BUD MANNIX, PLAGUED BY HIS MOTHER'S SHODDY WAY OF LIFE AND HIS FATHER'S resultant warnings about women, bums around the country, from one amour to the next-but really loving no one. As happens with all those who cannot or will not give of themselves, who do not offer love to anyone, but merely take all their lives, there comes a time when the tables turn against Bud Mannix. Basically weak and unstable, Bud is ripe for the kind of situation which will change his entire personality, his entire life-for the worse. And the secret to it all is his mother...."There is a darker side to sex. This mighty force, when thwarted, when bottled up, when damned by inhibitions, restraint of frustrations, can find an outlet in violence ... It becomes a compulsive force that can transform human beings into monsters. It bursts out, uncontrollable, carrying people to destruction." (L. T. Woodward, M.D. in Sex Fiend, Monarch, 1961.)
Prologue
According to Alex
Comfort, in his study, Sex in Society, "It is unfortunate that so much is written about early sex experience and teenage behavior by men and by unmarried women-for perhaps the key problem of sex education, physical, social and moral, is to give boys, who in our culture are the more sexually aggressive, some rudimentary insight into the ways in which girls' responses differ from their own. For a man, defloration is an achievement but no more-if anything, he is doing his partner a favor by making a woman out of her. For the girl, every act ... then or later, is an invasion ... by forces outside herself. She can never feel exactly the same toward a man who has 'known' her thus, even if only once-many boys are staggered by the change in her attitude ... and her intensity may scare them off. Women are neither biologically nor intellectually 'weaker vessels,' and neither sex should be brought up with such illusions, but they are, in our culture, more vulnerable to rejection-this can be as traumatic to them as denigration of his ability to a boy, and its effects can be as lasting. Love in its various manifestations is. after all, the justification for living at all, and gives us all our most rewarding, as well as some of our bitterest, moments."
CHAPTER ONE
Bud Mannix squinted from the gloom of the grease pit as the big white Lincoln rolled into the gas station. It braked in front of the high-test pump. Bud wiped off his grimy hands on a cloth and vaulted out of the pit. He combed his unruly curly black hair with his fingers and fixed a brilliant white-toothed smile on his face as he approached the car.
The driver was a woman-dark, beautiful and svelte-in an expensive, tailored suit; the kind of woman you would expect to be driving a Lincoln Continental. He judged her age to be about thirty. Her dark eyes did not return his smile, but he sensed a smoldering fire in back of her austere, expressionless facade.
"Fill her up?" Bud asked automatically.
"Yes," she said. "And would you take a look at this gas pedal? It's been sticking all day."
"Sure." Before he turned away to the pump Bud took a covert glance down the front of her low-cut silken blouse. Her breasts were full and wide-set, and he could look down the deep valley between them all the way to the shadowed flesh of her tummy. He guessed that she was not wearing a brassiere from the way the pointed summits poked brazenly out at the flimsy material of her blouse.
As he jammed the gas nozzle into the fuel tank, he was aware of her heavy-lidded dark eyes watching him in the rear-view mirror. Bud was not a conceited young man. but he had an objective knowledge of his own good looks. From the age of puberty, he had always drawn the admiring glances of girls his age-and older women. At twenty-five, he considered himself at the peak of his sex appeal and his sexual prowess.
Ht left the pump on automatic control and opened the door on the driver's side of the car. "I'll have a look at that gas pedal while she fills, ma'am."
Still unsmiling, she slid across to the opposite side of the seat. The bare flesh of her legs squeaked on the hot. damp, leather upholstery, and her short skirt hiked several inches up over her knees.
Bud was excitingly aware of those long, shapely, suntanned limbs staring him in the face as he crouched on the floor of the car. He worked blindly on the stuck pedal with experienced hands while, out of the sides of his eyes, he ogled the lady's legs. She had slim ankles and tapering calves. Her knees were trim and finely boned. A lot of women had big, bony knees, like truck horses.
His breath caught in his throat as she crossed her legs in a leisurely fashion, very high. He had a generous view of her sleek, rounded thighs and a peek at a tantalizing little triangle of her pink nylon panties. Bud's head whirled dizzily and his fingers trembled on the stubborn gas pedal. He relished the forceful pounding of his blood in his chest and belly and in the muscular flesh of his thighs.
It was the same old story, but he never tired of it. Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Girl pretends not to notice boy. But girl betrays her true feelings with coy little tricks like the one this babe had just played. Bud was confident that she had known precisely where his eyes would be focused when she crossed her legs like that.
For as far back as he could remember, Bud Mannix's life had been made up of isolated segments, like the episodes of a television soap opera. He felt like an actor sometimes, moving through the scenes of a play. Always the same play, with the same plot and the same ending. It didn't matter to him. There were always plenty of surprises between the beginning and the ending.
"Act One, Scene One," he muttered to himself.
"What was that?" the woman asked.
"I said, the gas pedal is fine now." As he looked up at her. his left hand, hidden under the dashboard, deftly snapped the spring which activated the accelera tor. He got out of the car and shut the door.
"Four-ninety for the gas," he told her.
When she slid back across the seat, her skirt crept way up on her thighs. The smooth flesh gleamed like satin in the harsh sunlight. Before she pulled the skirt down, she opened her handbag and took out a five-dollar bill. Bud had a good, long look at her legs as well as a second chance to peer down the plunging gap between her breasts.
She handed him the bill, and he gave her a dime in change. He stood aside as she started the engine. Her right foot felt for the gas pedal futilely. She frowned.
"Say, what is this? It's worse now than it was before."
Bud feigned surprise. "No kidding? Let me have another look." He opened the door before she had a chance to move across the seat again and bent underneath the dash. He was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, and the hard, muscled bicep of his right arm pressed against her knees. He felt her flesh tremble and heard the muted gasp that escaped her lips. However, she made no attempt to move away to the other side of the car. As he straightened up again, he brushed the inner side of her nearer leg with his bare forearm, just below the calf. The olive skin of her face and neck was suffused with a deep blush.
Bud's face was wooden. "Yup. She's gone for good this time. Broke clear through. Just as well, ma'am. It might have happened on the open road."
She pouted. "How long will it take to fix it?"
He shrugged, "Oh, we should have it ready for you by tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning!" She was outraged. "How am I going to get home?"
"You live around here?"
"Yes, about two miles outside of town. But-"
He interrupted her. "That's fine. I'll drive you home in my car. We'll deliver your Lincoln to your door tomorrow."
For the first time, she smiled. He was amazed at the hidden sensuality of her mouth. It was as if she had been keeping her lips compressed deliberately before to lend an aspect of coldness to her face.
"I suppose I don't have any choice," she said.
Bud's voice was enigmatic. "No, I guess you don't. Neither of us do."
He went into the office to tell Hy Walker, his boss. "Got to take a customer home. You hold the fort while I'm gone?"
"Sure thing." Hy didn't even look up from his accounts.
Bud went back into the men's room and stripped off his dirty overalls and T-shirt. He washed his hands and face, then put on a clean sport shirt and slacks. He combed his thick, luxuriant black hair very carefully. Jauntily, he walked out to where the woman was standing.
"You all set Miss-?" He hesitated. . "Mrs. Carr," she said emphatically.
He suppressed the smile that tugged at his mouth. Why was it, he wondered, that all of them were so defensive?
Mrs. Carr! in that haughty, frigid manner, as if to convey the impression that her honor was absolutely unassailable. What was it that Shakespeare had said about dames like her? he asked himself, j
"-the lady doth protest too much!"
"Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Carr," he said. He led her to a faded blue '61 convertible and held the door open for her. "It doesn't ride like your Lincoln, but it's clean." He turned and winked at her. "And the gas pedal works."
He studied her profile covertly as he drove. She wore her hair pulled back tightly and gathered into a big sleek chignon. The effect was exotic and Oriental-looking.
The shock absorbers in his old heap were badly worn, so that every bump in the road jarred the passengers. Her big, jutting breasts kept jiggling wildly underneath the thin blouse. They hit one large rut so hard that he thought her pointed nipples would pierce through the fabric.
She gave him directions to a fashionable suburban development. "Nice section," he observed as they turned off the main road into a quiet, tree-lined street.
"I live on Minton Lane," she said. "Third house from the corner."
The big ranch houses were set well apart and screened from each other by trees and foliage. Instead of parking in front of the house, he pulled into the driveway and stopped under a shaded arbor at the rear of the house.
"You could have let me out by the curb," she said uneasily.
Bud smiled. "Our motto is service with a plus."
He timed it perfectly. As she bent forward to reach for the door handle, his hand shot across her body and closed over her hand on the handle.
She tried to pull back as her breasts were mashed snugly against the back of his arm, but he held her fast. He knew for certain now that she had nothing on underneath the silk blouse. The heat of her body took his breath away. She might have been pressing naked against him. He felt the firm swell of the fleshy mounds as she took a deep breath. Her nipples hardened and nudged his arm. With a small gasp she looked at him, and their eyes locked.
"I'm sorry," he said pleasantly. "Just trying to be a gentleman." He let go of her hand and drew back slowly, teasing the taut nipples with the back of his hand.
She shivered, and her face was fire-red. She opened the door and slid out quickly, ignoring the fact that her skirt was sliding almost all the way up to her hips. He gaped ravenously at her long, gleaming legs, bared briefly to the lacy hem of her panties. Lust uncoiled fiercely in his loins. His eyes were brazen and demanding on her, and he made no effort to conceal the physical evidence of his desire from her as he sat sprawled on the car seat. He felt her gaze drawn to him as the gaze of a doomed doe is drawn to a stalking wolf.
She put one hand to her throat and swallowed several times before she could speak. Her voice was dry and brittle. "Thank you for bringing me home. Would you care for something cold to drink? It's a very hot day."
"Very hot," he agreed. "Thank you, I'd like a drink."
He got out of the car. She turned away quickly and walked up the flagstone path which led to a side door. Bud followed close behind, watching the flexing of her round buttocks beneath the tight skirt. The blood was pounding in his temples, and leaden fire lay hot and uncomfortable deep in his belly.
She took him into a glass-walled playroom with green, translucent draperies drawn against the midday sunlight. It was cool and dim in the room, and the murky greenish light gave him the feeling of being under the sea. There was a small, leather-tufted bar angled across one corner of the room. Bud sat down on one of the high stools, and the woman slipped behind the bar.
"What would you like?" she asked him. Her voice was sensuously dreamy, and her eyes were brightly glazed.
"What would I like?" he repeated. "Now, that's an interesting question."
Her upper lip quivered, and she licked at the beads of perspiration on it with a pink tongue. "Scotch, rye, bourbon?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You mean to drink?" His grin was sly and mocking. "I'll have Scotch, with water on the side."
Her hand shook as she poured liquor into two glasses and added ice and soda to one.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Carr, I told you. Vicki Carr. I-" She stopped and blinked in confusion as she lost the thread of what she had been about to say.
Bud smiled. He experienced a swelling of pride, the kind of pride that a scientist feels when he notes the predictable responses of a guinea pig which has been innoculated with a new wonder drug. Women-the entire spieces of the human female animal-were Bud's laboratory specimens. Every encounter with a new woman was an experiment, accompanied by the thrill and wonder of discovery. He was Columbus. He was Thomas Edison. He was Jonas Salk. Each pretty face, each pair of firm young breasts, each soft belly and plump fanny posed a new and exciting challenge to be overcome.
Bud thought of himself as a man of destiny; and, in a sense, he was right. Nature had endowed him with a handsome face and a well-developed body, but there was more to him than mere physical appeal. Bud Mannix possessed a quality of masculine magnetism that went far deeper than the flesh. It was a mesmeric quality that was as intangible as the field of force that surrounds a polarized bar of steel. It was irresistible to women. Once exposed to it, they became as helpless as gauzy moths entranced by candle flames. With ecstatic abandon they cast themselves into the core of the white-hot heat he generated, to be reduced to ashes by the intensity of their passion.
"Vicki," he said, "what does your husband do?"
"He's an engineer."
"And he works long hours?"
She nodded and dropped her eyes. "I hardly ever get to see him any more."
"The wife of a successful man is always lonely. It's a rule of life." He clinked the ice in his glass. "Here's to unsuccessful men and happy, contented wives."
"IT drink to that," she said vehemently.
They drank, and he patted the stool next to his. "Come around and sit by me."
"All right." She came out from in back of the bar and perched gingerly on the stool facing him, with her high heels hooked over the bottom rung. Her hands tugged at the hem of her skirt in a show of primness, but they both knew it was just a game. Girls, and even older women, were constantly seeking tighter and shorter skirts and dresses for the sole purpose of displaying as much of their unadorned femininity as was legally permissible. Then, when they sat down, and hemlines revealed coquettish glimpses of bare thighs and frilly garters and often considerably more, they pretended to be mortified and giggled and blushed all over the place.
Bud sighed with understanding and sipped his Scotch. His eyes were hot and obvious as they caressed her limbs from ankles to petite knees and coveteously probed the alluring shadows above and beyond where her brief skirt lay high on her flaring thighs. She pressed her knees so tightly together that they trembled from the effort, and two crimson spots of color rouged her cheeks.
Bud laughed. "Does it embarrass you to have me staring at your legs?"
"You need not be so obvious about it," she said defensively. "I feel as if you're stripping me naked with your eyes."
"I am," he admitted promptly. "And the truth of the matter is that you enjoy it. Why be coy about it, Vicki? Both of us know why I'm here, and what's going to happen before I leave."
She choked on her drink. "Why must you be so crude? I must have been out of my mind to have asked you into my house!" She appeared genuinely angry.
His voice was soothing. "You don't mean that, dear. I know all about you."
Her dark eyes widened in astonishment. "About me?"
"About all the lonely wives like you. You all have nice cars and expensive clothes. You have charge accounts all over the city. You belong to the best country clubs. You attend the opera and get matinee seats at the best plays whenever the whim hits you. Your husbands are handsome, distinguished and respected by the community. There's only one thing wrong. For all the good your high-toned mates do you, for all the manhood they bring to your womanhood, they might as well be manikins in a Brooks' Brothers clothing window."
"You're cheap and vile!" Face contorted with pain and anger, she made a move to slide off the stool.
Bud was on his feet like a cat. One strong arm encircled her shoulders. His opposite hand clamped over her knees. She struggled, but he held her pinned firmly on the bar stool. "Easy kitten, easy," he muttered.
Her enormous eyes reflected a mixture of excitement and fear. "Let me go!"
His right hand shot up from her knees and fastened on the neckline of her blouse. He ripped it open from top to bottom, sending broken buttons spewing over the Kentile floor. Her breasts burst free, the red nipples swollen and inflamed.
Bud laughed softly. "Do you always go around without a bra, Vicki?"
"No," she answered weakly. "Today was so hot and...."
"And you were so hot, and I don't mean from the temperature."
She squirmed in his grasp and moaned as one large hand cupped a rich mound. It was heavy and ripe against his palm. He jiggled it gently, stroking the satiny fullness with adept fingers. The nipple bloomed under his twirling thumb like a rose petal opening in the sun. Now he gave his attention to the other breast.
She threw back her head and gasped. "No! Please! I changed my mind."
"No you didn't." His lips descended on the curve of her throat. He could feel a pulse beating wildly under his hot, wet mouth. He kissed the hollow of her throat, kissed her all the way down the slope of her chest. His lips lingered in the valley at the base of her breasts. She had stopped struggling and sagged back limply against his supporting arm. His mouth traveled up one soft slope, his tongue teasing the tender flesh. A spasm wracked her as he kissed the pulsating summit.
"Oooh!" she groaned. In a reflex action, her hands caught his head and pulled him down fiercely, mashing his face into the resilient mound.
He dropped his free hand to her knees again, stroking their petite roundness. His fingers insinuated themselves between her thighs and worked upward, pushing the skirt back ahead of them. The flesh on the inner sides of her thighs was as soft as a baby's skin. A nerve fluttered under his touch like a frightened bird. She parted her legs, giving him easier access to her body. Her belly was soft and tremulous through the thin panties. Slyly his fingers slipped underneath one legband of her panties and tickled the sensitive flesh. She jerked in his arms as if he had touched her with a live wire.
"Oh, mister," she moaned. She pulled his head up from her breast and kissed him with passionate ferocity, her mouth open wide. Her hot, swollen tongue rammed into his mouth, flicking wildly. Bud smiled inwardly. She was completely possessed by lust.
Effortlessly, he picked her up in his arms and carried her over to a couch placed against one wall. She sat up and helped him peel off her blouse.
"Hurry!" she pleaded. There was an animal luster in her wide, black eyes, and her full bottom lip was pinched between her teeth in a feline smile. She lifted her hips so that he could pull down her skirt and panties. The tight nylon clung to her perspiring buttocks, and he had to roll them down, the way a woman peels off a stocking. The hot, fleshy globes expanded and contracted against the palms of his hands. She whimpered from the pangs of her great and urgent need.
"Please hurry!"
He kneeled on the cushions beside her and stripped off his shirt. Impatiently, her fingers fumbled at his belt buckle. He watched her with an indulgent smile as she undressed him. She reminded him of a kid unwrapping a gift on Christmas morning. Her eyes and face held the same kind of childish wonder and expectation. He felt sorry for this poor, deprived female. Mostly, though, he felt superior.
His gift did not disappoint her. The sight of his readiness filled her with rapture and delight. "Lover, lover, lover," she chanted, adoring him with her eyes and hands.
"Long time no see," he joked. It had been longer than he had first imagined. She was ravenous, out of her senses with desire.
She fell back and pulled him on top of her, encircling him with her arms and legs. Like a spider enveloping a victim in its web, he thought. The image did not please him, and he frowned. She was the victim, after all. Or was she?
He did not have time to reflect on it further, as her body arched up to meet his body and her flesh devoured his flesh. He lunged fiercely, almost viciously.
She writhed beneath him and cried out at the initial pain. Then the pain was swiftly eclipsed by a surging wave of pleasure that seemed to rise from the tips of her toes and the tips of her breasts simultaneously, washing hotly up the length of her legs and thighs and down her torso. The two waves clashed with a resounding roar in the pit of her belly. She seemed to be lifted higher and higher in the eye of a tornado, twisting dizzily, with her arms and legs akimbo.
He hammered away at her soft body in a frenzy that was born as much out of hatred as it was out of desire. His hard belly punished her tender flesh. His hip bones grated harshly against the smaller bones of her pelvis. He was trying to hurt her purposely; but instead, he only succeeded in increasing the peak of her pleasure.
The climax seized Vicki first. She rose against him explosively, grinding her breasts into his hairy chest, grinding her buttocks against his trembling hands. A long series of garbled cries escaped from her lips-uninhibited animal cries, issuing forth in spasms like an aggravated case of hiccups.
Bud's release was bizarre, in that with every surging spasm he shouted a string of crude, insulting obscenities in his partner's ear. As it was, the music of her physical bliss was still a crashing symphony in her head, blotting out all external distractions.
He rose from her and dressed hurriedly.
"Don't rush away," she purred. Her naked body, curled up on the cushions, reminded him of a big, golden cat. Bud didn't like cats. He gazed upon her with mild disgust as she exerted all the age-old female wiles to persuade him to stay. She stretched full-length, arching her back to throw up her breasts in high, pointed relief. She made suggestive, thrusting motions with her hips and belly, like a stripper. "Stay a while," she coaxed.
He looked away from her, his face dark and ominous. "I've got to get back to work."
She accepted that, though reluctantly. Rising from the couch, she pulled on her panties and skirt. She tucked in the open blouse as she followed him to the door.
"You'll bring my car back tomorrow?" she asked. There was no mistaking the suggestion in her voice or in her feline smile.
"Sure."
"Make it as early as you can," she said. She pouted as he opened the door. "Don't I get a good-bye kiss?"
He kissed her coldly on the lips and hurried down the flagstone path to his car.
The next morning, Vicki Carr had just stepped out of her shower when the door chimes sounded. She belted a robe around her wet body and shook her long, black hair across her shoulders. Every fiber of her body was singing with joy and hope. When she opened the front door and saw him standing there, she could have shouted her happiness aloud.
"Lover!" she said. "You are early!"
His dark, handsome face was expressionless. "Your car is in the driveway. Here're the keys." He tossed them to her carelessly.
She let them drop on the carpet. Her face clouded in bewilderment. "Well, come on in."
"No thanks. I'm off. Got to get going."
"I don't understand. Back to work?"
He shook his head. "I quit the garage."
She grabbed at the doorjamb for support. "But why?"
"I've been in this town long enough. I'm restless."
"No!" she exclaimed fiercely. "You can't! Not after what happened yesterday. I need you, Bud. I want you!" Her pretty face was ugly now with frustration and grief. "You can't leave me! I've never known a man like you before."
A snide, supercilious smile crept over his face. "You're just trying to torture me," she said with rising anger. "You're not really leaving."
"I'm leaving."
Suddenly she grabbed his arms and pulled him into the small foyer. She slammed the door closed and leaned back against it as if to bar his way. Her eyes were wide with hurt.
"Don't you want me any more?"
"No," he answered calmly.
"You're lying!" She flung her robe wide open, showing him her nude body, still glistening with beads of moisture from the shower. "You wanted me so badly yesterday, you were out of your mind. I'm the same woman, the same body." She cupped her hands beneath her breasts and moved against him, offering them to him. His gaze upon her was ice cold.
Tears of fury and confusion beaded her long eyelashes. "I'll make you want me," she said. Her hands let go of her breasts and clutched at his trousers. He made no move to stop her as she undid his clothing and caressed his bare flesh. The mocking smile never left his face. Try as she would, she could arouse no spark of response in his cold body. At last her hands dropped lifelessly to her side.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong with me?"
He adjusted his clothing before he answered the question. He said the words slowly and distinctly. "Vicki, dear, you are yesterday's pizza."
She recoiled. "Yesterday's pizza?"
"Yeah. It's never quite the same when it's reheated."
She stood in the foyer, stunned and speechless, as he moved past her to the door and went out into the summer sunshine.
CHAPTER TWO
The first woman Bud Mannix had known and loved was his mother. As a matter-of-fact, Gladys Mannix was the only woman he had ever loved. She was a big, loud, friendly woman with an appreciation of life that was almost unique. She was big-breasted, big-hipped, blonde and beautiful in a coarse, animal way. Bud would always carry indelible memories of his mother, of how she would take him in her bed when he was lonely or frightened at night and pillow his small head against those soft, billowy breasts. He would bury his face in the vast hollow between them and forget all the terrors of the night as he inhaled her fragrant perfume.
"You're making a sissy out of the boy," his father would grumble. His father was a tall, stooped man with a bald head and a flowing mustache. By nature he was a sour, cynical man, and the neighbors would often speculate on how a sweet, outgoing girl like Gladys had come to marry a lemon like Roy Mannix.
Happily for little Bud, his father was a traveling man who spent at least three weeks out of every month on the road. The only time he truly felt any affection for his father was when the man left on one of his trips. When her husband was away, Gladys permitted her son to sleep in his father's place beside her in the big double bed in the master bedroom. These nights were sheer bliss for Bud, snuggled under the quilts and warmed by the heat from his mother's soft, ample flesh.
The privilege, the joy, of sleeping with his mother ended abruptly when he was eight years old. It happened right after his father's brother Jack came to board with them. Jack was much younger than his father, closer to his mother's age, and he was a cheerful, handsome fellow. Roy called his brother a dude when Jack was out of earshot, but Gladys would laugh and defend Jack.
"He's full of life, like I am," she would say.
Jack lived with them for two years before Bud discovered the real reason he had been banished from Gladys' bed. It happened right after his tenth birthday, while Roy was on the road.
There was a summer thunderstorm, the worst one of the season, the worst that Bud could ever remember. It woke him out of a deep sleep, and for an hour he lay trembling in his narrow, lonely bed, listening to the grand claps of thunder rattling the windows, and shutting his frightened eyes against the zigzag lightning in the black sky outside his window. He endured the torture in silence until a bolt struck a tree in the field next to the house. Then, like a panicky little animal, he bolted down the hall to his mother's room.
He opened her door quietly and slipped inside. He thought that if he could slip into her bed without waking her, everything would be all right.
He padded across the carpet, his footsteps muffled by the crashing volume of the thunder. He was halfway across the room when a blinding flash illuminated everything as brightly as daylight.
He stopped, astonished by the sight that met his eyes.
There on the bed with Bud's mother was his Uncle Jack. The covers were thrown back to the foot of the bed, and Bud could clearly see that they were both naked. His mother was lying on her back with her knees slightly bent, and Uncle Jack had his face buried in her wonderful big breasts, just as Bud used to do when he was frightened.
At first, Bud was just annoyed at his uncle and mother. Also, he was a little amused. Uncle Jack was an even bigger sissy than he was, he told himself. After all, he was a grown man, and shouldn't be afraid of a little thunderstorm! He wondered what his father would say about that!
He stood there mesmerized by the two figures on the bed, which were periodically lit up by lightning flashes, like the characters in an old silent film. Gradually, his innocent child's mind came to realize that there was more to the scene on the bed than he had at first imagined. Uncle Jack was not asleep, and neither was his mother. They were stirring restlessly against each other, moving their hands over each other's naked bodies.
The little points of his mother's "boobies", as Bud called them, were not the small, pink spots that he remembered. They stood up stiff and huge and dark against her white flesh, and they got even bigger as Uncle Jack kissed them furiously. The way he was carrying on, Bud thought, anyone would think he was eating an ice-cream cone.
One of his uncle's hands was stroking her plump, round stomach now. His mother seemed to like it, for she moved up against the hand the way the cat arches its back when it's being patted. He could hear her making little sounds, too, like a cat purring. Bud blinked in surprise as his uncle's hand moved down across her belly and disappeared at her voluptuous thighs. Her body trembled, and a high-pitched squeal came from her lips.
Bud frowned at the invisible hand on the arm that was moving so rhythmically above his mother's legs, and he was curious to know what it was doing that made his mother behave so strangely. He tiptoed over to the foot of the bed. The next flash of lightning showed him in stark detail what Uncle Jack was doing.
For a moment, his head spun giddily, and he swayed. The revelation awed him. This unadorned spectacle was staggering to his ten-year-old brain.
Almost as great a shock to him was the sight of his uncle. His eyes followed his mother's small white hand as it rubbed Jack's hairy chest and then trailed shyly down over his belly. He almost cried out as the slim fingers caressed and closed on that part of his uncle which his father had warned him ominously was not an object for undue handling.
Bud could hardly believe what he saw. Automatically, he felt himself through his thin pajamas. There was no relationship at all between what his mother was holding and what he was holding. He told himself that Uncle Jack was ugly and awful and shameful; but evidently his mother didn't think so, from the way she was caressing him. She was even more loving than when she held Bud's head against her bosom and stroked his hair.
Tears began to flow silently down his cheeks. She had never stroked or patted him there, he thought, the way she was patting his uncle. He knew why, too. It was because he was so little, and Uncle Jack was so big and strong and powerful. He forgot all about his fear of the storm now. A much greater fear was grasping at his heart with icy fingers.
The blood pounded in his temples as Uncle Jack rolled on top of his mother's soft, round, plump body and kneeled over her thighs.
What happened next was a shock that would forever be etched on his brain with scalding acid. His mother's round arms encircled Jack's neck, and she was straining her body upward to meet his. The man's upturned buttocks were flexing strangely, and he appeared to be stabbing at her. The boy's first impulse was to leap on top of him and pound at him and scratch him.
He wanted to shout. "Let her alone! Stop hurting her!" But the words stuck in his tight throat.
Then it was too late. With a mighty lunge, Uncle Jack attacked his mother. Her white body thrashed around on the bed, and her legs locked around Uncle Jack's back. She was uttering frightening noises.
He's killing her! Bud's mind screamed. She's dying!
He was on the verge of acting, doing something, anything, when his mother's voice struck him with the impact of a slap in the face.
"Faster, Jack! Move faster now! Oh, merciful heavens, but I love you, Jack!"
Love! With that one word, Bud's world came crashing down around him-the wonderful world of love that had existed between him and his mother. Choking on his tears, he turned and ran from the room, not caring whether they heard him or not. Still, he knew they would have paid him no attention at this moment, even if he had shouted at them at the top of his lungs.
He was pleasant and courteous to his mother and Uncle Jack the next day, and for all the remaining days until his father came home from his trip.
Then, the first time he had an opportunity to speak to his father alone, he told him of everything he had seen and heard that night in unemotional detail. He had always thought of his father as an old man; but with the unfolding of the lurid story, Roy seemed to grow even older. When Bud was finished, Roy Mannix looked as old as Methuselah.
He placed a yellowed, bony hand on his son's arm and said bitterly, "It's my own fault, boy. I should have known better than to marry her. Women! Witches, that's what they all are! They work an evil magic on a man, and they destroy him with it when they've had their fill of him. Don't let it happen to you, son. Don't let them destroy you. Keep your heart locked away from them. Use them as if they were toilet paper. Use them, then flush them down the drain. Never let a woman get too close to you. If they get inside you with their evil magic, you're doomed."
Then Roy quietly went out into the woodshed and blew his brains out with a pistol.
Nobody else ever knew why he did it. Bud never mentioned their last conversation to anyone.
One year later, his mother married Uncle Jack. The boy couldn't have cared less.
When he was thirteen years old, he jumped a freight train and never saw either one of them again. For the twelve years since then, he had been bumming around the country, scrounging a living as a mechanic, a dishwasher, a lumberjack or whatever other menial job he could find. He never stayed in one place too long; usually, it was a girl who would send him fleeing away.
The sex urge was powerful in his loins. A pretty face, opulent breasts, a plump backside, a pair of svelte legs never failed to send the hot blood pounding through his veins. But he was obedient to his father's advice.
Use them, then flush them down the drain!
In the beginning, he was careless. He would make love to a girl five or six times. He would stay with her until she spoke of love and marriage; then he would disappear into the night. However, as he got older, he got more cautious. He would enjoy a woman's body once or twice and move on.
But Bud Mannix had one quirk which kept him from ever truly forgetting any of the women from whom he had taken his pleasure. In a dirty, dog-eared notebook, he had studiously inscribed the name and address of each of his conquests, along with a short paragraph describing the physical charms and personality traits of each one.
At the present time, that notebook contained exactly 786 entries, including Vicki Carr!
Two weeks after the Carr episode, Bud was driving through a small town in Ohio when he passed an electronics equipment plant set well back off the highway. On a hunch, he made a U-turn and pulled into the plant's parking lot. He braked the blue Ford and went into the building.
"I want to apply for a job," he told the receptionist.
As luck would have it, the personnel manager was a woman. She was a plain-looking person with wispy brown hair and myopic eyes. However, Bud noticed that, underneath the tailored suit she wore, her breasts were round and plump. The nameplate on her desk read: Bess Dixon.
At thirty-five Miss Dixon was a virgin, and truthfully she had never been tempted to change her status. Not until she set eyes on Bud Mannix. She was dazzled by his smile and by the rippling chest muscles under his tight shirt. She shocked herself by staring at his flat belly and his bulging thighs, so blatantly masculine in the tight Levi's.
In spite of his lack of experience in the field, Bud landed himself a job as special assistant to the shop foreman. At the end of the interview, he shook Miss Dixon's hand and squeezed it a trifle more intimately than was necessary.
Bess Dixon was flushed and flustered when he left, and she had the most peculiar tingling sensations in her breasts and buttocks. The sensations returned several times that day, whenever she thought about Bud Mannix.
That night, she saw a vivid image of him on the ceiling of her darkened bedroom, and fire flashed through her body. She moaned and shivered. One hand slipped inside the bodice of her nightgown to squeeze her tingling breasts, but the squeezing only made them tingle more. Her thighs were on fire. She patted them tenderly with her other hand. Her fingers felt cool and soothing on the hot flesh. They pushed back her nightgown, stroking higher and higher. Bess gasped in mortification as she realized what she was doing, but she couldn't stop herself. The pleasure was too intense. She closed her eyes tightly to blot out the image of Bud Mannix, but it was hopeless. His handsome face smiled mockingly at her out of the night. In her mind she began to strip off his clothing-first the shirt, then the Levi's and, finally, his undershorts.
Reveling in her lechery, Bess twisted her throbbing buttocks on the warm sheet. A low whimper was building up in her throat as the movements of her hands became more and more feverish. In her fantasy, these were the young man's hands on her body.
In the next room, her mother and father sat up in bed as her intense, uninhibited outcry of pleasure penetrated the thin wall.
"What was that?" asked the old woman.
The man snuffled into his pillow. "Bess is having a bad dream. Go back to sleep."
The next morning, Bud commenced his new job bright and early.
His boss was Ed Wheeler, the shop foreman. Ed was a big, good-natured, heavy-set man, about thirty years old. His blond hair was thin on top, and his cheeks and nose were puffy and webbed with blue veins from years of too much beer and whiskey. He liked Bud immediately. Most men did, as well as women. Before the day was over, he had invited Bud to his house for dinner that night.
As soon as the five-o'clock whistle sounded, they got into Ed's car and drove out to his $15,000 Cape Cod house in the surburbs.
Ed's wife, Sue, greeted them on the front porch. Bud's eyebrows lifted in surprise. Somehow, he had expected the big, lumbering foreman to have a stout, coarse spouse; but the blonde doll who smiled at him from the porch was neither coarse nor stout.
She had long hair, held back by a headband and fluffed out around her shoulders. Her features were delicate, and her gray eyes were faintly almond-shaped. Even in the inexpensive cotton house dress, her figure was superbly displayed. She had large breasts for a small, delicate girl. Her waist was no more than twenty inches around, emphasizing the full, womanly flair of her hips and buttocks. Below the hem of the dress, her legs were lithe and tanned. Bud surmised that the thighs were equally delightful.
Two bright spots of color dotted her fair cheeks when he took her hand. "It's going to be a pleasure, ma'am," he said with tongue in cheek, amused by the way her gray eyes avoided his intent gaze.
Ed laughed. "What's this ma'am stuff? Her name is Sue, old buddy!"
"Sweet Sue," Bud said gallantly.
The girl whirled abruptly and went into the house. "Dinner is just about ready," she said.
Bud admired the way her plump little rump flounced under the thin skirt.
Ed laid a heavy arm across his shoulders and took him inside. "How about a quick beer before we eat?"
"Love it," Bud said.
The meal was excellent. When they were having dessert, Bud grinned at Ed and shook his head. "Some guys have all the luck. It isn't enough that you got yourself a beautiful wife, but she's the world's best cook in the bargain."
Sue flushed and kept her eyes fixed on her coffee cup, unreasonably irritated at her husband for bringing this young, handsome stranger home to supper. All her life, she had distrusted males who were too good-looking, too self-assured, too mysterious. She preferred simple, honest, plain men, like her husband. She kept telling herself that silently throughout the evening.
It was near midnight when Bud went back to his motel.
The Wheelers undressed in their bedroom, conversing about the casual topics that married couples favor once the honeymoon is over. Their nude bodies were as common to each other as the furniture in the room.
"Great guy, Bud, isn't he?" Ed asked.
"I guess so." Sue answered vaguely.
Ed was incensed. He wanted his wife to like his friend as much as he did. "What do you mean, you guess so? He's one of the nicest guys I ever knew."
"You've only known him one day."
"No matter, I can tell. Bud's all right. Bright, too. He's going to be great on the job."
"I'm glad."
He stopped in the process of pulling on his pajama pants and faced her. "You don't like him?" he asked with sure instinct.
Sue had just removed her bra. Her pear-shaped breasts lifted provocatively as she inhaled deeply. Her nipples were shiny in the lamplight.
"No!' 'she said sharply. "I don't."
"That's unfair," Ed accused her.
Impulsively, she went over to him and put her arms around his neck. She pressed her hips and belly close against his naked body, rotating slowly.
"Let's not talk about Bud any more," she whispered with an ardor that startled him. "Make love to me, Ed honey."
Ed Wheeler savored sex as much as any man, but like so many husbands, the easy availability of his wife took some of the edge off of his libido.
"Gee, sweetie," he fenced. "It's awfully late. I've got to get up at six."
Her arms tightened around his neck, and the swivel motion of her hips quickened. She reached down with one hand and pushed her panties down around her thighs so that their bellies were bare against each other.
"I want you now." She kissed him open-mouthed, ramming her tongue between his lips and teasing the insides of his cheeks. She felt the pressure of his climbing desire against her body. Locked in tight embrace, they moved toward the bed. She lay back and pulled him down on top of her. There was no need for stimulation this night. Sue was quite ready to receive him.
Despite his fatigue, Ed was excited and elated. His wife had always been a moderately passionate woman, but never before had she revealed such urgency in their sexual relations.
He took her boldy and strongly, thrilling to the strong rhythm of her contractions. Their mutual spiral of lust ascended swiftly.
To his surprise, the torrent of her desire overflowed well in advance of his own release. Her arms and legs writhed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites. A gibberish of love words exploded from her lips.
Never in all of her married life had Sue experienced such satisfaction. Every nerve in her body was singing. A white-hot sun exploded on the back of her closed eyelids; and, in the center of the burst, a man's face materialized-the face of Bud Mannix.
The next night Ed came home and announced to her that Bud was going to board with them. Sue protested vehemently.
"No! I don't want a stranger in my house!"
Ed laughed. "Bud isn't a stranger. He's my assistant. And he's my friend!"
"I don't like him."
Ed ignored that. "Besides," he said, "that little room in the attic is going to waste. We can use the money it'll bring, and you can get that new washer you've been pestering me for."
He tolerated no further argument. Bud moved in with them the following Saturday, and Ed was overjoyed. Every night after supper, the two men would sit out on the porch and drink beer.
"You should get yourself a girl," Ed liked to tease his new boarder. "Maybe Sue has a friend she can introduce you to."
Bud laughed. "Don't play matchmaker, or you'll be losing a tenant and an assistant."
"You act like you're scared of women, Bud. Hell, a good-looking guy like you can have practically any girl he wants. I'll bet if you put an ad in the paper, you'd have them standing in line to pull down their panties for you." He peered over his shoulder to make sure that his wife was out of earshot. "Listen, don't you ever get horny, being without a woman?"
Bud sipped his beer. "I get horny."
"What do you do about it?"
The younger man smiled. "Same as you. I get my ashes hauled."
Ed wrinkled up his brow. "You getting any from the gals at the plant?"
The smile was enigmatic now. "Maybe. Gentlemen don't tell."
Ed snickered, "I'll bet you I know who it is-that Dixon broad in personnel. Confess, old buddy. Are you getting into her drawers?"
Bud breathed a sigh of relief as Sue came out of the house and the conversation ended.
"Sure is hot tonight." she said, wiping her sweaty forehead with a forearm. She sat down on the top step and leaned back against the end post of the porch railing.
Bud examined her out of the corners of his eyes. Ed was right, he admitted. He needed a woman real bad. Just the sight of Sue in her shorts and halter sent his passion climbing to a full and tormenting peak. He discreetly folded the newspaper in his lap. The top hemispheres of her breasts bulged over the top of the brief halter. They were squeezed together like two pieces of ripe, round fruit. Bud's mouth began to water. Her waist was as lithe as a reed, and her pink belly button pouted over the top of her hip-hugger shorts. He wondered what she would do if he bent over and kissed her there. His eyes coasted up the length of her shapely legs, admired her delicate knees and followed' the symmetrical flaring of her thighs. Her flesh was the color of honey, and just as smooth. He appraised the brief shorts with mounting lechery.
It was a wonder, he thought, that more girls didn't get raped these days with the kind of clothes they wore.
Sue's shorts, for instance, were totally inadequate to hide her rich, feminine contours. The legs were cut on a bias so that they almost followed the juncture of her thighs and torso. The cotton fabric spanned her belly and her buttocks so snugly that every nuance of her body beneath it was etched in sharp relief. The point of view she presented, sitting with her legs up and her arms wrapped around her knees, was especially tantalizing.
Only a smattering of cotton and nylon shielded her most intimate charms from his probing eyes.
He started as Ed got out of his chair. "Think I'll mosey down to the saloon and pick up some more beer. You want to tag along, Bud?"
Bud kept his voice steady. "No thanks, Ed. I'll just sit here and read the paper."
"Don't go out, honey," Sue pleaded, with a hint of desperation that made his eyebrows arch.
"Hey, what are you so jumpy about?"
She pushed back a lock of fine hair off her forehead. "Nothing, Ed. I guess it's just this heat spell." With dull resignation, she watched his broad back move down the walk to the road. She knew that once he got into the bar, Ed would be gone for most of the night. In spite of the 90-degree temperature, her body felt suddenly cold and clammy. She shivered.
"You have goose pimples," Bud observed in his low, oily voice. The way he said it made it sound dirty.
"You can get chilled from the heat," she said. "It happens to me all the time." She was acutely aware of the direction of his intense gaze; but, if she put down her legs, he would know she was aware of it and aware of what he was looking at. She stood up quickly.
"The dishwasher just cut off. I think I'll put the dishes back in the cabinet."
He followed her through the screen door. "I'll help you."
"Don't be silly, Bud. You read the paper. It isn't much of a job."
"Just the same, I hear you call Ed every night to reach those high shelves."
The kitchen had only one window; and, in the dusk, it was quite dimly lit. Sue moved to switch on the light, but Bud spoke up rapidly.
"Don't turn on the light. I like it like this, cool and soothing. Dusk is my favorite time of the day."
She shrugged. "It's awfully dark, but I guess I can see to stack the dishes. The light would only make it hotter." She opened the top of the washer and began to remove the glasses. Bud took them from her and arranged them on the shelf over the sink. When the glassware rack was empty, she bent over to get at the plates at the bottom of the washer.
Bud's heart pounded chokingly in his throat. His eyes licked up the perfect legs and thighs hungrily. Bent over as she was, Sue's little shorts were strained to the ripping point across the exquisite cheeks of her buttocks. Their bare lower curves peeked out from beneath the hems of the shorts. Bud was grateful for the dimness, for in the bright light Sue could not have failed to note the high state of physical excitement that possessed his body.
She straightened up and carried a stack of plates over to the closet above the stove. Carefully, she stacked the dinner plates one on top of the other. At last she was left with two big serving platters. Standing on her toes, she strained to place them on the highest shelf, but she was much too short.
Swiftly, Bud came up behind her. "Let me do that." He took one of the plates from her and stretched his arm over her shoulder to reach the shelf.
Unexpectedly, Sue found herself pinned between his body and the stove. She stifled a gasp as his hard loins and rigid belly pressed into the soft flesh of her buttocks. An electric shock went tingling up the valley between her plump cheeks and radiated up along her backbone.
It did not occur to her at once that the contact was a deliberate maneuver. Primly, she flattened herself against the front of the stove and pulled in her derriere. He took the second platter from her and reached up again. This time there was no mistaking his intention. She could feel the brazen way he was thrusting himself against her sensitive flesh. Even through the layers of his clothing and her shorts and panties, it seared her like a hot iron.
"You stop that this instant!" she gasped in a voice that was thin and quavering. She tried to twist away from him, but his powerful arms clamped around her in a vise-like grip.
His mouth was hot and soft against her right ear. "Why should I stop it? It feels good, doesn't it?"
She struggled futilely. "You're disgusting! If Ed walks in here and sees what you're doing, he'll kill you."
"I don't doubt he would. But we both know that Ed isn't going to walk in here for at least another two hours."
"If you let me go and promise never to get out of line again, I won't tell him. I promise you."
Her heart was beating so wildly that she couldn't distinguish between the beats. Fear? Fear, yes, but something else, too; something that Sue pushed down frantically in the dark depths of her psyche.
"You won't tell him," Bud said confidently. His hands covered her breasts. He slipped his fingers down into the halter and popped them out of the flimsy bandana. He caressed their round softness gently. The flesh quivered in his grasp like wild birds trapped in a snare.
Her voice was hysterical. "Please, don't! Leave me alone!"
He shook his head and laughed softly. "You're so funny, all of you women. The mysterious female. The enigma of the ages. Most of the time you go around saying one thing when, in truth, you mean exactly the opposite. In matters of sex it's particularly obvious. You dote on clothes that make a point of calling attention to your physical charms. You hide your breasts and your buttocks in bikinis and the like. You show as much as the law lets you, with some to spare. The reason you do it is because you want the men to salivate when they look at you. You want to be stripped and mauled over and knocked on the ground and raped. At heart you're all alley cats, only you hide it behind a barrier of self-proclaimed purity and puritanism. " 'Stop it! I love it!' That's your battle cry!"
The slender blonde girl went limp in his arms and began to whimper. His fingers caressed her breasts with velvet softness, the pads grazing the nipples with subtle art. Sue gazed down at herself in mute horror and fascination as blood and pleasure flowed into the pointed nubs. They seemed to swell and flower under his ministrations. The nipple turned from pink to crimson, taut and stiff to a degree she had never seen them attain before. Each time his fingers brushed them, she would jerk in breathless delight.
After a time, he slid one hand down over her tummy and under the waistbands of her shorts and panties. His practiced fingers worked the same magic on her bare belly as they had worked in her breasts. Lost chords of sensation which had never been played before made her body vibrate like a church organ.
She offered no objection when he began to pull down her shorts and panties. He worked them over the plump, resilient cheeks and the round belly, down over her hot thighs. She wriggled her legs to help him, and the clothing fluttered to the floor around her ankles. She didn't realize that he had dropped his own clothing until she felt the wonderful, turgid, man's flesh pulsating against her bare buttocks. Whimpering in delight, she rubbed herself hard against his belly. Like a hot filly shoving her haunches through the fence railings into the stallion's paddock, her conscience accused, but Sue was too far gone now to pay any attention to her conscience. "Kneel down," he ordered her.
She squirmed uneasily in his arms. "Here on the floor? There's the bedroom."
"Here on the floor," he said firmly.
Still not realizing what he had in mind, she obeyed. Bud kneeled down behind her. Sue started to turn around to face him, but he held her firmly in place.
"Down on your elbows," he told her, pushing her forward gently but unrelentingly.
She fell down on all fours, with her lovely buttocks upturned to his lustful eyes. She was breathtakingly exciting to him, and so vulnerable. He grasped her tightly by the hips and moved ahead with a quick, sharp thurst of his hips.
"No!" she cried out, realizing his purpose. "Not like an animal!"
"Haven't you ever done it that way before?"
"Of course not."
"You'll love it, sugar."
"I don't-" The rest of the sentence was cut off as he achieved his goal. A column of fire blazed up through the core of her body. "Oh, Bud! No!" she yelped. But her tremulous sigh belittled the protest.
Bud snorted. "Stop it! I love it!"
He bent forward, pressing his belly and chest hard against her buttocks and back. Her flesh was torrid to the touch. He slid his hands underneath her armpits and fondled her dangling breasts. She was passive as he began his movements; but after a few moments she caught the rhythm and matched his motions with motions of her own. Snuffling like the filly-image of her conscience, she reared back, grinding her throbbing flesh against his hard body. Her lust skyrocketed madly, and she gripped him so tightly that he winced in pain.
As with most of the women Bud had seduced, her release came first and in a series of violent spasms and contortions. The frenzy was so intense that she pounded the floor with her fists. When it was finished, she collapsed face down on the floor and lay there inert as he spent his own passion on her drained flesh. Naked, on the kitchen floor, she fell into a swoon.
She awoke with a terrified yelp as the kitchen light went on. He was standing over her, fully dressed.
"Thank heaven!" she said. "I must have dozed off. I thought it was Ed." He didn't answer, and it was then that she saw the battered suitcase he was carrying. Her gray eyes widened in bewilderment. "Where are you going?"
"I don't know." he said vaguely. She sat up, oblivious of her nakedness. "You can't mean it! You're not leaving?"
"Yes, I'm leaving."
She got up on her knees and hugged him about the legs. "No! Please! You can't leave now. Not after tonight. I've never felt anything like this, Bud. I think I'm falling in love with you."
The words angered him. He shoved her away and stepped back, face contorted in a snarl. "You pig!"
She sat there on the cold linoleum with all her naked feminine charms exposed to his gaze. But the sight of her disgusted him now.
He turned his back on her. "You're all the same. You say one thing and mean just the opposite."
"No, don't leave."
He walked to the kitchen door. "Say good-bye to Ed for me."
"What'll I tell him?"
"Tell him I got what I came for." He walked out into the summer night.
CHAPTER THREE
It was pure chance that determined Bud's next destination.
He was driving on a back road in Kentucky when his radiator boiled over. Parking in the weeds, he took a gallon-can out of the car's trunk and set off to find some water. It was desolate farm country, and he walked for almost a mile without seeing a house.
Finally, around a bend, he came upon an old, ramshackle building surrounded by fields of neatly planted crops. There was no sign of life as he walked up the weeded path to the sagging front porch. He knocked several times without getting any response, so he decided to go around to the back. Probably, he thought, there was a pump somewhere in the yard, or a well. As he rounded the comer of the house, he stopped dead.
He heard a woman's voice emanating from a wooden shack that stood some distance behind the house. She was humming a folk song. At first he thought the shack was an outhouse, but then he heard the sound of running water. It sounded like a shower. Frowning, Bud walked over to the shack and put his eye to one of the chinks between the sideboards.
"Wow!" he muttered to himself.
There was a makeshift shower all right, an old Boiler with a shower nozzle attached to the underside, mounted on two overhead beams. But what caught his eye, soaping herself in the gentle spray, was a naked, redheaded woman.
She was a tall, statuesque girl, about twenty-five, with coppery hair piled high on her head in an unruly pyramid. Her breasts were the size of grapefruits, but they stood out high and firm. Thick soap suds swirled up from their nipples like topping on a pair of charlotte russes. Her waist was dainty, but her hips and buttocks seemed exaggeratedly sexy, like the paintings of nude women on barber shop calendars.
His desire rose in a slow arc. She was gorgeous. He pressed his eye hard against the crack as she bent over to lather her long, sleek legs. Her back.was to him, and her globular buttocks, all glistening with water, flared invitingly toward his face. She was exposed to him in this position as wantonly as a woman could display herself.
Sweat cascaded into his eyes, blurring his vision. He brushed it away savagely. Temptation vied with common sense in his mind.
There was nothing to stop him from pushing open the door of the shack and taking what he wanted right there on the spot. To all appearances, she was alone on the farm. Fortunately, common sense won out. Rape was a serious crime anywhere. In the Kentucky hills, it could even serve as an excuse for a lynching party.
He listened to a dog barking in the distance. It kept getting closer and closer. Regretfully, he tore his gaze away from the peep show and walked back to the front of the house.
He was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette when the man and the dog discovered him.
The man was a thin, sallow, round-shouldered fellow with a hard, bony face and a hooked nose. He appeared to be close to fifty, but Bud guessed he was probably only in his mid-thirties. It was the bitter heritage of the poor dirt farmer. Only his arms and legs, knotted with stringy muscles, gave evidence of youth.
"You want something, mister?" he asked suspiciously. The dog's hackles bristled and he bared his fangs, growling deep in his mongrel throat.
Exuding charm, Bud told about his car and asked if he could buy something to eat. He showed his money. Convinced that his visitor was no common tramp, the farmer relaxed.
"I'm Bill Carter," he introduced himself. "Come on inside and I'll get the missus to fix you something. She's back taking her weekly bath, but she ought to be done by now."
While they waited for the appearance of Mrs. Carter, his host poured Bud a glass of buttermilk. Bud gave him a cigarette, and, over the two smokes, the two men became fairly friendly. Bud was turning on his most winning personality, pulling out all the stops.
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the sexy redhead he had seen in the shower. She was wearing a high-necked gingham dress that was too small for her, and the way the cloth strained over her bosom and backside recalled vividly to Bud how her curves had looked in the flesh. His stallion virility was triggered the instant she entered the room.
"This is my missus, Kit," the farmer said. "Kit, reckon you can rustle this young fellow up some grub? He's gonna pay for it."
While he carried on the conversation with Carter, Bud kept glancing surreptitiously at the farmer's beautiful wife, as she prepared his meal at the sink. Her auburn hair was tied back with a ribbon, and it hung down almost to her waist. Her sculptured buttocks asserted their female roundness, even obscured as they were by the shapeless skirt.
He wondered how on earth an unappetizing creature like Carter had persuaded a beauty like Kit to be his wife. No doubt, he told himself wryly, her father had sold her to Carter for a couple of cows or pigs. It happened that way in some backwoods communities.
He ate the cold-meat sandwiches she placed before him with slow relish, maintaining a calculated dialogue with the farmer. "You work this outfit all alone, Carter?"
"Yup. Had two hired hands for a time, but the drought has hit us hard up here. Let 'em go couple of months back."
"Hmmm," Bud reflected. "That corn in the side field needs picking," he declared. He possessed a wealth of miscellaneous information about a variety of subjects, and all it took was a cue from a stranger to set the tone of Bud's discussions. It was a sure method of establishing instant fellowship.
Before long, he had convinced Carter that he was an unemployed farm worker. "When Dad died," he lied, "our place in Illinois fell apart. I hit the road. That's how it's been right up until now. Things have got so bad that I'd be willing to work for just my room and keep."
He detected the gleam of avarice behind the farmer's mean little eyes. "Well now, if that's the case, I just might be able to take you on to help with that corn."
"I'd sure appreciate it," Bud said.
"Then it's settled. You can have the whole attic for yourself. It's practically an apartment. Place like that is worth good rent." He pointed to the empty plate. "And with an appetite like you got, I'll likely end up losing on the deal."
Bud lit a cigarette to hide his scorn of the scheming, miserly man. "I'll get all that's coming to me, Carter. I'm not worried."
He was staring fixedly at the neckline of Kit's dress as she bent over to wipe some spilled milk off the floor. Her pendulous breasts sagged heavily against the thin fabric-big, rich and creamy white. Some sixth sense warned her of his attention, and she looked up, startled, her green eyes wide and lustrous.
Bud smiled at her. "I hope I'll be as much of a comfort to you, ma'am, as I intend to be to your husband."
Her peaches-and-cream complexion turned to strawberry red. Flustered, she straightened up and stalked out of the room. Carter appeared not to notice her unusual behavior.
"Come on," he said. "I'll show you your room, Bud."
In the late afternoon, Bud took a can of water down the road and revived his parched Ford. He drove it back to the farm and unloaded his single suitcase.
Before supper, Carter took him on a tour of the entire farm, the house, the barn and the other scattered outbuildings. He could tell that formerly it had been an impressive spread, but under Carter's management it had gone steadily downhill. When he inspected the main house, Bud took careful note of the location of the master bedroom, figuring what part of the attic it lay under.
Later, while Carter was out milking the cows and his wife was washing the dishes, Bud went upstairs to his attic quarters and crawled under the eaves to a spot which he judged was directly above the Carters' room. There was no insulation between the attic beams, and he had easy access to the plasterboard ceiling below.
Working quietly, he drilled a tiny hole in the board with an awl. From his pocket, he took a small optical device which he had purchased from a novelty mail order house. It was called a "private eye." When it was fitted into the tiny hole in the plasterboard, it afforded him nearly a 180-degree view of the room below.
Next, he went down to the second floor and entered the master bedroom. After a quick scrutiny of the ceiling, he was quite satisfied. The miniature lens was barely distinguishable from the countless stains and fly specks that mottled the plasterboard.
At nine o'clock, Carter yawned and announced, "Time to hit the hay, folks. Big day tomorrow. We'll start on that com, right Bud?'
"Bright and early."
They all went upstairs together: and, as Bud left the couple to climb the attic stairs, he smiled at the redheaded girl.
"Pleasant dreams. I know mine will be." He gazed boldly at her big breasts, rising and falling under the tight gingham.
Bud did not turn on a light in the attic. In the darkness, he felt his way along the rafters underneath the eaves until he reached the peep-hole glowing like a cat's eye from the refracted light of the room below. With mounting excitement, he peered down into it. The view was perfect. Kit was standing in front of the bureau, surveying herself in the mirror.
"I hate going around without a brassiere," she told her husband. "Can't I buy a couple of cheap cotton ones?"
Carter stripped off his shirt and grunted. "What's wrong with the ones you bought last year?"
"Two years ago," she corrected him. "They're plumb worn out."
The man cackled. "Them boobs of yours sure put a strain on anything, that's for sure."
She blushed. "I shouldn't think you'd want me to go around bare under my dress like this. Everybody looks at me."
"Let 'em look."
"It's embarrassing."
"Bosh! Who's around here to look, anyway?"
She whirled to face him, her green eyes glowing. "That new hand, for one."
Suspicion flickered across his ugly face, "Has he been making any passes at you?"
"Of course not! But he looks."
Carter shrugged it off. "So, let him look." His eyes grew small and bright as she slipped the dress over her head. "They sure are something to look at." He jerked his thumb at the ceiling and smirked. "Wouldn't be surprised if he's up there now having a little party with himself." He made an indecent gesture with one hand.
The girl's blush deepened. "You're terrible."
She was naked except for a pair of thin, cheap, cotton panties that had shrunk from too many washings. Her prominent buttocks bulged out of the seat on both sides, and in front the panties covered her barely more than a G-string would have. In the attic, Bud was looking straight down into the valley between her breasts. From this point of view, they stuck out from her body like rocket nose cones. The nipples were shriveled up like dried berries.
Carter walked toward her, rubbing his calloused hands and smacking his lips. He was naked and ridiculous-looking. Bud repressed a laugh. The old goat reminded him of a plucked rooster. At the moment, the rooster in him was manifesting itself all too obviously. Bud couldn't blame the man. Gazing upon this naked, redheaded Venus was sufficient to arouse any guy's sex urge. He was plenty uncomfortable himself in his prone position.
Kit Carter looked at her husband with total revulsion. "Not tonight, Bill, please. I'm tired."
"Nonsense! You've been lazing about all day. Besides, you know how much I like it after you take a shower. You're perfumed up all over from that fancy soap."
She backed away as his hands reached greedily for her breasts. "I don't want to!"
Her reticence only inflamed his passion. "You come here, woman." His breath rasped in his throat as he lunged at her.
In the attic, Bud shifted restlessly. The spectacle of a man in a state of sexual excitement was distasteful to him. He thought that it must be a throwback to that night as a child when he had seen Uncle Jack and Mother in their erotic embrace.
Carter caught hold of her, finally, in a bear hug. Although she was a big, strong girl, Kit was no match for the farmer's wiry muscles. He squeezed her to him, compressing her white breasts against his bony chest. They puffed out on the sides like two balloons. His little rooster rump twitched as he rubbed himself against her soft belly.
"Oh, that's good," he crowed.
"Be quiet!" she whispered. "He'll hear us upstairs."
"Who cares? Maybe I'll invite him down to watch." He cackled gleefully at the crude joke.
In resignation, the girl let him lead her to the bed. After five years, she was getting used to the torture of sex. When she was a child, her drunken father had beat his children several times a week as a ritual. She viewed sex the same way. You became hardened to it.
He was on top of her before she could take off her panties.
"Stop it!" she cried softly. "I don't want to rip these drawers. I've only got two pairs left. You don't want me to walk around completely naked, do you?"
Carter laughed. "Not a bad idea. But I wouldn't get much farming done, would I?"
The old rooster had more zip in his comb than Bud had given him credit for. Predictably, his technique was strictly for the barnyard.
Bud was gazing down directly onto the bed. It gave him a weird, unreal sensation to be staring into the girl's wide, sullen green eyes as she lay back on the pillow and prepared to receive her husband. It seemed almost as if she was getting ready to receive Bud himself.
"Oh no!" Bud told himself. If he was in Carter's enviable place, the expression in her eyes would be quite different. The reverie was shattered as the farmer's gnarled body came between them, eclipsing the dazzling array of feminine loveliness.
The green eyes closed tightly as Carter grunted over her, prodding and punishing her flesh. It was over very quickly, mercifully for the girl. The farmer played the rooster to the bitter end.
Bud left his peep-hole and moved silently to the other side of the attic, where his Army cot stood. He undressed in the dark and flopped down on the hard mattress. Desire simmered annoyingly in his loins until he dropped off into a fitful sleep.
The days that followed were difficult for Bud. Day and night, his mind was filled with lurid images of Kit. Kit in the shower with fluffy clouds of suds garlanding her lovely breasts. Kit standing nude before her bedroom mirror, stepping out of her panties, with her luscious buttocks upturned to Bud's lecherous eye at the ceiling peephole. Kit spread out on the bed, shivering at the spectacle of her leering, lust-crazed husband.
Around the house, she was completely oblivious of the power of her body. When she bent over the table to serve the men their morning flapjacks, her heavy breasts would dangle enticingly in the loose dresses she always wore, revealed almost to the summits. Bud could not keep his eyes off them, even though her husband was a witness. For his part, Bill Carter appeared to enjoy the dismay of his hired hand when Kit flaunted her charms in his face. It was as if he took personal pride in her sexuality.
One day Bud came in from the fields alone to fetch a jug of drinking water.
Kit was seated on the back steps, shelling peas into her skirt, which was hiked far above her knees. Her exquisite legs were bared to a point high up on her tapered thighs. She made no move to alter her position when Bud approached, didn't even look up from her task. All of her tempting charms were revealed to him, scantily covered by the thin, tight, cotton panties. Somehow, the sight of her like this fanned his lust even more than seeing her naked in the shower and the bedroom.
Impulsively, he bent over her, took her face in his hands, and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were ice cold. He kissed her again, more passionately this time, and tried to work his tongue between her lips; but they held fast.
Her green eyes were filled with amused scorn. "Now, you cut that out, Bud. Bill won't like it."
"But you do," Bud said.
Her laughter made him feel about one foot high. "I get enough pawing and snuffling from my old man, without looking elsewhere for it. You men, you're all the same. Seems the whole world revolves around your animal instincts." She stared pointedly at Bud's trousers, noting his raging excitement with bored distaste.
He was not accustomed to being treated with such indifference by women. His voice shook in anger and uncertainty. "Don't give me that, baby. Look at the way you're sitting there with your dress pulled up to your fanny, showing everything you've got. You know darned well what you're doing, Kit. You've been teasing me ever since I got here, shaking your boobs in my face every morning over the table, putting on free shows like this."
Her eyes were points of green ice. She brought her knees together and pulled down her skirt. She sneered at him.
"Animals, all of you! Dirty little boys peeking in privy windows and pulling up girls' skirts. Always itchy. Look, Bud, there's girls in town get paid for scratching that itch for the boys. You go there tomorrow night. Work off some of your steam. But leave me alone, you hear?" Her voice was strident and getting louder. "Ever since I been married, I got to lie down at least three times a week and let that raunchy old goat slobber over me. But I ain't going to take care of the hired hands. Now, you git!"
Bud was flabbergasted. His desire deflated like a leaking balloon. "You mean to say you've never enjoyed making love?"
Kit snorted. "That's a laugh, calling it that. Making lovel"
"Is Bill the only man who ever had you?"
"No. Just before I met Bill, I let another fellow do it to me. No difference. You all do the same things, you all say the same things, you all got the same things. You're all messy."
Bud's ego was slowly disintegrating. "You don't know how good it can be, Kit. Let me show you." He' sat down beside her and tried to put his arms around her. Kit was a big, strong girl, and she broke free, landing a resounding slap on his face. Bud fell back, his head spinning.
"You little witch!"
"You try that once more, Bud, and I'll scream my head off."
"Okay, okay," he said nervously. He stood up and stalked into the house. His face was hot, and there was a lump in the middle of his chest. In all of his experience, he had never come up against a frigid woman before. He had never met a woman who had so thoroughly repulsed his advances, repulsed him with so much scorn and disgust. It was a shattering blow to his self-confidence.
"I've got to have her," he told himself. "I will have her. And I'm going to make her like it. I've got to!" It was the supreme challenge of his sexual career.
He planned it for the following Friday. That was the day Kit always took her shower for the week. Early in the morning, the two men went out to plow the south meadow, about a half-mile away from the house. They took their lunch and a jug of water. A little before three o'clock, Bud pretended to be violently ill.
"Got a touch of sunstroke," Bill diagnosed. "Better go back to the house and lie down."
Bud's timing was perfect. He slipped into the little shack that enclosed the shower shortly before Kit came out of the back door with her towel over her arm.
There was a small closet inside the shack were Bill stored lengths of pipe and a few tools. Hurriedly, Bud stripped off his clothes and wadded them into a ball. Then he stepped into the closet and pulled the door shut. It was a tight squeeze, but he didn't care.
Through a crack in the door, he had a good view of the interior of the shack. Sunlight, filtering through the countless cracks and spaces between the boards, made it quite bright in the shower room. He held his breath as Kit came inside and closed the door.
Humming, she piled her red hair on top of her head and pinned it up. She unbuttoned her dress, grasped the hem and tugged it over her head. She was naked, except for a pair of white cotton panties. Bud's desire shot up like a twanging spring. The space he was in was so confined that it was a most painful experience.
He feasted on her magnificent, rotund globes of breast-flesh. Immense without being sloppy, they rose from her chest like two majestic mountain peaks. Her pale, undernourished nipples bothered him. They had yet to know the delight of tumescence. They had never lifted to meet a man's fingers or lips.
She had a perfect hour-glass figure. From the breasts she tapered sharply to a slender waist, then flared out even more sharply in the hips. The panties only half covered her plump belly and alabaster buttocks. Her long legs looked as if they had been carved out of solid columns of fine marble, with no joints or bones to break up their flowing continuity.
Bud's body pounded with hot blood as she peeled the panties down over the flare of her hips. The elastic waistband cut into the soft flesh of her belly and buttocks, reminding him of a knife slicing through warm butter. He followed the panties' slow descent down her thighs, past her knees, around her slim ankles.
She was as naked as he was now. The time had arrived. This would be Bud's moment of truth.
He waited until she was under the shower. The water beaded her firm, glistening flesh with sparkling beads. He became giddy, watching her lather up her breasts. He could not delay a moment longer. His raging lust was superhuman force, an atomic bomb sputtering in the pit of his stomach.
Taking a deep breath, he flung open the door and stepped out of the closet.
Her first reaction was frozen disbelief. Then she looked down at his uncovered body and knew there could be no doubt about his purpose. Nothing could have been plainer. Anger and outrage were reflected in her eyes now.
"Get out of here, you swine!" she spit at him. She took a step toward the door, but he blocked the way.
"No," he said quietly. "I want you, and I'm going to have you-with or without your consent."
She clawed at his face with the quickness of a cat. He caught her wrists and bent them behind her, forcing her body against his. She was surprised at the unyielding strength of his hands and wrists.
He pinned her hands against the small of her back and held them there with only one of his hands. With the other, he tilted up her chin and kissed her. Her lips were as cold and unyielding as they had been on the back porch.
"Loosen up, baby," he said gently. "Relax and enjoy it. It can be fun, if only you give it half a try."
Her only response was the icy contempt in her green eyes.
He dropped his hand to her breasts, smooth and slippery with soap. His fingers glided up the flawless mounds, describing little circles in the lather. Around and around they went, all the way up to the pink summits poking through the suds, like roses through a bank of snow. He tickled the nipples, he squeezed them, he pinched them. They remained inert and lifeless, no matter how he tried to bring them forth.
She laughed at him. "Fool! Can't you get it through your head? I hate it! I hate you! I hate all men!"
"No!" Bud refused to accept defeat.
"Oh, all right," she said bitterly. "We might as well get it over with." She pulled away from him and sat down on the floor boards. She lay back, waiting for him to approach her. "Well? What are you waiting for?"
Fury exploded in Bud's brain. Her condescending manner was humiliating. He wanted to kick her squarely in her smirking mouth. To his greater humiliation, the desire ebbed slowly out of his body until he was limp and lifeless.
Kit threw back her tawny head and laughed hilariously.
Her laughter drove him over the brink. Whirling to the closet, he yanked out his clothing and removed his belt from the Levi's. Gripping the buckle end tightly in one hand, he advanced on her. An expression of shock was stamped on her pretty face as she realized what he was going to do. She cringed and threw up one hand defensively.
"No, don't hit me! I was going to let you do it."
Bud gritted his teeth. "Witch! I'm going to give you the beating of your life." He lifted the belt over his head.
"Please!" She rolled away from him and got on her knees, scrambling on all fours in the direction of the door. The belt whistled down on her bare buttocks. She reared up like a mare with a burr under its saddle, screaming in pain.
A long, raised, red welt bisected the creamy cheeks. Before she could recover, he lashed her a second time. Her satiny flesh quivered in agony ac another welt crisscrossed the first. Whimpering, she rolled over on her back, clutching at her searing buttocks with her hands.
"You're killing me!" she cried. "It's occurred to me," he said.
He whipped the belt across her quaking breasts. The leather stung both nipples. She felt as though someone had touched a match to them. Fire spiraled down their slopes and flamed out through her body, taking her breath away. She swayed back against the wall as the belt came down again. She stared blankly at the red line that marred the flawless flesh of her heaving belly. But there was no pain this time.
A strange, alien sensation was flowing through her body, gorging her flesh, displacing all other sensation. To her astonishment, her nipples began to rise and grow taut. They were still tingling from the shock of the lash. The feeling was quite pleasurable. A similar sensation was churning deep inside her. The spark glowed brighter, broke into flames that licked at the inner sides of her thighs and up the smarting cheeks of her buttocks.
With a plaintive cry, she dropped to her knees in front of Bud and clasped him around the hips. At first, he thought she was begging for mercy. He started to move her away, but she only clutched at him tighter. Suddenly, he realized she was kissing him. Her mouth was hot and wet on his belly.
"What the devil!" he exclaimed.
Now her hands were caressing his hard, tight buttocks while her lips adored him feverishly in front. Bud gasped as the lust that she had killed a few moments earlier resurged with mighty vigor.
The significance of what was happening stunned him. He had read about women who were like this, but this was the first time he had ever encountered one in the flesh. In the flesh, indeed! Her feelings had been locked up tightly in a secret place of her mind and body. It required pain and violence to shatter the cocoon and release the beauty and ecstasy that were imprisoned within.
He pushed her gently back on the boards, thrilled by the fire and lust that possessed her beautiful face. Her breath hissed through swollen, sensual lips.
"Now, now, now! Take me now, before I go out of my mind."
She welcomed him with the greed of a starving creature. Her breasts swelled against his chest. Her belly beat a frenzied tattoo against his belly. Her heels, locked behind his back, hammered at his buttocks as if to drive him even harder. Her teeth snapped at his shoulders. She had become an animal, a lust-mad jungle beast. Bud was somewhat awed by the intensity of her passion.
Their bodies writhed and heaved on the boards of the shower room floor, wet with foam and sweat. They clashed with increasing ardor until Bud's pelvic bones began to ache.
Then, with a screech that shook the rafters of the little building, she surged up to meet him with express train speed. The catalyst fused their flesh in its ultimate glory. The flesh vaporized in a flash of white heat-a sun that radiated shimmering waves of extraordinary bliss off into space in all directions.
"If only I'd known it could be like this," Kit lamented when the last tremors had dissipated and her body was at peace.
CHAPTER FOUR
When BILL CARTER CAME home from the fields in the late afternoon, he found his wife in the bedroom, crying. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded.
She refused to answer him. At that instant, he heard a car engine revving in the road that went by the farmhouse. Bill walked to the window and peered out. To his surprise, he saw Bud Mannix's blue Ford speeding away in a cloud of dust.
"Where's he off to?" he asked.
She rolled over and looked up at him. "He's gone, left."
Bill's mouth opened wide. "You mean, for good?"
She nodded, biting on her lower lip. He noticed that she was wearing a quilted robe and that it was pulled open in front. His eyes traveled up her long, bare legs and came to rest on her naked belly.
"How come you ain't got any clothes on?" he asked.
"I took my shower today."
Bill frowned. "It's almost supper time. You been running around naked all day, with a strange man in the house?"
Her green eyes wilted under his accusing gaze. His neck reddened, and the blood shot up into his pinched face. Sudden revelation struck him. "Sayyyy ... It's funny, him leaving so quick like this. He didn't fool around with you, did he?"
She smiled queerly, the tears coming to a halt. "He wasn't fooling." She flung open the robe, revealing all of her naked body. The welts across her breasts and belly were vivid, scarlet bands.
Bill gaped at her incredulously. An oath was torn from his lips. "Bud did that to you?" he whispered.
She slipped off the robe and got off the bed, turning to show him her back. She pushed up her buttocks boldly to give him a good look at the angry lashes that marred their perfection. Bill's blood turned cold as she sauntered toward him, swinging her hips suggestively.
"Maybe it's just as well he's gone," she said dreamily. "After all, I still got a husband."
He stood paralyzed as she unbuckled his belt and pulled it through the loops. When it was off, she snapped it like a whip. "You want we should have some fun, honey?" she simpered.
He backed away from her, horrified. "No, no!" He refused to accept the belt she held out toward him.
"Please, Billy," she begged.
As her arms reached out at him, he turned and ran from the room. Her insane peals of laughter chased him down the stairs and out into the back yard, where he vomited onto a compost heap.
Miles away, Bud hummed softly to himself as he drove the old heap along the main highway at a steady forty-miles-per-hour clip. It felt good to be on the move again.
He drove steadily until ten o'clock that night. Finally, with the gas tank nearly empty, he pulled in at a motel and parked in front of the office. It was a small cubicle with a Coke machine against one wall and a juke box against the opposite one. He judged the place to be clean and inexpensive.
There was a stout man of about forty-five behind the desk, reading a newspaper. He looked up when Bud came in.
"Howdy. Want a room for the night?"
"Yes, please," Bud said. "I've been driving all day."
The man handed him a key. "Number I-A. That's the last unit in the building right over here in front of the parking lot. Ten dollars in advance."
Bud frowned. Ten dollars was a lot of money to spend for just a night's sleep. "You got anything cheaper?" he asked.
The man grinned. "You get half of it back when you check out. That is, if all my towels and linens are still there."
Bud laughed appreciatively. "It pays to be careful." He picked up a pen and signed the register.
The man squinted at the name. "Bud Mannix. Glad to know you, Mannix. My name's Smith. Sam Smith." He looked across Bud's shoulder. "Them there is my daughters, Pinky and Dolly."
Bud turned his head indifferently to nod to the two girls who had just come into the office, but his indifference went up with a bang as they slid into his field of vision. He saw a slender, willowy teen-ager with jet-black hair hanging in a loose, blunt-cut bob. She had big brown eyes, set wide apart, with high arching brows. She was wearing a striped polo shirt which pulled very tightly across her small, conical breasts, and white linen shorts which were molded just as tightly to her slim, boyish hips. There was nothing boyish, however, about her perky buttocks and rounded thighs. Her arms and legs were tanned and firm as only the flesh of youth can be.
Now, if this lovely young creature was not enough to send a male's libido soaring, there was an additional kicker. She was only one of a pair. Standing beside her was an exact reproduction, the same in every detail of appearance, build, coloring and dress. Bud rubbed his eyes in disbelief, thinking he was having double vision from too many hours on the road. Smith's voice, behind him, was reassuring.
"My twin girls. Bet you never saw anything like them before!"
Bud shook his head in agreement. "I sure never have."
The twins flashed him toothy smiles that were identical. "Hi!" they said in unison. "You staying over?" one of them asked.
"Yeah, for the night."
"We'll show him his room, okay Dad?" the other said.
Smith winked at Bud. "Watch out for 'em, mister. They're full of mischief."
"I sure will." Bud was fascinated by the way their perky little behinds wiggled identically beneath the tight white shorts as they escorted him out of the office.
He parked his car, got his suitcase and followed them along a boardwalk to the end of one row of units. "Too bad you can't stay over for a while," Pinky said. "It's been pure Dullsville around here for the past few weeks."
"Business bad?" Bud asked.
"Terrible," said Dolly. "You're the first boy we've seen all this month."
Bud grinned. "I'm not exactly a boy."
Pinky arched her sexy eyebrows at him. "Well, we're not exactly children, either."
He looked at her saucy breasts poking out of the tight polo shirt. "You got a point there." He looked from one girl to the other. Four little breasts jiggling in perfect time. The pleasant warmth was pervading his loins again.
"How do they tell you girls apart?" he inquired, to get his mind off their breasts.
The girls looked at each other with merry eyes and began to giggle at some private joke. "There is a way," one of them told him slyly, "but it's a secret between us."
"I'd like to find out what it is," he said. They giggled again. "Maybe you will," Dolly replied.
When they reached apartment I-A, the girls pushed open the door and preceded him inside. They switched on the lights and went around opening windows and uncovering his bed.
"Professional maid service," Bud joked.
"If you don't see what you want, ask for it," Pinky said.
Bud's gaze was fixed on the girls' buttocks as they stood side by side, bending over the bed to fluff up the pillows. Their heart-shaped derreires reminded him of two valentines. Mentally, he caressed their satiny globes.
I see exactly what I want, he said to himself, but to the girls he merely said, "Nothing I can think of right now. I just want to hit the sack now. It's been a long day."
Their identical mouths pouted. "Can't we hang around a while and shoot the breeze?" Pinky asked him. "We don't often get a chance to hear what's going on in the outside world."
"You got any liquor?" Dolly inquired hopefully. "We can get you setups or Cokes."
Bud shook his head. "No liquor."
"Can't we stay and talk anyway?"
He hesitated, strongly tempted to encourage them. They seemed like real hip kids, even if they were only teen-agers. It would be quite a novelty making love to identical twins, and these two were perfect dolls. The trouble was they were jailbait, and the old man was down there in the office, no doubt with a shotgun loaded for just such emergencies.
Uneasily, he told them, "I think you kids better go now. Your father will be wondering where you are."
Pinky wrinkled up her nose at him. "Your scared of us, aren't you?"
Bud snorted. "Afraid? What have I got to be afraid of?"
The twins turned on their private laughter again and hugged each other around the waist. Dolly showed him her pink tongue. "Because we're twice as much woman as any ordinary woman," she said enigmatically.
Bud blinked in confusion. "How's that again?"
Their faces were grave and serious again. "Really," Pinky said, "all twins have unusual qualities. Last year, the school made Dolly and me do all kinds of experiments. Something to do with ESP, whatever that is."
Bud was interested. "Extra-sensory perception. Yes, I read some place that twins are acutely sensitive to each other's thinking. Can you two read each other's thoughts?"
"All the time," Pinky said. She nodded at her sister. "Think of a number between one and ten."
"Okay."
"Is it six?"
"Of course."
Bud laughed skeptically. "How do I know that was the number she was thinking of? I think you've got a game going to fool the public."
"No, honest," Dolly assured him. "My number was six. That's easy. You should see some of the things we did in the school experiments. Even the professors were stumped."
"We even feel the same sensations," Pinky said. "Once when Dolly sprained her ankle, I couldn't walk for two days."
"Very interesting," Bud admitted. "But now I want to shower and go to bed."
The twins giggled. "Can I scrub your back?" Dolly asked.
"Can I tuck you in?" said her sister.
"Out, both of you!" Bud ordered.
The girls exchanged mischievous looks. "You'll be sorry," Pinky told him. "We were just going to demonstrate one of our most amazing talents to you."
"Maybe tomorrow." He herded them out and locked the door behind them. He was glad they were gone. A few more minutes of their provocative teasing and he would have succumbed. His hands were itching to cup those cute little breasts, to stroke their smooth flanks, to caress their succulent thighs. He stripped off his shorts and surveyed himself solemnly in the mirror.
"Old buddy," he said to his mirror image, "you had better take a cold shower, pronto!"
The instant his head hit the pillow, he fell into a deep, exhausted slumber. He had no way of knowing how long he had been sleeping when the dream began. He was a Turkish sultan, reclining on a mountain of satin cushions, surrounded by a harem of sultry, naked beauties. He lay back on the cushions, smoking his hookah, while the naked girls jostled each other to fawn over his regal body. Soft hands and teasing fingers fondled him and pinched him. Hot lips drooled over his hard, masculine body.
Bud groaned and thrashed restlessly on the hard motel bed. His flesh was hot and throbbing, his passion ready to boil over like an overheated percolator. His eyes opened slowly, and he stared at the blank ceiling. It took a few moments for full consciousness to return. He frowned as he realized that there was a dim lamp glowing in one corner of the room. He could have sworn that he had switched off all the lights before lying down. He looked down the length of his body. The sheet had been thrown off the bed, and his nakedness was flaunting itself brazenly. His entire body ached with desire. Then he spied a girl!
Pinky or Dolly, he couldn't tell which, was sitting yoga-fashion at the foot of the bed. Only she was contemplating his navel instead of her own. A pixyish smile was fixed on her face. Not realizing yet that he was awake, she bent forward until her lips were; only inches away from his body and blew gently on his throbbing flesh. She ran the fingers of one hand lightly over his flat belly and down between his thighs.
Bud bolted upright. "What do you think you're doing, young lady?"
She smiled serenely. "What do you think I'm doing?" She fondled him with both hands. "You're real cute, Bud. We were waiting for someone like you to come along and help us with our experiment."
"Your experiment?"
"Sure," she got up on her knees now, and he saw that she was wearing a shortie nightgown that barely reached below her hips. It was very sheer, and in the soft light the contours of her girlish form were alluringly silhouetted. As he stared at her, she grasped the bottom hem of the gown and pulled it up over her head. Bud murmured as her fine, small breasts came into view. They were about the size of large plums, and when she lifted her arms to remove the nightie, their pink, pointed summits stood up high and erect, as if they were supported by invisible strings.
"Come here, you," he said in a voice taut with desire. She slid into his arms with the smooth grace of a snake. Her slender, girlish arms were amazingly strong around his neck. Her body seemed to mold itself to his with a tenacity that took his breath away. Her breasts flattened against his chest. Her belly welded itself to his. Thigh to thigh and leg to leg, they fitted together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Her mouth was sweet and young. Their tongues fluttered together like two live wires, sending off little sparks of electricity that sizzled throughout their bodies.
One of her hands slithered between their hips, and she fondled him. "You're beautiful," she said, sighing. "I've never seen a naked man before, except in a picture."
Bud was unpleasantly jolted. "You've got to be kidding! No demure maiden would pull a stunt like this, coming into a stranger's room in the middle of the night!"
"We've been planning it this way for a long time. We were just waiting for the right subject to come along."
"We?" He looked nervously around the room.
"Pinky and me. She's in the next room. That's part of the experiment."
"What's all this mysterious talk about an experiment?"
"We told you before. It's ESP. You know that each of us is supposed to know what the other one is thinking and feeling. Well, Pinky and I asked ourselves a couple of months back how it would work out with some really powerful experience, like sex." She giggled self-consciously. "We got to wondering what would happen if one of us went to bed with a man. Would the twin who wasn't doing it experience the same reactions as the twin who was doing it?"
A long, slow grin spread over Bud's face. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's find out." The adventurous nature of the girl, the bizarre quality of both the twins, intrigued him as he had rarely been intrigued by a female-or females-before. The calm logic of their little experiment stirred deep down into untrapped reservoirs of his own sensuality. And there was the added bonus of her virginity. Bud exploited her hot, responsive flesh with the zeal of a gourmet attacking a platter of rare, exotic Oriental food.
He gorged himself on her tender, pulsing breasts. They were so small that he could almost encompass a whole one in his mouth.
Wanton joy blazed down their summits and raged through her body as her nipples swelled against his tongue. She writhed in smoldering torment at the fire in his hands and fingers ignited in her buttocks, belly and thighs. She was impatient to cast off the yolk of her virginity.
"Now, Bud, now!" she squealed. Her hands tugged at his blazing flesh, pleading with him to accomplish the mating ritual without further delay.
Bud swung across her lithe body. She moved so restlessly beneath him that he had to pin her hips to the bed with both hands. "Steady, girl. Steady!" he soothed her.
"I'm going out of my mind," she gasped.
"Here we go." He positioned himself and braced his feet against the footboard of the bed. She grunted as he began the long, sharp lunge. An agony of white-hot pain seemed to split her body in two. Then it was done.
"Oh, wonder boy!" she exulted. "It's pure heaven. Nothing like this ever before ... Ohhh!" Words failed her as the choking surge of passion welled up in her throat.
Bud sent her higher, ever higher, with smooth, pistoning strokes. He could sense she was teetering on the brink, when suddenly the door of the room flew open. In the periphery of his vision, he saw a white wraith moving toward the bed. It was the other twin, Pinky. She stood at the side of the bed in her shortie nightgown, quaking as if she had a malaria chill. Her hands clutched desperately at her breasts through the gauzy nylon. Her face was frighteningly contorted. With a shock, Bud recognized that expression. It was the same face, the same expression. It was Dolly's face, the face of the girl whose body heaved and twisted against his body in the climactic throes of passion.
"I'm burning up!" she wailed. "Do something." Be fore Bud knew what was happening, she had hurled herself on top of him. Her pointed breasts stuck into his back. Her belly twisted and rolled against his bare buttocks. There was nothing he could do, except to let her hang on for the ride.
Thankfully, Dolly began the dramatic finale of fulfillment. Breasts, belly, thighs hurled themselves at his body like chaotic waves crashing on the beach at the height of a storm at sea. He paced himself carefully, with the other twin in mind.
At last, Dolly collapsed and lay there inert as a dead woman. He rolled her to one side of the bed and lay down where she had been lying, on his back. He smiled up at Pinky, who was crouched on her hands and knees, shaking with massive desire.
"Come on, honey," he coaxed her. "There's plenty left for you."
She needed no invitation. Scrambling like an animal, she climbed on top of him, straddling his lean hips. She clutched at him ravenously, squirming to attain the goal of her lust. Bud smiled. She reminded him of a greedy child stuffing candy into its mouth. He let her take control, and she found the way instinctively. With a long, shuddering sigh of relief, she took him.
In hardly more than an instant, she was over the brink, and Bud was with her. They soared through empty space, tumbling end over end, until they landed with sweet softness on the bed once more.
Later, the two sisters stared at each other with glassy eyes. "It worked, didn't it?" Dolly asked.
Pinky nodded. "Only next time, I want to be on the positive end of the connection. It's no fun waiting in line."
Bud chuckled. "Better yet, find another set of twins. Boys, naturally."
The sisters laughed. "That's the perfect solution," Pinky said.
Dolly sighed. "I can see we're going to have real problems when we get married. We'll have to arrange it so that our husbands make love to us at the same time on the same nights. Otherwise we'll both go t crazy."
"This old ESP has its drawbacks," Pinky lamented.
Bud began to laugh heartily.
"What's with you?" Pinky demanded.
"I've got it," he said triumphantly. "Now I know how to tell you apart." He reached out with both hands and tweaked the cheeks of their round, plump buttocks. "Pinky has a beauty mark on the left cheek, and Dolly as one on the right cheek."
"You hit the jackpot," the girls chorused.
"You can say that again," Bud admitted.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, he checked out of the motel early, before the twins were awake. Sad farewells made him sick to his stomach.
"Say so long to your daughters for me," he told the manager.
"Sure will. They give you any trouble last night?"
Bud suppressed a smile. "Not a bit."
"Where you headed?" Smith asked him.
"Don't know for sure. Thought I might head out to tha West Coast."
"Hollywood? You going to be a movie actor?"
Bud laughed. "Never thought about it."
"You're good-looking enough to be one."
"Thanks, Maybe you gave me an idea."
As he drove west in the old blue Ford, Bud carefully considered what Smith had said. It was true-he was a handsome guy. Once, a fellow had approached him on the street and asked him if he wanted to model men's shirts. Bud had poked him in the nose, thinking he was a fairy. That had been a long time ago, when he considered actors and models a bunch of sissies. Now he was older and wiser, and he was getting tired of knocking around the country. Another thing appealed to him about Hollywood. It was packed with beautiful women, and not the kind who wanted to get their hooks into a man for keeps. They were out for fun, and they didn't make any secret of it. He remembered having read in some scandal sheet about aging actresses who kept young studs around to service them, the way a sultan keeps harem girls. It was worth a try, he decided.
On the long trip across country, he tried to steer clear of romantic entanglements, but it wasn't easy. He got safely across Missouri and Kansas, but outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado, he was delayed for two weeks. He was driving down a lonely stretch of highway when he passed a car with a flat tire on the side of the road. A lone woman was standing in front of it, waving her arms frantically. Bud screeched to a halt and backed up. "Need help?"
"Looks it, don't it?" she said in a flat, Midwestern accent.
He flushed slightly. Bud hated flip, superior females. He was tempted to drive on and leave her in the lurch, but there was a bigger temptation to remain. Two big temptations, as a matter-of-fact. They were bulging out of the V-neckline of the man's shirt she was wearing, almost spilling out of her brassiere. He looked her over brazenly from head to foot. That was always calculated to put women in their proper place, his way of scrutinizing them like they were brood mares. Only it didn't work with this woman. She was wearing a pair of faded denim hip-huggers that fit her hips and thighs like a second skin. Bud's eyes fixed on the plump triangle where her legs ended. It was vividly denned under the strained material.
"Well, are you finished?" she asked in bored indifference.
"Finished?" Bud was startled.
"Yes, with the inspection. Here, let me show you the rear view." She spun around and presented her backside to him. The cheeks were plump, round and inviting. Bud blushed scarlet. She was too aggressive for comfort. He flung open the door of his car and got out, scowling.
"Let's get at that flat tire, ma'am."
"That's what I had in mind."
While he jacked up the rear of her station wagon, she got the spare out of the tire well in the back of the wagon. She watched him work, standing hip-shot, with her hands on her flaring thighs. He studied her slyly with quick glances.
She was a good-looking woman, not beautiful nor even pretty, but good-looking. Her face was wide, with high cheekbones and straight, clean features. She had a fine brow and solemn brown eyes. Her hair was brown, with streaks of gold, and cut very short, almost in a boyish bob. He judged that her age was about 30. She was tall, and her voluptuous figure, as he had observed earlier, had a vital Amazon quality. He didn't really like her as a female. She was too forceful.
"I'm Mrs. Larsen," she introduced herself as he screwed the lugs on the spare tire. "My husband and I run a summer camp on a lake a few miles from here."
"A children's camp?" he asked politely.
She laughed, showing brilliant white teeth. "Their parents like to think of them as children, I suppose, but they don't get to see the side of them that we do. Age group-twelve to fifteen. Male and female. Boys on one side of the lake, girls on the other side. At least that's what it says in our brochures. The truth is, they migrate back and forth like spawning salmon, the little sneaks. Biggest bunch of nymphs and satyrs I ever encountered. Ah well, the fires of youth and all that. Personally, I find their precocious diddling rather charming. Of course, my husband and I are of Swedish descent. Nels once managed a youth hostel in Sweden. We Nordics are more broad-minded about sex than the Americans and the English. We say that boys should be boys and girls should be girls in the fullest possible meaning."
Bud wiped off his greasy hands and looked up at her with a studied leer. "How about men and women? Does it hold for them, too?"
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Oh, even more emphatically!"
She was beginning to excite him in a way no woman had ever affected him before. He hitched up the legs of his Levi's to ease the strain. It had been over a week since he had been with a woman. He hammered the hubcaps back on the wheel, trying to turn his mind away from lurid thoughts.
"Are you on the road?" she asked.
"Going to California. I take my time, pick up odd jobs along the way."
"Odd jobs." Her laughter was throaty and exciting. "Well now, I think you just might fit a job that's open at the camp. Our senior counselor is in the hospital with appendicitis. Are you a good athlete?"
"Four-letter man," he lied.
"We close up in another two weeks. Do you think you'd be interested in filling in on the job? It would be worth a hundred dollars, and room and board."
"You got yourself a deal, ma'am," he said. He stood up and faced her. Her eyes were almost on a level with his own.
"My name is Jenny," she said. "And yours?"
"Bud. Bud Mannix."
"Okay, Buddy-boy. Hop in your car and follow me." She inhaled deeply, her full breasts swelling out of the man's shirt. Quite distinctly, he saw the outlines of her hard nipples asserting themselves through the shirt and brassiere. She must be quite a woman in bed, he reflected.
Camp Karnak was situated on a small, picturesque lake in a hollow between two mountains. There were two permanent wooden barracks on each side of the lake, as well as a scattering of pyramidal tents among the trees. Its complement was made up of fifty boys and fifty girls, not including the staff. There were five male counselors and five female counselors, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-one.
Nels Larsen was a big, lanky man with unruly blonde hair and a face like a hawk. He was ten years older than his wife.
"An act of providence," he said, as he shook hands with Bud. "We really need another strong hand here to keep these hellions in line."
Later, he took Bud aside. "I don't know whether or not my wife told you about the problems we've been having. Sex has been rearing its ugly head, as the Muses term it. Frankly, I believe it's healthy for boys and girls to find out about their bodies by harmless experimentation. It's always been my experience that a little sex play provides an excellent release from the tensions of adolescence. Unhappily, we have had one serious consequence so far this session. One of our fifteen-year-old girls became pregnant. In my country, naturally, this would have been of only minor importance. Swedish law provides for such mishaps to be rectified in a simple and discreet manner. It's all part of the growing-up experience. You Americans are such puritans, however. In any case, it has become necessary to curb the natural exuberance and curiosity of our youthful charges." He smiled ruefully. "It will be your chief responsibility, Mr. Mannix, to see that the nocturnal excursions and exchanges between our two camps do not get completely out of hand."
Bud was amused at the irony of the situation. "I'm kind of a warden, is that it?"
"In effect. You will, shall we say, limit intercourse between the camps."
Bud laughed. "That's a good way to phrase it. Look, can I expect much help from the other counselors?"
Larsen's eyebrows arched. "Only in the daytime activities, I fear. At night the older boys and girls have their own preoccupations. Look."
He indicated a couple in bathing suits who were seated on the end of the dock. The girl was plump and vivacious in a bikini that covered only the minimum essentials of her brown, firm flesh. They were sitting close together, dangling their bare feet in the lake, and the boy's arm was around her back. His hand was resting on her side. It looked innocent enough to Bud, until Larsen pointed out that his thumb was moving slyly inside the loose bandana that cuddled her round, orange-sized breasts. The girl, in turn, was stroking the boy's bare thigh with one of her hands.
"You see what I mean?" Larsen said. "The counselors have come to know each other intimately over the long summer. Several romances are flourishing. When the moon is high over the lake, they have eyes only for each other. I don't worry about them though. All of my older boys have received a thorough orientation lecture on the hazards of promiscuity. I have also provided the older girls with certain pills. So it will be entirely up to you to ride herd on the younger group."
"Okay," Bud said. "How do I know when to blow the whistle on the kids? Is the boys' side strictly off limits to the girls at night, and vice versa?
Larsen frowned. "I don't want to turn the camp into a monastery or a nunnery. You'll have to use your discretion. Keep an eye on the bonfires on the beach and at the clambakes. There's a little kissing and feeling and fondling. It's usually sufficient satisfaction for adolescent boys and girls. The pleasures are quick and heady and delightful. Few of them dare, or even want, to go all the way. You know what I mean?"
The food was excellent at supper, and Bud rather enjoyed his position of authority at the counselors' table. To the chagrin of the boys, the girls concentrated most of their attention in his direction. He accepted their admiration and giggles with polite dignity, born of a sure knowledge of his appeal to the gentle sex.
The plump little brunette who had been sitting on the dock earlier in the day had a bad crush on him. She kept wriggling her round little bottom skittishly against the seat of her chair; and, more than once, her thigh brushed his tentatively underneath the table. Bud pretended not to notice.
"You're our boss, Bud," she joked, "and we'll do anything you say."
The boy she had been teasing on the dock scowled darkly and stabbed his fork viciously into a piece of steak.
"Anything!" a sexy blonde girl echoed. "You name it."
"You kids better keep your sticky paws off of Bud," a wise-looking lad with horn-rimmed glasses warned them solemnly. "I got a hunch that Mrs. Larsen has her eye on him."
"You mean she's got a 'private-property' sign on him?" the plump brunette squealed.
"That's just what I mean. How about it, Bud?"
Bud dismissed it lightly. "She's a little old for me, I think."
A tow-headed boy groaned in mock ecstasy. "Not for me, she isn't. Jenny can put her moccasins under my cot any time she wants to. What a woman!"
Bud was grateful when the meal was over. The girl's hot thigh rubbing on his leg underneath the table and the suggestive horseplay had conspired to arouse his desire more than a little bit. He lit a cigarette and walked out on the dock to cool off. He sat there a long time, until purple dusk had settled over the lake and the full moon peeped over the trees on the opposite shore.
Nels Larsen interrupted his reveries.
"You should start making your rounds about now, Bud," the camp director said.
"It's kind of early for the funny stuff to begin, isn't it?" he said.
"True, but I want them to be aware of your vigilant presence. That way, they'll be on their guard later on. They won't let their petting get out of hand. Prevention is the most effective medicine, you know."
Bud nodded and laughed. "I'm off, then. Keep your pants on, boys and girls."
Larsen smiled. "That's the objective. By the way, there's a marshmallow roast on the girls' beach at nine. Also, a bunch of the kids are going out in the power launch to do some spear fishing. No problem there, there'll be two counselors aboard. But you'll have to keep an eye on them after they come in."
"I'll manage," Bud assured him, and started off around the lake.
Darkness came to the valley while the sky was still tinged with twilight. A good part of the beach that circled the lake was overshadowed by towering trees with shaggy crowns. He could see that there were countless potential trysting spots where a boy and his girl could sneak away to relieve their mutual itch.
Bud felt sorry for all the young, confused kids in the world who were undergoing their initiation into adolescence, frightened and desperate because of the mysterious and powerful urges that compelled their changing bodies. He rememberd how it had been with himself. Sex was far more than pleasure. There was pain, anguish, humiliation, terror. The fact was, the disadvantages far outweighed the advantages. He thought bitterly of his mother and Uncle Jack.
He reached the girls' camp and began his leisurely inspection. The beach was crowded with kids of both sexes in bathing suits or shorts. They were laughing and giggling, dancing to the music of transistor radios and chasing each other over the sand. He was surprised at how mature some of the girls looked, considering that none of them were older than fifteen. Even the twelve-year-olds were flaunting their budding femininity proudly in bikinis that emphasized their hard, small breasts and their cute little buttocks. Their thighs, just beginning to flesh out, were slim but shapely.
He watched a boy come up behind a girl with a prominent fanny and clasp her around the waist. She screamed and struggled to free herself, but didn't try too hard. The boy's hips, lean and bony in his brief trunks, convulsed hard against her soft buttocks, which were half exposed in the skimpy bikini. They wrestled for some time in this fashion, both clearly enjoying the contact of their sweet young flesh. Bud shrugged and walked on. It was innocent diversion.
He walked around the rear of the barracks to the tent area. Rounding the comer of one tent, he came face to face with a shy young miss scampering from the showers to her tent. She was wearing only a pair of pink nylon panties. Her cute face froze in an expression of mock horror.
"Oh!" she gasped, covering her saucy little breasts with her hands.
She was only about fourteen, but she was all female, Bud observed with a twinge in his loins. Blushing to the roots of her black hair, she ducked into the nearest tent, showing him her pink-clad fanny, firm and round in the tight panties.
"There's a man out there!" she announced excitedly to the inmates of the tent. Peals of girlish laughter followed him as he sauntered off, smiling to himself.
He stopped in back of a tent at the outer edge of the camp, intrigued by a loud, feminine voice from inside. "You can't back out now, Sandra. I promised the guys I'd bring another girl tonight."
"I'm scared." This voice was tremulous.
"So was I the first time, but you get over that fast, once the fun starts."
"Is it really fun?"
"You can't imagine!" The girl sighed ecstatically.
"But how do you know what to do? I've never even been kissed by a boy. Not really."
The other girl giggled. "You just do what comes naturally. Don't worry, these guys are just as dumb as you are. I know more about it than the three of them put together."
"Ethel...." The scared girl hesitated. "Did you ever go all the way with a boy?"
"No, but I just might do it tonight."
There was a stifled gasp of dismay. "Then I'm not going! You said we were just going to fool around a little."
Her friend laughed. "I was only teasing. It's nothing, really. Didn't you ever play doctor with a boy when you were a little kid? Come on, we've got to get going."
Keeping a safe distance behind them, Bud followed them silently through the darkness as they walked around the lake to the boys' camp. They stopped before the darkened boathouse. Their figures were blurry shadows as they ducked into a black cavity under the steps that led to the top of the building.
Bud waited a few minutes, then followed them. There was a space between two pilings, just wide enough to squeeze his body into. He felt his way slowly across a small room littered with gear.
On the opposite wall, a rectangle of slivery light marked the position of a door. He found the knob and eased the door open scarcely an inch. It was enough to let him peer into the next room.
The two girls were sitting in a circle with three teen-age boys in the light of a naked light bulb. The boys all looked ill at ease. The girls were no older than the boys, but they appeared more mature in their tight, revealing swim suits.
The one named Ethel was rather coarse-looking. She had blonde, stringy hair, thick, sensual lips and a broad nose. Her body was thick in the waist, her hips and buttocks round and voluptuous, her legs heavy but shapely. It was her breasts that held the awed attention of the boys, however. They were plump and soft, bulging over the top of her bikini bra.
The other girl, Sandra, was slender, with delicate, sensitive features. Her dark eyes were enormous and luminous. She had raven-colored hair bobbed about her slim shoulders. She folded her arms in front of her and hunched forward to minimize the thrust of her small, pointed breasts. Her body was as sleek as a cat's. There was a feline grace and form to her hips and long legs as she sat curled up tensely on the boathouse floor.
Ethel tittered. "You go first, fellows."
"Says who?" protested one of the boys.
"I say so. Listen, I got fooled once by two boys from another camp. I stripped first, and after they had an eyeful, they just walked away."
"Okay," the largest boy said, in a changing voice exaggerated by embarrassment. "Let's get it over with." He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his swim trunks and pulled them off slowly. The other boys reluctantly followed suit.
Sandra, blushing furiously, averted her eyes. But Ethel watched them with an overt, smoldering gaze. She nudged her friend and giggled. "There it is, sweetie. The male body. That's what all the fuss is about Bet you're disappointed, aren't you?"
The dark girl lifted her eyes timidly. She was disappointed!
"It's all right, Sandra," Ethel went on, "things will perk up as the evening goes on."
"Cut the gab!" one of the boys snarled. "Now, it's your turn, girls."
Ethel didn't have to be coaxed. She reached in back and untied her bra. Flipping it off, she thrust out her big breasts proudly. The nipples stood up like stiff red pegs.
"Wow!" the smallest boy said. The initial nervousness left him abruptly, and his body responded vigorously to the vision of the girl's naked breasts.
Ethel was delighted at the rousing effect she had produced on the boy. She could hardly wait to wriggle out of her bikini pants. She balanced herself on her knees and thrust her plump tummy forward, letting the lads enjoy her ample and impressive femininity.
"That's an improvement, fellows," she said, looking directly at their changing physiques and nudging the other girl with an elbow. "Still disappointed, honey?"
Sandra was in a state of shock, overwhelmed and petrified by the remarkable transformation which had come over the young male bodies so abruptly.
"Your turn, Sandra," Ethel said. "Take it off, so we can start the fun and games."
The dark girl was now very pale. "No," she said, "I don't want to. I feel sick."
A concerted howl of protest went up from the boys. Ethel glowered at her. "Oh, no you don't!" she growled. "You came here of your own free will. You play the game square!"
"I can't!" Sandra started to scramble to her feet, but Ethel grabbed her.
"Help me, you guys!" the chunky blonde said. "If she won't cooperate, we'll take her clothes off for her." She flung the struggling girl flat on her back and clamped a hand over her mouth to choke off her terrified outcries.
Like young, salivating wolves, the naked boys leaped upon Sandra. Two of them pinned her down with her arms and legs spread wide apart, and the third tore off her bra and her bikini pants.
Her small breasts strained up high and firm as she arched her back in her frantic efforts to escape. Her buttocks and belly had the look of white satin where the pants had covered her, in striking contrast to the rest of her richly tanned body.
The boys gazed upon her exposed charms with lustful admiration. "Hey, she's a real doll!" one of them said.
Sandra closed her eyes tightly to blot out the image of their animal lust thrusting brazenly at her from all directions. She went limp, exhausted by fear and humiliation and disgust.
"Okay, she's over it now," Ethel sang out. "Let's have some fun."
She let go of Sandra and leaped at the nearest boy. They rolled over in a tangled heap like two frolicsome puppies. One of the boy's hands clenched on the girl's buttocks. The other slipped between her thighs. His lips were kissing her breasts. Ethel's hands were working expertly on his flesh.
The two other boys were doing their best to arouse Sandra. She lay on her back in a daze, staring at them with dull eyes. One of them was kissing her little nipples ardently, but she felt nothing. The other was stroking her tummy with one hand and her thighs with the other. She didn't feel that, either. The hand moved between her thighs, and she felt the fingers teasing the lower curves of her buttocks.
"I felt that!" she told herself, a little startled. The slow, teasing pressure of the fingers persisted. She stirred restlessly. Sensation was returning to her breasts, to all of her body. Electricity leaped from the summits of her nipples, which were erect and tingling now, and sizzled through her tummy to explode in the pit of her body where that tantalizing hand was caressing her.
Before Bud turned away from the crack in the door, he saw her white hands reaching out shyly to touch the boys' bodies.
"Boys will be boys," he thought, "and girls will be girls, and always the twain shall meet!"
It wasn't an accurate quote, but it was an accurate fact of life. He had debated with himself the propriety of breaking up the orgy he had just witnessed, but had decided against it. After all, Larsen had told him not to spoil the kids' games unless they seemed to be headed for the adult level. Bud was pretty certain that Ethel and Sandra and their swains would hold the line where it was when he left them.
CHAPTER SIX
By midnight Camp Karnak was dark and quiet. Bud continued to make his rounds of the lake, stomping out the glowing ashes of campfires and gathering up refuse.
He was walking at a point on the beach halfway between the boys' side and the girls' side when he came face-to-face with Jenny Larsen. She was wearing a short terry-cloth robe belted around the middle, and her legs and feet were bare.
"Hello, there," Bud greeted her. "What are you doing up at this hour?"
Her teeth flashed in the moonlight. "I like to take a late swim after everything simmers down. It helps me get to sleep."
"But why here?" he asked her. "You've got a swell beach right in front of your bungalow."
"I don't want to disturb anyone. In the dead of night, you make so much noise splashing around. I'd have half the camp up."
"If I had my suit handy, I'd join you," he said. "It's a hot night."
She laughed. "Don't let that stop you."
Casually, she untied her belt and shrugged off the robe. Bud's eyes bulged. She was stark naked. The moonlight glistened softly on her high, full breasts and on her bare arms and shoulders.
"I despise swim suits," she said. "Last year, Nels and I tried to start a nudist camp for youngsters, but there was too much opposition from the parents. In Sweden, nudism is quite fashionable, you know."
"I've heard." Bud could not stop himself from staring at her nude, statuesque form.
She reminded him of a classical sculpture. In the moonlight, her white flesh had the sheen of Italian marble. Her body was a study in symmetry, so round and full in all of its breathtaking proportions. His gaze lingered on the shadowed hollow of her navel and on the deeper hollow between her thighs. She was aware of his inspection, amused by it.
"Don't just stand there staring, Bud. Take off your clothes, and we'll have a swim." When he hesitated, she laughed and turned her back, walking to the water's edge with long strides. "If you're bashful, I won't look."
Bud wasn't bashful, but he was self-conscious about exposing the lust that had been tormenting his flesh since he had witnessed the teen-age orgy in the boathouse. The sight of Jenny's nude, voluptuous body had aggravated it, so that now his sexual desire was at its pinnacle. Grateful for the darkness, he stripped off his shirt and trousers.
He dashed down the beach and dove into the shallow water. Jenny was ahead of him, swimming with long, easy strokes. Her long, tapered legs scissored up and down, gleaming wetly in the luminous, greenish light. Her buttocks stood out of the water prominently, two perfect spheres of firm, rotund flesh. He had to fight down a strong urge to hurl himself on top of her.
Jenny turned around, treading water until he caught up with her. "Delightful, isn't it?" she said.
"Delightful," he murmured, his eyes fixed hungrily on her breasts, which were bobbing buoyantly on the surface. The nipples were dark and rigid.
"How did your first night go?" she wanted to know. "Any incidents to report?"
"Just the routine horseplay you might expect. Girls and boys wrestling on the sand, that type of thing." He deliberated telling her about the kids in the boathouse and decided against it. She might think he had been too circumspect.
"I'm glad," she said. "I like to encourage a little sex play between my teen-agers. It's healthy."
She was drifting closer to him, her magnificent breasts moving up and down sensuously with the little waves. In another moment, her nipples would be touching his chest. Bud took a deep breath and looked into her dark eyes. They stared at each other solemnly for a time, then Jenny put one of her hands on his shoulder. Bud gasped as her other hand touched him slyly under the water.
She smiled. "It's healthy for big boys and girls too," she whispered.
Her hand explored his body eagerly. Bud curled one arm about her waist and pulled her hard against him. In contrast to the cool lake water, her flesh was very hot. Her firm breasts were cushioned against his heaving chest, the stiff nipples digging deep into his flesh. She wriggled her soft belly and smooth flanks against him, driving his lust higher and higher.
"Lover," she whispered. She nipped his ear lobe, trailed kisses down the line of his jaw to one corner of his mouth. Her tongue played across his lips, then wriggled into his mouth like a warm, pink worm. Bud's hands slid down her tapered back to the flaring slopes of her buttocks. The tender cheeks quivered as he caressed the flesh. Her belly pushed into him urgently.
"I can't wait a moment longer," she cried.
"Come on," he said thickly. "Back to the beach."
"No! Here! Now!"
He thought she was fooling. "But Jenny," he protested, "the water is over our heads. We'll drown."
She would tolerate no delay. Her long, strong legs went around his waist, and her ankles locked together at the small of his back. Bud began to tread water desperately as they slowly sank. She laughed softly. Strangely, in spite of the danger, Bud was terribly excited. It added zest to the experience. With greedy hands, she directed him to the smoldering bower of her womanhood.
Bud had a fleeting impression of being a diver in the South Seas and being trapped in the jaws of a giant clam. The water churned furiously all around them as the rhythmic clenching of their bodies increased in tempo. A bystander on the beach might have thought they were two sea creatures locked in mortal combat.
His fingers stroked the rippling muscles in her buttocks. His piston strokes built up to a frenzy.
She cried out in ecstasy as the convulsions of fulfillment seized her, falling back in the water. Her legs remained locked strongly around his hips, contracting and opening to the tempo of her spasms.
Bud kept driving her though the water as if he were a harpoonist putting the coup de grace on a big fish. The night exploded in a million stars for him, too. He gave a final gasp before the water closed over their heads. Down, down they sank, into the depths, writhing and pulsing in the eternal rhythm of tide and flesh.
Bud was exhausted when they dragged themselves up on the bank. They lay side by side, regaining their wind. After a while, he levered himself up on one elbow.
"You'd better get back to your place before your husband comes looking for you," he said.
Jenny laughed deep in her throat. "Nels won't come looking for me, don't worry."
He frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She ran her hand playfully over his rigid belly. "Whatever you make of it." She fondled him with practiced fingers. "I'm ready whenever you are, darling."
Bud was startled. "Are you kidding? So soon?"
She rolled onto her side and bent over him so that her breasts dangled close to his lips, as enticing as ripe fruit on a vine. There was no denying the power of her charms. To his surprise, he felt the uncoiling of desire in the pit of his loins. Slowly, his flesh responded to her ministrations.
"That's my good boy," she purred. Bending closer, she popped a turgid nipple into his mouth. Bud shut his eyes and drank deeply of her flesh. His body sank into the soft sand as she straddled his hips. He lay there limply and let her do all the work. She pursued her course methodically, the aggressor all the way. She reminded him of a horsewoman, a naked Lady Godiva, galloping to her goal at a frenzied pace.
Much later, Bud staggered into the tent he shared with two other counselors and collapsed on his cot. He fell asleep without even bothering to undress.
When they met the next morning, Jenny behaved as if nothing had happened between them. She was the cool, efficient administrator of the camp.
"Man!" one of the counselors observed at breakfast, "Mrs. Larsen is really blooming this morning! Look at the color in her cheeks and the luster in her eyes."
Two of the girl counselors exchanged sly winks. "She must have had a satisfying night," one of them said. She looked at Bud. "Too bad we can't say the same thing for you, Bud. You look terrible. How did you spend your night?"
"I spent it," he snapped laconically, without looking up from his ham and eggs.
That afternoon, he went into the camp director's office and submitted his resignation. Nels was shocked and hurt. "What's happened? You've only been here one day."
"I know," Bud said lamely, "but the job isn't quite what I expected it to be."
"I beg of you," Nels pleaded, "don't leave. I'll double the salary Jenny promised you. Two hundred dollars. And it's only for another two weeks."
Bud was taken aback by his illogical agitation. "Gee," he said, "my job here isn't that vital. I mean, what do I do? I play night watchman to see that no hanky-panky is going on in the tents. Anyone can do that."
Larsen's eyes were evasive. "Your presence here is essential to us. You're a fine, strapping specimen of a man."
Bud was thoroughly bewildered. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Jenny would be disappointed if you should leave now."
"I'm sorry, but my mind is made up."
Larsen placed a hand on his arm. "Promise me one thing, anyway. Talk to my wife before you make a final decision."
Bud shrugged. "Okay, but it won't change anything."
"She's over at our bungalow now," Larsen said. "Why don't you go over and talk to her?"
"Okay, okay." Bud left the office and walked across the compound to the little white bungalow that sat at the edge of a grove of pine trees. He mounted the steps and knocked on the door.
"Come in," Jenny's deep voice called out.
He entered and shut the door behind him. The living room was dim and cool, the Venetian blinds drawn against the afternoon sun. Jenny was stretched out on a couch along the opposite wall. She was wearing a thin white blouse and a linen skirt which was pulled halfway up her sleek, golden thighs. He looked at her with utter detachment, not at all moved by her vibrant, female magnetism as he had been the day before.
Her smile was sultry. "This is a pleasant surprise. I was napping."
"I'm sorry T bothered you."
"Don't be silly." She swung her legs off the couch and sat up. The skirt slid up almost to her hips, but she made no move to pull it down. His eyes moved up the length of her thighs, and he could see she was naked under the skirt. She patted the cushion beside her. "Sit down."
"No thanks." Bud shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "I was just over at the office to see your husband. I'm leaving."
She blinked in disbelief. "Nonsense! You only got here."
"I decided the job isn't right for me. Besides, I want to get out to California."
Her voice was harsh and brittle. "Why? Do you have some little chippy waiting for you out there?"
"Nothing like that. I'm anxious to get to Hollywood and find work. I'm going to give acting a whirl."
"Acting?" She laughed in his face. "You must have been smoking pot, to get an idea like that!"
Bud shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I've been told I've got a photogenic face. Maybe it's got box-office appeal."
"Box-office appeal!" She laughed harder. "You fatuous clod! The only appeal you've got is in your pants." She got up and sauntered over to him. "Look, I'm only asking you to stay on for another two weeks. If it's a question of money, I can do better than a hundred dollars."
"Your husband already offered me two hundred."
Her eyebrows arched in amusement. "Good old Nels. Always thinking of me."
Bud was confused. "I don't get it."
Her eyes were glowing strangely, and her voice was softer. "Don't you? Nels is a very considerate husband, and he's broad-minded. He wants me to be happy." Her fingers were opening the buttons of her blouse.
"Happy?"
"I'm a very passionate woman, Bud. You found that out last night. Nels has always known that one man doesn't have the stamina to satisfy my needs." She opened the blouse and bared her breasts. The nipples were red and swollen with desire. Looking at them, he experienced mild revulsion.
"You mean your husband knows you fool around with other men?" The idea made his flesh crawl.
"Of course." She took one of his hands and placed it on her left breast. "Feel how my heart beats faster for you, Bud."
Her hot flesh swelled in his hand, and he felt the wild throbbing beneath it. Smiling, she slipped her other hand down inside the waistband of his Levi's. Her fingers pleaded with him in vain. Her mouth curled down at the edges in anger and disappointment.
"What's the matter with you?" she snarled.
He gave it to her frankly. "Last night was it for you and me, Jenny. I only play to one-night stands."
Her face flushed. "You're an insulting slob!"
"I'm sorry," he said. He disengaged himself from her. "You'll have to find yourself another boy, baby."
"No!" She was on the verge of tears now. "Don't leave me. We were so good together last night."
"That was last night."
"I'll do anything you want. Anything! I can show you things no woman has ever done for you before."
Bud smiled. "I bet you can."
The tears began, tears of helpless fury. "No man has ever walked out on me! I won't let you!"
"You can't stop me."
The hatred in her face frightened him. If she'd had a gun or a knife her hands, he thought, she would have killed him. Relief flooded through him as a knock sounded on the front door.
"Who is it?" she called out irritably.
"Paul Gleason, Mrs. Larsen. My counselor said you wanted to see me."
Bud stepped quickly to the door and opened it.
There was a tall, lanky youth about fourteen on the steps. His pink cheeks were sprouting with soft peach fuzz. He seemed pale and frightened.
"Come on in," Bud said. "I was just leaving." He turned to Jenny, who was buttoning up her blouse. "So long, Mrs. Larsen. It's been nice knowing you."
As he rounded the corner of the bungalow, Jenny's strident voice carried out of an open window. "Gleason, you've been caught peeking into the girls' shower room on several occasions. What do you have to say for yourself?"
"It's true, I admit it," the boy said miserably. "I just can't help myself. I get this urge."
Bud heard the woman's sharp intake of breath. "An urge, yes. I understand about such urges. It's only natural to be curious about the opposite sex at your age."
Furtively, Bud stepped up to the window and peered between the closed blinds. There was just enough space to afford him a view of the couch.
Jenny was unbuttoning her blouse again, as she spoke to the boy in a sing-song voice. "I suppose the best way to purge you of your childish urges is to satsify your curiosity thoroughly, in a mature fashion."
The boy's eyes were huge with wonder as her large round breasts tumbled into his hands.
In disgust, Bud turned away and walked to his blue Ford. Jenny Larsen had called him a slob, but it was she who was the slob.
His father had been right. None of them were any good. They devoured the male of the species, just as black-widow spiders did. Man-eaters, that's what they were.
That night he slept in the car by the side of the road. Before he went to sleep, he brought his journal up to date, inscribing the entries by the dim light of the dashboard. He made a vow to himself that he would not look at another female until he had reached Hollywood.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bud was true to his vow. For the remainder of the long journey to California, he scrupulously avoided any further intimate contacts with women. It wasn't easy.
Wherever he stopped, in motels, in lunchrooms, in bars, he would invariably draw inviting glances from eager females. Some of them were difficult to refuse. There was a sultry brunette behind a cash register who showed him the most alluring cleavage he had ever stared into. There was a blonde carhop in skin-tight shorts with a frenetic fanny and legs like a chorus girl. In spite of these temptations, Bud remained celibate.
He was disappointed in Hollywood. Except for Glamorous Beverly Hills, he found it a drab, sprawling, lonely town. He took a room in the Y.M.C.A. and spent his first night poring over the classified telephone directory, looking for actors' agents.
The next morning, he shaved and showered and dressed carefully in the one white shirt and old suit he owned. Examining his reflection in the mirror, he winced.
Rube Hayseed in the flesh, he thought. He took off the suit and shirt and put on his faded Levi's and a tight T-shirt that showed the excellent development of his chest and shoulders. Bud had good instincts about his own personal charm, and for the best ways to exploit it. He needed a haircut, but he decided that he looked more like an actor with his hair long. With his list of agents in hand, he began an endless and discouraging trek around Hollywood.
In the bigger and more prosperous offices, he never got past the receptionist. The dialogue was always the same.
"What studio did you work at last?"
"I just arrived in town."
"You worked on the stage in New York?"
"No."
"Do you have any acting experience at all?"
"None."
"Well, if you want to leave your composites, we'll be happy to look at them."
"What's a composite?"
"Your photographs. Look, mister, I'm afraid our agency wouldn't be interested in you."
In the smaller offices, he sometimes got to see one of the junior agents, but the dialogue remained equally negative. The only attention he did receive was from the clerical help-female, naturally-who mooned at him over their typewriters and switchboards.
Behind him he always left a wake of uneasy excitement, like a stallion passing by a field of fillies. The girls would wiggle their cute little bottoms against their chair seats and pluck their skirts away from their hot, tingling thighs. It was an aura that he radiated, a kind of animal magnetism.
He had just made an exit from one reception room, and two stenographers were gushing over him to the receptionist, when a tall blonde woman stepped out of one of the inner offices.
Eve McKintosh was forty years old, but she didn't look a day over thirty-five. Her legs were still as good as they had been when she was a chorine at MGM twenty years before, and her hips and bust were almost as good. Expensive foundation garments took up what little slack had accumulated over the years. Her hair was swept up in a glistening platinum-blonde bee hive. Eve was pleased when strangers told her that she resembled Lana Turner.
Her almond-shaped hazel eyes narrowed as she surveyed the giggling girls. "Sounds like somebody sat on a feather," she teased. "What's up, girls?"
"We're all in a swoon, Miss McKintosh," the receptionist explained. "You should have seen the hunk of man who just left here."
"Maybe I should have," she said. "This is an actors' agency, Marie. Why did you give him the brush?"
"Oh, he's beautiful enough, all right," the girl said. "But he's a real greenhorn. Doesn't even have any pictures. Besides, he mumbles."
"So does Brando," Eve said.
She went to the door and opened it a crack, peering out at the bank of elevators. Bud was standing in profile to her. His shirt and Levi's were plastered to his body with sweat. His hips were thrust out, and Eve could see the flowing muscles in his thighs and buttocks. She could see nearly everything there was to see. His masculinity was overpowering. Her heart did a flip-flop in her chest, and her mouth was dry as she flung open the door and stepped into the corridor.
"Young man! You, in the Levi's! Come back here. I want to talk to you."
Eve took Bud into her private office and interviewed him thoroughly. All the while he was talking, she studied him closely. She quickly realized that his interest in acting was nothing more than a whim.
It happened to thousands of young men and young women every day. If they didn't outgrow it first, Hollywood was almost certain to disillusion them eventually. Of the thousands, maybe a dozen would make the grade. Maybe two would go on to stardom.
In the looks department, Bud had no more or no less to commend him than the average aspirant. Handsome young men were a dime a dozen in this city. His voice was all right, but his manner of speaking was atrocious. What Eve was counting on was the intangible quality of sex appeal, the thing that had made the girls in the outer office swoon. He had a way of walking, of carrying himself, a confident set of the shoulders, a way of looking at you out of the sides of his eyes that set him apart from the stereotype Hollywood male. He was a diamond in the rough, Eve decided.
He was worth the investment of drama lessons, voice lessons, the whole bit. Hone off the rough edges, shape the stone, polish the many facets until they glittered. Then, perhaps it was still a long shot-the agency might own a priceless gem.
"I'm going to take a chance on you, Bud," she said, and went on to enumerate the details of his apprenticeship. "The first thing to do is to get you a job, so you can pay for your drama lessons and voice lessons and all the rest."
"I didn't know you had to pay to become an actor," he said.
Eve laughed. "Pay? Oh, how you're going to pay! And I don't mean just in money. How have you been earning your living up until now?"
"I'm a jack-of-all-trades, I guess you might say. I'm pretty good at mechanics."
Eve tapped her blotter with a gold pencil. "Know anything about electricity?"
"Sure, I was an electrician's helper for six months once."
"Good. I might be able to get you a job as an assistant lighting technician at one of the studios. That's how Alan Ladd got his start."
"I'd like that fine." Bud felt warm and friendly toward this woman. No female had taken such a personal interest in his welfare since his mother, in the days before her affair with Uncle Jack. The idea disturbed him. There was nothing maternal about Eve McKintosh. She was cold and glossy and almost too beautiful to be real.
She stood up behind the desk and stretched. Her breasts surged up inside the tailored blouse, spanning the silk tight across their summits. "Check out of that Y.M.C.A. and find yourself a cheap apartment. I'll send you to a decent, clean place out on Sunset. The agency will advance you a hundred dollars until you start work."
"You're a swell girl, Miss McKintosh," he said.
She smiled. "It's been a long time since anyone called me a girl. Thanks, Bud."
She was standing before a glass wall with the afternoon sun directly behind her. The bright light silhouetted her long, svelte legs under her thin skirt. Desire resulted faintly in his loins. It had been a long time, in Bud's book, since he'd had a woman. She sensed what he was thinking, read it in his expressive eyes. To her chagrin, her body warmed under his intent gaze. Her breasts felt cramped and full in the brassiere. The seams of her panties chafed her thighs and buttocks.
Her voice came out more sharply than she intended. "Let's get one thing straight, Bud. You and I are business associates. You should think of me as your agent, not as a woman."
He laughed softly. "That's a tall order, ma'am You're so much woman."
"Tall or not, it's an order. It's strictly business between us, and it's going to stay that way. Which brings us to another point, young man. You're a young, healthy animal, and you've got that fatal curse that attracts females to you the way jam attracts flies. I don't delude myself that you're going to live like a monk, but get one thing straight. Keep your nose clean. Stay away from romantic entanglements. The first time some little broad comes crying to me that you've knocked her up, you're out on your ear. Understand?"
"I understand," he said firmly.
"Look, I know you're going to play around with girls, but be careful. Don't get involved too deeply with any one girl. Play the field. There are hundreds of beautiful girls in Hollywood who are lonely and willing. With your sex appeal, you could probably have a different one every night."
"You flatter me," he said lightly.
Her wise eyes glittered. "I think not. Okay, now you get out of here and let me get to work."
Less than two hours later, he had checked out of the Y.M.C.A. and signed in at the Allegro Motel, the place Eve had recommended. His apartment consisted of a single huge room with a convertible sofa-bed. There was a small kitchen area in one corner, with a breakfast bar, sink, stove and refrigerator.
He was worried about the rent, but decided to let the future take care of itself. When he was unpacked and settled, he lit a cigarette and strolled out onto the second-story sun deck which overlooked a swimming pool.
He leaned on the railing and watched the bathers cavorting below. There were two young men and at least a dozen girls. They were all slim and vital, with golden tans and white teeth.
The girls, blondes, brunettes, redheads, all sizes and shapes, were uniformly beautiful. Their breasts were round and high with firm muscle tone. Their bellies were supple. Their buttocks were bold, and their thighs were hard and smooth. That was the trouble, he thought, they were all so uniform, like mannikins in a show window. Pretty girls with but a single thought on their minds-an obsession really-to see their names in lights over a glittering theater marquee.
What was it Eve had told him?
"There are hundreds of beautiful girls in Hollywood who are lonely and willing."
The setup was ideal for Bud. Everything was going to work out perfectly. Hollywood was a place where he could settle down permanently, or at least for a long time. There would be no need to play the game of hit-and-run sex that he had been playing for so many years. In the hick towns he had lived in, if you slept with a pretty girl, it was a major production. Here it meant no more than eating or drinking. It would be like shooting fish in a rain barrel. There would be no fear of entanglements, or long, agonizing affairs.
Probably, he thought, a girl would be hard put to remember who she had gone to bed with on any specific night. That suited him fine. Bud didn't want to be remembered. He didn't want to remember.
There would be no problems with Eve McKintosh, either. She had made it plain what their relationship would be, and that was how it would remain. They were business associates, nothing more. Bud had experienced some doubts about her in the beginning. Too often, older women like Eve developed a lech for a young, virile male and ended up falling madly in love with him. That was the worst possible woman-trouble of all. Bud was relieved and grateful to Eve for laying down the ground rules.
Still, in one way, it was too bad. She was a real doll, and he would have been willing to bet she was as hot as a pistol. It would be fun making love to an older, sophisticated woman like Eve. He remembered how she had looked standing in front of the window with the sun shining through her skirt. She had good legs. He tried to visualize them bare, without the skirt. He would unfasten her garters and roll the nylon stockings down over thighs, knees, and calves. He would peel off her lacy panties.
Highly irritated at himself, he hurled down the cigarette and ground it savagely under his heel. Desire pulsed hard, hot and uncomfortable in his loins. In embarrassment, he stormed back into his apartment.
He turned on the television set that was furnished with the place and watched an old Western movie without enthusiasm. He hadn't wanted either the TV or the telephone, but the management had insisted that they were part and parcel of the arrangement.
"You might as well be dead in the Mojave Desert as to be without a phone in Hollywood," the man had said in a superior tone.
A little after nine o'clock, there was a knock on the door. Bud answered it, pleased to see two of the girls who had been swimming in the pool earlier.
They were wearing knitted half-shell tops that fit their breasts as snugly as gloves and left their midriffs bare. Their hip-hugger capri pants were cut extremely low, exposing their round tummies to a point at least two inches below their dimpled navels. Bud estimated that they were only a hair's breadth away from indecent exposure.
"I'm Lynn Snyder," the smaller and heavier of the girls introduced herself. "This is my roommate, Pat Evans. We're your next-door neighbors."
Bud grinned and waved them inside. "Hi! It's a pleasure. I don't have anything to drink except beer, but it's cold."
"We love beer," Pat said. She was a tall girl, but her bone structure was delicate, so that she gave the impression of being petite. She was very dark with glowing olive skin. She reminded Bud of an Indian princess.
Lynn, the louder and more uninhibited of the girls, was pretty, freckled and quite fair, with light brown hair. She was shorter than Pat, but her body was more voluptuous.
They sat around drinking beer for two hours, getting acquainted. Pat and Lynn were aspiring actresses, and, like Bud, were working to pay for drama, voice and dancing lessons. They were waitresses in a local luncheonette.
Bud's mind, heated by the alcohol, was not on the casual conversation. It kept flitting from Pat's breasts to Lynn's bare navel. The way Lynn's stretch pants were glued to her body, he could tell she wasn't wearing any panties under them. Every contour and detail of her belly and buttocks was traced out in the clinging material. The continence of the past few weeks only made things worse for him. He felt as if he was sitting on a raging volcano. Lust ached in his thighs and his belly. It finally got to the point where he could no longer trust himself to stand up to get more beer.
"That's the last of the brew," he lied.
Pat yawned, flicking out her pink tongue. "It's time we got going, anyway. Big day tomorrow. I got an early-morning call for an interview for a television commercial. It's bath and bed for me, kiddies."
Lynn held up a full glass. "I'll just hang around until I finish this, honey. You start in the bathroom."
"So long, Pat," Bud said. "You'll pardon me for not seeing you to the door." He caught Lynn grinning at him slyly. "What's up with you? You look like the cat that swallowed the yellow bird."
She laughed. "That question should be the other way around." She faced him on the couch and took a deep breath. Her breasts swelled breathtakingly in the knitted halter, stretching the stitches so that he could almost see through them. "You like the halter?" she asked archly. "I made it myself."
"I dig it, like, wow!"
Her blue eyes were heavy-lidded. Idly, she brushed a strand of brown hair back off her forehead. "You are the most gorgeous hunk of man-flesh I've seen in a long time, Bud. I get butterflies in my stomach just looking at you."
"No kidding?" He reached over and placed a big hand on her bare, rounded tummy, just above the low-slung waistband of her capri pants. The hot, soft flesh quivered at his touch. "You're right," he said. "I can feel them fluttering."
Her breath was steamy on the side of his face. She mumbled something unintelligible into his ear as she kissed it.
His hand slid up her bare belly to the halter. He stretched the pliant fabric away from her body, and her breasts tumbled free-two mounds of pink flesh that quivered like Jell-O. Her nipples snapped to attention at the light teasing of his fingers. Lynn threw back her head and opened her mouth as if she was in great pain. She arched her back to make her breasts jut high into the air as his mouth descended upon them. He rolled the nipples around in his lips until she was writhing and squealing for mercy.
"Stop! I'll go mad!" she gasped.
"It's all right, honey," he whispered. "I've got butterflies in my stomach too. Want to feel?"
She explored his body with her hot, eager hand, measuring the extent of his desire. She giggled. "That's a butterfly?"
He slipped his hand down inside her capri pants and feigned surprise. "Well, that wasn't very far to go, was it? If a gal ever got caught with this jig on in a crowded bus, she could be ruined before she realized it."
"I'd realize it, buster. I'm not one of those dead-end girls."
"I'll bet." He began to work the tight capris down over her thighs and buttocks. Her hips and belly gyrated maddeningly in his face as she tried to assist him. Her body beckoned to him with slow, pulsing undulations that flogged his lust to fever pitch.
He pulled off his Levi's and shirt and lay back against the cushions, relishing the freedom of flesh and desire. Her eyes glowed with appreciation.
"What a man!" she murmured. "Oh, I want you so bad!"
He pulled her onto his lap, nuzzling his face into the ripe softness of her breasts. Her buttocks swelled and contracted against him, seeking him out blindly. She knelt over him with her thighs trembling and clenching on his hips. He surged up to meet her as she sank down to accept him with a low moan of joy.
"Delicious," he said, clasping his hands on her fleshy buttocks and drawing her closer.
Their hearts pounded as one now, their blood crashing like cymbals in gorged corpuscles and distended capillaries. His face was smothered in the cool pillows of her smooth breasts. They carried each other swiftly and slickly to the pinnacle. For an agonizing eternity they hung there, suspended over the abyss.
Then, at last, with a mighty lunge, the girl tipped them off the point. It seemed to Bud that he was gliding down a long, slippery slope. The wind rushed in his ears. His belly sank away into nothingness.
His pleasure was still throbbing weakly, waning reluctantly, when she collapsed against him, totally spent.
Later, as they dressed, he joked with her. "I must say this was an unexpected pleasure, Miss Snyder. I didn't count on being greeted so warmly when I moved in here."
Lynn giggled. "Just call me the Welcome-Wagon lady. Seriously, I never had any such idea when we came over tonight. I don't know what got into me."
Bud laughed. "I can tell you."
"Fresh!" She slapped his face playfully. "No, I mean it. I'm not accustomed to tumbling in the hay with every young man I meet for the first time. Did anybody ever tell you that you have an irresistible charm, Mannix?"
"I can't recall ever hearing it before."
She regarded him thoughtfully as she adjusted her breasts in the halter. "I have a hunch you're going to go a long way in this town. A long, long way."
"I hope you're right." He walked to the door with her in his shorts.
"Don't let anyone see you like that, with me going out the door," she said seriously. "I wouldn't want this to get around. Especially to Pat."
He frowned. "Especially to Pat?"
She avoided his gaze. "She wouldn't understand."
She left him scratching his chest, pondering her last statement.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning bud was awakened out of a deep sleep by the jangling of the telephone. It was Eve McKintosh.
"Get up, sleepyhead," she said cheerily. "You're going to work."
Bud couldn't believe it. "You're kidding!"
"Meteor Studios. I couldn't swing a technician's job for you, but there is a spot open for a carpenter. How do you rate in that department?"
"Great, I can do most anything with my hands."
She laughed wryly. "I'll bet! How do you like your new living quarters?"
"I like it fine here." He hesitated. "The neighbors are friendly, too."
Her voice took on an edge. "You remember what I told you about entanglements?"
"Don't worry about me. I'll keep my nose clean."
"See that you do keep it that way. You're my baby now, and I intend to keep your new image intact."
"What's my image?"
"A clean-living, clear-eyed, ail-American boy."
Bud laughed into the phone. "Yes, mama!"
"Good. If you're a bad boy, mama will spank."
In the days and weeks that followed, Eve McKintosh materialized as the most dominant figure in Bud's life, the most dominant force in his life, that he could ever remember. There had been another, but he didn't want to remember her.
The job at the studio was a breeze. It was a big thrill for him working on the sets of movies that were being shot, rubbing elbows with all the famous actors and actresses whose pictures he had seen in countless magazines and newspapers. They noticed Bud too, even if he was just a lowly carpenter-particularly the women. His good looks and physique were outstanding, even in this atmosphere of motion pictures in which glamour and beauty were so common.
He played it cool, as Eve had instructed, treating the men with polite deference and turning on his boyish, wistful charm for the benefit of the ladies.
The young starlets and other girls who worked on the lot, he ignored completely. It wasn't easy. Their pert, youthful breasts were mouth-watering in tight sweaters and low-cut blouses. Sometimes the longing invitation in a pair of soulful eyes was almost too much for a healthy man to decline. He could read the message clearly in the insinuating flip of a plump fanny:
Do you want it, Buddy-boy? It's all yours for the asking.
It was sheer torture, but Bud was developing character and restraint under Eve's tutelage. His sex life, off the lot, was at an impasse as well. He purposely kept away from the pool where the wenches who lived at the Allegro Motel cavorted about in their skimpy bikinis a good part of the day. There were at least a dozen nubile nymphs who were on the make, but he refused to heed their advances or the hunger of his own body.
To his gratification, Lynn Snyder, the girl next door, never made any attempt to resume the intimate relationship they had both enjoyed that first night. She and Pat sometimes came over to his place, or he would visit them, but it was strictly a buddy-buddy relationship for all concerned. Having possessed her body, Lynn no longer held any allure for him, though he was curious about her casual attitude toward him. Ordinarily, once he had begun an affair with a girl, she wouldn't let him alone. Perhaps, he thought, Lynn was the same as he was. Perhaps she only wanted a man once.
There were times, when the old demon lust was gnawing at his vitals, when he would have made a pass at Pat Evans. Her fragile, exotic beauty excited him strongly. Fortunately, she and Lynn were practically inseparable.
So, to sublimate his desires, Bud immersed himself in work. In addition to his drama lessons and voice lessons, he enrolled in a drama workshop. Every spare moment that he had on the studio job, he would retreat to a corner and pull out a paperback copy of plays by Shapespeare, Wilde, Shaw, O'Neill or one of the other classic playwrights. He read incessantly. Often, in his sleep, the immortal lines would go flashing across his brain glittering procession, like neon signs.
One Friday, after work, he received a phone call from Eve. "Come by my place and take a look at the photos we took of you last week," she said.
"Your office?"
"No, my apartment. I left the office early this afternoon."
Bud put on a clean sport shirt and drove to her apartment, which was in a new, lavish building on the outskirts of Beverly Hlls. A liveried doorman made him wait in the lobby until he checked Bud out with Eve over the apartment-house intercom. Bud rode the self-service elevator up to the eighth floor.
Eve greeted him at the door in a pair of silk lounging pajamas. They were black, with gold sequins arranged in intricate designs around her breasts and across the midriff. The black silk was shaped to her body as snugly as a stocking, and it was plain that she was naked beneath it.
Bud swallowed hard as he entered.
"You look great, Eve."
She laughed. "Stop gawking like a high-school freshman. Haven't you ever seen a woman in pajamas?"
"Not pajamas like those. I'm sorry." He looked way from her.
"I'm going to have to teach you some of the finer graces, my lad. A real gentleman never stares, even if his hostess comes to the door naked."
"Then I guess I'll never be a real gentleman."
She took his arm and led him down into her sunken living room. "In a way, it would be a shame to tarnish your primitive charm."
Bud whistled in awe at the elegance of the room. "Now this is my idea of Hollywood living."
"Someday, this will look like a cold-water flat to you, if you hit it big. What do you drink? Scotch, rye, martinis?"
"What are you drinking?"
"Martinis."
"That's okay by me."
He admired her profile as she poured the drinks. Her hair looked like some elaborate ornament made out of spun gold. Her face was a model for a cameo. Under the thin pajamas, the full maturity of her figure was undisguised by the foundation garments she wore in the office. He had thought of her as a slender woman, but now he could see that she was quite buxom in the in the hips and buttocks. Her breasts were larger than they appeared when encased in a brassiere. They sagged heavily against the silk as she bent over the coffee glimpse into the V-neckline. They dangled in front of him like two pink, overripe peaches. She sensed his attention and flushed.
"Must you stare all the time? Maybe I'd better go put a robe on."
Bud blushed furiously. "I can't help it if I like to look at beautiful women. You're very beautiful, Eve."
Her gray eyes regarded him with uncertainty, not about him, but about herself. "You're very sweet."
He reached for her hand. That ended her uncertainty. Her mouth, which had softened for a moment, clamped into a thin, hard line.
"Young man," she said sternly, "I am almost old enough to be your mother. Now, let's cut the horseplay and get down to work." She took a folder from the mantle and opened it on the table. It contained the photos which Bud had sat for the week before.
He whistled in awe. "Is that me? Gosh, I look like a Hollywood actor."
She laughed. "You are a Hollywood actor. At least you're going to be, after these pictures get around. They are excellent. Mae Clark is the best in the business. Incidentally, Mae wants to do another series of you. And get this-she's going to pay you a modeling fee. Two hundred dollars!"
Bud was stunned. "How about that!"
"Her work appears in some of the biggest galleries in the world. She's photographed presidents and kings, some of the biggest celebrities in the world. It will be a feather in your cap if you show up in one of her exhibits."
"I'll be darned," Bud said, unable to comprehend this lucky break.
"Now, for the main business," Eve said. "I want you to hand these pictures to Steve Welles tomorrow at the studio. He'll be expecting them. I spoke to him on the phone today about you. You know that new picture they're shooting at Meteor? Well, the young man who was cast as the gigolo-the guy Gay Kelton hires to make her husband jealous-anyway, he broke his leg on the second day of shooting. Steve Welles is frantic for a replacement. He's agreed to have a look at you. He'll call you up to his office sometime tomorrow."
Bud couldn't believe it. It was just too much for one day. He slugged down his martini and walked to the bar to pour himself another.
"You mean I might actually get a role in the picture? It's crazy. I'm not ready for that yet. I'll fall flat on my face."
"Don't be an ass," Eve reprimanded him. "Don't underestimate yourself. One of a successful actor's biggest assets is his ego. Besides, this isn't much of a speaking part. They just want a big, handsome male who radiates sex appeal. I think the role was made for you. You won't have to emote. Just play yourself."
Bud shook his head to clear it. The martinis were going around and around. "Imagine me getting to play opposite Gay Kelton, and being directed by Steve Welles. Two of the greatest names in this business!"
Eve's eyes narrowed as she peered at him through her cigarette smoke. "I have a feeling Gay is going to like you, Buddy-boy. So watch your step."
Bud got a second look at her big, lovely breasts as she bent over to stub out the butt. His hands itched to hold the rich, soft mounds of flesh. He visualized her nipples as being thick and dark, like big strawberries.
He came back to the couch and sat next to her, facing her, with one knee bent on the cushion. It nudged her thigh casually.
"Won't it be good if she likes me?" he asked.
"It could work either way." she reasoned, with a logic born of long experience. "Gay Kelton is a very selfish and possessive woman. If she grows too fond of you, she could smother your whole career. Box you in. She's capable of it."
An icy hand gripped Bud's heart. A woman like that would be the worst of all, the epitome of all that he reviled in the female sex. They were man-eating sharks, and Gay Kelton was a queen among sharks, according to Eve McKintosh.
"Maybe I ought to pass it up," he said uneasily.
"Nonsense. We can handle old Gay, don't worry about that. You listen to mama, and you'll come out smelling like a rose."
A feeling of enormous gratitude, confidence and love for her welled up in his chest. Impulsively, he put his arms around her and pulled her close. Her breasts were like warm pillows crushed against his muscular chest. He held her with one arm around her shoulders. His other hand slid down her silken side and came to rest on the plump curve of her hip, his palm on her upper thigh, his long fingers curling around the globe of one buttock. Only an infinitesimal layer of silk separated his hand from her bare flesh.
"Eve, you're wonderful," he said in a tight voice.
Her eyes were wide with amazement. She opened her mouth to speak, but he choked off the words with a kiss. Her lips were moist and trembling for a brief moment, her body passive in his arms.
Abruptly, she stiffened as if a bolt of electricity had struck her. She was a big, strong woman, and she was angry, very angry. Bud didn't see the blow coming. All of a sudden, the whole right side of his face seemed to explode with pain. The flat of her hand sent him flying back, and he almost fell off the couch.
Through a red haze, he saw her livid face. She was shaking a finger at him. "If you ever try that again, I'll really scratch up that pretty face of yours."
He was hurt and bewildered. Tears pricked at the backs of his eyelids. "Eve, I'm sorry!" he blurted out. "I just felt so wonderful and everything about all the good news. I'm so grateful to you."
"So you figured you'd show your gratitude by giving the old girl a thrill?" she snarled.
"It's not like that at all!"
"Save it for Gay Kelton."
"Eve, please."
Her anger dissipated as quickly as it had commenced. "Okay, Bud. All is forgiven. I'll chalk it up to exuberance and to those two martinis. Just don't get out of line again, or you'll ruin a beautiful business relationship."
A slow burn was building up inside of him now. He wanted to tear off her silk pajamas, wanted to maul her big breasts, wanted to rub himself against her swelling buttocks, wanted to violate her soft thighs and round belly. He wanted to humiliate her the way she had humiliated him.
Then her radiant smile pricked the bubble of his anger.
"I want us to be good friends, Bud," she said softly. "I'm sorry if I hurt your face." She reached up and touched the smarting cheek with tender fingertips. "You want me to get you a washcloth soaked in ice water?"
"No. it's fine, Eve." He grasped her hand and removed it from his cheek. It occurred to him that if she let him stay and hold her hand like that, he would be perfectly satisfied.
"Be a good boy and go home now. It's getting late," she said.
He drove back to the Allegro in a state of ever-increasing gloom. The loneliness of his room made it worse. Thinking that some company would cheer him up, he went next door and knocked. There was no response, so he opened it and called out. "Pat! Lynn! Anybody home?"
The apartment seemed empty, but from beyond the half-open bedroom door, he could hear the hiss of a shower. Shrugging, he went inside and helped himself to a beer from their refrigerator. He guessed that one of the girls was showering and that the other one was out. He sat down with his beer and waited.
Slowly, sexual excitement was building up again inside his body. He had a vivid image of a nude woman standing under a shower, her breasts and flanks sleek with soap and water. The fires that he had kept banked so long exploded into bright flame. He crushed the empty beer can in one hand and looked toward the bedroom. He prayed that the girl in the shower was Pat. Beneath her dark, fragile beauty, he thought, there had to be an intense, passionate animal. He was confident he could seduce her. No woman had ever refused him.
On the other hand, if it was Lynn, there would be no need for preliminaries. He could just walk into the bedroom and take her. True, it would be the second time, and there would be the risk of a deeper involvement on her part. Still, he felt safe. Lynn had never evidenced any more than a casual physical interest in him from the beginning. He waited impatiently in the dark living room.
The shower stopped, and his heart beat faster. A dim light came on in the bedroom. He was shocked to hear voices, two voices. It dawned on him, in surprise, that the girls must have been showering together. Quietly, he got to his feet and padded across the carpet to the half-open bedroom door. Keeping well in the shadows, he peered into the room.
The sight of the girls' nude bodies should have fed the lust that was gorging his loins. Instead, it filled his belly with a cold, leaden lump.
Lynn was as he remembered her from the night when they had made abandoned love on his couch. Her breasts were lush pears, their upper slopes beaded with water. Her hips and belly were full and womanly. But now he recognized an unfeminine hardness about her flat belly and sturdy legs.
By contrast, Pat was all the soft, demure, dainty things a girl should be. She was taller than Lynn and more willowy. Her breasts were rounder and softer looking than the other girl's. They stood high and pointed on her body, light and springy as two spheres of foam rubber. Her waist was small enough for a man to span with his hands. Her hips, swelling belly and tapered thighs were as perfect as if they had been fashioned by the hand of a master sculptor. As she bent over to dry her legs with a towel, her dimpled buttocks opened to his gaze a tantalizing vision of feminine glory.
Bud stared coldly as Lynn came up behind her and clasped her about the waist. She pressed her belly and hips against the softly swelling flesh.
"You're absolutely shameless, sweetie," she whispered in a voice terse with passion. "You know how hot and bothered I get when you do that."
The dark girl giggled. "If you don't like it, don't look."
Lynn rolled her hips ecstatically. "You know how much I love it. I love you."
Pat straightened up and put aside the towel. She turned in Lynn's embrace, so that they were standing face to face. Their breasts brushed each other lightly-four lovely, delightful globes of desirable flesh. Pat's dark eyes were glazed with a starry luster. Her nostrils quivered. She swayed her breasts from side to side, letting her pink nipples rub against Lynn's darker ones. Both girls stared in silent rapture at their expanding summits. Soon the nipples were inflamed, taut points.
Lynn let her hands slide down from Pat's waist to her buttocks. She caressed the rotund cheeks lovingly. The dark girl put a hand between their swaying bodies. Her slim fingers stroked across Lynn's hard belly and dallied at her thighs. Lynn began to tremble.
"I'm burning up. Let's hurry." she pleaded.
Pat pulled her down on the bed and kissed her ardently on the mouth. They were locked in passionate embrace just like any two young lovers.
The trouble was, Bud thought, they were two girls! He had always been repelled by the idea of homosexuality in any form. The realization that he had made love to a female who was obviously a Lesbian sickened him. Still, he watched in morbid fascination as the scene on the bed unfolded.
Lynn pressed Pat flat on the mattress and rained kisses about her neck and bare shoulders. Her mouth moved down to the round, tumescent breasts. Pat moaned as the hungry lips slid up the fleshy slopes and closed over her flaming nipples. Her own hands were caressing the smaller girl's pear-shaped breasts.
Pat arched her back as the teasing lips moved down to her soft tummy. She gasped as Lynn speared her navel with the end of her pink tongue. Writhing in torment, she grasped the other girl's touseled head and urged it down still lower. At the same time she clutched at Lynn's buttocks and endeavored to pull her closer.
With the expertise of old bedmates, the girls postured their bodies to accommodate each other. Lynn was on her knees, straddling Pat's dark head. Her elbows rested on either side of Pat's convulsing hips. Her mouth was wet and hot on the brunette's straining thighs.
"Lover," she cooed, before she planted the ultimate kiss on the tortured flesh.
"My darling," Pat murmured, as her hands caressed Lynn's upturned buttocks and drew the delightful flesh down to receive her answering kiss.
Bud turned away from their sinuously undulating bodies in anger and frustration. They reminded him of two slimy snakes all intertwined. He left the apartment quietly and went back to his own place. He thought about what he had witnessed as he lay down in his lonely room.
One had to be philosophical about it, he supposed. It took all kinds of people to make up the world. Lesbians, nymphomaniacs, sadists, all the odd-balls-they had a place in the scheme of things. The word "normal" was only a tag of approval a person put on his own behavior.
So, Lynn and Pat were Lesbians! So what!
He expected he was going to be in for some bigger shocks before he was through with Hollywood. Or, more accurately, before Hollywood was through with him!
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning about eleven o'clock, a secretary came up to the set where he was working. "I'm from Mr. Welles' office. Are you Bud Mannix?"
Bud nodded dumbly.
"He wants to see you right away," she told him. "Come with me."
Bud stopped at his locker on the way and got his folio of photographs. He was aware that the girl was studying him as they walked across the lot to the executive offices.
She was one of the stereotypes. She wore her hair and make-up to emphasize a fleeting resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor. Her dress was cut so low in front that her big, hobbling breasts kept threatening to spill out of her half-bra.
Bud turned his eyes away. The juices were bubbling dangerously in his loins. It was worse than yesterday. He had to have a woman today, he told himself. If he didn't get his ashes hauled today, his boilers would burst for sure.
The chick with him was as good a prospect as any. The way she was looking at him with those hot eyes, she seemed ready to pull down her panties for him right now in the middle of the lot.
Bud grinned. That would make some picture!
"Are you the boy who's going to audition for the part in Miss Kelton's new picture?" she asked him.
"I guess so. It's about a gigolo, isn't it?"
She smiled. "Yes. Does being a gigolo appeal to you?"
Bud laughed. "A gigolo is a fellow who gets paid for making love to women, right?"
"Yes, in a way."
"The way I look at it, any man who manages to get paid for that kind of work must be a genius. And quite a man, to boot."
She kept bumping him with her hip as they walked. It was soft and fleshy under her light dress. "You fit the last part, all right," she said slyly.
"What's that?"
"You look like quite a man."
"And you look like quite a woman," he said softly. He reached back casually and cupped her round bottom with one hand. "You feel that way too."
She inhaled so sharply that her breasts swelled lustily over the top of her dress. They were white and creamy.
"Stop that! Suppose someone sees us."
He shifted his thoughts deliberately to another, less sensual topic before his climbing desire got to an embarrassing point. "How is this Welles? Is he a nice guy to work for?"
"The best. He doesn't expect a girl to humor him after hours, either. Lots of big shots treat their girls like they were common whores."
"He sounds okay," Bud admitted, though he was still a bundle of nerves.
"I'll see you on the way out," he told the girl as he prepared to enter the director's office. "If things go well, maybe you'll help me celebrate tonight."
"Could be," she said. "Good luck."
Steve Welles was sitting behind a desk that looked as long as the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. He was a short, stocky man with gray hair and dark-rimmed glasses. His face was round, and ruddy from the sun. Bud was disappointed. He had expected the famous director to be a more imposing figure.
Welles smiled and stood up. "Come in, young fellow, and let us have a look at you."
Bud was halfway across the office before he saw the other person in the room. She was partially reclining on a lounge in a corner of the spacious office, out of sight of the door. Even with the dark glasses, he recognized her immediately. It was Gay Kelton.
At forty-four, she was still one of the top box-office attractions in the country. Her name and face were as well-known internationally as any U.S. president's. She had won two Academy Awards. Her beauty was fading after twenty years on the screen, but she was still a handsome woman. Her complexion was smooth and flawless, her red hair as tawny as it had ever been. She wore it long and straight down her back. Her figure was nothing special, but it possessed animal grace and fluidity. Her breasts were small and pointed in the tight black sweater she was wearing. Her hounds-tooth checked slacks revealed tight, small buttocks and boyish hips.
"This is Gay Kelton," Welles said. "Gay, here's the young man we were discussing. His name is Bud Mannix."
Bud shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as the director and the actress appraised him boldly from all angles. He felt like a farm animal on the auction block.
"What do you think, Gay?" Welles said finally.
She didn't answer. Behind the smoked glasses, her eyes were a mystery. Still, Bud could feel them boring into him. He had the peculiar sensation that she was mentally undressing him.
He held out the folio of pictures. "I'm supposed to give you these. Miss McKintosh says they're very good."
"I'll look them over later," Welles said. He picked up an open script from the desk and handed it to Bud. "Suppose you read a few lines. Take it from the top."
Gay Kelton spoke then for the first time. Her voice was low and musical, like an organ tone. "That won't be necessary, Steve. I think he's perfect for the part of Tony."
Bud's legs almost gave way from the shock.
Steve Welles looked at her. Then he looked back at Bud. His mouth was twisted in a wry grin.
"You heard the lady, Bud. I'll arrange to have a copy of the script sent over to your drama coach this afternoon. He'll work with you tonight-all night, if necessary. Report for work on the set at seven a.m. tomorrow."
At the door, Bud turned and looked at Gay Kelton. "Thank you ma'am. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me."
She laughed, showing perfect white teeth. "There are greater things in store for you," she said in a pleasant voice.
He stopped in the outer office and told the secretary about his good news. "That's great," she said. "Do we celebrate?"
He gazed longingly at her overripe breasts, weighing the delights they could bring him against the hazards involved. She was Steve Welles' secretary. What would the director think if he found out that his new boy wonder was sleeping with one of his girls? Bud decided to keep his nose clean, as Eve had advised.
"Not tonight," he said truthfully. "I'll be working on my lines."
"Tomorrow night?" she said impatiently.
"We'll see. Now, I've got to run."
He ducked into the first phone booth he came to and phoned Eve. "I'm in like Flynn," he said breezily.
She was not amused. "Is that a prophecy?"
"I don't get it."
"Gay Kelton is panting over you. I just heard from Steve."
He laughed uneasily. "Aw, he's kidding you. She hardly said anything to me at all."
"Gay doesn't say it with words, Buddy-boy. Steve said she had a dangerous glint in her eyes."
"I can handle her."
"I hope so." She changed the subject. "Listen, you won't have anything to do until five o'clock this afternoon. That's when I set up the appointment with your drama coach. Steve is sending over the script after lunch. Why don't you drop into Mae Clark's studio and sit for her? It would be nice timing if some pictures of you would appear in one of her exhibitions about the time the movie is released."
"Good idea," he agreed. "I'll go right over there. Before I forget it, Eve, thanks. Thanks for everything."
She laughed. "It's my job. Anyway, you're a good kid."
"So are you, Eve."
"I wish I were a kid again." She sighed. "Now, get going."
Mae Clark's studio was in a huge loft on Vine Street. He picked his way through a labyrinth of tripods, transformers, lights and electrical cords to a dais on one side of the room where Mae was shooting a still-life series on driftwood. He was shocked to find her dressed only in her panties and bra. They were made of sheer, flesh-colored nylon, and her bare flesh showed through them very plainly.
"Excuse me!" he said, turning away.
Mae laughed. "Don't be silly! I always work like this in hot weather. Did you come to pose? I hope so."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good!" She lit a cigarette. Mae Clark was a tall, big-boned woman of thirty-six. In her street clothes, she gave the impression of being thin and mannish. Bud was surprised to see that she really had quite a good figure. Her breasts were small, but full and round. He could see the dark circles of her nipples through the translucent bra. Her hips and buttocks were well-fleshed. Bud had a difficult time keeping his eyes off her panties.
"Go behind that screen in the corner and take off your clothes."
"What?" he asked in disbelief.
"Get undressed. I'm going to pose you nude. Your body is just as handsome as your face. It's a crime to hide it."
Bud was aghast. "You mean to say that nude pictures of me will be hanging in a gallery for the public to see?"
"Of course. The publicity will be worth a fortune to you. Eve said you got the part in Welles' new picture. Congratulations."
He still could not accept it. "I can't do it. I feel too foolish."
"Don't be childish. The pictures won't really show anything blatant. I'll pose you very modestly, I promise."
"Just the same," he grumbled, "the idea of posing naked for a woman photographer bothers me."
Mae laughed. "Why? Girl models are always posing in the nude for men photographers."
"That's different."
"Nonsense! Now, go get undressed." Her voice was firm and authoritative. "Your agent promised me that you'd do this sitting for me. They won't like it over there at the agency if you pull temperament this early in your career."
Bud was convinced. "Okay," he said reluctantly, "I'll do it, but I don't like it." He went behind the screen and undressed slowly.
"Hurry up!" she called to him. "I don't have all day."
He was completely naked, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. The idea of stepping out from behind the screen was mortifying. It was silly, he knew. After all, hundreds of women had seen him in the nude, but the circumstances had been quite different. Those times, it had been a natural development of lovemaking. This was unnatural-taking off his clothes and letting a woman take pictures of him.
"Bud, snap it up!"
He took a deep breath and stepped out, blushing to the roots of his hair. She examined him impersonally. "You're perfect," she told him. "You've got the body of a Greek discus thrower. Get up on the dais and sit down."
She had removed the driftwood and covered the raised platform with a white sheet. Bud sat down gingerly.
"Right hand planted flat behind you," she directed him. "Left leg slightly raised and bent at the knee. Prop your left elbow on your thigh. There, that's got it."
She retreated to her camera and peered through the viewfinder. "Not quite. You're showing too much. Left knee a little higher." She grinned and winked at him. "After all, I don't want to get the girls all hot and bothered when they look at these shots."
Bud was not amused. Sweat began to bead his forehead, as an even more embarrassing problem was coming up. Mae Clark was a very attractive woman. Her face wasn't beautiful, but it was sensual and alluringly framed by short black hair that was naturally curly. Running around practically naked in front of him, she was a disturbing influence. It would have bothered any normal male, especially a male who had been as sexually frustrated as Bud had been for the past few days. To make it worse, he was as naked as a babe, with no way to conceal his inexorably growing lust.
Mae was all set to snap the first photo when she got an inspiration. "You know what it needs to make it perfect?" she asked. "Some oil-to make your flesh glisten and highlight those beautiful muscles." She went to a shelf and came back with a big bottle of thick, viscous liquid. "Bath oil," she said.
To Bud's dismay, she emptied a big dollop of it in her right hand and began to massage it into his shoulders and back. Her fingers were soft and slippery on his flesh, sending little electrical charges down his backbone into his hot loins. He stared in fascination at her hand as it came down on his left thigh. He gasped as the fingers moved higher and higher. Up until now, he had been battling his tumultuous emotions on an even basis, but when the titillating female fingers touched his belly, his defenses collapsed altogether. Helplessly, he watched the tide of lust explode in his flesh.
Mae gave a strange, muted cry. Her eyes were wide and bright, and her thick lips were parted in awe and admiration.
"Naughty boy," she whispered. "Wouldn't that make a pretty picture for the genteel ladies who frequent my exhibitions?"
"Very funny," Bud snapped. Desire and humiliation made him reckless. "What did you expect, shaking your boobs and your fanny in my face the way you've been doing, and feeling me up? I'm only human. You've been asking for it, lady. Now, you're going to get it."
He grabbed her wrists and pulled her down on the dais beside him. His fingers locked on the strap of her bra in the middle of her back and ripped the elastic. He peeled off the torn garment and cast it aside. Her breasts were firm and conical, the nipples inflamed and stiff. Her body quivered as he touched them with his hands.
Bud laughed. "You're a sly one, Mae. All the time, you wanted me as much as I wanted you." He slid a hand down inside her panties. It felt to Mae as if his fingers were immersed in boiling oil. She writhed in his embrace and rolled her eyes back in her head. Her hands were fluttering over his body, exploring with a frenzy he had never seen a woman display before.
He peeled down the nylon panties and flung them away with a sly quip. "Ouch!" he said. "They were really hot."
He bent her back on the dais and kissed her. She had the most sensual mouth he had ever kissed. The lips were swollen, and they pulsed against his. Her tongue throbbed inside his mouth. He knew she was ready. Gently he parted her thighs and tried to take her.
"No!" she gasped. "Not that way."
He blinked in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"It's no good for me that way."
"I don't get it."
"You just lie back and I'll show you." She turned in his embrace and pushed him down gently on the dais. Then she got on her knees and bent over him.
"You're gorgeous," she said dreamily, fondling his aching flesh in her soft palms. She was not so much addressing him as she was addressing the flesh itself. He was both excited and intrigued by the ritual she made of the act. He remembered reading once about cults of symbol-worshippers in ancient societies. Mae could have been a temple maiden, kneeling in prayer at the holy altar.
Her breasts touched him, teasing his flesh with the raging summits. She grasped her breasts on either side and tenderly enfolded him in her soft, hot flesh. Bud was in a delirium of joy, his hips twitching involuntarily. Her breasts released him, and she bent closer. She showered him with wet, smacking kisses.
Her face was so contorted with lust that she looked like a hungry she-cat. With a cry of ravenous desire, she lunged and captured him as the cat would have captured its prey. At least, that was the eerie sensation Bud experienced-of being captured. It was quickly eclipsed by other sensations of such intensity and pleasure that his whole body was racked by thunderous waves. Mae was a unique woman. The talent of her mouth and tongue was unparalleled.
When he closed his eyes, he could easily believe that he was making love to a woman in the conventional way. Only this way was considerably more tantalizing.
He strained to sustain the bliss as long as he could, but the tides were crashing too urgently at the dam. A blinding flash of ecstasy sent his hips surging upward from the dais as the deluge began.
The pitch built higher and higher, until he thought there would be no end to his delight. It kept on building until his mind and flesh begged for surcease. The woman would not let him stop. Her insistent and persuasive mouth was coaxing every ounce of strength from his passion-ridden flesh. His fingertips were numb and bloodless. His toes were shriveled up. For an alarming instant, he was gripped by the illusion that she would tear the life and soul from his body.
He had no awareness of time. He wasn't even sure how long it was before she finally released him.
Gradually, he drifted up out of a thick, golden, syrupy sea and back to consciousness. She lay beside him in a swoon, her face a mask of contentment. She smiled at him.
"It was good for you, I could tell."
"It was wonderful," he admitted freely. "What about you?"
"Exquisite. Never been better. You're a remarkable young man. Such virility!"
"I don't understand what you got out of it," he said.
She shrugged. "You're inexperienced. Women aren't all alike. In some of us, there are short circuits in the sensory system. I know women who have their greatest sensitivity in their breasts. All they need is for a man to touch or kiss them on the nipples to bring total fulfillment. In my case, it is the lips and the mouth."
"I'm learning new things every day," Bud said wryly.
Mae stood up and pulled on her panties. "Now that we've got that out of the way, how about getting down to work?"
Bud laughed. "I don't figure to give you any more trouble, ma'am. That little session really took the starch out of me."
The woman worked swiftly and efficiently, and, inside of an hour, she had shot two rolls of film.
"I'll phone you when they're finished. You can drop over and look at them," she said.
He fidgeted nervously. "You better mail me a set. I expect to be pretty busy from now on."
She looked at him quizzically. "You act as if you're afraid of me."
He grinned. "Maybe I am. If a man got much loving from you, he'd be an empty shell before very long."
She patted his cheek. "Well, if you ever get the urge, you know where to find me." She handed him a check as he went out the door. It was for one hundred dollars.
Bud frowned. "I thought this job paid two-hundred dollars," he said.
"That's right," she agreed. "I'll send that modeling fee to your agent. This is a personal bonus." Bud was embarrassed. "Gee, thanks. But you don't have to do that."
She shoved him out the door. "You were a star model. Worth every penny of it. Now beat it!"
Back in his own apartment, he stripped and show ered.
Afterward, he sat around in his shorts, drinking beer and thinking about what a fine day it had been for him. First the big break with Welles, then the rewarding session with Mae. He spread out the check Mae had given him. A hundred dollars, plus the two hundred for his regular fee, minus commission. He'd never made so much money in one day in his whole life!
Ever since the day he'd run away from home, he'd been chasing a rainbow. They said you never got to the end of a rainbow, but they were wrong. Bud Mannix had gotten there. Hollywood was the end of his rainbow, and he was only beginning to dip his fingers into the pot of gold.
At five o'clock that afternoon, he reported to the apartment of his drama coach. The man was a retired actor in his middle sixties who had played some fine supporting roles in his time.
He never knew quite what to make of Mannix. The lad was awkward, uneducated, and without any talent, as far as he could tell. The one asset he did possess was stage presence. Up on a stage, surrounded by a dozen other men and women who outshone him in ability, he was nevertheless the commanding figure in the group.
The coach took a dim view of his chances of projecting himself convincingly into the role of an Italian gigolo, even if he did have only ten lines in the whole script. But to his amazement, it turned out that Bud's accent was excellent.
"I once roomed with an Italian family in New Jersey," Bud explained. "I always had a good ear for the way people talk."
By eight o'clock, he had his lines down perfectly. Ashe left, the coach slapped him on the back. "You do as well tomorrow, and you're on your way."
Bud laughed. "On my way to what?"
Instead of going home, he drove over to Eve's apartment on an impulse. The doorman was flagging a taxi for a woman in an evening gown, and he was able to sneak into the elevator without being announced. He wanted to surprise her.
He rang her buzzer five times before she came to the door in a long, black, filmy negligee. It was obvious that she didn't have on anything underneath it. He could see her breasts thrusting boldly against the clinging fabric, the nipples jutting forth tautly. Usually, her blonde hair was immaculate, without a single strand out of place. Tonight, it was wild and disordered. The sight of her unnerved Bud, as did the coldness in her voice.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"I wanted to see you. I ... I wanted to tell you how ... how great it went tonight," he stammered. "I thought you'd like to hear."
Her voice softened somewhat. "That's fine, Bud. I'm glad to hear it. But you could have told me on the phone."
His eyes roamed hungrily over her breasts. "I wanted to see you."
"Yes," she said quickly, "that's nice of you, but this is a bad time. I just got out of the shower, and I have to dress. I've got an important dinner date."
He slumped his shoulders. "Oh, I'm sorry I bothered you, Eve. I'll go home."
"I'll phone you tomorrow, Bud," she said, "to find out how your first day on the set went."
"Swell."
As he turned away, he glanced across her shoulder at the mirror that hung on a wall of her living room, directly opposite the doorway. In it he could see the reflection of her bedroom door. Framed in the doorway was a man, naked except for a towel tied around his hips. It was Steve Welles.
Face burning, Bud stalked away to the elevators. He kept hurling vile, obscene epithets at Eve all the way down to the ground floor and out to his car. He managed to hold back the tears until he was inside the old Ford.
CHAPTER TEN
The first hour at the studio the next day was a nightmare for Bud. He was whisked into the costume department and measured for a tuxedo. Then he was rushed over to make-up, where a scowling barber gave him a haircut.
"The last time you had your hair cut, they must have used gardening shears," the man grumbled.
Bud gulped. "I cut it myself."
The barber slapped his forehead and cursed in French. Meanwhile, a team of two girls and one man slapped powder on his face and rouged his lips.
"What am I supposed to be, a fairy?" Bud howled. They replied by tinting his lashes and eyebrows. By the time he staggered onto the set, he had forgotten every single one of his lines.
Welles spoke to him soothingly. "You look a bit green, boy. Feeling okay?"
Bud nodded numbly. As he gazed into the round, friendly, fatherly face, he remembered the previous night.
He saw Welles standing naked, except for the towel, in the doorway of Eve's bedroom. He saw Eve's taut nipples under the negligee. It was perfectly obvious that he had interrupted them, and the name of the game was sex!
He stifled the urge to punch Welles in the face.
Luckily, the anger coursing through his body was a catharsis for the terror and confusion which had threatened to upset his acting debut.
He squared his shoulders. "I'm all set. Where's Miss Kelton?"
"She's in her dressing room. You'll run through the scene once or twice with her stand-in. Then we'll try it with Gay."
The set was a mock-up of a swank hotel room in the Hotel Excelsior in Rome.
Welles set the scene for Bud and the stand-in: "Lucy Freemont knows her husband has been cheating on her with an Italian countess. She has this fixation to get even with him by having an affair herself. The trouble is, she's too reserved and moralistic to go about it in the conventional way. So she figures that she has to take the plunge quickly, like getting into cold water. Just dive in. Her idea is to hire a gigolo from this escort service. Like a lot of naive Americans, she has the mistaken idea that professional escorts are male prostitutes. Of course, this isn't true. Actually, Gino-that's you, Mannix-is a refined gentlemen from a good, old family that has come into hard times. He has no concept of what this middle-aged American lady has in mind. Okay, we open with Gino knocking on the door of her hotel room. Your eyes pop when you see she's wearing a diaphanous nightgown. The tone of this scene is comic-tragic. The timid, bungling wife trying to seduce the young, handsome gigolo. The suave, experienced gigolo shocked and offended by her pathetic and ludicrous advances. Okay, let's try it."
The stand-in for Gay Kelton was a pale replica of the star. About the only resemblance that Bud could see was that they had the same color hair and about the same type of build. She was dressed in skirt, blouse and loafers.
Surprisingly, the lines came back naturally to Bud. After two rehearsels, Welles was all smiles.
"That's fine, Bud. I think we're ready for a take." He turned to an assistant. "Tell Gay we're ready for her."
Bud's eyes opened wide when Gay Kelton arrived and unbelted her robe. She was actually wearing a sheer nightgown with nothing under it! Her small, pointed breasts stood out brazenly in the bright lights. The countours of her thighs and buttocks were out-lined when she walked. She wore very little make-up. Only her hair had been arranged to give her the appearance of an average upper-middle-class American housewife.
She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Got butterflies?" He grinned back. "I had them, but they finally died."
"You'll be fine."
A minor miracle took place when Gay Kelton began to emote. The fights and cameras and the dozens of gaping faces around the set dissolved. The set became a real hotel room. Gay Kelton was a distraught housewife. And it was infectious. As if by magic, Bud began to think of himself as an Italian gigolo. He was Gino!
The cameras rolled.
"Mrs. Freemont," Gino said, lifting his eyebrows at her revealing nightgown, "I thought you said eight o'clock. I am sorry. Of course, you are not ready."
"I'm ready," Lucy said grimly. "Come in, please."
Gino entered the room with uncertainty. "Please, I do not understand."
"You are from the escort agency?" Her voice was on the verge of becoming hysterical.
"Of course, but-"
"Then. you know what you're here for. You can undress in the other room. I'll be waiting for you in the bed."
At this point, Bud's exaggerated reactions bordered on slapstick. Welles exchanged amused looks with his crew. "He's got a style like Cary Grant," someone whispered to him.
It degenerated into broad farce here, as Mrs. Freemont, desperate to get the seduction accomplished, threw her arms around Gino and kissed him.
Bud was shaken by Gay's ardor. Her breasts were mashed against his chest. Her pelvis was swiveling against his. The hot, plump fullness of her belly strained so hard against his loins that he was breathless.
To his horror, he felt his body respond to the provocation. It passed briefly, but when he gazed into her green, cat-like eyes, he knew that she had felt the pressure of his sharp burst of desire.
When the scene was over, she purred into his ear, "You must be one of those method actors, darling."
Bud felt the blood flood to his face. "I-I'm sorry." he mumbled.
Her eyebrows arched. "Whatever for? The pleasure was mutual."
Welles came over and shook hands with Bud. "I've never seen anyone handle himself like you did the first time in front of a camera." He looked at Gay Kelton. "What do you think of him, Gay?"
"I thought he was superb," she said. "He's a natural. I also think the writer should build up his lines in the rest of the picture."
"It might be a good idea, at that." Welles stroked his chin thoughtfully. "How about you, Bud? Do you think you could manage it if your part was expanded?"
"I'll do my best."
Gay took his arm possessively. "And with me coaching him, he can't miss. I tell you what, darling, after the writer fleshes out your next scene this afternoon, you come have supper with me at my house."
Bud looked at Welles for confirmation. "Is it okay?"
The director smiled. "It's okay with me. But you better watch out, Gay. He might end up stealing the picture from you."
Her expression was hard, and unamused. "Very funny, Steve. Very funny."
Welles nodded to Bud. "You come along with me to my office. We'll see what we can work out for you with the head writer."
"Don't forget tonight, darling." Gay called after him. "Be at my place at six."
The session with the writer was stormy.
"We can't build up Gino's part! It would spoil the pace of the entire film. The scene you shot today has to be his major effort. From now on, Gino is just another prop," the writer insisted.
"I'm not sure," Welles said. "Maybe we're missing a good bet. If Bud can continue to come across as strongly as he did today, we ought to milk everything we can out of the role."
It was finally decided that Gino would truly fall in love with his client, the frustrated American matron. This would provide Bud with a sentimental farewell scene, in which he would learn that she had always been deeply in love with her husband. With Latin nobility, he'd kiss her hand and depart, with a tear glistening in his eye.
"It's corny, but you might be able to bring it off," Welles told Bud. "Stop by my office before you go to Gay's, and we'll have a draft of the revised script for you to take along. See what she thinks about it."
On his way out, Bud was stopped by the sultry temptress in the outer office. She was wearing a tight sweater that looked as if it had been sprayed on her bulbous breasts.
"Do we celebrate tonight, big boy?" she asked.
"I'd like to," he said, "but I've got to go out to Miss Kelton's place to rehearse tonight."
Her eyes flared expressively. "Oh brother! You don't know what you're in for!"
"I don't get it."
"The initiation."
"What initiation?"
"All of Miss Kelton's boys go through it." She smiled mysteriously. "Some guys like it, of course. That changes things between us, naturally. I don't think I'll be going out to help you celebrate after all. Not after tonight."
Her feline smile irritated him. "Why not?"
"Not if you're her new lap dog."
Bud laughed. "I'm not going to be anybody's lap dog."
Her smile became more taunting. "That's what you think. There's a word that describes the boys Gay Kelton likes, but I'm too much of a lady to say it. I just know I don't want to be one by proxy!"
With that parting taunt, she stood up and went into Welles' office with a stack of mail. Her plump buttocks wagged saucily underneath the short tweed skirt.
Bud left the building, mulling over what she had said. He couldn't make any sense out of it at all. "The hell with her," he told himself. "She's just jealous."
That afternoon he went to an expensive men's clothier and bought a white dinner jacket and black trousers. He charged them to Eve's agency, as she had instructed him to do, along with the accessories-black tie, shoes and dress shirt. Eve would pay the bill with the proceeds from his modeling work. Later on, he phoned her.
"I went for broke today," he said. "Dress-up clothes for my date with Gay Kelton."
"Gay isn't interested in having you dressed up," she said laconically.
"What?"
"Nothing. It was meant to be a joke. I'm glad you bought the clothes. That's what most of your money will go for in the next year. Now that you're on the way up, we've got to build up your wardrobe. Five or six thousand dollars should do it."
Bud was flabbergasted. "Five or six thousand dollars! For clothes? You must be out of your mind!"
"Seriously. From this point on, the Levi's and T-shirts are passe. You've made your point. You're a rugged male animal. In the beginning, I figured you for the Brando image. But after the showing you made today as a suave gigolo, we've got to revise the image. Keep it slick."
Bud's head reeled. It seemed to him as though he was no longer the master of his own destiny. He felt like a puppet, and everybody had a hold on a string. Welles, Eve, Gay, the writers-all of them were manipulating his every action, even in his life outside the studio. Less than six weeks before, he had been little more than a bum, but a bum with a free spirit and no responsibilities. His sex life was uncomplicated and uninhibited. Now he had a contract with a major Hollywood studio, he had money in his pockets, he had some good clothes, and he was on his way to have dinner with the greatest siren of the silver screen. Ironically, he had never felt more inhibited and restricted in his life.
"Starting today," Eve said, "you'll be drawing five hundred dollars a week on a two-year contract."
Bud was unimpressed. "A contract? You mean, if I get sick of this work, I can't quit for two years?"
"That's exactly what I mean. Anyway, why would you want to quit? You've never had it so good in your whole life. You're a fairy-tale prince, Buddy-boy. It only happens to one in a million."
"Yeah," he said gloomily, "a fairy-tale prince. Okay, Eve, I better get going. Thanks for everything."
"Bud?" Her voice was anxious. "Is anything wrong?"
"No, ma'am." He hung up.
The drive out to Santa Monica was long and hot. Bud decided that his next investment would be in a new car. By the time he reached the Pacific, his dinner jacket was sweaty and sticky. He arrived about fifteen minutes late at Gay's seaside villa.
She greeted him on her patio, which hung out over the rocky beach like a shelf. She was breathtakingly beautiful and youthful-looking in form-fitting black velvet slacks and a white satin blouse. Her breasts were high and springy under the satin, and the nipples were etched in bold relief.
He knew she was naked under the blouse, as she was under the velvet pants. No tell-tale legbands marred the sheen of the velvet where it spanned snugly over the curves of her buttocks.
"I should have told you to dress informally," she said, with a warm smile, "but you look quite handsome, darling."
They sat on the patio and drank martinis until the sea and sky merged in the darkness. The alcohol loosened Bud's tongue, and he told her about his aimless existence during the past ten years.
"A charming wanderer," she said. "You must have conquered many women in your travels."
He avoided her bright, intense, cat's eyes, which seemed to glow in the dark. "I met a few girls," he admitted.
She threw back her coppery head and laughed. "A few girls! The boy is so modest." She stood up. "It's time we ate dinner. Then we'll go over the changes in the script. Do you like your part better now!"
"Well, it really gives me a much more important role in the picture. I guess that's good."
"Good? It's the opportunity of a lifetime for you, darling." She laughed strangely. "And just think, you owe it all to me."
"I sure do," he said quickly. "I only wish I could think of a way to repay you."
She patted his hand. "Don't worry, I'll think of a way."
The food was delicious-squab glazed with currant jelly on a bed of wild rice. Bud wolfed it down ravenously, washing it down with vintage champagne.
"Best meal I ever had," he said.
After the dishes had been cleared away, Gay dismissed the butler and maid for the night. She came around the table and put her arm about Bud's broad shoulders. Her velvet-clad hip, soft as cat's fur, pressed against his arm. A pointed, satin-covered breast brushed against his temple.
"I think we should get to work on the script." she said softly. "Come on." She took his hand and pulled him out of the chair.
"Where are we going?" he asked her, as she led him across the living room and into the hallway.
"I always work in my bedroom," she said. "It's sound-proofed. "The pounding of the surf can be very distracting when you're studying a script."
Bud's heart beat faster. The idea of being invited into Gay Kelton's bedroom was enough to excite any man, even if it was only to study a script. For twenty years, men and boys all over the world had worshipped the image of this love goddess of the screen in fan magazines and pin-up photos. In their beds at night, they had indulged in lurid fantasies in which the goddess beckoned them into her boudoir. They had pawed and drooled over her naked charms on satin sheets. The martinis and champagne had made Bud giddy, drunk with a sense of power. He studied the feline rippling of her thighs and haunches in the clinging pants, thinking that, very possibly this night, he might realize the desires of all those men and boys.
Her bedroom fairly reeked of femininity. Scarlets and pinks and fleshy tones dominated the decor, along with velour and satin and lace. It was the embodiment of a rather intimate and inviting Valentine, Bud thought. Pungent, spicy odors wafted in the air, titillating his erotic senses.
"Now let me see the script." she said. She took it and sprawled on a chaise lounge, patting the foot of it with one hand. "Darling, sit with me.
Her lovely, sensitive face darkened as she read the proposed changes in Bud's role. When she finished, she shook her head. "It's not quite right. I don't like it."
Bud was crestfallen. "Gee, what's wrong? Gino has a lot more lines."
"Yes," she said impatiently, "But they're stilted and unnatural. Take the scene in the bathroom when Lucy is bathing, anointing her body to receive her lover. Gino is in the bedroom, pacing up and down in his dressing gown, waiting impatiently for her to surrender herself to him. She begins to have second thoughts. Her puritan morality is smothering her again."
She sprang up from the lounge suddenly. "Look, the only way to understand the scene is to play it out." She tugged the tail of her blouse out of her pants and walked to the bathroom. "I'll get in the tub. You undress and put a robe on. There's one in the closet that belonged to my last husband."
Bud couldn't believe his ears. "You mean, you're actually going to take a bath?"
"Of course, darling. Realism is the key to everything in acting. How can I possibly feel the true emotions that Lucy is feeling when I'm sitting here fully dressed on a chaise lounge? When a woman is naked in a tub of warm, scented water, she's not the same woman that she is garbed in the armor of civilization. Clothing, undergarments, stockings, shoes-they imprison the emotions. Naked, she reverts to the basic female. She is Eve in the garden. All of her voluptuous instincts emerge. That's the method, darling. I must teach you more about that."
He looked after her, speechless, as she entered the bathroom and closed the door. After a few moments, he shrugged and took off his jacket. If she wanted him to undress, he wasn't going to argue with her. He grinned wryly as he unbuttoned his shirt.
A hot, tingling flush was spreading out from his loins, suffusing his chest and his belly and thighs. Maybe there was something to this method acting, he thought. The sensations he was experiencing now were no doubt the same ones that Gino was feeling in the story. He examined his naked body in the full-length mirror on the wall. He and Gino were both ready for action, that was for sure!
He put on the man's dressing gown that he found in the closet, and paced up and down. At last, she called to him through the closed door.
"You may come in now."
He pushed the door open slowly, holding his breath. She looked dazzlingly lovely sitting there in the tub, with only her bare knees and her head and shoulders showing above the mountain of bubbles. Her red hair was pinned up carelessly on top of her head, giving her a young, innocent expression. Her eyes were wide and guileless. She looked timid and vulnerable.
"Here is Lucy's basic dilemma," she explained. "Her body yearns to surrender to her lover, but her mind and her conscience resist. She sincerely believes she's being honest when she calls to him through the door and tells him to leave. She tells him that she's too ashamed to face him, but she's lying to herself and to him. Subconsciously, her true motive is to force his hand. She wants him to burst in on her, find her naked in the tub. She knows that once he sees her like this, his desire will become uncontrollable."
Coyly, Gay sat up higher in the tub so that her breasts emerged from the water. Foam flecked their gleaming slopes and hard nipples.
Her sensual mouth curved in a come-hither smile. "Now, how do you suppose Gino would react to her little game?"
Passion engulfed Bud in a red, roaring wave. In a daze, he walked over to the tub and looked down at her. Bending over, he plunged his hand into the water and grasped one of her ankles. Slowly, he lifted it out of the water, baring her long, smooth, slender leg.
"Bravo!" she whispered. "It's perfect! What does that fag writer know about a hot-blooded Latin like Gino?" Her green eyes blazed out of her pale, oval face. "Now, Gino's basic problem is this. He knows he is going to have this woman, by force if necessary. But he wants more than sexual satisfaction from the encounter. This is a woman who loves her husband, who has always been responsive to her husband's lovemaking. At this point, her marital relationship is teetering precariously. Gino wants to give it a final push, win Lucy for his own. He knows his act of love with Lucy must be more than an animal mating. He must lift her to heights of joy so exquisite and wonderful that, when she looks back on her sex life with her husband, it will seem pale and drab by comparison."
"Yes," Bud said in a dreamy voice. She was hypnotizing him. He was playing Trilby to her magic. He lifted her foot and pressed his mouth to the dainty, arched instep. She wriggled her toes and sighed with pleasure.
"That's precisely what Gino would do." she said.
He fell to his knees beside the tub and let his lips trail up the length of her leg to her knee. She leaned back and lifted her hips to give him easy access to her thigh. Only a thin layer of water and suds hid her beauties from him now. She lay there completely abandoned, glorying in his enraptured gaze.
His dressing gown had come open, baring his lustful condition to her avid eyes. The sight of him entranced her. Her voice droned on as he kissed the sleek inner sides of her quivering thighs.
"This is the beginning of Lucy's realization of the power of her femininity. Her husband's infidelity has made her feel old and unappealing. But, when she sees what mad fires she has kindled in Gino's strong, young, virile body, her confidence is restored. Now she is ready to surrender, to be loved. And Gino is going to love her in a way she has never been loved before.
Bud's hands slipped beneath her round, slippery buttocks and lifted her out of the water so that his lips could adore more of her sweet flesh.
"Not here," she gasped. "The bed."
He gathered her slim form into his arms and carried her out into the bedroom. Gently, he deposited her on the satin coverlet. Stripping off his robe, he lay down beside her.
He kissed her small breasts, drinking deeply of the sweet flesh. He mouthed the scarlet summits. She put her hands on his head and urged him to slide lower. His tongue teased her tiny belly button until she howled in delight. His lips sought out every nuance of her body. This woman had no secrets from him any longer. These were the secrets which men all over the world had dreamed of worshipping. She was a love goddess, and he paid homage to her hallowed flesh in a way befitting a goddess. Then her flesh seemed to dissolve in violent, quaking tremors, and her screams of ecstasy reverberated from the four walls of the soundproofed room.
At last she lay still and satiated, but as yet Bud was still denied his pleasure. His lust was like that of a great, throbbing tooth whose roots reached down to the very core of his existence.
"Gay!" he gasped, struggling to pry open her tightly-clenched thighs with his knee. "Please!"
The green eyes opened slowly, regarding him from under heavy lids. "No." she said slowly, "it is not possible."
"What are you talking about?" he demanded between clenched teeth. "I've got to have you!"
She shook her head. "No. Ten years ago I took a vow of chastity. No man has ever violated my body since that time, not in the crude, animal way that you want to."
"But why? That's crazy!"
"It's the only logical way. Before that, I was a violently passionate woman in the conventional sense.
I gave my heart and soul to a man when we made love. I gave everything. It exhausted me, drained the reservoirs of my genius. I realized then that I must banish love, if I was to survive as an artist. I have never given myself totally to any man since I made the vow."
"But you take from men?" Bud snarled.
She smiled serenely. "Yes, I take their love. I take it as I accepted yours tonight. Your adoration, your reverence. After all, I am a goddess of sorts. A goddess receives; she doesn't give."
"And what about the state I'm in?" he said in desperation. His torment was almost beyond endurance.
She sat up languidly. "Lie back. A goddess has an obligation to dispense small blessings to her worshippers-the truly faithful ones like you, darling."
She put her small, gentle hands on his body with the air of an angel of mercy soothing a fevered brow. Rhythmically, she caressed him.
"There, there," she cooed in a languid voice, "it's going to be all right."
Bud shuddered and closed his eyes, letting the goddess bring him relief in this unsatisfactory, humiliating fashion. Half a loaf was better than none, he thought bitterly.
A little later, he bid her a cold farewell. "I'll see you at the studio," he said.
Her eyes glowed. "And tomorrow night for supper."
"Oh no!" he said, sneering at her in disdain. "You're going to have to find yourself a new boy, lady!"
The glow dimmed. "In that case, you're going to have to find yourself a new picture and a new studio. Do you understand me, Bud?"
The old terrors clutched his heart like the tentacles of an octupus. They devour you, his father had said. They destroy you! And Gay Kelton was the queen bee of them all. She fed her witch's soul on the life force of young males. Gay Kelton owned him. She owned Bud Mannix in the same way she owned cars and furs and servants and lap dogs.
He laughed in bitter recollection of what the brunette in Welles' office had said about her men. They were lap dogs. He knew now precisely what she had meant. He was a lap dog, all right. In the most literal meaning of the term!
He cleared his throat and answered her finally. "I understand you."
"Good! We'll dine here again." A smile flickered around her sensual lips. "Then we'll do our homework in the bedroom. Really, Bud, I think you'll shape up into quite a fine actor someday."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The bathtub scene was rewritten under Gay Kelton's direction to approximate the real-life situation that had taken place between Bud and herself in her Santa Monica home. As Gino swept out of the bath, carrying Lucy's towel-draped form toward the bed, Steve Welles called out: "Cut! All right, wrap it up!"
A smattering of applause sprang up among the stagehands stationed around the set. Shouts rang out. "Just great, Miss Kelton."
"You too, Mr. Mannix."
Welles came over and put his arms around the two of them. "That was absolutely fantastic. The two of you spark like flint on stone. If things keep going the way they have been so far, I think we've got an Academy-A ward winner on our hands."
Gay beamed at Bud. "Isn't he fabulous, Steve? He gets better every time he steps in front of the cameras." She hugged Bud possessively. "Darling, under my tutelage, you may become the greatest leading man since Gable."
It went that way for the next three weeks. Nightly, Bud made his pilgrimage to the beach house to study lines and pay carnal homage to the goddess' strange desires. He began to drink heavily. Each night, after he left Gay's place, he was tortured by self-recriminations, disgust, despair and hopelessness. He was losing his identity. Gay did his thinking for him. He was a ventriloquists' dummy brought to life on the sound stage through her magic. Dozens of items began to appear in newspaper columns to the effect that Meteor Studios had discovered a new young star who was destined to set movie screens ablaze across the nation.
On the final day of shooting, electric tension crackled through the Meteor lot. Actors and crewmen from the sets of other pictures converged on the set to watch, the big, climactic scene where Lucy was to bid farewell to her Italian lover.
She kissed him on the cheek and, wraith-like, vanished from the little cafe that was the setting of their final meeting. As he watched her leave, Bud thought to himself, "Lord, if only it were true! If only I would never see her again!"
A wave of self-pity swept over him and, spontaneously, he buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. His body was convulsed with genuine, tragic sobbing. He was still crying after Welles shouted "Cut!"
Now the set exploded with thunderous cheering. It was mostly for Bud's performance, and Gay knew it. Her face was white with anger as she stood on the sidelines and watched the mob surround him, shouting good wishes and praise.
Steve Welles came up behind her and whispered in her ear. "You haven't created a Frankenstein monster, have you, dear?"
Her reply was unprintable. Steve walked away, laughing quietly to himself.
Bud got roaring drunk at the party to celebrate the completion of the epic. Pretty girls swarmed around him, pressing their soft breasts and thighs against his hard body in hot invitation. He kept a fixed smile on his face, but, in his mind, he wished all of them dead. Women! How he hated them!
Gay Kelton managed to mutter at one point, "I want to see you, Bud. In my dressing room."
He was able to slip off unobserved about five minutes later. He found her pacing up and down, drinking champagne and smoking a cigarette.
She looked regal and elegant in an ankle-length gown of gold lame encrusted with tiny, diamond-like rhinestones. It thrust her small breasts high over the neckline of the bodice, making them appear larger. The metallic cloth was plastered to the contours of her belly and buttocks.
"Well, if it isn't the great lover himself," she said sarcastically. "Thank you for heeding my humble summons."
"What's eating you, Gay?" he grumbled.
She laughed deep in her throat. "I've got a snappy retort to that, but I'll save it until later. Listen, you little punk, what was the idea of upstaging my exit with that ad lib crying act?"
He stared at her solemnly. "I didn't mean to upstage you, Gay, but now that it happened, I'm not sorry. As of now, you are no longer in the driver's seat."
The muscles in her gaunt cheeks were twitching dangerously, and her voice was ominously quiet. "And whatever gave you that idea?"
He sneered at her, his nose almost touching hers. "You think I'm a hayseed, don't you? You think I don't know the score. That was true when you first got hold of me, but I've been educated since then. Educated by you, Gay. I know one thing. I was good in this picture, very good. No matter what you do, you can't hurt me now. The picture is made, and I'm going to be big box office. I don't need your support any more, Gay."
She laughed at him. "Oh, don't you?"
"No!"
The cat's eyes sparked. "That's what you think, my callow friend! You need my support more than you ever did."
"Why?"
"Because I've been checking up on you, darling. I've had some private detectives looking into your background. It's pretty seamy, isn't it?"
Bud was not shaken. "Sure. So what? I'm not the first actor who bummed around for years before his break came along."
Her eyes were glowing. "That's true, but I'm not talking about that aspect of it. I'm referring to your lurid sex life. All those girls-there must have been over a thousand. All the tragedy you ' left in your lustful wake! You're a fiend, a satyr!"
He tried to laugh, but his cheek muscles were frozen. "How would you know anything about my sex life?"
"For one thing, there's that lewd diary you have." She smiled. "Correction. The diary that you used to have!"
The blood drained out of his face. He had forgotten all about the diary! He hadn't opened it since his involvement with Gay Kelton.
"What about my diary?"
"You shouldn't leave a lurid item like that lying around in the open. Anyone can pick it up and walk off with it."
The impact was stunning. "You have the diary?"
"Yes." She sat down on the edge of her dressing table and put her feet on the stool. Carefully, she pulled up the gown, baring her legs to the knees.
"What are you going to do with it?" Bud asked.
"Nothing, so long as you stay in line, young man. There's no reason at all why you and I can't go on making pictures together. We may become the most famous team since Lunt and Fontanne."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll be forced to turn your diary over to the newspapers. Can't you see the headlines? 'Hollywood Heartthrob Unmasked as Sex Fiend!' I'll bet the police will be interested in you too."
Bud sagged weakly against the back of a chair. "You wouldn't do that, Gay. You couldn't!"
"Try me." Without subtletly, she pulled her skirt higher on her thighs. The sight of her svelte, tapered limbs left him cold.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked dully.
Her face was hot, and he detected the first quiver of desire in her voice. "Well, for starters, come over here and kiss me, darling."
Like a zombie, he went to her and let her put her arms around his neck. Her lips were warm and wet, and her tongue pulsed between his teeth. Bud felt nothing. She pushed him away and frowned.
"Be good to me, darling. It's been such a hectic day. My nerves are screaming. Help me relax, that's a good boy."
"Gay," he said, "I don't want to."
"Be a good boy," she repeated firmly.
She pulled her skirt up to her hips and spread her thighs wide. She was naked underneath the dress, and he could tell she was quite ready for him. In resignation, he knelt down on the chair.
Much later, he staggered, out of the dressing room. Gay was sleeping peacefully on the lounge, a contented smile on her lips. He slunk through the dark studio, carefully avoiding the party going on at high speed on his own set. He found his way out into an alley and gulped in the clean, night air. Then he vomited.
He found his new Jaguar in the parking lot and got in, gunning the engine violently. He knew he couldn't go on like this, chained on a leash to Gay Kelton like a well-trained pet for the rest of his life.
But what could he do? The whole situation seemed hopeless. If he left her, Gay could ruin his career before it even got off the ground. He asked himself whether or not it really made any difference to him. After all, the whole thing had been an accident to begin with. It wasn't as if he had wanted to become an actor all his life. The answer to his question was clear and simple. Accident or not, it meant plenty to him. He liked the money, and he liked the prestige.
Without thinking about it consciously, he headed in the direction of Eve McKintosh's apartment. If anyone could tell him what to do about Gay, it would be Eve.
This time he avoided the doorman by entering through a rear door. He climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, then took the elevator the rest of the way. He pushed the buzzer on the wall in front of her apartment and waited. The door was opened by a young girl with a sweet face, framed by soft brown hair falling loosely around her shoulders. Her large blue eyes regarded him blankly.
"Yes?" she said.
"Is Eve here?" he asked. "I'm one of her clients."
She recognized him suddenly. "Oh, yes! You're Bud Mannix, aren't you? I saw your photograph in Mother's office today."
Bud was shocked. "Mother?"
She smiled brightly. "Yes, I'm Eve's daughter. I just got home from school. I go to Vassar. Do come in, Mr. Mannix." She opened the door wide and stood aside.
Bud's feet carried him mechanically across the threshold. He couldn't accept the idea that this girl, this grown woman, was Eve's daughter.
"Mother isn't here right now," she said, "but you can wait for her. I expect her soon."
"I didn't know she had a daughter," he said.
The girl laughed. "Female vanity. She tries to keep me a secret. In her business, a woman has to keep up her image of youth and glamour."
"I guess so," he said, examining her curiously. There was a definite resemblence between the two. She was a tall girl, slender, with full breasts and slim, rounded hips. Her breasts jiggled under the white blouse when she walked, and her thighs molded the fabric of her tight skirt. She was a real long-stemmed beauty. Bud felt an unreasonable resentment toward her because she was Eve's flesh and blood.
"I hear wonderful things about you from Mother and Steve. They say you're headed for sure stardom."
"Steve?"
"Steve Welles." She laughed. "I think I'll start your first fan club when I get back to school."
"Thanks," he grunted. He wondered if she knew that her mother and Steve Welles were lovers. "What brings you back from school at this time of year?" he asked her.
"I came back for the wedding," she answered lightly.
A point of pain stabbed through the top of his head. "What wedding?"
Her wide eyes regarded him with surprise. "Why, Mother's wedding, of course."
"Eve's getting married?"
"Didn't you know? She and Steve Welles are getting married next Sunday."
His legs gave way, and he sat down heavily in a chair. "No, I didn't know."
She giggled. "Isn't it silly the way grown people make a secret of things like that? I suppose they don't want a crowd of reporters and press agents following them on their honeymoon."
The pain in his head was getting worse. The jangling of the telephone intensified it.
"Excuse me," she said. She went over and picked up the phone, keeping her back to him.
"Hello? ... Oh, it's you, Mother. What's been keeping you? ... You're going to be delayed? That's too bad. There's a friend of yours here ... Bud Mannix ... All right, I'll tell him."
Bud's eyes moved slowly up her sleek, nylon-sheathed legs. Her shapely calves curved in to small, petite knees. They were dimpled beneath the hem of her short skirt. He could trace the graceful roundness of one thigh shaping the clinging material in back. It tapered into a rotund buttock, alluringly defined by the skirt's tight seat. The leg bands of her panties wrinkled the skirt where they encircled the full, fleshy cheeks. Bud experienced the familiar throbbing of desire in his belly. Somehow, it was tied in queerly with the pain in his head.
She hung up the phone and turned back to him, smiling brightly. "That was Mother. She's been delayed. She says she'll phone you later at your apartment. Do you have to rush off? I'd love to talk to you about all the exciting things that have happened to you so fast."
His voice was unemotional. "I'm in no hurry. Do you mind if I mix us a drink?"
"Help yourself." She hesitated. "I'm not much of a drinker, myself."
He walked to the bar. "But this is an occasion. You've got to have a drink, so we can toast your mother's wedding."
"You're so right. Fine, I'll have whatever you're having."
He mixed two potent martinis and brought them back to the cocktail table. He handed her one and sat down beside her on the couch.
Lifting his glass, he said bitterly. "To Eve and Steve. May they always be as happy as I am at this moment."
She sipped the drink and winced. "This is strong."
"You don't sip martinis," he goaded her. "You slug them down like this." He swallowed his drink in one gulp.
She inhaled deeply, and her sharp, youthful breasts filled the blouse. "Here goes." She drank it all down. Tears came to her eyes, and her face turned crimson.
Bud took the glasses back to the bar. "Now, we'll have one to celebrate the end of my picture."
The girl finally recovered her breath. "Oh, I shouldn't! I'll be on my ear if I have another one of those!"
"They go down easier after the first one."
He handed her a brimming glass. To her surprise, it did go down easier. In fact, she was beginning to enjoy it. The alcohol made her body glow all over. She studied Bud with bright eyes.
"Wait until the kids back at school hear about this," she said, giggling girlishly. "Imagine me having martinis with a handsome Hollywood actor, alone in an apartment."
"What will they think?"
The martinis had loosened her inhibitions. "They'll think we made mad, passionate love, and I'll be the envy of the campus."
Bud's smile was controlled. All of his thoughts and actions were controlled. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull, throbbing ache. He was filled with cold fury.
It was a fury directed at Eve and at Steve Welles and at this sweet, innocent, smiling female beside him. Innocent? Innocent as a baby viper, he told himself.
He closed his eyes, and their faces all merged into one face. At first he didn't recognize the new face. It had frowsy hair, a sensual mouth and mocking eyes. Then he knew who it was. It was his mother! They were all mixed up together, his mother and Eve and Steve and this girl.
"I don't even know your name," he said to the girl.
This amused her. "What a dope I am! I'm sorry. It's Lee."
"What will we talk about, Lee?" he said, undressing her with his eyes. The desire was building in his loins, the sick desire born of hatred.
She had finished her second martini, and she was feeling very giddy. "Back at school, the girls always wonder about those passionate love scenes in the latest films. They're all so sexy and realistic. In one French picture, this girl and boy were in bed necking, and they were both naked." She giggled. "How can the actors be so impersonal about it? You'd think sometimes their emotions would get out of hand."
Bud laughed. "That's the way acting is, I guess. Making love to a girl before the camera is serious work. Hard work."
She was sitting facing him, with her legs folded under her on the cushions. Her skirt was midway up her thighs, and he could see the tops of her stockings.
"It's hard to believe," she said.
"Look, I'll show you." He slid over to her and put his arm around her. "You and I don't have any feelings for each other. We're just two performers. Okay, now you pretend that I'm your lover, and that I'm going off to war. We'll kiss good-bye."
She was too startled to resist when he pressed his lips to hers and pulled her close to him. Her mouth was warm and sweet, and it trembled under his. She lay lifeless in his embrace, with a dazed look on her childish face.
"See?" he said, breaking off the kiss. "It didn't mean a thing to you, right?"
She shook her head. "I guess not," she said weakly. "Okay, we'll try it again."
She tried to pull away from him this time, clamping her lips tightly together. Bud kissed her with great ardor, kneading her mouth, working his tongue between her clenched lips. He could sense the violent and conflicting emotions whiplashing through her tense body. Slyly, one of his hands slid down off her shoulder and covered her breast. The firm flesh swelled in his grasp as she recoiled. She struggled a moment, then gradually her mouth softened and warmed. With a puppy-like whimper, she parted her lips to his tongue and nestled into his arms.
She offered no objection when he unbuttoned the front of her blouse, nor when he reached behind her and unhooked her brassiere. Her breasts were perfect-full, firm and high, with pink, virginal nipples. Her legs thrashed restlessly as he gently caressed the summits of her breasts, teasing them into distended scarlet points.
She sighed deeply as he kissed the curve of her throat. "Oh, my gosh! I get too carried away to be an actress."
Her hands made a feeble effort to push him away when his mouth closed on a tingling nipple, but the hot blood of youth had sabotaged her defenses. Lee was no novice at necking. It was a big campus pastime at Vassar. She had allowed boys from Yale and Harvard to fondle her breasts through her bra and touch her thighs above her nylons, but she had always kept the situation under control. When the boys tried to go too far, she stopped them firmly and decisively. Now, for the first time in her life, she knew what it meant to separate the men from the boys.
Bud overwhelmed her with his dynamic masculinity. While his mouth burned her breasts, his hands were hot and insistent on her thighs. Her skirt was tangled about her hips. She cried out as he ran a practiced hand over her round, heaving little tummy and slipped it down inside her peach-colored panties.
She locked her thighs together, but it was too late. His hand was trapped there, busy undermining the defenses of her last and most vulnerable sanctuary.
She felt as if she was a detached observer watching two strangers making love on a movie screen. She saw, with some distaste, the wanton girl fumbling eagerly at the man's trousers. The things the girl was doing with her hands amazed Lee. She was shocked at the eagerness with which the wench reared up off the couch so that the man could slide off her panties. Without even stopping to remove her garter belt and stockings, the brazen little hussy welcomed his lecherous eyes and his brutal, masculine body.
Lee suffered for that nameless girl as the man assaulted her virgin body repeatedly, bruising the untouched flesh. She felt the terrible, searing pain leap up through her body when he finally accomplished his task. Lee shut her eyes against the image but the pain persisted, ebbing gradually, to be supplanted by an even more intense sensation.
It filled her breasts and belly and buttocks and thighs until she thought she would explode into a million fragments. Then she did explode, in a joyous burst of fiery delight that sent her soaring into the heavens like a rocket.
Afterward she lay in a swoon, arms and legs askew, breasts still heaving with deflating passion. Through a red mist, she saw his leering face. There was no love in it, nor even lust. It radiated pure hatred.
Tears streaked down her flaming cheeks. "Why, Bud? Why did you do it?" she sobbed.
His laughter was full of venom. "I did it for Eve," he said. "That was for Eve. You tell her that!"
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day, eve went over to Meteor Studios on her lunch hour. She caught Steve Welles as he was leaving for a luncheon appointment.
"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," Steve said. He kissed her lightly on the lips. "You just can't stay away from me, can you, dear?"
She smiled. "I thought I might find Bud here. Have you seen him today?"
"No, should I have?"
Eve lit a cigarette with nervous fingers. "It was just a chance. I've been trying to reach him since last night. He stopped in at my apartment yesterday, but I wasn't home. Then he dropped out of sight."
Steve laughed. "Maybe he's pulling a Garbo. He wants to be alone. Incidentally, have you tried Gay Kelton's place in Santa Monica?"
"She's been calling me all morning. She's furious at him. They were supposed to go out to Catalina on her yacht today."
The director frowned. "You think he might have gone out on a binge? You know, to let down from all the strain he's been under?"
"That's one of the things I'm concerned about. He could have been mugged. He could be lying in some alley, or in a hospital."
Steve bit the tip off a cigar and sat on the edge of his desk. "Have you tried any of the hospitals?"
"No, I wanted to ask you about it first. I don't think the studio would want the newspapers to get hold of it."
"Don't get melodramatic, Eve. You don't even know that anything has happened."
She rolled the cigarette between her fingers. "I don't know, Steve. Call it feminine intuition. I think some thing has happened. Don't ask me what. It's only a feeling."
He came over and sat on the arm of her chair and put an arm around her shoulders. "You know what I think? I think you have pre-wedding jitters."
"Don't be silly."
She was wearing a low-cut, pink silk dress that bared the upper mounds of her breasts. Steve slid a hairy hand down from her shoulder and slipped his fingers inside her brassiere.
"What do you say we lock the door and spend our lunch break on the couch?" he whispered. "It'll relax your nerves, dear."
She removed his hand with great deliberation. "How can you think of sex at a time like this?"
He stood up irritably. "Oh, come off it, Eve! You've got a mother fixation on this kid."
She blinked in surprise. "You could be right. I do tend to think of Bud as a son. You know, underneath that Adonis body and profile, there's an unhappy, mixed-up young man."
Steve snorted. "I should have his problems! He gets to be a star overnight. He's got more broads panting after him than he could boff in a lifetime, working at it night and day. He's got Gay Kelton."
"Correction," Eve snapped. "Gay's got him!"
"So, maybe he's running away from her."
"I've thought of that. Steve, we've got to find him."
"Okay, okay. If he doesn't turn up by tomorrow morning, I'll talk to the big boss about it. I guess he should be consulted before the police are called in. By the way, did he talk to Lee when he went to your place yesterday?"
Eve's pretty face grew darker. "Yes, but she said he didn't stay very long. That girl is another one of my problems. For some unknown reason, she's in a strange mood. She won't talk. She won't eat. She just lies in her room and broods."
Steve was skeptical. "That sweet kid? You must be fooling. Maybe school problems?"
Eve shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I wonder if she's starting to resent our getting married. It could happen, I guess."
Steve scratched his head. "Gee, I hope not. I figured Lee and I were going to get along fine."
"I thought so too." She crossed her long, sleek legs in a flurry of pink silk and white thighs.
Steve eyed her legs wistfully. "I still think we should knock off a quickie on the couch," he said.
Eve smiled and patted his arm. "You men! You're all little boys, no matter how old you get. That's why I'm so worried about Bud."
He looked at his watch. "It's too late for lunch, anyway. Now I've got to rush to catch Saul before he leaves the commissary."
Eve returned to her office, feeling more depressed than before.
Bud Mannix did not show up that day, nor the next. The following afternoon, Steve Welles phoned Eve. "I've spoken to the boss about our disappearing boy. It threw him into an acute ulcer attack. For obvious reasons, he doesn't want to let the law in on it. So, what I've had to do is hire the best private detective agency in the city to track Bud down."
"I guess that's all we can do," she said helplessly.
"Cheer up, darling," Steve said. "Two more days to go, and we'll be on our way to Acapulco."
"Yeah. I hope they find him before Sunday."
After he had left Eve's apartment on Thursday night, Bud had driven to a cheap motel in the seamiest section of town and slept for fourteen hours. When he got up on Friday afternoon, he still felt beat.
He dressed and went into a gloomy bar adjoining the motel. He ordered a double martini. While he drank it, he eyed the lone girl at the far end of the bar.
She was a tawny mulatto, with a thin, straight nose and soft black hair that hung below her shoulders. When she got off the stool to put a coin in the juke box, she moved with the fluid grace of a panther, the muscles of her thighs and buttocks rippling beneath the tight sheath. The bartender refilled her beer glass.
"On the house, Estelle," he said.
"Thanks, Harry," she called from the juke box.
The bartender spread a newspaper open on the bar. He spoke to the girl. "Did you read about that big call-girl ring they broke up yesterday? In Beverly Hills, no less."
The girl returned to the bar and sat down, laughing. "Yeah, and they call this the rotten section of town." She pressed against the padded rim of the counter, and her high breasts bulged above the neckline of her dress. The mounded flesh had the hue of smooth cocoa butter.
"Classy broads, though," the bartender said. "They were getting a hundred bucks a night."
The girl laughed. "The price is different all over, but the name is the same in Beverly Hills as it is down here. They're all whores."
On an impulse, Bud carried his drink down the bar and joined the discussion. He was feeling the martini. "Estelle, Harry, my name is Burt. Mind if I put in my two cents worth?"
They eyed him curiously. "Free country," the bartender said. "What do you have on your mind?"
Bud sat on the stool next to the girl. "Do you mind if I ask you a question, Estelle? Don't you think that all women are whores, basically? Why do you look down on girls who come right out and advertise it and put a price tag on it?"
The mulatto girl recoiled in shock and anger.
Harry the bartender scowled. "Okay, mac, that's enough of your lip! Watch your mouth or get out of here! This is a decent place, and it caters to decent people. Don't you go picking on this kid. She's tops."
"You don't understand," Bud explained patiently. "I was only making the point that all women will do it-if the price is right."
"You're talking to a respectable married woman, mister," the girl said coldly. "I've never been unfaithful to my husband in my life!"
"Good!" Bud said. "You're a perfect guinea pig for my experiment, then." He opened his wallet and took out three of the ten one-hundred-dollars bills which Gay Kelton had loaned him earlier in the week. He placed them on the bar in front of the girl.
She glowered at him. "You're looking for a fat lip, buster!"
"Nothing personal, Estelle," Bud said. "All you have to do to earn that dough is to come back to my room with me. Think about what you could do with all that money. Buy a new stove, or a refrigerator. Take your husband on a weekend to Las Vegas. Buy new clothes. There're guys who work like dogs for a whole month to take home that much cash after taxes. I know. I used to be one of them. The point is, you can pick it up for ten minutes' work." .He laughed wildly. "And it's all done lying on your back on a nice, soft mattress."
The bartender started to reach under the bar for the billy club he kept stashed there for mean drunks, but the girl stopped him.
"Take it easy, Harry. I've had propositions before, and the price wasn't nearly so high."
"There!" Bud smiled triumphantly. "They're all the same! Tall, short, fat, skinny, black, white, yellow or brown. Women! They're all daughters of Eve. Now that gal was the biggest whore of them all."
The bartender looked uneasy. "Are you drunk or crazy, mister?"
Bud laughed hysterically. "Maybe a little of both. Mix me another one of those, Harry."
He missed the silent exchange that passed between the man and woman.
Estelle fingered the bills lovingly. "Sure is a lot of money, all right."
"Well, is it a deal?" Bud said. Hot excitement was licking at his thighs and belly. She was a sexy wench, well worth the investment. He leaned back and examined her buttocks hanging over the back of the stool. They were spread widely and enticingly under the tight sheath.
She swiveled around to face him, hooking her high heels over the top rung of the stool. Her skirt was hiked up about six inches above her knees, revealing her gleaming thighs.
"I've never done anything like that before," she said, wrinkling her smooth brow in perplexity.
He tilted backward on the bar stool and his eyes climbed up the tantalizing valley between her rounded thighs. He could just make out a wisp of her panties. He had an overpowering urge to reach underneath her skirt and tear the annoying covering away from her body.
His voice was tremulous with desire. "Business and pleasure at the same time," he said. "I'm pretty good in bed, in case you're interested. I've never had a girl complain yet."
Her eyes abruptly caught fire. For an instant, he was uncertain whether it was desire or amusement he read in her face.
"All right, mister," she said, "you've got yourself a deal."
Harry set the fresh drinks in front of them. Bud picked up her beer and his martini. "Thanks, Harry. You'll excuse us for a while, friend? The lady and I have some business to transact in my room."
The pain in his head was back again, worse than it had been the day before. His vision kept fogging over too, but he blamed it on the drinks. When they were inside the room, he sat down on the bed and gulped the fresh martini.
"Okay, Estelle," he ordered her. "Start earning your money. Take it off."
There was a fixed, mocking smile on her face as she began to undress. She grasped the hem of the sheath and lifted it slowly, unveiling her strong, panther-like thighs. Her trim hips were encased in white rayon panties. Bud's gaze was fixed on her bare midriff, tan and flat, as she pulled the dress over her head.
"Lovely, lovely," he applauded her.
Next, she reached behind her and unfastened her bra. She shrugged it off, and her breasts bounced free. They were firm and beautifully formed, with the upper slopes turning up at the summits like ski slides. The nipples were a unique shade of mauve. Bud got to his feet and reached out for her. He swayed unsteadily.
"Hey, these drinks are potent," he said, blinking at the empty martini glass.
She laughed softly. "More potent than you think, friend." Hooking her thumbs in the waist elastic of her panties, she pulled them down over her smooth belly. The sleek globes of her buttocks bobbed gently as the panties slid across them.
Bud staggered over to her and threw his arms around her. His hands stroked down her arched back and fastened greedily on her buttocks. He squeezed them, pulling her hips tightly against his.
Unexpectedly, a peculiar and frightening thing occurred. His feet and legs seemed to be melting away like candles. He seemed to be growing shorter. His face slid down her body, brushing the perfumed mounds of her breasts. His cheek slid across her smooth stomach. For one delicious moment, he nuzzled against the hollow of her belly. Then his face slipped down the full length of her supple legs and came to rest on her feet.
Giggling, she stubbed his nose with her big toe.
She had put her panties and bra back on when Harry came into the room. "You had me worried there for a minute," he said. "I thought the mickey might not work until after he got you in the bed."
She giggled again. "I'm almost sorry he didn't. I bet he's good in that department."
Harry slapped her playfully on the buttocks. "Don't get funny, baby." He took out Bud's wallet and removed the seven remaining hundred-dollar bills from the billfold. He tossed the empty wallet on the floor and addressed the unconscious man angrily.
"You were really asking for it, buddy! From now on, maybe you'll stay in your own neighborhood when you're looking for sex. You Beverly Hills types, with your expensive clothes and Jags and fat wallets! You think you can come down here and wipe your feet on our women! You're lucky, mister. In this neighborhood, someone might have cut you up in little pieces for trying something like this!" He spit on Bud.
The girl took his arm. "C'mon, Harry, let's go."
Bud didn't regain consciousness until Saturday morning.
His headache was blinding. His tongue felt swollen to twice its normal size. He staggered into the bathroom and cupped water into his parched mouth. He almost choked as vomit spewed out of his throat. He washed himself up and gulped down six aspirins. They didn't relieve his headache a bit. When he stepped out into the sunlight, red daggers knifed into his optic nerves.
He covered his eyes with his palms and ran into the dim bar. There was a fat man with a white apron behi:! the counter.
"Man, you really tied one on, mister," he joked.
"Where's Harry?" Bud demanded.
"Harry quit last night. Said he came into some money, and that he and his wife were going to Las Vegas for a while."
With my thousand bucks! Bud thought.
"Do you know a girl named Estelle?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Where can I find her?"
The fat man shrugged. "In Las Vegas, I guess, with Harry. She's his wife."
Bud staggered out into the parking lot and got into the Jaguar. The landscape danced and dazzled before his throbbing eyes. He got out of the car and walked blindly down the street until he saw a taxi parked by the curb.
He got in and gave the cabby Eve's address. When they reached the apartment, he took off the expensive wrist watch Gay Kelton had given him and handed it to the driver.
"I'm broke," he said, "but that's worth a heck of a lot more than the fare." The driver stared after him in open-mouthed astonishment.
He went in the back way, as he had done the night before. He pressed the buzzer and sagged against the wall, pressing his aching forehead against the cool marble.
Eve's face showed both shock and relief when she saw him.
"Bud! Where have you been? We've been out of our minds, all of us. Me, Steve, the studio." She dragged him into the apartment. "You look like walking death. Have you been ill? Were you in a fight?"
He shook his head dumbly in answer to all of her questions. His voice was a weak whisper when he spoke. "I just went away. I wanted to be by myself."
She led him over to the couch and sat down beside him. For the first time, she became conscious of the fact that she was wearing a new black nightgown which she had purchased for her trousseau. She had been trying it on when the buzzer sounded. Thinking it was her daughter, who had gone out earlier to buy a pair of shoes, she hadn't bothered to put on a robe. Bud was staring at her with unconcealed adoration.
"You're lovely, Eve," he said.
"I better put something on." She started to rise, but he grabbed her by the wrist.
"No. I want to look at you just as you are." There was an unreal quality in his voice that frightened her. "Where is Lee?" he asked her.
"She's out shopping. Bud, please! You're hurting my arm!"
"Did she tell you what happened last night?" Eve frowned. "No. What are you talking about?"
"I raped her. Right here on the couch." He said it so casually that she didn't even believe it. "Bud," she said, "stop talking like that! You must be drunk!"
He grinned at her doltishly. "No, I did it, all right. I raped her."
She knew, suddenly, that he was telling the truth. The impact of it stunned her. Horror and fear welled up inside of her. Her voice was a whisper.
"Oh, no! Bud, what are you saying? My little girl! Why, Bud? Why would you do such a thing to that child? To me?"
His voice was thin and childishly peevish. "Because ... because I wanted to get even with you, Eve."
"I don't understand," she gasped. "Get even for what? I've never done anything but good for you, Bud."
"You've been wonderful," he admitted. "Too wonderful. I love you, Eve. I love you, don't you understand?" The pain in his head was becoming unbearable. Tears trickled down his cheeks. His voice rose. "But you don't love me! You were going to go away and leave me. You were going to marry Steve. You're the same as all the rest of them! My father told me. I should have listened to him. I should never have come here! I should never have met you! I should never have fallen in love with you!"
As the tirade reached a frenzied pitch, Eve's flesh crawled. She realized he was quite mad. She fought down the panic that threatened to send her bolting for door, realizing that she wouldn't have a chance. His grip on her wrist was like iron. 'I won't let it happen! He can't take you away from me, Eve! I'll kill you first!"
The hand that wasn't holding her stroked up her bare arm and settled on her shoulder. His feverishly bright eyes focused on her magnificent breasts, now straining against the lace-net bodice of the gown from her labored breathing. Bud thought he had never seen such beautiful breasts in his whole life. A frown flickered over his handsome face. They reminded him of another pair of breasts, but he couldn't remember who they belonged to.
"Bud," Eve said gently, "if you don't want me to leave you, I won't. I won't marry Steve. I promise."
His lower lip pouted sullenly. "You're just saying that to fool me."
"No, I'm not, Bud. I love you, too."
He was suddenly angry. "You're lying! You don't love me. You're just saying it! You're a liar, just like she was!"
Eve's eyes flared. "Like who was, Bud?"
"Never you mind! Just don't tell me any of your lies!" His hand crept up from her shoulder to her neck. The fingers began to encircle her throat.
Eve realized there was no time to lose. With a quick motion, she pulled down the straps of her nightgown, shrugging them past her shoulders. Her breasts popped out and stared at him nakedly-two round globes of porcelain whiteness with fragile blue veins showing beneath the fair skin. Her nipples were not the perky summits of a young girl; they were thick and dark and richly mature. This was a woman who had borne and nursed a child.
"I'll prove to you that I love you, Bud. See? You can make love to me if you want."
"Make love to you," he repeated dully. His hand left her throat and slipped down to one of her ripe breasts. He fondled it gently, reverently.
"Lie down here with me, Bud," she said in a singsong voice. She stretched out full length on the couch, pulling him down with her. She took his head in her hands and pillowed it on her breasts.
He snuggled his face into the warm hollow between them, inhaling her fragrant perfume. He whimpered like a child. There was no desire in him, only a warm secure sense of peace and contentment.
"Mama," he whispered. "Mama, I love you."
Tears glistened in Eve's eyes as she patted the back of his head. It's going to be all right, baby," she said soothingly.
They were still there one the couch when the police came in, followed by Steve Welles and Lee.
Eve touched a finger to her lips. "Shhh! He's asleep. It's all right. He didn't hurt me."
"I saw his car out in front of a motel," one of the private detectives said. "There was a cab stand down the block from the joint, and one of the drivers recognized his picture. He told us he had brought him to this apartment building. The cabby said he acted kind of crazy. I phoned Mister Welles, and he figured we better get some reinforcements."
Bud was docile when they took him away. An impenetrable film had materialized across his eyes. He stared vacantly out of them, like a blind man.
"Where am I going, Mama?" he asked Eve.
She patted his hand. "To the hospital, honey," she told him. "You're sick, and they're going to make you all well again."
He shivered. "You'll come and see me, Mama?" he begged. "You won't leave me alone again, will you?"
