The room seemed to fill slowly with silence, as if silence were a substance and he was watching her through it. It was rising all around them like water, like something you could touch and feel. She felt him coming through the silence, his eyes glowing with a groping, hungry fire. She began telling herself, "I mustn't let him. I mustn't let him."
But she didn't move. She felt as if her body was changing and she had no control over it. Her body felt strange, feline, sending out waves of excitement. She felt something turning over inside her. A feeling of heat and hysteria permeated her flesh.
"I mustn't. I mustn't," she kept repeating to herself.
CHAPTER ONE
Ivan Swanson had his hangup ever since he'd been home from Vietnam. He simply couldn't get a hard-on. The reason was simple, but he was afraid to see a doctor about it. In fact, he was terrified to mention it to anyone.
If it hadn't been for Betty Haden, he'd still be a man. It was insanely crazy the way it happened, Ivan thought. He had been going to Hong Kong on leave when he got her letter.
At first he couldn't believe it. They had gone through high school together. Betty was a sweet lay, nobody like her in the world, and suddenly she'd pulled his whole life down around his head with one letter. She was going to marry that bastard Tom Norton. Ivan knew that because of a shoulder separation Norton was 4F. He'd never have to serve. The bastard!
But the worst part came later, when Ivan got to Hong Kong. Filled with bitterness and hate, he had been determined to screw every broad he could find..
That bitch Betty. They were all bitches. Let a guy get away long enough, and they'd grab the first cock that came along. Well, it was a two-way street, and he was going to grab all the cunt he could grab on his leave.
The first time Ivan couldn't get a hard-on he figured he'd had too much to drink. He even told himself that the second time, but the third time he was scared. He didn't have anything to drink, not a drop, and he was upstairs in a nice little Chinese bar with a beautiful Chinese girl. She wore men's silk pajamas. She leaned against his shoulder where they sat on the bed, her slanted dark eyes studying his face.
"Have a little drinkie," she said in a soft voice. He looked down at the curve of her breasts, and reached inside the top of her pajamas and stroked the nipple, feeling it swell and harden as he waited tensely to feel something in his cock. But nothing happened.
She put a slender soft hand on his thigh, moved it gently.
"You want some help, honey?"
"No, I'll be okay."
"What's amatter? Did you get hurt in the war?"
She opened his pants and drew out the limp member and stroked it, but the dead stalk only lay limp in her hand. Ivan shook his head in anguish, and tears came to the corners of his eyes.
"I can't help it," he cried. "I can't seem to do anything about it. I'm finished as a man."
"No, no," she said, opening his trousers, helping him take off his pants. "Just lie down on your back. I will help you be man. I will give you a sleeve job. You need a real woman again."
"Sleeve job?"
"Just take off your clothes and lie quietly."
She went out of the room and returned a few minutes later, carrying two brown paper sacks. She handed him one brown paper sack. Ivan sat up and peered inside. He stared at a jar of Vaseline and one of cold cream.
"I want you to coat your body all over with Vaseline, then put a thin layer of cold cream over the Vaseline. I shall do same."
"How's this going to make a man out of me again?"
"Just do as I do."
He watched her soft brown body begin to glisten as she rubbed the cream into her lush skin. His mind told him her body was gorgeous, but his cock lay limp and dead between his thighs. He had never felt so humiliated in his life. Hell, he'd been the biggest stud in Wayzata High School. He wondered if he'd caught some diseases off those bar girls in Nam. No, he'd have a pimple or drip to show if that were the case. No, it was just-he didn't want to think again about the letter from Betty. He only wanted to get a hard-on again. Just one.
Please. Just one. He lay back on the bed and let her finish rubbing the cream into his skin. Then she took his limp penis and stroked it softly, but only once. Then she got on top of him and squirmed back and forth, sliding up and down, around and around on top of his cock, over and over again, until their flesh had absorbed almost all the cream. She tried sucking his cock, but nothing happened, only the limp member hung from her lips. He turned on his stomach and began to cry.
She rose and smiled softly and patted his back.
"No, no," she said. "I can help you. Just stay that way. Just stay here, right on your stomach. I'll be back in a minute."
A moment later she returned with a double-headed object. Ivan had stared at the leather thongs hanging from it. One ivory head was carved in the shape of a penis.
"No," he said. He started to rise. He was horrified. What the hell was she thinking of doing? What hell could this be? He had an idea what it was but he didn't want to believe it.
The Chinese girl pushed him down gently. He watched her bring the dildo to her lips. She sucked at the blunt end, wetting it, and then lowered the slippery ivory column, and pressed it into herself. She smiled softly.
"Oh, no," Ivan said, rising again. "Not on your life."
"Ah," she said softly, smiling. "If you do not get a hard-on, you pay nothing."
"What're you going to do?" Ivan stopped getting off the bed and stared at her, not wanting to believe what he thought she might have in mind.
She didn't answer. She cinched the leather thongs around her loins. She smiled down at the big ivory cock springing up. It looked huge and long and thick sticking right out of her black cunt hair.
"No," he said. "It's wrong." He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her. "No, it won't help. You just want your kicks."
She walked slowly toward him in the darkened room, grinning. Ivan remembered staring at the huge cock, long and slim against her thigh. He looked at his wrinkled member, at his slack testicles. He was dead. He would be dead the rest of his life. Maybe this Chinese girl knew something that would bring him to life. He would try anything to be a man again. He didn't care now what happened to him. Nothing mattered.
He lay quietly face down on the bed, fearful and trembling as he felt the skin prickling all over his ass. Then suddenly her hand was there stroking his buttocks. Such a soft hand. It stroked back and forth, steadily and easily, then just as slowly, he felt her playing with the hair around his asshole.
Slowly, slowly, he felt his legs spread without asking, just as if he knew what she wanted him to do. Without being able to see it, he felt the big cock standing up behind him. Then her lips were on his buttocks, and before he knew it her finger was in his anus. It moved slowly, gently, lovingly, and he felt his cock and balls twitch with a growing sense of wonder, a quick eagerness racing through his whole body. He felt her finger going deeper and deeper, wriggling back and forth. Then he felt her legs and his legs tremble and shake as she mounted above and he felt her ivory prick push tenderly between his legs. Almost of their own volition his legs closed.
"Not so fast," he heard himself say. "Not so fast. Slowly. Real easy." Then he felt his hand reach around him and grasp her prick as his buttocks rose, and he felt his own cock and his balls hardening.
"Go on. Go on," he cried.
He felt the head go in. His anus burned, seared for an instant, but his cock throbbed suddenly with new life. He felt an agony of contraction in his sphincter muscle. Then suddenly, through a burst of pain, he knew she was inside. He caught her thigh, asking her to wait, feeling his cock throbbing bigger and bigger. Then he lifted his buttocks again; she slid all the way in and he felt her black belly hair against his buttocks. He writhed on top of his stiff cock bent double under him and she ground her stomach against his back, grinding his cock round and round into the bed.
He felt her withdraw slowly, and just as slowly he felt his cock going down. He reached around and clutched her thigh before she was all the way out. He shoved against her hip and felt her go all the way into him again. His cock rose again.
"Go ahead," he said. "Go ahead."
At first it was agony, a beautiful, strange new agony of pain and ecstasy; then as she moved more easily inside him he heard himself moaning with pleasure. It was better than anything he had ever felt in his life. He'd never had such a hard-on before.
He pushed up on his arms slowly at first, to contract his buttock muscles and then slam his rigid penis down hard into the bed. By God, he was a man again. Even the sound of her wet belly slapping against his buttocks was music to his ears.
He moved his body sideways, up and down, around and around-grinding his cock into the bed, and feeling her pleasure behind him. Suddenly he said, "Go, honey, go hard. Go hard!"
She thrust into him savagely again and again. He felt his muscles twitch with excitement. He was ready to come. And as she lifted upward he drew his hips down suddenly and her prick came out of him and he turned and lay on his back.
She grabbed his upthrust cock in both hands, and then stuck it between her lips. Her lips tightly circled the base of the cock in her mouth. It was huge now and his balls were hard as rocks. He was alive again. He'd been so worried and now it was all over. He'd thought he was finished, but he was only just starting. This was like nothing else in the world. The best.
With each movement of her lips, in and out, in and out, his cock grew bigger and harder. Then, as his excitement and joy increased, he felt deeply happy and relieved in each hot, sharp, wonderful spurt of come that sent him crying out in an agony of joy, panting and shaking. He lay there, moaning and shivering, quaking from the release. It even took a long time for his penis to go down. All that time he stared at the enormous dildos that lay on the bed. When he left Hong Kong he bought two of them. And before he was back in Minneapolis a month, delivering milk for North Star Creameries, he'd found two women on his milk route who knew how to give Ivan Swanson a hard-on. But suddenly they had moved away, not even a warning note, just a message saying not to leave any more milk. He'd been screwing each for about a year. It was a mystery why they had moved, but he was hard up for a piece, and depressed again. He'd tried it without the dildo, and there was no other way for him. He simply could not get a hard-on without being screwed first with the dildo.
In two days he was going up north grouse hunting with his old buddy Lachlan Breedlove, and if he didn't get laid before then he'd be out of his mind. And why in the hell did Lachlan have to bring that damn little virgin he was going to marry with him?
Was he thinking of screwing her up at the hunting lodge? If so, why didn't he take her up there alone? And if she wasn't along there might be a chance of picking up some Indian quiff; they'd go for anything, and he needed a lay bad. He wondered if that Joanie Hoke, juicy Joanie, had ever been laid. That would be fun to break in. He thought about her tits and ass.
CHAPTER TWO
Lachlan Breedlove knew he had to figure out something about the maid after he was married. That was the number one problem now. He certainly couldn't take Elsie with him when he moved out of the house into the new house with Joanie, but Elsie wasn't going to take money just to stay with his father and mother. Elsie's pay-off was in cock, but he couldn't risk having Elsie around Joanie because sure as hell Elsie would give him a hard-on and the next thing he knew he'd be in the sack and her and Joanie would get wise sooner or later, no matter how naive she was now. He wondered if she were a virgin. Oh, hell, she had to be, the way she acted when he kissed her, panting and almost sobbing, wanting it so badly, but crying if he touched her breast.
"No, no, not until we're married," she would say. "It's a sin if we do it now."
"But you want me as much as I want you, don't you?"
"You know I do."
"Then why not?"
"I couldn't live with myself."
She made him feel like such a louse, and he did love her, but he was sure going to miss the sex he was getting from Elsie. The only solution was to set Elsie up in a small apartment so they could knock off a piece now and then. If the old man or the old lady ever found out he'd been punching Elsie ever since he was fifteen they would go out of their minds. The old man, a stiff-necked old fart, would kick him out for good, and right now if it weren't for Uncle Jeff, who owned the second largest heat control company in the nation, Lachlan Breedlove would be having to learn the department store business from the basement up at Breedlove, Inc., Minneapolis' largest and oldest department store, with five suburban branches. No, thank God, old Uncle Jeff was going to loan him the money to get started in a small computer company of his own. And thank God for Elsie. If they hadn't hired Elsie, Lachlan figured that he would still believe his cock was simply something to piss with. He could hardly wait to sink it into Joanie Hoke. She was going to be, he was positive, one of the juiciest fucks he'd ever had.
"Lach." The voice behind him was soft, cajoling and teasing. He turned from the bedroom window overlooking Lake Minnetonka. The swimming pool had been drained and there were autumn leaves on the lawn. It would be perfect for grouse hunting this weekend up north. One thing Joanie had to know how to do outside of how to fuck, and that he could teach her, was how to hunt. There was nothing like having a piece of ass on the bearskin carpet up at the hunting lodge, with some good booze and the log fire roaring, flickering shadows over the wall. "Lach!"
He turned. It was Elsie Ward, the maid, with just the tip of her tongue showing between her teeth, mocking and teasing him with a smile. For a broad pushing thirty, Elsie was really something. She wasn't wearing a bra now and he could see her big rounded breasts and the nipples pressed against the starched front of her maid's uniform.
"My old man will kill you if he catches you running around like that."
She giggled.
"He can't," she said. "He's not here."
Then Lachlan remembered. It was Friday, the day his mother and father played their round of gold at Woodhill Country Club. How in hell had he forgotten all the good ass he'd knocked off with Elsie on those great Friday afternoons?
She zipped down her white maid's uniform and he saw she was naked. Even from this angle he could see the beautiful shape of her cunt, the high golden mound, and he felt his cock swell and pulse. Almost immediately began to throb.
"You haven't forgotten what day it is?" Elsie asked and came straight across the room and put both arms around his neck and pressed her naked body against him, squashing her hard tits against his chest.
"Mmm," he murmured around her hot tongue already inside his mouth, curling and twisting. "Friday. Friday." He drew back his head. "I've been so damn busy all day figuring out the cost of the extra floor plan for the factory I forgot."
She pushed her cunt hard against his throbbing cock and said, "Don't let it happen again." She giggled and drew back her head. "What's little old Elsie going to do when Big Lachlan's an old married man? Will there be any of that prick to spare for little Elsie?"
He kissed her nipple, and stroked his hand up her cunt, feeling the cunt juice already dripping between her legs. "Baby, there's never been anybody who could fuck like you and there never will be."
"Prove it," she hissed and thrust him down suddenly on the bed.
"Come on, come on," he pushed her away. "Not here." He was thinking of the time his parents came home early from the club and almost caught him.
Elsie lived alone in the maid's house, about a hundred yards down the shore from the guest cottage. Once it had been occupied by both a cook and butler, but with Lachlan's older brothers and sisters grown up and married and living away from home, Elsie had the two-bedroom house all to herself. The great thing about it was the back door that was only about twenty feet from the rear door of the boat house. You could go into the boat house from the front and out the back door and right across to the maid's house rear door without being seen from the big house. But even as he embraced Elsie again, telling her to meet him at the maid's house, Lachlan was worrying about what he had been worrying about for weeks. What if Joanie was a lousy poke, and then for business reasons he had to stay anchored to her on the old ball and chain for the rest of his life? He might have to do just that. The Hoke money was big money in Minneapolis and very important money, flour milling and lumber money from the days when the Hoke Lumber company had raped half the state forests. And Joanie's mother was nearly seventy, and the only other heir to Joanie's mother's millions was Joanie's brother George. The trouble was that no matter how lousy a lay she was, anything was better than having to go into the family business. Look what a bunch of idiots his brothers had turned out to be, knuckling under to the old man so they could become vice presidents in that lousy department store. Bloody nine-to-five clerks. No thanks.
Lachlan kissed Elsie's other nipple, feeling his cock getting bigger and bigger again. Kissing the nipples, first right, and then left, he kept seeing Joanie's nipples. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was breaking in Joanie. He wondered if he dare take a real crack at her up at the hunting lodge just to find out if she was uptight from all that damn religious schooling.
Ten minutes later Lachlan was lying in bed in the maid's house with Elsie and thoughts of breaking in Joanie were far away because Elsie was taking care of him in a way it might take Joanie years to learn.
His cock was throbbing with insistent jerks deep in Elsie and he was kneading her breasts with both hands. He slid his prick back and forth, seeking to go deeper; then, as she flexed her ass, he felt his cock touch bottom and the slick side of her cunt clutching and releasing his cock as he smoothly moved in and out.
He felt his balls banging against her ass and he could feel the sperm swelling up in his sac. He could feel it coming up through his cock and he wanted to hold it back.
"Jerk me!" she screamed, and he did what he had never done with any other woman. He'd never known any woman who could stand it. He reared back on his knees and grabbed both of her tits with both hands and yanked her body up against his chest and, holding her by the tits as if they were handles, feeling his cock bending up inside her, he sluiced her mouth with his tongue. She flung her head back and grabbed him around the hips, socked her cunt hard against his bent prick and then fell back with a moan.
"Fuck me! Fuck me!" she screamed, clutching the bedsheet, her hands twisting the sheet.
He felt his prick get even bigger when he saw the red streaks on her breasts where he had clutched her tits. He leaned back, kneeling between her legs, drawing his prick out a little. He ran his fingers lightly down the side of her spread thighs, then softly ran his fingers back up to the curly golden hair of her cunt and softly intertwined his fingers in the wet hair.
Parting the puffed lips of her pussy, he ran his fingers down through her slit, feeling for the swollen bud of her clit. When he found it he flipped it back and forth, alternately flipping it and stroking it up and down. Elsie moaned and pulled her legs up tighter and spread her knees further apart, until her cunt and clit were fully in his grasp.
Lachlan toyed with Elsie's blood-filled clit. Her hips shot back and forth and thrashed from side to side. He knew she was coming all over the place. Like claws her hands shot up and reached for his butt. She pulled him tight against her cunt and thrashed up and down and around and around, racking her cunt with orgasms.
He could feel every muscle in Elsie's cunt contracting and expanding, milking every drop it could out of his cock. Then he knew he was going to give her what she had trained him to do, what she sought more than anything else and now was the time. Keeping his finger on her clit, he slid his other hand under her ass. He felt her cunt muscles still milking him and he felt his finger touching the rubbery ring of her anus. It was jerking in a frantic spasm in tune with her cunt muscles. He stroked it with cunt juice, feeling it move in and out, like the mouth of a gold fish. It opened easily beneath his finger. Then he slid his finger in and felt her muscles tighten around it and hold it there. Her moans of ecstasy rose higher and higher.
He pushed his finger in further and her rectal muscles squeezed it just as her cunt muscles were gripping his cock. He felt his legs tiring so he rolled on his side without taking out either his cock or his finger. Their bodies fitted together like spoons. He pressed his finger deeper and deeper into her ass until finally his whole middle finger was buried in Elsie's rectum and she was shoving harder and harder to get the pressure she wanted. He gave her short jabs, faster and faster, and he felt her mounting to another orgasm.
Elsie began to scream then, rearing and bucking, not knowing which she wanted more, his cock or his finger, but she was determined to get all of herself blown on both of them at the same time. Suddenly he pulled his finger out of her asshole and rolled over on his back so that Elsie was lying on top of him. He squeezed her tits a couple of times and bounced her back and forth. Then suddenly, without losing his cock, Elsie turned on it and faced Lachlan's feet. She braced herself with both hands on his knees and started to ride up and down, giving his cock hard and sure strokes. This was the greatest, Lachlan felt. How the hell was he ever going to ask Joanie to go for this? It might take a year to break her in, and even then maybe not, what with her strict religious upbringing. He'd have to keep Elsie on the string somewhere, someplace where they could meet. He reached up between her buttocks and started massaging her clit with one finger. She was panting and moving; her cunt seemed to clutch him even stronger. He went on rubbing her clit harder and harder. Then he felt her come, her whole cunt trembling and shaking, but he held onto himself because there was more work to be done. He let her shudder and shake and moan.
As she shivered and cried out, he pulled out his cock suddenly. Before her hand could grab it again, he pressed it right against the ring of her anus and felt the ring give. He shoved and then he was home, deep, then deeper and all the way. He grabbed her around the waist and drew her back against him and felt her sphincter muscle relax.
Her hole was still beautifully tight although he'd been screwing her like this for almost five years. He moved his cock in and out, reached around her hips and found her weakly spasming clit. He pushed two fingers into her cunt and stroked her clit with his other hand and rammed his hips forward, whacking his prick in and out like a piston. She reached back, moaning and screaming with ecstasy, spinning into another orgasm, both holes filled.
Then Lachlan knew he couldn't hold it any longer. He felt the sperm surging, striving to escape, his cock trembling with joy, so he shoved it all the way in and then all the way out. He kept his fingers going at the same tempo into her cunt and across her clit while his other hand squeezed and stroked her tit.
He felt sweat running down his face and came rushing toward the head of his prick and his loin muscles jerking and twitching. Then he felt as if he were going to pass out with the violent surge of come rushing up his cock. He thrust his cock all the way in Elsie and let his prick spurt the full gush. It was the greatest! He'd have to teach Joanie, he thought.
Then he felt spurt after spurt of sperm jerking into Elsie's asshole, the muscles contracting around the shaft of his cock, milking out every drop of juice.
Then he felt his whole body fading away, sinking down into the bed, as if he were dying, feeling all the breath coming out of his body. For an instant he felt ghost-like, unreal, disembodied, utterly limbless. He was out of this world. Joanie would have to learn. No other solution, but what if she wouldn't go for it? No, she'd have to. He had to get that money. Damned if he'd ever work in that dull department store for his old man. And when the time came to expand his business, it would be Joanie's mother's money that would do it. His old man would never give him a cent.
"Honey," Elsie said lying beside him, patting his cheek, "you think little Joanie will be able to handle you?"
Lachlan grinned, kissed her tit.
"No way, baby. Nobody fucks like you. Never.
Ever."
Elsie wrapped her lips around his cock for a minute, limp as it was, then released it, but she did not move her head, laying her cheek upon his thigh, her face turned up to him. She lifted her right hand and waggled her finger, smiling.
"Don't you be giving Joanie too many lessons. Elsie doesn't want to lose you."
"Don't give it a thought," Lachlan said. "Nobody's ever going to replace you, baby."
Ivan Swanson was packing his hunting gear. He unzipped his canvas bag and counted the shirts. Six khaki. Three pairs of hunting pants, rain cape, ten pairs of sweat socks, red hunting pants, rain cape, red hunting vest, tan cap and red cap. Bean shoe packs for wet weather. Red Wing boots for dry weather. One pair of long Johns just in case it got cold this time of year. It probably wouldn't, but it had before, so come on like a Boy Scout, be prepared. He picked up his .20 gauge magnum pump, slid the chamber open, thinking of pussy and cock as the chamber slid back so easily, wishing Lachlan wasn't going to bring a woman, thinking how he had the dildo hidden in the other hunting bag. That was something Lachlan didn't know about. He felt scared when he considered being discovered, but so far, so good; in five years of hunting, Lachlan had never found out about the dildo. Only Tar-Paper Annie knew about it, the greatest Chippewa Indian screw in Pine County, and Tar-Paper Annie wasn't about to tell anybody, not since he always brought her a little pot every year when he and Lachlan went grouse and woodcock hunting. He felt his cock swell faintly as he thought of Tar-Paper Annie screwing on a bed of pine needles. Then, without knowing why, he found himself thinking about Joanie Hoke. Jesus, wouldn't it be fun to get his cock into her? That would shake up that frosty little rich bitch, always looking down her nose at him.
CHAPTER THREE
The first light snow had blown out of Manitoba across the shores of Lake Superior, and such cold weather was early, far too early. Lachlan Breedlove was really excited. Farmers he knew around Lake Mille Lac had told him by telephone that thousands of blue bills had apparently departed suddenly from Canada and Lake of the Woods and were heading south. He called Ivan immediately.
"You're out of your mind, Lach."
"Get cracking," Lach said. "We can swing over and go grouse shooting later."
"They can't be down this early."
"The hell they aren't." Lachlan laughed. "Pick you up in an hour."
"Okay," Ivan said, knowing it was useless to argue with Lachlan when he was this excited.
Ivan had shot ducks in Minnesota ever since he was ten years old, and he couldn't ever remember blue bills coming down this early from Canada. He couldn't believe it. Unless there was one hell of an early freeze they would stay in Canada until their butts dropped off with icicles. But if Lachlan said they were down, they were down. And the great thing was they were so damn easy to decoy, not like those beautiful but smart mallard, spooky as hell, smart as hell. You couldn't sneak them or decoy mallard, unless you knew all the tricks. Mille Lac was a blue bill hunter's paradise when the flight was on.
Going up north in Lachlan's Volkswagen bus, Ivan sat in the back, with Lachlan's yellow labrador. Joanie sat in front with Lachlan while Ivan and Lachlan kidded about old hunting trips together. Ivan wanted to stop and get some liquor, but Lachlan said no, not until after the hunt.
That night in bed, Ivan lay awake in the hunting lodge that had been built by Lach's father, listening to see if Lach would get out of bed and go into Joanie's room. Ivan was curious as hell to find out if Lach had ever pronged his bride-to-be. He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. He chuckled when he thought about it. He couldn't stand her, with her uppity airs and lifted nose, acting all the time as if there were a bad odor in the room. How he'd like to stick that dildo right up her butt, take some of the starch out of her face. Ivan listened, but in the darkness of the cabin, with Joanie just down the hall, Lachlan did not move. He only snored.
Ivan and Lachlan left the cabin two hours before daylight, and at the first slough beside the road, they headed north and west, with Joanie sound asleep back in the cabin.
"Why didn't you bring Joanie?" Ivan asked.
"Oh, hell, I told her we were going grouse hunting.
This early duck shooting stuff is too tough a way to break any woman into hunting."
"Speaking of breaking in-?" Ivan said, and nudged Lachlan and guffawed.
Lachlan grinned, looking straight ahead. "She's all virgin."
Ivan cackled. "Boy, you dreamer. Who ever told you?"
"I know."
"How?" Ivan guffawed.
"Listen, she won't let me touch her till we're married. Those nuns really got her hung up."
"How are you going to get away when I get Tar-Paper Annie to line up a little Indian quiffy for you?"
They stopped by a lake and Lachlan got out with a flashlight and shined it on the water. Faint skim ice. But dark as ink, the water rippled further out in the circular lake bisected by the road. The flashlight was powerful and cast a wide beam as Lachlan searched the area. Not a duck. Not even a sound of wings of a duck passing overhead, going out to feed. Only the vast empty hollow darkness of the Northern Minnesota woodland. The ice looked thin as cellophane, a sure sign of blue bill weather. But they were probably rafted away on Lake Mille Lac.
"Which blind are we going to shoot out of?" Ivan asked.
"With this wind northwest point'll be best."
It was still pitch black when Lachlan turned onto worn ruts across the edge of a ploughed field. On each side stretched a land of frozen clods of black earth.
Suddenly the Volkswagen bus braked. They were in a hollow that was shallow, but which shielded them from the lake to their left.
Lachlan sprang out, crouching, from the bus, padding across to break frozen grassy stalks in the plow-churned ground. He vanished, leaning into the darkness. When Lachlan, wearing bleached and faded camouflaged hunting jacket and trousers, materialized a little later beside the bus, as if he'd popped out of the ground, he was rubbing his hands, blowing on bare knuckles, even now keeping his head low, as if he expected ducks overhead. He whispered in a hissing voice: "Wind's blowing east. If we sneak up, they won't swing. We're going to have to sweat them and pray."
"How many?" Ivan asked.
Lachlan eased the door shut, holding the handle up as if he were a burglar in a jewel theft scene. In the iron cold darkness, a duck could hear a tooth click half a mile away.
"Big raft," Lachlan said. "Maybe three or four hundred." His voice was a dying whisper.
He reached behind the seat and drew out the old leather shoulder shell bag his father had worn fifty years ago, jumping black mallard in the autumn flood shores of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin.
Then in the dark he handed Ivan a black hard box, but before Ivan could see what it was Lachlan stooped again behind the seat and in a single motion slung an oblong box over his shoulder, and Ivan heard it strike the duck call suspended against Lach's chest.
"Let's go. Come on! Come on!" Lach murmured, and Ivan could hear him panting, and could sense Lach was trying to hold his breath, as if he believed the birds six hundred yards away in the cold stillness could hear even the pulse beats of the two men.
And he's right, Ivan thought, you need to be a deer stalker, an old Sioux or Chippewa with buckskin feet to move up on shore-rafted ducks at this hour. Then Ivan heard the dog shifting and shivering again, almost as if the dog sensed the ducks through their conversation, as if Lach and himself gave off in their silence a special smell the dog knew meant that the hunters had spotted game. They passed under the cold remote stars, listening. Still no sound of wings, only silence like a substance beneath the high black dome of the world, filled with stars and the moon.
"Missy," Lachlan whispered and the dog's toenails scrabbled for a second on the floor behind the seats and then the yellow labrador surged over the seat and leaped out onto the frozen dirt, shaking her body and head. Then they saw the first pencil-thin line of light on the bottom rim of the sky, that signal for gun-spooky birds to start listening to life around them in the dawn. But still there was no sound of whistling wings.
The two men moved low like crouching Indians through the rutted lane of the ploughed field. It was still dark when the first straw stack loomed against the slant of the hill. Below them were the S-shaped flat around between them, two lakes, actually inlets off the main body of water, like huge lagoons, lay black and shining beneath the waning moonlight.
"We can't get out to the blind without spooking them," Lach said. "There's another straw stack on the other side of the pass. If somebody comes onto the east end of the lake behind us and spooks those ducks, they'll swing on us with the wind blowing our way."
"Want to use the walkie-talkies?"
"That's what I figured. Then neither of us will have to watch a full three hundred and sixty degrees," Lachlan said. "As soon as it's light I'll call birds behind you and you call any birds coming behind me. Mark on the clock."
"Let the first flock pass," Ivan said. "And see if they'll sit down. Just singles and doubles and triples. Maybe the whole raft will bring them down."
Ivan climbed up the frozen slippery strawstack and dug a fox hole on the east side. His camouflaged jacket, trousers and pants had a color scheme that fitted in beautifully with the weathered tan straw. He hammered a groove in the top of the stack with his forearm and laid his gun in it. He called Missy up and she snuggled down at his feet. He pushed two boxes of shells into the straw beside his right arm, opened one box and filled both pockets of his hunting jacket. He arranged the walkie-talkie directly in front of him, then pushed it down into the straw so he would have maximum swing, right and left. He could still lower his head quickly, press the button on the walkie-talkie and signal across the pass if birds were coming in behind George.
Joanie turned slowly in her bed. It was still dark beyond the cabin window. A muffled sound came to her, but she did not stir. Gradually the sound became louder and louder, and it woke her. She sat up in bed, listening. Then she realized it was the sound of two voices. A man and woman. What were a man and woman doing here? Frightened, she wondered if she should call out for Lachlan, then she remembered they were going hunting before dawn. What time was it? She lifted the luminous dial of her wrist watch. Oh, God, they had left by now. Who could be in the house? She felt her heart begin to pound. She longed to pull the covers over her head, and escape the sound of voices below in the kitchen. Maybe if she lay still the voices would go away. Maybe they were friends of Lach's whom he'd told he was coming up here hunting and they had come by. But at this hour?
She climbed quietly out of bed. Stealthily she moved down the hall to the head of the stairs. She could hear voices in the kitchen but she could not hear what they were saying. Slowly, carefully, she tiptoed down the stairs to the landing. To her right a closed door led down another stairway into the kitchen. Ahead the stairway descended to the first floor hall.
She slanted her head against the surface of the kitchen door, but still the voices below were muffled and strained. Joanie slowly twisted the doorknob, a fraction of an inch at a time. Finally a slit of light showed, and she could look down into the kitchen.
She froze with fright and shock!
A big Indian man and an Indian woman were seated at the kitchen table. Upon the table were two glasses of whiskey and a bottle of whiskey. The man was sitting with his fly open, grinning foolishly, his cock sticking straight up out of his pants, and across from him the woman was smiling. Her woolen skirt was open and her naked breasts lay against the edge of the table. The Indian woman giggled and then scowled.
"How do you know they're not here?" she asked. "No car," said the Indian. "How did you get in?"
"You seen me, I got the key. I suppose to watch. They don't come up till later. They'll think some kids broke in and stole the whiskey. We'll break a window when we leave, and I'll call Lach at home."
Staring at the upthrust rosy stalk of the Indian, Joanie felt the blood rushing to her face. She ought to call the police, but they would hear her, the phone was downstairs. There was nothing to do but stay here and see what they did so she could report it to Lach.
But what froze her eyes even more to the slit in the door was the sight of the Indian girl grinning, rising, pulling off her skirt and stockings and shoes and shirt until she sat naked in the chair with her legs spread, revealing the black curly patch of hair between her thighs. As she spread her legs more, all the time smiling, the curly black hair opened to the red lips of the mouth of her cunt.
But Joanie was even more stunned as the Indian rose and flung all his clothes on the floor, and stood there, dancing and grinning, his huge penis bobbing up and down, while he sang and shuffled toward the girl.
It was getting lighter now. Lachlan turned and saw the low line of daylight had widened above the big lake invisible beyond the ploughed ridge. Across the open water on the far side he knew there were duck blinds and marsh for duck boats. He loaded his gun.
Then he heard the walkie-talkie crackle and Ivan's voice: "Mark. Nine o'clock."
Almost at once Lachlan heard the whisper of wings. He crouched. He grabbed the gun with his right hand and swung, still crouched. He looked up under the rim of his hat. Then he sprang, straight up. It was light enough for the two ducks to see him, but against the strawstack they missed him. They were slanting, down, mallard, local birds, not Canadian blue bills. Their wings were beating and they weren't braking for the ponds ahead. They looked black against the dim sky, wings beating, straining.
Lachlan got his head low, right down on the gun stock, and swung the gun, holding well down and ahead of the second duck, without stopping his swing. He fired but did not wait to see if the bird collapsed. He heard the thud of the bird striking the frozen ground even while he twisted around at the waist, swinging the gun up to the right as the other mallard flared, climbing. He pulled and saw it fold and drop among the clods of upturned earth in the ploughed field.
Lachlan flipped out the empty shells and reloaded, thinking of all the doubles he had missed in his life, while his heart was swelling with the pride of knocking down a double. And then he remembered what he had done instinctively, out of what his father had told him years ago: Shoot at the far duck first, take the near duck second and you'll get a double. If you take the near duck first, unless you're quicker then hell, you'll never hit the far second one on the second shot.
Lachlan watched the dawn light the sky beyond the ridge. He looked across at Ivan through the glasses and saw only the brown dot of Ivan's hat above the straw stack. Ivan's face was blur. Then Lachlan heard the sound of gunfire out on old Lake Mille Lac. The hunters in the blinds beyond the lagoons would be putting up some birds and they might swing west and come back. Right over the straw stacks. He felt a breeze on his face. The wind was shifting. God, it was going to turn colder. Fine. More bills coming down from Canada. Then he saw them, two bunches, high, behind Ivan and Lach called:
"Mark. Twelve o'clock. Two bunches. One bunch at one o'clock."
But just as he heard Ivan fire, a pair came suddenly out of nowhere. He could hear their feathered, whistling wings. He swung and busted the drake. The bird hit the field like a rock, and while the bird was still falling he swung across at the long-necked mate, just starting to climb fast, and missed, and fired again and missed, and heard Ivan calling: "Nine o'clock now. Let them come in."
They were mallards, bunched, whispering past over to the right. With decoys Lachlan knew he could bring them in. Suddenly they stretched out. Then they lifted over the water and far-faint, he heard Ivan talking to the ducks, calling and calling them.
Come on, Lachlan thought; he longed so much it was like wanting sex, wanting those birds to come back swinging across the gun sight again. Come on, baby. Come on. Come on. Come in. Come in. Swing back.
He watched them slanting swinging, coming in nicely, smoothly, and then they saw the empty lagoon.
They were about to flare when two set their wings to brake, and then more braked and the whole flock plopped down. In a few minutes, there were flocks and bunches of threes and fours all over the sky. He was constantly on the walkie-talkie with Ivan. Lach could see them coming low over the hills behind him and he got as excited as if he were going to screw a new broad-twos, threes, singles, mallards, and blue bills. The first flock decoyed another flock and Lach could feel his heart pumping and hammering as if he were chasing a new broad. Then a big gang of mallard almost knocked his heart out of his chest; they came seesawing down, slanting directly across in front of Ivan. The mallard, he knew, was at once the most friendly and yet the toughest duck to decoy. The mallard will hang around all fall even after it's been shot at, but once shot at, Lach knew it was tougher than hell to decoy.
Then one of the ducks on the water called, and the ducks all rose, their wings clammering. Lach crouched and saw Ivan crouching and both bunches came in a long rising swing.
Lach heard a shot and saw Ivan had turned and was firing at ducks behind him, and then above the lake, the two bunches came toward Lach, head on. He heard their wings. He rose as they passed straight over him, and saw the long beautiful necks of the drakes, the big wings beating slowly, but knowing this meant speed in a duck that size compared to the fast-beating teal wing, which looks fast, but can't produce the speed with its small wings. Lach watched them all sharp and clear against the cold sky going away. He pulled up, covered the third bird and pulled and swung at the same time as far back over his head as he could swing the gun and he could see the whole beautiful winter plumage on the breasts and wings. Suddenly both collapsed as he fired and they hit the ground with their heads down and the sky was empty.
Gazing horrified and yet fascinated at the Indian's wobbling cock as he danced around the woman in the kitchen, Joanie kept telling herself it was sin to watch, just as it had been a sin to do what she had done with Isabelle last year in the convent. But she could feel the same edge of a thrill running through her, all the way up her legs now, as she had felt back at Villa Maria Academy when Father Meesah had warned all the girls at the sex lecture about wearing shoes that were too shiny because boys would use the shoes as little mirrors to look up your legs. The talk had frightened Joanie and yet thrilled her, and now as she watched the two Indians in the kitchen she longed to do what Isabelle her roommate had done to her a year ago, but she had been scared to masturbate ever since the priest in confession had warned her it was a sin. Now, as she watched the Indian peel back the foreskin on his cock and shake it at his girl, Joanie found her own hips twisting and rising toward her trembling hand. But just as she felt the dampness in her nylon panties, something within her conscience caused her hand to jerk away from touching herself where she knew it was a sin to touch. Lord, if only she and Lachlan were married and on their honeymoon here alone she would love him to death. She felt her cunt throbbing with the thought of lying naked in Lach's arms and at the same time the thought filled her with guilt. She felt the deep ache in her cunt and as she stood there the lips of her cunt opened and closed like a starving bird's mouth, seeking nourishment. It took all of her will power to keep herself from reaching under her skirt and rubbing her clitoris. But she could feel it getting bigger and bigger as the Indian's cock seemed to grow bigger in his stroking hands as he danced round and round. Joanie shuddered as she recalled all those summer days she had struggled to keep her eyes off Lachlan's crotch when they went to the beach. Every day she felt depressed with guilt. I must be a sex maniac, she told herself, knowing how often her eyes had kept straying to the bulge in Lach's swim trunks. She found herself staring at the Indian as he flung away his trousers and his big upthrust stalk pointed at the Indian girl's spread thighs. Looking down between the spread thighs, at the triangle of hair, Joanie couldn't stop herself from thinking about the time Isabelle had taught her how to fingerfuck back at school. It had all started at school in a dream, and it reminded her, too, of the way Ivan Swanson made her feel in the car on the way up here, always sneaking glances at her breasts and legs when Lachlan wasn't looking. Lach would kill Ivan if he knew Ivan was giving her the eye, just about taking her clothes off in the car with the evil, smirking, sliding glances he cast at her. But now, more than ever, the sight of the two Indians made her think about the night back at school a year ago, that time she had the dream.
The memory of the past and her gaze upon the Indian's cock seemed all mixed up together. Her in-sides felt like butter as she watched the Indian girl open her legs and show her wet pussy opening and closing like a little bird's mouth, seeking the big cock coming closer and closer.
Wanting to drag her eyes away but completely unable to move, Joanie heard herself moan as the Indian's massive cock touched the moist, soft center of the girl's vulva. She watched him move his hips forward and saw the hood of his cock peel back slowly, so slowly, until suddenly the shaft slid in up to the hilt. In the back of her mind Joanie saw herself lying in bed at school a year ago, and all the crazy wonderful things that had happened that night.
In her sleep at school the image of her fiance came to her, and she saw Lachlan Breedlove's body lying beside her and felt his hairy thighs pressing against her. Utterly against her will, she saw herself throwing her leg across Lachlan's body. Then she saw her hands reaching for his hairy chest, rubbing his breasts with both her hands, and before she could stop herself, feeling horrified that she could not stop her body from doing what it was doing, she began to suck Lachlan's tits. Then, as if in a wonderful dream come true, so blissful that momentarily all terror and guilt left her, she felt Lachlan grab her by the hips and lift her up in the air, until his face was right under her cunt. She wanted to scream with pleasure but she felt herself choking, his hand peeling open the lips of her cunt and her whole body shuddering and swooning with immense pleasure. Then, just as she felt his tongue going into her cunt, not quite understanding what he was doing, and thinking of Isabelle fingerfucking her back at school, she heard herself scream, for in the dream Lachlan seemed suddenly to vanish. Bearing down upon her, clasped firmly in the huge, hairy hand, was an enormous penis, glowing and throbbing in the darkness. It looked three feet long, all covered with hair, dripping with juice, its slit like the fierce mouth of a monster, all the while the huge hairy hand was pumping the foreskin, and the immense prick, like a huge missile moving in slow motion, descended. She felt her whole body shrinking away and yet contorting in a long shuddering swoon of passion. Then, as she watched with fascination, she felt her mouth and cunt opening wider and wider, as if they were on the same nerve length, and her hands lifting to embrace the gigantic prick. Just as the gigantic prick came within an inch of her gaping mouth, with her head rolling from side to side, to avoid it, she saw the hairy hand grab her cunt and felt her cunt clutch at all the fingers. Suddenly the huge cock spurted, covering her breasts and face with soft creamy liquid. In the dream she fainted. She woke and felt the damp pillow between her thighs, her mouth dry. She felt faint and sick. Then something moved beside her. Her roommate, Isabelle, had crawled into bed with her.
"I'm cold," Isabelle whispered, curving her body against Joanie's back. Then Isabelle shivered like a cold little girl, and cuddled against Joanie, closer and closer.
"Feel my hand," Isabelle said, and before Joanie could respond Isabelle slid one of her hands right over Joanie's shoulder, and somehow it slipped inside the top of Joanie's night dress and rested on her breast. "I'm frozen," Isabelle whispered.
Joanie was half asleep and she woke with a start, shocked to feel her nipple harden and even more shocked that she lay there, without moving, wanting the hand that rested on her nipple. She didn't say anything, and she lay there for a long time, pretending to be asleep, feeling shocked and disgusted with herself, yet unable to move, hoping she could go to sleep. Surely it was an accident that Isabelle was touching her breast. I'm not like this, Joanie told herself, feeling guilty and sinful, yet unable to move, choked with a secret excitement. She made a little noise, as if murmuring in her sleep, and found herself turning over from her side to lie on her back. As she turned she felt Isabelle's hand slide off her breast and down upon her belly. She felt her navel twitch and she heard the deep sound of Isabelle breathing. Isabelle was asleep; she wasn't even aware of what she was doing. For a long moment, Joanie felt ashamed that she had felt Isabelle had designs on her, and thinking these thoughts she began to doze.
In the midst of dreaming and dozing she felt Lachlan's hand on her thigh as she had so often dreamed and as she so often during the last year had confessed to the priest.
"Lachlan! Lachlan! Please. Please," she heard herself crying out in her sleep, moaning excitedly.
She had awakened suddenly, and realized that Isabelle's finger was in her cunt and that her legs were spread and that her thighs were wet and gooey and Isabelle was panting.
Joanie's clit was hot and hard and Isabelle's finger was wonderful, but Joanie still was so ashamed of the pleasure she felt she didn't dare move. She just lay there pretending to be asleep.
She choked back a cry escaping her gaping mouth. Suddenly she knew something was going to happen to her that had never happened before. She didn't know what it was, but it was sheer heaven. Shame weighted her body, but it couldn't stop the fantastic oozing warmth spreading up her thighs, and suddenly she screamed and twisted and caught Isabelle in an embrace.
"More, more, more," she cried, and suddenly the orgasm was over, an she had never felt so ashamed in her life. She wanted to crawl away where nobody would ever see her again.
She whirled away from Isabelle. Suddenly the door opened and a light shone upon them. Isabelle sprang from her bed. Caught in the glare of the flashlight beam, her naked body flashed against the darkness.
"What are you going doing?" Sister Cecil's harsh voice screamed. Sister Cecil was a tall, austere woman with a long face and little mustache, faintly blond.
She flung the covers off Joanie, and thrust the beam of the flashlight down upon Joanie's hand, clutching her vagina.
"You foul girl!" Sister Cecil screamed, flinging the covers on the floor.
"I didn't do it," Joanie pleaded. "I didn't! I didn't!"
"Take your hand away!"
Joanie pulled her nightdress down over her body. "She did it. She did it," Joanie pleaded pointing at Isabelle.
The nun stood in the doorway, flashing the light over the room.
"Get in your beds," she ordered. "I'll be over here in the hall, listening. If I hear anything more tonight, I'll call Mother Superior. I want you in my office tomorrow at noon."
Joanie lay there tense, listening, long after Sister Cecil closed the door. Surely Sister Cecil couldn't stand out in the hall all night.
Joanie felt overwhelmed with guilt and shame. How could I have enjoyed something so foul? she asked herself over and over again.
Joanie was asleep about an hour when she felt a strange sensation between her thighs and she woke to find Isabelle beside her in bed.
"Sister Cecil isn't fooling anybody, honey," Isabelle said. "How's that? Feel good? I bet she's outside the door right now, getting her kicks. Let her listen."
"Don't do that. Stop."
"It's good, isn't it?"
"Please, Isabelle, please stop. I don't want to."
"She won't bother us."
"We'll be kicked out of school."
"No way, baby. No way. I've got her spotted."
"Oh, God, please don't. Please."
"Say you want it. Go on. Say it. Say it."
"No. No. No," Joanie gasped, almost spinning on Isabelle's finger.
"God, honey, you've got a sweet, tight hole." Isabelle went on rubbing Joanie's spasming clitoris, then shoved two fingers of her left hand into her cunt, and stroked Joanie's clit with her other hand.
Joanie stifled a scream and felt her body rear back against the two fingers, feeling herself going into another orgasmic spin. Now she could no longer help herself. Low moans broke from her lips and she thrashed and writhed beneath Isabelle's hands.
At noon she had been terrified, waiting outside Sister Cecil's office. What would happen when she had to tell all of this in confession? How could she ever face her parents again? What would they say when they heard she had been kicked out of school.
How could she ever hold out against Isabelle again? I must go to confession and tell the priest, she thought as Isabelle came out of Sister Cecil's office and shut the door.
Joanie took a step toward the door and reached for the knob. Smiling out of some secret reserve of laughter, Isabelle caught Joan's wrist and removed her hand from the doorknob.
"Come on," she whispered, putting one finger to her lips. They went back to their room, Isabelle shut the door.
"I've got it all straightened out," said Isabelle. "I told her it was my fault. You had nothing to do with it."
"I've got to go to confession."
"Not here. No listen, and listen carefully. Everything is going to be okay. She's moving me out of your room. You're not to go to confession here at school. After graduation at home, okay?"
"I can't stand it. I can't go on living with what happened."
"Just keep your mouth shut and you'll graduate."
"Why haven't you been kicked out of school?"
Isabelle smiled. Her lips curved slowly, her eyes were innocent and merry. "Sister Cecil's going to give me another chance."
"Where are you going to room?"
"Next to Sister Cecil's room." Isabelle smirked. "She wants to keep an eye on me."
Isabelle sat slowly on the bed beside Joanie. Suddenly she grasped Joanie and brought her head down upon Joan's breast. Almost at once Joanie felt weak, filled with longing, but she was determined never again to do what she did last night.
"Stop it, you crazy fool," she said, her voice cold and harsh.
Isabelle flung her back on the bed, and with amazing celerity suddenly knelt on the floor, and with a single gesture of her arms, separated Joanie's legs and darted her head between her thighs. A thrill shot through Joanie as Isabelle's hot tongue licked up her thigh, but she struggled against it. She struck out with both hands and fought herself into a sitting position only to discover Isabelle's head was all the way up her thighs and her lips were kissing Joanie's cunt. Isabelle's head was invisible beneath Joanie's skirt.
Isabelle's arms were strong. They clutched Joanie's buttocks while Isabelle's lips pressed firmly against the lips of the cunt inside Joanie's silk panties. The pressure of Isabelle's arms kept Joanie from spreading her legs and springing upward. But suddenly she pushed off the bed with both hands and sprang straight up onto Isabelle shoulders.
She felt Isabelle's teeth gnawing at her panties and she slammed both fists hard into Isabelle's breast. Isabelle screamed and leaped back and Joanie fell on the floor. Almost at once she was on her feet and in a single whirling leap she was at the door, and a second later she was free.
She ran out of the dormitory, across the campus, into the woods. She stayed there until sundown.
When it was dark she returned to her room. On the desk was a note, a key to the door. The note was from Sister Cecil, instructing her to keep her door locked the rest of the spring term.
Joanie's thoughts shifted suddenly and she was thinking again of the argument she'd had with Lach.
Why did Lachlan have to bring Ivan Swanson along? Here was Lachlan Breedlove, scion of one of the wealthiest flour-milling families in Minneapolis, and he chose to hunt and play tennis with a milkman. And Swanson was such a crude person, always smirking and making sly remarks, hinting about sex, but never really saying anything directly.
"How can you stand his company?" she had asked Lachlan.
Lachlan laughed. "You've got to know Ivan to love him."
"To love him?"
Lachlan roared. "I was only kidding. Listen, his father was our gardener for years. I grew up with Ivan. He's one hell of a fine tennis player and a terrific hunter."
"My God, why don't you play golf with him?"
Lachlan grinned. "He doesn't belong to Woodhill Country Club."
"Hardly," Joanie had said bitterly, and then she found herself thinking of Ivan's big, crude Viking body, his tree-trunk legs in tennis shorts, his full lips, and his smirking, teasing eyes. She wondered why Ivan had never married, but she hated the thought of spending a whole weekend with him and his disgusting sidelong glances and leering eyes.
She mustn't think like this if she were going to be pure when she married Lachlan, but how would she ever tell him about Isabelle? She wasn't pure. Isabelle had fouled her body. It was terrible having to live with this thought, but she'd never done it with a man, and she wouldn't until her honeymoon night with Lachlan. She thought again about Ivan, her heart hammering with revulsion and something else, the memory of those big legs in tennis shorts, and she found her mind dreaming again, big legs wrapped around her body. Oh, God, please help me. I must stop thinking like this. That night at school she had climbed out of bed and knelt on the floor and prayed and prayed for pure thoughts.
And tonight, a year later, she was still having the same inner struggle. Should she cry out at the Indians or should she watch? She felt at once revolted and fascinated and no matter how much she told herself to stop peeking through the partially opened door she could not stop herself.
She wondered what it felt like to have all the long shaft of that cock inside her the way it had vanished into the girl on the kitchen floor. She saw the Indian rear up, lifting the girl to him, with both hands beneath her waist while his balls flopped back and forth as he knelt above her, pulling her up and down. Joanie's eyes bulged as the Indian girl wiggled her ass, arching her back higher and higher to meet the steady stroking of the massive penis. Joanie felt it was absolutely filthy to stay and watch, and these people were filthy, but she felt her own vagina tightening and writhing, and her finger involuntarily straying toward her thighs. She couldn't move. Perspiration beaded her lips. She felt sinfully moist between her legs but she could not tear her gaze away from the Indian's naked rump moving faster and faster. Joanie stifled a cry in her throat.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ivan looked toward Lachlan, across a couple of hundred yards of ploughed field. It looked as if the hunting was finished for the morning. Ivan lit a cigarette, grinning to himself, thinking about Joanie back at the cabin. He had to laugh at Lachlan, thinking Joanie was a virgin. Haha. Fat chance. That little chick was a hot cunt if there ever was one. Ivan could tell. You only had to think about the way she acted in the car on the way up when Lachlan had stopped in a gas station to fill up the tank and use the men's room. Ivan laughed to himself again when he thought how he had leaned against the front seat, resting his chin on top of the seat just behind her head, so that when he spoke and she had turned around, their faces were only a few inches apart.
"So you and Lach are going to get married?" he asked, grinning, watching her face color, looking steadily into her eyes, knowing she knew what he was thinking about, what a good fuck she'd probably make.
For now in his mind he saw her wearing the dildo, her body glistening with perspiration, his spine snapping in convulsive arches as she pressed the dildo deeper and deeper inside his anus. He could see himself now beneath her, his cock and balls getting harder and harder as she rammed it home, her tits swaying back and forth across the skin of his back, her fingers buried in his armpits, her lips on his ears and jaws, her cunt pressing the dildo in and in until his cock rose flat and hard against his belly, waiting for her hand to reach underneath to squeeze out the hot, sharp spurts of come against his wet belly. Oh, he'd like to show this little phony. He'd bet anything she'd be willing to learn.
"That's right," she said, turning away, looking straight ahead, through the windshield.
"He's a good person," Ivan said. "My old man worked for his old man. Good folks," he touched her shoulder. He felt her stiffen, but she didn't draw away.
His thoughts about her ceased now as he heard Lach's voice on the walkie-talkie. The sun was up dim, and there were some scudding clouds. Lach said he'd knocked down a couple of pin tails. Ivan sent Missy out for the dead ducks. The sky was empty. Ivan started thinking about Joanie again, her nice tits and legs.
In the car she hadn't pulled her shoulder away, Ivan remembered, still feeling the soft curve of her shoulder, still talking to her, pretending he didn't know his hand was there, while she pretended the same thing. One thing he was sure. She wasn't afraid of him, and maybe the way she lowered her eyes, with some secret thoughts just half showing from beneath her lids as he drew his hand away from her shoulder, meant one thing. She was interested. She'd been screwed before, Ivan was sure, and she wasn't kidding anybody. Not even when she tried to snub him as she saw Lach coming out of the service station, walking toward the car across the pavement.
"Get your hand off me!" she hissed.
"Who are you kidding, baby?"
"I'll tell him."
"Tell him what?"
"You made a pass at me."
Ivan laughed softly.
"You wish somebody would made a pass at you."
"Shut up!" she hissed. Lach was about fifteen feet from the car then. Ivan leaned slowly back, crossed his hands on his stomach, and just before Lach reached the front of the station wagon, Ivan whispered, "You know what you need, baby. And I've got it."
Now in the straw stack, looking out in the good light, Ivan saw the birds were rafted up in the middle of the big lake. But he felt there was something wrong with the weather. Somehow it just didn't feel right. It was duck weather, cold and blowing enough to make the birds move, but nothing was moving. He walked back to the car and dug out the thermos of hot coffee laced with brandy. He sat in the front seat and slowly sipped the hot drink, feeling the blood moving warm now in his veins, his guts warming, too, and for a long moment his thoughts drifted as he felt his guts and whole body warming, his mind slowly dreaming about canvasback ducks. They were almost all gone, and in a few years you probaby couldn't shoot them anymore, and he'd be willing to bet that in ten years all the goddamn farmers who had tilled and drained the land to plant more crops, all those bastards, he felt, in ten years would be asking the federal government for grants to replant pasture land.
And sure as hell after they did it, the bastards who drained the water table off the land and had signs Antiques For Sale, would be advertising: Genuine Pasture Real Cows And Horses $1.00 Bring the Kids To See A Real Old-Fashioned Farm.
He looked up at the sky. It had a strange color, a November color, dead and gray. He opened the door and trudged up through the ploughed rufts, frozen in big chunks of earth. He listened to the wind. The wind would blow, then suddenly cease, and start blowing again. But it was getting colder every minute.
"Come on, you bastards," he said aloud to the empty sky. "Fly, babies, fly." He stared at the gray sky, the gray water, the gray fields. Damn it, the shoot seemed finised for the day, and yet something in the air told him the world around him was different than ever before at this time of year. For a fraction of a second he felt frightened because he couldn't figure out why the atmosphere should be this cold so suddenly this time of year.
Suddenly he started thinking about Joanie. Why, that phony little jerk, he thought, laughing coarsely to himself, thinking how he'd like to get her so worked up he could get her to put on the dildo and ram it home so she could get hers. That'd take the snippy look off her big society face. Whothe hell did she think she was? Once you rammed the old rammer to them, they were all sisters under the skin. All they needed was a taste of prick, and the duchess was a bigger whore than the lowliest female dishwasher. All they had were their cunts. Them poor bitches and liberation. Oly a big cock liberated them. He noted with surprise his cock was hardening, thinking about it.
Suddenly the wind hit him so hard across the face he heard the dog howl. He jerked his head down because the wind howled against his cheeks, burning his skin.
"Jesus," he yelled on the walkie-talkie. "What cooks?"
Then just before Lach turned off his walkie-talkie, with his voice fading, Ivan heard the old call; Lach on the duck call, giving the chuckling talk, and pin tails came slanting against the sky. Only to flare suddenly. Not even a glance down. Just sixty-degree climb, showing they smelled danger. Ivan cursed. Some damn jump shooter had probably scared them away, sloshing around the shore. Yet this might scare the rafted birds up off the open water.
Suddenly in the wind he felt snow on his face, like quick frightening sparks blown upon his skin from a cigarette.
He looked north and west and saw the snow blowing thinly but steady and the wind blowing stronger and saw the water rippling in the ponds and smelled what he knew now was strange at this time-the first smell of arctic coldness, the blasts of November. The whole country would be frozen up by morning! This could knock the hell out of the pheasant and prairie chicking hunting if it hit South Dakota.
Then the walkie-talkie crackled: "Ivan, listen! I can't believe it. Listen!"
Ivan slanted his head against the wind. At first there was no sound save the rising wind. Then, through the wind, the sound came to him, the old, unmistakable sound-a grabbling, metallic chronk, chronk, chronk-from an immense distance, as if the sound were coming from another world, far-faint, another planet, a steady, almost plaintive cry, ghostly, phantom-like. And then it receded, faded, died away into the wind.
He squatted, listening. There was no sound except the wind raging and roaring, the snow still thin, but swirling, and then into the vortex of the whirling snow a new sound rose steadily ... torock, torock, torock, guttural and rolling ... torock ... torock.
"Lach!" Ivan yelled into the walkie-talkie. "Cana-das. Can you see them?"
"I hear them," Lach said slowly. "Can't see them."
The sound came again, only closer, more rapid, changing to car-r-rup, r-r-rup, r-r-rup ... r-r-ru-p ... r-r-rup.
Ivan felt his heart jump and hammer and his whole body leap with excitement. My God, the geese couldn't be down this early. But the sounds were there, and he knew how the geese would come, ordinarily in loose wedges, but sometimes in broken groups and lines. They would look slow. Geese always do, he knew, but they're coming a lot faster than they appear to be moving. He knew how to get their motion. The old machine gunner method. He made a circle out of right thumb and forefinger. Just like a ring and bead sight on a machine gun. He lifted the circle of his finger to the sky and moved it across the sky. He would place the first bird on the rim of his finger bead sight, and then let the bird pass through, in that way check the speed, drift and apparent motion of the bird, all at the same time. Suddenly they came into sight, between the hills to Ivan's right. They appeared to be flying slowly as he checked their direction through the circle formed by his two fingers. They were low, looking for a place to land. He felt his heart suddenly hammering with excitement. Beautiful long wedges of light-breasted birds made him think again of Joanie, and he felt a strange fire in his loins, and a strange mixed thrill of sex and eagerness to shoot the birds. He listened to their gabbing, grunting notes and watched their shapes.
"Lach, they're going to pass right between us. They're closer to you, but they're helluva long way out. Take the first crack at them," Ivan called through the walkie-talkie.
Ivan knew that all he had was No. 4 shot and he ought to have No. 2 if the birds weren't going to come closer, and they better be damn close if he were going to nail them with No. 4 shot.
But the geese were still low, talking to each other, gabbling excitedly as if arguing about where to land. Ivan saw they would pass right between the two straw stacks-but how to reach them? Too far. Too far. Unless they veered toward one straw stack.
Then again, materializing as if by magic, another giant wedge was suddenly straight out in front of Ivan, not much higher than the straw stack. He wanted to count them, but there wasn't time. On they came, growing larger every second, turning their heads slightly from side to side. When they were level with the top of the straw stack, they turned slightly toward Lach. Ivan saw Lach stand up in the straw stack blind, swinging his gun, and he let them have it. Nothing folded against the sky. The geese flared swiftly, breaking right and left, seeming to hand in mid-air for a long instant, then coagulated in front and straight of Ivan. He swung up and fired into them and one came tumbling down. He fired again, and as the broken flock passed over and behind him, one goose fluttered, tumbled, righted himself, and then suddenly collapsed and thudded against the ground. Ivan shouted at the dog because Lach was shouting on the walkie-talkie that he had a cripple down and Ivan saw the bird limping and running on one leg through the frozen ploughed ruts of turned earth. He waved Missy across.
Suddenly he heard the rush of more wings. The snow was thick now, blowing in swirls, but another string came over the hill and then a flock of mallards. In a few minutes, more and more flocks, calling and calling, flock after flock, in the darkening sky. Ivan could hear them everywhere, snow geese, Hutchins, honkers, above the sound of the wind, high and crying, and the rush of their wings, zipping past, high and low. Then suddenly the sun broke through the cloud, shining crazily through the snow. Against the dazzling light Ivan saw them all, up high, the northern flight going through early, on and on against the blinding snow, flock after flock, legions of beating wings, thronging the wilderness sky, vast wedges, and long undulating lines of birds, perhaps a hundred thousand, heading south. In half an hour the sky was empty and they had shot their limit. The snow had ceased and the sun was gone.
"How do you like these straw stack birds?" Lach grinned.
Ivan shook his head in disbelief. No boat. No full blind, No decoys. And they'd scored. He grinned.
"Where the hell are all the blue bills?" he said, smiling, still panting with excitement, thinking suddenly again about Joanie, telling himself not to. You'll get yourself in trouble. But he couldn't stop telling himself he'd like to wipe that snooty smile off her face with the biggest screw in the world. He wondered how the hell he could get her so hot she'd go for the dildo with him. He laughed suddenly to himself. That would be something.
"What's so funny?" Lach said.
"I was just thinking."
"What?"
"We came up here for blue bills and we got geese."
"There are plenty of grouse in the woods."
"I'll bet the woodcock are gone with this snow," said Ivan.
"Pretty dumb woodcock if they're not."
"How about trying the cabin over in Pine County?" Ivan asked. He was referring to a big log house about fifty miles east in cut-over pine forests that had excellent swampy woodcock cover in addition to forests of conifer and hardwood which served as excellent grouse cover, so that in a ten-mile-square area, you could hunt two birds in different cover. The grouse sometimes were in woodcock cover, but the woodcock was seldom, if ever, found in grouse cover.
They stood looking at each other, smiling, and for an instant Ivan felt a pang of conscience about wanting to screw Joanie, but when he remembered her contemptuous snooty attitude toward him he longed again to screw her into abject humiliation. And again, he was surprised by the jerking of his cock.
"Hell, we might even get some sharp-tail hunting, too," Lach said, referring to the grassy hills north of the grouse cabin which were good sharp-tail habitat.
CHAPTER FIVE
No, no, Joanie was telling herself, lying alone on her bed back in the hunting lodge, trying to prevent herself from thinking again about watching the Indian couple screw. They had left the hunting lodge an hour ago but she couldn't put the memory of that scene out of her mind.
The joyful screeching of the woman as she twisted her hips in the hands of the big Indian where they lay squirming on the kitchen floor. It all was printed indelibly on Joanie's brain, stamped inside her head like a photographic print. The woman's head flopping from side to side while she crooned and moaned and groaned, the big Indian, his eyes glaring down her hard-nippled breasts, his upper lip pulled back over his bared teeth like a wild animal, his blood choked with raw lust. It was horrible to think about it. It was sinful. She mustn't remember it, but the more Joanie told herself this the more guilty she felt for having watched them.
She tentatively slid her hand down her stomach.
She stopped her hand, longing to finger the top of her vulva. But she mustn't. It would make her as vile as that couple. It would make her feel as terrible as she felt after sleeping with Isabelle. She didn't want to feel that guilt and remorse again. She must never feel that again, yet a tremor shook her body as her finger, as if without her knowledge, touched the opening of her vulva.
I mustn't. I mustn't. I mustn't.
Ah, but it felt so good, so sweet and good, even better than what she had been doing the last hour, half asleep with a pillow clasped between her legs, squeezing it, telling herself she was asleep and it was all a dream, but knowing she was lying to herself.
She stared into the darkness of her closed eyelids and saw the huge, hairy prick of the Indian thrusting in and out. She thought how dreadful she was to think about having a big, hairy prick inside her. Swamped with guilt, she found herself squeezing the pillow harder and harder between her thighs until she began to pump her slit against the pillow. Sweet waves of passion throbbed deeper and deeper inside her. She felt her eyeballs rolling inside her skull. Her finger touched her vulva while she tried to keep from screaming the words that were rising inside her skull like bubbles: "I'm going to do it to myself!" She was pumping faster now against her finger ... not even aware that her gaped mouth was opening and closing upon her finger, her lips sucking and opening and closing upon the edge of the pillow. Saliva slid across the edge of her lips. Then she screamed with ecstasy. She rubbed her clitoris faster and faster. It was wonderful! Her tits throbbed and she caught and grasped and twisted and kneaded one throbbing nipple.
Then she longed so much to put her fingers straight inside her moist cunt she couldn't control herself any longer, no matter how strongly a part of her mind told her she was rotten and sinful. "No. No. I mustn't!" she sobbed aloud.
Her slit throbbed wetly. She drew her hands away, horrified that she had considered masturbating. Then she could no longer stop herself. She thrust her finger inside her slit and jabbed it faster and faster in the wet, juicy cunt, moaning and crying out with joy and relief, feeling the ecstasy rising higher and higher inside her slit, her body trembling and shaking, thrusting and writhing faster and faster. Suddenly a thousand stars seemed to explode behind her closed eyes and she screamed, feeling her insides open wider and wider and wider. She felt herself losing her body and mind. She fainted. She woke from a deep sleep, and then she recalled what had happened she began to cry. "Oh, God," she sobbed, "why did I watch?" Her body felt laden with remorse. Then she heard the car stop in front and the sound of Ivan and Lach mounting the steps and crossing the porch. They were laughing and talking loud.
She listened to them come into the kitchen, open the refrigerator.
"Joanie?" Lach called. She dried her eyes and came downstairs into the kitchen. Upon the kitchen floor, covered with newspapers, lay a pile of ducks and geese.
"Oh, hell," Ivan was saying, "we can clean them ourselves, if we had some paraffin."
"Let's take them into town tonight to the locker plant," said Lach.
"I'll flip you for the pleasure," Ivan said. He drew out a quarter. "Heads," he said, and tossed the coin in the air and let it fall on the floor.
"Ha," Lach grinned, kneeling above the coin. "You lost, old buddy." Lach turned toward Joanie. "Want to ride into town?" he asked.
"Why don't you just hang the birds outside?" she said. "It's going to be cold enough tonight. It's cold now." She glanced uneasily at Ivan, who was staring straight at her tits and grinning. Lach was at the sink, with his back, turned, pouring tap water into three glasses of bourbon.
"We could get a warm wind," Lach said without turning. "This is crazy weather this time of year. It's bound to thaw all of a sudden. No, I'd just as soon take them into town, get everything cleaned and frozen."
Ivan didn't say anything. He was removing his shooting jacket, still laden with shells in the side pockets, and he hung it over his gun leaning against the wall.
"Let's go, Joanie," Lach said. Joanie hesitated. She must go. She mustn't stay here alone with Ivan, and yet she felt herself irresistibly drawn to remain alone in the cabin with Ivan, as if she might test herself to resist any sexual taunts and challenges he might offer, almost as if she were doing penance for what she had watched by facing temptation in the form of Ivan. She would stay, she decided, and prove to herself that no matter what Ivan did she would not give into temptation as she had given in today to masturbating. She mustn't touch herself. She must fight every temptation until she was married.
Yes, she would stay and let Ivan try to tempt her.
And she would resist him.
She would prove to herself she was still pure.
"I'll get dinner ready," she told Lach, looking straight past him into Ivan's eyes. Her gaze was harsh and cold, and Ivan grinned right back at her over Lach's shoulder.
"Oh, come on," said Lach. "It'll only take a couple minutes to fix the steaks when we get back."
The sun was setting through the trees beyond the big kitchen window, gold and pink, the rim of the earth rising darkly out of the lake, the air hushed and still over the snowy land.
"It's so pretty here," she said. "Please. I want to stay."
"Okay, okay," Lach said in a cross voice. "Give me a hand with these birds, Ivan."
A few minutes later, when Ivan returned from the car, he found Joanie sitting at the kitchen table. He didn't say anything until he heard the sound of Lach's car fading away in the stillness.
In the silence his voice sounded low and ominous, though actually it was rather soft and quiet: "Care for a drink, Joanie?"
She appeared not to hear him. She sat with her chin perched in her hands cupped under her jaw, both elbows on the table, her eyes steady and dard, staring out at the dying sunlight, the light rising darkly through the stark barren trees surrounding the cabin.
Ivan didn't ask again. He half-filled a glass with whiskey and sloshed water into it from the tap. The little bitch, thinking she could ignore him. Well, we'll see, he told himself, sipping the almost straight whiskey, feeling the warm glow of the booze running through his gut and chest.
He poured whiskey into another glass, slowly filled it with water.
He walked across the kitchen and reached over her shoulder and set the glass down on the table.
Then he sat down at the other end of the table and looked out at the sunset. He sipped his drink and, without turning his head toward her, he spoke across the rim of the glass.
"Why didn't you go with him?" His voice was flat, quite noncommittal.
At first she didn't answer, didn't even appear to hear him. She brushed a strand of hair away from over her eyes, wet her lower lip with her tongue.
"I didn't want to," she said, still not looking at him.
"Ha ha," Ivan laughed harshly. "You are stupid," she said. She still hadn't looked at him. "Do you think I stayed here to be with you?" Ivan guffawed.
She picked up her glass and took a long drink.
"Beats the hell out of me," he said. "I didn't know you were such a big nature lover."
"Does there have to be a reason for everything?"
"No, but there usually is. What the hell is eating you, baby?"
Now she turned and looked at him, her gaze icy and still. "Would you mind, please, going in the other room?"
He laughed, and did not move. "Oh, dreamy girl wants to be all alone with her big dreamy sunset?"
"Go in the other room, if you don't mind."
She looked away, staring again out the window.
He put his face down flat on the table, and inched forward a little, so that he was looking up at her jaw, his face almost directly below her hands.
"Well, well, Miss Snooty Ass. Tell me, do you think your crap is whipped cream or something?" His voice rose. "What the hell do you think makes you so special?"
"I don't have to think about it. I know."
"Funny. Funny."
"God in heaven only knows," she said, "why Lach associates with you."
"Baby, you got a lot to learn about Lach."
"Don't try to teach me."
"Funny. Funny." Ivan guffawed. "I could probably teach you plenty." Ivan lifted his head, sat erect.
He stared at her across the table. Ivan's eyes glowed, the pale irises appearing for an instant to spin on the pupils like tiny wheels. His lip lifted a little. Then he sighed, expelling his breath. He looked at her breasts, as if he could see the pink and ripe nipples through the cloth of her dress. His eyes glowed with a hungry fire. He slowly rubbed his thigh, rocking a little from side to side. He watched her run her tongue along her lips, and through her dress he could feel her flesh, smooth and swift, swelling with wild voluptuousness over which she didn't have any control. He thought about the little pink nipples of her tits.
"Joanie," he hissed, his voice a harsh whisper. Then he reached across the table and touched her breasts. She sprang up, spilling her drink, her eyes wild and hot. She caught the back of her chair and leaned against it, glaring down at him.
"Don't you touch me!" she said. "Don't you dare!"
Ivan didn't appear to move, but his hand shot out, gripping her thigh, and she sprang back, upsetting the chair.
She stood in the center of the room, quite motionless, her mouth open a little. Ivan just sat there, looking at her. Then he looked past her, and she had the feeling she ought to look behind her. Then his eyes came back to her again, and she still could not move.
"Didn't I tell you I'd tell him if you bother me?"
"I wasn't bothering you," Ivan said. "I was just looking at you. You couldn't prove anything. Besides, why did you stay, if you didn't want to be bothered?"
"You'll find out. Just try something," she said. "Just try and you'll find out."
"I can wait."
Then the room seemed to fill slowly with silence, as if silence were a substance and he was watching her through it. It was rising all around them like water, like something you could touch and feel. It was as though sound and silence were inverted. She seemed to hear the silence, even above the sound of their breathing, and then she saw him rise, moving toward her. She felt him coming through the silence as if his body were parting the feeling of silence all around her, his eyes glowing with a groping, hungry fire. And she began to tell herself, I mustn't let him, I mustn't let him. But she did not move. She was saying it to herself silently inside her head.
"I won't let you!" she screamed at him, his eyes glowing, growing bigger and bigger as he walked steadily toward her. "I won't let you!" she screamed, pasting her hand over her mouth even as she screamed, as if to choke the words back down her throat, feeling the silence breaking all around her until she felt Ivan's hands clutching her shoulders. "You won't! You won't!" she screamed.
Ivan took her wrists and drew them steadily apart, away from her breasts. Slowly and steadily he carried her hands around behind her and held them in one of his. With the other hand he unbuttoned her cardigan sweater. The brassiere was white, freshly laundered, and her breasts swelled over the top.
"Well," he said. "Dressed for hunting."
"Go on," she said. "Lach will kill you."
He let the sweater fall. He released her hands and she drew the sweater together and buttoned it. With his hand on her shoulder he began to push her toward the bedroom dooorway. "Go on," he said. Her shoulder gave. But only her torso turned, her hips and head still facing him. He reached swiftly and gathered up the front of her sweater in one hand. He began to shake her. Holding her up by the gathered wad of her sweater he shook her, her body trembling, her shoulders and thighs shuddering with fear and yet with a strange excitement.
"You snooty fool!" he said. "You fool!"
His eyes seemed to widen, to turn black with fury. Ivan shoved her away. She sank back and almost at once he caught her and began to shake her again. "Get in there," he said. Joanie did not move. Ivan swept his other arm under Joanie's knees. She felt herself swooping and then she was lying on the bed, with Ivan looking down at her, and an acute surge came over her, like her blood was too hot all of a sudden, getting hotter and hotter, like wild music rising and rising inside her.
"I mustn't," she whispered. "I mustn't!"
Ivan's soft, cold eyes seemed to touch her breasts. She felt her nipples hardening beneath his gaze.
She felt as if her body were changing and she had no control over it. J mustn't. I mustn't. But her body felt strange, feline, sending out waves of excitement, penetrating all the pores of Ivan's body. She felt something turning over and over inside her. A feeling of heat and hysteria permeated her flesh. I mustn't. I mustn't.
She pressed her thighs together. Inside her skull she felt stars blooming like huge soft flowers, little explosions shaped with tiny lights through which she saw Ivan's glowing eyes descending.
She could hear the blood in her veins, the little muscles at the corners of her eyes cracking faintly wider and wider, and she could feel her nostrils going alternately cool and warm. The room was dark now but she could feel the movement in it. She began to pray she might turn into a boy or that she might fall asleep. Ivan did not move.
Ivan just stood leaning over her, staring with his glowing eyes. She felt her lips getting ready to scream while a part of her mind wanted to tell him to take her, take her, take her.
Then in the dark something touched her. His hand, nasty and cold, fiddling around under her skirt, feeling up her naked legs. Then it went away and something ice cold touched her thighs and her skin started jumping away from it, but she could not seem to move her body. It was as if she were not feeling it herself, only her skin could feel it, only her skin knew what it was going to do next, and her skin went on jerking ahead of whatever she felt or thought.
Then her insides started to bubble and she felt the bed making a noise. She thought she heard him laughing, but she wasn't sure because all the time his tongue was going inside the top of her slit and she couldn't move. She kept telling herself she would change into a boy after it was all over so it wouldn't matter. She didn't seem to be breathing. She felt she hadn't breathed since his tongue had touched her. She wondered if maybe she was dead. Yes, that was it. She was dead. She began to cry because she had died, and now it didn't matter because her body was dead, and Ivan could do anything to it he wanted to. Yet she could feel her armpits going cold and hot and cold and hot. She began to laugh, listening to the plopping sound between her legs, like somebody was blowing a balloon wrong-side outward. Her slit felt cold and she told herself nothing was happening to her. She lay still, feeling she was going to laugh, but feeling she must not laugh at the jerking of her flesh. She told herself if she went to sleep it wouldn't count, nothing would count, because she wouldn't know about it, and that would make Ivan surprised and mad when he discovered she was asleep. That would show him. No matter what he did it really didn't matter. He thought he was getting to her but she could stop it by going to sleep and then that would cancel it all out, just as if nothing had happened. That would really make him mad. And she would do it before her flesh stopped jerking and her body started answering his tongue. Then all of a sudden she went to sleep. She couldn't remember when, only a feeling of her body suddenly slanting upward into a darkness shredded with flickering lights like living fire. She felt herself swinging lazily in nothingness. From far away she could hear a plopping sound between her legs.
She didn't wake up until half an hour later. Ivan was sitting beside her on the bed. She laughed at him, rubbing her eyes.
"Go on," she said, laughing at him. "You didn't do it. You can't do it. You didn't do anything, did you? You're not even a man."
She began to giggle. He stood up, looked down at her coldly. His eyes were bright. He looked mad.
Again she had the terrible feeling of the silence in the room turning to a substance and Ivan's body moving through it, and her body surrounded by it.
"Where's Lach?" she asked, feeling her body slowly shrinking down into the bed. Ivan didn't answer. He just stood over the bed, looking down at her.
She drew the covers up to her chin, watching him. He licked his lips, looking down at her. Suddenly, as if she had no control over it, her flesh began to jerk again. She felt her body writhing slowly while she seemed to feel herself cringing away from her writhing body which she could not control. She felt herself cringing more and more in upon herself. She felt like a fly pinned against the wall, utterly helpless and isolated, wanting to fly, but only able to squirm and squirm upon the pin that held her.
She looked down at her loins writhing and writhing and she told herself to stop, but her body would not listen. She felt her lips cracking in a broken grin, her jaws rigid, her grin a stiff grimace as if she were begging him to free her with her porcelain smile.
When he lifted the covers and touched her naked thighs and put his fingers on the top of her slit she began to whimper.
"No, no, please," she whispered. "No, no, just don't put it in me, please ... don't put it in me!"
Ivan flung the covers aside. She lay motionless. She looked hypnotized; her white smooth flesh beneath the hairy slit between her loins cringed rearward, shaking like a small frightened animal suddenly confronted by an enormous enemy. When Ivan lifted his hand she thought he-was going to hit her. Then, in that second as she saw his face, she was no longer afraid. He was powerless.
His face began to twitch and jerk as if he were about to cry. He began to whimper like a child. He lifted the bottom of her skirt. She grabbed his wrists and felt her body began to toss from side to side. She wanted to scream but her mouth would not open. She felt his hand clap over her lips. She gripped his wrist, saliva drooling between her fingers, her body thrashing furiously from thigh to thigh. Then he grabbed her ankles and jerked her sideways upon the bed. Her legs dropped over the side of the bed, but her thighs went on thrashing from side to side. Ivan crouched beside the bed. His face was white and twisted. His lips looked blue and protuberant, as if they had grown in a few seconds. He appeared to be blowing through his lips as if he were cooling a hot dish of food. Then he made a strange animal sound, high and fierce, and she felt her slit rising toward his big lips.
"All right! All right!" she cried. "Do it! Do it! But don't put that thing in me."
CHAPTER SIX
Lachlan Breedlove lay in bed, rubbing his forehead, trying to figure out why Joanie and Ivan had acted so strange, a kind of odd tension between them, when he had returned from town. Of course, Ivan had a lot of screwy ideas about everything from religion to politics and he liked to get people in bars arguing about religion and politics and how all religions ought to be done away with. He got a big kick out of baiting people and he could argue about as logically as a pig's ass. He might have baited Joanie into one of his goofy arguments about cars or women or politicians and then gotten Joanie sore so they might have had a real fight, but she didn't want to tell him about it. They were covering up something. He wondered if he dared go up to her room and perhaps sit on the edge of her bed and hold her hand and maybe ask her what the trouble was-and then, in conditions like that, try to make out a little. What if she turned out to be a lousy lay and he was stuck with her lousy twat for the rest of his life, just for her dough? That would be great. He had to find out somehow before they were married if she was really going to like to fuck. But with her damn convent upbringing there didn't seem to be any way. The more he thought about it the more he started to imagine what it would be like to screw her, and mentally he began to undress her. His hand slowly sought his cock. He felt it slap back against his navel, and in his mind he held a picture of Joanie naked. He felt his cock getting thicker and thicker. God, how he'd like to go down into her bedroom and stick this beauty all the way into her lovely, fresh pussy. He rubbed the throbbing tip and began to stroke it slowly, feeling his eyes distend in his skull. He thought of Joanie sucking it. The more he saw her lips wrapped around the pulsating, glistening head the faster his hand began to stroke it. Smoothly and gently he stroked the spongy head. He began to get so hot he winced and groaned, squeezing his balls with his other hand. If was just as if he could see and feel himself with his cock right in her mouth. He could even feel her tongue licking it. His mouth gaped wildly, and then he felt the come surging, fighting to come out; just as he was about to come, the bedroom door opened and he grabbed his cock hard and fought against coming.
Downstairs, Joanie had been lying awake in her bedroom, thinking about what had happened with Ivan. Her slit and thighs and breasts still felt warm and pleasant, and when she thought of where and how Ivan had touched her she felt her slit swell and throb. Well, anyway he hadn't put his penis into her, and what he had done to her at first, she couldn't even remember, but the terrible thing he had done to her, no, that she had permitted him to do, no, wanted him to do, that had made her feel so good, she would never forget. How could she have wanted anybody to put their tongue inside of her? Now, it seemed horrible, but while he was doing it, oh, it had been wonderful, such a relief. But now she was a rotten sinner and the terrible thing was she wondered if Ivan would sneak into her room tonight, and if he did, what would she do? Would she let him suck and kiss her again between her legs? She squeezed her thighs now as the memory of the wonderful thrill ran all through her body again. She mustn't let him. The trouble was none of the doors could be locked. There were only outside latches, and anybody could enter her bedroom, Oh, if only she were married, she'd be sleeping right now with Lach. She was terrified that Ivan would come to her in the night and she was terrified that she would permit him to enter the room. Her body was swept with an agony of remorse when she relived now those moments with Ivan. She couldn't believe it had happened. She must have been insane not to fight back, but she had. It was her body that wouldn't fight. She had wanted to fight, but her body wouldn't. It wasn't really her fault. It was her body's fault. She remembered all of it, and she tried not to recall it, but she couldn't stop her mind from recalling every gesture, and finally she surrendered her mind and let herself slip into a half-doze, recalling all those moments with Ivan this afternoon. She remembered him kneeling on the floor and getting his hands under her buttocks and then the feel of fingers on each side of her slit and then feeling him opening the slit with his two fingers and suddenly his tongue darting straight inside her. Oh, God, but it had been wonderful, wonderful, more wonderful-feeling than anything Isabelle had done to her at school. She found her hips now thrashing from side to side and her finger sought her slit in memory of Ivan's tongue. She shuddered, her whole body contorting in a long, slow undulation.
As her finger passed back and forth over her clit and she felt Ivan's tongue doing it in her mind, she even felt she could feel him breathing again between her legs. Then, forgetting herself completely, she gave her mind up completely to the memory of those moments with Ivan-his tongue finding the bud of her clit, lashing it slowly, so slowly, the ecstasy mounting inside her steadily, but not too fast, his tongue sliding down a little and dipping just inside the opening of her cunt. He did it over and over again until she could feel juice running out of her slit, and then his tongue was lashing faster and faster, her whole body moving against his tongue. Suddenly her hands had shot out and gripped his head and held it tighter and tighter as spasm after spasm shot through her cunt and straight through her body, taking her brain right out of her head.
She opened her eyes in the darkness, mortified again. How could I have done such a horrible thing? It was sickening. But what if Ivan comes here, but where can I go? She wondered what Lach would do if she went up to his room and asked if she could trade beds because her room was cold. But then, what if Ivan came in and woke Lach in her bed and Lach caught on to what had happened? She wondered what Lach would say if she asked if she could get in his bed to keep warm, that she'd had a nightmare, and perhaps if they put pillows between themselves it would be all right. She mustn't be here when Ivan came down. And she knew he would come looking for her in the night, and she could never tell Lach because Ivan would just laugh at her and tell Lach she'd let him kiss her kitty-cat. No, maybe she'd actually be safer now with Lachlan. She climbed softly out of bed.
Lach held his breath, listening to the footsteps coming across the bedroom floor. The sound of footsteps ceased, then he felt pressure on the far side of his bed. He rolled over and sat up and in the darkness smelled the sweet soft odor of Joanie's perfume.
"Lach!" she whispered. "Lach!"
"What's the trouble?" He felt his cock collapsing.
"I had the most horrible dream," she said hesitantly.
He snapped on the lamp and almost instantly she clasped her hands over her breasts, but not before Lach saw the big, rosy nipples of her breasts through her nylon nightgown.
"Please," she breathed softly. "Turn off the light." She leaned forward, shielding her breasts from his gaze. A moment later in the darkness she said, "I know this sounds terrible, but I had this dream and I'm so cold. I just can't sleep. Would it ... I mean, would you care if I put on your bathrobe and got into bed with you? I mean, if I got into bed with you, and we put some pillows between us it would be all right, wouldn't it?"
He patted her shoulder in a fatherly manner.
"Sure, sure. Bathrobe's right at the foot of the bed. Listen, don't worry about it, honey. You don't have to put on the bathrobe. I'll bear it and sleep on top of the covers, and you snuggle down inside. Everything will be okay."
When he was dressed in the bathrobe and lying on top the covers and she lay on the other side protected, but feeling his body through the covers, she kissed him, opening her mouth softly. He felt his cock rising, but kept slightly turned away from her so she couldn't feel it through the covers. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes and felt like a little girl again with her father saying goodnight to her at the summer lake house long ago.
"Okay, now try to get some sleep," he said, taking his lips away, wanting to thrust his tongue way down into her throat, but knowing if he did he'd be apt to attack her and scare hell out of her. He swore right then that if he ever had a daughter he'd never send her to a convent school. He rolled over on his stomach, pressing his hard cock down into the blankets.
He lay there for a long time, listening to her breathing, feeling her naked body through the blankets beside him, longing to rip the covers away and feast on her virgin body. He couldn't sleep but soon he was sure she was asleep. Her breathing was deep and steady. He called to her softly, and she did not answer.
He stretched out an arm and found his fingers touching the round soft curve of her shoulder. With his other hand he gave his crotch a little squeeze. He felt his heart pumping fresh blood into his prick. It jerked once and came straight up. Joanie was lying on her side with her head on the pillow facing him, and between their bodies, like a wall, two pillows rose. His cock felt rock-hard, sticking straight out of the front of his bathrobe. Slowly, not to waken her, he drew aside the pillows. Hell, he thought, if she'll get into bed with me, it means she wants to screw, and that she's been wanting to all along, and she's pretending to be asleep, but even then he wasn't sure because her breathing was the deep, steady breathing of a sleeper. He slowly wiggled up and slid under the covers snuggled up tight against her, but she didn't move.
He kissed her hair. He slid his hand over the front of her nightdress and felt her breasts. The nipples were big but soft. He felt one breast quiver as he touched her. He cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face to his, and kissed her softly on the cheek. He felt her mouth open faintly, but she was still asleep. He wriggled his hips against her but she did not stir and he felt his prick throb against her thigh through her nightdress.
Slipping his hand under the hem, he caressed her belly and thighs, feeling the softness of her skin. Then he slid one hand up along her stomach and brushed lightly over her nipples and felt them swell.
Mewing little sounds of pleasure in her sleep, Joanie rolled toward him, forcing more of her breast into his hand. God, she was soft and fresh and smooth all over.
Suddenly she gasped and wakened and sat bolt-upright, terrified.
"Lach!" she cried. "Oh, God, no. I thought I was dreaming. What are you doing?" She drew the covers up to her throat and reached for the bedlamp but he caught her hand and drew her back down to the bed.
"Honey," he said, patting her cheek. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't stand having you here like this. It's too much for me. I want you so much."
"I want you so much, too, but I can't, you know I can't, until we're married. I was brought up that way, and I can't change. Please understand."
"I understand. But you don't know what it's like being a man and having the girl he loves in bed with him."
"I'm sorry, but I was so cold, and I'd had such a nightmare. I was lost in the woods and a bear was chasing me."
"Listen, help me a little, will you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you know?"
"I won't do anything. You know I love you, but I couldn't sleep with you. I'd feel terrible. I'd hate myself."
"No, that isn't it."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Please," he said and caught her wrist, and put her hand round his blood-filled cock. "Please," he murmured. "Just jack me off." She gasped and struggled, but he held her hands pressed around his cock.
"I can't," she cried. "It's a sin."
"No, no," he said, holding her hand around his cock. He moved her hand inside his hand up and down. She felt the outer skin move up and down. Then he took her other hand and cupped them around his balls. She was engulfed in fright because she felt herself wanting to have him put his prick right inside her, but she must not. Her body jumped with excitement. Oh, God, how could she ever take something this big inside her? It was huge. The penis bulged and throbbed in her hand. How did a woman ever manage to have one of these go all the way into her? She was terrified. What if he tried to put it in? Her brain was swamped with fear and desire. I mustn't, she thought. She didn't dare yell. It would bring Ivan. She didn't want Lach to get angry, but he mustn't expect her to do this if he loved her as he said he did. Was he just another animal as the nuns had told her men were?
"Don't-please, Lach, don't-please don't make me do it!"
But she felt a thrill run up through her arms into her breasts as the cock throbbed and swelled in her hand and Lach moved his hips back and forth. It was degrading. The man she loved was degrading her. It was the worst kind of sin. Yet her tits were swollen with delight.
She couldn't understand the pleasure she felt in making Lach feel so happy.
"Oh, sweet honey, don't stop," he moaned. "Please don't stop now. I'm sorry, but don't stop, please." She pushed his hand away from her breasts, but her tits jumped with thrills. It was so lovely and so incredible to have somebody she loved doing this to her.
"Oh, Lach, Lach," she said, moaning. "We must stop."
She felt hot liquid oozing out of the shaft in her hand and the bulbous head moved swiftly through her fingers. She wondered again how it was possible to have all this hot throbbing meat get all the way inside her.
Then she became aware that his hand no longer held her hand to his cock, and she quickly drew her hand back, feeling his cock jerk up and back and forth.
Now Lach couldn't stop himself. He knew he ought to. He wanted to curse her for ever coming into his bed. He grasped the hem of her nightdress and jerked it up over her breasts. Knowing what might happen, Joanie knew suddenly there was only one way to stop it. She hated the thought. She couldn't hit him. She didn't want to lose him. She didn't want him to be angry in the morning. Better she hated herself in the morning than have him hating her, and he would feel so badly over having made her do what she was going to do now that he would probably be easier to control from now on. She gripped his stiff pecker and pushed her hand against Lach's chest. He lay back, spreading his legs. She didn't know if she was doing it right, but she began to slowly stroke his penis. His wet foreskin moved smoothly up and down and she felt his body shaking and her nipples hardening and cunt beginning to fill with moisture. She must hurry before she let herself get worked up. As she stroked him she saw in her mind her body totally nude, her legs spread, and Lach's big prick coming slowly toward her, moving slowly inside her. She kept visualizing this, almost unaware of the motion of her hand, until suddenly semen pumped over her fingers. Spurt after spurt shot up her arm. She jerked her hand away. Lach groaned. She longed to put her finger in her slit, but she didn't dare in front of him. She felt his body arch again and suddenly he collapsed against her. "Thanks, honey, thanks," he said. He kissed her cheek tenderly. Suddenly she felt a warm motherly love toward him and she fell asleep in his arms, but only after she had placed a pillow between her crotch and his limp cock.
In the morning the dawn rattled the shutters against the cabin walls.
Joanie turned over slowly and kissed Lach softly on the cheek. He did not move. She felt loving and tender toward him. He wouldn't hurt her. He would never hurt her until they were married. But, oh God, she wanted to feel his cock. Why, oh, why? I mustn't. I mustn't. She felt her body twisting upward, away from him, and she did not want to go this way. She wanted to feel his cock. He was just like a little boy if you felt his cock for him. They were all little boys wanting their cocks played with. But to have that meat inside! Oh, it must be good. Real good. She felt her body swooning away, her mind disappearing upon the thought of all that long thing sticking inside her. It felt so good to think about it. Could it feel this good, really, once it was all the way stuck into her? Oh, God, it had to be better than the finger. But could it be? It was so good with the finger. Oh, God, it was so good. How could it be better with that big thing, so big, so terrible looking, oh, it must be better. It must be. It must be.
Her hand went down under the covers, reached around.
"Ha ha, ho ho," said Ivan, standing suddenly in the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb. He just stood there laughing and gasping for breath between laughs, shaking his head back and forth in disbelief.
"Hey, lover boy," he guffawed, bending down, laughing, gasping for breath. "How about breakfast?"
Lach and Joanie stared at him out of sudden shocked astonishment, but before they could speak, Ivan bent down again in a paroxysm of laughter, holding both hands against his belly button as if it were going to fall out of his guts.
"Wheaties?" he asked. His voice was merry, innocent.
"What the hell?" Lach said, surprised, sitting up in bed.
"Well, well," said Ivan.
Lach's eyes blazed. The last thing he wanted was to embarrass Joanie, and now this fool was sticking his nose into it. The damn, stupid bastard. This would ruin the whole weekend for them.
"Get out of here!"
Ivan though Lach was kidding and didn't move. He stood there grinning.
Lach sprang out of bed and rushed across the door. He socked Ivan in the chest, knocking him back through the open door. He slammed the door, and shouted: "Get your stuff packed! We're going home!"
Joanie lay on the bed crying. Lach leaned down and put his arms on her shoulders and, turning her around, drew her up and patted her back. "Now, now, don't worry. He'll keep his mouth shut."
"He'll tell everybody."
"He doesn't know anybody we know."
"He'll get drunk in a bar and shoot his mouth off," she said.
"He'll keep his mouth shut."
"I can't face him."
"I'll drive him into town and he can take the bus home," said Lach.
Lach tried to control his rage yet he couldn't help but feel Joanie's breasts pressing against his chest while he stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. He could feel her flesh pressing into him. He wondered if she were aware of it. He wanted suddenly to drown in her body. His brain felt dizzy with the sweet smell of her breasts. He wanted to suck each nipple, run his tongue over the soft smooth skin inside her thigh, then slowly bathe her clit with easy tongue-strokes until her slit dripped and her body arched and rose and fell over and over again, until she screamed and begged him to slide his cock all the way in to the hilt. In his mind he could see her bucking and moaning and yelling with joy on the end of his big cock. As he thought of this, he felt his cock growing bigger and bigger and he wanted to screw her the worst way. But he knew he mustn't. She'd hate him because she'd hate herself if he screwed her now. There was no changing her at this point. Take it easy, he told himself, take it easy. But unconsciously she was pressing her nipples harder and harder against his chest until he felt his cock so rock-hard and throbbing it ached.
Finally he couldn't stand it any longer and he guided her hand into his pajama trousers and placed her fingers around his cock. Gently she massaged. Oh God, it was hard. He was almost ready to come. Suddenly she jerked her hand away and swung away from him and sat on the other side of the bed with her legs dangling over the edge. She put her head in her hands. "I can't," she sobbed. "I mustn't. I can t.
He crawled across the bed and put both hands on her shoulders and turned her round. Then he put one arm under her legs and lifted her back on the bed and lay down beside her. She lay almost child-like on his shoulder, crying, her hands palm down, covering her pussy beneath her nylon nightgown.
"I fell so rotten thinking of Ivan."
"It's all right. Don't worry about it. Don't give it a thought." All the time Lach's cock was throbbing viciously, and he snuggled her head gently and kissed her lightly on the lips. "God," he said. "I can't stand it. You've got to help me. Like last night."
"I mustn't," she breathed heavily. "That was terrible."
"You won't be any different."
"I never should have done it."
"Please."
"What if Ivan comes in?"
"You know he won't. Here ... there ... ah, that's it. Just do it slowly ... that's lovely. Ah, that's good."
"I shouldn't," she murmured. This was vile. She mustn't. This was perversion. Oh, she was despicable to do this, but her hand wouldn't stop. It was as if the nerves in her fingers ran directly to her pussy and she could feel the delightful little shocks going into her pussy as she lifted the wet foreskin up and down and closed her eyes and tried to stop the dream of having this cock inside her. But she couldn't stop it and suddenly she was lost, drowned in the vision of being screwed, and she stroked faster and faster, feeling chills going up and down her spine and her pussy dribbling until suddenly Lach bucked and groaned and hot liquid spurted all over her hands.
"Go on. Don't stop," Lach groaned. "Faster, faster. Get it all."
Joanie felt herself sliding out of reality and her in-sides rushing hot and cold and then hotter and hotter and suddely Lach pushing her hand away just when she thought her body was going to explode, but nothing happened. She felt herself falling in a dream and suddenly bumping on the ground. She opened her eyes, feeling flat and dead and disappointed, angry with herself, ashamed for what she had done, and yet angry at Lach for not having let her carry herself to the summit of her dream.
She struck his hand away and jumped out of bed.
"I hate you!" she said. "I hate you. You've made me vile. And Ivan knows it."
She ran across the room.
"Hey!" Lach called, puzzled and astonished. Joanie slammed the door and was gone. He listened to her descending the stairs and then, in a harsh cold voice, in a long string of oaths, he cursed Ivan.
Joanie raced down the stairs and passed Ivan, who was sitting in the living room.
"Hey, baby!" he called, looking at her titties through the sheer nightgown. She flung her head aside, ignoring him. She crossed the room swiftly, vanished down the hall to her bedroom.
"Those are some nice yummies you got, honey," Ivan called after her. "You can bet your sweet butt Ivan Swanson wouldn't kick you out of bed."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lach found Ivan in his bedroom. Ivan was lying flat on his back, his hands behind his head. He was staring at the ceiling, looking utterly unconcerned.
Lach shut the door and exploded angrily. "You dumb shit, what the hell's the idea busting into the bedroom?"
Ivan shrugged, went on staring at the ceiling.
"I didn't know you were laying pipe, old buddy," he said, grinning now, turning his head, his eyes amused.
Lach's eyes blazed. "You stupid bastard, she's a virgin. You blew the whole thing."
"Pull the other one. She's about as virgin as you."
"I'm not kidding."
"You got to be."
"I've never slept with her."
"What the hell was she doing in your sack?"
"So help me," Lach said. "She got scared in a dream last night. And cold and she-"
"-jumped into your sack," Ivan snickered.
Lach sprang across the room and grabbed Ivan by the front of his shirt and jerked him upright.
Ivan glanced down at Lach's hand bunching the front of Ivan's shirt. "Hey, old buddy, know what you're doing?"
Lach shook him. "You say a word to anybody and if it gets back to her I'll-"
Ivan looked at Lach's hand again. "You're wrinkling my shirt."
Lach shook Ivan again, his face white with rage. If he lost Joanie, through her humiliation at Ivan's hands, his whole future was blown. He felt like killing Ivan right now. His business dream could blow up if she felt humiliated and walked out on him.
For an instant Ivan glanced patiently at Lach's hand that was shaking him. Then suddenly Ivan reared back and belted Lach in the jaw.
Lach staggered and fell against the wall. He leaned there, shocked and amazed, nursing his jaw with one hand, staring at Ivan. Never in all the years they had known each other had they argued.
Slowly and deliberately, Ivan rose. He walked across the room and stood directly in front of Lach. Ivan leaned forward, his hands braced on his hips. He pushed forward until there were only a few inches between their faces. "I don't give a damn if you screw her all night. Don't go laying any hands on me."
"I'm sorry, Ivan. You don't understand," Lach said.
"I understand. In fact, I don't even care if you crap me. I don't care what you want to believe." Ivan turned around and walked over to the bed and picked up his canvas hunting bag. He opened the closet and began to remove his clothes, stuffing them in the bag.
"Where are you going?" Lach asked.
"I'm getting the hell out of here."
"Take it easy," Lach said. Don't let him go, Lach thought, if he goes away sore, he'll shoot his mouth off to somebody, sure as hell.
Lach put his hand on Ivan's shoulder but Ivan went on packing his clothes.
"Look, Ivan, we're up here to have fun. Joanie feels humiliated and she's afraid you'll get stiff in some bar and shoot your mouth off."
"None of her friends come into the bars I go to," Ivan grunted.
"That's not the point."
"What the hell is?" Ivan folded two pairs of sweat socks, his hands busy in the bag, keeping his back turned to Lach.
Suddenly he straightened up and returned to the closet and came back with a pair of waders and folded them on the bed.
"Listen," Lach said. "I'm sorry I got sore. Just take it easy and listen to me for a minute."
"I'm listening, but I'm not having some female putting me down."
"She didn't put you down."
"Miss Rich Bitch! Looking down her nose at me all the time."
"Listen, will you take it cool a minute. We can have a lot of fun this weekend."
"You sure are."
"All you have to do," said Lach, "is go to her bedroom and apologize and tell-"
"Apologize for what?"
"Making fun of her. Implying she was getting screwed."
Ivan didn't look up. He guffawed and went on packing. "What were you doing, reading poetry together in bed?"
Lach's face contorted with frustration and rage. Damn it, did he have to fill this stupid bastard in on the whole picture?
"All I want you to do is go to her bedroom and tell her you're sorry, and say I explained to you that she'd just come into the bedroom a few minutes before."
Ivan turned around, a folded hunting shirt in his hands. "You got to be kidding. She'll never believe it."
"If you tell her, she will. She just lost face, that's all."
"Honey," Ivan said in a mincing female voice, "you weren't getting fucked, were you, honey, with little old Lach?" Then in a tough voice: "Knock it off. Give me a ride into town."
Lach grabbed Ivan by the shoulder, spun him round, pushed him down on the bed, and thrust a finger in his face and hissed: "Okay, I'll give it to you straight. Her mother's got a bushel of money, and she'd old, real old. She won't live too long and when she dies, guess who gets it? The only child. Joanie. With that dough I can build a real computer company. She was raised in a convent and she's got a lot of sexual hang-ups. As soon as we're married, I'll straighten that out. But she's a virgin right now and she won't budge until we're married. So help me, I never screwed her. She'd go into shock."
"I'm not apologizing to her," Ivan said flatly. "You got to."
"Like hell I do."
"Just this one favor, Ivan. Look, when the company gets going, I'll give you a job. A damn good job."
Ivan turned and grinned, tossed the folded hunting pants onto the bed. "The kind of a job," he said slowly, "where a guy can find a lot of time to go fishing and hunting, like year around?"
"You bastard," said Lach.
Ivan's gaze was empty, baleful. "Well," he said, "Can you put it in writing?"
Lach stared at him for a long moment. His mouth opened slowly. "After you apologize to her!"
Ivan turned and began tossing the hunting gear out of his bag. "It's a deal," he said. "Wait 'til I put these clothes away."
"Leave them in. Let's go over to Pine County and hunt grouse. We'll stay at the lodge there."
Ivan stuck out his hand, smiled. They shook hands. Lach put one hand on Ivan's shoulder. "Come on, now. Go talk to her."
A few minutes later Ivan rapped twice on Joanie's bedroom door.
"Who is it?"
"Ivan, I want to talk to you for a minute."
"Go away, please."
"Really. I'm sorry about this morning."
"Go away."
He tried the knob. It turned and Ivan pushed the door open. Joanie was sitting up in bed holding the covers up against her throat.
"Go on," she said.
Ivan came across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, his face grave and serious.
"I don't care what you're going to say," she said.
"Just listen. I was wrong," he said. "I'm sorry. Lach told me all about it. I'm really sorry, Joanie. Lach said you'd just come into the room and it was cold and you just happened to wrap the blanket around yourself."
Joanie began to look relieved, her head nodding a little.
"I could cut my tongue out," Ivan said. "Please believe me."
Joanie's face softened. The tension seemed to flow away. Gosh, Ivan could really be a sweet person, she thought. Maybe he was crude, but he could be really sweet. While listening to him, her hand had dropped the blanket from round her throat, and she sat attentive now with her titties in full view.
Ivan's voice ceased and he found himself hypnotized by the thought of sucking her again.
She saw his hot gaze and quickly drew up the blanket again.
"Please, you won't tell Lach," she said. "Please."
"Baby," Ivan smirked, "my lips are sealed until after you're married. Then I want a little of that poontang Lach'll be getting. Tell me something. Are you really a virgin?"
She nodded.
"I can't believe it."
"I am, honest."
"How'd you like that little joy ride we had?" Joanie's eyes filled with tears. "Please, please, don't talk about it."
He put a finger against her throat and caressed her chin.
"I'll give you a screw you'll never forget."
"Please don't tell Lach," Joanie pleaded again.
"I may look like a fool, honey, but I'm not."
Ivan rose from the bed, listening to the secret thoughts in his head. They were both stupid. His plan had worked perfectly. In a couple of years he'd never have to work again. Lach would have him on the company payroll, and when Lach was hard at work, he'd be sucking Joanie's pussy at home, and Lach would never know it. He felt good, thinking of all the years Lach and his parents had patronized him and looked down their noses at him secretly. He had Lach and his little virgin by the ass now.
"Take it easy," he said as he closed the door.
She lay in bed a long time praying for God to forgive her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the big log cabin hunting lodge in Pine County, one hundred miles east of where they had been hunting ducks, Lach kept falling asleep and waking, over and over again. Then suddenly he was wide awake, listening to the wind through the forests. They were twenty miles off the main highway, far down in the old cut-over forests of what had once been pine lumbering country. He heard Missy outside in the hall, her nails scrabbling on the floor while she went around in a circle finding another spot to curl up and sleep. He lay in bed and decided how they would hunt this day. He knew the grouse were thick in the woods, but the hunter had to find just the right cover, so they might as well hunt both the woodcock cover and the grouse cover along the Kettle River. What he felt best about, though, was the fact that the breach had been healed between Ivan and Joanie, and all the way over here in the car they had been one big, happy family together, everybody joking and laughing.
He threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, taking a deep breath. It was cold in the room. He put on his hunting pants and shirt and hunting boots. Beyond the window he could see the fog. It was thick. No snow, but the low-pressure area must have been hit by the cold front. It looked like smoke, rolling over the fir trees in big cloud-like billows, parting here and there, and then rolling a fresh cloud of fog in the wind to cover the trees again.
Then he knew what he was going to do. He opened his duffel bag and drew out his hunting jacket and cap and put them on. They were faded and well worn. His sixteen-gauge automatic shotgun with the poly-choke on the end of the barrel stood against the wall in the corner of the bedroom. The stock was nicked but polished and in the dim light the blue-black barrel shone. He pulled back the breech lever and opened the breech and slipped in a shell, then flicked the breech lever again and ejected the shell. He opened the bedroom door and tiptoed softly downstairs. Missy stirred as he passed, but he lifted a hand signaling the dog to lie down and she sat back, coiled up and closed her eyes.
Outside, the white mist shrouded everything. It smothered house and trees and the thin track of the rutted roadway. It swirled around him as he stepped down into the woods. He knew the country all around for twenty miles-the ravines, the lakes, the lowlands and hills, all the cover ranging from swamps to alder thickets. He had hunted deer and grouse and woodcock in here since he was a child so he was not afraid to enter the woods at this point. He knew where he was going. The fog wasn't going to get any worse. He knew that grouse would not be in that thicket in this kind of weather. They hated getting wet, just as humans hated being cold and wet. They would be where they had nested and protected themselves all summer while creating a family. Down in the swamps, beneath the protecting boughs of fir trees, or sitting on hummocks beneath heavily limbed old trees. They would not be out eating in the alder thickets. They would be waiting for the fog to lift and the sun to come out.
Near the big alder thicket was a big swamp. The thought of this swamp and memories of old hunts made Lach's skin prickle with excitement. He could feel the excitement running down his arm, as if the gun itself were transmitting some of this excitement all the way through his body.
The fog was now so thick he could feel it flowing over his face in wet swirls almost like water. It was good to be out here alone, away from all the problems of business and money and getting married and keeping Joanie happy. He'd just like to keep walking like this for days and days and camp out and forget all the damn petty confusion of having to live in a city and be a successful business man.
Then he began to use his eyes, stopping, looking beneath the trees, and high up, about halfway up the big spruce trees where the boughs were long and thick. A grouse would be dry and safe in there and he knew that they would not flush even if you walked right under them. You had to stop, make them nervous by stopping, and when they flushed hope the wind would shatter the fog long enough for a snap shot. Lach was an excellent shot. He had killed geese at fifty and sixty yards with a twelvegauge magnum, but the visibility problem was the real dilemma, and the grouse was the most difficult bird to hit in even clear weather, for it could dip and turn so fast and it was seen so quickly and so briefly there wasn't time to think. A man had to be an experienced grouse hunter to score. Lach knew how. Don't think. If you thought when you saw the bird, thought about lead and deflection, it was already too late. The bird was gone. He hadn't shot any grouse this year, but he was certain he could score, even in this fog, if he flushed one.
The fog didn't seem to lift. It seemed to grow thicker, but here and there, as he walked gingerly from hummock to hummock, a patch of fog would blow away momentarily, and he could peer beneath the wide spreading lower boughs of the spruce trees. Then he felt the ground descend, and knew he was in a deep ravine, running through the middle of the swamp. It was utterly still and quiet. He walked carefully, trying to be as soundless as the woods.
The water between the hummocks was surfaced with skim ice, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the sound of the skim ice breaking if he slipped off a hummock. The hummocks were two feet high, mounds of grassy bumps, as if the swamp had a disease of gigantic grassy pimples.
Then he found the ground rising beneath him, and knew he was nearing the far edge of the swamp. He was walking with his head down, trudging toward the slope that lifted into alder thicket on the side of a hill when he heard the first whirring of wings. His head jerked up and he knew the bird was gone. Then he stood still. Suddenly birds were there, jumping straight up out of the hummocks, four smoke-colored bodies, hurling into the shelter of the fog which had lifted to the tree tops. Lach thought, Don't swing. Just point ahead. The gun lifted quickly, but without haste and crashed twice and two birds came tumbling down. He searched among the hummocks and found both birds lying in water. He shook them, pulled out his hunting knife and opened their crops to see what they had been eating so he could figure where to hunt them. He studied the seeds and clover from their crops. They had gone out early, even in the fog, to get some food, but their crops were not full.
When he had hunted what he felt was another mile east of the cabin Lach felt he had gone far enough. He estimated he was perhaps little more than a mile from the cabin, due east. But the wind had shifted subtly. The blanket of fog was moving now about fifty feet above the tree tops, and visibility had opened in the forest itself to about one hundred feet. He was certain the birds were still among the trees in this wind, waiting for the sun to shine.
He started back toward the cabin, looking up into the tops of the spruce trees from right to left, walking slowly. The mist still drew across his face in thin puffs. He stopped and listened. A faint cackling sound came through the trees. Sharp-tailed grouse! They would be in the meadow beyond the woods, but was he hearing things? Even the sharp-tailed grouse was reluctant to feed in this weather, but perhaps they'd had a couple of days of this fog and were desperately hungry. Slowly, he stalked forward, keeping low, stepping carefully between the branches of each tree, and when he could see the meadow he lay down and looked out from beneath the branches of the trees. About twenty-five yards into the meadow was a flock of sharp-tailed grouse, just their heads jerking and moving above the meadow grass. One swiveled its head, without turning his neck and looked directly toward Lach, and then bobbed down again and resumed eating.
They were facing into the wind and if he could move quietly along the ten yards to the edge of the forest he could jump shoot them and they would have to take off into the wind. It would be like jump-shooting ducks, their wings beating and beating as they hung motionless for a second or two in mid-air, without an inch of gain, until their wing beats accelerated enough to draw them climbing into the sky.
He felt confident he could get a double out of the flock. He crept forward slowly on his hands and knees, holding his breath. For an instant he paused on the edge of the woods, kneeling on one knee. It would be a point blank shot, no deflection.
He sprang up but just as he went to shoot a sudden gust of wind blew directly into the birds, a fierce sudden gust. As he fired he knew he should not have fired point blank. So few hunters realize how much difference wind makes with a shot gun even at close range. It could throw off a whole shot pattern. Deer hunters always allowed for wind, but few upland game hunters thought about it. And as he fired he knew he had missed, and he tried to compensate for the two missed with the third shot but the birds were gaining height, and were at least between thirty-five and forty yards away, getting smaller and smaller, reaching the edge of the meadow and the shelter of the forest. He fired and missed. He cursed and found he was shaking.
He stood there sweating and panting, sucking the fog into his lungs. It tasted sour, of the swamp behind him. He walked back on the deer trail through the alder thickets.
Joanie was up, cooking breakfast in the kitchen. As Lach put his gun down in the corner, Ivan came into the kitchen.
"Where the hell you been, man?" Ivan said, looking at the gun.
"Getting a little meat for the table," Lach said, pulling the two birds out of the game pocket of his coat.
"Where'd you go?"
"Down in the swamp east of here."
"Any schickens up in the meadow?" Lach laughed. Ivan always used the old Scandinavian farmer word to describe grouse. "Nice flock. I blew it," said Lach. "Blew it?"
"I figured I had it made so I didn't have to allow for any wind. They couldn't have been more than twenty yards at the most. They had to jump right into wind. But I blew it. I sensed there was a sudden gust and I had time to allow for it, but I didn't. It looked too easy."
"Ha," said Ivan. "The great white hunter."
"I'm going with you today," Joanie made the declaration quietly.
"You bet," Lach agreed.
"The great white hunter will train you to track the wily grouse," said Ivan.
"Listen," said Lach. "She's not a bad shot."
"If you trained her, she's got to be." Ivan wanted to look her right in the eye as he said this, but he didn't want Lach to see him doing it, so perhaps, he felt, it was better she averted her gaze as he spoke to her.
"I'll make you a bet," said Lach. "She shoots more grouse today than you."
"You got to be kidding."
"Ten bucks."
"Sucker money. You're on. But how will I know she did it?"
"She shoots the twenty-gauge and I shoot the six-teen-gauge. How's that?"
"You got a bet." Ivan laughed. "It's like taking candy from a baby. Maybe I ought to give you odds."
"Nope. No odds."
They went on kidding while Joanie cooked. They kept kidding each other about how they had missed different shots, then they started bragging and matching stories about who was the best shot and talking about old hunts and people who had hunted with them. Outside the big kitchen window the fog was clearing, but the sky was still gray and cloudy, with gusts of wind blowing right up against the clouds. For breakfast they had pancakes and maple syrup and sausage and toast and coffee. After they finished Joanie washed the dishes while Ivan and Lach listened to the news. Weather forecast said the temperature would rise and the unseasonal weather would be gone tomorrow. Then there was the latest news, including some remarks that the economy was improving.
"Yeah," said Ivan. "Every time the economy improves, things get worse."
"Oh, come on," Lach said and then ceased as the newscaster interrupted with a special news bulletin: "Two bandits who robbed the St. Cloud National Bank yesterday are still at large and believed headed for the Twin Cities."
"See," said Ivan, "the country's going to hell just like in the depression back in the Thirties. My old man said the minute the country gets on the skids, you got bank robberies all over."
"Yeah, okay," said Lach. "But let's figure out now how we're going to hunt. Ivan, why don't you go west along the Kettle River and that big cedar and spruce swamp? We'll go back east and work around to the old lumber road, and come back in about two o'clock. Then get some lunch and work up north till it's dark."
"Okay," Ivan laughed. "I'll even give you a half-hour start. I didn't clean my gun last night. Mind if I take the dog?"
"You'll need it, sport."
In about fifteen minutes Joanie and Lach left the cabin, and right away Lach knew it was going to be tough getting much hunting done with Joanie. She just wasn't the outdoor type, but she was trying hard to please. She complained about the branches scratching her face and kept asking how in heaven anybody could hope to hit anything in this jungle. Lach had taught her to shoot and on a skeet range she had become a fairly credible shot, but it was a different ballgame here where the hunter might have one foot in the air and one on the ground and birds whirring up all along him, half scaring him, before he could get his gun up. No, it was not skeet-range shooting. That was for damn sure, and he should have taken her into the woods first, and just had her walk around with the gun empty, and get used to being aware of keeping her balance without having to look at her feet or at the ground immediately in front of her. You simply had to sense the ground ahead of you on a grouse hunt because you must keep your head and eyes up and keyed, but she would never be able to do this the first time out. So it looked as if it were going to be more of a hike than a hunt. Besides, Joanie was not too coordinated. This Lach knew from having taught her to shoot. Shooting was one thing, but being coordinated walking over hummocks was another thing. She stumbled and fell down twice, and once Lach found her after she had fallen with the safety catch off the gun. He didn't say anything but he told her from now on to walk right beside him. He sure as hell didn't want to get shot by her the first time hunting, and yet she ought to know better. He told her all about gun safety, but it was obvious that in actual hunting conditions she was nervous and she had forgotten. It made Lach nervous, too. But he knew he must be patient with her.
"Walk slower," he said. "The slower the better. Just go over to the left about ten yards and walk forward about ten yards, stop and listen. Just keep doing this. If the birds gets up directly ahead of you, that is, if it's going straight away, not rising too sharply, remember, just put the front sight bead right on his behind. Keep both eyes open."
"I know. I know," Joanie said irritably, as if she were being treated as a child. Good heavens, he had told her that a hundred times.
"And don't swing. There isn't time. Just a line of sight, ahead of the bird. Point and fire."
"Oh, God," she said, stumbling again. He could see her faintly through the underbrush to his left.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, but there must be some other kind of a bird easier to hunt than grouse."
"There is."
"Why did we have to come here?"
"Might as well start the hard way."
"Very funny," she said coldly.
"Ah, come on, honey, don't let it get you down."
He knew she wouldn't get tired. She was in good shape from swimming and tennis, so it wasn't fatigue that disgusted her.
Then he chuckled to himself. His whole plan was working out. After they were married if he hadn't shown her this side of his life she might turn into one of those complaining wives who bitch when their husbands go away to hunt. After this, Lach was sure she'd be grateful if he didn't ask her to go hunting. This was a sure cure, and this way he'd be able to get away with the boys for some good hunting without having his wife on his back for not taking her along.
"This is awful," she yelled through the brush. "I can't see anything."
"Wait'll we get to the old lumber camp road. If the sun comes up, they'll come right out on the trail and you can take your pick of easy shots."
"This is for the Indians," she said.
After a while Lach called her over and said they ought to rest for a while. They settled down in a little ravine. The ground was soft, and not too damp, covered with golden leaves. He figured if they rested some he would work around the edge of the big swamp, and they might pick up some shots without going into the marshy ground. She couldn't take much hummock walking, that was for sure. "Getting tired?" Lach asked.
"You better believe it," she said. "Are there any snakes in here?"
"Garter snakes, I suppose. Too cold up here for snakes."
"I can't stand the sight of snakes. Are there bears?"
"Lots of them, but they'll run if they see you."
"I heard that momma bears don't run."
He hugged and kissed her suddenly. "Momma bear and papa bear."
"No." Joanie drew away. "Not here. Not in the woods, please. Come on." She caught his hand and stood up. "We came out here to hunt."
"What're you afraid of?"
"You."
"Come on, honey. Sit down."
"No, we're going to hunt." Joanie was adamant. The set of her face brooked no argument.
He got up reluctantly, thinking he might have been able to talk her into a handjob right here in the woods, then changed his mind. This was the wrong atmosphere for her. She wanted a bed, where she could feel it, but couldn't see what she was doing in the dark. Then she wouldn't feel so guilty, and it would be a lot easier to bring her along gently that way.
They went on through alder thickets without flushing any birds and then they came out on the old lumber road. The state conservation department had planted clover between the almost invisible rutted lanes along which sleds had hauled logs out of the forests fifty years ago. It was now a perfect feeding ground for grouse. They had the swamp to breed in, the woods for alder buds and clover to feed on, and the swamp to retreat to from their enemies.
The second-growth thirty-foot-high timber of spruce and pine and birched loomed all around them. The road curved east suddenly. Lach looked across the tops of the trees to high ridges beyond. The tree tops were swaying faintly in the breeze and the air was clear. If the birds were in the tree tops now with the sky clearing, trying to get their feathers dry, they would be tricky as hell. They enjoyed showing their wiles, flushing from tree to tree, and then suddenly taking long flights. A hunter really needed a dog in here with a bell ringing, if it was a good pointer or setter, the hunter would know he was onto the birds. The road dipped and rose, and Lach kept running his gaze back and forth, between the middle of the tote road and the tree tops. That's where the birds would be.
Suddenly the tote road ended in a clearing in which stood the ruin of a log cabin, roofless and windowless, sagging down into a jungle of brush and grass. Ahead the forest climbed even higher and Lach and Joanie stepped onto the pine needle floor of the woods, among tall, old pines with branches intertwining high overhead.
"About a quarter of a mile ahead of this stops," he said. "Then we'll be back in birch and alder and buck brush right down to the river."
"This is lovely in here," Joanie said, thinking, What a romantic spot in the summer, how soft the ground. She thought how wonderful it would be to lie on this ground and make love with your husband here on a warm summer day.
Lach decided they certainly weren't going to work all the way to the river. He searched the high branches against the sky. Uusally there weren't too many birds in this type of cover because grouse like some grassy cover, just enough to conceal them from hawks and predators, but not so high or thick they become entangled when trying to fly.
The wind was rising in the high branches. Then he hears a grouse calling, a deep liquid sound. He caught Joanie's arm, held her still, and listened, then walked another twenty-five feet and stopped and listened again.
He smelled sweet fern and knew he was coming to the edge of the pines. There. He heard the deep, soft liquid call again. Might be birds in the sweet ferns. Sometimes where an old fence or log had tumbled into the ferns a stalker might find a neatly concealed grouse sand bath in which the birds dusted themselves.
Suddenly he heard the whirr of wings. But before he could swing his gun far enough he saw a glimpse of the banded tail, going out from his line of vision, over the tops of the tallest pine. He knew the bird would be perhaps a hundred yards ahead, and the line of flight more often than not wouldn't differ from the flushing point.
He cut to the right. He wouldn't come up directly on its back path because that's where the bird would expect him to come from.
Lach and Joanie came out of the pines, heading north, figuring the bird had flown west. They went up a sparsely timbered ridge. No berries or thickets for cover, so he walked fast, and he could hear Joanie panting and stumbling. Walking, he thought how the best grouse hunters he had ever known were also the sharpest woodcock hunters. They shot quickly, but not too fast. They never hurried or rushed a shot.
"Lach!" Joanie called.
At first, Lach didn't heard the bird, only the whirring explosion of pinions, and then he saw it, a big gray bird, crest cocked, barred-tail fanned out and the magenta-colored back gleaming for an instant. The bird was rocketing downward, smart old veteran, seeking low scrub cover.
He saw the bird only for a fraction of a second. He pointed the front sight down and ahead, without any swing of the gun barrel, and fired. In that instant another bird flushed, and he saw both birds at once, one tumbling against the sky, the other rising. His heart felt stopped with excitement. With his cheek down hard on the gun stock, he was about to fire when Joanie fired. The bird crumpled.
"Hey," he smiled. "I was going to shoot a double."
"Ah-ha," she laughed, putting her hand around his neck, drawing him down for a kiss. "But you didn't."
Lach picked up the birds; holding them in his hands they looked so different than they had appeared flying: the marbled feathers beneath the throat, the subterminal black band crossing the fan-tail, the dark, almost-bluish neck plumage, the eye like a single jewel in the crested head, the ruffs glistening in the forest light. None of this was visible in the sudden flight. But here, looking at the birds, it seemed to Lach he could see in their colors all the colors of autumn, the trees, the swamp, the grass, all in the soft, warm feathers of the grouse.
"That was fun," she said, as they started back to the cabin. "It's work."
"Too much like work," she said.
He could see the smoke coming from the cabin chimney. As they emerged from the woods two men stepped out from behind Lach's station wagon, both of them with pistols hanging from the end of their long arms along their legs.
"Hi," Lach said.
They were both tall, in their middle twenties. One had a big round face, and the other, perhaps a little shorter, though both were over six feet, had a long face, with a thin mustache. Both their faces were stubbled. They walked along slowly toward Lach and Joanie, both men smiling easily. At first Lach thought, Bank robbers! Then he saw their khaki pants and boots and hunting jackets. He knew they could be rabbit hunters. A lot of people had taken to hunting rabbits with pistols and they were certainly dressed for it.
They walked closer, smiling and friendly. Yet Lach felt there was something strange about them. They seemed to be watching him too steadily and carefully, as if carefully avoiding looking at Lach's gun, and though they were smiling, their eyes were neither cheerful nor friendly. Something fishy, Lach thought.
"What're you hunting?" the round-faced one said. "Grouse. Not having much luck," said Lach. "Not much luck, eh?"
"We had our chance," said Joanie. "We got a couple."
"Maybe you need more practice," said the round-faced one, and the long-faced partner grinned, showing a gold front tooth. There was an odd edge to the laugh. Lach didn't like it. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something in the atmosphere, a kind of mocking tone of glee in the man's voice. Lach suddenly felt scared.
"I've had plenty of practice," Lach said, balancing the shot gun in his right hand, trying to slide his hand back toward the trigger guard.
"What do you practice on?" said the long-faced man.
"He taught me on skeet," Joanne said.
The two men looked at each other and smiled. Simultaneously they said: "Well, well, she shoots, too."
"She's quite a shot," Lach said.
"No kidding, mister?" said the round-faced man and scratched an itch on the side of his face with the end of his pistol barrel.
"What're you hunting?" Lach asked.
They both grinned. "Birds," one said and laughed and then the other laughed.
Lach grinned and nodded at their guns.
"You must be a pretty fair shot. Got your limit?"
"Not yet," said one.
"Not yet," said the other and both laughed. "But we're aiming to," said the long-faced one.
"Lots of rabbits in the swamp," said Lach. "Thanks a lot," said the long-faced one contemptuously.
"Well, good luck," said Lach and taking Joanie's arm, he steered her toward them to pass, but just as they were passing the long-faced man said, "You two all alone hunting?"
Lach blinked and thought, If I mention Ivan they may leave us alone. They aren't hunters, those hunting outfits are disguises. If I tell them we're alone, at least we have some reinforcement in the form of Ivan, if they jump us for some reason. If they want the car, why haven't they taken it? Still, hell, they may be hunters. Beginners, fooling around with pistols. He remembered the pistols were new.
"Yes," Lach said. "We're alone." He passed them and started up the steps to the cabin with Joanie.
"Don't turn around," said the voice of the long-faced man. "Drop those guns! Don't move or I'll blast you."
CHAPTER NINE
"Drop the gun," Lach told Joanie.
He heard her gun fall. Lach dropped his.
"Keep walking, Jack," said a voice behind them. "Right into the cabin. Move!"
Then Lach felt the muzzle of the pistol barrel against his back. He wondered if there would be pain, or just the sudden unknowing shock when they killed him. He felt his skin crawling and cringing away from the gun barrel. Maybe they would simply tie them up and take the car. The gun muzzle pressed harder into his back as he mounted the stairs.
"Open the door carefully," said the voice. "No tricks."
"Keep those hands up," said the other voice.
Lach and Joanie raised their hands above their heads. Joanie felt her stomach, a hard cold ball of fear in her guts, and then she felt the urine dribbling faintly into her panties.
Lach opened the door with one hand, keeping the other raised.
"Sit down in the chair and face the wall," a voice ordered.
"Here?" Lach asked.
No answer. Lach chose a hard-back chair and turned it against the wall and sat down. He wondered why they didn't order Joanie to do the same.
"Get the rope out of the car," the long-faced man said. So they had gone through the station wagon already. In a minute the round-faced man was binding Lach to the chair, tying a knot behind Lach's back that bound him to the chair. He did it in a professional manner, as if he'd bound lots of people before.
Then he hit Lach a blow in the back of the neck. For an instant Lach blacked out, his head striking the top of the chair. He felt the hot sudden abrasion and when his head cleared Lach saw blood dripping down onto the floor. The top of the chair was sharp as a knife.
"That's to keep you thinking," said the man. "Nah," the other one laughed. "That's to keep him awake."
The long-faced man told Lach to stand up and drag the chair around so Lach faced the room. Lach did so. The long-faced man put the muzzle of the barrel directly into the right nostril of Lach's nose.
"How'd you like a new breather hole, buddy?"
The round-faced man guffawed. "Why don't we blow him a new asshole first, then a new belly button, and then a new breather hole after we give him a little show?"
"What the hell do you want?" Lach asked.
The man drew the gun away from Lach's nostril. "We'll be getting to that shortly, sonny."
"Sonny," said the other man and laughed.
Blood ran down over one of Lach's eyes from the cut on his forehead. He'd never felt such hate in his life for anybody. Yet he was scared, more scared now than hateful, as if the fright inside his heart and guts dampened the hate, held it back. He shook his head, feeling dizzy, trying to keep the rill of blood from his eyes as it trickled slowly down his skull like a red worm.
In the corner of the room Joanie stood with her mouth gaped. She looked as if she had stopped breathing. Her hands were lifted, fingers splayed in front of her jaw, like frozen talons. Her eyes were wide with terror. She watched the two men coming toward her, both of them grinning like apes. Her teeth began to chatter and she began to shake all over, her skin rushing hot and cold. She seemed to see herself frozen in the corner. They seemed to advance on her in slow motion, as if in a film. Their eyes glowed as they walked toward her, lifting their feet slowly, like hunting dogs stalking a bird. She began to squeak at them in tiny plaintive gasps. She backed away along the wall, feeling the wall behind her with both hands. Her body arched away from the wall as she moved. They looked at her. They smiled. They did not speak. They just kept taking slow steps toward her as if there were all the time in the world. Joanie's face was chalky white, and the lobes of her nostrils were even whiter. They looked like wax. Then she saw their eyes were bloodshot. Motionless for an instant, facing as though in a dance, they stared at each other.
The long-faced one sprang at her first. He caught her wrist and she began to struggle. He stopped Joanie's other hand as it slashed at his face and, holding both her wrists with one hand, he slapped her. It made a dry, flat sound. He slapped her again, first on one cheek, than the other, rocking her head from side to side.
"That's a starter," he said, slapping her. "See?" He released her. She stumbled backward against the corner, watching him as he came toward her again.
"Kneel down," said the fat-faced one. He pointed the gun at her pussy. "Kneel. Or I'll blow you a new pussy."
She knelt. The long-faced man pushed her down on the floor.
"Get your clothes off," he said.
Joanie looked at him. "No...." she began.
The long-faced man put the muzzle of the pistol against Joanie's temple. "Get 'em off," he said.
"I'm ... I've never...." she said weakly.
"Hurry up," said the other. "We ain't got all day."
The long-faced man slapped her again and Joanie unlaced her boots and unzipped her hunting pants. She took them off. The man kicked them away. She unbuttoned her shirt and took it off.
"Who-o-oe-e-e-e-!" said the long-faced man. "Look at them titties. Man, I could suck them all day."
"We ain't got all day," said the round-faced man. "Honey, get over on that davenport."
Joanie went over and sat down on the edge of the davenport.
"Lie down, honey, and spread your legs."
The long-faced man stood over her and stared down with his hot glowing eyes at her naked body.
Suddenly he was naked from the waist down.
"You'll get life in prison for this," Joanie said, panting. "You'll never get away with it."
"Buddy boy," said the other man to Lach who was straining at his bond, "just relax and enjoy the show."
"Honey," the long-faced man told her, "you're going to get the thrill of your life. I'm going to make a real woman out of you. You look like one of them society teasers. Look at those tits hardening. Hey, Joe, this little honey likes it but she won't admit it."
Dirty! They were vile, dirty men. She could smell their unwashed bodies. It was horrible. They both smelled like animals. They were going to rape her. And there was no way to stop them. Where was Ivan? If she fought him, they would kill her. But wouldn't they kill her anyway? How could they leave witnesses to this? They would kill Lach, too.
"Let's lick those titties up first," he said, sitting down beside her, kneading her nipples, laughing at her.
Joanie twisted away from him but he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her around and flopped onto her stomach. He squeezed the back of her neck and pushed her face down into the davenport.
Joanie had never felt so degraded. She moaned. He struck her across the buttocks, and almost immediately afterwards a thrill shot through her whole body, tingling her breasts, making her body feel suddenly warm, swollen voluptuously as her nipples suddenly hardened.
She was shocked and mystified. He rolled her over onto her back. His white teeth glinted above her nipples.
He began to suck and nibble her titties. Joanie felt her legs spreading apart little by little and tried to draw them together, but the more he sucked it seemed to her that her legs spread of their own volition. She no longer controlled her body, and she felt her thighs opening wider and wider. It was horrible, but it was so thrilling. She must stop him, but if she did they would kill her. She mustn't like it, though. She must let him do what he wanted to do, but she mustn't like it, so that she would never remember it this way. God, Lach would never marry her, if he saw she liked it. She mustn't show any feelings, but the giddy thrills kept running all over her body.
She felt his wet mouth sucking her slowly, so slowly, and nice. She thought he would be horrible. She felt him licking each tit, then slowly kneading the bud between his fingers. His tongue was so sweet and hot. Oh, she wanted to throw her head from side to side, but she didn't. She gripped the sides of the davenport and fought to control herself. She mustn't let Lach see that the thrills running through her body were tearing her apart. Oh, oh, oh, the sweetness of her tits jerking in and out of his lips. Oh, it was good. She mustn't show how good it was. She steeled herself.
She felt his big hot hand running over her stomach, then touching her mound and the soft flesh between her thighs, pressing down on her mound, but not going near her slit.
She made no sound, clapping her jaws tight, feeling the hot swelling along the edges of her cunt. Her anus and cunt quivered and throbbed. Oh God, I mustn't show anything in front of Lach.
Then she felt his big finger stroke her pussy, one long deep stroke, right into the warm honey of her cunt. She bit her lip to keep from screaming out with joy. Her cunt was soaking wet.
Joanie could not escape the terrible depths of her humiliation. Her body and soul were debased forever, but she could feel her legs spreading and drawing up, slower and slower.
Her heart shrank with mortification, but she wanted to raise her head to the man's prick, knowing now he was kneeling between her legs, looking right into the moist pink slit of her cunt. Then she felt his finger stroking her anus.
She wondered how much it would hurt before she opened both eyes and saw him fondling his huge cock, brushing it against the dribbling opening folds of her pussy. Oh, let him put it in, put it in, please, maybe this would keep them here, until Ivan came. Oh, but it would hurt! It would be so big and it would hurt so much.
"I'm a virgin," she gasped. "Please don't hurt me."
"Just relax, honey."
He put the head of his cock against her crotch, then eased it into the top of her slit and rubbed the entire length of her slit with the head. Then he eased the head into the middle of her slit and shoved it in and out a few times, just enough to wet the head.
He ran one finger down her crotch, opening the lips of her pussy and flicked across the hiding place of her clit under the folds of skin around her pussy lips. Then suddenly he plunged his head between her thighs and dipped the tip of his tongue into her cunt, lapping up and down. Finally his tongue found her clit. He pressed his lips against the spot and Joanie felt her clit throb and rise hotter and hotter.
She felt his pursed lips pressing harder and harder, sucking on the clit, pulling it deeper into his mouth. Then his lips clamped down and she couldn't stop herself any longer. She moaned and groaned and writhed in ecstasy, bobbing her pussy, flinging her legs in the air until they rested on his shoulders. Suddenly she felt her hips bucking back and forth faster and faster and she felt something terrible and wonderful was going to happen to her and she didn't care. She wanted it to happen now, more than anything in the world.
Hot juices poured from her open cunt and her mound moved around and around and up and down and around and around beneath his lips. She felt him push harder and she pushed back against his mouth. Then his lips caught her clit again and his tongue lashed it back and forth. Joanie felt as if she were going to lose her brain. Oh, why, oh, why, didn't he put his thing in her now? Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. She wanted it. She was ready for it. Her body thrashed all over the bed.
"Oh-h-ah-ah-ah-ah," she cried. He lapped her cunt, licking and sucking, biting the clit head. Then suddenly she felt as if her body were going to fly out of the room and she felt wonderful, wonderful.
Just then the round-faced man caught the other man's shoulder and pulled him away.
"Come on, Joe," he yelled. "You got her warmed up. Daddy-o's going to finish the job."
But the man ignored the round-faced man except to lift his face momentarily to say, "She's a tight virgin, and if that's what you want, she's all yours in a couple minutes. I'm just running her engine up."
Just as the passion was sliding out and away from Joanie, his tongue flicked her clit again and she was off and sailing. She told herself this must look terrible to Lach. She knew she was a horrible person to enjoy it but she couldn't stop herself. Nothing had ever felt so wonderful before, more so than the first time with Ivan. This man was even better than Ivan. She moaned and thrashed and felt such a high ecstasy that all thoughts of guilt were washed away in a sudden savage thrust of her hips. There was no past. No present. No tomorrow. Only this sudden new exquisite moment. She felt her body dissolving and all her nerve ends jumping and jerking beneath her hot flesh. Then, as her flesh rushed upward into a warm, wonderful soft darkness and her eyes rolled in her skull, a cry of exultation and triumph broke from her lips. Suddenly all of her muscles relaxed, and she felt her body returning to her as if she had died, drowning far out at sea. Her body was floating endlessly, softly, on a vast, wonderful sea. She opened her eyes, felt her body pulsating warmly, radiant. Then she felt his tongue on her clit and she spasmed again and again, her flesh throbbing in utter bliss. She turned her head to one side. Not even Ivan had made her come like this. How lovely it was to feel so tired, so perfectly empty. There was nothing in the world like it.
The long-faced man was standing in the middle of the room, buttoning his pants, and the fat-faced man was unbuttoning his pants.
"She's virgin," said the first one.
"Not for long," said the round-faced one.
Then Joanie saw Lach's face, and it came to her again how horrible she had been, enjoying this because the look on Lach's face horrified her. His eyes were glowing faintly, like the eyes of a cat, and from the corner of his mouth a faint thread of saliva hung. She could hear him breathing above the sound of her own breathing. Then she saw his eyes glow again, looking at her, but through her and past her, yet as if he saw her, only she had become something different to him. Not that his eyes looked sad, but rather transfigured, with a dull, happy glaze.
"He enjoyed it," Joanie whispered. "He enjoyed watching me." Then that acute surge came again in her cunt, like all the hot blood was rushing again into her loins. She couldn't believe the way she felt now. She knew it was bad to feel this way, to actually want somebody's cock before she was married, but she had never felt anything like the climax she had just experienced. She clasped her arms around her breasts, as if embracing herself, feeling her nipples, the good warm odor of her body. She had never felt so right, so happy. The she turned her head, looked at the round-faced man and moaned.
CHAPTER TEN
The long, limber cock of the round-faced man stuck straight out from his hairy body. It looked thicker than her wrist and her body shuddered as she stared at the huge, rosy head. Oh, God, he would kill her with that. She'd never be able to get it into her body.
She cried out and rolled over on her side, her face against the back of the davenport.
"Please," she said. "Please. I'll do anything, but don't put it in me. Please."
His prick bobbed up and down as he walked toward her. She stared at its hugeness. She had never seen one up close before. She was badly frightened.
It was too big to imagine getting inside her. Are all pricks the same size? she wondered. She sprang up and as she turned she found the muzzle of a gun pointing straight at her nipple. It was the long-faced man.
"Lie down" he said. "My friend likes virgins."
Why, oh, why, didn't Lach at least say something? No, it was no use. He could do nothing. They might shoot him if he complained.
The fat-faced man pushed her down onto her back. He sprread her legs, looked down at her slit, smiled, and then stroked his enormous cock. It was gigantic! It would tear her to pieces.
He knelt slowly between her legs, all the time massaging his cock. She closed her eyes, clenched all her muscles. Then she felt his hands under her butt. He was lifting her up. She wanted to open her eyes and look at his cock, but the pain was going to be terrible.
She felt his coarse rough hands press into the soft, smooth flesh of her ass. His prick jerked and quivered against the inside of her thigh. Then, slowly and deeply, he massaged her fanny.
Suddenly he removed his hands and spread both her legs wide with both hands. She opened her eyes and saw his hot gaze upon her open slit. She felt the slit throbbing and pulsating, puckering and cringing, wanting it, yet fearful, as if the little slit had a mind of its own.
Oh, but his prick looked so terribly hard.
She couldn't do it.
Oh, but what would it be like? Would it hurt? Would it be better than his tongue?
Her mind reeled with desire and confusion.
How much would it hurt? He mustn't hurt her. She wasn't ready.
The other man shouldn't have stopped. She didn't feel nearly as hot now. Oh, if this one would only lick her a little and get her ready again.
She arched her back, lifting her mound.
His head darted down like a snake. His tongue flicked her clit.
Her hips bucked up. He lifted his head and touched the folds of her vulva with one finger.
He could feel her vagina wasn't ready, but she did not know this.
She began to fill with a numb fear, her mind emptying of all thought.
Yet her vulva waited expectantly. Then she felt the wonderful finger again, exploring, going round and round just inside the soft inner ring of her cunt. Then he eased it deeper.
His fingertip touched her hymen and she winced. Yet her legs widened as her hymen stretched.
What if after he stuck it in her she had a baby? What was it Isabelle told her boys used so the girl wouldn't get a baby?
"Don't give me a baby," she pleaded. Both men guffawed. The long-faced man said: "Just let Fatso do the job. You won't have to worry about a baby when we're done with you."
"Please don't give me a baby." Then the thought of having a baby by one of these monsters resurrected again all Joanie's moral upbringing and her mind filled with guilt and dread again, but she knew she was helpless. Yet she had cooperated. Oh, God, I am a sinner. But nothing stopped the throbbing of her vulva.
She whimpered and writhed, looking at the massive head of his cock which he held in both hands.
He notched it slowly into the bottom of her slit and slowly swabbed it up and down her slit.
Suddenly he stabbed it straight into her. A hot shocking blow shot through her, burning her insides, and she arched, bellowing, screaming. Oh, God, the pain, as if a hot poker had gone into her, the big rod ramming in hard. It hurt so badly, and yet it felt wonderful in the pain, but she lay there crying hopelessly, passively, like a child in a dentist's chair.
"Now, now," said the man, kneeling, working his tool in and out slowly. "Move up slowly, right over it. Easy does it."
He put out a thick, big hand, haired over with black fuzz to the second knuckle joints. Suddenly cold air seemed to slip down her body, below her thighs. She closed her eyes, opened her legs wider. She found her hand caressing his cock as it came out.
"Oh, yes, yes," she whispered. It didn't hurt anymore. It felt good, delicious. Suddenly her hand began to steal around his hips in a swift, convert movement; then it snapped away in a movement of revulsion. "I shouldn't," she whispered to herself. "I shouldn't ... I shouldn't." But her lips said: "OOOOOOh-ooooh!"
"More?"
"Yes, yes, please," she heard her voice through her heavy breathing.
But she was wrong to feel this way. She mustn't let herself show how she felt. That was the worst part. If she didn't let herself feel she could be saving her life and Lach's, and still in a sense be a virgin, even if her hymen were broken because spiritually she had cooperated. She had betrayed all her beliefs. She pushed at him, but he caught her wrists in one hand and guided his cock back into her with the other.
He stroked deeper while she listened and felt the secret seeping of her blood. She felt her body opening up to each stroke. She was still, letting the strokes open her wider and wider.
She stared up at him, the sweat on his face, his eyeballs rolling as he pressed harder and harder. The hot hardness of his cock was widening her and she felt the sheath of her .vagina holding him tightly while he gasped and bucked.
She felt herself entering an utter state of bliss. She couldn't believe that this foul wretch could make her feel this, and yet it all felt as good as her daydreams told her fucking might be. Even better. Nothing in the world felt better than this. She felt her body floating in another reality. She felt as if something new within her was blossoming, her whole being opening up, a heightening of all her senses.
She felt her body rising and falling with his cock. Her insides contracted and quivered. She clutched his buttocks and pulled him down on her and screamed: "Oh, good! Good! Good! More! More!"
She lashed her hips faster and faster to meet his strokes.
The fat-faced man panted in rhythm with her. Her skull felt as if metal bands were squeezing her temples tighter and tighter. Her heart and breath suddenly seemed stopped.
She screamed high and clear with joy just as the floodgates of emotions shattered, and her heart soared higher and higher, filled with a magnificent surge of joy and ecstasy. Her body suddenly seemed to swell with a new warmth. Then her mind went out of her body and all she felt was a floating blissful state rushing over her in wave after wave, with spasm after new spasm as his cock went around and round and up and down.
She shuddered over and over again. A long time later she opened her eyes, thinking she had fainted.
Then the terrible sense of guilt struck her again. No, it had not been her fault. She had been raped. If she hadn't done it, they would kill her and Lach. She'd only done it to save herself and Lach. She closed her eyes and lay back, and felt her attacker pulling his long prick out of her and remorse swept over her.
She heard a rustling sound, a movement. She opened her eyes. The longfaced man knelt between her legs. She struck at him.
He slapped her twice across the face and put the barrel of the gun right against the top of her pussy.
"Which gun do you want?" he asked.
She did not answer. She covered her eyes with one arm and waited. There was nothing she could do.
Then his shaft slid into her and she felt his stomach come down upon her and his hands kneading her breasts.
Again she felt herself moaning with pleasure, luxuriating in his twisting, revolving cock. Ah, it felt so wonderful!
I'm a slut, she thought, a real slut. I've ruined myself. I didn't really fight. I'm doomed.
She spread her legs, lifted them around his back and fucked in a solid rhythm with him. When they came together, she dug her nails into his shoulders and wailed and writhed and flung her head from side to side.
He eased his prick out. Both men looked down at her, smiling.
"Hey, buddy," the long-faced one said to Lach.
"We got this little bronc all broken in for you. And, brother, she bucks."
Lach stared at them vacantly. He did not appear to hear them.
The fat-faded man slowly raised his pistol and walked toward Lach.
"Well, smart ass," said the man, "how'd you like the show?"
"What?" Lach said. He felt strange, remote, removed from the whole scene, but he knew how he was expected to react, and he suppose they were going to kill him and Joanie.
"Where's the car key?" the fat one said.
"In my pocket."
"Which pocket?"
"Hell," said the other. "We'll get the keys after."
Then Lach knew they were going to kill them.
The fat-faced man untied Lach and told him to kneel down, face the wall. He prodded Joanie off the davenport and told her to kneel down and face the wall beside Lach.
Kneeling there, yet feeling all that had happened was unreal, Lach knew he was going to die.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Missy's nostrils twitched in the wind, her eyeballs rolled skyward. About a hundred yards away three sharp-tailed grouse skimmed low across the sky to land in an open meadow surrounded by trees. Missy started to move. Ivan touched her rump, whispered, "Sit!"
The dog squatted on her haunches, trembling with excitement, and soon more birds arrived in twos and threes.
The open field in which the grass had been cut recently was dotted with bales of hay. It was about a mile long, several hundred yards wide.
Almost at once Missy began to quarter with her head lifted, moving faster and faster, her nostrils twitching, really making game. Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of cackling and clucking. Against the sky a covey of seven or eight birds flushed sixty yards away.
Out of range. Ivan shook his head.
Ivan watched the birds fly about a quarter of a mile. He thought they would probably land in the buck brush on the edge of the woods, but they came down again in the open field.
He halted, waited. He would let them calm down, and perhaps he could sneak up closer on his next stalk.
He saw Missy easing forward, lifting each paw gingerly, pausing, perhaps ten yards ahead. Her right front paw lifted slowly and hunt in the air, poised about six inches above the ground. Her nostrils twitched once, then she slammed into a charge. The birds seemed to jump straight into Ivan's gunfire. He swung on the bird to the left and cut it down. The dog bounded to retrieve as Ivan tumbled another grouse curving away to the right. It was a long shot.
He squinted, narrowing his eyes hard, roving his gaze across the field. Suddenly his heart kicked over. About a quarter of a mile away he could see a flock feeding, about a dozen heads sticking up above the stubble.
He thought of the old days of his extreme youth with his father when they put the pointing dogs in front of the car and let them range through vast wheat stubble land. Then, as the dogs pointed, he would leap off the car fender and in a kind of breathless pandemonium, charging, gun in hand, before the car could stop, he would be shooting suddenly in a wild excitement over the rigid, motionless dogs, staggering from the momentum of the moving car.
Now he crouched and inched forward, keeping the dog at heel. He stooped behind a bale of hay. The heads of the birds had vanished.
"Easy, easy," he whispered to the dog. "Hold." The birds were acting spooky. Maybe they had heard him and the dog.
He squatted beside the dog for ten minutes, checking the wind to make sure it hadn't shifted. Then he peered over the top of the hay bale. The heads of the birds had arisen upon their little periscope-like necks. They were alternately feeding and looking around. Ivan felt an old excitement rising in his guts. He scrambled forward about twenty yards. He ducked behind another bale and studied the birds. Still there. But the flock had spread out. The birds were more relaxed now.
He moved from bale to bale as quickly and as quietly as possible, the dog right behind him. Missy was quivering and shivering but she stayed right at his heel as he whispered commands to her. He knew that if he could get within fifty yards he could rush the last twenty and get within gun range.
He watched the birds. He stroked the dog's head with his left hand while studying the birds. "Easy, girl," he murmured, then rising, he spoke softly, "Heel. Come on."
The dog walked out stiff-legged, as if her paws were fragile as glass and she were walking on paper-thin ice.
Later, after it was over, he asked himself how it all happened, at what instant the dog made that single tiny movement, inperceptible to the human eye, but sensed, felt or seen by the birds, so that everything seemed to happen simultaneously. He was still running, his gun swinging back and forth in both hands across his chest, when the birds burst out of the stubble. Even in that instant,, running, he could see their markings blurred, the feathered bodies looking mottled and gray slanting up against the vivid blue morning sky. The gun came up light and familiar, held point blank on one rising shot, firing quickly. Too fast, too fast, don't shoot so fast! Then that miracle happened when a hunter thinks he's undershot: feathers floated suddenly upon the air, drifting down on the wind, and he knew the bird was down, though there wasn't time to note its fall.
For now there was only a fraction of a second in which to shoot again, and he fired, missing, into the sound of their cackling. Then his right eye picked up a bird far out, moving straight away. Pull up through him or you'll miss! He fired. The bird flew straight, climbing a little, the suddenly folded.
Then Ivan was running, calling in the dog who was coming up with a bird in her jaws.
Missy dropped the bird in front of Ivan. He stuffed it in the game pocket in the back of his jacket. Then he saw the dog looking up at him, wagging her tail. Ivan told her to "hunt" but the dog did not move. Then she strolled around behind Ivan and looked down at a dead grouse Ivan had passed.
Horned larks flitted and slanted against the sky and Ivan worked back west along the edge of the field, toward the cabin. The dog wasn't making game, but this was good country and there would be more, every day. The sun was high now. A cold bottle of beer would be great. His mouth tasted like cotton. He wondered if Lach and Joanie had had any luck. Even if they didn't get their limit it had been a fine day for hunting. He sighed like a tired hunting dog.
Fifteen minutes later he mounted the hill toward the cabin. Suddenly he heard a hoarse laugh, then another, then a scream.
He ran, stumbling, until he came to the bottom of the cabin steps. The scream came again. He tiptoed up the steps, thumbing the safety button to "fire" on his gun. He hissed softly at the dog to stay at heel.
Something was happening inside. Something odd. Why would Joanie scream? Then he was kneeling, gazing through the window.
There were two men in the room. One was holding a pistol on Lach and Joanie.
Lach was lying on the floor. Joanie was kneeling on the floor. The two men were laughing and slapping their hands against their knees. Joanie knelt above Lach. She held his prick in her hands, shaking it. It looked limp. Ivan watched it grow stiff.
Ivan felt his limbs freeze. He could not move, and then his mind said: "She can't be going to do it. They've got to be making her do it." Then Ivan felt his own cock move and his legs trembled.
"Stroke it, baby," one of the men said.
Ivan watched her hand curve around Lach's cock. Astonished, Ivan felt his own cock rising.
A thrill shot through him. This was wonderful! As he looked he felt his pecker getting harder and harder. He stared at Lach's hairy cock standing straight up, the pistol against the back of Joanie's head, her head sinking lower and lower over Lach's body. Suddenly Ivan's cock became rock-hard as he stared dumbfounded at Joanie's mouth closing over Lach's cock. Little bubbles formed at the edges of her lips as her head rose and fell. Ivan felt his cock quivering, and he closed his eyes and grabbed his cock and in his mind saw it growing bigger and bigger inside Joanie. God, she'd made him a new man again, just watching her do this. It was incredible, but whatever had happened to his mind was unlocked when he saw her lips working. He longed to find out if the sight of her naked skin alone with him would give him a hard-on without her having to use the dildo on him. He prayed it would work, just her flesh against his. He opened his eyes, unzipped his pants. As he saw Joanie peeling back the head of Lach's cock, Ivan felt his hand peeling back the flesh over the head of his own cock. He watched her hands finger Lach's balls. Then the man holding the pistol against her head pushed at the back of her skull and sent her sprawling forward as Lach's body arched and his steaming prick rammed as hard and as deep as it would go into her mouth.
For long moments Ivan was aware only of the silence and the chuckling voices of the two men towering over Lach and Joanie. It seemed to Ivan that he could feel the caress of Joanie's soft tongue on his own cock. He felt himself inside Joanie's mouth and cunt, merging with her wetness. He felt his body whirling inside Joanie's wet slit, his thighs jerking with the electric flow of her sexual hunger sucking at him. The thrill hollowed out his guts and legs and arms. Every nerve end in his body quaked and trembled as he saw her head move faster and faster, up and up and then down, over and over again. Suddenly Ivan's belly and buttock muscles tightened, heaved and his cock spasmed and in his mind he saw Joanie's lips sticky with his jism.
Ivan almost fell over from the orgasm, but controlled himself, for in that spasming instant he saw both men lift their arms, and then he saw the guns level down at the skulls of Joanie and Lach, and Ivan knew the men were going to kill them. Lach lay, all passion spent, flat on his bank, arms outstretched, crucified by Joanie's mouth where she lay now face down against Lach's naked thighs, extracting the last driblet of juice from his limp cock.
Lach waited for the blasting roar he knew he would never hear, the roar that would blow his brains out. For an instant he heard the two men chortle, and he thought it was probably the last sound he would ever hear.
Then the crash of gunfire filled the room and Lach sprang upright, flinging Joanie aside. In the same instant the round-faced man teetered alarmingly, his face suddenly blank but his eyes wide with astonishment, and a bright red smear ran over his chest. The stain spread abruptly like magic. The man teetered again, grabbing his chest with both hands and the pistol fell on the floor. Almost at once upon the crash of more gunfire the round-faced man pitched forward and landed on top of Joanie's naked body.
Lach grabbed at the pistol. The long-faced man fired at him point blank and missed and whirled and fired at Ivan coming through the door. Ivan fired. The shotgun roared, but the long-faced man was gone, running, straight through the open door into the kitchen. Long after the echo of gunfire stopped, Lach thought he could hear the man pounding down the back steps and through the brush into the woods.
Joanie lifted her head, looked into the dead eyes of the man slumped over her naked body and faint-ed. Ivan reached down and rolled him off Joanie's back. A rill of blood ran out of the man's mouth.
Lach looked about the room. Joanie opened her eyes. Slowly, she lifted herself on one arm until she was in a sitting position. She stared at both Lach and Ivan as if looking at them simultaneously, though they could not have been completely in her field of vision. The room was deadly still. Lach and Ivan exchanged glances and, without speaking, went swiftly into the kitchen.
"He'll be back," said Lach. "He wants the car."
"We'll wait him out," Ivan said.
Back in the other room Joanie lay on her stomach, her face in her hands.
Ivan smiled. "I could have nailed both of them. I shouldn't have jumped to one side when I came through the door, but he had the gun damn near on me."
Lach walked back into the other room, knelt beside Joanie and touched her cheek. She turned her face away. He helped her up and guided her to her room and laid her gently on the bed. She told him to close the door, to leave her alone.
He went downstairs. Ivan was looking out the window. Lach touched his shoulder. "Thanks, Ivan. He was getting ready to-"
"I know it," said Ivan. "They were going to kill both of you. They'd have to after what they did to her."
"Did you know what was going on?"
"I heard her yelling."
"They'd told her they were going to shoot us," Lach said.
"I sure did a job on his back," Ivan said. "That trap shot is something else. I suppose we'd better get the sheriff."
"Wait a minute. Not so fast. What about Joanie?"
"Nothing we can do," said Ivan.
"Like hell," Lach said hotly. "How the hell is she going to feel if this ever gets in the newspapers or on television and we have to tell the newspapers what we tell a grand jury? They'd find out one way or another. We couldn't ever live in this state again."
"If he gets caught he'll tell," said Ivan.
"Maybe he won't get caught."
"Sooner or later," Ivan said. "Hell, bank robbers don't live forever. No, somebody'll hear about it from him."
"I'm not dragging any police in here," said Lach. "It'd ruin us for life. Hell, do you think I want my friends to know what went on here?"
"So?"
"We're going to bury this guy. I mean deep, back in the woods, so the bears or dogs can't get him."
"What about the other guy?"
"I think we ought to wait for him and nail him, too."
"I think we ought to get the hell out of here," said Ivan. "Bury this monkey. Okay, I'll buy that. But I'm not setting up an ambush so you can be sure your bride's public reputation is lily white."
"Do you know what they did?"
"I can guess," said Ivan. "Listen, how the hell do you know she didn't enjoy it?"
"You sonofabitch!"
"Cool it," said Ivan.
"If you knew what they did."
"You never can tell about women," said Ivan.
"Shut up."
"Take it easy. Okay. So we bury this one. Then I'm leaving. If you want to stay and wait for that guy to try to take the car, that's uh to you."
"How're you going to get to town?"
"Walk," said Ivan.
"It's twenty miles."
"I'm not hanging around here. Go out there now and he'll nail you."
"When it gets dark we'll buy him."
"I'm going to check the car. Cover me," said Ivan. "He's only got one field of fire, and to hit me with that pistol he'll have to come into range from the woods. I don't think he will."
"I'll cover you," said Lach.
Lach went to the door, opened it a slit, peered out. The woods were still all around the cabin, but the first line of trees was at least a hundred yards from the cabin. The robber would have to be the world's best pistol shot to hit anybody from the edge of the woods. Ivan went down the steps and walked close against the house. He got into the car, pressed the started. The started ground and ground, but the engine didn't fire. Lach felt as if eyes were watching from the woods. Ivan got out and lifted the hood. He shook his head twice, then lowered the hood and returned swiftly to the house.
"Nobody but that guy is driving the car away from here," said Ivan. "They lifted the plugs. He probably has them on him."
Ivan prodded the pockets of the corpse with his toe. The pockets were empty.
"It's an even bet," he said, "they're walking because they wrecked their own car or dumped it in a lake and figured they could hole up here in an abandoned cottage for a week or two until the heat faded. Bet they've stashed their dough, and the car's at the bottom of some lake, so the cops'll figure after a couple days they've run clean out of the state and got away. Then they use our car."
Lach looked at his watch. "It'll be dark in an hour."
"Have you got a shovel?"
"One in the trunk of the car. Wait till dark. I'm sure he's watching us."
"I'll help you bury him, then I'm checking out."
"Thanks," said Lach coldly. "Thanks a helluva lot."
"Do you think Joanie wants to stay and get herself killed?"
"You've got a point," said Lach. "Take her out tonight with you."
"We'll go around the swamp," said Ivan. "We'll be down in the creek bottom beyond Axelrod's old cabin. A couple of sleeping bags ought to see us through the night. I'll wait till nine o'clock. If you don't show we'll start walking toward town."
"I need a drink," said Lach.
Lach shook his head. What could he do for her after seeing her degraded like this? Would she ever get over it? Yet a thrill ran all through him as he thought of her wet lips again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Upstairs on the bed in her room Joanie tossed and turned, scolding herself for feeling so good. The terrible thing was she had done willingly what they had thought they were forcing her to do, and when she thought of it now, even the sucking of Lach, she knew deep inside her, that after the wild, wild fuck with that monster gangster that was nothing she would do about it, no matter what they asked her to do. Because her flesh and soul and lips and mouth were still burning with the longing for flesh. Even now she felt her hips begin to move involuntarily upon the bed as if they had a life of their own and were feverish to relive the sex they had experienced. The pain had been terrible at first. The hot terrible pain. She closed her eyes and bit her tongue as she thought of it. She remembered her belly and flanks dancing convulsively, the warm blood trickling from her slit. His cock had been like a knife going deeper and deeper, cutting through her hot, boiling flesh. Then suddenly the bright blinding flash of pain.
Even in that terrible instant when her hymen had burst the pain was beautiful.
And then when the other man had mounted her, gripping her buttocks in both hands, ramming it home into her dripping cleft, the pain softened in her loins into a soft, burning tingle which spread like fire through her limbs. She would never forget it, but now Lach knew she had enjoyed it. No, he really didn't. She hadn't revealed pleasure. She had put on a good act. She knew now she might never be able to resist cock again, for even when she had been sucking Lach's cock she had felt her cunt opening as if crying out to suck in the sweet, thick fluid that gushed like hot steam into her mouth. Even now she was mystified that she felt only pleasure at the memory, as if in the memory of the pleasure her body was now spreading upon the bed like soft wax, eager to expose the tenderest and most secret parts of her wounded cleft to the healing ointment of deep, deep penetrating sex. She inserted her finger into herself and closed her eyes and waited for the sound of a male moaning voice to mount steadily in her mind. When it came far-faint, filling her brain as if from a great distance, getting closer and closer, knowing she was going to climax on her finger, and that she was going to scream with joy with it hit her-just in the second she felt herself passing out, as if a great blissful mist were closing over the back of her head and was going slowly down the length of her body, tingling her legs, her feet, her toes. Then she shuddered once and slept.
A hand, a voice roused her. It was dark in the room. For a fraction of an instant an old fright seized her and her flesh jerked away and then she heard Lach's voice: "Honey, listen to me carefully." She sat up. He took her hand. "Are you all right?" he asked solicitously. "Oh, yes. What's the trouble?"
"You've got to get out of here."
"I'm all right."
"Now, listen. We buried the one Ivan shot. Just remember, you never saw it happen. The other man got away. He took the spark plugs. Obviously, he's coming back tonight. I'm going to wait for him."
"No," she hissed. "Let Ivan." She caught his hand.
"Ivan won't stay."
"I'm staying with you."
"Don't be a damn fool."
"That Ivan," she said contemptuously.
"Listen, this is the plan. Like I said. I'll wait for him. You're going out with Ivan. It's dark now. Across the swamp. He'll bring the sleeping bags. We'll meet tomorrow morning at nine beyond the swamp."
The darkness swallowed them. The sleeping bags were roped to their backs. It was cold now, cold mist rising through the brush. In the moonlight Ivan could see his breath. The damn fool. Let him get killed. The bandit was obviously a pro. He'd trap Lach sooner or later. Lach was a damn fool to stay there and wait for a pro to come and get him. Foolish. He heard Joanie stumble. I suppose I'll have to carry her across the swamp, he thought.
"Come on," he said.
"Ivan, please, don't go so fast."
His breath, vaporizing, bloomed like smoke around his face, obliterating his head momentarily. The cold air was raw this deep in the swamp. On the high ground it would be better. He reached back and caught Joanie's hand and led her over a hummock of frozen earth.
Somewhere a loon cried. The lonely wail echoed mournful and forlorn. They went on in the thick darkness. Ivan felt his skin glowing. The thought of being alone with Joanie in the woods for the night was filling him with lust. He saw her naked body again upon the floor of the cabin. The image nf her tits and cunt rising and falling lay imprinted on his brain. It stunned his mind like a blow.
They came out of the swamp and a deer trail rose curving beneath the moonlight. The deer trail curved downward and they went on over a series of ridges, sparsely covered with aspen and birch and brush which bent and then whipped back against their thighs. Even above the dry smell of the autumn woods the soft, sweet odor of her flesh came to him. A hazel bush flicked his face. Then another. Ivan turned to warn her and then stooped his head and pushed the brush back, holding it for her to pass. He felt her body right behind him, touching his back for a second. Ahead in the moonlight lay a grassy track, an old lumber road rising and falling in the cold moonlit darkness surrounded by alder and aspen trees. It felt warmer in the woods as the trail narrowed until it became a single track, a deer trail. The brush on both sides of the trail was impenetrable. Suddenly a rush of wings whirred past their faces. Just a dark blur. Joanie screamed.
"Hold it," Ivan said, turning to clamp his hand over her mouth. "It's only an owl." He stopped and listened. No sound in the darkness, just his heart hammering. He had expected the sound of gunfire by now from the cabin. No sound. "Come on," he said.
A moment later the trail widened into a clearing choked with high grass surrounded by alder bushes. Against the darkness at the edge of the clearing a square of thicker darkness rose leaning. It was a cabin.
"We're supposed to meet him in the creek bottom," Ivan said. "It's about a quarter of a mile from here."
He pushed open the cabin door.
"It'll be damn cold in that creek land tonight, so we'll stay here."
"Right. Only you sleep. I'll stay awake."
Joanie unrolled her sleeping bag, and slid inside and zipped it up around her. She couldn't believe Ivan hadn't made a pass at her. The idea of going with him had at first frightened and thrilled her. She wanted to be the person she had been before those men had ravaged her and denigrated her by making her suck Lach's cock. The worst thing was that Ivan knew it, but what he didn't know was that in the end it had enthralled her. She told herself now if she resisted her desires this time she could become the person she had been before this trip. It only she could resist the terrible temptations that kept running through her mind.
She pushed far down in the sleeping bag until almost her entire face was covered. She closed her eyes and lay there listening to the sound of Ivan breathing steadily. He sounded as if he were panting. Maybe he was cold, she thought, but it didn't sound that way. She knew he was sitting with his back against his sleeping bag, facing the open window, so he could see anybody coming out off the trail across the clearing. The moonlight bathed the area in white, clear light.
She heard a noise. It was Ivan rising. There was a knock as he leaned his gun against the wall. Then the sound of his footsteps coming through the silence. Joanie froze, feeling her flesh beginning to jerk, rushing hot and cold, and the blood in her loins pounding. She pressed her thighs together, feeling the pounding of her heart. Don't. Don't, she told herself, yet unable to stop the quivering of her flesh, the secret juices rising in her cleft, the involuntary squirming of her thighs rubbing against each other.
"Ivan," she whispered. "Don't. Please. Please, please don't."
Then he was kneeling beside her and in the darkness she heard his hand unzipping the bag. She wanted to scream. He mustn't let her destroy herself. He mustn't let her tempt herself again. Her mouth opened on no sound.
"Don't," she said. "Or I'll yell."
"Sure," he said. "And get us both killed if that guy's in the woods." She heard him pulling off his pants.
No! I mustn't. I must try to be the person I was before. Virginity is a state of mind, she told herself again. I must reach that state again. No matter what happened I can be virginal again, without sin if I don't do it again of my own free will. Before I was forced. She made a choking sound and pushed at Ivan with both hands. Then he had his arms around her, and pushed all his body surface against her. She felt the big, rigid cock flattening against her stomach, sliding down around her pubic mound, his hands under her skirt fumbling with her panties. He ripped off her pants and covered her hairy cunt with his full hand, pressing and pressing, while his mouth covered her lips, his tongue twitching to open her mouth. She swung her head.
"No! No!" she hissed. "I won't! I won't!"
Then his fingers were inside her slit. She moaned, writhing. His whole body felt pressed upon her out of a kind of exquisite torture. She felt the blood draining out of her skull and she heard the sound of her own moaning. But as his fingers probed deeper, swirling the juice in her cunt, her body sprang as if of its own volition hard against his pecker and her hands clawed at his back. She floundered against him like a wild animal, whimpering and moaning, then grinding her loins against his cock, until he withdrew his hand. She felt her eyeballs rolling back in her skull. Joanie whimpered softly as he opened her shirt and massaged each breast with his hands, her body arching harder and harder against his pecker. Then his mouth was sucking both breasts, rippling back and forth from titty to titty. He pulled her skirt down and she longed to have his cock back against her pussy. He drew her up with one hand and removed her shirt and his own shirt. He kissed her tits again and again, sucking and kissing them, then kissing and sucking the smooth skin of her stomach. While his fingers kneaded her titties, she felt his tongue slowly descending to her crotch. Oh, oh, oh, oh, she wanted his tongue to go down. His lips kissed the hairy top of her mound and her body arched higher and higher, asking for his tongue, begging and beseeching, her clit laved in juice, trembling in expectation.
"Oh, darling, darling," she heard herself say.
His head moved and then his mouth opened wide and she felt his lips engulf her clit, his tongue slowly laving it. She felt his fingers pinching her tits and her cunt throbbing in unison with the thrill in her tits. She began to move her cunt up and down on his face, as thought her cunt wanted to suck in his entire head. His tongue impaled her.
Her tits became puffed nobs beneath his fingers. He caught her thighs and held her still and pushed his tongue in and out of her cunt and sucked at her clit. She gasped in joy. Oh, it got better every time. This was better than ever. She wanted to suck him, too. She wanted to scream as she felt his tongue going around and around.
Suddenly he stopped and in the darkness he loomed, kneeling between her legs. Her hand wanted to reach out for his cock. He mustn't stop. What was he going to do? She felt his body straddling her hips, then he was kneeling above her tits, swabbing each nipple with his cock. Thrill after thrill shot through her limbs, convulsing her vulva, which throbbed each time his cock stroked her tits. Her whole body throbbed.
She smelled his cock and balls right above her. He leaned against the wall with both hands and danged his cock just above her lips.
"Come on, honey, come on. It's good. You know it's good."
"Oh, please, no-nooooh, no. Please."
Joanie felt the head of his penis rubbing her chin. She was terrified by her own feeling, wanting to take it in her mouth, yet horrified that she would want to. Then she felt the tip of his prick rubbing against her lips. She swung her head away. She mustn't do this. It was terrible to do a thing like this, and worse yet to want to do it. That was what was so awful. But he caught her head between his hands and held it straight, rubbing the tip of his penis against her lips. She clamped her lips tightly. But her mind was dizzy with the strange, horrible desire to open her lips. She felt her mouth trembling. She mustn't! Mustn't! Never!
Later she told herself that she did not open her lips freely, that her lips opened all by themselves, that she had no control over them. The hot throbbing shaft was in her mouth, going in and in and in, gagging her as she fought to breathe, only to find she was sucking his penis faster and faster, her cunt throbbing in the same rhythm.
She felt the head bloating bigger and bigger. It seemed to her later that her tongue had known all the years of her life what to do. She felt it licking across the top of Ivan's cock as her cunt was opening wider and wider like a blossoming flower. Her tongue flattened against the back of his cock, prodding up it until it reached the little slit in the head. As her tongue opened the little slit, just wide enough for the tip of her tongue, she felt the flesh of his thighs glow hotter and hotter against her face.
When her lips descended right over the head, while her tongue prodded against the underside of his cock, pushing it from side to side, Ivan felt himself on the verge of coming and lifted his hips to draw his cock away.
Suddenly she cried: "Now! Please! Please! Put it in me! Put it in! Ah-ah-ah-ah. Pleasepleaseplease-please!" She couldn't believe she was saying it. Then his body was sliding down over her flesh.
"I'm going to give you the fuck of your life," he panted.
In a second, as he eased into her, Joanie didn't know how she was or where she was. Inch by inch she felt his cock slide into her, advancing slowly. She found her hips moving slowly as though the shaft brought her agony, an agony which she adored. Her thighs twitched uncontrollably and her belly flowed smoothly against his. He glided and she seemed to flow, feeling her main mingling in delicate lacework with his hairs.
Her breath came deeper and deeper. Her face was contorted, red and hot with passion. She thrilled to the constriction of her body as she felt her slit tightening on the thrusting member thrashing around in the juices pouring from her tissues.
"Now?" he asked. "Are you ready?"
"Oh, now. Soon. Please. Now."
Up and down, time after time, faster and faster he thrust deeply into her. She could feel the lips of her cunt spreading wider with each thrust, growing juicier and juicier. She felt her suction drawing him in deeper and deeper. She was fascinated by the reactions of her own body. She locked her thighs around his stomach. She squeezed her cunt gently until she felt him dip far down into the darkness of her womanhood, seeking the ultimate source of the happiness rising out of her juices.
Joanie gasped. Her eyes narrowed with exquisite pain. Her belly rose up with each stroke. Ivan cupped her buttocks in each hand, helping her to rise with each lunge. She clutched at the sides of the sleeping bag as if trying to hold onto reality, feeling herself slipping gradually away, inch by inch, wondering how it could be so wonderful and how it could feel that with each thrust he seemed to go deeper and deeper into her. She writhed her head from side to side, sighing with an excruciating sense of pleasure, as if her passion were reaching a pinnacle that would pass out of the realm of sound and sight into a world she could never reach if she stopped trying to lift herself into it.
Her body and mind drifted on that sea of pleasure where existence has no meaning beyond the distant shore of relief. She felt a giant eruption about to burst out of her body. Her head thrashed from side to side and her hair whipped wildly back and forth across her face.
Ivan plunged harder and harder, sliding easily in the juicy, oily passage. He banged her loins savagely. His hips jerked from side to side. He pummeled her and her belly rose and fell, arching ever higher, straining.
Suddenly, his orgasm came rushing, paused for a fraction of a second and then erupted. Bucking and rearing, his prick pumped its load into the depts of her writhing flesh. Joanie felt the sweet juices seep from the softening walls of her vagina, felt them compress automatically at the plummeting stroke, so the juices oozed down the passage, scalding her flesh. She gasped and she felt her responses intensify as the hot cream filled her. But still she had not come; her cunt hungered for more of his hot juice. But she quivered as his hot semen gushed into her.
"Please," she murmured. "Please, Ivan, don't stop. Please. Please, darling, don't stop." She knew he was still hard and he rose above her, pumping, and she pumped against him faster and faster. She was no longer the inhibited girl and she kept screaming at him to screw her faster and faster, harder and harder. It was so good! So wonderful! She wanted it to go on for ever and ever, deeper and deeper and deeper, around and around and around.
Why hadn't she known that was the whole meaning of a woman's life? There was nothing equal to it and she would never, never get enough. Her legs clasped him tigher and tighter. She jerked suddenly. She but her lip to stifle a scream of joy rising in her throat. She felt her climax release rising, the dam breaking. "Oh, darling, darling, darling!"
She felt herself explode, as if all her insides were rushing out of her cunt and anus, as if some giant bird had flown right out of her rectum. One huge spurt, a flash flood of such newness and enormity that there was nothing left in her loins. Her legs collapsed from his body and fell down, spread out lifeless.
She reached up and drew his head down and kissed him softly, rubbing his shoulders. "Oh, darling, darling," she whispered. "I love you."
"Did you get enough?" he asked, feeling as if his body had turned to liquid.
"Oh darling," she whispered, kissing his ears and lips. "I love you so much."
"You're a hell of a lay, Joanie."
"Darling, say you love me."
"Sure," Ivan said, sucking her earlobe. "I love you, sure."
"Let's wait," she said. "And do it again."
She felt at peace with herself, no qualms or conscience pangs. She loved Ivan. That was all that mattered. There was nothing wrong about doing it because she loved him. Nothing sinful in it when it was love. And he said he loved her. She wanted him always. Oh, if only they could do this all night, every night. I never want to do anything else, she told herself. She was amazed and happy about her new feelings. All the terrible things that had happened to her were washed away in this new feeling of love. She no longer felt she had ever done wrong. She felt new and pure, more happy than ever before in her life.
"All right, you whore!" a voice bellowed, and a flashlight beam transfixed her where she lay. "Get up, you whore!"
It was Lach's voice. Ivan reached for his gun.
"Up against the wall, you fink!" said Lach. "Both of you. Stand up, put your hands on the wall." His voice was furious.
"Lach, don't," Joanie wailed. "Don't. I love him! He loves me!"
"Bitch! Whore!" Lach snarled. Then he said in a cold flat voice, "My friend. My hunting buddy. Ivan, I'm going to blow you a new belly button. Turn around."
In the glare of the light, his hands lifted, Ivan slowly turned.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At his cabin Lach had waited, lying on the kitchen floor. From the window he could see the lawn. Nobody could approach the cabin front or back. He would see them. He knew why the bandit hadn't approached. Too much moonlight, so Lach had taken a chance, running out the side door, across the clearing into the woods. The bandit had fired at him once before Lach had reached the cover of trees and brush. Then he'd struck out for the abandoned cabin, figuring he would find Ivan and Joanie in the creek bottom beyond the cabin and that then during the night they could walk into town and get help. But he had found a different scene at the cabin than he had expected, and he was insane with rage.
"I'm going to kill you both," he said. His voice was quite cold, almost remote. "I've got the bandit's gun, so he'll get stuck for it."
"Come on, don't be a damn fool," Ivan said. He didn't sound scared. "Murder for a piece of tail? You got to be crazy."
Lach didn't answer. Ivan heard him enter the cabin, the sound of his footsteps in the darkness coming steadily across the room.
Suddenly a gun crashed. The room plunged into darkness. Ivan felt himself slammed against the wall.. He ducked. Joanie screamed. Ivan felt her flesh slide against his. Ivan groped along the wall, felt for his shotgun in the darkness. He fondled the stock in his right hand.
"He's out there," Lach hissed. "He followed me."
Ivan put his forefinger into the trigger guard. He crouched, listening. Joanie started making a whimpering, choking noise. Ivan reached for her arm.
He squeezed her forearm. "Get your clothes on."
"Listen," Ivan murmured, drawing on his pants. Lach was invisible in the darkness. Somewhere a loon cried. Then silence and into the silence came the sound of an owl hooting. "When we get dressed, we've all got to break at the same time. Different directions. Joanie and you, go out the back windows. I'll fire once from the door and go out the right front window. I mean go. Dive and run."
Lach did not answer. "Got it?" Ivan asked. He slanted his head, listening, but there was no sound. The gunman was out there waiting. But where? Which window was he nearest? He wouldn't be in the clearing. Too much light. That was the problem. No, they'd all have to break out the back window. One at a time and then go in different directions, like deer poachers throwing off a warden.
"I'll fire through the door to cover you," Ivan said. "As soon as I open fire, both of you go. Break in different directions."
"Make for the north end of Lake Sarah," Lach said. "You know the duck pass point. Meet in the blind."
"Okay. Are you ready?"
"All set," Lach said.
"Joanie, do you know what to do?"
"Yes," she answered in a choked voice.
Ivan crept to the door. "Get ready." He peered round the ruined doorjamb. He fired once. Instantly a gun barked from the woods and bullets hammered into the wall. Ivan saw the muzzle flash and fired again and heard Joanie and Lach dive out the rear windows. Ivan ran to the front window, fired, ducked, and crouched, ran to the rear window and climbed over the sill and entered the woods.
He had gone only a few feet when he stopped to listen. The crash of underbrush came to him. He listened carefully. The fools! They were running together. They must separate. He listened again and headed away from the sound of their running. Ivan fought his way through the brush for an hour, stopping now and then to listen. At first he would hear a faint noise, then silence. He was being followed. Each time he paused, he could hear somebody moving in the brush. Then silence, so he would run again, the brush beating against his body, slashing his face like whips.
He stopped fifteen minutes later and listened. The sound of somebody following came again. He knew it would be futile if he continued in a straight line. As soon as it was light the bandit would have a line on him. So the thing to do was give him a track, let him follow as closely as possible. Then as dawn light broke, ambush him.
Ivan started to loop his trail, pausing just often enough to listen for his pursuer. Ivan doubled back on his track, but so fast the bandit couldn't stay close enough to hear him move. But he was tiring. He paused, listened-no sound. He lay against a tree trunk a long time, listening, still no sound. Could the other be trying to outwait him? He felt exhausted. If he didn't get some rest, he'd be too tired to shoot straight. Then suddenly he heard the sound of his pursuer moving away, going north. He listened. The bandit had taken another track.
At first Ivan thought it was a trick, but the longer he listened, the more certain he felt that the pursuer had deliberately headed away. He wondered where Lach and Joanie had gone. No trace of them. He hoped they had separated.
His best bet was to climb a tree. He would be safe there as long as it remained dark. The trouble was as soon as it was light the concealment was gone, his body exposed in the leafless boughs. But in the dark, it would be the safest place to sleep.
He climbed up into the crotch of a big cottonwood and stretched out on a broad limb and rested. He could not sleep, but he could see all around in the forest. He felt utterly safe.
Two miles away the bandit was stalking Joanie, and he knew he was after a woman and he knew the three people had split up to throw him off. He had lived in the woods in his youth with his grandfather, an old World War One pensioner, who subsisted off poached deer.
Hank Miller was thirty-five years old, and he had been a thief ever since the day the truant officer had taken him out of his grandfather's shack and almost literally dragged him into town to go to school. That first night Hank broke into the grocery and brought home across the swamps and forests to the cabin of his grandfather nearly thirty dollars' worth of groceries, mostly flour, eggs, pancake flour and pancake syrup, which his grandfather purchased twice a year on his biannual trips to Pine City. This time it was free and his grandfather struck him across the mouth for being a thief. He shot his grandfather for striking him. It was cold, blizzard weather and nearly three weeks went by before the truant officer returned to the cabin looking for Hank Miller only to find the frozen carcass of his grandfather.
Joanie Hoke lay still, listening. It seemed strange to her that after what had happened she was still breathing. Yet her chest felt so tight she felt she needed more air and breath. She had held her breath too long, too often in the last hours since leaving the cabin. She lay behind a log and watched the darkness ebbing, her breathing more light and regular the longer she lay there.
She sensed the first sound, a faint rustling, and then she thought it was breathing she heard until she realized is was her own breath coming more quickly because of what she heard: the dead leaves shuffling on the forest floor. Then the sound came again and she knew it was not the wind moving the leaves.
She sprang up, running, fists closed, mouth clamped tight, her nostrils flaring and swelling.
She ran on in the fading light of night. She didn't know where she was running. She didn't know the country at all. She didn't even know which way the sun was rising. She simply ran into the darkness away from the sunrise. Soon she was exhausted and she lay down. She had run three miles. She was in a dried creek bottom, concealed by an alder thicket. For the first time she saw Hank Miller since he had helped rape her. He carried the pistol in his right hand. He did not see her, though she knew he was looking for tracks in the damp ground where already visible were the pencil-thin holes drilled by woodcocks. The sight of him made her heart thud. But she was not tired suddenly. This astonished her, the feeling she could run. It was the sight of the weapon in his hand that gave her strength.
She waited for him to pass. Then she moved. She started quietly to return in the direction from which she had come, but it wasn't long before she found herself running, panting. She knew she was lost, yet hoped to come across either Lach or Ivan. Suddenly she stopped, her heart flogging her chest. Through the silence came the sound of somebody running, quite far away. She followed the sound, her eyes wild with a restrained look like a horse. They appeared to pulsate as though worked by her lungs.
In the full dawn light she lay down behind an oak log, unable to sleep, watching a slow procession of ants advancing along the length of the log. They moved in an unbroken line. Her reddened eyes rolled as she watched them.
Suddenly she slept, but woke abruptly without knowing how long she had slept. She shouted something, astonished by the sound of her voice, not knowing what she shouted. She squatted, talking to herself, her voice quick and jerky. Dawn light was there. A mallard moved slowly across the purple sky.
Joanie was wide awake.
Hank Miller entered the draw in which she squatted. She sat there humming, her face lifted to the morning light.
Hank Miller looked at her, patient, waiting. He made no sound. He did not speak. She looked up at him, her lips cracked. Her eyes were bloodshot. One crack in her lips bled. She held her hands close to her breasts, staring up at him. Her arms were caked with mud. She was not aware of it. Then she smelled him, a rank smell. She watched him quietly, until he touched her arm. "Lie down," he said. "You'll make a good decoy when I finish with you."
She felt her dry throat working as he removed her hands from her breasts. In the silence she heard his breath: "Ah-ah-ah."
It was terrible. She wanted this man, and she was in love with Ivan. How could she feel this way? I'm a slut, yet I love Ivan. His big hand squeezed her luscious breast and she felt her nipples hardening with urgency. She tried to tell herself the man was forcing her, but she was unable to rationalize. All she knew was she wanted cock inside her again. She longed to know how this man would feel inside her after the awakening Ivan had given her. She told herself she could still love Ivan and still want this man's cock. Her vulva was burning moistly and she took his hand and guided his cock against her slit. If she didn't let him have it he would kill her or rape her, beating her. She might as well let him do whatever he wanted to do. There was no other way. She pushed against him.
The head slid in. She was tight, not quite lubricated, but her cunt itched for the rest of the cock.
He pushed harder and she felt her pussy grow juicy and another inch eased into her. Then he pushed and was inside, but not all the way. She arched her back and pushed and felt him thrust upward. She moved slowly forward, feeling his cock hair meeting her cunt hair until her hair was tangled and writhing with his. She moaned and felt herself grow weak from the deep thrust of his enormous cock.
He drew it slowly out and just as she feared he was going to take it away he rammed hard back into her, deeper. Then again and again and again, until they were sliding smoothly in her juice, and she moaned with pleasure.
She felt her muscles contracting and expanding with the sound of his belly slapping against her belly. His cock was enormous, like the branch of a tree. She longed to bury her fingers in his hairy armpits. He fucked her slowly, with a slow circular motion, deeper and deeper, moving his body sideways, up and down, around and around, then suddenly he shouted, "Let's go, baby! Ride! Ride!"
She pushed savagely up against him in a mounting frenzy. He ground his balls against her. She felt her body quivering, ready to come. She reached and clustered his balls in her hand while his cock swayed around and around, in and out.
She gloried in the growing excitement, loving the strong, fast thrusts, and felt a wonderful happiness when the hot, sharp spurts of come flowed into her. She shouted in an agony of joy, panting and trembling. She flung her arms out, quaking from the wonderful sense of joy and release. She felt his penis contracting slowly. She fingered the penis as he pulled out, and rolled over in a stupor on the ground beside her.
His eyes were closed. Then she saw the gun. It lay on the ground a few feet from his hand. She watched him carefully, then rolled casually on her side, reaching for the gun. It lay just beyond her fingertips.
Only a few inches away. She squirmed toward it. A meaty hand grabbed her leg and drew her back.
"No way, baby," Hank Miller chortled. He rose and picked up the pistol. He zipped up his pants. "Let's go, baby. You got work to do."
She got up, drawing on her clothes, slapping the wrinkles out of her skirt.
Hank Miller looked at her. He appeared not to be thinking about anything. The butt of the pistol was cold in his hand, cold and familiar. It felt good, comfortable as it had felt so many times before. There was only one thing to do, get both of them before they got to town. It was obvious they knew the country. One of them had the car keys. Probably the second one. Miller would have been out of here before this if there had been one piece of wire around that cabin. But not a piece, and no matter what he did he couldn't get the ignition wires to cross without an extra piece. No, he'd have to get the keys.
"Which one of your friends has the car keys?" he asked.
"What?" she said. Her eyes were glassy. "Car keys."
She shrugged. Her blank face told him nothing. He caught her shoulder and she jerked away and laughed. "How should I know? You find out," she said.
"You're going to find out for me."
What's he going to do? she thought. Doesn't matter. He won't hurt me. He wants Ivan and Lach. Well, he can have them.
"What's your name?" she asked, her eyes and voice bold now.
"Shut up," he said.
She laughed harshly. "Do you like me?"
He waggled the pistol at her, beckoning her to go on ahead.
"I've had better," he said.
She laughed again, cheerfully.
"I want you to start screaming in about five minutes," he said, thinking, Get the keys, and take her along in the car. She'll be worth something in Chicago.
"Screaming?" She looked puzzled. "As loud as you can."
"If I don't?" Her voice sounded quite calm to her. His face was the color of dirty paper. She watched it.
"You catch on slow," Miller said, lifting the pistol to her head.
"Look," she said, in that calm voice. "Now, you don't have to be so tough."
"Keep moving. Straight ahead."
"What if I run?" she said. His eyes were cold and hard. '"Do you want to?"
"No," Joanie said. Hank Miller looked past her. "I wouldn't," he said.
Joanie heard mallards calling from a pond. High overhead the Duluth plane passed. The sun was rising and the sky was clearing. Hank Miller pulled back the sleeve of his jacket, looked at his wrist-watch and shook his arm covering the wrist again with the jacket wristlet.
Where two deer trails intersected a tree had fallen across one. He directed her to take the trail to the left. In the damp earth were marks of deer hoofs. Between them Joanie saw the prints of boots. The trail went on, curving, through the alder and brush and fir trees. He tapped her on the shoulder. "Start yelling, sister," he said. His lips jerked viciously. "Hurry up." He stepped off the trail into the bush.
"Don't move off the trail," he said, stooping behind a tree.
He's going to ambush them, she thought. If I don't scream, he can't. But he'll kill me. He won't have any choice. But if I'm dead I can't scream.
She screamed once, high and shrill, then again.
"Stand still," Miller said.
He waited, the pistol cocked where he stood flattened behind the tree. His lips were lifted a little upon his even white teeth.
Standing in the middle of the trail with the echo of her scream gone, but the sound of it still in her ears, Joanie turned her head suddenly toward a big clump of alders off to her right. She saw the bush sway, then stop, then Lach's arm appeared, groping gingerly to move the limb of alder aside without making noise. He stepped out, holding the shotgun in his left hand.
She stood quite motionless, her mouth open a little. She looked away from Lach. He was too far for a clean shot. There was one tree in the way. He stepped gingerly, lifting first one leg, then the other, like a hunting dog stalking.
Joanie was watching Hank Miller. To her he did not appear to move, nor did his hand appear to move. Her mouth opened wider. Her mouth felt dry and gritty. She wanted to scream, but her mouth would not move, for now she saw Hank Miller's hand move.
There was a crash like the sky falling in. The trees shut in the sound, but it went on reverberating long after she stopped screaming. She stood there, screaming, her arms hanging limp, staring at Miller's profile as he leaned against the tree, the pistol still resting on his wrist.
Lach lay face down in the leaves. Miller walked over to him and turned him over with one foot. A neat round role like a third eye flowed blood from just above the bridge of his nose. Miller emptied his pockets. He turned and looked at her. He wagged the pistol slightly and put the car keys in his pocket. Silence filled the woods.
"Come on," he said. "We're getting out of here." She watched him counting the money in Lach's wallet.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ivan heard the sound of gunfire and ten minutes later reached the body of Lach. He did not pause. He struck straight down the trail, certain Miller was heading for the cabin.
The woods was filled with daylight. Ivan kept looking down the trail, walking fast. He breathed with his mouth open, thinking, II he wants to ambush me he can, but he's probably after the car now. So he's hurrying and he's got Joanie with him.
He cringed, expecting to hear the blast of the gun that would kill him, but the woods was silent. The deer trail was like a tunnel through the brush.
He stopped to listen. No sound. That meant they had a good start. He would have to run to reach the cabin in time. He began to dog trot. He felt utterly naked, vulnerable, running down the trail. It was all a gamble.
As he neared the cabin he slowed, moved off the trail, moved cautiously. He paused behind a tree, craned his head out, searched the woods, listening, then moved on from tree to tree.
A sound caught his ear. Ivan halted. His guts froze. He didn't dare move a muscle. Only his eyes moved and then he saw Miller out of the tail of his eye.
An alder branch whipped the air, and Miller was coming straight down the trail. He carried a shotgun in both hands, held across his chest in a port position.
This is my chance, Ivan thought, but I'll never get a clean shot at him in the woods. I've got to wait for him to go back to the clearing. But why am I here, risking my life?
Ivan knew why, but he didn't want to admit it to himself. He wanted Joanie. She was the greatest piece of tail he'd ever had. Maybe I am in love with her, or that screwing she gave me. He'd never had a young one who liked it so much. She'd brought him back to life. He mustn't lose her. Lach was dead and she was his if he could get to her. All he had to do was plug this guy. He'd never find a girl again who made him feel as she had, who could make him a whole man instead of a pervert.
His whole body was shaking. He felt his hands quiver, and he wondered if he could hold the gun steady. He looked at his hands shaking. Then he told himself he could do it, but he didn't believe it. If Miller came back down the trail and went into the clearing around the house he would have a clean shot.
He couldn't stop shaking and then he lost sight of Miller. He must have gone past, Ivan thought, but he could not move. He knew he must not move. The moment he moved he would give himself away. He began to shake again.
Lach's killer came into sight again where the trail curved and the cover was sparse. He was looking from side to side, holding the gun in both hands, ready to fire. Ivan lifted his shotgun, but almost at once Miller moved and was lost among the brush and trees. He can't see me either, Ivan reassured himself.
Take it easy, Ivan thought. Get him in the chest or stomach. Don't try for the head. Knock him down with a long shot in the guts, then come up on him.
Suddenly Ivan couldn't hear any movement. The man would have to come back along the trail. What if he circles around and gets in behind me? But Ivan felt he would hear him coming. Nobody could move completely silently in this thick brush, unless there was another trail, and Ivan knew there was not.
He stopped shaking and waited. Then he heard a sound again, and looking through the brush he saw the killer approaching, walking backwards.
Ivan felt his eyes moving faster and faster and the gun coming up to his shoulder. Then he felt himself beginning to shake again. His arms froze. In that instant he felt his nerve and concentration coming apart. He knew he must fire now or miss.
Ivan was never sure what happened except that later he figured the man must have turned in that instant and seen him with the gun raised. A roaring sound rose all around Ivan. He thought it was his gun until the hot shocking blow struck his shoulder and he felt as if somebody had torn the gun out of his arm.
When he hit the ground he knew he had been shot but he still didn't know where. He heard gunfire again and rolled and got to his knees and heard the crash of the gun again before he realized he was running with his right arm dangling against his side.
He ran on, waiting every second for the gun to crash behind him that would kill him, but there was no sound, only the hoarse sound of his own panting. I'm going to die, he thought.
He plunged through a thicket and out the other side, running full speed across a clearing, waiting for the next charge of shot to strike him in the back. He stumbled, fell once, and rolled over, still not feeling pain, only as if he were sinking into a mist. Then he was aware he had fallen again and he was rolling, falling down, down, down.
The sharpness of the brush against his face woke him. He lifted his head and looked up into the tops of trees. He sat up slowly.
Then he felt the pain in his shoulder. The charge of shot caught the edge of his shoulder, the flesh was torn and he was bleeding. He couldn't tell how deep he had been hit. He couldn't lift his right arm. His whole arm and hand were stiff. He gritted his teeth and with his left hand started to peel the coat sleeve off his right arm and shoulder. The pain almost forced him to cry out. He couldn't draw the sleeve down any more without fainting from the pain. He lay back and listened and then he remembered.
Yes, he remembered now and he was sure he had hit the killer. He'd fired again, but Ivan was sure some of his shot had struck home.
Ivan had seen gunshot wounds in Vietnam, rifle wounds. He was certain he had a flesh wound or he would have lost more blood even though his sleeve was drench with blood and he could feel the blood cold on his chest. His guts jumped with pain as he moved the arm again.
He lay there a long time, but he felt free. Could he walk out without bleeding? The bleeding seemed to stop but it started again as he rose and walked. He did not know how long he had lain in the woods.
He followed the trail of his own blood, from leaf to leaf, He felt his arm turning numb. He found himself whistling and stopped. Then he realized the sun was behind him and that he passed out in the woods. But he didn't feel so weak now. His whole arm was stiff now. He sat down and almost at once his eyelids closed. He leaned back against the tree, feeling the blood clotting on his shoulder. He slept, exhausted.
Joanie drove slowly and carefully, along the rutted grassy lane through the woods. Hank Miller lay on the floor of the back seat of the station wagon. He held the pistol in his right hand. Ivan's shot had nailed him in the left forearm and he wore a tourniquet of rope just below his elbow. His arm was blood-soaked but the bleeding had stopped. His hair was wet with sweat, swirled about his temples. His face was pale and he rolled as the car went up and down over the old bumps formed by logs beneath the grass ruts. He raised himself and looked at her vaguely.
"Don't try any funny stuff," he said.
She swung the car carefully in the grassy ruts around a curve. She drove no faster than ten miles an hour as the old road twisted and turned through the forest. He sat upright on the floor, yet crouched just enough so that his head did not show over the bottom edge of the windows.
"I got this gun right on your head," he said once when she speeded up the car and lurched, swaying him back against the edge of the back seat.
Joanie sat erect, leaning forward a little over the wheel, her eyes bright and hot, watching the rutted lane flee past beneath the wheels, waiting anxiously for the highway. I'm going away with him, she thought. Just him. He had told her Ivan was dead. So it no longer mattered. She didn't care now about Ivan. She thought of both men as only machines that eased her throbbing loins. The land opened, the brush gave way to birch, open fields, while she pressed her legs close together, rubbing her thighs together as she drove, remembering the excitement both men had given her, saying happily to herself, I'm different than I was. I'm different.
It was a brilliant afternoon, Indian summerish. The car came out of the rutted lane, went along a gravel road five miles, turned onto the pavement.
"South," he said, then he screamed as she jerked the car up onto the pavement. He clamped his mouth shut. "Light me a cigarette," he said.
She drove with one hand, taking the cigarette out of her purse, and pulling out the lighter with her right hand. She handed him the lit cigarette over her shoulder, without looking back at him, her eyes steady on the road.
"Just keep driving," he said. "Right into Minneapolis. Not too fast. I don't want to get picked up."
"Don't worry."
"Don't con me, baby."
"I'm not."
It was dark now. They went on. The highway became four lanes, filled with home-bent commuters, cars moving slowly in long snake-like formations.
They reached Minneapolis at nine o'clock. They drove into the southeast section of the city, past the old University buildings, crossing the Mississippi river beyond which the skyline rose in lighted terraces of new office buildings. He ordered her to drove through the business district. Above a bridge spanning a super highway he told her to abandon the car. She walked with him five blocks. He stopped before a huge old red brick three-story house. The door was wooden with a glass plate. He pushed the bell twice. A thin old man, wheezing faintly, and munching snuff-he spat upon the porch-opened the door, and caught Hank Miller as he stumbled into the vestibule.
"Take her to Ethel's," Miller said. "And get me a doctor."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was dark in the room when Joanie woke. She remembered the ride, the man guiding her down the stairs, into the car, the car passing in and out of the lights, through the darkness, then being lifted from the car, dragged, struggling briefly, and now suddenly awake in this dark room. But she wasn't frightened. It was as though she were where she had expected to be. So she rose from the bed without astonishment. She walked, feeling she looked mechanical, but knowing she did not feel mechanical. She put her hand upon the doorknob and opened the door, her face vague, but without any fright.
It wasn't until the thin, sickly looking old man came along the hall, his smile cunning and greedy, that she realized she was naked. His fingers rested on her naked shoulders and he moved his face forward, leering at her. She could smell his rotting teeth. He dug his fingers into her flesh. She did not move. She stood there and laughed at him, her laughter high and shrill and derisive.
Then she struck him once across the face and shoved him across the room and out the door into the hall. She slammed the door, and shouted: "Send in a man, grandpa." She listened to him go along the hall.
She crossed the room and sat on the bed, naked, drawing her hands slowly over her thighs and loins, up along her stomach and over her swollen breasts, pinching the nipples, her eyes smiling in her flushed face. Then she lay down on her back on the bed, feeling the cool sheets against her hot flesh. She snapped the light out over her bed, then remembering the package of cigarettes on the nightstand, she reached in the dark, felt the pack, and the lighter on the nightstand. I'm in a whorehouse, she told herself, and smiled, inhaling, drawing the smoke far down into her lungs. She stared at the lighter flame, still burning. The flame seemed to grow larger and sharper as she gazed at it, an upthrust reddening conical pointed stalk, throbbing and wavering like a hot penis. She lay there staring a long time at the flame.
It was after midnight. The house was silent, then at intermittent intervals it was full of sounds, shrill voices, other women's voices, just as she had heard on the first night. The sounds were remote but clear, footsteps passing her door, the almost indistinguishable voices of men. She wondered why she wasn't hungry, and she tried to remember how long it had been since she had eaten. She wasn't sure. In fact, she wasn't sure what day it was. It didn't matter. She felt content. And she did not know why. She smelled food in the room, but she did not remember seeing it. She lay there smoking, smelling the food. After a while she turned on the light and saw the tray on the bureau, a steak and potatoes and a glass of milk. She put the cigarette down and drank the milk. It tasted strange to her. It was cold, quite sweet, but there was a strange taste to it, almost too sweet. She picked up the knife and fork and standing in front of the bureau she began to eat. She heard automobile brakes in the street beneath her window. After she ate she lit another cigarette and lay on the bed listening to the noises in the house. She thought she heard a bell, a door banging somewhere, feet coming slowly up the stairs, along the hall. Joanie watched the door until it opened and Hank Miller stood in it, his arm in a sling. He now wore pants flared at the bottom and a checkered jacket, sleeveless on one side. He entered on brown patent leather shoes with high wedge heels. Behind him stood three men. She looked at Miller with love but she felt a new interest in the men. She studied them. All of them were young, well built, in their early twenties, dressed in top styles of double knit pants and knitted sports shirts. Miller turned to them.
"Well, boys, here she is. What do you think?"
They smiled and nodded in unison. Her heart sank as she looked at Hank. It didn't bother her that they saw her naked. She felt their hot bright eyes probing her flesh and she reveled in their gaze. But she wished they would go away. She wanted Hank inside her. It would be good! Ah, so good! Hank murmured something to the three men and they turned and went out, closing the door. She wondered that a week ago the thought of being in a cathouse would have scandalized her. Now she was intrigued. She didn't want to admit it to herself, but she wondered what it would be like to fuck with those three young men all at once. But she scolded herself almost immediately. She mustn't think like that! Hank was all she wanted. He could give her all the love she needed. She told herself over and over again that Hank loved her and that she loved Hank and she was going to live with him.
"Hank," she said. "Is this a whorehouse?"
He laughed. "Just a home for girls, honey."
She laughed, knowing she was right, excited but scandalized still that she should be excited. She tried to concentrate on the fact that she loved Hank no matter what he had done. She'd never been made love to as well. There was nobody else in the world who could make her feel as Hank made her feel.
She watched him come toward her, opening his pants. She did not move. Her eyes grew darker and darker. She felt them turning upward into her skull. She heard her voice before he touched her. She began to sigh and moan, "Ah-ah-ah-ah," with a kind of painful wail, her body arching slowly as though about to face an exquisite torture. Then he touched her and she hurled herself upward. He pushed her away. "My arm. You'll have to get on top."
She stared at his long curving cock as he lowered himself onto his back. She sat on the edge of the bed now, holding his penis. She stroked it up hard, easing the foreskin over the big spongy head. With his free hand, as she stroked him, he rubbed her tits, first one then the other, back and forth, then into her warm moist slit, his fingers slid, twirling. She spoke out of a swooning agony of erotic longing, with long shuddering waves of desire rippling over her, her eyeballs rolling back into her skull, her face drained of blood. "You've got to now. Now! Now!"
"Get on top," he said. "Hurry."
Joanie's nipples throbbed, puffed and pouting. Then she was straddling him. He rammed his wildly throbbing prick up into her and she came down all the way. Tingling sensations ran out of her cunt all the way through her body, right up her spine into her scalp. He pushed his cock in and out. She felt his balls hardening and come bubbling inside each testicle. Her head thrashed from side to side. He dug one finger into her anus and snugged it in as he felt her clit pressing down harder and harder. Sensations after sensations shot through her body in delicious electrical shocks.
Suddenly Joanie knew she couldn't hold herself any longer and she flung herself around and around, up and down, up and down, nearing an orgasm. She reached behind her, seeking his balls. She rolled them, heavy with come, between her fingers, and she felt his prick grow inside of her. Sweat poured down over her breasts and belly, and she pumped her hips harder.
A sexual flush spread over her flesh and she spasmed again and again, twirling her cunt upon the delicious shaft, ramming it down, writhing her hips, feeling the come racing up in his prick.
She felt him explode, the hot come scalding her vulva. Spurt after spurt jetted against the walls of her cunt and she ground her teeth with ecstasy.
She reveled in the warm, sticky juice from his body running up inside her body, feeling his prick bathed with both their juices. She went on moving up an down, sensing his prick shrinking. Suddenly she heaved a great sigh and rolled off his body and curled up on the bed beside him. He lay there until he saw she was asleep. He picked up his clothes. She did not move. He opened the bedroom door. The three men stood there. Hank put a finger to his lips, shook his head. "Give her a half-hour," he said and shut the door.
Joanie was asleep, dreaming. In the dream her cunt was swollen with desire. She writhed on the bed slowly, like someone drowning in deep water. She heard her voice in the dream. It was making high, jerky noises. There was a heavy, enormous swelling and tightening in her pussy, and a burning spout deep inside her struggling to get out. In the dream the face of a strange man made her lips tremble upon his cheek as her fingers dug into his back and the lower half of her body writhed against him. She felt light pressure on the insides of her thighs. She parted her legs. She felt hands going slowly over her, her body writhing to meet his touch, her thighs opening and closing, her knees slowly jack-knifing upward.
Her breasts felt enormous, as if they were soaring out of her body. Inside her body seethed, jerking hot and cold, her vulva palpitating. Her lips paled. She felt her eyeballs rolling up into her skull and then she heard voices. Three voices, and in the dream they were visible, three naked men, one on each side of the bed, and one lying beside her. She felt her body sending out wave after wave of sex penetrating the pores of each man's body, drawing them over her. She could smell their hair and bodies and pricks, becoming one with her flesh, with the hysteria rising in every pore of her body. She reached and touched each man's penis in turn. She felt a kind of invisible music rising higher and higher around her. She twisted, flaunting her loins at them. In the darkness she felt a tongue penetrate her lips. A vast dizziness swept over her body. Then a tongue oozed into her slit and heat from the thrusting tongue sent spasms of pleasure into her tits, rippling waves. Then the tongue washed her clit and she longed for the dream to go on forever. Suddenly she woke.
It wasn't a dream. Three men were in her room, one with his head between her legs, the other two bending over her, stroking and tonguing her breasts. She screamed, "Hank!" but it was too late. Three pairs of hands held her.
Joanie opened her mouth to scream again but no sound came. A hand clapped over her mouth, and two hands clamped her arms down so that she was spread-eagled flat on her back, her body thrashing furiously. She saw the men crouched beside the bed.
She froze for an instant, then she knew it was no use, for hands were tantalizing her flesh, the hysteria of passion mounting between hands stroking her breasts and buttocks and belly. Though she felt debased, she felt her crotch opening, unable to control it, a tongue titillating the thick triangle of curly brown hair. The tongue descended slowly, circling and swabbing her curly mound, and then the tongue stabbed at the opening of her slit like a snake's head. She felt her hips grind down upon the man's face, her body utterly out of control. She moved her slit back and forth against the tongue, while the fiery fork darted in and out faster and faster.
She felt her hands released. Of their own volition her fingers began feeling in the darkness for pricks and balls. She felt her hands soften, stroking balls and pricks. Then she cried out as the tongue slid from her cunt, but only for a moment as it slid up and down her slit, pushing aside the lips of her cunt, seeking the clit. Then the tongue found the thickening knob and she felt her clit being lapped steadily. Hands pushed her legs apart, then the lips fully grasped her clit, holding it fast, sucking until a sense of magnificent happiness soared higher and higher inside her so that it seemed that all men were the same and all these men were suddenly one marvelous man with three pricks and six hands and three mouths, a super lover, filling her with a complete sense of uninhibited womanhood she could never reach with one man.
She felt her hands kneading balls, her tits brushing against a belly, lips glued to her clit. She felt around in the darkness, rolled another pair of balls in her hand. She felt absolutely wonderful. Hands held her tits, molding them. One second her cunt was empty and the next instant she felt cock sliding inside her. Lips opened wider over her breasts, pulling at each nipple. Then a tongue made small circles around the point, brushing the nipple back and forth.
She felt her breath coming and her hips moving faster and faster. Joanie felt she was building up to the biggest orgasm of her life and she wanted everything working on her now at once-a mouth, a tongue on each of her nipples and a big cock down there sluicing in and out of her cunt.
She was really swinging, sweat rolling down her face and body, feeling the wonderful wet squishing of her cunt with the telltale throbs going deeper and deeper into her cunt, traveling the length and breadth of her channel, squeezing and squeezing-and then the orgasm ripped out of her. Her hips zipped up and down as she came again. She tried to get more and more cock into her spasming hole. She made low mewing sounds and then as she came again a wail tore from her throat. As Joanie wailed, her hands sought each man, drawing them down, one at a time, impaling herself on their cocks, lunging and wailing, moaning and sighing, milking each prick over and over again, while her lips through long gasping moans sought other pricks, milking them as her cunt, with giant contortions, squeezed the prick within her with a massive convulsion, until sighing the men lay upon the bed, gutted sexually. Joanie, still breathing hard, felt her cunt milking the last softening length of a cock, taking the last drop of come out of it. Her limbs for the first time in her life felt perfectly at ease, completely free.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was almost a month before Ivan returned to his apartment, counting the time he spent in the hospital and the time it took the grand jury to indict a body that was already dead in the woods and for the county attorney to issue a warrant for Hank Miller and the state police to conduct a search for Joanie Hoke, who had vanished. They couldn't find her or Miller after two months.
It was a cold winter night that Ivan heard the last news report that probably marked the end of the search for Joanie Hoke. She and Miller had vanished without a trace. His apartment was hot, too hot, and dry, and the radiators crackled and baged with the rising heat. He had a single bed, a kitchen, a bath. Upon the bureau he had spread his towel, his watch, his shaving kit, and, lying back on the bed he studied the mass of newspaper clippings that lay around him on the bed, and then picked up one, a news photograph of Joanie taken at her debut party at Woodhill Country Club. Upon the fading paper a shadow lay. He moved the clipping. He looked down at it, the pretty somewhat bland, sweet face, which seemed to star innocently out past him, out of the dead newspaper clipping. He thought of the woods in northern Minnesota and the murmur of the wind in the pines when he lay with her in the sleeping bag. Good God. The room around him seemed to darken into the remembrance of the sweetness of her body, the urgent, wild young flesh seeking love in his body.
He must find her. She must be alive somewhere. But how? The police were baffled. Could she have...? He wondered if somewhere news of her had been suppressed. If somehow her family's wealth had made possible such suppression.
He sat up suddenly. The newspaper photograph slipped from his hand. Her image blurred beneath the bed lamp. He stared at her with horror and despair.
Her eyes looked secret and soft suddenly, as if he had not quite seen beyond the innocent expression. The photograph was three years old, three years since her debut. He knew there was another look in her eyes now if she were alive. He stared at her painted lips, remembering their furious pressure. Yet as he looked at her photograph again he seemed to see in her eyes a beyond-looking expression, contemplating something nobody would ever know. He lay in bed a long time, with the bed lamp shining on the clippings. It was past midnight when he went to the telephone. He called the police department and asked for the night captain of detectives. He did not know the man. The switchboard put him through to a guttural German voice:
"Yess."
"Is Detective Resunko in?"
"Who's diss?"
"A friend of Resunko."
"Her vorks duh day shift."
"Thanks," Ivan said and hung up the telephone.
Ivan wondered why he hadn't thought of calling Bernie Resunko before. Ivan remembered him ten years ago as a hulking high school kid, a guard on the West High football team, with a cunning face, son of a retired traffic cop, with an older brother who had served time in Ohio for forgery.
The next morning Ivan called him. Resunko had forgotten Ivan or was pretending not to remember him, but Ivan was certain Resunko was pretending because Ivan's picture had been in the newspaper several times following the grand jury hearing in Pine County.
"Don't give me that crap," Ivan said. "You know me and I know you."
"Oh, yeah, Ivan. Jeez, I didn't get the name right."
"Maybe you don't read the newspapers, Bernie."
"What's new?"
"You tell me."
"How're you feeling?"
"Not good."
"Huh?" Resunko grunted, puzzled. There was a silence on the-.wire. "What about you?" Ivan asked. The wire hummed emptily.
"What about you?" Ivan asked again, his voice faintly hostile. "Nice talking to you," said Resunko.
"Listen, you bastard, I'm not calling you for a high school reunion."
"You sap," said Resunko, spitting out the words.
"What's the trouble? I thought you were a friend."
"What the hell are you calling me for?"
"Cool it, man," said Ivan. "I just want to talk to you."
Again the long silence on the phone.
"How're things going with you now that it's all over?" Resunko asked awkwardly.
"I want to talk to you." Ivan's voice was harsh, assertive.
"Call me at home," Resunko said. He said: "Three seven seven one six two two. I can't talk to you here." Resunko sounded scared.
Ivan hung up immediately. That night he called Resunko at home.
"What the hell's happened to Joanie Hoke?"
Resunko breathed heavily along the wire.
"Half the trouble in the world is caused by women," he said.
"Don't con me," Ivan said in a dry, furious voice. "Where is she?"
"What?" Resunko said.
"Where is she?" The muscles in Ivan's jaw ached with rage.
Then Resunko spoke in a guarded, tomb-like tone. "You going to be home awhile?" Ivan told him his address and slammed down the telephone.
In fifteen minutes the doorbell shrilled and Resunko stood in the doorway.
"Hurry up," he said in an urgent voice, entering swiftly, closing the door just as swiftly behind him.
"Yes," said Ivan. "Well, what have you got?"
"Information that might interest you."
"Come on. Come on."
"It might interest a lot of people." Across the room a television orchestra thudded against Ivan's ears. But above the sound of the music he could hear Resunko's gross breathing.
"Okay," Ivan said. "What is it? And how much?"
Resunko stood there bulkily, looking at Ivan's face,' his eyes. Resunko suddenly took on an air of cunning and calculation, his eyes flicking from side to side as he thought.
"Still single, eh?" Resunko said. "I always say why buy milk when there's so many cows wandering around free. I always say."
"Knock it off," Ivan said. "What've you got? Where is she?"
Again Ivan felt Resunko watching him, the stare bold now, yet still calculating and cunning. "Like I always say, good information like a good woman's hard to find ... cigarette?" Resunko's big meaty hand flicked to his trouser pocket and offered a package of cigarettes.
"No thanks," Ivan said coldly.
Resunko lit a cigarette, his face moon-like behind the sudden cloud of smoke.
"Start talking," Ivan said. "Quit jacking around."
Resunko puffed the cigarette, exhaling without removing the cigarette.
"Week ago I come onto some news about that girl might be of value to you, if I'm not mistaken."
"I said before. How much?"
"I'll leave that to you."
Ivan's mind flicked and darted for an instant. There was nobody else except her mother who might pay for such information. So why hadn't Resunko gone to her? He must be afraid, Ivan thought, afraid she might go to the state. So somewhere the cops are mixed up in this. But who's paying off the cops to keep it quiet? If he hasn't sold the information to Joanie's mother, why not?
"Doesn't anybody else want to know about her?"
Resunko shook his head.
"What about her mother?" Ivan said.
He could feel Resunko watching him. Again Resunko shook his head, steadily, and slowly, watching Ivan's face.
"You really want to know where she is?"
"First, I want to know why you haven't tried to peddle your information to Joanie's mother."
"Her mother doesn't want any part of her. She doesn't want any publicity. We told her. She's an old stuffed shirt. She'd as soon forget her daughter as to have any public scandal."
"You know where she is?"
But Resunko said nothing. Ivan clenched his hands.
"What makes you think I can pay you?"
"You know that better than me. I ain't no burglar. We were pretty good buddies in high school on the team. I ain't no burglar, but you got to keep your mouth shut."
Ivan turned and sat down and pointed at the bottle of whiskey under the table beside the television set. "Fix yourself a drink," he said. Resunko stooped and uncapped the bottle and tilted it up and Ivan watched his Adam's apple bobble up and down.
Then Resunko sat down across from Ivan.
"Yeah, I know where she is." Resunko drew the back of his hand across his mouth. "You bet. If she ain't still there, I'll give you your money back. How's that for a deal?" He chortled.
"What's so funny?"
"You might not get back from getting her." Resunko smoked the cigarette to a tiny coal. "All right," said Ivan. "How much?"
"Two hundred bucks."
"Where is-? Wait. Is there a fix in with the chief of police on Miller and Joanie?" Resunko nodded.
"All right," Ivan said, putting his shut hands on his knees. "Where is she?"
"You never talked to me," Resunko said. "Just remember that. Miller's got her in a cathouse."
"And he's paid off the chief of police?"
"All the dough from that bank job, I bet," said Resunko, smiling. He snapped his dead cigarette in the ashtray.
"Where's the cathouse?"
"Old house up on Garfield and Twenty-Seventh Street. You better get yourself a gun."
"That goes with the two hundred bucks," said Ivan.
"Oh-ho?" Resunko said. "Three-fifty."
"All right," Ivan said. "Bring me the gun tomorrow."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"I want fifty feet of your strongest nylon cord," said Ivan. His chin was stubbled with two days of beard.
"This'll hold an elephant," said the hardware salesman.
Ivan drove slowly away from the hardware store, a mile and a half to his apartment room. He turned on the television and waited for it to get dark outside. He knew where the house was, the backyard, the alley, the tree alongside the porch on the second story. He had cased the house twice during the day, driving slowly past, and twice at night, walking up the alley. With the rope he could scale the tree easily, parking the car at the alley entrance five houses from the house in which Joanie was a prisoner. The problem was, which room. On that he would have to gamble. He didn't want to have to shoot his way out, but there was always that chance if Hank Miller were there or he entered the wrong room and some other girl cried out in alarm.
The rope was in the car, on the back seat, smoothly coiled. It would be easy scaling the tree. It was past ten o'clock when he left his apartment building. The sky was dark, moonless, the stars remote and cold.
There was no sign of life on the street when he parked the car at the alley entrance. He left the street and entered the alley and moved steadily and carefully along beneath the dark, lush trees. Now and then he looked up at lighted windows through the trees in the back yards of houses bordering the alley. He walked close to the high alley fences. He turned into a backyard and crouched before he stopped between the intertwining branches of a lilac hedge. The big house suddenly loomed over him and the elm tree rose dark and huge beside the house. He crouched, studying the house from the screen of lilac bushes, then, still crouched, he ran swiftly across the backyard.
Beneath the tree he cast the rope up, weighted with a stone on the end. The rope came back to him in a loop. He tied one end of the rope around his waist. He took the gloves out of his back trouser pocket and put them on. He checked the bulge of the pistol in his trouser pocket. Then hand over hand, feet flat against the trunk of the tree, he mounted the trunk, slowly and quietly. He paused after each step, listening. There was no sound, no light, no movement from the house. When he reached the big open crotch at the top of the tree trunk, he squatted there, listening, his teeth bared against the darkness. He darted his eyes back and forth over the second-story rear of the house. He was panting a little. He untied the rope around his waist, fastened the rope around the biggest limb hanging over the yard, dropped the rope down on the ground. Then, hand over hand, he swung his body forward along the limb extending over the second-story porch. He swung his feet up and onto the porch roof, and hoisted his body up and lay there, listening.
Beneath his hunting-knife blade the screen came away. Then, lifting the screen behind him, he thrust his head into the room and listened. There was no sound. With a cat-like flow of motion he was over the sill and inside the room, squatting against the wall away from the window, hearing the emptiness of the house as if it were deserted. He licked his lips and drew the pistol slowly out of his pocket, still listening. No sound other than the steady hammering out of his heart, drumming in his brain. Then the panting started again. He crept across the floor feeling ahead in the darkness. He touched the edge of a bed. His hand explored the surface. Empty. His heart thudded. Suddenly a sound, faint, just the creak of a board came to him, and he stopped panting immediately, almost as if his heart were stopped, just as light exploded in the room. His breath came out in a snarl as he saw Hank Miller in the corner, knowing in that instant he had been double crossed. For a fraction of an instant as he saw the gun come down, pointing toward his skull, Ivan's eyes rushed white and wide, insane with rage.
Then his hand was moving faster than he thought it capable of moving, faster than Hank Miller who was being deliberate, almost contemptuous in aiming because in the sudden glare of light he hadn't seen the gun in Ivan's hand.
The sound of the first shot came while Miller was still being deliberate, aiming almost with excruciating care, so that his hand never finished moving, the blood sploshing over his face as the bullet smashed into his cheek and came out through the back of his skull.
Then Ivan was moving, running, the door of the room open without his even knowing he had opened the door, his body outraged and savage plunging along a dark corridor. He was kicking doors open, lights coming on, his voice calling her name into each room.
"Joanie!" he cried, kicking open another bedroom door. "It's me! Ivan! Where are you!"
Then the last door at the end of the corridor swung back into the room from a blow of his foot. The light was on. Joanie sat on the edge of the bed, naked save for her nylon panties, sitting with spread thighs.
"Come on," Ivan said. She did not move. He stopped toward her. She looked startled, as if suddenly awakened. He took her by the wrist. "Get up," he said. He jerked his head toward the door. Then she began to struggle. Ivan caught her in both arms. Joanie jerked and wrenched at them. She was suddenly ferociously strong, he felt. But there was no time. "Let me go!" she cried. "I can't go with you!"
"Hank's dead!" he shouted into her face.
"They'll kill me!" she cried.
Then she was free. Ivan grasped at her but it was too late. She whirled, running. Ivan stumbled, fell on one knee. He saw her burst through an astonishing expanse of young female faces in the doorway, all of them with the identical bovine expressions.
Then he was out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, on the cement of the starlit sidewalk in the heavy odor of lilacs, the sidewalk rushing back with terrific slowness under his running feet. He reached the corner at last and turning, running, saw her running full speed up the next street. He ran on, his heart and lungs drumming, on along under the dark trees, calling to her, toward the next lighted street corner. He never broke stride, his chest burning inside. She passed under the street light, still running. He ran on, blood and breath roaring inside him. He could not see her in the darkness. He had the feeling he was galloping like a horse. He was almost upon her before he heard the sound of her naked feet on the dark sidewalk. In the terrible urgency of his wild need he hurled himself at her back and, still seeming to run in mid-air, felt his arms around her waist, flinging her down upon the dusty grass beside the sidewalk, panting, sobbing, "Joanie! Joanie!"
At midnight he was sitting beside her on a hill of a country road. He did not know the time and he did not know how far he had driven. But there was no glare behind them of the city light against the dark sky and he saw now, his faced turned toward her bowed head, feeling the longing in him for her.
"Why?" he said. "Why?"
"He wouldn't let me leave," she said. She did not turn her head. "But the police-"
"He had it all fixed. They wouldn't touch me."
"Your mother?"
Joanie lifted her face. There were tears in her eyes.
"That old bitch," she hissed. "She knew about it. All of it. She told the police she never wanted to see me again. She didn't care what happened after you told in court what they'd done to me."
Ivan put his arm on her shoulder. She drew away.
"I'm just a whore," she said. "He made me a-whore. I screwed dozens of men. I admit it. It made me feel terrible, but I admit it. I enjoyed it. He made me a whore."
"I don't give a damn what he made you," Ivan said. "I love you. There's nobody like you for me."
"You wouldn't want to touch me if you knew everything."
"It doesn't matter."
"You will always think about all of them."
"It's me and you. That's all I want to think about."
"All right, all right," she broke down suddenly, sobbing, flinging her head on his shoulder, drawing his arms around her. "And she'll pay. That bitch will pay. I know it. She'll pay for me to go away and stay away forever. We'll make her pay. Oh, darling, darling, do you really love me?"
"There's never been anyone like you." His hand caressed her nipples lovingly.
It was a beautiful English summer, sun-filled. The high sky shimmered, empty and blue, vivid as glass. In Hyde Park young girls wore bright summer dresses, and in Bond Street, as Joanie and Ivan passed, the young men in dark suits and bowlers seemed out of season in so much bright sunlight. Along the street, empty now in the waning afternoon light, trees rose green and leafy and peaceful, the birds motionless among the leaves, nightingales waiting for the last light, for darkness to call out their liquid silver voices into the heart of the summer night. Ivan and Joan mounted the steps of the Hotel Ritz and went upstairs to their room. Ivan ordered two Scotch and sodas while Joanie showered. He lay back naked on the bed, sipping his Scotch, and shortly she crawled in beside him. He curled his arm around her shoulder and she sank against him, letting her hand rest lightly on the top of his thigh. He kissed her and took the drink out of her hand and set it down on the floor beside the bed. He felt like a honeymooner and she was playing the role to perfection, waiting for him to direct and lead the sex play. His gaze took in her firm, full body, the smoothly rounded thighs, and the gorgeous mound of her cunt covered with light brown, soft hair. Her cunt hair was the softest he had ever touched. She let him take a long look at her body. Then suddenly his hands were all over her, squeezing and pressing her tits, pinching her nipples, sliding a finger into her cunt. She felt the lovely moisture starting to fill her cunt. Slowly she drew him to her and she lay back flat on her back. She shoved a pillow under her head. They both knew what they loved to do, what they had been doing day in and day out, what they had done that night out in the field beside the car.
She felt him straddle her shoulders, staring at his cock right in front of her face now. Reaching up, she guided the soft staff until its head touhced her lips. She opened her mouth and flicked her tongue over the coronal ring. She felt Ivan's cock jerk as the blood rushed into it. He leaned forward, pushing more hardening cock into her hot mouth. She knew he loved this part of their lovemaking.
Her mouth embraced his cock and she felt her cheeks hollow as she sucked the entire length. She went on sucking as she cupped his balls between her fingers and gently kneaded the sac. She stepped up the rapidity of her tongue. The blood-filled shaft thickened and hardened. She sucked and slashed at it with all her tongue.
Then she changed the tempo, slowing the side-to-side movement of her head, making his prick swell even bigger with the flat side of her tongue as he shoved his cock in and out of her mouth.
He knelt there, drawing it in and out of her mouth in long slow strokes, and she felt the liquid almost sloshing now in her cunt, her nipples hard.
A wonderful feeling of ultimate bliss was rising in her. With Ivan now she felt entirely untainted by her past, completely free of any guilt or shame. She loved what she could do for Ivan and what he could do for her sexually. She belonged to him because she knew he really loved her. His love washed her clean, she felt, of all fears and false thoughts of guilt about her past and how she had changed. She felt life should always be this natural.
She let her tongue twirl around the stem of his cock, feeling his rising passion filling her body. Suddenly she drew his cock out of her mouth and rolled him over on his side and straddled his body. Oh, oh, now to have his tongue in her juicy cunt! It would be bliss. She stretched her thighs wide over his shoulders, opening her crotch as she leaned steadily forward, slowly bringing down the thick triangle of curly soft brown, slowly, so slowly, to Ivan's waiting mouth.
She felt his tongue snake slowly, gently, through the soft tangle of curly hair, stabbing little by little to her slit. Then she ground her hips down upon his mouth and his tongue stabbed into her hole, and delight shot through her flesh. Her soft hands sought his prick and balls, pulling and kneading.
She felt her clit growing bigger and bigger in an agony of pleasuring, longing for his tongue to seek it. She pressed down harder, her clit seeking his darting tongue, and then his lips clamped upon it, sucking shock after shock of bliss and pleasure through cunt and buttocks.
She arched her body over his thighs, seeking his cock with her lips, feeling herself coming steadily in her loins, the passion mounting. She suddenly stopped and rolled over on her back, and she knew he knew what she wanted now. She lifted her legs high in the air, folding her thighs back to form a reverse vee. Then she drew his head down into the hollow of her thighs, feeling his tongue snaking into her again, thrusting deeper and deeper.
She felt his hands prying apart the cheeks of her ass, his finger probling for the ring of her anus, and then suddenly ramming his finger in with a single stroke.
As he did this she reached around behind him and moved her finger straight into his asshole. Electric shocks raced through their bodies until their bodies shuddered. Her body was a mass of wonderful sensations. She fought to control the wonderful feeling raging through her cunt.
She lay still, feeling thrill after thrill coming out of her cunt and asshole. Soon she knew she was ready for some real fucking. She rose and got on top of Ivan but suddenly felt she wanted some sucking first, so she lowered her slit to his face and rubbed her belly with both hands and cupped her breasts and tweaked her nipples as his tongue went into her spasming hole. She began to moan through her teeth; the involuntary contractions of her cunt muscles gripped and held his tongue against her swollen clit.
She went on moaning and sighing, kneading her breasts, feeling her orgasm coming, knowing she could have this one now, then a straight fucking one later, if she didn't take him all now. She pushed her cunt up and down, faster and faster, feeling the wonderful, terrible urgency of orgasm. When she came she went on pumping and pumping, finally putting her wet crotch off his face and down his body. She lifted his cock and aimed it dead center at her crotch and then wriggled a little and let her weight slowly descend, sending the big, stiff, swollen shaft all the way into her cunt, filling herself with all of his hot meat. She felt it throbbing and jerking, and she slowly lifted herself until just the head of his cock was in her slit. Then she sank down, thrusting it all the way in, filling her cunt to the brim. She lifted his hands to her tits, and directed him to squeeze and tweak the nipples while she rocked up and down, back and forth, bringing herself closer to the perfect orgasm.
She began to move faster, moving her hips in a wide circle, pushing and shoving the head of Ivan's cock at her innermost points of sensation from every angle.
She felt his hips moving up and in time with her rhythm. She felt her mouth opening and she knew she was about ready to explode, but she wanted it to go on forever. Yet she knew she was reaching an absolute perfect peak and not to take it now would spoil it. She felt herself groan with ecstasy as she lunged and sank all the way down on Ivan's prick, squeezing hard with her cunt muscles. Then she felt herself going over the brink, her whole body exploding with joy and pleasure, wave after wave of shocking pleasure rending her flesh, her cunt spasming over and over again, as he pulled and twirled her thick clit tight between his fingers. Just as she hit her peak. Ivan rammed deep into her for the last time. The come rolled out of his balls and she felt it rushing up through his cock. She pressed down, down, down until suddenly they came together, the hot juice of his cock shooting into her, jet after hot jet, pouring come into her as she gasped, feeling as if she had found the meaning of life at last and that life at last had found her.
"Ivan, Ivan, darling, darling, darling," she gasped, quivering, a long sigh of freedom issuing from her throat.
Then she lay still, utterly motionless, unable to move, unable to break such a love chain of unbearably, wonderful happiness.
