of her inner thighs to pull him more deeply into her. The room was filled with grunts and cries, plus the rhythmic sound of naked flesh smacking against naked flesh created each time his pile-driving loins crashed brutally into the widely split crevice of her nibbling young pussy.
She seemed to have become another woman, a different person entirely. Her face was wildly contorted with her approaching orgasm, her tongue swirling crazily up into his mouth and her breasts seeming to swell as the rock-hard nipples bored into his chest like tiny spreading bullets.
"Oh, oh, oh,! " she was whimpering up into his hotly slavering lips as her moment of ecstasy drew near and he felt her tightly locked cunt begin to contract and expand fiercely around his plunging rod.
Then he stopped!
The helpless writhing young widow stared up at the cold man, dumbfounded. Her hips continued to undulate, grinding up at him as best they could under his pinioning weight. Her eyes that had been glazed over with ecstasy were now wide with shock, uncomprehending. She was beyond the point of return. All she cared about was his steel-hard cock thrusting in and out of her moistly seething cunt!
Pam's muscular boy friend grinned down at the blonde, his face twisted lewdly. "Now, baby doll," he commanded. "Now you can beg me to fuck you!"
"Ohhh ... please ... Walt..." she murmured.
"Beg me for it," he hissed. "Say it!"
"Do you have to ... drag me down to that ... too?" Elle pleaded.
"If you want it, you'll have to beg for it! Come on, damn you! Beg!"
She could do nothing else.
"Ooooohhh ... yes. Fuck me. Fuck me Walt. FUCK ME!" she gasped through tightly clenched teeth, hating it, hating the words even as she said them, then turned her face away from him as the obscene sounds rolled reluctantly off her tongue.
"That's better, doll," he said, and immediately began to probe into her once again. The brief pause had caused him as much discomfort as it had her, for his balls ached with the need to cum, and he began to thrust into her with renewed lust, each stroke slightly more powerful than the one before.
It was then that Des regained consciousness slowly and with a painful awareness of impending doom. He heard the cruel debasing performance going on only scant inches from his agonizingly slumped and tormented head, and it sickened him! And although he knew Elle's cognizance of his consciousness might bolster her spirits, he also knew their only hope for survival lay in his unconscious pretension.
For some minutes he painstakingly worked on the knots of the rope that bound his hands, knowing it was probably useless but realizing that if there was any hope at all, it lay in his freedom. He had just about given up when the back of one hand scraped against something hard and sharp!
Moving carefully so as not to be detected, he managed to grasp what to his amazement felt like a piece of jagged glass. But what good would it do? In order to cut through the tight binding rope, he would have to move. And to move meant detection. The only answer lay in acting out a return to consciousness, then somehow distracting the ever-watchful Walt. There was no other choice if they wanted to live.
He groaned then, weaving ever so slightly as though he were coming out of his stupor, and began working the sharp glass across the binding.
Suddenly Walt smiled with new found pleasure. There was an aching need in him to finish the job at hand, but the opportunity to further debase this little slut before the watching eyes of her boy friend was too great an opportunity to pass up.
Clutching the naked Elle tightly to him, he rolled deftly onto his back, then began squirming along the carpet until her head touched her boy friend's legs.
Elle was aghast at this sudden change of events, but before she could voice a protest, the reasons behind it were made all to perfectly clear.
"Now, Baby Doll, we're really gonna have some fun," Walt snarled, still clasping her tightly to him, still hammering his blood-stiffened cock into her with ungovernable force. "Unzip his pants," he spat, "and take out his ant-sized penis. Let's see if we can't make it grow a little!"
Elle knew in an instant what he expected her to do. Although she had never performed fellatio before, there was no question in her mind that under different circumstances she would have taken Des' penis into her mouth willingly. But not like this! It was unthinkable!
"Do it bitch!" he spat, "or I kill him slowly and painfully while you watch!"
With trembling hands Elle did her tormentor's bidding, following his instruction to the letter, her eyes searching Des' for guidance and understanding. But to her amazement, then confusion, Des returned her gaze with an unwavering cold stare.
Suddenly the victimized widow felt a hatred for the entire male species! And unthinking, her mouth slithered quickly and uncaring to Des' flaccid penis.
Taking his soft member into her mouth, she began to suck, then nibble, her tongue swirling tentatively around the shrunken head. Finally she began teasing the sensitive underside.
It was then that Des began to lose his composure!
He fought the sensation, fought his body's response to it, then groaned loudly as his loins began to surrender in sweet depraved delight.
From his position beneath the slaving blonde, Walt grinned with sadistic pleasure and began grinding into Elle with renewed energy. Elle too responded squeezing her vaginal muscles tightly around the marvelous pistoning shaft, she felt a wondrous new sensation begin to sweep over her as both cocks the one in her mouth that was steadily elongating and swelling and the one thrusting wildly into her seething cunt brought to her distorted senses a sudden perverted thrill that threatened to engulf her completely.
Already the kneeling woman could feel Des' penis begin to throb lewdly in her mouth, to beat with a life of its own, and she began moving her head up and down on it, taking it right into the back of her throat ... sucking, nibbling, licking like she had been doing it all her life.
And Des surrendered to the salacious sensations Elle was bringing him. His pelvis made one tentative little movement forward, one little jab up into her warm mouth and then another and another until their oral-penile rhythm was as one. And all the while, behind his back, the piece of jagged glass kept working to this sensual rhythm, cutting ever deeper through the strands of rope.
Meanwhile Walt was going out of his mind with sadistic joy. In his prone position he knew that his orgasm could be controlled, at least relatively so, and there was one final debasement that he wanted this haughty wanton blonde and her boy friend to experience before they died.
Releasing one hand from its position around her waist, he bent his arm until his wrist was positioned above his mouth. Then taking the gold bracelet that was fastened there between his teeth, he pursed his lips and blew once strongly into its small barrel-shaped base.
Des watched this performance with curious attention, unable to understand its purpose as he let the surging sensations of his lewdly jerking body take him deeper into a world of quickly rising orgiastic need.
Elle was overpowered with salacious want, her mouth sucking hungrily at Des' throbbing hardness and her hips wriggling in undulating subservience as she tried to screw her seething vagina even harder down onto Walt's shaft of energetically pistoning rigidity. Her legs were spread unbelievably wide as her pussy clutched at his pile-driving cock, trying to take it ever deeper up into the completely filled core of her desperately contracting belly.
She moaned aloud in an agonized ecstasy that had no equal or so she thought
For at that moment she was greeted with a new sensation new but familiar: Nicki's cold nose sniffing, then his moist tongue probing at her helplessly exposed anus!
Walt guffawed loudly as the huge sleek Doberman immediately began mounting the young widow from behind. Then reaching around her obscenely splayed thighs, the grinning sadist grasped the dog's rapidly expanding animal-penis, guiding its pointed scarlet tip in between the exposed valley of her undulating ass-cheeks.
Elle tried to scream, but Des' hard throbbing cock-shaft so completely filled her greedily sucking mouth that her protest came out as only a dull gagging sound. Immediately she tried to jerk her head away, but one of Walt's hands was one step ahead of her, grasping her and forcing her head to remain where it was.
Nicki thrust then, driving the red length of his beveled penile hardness completely out of sight up into the wide-stretched hole of Elle's hopelessly exposed rectum.
The blonde mewled out her protest around Des' throat-expanding penis, her full dangling breasts dancing excitedly as her eyes widened with the sudden pain! She jerked and squirmed in a wild effort, to escape the cruel entry, but there was no shaking the clinging forepaws of the growling black beast of the thundering invasion of his hammering length of jerkily pummeling animal hardness savagely reaming up into her tight little rectum!
She was held fast by powerful arms and completely stuffed with male cocks, all of them now pounding wildly into her invading rectum, cunt and mouth. And there was nothing she could do about any of them! She was their helplessly trapped slave!
Beneath her Walt was getting impatient. His brain had become an inferno of heatedly raging lust, the sensation of the beautiful young widow's warm velvety vagina wrapped so tightly around his throbbing cock driving him to lustful distraction. In the mirror across the stateroom his eyes locked hypnotically on Nicki's sodomizing red hardness disappearing lewdly up into the tight fiery hole between her helplessly unprotected buttocks. The dog was ramming into her with ungovernable force and with each thrust Walt could see the tender ridges of pink anal flesh pulling out with the animal's scarlet member, then being absorbed once more with each inward thrust which drove those tender, forever-stretched flanges back up into her belly. His breath began to come faster, and faster, until he was fucking with wild rhythmic strokes in and out of her seething moist vagina with no further thought of anything but the release of his own restlessly churning sperm!
Elle too was once again alive with want, with the steadily mounting desire for release. Her helplessly pinned body was stuffed with male cocks and she was so inundated with sensation she didn't know which of them was giving her the most flourishing masochistic pleasure.
At first it had been a matter of enduring the pain, but now unknown sensations were permeating her sizzling loins ... and ... and the debasing pleasure she was receiving like some primitive slave-whore was overwhelming! She suddenly wanted to repay those marvelously rutting cocks and the only way she knew how was to concentrate on one of them at a time and give them and then herself that much-needed release.
She sensed Des would be the first to cum, for it felt as if his hard penetrating cock had suddenly increased sizably as it throbbed and twitched alarmingly in her moist ovaled mouth. And she wanted him to cum, to fill her voraciously laboring throat with the heat of his sperm. She wanted to give him pleasure and so she increased her salaciously inciting efforts.
The futilely pinned young widow began to suck her boy friend's cock like a hungry calf feeding from one huge teat, her fingernails digging painfully into his buttocks and her lips forming a tighter ring, increasing the hot moist friction on his hardened shaft of obscenely throbbing penile flesh.
"Oh ... God!" Des suddenly moaned as his pelvis began an abandoned thrusting up into her eager young mouth and he began babbling, "Sorry ... so sorry..."
Then abruptly, Elle's throat was filled with a hot thick stream of explosively erupting sperm. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked voraciously until his orgasmically spasming member stopped its potent twitching and slowly began to soften.
The greedily swallowing widow was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of pure animal excitement that raged beyond her control and before she could gather her senses to concentrate on one of the two remaining cocks filling her slavishly kneeling body, she felt a fresh erupting wave of spurting hot sperm.
Nicki was dimming! His spasmodically pistoning animal hardness was shooting its lewd sperm far up into Elle's clasping rectum, filling her forever-stretched passage to overflowing with heatedly spewing animal-cum that gradually ooozed back out in a copious moist stream to run unchecked down her muscle tautened white thighs.
Groaning with relief as she felt the dog's cum filling her, the beautiful young widow increased the wanton undulations of her viscously clenching buttocks in time with the final rapid thrusts of the panting drooling Doberman. She gave herself over completely to the delicious sensations of his still erupting animal-cock, savoring each passing second of stunning sexual enlightenment. Only moments before she had received Des' spurting sperm up into her virginal mouth and now she was hungrily seeking new, more exciting erotic thrills as once again her formerly prudish mind was beaten in its futile struggle to dictate what her body should do. The insane pressure was building incredibly fast in the young blonde's obscenely pumping loins and buttocks so that she was nearly out of her mind with the lascivious desire for release!
Beneath her Walt grunted, grinding his huge shaft of convulsively throbbing cock-flesh deeper and harder up into her quivering little pussy, his plunging penis soaring far into the sanctuary of her hotly pulsating vaginal sheath, flicking past the neck of her womb to nudge into the far recesses of her trembling inner wetness. He knew she was ready to cum any moment now as he watched her breasts heave and quake with the shock of his incessantly pummeling strokes, the hard pink buttons of her nipples expanding before his eyes as her passion soared to undreamed-of heights, and her head tossed wildly from side to side, her beautiful blonde hair flailing helplessly.
"Come on ... Baby!" he gasped. "It's time ... to cum!"
He felt the acid burning of his own need and for one horrible split second he thought he had failed to bring her to orgasm.
On the next instant ... she convulsed spasmodically beneath him.
"Oh! ... Ooohhh! Oooohhh! Godddddd!" she mewled. "I I'm ... I'm going to cuuumrammm!"
Her possessed body writhed uncontrollably as wave after torrential wave of orgasmic release flooded through her heatedly dilating belly.
Confidently then, Walt hammered his lewdly inflating cock into her, faster, faster, deeper, deeper, with all the strength of his muscular back and legs. He felt her body spasm its release, her automatically clasping cuntal lips sucking at him voraciously, her breathing labored as she rasped in short feverish gasps.
And suddenly he felt his own life-liquid begin its mad race the full length of his hardened shaft with fervent erotic ecstasy, spewing from his bulbous, still expanding cock-head far up into the quivering softness of her contracting cunt. It pumped and spurted into her receptive vagina in a never-ending stream of climactic delight, as he ground his pelvis tightly up against hers in one final slamming thrust, then stiffened, cradling her between his thighs, enjoying to the utmost his spewing ejaculative release. His breathing was little more than uncontrolled shallow pantings as he collapsed utterly spent from the fury of his final effort.
Elle moaned aloud as subsiding waves of relaxing euphoria descended on her sensually overtaxed body and mind. Her thighs quivered and her belly quaked with the unfathomable pleasure she had just experienced. She had never realized such supreme joy existed on the face of the earth. Limply, her legs fell wide-splayed, her hips and thighs locked within the cradling loins of the muscular blonde youth while her chest heaved and her heart beat a wild tattoo against her ribs. She had been thrice filled fulfilled to overflowing. Everything was complete. Her eyes closed and for several moments she savored every reminiscing sensation in her body, then slipped quietly into the refreshing arms of euphoric unconsciousness...
Des had waited patiently for just that moment. The bonds had been cut and his arms were free. Elle was unconscious, Walt was spent and the moment for action had arrived. It was now or never.
Gathering his feet under him, the private investigator tensed his leg and back muscles, then kicked powerfully outward, his united feet aiming for Walt's temple.
There was a dull sickening smack and the coupled bodies parted swiftly with a jarring force with Elle's unconscious form rolling over twice before it struck the bulkhead with a soft thud.
For a moment Des thought the blow had killed Walt. His aim had been accurate and Walt's neck had been jerked sideways with tremendous force and speed as his naked body rolled over once and flopped loosely on its stomach. There was no movement of the powerfully muscled, golden-tanned back and as Des rose and bent over it, he could detect not the slightest movement of breathing. Slipping one hand under Walt's shoulder, he rolled him over onto his back.
Suddenly Walt rolled against Des' hand, pinning it, then rolled onto his wrist and arm, the leverage forcing Des down against the carpet. Then Walt was on his back again, Des' right arm under him.. He hooked his left arm around Des' neck, pulled his head against his own waist and began hammering the older man with his free hand.
Des had no leverage and no room to strike back. As his face began to break and the world began to blur, Des planted his knees and stuffed his other arm under Walt and heaved. It brought him up and turned him, and Des ripped his right hand free. Walt bounded up with rubbery agility, and Des barely saw the kick coming but turned just enough to take it on the point of the shoulder. Des' left arm went numb.
Walt was a great brawler. He kept low and balanced, snorting with each exhalation, and Des hit him twice before he was bowled over and borne back down to the carpet. Then Walt began the stolid business of rib cracking, gouging, kneeing and breaking everything loose he could reach. Walt straddled the sandy-haired man trapping his arms under his muscular legs, and banged his head back against the teak bulkhead.
As the world went slow and dreamy, Des got an arm loose and saw Walt's hand off in the distance, the heel of it under his chin. Walt tried to hammer his clasped hands down onto Des' rigid arm, and would have snapped it nicely had Des not got his feet braced and bucked him off.
But Walt was back like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from an inset shelf. Des caught the first one on the shoulder, then cleverly ducked and caught the next one over the right ear. It exploded a huge white bell in his head, and Walt side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let Des go down.
He leaned on his side and Walt punted him in the belly like a football player trying for a field goal from his own twenty-yard line.
Des had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave him a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a stage viewed from the other end of a dark theater, with blurred sounds, strobe lighting and a ghost actor. Somewhere the grinning beach boy was leaning against the bulkhead and sucking air. Des couldn't have licked his lips if somebody was frying them with a butane torch.
Walt began cleaning up the stateroom, humming to himself. Every time he got in range, he kicked Des in time to the humming. Then he kicked him in the head. It faded that distant stage right out, right down to a rapidly closed curtain, and then that was gone too...
* * *
The little stage came back to life. There was vibration engine rumble, sound of wake yacht idling along. And:
"Oh, don't! Oh, please don't! Please, no more!"
Des was folded into a corner of the stem cockpit. It was nearly dark. He had to puzzle the voice out slowly. And then dear old Walt went, "Ho, ho, ho." like the great Green Giant. "You're a cute tasty little piece."
Des picked one eye the right and pumped it open. It was like jacking up an earth mover. The sun was down and in the evening radiance, Walt was ho-ho-hoing over a naked Elle. He was crouched at her like an ape, and he had her butted back against the windscreen, both her wrists held behind her in one hand, his other hand up between her legs, lifting her onto tiptoe. They were close enough to fall on Des.
Suddenly the big blonde man grunted, then turned and started forward, releasing her as he went up toward the wheel. He reset the automatic pilot, then came back to the fun. But Des didn't want anyone ho-ho-hoing Elle.
She was hunched over, sobbing, and Des came up with blinding speed, like a sleepy, hibernating bear looking forward to his last spring. He felt ten feet tall and as wide as a credit card, with a head fashioned of laughing gas.
As Walt roared, Des flopped one dead arm out and around Elle's waist, pulled her toward him and rocked over backward with her over the rail and down into the blue, blue water which was now black, tucking in all elbows and knees, feeling the bite of the water, expecting to experience how hamburger felt as he waited for the blades of the props.
They popped up in the turbulence, and Des saw the running lights receding at a comforting pace. He looked around for shore lights, trying to orient himself. They were miles south of the villa, but still in a fairly narrow channel.
Elle tilted her pale, child-like face back, her hair appearing like shimmering dark gold pasted to her head, and made a waffling sound of total hysteria. The yacht stopped bubbling along and roared into a turn. Des slapped Elle once on each cheek, shoved her in the direction of land and yelled, "Swim, baby!"
She came out of it. She swam very well indeed. In fact, she pulled ahead of him.
Des felt as if he were swimming with four broken arms, and with each breath he was convinced Walt was still kicking him in the stomach. They had a good angle of escape. They had to go fifty feet to get past a submerged oyster bed. Walt had to come back about two hundred and fifty yards. Des hoped to sucker him into jamming the yacht aground.
"Keep going," he yelled at Elle. "Angle a little left."
A spotlight searched across the water and found them. Elle stopped swimming. Des took two big strokes, reached her and bore her under. When the need for air became too great they popped up, and Des peered about. The oval of light was very big now, too big! The yacht was bearing down on them with sickening speed.
Des grasped Elle by the waist and took her down once again, kicking violently to get them deep enough before the speeding yacht crushed them to bits.
Suddenly their thrashing arms and then their heads smacked into the sandy bottom, but before the realization of what this meant was converted into conscious thought, they were being tossed upward with such speed and force that they were falling back down before they realized what had happened.
Finally, like two tiny corks, they were bobbing up and down in a series of huge surging swells. Des' ears rang like his head was inside a great church bell, and his eyes burned in a glare of intense, hot white light. Around them bobbed small black and red pieces of what used to be the Pamela S., and spreading rapidly across the water toward them was a giant flaming gasoline spill.
"Elle?" he yelled.
"H-here I am," she said, about ten feet in front of him. She was standing in waist-deep water. "He ... He ... he was going to..."
"But he didn't."
"He ... He ... He was going to..."
"He's gone, Elle! Pull yourself together."
Then he went to her, putting his arm around her. She leaned her face against his chest and said: "Oh, God!"
"Come on, baby. Let's get out of here."
"I I..."
"It's all right Elle. He's gone. And his little chums went with him. They deserve each other. Now get yourself collected and we'll swim ashore."
She clutched him tightly for a moment, then bent forward and slipped quietly into the water and began swimming.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the island, behind the walls of the villa, the air was filled with a rainbow of fragrance. The huge yellow and black bees were no longer busy in the well-cared-for rosebushes at the end of the garden, but a naked man was sprawled on his back near the swimming pool.
The drowsy luxurious silence of early evening was broken by the sound of a rhythmic sssh-sssh-sssh. The naked man beside the swimming pool did not move, but his eyes for an instant opened very wide. In a moment he identified the sound and his eyelids with their fringe of short sandy eyelashes drooped drowsily back over very pale gray, outward-looking eyes.
It was three weeks after the demise of the Pamela S. a Saturday night under a moon almost full and Des Sherwood was stretched out on a pool mat in the garden of the Sutherland villa.
It had been the rarest of all perfect days, hot and clear, with just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. Before noon, he and Elle had gone fishing and come back with a fine yellowtail, baked it and ate it with gobs of lemon-butter and a very fine Mosel wine. When it had become too hot, they had gone into the relative coolness of the thick-walled villa, into the big bed in the master bedroom for a long lazy game of love and the resultant sweet nap until dusk.
Des looked across to the pool now and saw Elle swimming easily back and forth, the moon so bright it almost masked the pale green fire of phosphorescence her slow strong strokes created. Finally she came wading up out of the water, up the submerged steps, naked in the moonlight, smoothing her shimmering water-soaked hair back with both hands.
Under the lazy days of bright Mexican sun the formerly pale blonde had got dark quickly. In the daylight, with her golden hair shimmering radiance, she had begun to look like a white-headed version of the native Yaqui Indian. She was one perfect even color all over, a primitive honeyed bronze without a single light streak.
She came to the mat and knelt, then slid gracefully onto her back, making a pillow of Des' left arm for the soaked nape of her neck. She made a small sound of contentment and lay there in a spill of moonlight that turned the water droplets on her body to a silver gleam.
"Long swim," Des said.
"Just floating out there, darling. Thinking."
"Of?"
"Oh, of whatever happened to that silly naive girl who got herself involved. Maybe you remember her. The one that fastened herself to the erotic desires of the flesh."
"Vaguely remember her. And I remember another girl. One who kept saying no."
"Oh, her! She was corrupted long ago."
After all the hundred details of questioning, testimony, arrest and burial, they had decided to remain at the villa for an indefinite stay. According to the terms of the will of the corporation Paul and Tom Sutherland had founded, everything now belonged to Elle. There had been over a week in which Elle had remained in semi-shock over the events of that fateful day at sea the least of which had been the demise of the Pamela S. and its occupants. And with comforting empathy Des had let her find her own growth through experimentation, right up to the point where she would say hoarsely, gaspingly: No! And without fail he immediately obeyed that word. She had to know her own strengths and weaknesses, know what she wanted and didn't want that was her option. After a time the tops of the enshrouding pajamas could be shucked, then several nights later, the bottoms.
Some days, during that period, she would be sensuous and warm, sloe-eyed, half asleep. Other days she would be wound taut, jabbering, chattering, laughing, turning her head with bird-like motion. But it was her battle, her demon. It was a precipice, and the knowledge that she could remove it at any time gave her the boldness to approach ever closer to the edge. One sticky night, some ten days after the explosion of the Pamela S., the footing crumbled under her hesitant step, and with a soft harsh shriek like that of a rabbit whose throat has been slashed she fell.
Maria, the housekeeper, and her lovely daughter were given a much deserved holiday and for three days and nights clothes became clumsy and useless and were discarded. They began to eat like barracudas and sleep entwined, with the deep slumbering innocence of children. They would look at each other, then for no reason start laughing. Horseplay would turn from passion to sweetness to comedy, then back to passion again.
"How about the girl beside me?" Des asked her. "Did you do much thinking about her while you were out there floating?"
"I've been thinking about her for days," she said, rolling toward him, bracing herself on one elbow. The moon was slightly behind her, making a furry golden line that followed the deep cleft at her waist, then rose into the full astonishing curve of her hip. Slowly Des began to trace the line of it with his fingertip.
"Reach any conclusions?" he asked.
"I've boiled them all down, sort of. Des, darling, when I was a skinny lonely kid I had a sense of my own lightness. I had a feeling, an approach to life, as if it would all open up for me. And now it's like that again. I'm alive once more. And that is a gift from you, of course." She chuckled warmly. "A very clever, very sneaky seduction, Mr. Sherwood."
Des winced, not at the exposure of his subtle tactics, but at the name cloaking his identity-the whole sordid ruse he had put off telling her about. And he knew it had to be done.
"Can I be honest?" he finally asked.
"Please," she said, still smiling warmly.
And so he told her. Everything. From the beginning. And as he told it, her expression changed. From smile, to curiosity, to perplexity, to puzzlement, to seriousness. And in the end, back to that smile of warmth.
There were still questions in her mind, questions that needed answers. But they would wait. She knew that it had hurt him deeply to have to keep up the pretense. She knew it immediately and instinctively, and she wanted him to know it.
She sighed, snuggling closer to him. "Des, one very fundamental part of me, the primitive part I guess the flesh and bones that part keeps telling me I can't ever let you go, that I have to have you for always, that I must do anything to keep you near me."
"Hmmm."
"But all the rest of me says nonsense. We could never make it work, not on any basis. We are different types. I'm really quite a sober, sedate, earnest woman, present appearances to the contrary. And you are a very charming rebel, Mister Russell. And I thank you with all my heart for bringing me to my own rebellious time. I needed it. to counteract all the other. I needed it to bring me back to some kind of a norm later on. But this kind of life is more near your norm than it could ever be to mine. I get hooked on ideals. Any kind of ideal. Some kind of energetic worth. It's the puritan twitch, inescapable for me, and perhaps in some much more subtle way, inescapable in a smaller sense for you too. You keep having to deny things in yourself, but you do it more readily than I."
"More practice."
"No. It's more fundamental than that. Darling, I relish you. I hunger for you. I can't have enough love-making, as you have no doubt noticed. I'm grateful to you. I love you. But there is a barrier between us. For it to work, that barrier has to be removed. Do you understand?"
"I suppose. But like with you, it must come slowly. A wall of hurt comes tumbling down in an instant, but to rebuild that wall takes time."
"Of course, darling. And I know that the discovery that Ware was the chief instrument behind the whole blackmail scheme came as a terrific shock to you to both of us."
Then quickly, the sober serious Elle was gone. She kissed him furtively on the chest, then stretched, yawning in tawny luxury. "Your place or mine?" she chuckled softly.
"I distinctly remember you bitching this morning that your only toothbrush was at my place," he answered in mock sobriety.
"So be it," she said.
Near dawn, Des heard a rooster crow across the silence that separated the island from Regalo del Santos. For him, there had been no sleep. Elle was dreamily curled against him, fists against his chest, round knees pressing into his belly. Gently, he bent over and kissed one sleeping eye.
She grunted and came part way up out of slumber, far enough to begin a slow and determined squirming, trying to work her undermost leg under him, under his waist. When he saw what she was trying to do, he made it easier.
She slid the leg under and then hooked her calf back against him. She lifted her other leg over him, the drowsy weight of it coming down across his waist. She uncurled her fists, sliding her hands around his chest, one under him, one on top, flattening her palms against his back.
Then there was the unseen questing, the guiding touch, and finally a slight pressure, heightening, intensifying until commemorated by a little rasp of quickly insucked air through her nose they were suddenly, sleekly, deeply coupled. Hitching herself a little higher, she changed position, moving her hands farther around him, and made her small warm sound of contentment.
Des slid his hands down her back until they reached and cupped the smooth solid warmth of her buttocks. And like some familiar, faithfully loyal little machine, that touch and pressure was enough to start the slow rhythmic pumping of her rich, sleepy, demanding hips.
So with a dawning gray at the windows, her mouth turned upward for a kiss and the slow deep steady beat, that would begin to change only when they neared climax, began. This was their reality. This was the avowal, the communion, the immortality. It was a small, personal and totally shared thing. It was that special thing in time which changed the Pamelas and Walts and Toms and Wares to frightening masks fashioned of ether and remembrance empty things hung from a tree of empty , memory.
"Ah," said the tireless, tawny, loving machine....
