Penny was so horny that she could not control herself any longer. She ripped off her clothes and stood in the nude, sexually enticing the handsome stranger.
He was not at all surprised at her action-she had invited him into her home, they were undoubtedly alone and itchin' for some good fuckin'.
He hurriedly removed his own garments, eager to display his big cock. Penny stared at the pulsating muscle, the blood-gorged veins-the tool that was going to give her pleasure!
They began to grind their bodies together, as their genitals begged to be joined together. Penny felt like screaming, "Come on, let's fuck already you bastard!"
CHAPTER ONE
Penny was staring down at the floor and thinking back over her life. Just think, she pondered, there are actually girls my age who have lived in the same house since the day a doctor smacked them on their little asses and introduced this world to them. If they had had their choice, I wonder, would they have changed places with me.
Penny had known nothing but travel, excitement, and changing scenery all of her life. People! Thousands of different people, faces, and environments changing as often as most people change the sheets on their beds. And how she had loved it! The best of everything, no matter where. But that was because of her father's position and assignments around the globe. A silly thought hit her. Why, even President Carter, on his peanut farm, hadn't been as well traveled as she was. But now this! Her eyes darkened. This was a bit like a peanut farm, this dump they now called home.
Her stepmother rushed into the room, interrupting Penny's thoughts. "Great news," the woman grinned.
"Dad's been fired. Good. We can move out of this dump," Penny snapped.
"Penny-please don't be sarcastic," Erlene said, holding onto her temper with difficulty. "We are very lucky people-or didn't you know?"
Penny, an attractive girl in a darkly dramatic way, shrugged, and her eyes narrowed. "What's so exciting about living in a native village among characters who have never been anywhere, never seen anything, and are jealous of anyone who has? What's so marvelous about living in a house that's falling apart, with no servants, no anything? Lucky, did you say?"
"Yes, lucky," Erlene repeated firmly. "Lucky to be back in the States; back to a normal way of life-renewing old friendships, fixing up our own little home with our own hands. It's what your father and I dreamed of through all those fantastic years overseas. We could never stay anywhere long enough to take root. It's wonderful, being able to stay put for a change...." She broke off to smile at her stepdaughter in mute appeal, then raced on:
"It wasn't only of ourselves that we were thinking. We felt that our two girls-you and Gena-were missing a whole lot-the best things, I mean-and maybe getting false ideas about life. Now we're living, really living. After all, our roots are in America, right here. It's where we belong, dear."
It was a long speech for Erlene, whose shining red hair and flashing gray eyes implied impulsive action rather than guarded phrases. But there was no mistaking her sincerity.
Penny, absorbed in her own grievances, was not impressed. "Still flag-waving, huh?" she scoffed. "And still playing games with pails, mops, paintbrushes, and stuff. Now really, Erlene, how proletarian can you get?"
A quick flush mantled the older woman's face, but she said with resolute mildness, "I've been helping fix up the basement. It's to be a recreation room-a fun room, Gena calls it. He's using odds and ends of paint, so it's going to be a little on the wild side. Well, at least it will look colorful."
"You should take a good hard look at yourself, darling," Penny said, eyeing her stepmother's work attire with unconcealed distaste.
Automatically, Erlene pushed back an errant lock of hair and tried, with small success, to cover the unsightly safety pin with a paint-smeared hand. She had a wild impulse to knock the chip off Penny's shoulder and run screaming out of the sunroom. Then compassion took over and she was tempted to throw her arms around the unhappy girl and promise her anything and everything in the interest of peace. Instead, she took a deep breath and said with a feeble attempt at facetiousness:
"Well, anyhow, I've been fired from the paint job. Gena wanted to take over, and there was no extra brush. Funny thing about painting-it grows on you. Philip and Gena are having a ball decorating everything, including themselves. If you think I look a sight, dear, you should see them!"
"No, thanks. I've seen all I want, and more, of this corny do-it-yourself performance you and Dad dreamed up," Penny announced sulkily. "Now you've got Gena doing it, too, and thinking she likes it. But then, the poor baby is so blind she can't see the woods for the trees!"
Erlene's face softened, as it always did when she thought of Gena, Penny's younger sister, whose long blond hair was like a shimmering mantle and whose myopic blue eyes were all the more luminous through the thick-lensed glasses she wore.
"Gena," she said gently, "is not blind and never will be. She walks on the bright side of life and has perfect vision in her heart."
Penny's face softened, too, briefly. Her affection for her handicapped young sister ran deep. "Gena's an angel," she murmured. Then the moment was gone and she was saying accusingly:
"But look what's happening to her. Isn't it bad enough for her to be tearing around The Grove in a monkey suit, getting cozy with anybody and everybody? Must she be stuck away in a dreary cellar, painting a recreation room we'll have no earthly use for in this miserable town? I'm surprised you'd tolerate such a thing!"
Erlene's jaw dropped. During her twelve years as devoted wife to Philip Gilmore, ace newsman and foreign correspondent, and mother to his two orphaned daughters, she had been many things to many people in many places. But never before had she been thrust into the role of cruel stepmother in what appeared to be a hastily contrived version of the old Cinderella story.
"Gena's having fun," she said defensively. "She likes doing things with her hands, just as Phil does."
"Oh, Dad." Penny groaned aloud. "If he wants to make a spectacle of himself, nothing can be done about it, I guess."
"Working with his hands is a relief from the brain work that's been running him ragged all these years. And he's doing a fine job on the house, considering. He admits he's no great shakes as a handyman."
"Exactly," Penny said. "Dad's a journalist, an important one. It was my impression he was taking this leave of absence to write a book."
"He's doing first things first, dear," Erlene pointed out with a fine degree of patience. "Everything must be shipshape before he settles down to work on his book. He's like that, you know. There's a lot to be done on the house, naturally. Don't forget we've been away ten years and had a whole slew of tenants."
"Exactly," Penny said again. "Why, for heaven's sake, doesn't he bring in some of these local characters to do the menial work? Why must he go around looking like a common laborer, hobnobbing with riffraff, humiliating us, demeaning himself? Or," she added recklessly, "why can't we just skip all this nonsense, take a house in Washington or somewhere, and live like human beings again? Why?"
Erlene bit back the obvious retort: What would we use for money? Apparently Penny had chosen to forget that Philip was taking this leave of absence without pay. It would do no good to point out that, under the circumstances, the cost of hired labor was prohibitive and a house in Washington out of the question. It would be equally useless to explain that in the proud little town where they lived, the words "menia!" and "riffraff" were dirty ones. In her present frame of mind, Penny was not likely to listen to reason.
"Oh, I'll admit it's going to take time to get the place fixed up," Erlene said in a placating voice. "But just you wait, dear. This is really a doll of a house. You're going to love it, just as Phil and Gena and I do already."
"I should live that long!" Penny groaned, and turned her face to the wall. "Do me a favor, Erlene, will you? Leave me alone."
Sighing, Erlene started to leave the sunroom. Then, remembering the news she'd come to deliver, she sank into a chair, groping around in her mind for a suitable approach. Of late, Penny's reactions to any news, good or bad, were unpredictable.
Conscious of Penny's growing hostility, Erlene had found it increasingly hard to remain the patient, understanding motherly type since she, her husband, and two stepdaughters had returned to their Maryland home after a decade in faraway places. More than once her red hair and impulsive nature had almost betrayed her. And that was the last thing Erlene Gilmore, conscientious to a fault and beset by the various problems of readjustment, wanted.
Philip had forewarned his two girls that the transition from one way of life to a completely different one, while highly rewarding, would not be easy. However, they would be in their own home and among loyal friends, instead of living it up among people who spoke another and sometimes unfriendly language.
"What it amounts to," he'd said in his usual half-joking, half-serious fashion, "is that we're swapping the fleshpots of the East for the down-to-earth salt mines of the Western Hemisphere. There'll be no green stuff coming in for a while, and a lot going out. So we'll have to pull in our horns, maybe tighten our belts. Think you can take it?"
Fourteen-year-old Gena, thrilled at the thought of going home, had clapped her hands in delight. "Goody, goody!" she'd crooned. "No more bodyguards breathing down my neck; no more schools behind barbed wire, like in Saigon. No more scorpions, like in India. And no more Yankee-go-home signs, like in a lot of places. How soon do we start?"
Penny, almost twenty and just out of an exclusive school in Switzerland, had not rejoiced with her sister. Her grim expression, in fact, might have alerted her stepmother then and there had Erlene not felt that Penny eventually would realize the move was a wise one.
"And there'll be no more solid gold water taps, no more fur-lined bathtubs," Philip had gone on to say, quick to take advantage of Gena's lead. "You'll be doing things for yourselves for a change. That, my lovelies, is the American way. Fine thing, too. Something tells me you've had it too soft for too long."
"It'll be fun doing things," Gena had said.
"Don't be ridiculous, honey," Penny had scoffed. Dad's joking, of course. He can't do this to us. Erlene won't let him."
He was not joking, Philip had announced with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Erlene and I are counting on our chickadees to cooperate," he'd added, smiling fondly at his two daughters.
"We won't let you down, Dad," Gena had said, crossing her heart as though making a vow. And Penny, realizing she was outnumbered, had agreed to conform.
Gena, though handicapped by limited eyesight, was living up to her promise and adjusting beautifully, happily. She loved "The Grove," as their hometown was affectionately called by the people who lived there. It was fun, she declared, "camping out" in a beat-up little house that was being rehabilitated by loving, if unskilled, hands.
To Gena, it was exciting to renew acquaintances with young people, now teenagers like herself, whom she remembered as small fry. It was amusing, though a little disconcerting, to be told by oldsters that ten years overseas had transformed her from a troublesome tomboy into a comely, well-mannered young woman.
Penny, on the other hand, hated the whole set-up and made no effort to conceal her disdain. Apparently she considered herself a stripe above those ordinary mortals whose horizons were less far-flung than her own. Bemused by the superficial luxuries enjoyed by Americans living overseas and shielded from the various discomforts, she had acquired delusions of grandeur, along with a "high society" attitude that neither enhanced her popularity among the townspeople nor made for peace in the home.
Given time, Penny, being her father's daughter, would regain her lost sense of values, Erlene believed ... had to believe. Meanwhile, there would be heartaches for everyone concerned....
"The news I have, dear," Erlene said now, choosing her words carefully, "concerns you, only you. Listening?"
Penny turned to face her stepmother, and some of the hostility went out of her eyes. "I'm listening."
"Philip and I have been talking things over. We love you very much, Penny, and it distresses us to see you unhappy...."
"And so...." Penny prompted.
"We've decided to let you strike out on your own, as you call it; live your own life-if that's what you want."
"You mean that?" Penny's eyes widened in surprise, and her voice was wary.
Erlene nodded. "Phil has friends in Washington who will help you find a job there, and The Grove is within easy commuting distance. Of course, if you prefer," she said quickly when Penny made a sour face, "you can find an apartment to share right there in the city. But remember, dear, this is your home, and you'll always be welcome here."
"You mean I'm free, really free?" Penny was still skeptical. "I can't believe it. Why this sudden about-face?"
"Darling, your father and I have not made a sudden decision. We've been talking it over for some time. We decided if you were going to be so unhappy staying here with us, perhaps we'd better try it your way for a while. If you don't like working in Washington, you can always come home."
Penny, glavanized into action, sprang from the daybed, flung her arms around her stepmother, and danced her around the room till they were both breathless. "Then you do mean it!" she exclaimed. "I'm so happy I could explode. Washington-here I come!"
Erlene smiled. "It's good to see you looking happy again," she said when Penny finally released her. "Honestly, I've been afraid you'd come down with melancholia, though Phil and I kept hoping that nice young doctor from Medical Center would snap you out of it...." She broke off to grin adding:
"He must be quite taken with you, my dear, the way he keeps phoning and squiring you around, when he can't have too much time of is own."
"Oh, you mean David Stewart." Penny's face flushed and she spoke with an exaggerated airiness that suggested anything but indifference. "Dave is not a doctor, Erlene. He's only an intern, and he's in debt up to here for his schooling. It'll be ages before he has any time of his own or any money to spend on a date.
"The truth is," she continued when Erlene made no comment, "Dave Stewart's a nobody who never wants to be anybody. The height of his ambition is to go poking around in some research laboratory or clinic, while a dull little wife stays home, keeping his supper hot on the back of the stove. I'm not his type, darling, and he's certainly not mine."
Erlene, convinced that there was more than met the eye in Penny's protestations, smiled. "But he's very good looking. And he's got his feet on the ground-good American ground," she ventured.
"There you go again-flag-waving!"
"I suppose," Erlene said wistfully, "I can never make you realize how wonderful it is to be out of that international rat race; to come home, to have a place that's all our own...."
The precarious conversation was brought to an end by the arrival of young Gena, wanting to know what all the yakking was about. She stood framed in the doorway, a small figure in a paint-smeared monkey suit, her large blue eyes peering through heavy glasses, her long blond hair tied back in a rakish excuse for a ponytail.
"Dad and I could hear you all the way down in the cellar," she giggled. "You sounded like a team out of Gilbert and Sullivan, or something. What gives-a rehearsal? Sorry, Mom," she told Erlene, her face sobering. "I wasn't eavesdropping. I just couldn't help overhearing."
"Come on in, dear, and join the gabfest," Erlene invited.
"Yes, do," Penny seconded. "Of course you couldn't help overhearing honey. It's that kind of a house: cardboard walls, formfitting rooms, no privacy at all. I'm getting out of it!"
Erlene, at the end of her rope, murmured something about a Yankee pot roast she was preparing for the evening meal and went out to the kitchen. Gena sat down in the chair she had vacated.
"I'm taking a position in Washington-and an apartment." There was a note of uncertainty, almost of fear, in Penny's voice now that she was alone with her sister. Slight though it was, it did not escape Gena, whose poor eyesight seemed to sharpen her other faculties.
Gena nodded. "Dad said he was giving you the green light, and I heard you and Mom talking." She paused to regard her older sister with anxious blue eyes. "You've been claiming all the time you wanted to strike out on your own. Now you're stuck with it. I'm sorry, sis."
"Sorry? You're an angel, honey, and I love you, but...."
"Sure I'm sorry, just as you'll be when you stop to think about it, if you aren't that way already...." Gena hesitated and her face colored. "I heard what you said about your steady, too. You didn't mean that, either; you couldn't possibly. You were just mad about something and trying to shock Mom."
Penny took refuge in what was meant to be an indulgent smile.
"He's a living dream-Doctor David Stewart-and he won't always be poor," Gena murmured.
"That's what you think, honey. He likes being poor, working in clinics and stuff. Expects a girl to go along with the humanitarian act. It's the doctor syndrome, I guess."
"I will say he's beautiful," Gena persisted. "Why, there isn't a girl in The Grove who wouldn't be thrilled to pieces to be going out on dates with him!"
"Don't get excited, darling. Even the sidewalks have ears here in The Grove-don't forget that. I have a date with him tonight, and I'm keeping it. Does that make you feel any better?" Then, when Gena beamed her approval, Penny added sourly:
"Another dinner of frankfurters and beans won't kill me, I guess."
There was nothing exciting about a date with David Stewart, intern, Penny went on to say with a vehemence surely calculated to convince herself as well as her sister. This evening would follow the usual pattern. He would arrive early, before sundown, when all the busybodies in The Grove would be watching, so as to be back on duty at the Medical Center promptly at the stroke of ten. With his helpless date, he would proceed in his elderly Ford to a roadside diner where truck drivers ate, thus guaranteeing "good solid food and plenty of it."
"A girl has nothing to say about it," Penny interposed, then resumed her detailed account of an evening which she avowed was the ultimate in proletarian entertainment and even duller than dishwater.
Gena was not looking at her sister; she was only half-listening. Surreptitiously, she had slipped off her hated glasses and was staring sightlessly into space.
"Love," she murmured, smiling wistfully, "is wonderful. Maybe some day, something colossal like David Stewart will happen to me!"
Penny ran over and threw her arms around her young sister. "Wonderful things are going to happen to you, darling," she whispered. "That's a promise. Just you wait till I get to Washington. I'll be meeting scads of important people, and...."
She did not finish the sentence. Instead, she kissed Gena gently of the cheek, said, "Now put your glasses back on, angel," and hurried off to get dressed for her date.
Gena, she told herself fiercely, blinking back the tears that were burning her eyelids, must not know she was crying. Under no circumstance must Gena, blindly trustful of the ultimate Tightness of things, suspect how frightened she was, how unsure she was of herself and of what lay ahead....
CHAPTER TWO
Penny stood in the bathroom in her bra and bikini panties, putting on some makeup while staring listlessly into the mirror. She began thinking about Dave, wondering why he had to be such a straight arrow. Why couldn't he be more like Werner Molders, the wonderful guy she had met while going to school in Switzerland? Penny had heard plenty about how tender and experienced European men were while she was in Switzerland, and it was to Werner that she willingly gave her virginity.
She paused for a moment, set down her makeup kit, and tried to conjure up a vivid picture of her first lover. Penny recalled his fantastic good looks and, in particular, the massive cock that he carried between his legs and which he put to her that fateful first fuck of her lifetime.
Penny sat down on the closed toilet seat and gently pulled the elastic of her tiny panties forward, and began to probe inside with a finger. She could feel the tiny digit play with the brown curls of her pubic hair and could feel the moisture begin to form deep inside her pussy. But the little finger was nothing compared to the length and breadth of Werner's hefty prick, so she realized a few more fingers needed insertion to make things a bit more realistic for her. Penny added another finger, but was still not enough ... a third found its way inside her delightful love passageway, and she still didn't feel quite right. She didn't bother to add just a fourth finger because she knew that all five fingers plus her hand might do the trick better. Pretty soon, her fist was in her musky hair-covered hole and probing inside, just as Werner's cock had back in the days she had spent in Switzerland. Her pussy was really juicing away now, and she was practically reliving those lovely hours in bed with Werner. There still was something wrong, though. She didn't quite know what it was.
Suddenly, she recalled the movie, Dressed to Kill, and how Angie Dickinson had masturbated in the shower in the opening scene. She remembered how Angie had used a bar of soap to really give herself the feel and hardness of a nice stiff prick. Her fist was nice inside of her coral cavern, true, but the bar of soap would do far more nicely, and she could shove it inside of her just like it was the real hard, stiff juicy cock she had remembered from days gone by.
Penny reached into the bath and grabbed for a bar of pink soap, just the color of a warming penis. She admired it for several seconds, thinking that its thickness was reminiscent of the thickness of Werner's long pecker-she had loved to feel it so much, plunging into her and then taking a very short break before slamming back inside. She lowered her bikini panties down her firm white thighs and then past her knees, well-shaped calves and ankles, and off. She got down on the bathroom floor and spread her legs to their limit as the bar of soap gently caressed her face and moved on down to her neck and bra-encased breasts. She probed into her bra with the soap, enjoying the feel of it against her nipples. But she realized she could make her nipples harder all the faster by removing her bra. She unclasped it in the front and lifted the cups away gently with her fingers, letting them fall to the floor. She was totally naked to the room's eyes now, wishing once again that Werner Molders was above her.
As the piece of soap played along the mounds and valleys of her delightfully sensuous body, her mind went back to those joyous days with Werner....
The two of them sat on the couch, he dressed in a denim shirt and tight denim jeans, and her in just a bathrobe, having just exited from a well-deserved shower after a tough day of exams at school. Werner lifted his hand to her face and began to stroke the side lovingly. Her eyes closed as she felt a tinge of excitement deep in her pussy. Before she knew it, Werner's lips were near her own, and fondly kissing them, feeling their warmth and enjoying their taste. His tongue came out and played along her sensual lips, making them glisten even more. She opened her mouth to accept his probing tongue, and her own tongue came forward to greet it wantonly. His licker and hers encircled one another, and they occasionally sucked on each other's tongue, making it feel that it might well be pulled from its moorings. As his tongue played with hers, Werner's hand went inside her bathrobe and began to caress her large breast, enjoying its warm feel. As he approached her nipple, it was already quite hard, but with his touch, it became even harder. With his thumb and forefinger, he toyed with the taut nipple, and squeezed it hard at times. This movement made Penny wince with a combination of pain and passion, but she was enjoying both emotions so he continued for a while longer with the pinching. He opened her robe after a while, revealing to his eyes the wondrous sight of her two huge breasts, each topped by a large nipple and areolas the size of old-style silver dollars.
Werner's tongue just couldn't wait to have a taste of her hot titflesh, and he was soon licking the two sweet tits, making long strokes along the delightfully firm orbs. And when his eyes caught sight of her hard nipples, his tongue made circular motions around them, circular motions that became smaller and smaller until it gently touched her sweet red nipples, and then his lips closed around each and sucked its mini-length. He licked his fingers and then caressed the nipple of her other breast so that one nipple would be occupied by his mouth and tongue and the other, by his hand.
Werner and Penny were both in a high state of excitement, now, and the two of them realized that there was a bedroom nearby and that Werner still had all of his clothing on.
The pair stopped their foreplay for a while so that Penny could help Werner out of his clothes. But first, she tossed off her robe to reveal her virginal body to Werner's lecherous eyes, which were now almost as big in size as Penny's areolas. He stood back for a few seconds, admiring her beautifully constructed figure, almost perfect ... on second thought, perfect. The well-shaped breasts hung deliciously in front of her, the nipples pointing upward, toward the ceiling. Her taut stomach excited him further-he knew she must take good care of her body to keep it in such good tone. Then, his eyes gazed upon her glistening brown pubic hairs, and he could feel his hardening cock just about ready to burst the material of his skin-tight jeans.
Penny noticed the bulge in his jeans also, and knew she ought to do something about the problem ... and fast. As she approached him, Werner couldn't help noticing her nicely constructed legs and how well they looked as she clicked toward him on her high heels. She unfastened his belt, pulling it away from around his waist and tossing it on the floor. Then, she unbuttoned his jeans and, with some problems because of the size of his cock, she lowered the zipper, tugging it most of the way down. As Werner was not wearing any underwear, his pubic hair and the wide base of his penis came into view quickly, making the juices in Penny's cunt flow passionately down the insides of her thighs. She could see the outline of his hard dick inside his jeans and could detect that it was long, quite long. It was so long, in fact, Penny realized that she would be better off lowering his jeans all the way down rather than trying to yank his cock out through his fly. As she moved his jeans lower and lower, more and more of his magnificent prick came into view for her feasting eyes. Momentarily looking up into his eyes, her tongue swirled around in her mouth, and she knew that she had to have his huge cock inside of her ... her mouth ... and, of course, her cunt. If she was going to lose her virginity this day, she must lose it to Werner ... and to a huge cock such as his. As she yanked the jeans off and took off his shoes and socks, he removed his shirt, watching his extremely conspicuous cock bob up and down against Penny's lowered head. When she had finished removing his clothing, she looked up to see his mighty sword just above her face.
"Werner," she moaned, "that cock of yours is so goddam long and thick that I just have to have it in my cunt before too long. And I want you to pound my virginity into kingdom come. It's something that I should have lost long ago, but I didn't. I was too silly, then. But when I look at your fantastic schlong, I guess I'm glad I waited so I could have the absolute best the first time around."
"Suck it first, honey," was Werner's reply. "Take it into your delicious mouth and make passionate love to it. Hurry, hot lips, I want to fuck your face."
"Mmmmmmmmmm!" was about all Penny could say as her lips made a beeline for the purpling satiny-smooth cockhead that awaited the onslaught of her lips, tongue, and teeth.
With both hands, she gripped his large cock, finding that much of its length was still left uncovered. He was quite long, and Penny was thinking twice about how smart it would be to let something this immense invade her untouched innermost depths for the very first time. He could break me into two pieces, she thought. But if I died satisfying him, it would be well worth it. As her mind began to think of what was ahead for her, her lips approached his hot cockflesh and her tongue leaped out like a lizard's to play along the fiery tip of his pecker and to lick away the droplets of pre-cum that were appearing one after the other at his piss-slit. She put just the head into her warm oral cavern, licking and sucking on it licentiously. As she became braver and braver, she fed more and more of it into her mouth, caressing it lovingly with her tongue and giving it occasional bites with her teeth.
"Unnnnnnnhhhhhhh! Ooooooooh!" were the cries that came from Werner as she bit lightly into his hard prick, and although she had never given head before, it was apparent to the man that she was learning fast ... and learning well. In fact, it seemed to be coming quite naturally to her.
When his cock touched the back of her mouth, Penny saw that there was still plenty of him outside her moist lips. But she didn't want to stop there. She wanted to try to get all that mighty whang inside her if it was the last thing she ever did.
Werner looked down at her, seeing her predicament. "Relax your throat muscles, honey. Completely relax, and you'll be able to get all of me into your mouth and throat."
Penny tried her best to relax, but it was her first time sucking a cock and her first time for fucking, and, as could be expected, she was a bit nervous. But after a little bit of soothing talk and some gentle stroking of her hair and face by Werner, she seemed to relax.
As she gazed up at Werner and he smiled down at her, she began to move more and more of his length into her mouth, feeling it enter her throat. It seemed easy to her now that she had mastered the art of deep throat. And she was quite proud of herself when Werner's bulging nuts hit her chin and her nose nuzzled against his pubic bush, telling her that she had taken his entire length inside of her mouth. She loved the feel of his penis deep in her throat, and she could tell that Werner was also mighty turned on by this chain of events.
He was pulling out of her now; feeling his cock touch her squirming tongue and teeth on the way out. Why is he pulling out? she wondered. Is he ready to fuck me?
Her questions were answered soon enough, as she felt Werner feeding his cock back into her mouth and then into her throat. This time the invader was moving smoothly along the once-traveled route, and Penny smiled, wondering why she had had any trouble to begin with. He moved in and out of her face, each time feeling his balls slap into her chin, making a louder sound as the perspiration became more and more prominent on Penny's face.
With the moaning that Penny was doing during this face-fucking expedition, Werner figured that her cunt must be boiling, and it was time for her pussy to get a tongue-lashing as well.
"Let's go into the bedroom, Penny. I think things will work out more comfortably in there...." Werner suggested. And Penny was right behind him, her hand in his.
Penny was really getting a taste, so to speak, of cocksucking, and once the two of them were in the queen-size bed, her face went straight for his cock. Soon the entire shaft disappeared into her innards, pumping in and out like a piston.
"What I'm ... go ... going ...'t ... to do now ... is what ... is called sixty ... nine," Werner said between short moans. "In Switz ... Switzerland ... it's ca ... called ... soixante-neuf ... by ... tho ... those who ... sp ... speak Fr ... French."
Penny had no idea what he was talking about until she felt his head come between her creamy thighs and begin to nibble on her pubic hairs. She heard him breathe deeply as he attempted to get a full gulp of the musky odor emanating from her oozing pussy.
Sensing she should open her legs wide, the girl gave Werner a better and better view of her pinkness, which he absorbed fully with his eyes, and then went for with his lips, tongue, and teeth. His mouth entered the moist expanse, quickly becoming coated with her delicious ooze. His tongue probed as deeply as it could, and once tasting her cuntal emanations on his taste buds, he slurped up more and more. When his eyes spied her hardening clitoris, he moved his licker so that it dabbed around the hooded nub, making Penny moan deliriously. His teeth bit into the mini hard-on, and Penny moaned ecstatically.
Werner stiffened his tongue and began moving in and out of her vagina with quick and intense thrusts. Penny was mewling like a banshee, hardly able to control herself until his cock would enter her sex canal.
When she momentarily had his dick free of her mouth, she moaned, "Oh, Werner. I can't stand it anymore. I've got to feel that big thick cock of yours inside me. Nowww!"
Werner laughed low, his breath finding its way into Penny's cunt and exciting her even further. But he wasn't ready to plunge his pecker into her yet; he was enjoying the smells and tastes of her pussy just a bit too much.
His tongue made circular motions in her twat, licking up the glistening ooze almost as fast as her insides were producing it.
"Fuck me, Werner. I wanna be fucked ... and fast!!!" Penny shouted, worrying that Werner would come in her mouth. But little did she know that he was an expert on delaying his ejaculation, and would fuck her face until he knew that he would have plenty of time to enjoy her pussy's pleasures.
He continued his ministrations on her cunt, and, even though she wanted to get that cock she was now sucking on inside her cunt, she kept up her oral work on it with glee.
And it was just that enthusiasm that was getting Werner close to orgasm. Even this expert knew that he should get on to the fucking soon, or else Penny would have to stay a virgin awhile longer. Neither of them wanted that.
"Okay, cunt!" Werner shouted. "I'm going to fuck that virgin cunt of yours silly. And you'll be thanking me till the day you die for how wonderful it's going to feel. Get on your back, pussy!"
She complied with no hesitation, knowing that the moment had arrived for her cherry to be burst every which way at once. And the size of Werner's penis guaranteed a ferocious break in her hymen.
As she spread her legs to their widest to wait for the onslaught of Werner's gigantic masterpiece, Penny stretched out her arms to place around his back. Werner moved forward to allow her to do so, and Penny felt his penis touch the entrance to her cunt. The slick pussy lips fibrillated at the touch of his cockhead, and Penny knew she was in for a great time. The man wanted to make it a little easier on Penny at first, so he just toyed with her cunt lips, using his penis as the prober. Up and down her portals he moved; then he went in circular motions along the fiery entrance.
"Inside!" she shouted. "Stick that big cock of yours inside mmmmeeeeeeeeee!"
He complied, though slowly. First, he fed a few inches in, feeling her hymen touching the tip of his pecker. He knew that one good thrust would massacre the little dickens to eternity, which was precisely where it belonged. Tensing his thighs and ass cheeks, he prepared to enter deep into her coral grotto ... where no man had ever been before....
Werner pulled back an inch or so and then powered home, feeling the hymen give way in a split second as his penis headed deep into the devirginized cavern.
"Aaaaaaaiiiiiiilyyyyyyeeeeeaaaahhhhhh!" cried Penny as she bit deeply into Werner's shoulder, drawing a few droplets of blood, about the same amount that came from her torn hymen. But Werner didn't even feel the pain, slamming his length deeper and deeper into her inner recesses.
Penny began meeting his thrusts with hers, their bellies slapping against one another and making louder noises as their bodies perspired more profusely. The girl learned the ways of sex rapidly, and this could not have made Werner happier.
The friction between cock and cunt was perfect, and Werner knew that his cum would be shooting like skyrockets in no time. Penny also seemed to sense that her orgasm was just around the proverbial corner.
In and out, in and out, Werner's penis thrust inside her deep pussy, now free of the hymen that had spent far too much time barring entry to the wonderful warmth and desire beneath. He was ramming his prick in so deeply now that Penny thought it was going to come out of her backside.
"Grab onto my cock while I'm fucking you, Penny," Werner urged, knowing the friction on his dork would be increased.
Soon, he was seeing the red mist of ecstasy before his eyes, and the sperm was coming in gob after white-hot gob from inside his aching nuts. His testicles were slamming into Penny's creamy ass cheeks and her creaming pussy was oozing like wildfire as her body went through a powerful orgasm.
Their bodies were bucking atop the bed with so much force that it was hard to believe it wouldn't come apart and crash to the floor.
The pair lay back in bed for a while, enjoying the ecstasy that their bodies had just experienced, and knowing that there was more, much more to be had while she was in Switzerland.
Werner, having participated in the sex act many times with other women, knew that his cock would stay rock hard for a second coming, so to speak, and he wanted Penny to take advantage of its thickness.
As he lay back on the bed, he said, "Say, Penny, how about sitting on my face for dessert?"
"Your wish is my command," answered Penny, and she did as requested, spreading her ass cheeks above his face and letting him move his tongue around like a wild man, inside her asshole and between her wideopen cunt lips. Meanwhile, she grasped his hardening cock and jerked it a few times, admiring the oozing pre-cum at the tip of the purple cockhead. She leaned over to lick it off, and Werner reached up to grab her thighs to bring her southside lips and asshole back in contact with his lips, tongue, and teeth.
He ate her undersides voraciously as she continued to stroke his pecker, which was rock hard again. He knew she was going to have him coming again soon, but he made sure he held out just a wee bit longer.
As Werner licked and bit her pussy lips and probed into the tight brown hole between her ass cheeks, she squeezed her taut nipples and rubbed her flat hands in circles around her large breasts. Her ass cheeks were jiggling all over Werner's face and at times he didn't know whether to take a breath and leave the fantastic warmth between her alabaster buttocks ... or to smother between them, knowing that if he had to die, this would be a most delightful way to meet his maker.
At the same time, Penny realized that she should do some work on Werner's cock or it might shrivel down to nothing. So she began to whack it so quickly that it seemed like her hand was just a blur, as was his cock.
She could feel Werner's body tensing beneath her, and knew-perhaps through instinct-that he'd be shooting his hot wad soon.
And she was right. From his hot balls and along his long shaft came another onslaught of semen, which she caught on her tits. She lowered her body onto his, letting her boobs take each and every drop of his unleashed cum, rubbing her tits along his thighs and tender cock, making him writhe between her legs and lick at her cunt until she, too, orgasmed....
When Penny came back to reality in her bathroom, she found herself at the peak of her come, clenching her teeth and hissing, "Dave ... ohhhh, Dave!"
She wondered if Dave could satisfy her the way Werner had.
The date started off like any other evening with David Stewart, intern, whose dedication to his work took precedence over mundane affairs. Looking very tall, very dark, very handsome, and very much out of place behind the wheel of his old car, he arrived promptly at five-thirty.
Before the evening was over, Penny knew that she would have to hurt this praiseworthy young man. It was not a pleasing thought.
However, there were times when it was necessary to be cruel to be kind, Penny reasoned, and wished with all her heart for a less painful way out. It was no use.
She believed, as Gena did, that Dave was in love with her. Therefore, in all fairness, she must make him understand that his way of life and her dreams of the future were poles apart. She must do it carefully, in a way that would cause as little pain as possible to him and the minimum of agony to herself.
The sooner the better for him, she decided as she returned his smile of greeting as they met. It would be the height of cruelty to wait until he embarrassed himself-and her-by revealing in all its poignant details what went on in his heart.
As they drove, Dave mentioned that he was almost at the end of his internship. "Come autumn," he commented, 'I'll go into my residency and start three years of special training-at the Medical Center, no less! It's more than I'd hoped for. I signed up today."
Momentarily, Penny felt a sense of relief. Perhaps she wouldn't have to tell him after all. In any case, she could afford to be generous.
"Why, that's fine!" she exclaimed. "Congratulations. It couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Of course, three years is a long time. But if that's what you want...."
"It's what I want, the best training possible. It will be a rugged three years, I'll admit, and I don't plan to go in for the carriage trade later. But if I can persuade my true love to go along with me, I won't mind. I've been thinking things over. What I mean is...." He hesitated, seemed to be having difficulty getting the words out.
"You mean...?" Penny promoted on a rising tide of compassion-she could have bitten her tongue.
"I've fallen in love with you, Penny Gilmore, although I'll admit it's the last thing I wanted to happen. I'm about to break down and ask you to marry me."
"You're a grand person, Dave," Penny answered somewhat indifferently, "and I'm really quite fond of you. Only-well, I just can't see myself as the wife of a ... dedicated doctor. But don't worry, because after tonight we won't be seeing each other again. I've been trying to tell you that, but you wouldn't let me."
"But why, my sweet? Why won't we be seeing one another again? Why?"
"Because it's all wrong-that's why. And don't you try to sweet-talk me, either, Dave Stewart. That's wrong, too."
Before Dave could say anything, Penny added, "I'm leaving The Grove-and for keeps. I'm going-well-where the action is."
"But where are you going?" Dave managed to interject.
"I'm taking a position and an apartment in Washington-that's where I'm going." Penny bit her lip in vexation. The word Washington had slipped out, when she could just as easily have said London, Paris, even Hong Kong.
"Well," Dave retorted, "since you're only going to the nation's capital, I'll be seeing you now and then."
"Don't count on it."
Those words let to more heated ones, with Penny finally saying, "I'd thank you not to start phoning me, taking my mind off-uh-whatever I'm doing." A sudden rush of conscience prompted Penny to add: "I'll call you."
The woman had no way of knowing that her words constituted the ultimate in polite brush-off, American style: "Don't call me;
I'll call you." Therefore, she was taken aback when David Stewart's jaw tightened and he said sharply:
"Oh, so it's like that, huh? I get the message. If that's the way you want it, that's the way it will be."
Well, that tears it, Penny thought. She had not wanted to hurt him. However, she supposed it would do no good to try to soften the blow by saying, "This is tearing me apart, too." He would never in the world comprehend the travail she'd experienced trying to get through to him.
CHAPTER THREE
"I'm sorry, terribly sorry," Penny stammered when the silence following her ultimatum and David Stewart's grim acceptance became unbearable.
His demeanor changed abruptly. Reaching over, he patted her arm, much in the matter of an old-time family doctor reassuring a nervous patient. "There, there-take it easy, baby."
"But I've hurt you!" Penny wailed. "I didn't mean to do it like that."
"Think nothing of it, sweet. I asked for it; I had no business dreaming out loud. A fellow can't always win."
"A girl can't, either," Penny said weakly.
His manner changed again. "Now we've got the future wrapped up," he said matter of-factly, "suppose we get on with the show. In a few minutes we'll be in Washington, and you're missing the overture. It may come as a surprise to you that there are a lot of points of interest right here in your own front yard."
Once more, with disconcerting rapidity, David Stewart's manner changed, prompting Penny to ask herself, What is he anyhow-man or superman? Why, within the space of a few brief minutes, he has become several different people!
He was no longer the would-be benedict, dreaming of the unattainable. He wasn't even the syndrome-ridden young medicine man, poking into symptoms, probing for imperfections, while practicing like crazy to achieve a cool bedside manner. Nor was he a reincarnation of the easy-going family doctor, who made you feel so young, so dependent, and so divinely safe.
Now he had stepped into still another role-that of professional guide. With becoming deference and only an occasional wisecrack, he was pointing out to a "beautiful foreigner" the "colossal sights" along the Maryland highway leading into the "super-colossa!" city of Washington.
"It's all in a day's work, ma'am," he said when Penny, feeling guilty, suggested returning home.
With a flourish, he stopped the car in front of the Medical Center. It consisted of a group of buildings whose architectural grace and landscaped surroundings would have made it a showplace anywhere in the world.
The scene was dominated by a many-storied tower that rose high and white into a kaleidoscopic sunset sky. The time was six o'clock, and the Center was broadcasting a musicale by means of carillon chimes. Altogether, it was a breathtaking sight, made all the more impressive by the music.
"On your right, ma'am," David was saying in the sing-song voice of a practiced guide, "you see the finest get-well card in the world-begging your pardon, of course. It's got everything: thirteen thousand beds, a ship's clock, and a nine-hole golf course. How's that for class, ma'am?"
"It really is extraordinary." Penny, who had seen the structural masterpiece several times since her return to the States, spoke with genuine enthusiasm. "Even on the Continent...."
"I'm prejudiced in its favor, of course," Dave broke in hurriedly, returning to his normal tone of voice. "After all, it's my classroom, my workshop, my home away from home-my life, for the time being."
It was in this hallowed place, he went on to say, that he had worked for two rewarding years-in research laboratories, clinics, wards-learning of the facts of life and of death. Coming there fresh out of medical school, he had labored a minimum of nine hours a day, not to mention night duty. He had put in as many as five hundred hours a month on occasions, napping whenever he could.
"Many times," he confided, grinning, "I didn't hit the hay for thirty-six hours hard running."
"And for what?" Penny asked, then answered her own question. "For a room and board and peanuts. You've told me."
He looked at her in shocked surprise. "Did I say a stupid thing like that? I must have been out of my mind, too pooped to know what I was saying."
"Oh, you said it-never mind the alibis." There was a ring of triumph in Penny's voice. Here, at last, she had Right on her side, indisputable evidence that David Stewart was far from perfect.
"You said a lot more, too," she gloated. "You admitted your bed was too short and the hospital fare was sort of pablumish. You all but broke out in a rash in your hurry to get to a roadside diner where you could get man-size meals, as you call them hamburgers, hot dogs, corned beef, and stuff. Deny that, if you can!"
He grinned sheepishly. "I'm not denying anything, pussy cat. A man has to sound off now and then. Even so, I should have my throat cut here and now."
"We-e-ll, I wouldn't say that, exactly," Penny backtracked, not wanting to press her advantage too far.
"I'd say it. I owe the Center everything-and I do mean everything. A medic who trains here has it made. He's not only qualified to take the Oath; he's conditioned to live up to it. Oh, I'll admit it's been rough at times, and I've done my share of griping, but there isn't a single little thing I'd change."
He was silent as he started the car and moved back into the line of traffic en route to Washington. Then he said, seemingly out of context but quite pointedly:
"Be careful what you ask out of life, pussy cat. You might get it."
"What do you mean, I might get it?"
He shrugged. "Never mind. I was just thinking. A lot of poor devils don't actually know what they want. They beat their brains out chasing fireflies, winding up behind the eight-ball and blaming Fate as the cause of it all. I'd hate to see that happen to you, Penny Gilmore."
To Penny, this was a sobering thought, one that was to remain in her mind throughout the evening and for some time thereafter.
They had dinner at a small but beautifully appointed restaurant in the Rock Creek section of Washington. Although it was still daylight, the blinds were drawn, and rose-shaded lights shed a benevolent glow on groups of well-bred diners, predominantly female and obviously not as young as they once were. The fragrance of cut flowers mingled with the aroma of spicy, exotic foods, while muted background music formed a pleasantly unobtrusive accompaniment to the medley of voices.
"We came here because they specialize in the finest of foreign foods," Dave explained when they were seated and studying the menu, "served in a style to which you've been accustomed. Thought you'd like that."
They specialize in high prices, too, Penny thought, and said in deference to her escort's modest salary:
"I think I'll just have a sandwich-ham on rye bread, perhaps. Something light, you know. I'm not a bit hungry." She all but choked over the lie and wondered what, besides a vague feeling of guilt, had possessed her to say rye bread. She hated the stuff!
"Now look here, doll, what kind of nonsense is that?" Dave protested. "You don't want a crummy old sandwich-not in a place like this where you can get everything from pickled octopus to sauteed lamb's eyes."
Penny smiled and pushed the menu aside. "Even if I were starving, I'm afraid you couldn't tempt me with lamb's eyes."
"Well, I'm hungry, after all the pablum you say I've been eating. I intend to have skish kebab with all the trimmings. Can't I change your mind? How about a cocktail for a starter? I'm not working tonight."
Penny wavered for a second, then held to her original decision. To hesitate at this point would be to confirm this young man's assumption that she did not know what she wanted, even in the matter of food. "No, thank you. I'm really not hungry. Just the sandwich and perhaps a glass of iced tea."
"Well, I'll be a so-and-so!" David Stewart exploded. Then, in a gentler tone, "Sure you won't change your mind, sweet? The food here is ultra-special. Today was pay day, so we don't have to pinch pennies, if that's what's holding you back."
When Penny shook her head vehemently, he gave the order to a robot-like waiter: a double martini and a sumptuous meal for himself, tea and a sandwich for the unhungry lady. The automaton bowed stiffly and went on his way.
While she nibbled on the all-American sandwich and her escort feasted on the elegant cuisine reminiscent of romantic places, Penny had a chance to take stock of her surroundings.
Smartly attired women of indeterminate age sat in pairs or small groups, chatting earnestly, as though settling affairs. A bevy of predestined spinsters clustered around a long table, enjoying what appeared to be an office party, sans men.
An occasional male, well on in years, sat in solitary dignity, frowning into his highball and scarcely touching the delectable dish set before him. Altogether, it was a thought-provoking scene. Penny remarked on it.
"You know what?" She laughed, bent upon keeping the conversation light. "I sort of miss those lovely truck drivers back at our little diner. They were so big and strong and-well, masculine."
When her companion looked at her curiously, she inclined her head toward their fellow-diners. "This must be Ladies' Night here in Washington," she giggled.
"Could be every night is Ladies' Night here in Washington," he teased, mimicking her voice. "Could be."
"I've never seen so many surplus women, outside of a girls' school I attended in Switzerland. Why, there isn't a man in sight under sixty-except you, of course," Penny chattered on. "We're such oddities, they've all been staring at us ever since we came in, as though we don't belong and they sort of resent our being here."
"Could be it's that outlandish sandwich you're not eating that's bugging them, or this elegant meal I'm putting away."
"Pooh! It's just that we're strangers and-well, you know how Americans are."
"Don't fool yourself, sweet. I hate to say this-but it's me they're looking at, admiring; you they're resenting." Dave Stewart flashed his outrageous grin. "Something tells me we'd better eat fast and scram."
"But why, for heaven's sake?" Penny demanded, unwittingly picking up the bait.
"Well, I wouldn't want to start a stampede among the ladies. That's not impossible," the young intern announced by way of apology. "I still say Washington is the greatest city in the world, but it's no matrimonial smorgasbord. A good man off a leash is hard to find."
"You're impossible," Penny flung back, laughing in spite of herself. "But let's do finish eating and get out of here."
Dave chuckled. "Anyone for cherry blossoms?"
The cherry trees along the Tidal Basin were just as beautiful as he'd said they'd be. Darkness had descended, but pinch-hitting for the moon Dave had promised, powerful floodlights illuminated a scene of haunting loveliness.
There were people, too-male and female, strolling in pairs. Couples, young and not so young, walked arm in arm or holding hands, seeing only each other, seemingly oblivious to the rosy pageant of cherry blossoms. The flowering trees were but a fitting backdrop for romance.
"Who said Washington is no marriage smorgasbord?" Penny challenged. "If these people aren't married, they ought to be. They're in love, that's for sure."
They were honeymoon couples from the hinterlands, Dave said, stepping easily into the role of wet blanket. The National Cap ital at cherry blossom time outshone Niagara Falls as mecca for newly weds. Residents of Washington, he went on to say, did their sightseeing, if any, in the daytime. It was safer, in view of a crime wave that was plaguing the city.
"If you're trying to scare me, you're wasting your breath, David Stewart! I don't scare." Penny felt her face burn, but she believed her voice was reasonably steady. "I wasn't born yesterday."
"No?" David Stewart's eyes twinkled; then his face took on an expression of affectionate concern. "Living overseas for ten pampered years, you've been wrapped in cotton. I'm not trying to scare you, sweet. I'm only conditioning you for whatever's ahead. I'd hate to see you get hurt in your first brush with freedom."
"You'd like nothing better." Penny knew she was being unfair, but she was beyond caring. "Conditioning me-indeed!"
Some two hours later, when he helped her, very gently, out of the car in The Grove, it irked Penny to realize that David Stewart had slipped once more into the spurious role of family physician and friend. Despite the fact that he had been-well, jilted was the only word for it!-he was as calm as you please. She herself felt shaken, drained dry.
He knows it, too! she told herself helplessly.
When she said goodnight, good-bye, and thanks for everything, he made as though to kiss her, but she turned and fled up the flagstone walk and into the cottage she'd thought she hated. Suddenly it was a heaven-sent refuge.
She supposed she should feel lighthearted, even exhilarated. She was getting the freedom she had asked for, had thought she wanted. From now on she could live her own life without family interference or hampering romantic entanglements. She had won a victory, of sorts.
But somehow the taste of it was like brine in her mouth, and even the poor little house took on a precious quality now that she would soon be leaving it. For some reason she could not quite fathom, she felt for all the world like a displaced Pilgrim, lost and alone in an American wilderness, with nothing but darkness ahead.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the hectic days that followed, Penny had no time for regrets. Life took on a new and accelerated tempo, and she was swept along on a tide that had no tangible beginning, no foreseeable end. Having made her bed, however, she resolved to lie in it with the sturdy pioneer spirit that Dan and Erlene considered so essential, and which David Stewart obviously thought she did not possess.
There was much to be done before she could face Washington in a manner befitting a confident career girl; a girl who knew what she wanted of life and had every intention of getting it. Many times it occurred to Penny that no career, however exacting, could be more frustrating than the process of getting into orbit. Certainly The Grove, with its self-service way of life, was a poor excuse for a launching pad.
There was no hired help around to "oil the machinery and do the dirty work," as Dad inelegantly described the sorry state of affairs; no by-the-day sewing woman to rejuvenate an ailing wardrobe; no bearers to tote and fetch-and no class distinctions whatsoever. Penny remarked on it, only to have Erlene smile and say:
"Don't forget, dear, this is the land of the free...."
"And the home of the brave," Penny finished. "You don't need to say it again, darling. I heard you the first time." Tactfully, she refrained from adding what was on her mind:
"I am the brave one around here."
It was downright irritating to hear young Gena say, as she often did, "It's wonderful, living in a place where you don't have servants hanging around, breaking their necks trying to please everyone, while you bend over backward trying to please them."
But then, Gena was like that, the older sister reflected: too democratic for her own good. And Gena, like everyone else in the family, was cooperating to the fullest, the object being to send Penny off in the style to which she was surely entitled. Penny, for all her grandiose airs, was properly grateful.
Philip Gilmore declared a moratorium on house repairs and made several trips to Washington and innumerable phone calls, renewing old friendships in the interest of his elder daughter. With his usual flair for getting things done without fanfare, he-met and hurdled such obstacles and Penny's inexperience, his own misgivings, and arranged for interviews with suitable employers. Happily, the Gilmore name was no handicap; in fact, it seemed to have magic qualities. Only once did Philip break down and say:
"I'm lying through my teeth, Penny; sticking my neck out all over Washington. If you let me down, may God help you. I can't."
"I won't let you down, Dad," Penny . promised.
Erlene, cooperative as always, borrowed a sewing machine from a friendly neighbor and set about the business of updating Penny's wardrobe to comply with a rather shocking new freedom in dress. America, she observed wryly, was out-marching Paris in the style parade.
"We'll strike a happy medium, salvaging whatever we can of the wardrobe you have," she told Penny. "Next week we'll rob the piggy-bank and go shopping for new things."
Penny, touched by her stepmother's kindness, tried to express her appreciation in deeds as well as words. She offered to take over the household chores, including the cooking. But Gena, who had installed herself in the kitchen the moment it was vacated, refused to budge from her self-appointed assignment.
"I'm having a ball," she declared, and proceeded to prepare meals remarkable mainly for their accent on TV dinners and gooey desserts.
"After all, I'm not getty any younger," fourteen-year-old Gena announced with amusing solemnity. "It's high time I learned. A lot of girls my age are already going steady."
Penny, not to be outdone, volunteered to do the grocery shopping-and was stuck with it. No matter, she told herself sturdily. Regardless of David Stewart's heckling, no girl who had been practically everywhere, seen practically everything, could possibly lose her bearings in an American supermarket.
Assuming a nonchalance that she certainly did not feel, she joined the parade of housewives-many of them accompanied by children of assorted sizes, not to mention over-friendly dogs of varied ancestry-in what appeared to be a frenzied raid on a gargantuan grab bag.
In a way, it was a challenging experience and, Penny admitted, a rewarding one. She had bought all the items Erlene had set down on a seemingly interminable list and come through alive. In fact, she managed to say quite convincingly in response to her stepmother's sympathetic, "You poor child; you must have had the full treatment."
"It was nothing, darling. I sailed through like a breeze."
She had a wild impulse to telephone David Stewart and inform him of her latest achievement, let him know how wrong he'd been about so many things. But no, she decided, she would wait till he broke down and called her. She could be just as proud, as ornery, as he could.
He did not call, and Penny hated herself for getting goose pimples every time the phone rang. Only Gena, always sensitive to the fortunes and misfortunes of her older sister, seemed aware of the ignominious situation. And Gena, passionately loyal and wise beyond her years, had the grace to remain silent.
"I couldn't care less," Penny would say by way of reassurance. "Don't forget I'm going where there's life, action, and romance. It's not just for myself I'm doing this, angel. You don't belong in this provincial town any more than I do. Just you wait till I get set and you're a little older-"
"I like it here," Gena would say loyally. Nevertheless, with each repetition, there was a growing breathlessness in her voice that should have warned Penny that, even now, young Gena was not altogether averse to going where romance was.
There followed two weeks of pure bedlam, in which feverish activity, anxiety, and high excitement merged into a kind of dizzy pattern. For Penny, there were trips into Washington with an indulgent though apprehensive father, for interviews with potential employers-all hand-picked in advance. Now and then as they drove along the highway, Philip Gilmore would glance sharply at his daughter and demand:
"Are you sure this is what you want, baby-this career, as you call it? Think you're ready?"
"I'm ready-as ready as I'll ever be, I guess."
"Erlene and I will help you all we can, of course, financially and otherwise. But we both feel you should go to school in the fall, here in the States; perhaps take a secretarial course. Unless I miss my guess, you'll be running into some plain and fancy competition."
"Don't be stuffy, Dad. Not every girl can say she's lived all over the world and can converse in several languages. And don't forget I do have a diploma from one of the most exclusive finishing schools in all of Europe."
"It's not enough, dear. You're a beautiful girl, Penny, and you have all the graces. But you have no special skill, nothing of market value in the business world," Philip would say, pointing out a fact that became increasingly obvious with each interview.
Whereupon Penny would take refuge in her sweetest smile and say, "Never mind what I don't know, Dad. Just look at all the lovely people you know in Washington. Don't worry. I'll get along."
And Philip Gilmore, hastily revising his opinion of his unpredictable daughter, would say, albeit a little anxiously: "Chances are you will get along, at that."
On the brighter side, there were shopping expeditions, with Erlene an indulgent, style-conscious guide, and Gena going along as cheerleader. Despite Gena's insistence on frilly, romantic things for her adored sister, Penny became the possessor of a tasteful wardrobe that could go anyplace, anytime.
There was, however, the grueling process of finding a suitable apartment to share. More than once as she made the dreary rounds with a suddenly hard-to-please Erlene, it occurred to Penny that they were looking for a combination that did not exist: an attractive apartment, a proper address, a wholesome roommate, and a reasonable rental-all in one package.
"We'll just have to compromise, I guess," she said tentatively, when they'd closed the door on a luxury apartment in which only the price and the roommate were wrong. "You and Dad often say that life itself is a series of compromises."
Erlene put her foot down. They would not compromise, she announced firmly, pointing out that the redhead-in-residence had all the earmarks of a hussy. Eventually, she promised, they would find a place with all the necessary virtues and only such inconveniences as a girl in Penny's position might expect.
"We aren't going to find the perfect place-I agree with you on that point, my dear," Erlene went on to say, trying once more to establish a forthright line of communication between herself and her bemused stepdaughter. "There'll be things on the debit side, as well as the credit. Make no mistake about that. But they'll balance."
Erlene's words were prophetic. With the help of a roommate agency catering to top-drawer career girls, an efficiency apartment was found in the Georgetown section of Washington. It consisted of a sizable living room, a pink-tiled bath, a stand-up kitchenette screened from view by a collapsible door, and two of the smallest bedrooms Penny had ever seen.
Strictly on the debit side was a kind of female population explosion that took place while Erlene and Penny were examining the apartment. Penny held her breath in dismay as three embryonic glamour girls, their hair done up on rollers, arranged themselves one by one on hassocks around a seemingly shrinking living room. Actually there were three roommates instead of the one she had visualized, not to speak of a frisky blue poodle.
In a flurry of words, the girls introduced themselves as Susan Randolph, librarian; Cynthia Blake, airline hostess; and NellieMay Butler, presently "resting." The dog's name was Husha, short for Hush-puppy. He was the property of Nellie-May, who described herself as Cynthia's "bloodcousin," come up from the South.
"Don't look so scared, sugah," NellieMay consoled Penny. "There isn't usually such a crowd here. Cynthia's away most of the time. And me-I'm just visitin', lookin' around. One of these days, we'll be going back to our lovely plantation home down in Georgia, won't we, Husha?" she drawled, addressing the restless poodle.
Cynthia and Susan, obviously older and more sophisticated, exchanged amused glances. Clearly they were not too companionable with the pretty blond visitor from down South, a circumstance that boded no good for the camaraderie of the crowded retreat.
On the credit side, however, there were such compensatory features as: the impeccable address, the above-average furnishings, and the rent that would be split three ways, maybe four.
"Besides, it's only a stopgap," Penny confided later to a visibly impressed Gena. "In no time at all I'll be moving out of that cat cage into a place of my own."
She was equally philosophical about the position, which, as sheer luck would have it, had come through on the very day she had signed up for the apartment. While she would have preferred a more glamorous assignment to start with, Penny admitted, a post as receptionist in the offices of one J. Cyrus Henry, generally known as "the Smiling Legislator from the Great Southwest," was not to be scorned.
"It's a steppingstone," she told Gena. "The important thing is, I'm in."
Now, on a Saturday afternoon, after a peculiarly frustrating week of commuting and getting acquainted with her job, Penny was gathering together her belongings in preparation for the move to the Washington apartment. Meanwhile, in response to considerable probing, she was regaling her young sister with a running account of her duties, together with a purposely facetious description of the unorthodox surroundings in which she worked.
The building itself, she declared, was ultramodern, all windows-a showplace, really. The Henry suite, on the other hand, was a masterpiece in down-to-earth austerity. Whereas the corridors were of finest marble and there was wall-to-wall carpeting all over the place, the smiling congressman's domain, including the large reception room, presented a picture of what Penny described as Early Southwestern Corn. The decor, in fact, was incredible.
"Mr. Henry doesn't want his friends from the great open spaces to get ideas; wants them to feel at home, I guess," Penny continued. "There's even a water bucket with a dipper in the reception room-believe that, if you can! There's also a rack for ten-gallon hats, a buffalo rug, cane-bottom chairs, a place to park boots and saddle and stuff...."
Moreover, there were framed mottoes on the walls and elsewhere, pointing out that honesty was the best policy, and admonishing everyone to keep smiling. These, Penny assumed, were for the purpose of emphasizing the image of honest goodwill Mr. Henry and his public relations man were striving so earnestly to project.
"And he is democratic; he actually means it," Penny added in a sudden burst of loyalty. "I refuse to believe it's all politics, American style. I hope I haven't sounded snobbish or critical."
Gena's admiring smile was answer enough.
"Actually, he's genuinely interested in doing good for his constituents, especially underprivileged young people-and I'm sure there are a lot of them back where he came from. Anyhow," Penny concluded, "he's a sweet old man. Otherwise Dad would never in the world have consented to my working for him."
"No, of course not," Gena said. "Sounds luscious-your job as a receptionist. Just look at all the exciting people you're meeting."
Penny shrugged. "Mainly politicians, cowboys, and stuff-."
"I will say it's luscious and exciting. I think cowboys are sort of cute. They look so romantic, so-well, you know, sexy." Gena's accompanying giggle did not quite come off, and her face flamed with sudden color.
"Gena!" Penny scolded. "You're only a child. What would you know about romance"-she hesitated-' 'and sex?"
Gena did not answer, and Penny, reassured, resumed her recital. "Well, I don't have to mix with any riffraff. All I have to do is to send them packing-but smiling. My job, according to Mr. Henry, is to separate the freeloaders from the bona-fide constituents and keep smiling. That's a must-whether I feel like it or not. If you think that's luscious and exciting, Gena, think again."
"I was just about to ask how you tell them apart," Gena said cautiously.
"That's the problem," Penny confessed, lowering her voice to a confidential tone, as though the very walls had ears. "They're look-a-likes, dress-a-likes, act-a-likes, most of them. But no matter. As I said, this position is only a steppingstone."
Fastening the last strap of her four suitcases, Penny smiled grimly. "I'd better call Dad now, so we can get started with these things. I'd like to get into the apartment and get oriented before I start getting dressed, though heaven only knows how I'll manage with all that crowd around, I have a date to go dancing tonight...."
Gena beamed. "Then you've made up with Doctor Stewart. I knew you would, sis. I gave him your office phone number when he kept calling here."
"Thanks, honey. Dave phoned me. We're still good friends, always will be, but that's all. My date tonight is with a man who's already 'arrived.' He's an image-maker. We're going to dinner, then on to Tino's a Go-Go, which is supposed to be one of the liveliest discotheques in the city," Penny added in a breathless spate of words surely calculated to forestall any backtalk on the part of her young sister.
"An image-maker?" Gena repeated, picking out one of the few words that had registered in the avalanche. "You mean he's a for-real sculptor?"
Penny laughed and shook her head. Mark Graham, her date for the evening, she explained, was a public relations wizard, who specialized in creating and fostering images for important and would-be important political figures. J. Cyrus Henry was only one of his many clients.
No, Penny acknowledged when pinned down, Mark Graham was not as good-looking as David Stewart; few men were. Nor was he as young. Actually, he was a trifle on the homely side, and there was a touch of gray at his temples; however, this was inconsequential, since it only added to his distinguished appearance and marked him as a successful man of the world."
"Don't get excited, honey," Penny protested when Gena fell silent. "Just because I'm going out with him tonight doesn't mean I'm in love with him and that I intend to marry him. Mark Graham may not be your idea of a Prince Charming, and to tell the truth, he isn't mine. But he does know everybody who is anybody in the whole city of Washington!"
"Oh. Then he's another steppingstone, you mean?"
Penny, feeling unaccountably embarrassed, averted her flushed face. Then, on an impulse, she raised her head and glanced across at her sister. Gena had taken off the thick glasses she hated, and in her luminous eyes there was the unmistakable light of affection for an older sister who presumably could do no wrong.
There was something else, too-an inscrutable look Penny had never noticed before, causing her to shiver perceptibly. She recalled a remark Erlene had once made.
"Gena?" Erlene had said, "has perfect vision in her heart."
Again Penny lowered her eyes. Somehow, at the moment, she could not bring herself to face the challenge of her young sister's all-seeing heart.
That evening, Erlene and Philip Gilmore lay in bed talking about their two daughters. Since moving back to the States, they had been very concerned about the way Penny and Gena would adjust to life in America.
It was dark in their bedroom, and they huddled close together under the covers, enjoying the feel of their naked bodies pressed tightly together.
"You know something?" Erlene asked, twirling her finger in the thick hair on her husband's chest.
"No, what's that?" Philip sighed, reaching up to lazily caress his wife's large tit.
"I think the girls will be all right, as long as we don't get in their way too much. In fact, I'm pretty proud of them so far. Aren't you?"
Philip just grunted his assent and then attacked his wife's fleshy breasts with increased ardor.
"Oh, honey," she squealed. "You know what that does to me. Oooooo!"
Grinning lewdly, Philip moved down so he could suck on Erlene's nipple. He rolled his tongue all around the brown nub of her tit-tip, listening while Erlene sighed contentedly.
"Yes, I'm sure the girls will be all right," Erlene said softly. "And besides, you have more important things to do than worry about them day in and day out. You've got your book to write, and...."
Raising up from her tit, Philip had a thin slivery strand of spittle hanging from his chin. Determinedly he said, "And I've got a beautiful wife to make love to. Now just relax and stop thinking about the girls. I want you to enjoy this."
"Whatever you say, darling," she replied, pulling his face back down against her breast. "Whatever you say."
Philip bit down on his wife's nipple just enough to make it pleasant for her. She moaned beneath him, running her finger through his hair while gently calling out his name.
Having thoroughly aroused one of Erlene's nipples, Philip moved his attentions to the other one. Before long, he had both her tits covered with a glossy sheen of saliva, and that gave him an idea.
"Hey, honey, what are you doing now?" Erlene asked. "You're not going to stop already, are you? Huh?"
Philip intended to stop sucking her nipples, but he planned to begin fucking his cock between her big boobs. Sitting down on her quivering belly, he slowly scooted up until the head of his prick was lodged in her cleavage. Then he leaned down with his hands firmly gripping her breasts, pushing on the huge globes until he had formed a tight passageway through which he could fuck his penis.
"You ready, honey?" he asked breathlessly.
Erlene just nodded, eagerly awaiting the moment when her husband would begin fucking her tits. She stuck out her tongue and tried to arch her head forward so she could get in a few licks and sucks of Philip's cock as it appeared at the top of her cleavage.
Philip fucked back and forth slowly at first, moving his hips in a steady controlled rhythm. It was easy for Erlene to get in a few licks on his penis during the upstroke. In fact, when Philip's cock began drooling pre-cum, she was able to suck that gooey jism down, right out of his piss-slit. This turned her on immensely, and she could hardly wait for him to shoot out his load of sperm, covering her face and neck and shoulders with the creamy stuff.
Then Philip began thrusting harder, working his dick between her tits until it was a mere blur. Each time he reached the peak of his thrust, his ass would bounce against her belly, causing a loud slapping sound that grew louder the more they sweated.
"Oh, Philip!" she cried. "That's so good. Oh, that feels so damn good. Do it harder! Faster! Ohhhhh!"
While staring down at his aroused wife's face, Philip got the sudden urge to plow his cock into her mouth. Fucking her tits was nice, but he knew that the powerful suction she could put on his penis with her lips and mouth would feel even better.
Releasing her breasts, Philip scooted for ward until his prick was jutting into his wife's face. While she took hold of his cock with her lips and tongue, he leaned back and started stroking her wet pussy with both hands. While she sucked his prick, he tried as best he could to stimulate her engorged clitoris.
It didn't take them long to get a steady rhythm going, even though they were in such a strange position. Erlene sucked hard, giving it everything she had, while enjoying the tremendously exciting feelings provided by Philip's fingers rolling over her clit. And Philip grunted out his ecstasy, sitting back and letting his body take over, giving in totally to the ripples of lust that were sweeping through his loins.
When he felt that unmistakable itch in his balls, Philip could tell that he was going to come at any moment. So he increased the pace of his thrusts, trying to let his wife know that his moment was at hand.
Getting the message, Erlene began sucking as hard as she could, filling the room with lurid slurping noises. And it wasn't long before she was rewarded with the first hot spurt of her husband's sperm. Philip couldn't shoot the stuff out fast enough to suit her, because she swallowed down each wad of semen greedily.
Having emptied his load, Philip was exhausted. But he still understood that his wife had not come. So after she had licked his cock clean, he rolled over and began sucking on her pussy, driving his tongue into her hole as deep as he could.
Since she was so aroused by the taste of Philip's jism, it didn't take Erlene long to enjoy her climax. Sandwiching his head between her quivering thighs, she let her come sweep through her, thoroughly enjoying the feel of his tongue slithering around her clitoris.
Just before drifting off into sleep, Erlene thought how prophetic her earlier statement was. Of course they had more important things to do than worry about their daughters day in and day out. Worrying would detract from their sex life, and she didn't want that, not by a long shot.
CHAPTER FIVE
Penny, for all her maneuvering, was not consciously an opportunist. She much preferred to think of herself as a modern Andromeda, trapped by circumstances, seeking escape into an environment that was rightfully hers.
There was nothing vicious about her apparent antagonism toward her stepmother. The Grove and the Gilmores' surroundings-they were only convenient pegs upon which to hang her discontent with a self-service world, which she had certainly never made but had been thrust into.
I deserve something better, and so does Gena, she told herself time and again, and with each reiteration believed it more strongly.
Therefore, it was with no sense of culpability that she turned her back on The Grove and moved into the apartment which was to be home until something better came along. Perversely, she was shocked, even pained, to hear Nellie-May, the youngest and surely the least tactful of her three roommates, say in her exaggerated Southern drawl:
"Washington is a good place to visit, sugah-that is, if all you want to do is sightsee. It's a fine town to work in, too-that is, if you know the right people and how to use 'em." The girl paused to readjust one of the oversized rollers that garnished her bright-blond hair, then continued:
"What I mean is, this is purely a cat-clawcat town in many respects. But a girl can go places, if all she wants is a little ol' career, and she isn't too squeamish about steppin' over bodies and stuff."
Penny's face crimsoned, but from annoyance rather than guilt. The Southern girl's words seemed peculiarly obnoxious. If there was a vague resemblance between NellieMay's words and her own plan of survival, Penny chose to ignore it.
After all, she asked herself, what could a birdbrain but recently out of the hinterlands tell her that she did not already know? Why, Nellie-May, who boasted of being "eighteen, going on nineteen," looked as young and untutored as fourteen-year-old Gena.
Less than an hour before, when she had arrived at the apartment with her luggage, Penny had been pleased to find the premises less crowded than she'd expected. Although it was a Saturday and business offices were closed, only the young visitor from Georgia and her pooch were on hand to greet her.
Cynthia, whose life was bounded on all sides by her job as an airline hostess, NellieMay explained, was off on a trip to Chicago and points West. Susan, a truly dedicated librarian, was spending the weekend with bookish friends in Maryland.
"See?" the girl had exclaimed as she ushered Penny into the living room, the poodle all but upsetting the two of them in a frenzied dash to get ahead. "Like I told you, there isn't always a crowd here. Some days, like today, I'm so lonesome I could cry. I really should take Husha and go back to the lovely plantation, where I've got such a sweet little ol' family and oodles of friends-"
Momentarily, Penny's heart had warmed toward this homesick girl who was lonely for crowds. She thought of Gena, trapped in her semi-blindess, and lonely now that her adored sister was away. She'd made a mental note to bring Gena in to Washington for a visit the very first weekend Cynthia and Susan were away.
Now, as she unpacked her bags in the form-fitting bedroom she was to share with Susan, under the watchful eyes of a chatterbox and a meddlesome dog, it occurred to Penny that Nellie-May and Husha constituted a considerable crowd. Moreover, in many respects, they were a whole lot a-like: curious, acquisitive, bent upon running the show.
She wished devoutly that they would go away, leaving her to get settled in peace. But no-Nellie-May, enthroned in the one easy chair, was jabbering away, airing her outlandish views regarding life and the single girl in the National Capital, her avowed purpose being to spare "little ol' Penny the sure-for-certain pitfalls" she would encounter.
As a bonus irritant, Husha was inspecting Penny's belongings, poking his small nose into handbags, sniffing disapprovingly, as though he did not like anything about this dark-haired newcomer, including the perfume she used.
"Like I'm telling you, sugah," Nellie May was saying, "Washington is all right for girls like Cynthia and Susan who are married to their jobs and think love is only for birds and bees. But it's rugged on a single girl who wants to get married, and have a nice home and raise a family. Purely rugged...." She paused, but only to get a fresh breath and speak to the sniffing poodle.
"We wouldn't want to discourage little ol' Penny, would we, Husha, honey?" she crooned. "Cynthia and Susan would never forgive us if she got cold feet and walked out, considerin' what she's putting into the kitty." Then to Penny, who was getting more aggravated by the minute:
"But I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't brief you."
Penny, in the process of crowding her belongings into the half-closet and three dresser drawers that had been assigned to her, forced a smile. Resolutely, she refrained from pointing out that she had been briefed by experts, including one David Stewart, intern. Some of her annoyance must have seeped through, though, for NellieMay, looking a little frightened, demanded:
"You wouldn't leave, would you, sugah? I'd never in the world hear the last of it. It's only for your own good I'm briefing you."
"Don't worry," Penny said crossly. "I have no intention of leaving, now that I'm here and have paid my share of the rent."
"Good. That takes a load off my mind. As I was about to say, love-and-marriage in this town is a dead pigeon. The men are either too old for any use or already taken," Nellie-May resumed, evidently bent upon going all the way with her talk. But Penny was equally determined to put an end to what she considered a senseless monologue.
"Oh, skip it, for heaven's sake," she snapped. "I've been around." She lifted her chin high in the air, then said in a tone calculated to impress, "As a matter-of-fact, I've been living abroad for ten years. Europe, Asia, Africa, and-well, just about everywhere. It's true I've never lived in a large American city before. But I'll get along."
The blond girl's reactions were disappointing, to say the least. "Oh, boy," she groaned, "how perfectly creepy! Ten whole years with nothing to pick from but foreigners, savages, and stuff."
Penny looked at her sharply and waited for the giggle that would identify the inanity as a bad joke. There was no giggle. NellieMay's face was deadly serious and, with her coltish legs draped over an arm of the easy chair, she looked younger than ever.
Much too young, Penny reasoned, to be chattering about love and marriage and throwing out unwanted advice. But then, she reasoned further, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, American girls, even the nice ones, were more precocious, more outspoken on such matters than their European counterparts. Too, Nellie-May had said she was eighteen. There was no logical reason to doubt her.
"I've been hopin'," Nellie-May said, giggling now, "you'd have a sweet-patootie already sewed up and in the bag. It would be sort of nice to see a pair of pants around now and then. You don't look like the old maid type."
Penny could not suppress a smile. "Oh, I have a Prince Charming, if that's what you mean."
Nellie-May grinned, and her baby-blue eyes flashed a message of approval. "What's he like, sugah?"
Penny thought a minute, then decided against telling this scatterbrain about tonight's date. Nellie-May would find out soon enough that Mark Graham, though a successful man of the world, was not as young as he once was. Mark, considerably on the far side of thirty, would be relegated to the status of senior citizen.
The thing to do is to get Nellie-May out of here before Mark Graham arrives, Penny told herself, and groped around in her mind for a kindly way of doing so.
"What's he like?" Nellie-May repeated.
Penny, pinned down, launched forth on a glowing description of David Stewart, the man she was putting out of her life. "Oh, he's very tall, rather dark, wonderful company, and devastatingly handsome. He's an intern at the Medical Center," she added rashly.
Nellie-May's expression of delight did not change. "Sounds marvelous," she caroled. "Of course it will be years before he can give you anything-except first-aid lessons, maybe."
Again Penny's face burned, this time from a gnawing sense of guilt. She herself had harbored the same idea about David Stewart and the rugged road in front of him. Coming from someone else, it sounded shamefully mercenary. She was relieved when Nellie-May changed the subject, transferring her attention to the attractive dresses Penny was crowding into the half-closet.
"Looks like you've got everything you'll need, sugah, and more," the girl commented, and ran over to get a close-up of the dress Penny had planned to save for special business dates. She held the dress up in front of her and smiled at her reflection in the pier glass on the closet door.
"This is keen, sugah, purely keen," she squealed. "And, would you believe it, we wear exactly the same size! Mind if I borrow this sweet little ol' rag sometime?"
"Anytime, dear," Penny said absently. A glance at her wristwatch told her that it was after five o'clock. Mark Graham would be calling for her at seven-thirty, and there were still things to put away before she could shower and start getting dressed.
Nellie-May whirled around to give Penny a bear hug, but she did not loosen her hold on the blue linen dress. "You're a doll, sugah; a livin', walkin' doll!" she intoned. "Right now, can I borrow it?"
Penny, taken aback, had a vague feeling that she had nothing to say about it; that, in Nellie-May's opinion, the dress was already hers. Why, this girl was an opportunist of the first order!
"Well, yes," she said presently in answer to Nellie-May's question. "That is, if you have someplace special to go."
"Oh, I have a place, sugah. A way-out, swingin' place, if you know what I mean."
Penny, whose Stateside outings had been limited to mildly exciting evenings with David Stewart, did not quite know. But before she could say anything, Nellie-May, the blue dress draped carelessly over an arm, flounced out of the room, Husha racing ahead of her.
An hour or so later, showered and ready to get dressed, Penny sat on a divan in the living room, doing her nails and wondering helplessly how she had ever managed to get into this predicament. At least one of her roommates was a practicing nuisance; the other two, if Nellie-May was to be believed, were dedicated drudges. She supposed she should be grateful because there would be no personal competition, but the session with Nellie-May had been too distasteful to leave room for gratitude.
A door opened, and Nellie-May emerged from the small bedroom she'd designated previously as belonging to her Cousin Cynthia, Husha, and herself. For a moment she stood poised on the threshold, a preening pigeon dressed in borrowed plumes.
"How'm I doin', sugah?" she drawled, turning this way and that for inspection.
Penny hesitated. "You're an extraordinarily pretty girl," she said evasively.
And she was pretty. The blue of Penny's dress accentuated the blue of Nellie-May's eyes, and the extremely high-heeled shoes-probably Cynthia's-made her look taller and slimmer. Her weird, offbeat coiffure did nothing to diminish the golden sheen of her hair or the Georgia peach-blossom quality of her complexion. In her present incarnation, she could easily pass for a girl older than her declared eighteen years.
Only the little-girl-lost look in her eyes did not match up with the rest of Nellie-May, Penny observed. There was another look, too-was it defiance, furtiveness? Penny could not be sure. But suddenly it seemed vastly important to get rid of this chattering female before the ultra sophisticated Mark Graham put in his appearance.
Nellie-May bent over to fasten a worse-for-wear leash and rhinestone-studded collar on Husha, then turned to face Penny. "I guess I shouldn't be runnin' out on you on your first night here," she apologized. "But I don't often get a chance to go places. I'm supposed to just housekeep when Cynthia's away. And when she's here...."
Penny, realizing that time was marching on and thinking to shorten the girl's leave taking, made a gesture of dismissal. "Think nothing of it, darling. It just so happens that I have a date."
Nellie-May, sauntering leisurely toward the door, whirled around, her eyes bright with interest. "Oh. Then wild horses can't pull me away," she announced, and slid into the nearest chair. "I've got to see that handsome intern of yours. The way you were ravin', he has to be seen to be believed."
"We're going out," Penny said shortly, "where the action is. In fact, it's to be quite a large evening, starting with dinner, and winding up at Tino's a Go-Go. That's a discotheque."
Reluctantly, Nellie-May got up from the chair. "Sounds fabulous, sugah, purely fabulous."
Penny nodded, appeased. "I probably won't get back till all hours, so don't wait up for me."
"I may be out late, too. I'm going where the fun is," Nellie-May said, but volunteered no further information.
At the foyer door she turned again, evidently still reluctant to go. "You won't tell Cynthia, will you, sugah?"
"That you borrowed my dress? Why, of course not."
"Wel!"-Nellie-May hesitated-"that, too, I guess. You see, Cynthia's sort of old-fashioned. Still thinks I'm a stranger here and don't know my way around. Says it's dangerous for a girl to go places alone."
Carefully averting her face, she bent over and picked up the poodle in her arms. "Only I'd never dream of, traipsin' around alone in this town, especially at night. I'm takin' Husha...."
Penny smiled to herself ... Nellie-May's word had a familiar ring. She had heard the same arguments from Erlene and Dad. And even David Stewart had tried to discourage her by saying there was a crime wave going on. As if anything untoward could possibly happen in the fashionable Georgetown section!
Meanwhile, Nellie-May continued to stand in the doorway as if rooted to the spot-and time was not standing still. Something had to be done, and quickly.
"Don't just stand there, Nellie-May," Penny blurted. "For heaven's sake, get started. I'm sick of the sight of you!"
Even as she spoke, Penny felt her face burn with shame. She had not intended to say so much, had not wanted to hurt this exasperating girl.
Nellie-May, her chin trembling, stared at Penny in disbelief, her expression not unlike that of a wounded animal at bay. Then, without bothering to close the door, she teetered slowly down the corridor, her impossibly high heels beating a rhythmic tattoo against the tiled floor.
"I didn't mean it," Penny wailed into the heavy silence that mocked the privacy she'd asked for. "Why, the way she looked, you'd have thought I was throwing her to the wolves! I'll make it up to her later."
CHAPTER SIX
As she dressed for her all-important date, Penny tried to make her mind a blank regarding the recent unpleasantness. But it was no use. Try as she might, she could not shake off the nagging sense of guilt that lay like a hot coal in her heart. It seemed all out of proportion with the incident that had prompted it; incredible that a few simple words, spoken in desperation and actually invited, could cause so much remorse.
After all, Penny reflected, thinking to place the guilt where it really belonged, Nellie-May asked to have her pretty ears pinned back. Somebody had to do it. It was just my bad luck to be around when she needed it most.
That did no good either. The miserable feeling persisted. It was small comfort to assure herself that nothing of any consequence could possibly happen to Nellie-May in the highly circumspect environs of Georgetown-birdbrain though the girl was, whatever her age. Never mind David Stewart's scare story about a crime wave. It was still daylight, though darkness would soon be coming on.
On the other hand, it helped a whole lot to mull over in her mind the many things she could do-would do-to right whatever wrong she might have done to Nellie-May's feelings. This Penny proceeded to do with such thoroughness, such complete abandon of self, that she was able to greet properly the impeccably proper Mark Graham when, promptly at seven-thirty, he arrived. By the simple process of thought transference, she was once more her poised, gracious self.
There was one awkward moment. That was when Penny closed her eyes briefly and indulged in the absurd hope that some kindly genie would come along and transform the very eligible Mark Graham into the not-so-eligible David Stewart. She could tell Dave about her run-in with Nellie-May and her fear of repercussions. Oh, he would laugh at her, tease her. But he would come up with a sensibly reassuring answer, and she would be able to forget the whole ghastly thing.
Then the moment was over, past mistakes and foolish fancies tabled for the moment, and the gala evening had begun.
It was to be a lovely evening-lovely and expensive, Penny opined-planned and executed by an attractive escort who had already "arrived," and therefore would not have to count the cost. True, Mark Graham was young only in heart. But he dressed beautifully, wore his clothes casually, his years lightly, and knew practically all of the important people in Washington by their first names.
He acts young, too, Penny mused, as Mark Graham raced his sports car through the city traffic en route to the glamour spot where they would have dinner, challenging Fate in an all-out effort to keep at the head of the line. A little too young for his age, maybe. And pushy, even opinionated....
They had dinner at the South Seas, a posh eating place where the decor was exotic, the food perfect, the service flawless. A smiling maitre d'hotel ushered them to a table marked "Reserved," where, according to Mark, they could be seen and see.
"You're so wonderful to bring me here," Penny exclaimed impulsively. "It's almost like being in Tahiti or some other colorful South Sea island. With all the traveling I've done, I've never been there. Now Dad's on leave, so we're back in the States, though we've lived just about everywhere. Dad's a journalist, you know, a foreign correspondent-and he's tops, even if I do say so myself."
Mark smiled and caught her hand, pressing it warmly.
"He's an important man-your father. He's known all over, especially in Europe and the Middle East. I must meet the great Philip Gilmore. Think you can arrange it, honeybun?"
Penny flushed and withdrew her hand as unobtrusively as possible. She thought she detected a note of urgency in her escort's voice, but could not be sure.
"Well, yes, I guess so," she said in answer to his question.
"Tomorrow? It's Sunday, you know, and I'm free. Shall we have lunch at the Mayflower-say, around one o'clock-then drive out to The Grove for a quick hello and good-bye?"
There was no mistaking the urgency now, but Penny, although she was puzzled, had no intention of exposing the poor little house to the lordly eyes of this living success story.
She shook her head vigorously. "I'm afraid not. You see-well, Dad's frightfully busy. He's writing a book."
"Some evening early next week, perhaps?"
There it is again-that urgency, Penny thought. She supposed she should invite Mark Graham to dinner with the family, if only as a thank-you for this handsome evening. But she simply could not see him seated at a kitchen table enjoying one of Erlene's Yankee pot roasts or Gena's TV dinners.
"I'm afraid not," she said again. "But I'll phone Dad and find out when he'll be coming into town."
"Good girl," Mark applauded. "Tell him we'll have lunch at the Jockey Club. You'll make it soon, won't you, my dear? Don't forget I'm a busy man, too."
"I-well, I'll try."
Penny stole a quick glance at her companion, as if by doing so she could find a reason for his urgency; she had a feeling that she was being pressured into something-what, she did not know.
But he was looking in the other direction. Evidently his thoughts had raced on to other, perhaps more immediate things. He was smiling and nodding to a group of youngish couples who had entered the dining room and were now being seated at various tables.
They were members of Washington's hound-and-hunt set, Mark said when he could tear his eyes away from the newcomers. Gratuitously, he gave a brief rundown on the affair of the various personalities-their interests, their financial and current marital status-referring to each by his or her first name, and beaming at his listener as though expecting high approval, if not actual applause!
"They're the 'in' people, I suppose." A sour note had crept into Penny's voice, and her fixed smile was growing a trifle thin at the edges.
"Only the young marrieds," Mark said. "You'll find the real bigwigs-and I'm on a first-name basis with them, too, if you'll pardon my saying so-at such places as...." He rattled off a list of names which Penny assumed to be the best restaurants in all of Washington.
"Then you really do know them all, don't you-big-time, small-time, two-time." If Penny's words smacked of sarcasm, it was not altogether coincidental.
"It's my business to know people," Mark said shortly.
Then, in a gentler tone, "That's public relations, my dear. Unless you know the right people, you don't have a chance. As a matter-of-fact...."
"Never mind. You don't need to tell me. I can guess. It's not so much what you know as whom you know." Penny grinned as she repeated the tired old cliche.
"Exactly."
Why, he's a phony and a stinker-a success-at-anybody 's-price sort of person, Penny decided.
Without quite meaning to do so, she flashed him an accusing glance. Their eyes met and held in a kind of wordless challenge. Penny had an uncanny feeling that she was looking straight into a mirror, and she did not like the image it reflected.
I'm almost as much of a stinker as he is, she reflected, her face burning.
There was something to be said, she supposed, for plodding do-it-yourself characters such as David Stewart, who chose to come through the hard way: on their own merits, and with no kowtowing to anyone. Something to be said, too, for Erlene and Dad, who lived according to the old-fashioned verities and wanted her, Penny, to do the same thing. And for Gena, who saw with her heart so many truths that other people, with perfectly good eyes, were too blind to see.
Never once did it occur to Penny that perhaps she was the blindest one of them all.
"Yes, it's a grab bag, a rat race," Mark was saying in the pompous tone of one who knew all the answers. "The trick is to get there first with the most ammunition."
"Could be you're right," Penny murmured when he paused for approval.
He nodded. "You're darned right I'm right. It's not only essential to know the right people; it's also important to be seen in all the right places."
It was impossible in a city like Washington, he went on to say, to separate business from pleasure. "You'd be surprised to know how many big deals are started-and consummated-over a luncheon or dinner table, or in a cocktail lounge."
"Is this a big deal?" Penny blurted, remembering Mark's peculiar insistence upon an early meeting with her father. Why, he had all but twisted her arm! Undoubtedly he had an axe to grind.
No sooner were the brash words out of her mouth, however, than Penny wished she could recall them. But there was no way of doing so. After all, it was only natural for Mark Graham to want to maintain his place in the sun, to forge ahead of the dropouts. It was not her prerogative to question his methods. Who was she to don a halo all of a sudden?
As she might have expected, Mark pulled a long face, looking genuinely hurt. "Certainly this is no deal. It's pleasure, pure and simple. My pleasure," he added, smiling again.
"Mine, too," Penny said, not to be outdone, and peace was restored.
One of these evenings, Mark promised, they would dress formally and dine in a place where socialites spoke only to Congressmen, or better, and the wall-to-wall carpet was deep, downy, and red. Tonight, he reminded Penny, was for fun, as she would see when they joined the young hipsters at Tino's discotheque.
"Too bad I can't give you a real treat, luncheon at the Inner Sanctum, one of these days," Mark regretted. "Unfortunately, that famed eatery is for men only-Senators, no less. Know what those bigwigs eat?"
"No, I'm afraid I wouldn't. I haven't been so long in the States."
"That's right." Mark answered his question: "They eat Yankee bean soup-and I do mean eat it. It's that thick. They eat hamburgers with raw onion, corned beef and cabbage, or New England boiled dinner with Southern corn pone, depending upon whom they wanted to impress, or what neck of the woods they come from. It's good business."
A sickly smile crossed Penny's face. With a painful sense of loss, she was remembering a roadside diner in Maryland where truck drivers ate; where David Stewart, bone-tired and weary of hospital fare, fed heartily upon hamburger and raw onion, frankfurters and beans, not because he was trying to impress anybody or had any axes to grind, but because he was hungry for a man-sized meal, was obliged to economize and was honest enough to say so.
She was conscious of Mark's eyes, steel-blue, fixed upon her. She knew he was expecting her to say something-well, if not clever, at least something worthy of her age and his importance. All she could think of was a facetious:
"Men are funny that way, I suppose. Under the skin, they're all a-like."
She supposed no such thing. Under the skin, Mark Graham, image-maker, and David Stewart, intern, were as unlike as night and day. The difference was not a matter of age, either, although Mark was considerably older than Dave.
Nor was it a question of environment or circumstances. They lived in the same century, the same highly competitive world. But underneath they were poles apart. Mark was the caviar-for-breakfast type of person, interested mainly in creature comforts and the art of getting ahead. Dave would be willing to subsist on pot roast and potluck for the rest of his life if, by doing so, he could minister more effectively to the needs of his fellow men.
In some respects, Penny admitted privately, she was a little like Mark. It seemed incredible that one's small shortcomings could loom so large, look so unbecoming, in someone else. Why, within the brief space of a few short hours she had seen-first in Nellie-May, and now in Mark Graham-traits that had more than a passing resemblance to her own. True, they were exaggerated, but....
Mark's voice broke into Penny's thoughts, sparing her any further exploration. "Something bothering you, my dear?" he teased.
"No. I was just thinking-well, about all the important people you know and how much fun it is being here," Penny heard herself babble.
Mark had the grace not to laugh. "We haven't had any fun yet," he said, and signaled to a waiter to bring the check-never mind the dessert. "We'll have espresso and apple pie at Tino's," he assured Penny, much in the manner of an indulgent parent appeasing a child.
Tino's a Go-Go, according to Mark, was a highly respectable place designed expressly for the purpose of keeping young people entertained and out of mischief. Therefore it was creating its own image.
It's also creating considerable commotion, Penny thought, as she and Mark paused in the doorway of the disco and looked inside. The place was a youth-quake of color, noise, and confusion. Penny was glad, when they entered, to have Mark's hand on her arm, grateful that he piloted her through the mob scene to a table in the farthest corner of the room.
"Are you sure this is a 'right' place?" she bantered when, finally, they were seated and her host had ordered espresso and pie. "Are all these people 'in'? If you came here on my account...."
Mark's quick frown was a reproof, as though Penny had stepped on one of his favorite images. Tino's a Go-Go was his client, he announced stiffly. Because of its worthwhile purpose, one did not ask whether the guests were "in" or "out." It was enough to know that they were young, off the streets, and having good, wholesome fun.
Penny, her ears pinned back for the time being, sat staring wordlessly at the fun explosion taking place in front of her, the likes of which she had never seen before-in Europe, Asia, or even in Africa, where tribal dances sometimes ran the gamut of torso gymnastics from mild spasms to near collapse. Those she had seen, purely in the interest of culture.
She had heard of such goings-on on the Continent, but due to her careful upbringing, she had never been a part of the night life. She was shocked.
Involuntarily, Penny pressed her hands to her ears in an effort to shut out the bedlam, but not too soon to hear Mark Graham's deep voice:
"Maybe you should go back overseas where you came from, Miss Nose-in-theAir."
Well, now look who's talking, Penny thought, but decided to let the unwarranted remark pass. With her hands still pressed against her ears, she returned her attention to the dance floor.
Wild youngsters, male and female, were gyrating this way and that, flailing their arms and otherwise asserting their inalienable right to behave and look as odd as they pleased.
They were getting considerable competition from a sprinkling of older people who evidently thought young, and were making an all-out effort to preserve the illusion. They were chaperones, Mark said. Nobody, even the young ones, looked happy. They were all too busy having fun!
"Me-I'll never be the same again," Penny groaned, removing her hands from her ears. "I never saw people work so hard to have fun. I feel tired for them."
Mark laughed heartily. "That's the hustle they're doing now," he volunteered. "That's old hat. Just wait till they go into orbit with one of the new numbers. I forget their names."
"Never mind," Penny said without thinking. "After all, what's in a name? Put them all together and they spell the world's eighth wonder. How's that for a title, Mr. Image-maker?"
Appalled by her effrontery, she waited for the reproof that her witless remark had invited. To her surprise, the public relations virtuoso beamed, took out his notebook, and wrote a few words.
"Lady," he chuckled, "you have just coined a slogan. You've gotten yourself a new job, if you want it. Something tells me you'll be needing one before the stars fall," he added cryptically.
Before Penny could respond to the loaded remark, Mark Graham pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and held out a hand. "Now shall we dance, my dear?" He inclined his head toward the unmerry merrymakers. "Looks like barrels of fun."
Penny could think of nothing she wanted to do less. However, under the circumstances, she felt she had no choice other than to stand up and be counted as a working member of this strangely unfunny fun explosion.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Unexpectedly, the flamboyant dancing was fun. Soon Penny, her inhibitions forgotten, and a surprisingly agile Mark Graham were flailing and oscillating with the others, improvising as they went along. It was only out of deference to her panting companion that Penny finally suggested they call it a night and start home.
"They really are exciting-your weird native dances," she declared with the best of intentions.
Apparently the comment did not set too well with Mark, for he frowned ominously. "Must you always make fun, disparage, wear a halo?" he queried. "Have you never thought of changing your image?"
"Certainly not," Penny retorted. "Why should I? Just because you don't like my looks, maybe, or the way I dance? Or because you happen to be in the image-making business? No, thanks. I'm satisfied just being myself."
He grinned and patted her arm, indicating there were to be no hard feelings between them. "It's nothing personal, my dear," he avowed, then proceeded to make it uncomfortably personal.
"Oh, I'll admit you're beautiful, have all the social graces and that sort of thing." He chuckled. "And I won't say you aren't nice to go out with, fun to dance with, a sweet eyeful to be seen with, Penny Gilmore. What I mean is, you have nothing to worry about in the glamour department. But I've been thinking. Seems to me a change of image might be a whole lot of help to you, career-wise."
Penny's eyes flashed fire, though she managed to treat Mark Graham's harangue with the lofty silence she felt it deserved. She would not give this know-it-all the satisfaction of seeing her fly off the handle over his foolish appraisal. Nor would she be baited by his innuendoes into asking foolish questions.
She had not forgotten Mark's earlier remark to the effect that she might be needing a job soon; the implication being that Penny's days in the offices of J. Cyrus Henry, the Smiling Legislator, were numbered. And Mr. Henry was Mark's client-Mark's Number One Image. On the other hand, Mr. Henry was Dad's long-term friend. Nothing could happen.
Penny's resolve to ask no questions was short-lived. They were scarcely out of the disco and seated in Mark's car, leaving for home, when she was much in the state of the cat that curiosity killed. The problem now was how to play it cool; how to find out what she wanted to know without Mark suspecting how much she cared.
And she cared terribly. The very thought of losing her job at this point was sickening. It would mean returning to The Grove a failure. What would the family say? And, even more important, what would David Stewart think?
Meanwhile, Mark Graham, having all but shattered her poise, appeared to have forgotten the whole thing. Wasn't that just like the man! Turning the car, he detoured into a broad street where the houses were distinctive for their architecture and airs of aloofness, and began to drive slowly.
"Here, my lovely," he explained with an elaborate gesture, "is where the big-time diplomats live. Pretty cool, huh?"
"You know them all, too. I suppose-and by their first names." Penny, already distraught, and feeling that Mark was talking down to her, was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
"Well, no," Mark admitted. "But I am thinking of lining up some clients in Europe and the Middle East. All I need now is someone who can help me make the right contacts."
Penny frowned, believing she had found the answer to at least one question. Mark's reason for wanting to meet her father was quite clear. But there were other questions, even more important to her, and he seemed bent upon forestalling them.
"Well, shall we drive on?" Penny said coldly, clinging fast to the remnants of pride she had left. "I've seen Embassy Row several times since I've been back in the-States. As a matter-of-fact, I've seen embassies all over the world. In Cairo, we lived in a house just as impressive as any of these." She made a sweeping gesture that included all the houses in the immediate vicinity. She waited a moment for that to register, then continued, still coldly:
"In fact, it was a palace, built for a princess. It had solid gold water taps, and a garden as large as a park. And there were servants all over the place. You may not believe this, but it's true."
"I believe it," Mark said, but he tacked on, quite impudently: "Now we've gotten the princess out of the palace, why not let's get the palace out of the princess?"
"Must you always make fun, disparage?" Penny demanded, unconsciously repeating her companion's earlier accusation. "Have you ever thought of changing your image?" Then the questions poured out, tumbling over one another in their haste for expression.
"What did you mean, I might be needing a job soon? What did you mean when you implied I'd have to make myself over if I ever wanted to get anywhere? What would you know about such things, you"-she searched her mind for a suitable American term for poseur-"you phony?"
Mark shrugged. "Could be it takes a phony to spot a phony," he observed, with such surprising good nature that Penny was momentarily disarmed.
"Why, I'm getting along fine with J. Cyrus Henry, your Number One Image. Just fine. If I smile any harder, I'll start looking like the old coot."
Mark Graham made a gesture as if he had given up, and they drove along in a deepfreeze silence, until he stopped the car in front of the apartment house and Penny made ready to get out.
He placed a detaining hand on her arm. "Just a minute, honeybun. There are a few facts of life-business life, that is-you need to know, and I am about to tell you."
"I won't listen. And don't start saying it's for my own good. That's always a prelude to something unpleasant." Penny tried to pull away from Mark, but his hand on her arm tightened.
"Oh, you'll listen, whether you like it or not. I don't expect any thanks. But I owe a lot to J. Cyrus Henry, your long-suffering employer. And I'll be darned if I'll stand around, smiling, while you sit there looking down your nose at everything in sight, and otherwise spoiling a perfectly grand image."
"Pooh-you and your images," Penny derided. "If you're insinuating Mr. Henry might discharge me, you're out of your mind. He couldn't possibly do that. Dad wouldn't let him." Her face burned, and she added hastily, "What I mean is, they've been friends for ages."
"Yes, I know. Come to think of it, J. Cyrus isn't likely to discharge you, friendship or not. He isn't that kind of a 'coot,' as you call him. He'd sooner cut his throat than put a young person-especially one with no visible means of earning an honest living-out of a job. A kindlier man than good old J. Cyrus never existed. What I mean is, he's real."
"Dad says the same thing," Penny admitted. "If he's so real, why does he need you and all that image-building stuff?"
"He doesn't. He's an old-timer, with a built-in image that nothing can touch. Truth is, I need him, just as a lot of other people do."
"Then you're a charlatan, along with several other things I might mention," Penny accused him.
"Never mind about me," Mark retorted. "And you don't need to apologize. In public relations, a man's skin grows thick."
With that, he returned the conversation to Penny's employer, pointing out with evident sincerity some of the qualities that made J. Cyrus Henry a genuinely good if not truly great man. The Smiling Legislator's interest in his constituents sprang from a benevolent heart. He wanted every mother's son and daughter of them to be happy, upright, and gainfully employed.
"He's all but hipped on the subject of young people, their welfare and educational needs." Mark went on to say, "Insists they're the hope of the world-never mind reports to the effect that they're tearing it apart just for the fun of it. Get the picture?"
When Penny did not answer, Mark leaned forward and spoke confidentially.
"But unless you can stomach horror stories, don't let him get started on his pet crusade-the crime wave that's sweeping the country. He's working on ways and means to combat the frightening situation. He fairly oozes statistics on murder, criminal assault, and kidnapping, as well as other major and minor crimes."
"Sounds gruesome," Penny murmured. "You don't need to warn me. I'm not likely to encourage any horror stories. I'm getting goose pimples right now, just hearing you talk about them."
"J. Cyrus is so right," Mark continued. "Something must be done about it, and quickly. Why, even here in Washington, it's getting to the point when a man doesn't feel safe in his own home. And a girl can't step out on the street alone, especially after dark, without taking a chance of getting herself strangled or worse. According to the latest statistics...."
"Stop it, please!" Penny wailed. Her face had turned a ghastly white as Mark made his last pronouncement, and now her whole body was shaking.
With sickening clarity, she was remembering Nellie-May and the way she'd stood in the doorway, looking back at the interloper who was speeding her departure from home, as though reluctant to go out into the oncoming darkness. That had been hours ago. Where was Nellie-May now?
"I didn't mean to scare you, honeybun," Mark said. He put an arm around her protectively, soothing her, and Penny let it stay there for whatever small comfort it afforded.
"Oh, I'm not scared," Penny said sturdily. Not for myself, that is, she added mentally.
Fearfully, she glanced up at the apartment, whose living room windows faced the street, hoping to see lights. The windows were dark, which undoubtedly meant that Nellie-May was still out.
Experimentally, she closed her eyes, as if by doing so she could shut out the ominous truth. But her imagination began to play tricks on her, so she opened them quickly. In that brief instant she had seen a fleeting picture of the young girl, bruised and beaten-perhaps dead-on the historic cobblestones of one of Georgetown's dimly lit alleyways; Husha whimpering at her side.
Meanwhile, Penny felt Mark Graham's arms tightening around her, a circumstance she had been too perturbed to notice. Obviously, he had mistaken stark desperation for conscious encouragement. He was holding her much too close for friendly solicitude. She would have to do something about it.
She tried to leave the car, saying, "Thanks for a most interesting evening. It was fun." She half-heard, but preferred to ignore, the man's muttered soliloquy:
"Hell's bells-a prima donna to the very last gasp! Poor baby, she's scared to death of life. Something's bugging her right now. But she won't let her hair down and be folks. Oh, no! A man can't even try to help her without feeling he's a heel who may be destroying something beautiful...."
His speech incensed Penny. How could he talk that way to her? After all, she was a woman. She had no doubts about that. Ever since Werner Molders had made love to her, showing her the wonders and the delights of the human body, she had been a woman. And she wondered just how much of a man Mark was. Could he call himself a man with a straight face? Could he love her like a man, leaving her satisfied like Werner had?
Penny decided she would have to find out. She knew, even at her young age, that one of the best ways to humiliate a man was to prove him incompetent during sex. So Penny resolved to test Mark in the ways of love, right then and there.
She sat before him, slowly lowering her skirt and revealing a set of purple bikini panties to his eyes, which immediately lit up.
"I want to feel you fuck me, Mark. I want you to show me what a real man you are!"
Mark wasted no time in showing her precisely what she wanted. He motioned her into the back seat of his automobile and moved her down on her back along its length. He leaned forward and firmly locked his lips on hers and began to run his hand beneath her panties, moving his thick finger quickly inside her pussy until she was moaning out loud. Before she knew what was happening, he had added two more of his large digits inside her cunt and was pumping them inside of her, enjoying the sound of her moans. He opened up her blouse and began powerfully squeezing her large breasts, pinching the nipples whenever he felt like it.
Penny protested a bit, but Mark could see that she was really getting quite turned on by his ministrations on her boobs, and that her protestations were virtually meaningless.
He took off his slacks, and before Penny knew what was happening, he had his big thick pecker laid out between her titties and was making a deliciously warm and slippery cavern out of her two huge orbs. With what his cock and hands were doing to her tits, particularly her now ultra-hard nipples, Penny knew that Mark could-and probably would-match Werner as a love maker of the first order. His cock plunged into that milk-white canal that her big tits created and slid to within inches of her ruby red lips. And she didn't hesitate a bit to chew on his purpling velvet-like cockhead as it touched her lips. He was a couple of inches inside her mouth now, feeding his shaft into her and then reeling it back in, each time feeling the intense friction that her mountainous breasts were creating around his pecker.
As Mark pumped and Penny sucked, she also squeezed her tits around his invader, letting her tits love his cock into more and more ecstasy. But Mark knew that he wanted to ball Penny's brains out, so he made sure that he didn't shoot his load into her oral channel. He was saving that sperm-filled onslaught for the depths of her fine glistening pussy.
Mark pulled out of her mouth and from between the cavern made by her red-tipped orbs. He began to move his tongue down her body, stopping at her cunt, and thereby giving his cock a short rest before putting it to Penny ... all the way.
His licker went for her pubic hairs, twirling them around and coating them with saliva. Then, he went for her shining pussy lips, licking, biting, and nuzzling them while sticking his fingers inside and occasionally squeezing her tiny hooded clit, making the nub get harder and harder. No longer could Penny think about testing Mark's manhood. He was passing with flying colors, and all she could do now was enjoy his work upon her body ... her all-woman body.
His tongue went deep into her pinkness, swallowing up the juices and enjoying the musky scent that was tickling his nostrils and making his penis stay hard and at the ready for what was to come....
He blew his hot breath deep inside her cunt, and Penny writhed beneath his mouth, mewling like a cat and feeling like lights and firecrackers were going off inside of her, Mark had his tongue so far in that Penny told herself she wouldn't be surprised if she felt his tongue tickling her breasts ... from the inside. "I want your cock inside, Mark. Please fuck me! Fuccccccckkkkkkkkkmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"
Mark reached down and gave his hard prick a few strokes to get it at its peak length and full breadth and then moved up on top of her so that it was a pubic hair away from her begging pussy.
"You want to know what a man's dick feels like, pussy! Well, here's one that's nice and long and thick and...!"
With that, he slammed home his cock between Penny's twat lips, making the depths of her clutching vagina feel like they were going to burst with its massive size.
As Mark plunged down, Penny thrust her hips upward to greet his muscular onslaught. Her big breasts slammed against his oncoming chest, the noises reverberating off the inner walls of the car. Mark's big cock was so far in and Penny's grasping cunt so tight around it, that it seemed as if the two were one body.
Mark's well-hung nuts felt as though they were about to burst, and that's precisely what they did. The cum shot in gobs from his large piss-slit, filling Penny's inner depths to near-overflowing. Each sperm-loaded shot slapped into the recesses of her vagina, giving her the warmest of feelings inside.
And her well-lubricated pussy was quivering with each burst of cum, letting Mark know that he had satisfied her needs and desires as a woman deserves to have those needs and desires satisfied.
They rested for a few minutes, but soon Mark found that he was hard again, and wanted to have some more fun with Penny's delightful body.
"Have you ever been fucked up the asshole, honey?" he queried.
Penny replied in the negative, but said that it was something she'd sure like to try, considering the size and talent of Mark's cock.
She got up on the back seat on her hands and knees and presented her delicious creamy ass cheeks to Mark's view. In the meantime, Mark removed what remnants of clothing he had on so that he could get the full enjoyment out of this upcoming penetration.
As Mark didn't exactly keep a bottle of baby oil in his car, he had to think about what to use to grease up Penny's puckered asshole so that the entryway would be nice and easy for his huge prick to slide into.
Her amply lubricated cunt was the answer. Mark rolled his thick forefinger around in her cunt for several seconds, exciting the woman's insides once again. As the ooze coated his digit, he knew that it would be just the right liquid to give his cock clear sailing.
He extracted the finger and placed it at the entrance to her brown hole, making the shit passageway glisten beneath his finger. Then he probed inside, feeling the tight hole absorb his loving finger as it would soon be absorbing his big cock.
When things felt lubricated enough, he rubbed some of her juice on his cock and stroked his lengthy shaft a couple of times. He was ready to cornhole her, and he hoped that she was ready too. His cockhead entered her opening.
"Aaaaaaooooooooo!" was Penny's reply as her interior pained her ... but, without a doubt, also pleasured her.
"Take it up your ass, you pussy! Take my thick cock inside your shit chute and enjoy it to the hilt!"
Mark fed a few inches of cock into her asshole and she held her hands up a second, signaling him to stop. But he continued to ease more and more of his pork inside her, knowing that no matter what her hands were indicating, her asshole and her body were crying out for more ... much more ... all of his massive cock.
In time, he was all the way inside her chocolate speedway, his aching testicles ready to shoot another load inside her body, this time, up the rear entryway.
Penny was practically screaming, but she and he both knew it was far more a scream of pleasure than a scream of pain.
The jism was boiling up inside his nuts and soon it spurt out of his piss opening into her backdoor chute, filling it to the point where it overflowed out from between her sweet ass cheeks and dropped onto the back seat. The two lovers fell across the seat, somewhat exhausted, to say the least.
After recovering her senses, Penny's mind returned to thoughts of Nellie-May, and she ran from the car and up to her apartment house.
In the light from the living room, Penny could see Nellie-May curled up in bed, sound asleep. Lying there in the shadows, with her face cupped in a small hand and her bright gold hair splayed across the pillow, she could easily have passed for an innocent, sleeping Gena. On the floor beside the bed was Penny's cherished blue dress, now a crumpled heap, serving as a bed for Husha, who was sleeping as soundly as his mistress.
According to all rules of human behavior, Penny supposed she should have been fighting mad, not only because of the ruined dress, but also because of all the agony she'd been through, for no reason at all! Her only emotion, aside from an odd sense of compassion, was an enormous feeling of relief that Nellie-May-the young ingrate!-was safely home and in bed.
On an impulse, Penny went over and kissed the sleeping girl on the cheek. As she did, she saw that Nellie-May's face was streaked with mascara and her pillow was quite wet.
Why, she's been crying, Penny mused, and began feeling guilty all over again.
As Penny picked up her ruined dress, she spied the borrowed shoes and took them into the living room for closer inspection. The slim high heels were encrusted in a kind of clay-like mud that would not be found within the sacred precincts of Georgetown. The implication was plain. Nellie-May had gone far, stayed long-and walked home!
Puzzled, Penny put the shoes back where she'd found them and retired to her own room to get undressed and to ponder the events of the evening. She was convinced that she had not heard the last of the NellieMay episode, or of Mark Graham, either.
It was possible, she concluded finally, that she would have to change her image a little bit, if only as a matter of self-preservation. But she would do it in her own good time and in her own way, alert to such faults as were so unbecoming in others. Obviously it was impossible to live graciously in a strange new world where everybody was out of step but herself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The summer was passing with such dizzying speed that Penny often felt she was on a rocket ship, whirling in space. In many of the places she'd lived, time was relatively unimportant. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow melded together into a kind of easy-going way of life which Philip Gilmore, Penny's father, sometimes described as a no-hope-no-hurry type of existence.
Here in the States, however, time was the one commodity that there was too little of. The weeks, the days, even the hours, were all too short for reasonable accomplishment, much less fooling around.
Penny had come to Washington in May. Now, incredibly, it was the middle of August, with autumn only a few heartbeats away. Where has the time gone? she asked herself over and over again.
Today, she was alone in the office of J. Cyrus Henry, the genial legislator, having arrived early for the express purpose of getting out a large mailing in the interest of health, education, and welfare for his beloved constituents. Because it was a Saturday and the air-conditioner had been turned off for the weekend, the heat was almost overpowering.
While this was technically a day for rest and relaxation, Penny had come to work of her own free will and accord. Mr. Henry, now out of the city attending a meeting on crime prevention, had insisted upon getting extra help for the prosaic business of stuffing envelopes.
"No, thanks," Penny had told him. "I'd rather do it myself."
"Good girl." The kindly old gentleman, inured to surprises, had beamed his approval. "The way to get a thing done right is to do it oneself."
Oh, she had known all along that stuffing mountains of envelopes would be no picnic. Nevertheless, so engrossed was she in the work that it was eleven o'clock before she realized how tedious, how tiresome, it really was. Why, she had worked steadily for three solid hours and had scarcely made a dent in the pile!
She was glad now that she had accepted Nellie-May's offer to come in later and lend a hand, and wished she had not been so quick to decline Cynthia's and Susan's proffered help. Even Mark Graham had risen to the occasion and offered his services.
In fact, it was amazing how Mark, like everyone else-well almost everyone-had changed within the brief space of three scurrying months. Had anyone made the astute observation that the change was within herself, Penny would have denied the allegation and given the presumptuous alleger a piece of her mind. She had not changed. Certainly not!
Presently, feeling the need for a brief rest, Penny got up from her desk, stretched her legs, and went over to the window-wall, where she stood for a while watching the street scene below. A line of people of assorted sizes and ages, all carrying placards, marched along Pennsylvania Avenue, seemingly oblivious of the sizzling midday heat.
Back and forth, back and forth, they paced, while the sun beat mercilessly down upon them. From where she stood, Penny could not read what the placards said, but she knew the marchers were demonstrating for what they thought was right. They'd get it, too-if what they wanted was right for themselves and for their fellow man.
America is like that, she reflected. People get what they ask for, work for-that is, if their ultimate objective is "to establish Justice ... promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" for all....
Penny smiled as she heard herself repeating from childhood words she'd nearly forgotten but had come to believe. She could almost hear Erlene saying:
"Look who's waving the flag now!"
Even so, it was hard for her to believe that this fabulous America she had so recently discovered had been there all the time!
Her rest-break over, she returned to her desk and resumed work. Since the task was purely mechanical, she permitted herself a backward glance through the past three months, trying to find related incidents that might pinpoint the time, the place, and the possible reason for this dramatic change in people and places.
For one thing, just when-and why-had J. Cyrus Henry emerged from being a pussyfooting politician, angling for votes, into a man of great compassion, high ideals, and genuine love for his fellow man? Just when had he stopped being "a tiresome old coot" to become the kindliest, most considerable employer a girl could ever hope to have? As Mark Graham had said, the old gentleman's smile was indeed real, his heart as great as his beloved Southwest.
All of which made the stuffing of mountains of envelopes, on a hot Saturday in August when no one else was working, if not exactly a pleasure, at least a spiritually rewarding chore.
The change in Mark "Graham was equally astonishing, and certainly for the better. He no longer badgered Penny about changing her image, but appeared to have taken stock of his own. In their recent dates together, he had concentrated on providing lively and interesting entertainment, with almost no name-dropping at all!
They had gone to concerts, museums, and points of historic interest, with occasional nights on the town for dinner and dancing. And Mark had always acted like a gentleman, never a wolf. Once, at his insistence, they had crashed a large reception in Embassy Row-but only once. Even that, in Penny's opinion, was once too often.
"You're so right, my dear," Mark agreed, surprisingly. "It's good to see you've come down to earth, changed you perspective."
"I've changed my perspective ... '..?" Penny began, then decided to let the matter ride. After all, people never saw the beams in their own eyes; they were much too busy performing the peculiarly human rite of removing the motes from the eyes of others.
If Penny loved her job-which she certainly did, now-she was equally enamored of her living quarters. Miraculously, the Georgetown apartment had graduated from being an overly crowded area, harboring four girls, their assorted belongings and an inquisitive dog, into being a place of friendly camaraderie.
Cynthia and Susan, when at home, were marvelous companions, and Nellie-May, in her reincarnation, was not too hard to take. In fact, the four roommates never-well, almost never-got into one another's hair. Even Husha, formerly so snoopy, seemed to have become reconciled to the various smells.
It was fun to take turns with the other girls, to prepare quick meals to be consumed leisurely off trays while watching television. It was exciting to hoard dimes, then to go out as one of an "affluent" foursome and shoot the works at one of Georgetown's smartest restaurants. In a way, it was like feeding upon hot dogs and sauerkraut, while dimes piled up into the necessary dollars for a really big splurge, in the David Stewart manner.
It isn't too bad, Penny reflected, hibernating occasionally in a form-fitting bedroom while Susan entertains her Mr. Right, or Cynthia, whose job as an airplane hostess is a romantic hazard, fends off the importunities of a Mr. Wrong. She, Penny, could always do her nails, read a book, or wash her hair. Nellie-May, who seemed to have crawled into a shell, seldom intruded now.
As she looked back, Penny tried to remember just when Nellie-May had converted from being a Grade A nuisance into an object of pity. Was it on that unforgettable Saturday night when Penny had returned to the apartment, after a supposedly riotous evening, to find the girl all but drowned in a tear-sodden pillow?
Or was it the dreadful morning-after when Cynthia had come home unexpectedly from her West Coast run? Finding her cousin still asleep, Penny's dress on the back of a chair, her own desecrated shoes by the side of the bed, Cynthia had assumed the worst; the worst being that Nellie-May, in defiance of strict orders, had been skylarking in forbidden Rock Creek Park, and that Penny, who surely knew better, had been an accessory to the fact.
Whereupon Cynthia, normally a gentle girl, had read the riot act to Nellie-May; not sparing Penny, who at this point could see herself only as an innocent and grievously wronged bystander.
"I don't know what you mean, Cynthia," Penny had said defensively when NellieMay, sobbing wildly, had departed the scene and locked herself in the bathroom. "I don't know what's wrong with Rock Creek Park, except that it's quite a distance away. I only loaned her my dress, so what's the to-do about? After all, she's eighteen years old, and knows all there is to know, or claims to...."
"Nellie-May is fifteen, and too precocious for her own good. She only thinks she knows it all. Never hear of a romance-prone teenager? Never hear of a girl who thinks Cloud Nine is for real?"
"Yes. I've heard. Only I prefer to think such unrealistic people don't exist."
"You-and a lot of other escapists who don't feel responsible for the airborne prima donnas."
It was with mixed emotions that Penny later had accepted her roommate's apology and listened to a confidential report on the Southern girl. According to Cynthia, NellieMay was a cousin, several times removed, the product of a broken marriage, and therefore without roots. The "lovely family and beautiful plantation home in Georgia" were pure fiction, born of false pride and a foolish desire to impress.
"I brought her here, thinking I could help her," Cynthia had gone on to say. "You know-give her a happy summer and send her to school here in the fall. I didn't know I was letting myself in for baby-sitting and real trouble."
"She's lonely, she needs friends," Penny .had volunteered, a little embarrassed over the revelation. "Maybe if she thought she could have a few friends in here for a party or something...."
"She knows very well she can have her friends come here-that is, when I'm around to give them clearance. But no, she's found herself a 'steady,' as she calls him. Heaven only knows what this Chet Dalton is like. And the minute I turn my back, she's off to the park or somewhere to meet him. I can't seem to get through to her."
Then, as now, Penny had felt that NellieMay was more to be pitied than censured. At the time she had expected to do many things for the lonely girl before the summer was over. Now the summer was practically gone and she'd done nothing.
Perhaps this very afternoon, when NellieMay came to help with the envelope stuffing, she could have a heart-to-heart talk with her, get through to the girl behind the defensive facade. And there were still three weekends left before school started.
Why not, Penny asked herself, on one of these remaining weekends, take Nellie-May out to The Grove where real people lived? Gena's almost fifteen and also becoming slightly romance-prone. But she has her feet on the ground and would be good for NellieMay. And so would Erlene and Dad. Her parents were as genuine as the sturdy little house, which in one fleeting summer had blossomed from a makeshift shelter into a home-sweet-home where love and happiness dwelt in abundance.
More than once Dave Stewart had said nothing ailed Nellie-May that a few years, a little understanding, and a lot of love wouldn't cure. And nowhere in the whole wide world would one find a better diagnostician than Dave Stewart, intern, soon to become David Stewart, M.D.
And so it was by an extraordinarily circuitous route that Penny finally arrived at the subjects closest to her heart: family, home, and David Stewart. Oh, they had changed, too, especially the man she'd tried to put out of her life, but whose stubborn image refused point-blank to get out of her heart.
Through the summer months she and Dave had seen each other quite often, considering how busy she was, what with time carrying on like crazy; and how busy Dave was, what with his residency coming up, and the daily routine of hospital life going on just the same.
However, they had managed to squeeze in such patriotic excursions as a visit to Mount Vernon and a trip to the National Cemetery in Arlington, as well as trips to other historic shrines. By way of diversion, they had taken long drives through the Maryland countryside and enjoyed an occasional basket dinner at a picnic spot Dave had discovered, overlooking the Potomac.
And twice, at Penny's suggestion, they had stopped off at their special roadside diner for hamburgers and sliced raw onions, or frankfurters and Boston baked beans. There, they'd been greeted by friendly truck drivers, newcomers, who, assuming Penny and Dave were married, avowed they remembered them when they were only engaged.
Several times recently, they had driven to the little house in The Grove, to admire Dad's latest carpentry or paint job, to talk about the contact lenses Gena would soon be getting, and to enjoy one of Erlene's luscious Yankee pot roasts. They would leave there, Penny glowing with pride, Dave lapsing into a thoughtful silence characteristic of his new incarnation.
It disturbed Penny to realize that the change in David Steward boded no good for romance. He was as handsome as always, as friendly, as charming. But somewhere along the line, he had lost something, and Penny could not shake off the feeling that she was the actual loser.
She tried to think that his preoccupation was due to the pressure of his work, the new responsibilities he was facing. As a doctor, he would have to be dignified, aloof. But was it necessary for him to practice on her?
He no longer made light of her shortcomings, jokingly suggesting ways and means of improvement. And not once during the whole summer had he mentioned love and marriage. Only last April he had spoken the two words in practically the same breath.
True, she'd discouraged him, but people who were genuinely in love did not give up so easily. Clearly, he'd concluded that she did not have the stamina necessary for a doctor's wife; he had decided to travel faster-and alone.
Because the thought was too painful to contemplate for long, Penny returned her full attention to the task at hand. The pile of finished envelopes was growing, she noted but there was no noticeable decrease in the heaps yet to be done. It was pushing one o'clock, too, and Nellie-May, who had promised to come before noon, had not ye put in an appearance.
The phone rang in the outer office, and Penny ran to answer it. This, she decided would be the tardy Nellie-May, with some elaborate alibi to excuse herself for letting Penny down. Undoubtedly, Nellie-May was right now en route to the off-limits park for a rendezvous with her boyfriend. All she'd wanted was an excuse to get out; Cynthia had been right. When she lifted the receive and said, "Hello," Penny was surprised to hear David Stewart's voice coming over the wire.
"I called the apartment, and Cynthia said you were at the office. How come? Don' you know it's Saturday?"
"Oh, so it's you, Dave. I was expecting someone else," Penny stammered, taken off-guard. "What I mean is, I'm working.'
"Can't you find something better to do on the hottest day of the hottest month in the year?" Dave demanded. "How about a picnic at our place down on the Potomac? I have the afternoon and evening off. There's a swimming pool nearby. We'll eat, have a swim, then go places. Okay?"
Penny hesitated, but only briefly. "I'm sorry, Dave. It sounds wonderful, but-well, I just can't."
"Nonsense," Dave scoffed. "Why can't you?"
"Because I'm working, that's why."
"Nonsense," Dave said again. "What's so pressing it can't wait till Monday? I'll be around to pick you up in twenty minutes or so. I'm sure nothing you're doing on a Saturday is so important it can't wait."
"It is so important," Penny said a little crossly. "What I mean is, I'm up to my ears stuffing envelopes that have to go out on Monday. If it was your work-well, I don't try to lead you astray when you say you have to go back to the hospital."
Instantly David Stewart's manner changed, and he spoke with solicitude, even respect. "Need any help? Had any lunch?"
"No-uh-yes. If you'd only ask one question at a time...."
"All right. Need any help?"
"Well, stuffing envelopes isn't a picnic-and there must be tons of these hideous things. Nellie-May promised to come help, but she hasn't shown up. To tell you the truth," Penny added wearily, "I'm just about dead. I've been here since eight o'clock."
"Well, don't die yet, sweet." Dave laughed. "There's a doctor on the way. Had any lunch?" he repeated.
"No. I forgot to eat, and I'm starved."
"Take it easy, baby," Dave said. "I'll be right there in no time flat, bearing sandwiches and stuff, prepared to stay for the duration."
Upon leaving the telephone, Penny returned to her work with renewed energy and considerable speed. Funny, she mused, how you start getting better even before the doctor arrives. Why, these miserable throw-aways-she waved a hand in a sweeping gesture-are practically in the mail right now!
CHAPTER NINE
Ever since moving to Washington, Penny had made it a point to return to The Grove for occasional weekends with the family. She knew Gena looked forward to these visits, so she saved up any amusing incidents that had happened in the office or elsewhere to relate to her young sister. Gena listened, entranced, visibly impressed by Penny's account of "evenings on the town" with the sophisticated Mark Graham and the important people she'd encountered.
She's growing up-but fast, Penny reflected. And she's changing, getting ideas. Have I been setting a pattern?
It was a sobering thought, made fleeting by the reminder that the whole world was changing and Gena, no longer a child, was running true to form. Come October, Gena would be fifteen years old. Penny was now twenty; had been since June. Now and then during one of their gab fests, Penny would say, in apology for past derelictions:
"I haven't forgotten the lovely weekend in Washington I've been promising you, angel. It's just that-well, I don't know what happens to the time-"
"It's all right, sis. I know how busy you are, and I guess I've been almost as busy here at home. Besides, I'd rather wait till I get my contact lenses and grow used to them." Gena's face would flush and she would slip off what she called her "owl glasses," adding:
"I wouldn't be caught dead in front of a lot of important people in these dreadful things. Any how, I'm having a ball here at home. Mom's always saying, 'East, West-home's best.' Could be she's right."
"Could be," Penny would agree, indulgently at first, but with growing conviction as time passed.
Today, as she half-ran along the shady street, en route from the bus station to the cottage, Penny tried to recall just when The Grove had suddenly become "home." It was not on the first few visits, when the Georgetown apartment was exciting and new; when the rehabilitated little house was only a gleam in Dad's eyes and a dream in Erlene's heart.
But the painting and repair work had gotten finished, despite Philip Gilmore's amateur status. Gena and Erlene had taken over the interior-decorating job, unpacking and arranging the beautiful curios and exotic pieces they'd collected in far-away places and stored in the garage. The Gilmores, in fact, had achieved a modern miracle out of love and three pairs of willing hands.
Where have I been all this time and what have I been doing? Penny asked herself as she ran up the flagstone walk that led to the cottage.
Erlene opened the door, greeted her stepdaughter fondly and led her inside. Phil and Gena had gone shopping for groceries, she explained. "So I'm taking this opportunity to move things around some more. I've had that Greek Discus Thrower in five different places so far, and he still looks as though he doesn't belong...."
"Don't change a thing, darling," Penny said. "The whole place looks lovely, warm, and inviting. You and Gena outdid yourselves on those draperies. And the brass Egyptian tray makes a handsome coffee table. You've really done wonders-and in such a short time."
"We've been all summer," Erlene said matter-of-factly.
"All summer?" Penny repeated, realizing but still not wanting to believe that the summer was nearing its end.
"That's right, dear." Erlene, now busy making coffee and preparing a mid-morning snack for herself and Penny, smiled happily. "Hard to believe, isn't it? This is the last weekend in August. The only thing that remains to be done is to give the housewarming. We've decided to do that on Labor Day, when everyone in The Grove can be here."
It was Penny's turn to become time-conscious. Labor Day, she pointed out after a moment's calculation, was less than ten days away. "Are you out of your mind, Erlene?" she teased. "What are you going to use for time, for food, for help? Couldn't we hire somebody? What I mean is," she amended hastily, "is there something I can do to help?"
Erlene nodded. "I was just about to ask if you'd help write the guests. I'd like your employer, J. Cyrus Henry, to be here. Do you think he'll be staying in Washington over Labor Day?"
Penny said she thought so, but would make sure when she returned to work on Monday. Erlene also suggested that Penny's three suite mates and their young men be invited-and David Stewart, of course.
"And that nice public relations man who works for Mr. Henry-Mr. Graham, isn't it? Your father did him a small favor and, in return, he is putting Phil in touch with a fine literary agent," Erlene explained.
So Mark Graham repaid a favor with a favor! This indeed was a switch from the bare-faced opportunist Penny had first known-or so she felt. Perhaps Mark's idea about getting to know everyone-pushy though it seemed-wasn't such a bad philosophy of life after all. She nodded an agreement to Erlene's request and said:
"I hate to say this, but it begins to sound as if you'll need to hire a hall. With the delegation from Washington and everyone in The Grove...."
Erlene was not perturbed. She had decided the only solution was a barbecue, she explained. They had their own grill and could borrow others from neighbors; Philip and the other men would do the cooking. Barbecued chicken and hot dogs, with corn on the cob, would be the staples. And of course there would be tossed salad, potato salad, baked beans, pickles, and everything else necessary for a bang-up cookout. The vacant lot next door could be used for games and/or square dancing. "It still sounds like a lot of work," Penny said dubiously. "Oh, I know you've made beautiful parties all over the world. I'll never forget ... "
"This isn't that kind of a party," Erlene protested. "And I'll have help. Practically every woman who comes will bring some special dish-and plenty of it."
"You mean they come as guests and bring food?"
"But of course." Erlene nodded. "That's a good old American custom, and it still prevails here in The Grove. Why, Mrs. Magone would be genuinely hurt if I didn't ask her to bring the tossed salad with her own Italian dressing. Wait till you taste it; you'll think you're back in Naples!"
Penny smiled, and Erlene took a notebook from her apron pocket and consulted it briefly. "Mrs. Babcock will bring watermelon-rind pickles; Fran Mitchell, baked beans; and I'm counting on Katy Radigan for raised doughnuts. We'll arrange a long table under the oak trees, and the guests will help themselves."
"You make it sound as if you're going to be a lady of leisure."
Erlene shook her head. "No-I have a problem. It's up to me to bake the biggest cake our oven will hold, with coconut icing and great gobs of pineapple filling. The problem is how to make it look nice and still hold together when there's more filling than cake."
"That shouldn't be too much of a chore for you, darling," Penny said. "It sounds heavenly. And anything you cook is bound to be perfect. I don't know how you do it."
"Well, this culinary curio has got to be a masterpiece"-Erlene grinned-"because it's a wedding cake, and I happen to have a great thing going for the bridegroom."
Penny looked at her stepmother with dawning realization. "Oh, then it isn't just a housewarming you're planning. It's an anniversary party, too. You and Dad have been married-let's see-twelve years?"
"No, it's thirteen years-all of them good. But then"-Erlene grinned again not every woman has the luck to get a wonderful husband and two lovely girls in one fell swoop."
Penny smiled; then her face became serious. "They've been good years for Gena and me, too, Erlene. Thank you for marrying Dad. In my book, you're both tops."
Erlene, evidently a little embarrassed over this unprecedented compliment from her stepdaughter, pushed her empty coffee cup aside and began to stack the dishes on her tray. Any minute now, she told Penny, Philip and Gena would be returning from their shopping expedition. Meanwhile, it was up to her, Erlene, to get the trays cleared and the dishes washed and put away, so there would be room for the groceries they were bringing.
"Gena," she added, "has her new contact lenses. She's wearing them for the first time today-and is the child thrilled! Don't forget to admire them. She looks lovely."
"I won't forget. And I'm sure she looks lovely. She'll be a real heartbreaker one of these days," Penny predicted, smiling fondly.
"Not Gena-that is, not if she can help it," Erlene countered, smiling just as fondly. "She'd sooner break her own heart than hurt a living soul. She's like that-our Gena; gets more like her father every day."
Penny, upon being told that this was a one-woman job and she could do nothing to help, sat down at the kitchen table, where she remained silent, deep in thought. As she watched Erlene bustling around, getting things ready for the Big Moment when her man would come home, bringing the bacon, or whatever, Penny had a deep conviction that she was seeing the good life-the really good life-in action.
Here, she decided, is love-real love. It's a matter of working and giving, not just wishing and taking. I wonder why I never realized it before....
Penny was agreeably surprised at the alacrity with which her invitations were accepted J. Cyrus Henry canceled a speaking engagement. "A barbecue?" he boomed. "I'll be there, complete with buckles and spurs. What can I bring-maybe soft drinks and sorghum popcorn balls for the crowd? That's an old Southwestern custom, bringing things. I'll have fresh roastin' ears flown up from Texas."
"I am honored to be asked," was Mark Graham's formal manner of acceptance.
"There won't be any 'ins' at the party," Penny warned him. "This is strictly for 'outs.' "
Mark acted hurt. "Do I strike you as such an ornery character?" he demanded. "Anyway, for my money, your father is one of the 'ins' of all time."
Penny's roommates were equally quick to accept. Nellie-May, when told she could bring her "steady," Chet Dalton, threw her arms around Penny and kissed her.
"You're the most understandin' person I ever met, sugah," the girl said fervently. "You're purely a livin' doll. If it wasn't for you, I'm sure Cynthia wouldn't let me even have a boyfriend, much less take him to a party. Could I, please, ask a favor?"
"What is it?" Penny asked warily.
Nellie-May, with her usual flair for the oblique approach, did not answer directly. Chet had bought a car, she confided; an elderly jalopy, which he had made as good as new with his bare hands and the help of a friend, whose name was Barry Chilton. Barry was a nice boy, a little younger than Chet.
"You know what, sugah?" the girl finished breathlessly. "Cynthia will let me drive out to the party with Chet in his sweet little ol' new car, if we make it a crowd-and three's a crowd. She's purely hipped on the subject of there being safety in numbers-if you know what I mean."
Penny assured her that Barry Chilton would be welcome. "I'll check with Cynthia, of course."
Susan, instead of making an excuse to stay away from the party as Penny had feared, accepted without question. More than that, she would provide her own escort. Cynthia, returning late from a trip, said she would be delighted to come, but Penny sensed her hesitation.
"If you're worried about a partner, don't be," Penny told her. "Dave Stewart, now starting his residency at the Medical Center, can't get away till late, so Mark Graham will drive me out to The Grove. We'd love to have you go with us, and maybe you can run interference when I get too many escorts to handle. Dave will bring me home."
"Penny Gilmore, you're the nicest person I know," Cynthia exclaimed. "A few months ago I wouldn't have said that," she added with characteristic honesty. "You certainly have changed."
Labor Day dawned cloudless and pleasantly warm, despite the weatherman's predictions to the contrary. All along the East Coast, including Maryland, there were storm warnings, to the effect that the first big hurricane of the season was on its way. According to reports this very definitely was no day to plan a cookout. It seemed to Penny that her stepmother must have a spe-. cial dispensation from on high to get such a perfect day and to have her plans work out so beautifully.
Erlene had set the time loosely as "any minute from three o'clock on-the earlier the better." Penny, with Mark and Cynthia, started from the apartment at three-thirty, Nellie-May and her two escorts following close behind them.
"We'll be the first guests to arrive; nobody ever gets to a party on time," Penny explained. "People are funny that way."
Cynthia didn't say anything. But Mark, who had been waiting a short time for the cortege to start, muttered something about this being America-and hadn't Penny ever heard the old rule about punctuality being the courtesy of kings? As Mark would, being a changed man!
"We'll be lucky if we get there in time for the doxology-songfest to you, my dear," Mark added quite sourly.
As they came into The Grove, Penny saw that the party was well under way-and it was, indeed, an all-inclusive affair. A neighbor was directing traffic, and cars were parked in every available driveway. There was a long table in the backyard, with covered dishes filled with good things to eat. Erlene's handsome cake, under a great glass dome, dominated the festive board.
As she got out of Mark's car, Penny could see three sizzling grills, attended by white aproned men wearing chef's hats and smug smiles as with long, business-like forks they flip-flopped succulent meats over the glowing charcoal. One of the "chefs," Penny thought, looks a whole lot like Dad!
But it can't be, she decided on second thought, and not without reason. More than once Philip Gilmore, journalist, had boasted that he could not so much as boil water without burning it! However, that had been yesterday. Dad, too, had changed along with all the others.
Surveying the scene, Penny noticed that J. Cyrus Henry was already on hand. More than this, he had gone into business. On the vacant lot next door, borrowed for the occasion, he had set up a stand of his own. Now he was dispensing soft drinks, Southwestern peanuts, and sorghum balls to all takers; not to mention broad smiles and warm handshakes.
"He's a born politician, the sweet old coot," Penny said to Mark. "He could be President of the whole United States if he wanted to be, I guess. He could even be Mayor of The Grove! Never mind the image stuff-it's built-in. You were so right when you said that."
Erlene, in a pale green shirred dress, stood on the small front porch, waiting to greet them, looking every inch the queenly hostess. Giving her a quick hug, Penny whispered:
"You're back in the groove, darling. Looks like it doesn't have to be an Embassy wingding to be a success," Erlene beamed. "You're telling me?"
Gena, standing beside Erlene, appeared to be a little lost, despite her new party dress and cherished contact lenses. But at that moment Nellie-May and her two male satellites joined the group, and Gena was suddenly transformed.
She greeted the Southern girl and her beau with friendly warmth, but her manner toward Barry Chilton-a homely youth, Penny thought-was aloof and condescending. Penny and her stepmother exchanged amused glances; then Erlene suggested that the four teenagers go over to the far side of the yard, where a dart game was in progress.
Penny ran out to the grill where her father, with deadly seriousness, was operating on a broiling chicken.
"Dad, is that you?" she bantered. "I thought at first you were a chef from the Cordon Bleu. You look so-well-professional!"
"I'm an expert," her father said modestly, giving her a peck on the cheek. "This is the kind of life Erlene and I have dreamed of for years. But tell me, baby, are you happy here in the States?" he asked, his glance suddenly sharp.
"Yes-oh, yes, Dad!"
"Good. That's all I wanted to know." Philip Gilmore smiled happily, flipped over a broiler, and joined in the chorus of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which the fellow chefs had started.
Penny wandered around, shaking hands with the people she knew and smiling at everyone. Glancing about, she noticed that Cynthia and Mark were finding one another quite compatible; they were sitting near the long buffet table, chatting earnestly.
The two sets of youngsters were running true to form: Nellie-May and Chet were playing darts, while Gena and Barry sat watching them with exaggerated formality. Penny waved at them, then sighed. Among all these people, she alone was a misfit.
CHAPTER TEN
Penny's discomfiture was short-lived. Suddenly glancing up, she found herself looking straight into the smiling brown eyes of David Stewart. Only this was a new man. His suit, though unobtrusive, had fashionable new details. Even his voice had a different tone as he said:
"Hello, Penny Gilmore. Don't tell me you're mingling with the hoi polloi-and liking it."
"You don't have to be hateful," Penny flared. "Just because you've got a new job and a new suit...."
"The latest," Dave said smugly. "All I need to do now is to grow sideburns and a beard."
"Do that, and I'll never speak to you again."
"Watch your words, pussy cat. Never say never-it's too long a time." Abruptly, he became serious. "Honestly, Penny, I'm delighted things are working out so well for you-and for me. I believe I have good news about Gena's eyes, too."
"You have?" Penny's words had all the fervor of a prayer.
"I can't promise anything. But there's a new treatment-and a special doctor at the Medical Center now. I've been talking with him. They're finding new methods for treating eye conditions every day."
"Dave, if there's even hope...." Penny murmured, and lowered her face to hide the tears that flooded her eyes.
"There is hope-always." Apparently Dave sensed how she felt, for he put a finger under her chin and tilted her face so that he could see the tears glistening in her eyes.
"I'm crying because I'm so happy about-well-just everything," Penny said defensively.
"Of course, my sweet."
And then, as if they were alone on a desert island instead of in Penny's backyard with all the neighbors looking on, David Stewart leaned over and kissed her, long and hard, on the lips.
Philip Gilmore broke that up-whether innocently or on purpose, Penny could not guess. The barbecued meats and out-of-season roasting ears were ready, he shouted in a voice that must have been heard in fine-feathered Georgetown.
"Come and get it while it's hot, folks. Everything is on the table, this is a self-service soiree," Philip Gilmore added, quite unnecessarily, Penny thought, though she smiled happily, proudly.
There was a concerted movement toward the long table, as good friends and neighbors began to gather around the festive board.
"Help yourselves, my friends," J. Cyrus Henry invited in a voice still louder than that of his host, causing Penny to wince slightly. "What are we waiting for-solid gold cutlery and Morris chairs? These remarkable roastin' ears came straight from the Rio .Grande Valley-none better. And the best way to enjoy this Maryland chicken-none finer, I assure you-is to pitch in and eat it with your fingers."
Erlene's poise, in the face of the men-folks' banter, was unshaken. "Well, now, aren't you the cut-up, J. Cyrus!" She laughed. "I assure you there are plenty of benches for those who want to sit. And there should be enough silver, especially forks, for all. As a matter-of-fact, I borrowed...."
"Mother! Must you?" Gena gasped, her young face crimson with embarrassment.
Penny put an arm around her sister. "It's all right, honey. I'd have been embarrassed, too, only a short while ago. Don't mind the corny jokes. They're having fun, and so are we."
Mr. Henry was not to be veered from driving home his point. Fingers were made before forks, he avowed, solemnly, as though he had coined the phrase. Moreover, benches and chairs were only for people who were either too old or too weak to stand on their own feet. At a home barbecue like this, it was customary to use as few dishes and as little cutlery as possible, and to circulate.
"Saves work for a beautiful and most gracious hostess," he pointed out, beaming upon Erlene.
The reactions were typical of the times and the prevailing rage for youth. Only the four teenagers had the courage to seat themselves at the long table, evidently expecting to be served in the deluxe manner.
Meanwhile, the young-at-heart seniors circulated around, helping themselves to paper plates and whatever foods they wanted. Then they moved back so that others might come, and stood talking and laughing among themselves while they ate Texas corn and Maryland chicken in true picnic style.
"Strange how old young people are nowadays," the genial politician commented, smiling indulgently at the four youngsters Erlene was now serving. "However, it's a matter of statistics that every generation grows wiser and weaker."
There was an abundance of food, so much that Penny commented on it to David Stewart, who was helping himself with the lavish hand of a man who had endured many weeks of bland hospital fare.
"You know what?" Penny said thoughtfully. "It seems sort of sinful to have all this food, though I'm sure none of it will go to waste."
"Not with me around, it won't." Dave chuckled. "Just give me time."
Penny did not laugh. "What I was about to say," she continued, "was that I remember in one place where we lived, there were children begging for bread. Erlene-she's so wonderful!-tried to help them, but there wasn't much she could do. There were so many of them, and some of them were half-blind."
Dave flashed her a warm smile. "This, my sweet, is America, and you won't find anything like that here. But there's still much to do; plenty of people who need help in one way or another. A doctor sees a lot of grief the world never knows about. That's why I want to go as far as I can in my work."
"I wish I could do something," Penny said impulsively. "Only all I can do is be a receptionist and smile, smile, smile till my face aches. Dad was so right when he said I needed training of some sort. I'll never be anything really useful."
"If you're trying to be ridiculous, pussy cat," Dave said with mock seriousness, "you're off to a good start."
Every dish on the long table was perfect, straight through from Mrs. Babcock's watermelon-rind pickles to Erlene's anniversary cake. In addition to quantities of barbecued meats, there were delectable side dishes, also pies and cookies to supplement the elegant cake.
There was no danger of running short on food, no danger that anyone would go home hungry. The only danger, if any, was that, come tomorrow, The Grove would have an epidemic of stomachaches from overeating. Dave remarked on that.
"Too bad," he said jokingly, "I haven't got my shingle out and I'm not ready to start my practice. I'd be in business up to my neck, and that's for sure."
Despite Erlene's pronouncement that no gifts were allowed, there were presents all over the long table, once it was cleared of dishes and food. The next moments were hilarious as Erlene and Philip opened one elaborately wrapped package after another. The gifts were from friends in The Grove, who confessed they'd been at a loss to know what to buy for a couple who "had everything beautiful and exotic, but almost nothing really practical."
For Philip Gilmore, writer and erstwhile handyman, there were typewriter ribbons, notebooks, reams of paper, paintbrushes-and even a folding ladder. For Erlene, there were shiny pots and pans, along with various gadgets purported to make housework a continuous ball.
Philip and Erlene, standing side by side, their eyes suspiciously bright, tried to thank their friends in appropriate words, only to fail. They could get little more than a simple "Thank you, dear friends," past the lumps in their throats.
"The poor things," Penny whispered to Dave, "are so happy they can't talk. I've never known Dad to be inarticulate before, and I've never seen Erlene so completely disorganized. I'd hate to start crying right here in front of everybody but...."
Dave, also touched, tried to inject a light note. "Think we'll be that wool-gathered in thirteen years?"
Penny was spared from answering the leading question by J. Cyrus Henry, who had inserted himself into the act. Never one to remain in the background, the smiling legislator had lifted his voice in song. Signaling all to join in, he began to yodel, "Happy anniversary to you," with more than virtuosity, but winning a wide and vociferous following.
From then on, The Grove rang with laughter, music, and song. Led by J. Cyrus Henry, they and all the old familiar melodies, starting off with "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," and winding up with the inevitable, "Deep in the Heart of Texas." There seemed to be no end to the gentleman's repertoire.
In the midst of all this festivity, Dave and Penny drew closer together. And before they knew it, they were inside the house, walking to Penny's bedroom and flinging themselves down onto the bed.
They embraced, their tongues greeting one another in a split-second. They swirled their lickers around in each other's mouths, the saliva cascading down their chins and onto their clothing. The pair figured then that it might be a fine idea to undress.
Penny stood up from the bed and began to quickly unbutton her blouse. Dave, in the meantime, was undoing his shirt, but his eyes were glued to the creamy skin appearing as Penny removed her blouse. He admired her large, firm titties and the tightness of her stomach. Dave knew that he could hardly wait until she was completely nude so that he could run his tongue along her body ... and many, many times over.
She unclasped her bra and let it drop to the floor, and Dave, upon seeing her juicy red-tipped mounds, just couldn't wait any longer. He grabbed for her buttocks and pulled her toward him, nestling his head between her tits and licking their warm sides. His tongue roamed along their fullness, and played with each nipple, exciting it to a greater hardness. She placed her arms around his muscular body and began to enjoy the feel of him next to her. She dug her fingernails into his back, exciting both herself and him in the process. He sucked on her taut nipples, licking the large areolas and noticing the ecstatic little pimples form in their expanse. His hands went beneath the finely formed breasts and lifted them up, squeezing them and rolling them around as Penny writhed passionately.
As the woman had expected, Dave's cock was bursting in his pants, and she knew that if it didn't get some fresh air soon, Dave might burst through the front of his clothing.
Penny pushed Dave's hands away from her fiery breasts and sunk down to her knees, going straight for the large mound in his pants. She unbuttoned him and then tugged at the zipper, finding things a bit difficult considering the strain on the material. But Penny was a persistent miss, and soon the zipper was fully undone and all she needed to do to see that long hefty cock of his was to pull down his drawers, which was precisely what she did.
It stood erect before her admiring eyes, the cock that she craved so, so much. Her admiring tongue was lolling around in her mouth, but not for long. It came forward, toward his immense dork, and touched the top, going for the piss-slit, where small droplets of pre-seminal fluid were appearing. She licked the gleaming liquid from the tip, enjoying its bland taste and knowing that there was plenty more where that came from, deep in the now-aching nuts of her lover.
The brown-haired beauty's tongue made circular motions around the hard, smooth tip of Dave's penis, and she could feel it get even larger and wider with each and every touch of her talented licker. She realized Dave was uncomfortable now, and moved his hips up so that he would be standing and could get his slacks off to make things a little easier on the two of them. But she made sure not to disregard the giant lance that stood before her, giving it caressing touches with her lips, tongue, and teeth.
After completely undressing the large-cocked individual without missing any of her ministrations on his prick, Penny removed her skirt, leaving only her dark pantyhose and high heels as coverage. And it was this sexy outfit that Dave just couldn't help admiring. He loved the way her hips fit into those pantyhose, how the pubic bush was barely visible beneath them. He enjoyed the beautiful curves of her legs, made all the more luscious by her spike heels.
But he knew that he'd have to wait awhile to go for her ever-moistening pussy because Penny was starting to get more and more into his wondrous penis.
After laving it for several minutes, Penny looked up into Dave's eyes, and said: "You're going to get that cock of yours sucked better than it's ever been sucked before. And with its size, I can imagine that my mouth isn't the first to taste it."
Dave tried to smile modestly, but it was lost on Penny. Her voracious mouth was already back into action on the object of her lascivious affections-Dave's big prick and his well-hung nuts. She put the entire tip into her mouth and bit it gently with her teeth; her hands, meanwhile, went for his large testicles and squeezed them, trying to get his jism up to her throat all the sooner.
The man knew from the way Penny was enjoying all of this that she wanted him to shoot his hot wad in her mouth, and that fucking could wait until the next time around. Dave was not bothered in the least by her desires. He knew that he could keep hard for the second coming a lot longer once he had shot his initial gob of white-hot molten jism.
Penny was feeding inch after thick inch of prick into her face now, using her lips, tongue, and teeth to excite the lengthy shaft and get the boiling sperm inside to massage her throat passageway and do its thing on heating up her pussy.
Dave held the sides of her head as she sucked, trying to get Penny's head-stroking to the point where his cock would be ready to fire away. And he knew from experience that that wouldn't be too far off with the way he was getting hotter and hotter by the second.
Penny fisted what was not in her mouth yet, getting his juices really worked up. She could feel her own juices virtually pouring out of her cunt and staining her thighs and pantyhose. But she knew that Dave wouldn't mind in the slightest. She found out later that she was absolutely correct.
Right now, though, she was more concerned with getting Dave off because she knew the taste of his cum in her mouth would really get her ready for their future fuckfest.
Penny stroked and sucked and bit his cock, trying to get more and more of him inside her flushed, perspiring face. And it seemed that she would be successful or, more accurately, suckcessful. There was just an inch or two of thick cockmeat outside her mouth now, though her throat was already filled with much of him. With just a little more relaxation of her throat muscles, she had him fully inside of her, her nose enjoying the musky odor of his darkly entwined pubic hairs and her chin slapping against his hefty testicles.
She had fully conquered the mighty mouth-invader now, and was quite pleased with herself. "Glllluuummmppphhhhh!!!" was about all she could say, but Dave knew that she was proud of her talents, and he was too.
Dave extracted a few inches of cock from her throat and then plunged back in once again, knowing that Penny really wanted to feel his stuff inside her mouth, but was still truly enjoying the taste and length of his prick inside her oral channel.
In and out, in and out, in and out ... the massive cock was making headway easily now in her fully relaxed mouth. And Dave and Penny both knew that his wad would be a-comin' soon.
"I love to fuck your face, you delicious pussy you, and I'm going to ... I'm commmmmmiiiiiiinnnnnnggggggnnnnnngggggg!!!"
And that he was ... and powerfully. The jets of jism were slamming all over her mouth and throat, and she was truly enjoying its salty taste. But Dave had given her more than she had bargained for and some of his juice was dripping down the sides of her mouth, onto her neck, and onto her delicious breasts.
As Penny tried to lick up every last drop of semen from his piss-slit, Dave writhed pleasurably. He had been blown before, but, he admitted to himself, never by someone with the talent of Penny and her well-practiced mouth.
The two lay back on the bed, and Dave noticed that Penny's pussy lubrication was staining her pantyhose extensively. And Dave, enjoying the taste of cunt and its emanations with the same fervor that Penny enjoyed prick juice, leaned down on her thighs and started to lick at the large stained area. The musky odor of cunt hit his nostrils and he breathed it in deeply, enjoying its smell and taste. His licker roamed all around the stains, getting into the delightful V between her legs and feeling the indentation of her deep cunt as he probed. His saliva intermingled with her twat liquids and he scooped up the combination gleefully.
And you can bet that this was exciting Penny to the hilt. She was juicing more and more as Dave licked her pubes, and almost as fast as he licked up the moisture, more and more would appear.
But Dave was getting impatient now-he wanted to see that luscious pinkness between her legs and he wanted to see it pronto.
So he stood her up as he remained sitting on the bed and slowly lowered her pantyhose, down her luscious thighs, past her cute knees, and then past the shapely calves and ankles. This was quickly followed by her flimsy panties, so that the pubic hairs and the glistening pussy lips below were soon revealed to his lecherous eyes. He nuzzled his face into her cunt, now able to lick at her labia without them being covered by material. And Penny was writhing like an animal as she stood up, indicating to Dave that she wanted to get back onto the bed so that she could truly give him an eyeful and a mouthful. She also noticed that Dave's prick was hardening up once again and she knew that it would soon be inside her desirous pussy.
"Eat me, Dave." Eat my hot pussy and lick up my juices. Eeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaattttttt mmmmmeeeeeeeeee!!!!!"
It was a command Dave couldn't turn away from, and he spread her wide-open legs even wider to give her coral channel a tender eyeing before unleashing his lascivious tongue.
He stiffened his licker like a mini-cock and started to go beyond her glistening cunt lips and into the depths where his big prick would soon reside. He moved his tongue like a penis, working in and out and slurping up the lusciousness that lay between, letting it slide down his throat.
Dave explored every inch of her juicing cavern. Penny was bucking her hips and screaming like a banshee as her body orgasmed to the feel of his tongue. The moist lips of Penny's pussy were large, Dave noticed, and when he had finished licking her snatch to his and her contentment, he proceeded to play with them, squeezing her clitoris in between the two fleshy flaps. Her nub grew very hard and erect as he rubbed the wet warm sides of her interior. The pussy lips were soon back inside Dave's hungry mouth, being licked, bitten, nuzzled, and what all-each and every second exciting Penny all the more.
But Penny was also aching to feel that big cock of Dave's inside her deep twat. She wanted to feel her cuntal muscles grasp for his giant whang and feel his hot sperm inside her pussy as she had, a short while earlier, in her oral cavity.
Penny's lust grew and Dave sensed her desire-he was ready too. He grabbed for his hard-on and stroked it a couple of times before stoking it into Penny's inviting pussy.
Dave moved between her legs, and she led him into her fiery sex canal, feeling inch after inch after inch slide into her, past her glistening pussy labia and on down into that wonderful chamber of her sexuality. Her cuntal muscles grabbed at his pecker, welcoming it and begging it to stay. He did for several seconds, moving his dick around inside her in circular motions and feeling her heels bite into the tanned skin of his well-muscled thighs.
Then his prick left the love channel for a brief second. Her hips followed his, trying once again to grab onto his cock. But there was no need for her to worry because he was powering his mighty prick back inside her, the two of them feeling the friction as cock slid along cuntal walls on the downstroke and back on out. Penny's heels dug into his legs while her fingernails tore at his back, drawing slight droplets of blood here and there.
Penny's mind was swirling while Dave was thundering into her cunt, and she was wondering what it would be like if Mark Graham, her other lover, were here also in the bed with them.
She imagined how Dave could be fucking her while she sucked on Mark's cock. Both men would be over her, thrusting their huge penises into her body, one fucking her cunt while the other fucked her face. She wondered about all the hot fiery cum that would be flowing through her body and she felt she would explode with the thought.
Penny fantasized how the two men would fill every orifice of her body with their big pricks, and how she would simply and totally enjoy the wonder of it all. Her mind's eyes pictured the two men's lengthy cocks poised at her mouth, both trying to enter. She realized she couldn't get both dicks into her oral passageway at the same time, but she did her best to get the purple satin-soft tips inside and lick at each one, trying to get the droplets of pre-cum from both penises swallowed as fast as they would appear on the men's piss-slits.
Her tongue would roll around the two cockheads. She enjoyed the tastes of the male sex organs so much that she could devour the two big wangs at once.
She let her imagination run wild, allowing herself to picture things which in reality were physically impossible but in her dream world, lewdly real. She had Mark and Dave poised over her face, their cocks just millimeters away from one another. She pictured the two massive rods heading into her mouth now, and moving at the same pace toward the entrance to her throat and on down its length. Her mouth felt like it was bursting now, but she knew that she was truly enjoying the deeply sexual dream. She wondered if they would both come in her throat at the same time, but they did something that she though was even better. The two men yanked their wangs free of her mouth and gullet and began to jerk their tools above her face, letting her know in her mind that she was going to get an eyeful of their jism, to say the least. The two let her jerk their cocks awhile and then, when they knew they wanted to get her from both sides at once, they worked themselves to the point where both shot their loads simultaneously. If an eyeful was what Penny wanted, she got far more than she had bargained for. Her closed eyes held small pools of cum while her nose, cheeks, forehead, hair, lips, nostrils, chin, ears, and neck gleamed through the sticky stuff. And she smiled through it all, licking what she could from off her lips and the sides of her mouth.
Before she knew it, both men were hard-cocked once again and moving her body around in such a way that she knew her pussy was about to be ravaged, and she wondered what else they had in store for her.
What they had in store was to fill her pussy and her asshole with their pulsating manmeat.
Dave squatted on the bed and lured Penny's luscious creamy ass cheeks toward his out-thrust prong. As cockhead got closer to brown puckered asshole, Penny Was hesitant, wondering whether her tiny shit chute could handle his enormous dick. But her worry was for naught. At first, she had a little pain in her rectum as his pecker-head made its entry. But, once he started feeding in more and more of his thick prick, she let it glide into her with ease. When the man was well inside of her, Dave eased himself down on his back so that Penny was face-up on top of him. Mark admired the sight-Dave's prick curled around and plunged deeply into the tight brown hole between Penny's ass cheeks, and Penny's legs wide open, her pinkness ready to accept another piece of pork-Mark's.
The man proceeded toward her, his cock close to a foot in front of him. She wanted to scream from the pain she expected, but her scream came out more as a yell of passion. Mark's pecker didn't go into her slowly, but more like the flash of a stock car rounding Daytona Speedway. She could feel both giant cocks in her at the very same time, and she could feel the muscles between her ass and her cunt straining from the pres sure. But she also knew that she was as pleased as she could be that she could excite these two men to such heights with the pleasures of her beautiful body.
Penny writhed between the two male bodies, climaxing several times before they shot their juices into her cuntal and anal caverns. And shoot, they did, filling her insides with molten white-hot bolts of their manliness. Her body felt as though it had been filled with boiling water."
"AAAAAAAYYYYYEEEEEEYYYYYYAAAAAAAAHH!!!!" She screamed as her body orgasmed with theirs as they emptied their cock contents into her south-side holes. The jism was overflowing and going all over her undersides. She ran her fingers through it and then laved each digit, swallowing up the still-hot jism.
Penny figured in her dream that it would be a good time to rest now after having her body subjected to the two penises, divine as they may have felt. But the men weren't going to let her do that, no matter how hard she tried to fight them off. And she didn't try very hard, just nudging them playfully away.
The sexually satisfied girl realized, though, that the boys were in the mood for more of her, particularly when she saw, to her surprise, that their cocks were rock hard once again, and they were moving her around.
This time, they were on the floor. While she knelt on her hands and knees, one man got behind her delightful ass cheeks, the other stationed himself at her pretty face.
It was Dave who was going at her pussy doggy-fashioned, easing his cock between her ass cheeks and reaching the labia from down under, moving his many inches of throbbing cockflesh into her accepting vagina. Meanwhile, Mark had his prick touching her lips upstairs, toying with them and getting Penny ready to accept his huge pork. And accept it she did, opening her mouth wide to take his purple-veined shaft past her lips, teeth, and tongue, and on into her throat.
She was filled at both sides now, Dave's gigantic dick moving into her cunt at one end, and Mark's hefty prick making inroads into her throat at the other. They thrust into her at the same time, crushing her in between. But she was certainly enjoying their crushing movements because she was mewling like a wild woman, wolfing down Mark's cock voraciously while her hips moved acceptingly to take Dave's dick as deep as she could between her twat lips ... and on down into the depths of her clinging cunt.
Again she could feel their boiling sperm aching deep in their balls, just begging for release. She doubted there was anything still lurking in their testicles, but she was soon surprised.
This time, rather than coming simultaneously, the two men came separately. Dave ejaculated into her pussy first, filling it to the brim and beyond. Penny enjoyed the hotness of his cum inside her, and rotated her ass cheeks beneath his clutching fingers as he banged his prick deep into her. She felt his nuts slam into her bobbing ass cheeks and heard the slapping noise grow louder as perspiration between their two bodies increased.
Mark was still working on getting to his apex of excitement, but it didn't take long. The expertise of Penny's mouth on his organ soon had thick spurts of the stuff shooting into her throat. She bobbed her entire body now, trying to suck up all of the remaining sperm that the two men had to offer.
After this third coming, Penny's mind was still churning up sexual ideas. Her body just didn't want to quit. She was new to having two men at once so she wanted to enjoy it all for as long as she humanly could ... even though things were getting beyond belief.
Through all of this fucking and sucking, Penny felt that the two well-hung guys were ignoring her big tits for far too long. So, sighting their once-again hard cocks jumping out in front of them, she lay on her back and had each fellow lay beside her, his penis right beside her boobs. She took the head of each stiff prick and massaged her breasts with it, her cunt moving ceiling-ward as she bobbed her body up and down off the floor. She touched each nipple with a cock, feeling the red tips become hard-almost as hard as the muscles in their pricks. She rolled the cocks around again on her tits and asked the studs to play with her nipples. They agreed with no hesitation, pinching, licking, and biting them, tonguing the large areolas that circled them. As she had blown the two men simultaneously in her dream, she wondered if French-fucking with two cocks at once was also something her brain could conjure up. It did the job ... and quite well. Sometimes fantasy was better than fact.
Both men got on top of her, their cocks close together and their legs moving between her own shapely legs. The pricks approached her tits and she squeezed the two large orbs together, pushing the cocks together with the strength of her tits. She felt like a nymphomaniac with all of the fucking and sucking she was doing, but she didn't really care. She loved cock and she was sure showing it to her audience of two.
The two hot penises felt wonderful between her tits, and she knew as the two cockheads approached her mouth, that she could handle them with no trouble. Again, she licked at the seemingly ever-present pre-cum at their tips. She licked it all up, enjoying the fact that it kept coming and coming ... no matter how many times the guys shot their works.
As the guys fucked her tits and her mouth, and stroked between her legs, she bucked her body like a bronco and pushed her magnificent breasts together to love their dicks to the bursting point. She wondered if Dave and Mark were going to come on her face again as they had before.
But she should have known better, considering the variations she had already experienced with them and their fantastic dicks.
As Dave and Mark felt they were about to unleash their testicular contents once again, the two got up from the floor. Penny still lay there, her arms outstretched and beckoning up to them. The pair were masturbating now, their cockheads pointing toward her body. They were moving their cocks in different directions along her body, so she didn't know where their jism would hit her skin. If she had thought they would coat her entire topside with their cum, she was pretty darn close to the truth. The uncorked cocks began to shoot wad after wad after seemingly never-ending wad onto her, coating her hair, face, neck, breasts, stomach, hips, pussy, thighs, and the rest of her legs with the sticky cum. She bathed in the stuff and loved every minute of it. Her body peaked again and again as she thought of the man-juice covering her skin. The two men went down on their knees and started slapping their still-hard penises onto her big breasts, the slapping noises reverberating off the walls and ceiling of the room. This surreal idea of sex was enjoyable to Penny, you could tell from the smile on her face, visible beneath a sea of white cum.
Before Penny knew what was happening, Dave slipped her over and knelt near her tender ass cheeks, kissing and biting them and then moving toward the warm ass crack. He leaned forward and searched out her tight little shit passageway, moving his tongue toward it. He licked at it for a moment and then started to move his tongue more and more vigorously, reaching up as far inside as his licker could dive. Occasionally, he would do the same to her cunt, tasting his own cum on the lips but not minding it in the least. He made a meal of her asshole and cunt and squeezed at her giving ass cheeks, rolling his hands all over the wondrous globes.
Mark followed up when Dave moved over, his own tongue going for her anus and his finger delving inside her pussy, fingerfucking her from underneath. The two men were big on analingus, to be sure, as they were on everything else sexual that goes on between a man and a woman. Or, in this particular case, between men and a woman. When she thought they had done their work on her delicious backside, she was much surprised, to be sure, to discover what these guys had in mind next. She was indulging her most outrageous cravings, far past the realms of possibility into the world of bliss.
She felt them spreading her asshole as far open as they could. Then, she felt a cock slowly moving into her chute and told herself that she had been through this before. But then, she felt another pecker coming in along next to the first, and wondered if this was the last sex act-perverted as it seemed-that she might ever be participating in. The cocks went in and out of her and the thought was painful, but still pleasurable. She was intrigued that this particular part of her body could excite men as it did, particularly when not one but two cocks were inside her at once.
The penises had their way of telling her that she was about to get a bodyful of the stuff, and that's what she expected. She seemed right, as lightning bolt after lightning bolt of their male juices filled her asshole and parts beyond, seeming to almost inundate her stomach and make it feel oh, so warm. But what she did not seem to guess was that the men once again stood up beside her and finished coating the backside of her body-her hair, her neck, her back, her arms, her ass cheeks, her legs, and the bottoms of her feet.
II this is a dream, Penny thought to herself, I'd like to relive it each and every evening- She rolled around on the floor, virtually swimming in a sea of sperm and enjoying every minute of it. She licked up what she could, tasting the warm cream and swallowing it down in the hopes of going after more. Hot cum seemed to be everywhere she looked ... and licked.
Her mind was clearing now and she found herself in a sea of real perspiration-Dave was still fucking her cunt. Their taut bellies slammed against one another, making noises that could be heard throughout the room.
She wondered if Dave knew she had been in sexual dreamland for many minutes, but when she looked up into his face, she knew that he was too much in love with her to have thought about it.
Their tongues intermingled, the saliva spilling out of their mouths and the two of them licking it up as eagerly as she had been licking up Dave and Mark's cum in her dream. Penny enjoyed the imagined thrills of two cocks at once, but she realized that Dave definitely did know what he was doing in the sack, and that she should enjoy every minute of what was actual and real.
Dave squeezed her breasts and bit at her nipples while their bodies thrust toward each other, cock slamming deeply into cunt. Their fiery orgasms were just minutes away.
Dave grabbed onto her ass cheeks so that he could get more deeply inside her. She writhed at the feel of his fingers digging into the tender skin of her warm backside.
His cock throbbed with each burst of fresh blood that came from his heart.
Penny reached for his backside, and she could feel the hollowed, muscular cheeks of his ass give slightly beneath her lengthy fingernails.
Whines and screams, mewls and shouts intertwined with each other as the two climaxed in the grips of one another's arms. The sweating bodies bucked furiously as her cuntal muscles did their best to milk Dave's body of each and every bit of cum that his body contained.
When the pair had finished fucking, Penny reached for Dave's slightly softened penis and attempted to lick whatever remnants of cum she could from the tip. She flavored the combination of their juices and thrilled at the taste.
She smiled as she watched his shriveled cock harden once again. She knew they would be fucking more and more that day. And she knew too, she would enjoy it each and every time.
September was only a memory, and now October was ricocheting along, well on its way toward becoming just another chapter in life's diary.
Penny started thinking about her future. She knew she really wasn't that old, but she also knew she wasn't getting any younger. She thought she might possibly enjoy an exciting future with Mark Graham. He certainly knew his way around Washington, and being married to such an active person promised Penny a full life. Or so she thought. But the more she pondered a life with Mark, the more she thought about her own past and all the activities she had participated in worldwide. There had been no lack of action in her life, she had to admit. Because of her father's job and the constant traveling they did as a family, there were always fresh, exciting new experiences.
That's when she started thinking about Dave. She wondered just what kind of a life they could have together. Sure, there wouldn't be much time for them to travel, but Penny knew there were more important things to do than sightsee and vacation. Deep in her heart she knew that someday she wanted to raise a family, and she wondered just what kind of a family man Mark Graham would turn out to be. All things considered, she thought he just might not be the ideal man to father her children. But she couldn't be sure. She admitted to herself that she hardly knew the man. And then she decided that she should take some time to try and get to know Mark better. After all, she understood that she could never be too sure about things, especially important things like choosing a husband.
The next few months passed by uneventfully. Penny worked steadily at her job and went out on a few dates, but for the most part she found herself locked into a steady routine. At the same time, her father was locked into a routine, but one that had an ultimate payoff. He had been working diligently on his book, sometimes even twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Penny was proud of him, but she became even prouder when her father announced that he had received an extra advance because he had been working ahead of schedule. It was more money than Penny's father had ever dreamed of receiving for his labors, and his excitement spread through the family, thrilling everyone.
Then Mark Graham began pestering Penny regularly about her father's book. He had heard about the book through the grapevine and he was trying to work out some deal whereby he might cash in on the sale of the movie rights, acting as Penny's father's agent. He tried to convince Penny to let him talk with her father regarding the matter, but she was reluctant to do so. She couldn't bring herself to trust Mark completely, and began to think that he put more faith in money than he did in their relationship.
Ultimately, Mark barged in on her father, against Penny's wishes. After making a scene with Mr. Gilmore, during which Penny's father became quite distraught, Mark marched over to the publishers and tried to go over Philip Gilmore's head.
Penny found this unthinkable, and the next time she saw Mark she told him to stay out of her life. He had upset her father to the point of interfering with his work, and to such an extent that Mr. Gilmore fell behind on his deadlines. She told Mark that he had gone too far and that he had better not entertain any more ideas of seeing her in the future.
Mark shuffled away defeated, and as Penny watched him go she felt very good about herself. All along there was something about Mark that had stopped her from totally committing herself to him. And now that she had seen her hunch validated by Mark's uncalled-for actions, she knew she had done the right thing by chasing him away.
While she sat in her apartment one evening quietly reading a book, she was rudely interrupted by Dave, who rushed inside without even knocking. Penny was angered, but after she got Dave to calm down and tell her his story, she became almost as excited as he was.
Much to her delight, Dave announced that he had perfected a cure for Gena's visual problem. Dave tried not to take all the credit, explaining that he had worked closely with other doctors, but Penny somehow sensed that Dave had done the bulk of the work.
And she felt extremely proud of him. After her experience with Mark and her father's book, she had lost a bit of her faith in men. In fact, she was ready to write men off altogether and somehow try to forge a life on her own. But now that she understood just how selfless and sensitive Dave had been in his relentless struggle to discover a cure for her sister's ailment, she couldn't help but feel a deep love for him. As he held her in his arms, she realized that that love had been inside her for a long time, and that she had been reluctant to acknowledge it. And now that she had seen Dave in a clear light, understanding just how wonderful he truly was, she felt that love begin to glow within her.
And when Dave kissed her, she felt that he understood how she felt, also. She felt so right, so perfect, standing there in his arms, feeling his tender lips pressing hard against hers. She had often heard or read about such things happening to people, when love struck them a delicious and unmistakable blow, and now she had a hard time believing that it was really happening to her. But the harder Dave kissed her and the tighter he squeezed her, the more she couldn't deny just how powerful her feelings of love were.
"Oh, Dave," she murmured, tearing her lips away from his, "I ... I ... don't know what ... to say."
Dave smiled at her and playfully touched his finger to her nose. "How about, I love you?"
