Barbara Sanders was on the verge of giving, in. She struggled within herself to resist falling victim to the delirious sensations, yet she hadn't the will to shove the fiery lips from her swollen, aching tits.
Her nipples danced and palpitated against the rough, smashing tongue, and waves of tormenting pleasure electrified her to a state of near hysteria.
She sobbed her anguish.
"Jerry, don't. Please! I'm only human!"
But Jerry Comstock wouldn't listen. He couldn't. He was too far drowned in his passions. His breathing was deep and moaning at her naked flesh, and his hands were harshly gripping along her thighs and calves.
Barbara quivered.
Oh, if only she could let her hair down this one time with him! Toss everything to the winds and let go-let the wildness fly, let her senses sing with the pleasures her nature craved. Yet if she weakened, lost control, all her grand plans could end right here and now, this instant. Tragic thought! She'd never forgive herself in a thousand years for such a foolish mistake.
To come so close to success and then muff it for a few moments of ecstasy. She couldn't! That would be pure insanity. She had to keep her head. She absolutely had to.
She pressed her hands to her face for strength, anything to still the tremblings of her body and bring a grip on her emotions. If she allowed that "wild streak to trick her again, with Jerry, as it had so many times in the past with other men, then she might just as well give up and turn prostitute. She'd never escape her miserable background. It simply wouldn't be written in the cards.
"I've got to have you, Barbara. I can't stand it. I can't wait another minute. You drive me out of my mind!"
His voice was agonized, pleading.
She understood well enough. She had wanted it to come to this, had purposely manipulated him to this point. She had wanted him eating out of her hand, begging her to marry him. And it had worked. They were engaged to be married as soon as he could make the necessary arrangements, which meant locating a new job.
It was no secret his father would kick him and Barbara both out of the office the instant they married. He had larger plans for his only son and they didn't include any girl from Maupin Street as a daughter-in-law. He had already laid down the law to Jerry in no uncertain terms.
"Do you think he'd really be so cruel?" Barbara had asked, when Jerry told her. "Does he actually dislike me so terribly?"
Jerry had nodded morosely.
"He means it. He's convinced any girl from Maupin Street would only be marrying me for his money. He'll never believe anything else."
"But it's not true!" Barbara cried. "It's not!"
"Of course not, darling. But try telling that to my stubborn old man. He thinks he knows it all. You'd get nowhere fast."
Then Jerry had kissed her and wound his fingers in her jet-black hair.
"But don't worry, we can get along without him. We don't need him or his money. He's been running my life for me too long as it is, making me jump when he wanted me to jump. Well, I'll show him. He can take his job and his money and stuff it, for all I care. I know the real-estate business well enough now to find a job anywhere."
Barbara had tightened inside at Jerry's determined remarks. She hadn't expected this, and she didn't like the sound of it.
True, Jerry was a nice handsome young guy. But if he was separated from the prospects of his father's wealth he was nothing-just a spoiled, overgrown brat. She wouldn't have looked at him twice. He'd be just another guy, so far as she was concerned, no different from anybody else.
He was supposed to be her planned escape from Maupin Street. The ladder by which she could climb up out of the gutter to a life of position and plenty. But now this! It didn't look good. She feared she had underestimated old Sam Comstock. He had her figured. He was not about to be tricked as easily as his son Jerry.
Barbara had been forced into a decision. She either had to forget the whole idea completely or press ahead, trap Jerry into marrying her, against his father's wishes, and then count on Sam Oomstock's coming around to accepting her later.
She had finally made up her mind on this latter course of action. She hardly saw how she could lose. Even if Sam never changed toward her, there could be other arrangements made. He'd probably end up offering her a tidy sum to step quietly out of the picture.
And that, Barbara smugly concluded, would be perfectly okay by her-providing the sum was tidy enough to mend her broken heart. And it would require an awful lot of that gorgeous green stuff called money to accomplish such a cure. Mr. Samuel Comstock could believe that!
So full speed ahead. She had laughed to herself and gone on tormenting Jerry into craving her. What did she have to lose?
Lose? This snapped her back to the present.
They had parked in their usual wooded spot, and as usual she had teased and tempted Jerry cunningly and coyly, playing on his hungers for her body, driving him mad for her, then leaving him hanging, actually drooling. But tonight something had gone wrong.
Previously she had prided herself on how well she manipulated the situation, firing Jerry's passions to the breaking point, while she herself remained secretly and coolly aloof, controlling the intrigue with expert hands.
This time, though, her own native impulses for sensuality had slipped in to doublecross her, striking whiplashes of desire through her flesh, threatening to tear her down. The warm lips working over her full breasts and taut pointy nipples were getting through to her, turning her to quivering mush.
Oh, damn that wanton nature she'd been endowed with! It was going to wreck her yet. And what a disaster it'd be to let it get the better of her now. If she submitted to Jerry, let him have what he was sweating so frantically for, she could very easily lose her hold on him. Then good-bye, Jerry. Good-bye, marriage. Good-bye, money.
She didn't believe in kidding herself. It was sex alone which kept Jerry dangling on her string, and the tidbits which she'd so expertly doled out to him kept him constantly fired. He couldn't so much as glance at her lush, full-blossomed figure without naked desire leaping into his eyes. And she'd meant to keep it this way until he'd placed a wedding band on her finger.
She'd long ago concluded that her body and the animalistic aura of sensuality which seemed to exude from her were to be her fortune, her means of escape from the sordid world of Maupin street. She would have the best of everything. She would! She would settle for nothing less.
That's why she had taken the night course in typing, then found a job through an employment agency. If she wished to marry big, she realized, she had to mingle amongst big people. And the shortest route for a girl like her was through the world of business, where she could be seen and appreciated by men of importance.
She'd ended up working for Comstock Realty, and that's where she'd met Jerry, the boss's unmarried son. She'd been quick to realize that Jerry was the perfect prize.
He'd flipped the minute he'd seen her, and from then on she had cultivated his eagerness with all the female cunning at her command. In no time at all he was her virtual slave. He would gladly jump through hoops for her at the snap of her slim fingers. He begged her to marry him.
She played it cool, secretly amused at how easily she had overwhelmed him, and stalled for just the proper amount of time. Then she finally let him talk her into it. She consented like the coyest virgin. Later she could hardly stop laughing.
She wasn't laughing now, though. She was gasping and writhing, unwarily caught up in the throes of her own erotic hungers. Here at this crucial moment Jerry's kisses had touched the spring of her wild side, abruptly and confusing, leaving her brain reeling.
She tried to struggle up out of it but she could not. Her wanton flesh wouldn't obey. Another moment, she realized, and she would be lost, helpless to regain control. Her heart was pounding its erotic demands.
"Jerry, please stop. Please! Oh!"
"Never!" he muttered from the ravishment of her swollen breasts and nipples. "I'm going to have you! Now! I can't stand waiting another second."
His lips swept down toward the white flat plate of her belly. His fingers caught the elastic top of her pink panties and practically tore them away from her hips.
Too late she wished she hadn't worn the dress which buttoned down the front. It had been too easy for him. Now she was naked and helpless in his arms, and she knew it was madness not to be able to stop him, but by this time she could not even stop herself. Despair mingled with her tortured emotions. She cursed herself for being so weak.
Sight of her body maddened him. Moaning, he pressed his face to her silky muscle-tightened thighs. She could feel the hot dampness of his lips. She trembled.
Then, suddenly, inspiration came. If only she could change directions. It was the last hope by which she might save herself.
She had dated a boy once a long time ago, and he had given her a rough time. She'd found him repulsive and she'd refused to let him get to first base with her. Angered, he'd set out to rape her, and he threatened to succeed.
They struggled violently on the back seat of his car as he attempted to get her out of her panties, and during the melee his flushed cheeks made contact with her locked legs. Abruptly something seemed to happen to him then. He went mad for her calves and thighs, apparently forgetting all else.
His struggles ceased and then, surprisingly, he was begging to be allowed simply to suck her. Begging horribly. She had found herself stunned, relieved, and perversely fascinated by his quick change of tactics.
Slowly she had unlocked her legs and let him, and once he had started he literally drowned himself in her cunt. She had ended up laughing and having herself a real ball with the guy. He'd never wanted to stop. And he didn't attempt for anything more. He was a real kook.
She wondered if she could pull a similar trick on Jerry now, before it was too late. Seduce him in a manner which would leave her safe and still in control, yet satisfying her own emotions at the same time. It was worth a try. She had to do something and fast. Her last ounce of resistance was nearly gone, her nerves crying for fulfilment.
His lips were still ravishing her narrow tummy. She sighed deeply and slumped, began caressing the nape of his neck, resignedly. He moaned his pleasure, swept his kisses along her thighs. Her other hand sought his zipper. He gasped, when her fingers slipped inside to hold his throbbing cock and squeeze it lightly. His breath became a hot blast on her flesh.
She sensed his growing insanities, and felt her own as well.
She writhed her form under his lips wantonly, suddenly whispering:
"Suck me, darling. Oh, please suck me!"
He capitulated, moaning frantic abandonment, and her flesh sang with ecstasy. Her legs curled about him and the fingers of her free hand tangled in his hair to pull him closer and harder against her cunt.
Her mouth fell open and she gasped her excitement.
"That's wonderful, darling! Oh, it's so wonderful."
His stubble of beard scratched the tender insides of her thighs. Involuntarily, her hips jerked and bucked. She couldn't help it; the rapture was too overwhelming.
Vaguely she remembered to keep her fingers busy at his pulsating cock, stroking its rigid length, squeezing and tormenting.
Jerry groaned his lusty delirium and burrowed farther, his tongue snaking deeper into her sensitive and hot cunt.
She thought she'd surely swoon. This was it! This was the living end. She choked on a gurgle of pure lust, let her dark head fall against the back of the car seat, lolling from side to side. Her tongue ran wet circuits around her parted lips, lavishing them voluptuously. Her muscles twitched and quivered. Her green eyes rolled backward in her head.
Agonized, sluttinish noises commenced emanating from deep within her, bursting upward through her throat in bitchy cries of unbearable suspense.
Oh, that tongue! Oh, that gorgeous, delirious tongue!
Her entire body became hypnotized with the exquisite jolts whipping it, every nerve singing and every fibre of flesh throbbing.
"I can't stand it!" she cried. "Oh, Jerry, I'm going to come!"
His mouth followed her frantic heavings, while his hands dug into her buttocks to hang on, not let her escape.
She shrieked and climaxed, bouncing and straining, sobbing.
Jerry, still in the grip of her moving fingers, convulsed in an orgy of gusty groans and whines, practically devouring her in the process.
It was all so terribly delightful, and Barbara began to relax and smile her feeling of success.
Jerry untangled himself from her long, tapering limbs, straightened and fumbled for a cigarette.
"Damn," he muttered, still a bit confused. "What happened?"
"I don't know. I guess we went sort of crazy. But I liked it, darling. It was wonderful. You were marvelous." She giggled wickedly. "You must think I'm awful for saying it, but it was, just the same."
He flicked his lighter and held it while his eyes played over her nude form. He shook his short-cropped blond head wryly.
"You're gorgeous enough to bring any poor guy to his knees. I couldn't help myself. I was beyond help, and I don't care. I'd do the same thing again, any time. You don't realize what your beauty does to a man, Barbara. You bring out all the beast in a guy. You drive me nuts."
She laughed and sat up and touched his nose playfully.
"I'm glad I do. That way you'll never get away from me." She flung her lustrous black hair impishly, stirring its perfume about his nostrils. "I want to keep you so interested you will never look at another girl."
"Fat chance. You're all the woman I'd ever want."
She smiled.
"Once we're married, we'll have glorious times, darling. Wait and see, it's a promise. We'll do all the things you want to do. And more. We'll make love constantly."
She stroked his cheek sympathetically.
"I still don't see why we have to wait until then."
"Oh, Jerry. How many times have I told you? I want our marriage to be right, to get off on a good, clean start, like it's supposed to be."
"Are you trying to say there has never been anybody else for you? I can hardly believe it, Barbara. Not that it'd make a lot of difference to me. I love you, and that's all that matters."
"I never told you I was any virgin," Barbara said. "Yes, there was one other boy in my life. It was so long ago, though, that I've practically forgotten it. This time I want a ring on my finger. Your ring, darling. I want to feel good and proper, not sordid and sneaky. Don't you understand?"
"I guess so," Jerry grudgingly admitted. "Much as I hate to say it."
His lighter had gone out. He tossed it and the unlit cigarette on top of the dash. He reached for her again.
"No, Jerry, we should be going."
"I can't turn you loose yet. It's-it's too soon."
"But you'll only make yourself miserable again. And me too. And you know that we can't ... "
"I'll settle for another spell of what we just had. I'll settle for anything."
"Jerry, you're so crazy," she giggled.
"Why not? It solves a problem, doesn't it? Anything is better than nothing. We've been the route once, so what's to lose?"
"I really did find you exciting, darling. I can't deny it. But-" She leaned back pensively, noting how the moonlight washed her body in soft gold. "-I'm not sure we should."
It was all the coaxing he needed.
"Well, I am!" he cried. "And I'm going to work on you the balance of the night!"
He grappled roughly for her body, his kisses going wild.
She resisted mildly, her excitement climbing.
Yes, she thought deliriously, why not indeed? She needed to have a real orgy of sensation; she'd been too long without one. He'd mentioned the balance of the night, and it was still early yet. Time for a girl to have a thousand thrills for herself. She deserved such a night. Her wild streak called out for it, demanded it. And Jerry was ready and willing to be used to her heart's content. Already his breath was burning her cunt flesh, causing her legs to want to writhe and wind about him. Her brain reeled with anticipation.
She commenced to gasp:
"Oh, darling, you're awful. Just awful," she purred "We really shouldn't ... "
He was too busy to answer. Within seconds then, she caught her breath, as the first promise of ecstasy rolled over and through her, rendering her giddy with knowledge of pleasures to come.
Her nails found and dug into his scalp. Jerry moaned low and hopelessly. With a secret laugh wanting to gurgle up and out of her throat, she gave way to total wantonness. She threw her body to him, turned the wild animal inside her loose.
She kept him going until the first streaks of dawn came, and it was a great big ball all the way. She used him selfishly, callously, keeping him on with calculated caresses of her lightly gripping hand, seldom allowing him to spill over.
When daylight came she was a beautiful, washed-out rag.
"Slut," Jerry chided, as he helped her into her clothes. "But I love you more than ever." Then he drove her home.
CHAPTER TWO
Home to Barbara Sanders was a walk-up flat on the second story of a dilapidated-looking building on Maupin Street. It wasn't much, nothing to brag about, but it was still better than any of the other places she'd lived in during the past. Some of them had been lousy dumps, not fit for flophouse drunks and bums.
Barbara had hated those hell-holes with a passion and was never sorry when her old man couldn't come up with the rent and they'd been forced to move. There was always the hope that the next place would prove more decent. It never was, though. The dumps had only been lousier and lousier, each time a little worse.
"Stop your damn griping!" her father Ben Sanders used to yell drunkenly. "You got a roof over your head, ain't you? What do you expect? The Waldorf Towers? You and your high-flown ideas! You make my ass tired. Shut up and leave me alone."
And he'd go on slopping up his mixture of wine and beer, because he had found it to be the cheapest drunk available. The apartment always smelled like a brewery.
"You're worse than your mother ever was, and she never let up a minute until the day she was buried. And I'm not sure she ain't still yapping. Wouldn't surprise me none. You two shoulda been twins."
Barbara frowned at the memory and then stretched her body in a long, taut, delicious yawn, liking the feel of clean sheets against her sleep-softened skin. This was Saturday and she didn't have to go to work. Thank God for small favors!
After last evening with Jerry and coming in after daylight, she didn't believe she could have made it. But now she had today and tomorrow, and she could spend them as she darn well pleased, with nothing to interfere.
Idly she wondered what her father was doing with himself these days, since she had finally grown old enough to scratch for herself and moved out on him. More than likely he was in some flea-house nursing a hangover and worrying about where his next bottle of wine was coming from. But she couldn't be sure of that. Last time she'd seen him he'd said he was courting a widow who had money, and he had asked Barbara to lend him a few bucks for a clean shirt. She'd doubted his story but had grudgingly handed him a five-dollar bill.
"Here, take it and blow it on alcohol or a clean shirt or whatever, I don't care. Just leave me alone and don't pester me for anymore money. I can't afford it."
He'd gone away muttering obscene oaths concerning unappreciative daughters and how they had no respect for their parents anymore.
She had secretly wished it were the last she'd see of him. He was poison. They'd find him dead in a gutter one of these days. She had no doubts about it. He wasn't fit to hold a job for longer than a week before getting himself fired, and he didn't seem to care. He'd hustle straightaway to the welfare office and stand in line, waiting for his unemployment check, and this would carry him for as long as it lasted.
Barbara narrowed her green eyes. She hoped to God he never showed up around the office, yakking about how he was her father and embarrassing the life out of her. That'd be the last straw. She would never live it down.
But why borrow trouble before it happened? He hadn't pulled such a stunt on her yet, and perhaps he never would. So she was being foolish, letting the possibility go on bugging her. She cast the thoughts from her mind and yawned again, kicked the covers from her legs. She debated getting up now or just lying in bed and playing lazy. Then she glanced toward her dressing table. In the mirror she could see her own reflection on the bed. She smiled and made a face at herself.
"My, my," she spoke softly and mischievously, "who is that gorgeous creature lying there? The one in the shortie gown with the body divine? What legs, what a full-blossomed bosom! No wonder she drives everybody crazy."
Barbara laughed and kicked her legs de-liciously, then paused to caress the silky skin of her thighs. Small wonder Jerry had gone so mad for her last night. How could he help himself? How could any man?
She'd learned early in life that, for a Maupin Street girl, she'd been endowed with special qualities for fending for herself. By the time she'd reached twelve the boys were noticing her. They'd made sly remarks and whistled, when she strolled past them down the street, and by the time she was fourteen the men were beginning to stare and turn hot-eyed too.
She'd loved the attention and had commenced to twitch her buttocks slightly more than necessary, delighting in provoking pronounced sighs of admiration and gusty catcalls of desire. Trouble was, she hadn't realized just how far her playful sex antics were leading her. She found out soon enough, though, and it proved a time of unbearable horror, an evening she would never forget so long as she lived.
"Hey, you two cuties," the four boys in the car called, as they pulled alongside Barbara and her red-haired girl friend Jean. "Wanta hop in and go for a ride?"
The girls had giggled but had shaken their heads.
"Aw, come on. Nobody's gonna bite you. All we'll do is cruise around some, seeing the sights. What you got to lose?"
Barbara and Jean paused, flattered and excited at the invitation, and talked it over to themselves.
"Do you think we should, Barbara?"
"No," Barbara laughed. "But I'm willing if you are."
"I'm leaving it up to you," Jean said. "I just don't know. You think we can trust them?"
"Well, at least there're two of us," Barbara pointed out. "I wouldn't dream of going alone, but with both of us I don't see how ... "
"Let's do it, then," Jean enthused. "It ought to be exciting!"
It turned out exciting, all right enough. The boys drove them straight to an abandoned warehouse and dragged them kicking and yelling inside. There were some dirty mattresses on the cement floor.
When Jean knew what they intended, she became hysterical, screamed and shrieked and fought like a terrified animal.
"I want the red-haired wildcat," said the larger, more vicious boy of the rank group. "It'll be a blast breaking her in. I'm calling firsties on her right now."
He was a stocky, squarely built boy with huge arms and shoulders. None of his companions seemed ready to argue the point with him. He gave the impression of being incredibly cruel and mean, and he proved to be just that.
One of the boys held Barbara while the other three stripped and spread-eagled Jean on a mattress. Then two of them held her wrists and ankles, while the vicious boy got out of his trousers and threw himself on top of her.
Watching, Barbara was frozen in horror. The vicious boy had a monstrously large cock. It was bound to tear poor Jean to shreds. Barbara hoped the larger boy wasn't going to turn on her next. Both girls were virgins. The idea was spine chilling.
The vicious boy started grunting in his efforts, and Jean's tortured shrieks became ear-splitting, reverberating in the big warehouse in painful echoes.
Once the vicious boy had Jean punctured and his strong grip locked about her slim waist so there was no escape for her, he growled gaspingly for the other two to get away. They did, leaving the pain-stunned Jean in a state of fearful immobility, her fists clenched against the bright edge of breathless suffering, her tight voice now imploring the vicious boy not to hurt her.
The tense shuddering of her body in its hopless impalement was visible to Barbara, and she was shuddering in fear now herself. Her time was coming.
Yet for the time being the other boys simply watched the two on the mattress, held fascinated while the larger boy played his game of cruelty with his totally entrapped victim, gloating in her tensed helplessness.
When he moved even the slightest, Jean went into hysterics. Terror etched across her drawn lips and clouded her blue eyes. Her voice pleaded in short gurgling gasps and sharp little cries.
Finally the vicious boy tired of playing around. His heavy torso began to pound jerkily and relentlessly. Jean could only sob and writhe hopelessly under the brutal attack.
The other three boys then turned their attention on Barbara". They stripped her and forced her to the other mattress.
She'd decided it would be easier if she didn't fight it as Jean had. She didn't, and though it was at first a painful experience, she soon wondered that it was not more so than she had imagined. Still, it was more than a little horrible.
The boys kept them in the warehouse for hours, and there was never a moment's respite for either of the girls. The boys took turns, rushing from one girl to the other, laughing, grunting, groaning, spasming, making a hideous orgy of it while they had the opportunity.
Then they took the girls back where they'd picked them up, let them out of the car with a warning.
"Go yapping to the cops and you'll wish you hadn't," the vicious boy threatened. "Next time you won't get off half so easy. So be smart, chicks. Keep your traps shut if you know what's good for you! We're not kidding."
When the tires screeched away Barbara and Jean debated whether or not to report the attack. Jean was still a little hysterical. Her blue eyes displayed lingering terror, and she wailed that her folks would beat her half to death if they knew she'd gotten in a car with anybody. They'd warned her of the consequences a thousand times, told her she'd be punished thoroughly if she ever disobeyed.
"I don't know what to do, Barbara! And I'm too frightened and mixed up to think. You'll have to make the decision for both of us. I know one thing-I'd hate to have those awful creatures get their hands on me again. I couldn't live through it! I just couldn't! I think I'd scream if I ever had to let another man touch me. Just the thought tears me to pieces."
Barbara had decided not to report the incident. What good would it do, anyway? The damage had been done and couldn't be repaired. And, anyway, she was smart enough to know that the creeps who'd raped them would lie and say the girls had gone along willingly. There'd be four words against two. The boys might get off scot-free, anyway. Probably would.
The whole incident might have ended then and there, except for one thing. Jean ended up pregnant, her tummy beginning to swell a few months later. Her folks finally learned the truth. They sent her out of town to stay with a relative and have the kid and Barbara hadn't seen her since. Poor Jean. She sure had come out on the grisly end of the whole nasty business. It was a shame.
Barbara had not fared a complete absence of effect, however. The incident had left its mark on her too. It left her with a highly awakened itch for sensuality, and she was not the kind to ignore her giddy needs. In no time at all she was branded the hottest piece of stuff on Maupin Street, and all a guy had to do was take her out and spend a few bucks entertaining her to get what he wanted.
And what she wanted likewise! She wasn't long learning the score of how best to cope with the jungle of Maupin Street. Her body was both her fun and her fortune. She meant to keep it this way. And she had. And she was not sorry she had.
Sorry? Why should she be sorry? She had come a long way since then, and she was still climbing. Soon she was going to be the wife of the son of a very wealthy man, and wasn't that going to be something to shout about? She, poor litjle Barbara Sanders from gutter street, married into a highbrow family. Who could ask for more?
She laughed from her languid position on the bed and cupped her breasts and squeezed them deliciously. Life was fun and it was bulging with opportunities. She definitely meant to fill her cup to the fullest.
She thought about Jerry Comstock again, her sense of humor taking another leap. How easily and cunningly she'd used her body to enslave him. He was so passion-dazed for her he didn't know whether he was coming or going. It was ludicrous, it really was. What she'd tricked him into doing for her last night was a true stroke of genius. She bet he still didn't know what had hit him. It had been a lovely coup, for her, and a thrilling one.
She laughed again at the lurid memory and wondered if he was still trying to decide what had happened to him.
CHAPTER THREE
Barbara's smug mood of self-satisfaction was soon shattered, however. Because a threat to her feeling of well-being showed up in the presence of Turner Wilson, the last person she'd care to see at this particular time.
There had been a firm knock on the door, and she'd answered it and there he was, grinning down at her like an ominous hawk. She had felt something drain out of her at the sight of him.
"What do you want, Turner?"
"Why don't you invite me in and find out?"
He leaned his tall, husky frame against the door and shoved his hat back on his wavy brown hair. His grey eyes surveyed her sardonically in her loose-fitting robe, causing her to clutch it tighter about her, impulsively.
"After all," he added after a moment's silence, "it's been quite awhile. Thought you'd be happy to see an old friend."
"Hah! Well, I'm not, Turner. Not this early in the day. I'm not even dressed yet. So say what you have to say and then take off, He probably hadn't. He was much, much too stupid for that.
Barbara went on laughing and enjoying herself. huh? I've a lot to do."
"I just dropped around to offer congratulations, that's all. But you sure aren't being very receptive about it, are you?"
"Congratulations? For what?"
"There's a rumor going around you're getting married...."
"Oh, that. Well, yes. Yes, I am."
"Then can't a guy wish you well?"
"I guess so, Turner. If you really mean it."
"'Course, I mean it. Why wouldn't I? After you and me used to be so thick? Sure I mean it. I hope you're gonna have the best of everything."
"Well, thanks."
He pushed past her into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.
"That's better. Hey, you got a bottle stashed? I could use a snort. We oughta have a drink for old times' sake, anyhow. You know?"
He sat down and stretched his long legs, grinning up at her, then glancing around the apartment.
"I like your new joint. Beats hell out of those dumps you and your old man used to hole up in. You must be doing okay for yourself these days. That's good. I'm right proud of you."
Barbara stared doubtfully at him.
"No, I don't have a bottle, and you need not make yourself at home, either. Look," she lied, "no kidding, I'm meeting somebody shortly and I'm in a hurry. I've got to dress. So let's have that drink another time, okay?"
"You meeting the lucky guy? That Comstock brat-what's his first name? Oh, yeah, Jerry. Jerry Comstock." Turner laughed derisively. "Got to hand it to you, beautiful. You always were a hep chick. You don't do nothing halfway. No peanuts for you! When you gamble, you shoot for high stakes. I don't blame you. Once you got that Comstock guy hanged, you've got it made. You really have."
Barbara grew uneasy at his suggestive manner, wondered what he was getting around to.
She said a bit defiantly:
"For your information, I'm marrying Jerry Comstock because I love him and he loves me. And for no other reason. And if that dollar-brained mind of yours is thinking otherwise, you're sadly mistaken. It's the truth."
Turner guffawed again, shaking his head.
"Oh, come on, now, Barbara. Hey, this is me you're talking to, not some sap who doesn't know what makes you tick. I know you, remember? So you don't have to play it cute with me. Love? Oh, boy, this is a hot one! You don't even know the meaning of the word. Unless it applies to you yourself. Because Barbara Sanders never loved anybody but Barbara Sanders. So stop lying. I don't buy it for a minute."
"Then your memory must not be too good," she countered. "I used to be crazy about you. So don't think I'm incapable of loving somebody. It'll only prove your ignorance."
"Nan, I don't buy that. Never did, even when we had things real hot going for us. The kick was all you were after. The kick and the fact I had more dough than the other guys and didn't mind spending a few bucks showing you a good time."
"Have it your way, then," Barbara shrugged. "But I don't recall you having any complaints."
"Hell, I didn't," he grinned. "You were always the best lay on Maupin Street. When you made it with a guy he knew he'd been had!"
"Thanks for the compliment," she said sourly. "And now how about going back to your hole under the rock so I can get dressed. You're making me late for my date."
Turner lit a cigarette instead, then hung a leg over the arm of the chair arid settled back.
"Hell, go ahead and dress. Don't mind me. Wouldn't be the first time I've had a peek at that terrific stuff you're stacked up with. So don't let me bother you. I'll just sit by quietly and enjoy the show."
"I bet! Now, listen, Turner, no kidding. You've got to get out of here. I mean it. I haven't got all day."
He blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
"Jerry Comstock, huh? Well, that beats all. Just shows what a smart girl with a body can do. But then Jerry always was the sucker type. He'd give his last buck for a babe, any time, anyplace. He ... "
"You know Jerry personally?" Barbara's brows shot up in surprise. "I don't believe it."
"Turner waved a hand indifferently.
"Oh, I don't mean we're old buddies-nothing like that. It's strictly business."
"Business? I don't understand."
"Monkey business." Turner smiled and winked. "I fix him with a broad when he wants one. And, believe me, he wants 'em often."
Barbara scowled, showing her disgust.
"So you've stooped to pimping now, have you? I'm not surprised. I never did think you'd own that fleet of taxicabs you used to talk so much about."
Turner shook his head.
"Wrong again, beautiful. I got three cabs working full time. Another year and I'll add a couple more."
"Then why are you pimping," she sniffed, "if business is so good?"
Turner grinned evilly.
"So what's wrong with handling a few babes on the side? Their tails are what paid for my first hacks, got me on my feet and financed my start. They're the goose which laid the golden egg. Nobody but a fool dumps a good thing, and I don't figure myself stupid. Matter of fact, the two enterprises kinda go hand in hand. Know what I mean? One of my drivers picks up a fare who wants a chick. So who supplies the fun girl? That's right, me, yours truly. So don't knock it. It brings in the dough."
"And Jerry is one of your regular customers? It hardly seems possible...."
"One of my best customers. I'm sure going to hate to lose him. But if he marries you, doll, I can vouch he won't be looking for any strange cunt anymore. It'll take all his stamina trying to keep your gears oiled."
"Do you have to speak so crudely?"
He feigned surprise.
"Look who's talking! You really have gone highbrow on me, haven't you, Barbara? Well, I'll be! I can remember when ... "
"Forget what you remember," she snapped. "A girl has a right to change, hasn't she? Change for the better? Well, that's how I've done. I'm not the same stupid girl you used to know. You may as well make up your mind to it."
"Hell, you say. Look, doll, maybe you can fool most people-like Jerry Comstock, for instance-but not this boy. A hot piece like you never changes, inside, and neither have you. So stop pulling my leg. Only difference is you're turning ambitious. You plan to get laid on a higher level of income, that's all. And it's okay too, like I said. I don't blame you. But you shouldn't try to shuck your old friends on your way up. That ain't exactly kosher."
She put her hands on her hips, staring intently.
"Turner, just what did you come here for?"
"I already told you. To congratulate ... "
"Oh, cut it, will you? That's not the reason and you know it. There's something else on your mind. So let's hear it, and then perhaps you'll get out and let me dress."
His grey eyes studied her with a glint of humor.
Then finally he spoke:
"C'mere."
"What for?" she frowned.
"I want to see if you're still as good as you used to be. Time was, I could turn you on with a touch. I just wanta see if that much has changed about you."
"Don't be silly."
His lips tightened.
"I said c'mere, doll. I mean it."
"You can go to hell too. I won't! You'd better go, Turner. This isn't funny anymore."
"Okay, it isn't funny. So we might as well get down to brass tacks. I got you on a spot, beautiful. You're gonna be good or you'll regret it."
"Then I'll regret it. Just get out and leave me alone."
"Forgetting one little thing, aren't you, Barbara?"
"Such as?" she asked nastily.
He shrugged and spread his palms.
"Remember some of those parties and shindigs we used to visit together? I mean, some of the wild ones?"
Barbara nodded doubtfully, beginning to freeze up inside. She began to suspect the worst.
Remember? She remembered, all right. Some of those scenes she and Turner had made back then when they were running together were more orgies than parties. She'd thought him just the most then. He'd taught her a lot. Taught her all there was to know about thrills and excitement. Yes, she remembered. How could she possibly forget? She shuddered unconsciously. Why was he bringing it all up now, though? Unless-
Laughing suddenly once more, Turner was shaking his head reflectively.
"Never will forget that blowout at Hamlin's place with everybody running around naked and drinking and playing 'anything goes.' And then that skinny guy going nuts to get the girls to beat him with a belt. Remember, Barbara? And when it came your turn, boy, oh, boy, something really happened to you, doll. Those green eyes lit up like little glowing devils, and once you got started whipping the poor guy you couldn't seem to stop. You loved it, doll, you really loved it! You sure worked him over. Everybody stopped what they were doing and had to watch. You turned the guy into a mass of raw flesh, and we finally had to drag you off him. I never saw anything like it. You were glowing like you were plumb out of this world. Beautiful, it really was! Just beautiful!"
"Well, he was asking for it. I just gave him what he wanted."
"Yeah, and loved every minute of it."
"What is all this leading up to, Turner?"
"Me and you, doll. And how we're not quite so finished with each other as you think." He reached in a pocket and handed her an envelope. "Take a look. Remember that crazy blonde chick with the flash camera? She gave me the pics later. They're really something."
Barbara took one glance at the small photos, caught her breath at the shocking sight of herself nude and working on the cringing guy with the belt. It was horrible the way her face shone with perverse wantonness in the pictures. She slipped them nervously back into the envelope, and Turner snatched it back from her, returned the envelope to his pocket.
"So?" she ventured. "I still don't understand."
He looked threateningly at her.
"I was just wondering how fast Jerry Comstock would rush you to the altar if he got a glimpse of these."
"Turner, you wouldn't! You couldn't!"
"Who says?" He laughed. "Don't kid yourself, beautiful. I could and I definitely would."
"You'd ruin my chances! You'd spoil all my plans."
"Sure. But not unless you forced me, doll."
"All right then, what is it you're after?"
"Just come perch right here," he grinned, patting his lap, "and we'll talk about it."
Barbara could hardly breathe. She hesitated, struggling with herself for a decision. He had her where it hurt. She could see all her big schemes flying out the window if she bucked him. Turner was a bastard through and through. She knew him well enough; he'd use those pictures against her if she didn't play along. No doubt whatsoever about it.
He was waggling his finger at her again.
"Quit stalling, beautiful. You don't have a chance. And it's been a long, long time. I'm itching for you. I got a real big hard-on. So c'mere and let's renew old acquaintance, huh? We'll have fun. Just like we used to. C'mere."
"Turner, you're rotten to the core."
"Sure. Sure, I am. But so are you, Barbara. That's why we got to stick together. We're so much alike. But look, I'm through arguing. You gonna play along or not?"
"How about afterwards?" she asked nervously. "Are you still going to hold these damned pictures over my head?"
"No. All I want is a little fun now, then you're off the hook."
"I can have the pictures? I can tear them up?"
"That's right, beautiful. Absolutely right."
"How can I know you mean it?"
"Try me and find out."
She stared at him another long minute, and she knew she was helpless. She hated his guts for pulling a stunt like this, yet there was nothing she could do about it. He had her where he wanted her. She'd be forced to give in or suffer the consequences.
"Barbara, I'm waiting."
With a sigh of miserable surrender, she went to him. He laughed and reached for her and undid the belt of her robe.
"Let's get rid of this thing as a starter," he said, the beginning of a flush showing on his face.
The robe was pulled down her arms and he slung it away.
"Umm, yeah, now this is more like it. Wow. I see you still got these big tits, baby. And I sure as hell been aching for 'em. Oooo, Mama! What a pair of living beauts. I swear I'm gonna eat 'em up. Already my damn teeth are chattering."
"I hope you choke, damn you, Turner."
He chuckled and jerked her off balance against him, burrowing his face between her tits. Then his mouth worked crazily from one nipple to the other, and ran up and down her body.
She cringed, trying to hang onto her tricky emotions. But it was too much for her, no matter how she hated and despised him. Her nipples began to stiffen, the song of sensuality to sing in her veins. He'd always been able to turn her on something awful. She knew she was busting up inside. She could feel that wild streak building up fast, and it couldn't be controlled. She began breathing audibly in spite of herself.
"I hear you getting with it, baby," Turner mumbled mockingly. "Can't stand it, can you? You're falling all to pieces, beautiful. Just like old times. Never did take much more than a touch to set you off. And when that happens-wow! Look out!"
"Damn you. Oh, damn you to hell."
He swept her naked into his arms. His kisses ran damp and warm over her panting, writhing form.
"A beautiful chunk of candy, that's you, Barbara."
She gave in to delicious sensation. Gave in with a sudden, tremorous catcall of excitement. It simply burst up out of her wanton depths. She wriggled, giggling and pulling at him, feeding herself to him.
"Yeah," Turner moaned happily. "Yeah, man, yeah. This is my same girl. Wild like a panther and sweet as honey."
"You talk too much," she taunted. "Do something. And make me know it!"
He lifted her and stumbled toward the bed. Her brain was spinning as he deposited her on it, then stood back to come out of his own clothes, grinning wickedly down at her with his teeth clenched and showing.
"Just hold your horses, chick. I'm gonna fix you up right. You better believe it."
Barbara writhed in suspense and her heart pounded furiously. She hoped he hadn't forgotten any of his old tricks for making her flesh sing. She certainly hadn't. And, now that she was in the mood, she wanted to fly straight up to the stars. The bitch inside her was stirred and craven. She had to have it and it was a crying need.
She watched Turner drop his shorts and step out of them, then move toward her. His tall, well-developed physique was huge and muscular, his chest matted with a crisp, curly hair. He'd always been a handsome guy, and he hadn't changed. A flush of nostalgic excitement whipped through her, as she recalled how good he could be in the throes of love.
Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes. And his cock was monstrous!
She tingled in every nerve and couldn't stop squirming.
He bent over her, supported by his hands on the bed, and ran a trail of kisses from her knees clear up to her throat.
"Ummm, yeah. All sugar and wild spice. Chick, you sure got what it takes. You're soft velvet from top to bottom."
He took the trip over her again with his lips, and she raised her trembling body in an arch of invitation. She was uttering small gasps and purring moans, inviting his lips to touch her now moist cunt.
"Quit trying to drive me crazy, Turner. I'm burning up!"
"Been missing me, huh? Been missing my brand of swinging. Bet you thought about me a thousand times, huh? Come on, tell the truth."
She flushed, hating him, but unable to make her body cease writhing. She hated her own flesh for its weakness.
"Damn you, what're you trying to do to me?" She felt like clawing at his face in frustration. "Oh, I always did despise you when you teased me like this. I could kill you!"
He plunked his mouth to her quivering belly and drove his tongue into her navel. She arched again and remained suspended, feeling a trillion electric ticklings course through her flesh.
"Oh, god. Oh, god!"
His mouth swept to her breasts, gnashed hurtfully at the resilient swells and pink-budded nipples. Her hips came down on the bed and her legs began to thrash.
"Give it to me, Turner. Give it to me."
"Okay, okay, I'll give it to you, doll."
He changed positions quickly. Then he was sitting on his knees beside her and lifting her head, pulling her face toward his flaring, bone-hard prick.
"Not like that!" she cringed. "I didn't mean...."
He kept drawing her nearer and, ironically, she seemed devoid of will to resist. Turner was laughing quietly but eagerly.
"Take it, doll. Take it and go nuts. Just like you used to do, when you really let your hair down. Geez, what a thrill. Only you never would, 'cepting when you were half drunk."
"No, Turner. No! I won't, I won't!"
"Sure you will. And you're gonna love it too."
Her green eyes stared, horribly fascinated, and her head shook tiny negative movements. Yet she felt helpless to fight. She could not tear her frozen glance away. She felt hypnotized in an unholy spell of fascination.
"Oh, heaven help me!"
She gluped gaggingly when he quickly raised and thrust his rigid rod between her parted lips, ramming it past her teeth to the limit of her throat.
She felt her eyes bulge, felt herself beginning to choke. She struggled briefly. But then she moaned and surrendered, gave in to total eroticism.
Her nostrils flared as she caught her breath, and she let her lips close longingly about the throbbing, silky-muscled staff of flesh. Her tongue rolled over and around it lavishly. She loved it. She couldn't help it.
"Ohhh," Turner was groaning. "Ohhh, baby, baby, baby!"
He shuddered his pleasure and gripped his hands in her ebony tresses.
She commenced working her head up and down, slowly, sensuously. She could feel the swollen knob of his prick palpitating, filling her mouth.
Still holding her to him, he changed position. He fell on his side in an easy movement, then shuffled onto his back. Now she was over him and up on her own knees, bobbing her head eagerly, wantonly.
"Oh, geez," Turner hissed. "Geez, geez." He began to twitch and cringe and jerk. "Take it easy, doll, you're sending me over the hump! You're making it too fast. Oh! Ahhh."
He sucked in his breath, sounding agonized.
She caught herself,-slowed the voluptuous action of her head and tongue, until he returned to a steady throb.
She didn't want to finish him off like this, heaven forbid! Too much would go lacking. And much too soon.
She scooted her knees against his shoulder and then stretched her legs, swinging one of them softly across his face, feeling the dampness of his mouth, as his tongue lashed at her skin.
"Yes," he gasped. "Yeah!"
He moved automatically. His arms rose to grapple around her hips and buttocks, to draw her tightly against his face. She felt his burning breath fan her belly and the apex of her thighs.
She rolled her lower torso atop him, engulfing his face between her parted thighs. She immediately thrilled at the hectic eagerness of his voluptuous kiss, the crazy dartings of his snaking tongue, the exquisite manner in which it probed and tickled her particular spot of excitement, her hard clitoris, causing her flesh to sing with pleasure.
She began undulating frantically and sobbing her unbearable emotions, and Turner started hunching, cringing and flopping. They were wheezing hideously.
They climaxed together, clawing and whining in a dual role of pure, tormenting animal lust.
They began to sink back to earth. And then she was remembering.
Excitement, total excitement. That was the frustrating miracle of Turner which she could never quite forget. It had haunted her often in memory. He was an animal who took what he wanted. And gave her what she craved!
He was one of the few who could accomplish this for her. She hated him for it-in her off moments. Because it was a steel thread which kept her linked to him with invisible strength. She could never work him completely out of her blood, no matter how valiantly she tried.
He was a bastard, pure and simple. And if she didn't watch out he'd be the total ruination of her. He would keep her trapped on Maupin Street. Hell, he was Maupin Street. The very thing she was trying so desperately to escape.
She finally got herself pulled back together. "Now," she said quietly, "give me those pictures, like you promised." He sat up and grinned. "Sure. Why not?"
"You mean you really are going to let me have them?" she asked, a little surprised. "I said I would, didn't I?"
"Yes, but ... "
He reached for his clothes, dug into a pocket and tossed the envelope to her. She took them and sighed her relief.
"Honestly I didn't believe you'd give them back. I have to admit I thought you were lying."
"Me lie? Barbara, I'm surprised at you. Hell, chick, look, any time you want some more of those pics, why, just say the word. I'll fix you right up."
"More of them? But how...?"
"Oh, did I forget to tell you? I also got the negatives. I can reproduce them by the hundreds. You want more? How many more? Couple dozen, maybe? Well, tell you what, I'll bring 'em next time I decide to drop by. Okay? And we'll have us some more fun. Just any time you say, beautiful."
She got it then and she was furious.
"You bastard! You dirty, underhanded bastard! God, I could kill you. And I will if I ever get the chance!"
"Tch, tch. Watch it, doll. Your temper's showing."
"Get out!" she shouted. "Get out of here!" He shrugged and commenced putting on his clothes.
"Okay," he answered cynically. "But just for now. Me and you, Barbara, we're gonna get together more often from now on, though. Might as well make up your mind to it."
When he was gone she lay there fuming. She cursed him for everything she could think of. Then she cursed herself for being fool enough to believe him in the first place. She should have known better. Turner Wilson was the king rat of Maupin Street, always had been and always would. What on earth had she been thinking about?
Oh, god, what she'd give to get back at him! She'd love nothing better than to have him in a position where she could strangle him with her bare hands while he couldn't fight back. Oh, yes, but wouldn't it be delicious! She'd make the sweat pop out on him, bet your sweet life on that. She'd teach him a thing or two about tricking her. When she was finished with him he'd turn green with fear at the mention of her name. He'd run from her and keep running.
Daydreaming is not good, though, she grudgingly realized. It got you nowhere and only left you steamed up more than ever. He had bested her and that's all there was to it.
Still, there ought to be something she could do. If she set her mind to it maybe she could come up with something to fight him with. Those pictures he had and would undoubtedly hold over her head from now on-she had to do something about them even if she was forced to do something desperate. Should they come to Jerry's attention, she'd be finished. She may never get another chance to escape Maupin Street if her present opportunity went haywire.
And all because of that bastard Turner Wilson! What could she do to stop him? What? What? Nothing, that's what. Oh, god!
She left the bed in a fury of mixed emotions and entered her bathroom, turned the shower on hot and strong. She had to calm down and think. This latest ordeal had turned into a real tragedy. It was going to take a lot of concentration to decide the best thing to do about it.
She cooled the water until she could stand it, then soaped her body thoroughly and for a long time, hoping to gain a calmer control over her thoughts.
She rinsed off finally, toweled her skin until it turned a lush pink. She sprayed lightly with perfume from head to foot after returning to stand before her dressing table mirror.
She felt better, in a manner of speaking, but nothing had been resolved. The vicious frame of her mind still existed. She felt a flaming need to strike out at something or somebody. Anything to unwind the knot of hatred boiling inside her.
Then, suddenly, she remembered a brief incident out of the past which could prove her answer to the pictures Turner had. Could very possibly end that threat forever.
Angie Wilson, Turner's sister! Oh, yes, why hadn't she thought of this before? The girl was a confirmed Lesbian. And she had always wanted her-Barbara.
Abruptly Barbara laughed. Sure. Why not? You have to fight fire with fire. It's the rule of Maupin Street, isn't it?
She remembered now that she once had to practically fight the girl off. Turner had given them money to go to a movie with, and when they returned to the apartment where Angie and Turner lived, Angie had wanted foundress and play games. Both girls were around sixteen at the time and Barbara had been going with Turner almost a year.
Barbara had been tempted until she realized the possible consequences should Turner chance to find out. So she had feigned ignorance when Angie started kissing her and made her stop. It had almost been too late, though.
Angie had begun sobbing her love for Barbara, grappling to prove it.
"I'm mad for you, darling!" the girl cried. "I don't care if Turner is my brother! I love you! I'll do anything for you!"
Barbara had been forced to run from the apartment to escape being overwhelmed. It had been that close.
But now?
Oh, yes, things were different now. A hell of a lot different. And who was closer to a man than his own sister? Had access to his personal belongings? Like some photos and their negatives, for instance?
Uh-huh, Barbara smiled smugly as she stared at herself in the mirror. Perhaps she should allow Miss Angie to prove her love, after all.
It should be a most interesting experiment, possibly in more ways than one.
Barbara cupped her breasts in her hands, squeezing them deliciously. And Maliciously. She kneaded the succulent smooth flesh and admired the perfection of her exciting body. Bringing Angie Wilson to her knees should prove a most fascinating game to play. And with such blissful results! Not only would she gain possession of those hated pictures, but she would carry the situation completely over into something else almost as glorious.
She would get vengeance against Turner. Through his very own sister she would get it.
Let him laugh then! Yes, just watch him laugh! His darling little sister was the only human being in the world he cared anything for. And she-Barbara-would steal Angie entirely away from him, leaving him with nobody.
Let's see who'll have the last laugh then! Barbara curled her lips wantonly and cruelly.
CHAPTER FOUR
Angie was delighted to hear from her when Barbara phoned the next day, and was more then a little excited over the prospect of seeing her again.
"Yes, Barbara, I'd love meeting you somewhere for a chat. Where are you now?"
"At work," Barbara told her. "I simply got to thinking about you and how we hadn't seen one another for such a long, long time. I decided to call, find out what you were doing with yourself these days. Suggest that perhaps we ought to get together real soon and just gossip. You know?"
"Just tell me when," Angie pressed. "The sooner the better, far as I'm concerned. Can you get away from the office now?"
Barbara was amused at the girl's apparent eagerness.
"Oh, I couldn't just walk out," she said pleasantly. "But we could meet later, if you'd like."
"Where? I'll be there. I have no plans which can't be broken."
"It's really not that important, Angie. I mean, if you have other commitments for this evening, why, I wouldn't think of letting you break them just to see me. We can make it another time."
"I have no plans, darling. Honest! And I'm dying to see you. I bet I've thought of you a million times since you and Turner busted up."
"It's been the same with me too," Barbara lied.
"I have an apartment of my own now, darling, don't live in the old place with Turner anymore. Gosh, has it been a relief getting out from under his demanding wing for a change! Ever since our parents died Turner has been bossing me around something terrible. You know? The big brother act. Taking care of his little sister. He nearly drove me crazy. Whew! Getting my own place and doing as I like is heaven. Utter paradise. You just can't imagine!"
"Oh, I can understand how you feel, Angie. And it's the best thing you could've done. Turner's okay, I suppose, but I remember how he used to be. I don't think I'd want him hovering over me all the time, either."
"You can say that again," Angie sighed audibly. "I feel like a ton of weight is finally off my shoulders."
"Would you rather meet at your place then?" Barbara asked. "Or mine? Either way suits me."
"Me too. But why not come to mine? I'd love for you to see my apartment."
"Okay, yours it is. About eight?"
"Fine," Angie said. "I'll be looking forward to it."
"One thing, though," Barbara remembered to say. "If you run into Turner don't mention our little date, huh?"
"Oh? Why not?"
"I'd simply rather you wouldn't. I have my reasons. Promise?"
Angie promised she wouldn't mention anything to her brother, then added:
"Oh, I can see why, darling. You don't wish to stir up any old fires from your past affair, isn't that right? Sure, I can very well understand."
"Yes, that's part of it," Barbara admitted. "But look, darling, I've got to get back to my desk. Duty calls and my boss is giving me a dirty look. See you this evening."
Barbara put down the telephone, grinning and settling back in her chair. So far so good, she mused. Things were breaking for a change. If she handled Angie with finesse, they would get a lot better. Very much so, indeed.
Well, she could do that easily enough. Once you had a Lesbian eating out of your hand you could make her jump by snapping your fingers. She ought to know. It wouldn't be the first time.
Myra Dean had been one of the hapless creatures, and Barbara had certainly found a bagful of kicks with that particular girl. What a ball it had been.
She flushed delightfully at the memory. Myra was an instructress at the night school Barbara had attended, where she'd taken her typing and shorthand courses. And from the start Myra, a boyishly slim and bespectacled young woman with mousy hair, had paid unusually more attention to Barbara's progress than she had to the others. At first Barbara hadn't understood. Then something one of the other students sarcastically remarked awakened her to the truth.
"No wonder you're making top grades. That chick has the hots for you, Barbara. You've got it made!"
"Oh, shut up!" Barbara had flared indignantly. "You don't know what you're talking about! You're crazy!"
"Yeah? Then how come she sets you up front under her nose? And stares at your legs like she could eat you up? Hah, as if you didn't know! Who you think you're kidding? You're showing her your stuff on purpose," the accusing girl said.
"I am not! I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing!"
"Look who's talking. But hell's bells, I don't blame you, so don't get sore at me. If I could get her drooling over me like she does over you, I'd make the most of it too."
Barbara hadn't argued the point further. Surprised and more than a little curious, now that she began to see the light, she actually did commence to torment Miss Dean. She displayed more of her crossed knees than was necessary, feigning ignorance of the teasing effect her bare flesh wrought on Myra. It was amazing. Hilariously so. The young teacher almost went to pieces, became so upset and nervous she could hardly make sense of what she was trying to say to the class.
Barbara could hardly contain her amusement, as she continued to worry Miss Dean to distraction. It became a throbbing, delightful game. And finally the inevitable happened. Barbara was asked to remain after the others had departed the evening class.
Oh, oh, here it comes, she had told herself. Something is about to give.
"I wanted you to stay," Miss Dean nervously explained once they were alone, "so that I could congratulate you in private on your progress. Your work has been excellent, and I'm giving you top grades. At the rate you're going, I consider you one of the best students I ever taught."
"Thanks, Miss Dean. Thank you very much. I appreciate the compliment. But really, there's one thing I don't quite understand."
"Oh? And what is that?"
"I can't figure why I'm getting such grades when you and I both know I don't deserve them. Plenty of the others are smarter than I am. Not that I'm complaining. It simply doesn't add up."
Myra Dean smiled wistfully and sat lightly on the combination desk-chair beside Barbara.
"Well, perhaps I have been a bit partial toward you, dear. You're such a lovely, charming girl. For some reason I feel compelled to help you all I can. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind?" Barbara laughed. "Who minds getting grades without half trying? I think it's wonderful, Myra. I really do."
"I could help you even more," Myra was staring at her seriously, her dark eyes somberly intent. She touched Barbara's arm. "If you really want me to."
Barbara smiled brazenly back.
"Myra, what are you trying to say?"
"Can't you guess? I'm certain you must know already. Must I come right out with it? Please don't make me do that."
"Well, I-I think I know. But.
"Darling, I love you," Myra blurted. "It's driving me out of my mind! So there-I've said it. I hope you won't be mad."
Barbara studied the distraught teacher for a moment, secretly amused at her plight.
Then she smiled and said:
"Mad? Why should I be sore? Actually it's just the opposite. I feel highly complimented you feel this way about me. I think it's very nice of you to tell me."
It was all the encouragement Myra Dean needed. She grasped Barbara's hand and buried her face in the scented palm, whispering words of frantic endearment. Barbara watched the procedure with a sense of cool, curious detachment, her lips curled in a small, wicked grin. Then she felt a tremor of delicious excitement. This could be turned into a hilarious situation, a regular blast of fun. Barbara's senses began to trill at the marvelous prospects.
"Myra," she said softly, "not here. Someone might barge in. They wouldn't understand."
"I can lock the door and turn off the lights," Myra hastened to say chokingly. "Nobody would realize we're here."
"Do it, then."
"Yes!"
Myra practically ran. Returning after fixing the door and snapping off the lights, leaving the room dark except for a soft glow filtering through the windows from some street lamps outside, she reassured:
"Everybody's gone, I'm certain. But we won't take any chances, anyway."
Then the slim arms reached hungrily for Barbara.
"My darling. My beautiful, glorious darling."
For Barbara it became a time of breathless, lavish pleasure. Myra's heated, searching mouth became a joy sublime, tantalizing her flesh, adoring its naked form humbly and ravishingly.
Barbara moaned and palpitated, tormented with a bliss almost too exquisite to endure. She wound her fingers in the mousy hair, arched into the ecstasy with selfish purpose. Myra proved marvelously expert. She sent Barbara shuddering off into the erotic heavens of dazzling space.
After that Barbara's grades were straight "A's" without question. She enjoyed Myra Dean until the day she graduated.
Barbara snapped back to the present, pushing the memory of Myra from her mind. There was work on her desk to be done and she decided she had better try to get some of it accomplished.
After all, she wasn't Mrs. Jerry Comstock yet. Not one of the family here at Comstock Realty. So she had best keep on her toes. Sam Comstock-the big wheel-was undoubtedly looking for a reason to fire her. He'd do it in a minute too, given a logical excuse. She sometimes wondered why he hadn't already. Perhaps he feared his son's reaction to a certain degree should Barbara be run off, figured Jerry might leave the company in anger. Or maybe he was shrewd enough to keep her here under his nose so he could hold a close scrutiny over the affair between her and Jerry. She didn't know his exact reasons. She did know, however, that where the old hawk was concerned, she had best remain carefully discreet.
So Barbara forced her attention back on her work. She put paper in the typewriter and her fingers flew. She looked up a moment later in a tiny shock of surprise.
One of the handsomest men she had ever seen in her life was speaking to the receptionist, asking to see Sam Comstock.
"I heard he might have room for another salesman," the tall, dark-headed man said with a jaunty grin. "I'd like to talk to him about it."
"Your name?" the receptionist asked, flushing visibly under the man's attractive, dominating charm.
"Bob Holton. And please mention that I'm experienced."
The receptionist spoke into the intercom, then managed to tell Bob Holton that Mr. Comsotck would see him.
Holton thanked her with a wink and marched toward the private office in the rear.
As he passed Barbara's desk he grinned and whispered:
"Wish me luck, lovely. I need it."
Barbara nodded automatically.
"Sure, lots of luck."
She felt her remark embarrassingly inane, and she was completely flustered as the man swept past. The effect of this total stranger on her was astounding, she couldn't understand why. But then obviously the other girls in the office were struck by the same affliction. They were acting as though they were a herd of kittenish mares kicking up their heels in the presence of a stallion.
"Wow!" one girl enthused, breaking the silence and ostensibly speaking for all. "Did you see that?"
Bob Holton wasn't in Mr. Comstock's private office very long, and when he exited the disappointment on his face was evident. Barbara felt unaccountably downcast too.
"You didn't make out?" she had to ask.
Holton paused beside her, his countenance in angry lines.
"Who does that old bastard think his is?" he swore. "A moralist or something? God, maybe? Well, he can go to hell. I can't stand these holier-than-thou characters, anyway. I'm glad he didn't hire me. We'd never get along!"
"I don't understand," Barbara said. "I just don't see why ... "
"I'll explain it to you sometime when the mood is better," Bob Holton told her, obviously trying to control his anger.
Then he walked stiffly away and departed through the door.
It took Barbara awhile to get herself settled down and her mind back on her typing. It was ridiculous how the sight of the man had sent her heart fluttering, upsetting her and causing her to feel and act like a childish school girl who was seeing an attractive man for the first time.
What in the heck is wrong with me?
Finally she calmed down completely and managed to return to sanity. But, as she was soon to find out when her lunch hour came around, she hadn't seen the last of the handsome brute, by any means.
He was having a cup of coffee at the drug counter where she usually went for her sandwich, and he spotted her the minute she entered.
"Here, come sit with me. I've been holding a stool just for you." He laughed, displaying even white teeth against his ruddy complexion. "Maybe this is my lucky day, after all."
She slid gratefully onto the seat beside him and ordered her sandwich. Her voice sounded tremorous in her own ears.
Why, oh, why did Bob Holton have such a drastic effect on her? Well, perhaps she would eventually find out.
CHAPTER FIVE
They chatted while she munched her sandwich, and she was unusually tense, sitting so close to Bob Holton. And also unusually thrilled. It was amazing. Never, but never, had anyone affected her quite so sensationally as this. She even found difficulty breathing.
Bob, though, remained completely as ease.
"Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose," he was saying, chuckling. "But I never ran into a character like that boss of yours. You know why he said he wouldn't hire me?"
"I've been wondering about it," Barbara admitted. "Why didn't he?"
Bob lit a cigarette, shaking his head disdainfully.
"Beats all I ever heard of. When I told him I was employed at Satterfield Realty and wished to make a change, your dear boss gave me a flat turndown. Seems he and old man Satterfield are good friends, and he didn't want to make anybody sore. How's that for running into a streak of luck?"
"Gosh, that's a tough break," Barbara frowned. "I'm sorry. But Mr. Comstock really is peculiar about some things. He's all the time yakking ethics and stuff like that."
"Well, I guess it's okay. Ethics, I mean. But you don't find much of it around anymore.
Most companies go out of their way to steal salesmen from competitors, friendship or no friendship. But not your hallowed boss! He has to be the one in a million with old-time morals."
"Why do you want to leave Satterfield, Bob?"
"Too large a firm. Practically no chance to get ahead. I figured there'd be more opportunity with a smaller firm, like Comstock for instance."
"You must be ambitious. Most salesmen only want to close a deal, get their commission and then get drunk. I should know."
"Oh, well, the attempt was a complete flop. I managed to find the most beautiful girl I ever met. You. When can I see you again, lovely?"
"Sorry. No can do. I'm all tied up."
"Married? Hell, don't even say it. I could not take such a disappointment. Not after the other ordeal of the day."
"Not yet. Almost, though. I'm sorry, Bob. I'm engaged to Jerry Comstock."
He was quiet a moment.
"Oh, like that, huh? The boss' son. Well, well."
"Afraid so, Bob."
Bob shook his head miserably, then turned slightly on his seat to stare challengingly at her. His knee touched her leg and remained there.
"But you're not actually married to the guy yet. So what's wrong with stepping out with me? Hell, I wouldn't talk. And something tells me we could find one another real interesting. I mean that, Barbara. You shake me up something terrible. The first sight of you hit me where it hurts when I walked in the office and spotted you. No kidding, I was floored. Didn't you feel it? Anything at all?"
Barbara's smile was wry.
"Yes, and that's just one more thing for me to worry about too. I can't afford complications now, not after Jerry...."
"Hah! So you're yellow! Right?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look, if you were so crazy about the guy you wouldn't be afraid to go out with another man. But you are afraid. And this can mean only one thing. You're not in love with the guy, not by a longshot."
"You're crazy. Why do you think I'm going to marry him then? Answer me that, Mr. Smarty."
"Dough. Money. Heavenly green, lovely. That's the real purpose, isn't it? Don't lie now. Isn't it?"
"What's wrong with marrying into a wealthy family?"
"You're evading the question, beautiful. I'm talking about that old magic word-love. You don't love the Comstock brat you're supposed to be marrying. You're only in love with the benefits."
"That's not a very nice thing to say."
"Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn't it?"
"Well, no matter what you think, I still can't go out with you."
"Can you honestly tell me you don't want to?"
"I didn't say that, Bob. But under the circumstances-well, I simply can't."
"Why don't you give it more thought before you decide positively? Tell you what, I'll give you a call in a day or so. If you still feel the same, I won't bother you again. Okay?"
"It won't do you any good, Bob."
"Let me worry about that, huh?"
"All right. But don't say I didn't warn you."
Barbara finished her sandwich and told him she had to rush back to the office. She left him sitting there and hurried away, still riding on the effect of Bob's indubious, mannish charm.
He certainly did things to her, she had to admit. Earthshaking things. But she'd be a fool to let it get her down, or take the chance of letting him complicate her chances of marrying Jerry. No, she had to be careful, very careful, at this stage of the game. With everything else, she had troubles aplenty as it was. No need adding more.
Still, when his knee had pressed so knowingly and confidently against her-oh, golly, what it had done to her! She had practically felt her womanhood puckering in response.
She laughed at the thought and went on back to the office.
"Barbara," the receptionist said, "Mr. Comstock wants to see you."
Barbara stopped short.
"Junior or senior?"
"The wheel. Who else?"
"Did he have fire in his eye?" The receptionist shrugged. "Doesn't he always?"
"Oh, oh," Barbara breathed, walking away, "looks like the old hammer is going to fall."
Sam Comstock was standing, leaning over his desk when she entered. He glanced briefly at her and then nodded his thick-bushed, greying head.
"Sit down, Barbara," he grunted. "It's time you and I had a heart-to-heart talk."
She sat, waiting nervously, and finally Sam Comstock did too. He folded his large hands on the desk and stared at her a moment.
"Barbara," he said in his deep, gravelly voice, "there's something you and I must get straightened out. I'm talking about Jerry, of course."
Barbara answered determinedly:
"Of course. What about Jerry, Mr. Comstock?"
"This engagement business, naturally. You know how I feel about it, so there's no need beating around the bush. I'm against it wholeheartedly."
"Yes, I'm perfectly aware of that, Mr. Comstock."
"And you still wish to go ahead with your plans? Don't forget, I've said I'd kick Jerry and you both out of here. You'll be on your own. Jerry-or you, either-will never get any help from me. Job-wise or money-wise, either. I want you to understand my position on the matter, exactly."
"I already do," Barbara countered. "I love Jerry and he loves me. We'll just have to make out without your assistance. I hardly think we'll starve."
Sam Comstock looked at his hands, then up at Barbara again.
"You're either a good actress, or the smoothest liar in the world. I can't decide which. Or maybe you're even sincere."
"Thanks for nothing. I appreciate your kind remarks."
"But regardless, I don't want my son marrying you. He can't be getting into anything but trouble."
"How can you be so sure? Am I so much poison?"
"Yes. Yes, you are. You see, Barbara, I've had your background investigated. You've been a wild, sexy, ambitious young slut all your life."
He paused, watching for an outburst of anger. He didn't get it. Barbara remained cool, her expression unchanging.
"Perhaps I was all those things, Mr. Comstock, but a person can change for the better, you know. It has been done before. I never had much opportunity when I was younger. I was reared on Maupin Street. A girl had it rough, believe me. But it doesn't mean I have to remain a Maupin Street 'slut' as you say, all my life, does it?"
"And you're one of the ones who has changed, right?"
"Yes. Yes, I certainly am."
"I don't believe you for a minute."
"Then I'm sorry. Am I fired, Mr. Comstock? If so, I'll gather my odds and ends and leave."
"Just hold it a minute, young lady. I'm not finished with you yet. And no, you're not fired. What could I gain by letting you go? You'd still be around where Jerry could find you. It'd solve nothing. And, frankly, I wouldn't want to make a mistake."
Barbara had to smile.
"What you mean, then, is you're not so certain about me and my motives, after all. Isn't that correct?"
Sam Comstock spread his palms.
"I feel there's one chance in a million I could be wrong about you. Yes, it's true."
"So where does it all lead us?"
"To a proposition I happen to have in mind, Barbara. That's what."
"A proposition? What sort of proposition?"
"I'll put it bluntly. I'll give you ten thousand dollars in cash to forget Jerry and leave town. Cash, no taxes to pay. You could have a nice round-the-world trip and money left over. What do you say?"
"I say no, Mr. Comstock. Absolutely not."
"I started low because I'm a bargainer. Okay, twenty-five thousand. But that's my final offer."
Barbara paused, her mind in a furor. Twenty-five thousand dollars wasn't to be sneezed at, no, it wasn't. It was all the money in the world, and all in one big lump sum of cash. She swallowed unconsciously and her mouth felt dry. Should she take him up on the deal or shouldn't she? It was a real stickler of a decision and she hardly knew what to do.
Then a sudden inspiration came through to her, waking her up. All Sam Comstock was doing was testing her. Which had even deeper meanings than she'd first recognized. It meant that if she refused the money she'd leave the old devil completely fooled as to her long-range intentions. And it would also show her an entirely new side to his previous proclamation. That he'd disown Jerry forever.
She saw now that he never would, and that she had been right from the beginning in this respect. Else why was he willing to pay her a fortune in order to test her? It was very simple why. He knew himself he'd never disown his son, regardless of his threat to do so. Oh, he thought he was so smart, did he? Well, she wasn't any dumb bunny herself. She could see through him clear as glass. She could see it all now.
"Barbara, I'm waiting for your answer. On that kind of money you could really enjoy yourself for one hell of a long time."
Barbara was studying her nails, feigning utter disinterest.
"Waiting for my answer? I've already given you my answer, Mr. Comstock. I wouldn't hive Jerry up for all the money in the world. No, not for anything. It's true I like money. But I love your son more. So I'm afraid you're wasting your breath. May I go now?"
"You actually mean what you're saying?"
"Mr. Comstock, please, I don't wish to talk about it anymore. It's-well, such a horrible subject to be discussing, anyway. You don't buy or sell love on the open market, you know. Real love, I mean. So I really do wish you wouldn't mention it to me again. Honestly, I find it so terribly depressing."
"Okay, Barbara." He slapped his palms on the desk in defeat. "I tried. I still believe you're-well, let's forget it for now. Yes, you can go."
Barbara rose and started for the door, feeling his gaze following her. She wanted to laugh. She had him completely mystified, still trying to figure her out. Well, let him try. He was wasting his time. She went out the door and closed it behind her.
Going directly to her desk, she sat and pondered delightfully over her success. She had beat Mr. Comstock at his own game, out thinking him when the going started to get rough. Smiling, she shook her head and sighed. That twenty-five-thousand-dollar offer had almost thrown her, and wouldn't it have been a tragedy if she'd fallen for the tempation? What it would have amounted to was that she'd have traded a lifetime of wealth and luxury for one instant of greed.
Whew, it had sure been a close call.
She congratulated herself once more on her inspiring refusal, and then she pushed the incident from her mind. There were more immediate things to worry about. Like Turner Wilson, for instance, and those demoralizing photographs he was holding over her head. If Mr. Comstock ever got a glimpse of those....
Well, it'd be the end of her for certain, no doubt about it.
Angie, though, was going to supply the answer to this particular problem. She hoped. She'd know the result of this tonight, however. She would handle Turner's little passionate Lesbian of a sister with kid gloves, and if she played it smart, she'd have Angie begging to steal those pictures for her.
Curling her lips in a smirk of determination, Barbara shuffled some legal papers before her and got on with her work.
CHAPTER SIX
Angie Wilson was a petite blonde, blue eyed and slender enough to be pronounced skinny. She would have made excellent material for the modeling agencies. The fashion magazines seemed to want only the slight, bony creatures on which to display their merchandise. Also she was bubbly and effervescent, exuding a charming outgoing personality which could not be denied.
"Darling!" she had cried joyously when Barbara arrived. "Oh, how wonderful to see you again! I just can't get over it, I really can't. You look absolutely marvelous!"
The two girls had hugged one another, and then Barbara had expressed delight at Angie's bright, new apartment, letting the girl show her the rest of it.
Then they settled down with highballs which Angie had fixed, and things began to happen fast after more chatter and several more drinks.
They both became light headed and Barbara pretended a higher degree of intoxication than she actually felt. She purposely feigned a certain recklessness, setting the mood for her scheming intent. The manner in which she crossed her knees daringly and luxuriated herself on the sofa beside Angie brought searching glimpses of desire to the blonde girl's expression. Barbara felt highly amused and cunningly confident.
This was going to be easy. Angie was ripe for seduction. Barbara experienced a giddy thrill of conquest, anticipating the girl's final corruption. It was going to be a blast when it happened, but for now she had to remember to play her hand with utmost finesse.
"Now tell me about yourself, Angie. Catch me up on the things you've been doing since you're on your own. Where are you working?' '
"In a dress shop uptown. I always loved clothes, you know."
"Modeling? You certainly have the figure for it."
"No, I'm in sales. But I love it. And I can buy things for myself at a discount. All the employees can."
"That's a break," Barbara sighed. "With the price of clothes so high these days."
"Certainly is. But it's a tempation to purchase more than I can afford too," Angie laughed. "Sometimes I go broke and can't last the week out without hitting Turner up for a loan. But he usually comes through."
Barbara lit a cigarette, blew smoke toward the ceiling.
"Bet you meet some interesting people in your job too. Even some handsome man to fall in love with. Have you, Angie? Are you in love?"
"With a man?"
Barbara pretended surprise.
"Naturally with a man. Who else?"
"Barbara, you're putting me on."
"Putting you on? Darling, how on earth do you mean that? I don't understand."
Angie appeared a bit shaken. Then in a falling voice, she said:
"You know perfectly well I never cared anything for men. You haven't forgotten."
"Oh?" Barbara looked at Angie with mild speculation. "But, darling, I really don't remember."
"I was always crazy about you, Barbara, and I'm certain your memory isn't that blank. If it hadn't been for Turner being my brother I'd have given you all my love, back when you and he were so close. I thought you knew. Remember that time after the movie? When I lost my head? It should have proved something about how I felt about you, darling. Surely you haven't forgotten that."
"Oh, yes, now I remember. But I thought you were only kidding, playing around. I didn't take you seriously. Angie, are you trying to say you're not like the rest of us? That you're-gay?" Barbara frowned. "I don't believe it."
"A girl can't help being the way she is," Angie said with a whimper in her tone.
Suddenly she looked as though she might cry.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Of course, you can't help it. And it was cruel of me to sound so-so weird about it. Forgive me?"
Barbara touched her cheek sympathetically.
Angie gave a small sob and grasped Barbara's hand, crushing her lips into the perfumed palm.
"Oh, Barbara, Barbara, I'm so miserable! So ashamed! But I love you, darling. I always have and I always will. I adore you! You just never realized how much."
"There, there," Barbara soothed. "It's all right. I simply didn't know. I never guessed."
"And you don't hate me for it?"
"Of course not."
"Oh, darling, you're so sweet, so wonderful."
"And so are you," Barbara said.
She put her cigarette in a tray and smoothed Angie's blonde hair while the emotional girl's lips adored the palm of her other hand, her breath damp and warm.
Barbara felt gleeful exultation. She had Angie going now, and the result was inevitable. Angie would want more and more, which was exactly as Barbara hoped. And she would lead the girl insidiously to a point of desperation. Then, when Angie was beside herself for love, Barbara would cut her off.
After that, Barbara guessed, a kind of happy hell would surely break loose. Angie'd go completely to pieces. There'd be flurries of frustrated tears and wild supplications. Angie would beg from her knees. Barbara smiled, her senses thrilling at the prospect. From that point on, Angie would be eager to do anything demanded of her. And this was where Barbara would gain her promise to steal the photos from Turner, hand them over to her. It was a most interesting idea, poignant with overtones of sensational pleasure.
Barbara grinned down at the head she was stroking, fand her green eyes glittered pure malice. She trembled to get the blast on the go. This was going to be exquisite, utterly divine.
She let her fingers find their way under the soft curls to the nape of Angle's slender neck, fondling it, knowing how it would increase the girl's desire. It did, suddenly and explosively.
Angie was whimpering.
"Barbara darling. Oh, darling!"
"Poor sweet girl," Barbara breathed, sinking deeper into the sofa, knowing the movement would draw the hem of her skirt higher up her thighs, exposing tempting white flesh to Angie's vision.
It happened fast. A brief sob escaped the girl, and then her mouth was plastered to Barbara's smooth taut skin. Barbara had to choke back an impulsive laugh.
But she managed to hide her humor, retain her mood of seriousness.
"Angie, Angie, don't. Oh, please don't."
"I love you," the hopeless girl cried. "I adore you, I worship you!"
Her kisses flew, drowning Barbara's knees and thighs in hectic warmth. Barbara tried to steel herself against the heady tremors of desire crawling over her. She must remember not to lose control. Heavens no, not until she had wrangled a promise from Angie. Then, happily, she could turn herself loose, passionately and emotionally.
Then she could have her kicks to her heart's desire.
But not just yet. It wasn't time. She wanted Angie craving her to a point of absolute no return. Then and only then would she begin to tighten the screw.
With mock resistance she pushed lightly at Angie.
"Please don't act like this, Angie. Please. I had no idea my visit would upset you so. I never should've come. I'm not used to this sort of thing."
The objection seemed to drive the blonde girl to distraction. Her kisses became more dramatic, more breathless. She cried for Barbara not to turn her away.
"I couldn't bear it! Oh, darling, you're so glorious! So wonderful!"
Angie's knees hit the carpet during her imploring gestures, her lips sobbing and wild.
"Barbara, for heaven's sake! Be kind to me!"
Barbara studied the distraught girl groveling before her.
Sure, she thought wickedly, I'll be kind to you. You don't know the half of it. I'm going to be awfully, awfully kind.
Then aloud, her voice full of sympathy, she said:
"Do you really love me so much, Angie? I find it all so strange."
"Yes! Oh, darling, yes! I'd do anything for you. Anything you asked! Only please! Please, please, please!"
"Do you really mean that?"
"Anything! Just tell me-I'll do anything! I swear it!"
"Well-oh, I'd hate to take advantage of your love. No, I won't even mention it. It wouldn't be right to ask favors of you now."
But Angie was insistent. Her hands gripped the calves of Barbara's legs, causing the muscles to quiver under her impassioned fingers. Her tears dampened Barbara's shining knees.
"You must tell me, darling! You simply must let me prove my love for you. How else can I show my devotion?"
Barbara's fingertips found the flushed face and caressed it toyingly. Angie continued pleading. Finally Barbara sighed.
"Well, all right, darling. If you really want to help me. There's something I'd feel much better about if I could get it back from Turner. Some old photographs. Some that were taken of me at a wild party once. They're rather gruesome. I want to destroy them. I'd ask Turner myself, but it'd be embarrassing. You know? But the thought of their very existence worries me terribly. I shudder at the idea they may someday fall into the wrong hands. I'd be ruined. I'd die of shame. They're so awful. I was drunk when they were taken. I didn't know what I was doing. "
"You want me to sneak them away from Turner?"
"Would you, darling? I'd be so terribly grateful. Could you?"
Angie kissed the silken knee.
"Don't worry another minute over it, my dearest. I have a key. And I know where he'd keep them. I'll get them for you. It won't be any trouble. You'll have your photos back immediately. Tomorrow, maybe. Just as soon as I can catch him out of the apartment."
"I'd never be able to thank you enough, Angie. I knew I could count on you."
"I'll love doing something for you, darling," Angie sobbed. Then her lips slid over the soft trembly thighs. "Only-only please let me."
"Do you really have to, darling? I mean, I'm not used to this. But if it's so important to your happiness. Well, I hardly have the heart to say no. Still...."
"Oh, darling!"
Angie's kisses climbed daringly, and Barbara was gloating success. And she was also starting to throb under the exciting promise of fun to come. She could let her hair down now, let her flesh commence to thrill, her senses sing. Angie was breathless for her, and in such a state that she should be maddeningly good, insatiably divine. "Angie...."
There was nothing more than a toneless nod against her warm flesh. Barbara smiled.
"Angie, would you like for us to take off our clothes?"
"Barbara! Yes, oh, darling, yes!"
Barbara had to suppress a giggle.
Of course, and by all means, you stupid creature! Now you're going to send me flying. You're going to give me bang after bang after bang! Just wait and see.
The result was heavenly. Within seconds they were nude, Angie insisting on undressing Barbara herself, making a peppery love affair of it with her eager lips.
Barbara lay supine and voluptuous on the sofa. Her perfumed fingers caressed the flushed face that moaned over her naked breasts, heatedly kissing her budded nipples.
Barbara felt her nipples firm to vivid life, harden and spread tingly sensation clear down to her painted toenails. She thought she would swoon with pleasure.
The insanely divine mouth began to move. Barbara's flat white tummy tightened expectantly. She caught her breath, then began to breathe jerkily.
"Oh, Angie, please!"
She pushed lightly at the delicious blonde head that was setting her brain afire. Angie obeyed uninhibitedly. Barbara gritted her teeth in suspenseful anticipation. She was aching for the blonde girl's total surrender.
When it happened, Barbara was deliriously surprised, hypnotized with a surge of unholy bliss which washed over her in waves of shocking ecstasy. Her teeth parted, her lips parted heavily and wantonly. Her tongue moved wetly across her mouth in stunned sensation almost too enormous to bear.
She wished to laugh and cry all at once, her joy was so overwhelming, so wickedly sublime.
Nothing was so heavenly as this, she thought. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
She dug her nails into the blonde hair, against Angie's scalp in breathless excitement. Her legs entwined. Her body began a slow undulation. Her nipples and breasts felt like bursting. She wished she could bend and bite them with her own teeth.
Later she clawed and tortured them in agonized rapture.
Angie intended to love her all night long.
Barbara shrilled happiness time after time.
It was perfectly all right with her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Next morning Jerry cornered her in the hall outside the office, and he was obviously upset.
"I tried to phone you last night. I couldn't get an answer. Where were you, Barbara?"
The direct question and his demanding attitude left her piqued.
"What is this?" she asked snappishly. "The third degree?"
"I have a right to know. After all, we're supposed to be engaged. Or had you forgotten?"
"No, I haven't forgotten, Jerry. But we're not married yet. And in the meantime-until we are-I still have some rights. And besides, I hardly appreciate being put on the carpet by anybody any time, married or not. You're acting like a narrow-minded, domineering husband already. I don't like it."
"All right, all right," Jerry frowned painfully. "Forget I mentioned it. I guess I'm just nervous. I'm running into difficulties, and they're getting me down."
Barbara softened.
"What kind of difficulties?"
"Job troubles. I've been checking around, feeling out other companies. Nobody seems to have any openings all of a sudden. You'd think my name is poison the way they hedge and clam up. I can't figure it."
"Perhaps you haven't tried the right ones. I thought real estate men could find positions by the dozens."
"I did too. But evidently I was wrong. Seems I'm butting my head against a stone wall everywhere I turn. I can't understand it at all."
Barbara stared at him as an idea began forming.
"Do you suppose your father has anything to do about it? Would he go to such cruel extremes?"
Jerry looked questioningly at her.
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe he's blacklisting you. He knows nearly everybody in the business. He could be calling them and asking them not to hire you. Do you think he actually would go so far?"
Jerry paled at the implication.
"By damn, that's it, just as sure as hell! Why, that underhanded old devil!"
Barbara changed tactics, gave Jerry a sympathetic smile and laid her hand on his arm.
"Darling, why not talk to your father again. Try to get him to change his mind about firing us the minute we're married. I think it's only a threat, anyhow. I don't believe he'd actually go through with it."
Jerry's laugh was dry and humorless.
"I can see you don't know my old man. Don't worry, he means it all right enough. He won't back down on his promise. He's stubborn as they come about things like that."
"It's hard to believe a man could be so mean to his own son," Barbara said. "It's simply outrageous."
"Yeah, but he is, regardless. You don't know him quite like I do. No, I've got to find a new location. Surely some outfit will put me on. He can't stop me everywhere. He doesn't have that much influence. I'll just have to keep trying."
"Yes," Barbara nodded. "I'm certain something will break for you-us, I mean. Then we can tell your father to go take a jump. We'll be on our own."
Jerry began to smile.
"I'm glad you said that, darling. It helps to know you're with me all the way. I guess I was becoming a bit overly worried, frightened. Like a man with his back against the wall and nobody taking his side. You know?"
"I'm with you, Jerry. You should know that. I'm for you, no matter what."
"Then that's all I want to know." He grinned. "I guess I was simply hoping to hear you say it."
Barbara brushed his lips with her own.
"You should know how I feel, without having to be told," she murmured chastisingly. "You'll find another job, you'll see. Just keep asking around. Something will break. I'm certain of it."
They parted and Barbara returned to her desk. She began to wonder. Jerry was so boyishly naive, so easily subdued. This was disgusting, in a manner of speaking, but was actually a good thing for her purpose. Once she married into the Comstock family it'd be much better for her if Jerry did prove a weak husband, one she could control absolutely. That way she could more easily wrangle the things she wanted, have the delicious situation well in hand.
She mulled the prospect over in her mind once more, feeling entirely confident she was right in her previous theory-that Sam Comstock was bluffing. That he wouldn't have the heart to turn away from his only son once they were married. And if this was correct, which it surely was, she'd be in, really in. She'd have all the money and luxury and position the Comstock fortune could afford.
And it could afford plenty! She laughed at the happy thought. They'd find her a pretty expensive ornament to have around the house. They'd better believe it.
Then her happy mood changed suddenly, left her worried. She hoped Angie ran into no difficulty coming through with those dangerous pictures. They could queer the whole setup, and wouldn't that be a lousy break. Even Jerry would turn against her if he got a glimpse of those orgiastic scenes showing her at her drunken and wanton worst.
Damn, what a fool she had been to let such evidence come into being. What a stupid, crazy fool! She certainly should have been smarter, even if she was younger and more reckless at the time. It was ridiculous.
Yet, why look for trouble before it happened? she suddenly reprimanded herself. Fretting and upsetting her nerves was fruitless. Angie would come through for her okay, so why worry? Sure she would. Then everything would be all right, she'd be safe.
She tried to get on with some typing she had before her, but it was hard to concentrate on the work. Her mind kept wanting to wander.
She commenced thinking how she'd fare sexually with Jerry after they were man and wife. You never knew about a man until you've been all the way with him, and this hadn't happened yet because it was part of her plan to keep him in a sweat for her. So she didn't really know just how much of a man he'd really prove out to be. It took a lot of love to keep her happy. Perhaps he could take care of her and maybe he couldn't. Only time would tell.
Still, she shouldn't let herself be too concerned over the matter. A girl can always find ways to sneak in a little fun for herself if her husband happens to be a dud in bed.
Barbara started smiling. She remembered the night in the car with Jerry, and how she'd tricked him into giving her the thrilling sensations she craved, worshipping her on his knees. This had been one way she knew he could satisfy her. He had proved it without any doubt. So, in spite of any other talents he may or may not possess, she could have her kicks forcing him to repeat the delirious procedure. It wasn't bad, no, it certainly wasn't. She grinned wickedly.
There were more ways than one to skin a cat.
The telephone on her desk jangled, breaking her reverie. She answered and it was Bob Holton, the sound of his voice working magic on her the instant she heard it.
"How about lunch, lovely?"
She had to laugh.
"Bob, you crazy goon. I thought you said you weren't going to call me for a few days."
"Did, beautiful. But I couldn't wait. Could not begin to get you out of my noggin. I tell you, you really hit me a low blow. I want to see you. And badly. It won't wait."
"Sorry," Barbara told him, unable to keep a teasing quality out of her voice. "It's still like I said before. I'm engaged. And I'm not interested in further entanglements."
"You're breaking my heart, Barbara. You know that."
"Oh, you'll live."
"Perhaps, but only in misery." He chuckled. "Listen, no kidding, you're not being sporty about this in the least. You ought to see me just once if nothing else. Give me a chance to put my two cent's worth in, before you tie yourself down forever to that Comstock guy. Who knows? You might even get to like me. So don't be so chicken, chicken. Let your principles down just once and give a guy a break."
Barbara began to feel tempted, caught herself just in time.
"No, Bob. I can't. I really can't."
"Yellow. You're absolutely yellow, beautiful. I wouldn't have believe it."
"I guess you're right," Barbara said. "Maybe I am. It doesn't change my mind, though. I can't afford...."
"Oh, hell, darling, nobody'll ever be the wiser. I swear it."
"Bob, please don't insist. It's no good. I can't go out with you, and that's all there is to it."
He was quiet a moment.
"Okay, that's it, huh?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so. Good-bye, Bob."
"Yeah."
She began feeling depressed the moment she dropped the telephone on the cradle. She wished he'd pressed her a bit more, argued awhile longer. She was certain she could have given in eventually. She commenced to admit to herself she really would like to be with him, get to know him better.
Gad, what a man! She bet he'd be a kind of heavenly tornado in bed. He had the looks and the aggressiveness. Barbara sighed, imagining herself crushed in those strong arms and dominated by Bob Holton. The thought left her a little breathless.
She struggled to get him off her mind. If he were still around after she was safely married, well, that could be a horse of another color. She'd chance seeing him then. At least once, anyhow. Just for the experience.
Barbara smiled and got on with her work.
Two days went by and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Jerry took her out both evenings, boring her with complaints about not finding a company that would take him on. She had to force herself to appear attentive and interested. His whining had begun to get on her nerves. She found herself intensely relieved when he finally dropped her off at her door and drove away, pouty and sullen when she refused to let him come in.
She undressed in a mood of quiet disgust, condemning him for being such a spoiled, griping bore who acted more like a child than a man.
It proved a good thing she hadn't let him come in. Because on this particular evening something spectacular really did come about, and she was glad Jerry wasn't around to get in her hair. Somebody knocked on her door and when she cracked it, there he was, grinning at her with laconic boldness, his dark eyes bright with humor.
"Hi, lovely," he said with ease. "Long time no see. How's about a late date?"
"Bob! You fool!"
She couldn't suppress a giggle of delight.
"Fool about you, beautiful. Just can't seem to leave you alone."
"Where did you come from? This time of the night?"
"Oh, I dropped by earlier, but you weren't home. So I killed some time, then came back and parked, waited until I spotted the competition delivering you. See the trouble I go through for you, lovely? Ought to prove something, huh?"
"How'd you know where I lived?"
"Looked in the telephone book."
"Oh."
"Aren't you going to be polite and invite me in? I promise not to attack you, much as I'd like to. So how about it?"
She started to say no, then hesitated, because the objection seemed to suddenly hang in her throat, not wanting to be spoken. She felt briefly flustered and she tried desperately to gather her thoughts.
"Well, I...."
He chuckled, pushed the door gently but firmly wider and strolled in, closing it behind him.
Barbara felt stupid and weak in the tummy.
"You certainly have a nerve," she finally managed. "What in the world am I going to do about you? You simply won't take no for an answer."
He grinned, glancing around the apartment with his hands in his pockets like a landowner surverying a new possession.
"Very nice, very comfy," he nodded. "I like it." Then he turned and looked her up and down. "You look good too, lovely. That shortie thing sends me. God, what legs! But I knew you'd have 'em. Ummm. Real damn yummy. And the rest of you-wow!"
"I was ready for bed, silly. What did you expect? Wait a minute and I'll slip into something decent."
He stared into her face and his expression was handsomely mocking.
"Uh-uh. I like you better the way you are. Tempting and peek-a-boo. Absolutely eatable. Try changing anything and see what happens. Go ahead."
"I thought you said you'd be good if I let you come in. Now you're threatening me."
"Oh, what I have in mind would be good all right, don't worry about that."
She smiled, shaking her head.
"You're the darndest man I ever met, Bob. I can't decide whether I like you or not."
"Liar. You know damn well how it is between us. So stop beating around the bush."
"Oh? Just how is it between us? You tell me. I think I'd find it most interesting to listen to some of your mad theories."
"Let's get comfortable first."
He slumped his long frame in a chair. She took another, curling her legs under her. He watched her admiringly.
"Don't you have anything to drink around here? I could use a snort."
"Yes. I'll be right back."
She went into the small kitchenette, fixed two highballs and came back, handing him a glass. He reached to touch her but she laughed and danced out of his grasp.
"Damn, you're cruel," he said. "But the beautiful ones always are. So you're acting true to the clan of all desirable creatures."
Barbara sipped her drink.
"You were going to explain how it is between you and me," she reminded. "Let's not change the subject. This I'd like to hear." He winced.
"You make it rough on a guy. You over there and me overe here. How can a guy talk about love at first sight when he can't even get close to the chick? It's next to impossible."
"Try," she giggled. "Or have you lost some of your fabulous nerve?"
He took a big swallow of his drink. Then he set it beside him on the floor and got out of the chair, coming toward her. She knew without having to think that he was going to take her in his arms. He wasn't about to let distance stand in his way. And she knew something else too. She wasn't going to put up much resistance.
"Bob, don't look at me like that. And you stay where you are. You promised."
He stared grimly down at her. He took the drink from her hand and placed it determinedly on the table beside her.
"To hell with this dilly-dallying around. You've got my number, and I'm going to have you."
"Bob, stop acting like this...."
Her words were cut short, as he jerked her to her feet and crushed her against him, capturing her startled mouth with his own.
She struggled briefly, then gave up. Why fight it? she wondered, as a surge of happiness washed over her. It was inevitable that they should have their love. She had known it from the beginning. The feeling he gave her was like nothing she had ever experienced before. It was different. There were emotions that transcended physical sensation. She felt strange things, new weak joys and divine frustrations.
She knew she was in love for the first time in her life. She loved Bob Holton. Without asking why, or how it had happened to her, she knew she was putty in his hands. He could do as he wished with her, and she wouldn't have the strength nor will to defy him.
She was breathless as his mouth released hers and went for her throat and shoulders.
"Bob, oh, Bob!"
He swept her up and bean carrying her toward the bed. His arms were strong.
His arms were so very, very strong, and yet his hands were gentle as he placed her on the bed and methodically removed her gown, kissing her nakedness as he went about the exciting task.
Her nipples leaped to stiffen as his mouth brushed over them. His hands stroked the velvety length of her, and she was shocked at the incredible response of her flesh to his magical touch. It was electric.
He left her and stood up to take off his clothes. He didn't hurry, but acted as though he were carefully making preparations prior to seeing a job well done. There was a glint of humor flashing in the depths of his dark eyes. Barbara watched, suffused with giddy anticipation.
Nude, he was more muscular than she had imagined. His shoulders bunched and sloped off to magnificent biceps. His stomach was thick but firm, without the least sign of a paunch. His legs were stout, giving the impression of much capable strength. Barbara felt her heart beating rapidly.
Then she was staring at his hard cock, and he was very stout there also, and it seemed to start throbbing as she stared at it. Sight of its ruggedly capable size instilled her with joyous awe. She quivered and sighed deeply.
In many ways he reminded her of Turner Wilson, only there was more man here, more male brute in every respect.
Barbara tore her eyes from the magnificent body and lay writhing.
He came to her, and he seemed unnaturally calm, so matter-of-fact in his movements, almost ominous.
He placed himself on top of her and worked his rough knees between her own. She was briefly disappointed, having expected an interim of sensual love play, but her dismay was soon forgotten.
He thrust his prick into her, and she began to see the light. Her nerves grew taut. She gasped and instantly climaxed, feeling content and satisfied. Then her emotions started to stir again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Barbara thought she would swoon. She floated on multi-colored clouds of softest hue. Spasms of happiness washed through her in ever-gathering moments of purest bliss. Her brain was reeling and it wouldn't stop. Bob never stopped, either. His endurance was incredible. Slow and easy, sensual and overpowering. Timeless and unrelenting.
Never for the smallest instant did he lose control, shudder in climax. He just went on and on and on, gripping her tighter when the floods of love drowned her and sent her weeping into throes of ecstasy. Her cries became insane gurglings of delirious joy.
"Darling," she kept gasping. "Oh, how I love you. Oh, how wonderful you are!"
Her dark head twisted from side to side in unbearable sweetness, but his mouth followed her lax, parted lips, biting them, covering them, possessing them. His tongue filled her and made love to her own.
She arched into another spasm, and her little screams were smothered deep inside her. His total grasp of her body was inescapable. And still the slow beat of "him never ceased. Never ceased. Never ceased. She thought she would go completely out of her mind.
Finally she begged for mercy. He let himself go, then, and she felt him shudder along his entire sinewy length. They lay as they were, sighing, feeling their own bodies un-tense and relax by sated stages, a heady delight in itself.
He rolled away from her, lying on his back with his eyes turned chidingly toward her.
"Wow! You really are something."
She felt her own eyes beaming as she moved her head to his shoulder.
"Don't make jokes, darling. I feel too marvelous for jokes. I feel so full of love I could die, honestly I do."
Her hand brushed over the hair on his chest tentatively, wanting to feel the beat of his heart.
"Bob?"
"Huh?"
"How is it with us, really? You were going to tell me and you never did." He chuckled.
"Hell, I just showed you. And action is better than words any old day, wouldn't you say?"
"A girl still likes to be told."
"Sure. Okay, I love you, then. How's that?"
"I guess it'll have to do. Men! They seem to find it so difficult to blurt out their feelings. And you never know for certain if they're sincere. You're all alike."
"Look. I said I love you. You want me to get down on my knees?"
"No. Oh, Bob, I guess I'm acting silly."
"Girls have the right to act silly. A guy, though, he has a hell of a time baring his feelings openly. It's the old ego, I suppose."
"But you do love me? You really do?"
"Yes, Barbara. Yes, I do. Haven't I said it a lot of other ways, leading up to now? You ought to know. Hell, I've been chasing you like a miserable hound dog after a bone. And I couldn't stop chasing you. Oughta prove how I feel, shouldn't it?"
For answer she brushed his cheek with her lips.
"What're we going to do about it?" she asked.
"How do you mean?"
"I'm engaged to Jerry Comstock, remember? Am I supposed to go ahead and marry him? Now that you and I ... "
"No. You're going to marry me. To hell with Jerry. He's something out of the past, far as you're concerned, baby. He's a lost cause."
"Oh, gosh but I wanted to hear you say that, darling."
"You do want to break up with him now, don't you?"
"Yes, of course. But still, I've been thinking ... "
"Thinking about what?"
"Money, darling. You know something? You were right when you accused me of wanting to marry into the Comstock fortune. That's all I've been after from the start. I never cared anything for Jerry. He was just the means to an end."
"Why tell me now? That's all over and done with."
"But why should it be? Listen, I've a wonderful idea, darling. I have Jerry dangling on a string, begging me to marry him. And if I did, just think how it could be with you and me? We could meet in secret until I could arrange to leave him, taking a big slice of the Comstock wealth. Then you and I would be rich. We could have a lovely life and never have to worry about money."
"That's quite an idea. But I don't think I could stand the thought of you living with another guy, when I'd want you solely for myself."
"It wouldn't be for long, darling. And like I said, we could meet in secret. I don't like the thought, either, but with so much money at stake-well, it seems kind of insane to let the opportunity go by. I will, though, if you tell me to. I love you that much, Bob. I mean it."
"Yes, but suppose it turned out you couldn't wrangle your hands on the money? Everything'd go for nothing. How do you plan to work it? Jerry doesn't control anything. It's old man Sam who has the dough. You'd have him to deal with. And from what I hear, he's no fool."
"Nobody with a couple of million dollars is a fool," Barbara pointed out. "But he has one sure-fire weakness. Jerry, his only son. And that's where I can make the old devil come across."
"You already have it planned?"
"Of course. I'd make Jerry and the whole family so miserable they'd do anything to get rid of me. They'll find me the worst hellion they ever met. I'll embarrass them in public and do everything I can dream up to make them want me out of their hair. I'll force the old man to buy me off, for Jerry's sake. And, believe me, the price will be plenty high."
"How high?"
"Oh, say fifty thousand dollars, at least. Cash and with taxes to pay. Old man Comstock wouldn't even miss the money. But think about what good times you and I could have, darling. We'd have all the fun in the world, and money left over."
"Suppose it didn't work? What then?"
"I'd think of something else, don't worry. But one way or another I'll come out of it with more money than either of us ever saw before. There's always a way, and I'd find it. Believe me. I know I would."
Bob was obviously giving the matter concentrated thought. Finally he sighed.
"You actually think it'll work? It would be a break for us, starting out with a sizable bankroll. I agree to that much."
"Yes, darling, I'm certain of it. You just leave it to me. I'll make it work. We'll be rich, you'll see."
Bob looked at her and shook his head.
"You know something, lovely? You're even more my type than I first realized. You've a crooked mind and so have I. We'll have more kicks together than the law allows."
"Then it'll be okay for me to go ahead with Jerry?"
For answer he jerked her into his arms once more, took her furiously.
"You and money? Baby, it'd be heaven."
She thought that her brain would melt.
Bob didn't leave until nearly dawn, and she was more gloriously exhausted than she'd ever dreamed possible. She fell immediately into a love-drugged sleep.
The alarm went off at its usual time, seemingly a matter of mere minutes later. She groaned a sound of misery and turned it off. She usually cat-napped a short while before hopping up for her shower, but not this time. There was too much glorious wonder on her mind. Bob Holton, to be more specific. She smiled at the memory of him and, with her hands under her head on the pillow, she glowed in the after thought of Bob.
The feeling was entirely amazing and wondersouly new to her. And she realized exactly why with delirious clarity. She was in love for the first time in her hectic life. Truly and completely in love. It was wonderful, it was intoxicating, and she gloried in the tingly knowledge.
The happiness of her lazy, joyous reflections kept her suffused until another aspect came to mind, and then she was frowning.
She hadn't been quite truthful with Bob, she recalled. She hadn't told him of the possibility, the one chance in a million, that the elder Comstock might remain true to his threat, that he would disown Jerry if he married her.
The way she had the old man sized up, he was only bluffing. Still it would certainly be hell if she happened to be mistaken in this theory. She wished she could be one-hundred-percent certain. If only there were some method of knowing absolutely, some way she could be double sure her idea was correct.
Perhaps there was a method of finding out, if she could but see it. She played with this idea until it became scrambled in her mind, leaving her further confused. She finally had to give it up.
The realization that she would be late for work if she didn't hurry jolted her to action. She jumped out of bed and rushed into her shower. For a moment she hated the idea of washing Bob's kisses from her naked, love-softened body. She felt she'd like to luxuriate in them forever.
She arrived at the office ten minutes late, still a bit frustrated, conflicting ideas buzzing around in her head. Maybe she ought to toss aside marrying Jerry Comstock and grab Bob while she could get him. You never can tell what might happen, she brooded. Time can alter a lot of things, and meantime she'd be taking the chance of losing Bob altogether. There was the possibility he may fall for somebody else while hanging around waiting on her. And wouldn't that be a tragedy?
Still, perhaps he would wait for her. And somehow the idea of all that Comstock money kept plaguing her. She simply couldn't rid herself of the notion she'd come out of the situation with a huge bundle of cash. She'd never had any real money in her life, and the prospect of once having all she wanted was almost too good to let pass.
Yet if she lost Bob. ... Oh, it was all so upsetting. She simply couldn't make up her mind what she should do.
She forced herself to get to work at her typewriter and concentration was nearly impossible.
Then Jerry stopped by her desk and he was beaming mysteriously.
"Guess what happened, Barbara."
"I can't imagine," she said. "But you look like it's good news. Tell me."
"Suburban Realty called me first thing this morning. They'll take me on."
"Jerry, that's marvelous!" She pretended enthusiasm she wasn't quite sure she felt. "How soon do they want you?"
"Immediately, if not sooner," he grinned. "In fact, they seem most anxious."
"Are you going to take the job?"
He hesitated, laughed, and shook his head dubiously.
"Now here comes the kicker, and you wouldn't believe it. I told Dad I was leaving and going to work somewhere else. You know what he did? He flipped his lid. He wouldn't listen to any talk about' me deserting the firm."
"And then what?" Barbara was dying to know. "Tell me before I bust!"
"Well, he tried to 'talk some sense into my head' about marrying you, and he finally saw he was getting nowhere on that score. So he wound up giving in."
"You mean he's agreed to our plans and isn't going to fight us anymore?"
"That's it. Miracles never cease."
"Oh, I knew he would! I just knew it all the time! Didn't I tell you he'd soften? Didn't I?"
"You did, beautiful. You really did. Just shows you've more sense than I ever had. I still can't get over it. It's the only time I ever saw my old man give an inch. But this time he has. He seems to have accepted the situation completely."
"Jerry, that's heavenly! And now what? How soon can we...." She looked dreamily at him.
"Tie the final knot? Get hitched?" He laughed. "Just any time you say."
"The sooner the better. Oh, darling, I'm so happy!"
"We'll talk about it later. This isn't a romantic enough spot for me. I want a tight grip on you while we make our plans." He winked. "I don't want to miss any of the trimmings that go with making the cake."
"Oh, Jerry!"
He laughed again and went away.
Barbara smiled secretly and smugly to herself. What a relief! Now she knew! All puzzling doubt was gone. She'd guessed correctly and now she could afford to congratulate herself.
In a matter of a few short months she'd have the Comstocks-all of the Comstocks-wracking their brains for a means of getting rid of her.
She giggled impulsively. Fifty thousand dollars for her to vanish? Could be she'd up the price to double that. She'd have to see how it went. But actually, a hundred thousand was much more to her liking. It all depended on how much Sam Comstock was willing to spend on the sanity of his only son. And from what had happened this morning, she imagined he would be willing to pay any price she demanded.
Barbara's happiness was complete.
CHAPTER NINE
Jerry picked her up that evening and they rode around. He told her his father had asked to be allowed to foot the bill for a big wedding.
"I guess he wants to make up for the way he's acted. I suppose we should go along with the idea."
"How long will it all take?"
"Not more than a month."
"Oh, Jerry, I can't wait. A month seems like forever! Do we have to?"
"Well, he is my father, and it may be to our advantage to humor him this much. Let him clear his conscience for standing in our way the way he was. He's only trying to do something to make amends. And a month isn't very long. It'll pass before we know it. Do you really mind so much?"
"I guess not. If it's what you want."
He patted her knee.
"There's something else he wants to do for us. You'll fall flat on your face with surprise."
She stared at him curiously.
"Oh? And just what is that?"
"He's going to make me a full partner in the business."
"Jerry, you don't mean it!"
Her voice was a gasp of delight. Things were really beginning to look up for her now. This stroke of luck was incredible. It would make all her future plans so much easier. With Jerry controlling half of the business, and her controlling Jerry-why she'd simply have it made. This news was absolutely delicious. Just wait until she could tell Bob. Would he be bowled over! She felt like laughing aloud.
Jerry kept talking over details and she listened avidly, trembling with delight. Then he headed the car out toward the usual parking place.
She knew he was going to want to get mushy and suddenly the idea of his love-making caused a shudder of abhorrence. She abruptly hated the thought of his hands and kisses roaming her body. She didn't want Jerry's love-she wanted Bob's.
She struggled to calm down and face the inevitable. She would have to endure Jerry, for awhile at least. There was no escape for now. But after she was married to him, she'd wake him up then to the brutal facts of life. She'd never let him even touch her. And before she was through with him he'd be begging for a divorce. He'd find he was hooked to a monster. A female monster who made each minute of his life miserably unbearable. Just wait and see.
But she couldn't turn on the ice yet. She still had a part to play and she would play it grimly until she heard the tinkle of wedding bells and saw that neat little band of gold on her slim third finger. Then the revolution would commence.
Jerry stopped the car in some trees and reached for her.
"Come here, you delectable creature. I've got the hungrys for you something terrible."
"Don't get over anxious, darling," she chastised. "We've managed this far-let's not spoil anything."
"But there's no need to wait. Haven't you heard? Everything's going to be okay now. And, anyhow, I can't wait."
"I'm afraid you'll have to, Jerry. But it won't be long. Only another month, and then it'll be legal. You can do anything you want then. I'll belong to you completely."
"Oh, why do you insist on being such a stickler? You're making us both suffer with this waiting, and there's no reason for it. None whatever."
She laughed and fought off his hands.
"Oh, no? Who's to say that once you had me you wouldn't lose interest? Where would I stand then? Out in the cold, maybe, while you ran off looking for new fields to conquer? Never happen, darling. I'm going to keep you guessing until after the wedding. Then I'll know I have you. I won't have to worry."
He swore under his breath.
"You have a heart of stone, you realize that?" His tone was humorously grudging. "I believe you'd let a guy die of need."
"I'll make it all up to you later. I'll give you so much love you'll beg for a rest."
"That's not doing me any good now."
He shoved her into the seat corner and bent his face to her knees, nuzzling up the hem of her dress.
"Come on," he pleaded torturously. "Come on, this way can't do any damage."
She grimaced and supposed it was her simplest out. She sighed resignedly and relaxed. His kiss smothered her while she felt his hands groping for her panties. After awhile she could not deny pleasurable response, her nature being incurably wanton.
She gripped her fingers in his hair and threw her body into the maelstrom of soaring sensation.
She was totally exhausted when he delivered her back at her apartment. She bathed and fell into bed, hoping for quick oblivion. It didn't seem to want to come so easily. She felt a kind of nauseous disgust with herself. For the very first time she felt dirty, and the soapy cleansing hadn't been able to wash the feeling away. She turned and tossed, her brain confused.
Why all the worry? she wondered in growing exasperation. She had everything going her way. So what was the gripe now?
She didn't know and she was too tired to figure it out. Finally she dropped off to troubled sleep.
In the morning she remembered the one thing that could squash her plans. Those awful photos. Wouldn't it be a tragedy for them to come to light now? Just when the wheel of fortune was spinning so fortunately for her.
She fretted over this all the way to work and deep into the day.
Angie! What, if anything, had Angie been able to do about her promise to obtain that hideous evidence and give it back to her? She wished to heaven Angie would call.
Marrying Jerry before she received and destroyed those photos could lead straight to miserable failure. They'd be used against her sooner or later. And there was no sense in kidding herself that they wouldn't.
Turner Wilson was much too mercenary to overlook blackmailing her. He'd hold them over her head once she was married. He would bleed her dry of every dime she could lay her hands on. And worse, he'd probably demand her body as well, whenever the notion struck him.
Then too, how could she manage a settlement from the Comstocks if the photos fell into their hands? She wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and any divorce court in the world would turn her out shamed and penniless.
The sudden profoundness of the situation turned her blood to ice. She had to do something about those photos. She simply had to. Otherwise, her future was hopeless. Even Bob-if they came to his attention-would drop her flat.
Barbara made up her mind to contact Angie the moment she got off work and learn how the blonde girl was progressing toward stealing the photos from her brother. She felt she'd go insane if she didn't know. So much depended on it.
The day wore on, playing havoc with her nerves. At quitting time she rushed down to the drugstore, had to wait for the lone telephone booth to become available, and then she soon had Angie on the other end.
"I haven't had any luck so far," Angie told her. "I searched Turner's apartment up and down. Nothing. Zero. I thought I'd have no trouble, but apparently he has them stashed somewhere else. But don't worry, darling. I'll find them before I'm finished. They're there somewhere. I know they are."
"Yes, for God's sake, keep trying, Angie. They're the most important things in the world to me right now. You just don't know! I must have them. I simply must!"
"I understand," Angie said. "I won't give up." And then she added, "Barbara, can I see you this evening?"
"I'm afraid not, darling."
"Why not? I've missed you so."
"I'm too upset. I wouldn't be fit company for anybody. It's those darned photographs, they're driving me insane worrying about them. I stay on edge. But once I know they are out of the way, destroyed completely, I'll be in the mood to see you any time you wish."
"Any time, Barbara? Do you really mean it?"
"Yes, any time. I'll be so terribly relieved and appreciative, Angie. I promise."
"Even after you're married to Jerry Comstock?"
"How did you know about him?"
"Turner told me."
"Oh. Well, yes, it's true. And this is the reason-the main reason-I have to do something about those photos. They could ruin my marriage."
"But after you're married, how about us?"
"It won't make any difference, darling. I'll be able to get out. We'll meet often. I swear it."
"I hope you're not lying ... "
"Why would I, Angie? Listen, I think lots of you. I love being with you. I mean it."
"I'm taking an awful chance, Barbara. You know that, I hope. Turner would half murder me if he learned I was double-crossing him. He can be pretty mean and nasty."
"I realize that. But he'll never find out anything from me."
They finished the conversation.
Barbara was depressed and disappointed as she left the drugstore. Sne had gotten exactly nowhere. Angie had sounded not nearly so confident about helping her as she had in the beginning. Perhaps she wasn't going to be able to locate the photos, after all. Shudder the thought! Wouldn't that be hell?
Yet she couldn't give up hope, she brooded. As long as Angie was still promising and trying, there was still a chance she would come through. All she could do was wait and see, pray for the best. She wasn't whipped yet.
Her bus came and she got on it. She found a seat and tried to relax but she couldn't. Her mind was in a flurry of mixed thoughts and emotions.
Another idea popped up to distract her. Suppose Angie was lying. Suppose Angie did locate the evidence, decided to hang onto the photos herself, so that she would have the upper hand. Barbara trembled at the notion. On the other hand, this worry didn't hold water. At least not at the moment it didn't. Because if Angie already had the photos in her possession, and meant to hold them over her head, she would have made the intent known on the telephone just now. All of which went to show she didn't actually have them.
Barbara sighed relief.
She arrived home fifteen minutes later and found Turner Wilson hanging around outside her door waiting for her. She sensed trouble coming and she wasn't wrong.
"What are you here for?" she asked bitterly.
"Business and pleasure," he grinned evilly. "What else?"
CHAPTER TEN
Sitting slouched in a chair with his husky frame as ease, Turner's grey eyes watched her with mysterious humor.
His presence unnerved Barbara horribly, but she endeavored not to let him know it. She hung up her jacket and pretended his being there meant nothing, though inside she was shaking.
Finally she sat too and looked at him.
"All right," she said, "tell me the bad news. That's all I ever get from you. So say it and get it over with."
"When you getting hitched to Jerry Comstock?"
"Soon. Not that it's any of your business."
"Maybe I'll make it my business."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I could smash your chance, beautiful. So don't get smart with me. You're forgetting something, aren't you?"
"I guess you're talking about those-well, you know what."
"Yeah, the pics. You better act right with me, doll, if you know what's good for you. I'd hate to have to spring 'em out, show 'em around. Kinda mess your plans up for a rich husband, wouldn't it?"
"Jerry's not rich."
"His old man is. It's the same thing in the long run."
"All right, all right," Barbara said, "have it your way. You've got something on me, and you're going to make the most of it. So just what're you after this time? More sex? Well, I'm afraid I'd have to go along with it. I have no choice. So if that's what you want, let's get it over with so I can get you out of my hair."
Turner laughed.
"You're making it easier than I figured," he said. "You must've really enjoyed it the last time, huh? You must like my stuff."
Barbara grimaced.
"You wouldn't be slightly on the conceited side, would you? I hate your guts, Turner, if you want the truth."
"Tch, tch. You're breaking my heart, doll. You just don't know...."
"I bet."
He lit a cigarette without offering her one.
"Well," he said, "it's like this. I got a chance to pick up a quick five hundred bucks, and I need the dough. I also need a little help from you."
"Me? I don't understand how I can ... "
"I'm getting around to it, Barbara, just hold your horses a minute and listen. There's a convention of businessmen in town, and some of 'em want to throw a party, complete with girls. I got a couple lined up, but I still need a few more. That's when I thought of you. I kinda figured you'd be willing to help an old pal out of a difficulty." Barbara frowned.
"Just what in the hell are you trying to say? That you want me to turn prostitute for you? You must be out of your mind, Turner. I gave you more credit."
"The guys insist on one thing-that the broads have to be real lookers, otherwise no soap. Now I'm asking you, how many beautiful girls can a man like me dig up on a minute's notice? The guys are chipping in to raise a thousand bucks. They want a real shindig, if you know what I mean. A blowout. I figure five girls at a hundred bucks each. That kind of money ain't to be sneezed at. You'll have a ball and get paid for it too. How you going to beat a proposition like that?"
"I don't know and I don't care," Barbara said angrily. "But I'll tell you one thing right now, damn you. You can count me out. I wouldn't do it for anything. Not all the money in the world. I mean it."
"Why not?" He raised his brows. "You used to ball it up with anybody-and for free. You think I've forgotten?"
"It was a long time ago. I've changed my way of living and thinking since then. You're wasting your breath, Turner."
He shook his head slowly, and sighed.
"If you make it too tough on me to convince you, doll, I'm gonna have to get nasty.
I'm offering you a hundred bucks, remember. If you get stubborn, I won't pay you anything. And worse, I'll trot over to the Corn-stocks with those pics. You want me to do that? You think I wouldn't?"
Barbara froze up inside.
"Turner, look, you're pushing it too far. Okay, so I'm trying to worm my way into marrying Jerry for money and prestige. I admit it. But also I can't afford a scandal, not when I'm so close to winning. You can understand. But I'll make you a promise. Once I'm part of the Comstock family, I'll have plenty of money. I'll see that you get some. But this-this thing you're asking me to do now, why, it's plain suicide! I'd be a fool to take such a chance."
"Hell, doll, there's no danger. Nobody's gonna get wise. I told you, these party guys are from out of town. Here today and gone tomorrow. So you got nothing to worry about on that score. Jerry or his old man will never hear of it. That I promise. You can believe it."
"You're not going to let me out, are you, Turner? No matter how much it means to me. You know, I always knew you were a heel, but I didn't figure you for such a bastard as this. I guess I'm wasting my breath. You're not going to let me out of it. I can see that."
"I told you-I need the five hundred. It's the down payment on a new cab."
Barbara swore an obscene oath.
"I wish you'd take your damn cab and stuff it!"
Turner broke out laughing. He told her where to meet the others that evening and what time to be there.
"And be sure to look your best," he added. "These guys are particular."
"Go to hell," she snapped angrily. "And get out of here. The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach."
"That sure is a pity," he countered, letting his glance start at her feet and climb suggestively. "Because the sight of you shakes the living hell out of me. I got an idea, doll. Let's you and me take time out for a little loving, huh? What do you say? The more I look at that delicious figure of yours, the more I get the drools."
Barbara frowned sudden consternation and tried to hide her knees.
"For God's sake don't go getting ideas like that, Turner. Not now! I've had about all of you I can endure. I'm not kidding."
He spread his palms.
"That's what you said the last time, beautiful. Remember? But it was a lot different when we got rolling. It'll be the same this time too. You'll see."
"But I don't want to see, damn you! You are pushing me too far. Now get out of here and leave me alone! I mean it."
"The madder you get the better you look. And the better you look the hungrier I get. Doll, you know something? I've just got to swing a spell with you. It won't wait. You give me the sweats. There never was another chick like you. I swear. One look and I begin to boil."
He got to his feet and came toward her, his eyes gleaming, his lips stretched tightly over his teeth, bespeaking his grim and lustful determination.
Her dismay was almost nauseating.
"Oh, no. Oh, god, no."
Her voice was a broken sob of utter despair.
It seemed to excite Turner all the more. He grasped her arm and pulled her to her feet. There was no humor in him now. He was deadly serious.
"Strip," he told her warningly. "I'm through playing around. You're gonna do like I say, and you're gonna jump when I say jump."
She didn't argue. There was no hope of gaining anything, she realized. The dirty bastard had her number, and he wasn't going to give an inch.
He started taking off his clothes.
Shakily she did too.
When they were nude and on the bed he didn't waste much time. He kissed her breasts and belly and legs angrily, as though with some sort of vengeance in his craw. Then he made her turn over and lie on her stomach.
"What for?" she asked suspiciously.
He didn't answer. He placed his mouth at the nape of her neck, drew his damp lips down the length of her spine to her buttocks.
He lavished her buttocks thoroughly, then swept onward along her legs and over the curves of her calves, then back up again. At her buttocks once more, the excitment of his mouth increased. His feverish kisses, growing wetter and warmer, began to send tendrils of pleasure through her.
She moaned disgust with herself. Her damn thrill-hungry body was going to deceive her again.
Oh, hell, if only she could turn her passions on and off at will, retain control of herself! She'd give anything to be able to do that.
But she couldn't. She simply couldn't. It was utterly defeating. She despised herself for her weakness. The sensations were going to get the best of her and send her soaring, regardless. Already her flesh was beginning to sing and shortly it would turn wanton. She hated the truth but she knew it was going to happen.
The pleasurable feelings grew more pronounced, and she began to twitch and dig her fingernails in the bed covers. His tongue was lashing wetly at the twin globes of her buttocks, and his teeth were spreading to scrape over the smooth, tight flesh.
She couldn't resist allowing her lower torso to rise slightly and begin to swirl. The sensation was shockingly erotic, and suddenly all anger had flown away. She liked this enormously. No, she was beginning to love it! There was something so blissfully wicked about it all. So intensely electrifying.
She felt like laughing aloud. She had the delicious thought that this was exactly how it should be between her and Turner, the arrogant bastard! With him kissing her insolent ass and not being able to stop. She hoped he couldn't stop. She'd give anything to learn he couldn't.
It would give her the sweetest kind of pleasure to degrade him to the brink of insanity. She'd adore it; oh, how she'd adore having him like that. It'd be the wildest!
She caught her breath and wondered. She found the idea too frought with excitement to resist.
Quickly she rolled away and scrambled to a new position, catching him startled and off guard.
"Hey, what the hell?"
She was straddling him now, sitting on his throat with his eyes staring up between her thighs at her cunt, her knees bent back under. His expression was doubtful, but he didn't struggle. She grinned viciously, directly down at him.
"Let's try a new kick," she said. "You used to teach me, now I want to show you."
"I don't know. Hey!"
She made a quick shuffle forward, and his voice was muffled. He struggled briefly and some crazy sounds came from him. He could have shoved her off but he didn't, and this told her plenty.
She laughed with excitement and knew she had him. He wasn't going to fight her but so much, and probably none at all.
Oh, what a delicious trap to have the hateful bastard in! This was it! This was the living end!
He was writhing beneath her, and only his forehead was visible. She laid her hands on his forehead and pressed and stroked and needled.
She felt the warmth of his mouth beginning to part, his final struggles dying. His tongue pushed up between his spreading lips, and she thrilled at the tentative touch it made on her cunt.
She bared her teeth, waiting suspensefully, and kept working her hands on his head, kneading his brow and scraping her nails against his scalp.
His entire body shuddered.
She tightened her position, bending forward slightly, engulfing him completely. She saw herself as a black widow spider ensnaring a helpless victim and forcing him to his inevitable doom. She became intoxicated with the thought. Her smile was demoniacal, fiendishly engrossed.
His tongue slashed her cunt. She grew giddy with stark pleasure. The sensation was tickly and totally erotic.
She gasped and bent farther over, her cheek resting against one of her knees. Her heart was pounding a perverse fury inside her, and she was nearly choking with sensual delight.
Her hands on his head continued taunting, fondling, pressuring, urging. She became damp with perspiration, breathlessly eager.
The tongue between her quivering buttocks drove suddenly inside her, shockingly hot and moist. She nearly shrieked her glee. She throbbed with sensation. Breathing rapidly, she squirmed and ground down on him. His tongue became a soft, slippery spike driving deeper and deeper into her hot cunt.
Impulsively she twisted her face which was still resting on her knees. Her own flesh looked glowingly desirable. Hissing pure lust, she kissed her own knees and the skin of her thighs as far as she could reach. They were excruciatingly delicious to her.
Finally she straightened, sitting directly upward. She was giddily aware that Turner's arms and legs were moving and flopping without purpose, that he was spellbound in a situation from which he couldn't break.
Grinning angelically, she made a throne of his face. The erotic tongue sent ripples of exquisite pleasure coursing her excited flesh.
Raising her hands, she cupped her breasts. She squeezed and kneaded the resilient flesh, pinched the hard, pointy nipples, until they were palpitating in sweet pain and feeling ready to explode.
Letting her head fall wantonly back, she laughed aloud, a sluttinish cat-call of exquisite delight. She wiggled and squirmed. The serpentine sensation inside her climbed and climbed.
Ecstasy began to overwhelm her, and she was panting uncontrollably. She fell forward again, smashing her mouth to her own flesh once more. Her tongue lashed the spellbinding glory of her brilliant thighs.
She spasmed, emotions screaming lustily inside her.
Apparently coming to his senses, Turner heaved her roughly off him.
"You bitch! You dirty, lousy bitch! You pulled a fast one, didn't you? Well, you're not getting away with it. I'm going to finish what I meant to do when I started. You better believe it!"
He moved angrily. She was flopped over onto her stomach, and his weight fell on her. Frighteningly she realized what was going to happen. She was suddenly terrified. His huge prick was probing between her buttocks, and it was stone hard and throbbing.
"No, Turner! Not that way! You're too big! I couldn't stand it! You'll tear me to pieces. Turner, no! No!"
He laughed racously.
"One blessing, you're already well lubricated. You saw to that, didn't you? And now you're gonna get it-and I mean good!"
She struggled to escape, but he had his strong arms wrapped about her middle so she could hardly budge. Her horror grew.
Tensed, she felt the knob grinding, forcing an opening between her buttocks and pinioning her. Once begun, she turned frozen, afraid to move or try to move. It was all so tight and slippery, and his grunts were animalistic.
He hunched unmercifully, burst inside her, and she screamed at the shock of burning pain.
She broke into sobs of tortured pleadings, begging him to stop. He merely thrust harder, his breath fanning hotly against the nape of her neck.
He impaled her totally. Her suffering knew no cessation.
Her flesh throbbed in agony, until it became gradually estatic, perversly tortured, insanely exquisite.
She began lifting her buttocks to the gusty rape, spreading her legs, worming against the slamming onslaught of splitting ravishment.
It became an orgy of flesh slapping flesh, flesh ramming into flesh, loud, harshly, brutally-of groans and indrawn sobs, of hissing gasps and breathless whines.
"Ahhh, ahhh! Oh, goddamn! Oh, oh, oh!"
"Come on!" she cried. "Come on, give it to me!"
He convulsed, and she spasmed in a multicolored world of bright searing pain.
Turner was still chuckling when he left.
She slammed the door shut behind him, leaned miserably against it.
The son of a bitch, she thought, steaming inside and hating his guts. He would go and pull something like this on her. Oh, what a creep! What a sneaky, heartless creep! He didn't give a damn how much he shamed or mortified her. All he ever thought about was sex and making a dollar, and he didn't care whom he stepped on in the process.
She wished she could kill him. She wished she could wrap her fingers around his windpipe and strangle him, watch his eyes bulge and the sweat break out. It'd be the happiest moment of her life.
But she couldn't have such an opportunity, so she may as well forget it. He had her where she could do nothing but obey him. She swore again and moved away from the door.
The existence of those damned photographs were going to be the finish of her yet, she feared. She wished to heaven she could get her hands on them just once. She'd tear them into so many million pieces it'd take a thousand years to fit them back together again. But unless Angie came up with something, she was lost, utterly lost. Turner would keep her jumping to do his bidding for the balance of her miserable life. He would, he damn certainly would.
Well, she sighed, there was nothing she could do about it at this stage. Nothing except do as she was told.
She grimaced, remembering the party she was supposed to attend. Party! Ha, that was a good one. She knew what it meant. An orgy. A drunken orgy with five girls trying to keep about twenty men pumped up and happy. Yeah, real nice party, indeed.
She decided she may as well start to dress and get ready. The sooner it was over with the better it'd be. Until Turner happened to come up with another of his sordid brilliant ideas for using her body for his own gain.
Now this was something she could really brood and squirm over. He'd never let her off the hook if he could help it. One way or another she'd be paying him from now on. What a hellish, gruesome thought.
She went into the bath and had her shower, and when she came out, somebody was knocking at her door. She slipped into a robe.
As if she didn't have enough troubles on her hands already? It was her father. She shuddered and let him in, and she could smell the rancid odor of cheap wine. He carried his hat in his skinny hand like a whipped dog, telling her without her having to ask that he was after money.
"I'm in a hurry," she said snappishly, "so let's not argue. All I can spare is five dollars. You'll have to take it and leave. Okay? Will you do that?"
Ben Sanders looked defeated and uncertain, his narrow features paler and more deeply lined than she ever remembered seeing before.
Hesitantly, he said:
"I'm afraid five won't do the trick this time, Barbara. I'm in trouble. Real trouble. And I need help."
"What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?"
When he told her, she felt she could have died.
"If I don't raise fifty bucks right away," he said, "I'll be going to jail."
"So?" She looked hatefully at him. "Maybe it's the best thing for you. At least you'll be . forced to sober up for a change."
"You don't understand. I could be sent up for a lot of years. I'm not getting any younger. It could be the end of me."
"What have you done this time?"
Ben ran thin fingers nervously through his sparse grey hair.
"I don't know how to say it," he groaned, fumbling for words. "It's the worst blunder I ever made in my life."
"Try," Barbara said nastily. "You'll probably manage to come out with it, all right. Especially if you need money. Words never failed you yet."
"The police are after me for breaking and entering, or will be if I don't raise the money to pay off an only witness. Barbara, don't look at me like that! I needed a drink and I was dead broke. I was desperate. Night before last it was. I came here looking for you, hoping to borrow a few bucks, but you weren't here. My nerves were going to pieces. It got to where I couldn't stand it."
"So you broke into a liquor store. I never thought you'd let yourself be dragged down to such a level. But actually I'm not too surprised. I wouldn't be surprised at anything you did."
"I thought I was safe at first. But a guy saw me, without my realizing it. He told me this morning if I didn't hand him fifty bucks he'd inform the cops who'd broken the pi ate-glass window and run off with a bottle. I got him to hold off until I could see you."
"Well, you'll have to look somewhere else," Barbara told him. "I don't have fifty dollars. I'm sorry. But keeping the rent paid on this apartment and buying clothes and eating takes every cent I can earn."
"But I'll go to jail! You've got to help me!"
"How can I when I don't have the money? Look, I have enough trouble taking care of myself. Why do you have to keep bugging me with your stupid drunkenness? I wish you'd leave me alone! You're a lost cause and I don't want you pulling me down in the gutter with you. Please, you stay out of my hair and leave me alone, will you? I've a chance to marry into a wealthy family and be somebody. All you do is try to mess it up for me."
"Then what can I do? If you won't let me have the money, tell me what to do. I can't think straight. And I'm scared half out of my mind."
"You'll have to figure it out for yourself. I'm not a genius. You got yourself in trouble on your own, you'll have to get out the best way you can. What you did isn't my fault, is it?"
"No. I didn't say it was, Barbara. But there's one little item you might take into consideration. It ain't going to help your chances none getting married, with people saying your old man's in jail. You ever think about that? It sure ain't going to help you a damn bit."
Barbara looked disgustedly at him. There was something to what he said, she was forced to admit. And then suddenly she remembered the party she was supposed to to to, and the hundred dollars Turner had promised to pay for her services.
"Listen, Dad, if you can wait until tomorrow maybe I can let you have the money. I'll try. That's all I can promise. Can you stall the guy until noon tomorrow?"
"I'll have to. I'll manage to somehow."
"All right. Call me on the phone at work tomorrow. Don't come in person, for God's sake! Just call me. I'll meet you outside on the street and give you the money-providing I can dig it up. Now have you got it straight?"
Ben Sanders nodded, looking relieved.
Then he spoke hesitantly:
"Barbara, I hate to ask, but could you spare a couple of bucks now? I need a bottle to settle my nerves. I. ... "
She gave him a scathing glance. She found her purse and flung a five-dollar bill at him.
"Now get out and get drunk and leave me alone! I swear, sometimes I can't stand you! You make me sick!"
He took the money and left.
Barbara finally got back to dressing and preparing to go out.
What else was going to happen? she wondered. It seemed like the whole damn world was trying to put her down. Even her own father! No wonder she hated him so.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The thing to do, she thought, is to get pie-eyed drunk. Nothing is half so bad when you're floating high on a fuzzy cloud of alcohol. You can laugh at the worst, let your hair down and maybe even begin to enjoy yourself.
By midnight the party was in high gear and the hotel suite was beginning to jump. Booze floated like water and one of the conventioneers handed Barbara a fresh drink before she could finish the last one.
"You're the cream of the crop," several of the vague male faces remarked on oc-cassion. "You're for me, okay?"
"Sure," she'd laugh. "Why not?"
She paid slight attention to the other four grils. They were each surrounded by a small pack of men vying for attention, and there was a lot of guffawing and female laughter.
Finally one of the packs opened, each man with a feminine garment in his hand or slung over his arm. The red-haired girl who had allowed them to strip her nude was arched against the back of a chair, laughing with her head flung back as a short man, drunker than the rest, was struggling against her hands to get to her blantantly voluptuous body. The others were goading her on.
"Make him go down all the way, Red!" the men were racously encouraging. "We don't believe you can do it!"
The red-haired girl squirmed sensuously, challengingly, and quickly proved them wrong. She squeeled her delight as her quivering flesh blinded the short man to his knees. Then the pack closed up again to enjoy the show.
The incident stirred Barbara to wanton excitement, touching the wild side of her nature, causing it to want to soar. She let it. Two men were arguing over which would have her first. She played up to one of them and then the other. A fight ensued and Barbara laughed as a third man grasped her arm and led her toward a bedroom.
"Come on, sugar," he hissed, "now's our chance."
But more anger developed.
"Hey," a voice yelled, "Jim's running off with the best looker. We can't have that!"
"Hell now!" other voices swore. "He's not sewing that one up all for himself. Cut 'em off before he locks the door!"
The man tried to hurry her, but she hung back purposely. She was caught and jerked away from the first man. He put up an obscene squawk as he was shoved aside.
"We're gonna draw lots for you, doll!"
Barbara giggled.
"May the best man win. I'm ready to swing!"
She began undressing inside the circle of inflamed faces while the guys swore and gambled who would take her first. They were drawing from a pack of cards.
There followed miserable groans, and then a skinny man was leading her naked back toward the bedroom.
"This is my lucky day," he told her eagerly. "Beautiful as you are, I could eat you up."
She gave him a glittering dark-eyed glance. "Can I count on it?"
"You'll find out."
She did; and the skinny man was pretty good. He managed to heat her flesh for the others. After he was gone the others, one by one, joined her on. the bed.
Barbara panted giddily as each man took her. This was wild as a girl could hope for, and she could not deny passionate delight. Many times in her secret dreams she had wished for an unending stream of lovers. Now it was happening. Her flesh was raging, her body unable to cease bucking and arching.
"Geez, what a tornado that broad is!"
"Bring her another drink," somebody yelled. "Keep her rolling. I'm gonna want seconds on her!"
The orgy lasted all night. She never remembered passing out from booze and exhaustion. But it was daylight when she opened her eyes. And it was also quiet.
She swallowed and her mouth was dry and acrid. Her body felt squashed and beaten. Struggling to an elbow, she wondered where everybody was. The room looked as though a sudden stormy squall had wrecked it during the night.
The red-haired girl finally showed in the doorway, still naked but glistening from the bath. She had a towel flung over her shoulder.
"Going to sleep all day?" she asked Barbara humorously. "Gad, what a night!"
"What time is it?"
"Nearly eleven. If you're wondering about your slice of the loot, don't. I have your hundred bucks."
"Oh. Thanks. Is everybody else gone?"
The redhead nodded.
"All gone. And thank heaven for small favors. That was one wild pack of men, if you ask me."
Barbara blinked and groaned.
"You can say that again. I hardly remember what happened. But I know one thing. I'm not going to be able to go to work today. If I still have a job to go to, I mean."
The redhead idled over to the bed and sat on it beside Barbara.
"Work? You're not a full-time hustler?"
"No. I got wrangled into this shindig. I had no choice."
"You acted like you knew your business," the other said suspiciously. "You sure didn't make like any virgin."
"Oh, I've been around," Barbara admitted, managing a weak smile. "Only not professionally."
"The way you swing, sweetie, you ought to join the ranks. You could make a fortune. You put the rest of us girls to shame."
"If I don't get up and phone in sick to the place where I work," Barbara frowned, "I'll have to join up. Or starve. Do you have any idea where the telephone is around here?"
"In the front room."
Barbara managed to get to the front room of the suite and call the office, telling the receptionist-switchboard operator she was ill, and that she wouldn't make it in to work. That done, she felt less worried.
Then she told the red-haired girl who had followed her:
"My nerves are screaming. You suppose there're any aspirins around?"
"No, but there's some whiskey and mix left. It'll do the trick better and faster. I know. I've already had a shot."
"Ugh, I couldn't!" Barbara grimaced. "Just the idea makes me woozy in the tummy."
"Just hold your horses a minute, sweetie. I'll prove a point."
The redhead mixed a concoction and handed it to her.
"Just take the smallest sip to begin," she instructed. "Just a taste. Then another sip. See what happens."
Barbara followed instructions, and soon she was amazed. The alcohol eased into her bloodstream, and in mere moments she found she could drink the whole glass. She began to feel like living again.
"That's a wonderful cure!" she laughed. "I feel like a new person. You're an angel."
"They call me Ruby, in case you've forgotten. Ruby Hart."
"Yes-well, I'm...."
"Barbara," the redhead interjected, "I already know yours. Even soused to the gills I have a pretty good memory."
They laughed.
"Take a bath now and you'll really come alive, Barbara. It'll set you up just beautifully."
Barbara had her bath and the hot water soaked the last remnants of pain from her body, left her glowing.
"You should've been one of those lady doctors, Ruby," she said, emerging from the bath. "I feel like a new woman. Almost like I could take another swinging party and think nothing of it. You're a real marvel."
Ruby was watching her closely.
"Sweetie, I swear you've the figure of an angel. I never saw anything so lovely."
"Thanks." Barbara thought she noted a certain quality in the redhead's tone, one that made her wonder. "I appreciate the compliment. You're not bad yourself."
"Maybe we should get to be good friends."
"I'm for that, all right. You've practically saved my life, Ruby. I was dead, and now, thanks to you, I'm still around and kicking."
"You like swinging it with another girl, sweetie?"
"Well, I-I don't know," Barbara lied. "I never tried it. Why?"
"Why don't we have another drink?" Ruby suggested in answer. "This is too swell a joint to rush away from. I bet it cost a fortune. And checking out time isn't until three this afternoon. We could mess around and think of ways to amuse ourselves. You willing?"
Barbara started to object but she didn't. The alcohol had left her a bit giddy, just enough to revive her sense of erotic adventure. And Ruby did have an excitingly voluptuous aura about her, no denying the fact. Her skin was like pure ivory over one of the most fascinating bodies she had ever seen.
Barbara found herself thinking of the beautiful creature in ways that were entirely new and strange. A delicious feeling crept over her and she could not hold it back.
"Sure, I'm game for anything," Barbara said.
The next few hours proved she wasn't lying.
Always in the past, Barbara had played the passive role in similar situations. She had been the loved, not the lover. Something happened to her this time, though. The red-haired girl's flesh was overwhelming, too desirable to resist. And from the first tentative kiss of those magnificent breasts, Barbara had caught fire deep within herself, shockingly awakened to new worlds of forbidden ecstasy.
Her lips began to travel breathlessly over Ruby's electrifying form. Ruby sighed and writhed, goading her on.
One side of Barbara's mind tried to warn that this was wrong, but another side refused to let her stop. The perfumed, twisting and squirming voluptuousness of the red-haired beauty left her blinded with the most exquisite need she had ever experienced.
Barbara had turned frantic with pure, uninhibited desire to consume every delectable inch of the luscious girl.
"You're good, you're out of the world!" Ruby kept panting, rolling her hips and arching wantonly. "This I could go for forever! You're heavenly."
With a grasping shudder, Barbara lost herself in the golden web of thrashing flesh, clutching frantically to possess and hold inescapably.
Ruby squealed unholy delight. She began to bounce and jerk, laugh and moan, gasp and gurgle.
It went on and on and on. Barbara's need was unrelenting. In time Ruby had to plead for her to stop, then actually struggle to be released from Barbara's arms.
"Don't stop me now! Please?" Barbara cried.
"I can't take anymore," the redhead laughed, pushing at Barbara's inflamed face. "You are just too much. Let's rest a minute. Then maybe...."
Ruby left the bed, chuckling with a backward glance.
"I need another drink. Come on. You could do with one yourself. Oh, don't look so defeated, sweetie. We'll probably try it again. Honestly you're something, you really are. Are you positive you never swung like this before?"
"No, never. But ... "
"You've been missing your talent, then," Ruby said humorously. "I'm lucky I found you first."
"Lucky? I-I don't think I understand."
"You will, sweetie. Listen, you're a time bomb who's been fusing a long while, all your life, in fact. And I'm the one enjoying your first explosion. It was heavenly. I never had it so good."
"Ruby, I'm so ashamed!"
"You'll get over it, don't worry. I've run into your breed before. Now that you've gone the route you'll never want to give it up. It's in your blood. You're in luck, and I'm hooked, sweetie. You'll find out. Come on, let's have that drink."
Ruby walked away.
Barbara followed obediently, unable to tear her eyes from the red-haired girl's-exquisite form.
As soon as they had fresh drinks in their hands and were perched on the plush sofa in the sitting room, Ruby looked at Barbara and giggled. Then she let her head fall back luxuriously. She crossed her naked, creamy legs and sighed. Her hazel eyes narrowed to smiling slits.
Barbara couldn't cease watching her hotly, and Ruby undoubtedly was enjoying the worshipful attention.
"You're gorgeous," Barbara nearly choked, still stunned and hopelessly overwhelmed. "So terribly beautiful."
"Thank you," Ruby said.
"I hope we're going to get together like this often. We will, won't we?"
"Perhaps. We'll see. Do you very much want to?"
"I'll die if we don't. I don't believe I could stand not seeing you again."
"Yes, it has been nice. Very nice."
"I never had such a wonderful time," Barbara told her emotionally. "I never met anyone like you before. And now that I have, I hardly know what to do or say. I feel so-so stupid and foolish."
"Go get us another drink, dear. That's one thing you can do."
Ruby finished the one in her hand and extended the empty glass. Her expression was a smiling command. Barbara fairly leaped to comply. Ruby chuckled mysteriously.
Barbara hurried back with the drink, trembling with eagerness to keep the beautiful creature pacified and content. She found Ruby gloriously supine on the sofa, occupying its entire length.
Barbara put the glass in the slim fingers, her own beginning to tremble. Her eyes swept the dazzling contrast of white form against soft, dark velvet. She felt a pervading weakness taking her over, threatening to overcome her completely.
"Thank you, sweetie," Ruby said, her hair spilling over the arm of the sofa. "I hope you mixed it like I like it."
"I tried to remember how you'd want it," Barbara managed. "But if it isn't, I'll try again."
Ruby tasted from the glass.
"Oh, it's just fine, just right. You're a marvel, sweetie. You really are."
Clumsily Barbara looked for a place to sit. Then their eyes met, and Ruby's were poignant with an unspoken message. She elevated one knee slightly and traced a nail sharply down her ivory thigh.
The implication was plainly clear, and Barbara didn't wait to think twice. She fell to her knees beside the hypnotic white body, began kissing reverently where the slim finger had traced.
"Ruby, oh, Ruby darling!"
The redhead laughed softly and sipped her drink.
"Take it slow and easy," she purred, "and perhaps you'll work me into the mood again. But you'll have to be very, very nice. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Barbara gasped. "Oh, yes, I'll be as nice as you say for as long as you wish. Only please, just let me. Please?"
"We'll see," Ruby giggled tauntingly. "We will see."
Barbara's brain became suffused in perfumed pleasure, intoxicated with tantalizing worship. She breathed her adoring lips over the exciting curves and silken surfaces, moaning her love.
Ruby lanquished under the attentive devotion, her mouth a sensual smile.
"This I like, sweetie," she laughed. "This I can take forever. Pure luxury. I love it. Only don't get too eager. I may change my mind. You don't want that to happen, do you?"
Barbara sobbed an answer, poignant with desperation.
"That's what I thought," came the amused response. "So remember to take it easy and make it last."
Barbara hoped it would last the rest of her life. She struggled fitfully to contain her rising emotions, fought with herself to hold her crying desires in check..
The lusciousness of Ruby drowned her, melted her brain to helpless jelly. Now and then Ruby had to caution her, threaten to make her stop. Barbara nearly went to pieces when she did.
It lasted until almost checkout time. Then with a shriek of delight, Ruby let down the barriers, tossing all else to the winds. She gripped Barbara's hair and used her mercilessly. Barbara's happiness knew no shame.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Barbara didn't remember until it was too late. She and Ruby had parted after Ruby had promised to see her again, and Barbara had come straight home to her apartment, still dazzled and confused over what had happened to her. And more than a little terrified.
Terrified of this new knowledge about herself. She had Lesbian instincts which she had never dreamed existed, and now what was she going to do? After Ruby she could not be certain of anything anymore.
What was the matter with her? What was she? Some kind of monster who thrived on sensuality alone? How about Bob Holton? Only a few short hours ago she had thought him the only person in the world for her. But now what?
Now she was stunned with doubt. Bob faded in her mind beside the memory of Ruby's palpitating, glowing white body. The essence of the fascinating redhead was still running through her veins, and she strongly doubted it would ever wash itself out. Barbara grew more frustrated by the moment.
She showered and busied herself in the vain hope of escaping her shame and fears. They refused to let her rest. And then something else suddenly struck at her, rendering her sick with emotional nausea. Because that's when she remembered her father. She had promised to give him the money he needed to stay out of jail, had agreed to meet him earlier outside the building where she worked and hand him the money.
She had completely forgotten while in the ecstasy of Ruby's perfumed flesh. Forgotten her own father in his hour of tragedy! Oh, how could she? How could she forget such a thing, make such a tragic error? It was inexcusable, it was unbelievable!
But it had happened, and now she supposed it was too late to rectify. She had promised him the money at noon. Now it was hours later.
She wondered if he was already in jail and cursing her for letting him down. He must be, or else he'd have been here waiting for her when she arrived home. When he telephoned her office as she'd instructed and learned she hadn't come to work, he'd certainly have dashed right here in his efforts to find her. But he wasn't here. And that could only mean that the police had him.
Nervously she poured herself a stiff drink of whiskey and swallowed it fast as she could. Then she sat and lit a cigarette. Her nerves commenced to settle some, and a bitter smile to form on her lips. She shook her dark head and sighed.
Why should she care, really? What was her drunken old man to her, after all?
Nothing, that's what. Absolutely nothing. She didn't owe him a damn thing, and she wasn't going to let him get her down. He was probably better off going to jail. .It was no worse than the gutter existence in which he was already living, was it? No. No, it wasn't. Maybe it was even for the best. He'd have to get off the wine for the first time in years, and that could only be an improvement.
Sure, she had done him a favor, a real big favor, not showing up with the fifty bucks he'd needed. It was better for him that she hadn't.
She had another drink and shrugged her father out of her mind. To hell with him, he could go take a jump, for all she cared. He wasn't her responsibility.
She busied herself, wondering what her next move should 'be. But then, she asked herself, why worry about it to any great extent? Nothing had changed basically. Regardless of all else, her original plan remained the same as before. Marry Jerry Comstock. After that she could simply let nature take its course.
Money was the important thing. It was the kicking off point for any direction she'd care to take afterwards. Without money you were nothing. She'd still be rooted here on Maupin Street. And this excrutiating fact was the one thing she wasn't about to allow to happen.
Which once more brought to mind those incriminating photographs. They would brand her a sensual slut and ruin her entire scheme.
She decided to call Angie at the dress shop where she worked, feeling she couldn't wait until quitting time, even if it was nearly that late in the afternoon. But when she did she received another shock. She was informed that Angie was in the hospital.
"Hospital! Why? What happened to her?"
"They say her brother beat her last night. Beat her terribly," the female voice on the other end explained. "I understand he's sort of an unsavory character. He must be, to use his fists on his own sister!"
"But ... Oh, this is awful! Do you have any idea why he did it?"
"No. All I know is it happened at the place where he lives. Nobody knows what caused him to turn his temper loose on her. They say she's in foul condition, though. Black and blue all over. Such a shame! Angie's such a nice girl."
After they'd hung up, Barbara felt faint. The answer was obvious. Turner had discovered Angie snooping around looking for those photos. He'd forced the truth from her, and then his unruly temper had become unleashed. Barbara shuddered. This was bad. This was very bad.
And no doubt it was going to get worse. Knowing now what she had enticed Angie to do, he would probably divert his angry attention on her, seek the quickest and easiest way to destroy her.
Barbara wondered what she should do. It was no secret that Turner Wilson was a terror when he really got it in for somebody. He'd go to any extremes to wreak vengeance.
Barbara became very frightened. This meant he'd no doubt spring those photos on the Comstocks without hesitation, just to smash her chance to marry Jerry, it seemed the natural thing for him to do. The simplest and easiest for him to strike back.
Just at that moment somebody knocked at her door, and it turned out to be Jerry. She sighed relief and let him come in. He looked pretty upset himself.
"I've been worried sick about you," he told her, standing in the middle of the room and staring confusedly. "You phoned in saying you were ill, according to the switchboard operator. Yet when I called back to check on how serious it was, I couldn't get an answer. Tell me, Barbara, what is this all about? You're no more sick than I am. Something else is wrong. Are you in trouble?"
Barbara slumped in a chair and fumbled for an answer to give him. It was obvious that so far Turner hadn't been to see him yet. This was one break, at least. There was still hope.
"Yes," she finally blurted. "Yes, Jerry, I do have troubles. It's my father. You've probably heard about the kind of man he is. He's an alcoholic, and he's in a terrible jam, and I've spent the day trying to find a way to help him. You might as well know the truth ... "
She saw Jerry relax and grin.
"Oh, that. Well, don't fret, darling. I solved your old man's problem today myself. He's okay now. So if that's what is upsetting you, forget it."
He found a seat and made himself comfortable.
"You? Jerry, I'm afraid I don't understand."
He laughed.
"I guess not. Well, your dad kept phoning the office, wanting to speak to you. He was told you were home sick, but he apparently didn't believe it. I think he got the notion you were trying to dodge him. Then he asked to speak to me. And when I talked to him he was half angry and more than a little scared. I finally dug the information that you had promised to loan him fifty dollars, and he had to have it immediately. He was drinking and pretty shaken when he came up to the office. I'd told him I'd advance the fifty. He took it and went off saying I'd saved his life."
"Oh, Jerry,"
"I hope I did the right thing, Barbara. Was it okay?"
"Yes. And thanks, Jerry. I'll see that you get the money back. I'll pay you myself as soon as I can."
"You can stall until after we're married," he grinned. "Then you can beat the debt. No wife ever repays a loan from her husband."
"Just the same, it was very nice of you. I appreciate it more than you'll ever know."
"Your father needs help, professional help. I get the impression the alcohol has him and is killing him. Maybe we can do something for him."
Barbara shrugged.
"You don't know my old man, I can see that. All the doctors and hospitals in the world couldn't stop his drinking. He'd rather die first. He's pretty hopeless."
They dropped the subject and talked about something else.
"Now that I'm here," Jerry said, staring at her legs beneath the shortie gown she was wearing, "why don't we make a little mad love? Seeing you like this, well, it gives me an awful case of the drools."
"You'll survive," she managed to smile. "Let's not get into that same old argument again. You'll just have to wait, darling. I'm sorry."
He winced and shook his head.
"Not half as sorry as I am. If you only knew how badly I need you, you wouldn't have the heart to hold out. I ache in every joint. All this waiting and thinking about you is turning into pure torture. You just don't know."
"It was your idea to wait and let your father make the big wedding, don't forget. Not mine. So don't blame it on me."
"Yes, but what else can we do? Now that we have him on our side it seems crazy to make him sore again. It might hurt so much later. He's giving us so much-the full partnership in the firm, for one thing. That's not to be sneezed at."
"Okay, so I agree to that," Barbara told him. "But it's also the reason we have to wait."
"You're being unreasonable." She smiled wistfully.
"No sex until we're married, darling. You are just a man, and once you had all of me you want, you could change your mind."
"I'd never. You know I wouldn't. I love you."
"Uh-uh, not a chance, darling."
He argued on but she refused. She was amused at the pleading tone of his voice. He was ready to crack up. His coloring turned to pink around his forehead. His misery was bright in his eyes. It gave her an inspiring thought.
She would trick him into marrying her now and worry about the consequences later. His old man would get over it and come across with all his promises. And at least she'd be in.
She could hope for the best so far as Turner and those photos were concerned. Perhaps she'd find a way to stop Turner from using them against her. But one thing was certain, if Turner got to Jerry or his father first, she'd be finished for sure.
Yes, it was the only thing left for her to do. And it had to be now.
Her lips curled in a cunning smile, and she moved from her chair and went to him. She perched on his lap and teased his face with her fingertips. His skin was burning.
"Darling," she tempted, "if you felt the same as I, you'd say to heck with your father, and you'd suggest we elope. I hate waiting, honestly. I'm not interested in anything but having you for my husband. That's all I care about."
"You-you really mean it?"
"Why don't we be reckless for once?" she urged. "No matter what came later, we'd have each other."
"You mean run off and tie the knot now? This minute?"
"Why not?" She traced a perfumed finger across his lips. He trembled with desire. She said coaxingly. "I'm dying for us to be in bed doing all the things we'd like to do. I feel I simply can't wait another minute. You don't realize how I love you too, Jerry. But I only want it to be right for us. Man and wife right. I'd want it to last."
He buried his face in her breasts.
"All right, by damn, we'll do it! I give up. I'll do anything you wish. I've got to have you!"
Barbara sighed and felt she was getting somewhere now. But there was no time to lose. His mouth was eagerly seeking her nipples behind the loose material of her gown. She hugged his head to her bosom once, then escaped him, laughing.
He moaned like a whipped dog.
She hurried to get dressed so they could get out of here before something else popped up to spoil her plans.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They didn't make it out in time. Because just as they were leaving, old Sam Corn-stock himself blocked the doorway. His face was flushed under his bushy, grey head, and his eyes glittered evilly.
"Not so fast, stupid," he rasped, pushing Jerry back into the room. "Thought I'd find you here. And thank God I'm not too late." Jerry was shocked by his father's actions. "What's the matter with you, Dad? You're acting like a crazy man. I never saw you like this. What's wrong?"
Barbara sucked in breath, sensing the end of all her schemes. One look at the elder Comstock's face was all she needed to tell her she was finished. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned away defeatedly, sighing and putting down the small bag she'd packed for the elopement.
"I've something to show you about this cheap slut you're throwing your life away on, my lame-brained boy," Sam Comstock was saying. "Some real pretty pictures you'll surely enjoy seeing. A guy named Turner Wilson came to me, sold them to me for a price. Here, take a look. I think you'll find them more than a little interesting."
Jerry stared at the sheaf of snapshots, and his features turned pale. Then he breathed strainedly.
"Must be some mistake-some kind of awful trick. This isn't Barbara. It couldn't be!"
They both stared at her, the old man in grim delight and Jerry painfully awaiting her outraged denial.
Barbara shrugged utter disdain, now that the truth was out. There was no further cause for pretense.
"Why don't you two bastards just leave?" she said quietly and callously. "Your self-righteousness is contaminating the air in here. Look, just get out, will you? Just get the hell out and leave me alone!"
"Barbara...." Jerry's voice drifted, then played out.
She gave him a scathing look, and then her forced laugh was merciless.
"At least you never got to me, stupid! And you're about the only guy who never did. Now you never will. That's a hot one, isn't it? Well, go on wondering how good I really am, sucker. Think about it the rest of your life! I hope you sweat yourself to death dreaming about what you missed. And believe me, you've missed plenty! I'm the best piece that ever swung it. But you'll never know."
"Come on, son, let's get out of this whore's nest."
After they were gone, Barbara sat and pondered her future. She couldn't find much light in it. She wouldn't have even a job now, and when they checked out her employment record for references, she could imagine the things Comstock Realty would say about her. She'd be stopped cold.
Maupin Street, she shuddered. She was still trapped here on Maupin Street. No escape possible, it seemed. Nothing ever worked out the way she wanted. She might just as well give up.
She reached Bob Holton on the telephone and told him she and Jerry were finished, and then she added the lie.
"I couldn't go through with it, darling. I love you, not Jerry Comstock. He was here and demanded we elope. We argued, and I lost my temper. I practically threw him out. It's really for the best, Bob. Now there's no reason we should stay apart. I'm dying to see you. Can you come over, darling? Now? I need you so awfully much." Bob sounded hedgy.
"You broke with Jerry? And the Comstock money? Barbara, that wasn't a very smart move. In fact, it was downright lunacy."
"But you said you hated for me to marry Jerry, that you wanted me only for yourself. Darling, don't you remember saying that?"
"Oh, hell, doll. Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. But without money, what would we do? I'm in no position to take on a wife and responsibilities."
"Bob, are you saying you don't want me?"
"Well, no, it's not that, doll."
"Then what is it? At least you could come by and talk about it. Is this too much to ask?"
"Not now," he said. "I'm busy. Tomorrow maybe. Sure, we'll get together tomorrow. We'll have a ball and ... "
"You'll either come here now, this minute, or don't come at all! I need you, Bob. I need you desperately. I'm so upset and depressed I hardly know what to do!"
"Sorry, Barbara. Can't make it."
"That's all you have to say to me?"
"'Fraid so, doll. 'Fraid so."
She slammed down the receiver. That was that. Bob Holton was dropping her, and the reason was perfectly obvious. He'd thought she might end up with a wad of the Comstock fortune. And now that she wasn't, his interest had taken a quick dive into nowhere. She cursed him vehemently.
She flung herself on the bed and broke into tears of frustration. After a long while she saw the inevitable. Ironically she admitted to herself the direction her future would take. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't pretty at all. She cried herself into exhaustion, and finally she fell asleep.
Barbara was awakened by a loud knock on her door. She could see that it was already dark, and she instantly wondered two things: how long she'd slept, and who was knocking at her door.
She fumbled around for a light switch on the lamp on her bedside table, then flooded the room with a dim glow of light. After fluffing her hair, she opened the door to an even bigger surprise of the day. There before her, a smile nestling at the corners of his mouth, was Sam Comstock.
"Just what do you want here again?" she demanded, still only three-fourths awake.
He pushed on the half-open door and brushed past her to enter the room.
She closed the door, then leaned her back against it, giving him about the dirtiest look her face could construe.
"It's not all that bad, Barbara," he said. "That hollow-headed son of mine was no good for you."
"I don't need you to tell me who's good and who's bad for me!" she blasted back.
Sam hesitated a reply, and she said:
"Besides, it was made very clear that Jerry and I are washed up, by your devious revelations. So just why the hell are you here, anyway?"
"It's just that I wanted you to know that the evidence I got against you wasn't that bad. As a matter-of-fact, I sort of liked that picture of you strapping that guy, and it shows plainly that you liked what you were doing to him."
"So? Where does that leave me? So it wasn't that bad. What am I supposed to do about it now? You don't want me to marry your precious son because I'm not good enough for him. But you liked the picture."
"Listen, Barbara. Ever since Jerry's mother died, I've been trying to protect him and cover for him. But he wouldn't know what to do with a lively girl like you; he wouldn't know how to appreciate you, and he wouldn't know how to handle you and make you happy."
She glared at Sam, and while doing so she sized him up for the first time. He wasn't a bad-looking man for someone nearing fifty, and, in fact, he was on the appealing side. His wealth helped tremendously. Just maybe.
"You need a more mature man, Barbara," he proposed, looking her straight in the eyes. "And I couldn't have given Jerry half interest in the business. He'd have driven me crazy. I've got too many years left to turn even half of a business over to a nincompoop."
"I need a more mature man?" she asked.
"Yes, you certainly do."
"Where do I find this mature man?"
"I'm not such a bad guy, Barbara. I'm quite a bit older than you, but I can hold up my end well enough. And I like the sort of things you like-like that picture."
"I could whip you?" she asked, more than interested.
"I'd go along with whatever made you happy," he said. "And I'd also see to it that Turner Wilson ended up behind bars, where he belongs."
"How would you do that?"
"I have a lot of influence in this town. I'd have the police file charges against him, charge him with assault with intent to commit murder."
"Because of what he did to his sister?"
"Exactly. And I'd also have them charge him with extortion."
Barbara thought profoundly, dropping her eyes from his. How glorious that would be to have that son of a bitch Turner behind bars, where she could go see him and needle him about it. That'd teach the bastard but good.
There was something else: Sam Comstock could set her up in a fine apartment, get her a car and all kinds of pretty clothes, and finally she could get off Maupin Street. No doubt it wouldn't last, but where was she going from here, if she didn't accept what Sam was offering? Exactly nowhere, that's where!
"What do you say, Barbara?" he pressed anxiously. "You're my sort of girl, and I can do you a lot of good. If you want women on the side, like this red-haired girl named Ruby, then you have them."
"How'd you know about her?"
"I know everything that goes on in this town. I'm not looking for an angle, Barbara. And I don't have to have a girl who's in love with me."
"What're you going to do for me, Sam? Sex I can get plenty of."
"You play ball with me, and I'll get you a fine apartment, and about anything else you want, including an expense account."
"What will your son say and think?"
"I don't tell my son anything."
"When does all this start, Sam?" she asked. "There'll be no sex, until you get these other things started."
"I know just where to get the apartment," he said. "I'll have it by tomorrow noon, so you can move into it. Come to my office tomorrow morning, and I'll fix it so you can go shopping."
"All right, Sam," she relented gladly, "I'll be there tomorrow morning. But when you come to the apartment to see me, you'll have to bring your own belt, if you want a good whipping."
He smiled happily, and walked to the door. Within an instant he was gone, and for many minutes Barbara stood by the door counting her blessings.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
True to his word, Sam had made it possible for Barbara to lounge luxuriously in a beautiful, all white-furnitured apartment. The filmy negligee she now wore was from her new wardrobe, and all her old clothes were hanging and piled in a thrift store on Maupin Street.
Her liquor bar was stocked, and she was expecting Sam by eight. Shortly after she'd lain upon a comfortable lounge, scanning over the evening paper, her eyes focused on a piece of news that set her heart pounding with gladness. Turner Wilson had been arrested.
"Good for you, you dirty bastard!" she exclaimed loudly.
As she'd passed one of the girls that morning, just before reaching Sam's private office, she'd been told that Jerry had gone for a lengthy vacation, but she'd not been given any further details. She guessed that old Sam knew just what he was doing, all right enough.
Barbara had decided to wait and see how far she could make Sam bow to her, before she decided just what to do about his suggestion that she call in Ruby for side-line pleasure. She might just stick to men, and plenty of them.
The door buzzer sounded, and she jumped quickly and went to the door. It was Sam, and he was smiling most satisfactorily, carrying a small bag in his hand.
"How do you like your new home?" he asked, stepping inside.
"It's gorgeous," she said.
"Did you have your dinner?" he asked.
"I was tired, so I made a snack here," she said. "Want a drink?"
"Scotch and water, lot of ice," and for the first time he eyed what was showing behind the nothing-fabric negligee.
Her proud tits and their pert nipples shone through, and he could see her belly button and pubic hair. His already lively eyes lit up more, and he reached out and tweaked a nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
"Don't get funny-yet!" she laughed. "What is in the bag?"
"Something for you to have fun with," and he pulled a long, narrow belt from the bag. "It's long enough for you to use doubled."
She took it and measured the length, her emotions already on the rise.
"Looks adequate," and she threw it over a chair back. "I'll get our drinks. Sit down and make yourself at home. Get used to the place, because you're going to be spending a lot of time here."
"Right!"
Sam didn't wait for the drink. He stripped off every stitch, baring his husky body to the hair that covered most of his skin. With only himself knowing, he'd been wanting to get at Barbara for a long time, even before he'd seen the picture of her naked, strapping that man. Of course, after Turner Wilson had sold him the pictures, he'd known that he had to have her.
Barbara returned with the drinks, setting her eyes upon his hairy, virile body. Then her eyes traveled down to his cock, and she gasped audibly. The red head of his cock was hanging at least eight inches down his right leg, and it wasn't hard yet.
She handed him his drink, then looked again at the huge hunk of meat. She wondered if it might not be one of those that didn't get any bigger or longer after it was hard. If it got as big proportionately as the others she'd seen, she was sure she couldn't take it.
"You could whip yourself with that thing," she said, nodding downward at his prick. "Does that thing get bigger when it gets hard?"
Sam sipped at his drink before replying:
"Shall we keep that information for a later surprise?"
"I don't want to find out after it's too late," she said.
"Will you pretend you're my whore?" Sam asked.
"I am your whore, Sam," and she smiled over the rim of her glass. "I'm your whore from Maupin Street."
She thought he might take her into his arms, but he didn't. He was a cool cat, and he sat on a sofa, leaving plenty of room for her to join him on his right.
Once she'd sat beside him, she couldn't resist the urge to reach with her free hand and grasp his still-soft cock.
"Jesus Christ, Sam! But that damn thing's big. I wonder why it's so big around and long too?"
"You like that?" he asked.
"Who wouldn't?"
"It's just important that you like it," he said.
"I do," and she bent over and took the tip of it into her mouth.
"You just about have me ready for the belt," he said. "About the time I get my drink finished."
She stuffed more of the soft cock into her mouth, then pulled back her head and sat up.
"It didn't get any harder when I sucked on it," she half complained.
"Just be patient," he said. "Wait till you get busy with the belt."
She shivered, feeling her passion rise, just at the thought of beating him with the belt. Another strange thought also hit her: how would she like to be belted? Would she like it? Was that the reason she liked to use the leather on somebody else?
She rose and skinned off her negligee.
"I don't want to wait any longer, Sam."
He set down his glass and rose. He stepped a goodly distance away from where they'd sat, and he crossed his arms over his chest and stood rigidly.
Barbara got the belt, hesitated, and he said:
"Across the ass first," Sam instructed. "Then down the legs, back to the ass, then across the back, and try to lay the skin open!"
Barbara's eyes glistened, and she raised the doubled belt, then brought it down with a slanted slash across his naked ass. The sound echoed through the apartment like a gun shot. Down she came again, and when she started to bring it down the third time, she saw that his prick was standing straight out. It had grown in length at least two inches, and it appeared to be half again as thick. This spurred her on with a greater zest, and she laid at least five blows across his legs, before she moved back to his ass again.
Glancing at the huge erection time and time again seemed to enable her to strike even harder, and soon Sam reached around and grabbed the end of the belt, jerking it from her hand.
"Brace yourself!" he said, the belt doubled and one end clutched tightly in his own hand.
"No, Sam! Don't hit me with that!"
He laid a slash across her ass, then another, and instead of running away, she stood rigidly, her fingers running hurridly through her hair.
It took only four strikes, and she began trembling from about the strongest orgasm she'd ever had. Just to finish her off, Sam sent a stinging lash to her ass again, then dropped the belt to the floor.
He slung her to the carpet, raised both her legs so that her calves rested upon his shoulders, then he started into her, slowly at first, then he rammed all the way in, bringing a deafening, hair-raising scream from her mouth.
Sam grabbed two handfuls of her hair and pulled as if he were trying to bring it out by its roots, then he began pumping rapidly, slapping his pubic hair against hers.
Barbara didn't stop screaming, until she'd lost all the pain which had been replaced soon by the strangest ecstasy she'd ever felt. She then passed out, becoming limp as an unironed rag.
Sam pulled from her, pressed her legs together to stop any running, then climbed to his feet.
The apartment had cost him plenty, and so had all the clothes he'd had her buy. But as he took their glasses and headed for the kitchen, he figured it had been damn well worth every penny he'd spent on her.
After the drinks were mixed, Sam went to the bathroom and got a towel. He placed it between her legs, then began slapping her face lightly, endeavoring to awaken her.
She finally opened her eyes, focused and refocused them, then she said:
"Damn, man, what in the hell did you do to me?"
"What do you think?" he asked.
"You're a real damn man, Sam! The older the buck, the stiffer the horn."
"Happy with your bargain?" he asked, getting back to his feet.
"You better know it. How did you know I'd like that belt bit?"
"Because you like to use one."
"No! Is that the way it works, Sam? Do you like to use one too?"
"Yes, I do. But I like to use it just enough to get each other excited, then I want the real thing."
"How many women do you have that like this sort of action?"
"I don't have anybody else here. I had one far away, until she got killed recently in a car accident. But it's not easy to find people like you and me."
"Yeah, I guess not," and she realized that she'd never known herself yet. "I guess you and I had better stick together, Sam."
"You won't be sorry, Barbara. I know other means of pleasure too."
Suddenly Barbara felt no regret about what hadn't come about. She was glad.
As she rose, the towel tightly between her legs, she looked again at Sam's giant hunk of meat. It was still hard, and she began to get a much clearer picture. She was not only going to bask in wealth, but she was going to have Sam and some incomparable sex that she'd likely not have found during her lifetime.
