She smiled and nodded, and slowly got up from the couch. She led me across the living room, her small hand firmly clenching mine, and I let my other hand move slowly back and forth across her firm, smooth buttocks as we walked up the stairs. She stopped on the landing and whispered, "Betty sleeps without anything on. Let's go into my room and take off our clothes before we go into her room."
She quietly opened one of the doors. She smiled as she began unbuttoning her blouse. I fumbled at my pants, my eyes riveted on the beautiful woman as she disrobed. She smiled at me and giggled.
"Are you going to make love with your clothes on?"
CHAPTER ONE
I knew him only as Karl. It could have been his real name. His accent, broad face, and cheap, outdated clothes could have been from East Germany. He approached me when I was in the final stages of a drinking bout, when all of my money had been spent in a frantic, fruitless search for pleasure to escape from the somber blackness lurking just behind my consciousness. I felt uneasy about him from the , first, but my body was weak and my mind numb from weeks of sodden drunkenness. Karl became a familiar fixture among the drifting shapes and clouds around me, and I would wake in cheap, sour-smelling hotels to see him staring at me with the dull, animal-like tenacity of his kind as he waited for the right time to arrive. Fear was in my mind as I remembered like men in the dim bars of Vientiane, Hong Kong, Singapore, bars where the secrets of nations are bartered for coin, drugs, sex, and life. A violent negative would rise in my mind, a rejection of the final depravity of treason, then the first draught from the bottle he offered would ease my suspicions in a numbing cloud of alcoholic oblivion.
My body finally revolted and refused to accept the abuse, and my stomach steadfastly spewed back the liquor while my mind blanked itself out in healing sleep. The woman must have cost him hundreds, because she was young and beautiful, possibly a student or a secretary lured into relinquishing her principles for a thick stack of crisp bills. She was a tall, willowy blonde with a warm, slender body, firm, strong limbs, and beautiful features. She was with me when I woke in a expensive downtown hotel, and she coaxed me into the bathroom to bathe the grime of days with the solicitous care of a mother. When I was clean she helped me back into the bedroom to lull me back to sleep with tender caresses of her cool, smooth hands. She fed me when I woke, spooning bland, soothing food into my mouth, and she hovered over me as I scraped the beard from my face. When my eyes lingered on the smooth, graceful curves of her body and my fingers tentatively touched the flesh of one of her breasts, she bared her body and stood before me to let my eyes devour her spectacular beauty, then she offered me her body to take and use in any way I wished.
I derive no pleasure from commercial sex, regardless of the beauty of the woman or how much money has been used to stimulate her eagerness. I was also repelled by the situation. A twenty-dollar or even a hundred-dollar whore wouldn't have been unusual if he wanted me to do a big job for him, but this woman was so damn beautiful that I felt a sharp suspicion pierce through the fog of liquor. I told her to put her clothes back on and order coffee, and I sat and drank cup after cup to clear my mind as I waited for Karl to arrive.
He finally came, and the girl left after a whispered conversation and a rustle of bills. We talked about the job, and I weighed his proposition as I tried to see through the blank wall of his broad, bland face and dead, lifeless eyes. He assured me that the job was delivery of goods or I wouldn't have taken it despite the money. I've been fucked around enough to rationalize flying in a few kilos of drugs or some black market gold or gems, but I'm still an American and I won't knowingly transport an enemy agent into the country.
Karl gave me a healthy advance, expense money, and a set of instructions, and I took the next plane to Anchorage to get set up for the job. Anchorage was gripped by the steely cold of October in Alaska, with banks of dirty snow and ice along all the streets, jagged hillocks of pack ice in the bay, and a low ceiling of clouds over the shelf between the Chugach Mountains to the east and Cook Inlet to the west.
It was late afternoon, and a slow, soft snow was falling, smothering the sounds of cars moving slowly along the streets with their windshield wipers clearing dark, fan-shaped peepholes as grey plumes of exhaust trailed along behind them. Few people were hurrying along the streets in parkas and furs as the grey daylight faded into early twilight. My body demanded wholesome food, rest, and sleep to repair the ravages of the past weeks, and I stopped in a department store only long enough to buy myself heavy clothes, boots, and a parka before I found a place to eat and stay.
I cheeked in at the old Trappers' Hotel on Fourth Street, overlooking the harbor for the fishing fleet and the jumble of corrugated iron buildings of the cannery. The room was roughly furnished, but it was warm, and clean. I piled my things on the floor in the closet and went down to the restaurant where a fat, matronly woman eyed my shaking hands and pale face with disapproval as she piled my plate high with meat, vegetables, and potatoes.
My appetite mollified her, and she was friendly in a heavy-handed, motherly fashion as she dished up ham and eggs the next morning and kept refilling my cup with strong, black coffee. I spent much of my time in the hotel for the couple of days, sitting in my room and looking through the double glass at the bay or sitting in front of the fireplace in the dining room and listening to the stories of the old men living in the hotel.
On the third day I shopped in the city for the survival gear I would need for the job, and I began making short trips out to Merrill Field on the edge of the city both to accustom myself to the cold and shop around for an airplane to rent. I wanted a Super Cub because of its size and short field performance, but they were in high demand due to rentals for the moose and caribou season. I finally settled on a Maul, a small, single engine aircraft with flight characteristics similar to a Cub. It had a full panel of comm-nav equipment and instrumentation, an essential for small aircraft operation in the remote wilderness of Alaska, and high lift wingtips had been installed on it to further improve its takeoff performance and stall characteristics. The rental agency agreed to install wheel skis on the Maul for me, but I had to wait around a couple of extra days while they had them flown up on a commercial carrier from Seattle. My recovery from the weeks of drinking was still not complete and I had developed sore muscles in my back from the unaccustomed cold and weight of my survival gear, so I went to a steam bath to bake it out.
I don't like massage parlors. I'd rather let my come flood out into the flesh of a woman rather than spurt uselessly into the air while a masseuse beats me off, but I have frequently gone to steam baths and saunas to cook the poisons from my body after my irrational compulsions have driven me to the brink of mental and physical breakdown. I noticed the girls when I went into the place because there were no other customers and they were all sitting around in the front lounge and chatting. They saw that I didn't want a massage and I didn't look at them while the manager was taking my money lest one of them interpret a casual glance as an invitation. I went into the steam room, undressed, and got into the cabinet, then I closed my eyes as the stifling heat of the steam enveloped me and began to bring sweat from my pores. A whisper of sound made me open my eyes, and I looked up to see one of the girls come through the door with' a couple of damp towels. She was pretty, with long, black hair pinned up in a bundle on her head and a slant to her large, dark eyes which hinted at Eskimo ancestry. She wore hot pants and a loose, backless halter top, and her skin was that startling white shade people with dark hair and eyes sometimes have.
She dropped one of the towels on a chair and brought the other one over to wipe the sweat off my face and neck; it felt deliciously cool and refreshing. "You certainly are sweating," she said, glancing at the steam gauge. "Is it too hot for you?"
"I'm OK," I replied. "I've been frozen for the past few days, and I'm just beginning to thaw out."
She smiled and nodded, and walked across the room to get the chair. I looked at her long, slender legs, firmly rounded hips, and the graceful swaying of her lithe body as she walked over to the chair and dragged it back across the room to the steam cabinet. "I'll sit with you and we can talk while you have your steam bath," she said, wiping my face again.
"OK, but I don't want a massage, honey."
She shrugged. "That's all right with me. There's so many of us here and so few customers that I'm afraid I'll get laid off if I don't keep busy, so we won't do anything that'll make your wife mad."
"Don't have one."-
"Girl friend, then."
"Don't have one of those, either."
A disbelieving smile played around her full lips. "C'mon-you don't have to bullshit me. I'm nobody."
"I'm not bullshitting. I just got into town a couple of days ago, and I don't know anyone here. And the only one who'd think you're nobody is a queer."
Her dark eyes looked into mine as she leaned toward me and remained absolutely motionless for a moment, then her face broke into a broad smile and I could see the edges of her white, even teeth between her wide, full lips. She leaned toward me with the towel; the loose halter top fell open and I could see almost all of her white, firmly rounded breasts. She ruffled my hair playfully as she wiped my face, then she sat back in the chair and we began chatting. Her impersonal cheerfulness changed to a warm, friendly interest as we talked, and I experienced a sincere interest in her and what she had to say as I sensed a similar response in her questions about me. She used both of the towels and went to get fresh ones, and her hand lingered on the side of my face for an instant as she got up from the chair. She came back a few minutes later with the fresh towels and we began talking again. I found that she was from Valdez, where her father owned a deep sea salmon boat. She had come to Anchorage to go to high school, and after she finished school she had worked at various store clerk and waitress jobs before she had been hired at the massage parlor. "Do you like the work?"
"It's all right for the winter, but I might go and work on my father's boat next summer."
"Work on your father's boat?" I asked, surprised. Somehow I couldn't picture the slender, beautiful girl working on a deep sea fishing boat and hauling in nets, although there was a suggestion of strength and endurance in her lithe limbs and firm shoulders.
She laughed. "I'm not one of the frail little creatures you're used to seeing in the South. I've worked on fishing boats almost every summer since I was twelve. We also get some screwballs in here who think they've bought everything they see for the price of a massage, but I don't have any trouble taking care of them. I work in a massage parlor, but I'm not a whore." She glanced at the small timer on the wall as it chimed softly, then she began turning the steam off. "That's enough for you today-if you stay in too long at one time it'll make you feel bad."
"Do you have a boy friend?"
She shook her head quickly. "I've dated a couple of guys in Anchorage, but that's all."
"How about dinner tonight?"
She hesitated, then laughed. "I should be demure for the sake of appearances, I suppose, but I'm going to say yes before someone else gets their hooks into you."
She opened the cabinet for me, and her eyes moved over my naked body with something more than a casual glance as I stood up and stretched, testing the sore muscles in my back. It felt better, but there was still a twinge of pain just below my shoulder blades and I winced as I moved my shoulders.
"Is your back sore?" she asked, looking up at me and putting her hand on my arm.
I nodded, looking down at her, and I let my hand rest casually on her waist as I replied. "Just below my shoulder blades."
She stood on tiptoe and rested one hand on my shoulder as she probed at my back, and my hand moved up her bare back. "There?" she asked, pressing my back with the tips of her fingers.
I winced again as a lance of pain shot through my back. "That's it."
She let her hand slide down to my waist and she stood with her body pressed against mine and her arm around me as I moved my hand casually up and down her back, feeling her smooth skin with my fingers. "You really need a massage."
I patted her back and released her as I nodded. "OK. I usually don't like a massage, but I'd like one if you did it. Besides, I just like being around you."
She smiled as she gathered up my clothes, and when I reached out toward her she moved closer so I could put my arm around her. We went out of the steam room and down a short corridor to one of the massage rooms, and I stretched out on the table while she locked the door and hung up my clothes.
Her small hands were warm and soft, with a surprising strength in them, and she found the sore muscles in my back with an almost uncanny intuition. There were stabs of pain as her fingers dug into the sore spots, then there was a blissful release from pain as she firmly worked the soreness from them. Her hand moved slowly down my back, across my buttocks, and down my leg, and she began massaging my feet. A calm, peaceful feeling spread through me and I relaxed on the table in a soft cloud of warm comfort as her hands caressed and kneaded the muscles in my feet and legs. The sensation of her hands on my body was both stimulating and soothing, and a drowsy euphoria settled over me as she massaged my buttocks, my back, and my arms. I was resting limply on the table in a numb state bordering on sleep when she patted me lightly on my buttocks and told me in a soft voice to roll over.
My drowsiness evaporated instantly when I rolled over and glimpsed her. The room was steamy and hot, and she had taken off the halter top. Her full breasts were jutting out from her slender chest with the trembling, resilent firmness of young, healthy flesh, and I felt a hunger spreading through me as my eyes moved up and down her body, naked except for the brief hot pants which clung tightly around her flat stomach and smoothly rounded hips. "I've never taken my blouse off like this before," she said as she began massaging my toes. "It's just that it's very hot in here and you're not like the other people who come here...." her voice trailed off as she moved to my other foot to massage it, and she shrugged slightly, making her breasts move tantalizingly. "Well, I don't really know why I did it, I guess-you don't mind, do you?"
"I don't mind, honey."
She smiled at me with a halting smile and her eyes didn't meet mine as she continued massaging me. The touch of her soft, strong fingers on my body shot electric sensations through me as she moved slowly up my legs, and I watched the trembling movements of her firm breasts as she kneaded my muscles. She got up to my thighs, and the sight of her virtually naked body combined with the sensation of her hands made my cock stiffen to a hard, springy erection. She didn't seem to notice it as she slowly moved on up my stomach and chest to my shoulders, and my desire for her was a painful agony of longing when she had finished.
"How was your massage?" she asked in a low voice, one hand resting on my chest.
"You can't leave me in this shape, honey."
She sighed slightly and nodded. "I'm supposed to massage any part of your body that you ask me to," she murmured. "You must leave your hands on the table and not touch me-"
"What's wrong, honey? Why am I suddenly just a customer?"
Her large, dark eyes looked into mine, and they were deep, enigmatic pools of mystery. She blinked, then she was suddenly a beautiful girl smiling down at me. "I like you too much," she said. "I didn't realize it, but I took off my blouse because I wanted you to like me, and that's why-"
"You succeeded-get on the table."
She giggled and shook her head. "Not here. I'll finish work early tonight because there's not many customers. We can go to my place-"
"Goddammit, honey, I'm not talking about tonight-I'm talking about now. I'll never last until tonight. The room's locked and your boss or the other girls won't know. Now come on and get on the table."
She hesitated a moment, biting her lower lip, and glanced at the door before she smiled back down at me. "I'll do it now if you really need to, but will you promise to make it a quickie? We can go to my place or your place afterward and take our time."
I nodded, and she suddenly flowed toward me, wrapping her arms around my head. Her lips were on mine, and her tongue wriggled between my lips. Her breasts were pressed tightly against the side of my head, and I could feel the smoothness of her skin on the side of my face as our lips clung to each other. I --edged my tongue around hers and forced it into her mouth, feeling the sides of her mouth and the edges of her teeth with the tip of it. Her fingers combed slowly through my hair and her head moved from side to side with slow, tense movements as our lips pulled and tugged at each other, and our saliva mingled between our open lips. I slid my hand up and cupped her breast, fondling and feeling the firm resilence of her flesh, and one of her hands moved slowly down my body to cup my balls and moved slowly up and down my cock. She pulled away from me and looked down into my eyes with a slow, warm smile, then she opened her mouth wide and lowered her head to kiss me again. The warm, sweet taste of her mouth filled mine again as our tongues entwined between our lips, and I moved my hand up and down her back, feeling her slender body and soft skin.
She stepped away from the table as our lips parted, and her hands moved to unfasten the zipper at the side of her hot pants. It slid down, and she slowly slipped the hot pants and her bikini panties down her full thighs and stepped out of them as my eyes moved over her naked body and my cock throbbed to an aching erection. I started to reach out toward her as she moved toward the table, and she shook her head, smiling at me again. "No, you lie down and let me do it. Don't hold it back, darling, because we have to be quick while we're here. All right?"
I nodded and relaxed on the table, and she moved toward me again. She approached the side of the table, and she wrapped her fingers around my cock and she suddenly lowered her head and let my cock slide between her red lips. She pressed my cock between her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she slowly moved her head up and down, and the muscles in my legs strained and tugged at each other as I groaned involuntarily from the sensation of her hot, damp mouth on my cock. She let my cock slide back out of her mouth and traced around the head of it with the tip of her tongue, then she trailed the tip of her tongue down the length of my cock and pressed her lips to my balls. The feel of her saliva on my cock and her warm breath on my balls made the blood pound in my head, and I exerted my will to the utmost to restrain myself from sitting up on the table and seizing her.
She climbed on the table with a single, lithe movement and knelt over me, then she leaned forward with her hands on my shoulders and kissed me again. Her lips were soft and damp with our saliva as they tugged at mine, and her tongue was a small, live thing which wriggled and danced in my mouth. Our lips parted again, and she took my cock in one hand as she braced herself with her other hand and poised herself over my cock. She slowly lowered herself until the tip of my cock was touching the thin covering of black hair over her soft vulva, then she wriggled my cock and her hips from side to side to spread her vulva apart. The tip of my cock touched the channel of her pussy, and she lowered herself fractionally with a quick movement of her hips to let my cock slide into her. She hissed through her teeth and I gasped with the sensation of the head of my cock slipping into her hot, tight pussy. She paused for a moment and slowly worked my cock around to loosen her pussy, then she' began moving up and down with slow, measured movements. She gradually took longer and longer strokes as my cock began to sink further into her body, and my fingers dug into the sides of the table from the ecstatic feeling of my cock spearing into her beautiful body. I reached out to feel and caress her firm, rounded thighs, and she leaned forward for me when I reached for her breasts. I moved my hands over her breasts, cupping them and feeling them as she moved up and down on my cock. My cock slowly disappeared into her until she was sitting with her buttocks on my thighs and her thighs on each side of my body, completely impaled on my cock.
She moved her hips from side to side to move my cock around in her body, then she leaned forward and placed her hands on my chest to brace herself as she began moving up and down on my cock again. She pulled herself up until only the head of my cock remained in her, then she forced herself back down until my cock was buried deep in her belly and her firm ass was resting against my balls. I took one hand away from her breasts and slid it down to grope for her clitoris with my finger, and she shook her head quickly. "Don't do that, darling. I just want you to come in me so you'll feel better for now, and we'll do it later for me. Just feel me and hold me to make it good for you so you'll come quickly."
I nodded and put my hands back on her breasts, and she leaned further forward to keep them in easy reach for me as her hips began moving up and down more rapidly. I could feel her warm breath against my face as she panted slightly from the exertion of moving up and down on my cock, and I began to move my hands over her body as I felt the knot of semen begin to build up within me. It slowly swelled and ballooned into a knot which expanded until it was painful to keep down, and I lay spellbound on the table as I floated in a delirium of enjoyment. She uttered a small, tense whisper, begging me to come, and I released the flood of semen into her body. It gushed upward and raced out through my cock, and she gave a muffled exclamation as she felt it spurting out into her. Her body suddenly tensed, then she broke into an abrupt, involuntary orgasm from the sensation of my come gushing out into her belly. She continued moving up and down as her pussy knead-ed and sucked at my cock to drain the come from it, and she pressed her wrist to her mouth to stifle her cry of pleasure as her body tensed and writhed in the clutches of her climax. She dropped her hand away from her mouth with a long, shuddering sigh, then she reached down with her hand to cup my balls and squeeze them gently in rhythm to her movements up and down on my cock. The residual sensations of the aftermath of my climax made my body jerk and writhe convulsively as she continued moving up and down, then I closed my eyes and collapsed limply on the table as she leaned forward with her breasts softly stabbing my chest and her hands moving over my face with loving touches. She caressed and patted my face as she whispered broken phrases of endearment, and her body moved up and down on mine in response to my heaving gasps of labored breathing. A moment later she slipped from the table to get a couple of damp towels from the pile in the corner.
She was worried that the others might suspect what had happened, so I dressed and went into the reception room to pay for the massage while she cleaned up the massage room. The others in the front room gave me casual, uninterested glances when I came in, and they returned to their conversation and magazines while the manager took the money. I went back to the massage room on the pretext of giving the girl a tip, and she looked up at me with a strained smile as I walked in.
"You can stop worrying, honey," I said in a low voice. "They didn't even look up at me when I went in."
She breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. "Thank God. You can't wait for me, though, because it might appear suspicious. Where can we meet?"
I thought for a moment, then shrugged. "What time will you get off?"
"I suppose I could leave now. There's no business to speak of, and the manager will probably be glad to get rid of me for today."
"I'll wait for you outside, then."
She thought for a moment, nodded, and stood on tiptoe to kiss me softly. "I'll check with the manager and change clothes, then I'll be out."
I went back into the front room and the manager helped me into my parka with a professional, impersonal smile, then opened the door for me as I left. The early winter night had already fallen, and I pulled the parka hood up as I walked down the snow encrusted steps in front of the massage parlor. A thin scattering of large, soft flakes was slowly falling, and the tires on the cars squeaked through the snow and ice as they moved along the street. I walked between the berms of snow on each side of the path to the street, then I leaned against a tree at the edge of the sidewalk and waited, watching the cars cruise slowly by and looking at the occasional pedestrian who hurried along the sidewalk toward warmth and shelter.
The cold bit into me as I stood ankle deep in the snow and leaned against the tree, and I tucked my hands into the fur-lined pockets in the front of my parka to warm them as I stamped my feet to shake off the numb, frozen feeling. There was a movement at my side and a tug on the arm of my parka, and I looked down to see the girl smiling up at me from the depths of the hood of her parka. I put my hands into the pockets on the front of her parka and clasped her hands, then pushed my face through the wolverine ruff around the hood of her parka to kiss her. Her lips opened under mine, and her warm breath fanned against my cold cheek as her lips moved inside mine and her tongue slipped between my lips.
"Come on and let's go," she whispered as she pulled away from me. "Someone else might come out and see us here, and they might recognize you."
"Where would you like to go? Would you like to go for dinner-"
"I want to go take a shower," she said, then she giggled. "You left me all messy, and I couldn't very well take a shower there, could I?"
We walked slowly up the sidewalk, the snow crunching softly under our boots as we walked in and out of the pools of yellow light coming from the windows of the buildings along the sidewalk, and she slid her hand into my pocket and laced her fingers through mine. "There's something we forgot to do," I said.
"What's that?"
"We forgot to introduce ourselves."
She suddenly stopped on the sidewalk and laughed merrily, and a passerby glanced at us curiously as he hurried by, his shoulders hunched up against the cold and his face buried deep in the hood of his parka. "Well, if what we did can't be called an introduction, my name's Edna Martin."
"Mine's Jim Harrison."
"Hi, Jim."
"Hi, Edna."
She slid her hand into my pocket and laced her fingers through mine again, and we slowly walked along the sidewalk and chatted to each other until we reached her home. She lived in a duplex which had once been a log building, as had many of the older dwellings in Anchorage, and the rooms were small, comfortable, and cozy. She stirred the ashes in the fireplace which filled one wall of the tiny living room and tossed a few small sticks of kindling on the glowing embers, then she piled a couple of logs on the fire when the kindling ignited. We knelt in front of the fireplace as the flames began to lick up over the logs and cast wavering shadows on the walls of the room, then we slipped out of our parkas and tossed them onto the couch when the room began to warm up. She went into another room and came back with a small kerosene heater, took a burning sliver of wood from the fireplace to light it, and carrier! it into the bathroom. She came back in and sat on the floor between my legs, and she leaned back against my chest as I felt her breasts and held her to me. We sat for several minutes in companionable silence, then she stirred. "The bathroom should be warm by now," she said, giving me a quick kiss. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
I leaned back against the couch with my legs splayed out toward the fire and listened to the drumming of the water as she showered. I felt comfortable and satisfied in the small, cozy house with the crackling fire in front of me and the knowledge that the beautiful, sloe-eyed daughter of the North was there and would eagerly give her body to me whenever I wanted it. The pit of depression which loomed at the back of my mind seemed very distant. The water stopped running and I looked toward the bedroom door. A moment later I saw a flash of white, naked skin in the darkness of the bedroom, and I pushed myself to my feet.
"Edna?" I called, walking toward the bedroom.
She was standing by a chest of drawers in the darkness and searching through a drawer, and she turned toward me. "Yes, darling. What is it?"
I looked at the white blur of her body as she stood motionless in the doorway, and my desire for her was suddenly a choking force which robbed me of breath and made my mouth dry and powdery. "I want you."
There was a whisper of sound as she pushed the drawer closed, then she moved quickly toward me. "You only need to tell me, darling, you know that," she murmured, slipping her arms around my neck and opening her mouth for mine as she raised herself on tiptoe.
I pulled her warm, slender body to mine and ran my hands up and down her smooth back as I covered her lips with mine, and the tip of her tongue touched mine as our lips met. I ran the tip of my tongue along her tongue, then let it glide back and forth across the warm, soft flesh on the inside of her lips as her tongue darted around inside my mouth. Her lips opened wider and her breath fanned against my face as she pressed herself closer to me, and I cupped her firm, smooth buttocks with my hands as I pushed my tongue as far as I could into her mouth. Her buttocks tensed as she surged against me and pressed her pussy against my thigh, and I could feel my cock begin to stiffen and bulge in the front of my pants. Our lips parted, and we gasped for breath as she leaned her head against my chest and I cupped one of her breasts gently in my hand. She looked up at me, her dark, wide eyes gleaming. "Shall we get into bed, or would you like for us to go into the living room?" she asked softly.
"What do you want to do, honey?"
"I want whatever you want, darling," she breathed fervently. "I'll do whatever you want, in any way you want, and as often as you want."
I put my arm around her waist and pulled her toward the living room. "Let's go in here, in front of the fireplace."
She walked obediently along at my side as I led her into the living room, and I tossed our parkas aside as I pressed her down into a sitting position on the couch. I knelt on the floor in front of her, feeling her smooth thighs as I looked at her. She sat with her head resting against the back of the couch and her lips slightly parted as she silently looked at me and waited to see what I wanted. Her hair was loose and flowing down her back and sides in loose, shining waves, and the flickering light of the fireplace gleamed on her shimmering white skin. I let my eyes move over the delicate curves of her slender body, pausing at the rosy buds of her nipples and at the small triangle of curly black hair between her soft thighs. I leaned forward and took her face between my hands as I covered her lips with mine, and I forced her lips far apart with my tongue as I slid it into her mouth. She sat passive and unmoving as I gorged her mouth with my tongue, then began moving my head back and forth to fuck her in the mouth with my tongue. She formed her mouth into a tight oval and began pressing my tongue between hers and the roof of her mouth, and I could feel a desire for her body begin to race through me as her hot, panting breath rushing through her nose mutely testified to her arousal. I moved my hands rapidly over her body, feeling her breasts, her slender sides, and the smooth curve where her hips swelled out from her tiny waist. My fingers moved down to the small bun of hair between her legs to touch her soft vulva, and a murmur of sound came from her throat as her legs moved further apart. I pulled my tongue from her mouth with a lingering pressure of my lips on hers, then I moved my lips down her small chin to the downy softness of her throat as I fondled and felt her smooth thighs.
She sighed and writhed slowly and languorously as my lips moved through the soft hollow at the base of her throat, and she slowly raised her arms to place her hands on my head and lace her fingers through my hair. I moved from side to side, kissing her and letting my tongue trail along her throat and white shoulders, then I moved down toward her breasts. I slid the tip of my tongue in gradually diminishing circles toward one of her nipples, and her fingers clenched in my hair as my tongue approached the dark red bud. Her body jerked and shuddered convulsively as the tip of my tongue passed over her nipple, and she pulled my head toward her breast as she thrust herself away from the couch and pressed her breast toward my mouth. I flicked the tip of my tongue across her nipple again, then I let it slide into my mouth. I alternated between sucking her nipple and running the tip of my tongue across it, and she reached down to lift my hand and press it down on her other breast. I let more of her breast slide into my mouth as I began sucking harder at it, then I took as much of her breast into my mouth as I could, sucking it hard and moving my head from side to side. I moved to her other breast with my lips as I began massaging and fondling the first one with my hand, and her nipple was standing out straight and hard as I took it into my mouth. Her fingers combed through my hair and a low murmur of pleasure came from deep in her chest as I sucked and fondled her breasts, and a trembling shudder raced through her body as I moved my lips down toward her flat, smooth stomach.
She spread her legs further apart and slid downward on the couch as I pressed the tip of my tongue into her navel and worked it back and forth in the tiny opening, and she pressed my head down toward her stomach as her body surged up against my lips. I put both of my hands on her breasts and caressed them as I moved from side to side on her stomach with my tongue, pressing the tip of my tongue into her navel each time I passed it. Her legs spread even further apart and her feet raised off the floor as my lips moved on down toward the small bun of hair, and I slid my hands under her buttocks and cupped them as my lips tugged at the crisp hair. I moved my head further down and slid my tongue along her vulva, and she gave a loud gasp of ecstasy as she tensed and shuddered from the sensations racing through her. When I moved my tongue slowly up and down her vulva, pressing just hard enough to part the crack, she suddenly raised her feet from the floor and placed her legs on my shoulders. I turned my head from side to side as I ran the tip of my tongue back and forth along the inside of her thighs, stabbing the tip of my tongue into her vulva each time I passed it.
Her movements became more frantic as I teased her pussy with my tongue, and her hands pressed my head toward her pussy as her legs pressed down on my shoulders in her attempts to press her pussy against my face. Her murmurs became a pleading whimper as her body slowly undulated, pressing her pussy toward me, and I took her thighs in my hands to hold them apart as I lowered my mouth toward her pussy. I opened my mouth as wide as I could and took her entire vulva into my mouth as I sucked it and ran the tip of my tongue back and forth along it. I let her pussy slide out of my mouth and lapped at her with long strokes of my tongue, and her body responded in strong, lurching movements toward me. I parted her vulva with my tongue and searched for her clitoris, and it sprang into a hard, erect nub as the tip of my tongue touched it. I flicked the tip of my tongue back and forth across it, and she clenched her thighs around my head as her body began thrashing up off the couch and a broken cry burst from her lips. The tips of her fingers pressed into the back of my head and she drove her pussy toward me in rhythm with my tongue moving across her clitoris, and I felt the initial quivers of an orgasm building up in her. I steadily increased the pace of my tongue stabbing at her, and I could feel the tension rapidly mounting in her body as her climax moved closer. She suddenly broke through, and she gave a low, moaning wail as her body lurched in the throes of a violent orgasm. She pressed her thighs tightly around my head and raised herself up off the couch as her muscles tightened with spasms, then she collapsed back on the couch in a loose sprawl as the abrupt release of her emotions drained her.
I took her in my arms and held her to me as she panted and quivered in the aftermath of her orgasm, and she patted the side of my face and covered my lips with quick, pecking kisses. "That was heavenly, darling," she breathed. "I didn't know anything could feel so good."
I kissed her and squeezed her smooth, firm buttocks. "I liked it too, honey. That's one for you and one for me."
"One for you and two for me," she said, smiling up at me. "I had a climax in the massage parlor too-remember?"
I shrugged. "OK, but I believe I'm still ahead."
"No you're not," she said, wriggling out of my arms, "but I'm going to make you even. Get out of your clothes."
I stood up and began unbuttoning my shirt. "What do you have in mind?"
She leaned on one elbow and reached out to massage the hard, bulging knot my cock was making in the front of my pants. "I'm going to suck you until you're dry," she said.
I laughed as I began taking off my pants and shorts, and she moved forward on the couch to help me slip them off my feet. I sat back down on the couch, naked, and she curled up by me on the couch with her face against my chest. She moved from side to side on my chest, kissing me and touching me with the tip of her tongue, and the sensation of her caresses made the hair stand up on my arms and tiny prickles race up and down my spine. She moved closer to me and straightened up, then pressed her hot, open lips on mine with a torrid pressure. She moved her head slowly from side to side as she pressed my lips apart with hers, then she slipped her tongue into my mouth and flicked it around the sides of my mouth. She pulled her lips from mine with a soft, damp sound, then moved around the side of my head and flicked the tip of her tongue into my ear. She cupped my balls and pressed them gently in her small hand as she moved down to my chest again and quickly mouthed and tongued my nipples, and I could feel my cock stiffening into a trembling hard erection from the sensation of her caresses and from the sight of her soft, white body bending over me.
She suddenly dropped her head toward my lap and ran the tip of her tongue up and down my cock as she squeezed the wide base of it with her fingers. My cock trembled and throbbed as she caressed it, and an involuntary groan escaped my lips as my muscles tensed with the sensations which roared through me. I put my hand on her breasts and felt them as I pulled her closer to me, and she moved her lips slowly up and down my cock, kissing and nibbling at it. She cupped my balls and squeezed them firmly as she stiffened her tongue and probed it at the slit in the head of my cock, then she opened her mouth wide to let the head of my cock slide between her beautiful lips. She tightened her lips around my cock and pressed it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, then she slowly pressed downward and let my cock slide into her mouth until the head of it was touching the back of her throat. She exerted a strong sucking pressure in her mouth as she drew her head back up, and I writhed on the couch from the feel of the hot, damp stricture of her mouth on my cock.
She slowly turned over on the couch until she was resting on her stomach with her forearms on my thigh, and I ran my hand back and forth over her beautiful body as I savored the sensation of her mouth on my cock. She moved her head up and down with a slow, steady rhythm, and her hand pressed and squeezed my balls with a firm but gentle pressure. I lifted her hair from the side of her face so I could look down and see my cock sliding into her mouth, and the sight of my swollen muscle entering her beautiful face made the sensations racing through me more acute. She increased the pace fractionally as she trailed the tips of her fingers up and down the inside of my thighs, gently digging into my skin with her fingernails, and I felt the semen begin to build up into a ballooning knot within me. I clamped a firm control over myself to defer my climax as I floated in the pleasure of the sensations flowing through my body, but I felt the control being gradually, inexorably eroded by the sight of her beautiful body and the feel of her mouth on my cock. I moved my hand down her back to her buttocks and fondled them, then I slid my hand down between her buttocks to feel her vulva. She quickly parted her legs and raised herself slightly so I could slip my hand down between her thighs, and I toyed with her soft pussy as I watched her sucking my cock.
The onslaught of sensations finally began to overcome my control, and I could feel the come growing and swelling within me until I felt wrenched apart by the almost unbearable pressure. She sensed that my climax was approaching, and she spread her legs wide apart to let me feel her pussy as her head began moving up and down with a rapid, firm pressure of her mouth on my cock. She wrapped her fingers firmly around the base of my cock and cupped my balls with her other hand, then she began squeezing both of her hands in rhythm to her head moving up and down. The dammed-up semen grew to a massive knot which I could no longer contain, and my hips lurched off the couch as it gushed out of me and flooded up through my cock. I groaned aloud as my muscles strained and knotted in the wrenching spasms of a climax, and bright pinwheels seemed to burst in front of my eyes as the come spurted from my cock. She squeezed and kneaded my balls and cock as she sucked the come from me and avidly drank it, and I writhed in convulsions of ecstasy as she drained me. Her head kept moving up and down and she continued to knead my cock and balls until my throbbing muscle collapsed into a limp, lifeless head, then she pulled the foreskin back and licked at it until the sensations became too much for me to bear.
I sat on the couch, trembling, and she pulled my head to her firm, smooth breasts as I slid over to lie on the couch. She ran her fingers through my hair and planted quick, soft kisses on the side of my face and head as she cuddled closer and snuggled up against me, and I held her to me as the mad pounding of my heart gradually slowed and my gasping breathing subsided to a normal level. She riffled my hair and pulled my head back as she looked into my eyes. "Did you like that?"
"If it had been any better, I would have died," I said, running my hand up and down her back, feeling her smooth skin. I felt a sudden pang of hunger. "Where would you like to go for dinner?"
She shrugged. "Anywhere you like, or I could cook something for us."
"That's too much trouble," I said, shaking my head. "Let's go to the Trappers' Hotel restaurant. The food's pretty good there."
She nodded. "All right, if you want to. Aunt Martha is a good cook."
"Do you know her?"
She laughed softly as she got up from the couch and looked down at me. "You'll find out that in Alaska almost everyone knows everyone else. And if you want to read a hidden meaning into that, it's there. By this time tomorrow you won't be able to get an unattached girl to look at you, because everyone will know that you're mine." She smiled at me as she leaned quickly over and took my cock gently in her fingers to wriggle it, but there was a gleam in her eyes and a firm set to her lips which promised trouble for any girl who trespassed on what she had staked out as hers. She patted my cock softly, then straightened up and went toward the door. "Get dressed, darling. I'll be ready in a moment."
I watched her in the dim, flickering light from the fireplace as she walked toward the door, her smooth, firm hips swinging with a natural, unaffected grace, and the orgasm I'd had a few minutes ago did nothing to diminish my appreciation of the beauty of her tantalizing body. She disappeared through the door, and I wearily swung my feet to the floor as I groped for my clothes.
Her apartment was several blocks from the hotel, but she snorted derisively when I suggested getting a taxi. We walked there through the frigid darkness, with our boots squeaking in the snow and her small hand enfolded in mine in the front pocket of my parka, and the hotel dining room with its huge fireplace seemed bright, cheerful, and home-like when we pushed through the door out of the biting cold. The old woman smiled at us and nodded toward an empty table in the corner by the fireplace, and a few minutes later we had mounded plates of steaming hot food in front of us. We talked as we ate, and the conversation gradually worked around to my reason for being in Alaska. I told her that I had been hired to fly a man out to the Bering Coast to hunt for polar bear, and that I had come up in advance to set up fuel caches and overnight camps for the trip to and from the coast. She nodded thoughtfully as I talked, and there was a shadow of disappointment in her dark eyes as she pushed the food around on her plate with her fork. "I was going to suggest that you check out of the hotel and move to my place, but if you're leaving within the next day or two it wouldn't be worth the trouble."
"Didn't you say that business at the massage parlor has been slow the past few days?"
"Not slow-there hasn't been any. Why?"
"Well, if it's all that bad, maybe you could ask your boss for a couple of weeks off without pay so you could go to Talkeetna with me. I'll be flying in and out of there for at least a week while I'm staging the fuel caches, and I need someone there to buy the gasoline for me and have it delivered on time to the airstrip. I'll pay you whatever you're paid at the massage parlor."
She looked down at her plate and shook her head.
"I wouldn't take money from you, Jim. I know you don't mean it in an insulting way, but-"
"Look, the guy who hired me gave me plenty of money for expenses, and it'll take me a month to get the fuel caches in place if I have to birddog the fuel deliveries to Talkeetna myself. I'm just offering you a break from your job, and in return I'll have some help that I need."
She thought for a long moment, then nodded. "All right. I still don't feel right about it because I know the airstrip manager could get the fuel ready for you. But I'd like to go with you, and I can't make it for very long without some money coming in. I'll talk to the manager tomorrow, and I'm sure he'll go along with my being off for a couple of weeks without pay."
"Good. I'd like to get started tomorrow if we can. We'll need to find a place to live for the time we'll be in Talkeetna, and I'll have to get the gasoline deliveries started."
She nodded. "There won't be any problem about a place to live. A lot of cheechakos built cabins in Talkeetna and deserted them when the going got too rough, and I can borrow a few things to cook with from people I know there."
"Cheechakos?"
She giggled. "What you are. A newcomer-a tenderfoot."
I snorted. "I'll show you who has tender feet when we get into bed tonight."
"What are you going to do with your feet?" she laughed. "I'll bet I can make something else you have tender." She forked a sliver of meat into her mouth and chewed it with her strong, white teeth as she grinned at me with relish. "And I'm going to check your survival gear, too. I'm not worried about your getting frostbite on your fingers or toes, but there's another place where you could get frostbite. Maybe I'll knit you a thick wool stocking for it-"
She broke off with a smothered shriek as I reached under the table and pinched the inside of her thigh, and I noticed that the old woman who had brought the food was looking at us and smiling fondly as we talked and joked. When we finished eating, Edna talked to the old woman while I paid for the meal, and I concluded from their glances that I was the subject of their conversation.
It was much colder outside, and a penetrating wind drove a downfall of fine, dry snow into our faces as we huddled in our parkas and hurried to Edna's apartment. We dashed into the living room and huddled in front of the fireplace as she built the fire up, then we knelt in front of it and warmed our hands as the licking flames made the logs snap and crack. I began to get warm, and I glanced at Edna as I slipped my parka off. She was staring at the fire as though she was hypnotized by the flames, and the flickering light seemed to enhance the beauty of her large, dark, slightly slanted eyes and high, delicately shaped cheekbones. She blinked her eyes and brought herself back to the present as she looked up at me and smiled, then her smile deepened into a fond, understanding acquiescence as she read the desire on my face. "Here or in the bedroom?" she whispered.
I pulled her toward me. "Here-I can't wait." She nodded and gegan unbuttoning her parka as she smiled up at me again, her eyes moving over my face.
We left the next afternoon and flew to Talkeetna in the Maul. By the time I had made arrangements for tie down and service with the airstrip operator, Edna had contacted her friends and had located a cabin and a few cooking utensils. I helped her clean it up and put the rough, homemade furniture in order, and by nightfall we had tried out the bed and she was cooking dinner for us. A week went by while I divided my time between Edna and staging caches of fuel for the Maul between Talkeetna and Nunivak, then Karl arrived in an air taxi charter from Anchorage. He frowned with sullen disapproval when he met Edna, but his attitude changed to one of philosophical acceptance of my weaknesses when I threatened to cancel out on him. We spent a couple of days getting ready, and he slept in his sleeping bag in front of the fireplace while Edna and I occupied the log bunk built into the corner of the cabin. We quietly talked and caressed each other with our fingertips until he went to sleep, then we made love while his snores echoed through the cabin.
The word had spread around Talkeetna that Karl was a bear hunter and I was his pilot, and our early morning departure into the low, heavy overcast was without fanfare. It took us two of the short, grey, winter days to make the flight, and on the second day Karl unwrapped a piece of equipment he had brought along. It turned out to be an ultrasensitive homing beacon receiver, and it took us in an unerringly straight line to a rendezvous northwest of Nunivak as I hugged the pack ice to stay below the horizon of the coastal air defense radar system network. The signal gradually became stronger as the jumble of pressure ridges and hillocks of jagged ice passed under us, then I spotted the man. I could see the depressions made by the skis of another, larger airplane as I slowly circled and looked down at the man waving an orange signal flag, and a shrill voice of caution began to chatter in the back of my mind. Karl gave me quick, furtive glances. He seemed to be nervous and agitated as I swung the Maul around in a landing pattern, then I knew something was wrong as soon as I taxied across the snow and ice toward the man. Karl had told me to make allowance for transporting a hundred kilos of cargo, and I realized that the man we were meeting was the cargo when I saw that he had only a small bundle of survival gear with him. I taxied across a rough spot in a small pressure ridge, and I felt the bungee on the right ski break as we trundled across the white, shadowless surface toward the man. When I was a few meters from him I pulled the throttle back to ground idle, and he ran up to the side of the airplane and began chattering with Karl as I got out of the airplane. I loosened the ends of the broken bungee with numb, clumsy fingers, and I listened to their talk over the sound of the engine chugging over; they were speaking in Russian.
When I looked up from repairing the bungee, they were both sitting in the airplane and watching me. It occurred to me that the man might be a qualified pilot, and I cursed my stupidity and lack of foresight in not bringing a handgun as I walked around to the side of the airplane to ask Karl what the fuck was going on. I felt a tiny thread of relief flood through me when Karl tried to placate me with an offer of more money and a phony story about plans being changed to bring out a political refugee instead of goods. I knew then that they still needed me to fly the plane and I wouldn't be left on the ice for the polar bears to eat, but things were still grim because it would be dangerous for them to let me live after we reached our destination.
They huddled together over the fire and muttered in Russian at our overnight camp, and they slept in their bags on the opposite side of the fire from mine. I had drained the oil pan as part of the routine in securing an airplane for the night in the arctic, and I took my time in getting the airplane ready the following morning as I pondered possible ways to get out of the situation. If I returned without Karl I would immediately become embroiled in an investigation because of the impossibility of concealing the disappearance of anyone in sparsely settled Alaska, and particularly in the tiny town of Talkeetna. When Karl came over to me and suggested that we fly straight into Anchorage instead of stopping off at Talkeetna, I knew that I had to do something final and drastic because the landing at Anchorage would probably be the last one I would ever make and the Anchorage police would have an unidentified body to puzzle over. When I pre-flighted the airplane, I loosened the oil pressure transmitter wire from the indicator in the panel and left a loop in it so I could pull it out with my foot, then we loaded into the airplane and I took off. I assured them that we were heading toward Anchorage as I followed a compass reading toward Talkeetna, and the miles and hours droned by as they sat and silently looked down at the frozen, featureless terrain below. I jerked the wire loose with my foot as we approached a small, unused airstrip in McKinley Park, north of Talkeetna, and their faces were white and strained with fright as I faked an emergency and dropped the airplane in on the small strip, I spent the last couple of hours of the day in tinkering around the engine and under the dash while they sat over a small fire and muttered to each other as they watched me. The man we had picked up spoke to me in English for the first time when he asked me how far we were from Anchorage, and his English was perfect, with a slight tinge of a Canadian accent. I told him we were almost a hundred miles from Anchorage, which was true enough, but we were so close to Talkeetna that I was apprehensive of an airplane spotting us and landing to see if we were in difficulty. While I was fooling around in the airplane they built a brush leanto by the strip for us to spend the night in, and I got a small hatchet out of my survival gear and hid it under my parka before I turned in. The man we had picked up had a hard head and he was aroused by the noise I made hitting Karl, and we tore the lean-to down as I struggled to get a solid blow at him with the hatchet and he tried to get a pistol out of his pocket. I finally knocked him unconscious, tied both of them up, and built up the fire to sit and look at the outline of the Maul as I waited for dawn and tried to think of some way out of the situation.
The solution was obvious, but it was so foreign to my every impulse that it was hours before it occurred to me. When it finally did, my mind recoiled in horror and shame. My thoughts kept returning to it, and I forced emotion to the back of my mind as I considered it rationally. The man we had picked up was approximately my size and build, Karl was known in Talkeetna, and their bodies in a burned wreck would answer all the questions and give me an opportunity to escape back to the anonymity of the South. But I would have to deliberately destroy the little airplane, and the sour taste of bile rose in my mouth as I thought of it again.
There was less than two thousand dollars on both of them, but added to the money Karl had given me it was enough for the time and effort I had put into the job. When the grey dawn arrived, they pleaded with me and made offers of huge sums of money, and my hatred for them because of what I had to do to the airplane made a fierce joy race through me as I knocked them unconscious again and piled them into the cockpit. I started the engine and let it idle until it warmed up, then I leaned over Karl's unconscious form and pushed the throttle wide open as I jumped clear of the tail section.
The small plane raced across the strip and valiantly became airborne as it struggled to rise into its natural element to escape an ignominious death, but it crashed into the tall evergreens and tumbled back to earth in a crumpled heap. I walked slowly over to it, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. My fingers were awkward and fumbling with more than the penetrating cold, and I dropped several of the matches before I got one lighted. I dropped the match onto the fuel spill, and it raced across the snow to envelope the airplane with a greedy roar. I forced myself to stand and watch what I had done, and as the beautiful, lively little airplane turned into a charred mass of twisted metal and smoldering fabric, I felt a deep sense of shame mixed with glee over killing the men.
It was after dark by the time I walked to Talkeetna, and I was numb from the biting cold and the fatigue of struggling through snow drifts. I barely had enough remaining strength to bang on the door of the cabin, and Edna's face was white with concern as she helped me stumble toward the fireplace. She quickly got me out of my clothes and into bed to warm me up, and she pressed my cold nose into the soft, warm hollow of her throat as she cupped her hands over my ears. I became aware, then acutely conscious, of her provocative position as she wrapped her legs around me, and she giggled throatily as she eagerly rolled over on her back and spread her legs apart for me. The tensions and guilt seemed to flow from me as my come spurted into her slender body, and she closed her legs together under mine to imprison my cock in her pussy as she put her arms around me and tenderly stroked my head.
The rattle of a pan brought me back awake. The mottled shadows the fire made on the walls of the small cabin blended with the aftermath of a nightmare I had been having about the plane burning, and a depressing sense of impending disaster filled my mind as I sat up and looked around, blinking and orienting myself. I was still weary, but the tantalizing odor of the coffee and bacon made a pang of hunger shoot through me as I put my feet on the cold floor and searched for my clothes.
I had slept only a couple of hours, and the cold darkness still gripped the world outside the cabin as we sat in front of the fire and chatted. I gave her a version of what had happened, describing Karl as a criminal who had tried to trick me into flying illegal gems into the country. She listened to me with frightened eyes, then told me of several men who had come to Talkeetna and set up temporary residence after Karl and I had left. I felt afraid as she described them and their actions. They were either CIA or FBI, I guessed, and they had penetrated the Russian intelligence network well enough to learn about the man I had been bringing into the country.
We continued talking as I ate, and agreed that I had to leave immediately. She thought for a few minutes, then told me she had a cousin living in a cabin on the edge of the town who would take us back to Anchorage. She put on her parka and left, and I got our things together. When she returned she was followed by a taciturn, bearded man who seemed to fill the cabin with the bulk of his tall, massive body. He knelt by the fireplace and wolfed down the leftovers from my meal while Edna and I packed our belongings into the vehicle the man had brought. It was an old Army surplus ambulance with huge tires to negotiate the winter snow and summer mud, but the engine ticked over with a well tuned, throaty mutter when the man started it. It was a couple of hours before dawn when we left, and Edna and I huddled together in the rear of the battered old vehicle to keep each other warm as the bearded man peered through the half frozen windshield and slowly drove along the road to Anchorage.
I didn't have an opportunity to say farewell to Edna and to thank her for the warmth, joy, and understanding she had brought to me. We stood looking at each other in awkward, frozen silence after I had bought my ticket, and her face was pale and strained as we stood in the center of the terminal with people parting and flowing around us like a noisy river, brushing by us impatiently with their bags and suitcases. She finally moved forward and stood on tiptoe to press her lips to mine in a ghost of our former caresses, then she turned and left. I watched her as she stumbled through the rutted, dirty snow and ice in front of the terminal, sad to see her small figure bundled in the long, heavy parka as she waved for a taxi to take her home. A dark, unfocused anger was boiling in me as I shouldered my way through the terminal toward the boarding gate, and it was still in me hours later as I rode a bus from the San Francisco terminal to Broadway so I could hide in the anonymity of the swarms of winos, addicts, and criminals who lurk among the shabby hotels, small, dark bars, sex theaters, pawn shops, and dingy cafes of skid row.
CHAPTER TWO
The room had a sour odor of urine and mildewed bedclothes, and an oppressive atmosphere of poverty and despair. The light of the naked bulb dangling from the ceiling was bright and harsh, and it picked out each detail of the cheap, battered furniture, peeling walls, and scuffed, dirty linoleum floor. The room was worse than drab, but it represented shelter from the cold rain and wind raking the streets outside, and sleep would give me a respite from my loneliness for Edna, my fear of being caught, and my throbbing remorse over burning the Maul. I momentarily considered taking a bath and brushing my teeth, then I dismissed the thought with a shrug as I snapped off the light and began undressing. It was just past noon, but there was a wavering rattle of snores from the next room which rose and ebbed with a nerve wracking regularity, and there were occasional shouts and bursts of laughter which echoed along the dim halls of the old hotel. My limbs were leaden with fatigue, but I was tense and nervous, and my mind raced with blurred speed from one thought to another. It took long moments for my weariness to finally overcome the restless stirring of my mind, and I sunk into a shallow, troubled sleep with dark, murky shadows of nightmares moving on the edges of my consciousness.
I was still depressed when I woke with my face buried in the lumpy, musty pillow, and I rolled over to look around and orient myself. The lingering shadows of the nightmares receded and memory returned, and I licked my lips as I yawned and rubbed my eyes. The room was dark, and the furniture made dim, bulky shapes in the glow of neon through the dirty window pane. I slid my feet to the floor and placed them on the cold, sticky linoleum as I scratched my head and yawned again, then I got up and walked across the room to the window. The heavy rain had subsided into a slow, steady drizzle, and I could only see the dull outline of adjacent buildings silhouetted against the glow of the lights on the next street. There was an alley under my window, and piles of trash and rows of battered garbage cans were visible in the soft glimmer of lights over the rear entrances to businesses fronting on the next street. I padded back across the cold floor to the chair where I had piled my clothes, and I dug through my pockets for a cigarette. I lighted the cigarette and flipped the match to the floor, then I walked back across the room to the window and looked down at the alley through the streaked, cracked pane of glass as I smoked.
There was a flurry of movement in the darkness of the alley, and it resolved itself into two large, heavy men chasing a third, who was smaller and thinner.
They caught him in the pool of yellow light under one of the small bulbs glowing over a door, and I glimpsed his twisted, terror-stricken face, that of a youth scarcely out of his teens. I heard the sound of garbage cans rolling around as I watched them fighting; piles of old boxes and trash were scattered across the alley in their struggles. They finally got him down in one of the littered gutters and held him there as they kicked and hit him. He stopped resisting when one of the two larger men thought of holding his face down into the trickle of filthy water flowing along the gutter, then he curled up with his knees held against his chest and his arms around his head. The two large men knelt over him for a moment, evidently talking, then they effortlessly lifted him and carried him toward one of the garbage cans.
They stretched him over the garbage can on his stomach, then they began arguing. He almost got away from them while they were shoving each other and throwing half-hearted blows, then they caught him again, cuffed him around for a moment, and threw him back down over the garbage can. They finally came to some sort of agreement, and one of them fumbled with the front of his pants as he half knelt by the garbage can and lifted the youth's head by his hair to slide his cock into the youth's mouth. The youth turned his head from side to side as he struggled weakly, then he lay still and passively let the man stuff his cock into his mouth after several long, swinging, open handed blows had landed on his face. The other large man loosened the youth's pants and jerked them off his legs, and the youth's white skin gleamed wetly in the dim light of the alley as the man spread his legs far apart and moved in between them. The man in front of the youth was driving his cock far into the youth's throat as the man behind him began driving his cock between the boy's pale buttocks. He struggled momentarily again as he felt the man's thick cock thrusting into his anus, then after they had hit him several more times on the back, he lay passively across the garbage can as they raped him and lurched their hate and frustration into him. I pulled the tattered shade down over the window and tugged at it a couple of times to get it to stay down, then I walked back across the room and flipped the light on. The scene in the alley seemed a strangely appropriate introduction to the city.
I had paid ten dollars as advance rent for a week, and it was about what the room was worth. It was one of the better rooms in the hotel because it had a private bath, but the plumbing rattled with a deafening sound as a thin trickle of water ran from the spigot and splattered against the bottom of the bathtub. I turned the faucet on as far as it would go, and I had finished shaving and brushing my teeth by the time the tub was half full of tepid, yellow water. A sudden, penetrating scream from a woman in a room down the hall made me stumble as I started to get into the tub, and her voice subsided to a low wail as I settled myself into the water and began scrubbing away the grime and sweat I had collected during the past couple of days. The scream made me conscious of the sounds of others in the hotel, and I listened to the shouts, laughter, snores, and scuffling sounds of footsteps as I bathed.
When I dressed I counted my money and divided it between my pockets. There was over fifteen hundred dollars left, which would be enough for me to hide for several weeks if I watched what I spent and didn't go on a binge. I could have used more, because it would be wise to keep low for a few months in event the fake wreck hadn't deceived the CIA or FBI in Talkeetna, or in event they had a string on me through the rental agency in Anchorage. I'd rented the plane under a phony name with a private license I'd bought from a paper merchant in Detroit a few months before, but there was always a possibility that I could be linked to the job by a stray fingerprint or by detailed, exhaustive interrogation of the people at the rental agency. If that happened and it was the FBI which was involved, it could be tied in with the dossier they had undoubtedly built up on me during the past couple of years. I'd had brushes with various law enforcement agencies, and I could end up in prison. If the CIA was involved, they couldn't legally arrest me in the United States, but if their clandestine domestic operations branch became convinced that I was actively working for a hostile foreign power I would undoubtedly end up as an unidentified corpse in a city morgue.
The woman's scream had come from a room about halfway between my room and the dimly lighted stairs which led down to the lobby, and I could hear sobbing as I walked along the thin, dirty carpet toward the stairs. Her voice sounded young, and she was protesting weakly. Her voice choked off with a small cry as the sharp sound of an open palm smacking solidly against flesh came through the door, and I could hear the voices of three or four men arguing drunkenly over who was next. The arguing stopped as a scuffle broke out and the men hoarsely cursed at one another, then there was a wailing sound of pain from the woman again.
The lobby was tiny and dirty, with an overpowering odor of sweat, stale food, and wet clothes. There was a small registration counter along one wall with a slotted box for keys behind it, and three threadbare, overstuffed chairs were crowded in between the counter and the door to the street. The clerk who had taken my money was sitting in one of them and reading a newspaper, a derelict was dozing in another, and a tired, wilted whore was sprawled in the third. The clerk looked up and stared at me as I came down the stairs.
"I'll be back in a couple of hours," I said to him.
He lowered his newspaper and looked at me with a slightly sneering frown. "You didn't leave anything in your room, did you? We're not responsible for lost or stolen property."
I had already pushed the door to the sidewalk open, and I let it close again as I turned and looked at him. He was a middle-aged man with a lined, unhealthy face which revealed years of dissipation, indifferent health, and self abuse, and he had an irritatingly blustering attitude. "I left my clothes in the room and I locked the door. If anything's bothered while I'm gone, I'll kick the shit out of you."
His phony arrogance crumbled as I stared at him, and he began trembling visibly as his face paled. "Well, we're not responsible," he repeated in a quavering voice. "Some people leave and don't return the key to their room, and I can't help it if someone has the key to the room you're in and sneaks in while you're gone-"
"No one would go to any trouble to keep a key to a room in a flophouse. If anyone goes in my room it will be you, not someone who's kept a key to it. Like I said, if anything's bothered in my room, I'll kick the shit out of you."
He started to say something else, but he couldn't get the words out. He looked at me with his mouth open and his throat working as he swallowed dryly, and I turned toward the door again. "Would you like some company?" the whore asked.
I shook my head, shoving the door open again. "No, thanks."
"You've never lived until you've had Rosie's frenchy," she called after me, "and I could use a drink."
I stopped in the door and looked back at her. "You could use more than a drink, sister, and if someone's been in my room while I'm gone I'll kick the shit out of you too."
Except for the fact that the words on the neon lights and placards in front of the sex theaters were in English, the street could have been in the slums of Saigon, Frankfurt, Bangkok, Marseilles, or any one of a dozen other towns, because it reflected the degradation and depths of despair to which people can sink anywhere. The rain was falling in slow, dreary waves, packing the trash in the gutters and slowly washing away the puddles of vomit left by winos who huddled in the doorways and in the shelter of ragged, weathered awnings hanging over the sidewalk. A few of the people on the street were only passing through it enroute from one place to another, and they kept their heads down as they hurried along in the rain. There were a few men hungrily searching for respite from the boredom of their jobs and their wives' fat thighs, and they walked slowly along with their hands in their pockets as they eyed the whores and placards in front of the sex theaters with nervous, hesitant glances. Most of the people on the street were the vultures of skid row, pushers with merchandise for sale, addicts who would do anything for their habit, pimps who sold whores, and the freelance whores who sold whatever the customer wanted. My clothes were clean, neat, and conservative enough to identify me as a foreigner in the area, and some of them tried to catch my eye while a few of them even snatched at my arm as I walked along. Before my court martial and discharge from the Air Force I had met their counterparts in every corner of the world, and I pushed my way through them with practiced ease as I walked along, looking around. The neon lights gleamed brightly on the puddles of dirty water covering the sidewalk and on the windows of the cars parked outside the bars, and a few of the people on the sidewalk darted back and forth across the street, dodging the honking cars which cruised along with their tires hissing against the wet pavement. A police patrol car moved slowly along the street, and the stony faces and the hard eyes of the policemen were pale gleams behind the rain speckled glass of the car windows. The activity along the street froze as some of the people disappeared into dark doorways or openings between the buildings, and others stood motionless on the sidewalk to watch the patrol car pass. When it went by, a flurry of renewed movement and activity flowed along behind it like the wake of a ship. I was still accustomed to the cold of Alaska, but the damp chill of the air and the somber, depressing atmosphere of the street made me shiver as I tightened my coat collar around my neck and quickened my stride.
I started to pass the bus station cafe, then I changed my mind and pushed through the swinging doors into the noisy, steamy interior. The hubbub of noise and the mixed odors of cooking, unwashed bodies, and wet clothes struck me in the face with the impact of a physical blow. The rain had driven many of the pimps, whores, and pushers inside, and they were mingling with weary, leaden-faced travelers along the formica-topped counter and among the cheap, dirty looking chairs and tables. The floor was littered with newspapers, food wrappers, bits of discarded food, and other trash, and I pushed my way through it to the end of the serving line. I waited for my hamburgers and coffee, paid a fat, flustered woman at the cash register, then went to an empty table in a corner and pushed the dirty dishes and used napkins to one side as I put my food down and sat down. I was next to the streaked, steamy, plate glass window facing the street, and I looked out at the cars and people passing by as I began eating the greasy hamburgers. A couple of queers got into a fight just outside the window, pulling each others' hair and scratching at one another. One of them suddenly stopped fighting and began crying, and the other one stood back and looked at him, his anger slowly fading. He put his arms around the one who was crying, and they slowly walked down the street. The other people on the street surged back and forth around them like waves parting on one side of a piling and joining on the other, but no one seemed to have noticed either the fight or the sight of two men walking along the street with their arms around each other, one of them sobbing with deep gasps and the other one comforting him.
I could hear the rumble of diesels from the rear of the building as the buses arrived and departed, and the steady roar of noise numbed my consciousness as passengers arrived and departed and as the denizens of the street left to brave the weather while other came in to replace them. I had started on my second hamburger when I became conscious of the conversation at the next table. A girl was picking at the wrapper of a cold sandwich with shaking fingers and trying to appear casual as a pimp leaned over the table with one knee on a chair and tried to hustle her. The pimp was black, and his face was obscured by a three-inch growth of beard and the brim of a large, floppy hat which he had pulled low on his forehead. He wore a garish red and yellow coat with dirty smudges of food down the front of it and collar points which hung almost to his waist, and his hands were almost completely covered by lengths of braided black string which he had looped around his fingers and wrists. I leaned forward slightly so I could see the girl's reflection in the window, then I gave her a glance from the corners of my eyes as I lifted my cup and took a sip of coffee. She was a teenybopper, with a cute, freckled face, long, brown hair, and an enormously long overcoat which seemed to swallow her small body. There was a suitcase by her chair with a guitar case leaning against it.
"I'm bein' cool with you, chick," the pimp was saying. "Wolfman know' the game here, and he treat you right. Nobody lean on you or rip you off if n you Wolfman' chick-"
"I'm not interested-please leave me alone," the girl said. There was unmistakable fright in her voice, but there was also a firm, tone of determination. It occurred to me that I might have misjudged her age, and I glanced at her again then decided that I hadn't; she simply had a lot of guts.
"You fuggin' bigot or somethin'? You prejudice 'cause I black? That' not cool here, cunt, and someone hurt you fast ifn you lay that on." His voice suddenly developed a hard note. "I take trouble to put you straight and you lay shit on me-"
"I'm not prejudiced against anyone-I simply want to be left alone. Now please leave before I call a policeman."
The pimp gave a sudden, barking laugh, and the chair scraped against the floor as he pulled it away from the table and sat down. He rapped one knuckle on the table for emphasis as he gave her a sneering smile and talked. "Call fuzz on Wolfman? Shit-fuzz don' fuck w' Wolfman, cunt. Fuzz do what Wolfman say when I snap my finger." He reached across the table and snapped his finger under the girl's nose, and she recoiled in surprise. "Anyone around here split when I snap my finger." He leaned both elbows on the table and smiled sourly at the girl, then he looked slowly around.
I stopped eating and turned my head toward him as he looked my way, and I deliberately stared at him to see if he wanted to snap his finger to make me run. His eyes were dull beads between the brim of the clownish hat and the growth of beard, eyes hidden from the world but I had looked too often at death for his eyes to stir fear within me. I let the brilliantly blue heat of my contempt for him and for all earthbound scum shine through my eyes as I stared at him. He crumbled and folded, but I would not let him escape and he kept his gaze fixed on my eyes with the fascination of a terrified rat for a cobra until he was shivering and trembling before me in all of his naked terror, then I blinked my eyes, released him, and he looked down at the floor.
An instant passed as he tried to regain his self control, and the girl looked at me with wide, blue eyes. She turned her face back toward the pimp as he cleared his throat and looked at her with a sneering smile of bravado, but his loss of our contest of wills had strengthened her determination. She dropped the sandwich on the table and slowly raised herself out of her chair as she leaned across the table. "Get out of here," she hissed at him, her nose inches from his.
He pushed the chair back and stood up, his mouth twisted with rage and his hands shaking under the looped coils of braided string. "You honkie motherfuckers," he growled, looking from the girl to me. "I'll waste both of you fuggin' ofay motherfuckers-you wait and see." He barged toward the door, his walk exaggerated by massively thick soles on his shoes and flopping wide, thick cuffs on his trousers. I dismissed him from my mind as I began eating again.
"May I sit with you?"
I looked at her as I chewed. She looked very small, young, and helpless. She clutched her sandwich in thin fingers and looked at me over the collar of the freakishly mod overcoat with wide, doe-like eyes.
"It's a free country."
She got up from the table and moved her suitcase and guitar case over, then she pulled a chair out and sat down. It was hard to place her age with accuracy because the overcoat she wore completely hid her figure, but her features still had the slightly blurred, soft lines of childhood and she hadn't grown to her full height. I guessed sixteen and that she was a runaway. "Thank you for helping me with that man."
The inference that I was a knight in shining armor protecting her virtue irritated me. "Don't get the wrong idea. I put him down because he fucked with me, not because he was hustling you."
She stopped unwrapping her sandwich and looked up at me with a hurt expression in her eyes, then she shrugged slightly and began unwrapping the sandwich again. "Well, thank you anyway, regardless of your reasons. I was scared of him, but I'm sure that he'll leave me alone now."
"I don't know where you get that shit from. If you want some free advice, you'll eat your sandwich and get your little ass on a bus out of here. He meant what he said about icing us."
"But I just got here, and I intend to stay."
"You'll stay all right. In a fucking morgue you'll stay if Wolfman sees you again."
She took a small bite of the dry sandwich and chewed, looking down at the table. She had lost her appetite, and she ate mechanically. "I don't have anywhere to go," she said quietly after a moment. "I lived with my aunt and uncle just outside Chicago, and they're the only living relatives I have. Now they're getting a divorce, neither of them want me, and ... well, I simply don't have anywhere to go."
"What do you intend to do here?"
She looked at me in surprise, as though the answer were obvious. "Get a job, find an apartment, and things like that."
"Have you ever worked before?"
"Oh, yes. I've babysat, I worked in the school library, and I sang at a teen club near where I lived. I've done other things too."
I looked at the small, young girl stuffing the sandwich into her mouth and I thought about the strange contrasts of our society. We had surgeons who could perform miraculous operations and wrench people from the very clutches of death, yet we had millions of people who had not been inoculated against the most common diseases. A large proportion of our population was suffering from physical conditions caused by a surfeit of rich foods, yet we had millions starving. Fortunes were expended to send people to other countries and examine means of raising the standard of living in those places while children in our own country were suffering brain damage from eating lead-based paint off the walls of tenaments, and we had men walking on the moon while rats infested our cities. We could construct a machine to perform' any operation, a computer to solve any problem, and a tool to correct any malfunction, but we could not make a child study his homework. The girl sitting at the table represented the most cruel contrast of all, the coming of age of working-class children. They were sheltered from life and stifled by indolence as they wallowed in abundant luxuries provided by thoughtless parents and an affluent living standard, then they were ruthlessly cast forward to fend for themselves in one of the most violent, crime-riddled, and frenetic societies on earth. I looked at her as she stuffed the last of the sandwich in her mouth; life for her had been competing for dates, planning for parties and dances, and worrying about getting the latest fad for her wardrobe. Child-like, she didn't realize that the pocket money she'd earned in the past would be woefully inadequate to support her, and she didn't know that she was unconsciously relying on her uncle's home as a refuge if things got too rough. When the true facts of her situation became clear to her it would be a traumatic shock, and she would probably succumb, as many runaway girls did, to becoming a teenage whore with a drug habit to support or a small, pathetic, unknown body on a slab in a morgue.
"Do you really think that man will bother me?"
I nodded. "If he sees you, and he'll be looking for you."
"Will he be looking for you?"
I nodded again. "And I'll be looking for him. He won't try me unless he has an absolute advantage-say three to one in an alley-and I'll have to keep my shit together well enough to keep that from happening."
She looked down at the table and tapped her thin fingers on the dirty, scarred formica top for a moment, then she looked back up at me with a sigh. "I don't know what to do."
"I told you-go back to Chicago."
"I told you that I don't have anywhere to live there, and I don't have enough money to get there even if I did have someone to go to."
"Then you'd better find Wolfman and apologize to him. He probably won't kick you around too much if you do it right, and he'll take care of you."
She pushed at the crumbs from her sandwich with the tip of a finger as she shook her head. "You don't know what he wanted me to do," she said quietly.
"I know."
She looked at me, frowning. "Then what are you talking about? Do you actually think I'd sell myself to anyone who came along-"
"Your pussy might be precious to you, kid, but it's just a pussy to everyone else. And you'll probably do a hell of a lot more than what Wolfman wanted before it's over. Unless you're extraordinarily lucky, you'll be dragged into an alley and raped before the night is over. If it's three or four guys who are looking for fun, they might take you home with them and keep you for a while. They'll fill you so full of drugs that you won't know what's going on, and after a couple of days you won't care. They'll break you in and pass you around to all their friends, and you'll be sucking and fucking everything in sight within a week. Or it might happen that some acidhead will catch you and kill you for kicks, and that would probably be the best thing that could happen to you."
The freckles stood out in stark contrast with the pale skin on her small, white face as she looked up at me with wide, staring eyes. "But there's other girls who've run away from home and that hasn't happened to them-"
"Don't shit yourself. The rock concerts are filled with the brotherhood of humanity too, but somehow all the cocksuckers who go to them wind up trying to kill each other. A girl who's been on the street for a while is more than glad to do anything anyone might want just in order to stay alive. You've listened to all the bullshit going around about the happy, carefree lives of the groupies, but it's not happy and it's not carefree. They're abused and mistreated worse than alley cats and all of them eat more come than they do food." I swallowed the last bite of my hamburger and drained the coffee cup, then I shoved my chair back to get up. "Well, good luck, chick."
She clutched at my arm with a terrified expression on her small, white face. "You're not leaving me, are you? I don't know anyone here, and I can't-"
I shook her hand off my arm. "Look, honey, I didn't tell you to leave home and come here. Everyone has problems, and I guess you have more than most because yours are coming all at once. But I have problems too, and I don't want to add yours to mine."
Her face slowly twisted into a grimace as she began crying. She turned away from the crowd in the restaurant and pulled the wide collar up on her overcoat so others would not see that she was crying, and she closed her eyes and clenched her lips tightly together as she tried to control herself. A couple of large tears slipped from under her eyelids and trickled down her cheeks as she choked back the sobs, then she opened her eyes and looked up at me piteously. "Please help me," she whispered in a shaking voice.
The memory of Edna and the loss I'd felt when she walked out of the terminal in Anchorage was still very strong in my mind, but the idea of keeping the young girl with me was tempting. She lacked Edna's well developed body and there would probably be passive acquiescense in place of Edna's torrid, eager response, but I felt a dull stirring within me as I thought about exploring the slender body concealed by the overcoat and there was a captivating innocence in her small face. She was very young, but girls as young in other countries had been more than glad to live with me and I saw nothing holy about a girl simply because she was an American. But because of her youth I might attract attention by having her with me, which would be unwise in my situation. She would also be an additional responsibility and expense, and my money would go only half as far in supporting two people. On the other hand, I felt some compassion for her and I was reluctant to abandon her to what amounted to an inevitable fate without giving her a chance to adjust. "OK, wait a minute," I said, getting up from the table.
The fat, sweating, woman behind the cash register gave me directions to the nearest youth hostel. When I went back to the table, an uptown tourist was hovering around the table and cautiously probing the possibilities of rejuvenating his lost youth by dipping his cock into the kid's pussy, but when I glared at him, he scuttled toward the other side of the cafe and the safer commercial entertainment sitting by the door. I sat down at the table and told her about the youth hostel, and she was relieved by the prospect of being safe at least for the night. She smiled gratefully up at me when I slipped her a ten, and when she started to leave I decided to take her to the bus stop in event Wolfman was hanging around the street outside the cafe. She was glad I was going with her, and she happily hugged the guitar case to her and followed me as I carried her suitcase and shoved my way through the people milling around the door.
I pulled my collar up and hunched my shoulders against the rain as I trudged along, warily looking at the passersby for signs of Wolfman and any friends he might have collected, and the girl trotted along by me. The neon lights gleamed on her small, white face and drops of rain ran slowly down her face and into the collar of her coat as we walked along, pushing our way through the others on the sidewalk. At the end of the block the neon lights and pedestrians thinned out, and she moved closer to me as she plucked at my sleeve. "What's your name?"
"Jim Harrison."
"Mine's Susan-Susan Mayberry."
I nodded, then ducked as an awning overhead shuddered in a gust of wind and spilled a stream of dirty rainwater down toward me.
"Where do you live?"
We were approaching my hotel, and I pointed at it with my thumb. "There."
She slowed down to look at the front door as we passed it, then she trotted a few steps to catch up with me again. "Is it nice?"
"It's a fucking flophouse, honey-all the hotels in this area are."
She became silent and followed me without talking, occasionally hopping over puddles on the sidewalk and jumping over the flooded gutters when we crossed the intersections. Muted squishing sounds came from her shoes as she walked rapidly along by me, and I could hear the slight sound of her breathing from the exertion of our fast pace.
The bus stop was a wet, unsheltered bench on a corner, and I looked around for a place where we could wait out of the rain. A clothing store on the corner had a recessed doorway and a ragged awning partially sheltering the steps in front of it, and a sleeping wino was curled up on the dry cement in front of the dark entrance door. He woke with a jerk and looked resentful when I kicked the bottom of his shoes to make him move over, then he pushed himself up to a half reclining position against the glass door as Susan and I crowded into the confined space. Susan wrapped her arms firmly around her guitar case and held it in front of her, and she leaned against me slightly when I straightened back up from setting her suitcase down. The rain had plastered her hair to her head, and she looked pitifully young and defenseless as she leaned against me with her head not quite reaching my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of her slender body through my coat, and the fresh scent of her body and hair filled my nostrils. As I became more aware of her proximity, a hungry gnawing spread through my balls and I regretted the circumstances which made it dangerous for me to keep her with me. My regret became more pronounced when she looked up at me with her wide, blue eyes and smiled at me hesitantly.
"When will we see each other again, Jim?"
"What do you mean, honey?"
Her smile faltered, then faded as she shrugged and looked across the dark street at the store windows on the other side. "I thought maybe you'd want to come and see me at the hostel or something," she murmured.
I nodded. "OK, we'll see."
She stiffened slightly and looked up at me with a frown. "Don't be so damned enthusiastic about it," she snapped, irritated, then her momentary anger faded as I looked down at her. "Does my age keep you from liking me?" she asked quietly.
"It makes it awkward, doesn't it?"
"Makes what awkward? A lot of guys have chicks younger than they are. I appreciate your helping me and everything, but if you don't like me you can just say so."
"Don't bug me, Sue."
She looked across the street again and she was silent for a long moment. "Do you like me or don't you?" she finally asked in a soft voice, her words barely audible over the patter of the soft rain against the sidewalk and the rattle of the battered awning over us as the wind jerked and whipped it.
"I like you."
A bright smile spread across her small face and she wriggled in satisfaction as she pressed closer against me. Her small, even teeth flashed in the semidarkness as her blue eyes looked up into mine again. "I'll stay with you if you want me to," she said.
"I'd like for you to, but it wouldn't work out. Not right now, anyway. You'll be all right in the hostel for a while, and we can see how things work out for you and decide what to do later."
"Aw, take her home with you and fuck her," the bum growled, moving restlessly on the entrance by our feet. "Maybe I can get some sleep then."
My frustration over not being able to have her suddenly turned into anger at him. "You shut the fuck up before I kick the shit out of you," I said, looking down at him. "No one's talking to you."
He muttered unintelligibly and shifted again, and I pulled Susan to one side so I could put my foot against his ass and shove him out on the sidewalk. She squirmed and moved back in front of me, shaking her head. "Leave him alone, Jim. He's not bothering me."
"The cocksucker's bothering me," I replied. I looked down at him over her shoulder. "You open your mouth again and I'll kick your ass out on the street, shithead."
He pulled the greasy collar on his thin, ragged coat up over his face and said nothing, and I leaned back against the side of the doorway. Susan leaned against me again, and she smiled up at me quickly as I put my arm around her shoulder and held her closer to me. "I'm going out to look for a job in the morning, but I'll probably be back at the hostel by late afternoon. Why don't you meet me there, and maybe we could go to a movie or something?"
"OK. Will the ten dollars be enough?"
She nodded. "It'll be plenty, because I had some change left over from the bus ticket and buying food during the trip." A moment passed as she looked across the street, and I could sense that she was thinking about something. She started to speak a couple of times and stopped herself, then she finally got it out. "Would you like to do something with me before I leave?"
It took me an instant to figure out what she was talking about, then I smiled and squeezed my arm tighter around her as I shook my head. "I'll last through the night, Sue."
"I don't want you going with some chippy," she said, looking up at me, then her face flushed scarlet as our eyes met. She looked down in embarrassment. "Well, you'll just be wasting your money and you might catch something," she murmured defensively. I continued to silently smile down at her, and she looked back up at me. She gave me a hesitant smile, then looked away again. "Are you sure you'll be all right?" she whispered. "I could make you have a climax with my hand while you put your hands in my clothes and feel me, or we could do anything else you want to."
She was painfully embarrassed, but she was pitifully anxious to cement some sort of relationship between us. I toyed with the idea of taking her into a nearby alley and playing with her, then dismissed it; I didn't want to lose her, but I was also reluctant to commit myself. "I'll be OK, honey-don't worry about it," I finally replied when she looked up at me once more, her face flushed with confusion.
"It worries me because I'm your girl and that's what I should be worried about." There was a momentary silence, then there was a thread of urgency and concern in her voice as she continued. "I am your girl, aren't I?"
I nodded. "You're my girl."
"You don't have anyone else, do you?" she asked as the thought suddenly occurred to her, and there was a penetrating look in her eyes.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
I nodded. "I'm sure. I haven't been here much longer than you have, and I don't know anyone here either."
A bus pulled up to the stop with a roar and the door opened to let a few people off. I picked up her suitcase and kept my arm around her as we walked across the sidewalk, then she suddenly turned and put her arm around my neck to pull my face down to hers. Her soft, warm lips pressed against mine for an instant, then she took the suitcase from my hand and hopped up the steps onto the bus. She pressed her small, white face against one of the thick, dirty windows and waved her hand frantically, and I raised my hand in reply as the strong stench of the diesel exhaust enveloped me. The bus roared around the next corner and out of sight, and I turned to walk back along the sidewalk. The wino had reclaimed the doorway and sunk back into his alcoholic stupor, the incident forgotten.
I was reluctant to return to the bare, depressing hotel room, and I roamed around for a while. I stopped in an amusement arcade to get out of the rain, and a battering roar of clanging machines and laughing, shouting voices assailed my ears as I went in. I pushed my way through the crowd and ankle deep layer of litter on the floor to get toward the rear of the long, narrow place, and I plugged a couple of coins into a pinball machine. I halfheartedly tried to run the score but tilted it, then I plugged in a couple more coins and began again. A couple of pimps and hustlers offered to take me to some better action, but I shook my head and ignored them when they tried to persuade me. They finally gave up and left me alone, and I eventually tired of the pinball machine and the noisy, smelly arcade. The pedestrians were thinning out when I went back outside. It was after midnight, and I stood in the doorway of the arcade and debated going on back to the hotel. The thought of the room was still distasteful, but there was an accumulation of fatigue which made me feel leaden and sleep offered an escape from the boredom and depression of the street.
I decided to drink a couple of beers to relax me and help me to sleep, and I walked into the first bar I passed on the way to the hotel. It was small, dark, and dingy, with a strong odor of sour beer, vomit, and urine. A juke box was blaring a deafening, senseless barrage of noise, and the place was crowded with regulars and a good assortment of winos, whores, and hustlers. I shouldered my way to the bar and got a glass of draft, then I carried it to an empty booth near the rear of the place. I checked the seat and under the table to be sure I wouldn't be sitting down in anything, then I sat down and sipped at the beer. A couple of whores made a move toward the booth, and the one who got there first was a girl no older than Susan. She had been on the streets for a while, though, and the ravages of drugs, inadequate food, and countless men wreaking their will on her was plain on her small, desperate face and thin body. "Would you buy me a drink?"
"I'm not buying anything-drink, pussy, or anything else. Leave me alone."
The brightly artificial smile of invitation faded under the plastered smear of makeup on her small face, then became an awkward, frozen expression as she began to plead with me. "I need some money, mister, and I'll let you do anything you want. You just tell me what turns you on, and I'll-"
"I said I'm not buying, and I meant it. You're wasting your time and pissing me off. Now split."
Her shoulders slumped dejectedly, and she turned away, almost crying. An older, more experienced whore made her play. She was about twenty-five, and she had once been a beautiful woman. Her naturally graceful walk and poise were those of a professional model or actress, but her eyes had a hard, brittle gleam in them and there were lines of premature age under the makeup on her face. She slid into the seat across from me and came straight to the point. "I have a place where we can go, and I'll give you the time of your life."
"I've had the time of my life, chick. Leave me alone-"
"No you haven't. When you feel my tongue in your asshole, you'll think your toenails are going to come off. I'm clean, and I can do twice as much as any other chick you'll meet. Come to my place with me, and if I don't make you come two times you can have your money back."
"Maybe some other time. I'm tired and I just want to go to bed," I said, tired of arguing.
"Well, we don't have to go to my place if you're in a hurry. I'll give you a straight French here, if you like. I can sit by you so you can feel my tits while I do it or I can get under the table to do it, and I'll swallow the come for you. No one will think anything, because people do it in the booths here all the time. If you don't want to do it in here, though, we can go out into the alley and I'll sit on something while you hold my head and fuck me in my mouth. Either way you want it, give me five dollars and I'll make you feel like going to sleep when you go .to bed."
I shook my head once more. "I'm not going to change my mind. I'm not buying, and I want to be left alone."
A slight frown of anger passed over her face then was quickly erased; there was always another day. She nodded with a slight smile and stood up. "Perhaps another time, then."
"Maybe so."
I watched her melt back into the motley crowd, studying her somewhat thin but well curved figure and wondered what failure, disappointment, or weakness had turned her into a hooker and despoiled her beauty. I finished the beer and went to the bar to get another one. When I came back to the booth, there was a man sitting in the opposite seat. He smiled up at me as I approached the table. "Hello, there. Do you mind some company? You looked lonely-"
"I'm not lonely, and I'm not a fucking queer. Get your ass away from my table before I kick it out in the street."
He stood up, his face red with embarrassment and indignation. "Well, you don't have to be that way about it," he huffed in a thin voice. "How was I to know? You wouldn't have anything to do with-"
"Just get the fuck away from my table."
He moved away from the booth as I sat down, then he turned and looked at me from a few feet away. He was well dressed in neat, expensive clothes, and he was apparently a resident of a better section of the city who was combing skid row in search of compatible companionship. "I hope you didn't misunderstand my intentions," he said. "I don't need active participation, and there's lots of men who go with me because all the women around here want money. You could close your eyes and imagine whatever turns you on, and I'd make it good for you-"
His feminine mannerisms made a cold, white anger flood through me. "One more fucking word and I'll get up from here and smear your ass. I don't like queers, and I'm not going to have what looks like a man sucking on my cock."
He turned and walked quickly out of the bar, shouldering and shoving his way through the crowd. A couple of roaming Johns came in a moment later and occupied all the whores' attention as they began shopping and bartering, the juke box began blaring as someone dropped coins into it, and the routine of activity in the bar resumed. I finished my beer and got up to leave. A fingers tried to tap me as I worked my way through the crowd, but I detected the soft, quick pressure of his hand groping for my wallet as soon as he touched me. I stiffened the first two fingers of my right hand until they were knotted and trembling, then I put everything I had from my calves to my wrist behind them as I hooked them into his abdomen just under the center of his rib-cage. My thrust went home with such quick, deadly accuracy that no one in the bar saw what I had done, and four or five of them looked vacantly as he writhed and vomited on the floor.
The rain was much heavier and the gusts of wind were stronger when I got back outside, and I hurried along the sidewalk toward the hotel with my collar clutched around my throat. The wino was still dozing in the threadbare easy chair in the lobby, the whore had left, and the clerk was sitting behind the registration counter reading a comic book. He glanced up at me as I came through the door, then he tried to act as though he hadn't seen me. I checked my things when I got into my room, and I could find no evidence that they had been bothered during my absence. I got into bed, and the sound of the wind driving the waves of rain against the window drowned the noises of the other occupants and lulled me to sleep. Somber, threatening images slowly moved through my mind as I slept, occasionally resolving into Edna wearing a long, bundlesome overcoat and pointing accusingly at the burning wreckage of an airplane and Susan wearing a hooded parka and staring at the burning wreckage vacantly, trying to fathom what it was.
An urgent knocking at the door woke me. A thin, bleary light from behind the tattered shade over the window filled the room with the flat, grey illumination of early dawn. I pushed the covers back and slid my feet to the floor as the knock came again, and I padded across the cold, damp linoleum to the door. "Who is it?"
"It's me, Jim-Susan. Please let me in."
I unlocked the door and opened it. She was standing in the hall, holding her suitcase and guitar case, a contrite expression on her face. "I'm sorry to bother you, Jim," she said apologetically. "I didn't have anywhere else to go, and I couldn't stay there-"
"Come on in," I said, opening the door wider.
She glanced at me as I stood by the door in my shorts, then she looked away as she walked into the room and put her suitcase and guitar case down. "What the fuck happened?" I asked, locking the door.
"Jim, that place is a colony of sex maniacs and perverts. Some of the women who work there are lesbians and they roam around all night trying to get one of the girls, and some of the girls who were staying there got high and brought a bunch of boys in. It was the biggest mess you've ever seen. The boys were high and a couple of them got one of the lesbians on the floor and began balling her, some of the other boys began doing it to the girls who'd let them in, and ... well, it was just like an orgy all night long. I kept away from them until daybreak because I didn't want to be back out on the street while it was dark, but as soon as it began to get light outside I left to come here. I didn't want to bother you, but I didn't know what else to do. I didn't get any sleep at all, because I was afraid to go to sleep."
I yawned and nodded as I scratched my head and tried to absorb all she'd told me into my fuzzy, drowsy mind. "Well, you can sleep now. I'm still tired too, and we'll talk about it and decide what to do when we get up."
"You're a darling, Jim, you really are," she said with relief as she began unbuttoning her overcoat. She slipped out of it and dropped it across a chair, then turned toward me as I climbed back into bed. "May I take a bath, please? I feel filthy, because one of those women caught me just after I went to bed and kissed and licked all over me. It was horrible, and I feel as though I want to scrub and scrub all over."
I turned my head slightly and looked at her. It was the first time I'd seen her without the thick, ankle length overcoat on, and she had a slender, well formed figure. She was wearing a skirt and sweater, and the short skirt hugged her tightly around the smooth curve where her hips flared out from her tiny waist. It was short enough to reveal the firmly rounded thighs which tapered gradually down to her knees and shapely calves. The sweater was also tight, revealing each line of her small, jutting breasts, her slender chest, and her slim arms. There was a residual hint of childhood about her, even though the curve of her breasts and the smooth line of her firm buttocks were those of rapidly developing womanhood, and the delicate mixture of the charm of childhood and beauty of womanhood made her intoxicatingly desirable. She saw my eyes moving slowly over her, and she turned to hold her body in profile as a quiet smile played around her lips. "Yeah, go ahead and take a bath if you want to, Sue," I said, dropping my head back on the pillow.
She put her suitcase on a chair and opened it to take out a folded nightgown, a towel, and a soap case, and she smiled at me over her shoulder as she walked toward the bathroom. I was still groggy and things had been moving too rapidly for me, and it was not until I heard the water drumming against the bottom of the bathtub that I realized I had tacitly invited her to stay with me. I felt a slight stab of disgust with myself for my weakness, but the feeling was quickly overridden by a gnawing hunger and a tingling which spread up through me from my balls as I thought about her slender figure and her smile of promise. My cock hovered on the border of stiffening into a hardon as I thought of her, and I dozed off into the edge of slumber as visions of her small, slender body moved through my mind. The sound of the bathroom door closing and the movement of the bed as she got into it stirred me awake again, and I turned my head to look at her.
She lay on her side, facing me, and I could feel the wafting breeze of her warm breath brushing my face as her large, blue eyes looked into mine. "Shall I take my gown off so you can look at me?" she whispered.
She was slightly ill at ease and unsure of herself, but she was anxiously eager to please me. I nodded to her. "Take it off."
She gave me a quick smile and rolled over on her back as she reached down to gather the gown up. She pulled it up to her hips, then she arched her back and slid it up to her waist. She lay back down and pulled it upward with a shrug of her shoulders, then she tossed it to the foot of the bed as she turned her naked body toward me to face me again. Her body had the slim, clean lines of youth, with small, firm breasts and a full, graceful swell of her hips from her small waist. Her limbs were slim, but they had a delicate beauty and softly rounded curves which made my breath catch in my throat. My eyes moved up and down her slender body, pausing at her taut, firm breasts and the large, dark nipples, and at the small triangle of soft, curly hair between her smooth thighs. She watched me gravely with wide, serious eyes as I reached out toward her and let the tips of my fingers move from her flat stomach up to the jutting breasts and upturned nipples, and she put her hands over mine and pressed them against her breasts as I cupped them, feeling the resilence of her body.
"Do you like me?" she whispered.
"You're beautiful," I replied, my voice hoarse with desire.
She moved toward me, flowing into my arms. "I want you to do everything to me that you want to," she whispered, "and I want you to tell me what to do to make you feel good. I want to make it better for you than anyone ever has before, and I'll do anything to make it that way for you. Anything at all."
I put my arm around her slender waist and cupped her smooth, firm buttocks in my hand to pull her closer to me and press my throbbing cock against her flat stomach. "Just be yourself, honey," I said, my voice trembling.
She hissed through her teeth and wrapped her arms around my neck as she wriggled against me, and the feel of her slender, naked body against mine made my cock quickly stiffen to a trembling hardon as I put my arms around her and fondled her smooth back and firm hips. I pressed my lips to the soft hollow at the base of her throat, and she combed her fingers through my hair as I kissed her soft neck and let the tip of my tongue touch her. One of her slim legs curled around my waist as she pressed herself ever closer to me, and her small hands moved over my head and shoulders as she pressed her lips into my hair, kissing my head. I moved my hands up and down her body, feeling her breasts, her hips, and her thighs, and the movements of her hands on me became more urgent as she slowly became aroused. I moved my head on down her slender chest to her breasts, and I moved my tongue slowly back and forth across one of the large, dark nipples which jutted firmly out from her slim chest. Her fingers clenched at my hair as she hissed through her teeth again and. surged toward me, and her nipples became hard and taut as my tongue caressed one of them. I let her nipple slide between my lips and moved my head back and forth to let it slide in and out as I continued to flick the tip of my tongue across it, and she moaned in pleasure as she tightened her leg around my waist and began undulating her slim body to press her pussy against me.
I let her small, hard breast slide into my mouth and I sucked at it as I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed her to me. Her small body trembled in my arms as the sensation of my mouth on her breast raced through her, and I slipped my hands down to cup her firm, smooth buttocks and hold her to me. I took my mouth from one breast and moved toward the other one, and she reached down to guide her breast into my mouth as she eagerly surged toward me and pressed it to my lips. She moaned again with pleasure as her breast slid between my lips, and she wrapped her arms around my head and clutched my face to her breast as I sucked it. She writhed and trembled in my arms as she became more excited, and she whispered as she pressed her lips to my head with quick, hard kisses. I rolled her over on her back and pressed her down against the bed as I took my mouth from her breast and moved my lips on down her body, and her body jerked from the sensation of my lips and tongue caressing her. I reached her small navel, and I pressed the tip of my tongue into it. She surged up off the bed, pressing her body against me, and my fingers groped in the small bun of thin, soft hair between her thighs. She eagerly spread her legs apart as my fingers touched her small pussy, and I felt her soft vulva between my fingers as I tongued her navel and her slim, flat stomach. I moved on down her body and passed by my hand fondling her pussy as I trailed the tip of my tongue down the inside of her slender, white thigh, and the muscles in her body tensed as she buried her face in the pillow in ecstasy. I moved my mouth to her other thigh and slowly trailed my tongue back up toward her pussy, then I moved my hand to one side and let the tip of my tongue flick up through her vulva.
She reacted violently to the sensations which shot through her as my tongue touched her small pussy, and she spread her legs wide apart as she pressed her pussy toward me and reached down with her hands to push my head against her pussy. I rolled over on the bed and lay on my stomach between her legs, with her pussy just below my face, and I moved from side to side to let the tip of my tongue and my warm breath move along one thigh, across her pussy, and down the other thigh. Her moans begged me to return my tongue to her pussy as I tantalized her by moving along her thighs, and when her arousal had escalated to longing I suddenly opened my mouth wide and dipped my head down to take her entire pussy between my lips. The warm, rich taste of her young body filled my mouth as I sucked her pussy and ran the tip of my tongue back and forth along her vulva. She clenched her hands into my hair and her body tensed as she began thrusting at me with forceful lunges, and I let her pussy slide back out of my mouth as I began licking it with long strokes of my tongue. She put her small feet on my shoulders and held her knees wide apart to hold her pussy toward me, and I stiffened my tongue as I began dragging the tip of it through the crack of her vulva.
I searched with the tip of my tongue until I found the tiny opening of her pussy, then I thrust the tip of my tongue into it and began moving my head back and forth to fuck her with my tongue. She responded eagerly, and her small hips began thrusting up at me in rhythm to my tongue sliding in and out of her. I pulled my tongue back out of her pussy and moved it slightly upward, searching for her clitoris, and a small, muffled cry burst from her as the tip of my tongue touched it. It sprang erect in a tiny, hard nub, and I began flicking the tip of my tongue across it as I cupped her buttocks in my hands to hold her pussy up to my tongue.
She pressed her thighs against the sides of my head as she surged up against me, and I could feel the initial quivers of a climax begin racing through her body as soon as I began titillating her clitoris. I slowed the pace of my tongue to keep from forcing her into a climax too rapidly, and I could feel the tension building up within her as I caressed her and licked her clitoris. There was a steady trembling which slowly built up in her until each fiber of her body was vibrating wildly in a throbbing rhythm of ecstasy, and the pressure of her thighs against the sides of my head slowly increased. A surging ripple began spreading down through her body from her shoulders to her hips, and it grew in intensity until her pussy was whipping up toward me with quick, hard thrusts. She gave a small cry as the waves of motion reached a peak, then she broke into a wild, violent orgasm. Her legs wrapped around my head and squeezed almost painfully tight, and I began flicking my tongue back and forth across her clitoris as rapidly as I could. She writhed in the convulsions of her climax, and her body jerked disjointedly as she lurched up against me. The orgasm drained her strength as it wracked her, then she collapsed on the bed limply with a soft moan. I slid up the bed and gathered her in my arms, and she weakly slid her trembling arms around my neck as I pulled her to me.
Her shuddering gasps suddenly turned into sobs, and her tears trickled down my chest as she pressed her face to me. I put one arm around her thin shoulders and held her to me as I slid my other hand down and cupped her firm, smooth buttocks to feel and fondle her. My hard, trembling cock bulged out in my shorts, pressing against her flat stomach. She wept in panting sobs for a few minutes, then her sobs diminished to an occasional soft gasp and she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand as she looked up at me. "That felt wonderful, Jim. No one ever did that to me before, and I've never felt that good in my life."
"That was what that woman wanted to do to you last night," I said, chuckling.
She glanced at me quickly, then smiled and jabbed me in the ribs when she saw that I was teasing her. "It's different when it's you. I don't want anything to do with a woman." She suddenly became conscious of my hard cock pressing against her, and she reached down to cup the head of it through my shorts. "I want to do something to make you feel good. Shall I do the same thing you did?"
"If you want to."
She smiled at me as she pulled my face down toward hers. "Take your shorts off," she whispered, then she pressed her firm, full lips to mine. I rolled over on my back, sliding the shorts down my legs, and I held her with my arm around her shoulders as I covered her mouth with mine. Her lips opened inside mine, and she sucked my tongue into her mouth. Her saliva was warm and sweet in my mouth as she pushed her tongue at mine, then our tongues entwined between our open lips. She stiffened her tongue and ran the tip of it around my teeth, along the inside of my lips, and around the sides of my mouth as I forced my tongue far back into her mouth. She pulled back and kissed around my mouth with damp, soft lips, then she opened her mouth wide to pull my lips inside hers. We kissed in a long, passionate embrace for several moments, then she pulled back again and loosened her arms from around my neck as she trailed her lips down my throat in a line of soft kisses. She nibbled at the skin around the base of my neck with her teeth as her fingers moved down toward my cock, and I jerked with the thrill of sensation which raced through me as her small, cool hand touched it.
She pushed the covers off my body as she moved down toward my cock, then she cupped it loosely between her small hands as she knelt over it, her face inches from it, and looked at me. "I've never done this before," she said. "You'll have to tell me what to do."
"Lick up and down it, then take it into your mouth," I said, trembling in anticipation.
She nodded, then bent over my cock and stuck her tongue far out as she began lapping at it. My body tensed and my muscles knotted as the feel of her soft, damp tongue on my cock raced through me, and I reached down toward her with my hand. She glanced at me as the tips of my fingers touched her smooth buttocks, then she wriggled around so I could feel her as her tongue moved up and down my cock. I caressed and fondled her firm buttocks as I watched her head moving up and down, and the tip of her tongue made fiery sensations roar through my body. She flicked the tip of her tongue from side to side on my cock as she moved up and down, and her fingertips moved over my cock and balls in tantalizing touches which made the sensations much more acute. I ran my hand along the inside of her smooth, firm thighs and fondled them, and she spread her legs apart so I could feel her pussy. My cock trembled in an erection which was almost painfully hard as she caressed it, and my muscles strained against each other from the ecstatic feelings which gripped me. "Is that good, darling?" she murmured, her lips against the side of my cock.
"God, yes," I groaned. "Take as much of it as you can into your mouth, then move your head up and down."
She obediently opened her mouth wide and let my swollen cock slide between her red lips as she held the base of it in both hands. She closed her mouth on it and sucked at it, then she pressed it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she moved her head up and down in short, quick movements. I writhed and trembled as the maddening sensations of her hot mouth on my cock raged within me, and I sat up in bed and hovered over her as she bent over my lap with my cock in her mouth. I lifted her hair and moved it to one side so I could see my cock sinking between her lips, and my hands moved over her hard, tight breasts, her firm buttocks, and her soft pussy. She gripped the base of my cock in one hand and cupped my balls with the other as she took more of my cock into her mouth, and the sensation caused by the pressure of her mouth on my cock, combined with the sight of it gorging her mouth, made the growing passion soar in me. She moved her head in longer and longer strokes, taking more of my cock into her mouth with each stroke, and she paused every few strokes to trace around the head of my cock with her tongue. The semen within me began to form into a knot, straining to break through the walls of my control, and my hips began responding as her hot, demanding mouth took more and more of my cock in. She intuitively sensed that her fingers added to the stimulation of her mouth on my cock, and she began moving one hand up and down the inside of my thighs, gently scratching at my skin with her fingernails. She held my cock in one hand as she stroked her fingernails along my thighs, cupping and squeezing my balls each time her hand moved back up. The head of my cock began touching the back of her throat as she forced her head further down on it, and the flood of semen within me began to threaten to break through my control. When the first quivering surges of a climax began to seep into my movements, I took her shoulders in my hands to stop her movements. She turned her head sidewards and looked at me as she let my cock slip out of her mouth. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was ringed with her saliva as she looked at me interrogatively.
"It's getting too good, honey. I'm about to come."
"That's what I want you to do, darling," she whispered, her voice tense with sympathetic passion for the feeling she had aroused in me. "I want you to come in my mouth so I can drink it."
I nodded and lay back on the bed as she smiled at me, then turned back toward my cock. I looked at her slender, white body as she bent to lick my cock again, and I watched the trembling movements of her small, hard breasts as her head moved up and down. She opened her mouth wide and let my cock slide all the way in until the head of it touched the back of her throat, then she closed her mouth and raised her head back up with a lingering, sucking pressure. I groaned deep in my throat as the wrenching sensations raced through me, and my muscles became hard and knotted as she began moving her head up and down again. The fiery sensations raged through me with renewed vigor as my control began rapidly crumbling. She felt the trembling surge in my body as my climax approached, and her head moved more rapidly as she forced her head down on my cock until it was almost gagging her. The semen suddenly burst loose and streamed up from within me, then it raced through my cock and into her mouth. She gave a small, smothered exclamation of joy in her throat as she felt the come boiling up through my cock, and she began swallowing rapidly as it squirted out into her mouth. My hips lurched up off the bed as the powerful orgasm gripped me, and my body lurched convulsively as the come spurted out in waves. The peak of sensation passed, and I felt the strength draining from my body as she pressed my cock and balls between her hands and kept sucking at my cock. She drained the last drop of come from me, then she turned and crept into my arms as she pulled the covers up.
She made a small, satisfied sound as she snuggled against me and I put my arms around her. She wriggled and pressed her smooth, firm hips against my limp cock as she settled her slender body against me, and she fell to sleep almost immediately. I cupped one of her firm breasts in my hand and fondled it casually, and she murmured softly in her sleep as her naked body pressed back against mine.
I woke a couple of hours later. My leg was over her slim legs, my arms were around her, and her slender body was half under mine. My cock was hovering on the verge of stiffening into a hard-on as it rested against her smooth, firm buttocks, and I felt a hungry desire to repossess her beautiful body. I slid one hand down her flat, silky stomach to caress her pussy, and I moved the arm she was resting on so I could fondle one of her breasts. Her slow, regular breathing faltered as I felt her pussy and breasts, then she turned her head to look at me as her eyes opened.
"Are you feeling sexy again, darling?" she whispered.
I nodded and slid my hand further down to cup her pussy and feel her soft vulva with my fingers. She spread her legs apart so I could feel her as she turned over onto her back and smiled up at me. "Shall I do what I did before?"
"No. I want to fuck you this time."
She nodded, blinking the sleep from her eyes, then spread her legs further apart as I loosened my arms around her. I slid on top of her, covering her slender body with mine, and she laced her fingers into my hair and pulled my face toward hers. She opened her mouth eagerly as our lips met, and her hands moved down to my cock as our tongues entwined. My cock slowly became larger and more firm as our lips pulled at each other and our tongues probed back and forth, and a satisfied murmur came from her throat as she cupped my balls and squeezed my cock with her fingers. Our lips parted and I lowered my head to her breasts as she began stroking my cock with both of her hands. I sucked one of her breasts with a slow, gentle motion, running the tip of my tongue around the nipple, and her nipples stood out from her breasts as they became hard and firm. I moved my mouth to her other breast and sucked it harder, and she moaned softly as she arched her back to press her breasts up toward me. I opened my mouth wide and took as much of her breast as I could into it, then I began sucking hard as my hands roamed over her thighs, buttocks, and back. She moaned again and her hands moved more rapidly up and down my cock, which was suddenly long and hard in a trembling erection. My desire for her beautiful body swelled until the blood was pounding in my head and I was trembling all over from the need in me, and I raised myself from her body and looked down at her. Her face was flushed and she was panting slightly, and she gravely looked up at me as my eyes devoured her body. I poised myself between her legs and spread her vulva apart with my fingers as I guided the head of my cock toward her pussy, and she reached down with both hands to help me guide it in. The tip of my cock touched the lips of her channel, and I gave a short, quick lunge with my hips to press it into her. She hissed through her teeth and closed her eyes as the head of my cock penetrated her, and the sensation of my cock sliding into her hot pussy made the muscles in my body jerk convulsively. I paused for a moment, then began undulating my hips in slow movements to press more of my cock into her. She spread her legs wider to open herself for me, and the tips of her fingers rested lightly on the shaft of my cock as she guided it into herself.
I restrained my desire to spear her with a single, powerful lunge as I looked down at her and kept easing my cock in. Her small, hard breasts were standing tautly up from her slender chest from the tension in her muscles and her eyes were tightly closed. Her back was arched and her feet were up in the air as she held her pussy up toward me, and both of her arms were tightly pressed against her body as she reached down with her hands to guide my cock into her pussy. I moved my hands up to her thighs and held them as I maintained the slow, steady pace of my cock sliding into her, and I pushed her thighs further apart and pressed them forward to arch her back further. Half of my cock slid into her as I undulated my hips "again, and I trembled all over from the sensation of my cock sliding into her tight, hot pussy and from the sight of her body on the bed in front of me. She took her hands away from my cock and held her arms up toward me for me to lie on her, and I slipped my hands down her thighs to cup her firm buttocks as I lay down on her and began fucking her with long, hard strokes.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and planted her heels firmly on the back of my thighs as she began thrusting, her hips toward me, and more of my thick shaft began sinking into her eager body. She moaned and gasped each time my cock slid into her, and her hot breath fanned the side of my face and neck as she panted in quick breaths. We floated for long moments in the blissful pleasure of my throbbing cock ramming into her body, then her movements became more intense and convulsive as a climax began to build up in her. I began pressing harder each time my cock slid into her, then the entire length of it was sliding into her belly as my balls pressed against her firm ass each time I thrust forward. I lowered my head and began sucking at one of her breasts as I slid a hand down between us to feel for her clitoris with my finger. She gave an urgent moan as she quickly cupped her breast and held it up to my lips, then she writhed under me when my finger found her clitoris. Her nipple was a taut, hard berry between my lips as I mouthed her breast, and her slender body lunged wildly as I titillated her clitoris. I stroked it in rhythm to my cock sinking into her belly, and her hips lunged up to drive her pussy at my cock with the same tempo. Her moaning whimpers became louder and more demanding, and the convulsive movements of her body became wilder and more uncontrolled as her climax rolled inexorably forward. It burst upon her, and she gave a small cry as her stomach began undulating in rolling waves. I held her to me as I pounded my cock into her with a rapid pace, and her entire body, lunged against me in spasms. She thrashed about under me for a moment, then she collapsed with a weak sigh.
I pulled her legs together and lay on top of her for a moment, my cock still keep in her pussy, and waited until the residual sensations of her climax had passed. After her breathing had returned to normal, I looked down at her face as I raised and lowered my hips to let my cock slide in and out of her pussy. She sighed deeply and smiled up at me wearily. "You still didn't come, did you?"
"I almost did when you did."
She wriggled nimbly as she spread her legs wide apart with her feet resting against the small of my back. "There, darling, you can come in me now and you'll feel better."
I raised myself off her and pulled my cock out of her pussy. "Let's do it another way."
"All right," she said, smiling and reaching down toward my cock. "Do you want to come in my mouth again?"
I shook my head. "I'll show you. Roll over on your stomach."
She nodded and rolled over on the bed with a single, lithe movement. She looked at me over her shoulder as I pulled the pillow down and stuffed it under her stomach, then positioned myself with my cock touching her smooth buttocks. I felt for her pussy with the head of my cock as I moved closer to her, and she smiled in understanding as she reached back with one hand to help me guide it in. The head of my cock slid into her pussy, and she moaned softly as I tensed with the sensation of my cock slipping back into her. I cupped her pelvic bones and raised her slightly as I pressed on my cock, and she pillowed her head on her forearms as I began dog fucking her. I stretched out on her to feel her slender body under mine and to run my hands under her so I could feel her breasts, then I pushed myself back up to a kneeling position to see her body in front of me as I fucked her. The blood began pounding in my head as I watched my cock sliding in and out between her rounded buttocks, and I held her with my hands around her tiny waist to brace her against the lunging of my body. She reached back to push the pillow into a higher mound, then she arched her back deeply to raise her pussy up to the level of my cock. My cock suddenly slipped into her up to my balls, and I began slamming the entire length of it into her. The feel of her hot pussy sheathing my cock and the sight of her body stretched out in front of me began to tear down my control, and the semen in me began straining to burst loose. I held grimly onto my control as I gripped her firm hips and pounded my throbbing cock into her, then the knot of semen swelled up to the bursting point. She began whispering taut, urgent words of encouragement, pleading with me to release myself into her and flood her with my come, and the battering onslaught of sensations ruptured my control. I released all attempt at control as I felt the semen streaming up and pouring out of my cock. It gushed out into her, and she gave a small, glad cry as she felt it spurting deep into her belly. I shuddered in convulsive throes as I collapsed on her and gripped her to me, my hips pounding my cock into her slender body and driving my come deep into her, then I fell limply on top of her and we lay in a gasping, quivering heap.
My heart finally stopped racing and my breathing returned to normal, and I started to roll off of her. She clutched at me and shook her head as she made a negative sound in her chest, and I relaxed on her again. She wriggled and settled herself under me as she composed herself to go back to sleep, and I went back to sleep with her slender body under mine.
CHAPTER THREE
The hotel was dirty, noisy, and uncomfortable, but it offered the absolute privacy of a flophouse in the slums, where no one is curious and where anything goes. As the days went by and we attracted only the most fleeting and cursory attention, I became less apprehensive about drawing attention to myself by having Susan with me and we began spending more of our time outside the hotel. We ate our meals in the grimy, greasy cafes and small, dingy sandwich shops in the vicinity of the hotel, and we went to an occasional movie or on a shopping trip when one of us needed something. Several times when we were shopping I noticed Susan gazing wistfully at radios, and I noticed that they were what occupied her attention in store windows when we strolled aimlessly along the streets after eating. We had been living together about a week and were on our way back to the hotel one evening, and I steered her into a pawn shop to see about one I had seen her looking at several times. She affected a nonchalant air while I was haggling with the owner over the price, but once it was ours she clutched it under her arm with unconcealed glee. She plugged it in as soon as we got back to the room, and I lay down on the bed as she curled up in the ragged easy chair and tuned it from station to station.
A soft sound of music woke me. Susan was still curled up in the tattered chair, and she had her guitar across her lap. The radio was on the edge of the dresser and was tuned to an FM station which was playing a slow, melancholy melody, and Susan was strumming her guitar along with the music as she hummed softly. I looked at her as she bent her head over and cocked it to one side to listen to the notes critically, her body swaying slightly in rhythm to the music, and I watched her small, thin fingers moving up and down the neck of the guitar with familiar ease. It was the first time I had heard her play the guitar, and as she expertly followed the music through a complicated trill and a change in octave, I suddenly realized that she was much more of a musician than most teenagers who drag an instrument around with them.
The music from the radio changed to an orchestral rendition of a popular song, and she leaned back in the chair as she began playing and singing it. Her voice retained something of the thin, reedy quality of a child's, but she sang with the smooth control of many hours of training and practice. There was a husky tone and a catchy break in her thin, soft voice, and she sang the words with a slow, intense feeling as she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. The song ended, and she chorded the guitar and hummed the next song. She played with the melody, improvising small runs and variations as her fingers moved quickly up and down the neck of the guitar. She leaned back in the chair and sat still as she listened to the radio for a moment, her lips pursed as she silently whistled, then she turned the radio off and shifted to a more comfortable position, with her legs doubled up under her and the guitar cradled on her lap as she hovered over it.
She began playing the guitar and singing, and the music held me spellbound as her sweet, husky voice rose and ebbed with the quiet strumming of the guitar. The melody and lyrics were hers, and I gazed deeply into her innermost thoughts and fears as the sobbing notes echoed an agony of yearning for understanding, the deep, black despair of loneliness, and a searching need to know of the meaning of life. The eternal themes of music seemed to be endowed with a special meaning for me by the husky soprano of her woman-child voice as she thought herself alone with her music and sang of her hopes, desires, and fears. She stopped signing and strummed the guitar aimlessly for a moment, then she began singing a love song. There was a strongly erotic undercurrent to the heavy drumming of the bass guitar strings which was blended smoothly with a light, youthful innocence as she sang of the fusion of souls and bodies, and I felt a need for her which slowly mounted as she sang. Her voice trailed off into silence at the end of the song, and she turned her head to look at me. She started to smile when she saw I was awake, then the smile faltered and disappeared when she saw the longing for her on my face.
She stood up from the chair with a lithe movement and turned to carefully place the guitar on the chair, then she walked over to the side of the bed. She stood just out of my reach and looked down at me, her face serious and intent, and she began undressing with slow, deliberate movements calculated to turn my longing to lust. She kicked her shoes off and slipped her dress off over her head, then she took her bra off and cupped her breasts with her hands, holding the large, dark nipples out toward me. She slowly turned around to let my eyes feast on her slender body, and the blood pounded in my head as I looked at the graceful curve of her slim back and the symmetrical lines from her tiny waist to the firm swell of her hips. She put her hands in the waistband of her panties and pushed them down over her smooth, delicately curved buttocks, then she turned back around to face me as she stepped out of them. She flowed into my arms, and I took her gently, savoring her body and my newly found understanding of her.
After a month had gone by I began to worry about my dwindling bankroll, and I decided that I had waited long enough for the mess I'd got into in Alaska to settle. I made a few trips to the metropolitan airport and put out a few feelers among the air taxi services and independent operators. Nothing concrete was said, but a couple of them looked thoughtful when I told them I was available and I settled down again to see if I had made a connection. A couple of days later I had a visitor.
We were sitting in the room to stay out of the rain and listening to the radio when the knock came at the door. Susan looked at me in wide eyed surprise and fear, then she jumped up from the bed to put her dress on as I went to the door. There were two men standing in the hall. One was a heavy set man of forty-five or fifty with thin lips and a hard, scarred face; the other man was somewhat younger, but there were also small lines of scar tissue around his eyes and mouth, and he had the tense, taut look of a man who holds himself with a hairline control. They were both dressed in quietly expensive, conservative business suits, with dark raincoats and hats which were pulled low over their eyes. The younger man glanced into the room, then looked at me. "Jim Harrison?"
"Yes."
"I'm Frank Robinson. I heard that you're a pilot and you're looking for work."
I opened the door wider and nodded. "Come on in."
He turned to the older man and indicated for him to remain in the hall with a slight motion of his chin, then he took off his hat and walked into the room as I closed the door behind him. He glanced around, and his grey eyes stabbed quickly at Susan's pale face. He looked at me interrogatively.
"Sue, this is Frank Robinson. Frank, this is Susan May berry."
They nodded to each other, and he walked over to the easy chair. He put his hat on the arm of it as he took a small notebook and a pen from his inside coat pocket, then he opened the notebook, selected a blank page, and looked back at me as I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Who've you worked for before?"
I thought for a moment, then shrugged. "There's been a lot of people. You might know the Rodriquez brothers in Miami, or Raul Gonzales in Houston. I made a couple of flights for Tony Morelli in Chicago, Charlie Bellinger in Boston hired me for a while not too long ago, and I've worked for the Botticellis in New York."
He wrote a couple of lines and nodded. "Do you have a record?"
"I've never been arrested."
He looked up at me quickly, his grey eyes boring into mine. "What does that mean?"
"That means I've never been actually caught doing anything illegal, so I've never been arrested. But I've been involved in a number of things which might have resulted in the FBI having a dossier on me."
He looked at me thoughtfully, then his face relaxed into a wintery smile. "That's true of a lot of people, I guess. What kind of airplanes can you fly?"
"I'm licensed up to twin engine conventional and twin engine jet with centerline thrust. That covers all of the smaller private aircraft and most of the executive transport types. I have instrument ratings, but I'd have to have a chance to familiarize myself with some of the more recent panels, and I've lost currency in some of the larger twin engine aircraft."
He flipped through the pages of the notebook for a moment, then he lifted it to look closely at something he had written. "Can you fly a Piper Cherokee 140 and a Cherokee Six?"
I nodded again. "Yes, I have plenty of time in both of them. I'm familiar enough with any of the common single engine aircraft to be able to fly them after a check ride or two."
"What do you know about a Beechcraft Queen Air 70?" he asked, looking at the notebook again and droning the designation in a monotone which indicated a total lack of familiarity with aircraft.
"It's the medium-sized Queen. I've had plenty of time in it."
He made another note as he nodded, then he put the notebook back in his pocket and stood up. "All right. We'll be in touch."
I followed him to the door and held it as he went through, and the two men disappeared down the dark, gloomy hall toward the stairs. Susan was looking at me curiously as I closed the door and locked it again. "What was that all about?"
"Business. I've got to get some money if we're going to eat, honey."
"I thought you'd get a job with an airline or something."
I laughed, shaking my head. "Airlines have fairly high standards for their people, both from a professional and personal standpoint, and I've been in too much shit at one time or another for them to hire me."
She smiled at me as we sat down on the edge of the bed, and she tugged at my ear for me to put my head in her lap. I stretched out on the bed with my head resting on her thighs and put my hand behind her to feel her firm, smooth buttocks. She leaned over to kiss me softly, then straightened back up and pushed my hair back from my forehead with her small hand. "The airlines can shove it-you're better than anyone they have working for them, and it's their loss if they're not smart enough to want to hire you. Who was that man, and why did he look at me so strangely?"
"He was probably wondering why you weren't in school," I chuckled.
She giggled. "If he'd asked me I'd have told him it's because you won't let me out of bed long enough to go." She looked down at me and wrinkled her nose as she leaned over to kiss me again, then she straightened back up as she continued stroking my forehead with her small, cool hand. "Were you in the Air Force?"
I nodded as I moved my head to a more comfortable position with my cheek against the slight curve of her stomach, and she began dragging the tips of her fingers slowly back and forth across my cheeks and neck as I closed my eyes. "Did you get out because of Vietnam?" she asked softly.
I stiffened as I opened my eyes and looked up at her. "I'm not a peacefucker, if that's what you mean. I flew a bomber in Vietnam because I believed in what I was doing, and I'd do it again. I also believe I know more about the issues involved than some pimple-faced freaky cocksucker who's never been out of the country and who carries a Viet Cong flag or a peacefucker sign when he's tired of beating off, because I have a lot of friends in South Vietnam and I know what they think about the situation. I don't have any apologies to make about what I did, and the only reason I'm not still there is because I won't fight with my hands tied behind my back-I believe wars should be run by generals and fought with the object of winning."
She sat absolutely motionless and looked down at me with her hands resting on my face as I loosed the tirade at her and let my helpless, white hot anger and frustration boil over, then she stiffened her arms and pushed my head back down on her lap as I started to sit" up. She smiled quietly at me as she began stroking my forehead again. "Don't be angry with me, darling, and don't be so defensive. You can fight the rest of the world if you feel that you must, but you don't have to fight me. I love you, and I won't fight with you."
I looked up at her small, pixie face as she smiled down at me and talked, then I pulled her down to kiss her as I cupped her small, firm breast and fondled it. Her lips opened as she responded hotly, and her arms wrapped around my head to cradle it as we kissed. I sat up to take her in my arms as our lips parted, and she twisted nimbly away as she began unbuttoning her dress. "Take your clothes off, darling. You shouted at me and you're going to have to make it up. You've also got yourself all twisted up and stuffy inside, and I want to get it all out of you so you'll be contented again."
The names and information I gave Robinson apparently checked out, because there was a long, black limousine at the curb in front of the hotel when we came back from eating dinner at a sub sandwich shop the next evening. The older, heavy set man was sitting at the wheel, and Robinson was sitting beside him in the front seat. Other people were looking at the car curiously, and everyone seemed to be giving the car a wide berth as Robinson and the other man stared out through the windshield stonily. Robinson looked at me with a flicker of recognition in his eyes, and he turned and shoved the rear door open as Susan and I approached the car.
"Mr. Campanela wants to talk to you," he said as I leaned inside the door.
"Who's he?"
"He's the man. The girl comes too."
I gave Susan a reassuring smile as she looked at me and the car with wide eyes, then I climbed in and helped her in. The door closed with a quiet, solid click, and the big car moved smoothly away from the curb with a purring throb of exhaust from the powerful engine. The tires hissed softly against the wet pavement and the wipers swept soundlessly back and forth as the car raced through the dingy streets. The glaring neon lights and the grey, staring faces of the people looking at the car disappeared as the car swayed gently across the tracks under the freeway overpass, then the rear end slid slightly as the car rocketed around a sharp turn and accelerated up the freeway onramp.
We left the freeway and went up a sharply inclined four lane expressway on the edge of the Daly City area, then turned off the expressway and drove along a narrow, secluded road with thick, heavy foliage hanging down on both sides. There was a gleam of light through the rain and mist at the end of the tunnel like drive, then we swerved into the parking lot of a large nightclub. The limousine went through the parking lot and around behind the building, stopping in front of a rear door which was illuminated by spot lights buried in the foliage on each side of it. Two men materialized out of the foliage as Robinson got out of the front seat. Their raincoats were splashed dark and trickles of rainwater ran from the hat brims pulled down over their eyes. Robinson exchanged a word with them as I helped Susan out of the car, and one of the men took his hand from his raincoat pocket to knock quietly on the door. The door opened and there was another muttered exchange, then light streamed out of the door as it opened for us to enter. One of the men stepped back into the foliage as we went in the door, and the other one waited for us to enter with his hand on the knob.
The room appeared to be a sort of waiting room, and it was expensively and tastefully decorated. There were two men and a woman in the waiting room, and all of them appeared to be tense and nervous. One of the men was dressed in a tuxedo and appeared to be a functionary in the nightclub, the woman was dressed in a long, black evening dress and seemed to be a hostess, and the other man in the room was dressed similar to Robinson. Robinson looked at him as the door closed behind us with a solid, heavy sound. "Where is he?"
"In the office," the man replied, nodding toward a door panel between a pair of heavy drapes.
Robinson walked over to the door and rapped softly on it, and it slowly opened a couple of inches. He exchanged a few words with another man in a soft monotone, then the door closed again. The tense atmosphere in the room became supercharged as the door slowly opened again. Two large, heavy men quickly stepped through the door and stood on each side of it as an older man walked through, and I sensed that he was among the upper hierarchy of the underworld as I looked at him. He was at least sixty, with grey hair, a wrinkled, yellowish white face, and black, beady eyes. He wore a dark, heavy overcoat open in the front, with a white scarf tossed loosely around his neck and a black, narrow-brimmed hat on his head. His breathing was audible from several feet away, and he leaned on an ornate, silver and gold inlaid cane as he walked slowly into the room. Everyone looked at him, alert and anxiously eager to obey the slightest indication of a command. His beady eyes fastened on me and studied me for a long moment, then he looked at Susan. His movements were slow and economical, as though he had just recovered from an illness, and his face had the deep wrinkles and heavy pouches of years of pain or anguish. The pallor of his face was unhealthy, an almost deathly color, but the dark, sparkling eyes were piercing, watchful, and intelligent as he stared at Susan for several seconds then looked back at me.
His head moved fractionally in what could have been a nod of satisfaction as he gripped the cane tighter, turned slightly, and looked at the woman in the black evening dress. "Take care of the girl," he said in a hoarse, whispering voice, and the woman jumped forward in her frantic eagerness to obey him as he turned toward the door and motioned at me with his chin. "Come on in and let's talk."
There were two other men sitting in the room, and they stood when the old man entered. One of the body guards touched my shoulder as I started to pass between them, and their hands moved swiftly over me, frisking me for weapons. One of them nodded at me to proceed into the room, and they followed me in and closed the door behind me. They locked and checked the door, then stood on either side of it with their arms folded.
The other two men in the room were younger than the old man, about forty or so, and they sat back down as the old man sat down on the edge of an easy chair and placed the tip of the cane between his feet.
He rested both hands on the cane and fixed me with a steady, unwavering stare as he nodded toward another chair. "We're looking for a pilot, and they tell me that you're looking for a job," he rasped in his hoarse voice.
I nodded as I sat down. "That's right. What happened to the last one you had?"
The other two men looked at me quickly, their eyes boring at mine, and one of the body guards behind me moved restlessly. The old man's eyes were cold and piercing for an instant, then his pale lips moved slightly in an expression of wry amusement. "He went on a flight to Mexico and didn't come back."
"And you don't know what happened to him?"
He shrugged. "We have three or four stories, but we'll find out the truth eventually. Why? Does it scare you?"
"Yes, but I'll go anywhere if the price is right."
He breathed a whispered laugh, then his face became expressionless again. He studied me intently for several seconds as he moved his chin slightly and his dentures clicked softly, then he licked his lips dryly. "Where did you learn to fly?"
"In the Air Force."
"Why did you get out?"
"I got thrown out. I was court martialed."
"What for?"
"For bombing a prohibited target."
"What does that mean?"
"A antiaircraft gun emplacement had been trying to blow my shit away for three consecutive days while I was flying bombing missions, and on the fourth day I blew his shit away."
"And for that you got court martialed?"
"It's against the rules. I was supposed to bomb what I was sent to bomb."
His slow, steady breathing was an audible rattle in his throat and chest as he stared into my eyes. "So why didn't you?"
"I got pissed off."
He looked down at the floor, thinking, and I was suddenly struck by the similarity between the old man and an aging general whom I had met at Tan Son Nhut when they were shipping me back to the States. There was the same confident aura of authority, the same wrinkled visage, and the same bright, penetrating eyes. The general had looked down at the floor with a thoughtful look in his eyes as I had talked to him, and he had sighed softly, almost sadly, over the passing of the time when the fighting of wars had concerned only soldiers, and politicians had been limited to starting them.
"Where did you work last?"
"I had a job in Alaska that got all fucked up. I thought I was bringing in some goods from the Kamchatka Penninsula-maybe emeralds or something-and I found out that I had been set up to bring in an enemy agent. I killed him and the man who had hired me, then rigged it to look like an aircraft accident. The agent was about my size, so it might have convinced everyone. But there's a chance that it might not have, because I believe there were either CIA or FBI agents in the area and they might have figured out what I did. If they did, they might still be nosing around for me."
"If they are, they're looking somewhere else. I had you checked out, and you're clean." He coughed hollowly, swallowed, and a shadow of pain crossed his features. He breathed hoarsely for a moment to catch his breath, then tightened his grip on the handle of the cane. "Why didn't you want to bring the man in for them? It must have been worth a lot of money-"
"Because I'm an American."
One of the other two men uttered a harsh laugh. "A fucking patriot," he sneered.
The old man turned his head slightly and looked at the man who had spoken. The man's sneering smile abruptly disappeared and his face became taut with apprehension as the old man stared at him. "Another name for it is loyalty, Gino," the old man grated, his voice strong and firm with a deadly note of anger. "With a man like that, I know that I have a deal once we make an agreement. With a man who doesn't think of anything but himself, I know that I always have to be the high bidder on each hand in the game." A trace of an Italian accent came into the old man's voice as he spoke, then he stared at the man he had called Gino until the man's eyes fell and his face paled. The old man turned his eyes back to me, then he asked another question. "What's the deal on the girl?"
"She's a runaway from Chicago. Her mother and father are dead, and she lived with her aunt and uncle until they began to talk about a divorce. I met her at the bus station about a month ago, and she's been living with me since then."
"Do you want to join the organization?"
"No. I'll work for you, but I want to keep it on a worker and employer basis. If I decide I want to quit and go to Miami to run a fishing boat for hire, then I want to be able to do it. If you find another pilot who suits you better and you decide to hire him, I'll take it like it is and keep my mouth shut about what I know."
He closed his eyes and thought about it for a long moment, then nodded as he opened them again. "All right, we'll try it and see how it works. Young girls are dangerous, though, so I'd like to give your girl some money and let her go. We can fix you up with a woman who's attractive enough for you to take anywhere, who's an interesting person to talk with, and who'll do anything you want in bed-"
"I like the one I have."
The other two men looked at me with dark scowls on their faces at my temerity, and there was a trace of anger in the old man's face. He blinked and the anger was gone again. "Hung up on young pussy, are you?"
I laughed easily. "I don't think so, but I'm sort of hung up on this one. She looks like a kid, but she's mature for her age, she's smart, and she can keep her mouth shut. I agree with you that young girls are dangerous, but this one's an exception."
There was a breathless silence in the room for long seconds, then the strain faded away as the old man nodded slightly. "It's been so long since I've had any use for women that it's hard for me to remember what men will do to keep them. Keep the kid, then." He cleared his throat with a wet rattle, swallowed, and changed the subject. "I'll pay you either a thousand a week as a flat wage or a hundred dollars a day plus expenses while you're on trips, whichever is more. Keep a tab on your expenses, and if they ever run over three hundred dollars a week you can turn in a voucher for the difference. All right?"
I nodded. "That's plenty unless I get into something where the heat's really on me."
"If that happens we'll renegotiate the price for the duration of that job." He thought for a moment, and the room was silent except for the rasping wheeze of his breathing. "I'd like for you to live out of the city if you're going to keep the kid. Everyone notices a young girl with an older man, and it's not good for business to attract too much attention. We own a couple of beach houses, and you can use one of them as long as you're working for the organization. We'll also furnish a car if you don't own one."
"I don't, and I'll be more than glad to move out of the flophouse where we're living. But I can't keep Susan in the house all of the time-"
He shook his head, cutting me off. "I don't expect you to. I just don't want you taking her where people will be seeing you and noticing you all the time, and I don't want you taking her to bars or nightclubs. If you take her driving, to dinner, or to a movie, it won't make any difference. There's another thing too-they tell me that you like to climb into a bottle sometimes. If that happens while you're working for us, you'll be looking for another job. If you get boozed up and louse a deal or get the heat on the organization, you won't be working for anyone."
His face didn't change and his rasping, wheezing voice remained the same while the blunt threat of death was dangled before me, and I kept my eyes fixed on the maze of wrinkles. "I don't drink when I'm working," I said in a flat, controlled voice.
He nodded fractionally, then looked at one of the body guards standing at the door behind me. "Tell someone to get him a week's wages, and tell Robinson to take him to one of the beach houses-let him use the one the other pilot had." He tightened his grip on the cane and began levering himself out of the chair, and I stood up as the other two men got to their feet. "You won't be seeing me again unless something important comes up," the old man said in dismissal.
Robinson seemed pleased that I had got the job, and I guessed that it was because they had been needing a pilot and he had scored a few points by locating one. The man in the tuxedo got the money for me, and a moment later Susan came back into the room through another door. She smiled in relief as she walked toward me; she wasn't sure what was going on, and she was slightly frightened and ill at ease in the midst of all the strange people. The woman in the evening dress came back into the room with her, and I glanced at her as she walked over to Robinson and spoke to him. She was an attractive woman, with long, black hair and a full, well rounded figure under the tight fitting dress. She talked to Robinson in a low monotone for a moment, then walked over to me and Susan as we moved toward the door.
"You must have impressed Mr. Campanela," she said, smiling slightly. "He's given you much more lattitude in your personal affairs than any of us expected."
I looked down at her with my hand on Susan's shoulder. "Looking for a new job?"
She smiled wider, showing the edges of her pearly, even teeth. "A job's a job. but I have to keep regular hours and I'd rather be doing something which would allow me to set my own schedule. Perhaps you might change your mind."
"I doubt it."
"Well, if you do or you want to sample the services I'll be available. My name's Lilly."
I nodded and steered Susan toward the door, where Robinson was waiting for us. We went back out and got into the limousine, and it swung back through the parking lot of the nightclub and down the road toward the expressway. The driver took the freeway to the south coastal drive, and the miles flashed by at eighty miles per hour. When the city was behind us the driver turned onto an offramp which led to a two-lane highway bordering the coastline. I could see lights from scattered houses through the rain and the heavy foliage on each side of the road as we drove along it for a couple of miles, then we turned in between large, stone gateposts onto a gravel surfaced drive. The headlights flashed across a large, bungalow-type house as the car swerved around in front of it and braked to a stop. Susan got out of the car behind me, yawning and rubbing her eyes, as Robinson handed me a bunch of keys.
"You check the house and see if everything's all right, and I'll make sure the car runs-it's been a couple of months since it was used, and the battery might be dead."
I unlocked the front door as Robinson went toward the garage at the side of the house. Susan's eyes were wide and she looked around with amazement and disbelief as I switched on the lights and told her that the house was ours. She slowly walked across the living room, looking around, then she began trotting from room to room, exclaiming with delight at everything she saw. The house was a giant step up from the hotel room. It was a large, three-bedroom house with a separate den, a sunken living room, luxurious wall-to-wall carpeting in all the rooms, and sliding glass doors opening onto a patio which overlooked the sea. The furniture looked new, and it was fully provided with all the necessities, including linen and kitchen utensils. I was looking through the kitchen cabinets when Robinson came through the door which connected the garage to the kitchen.
"It was hard to start, but it's running OK now," he said, dropping the car keys on the kitchen counter. "Is everything all right in here?"
"It's fine," I nodded.
He told me that my instructions would be placed in the letter drop by a leg man and he gave me another warning about drinking as I walked to the door with him. He got back into the limousine, and gravel spurted from under the rear wheels of the massive car as it shot toward the highway. I closed the door and went back into the house, and found Susan still prowling through the house and murmuring with awe at each new thing she found. One of the bedrooms had a waterbed in it, and she squealed with delight as she jumped on it and let the surging mattress move her body in slow waves. She grinned at me as I lay down beside her, then her face became serious as she turned on her side and looked at me.
"Darling, why did we get all this? What do you have to do for those people?"
"Sue, I'll tell you the basic facts, then I don't want to discuss it any more. I'm working for a crime syndicate, and this house is part of what they're paying me. We also have a car and plenty of money, so we'll be fixed up for as long as I work for them. It will entail my being away from time to time for a few days, and I want you to stay in the house and keep the doors locked while I'm gone."
She nodded thoughtfully. "All right, but I don't like for you to be mixed up with criminals, Jim. You could get hurt, or the police might catch you and put you in prison." She put her hand on my arm and moved closer to me. "I like this place a lot, Jim, but we don't have to have it. We were all right in the hotel, and we don't need a lot of money. Couldn't you do something else?"
I shrugged, and the movement started the mattress rolling slightly. "I could, but I don't think there's much chance of my being caught by the police while I'm working for these people. They're professionals, not two bit thugs. I can also quit any time I want to, so when we have some money saved up maybe we can do that and go somewhere else." I put my hand on her thigh and squeezed it. "Will you be frightened to stay here by yourself when I'm gone?"
She shook her head and smiled. "I've been by myself plenty of times before, and I can find things to do. There's a nice TV in the den-did you see it? It's a color console."
I nodded and smiled, then relaxed as I yawned widely. Susan pillowed her head on my shoulder and snuggled against me as she slid her slender arm across my chest. She lay against me with her warm breath fanning against my cheek until the surging water mattress was still, then she moved her head slightly to look up at my face. "What was that woman talking about?"
"What woman?"
"Lilly. The one who took me to the restaurant and got me some ice cream."
"The man who hired me wanted to give you some money to get rid of you, and he wanted me to have another woman. I guess Lilly was one of the candidates for the job."
She stiffened with anger, and I turned my head to look down at her. "What does he have against me? Doesn't he trust anyone except his whores?"
"Your age. He was afraid that the difference in our ages would attract too much notice, and he was afraid that you might talk too much or in the wrong place. But I explained that you were mature for your age and I more or less told him that I wouldn't take the job if it meant losing you, so we went along with it."
She looked slightly mollified, then she suddenly smiled. "You really told him that you wouldn't take the job if you couldn't keep me?"
"What I said amounted to that."
The mattress surged as she moved up toward me, and her smooth, warm lips were suddenly pressed against mine. Her tongue wriggled between my lips and darted into my mouth as she pressed herself against me, and I slid my arm under her to cup her buttocks and feel them. She put both of her hands on the sides of my face as she opened her mouth wide and kissed me with a hard, hot pressure, then she pulled back and looked at me, her lips damp and shining with saliva. "Do you like me more than Lilly?"
"A lot more."
"Well, she's probably got the clap," she said, irritation and jealousy in her voice, then she giggled as she rolled away from me and sat up on the bed. Her fingers moved rapidly down the front of her blouse as she unbuttoned it, then she shrugged out of it and tossed it to one side. I looked at her slender arms and the delicate curve of her small chest as she reached behind herself and unfastened her bra, then my eyes became fixed on her firm, erect breasts and her large nipples as she tossed the bra to the foot of the bed. She moved back toward me, and one of her small, resilent breasts was pressed against my lips as she wrapped her arms around my head. "Suck it," she whispered. "Suck on it and make me feel good, and I'll suck you wherever you want me to."
I opened my mouth as wide as I could and took her breast into my mouth as I fumbled at the waistband of her skirt. She reached down to help me, then wriggled out of her skirt and bikini panties. I rolled her over on her back and moved back and forth between her breasts, mouthing and sucking at them, then I sat up and looked down at her naked body as a raging desire to thrust my swollen cock into her began to make the blood pound in my head. I quickly jerked my clothes off and threw them to the foot of the bed, and when I turned back to her she was watching me with a quiet smile. "Do you want to put it in me, or do you want to come in my mouth?"
I put my arms around her and pushed her legs apart as I moved between them and groped for the lips of her pussy with the head of my cock. "I want to fuck you." She made a satisfied sound in her throat as she reached down to help me guide my cock into her. "They say it's better on a waterbed-let's see if it is."
The head of my cock touched her pussy and slid in, then she spread her legs wide apart and put her feet against my thighs as I began pumping my cock into her slender body.
My come boiled out into her eager body and I thrust it deep into her with pounding thrusts of my trembling, spurting cock. I collapsed on top of her limply, and she slid an arm out from under my body to tug at the bedclothes and pull them over us. I put both of my arms around her and held her to me, and she wriggled comfortably under me as we went to sleep.
It was almost midnight by the time we got to the hotel, and it looked even more drab and shabby after having been in the house. We loaded our things into the Chevrolet sedan, the car which had been in the garage, then drove back to the house. The following morning we drove to a supermarket and loaded the trunk and back seat with enough food to stock the freezer, refrigerator, and cabinet shelves. The rest of the morning was spent in exploring the house and arranging things to suit us, then during the afternoon we walked along the beach. A slow drizzle pattered down, and the rain and fog isolated us from the other houses and the road above the beach. We watched the oily green waves surging out of the fog and low hanging clouds, breaking into foam and gliding up the sloping beach toward us, and it felt as though we were the only people in the world as we stood with our arms around each other. We went back to the house when dusk began to fall, and I let the awning down on the patio to shelter us from the rain while we grilled steaks. Susan cradled her guitar in her arms and slowly strummed it while she sang a ballad, and I looked at her small face in the flickering light from the grill as I listened to the waves breaking on the beach below. It was a timeless, precious moment and I was reluctant to end it, but after we had eaten she pressed herself upon me with a torrid intensity which drained me of strength and ended the day for me in deep, dreamless sleep.
There was a thick envelope in the letter drop the following morning. It contained a receipt for prepaid rental on a Cessna 170, a credit card for fuel, and a typed sheet of instructions. I woke Susan, and she fixed breakfast for me while I looked the instructions over. They were extremely detailed. I was to go to the rental agency and sign for the Cessna, then fly to Phoenix Field in Sacramento. Upon my arrival at Phoenix Field, I was to take a taxi to a hotel on Seventh Street where I was to meet a man and pick up a package. After remaining overnight in Sacramento, I was to return to San Francisco and deliver the package to a man at a bar on Broadway. Both of the men were described in detail, and the instructions included an identification countersign.
It felt good to get back into something orderly and meaningful. They had the Cessna out of the hangar when I got to the airport, and I went on out to preflight it as soon as I had my flight plan filed. Everything looked good, and all the clocks came up on the mark when I started the engine. As it rolled down the taxiway, I felt the controls and looked back and forth across the panel to refamiliarize myself with everything until I melded down inside the responsive little machine and made it an extension of my limbs and brain. By the time I was sitting in the holding position with the brakes locked and the engine ticking smoothly over at a rapid idle I felt at home in the airplane. The tower cleared me onto the active and I let it ease out, then I felt the triumphant thrill race through me and tingle in every fiber of my body as I looked down the long span of cement in front of me and jammed the throttle forward until the thrust was pressing me firmly back into the seat. Life was breathed into the web of fabric and metal as it flashed down the runway, then it broke free of the clinging fetters and rose to bear me into its element and mine.
The hotel was similar to the one in San Francisco where Susan and I had lived. I went to a restaurant to eat before I checked in and lost my appetite. I returned after eating and pushed my way through the sagging double doors into the small, musty lobby. The clerk was leaning back in a chair behind the registration desk and dozing. An old man was sitting in a moth-eaten overstuffed chair with a newspaper over his face, and he had a hard-on which made the front of his pants bulge far out as he made the newspaper tremble with his snores. There was a strong odor of vomit in the stuffy room, and as I walked to the registration desk I saw where someone had been sitting in one of the ragged chairs and had vomited on the arm of the chair, across the floor, and into a dusty, tattered, artificial potted plant by the chair. I woke the clerk, got a room on the fourth floor and paid for it, then carried my overnight bag up the dirty, creaking stairs.
The worn linoleum, battered, rickety furniture, and musty odor of insecticide, mildewed bed linen, and strong disinfectant were about what I had expected. I slid my overnight bag under the bed and walked down the hall, looking at the room numbers in the dim light, then I stopped in front of 414 and knocked. There was a sound of movement inside the room, then silence. I waited for a moment and rapped my knuckle against the center panel three times, then the key rattled in the lock and the door opened a crack. "October came late this year," I said in a low voice.
"The fifteenth ain't late," a hoarse voice replied.
"It's too late for some," I said, then sighed impatiently. "Now that we've finished with the bullshit, open the fucking door and let me in."
The door closed and the chain rattled as it slid from the metal groove, then the door swung open. I stepped inside, and a fat, unshaven man in a filthy undershirt and a pair of soiled khaki pants closed the door quickly behind me and slid the chain back into place. He smelled sour and rancid from underarm odor and bad breath, and I walked across the dirty, littered room to get away from him. "I'm glad you finally got here," he said, crossing the room toward a battered chest of drawers. "I've been sweating this drop, and I'm glad to get it out of my hands."
He opened the top drawer and took out a canvas bag. It was an ordinary bank cash bag with a zipper along the side which was held in place by a small padlock. I took it from him and carried it over to the window to examine it. I heard a whisper of sound from behind the closed bathroom door. "Who's in there?" I asked, nodding toward the door.
He started to lie and try to tell me that there was no one in the bathroom, then changed his mind. "Oh, just a couple of friends of mine," he said with a sickly, awkward smile, trying to appear casual.
"Let them out so I can meet them."
I was tense and nervous, half expecting a setup, but when he opened the bathroom door two girls and a boy came out, looking at the fat man and at me with wide, staring eyes. They were in their teens, and they all had the haggard, emaciated appearance of hypes. They were dressed in ragged, shabby clothes, they were dirty, and they looked as though they hadn't eaten a solid meal in weeks. One of the girls tried to smile at me invitingly but gave it up and stared listlessly at the floor when I didn't respond. The fat man herded them toward the bed and turned to me with a leering smile as they sat down on the edge of it in a row. "Maybe we can have some fun and games when we get our business settled. This is a good bunch-they know a lot of good tricks."
"Where'd you get them?"
"Oh...." he murmured, thinking rapidly, then he shrugged self-consciously and tried to appear casual as he lied. "I met them down at the bus station. They didn't have any money and needed somewhere to stay, so I took them in."
"How much did you pay for them?"
"Pay?" he asked, his voice rising shrilly. "What makes you think I paid for them? What do you. mean by-"
"Don't try to shit me, pus gut. The only hypes of fucking age you can pick up on the street are those rotten with the bug. You got those from a merchant who works girls for pimps and boys for the fairy heavens, and flesh merchants charge high prices."
He shrugged, with the sickly smile frozen on his face, and I ignored him as I looked at the bank bag in the light coming from the dirty, streaked window. The small lock had been picked open by someone who either didn't know what he was doing or didn't care how much of a mess he made of it. I took the lock firmly in my fingers and tugged at it, and it snapped open. I unzipped the bag as I crossed the room to the rickety table which served as a desk, and I emptied the bag on it. Several rolls of coins and banded stacks of bills dropped out. I picked up a paper bag from the floor and searched in my pocket for a pencil, then I began laying the money out on the table. "All right, come on over here and let's count it. We're going to write down how much money's here, then we're going to sign it."
His face blanched to a dirty grey color and he began trembling with terror. "What do you want to do that for? You're not supposed to open the bag-they'll smear your ass for doing that, and-"
"The bag had already been opened. Now get your fat ass over here and verify my count before I start kicking the shit out of you."
He walked toward me hesitantly. "Why'd you want to do this?" he whined. "You're trying to get me fucked up and blame me for something I didn't do."
"The only thing I'm trying to do is establish how much money was in this bag when I got it from you. Now get the fuck over here, cocksucker."
His shoulders slumped helplessly and he spread out his arms and let them fall limply back to his sides as he turned toward the chest of drawers again. He opened the bottom drawer and searched under a jumble of dirty, ragged clothes, then pulled out an envelope and brought it to me. "Goddamn it, I have a lot of expenses and they don't pay me enough to be able to make it," he complained. "All I wanted to do was borrow a little for a few days, and I would have made it up-"
"No one's stupid enough to rip off the syndicate, shithead," I said, opening the envelope and dumping the money out on the other bills.
"You're not going to fink on me are you?" he begged. "You wouldn't do that to me, would you? They'll waste me for sure-"
"You tried to drop the axe on me with a short bag, cocksucker, so you don't have anything to complain about."
He kept trying to persuade me as I rapidly counted the money and totaled the different denominations. I added it quickly on the paper bag and came up a few hundred short of twenty thousand dollars. I folded the paper bag and stuffed it into the bank bag, then began shoving the money into it. The fat man became panic stricken when he sensed that I was getting ready to leave.
"Don't go yet, don't go yet," he babbled. "You haven't tried the kids yet and they're good-they really are." He turned and snatched one of the girls up from the bed by her arm. "Get your fucking clothes off," he hissed at her, then he turned to the other two. "What are you two just sitting there for? Do something-suck his cock," he said, shoving the girl toward the boy. The girl he had jerked to her feet stood in the center of the room, disrobing, and the other girl quickly squirmed out of her dress while the boy dropped his pants. She knelt in front of him, naked, and took his small cock into her mouth while he put his hands on her head and began undulating his hips to fuck her in the mouth. The other girl had her clothes off, and she stood in the center of the room looking unsurely at me and at the fat man as she waited for an indication of what was expected of her. I felt no desire as I looked at the girls, because their bodies were so emaciated by the ravages of drugs that they seemed to be a parody of sexuality, a pitiful, almost obscene display. The fat man did not experience similar qualms, however, because along with the apprehension he felt about the money I could see that he was becoming aroused. Sweat was beginning to stand out on his bare shoulders and face, and a hardon was beginning to make the front of his pants bulge.
"Just look at that," he said, walking over to the girl standing in the center of the room and feeling her buttocks. "She can get you over any way you like it-she knows all the tricks." He pulled the girl to him and looked down at her as he cupped her small vulva in his hand, and she obediently spread her legs apart to let him feel her. "Her pussy is good and tight, she knows how to give a good blow job, and she's good at ass fucking too." He looked at me with a wild, glaring light in his eyes and a grotesque, strained grin on his face, then he turned to look at the other two as he clutched the girl to his gross body and pressed her small hips against his growing hardon. "They're good too," he said, nodding at them. The girl was passively kneeling in front of the boy with her hands against his thighs as he worked his hips rapidly and fucked her in the mouth. "Sometimes I make her blow him while I dog fuck her or ass fuck her, or sometimes I put all three of them on the bed and climb onto them and fuck whatever or whoever I can get it into first." His face became mottled red as he looked at them and talked, and he suddenly pressed down on the girl's shoulders and unzipped his pants. She quickly knelt and took his thick, hairy cock in both hands as it emerged from his pants, and she began licking and kissing it as he held her head in both hands. "I do all kinds of things with them, and sometimes I ass fuck the boy. He got smart with me once, and I made him give me a blow job before I'd give him his stuff. I found out that he really liked it, and he's good at it, too-he got my cock down into his throat without choking on it, and I had my balls shoved up against his chin every time he went down on it. I made one of the girls tongue my asshole and the other one suck my balls at the same time, and I thought my balls were coming out through my cock when I got over-"
He broke off as I gathered the bag up and started toward the door. He was holding the girl's head in his hands and gorging her small mouth with his cock as he lunged rapidly back and forth, and he stopped moving as he looked at me with his mouth open. "You're not going, are you? Do you want them all by yourself? If you do, I'll go somewhere and wait while you get over, or you can stay all night and do whatever-"
"The only thing I want is to be somewhere else. So long, pervert." His voice was raised in a begging, whining plea as I went through the door and closed it behind me. I went back to my room and got my overnight bag from under the bed, then I stuffed the money bag in on top of my things and zipped the bag closed. The fat man knew his hours were numbered and I was in his territory, so it was urgent that I get out of the vicinity of the hotel before he rounded up enough help to make a hit on me. The hall was empty when I opened the door a crack and peered out, and I closed the door softly then trotted to the window at the end of the hall. It was stuck closed with dried paint and the accumulated'grime of years, and the wood creaked alarmingly as I took the two handles at the bottom of the frame and tugged upward. I kept applying pressure, and it finally broke loose with a shudder and a shower of dirt.
I went down the fire escape and through the alley into the next street, then took a taxi to one of the better hotels. It was tempting to go back to the airport and return immediately to San Francisco, but I wanted to stick to the time schedule in my instructions in case other things were involved. I registered and went up to my room, then lay on the bed and watched TV all afternoon. I ordered dinner in my room and ate, then went to bed early. It was barely daylight when I woke the following morning, and I quickly shaved and showered to go down for breakfast. I took the overnight bag with me and paid my bill as I went by the registration desk to the dining room, and I caught a taxi to Phoenix Field as soon as I finished breakfast. The Cessna was serviced and ready to go, and I gave the service attendant the credit card to pay for the gas while I pre-flighted. A few minutes later the Cessna was racing smoothly down the runway and I lifted off to climb out of the murk, gloom, and filth of the city.
Robinson was waiting with the bag man at the bar on Broadway. He looked at me with a steady, unwavering stare as I came into the bar, and his eyes remained fixed on mine as I slid the money bag onto the table and sat down. "What happened to you? Why did you leave the hotel in Sacramento?"
"I didn't like the setup. The bag man had ripped off a couple of thousand and I made him give me what he hadn't spent. I figured that he might have had some friends in town and they might have paid me a visit during the night. Twenty thousand is a lot of dust, and if he's crazy enough to rip off the syndicate he's crazy enough to do anything."
He looked at me for several seconds longer, his eyes unblinking and his face expressionless, then he looked at the bag man and indicated the money bag with a slight motion of his chin. The bag man took the tab from the table and unzipped it as he slid it below the level of the table and set it on his lap, then he rapidly counted the money. A few seconds passed as the bills rustled and the rolls of coins clicked together, the bag man looked at the paper bag I had left in the money bag and mentally compared his total with mine, then he looked at Robinson and nodded quietly. "Six hundred short, and his tally was the same as mine."
Robinson looked back at me. "We knew he was ripping us off. You shouldn't have made him give the money back, because we were finding out where it was going before we sent someone to smear him."
"And you shouldn't have sent a new man after a short bag. You were checking me too-I wasn't born yesterday. I know where the money was going, though. He was using it to support some hype kids he keeps for kicks, and he probably ripped off at least a couple of thousand to buy them from a merchant. I don't know why you wound up with a weirdo like him as a bag man in the first place. I wouldn't trust him with a wad of used toilet paper."
"You've no idea of how hard it is to get good people," Robinson said, looking down at the table and tapping his fingernails against it, and I felt a sudden stab of amusement as I thought of how the comment would have been much more typical of an assistant manager of a department store than a subordinate leader in a crime syndicate. He looked back up at me and nodded. "All right-you passed the test good and clean. You're either honest or smart, and we'll let it go at that."
They abruptly got up from the table and left, and I went back outside to where I had parked the Chevrolet. I drove slowly back to the beach house and Susan came darting out of the front door when she saw me drive up. Her kiss was hot and passionate, and she clung to me with her slender body pressing against mine and her small fingers biting into my back. The first time was quick and violent as I let the pent-up tension gush from me into her eager body, then she kept me awake with her hot mouth and tantalizing fingers until I entered her a second time. We floated timelessly in the rapture of our bodies surging together as the waterbed undulated under us and pressed us together in a wildly erotic rhythm, then we burst into a simultaneous climax. The waves of ecstasy drained us and robbed us of strength, and I dozed off with her slender body under mine. I was roused later when she began massaging my back, and I lay limply on the bed as her thin, strong fingers kneaded and wrung my muscles from my shoulders to my feet. I lay and relaxed in a warm, delicious drowsiness when she finished, then I went to sleep again as she sat by me with her slender, naked body curved over her guitar, softly singing in her sweet, husky voice as she strummed the guitar.
There was another envelope in the letter drop the following morning. It contained instructions to go to Reno to pick up a man and bring him back to San Francisco, and there was a prepaid rental receipt for a Queen Air. A Queen is normally crewed by a pilot and a copilot, but I had enough time in the aircraft to be able to handle any situation except dire emergencies. I filed into Reno at twelve thousand, and it was a pleasant flight, far above all the weather as well as all the filth and scum with which man surrounds himself. I took a cab from the airport to the motel and got the man, then returned with him to the airport and took off again. He was a short, dark man with a surly, perpetually dissatisfied expression, and we didn't talk at all. He sat by himself in the passenger compartment, and I forgot that he was in the airplane as I busied myself with the controls. Darkness closed in as the sun glided below the horizon in a spectacular blaze of yellow and gold, and the brilliant colors slowly faded into red, crimson, then grey. The green glow of the instrument panel became brighter as the light faded, then the stars became bright pinpoints of light against the velvet blackness of the sky.
It had been a while since I'd made a radar controlled approach at night, and I came close to letting the boiling murk outside the canopy lure me into the cloying, treacherous trap of vertigo. The dark, bulging shapes of clouds scudding past the windshield were so similar to the dark pits on the edges of my consciousness that I felt drawn toward them, then the complete loss of orientation from vertigo swooped down on me and I felt a positive, absolutely sure conviction that the aircraft was laboring upward in a climb with the left wing low, and that I was on the verge of falling off on the left wing in a stall because of the descent power setting. I automatically reached for the throttles to advance them, then I got a grip on myself and brought my consciousness back inside the cockpit to the instruments as I fixed my attention on the attitude indicator. A cold sweat broke out on my face as I struggled with myself, because the panic inside me continued to shriek a warning of imminent stall despite the evidence of the slow descent and level wing flight on the attitude indicator. Then the moment passed, my world became the interior of the cockpit, and reality became the instruments in front of me. I continued to feel edgy, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I caught the rippling pattern of the strobes through the gloom below and in front of me.
The passenger picked up his briefcase and wordlessly walked down the steps when I dropped them. He brushed past the service attendant who had come out to secure the airplane, then he disappeared into the gloom and mist surrounding the hangars. I got back to the house in time for a late supper with Susan, and as we sat on the patio to grill a steak I thought of the brush with vertigo and other times when I had let myself become separated from my airplane so that I depended on the wild imagining of puny human senses in an environment completely alien to them. It occasionally happened to the most expert pilots. I had once been leading a wounded wingman back from a night mission over Hanoi when it had seized him. His instruments had been damaged and he'd had only my voice through his headset to reassure him that he was straight and level instead of in a climb, as he'd thought, and despite my shouts of command and warning he had advanced his throttle and put the nose down. He had plummeted earthward and rocketed through a hole in the clouds, then when the lights of the airfield and city came into sight he had recovered too late. The sluggish response of the wounded aircraft had doomed him, and he had perished in the boiling crimson of a flaming pyre on an unknown and unnamed jungle mountain a few miles from the airbase as a fleeting monument to courage, sacrifice, and heroism for its own sake.
"The steaks are burning," Susan murmured hesitantly, putting her hand lightly on my arm.
My mind snapped back to the present, and the gamine beauty of her small face dispelled the cloud of depression from my mind. I stabbed the fork into the steaks and flipped them over, and a fragrant, mouth watering aroma of seared meat and wood-smoke came from the grill. I looked down at her and put my arm around her, and she smiled up at me as she wrapped her arms around my chest and snuggled against me. "Hungry?" I asked.
She nodded, then giggled. "In a couple of ways."
I squeezed her and patted her firm, smooth bottom. "Food first. Go get some plates-these steaks are almost done."
I didn't have a flight the next day, but there was an envelope in the letter drop the following day. The instructions directed me to fly to Chicago to pick up a woman and return her to San Francisco. A Queen had been rented for the trip, and it was uneventful. There were a couple of minor writeups on the airplane which I annotated on the forms and turned over to the service attendant at Chicago to take care of, then I took a taxi to downtown Chicago. The woman was staying in the presidential suite of the Royal Hilton, and I felt somewhat overawed by the quietly expensive luxury as I walked into the massive lobby. The desk clerk looked down his nose with cold, haughty courtesy when I approached the counter, then he thawed somewhat when I mentioned the woman's name. He dialed on the house phone and spoke into it, then waved a bell boy over to show me to her suite.
I had been expecting some fat, petulant old bag with a mustache and a foul disposition from being petted and pampered, but I couldn't have been more wrong. She was small and petite, with black hair and dark, flashing eyes, and she had the smooth, olive complexion of Mediterranean ancestry. The instructions had included the information that she was Mr. Campanela's dead brother's widow, and I concluded that Mr. Campanela's brother must have been much younger than him because the woman was only twenty-five or so. She had a full, well developed figure, with large, jutting breasts and smoothly rounded hips, and her features were a picture of dark, Italian beauty. There was a courteous, reserved smile on her face as she opened the door and held it for me to enter.
"Please come in and sit down, Mr. Harrison," she said when I introduced myself. "Would you care for a drink?"
I shrugged, thinking rapidly. I had been more or less prepared for her to simply tell me what time she wanted to leave the next day, so the warm invitation puzzled me. I wasn't sure of our relationship and the propriety of taking a drink, and I didn't want to impose if she was only trying to be democratic. I suddenly decided to take her up on it, because behind the polite smile I could sense the slightest hint of a desperate loneliness. "OK, I'll have a scotch and water if you'll call me Jim."
Her smile widened. "Then you must call me Teresa. Please sit down."
I sat down on a large, plush couch and relaxed in its deep, soft comfort as she walked to a bar at the other end of the room and fixed drinks. Despite my knowledge that undue familiarity with her could bring the vengeance of the syndicate down on me like a bolt of lightening, I felt an involuntary stirring and a hungry gnawing in my balls and the pit of my stomach as I watched her walk toward the bar. She was dressed in a plain black dress which hugged the curves of her body, and her hips swung with a tantalizing movement as the short skirt of the dress revealed just enough of her smooth, rounded thighs to make me want to run my hands lovingly over them.
She walked back across the room with my drink and a small glass of wine for herself, and the delicate fragrance of her perfume filled my nostrils as she bent over and handed me the drink. A warm, glowing feeling spread over me as I looked at the top of her dress and saw the smooth, full curves of the cleavage between her breasts, and when she handed me the drink and my fingers touched hers I almost dropped the drink. I looked at her eyes to see if she realized what I was thinking, but her eyes were demurely averted. She sat down on the edge of the couch as she raised her glass slightly and smiled at me, then she took a tiny sip and set it on the coffee table. "I hope that coming for me didn't interfere with any other plans you might have had, Jim."
I laughed. "It's my job, and I like to fly. I enjoyed the flight here, but now that I've met you I think I'll enjoy the trip back much more."
She flushed slightly and a smile played around her lips as she reached for the wine glass. "Have you had dinner?"
I started to reply, then stopped myself as I detected a veiled suggestion that I take her to dinner. "As a matter-of-fact I haven't. Have you?"
She sipped the wine, looking down at the floor. There was a darker flush on her cheeks as she shook her head, and she didn't look at me as she replied. "No. I usually eat quite late in the evening. I live alone, you see, so it isn't necessary for me to fit my schedule to anything other than my whim."
"Would it be presumptuous for me to ask you to have dinner with me? I don't know anyone here-"
She shook her head, cutting me off. "You aren't being presumptuous, and please don't be under the impression that I expect any special consideration, Jim." She put the wine glass back on the coffee table and smoothed her dress over her thighs, and I longed to feel their firm, smoothly rounded beauty as I looked at them. "All things considered, I don't think it would be wise for Antonio to learn that we had dinner together-he might consider it an affront. However, I would like to have dinner with you." She suddenly looked up at me and her large, dark eyes bored into mine. "I am very lonely, you see."
"Antonio-that's Mr. Campanela, your brother-in-law?" She nodded silently.
"Does he keep tabs on you pretty closely?"
She sighed and smiled sadly as she shrugged. "Both my family and the family I married into are very old country. I have ample money, an abundance of clothes, and a luxurious place in which to live, but I am very isolated. I am expected to conduct myself as would a widow in the old country, and I am not allowed to go...." She suddenly shrugged her moodiness off and smiled at me brightly. "But now they are not here. Would you care for another drink?"
I shook my head, draining my glass. "I'll go down and register, then we'll go to dinner. Any particular place you'd like to go?"
She bit her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. "Perhaps it would be better if we had dinner here, in my room. Someone might see us if we go out together. I can have dinner sent up, and it will be our special secret."
I smiled at her. "Good-I like having secrets with you. I'll go register and get rid of my things, and I'll be back in a little while."
I set my glass on the coffee table and picked up my overnight bag as I stood up, and she followed me to the door to let me out. I stopped at the door with my hand on the knob and looked down at her. "See you in a few minutes." She nodded, smiling up at me, and moved forward to take the doorknob as I opened the door. She brushed against my arm, and an almost electric tingle ran through my body as I felt her warm, smooth skin and the tantalizing fragrance of her intoxicating perfume filled my nostrils. I paused and looked down at her, then I bent down and kissed her softly on her lips. She looked surprised and shocked for an instant, then her lips parted in a slow smile as a deep flush spread across her smooth cheeks. She reached up and touched the side of my face with the tips of her fingers, then she put her hand on my arm and playfully shoved me toward the door. The heavy door closed softly behind me, and as I walked down the hall my cock was trembling on the verge of stiffening into a hardon while thrills of anticipation raced through me.
Dinner with her was pleasant. She had freshened her make-up, combed her hair, and changed into a tight black skirt and a filmy, silky, white blouse. The room service waiter arrived shortly after I did, and he wheeled in a large trolley and set up a small, collapsible table in the living room. The filet was tender and juicy, with the rich, smoky taste of aged heavy beef, and the wine was an aged Chianti. Teresa was a pleasant dinner companion, with quick, witty repartee and ready laughter. When the meal was over she went to the liquor cabinet and brought back large snifters of a rich, heady brandy, and we sat on the couch while we sipped the brandy and talked. The waiter returned for the trolley and cleaned up the remnants of the meal, and an expectant silence settled between us after the door closed behind him. I got up from the couch and asked her if she wanted another brandy, then walked to the bar and refilled my glass when she smiled and shook her head in a silent negative. I went back to the couch and sat down again, moving closer to her. She had kicked her shoes off and curled one leg up under herself, and she was looking down at the floor in deep thought as she absently combed her fingers through one of the thick, heavy tresses of black hair which covered her ears. She glanced at me as I sat down.
"What time would you like for me to be ready tomorrow?"
"Whatever time you want to, Teresa-it's up to you. When do you have to be in San Francisco?"
"No particular time. I've been invited to visit with my uncle's family, but it's an informal visit and I don't have any particular schedule to meet."
"We can leave any time you're ready, then. Do you usually get up late or early?"
She tossed her head and laughed softly. "I'm very lazy. I usually lie in bed for an hour or two after I wake, then I finally work up enough energy to get up. What do you do?"
"It depends on whether or not I'm in, bed by myself."
The edges of her pearly white teeth were visible as she smiled, then her smile faded as I looked into her eyes and she saw my desire for her. She was a combination of the best of the old and new worlds, with a forthright, intelligent response and the ability to match wits with anyone, and a calm, understanding acceptance of a man's need for a woman. She leaned forward slightly and set her brandy glass on the coffee table, then she sat back and waited for me to take her in my arms. I fumbled with the brandy glass and almost dropped it in my haste as I put it on the coffee table, and it felt as though I could almost feel the warmth radiating from her beautiful body as I moved toward her. My hand trembled slightly as I put it on her firm, rounded thigh, and her large, dark eyes looked up at me with a soft, knowledgeable acquiescence. "Please be gentle with me," she whispered. "It has been a long time since I made love."
I grunted a hoarse acknowledgment as I slid my arms around her shoulders and pulled her toward me. Her mouth opened eagerly under mine, and a warm, minty taste filled my mouth as our saliva mingled. My tongue pressed hers to one side as I touched the sides of her mouth and the edges of her white teeth with the tip of my tongue. Her tongue pressed back against mine as she stiffened it and drove it into my mouth, then our tongues fought a warm, damp, soft battle between our open lips. Her pliant body surged up against me, and I ran my hands up and down her back to feel her warm, soft skin and firm flesh. I pressed my lips harder against hers, forcing her tongue back. She resisted momentarily, still pressing her stiff tongue into my mouth, then she relaxed in my arms. Her tongue became soft and pliant as her warm body melted toward mine, and she opened her mouth wide to receive my thrusting tongue. My hands grasped at her body, touching her thighs and moving up her soft stomach to cup her breasts, then I put my hands on each side of her face and held her head as I fucked her in the mouth with my tongue. I stiffened my tongue and drove it far into her mouth, touching the back of her throat, and she lay passively in my arms as my tongue probed into her. She took it in, and I felt a slight pressure on my tongue as she closed her mouth with a sucking pressure on it. My head moved up and down as I drove my tongue into her, and she held her mouth in a firm oval as she moved her head minutely to position it so I could thrust straight down into her mouth. I felt a slight dampness against my hands gripping her face as our saliva mingled and dampened the corners of her mouth, and her warm breath fanned against my face as she slowly breathed in and out through her nose. I ran my tongue around inside her mouth, feeling the soft flesh on the inside of her lips, then I pulled back from her to catch my breath as my chest heaved with the laboring of my lungs.
I could feel my cock stretching and swelling into a trembling hard erection, and there was a raging desire for her beautiful body pounding through me. I longed to seize her and rip her clothes away so I could thrust my hungry cock into her pussy, her mouth, and her anus and let my come stream out into her tantalizing body, and the iron control which I clamped over my ravening lust made my hands tremble as I fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. I could feel the pulse of her heartbeat against my fingers as I touched her, and her half closed eyes gleamed softly as she rested against me, looking up at me. "Would you rather go in the bedroom?" she murmured softly.
"No-do you want to?"
"It doesn't matter," she whispered, moving her hands up between us to help me unfasten her blouse. "You may do as you wish, wherever you wish."
Her fingers moved rapidly and nimbly from button to button, then she gave a quick shrug as she tugged the bottom of her blouse out of her skirt and pulled it off. Her shoulders and slender arms were firm and shapely, and her skin had an ivory sheen. I put my hands behind her and pulled her toward me, feeling her silky skin with my fingers and palms as I caressed her soft shoulders with my lips and inhaled the warm fragrance of her body. I ran my hands up her back to the fastener on her bra, and she put her hands behind her to help me as my trembling fingers jerked and tugged at the catch. Her bra fell loose, and I pulled it off her and tossed it to one side as I looked down at the smooth, resilient mounds of her breasts. They stood out from her in twin silky mounds tipped by the dark rosebuds of her nipples, and my raging desire for her abruptly swelled up within me in a choking knot as I fondled and caressed her breasts with my shaking hands.
She put her arms around my neck and pulled my mouth down to hers, and she opened her lips wide as my tongue slid into her mouth. I held her to me and caressed her naked shoulders and breasts as we kissed, and her arms tightened around my neck as she surged up against me in gradually swelling arousal. My lips moved down her chin to her soft, downy throat, and I let the tip of my tongue move back and-forth in the slight hollow at the base of her throat. She relaxed in my arms and let her head fall back against the couch as my lips moved over her shoulders, then I felt her body tense slightly as my mouth moved toward the firm mounds of her breasts. She moaned as my lips moved over her nipples, and she tightened her arms around my neck as I buried my face between her breasts. I caressed the warm, firm skin on her back as I moved my lips and the tip of my tongue through the warm valley between her breasts, and I let the tip of my tongue trail over her skin as I moved up toward one of her nipples. She jerked and trembled in my arms as the tip of my tongue moved in a circular motion around one of her nipples and flicked back and forth across it, and she gave a long, moaning sigh as I let the nipple slide between my lips. I cupped her other breast with my hand and felt it as I licked her nipple with the tip of my tongue, and her nipples slowly became firm and hard. I began moving back and forth between her breasts, sucking lightly at her nipples as I let them slide into my mouth. I took more of them into my mouth and sucked harder as I moved between them, and a moment later I was gorging my mouth with her breasts and sucking as hard as I could. She moved and twitched in my arms as I sucked and caressed her breasts, and her moans became louder and more demanding as her fingernails dug into my back and arms.
I took my arms from around her and searched for the fastener on the waistband of her skirt, and she took her arms from my neck to help me unfasten it. She loosened the catch and pushed the zipper down, and her firm, smoothly rounded thighs and hips moved from side to side as she wriggled out of the skirt. I tossed it to the end of the couch and pushed her pantyhose down, and she raised her hips off the couch to help me get the pantyhose off. I tossed them on top of the skirt, then looked down at her as she lay back on the couch and looked up at me in calm expectancy. Her ivory body seemed to glow as she lay passively against me, naked except for the tiny wisp of flimsy panties, and the sight of her beautiful body made my throbbing cock strain against the front of my pants. I touched her cool, smooth thigh with my trembling fingers, then moved my hand slowly up and down it, fondling her satin skin and firm flesh. My hand moved further up, cupping her pussy through the thin fabric of her panties, then I slid my hand down into the front of her panties. The blood was racing through my head with a pounding force and my breath was catching in my throat as my fingers touched her pussy. She flexed her knees slightly and parted her legs to let me feel it, and my fingers probed into her soft vulva. There was a thin, short growth of crisp hair between her thighs, and her vulva was small and pliant. I let my fingers glide through it, feeling for the opening of her pussy, and she parted her legs wider as the tips of my fingers touched her clitoris. The tiny organ became erect as I touched it, and she whimpered softly as her arms curled around my neck to pull my lips down to hers. Our lips pressed together again as she pulled herself up to me and opened her mouth for my tongue, and my fingers moved back and forth across her clitoris as my tongue slid in and out of her mouth. She sucked at my tongue, whimpering deep in her throat from the sensation of my fingers on her pussy, and she planted her heels against the couch as she pressed her pussy upward against my hand. I took my hand away from her pussy as I reached up to loosen her arms from around my neck, then I grasped her panties to pull them down her legs.
She raised her hips off the couch as I slid the panties down over her hips, and I caressed her slender, delicately molded legs with my hands as I pushed the panties off her. She put her feet up on the couch and stretched out on it, and I knelt in front of the couch as my eyes devoured her beauty and my trembling fingers moved over her body. She flexed her knees slightly and spread her legs apart as my fingers groped for her pussy again, and she opened her lips in invitation as she pulled me toward her to kiss her again. She responded torridly as my mouth covered hers, and our tongues entwined between our sucking lips. I pulled away from her mouth and trailed the tip of my tongue down her chin to her throat, then I moved back and forth across her shoulders, sucking and nibbling at the smooth, ivory skin. She trembled and slight shudders passed through her from the sensation of my mouth caressing her, and a small whimper came from her throat as I moved down toward her breasts. I fondled one of them with my hand and savored the firm, smooth feel of her resilient flesh as I sucked at the other one, and her nipples became small, hard columns stretching out from the crests of the silky mounds. I moved on down her body, nibbling at her skin with my teeth and flicking my tongue back and forth, and she writhed on the couch as I caressed her. Her body jerked convulsively as my tongue reached her navel, and she quivered all over as the muscles in her body trembled. I circled her navel with my tongue in gradually tightening curves, then I stiffened the tip of my tongue and pressed it into the tiny opening. She gave a small cry and lurched up against me as I fucked her navel with my tongue, and I slid my hands under her body to hold her up to me as I drove the tip of my tongue as far as I could into her navel. I worked my tongue around in her navel, spreading it and exploring the sides of it, and her breath came in quick, shuddering gasps as she trembled in my arms.
I pulled the tip of my tongue back out of her navel, then I moved on down her soft, flat stomach. She tensed again as my lips reached the bun of hair between her thighs, and her body trembled all over as I fussed at the hair with my lips. Her knees flexed and her thighs moved apart as I nibbled at the crisp hair, then the warm taste of her body filled my mouth as I stiffened my tongue and pressed it down into the crack of her vulva. I moved down to the end of the couch and spread her legs apart, and she turned on the couch to place her legs across my shoulders as I kissed and nibbled from side to side on her stomach again. I moved my head lower and passed around her pussy to nibble and tongue along her smooth, white thighs. I held her legs in my hands as I moved back and forth along them, tracing along her calves with the tip of my tongue and nibbling at the sensitive skin behind her knees with my lips. I gradually moved down the inside of her thighs, touching her skin with quick flicks of my tongue and taking pinches of her skin between my teeth. She began writhing on the couch as I moved closer and closer to her pussy, and she spread her legs wider as she pressed her heels into my back and forced her pussy toward my lips. I moved back and forth along her thighs, tantalizing her and bringing her need to a fiery heat, and her fingernails began digging into the couch as she struggled to press her pussy closer to my mouth. I teased her until her gasps became a pleading, begging murmur, then I suddenly cupped her firm buttocks in my hands and drove my tongue into her pussy.
She cried out as her legs flew apart and her pussy opened wide. I dragged my tongue back and forth along her vulva, and her clitoris snapped into a tight, hard bud as my tongue touched it. I turned my head from side to side to nibble at the inside of her thighs again, then I squeezed her buttocks in my hands as my tongue pressed once more into her vulva. I found the opening of her pussy and pushed my tongue into it, and I moved my head up and down as I fucked her with my tongue. She responded eagerly, spreading her legs even wider as she opened herself for me and thrust her hips upward to drive her pussy toward my probing tongue. I fucked her with my tongue for a moment, then I pulled my tongue out of her pussy and searched for her clitoris with the tip of my tongue. She gave a low, wailing moan and her body quivered as I found it, and I moved my tongue back and forth across it as I ran my hands along her body, feeling and fondling, her. She undulated against me as my tongue titillated her clitoris, and every muscle in her body became strained and taut as she drove her pussy up at me. I savored the warm, sweet taste of her body in my mouth as I caressed her clitoris with the tip of my tongue, then I opened my mouth wide to cover her entire pussy. I sucked her pussy into my mouth, then I let it slide back out and licked her pussy with long strokes of my tongue. Her movements became more urgent as I began stroking her clitoris with my tongue again, and her buttocks were firm and hard in my hands as she thrust her pussy up against my face in rhythm with my flicking tongue. I gradually accelerated the pace, and her undulating hips responded with faster, more tense movements.
Her moans became a single, unbroken cry which seemed to be wrenched from deep in her chest as her stomach began rippling in the initial stages of a climax. I drove my tongue faster, licking her clitoris and stabbing it into her pussy, and her thighs wrapped around my head as her body surged up off the couch. I slid my hands under her and braced her up off the couch, and her shoulders were the only part of her body resting on the couch as her orgasm moved inexorably toward her and enfolded her. A strong, rolling movement passed through her stomach muscles, and she gave a sudden shriek as the orgasm burst over her. My tongue worked frantically back and forth on her clitoris as her thighs clenched my head with a vise-like pressure, and her hips lunged up toward me with spasmodic jerks. She suddenly collapsed and her legs spread apart again as she fell back onto the couch. I dipped my head down and gave her pussy a few final licks with long strokes, of my tongue, and the muscles in her body jerked and contracted as my tongue lapped at her.
She lay limply on the couch, her breasts heaving as her lungs labored for air, and I could feel the hard, rapid pounding of her heart as I moved up on the couch and lay down by her. Her face was flushed, her eyes were tightly closed, and her soft, red lips were open as she panted. I looked at her beautiful face and at her warm, soft body, and I felt an urgent need to drive my cock deep into her body and let my come flood out into her. I slid my arms under her and gathered her to me, and she opened her eyes as I turned her toward me. She slid her arm around my neck and laced her fingers into my hair, and her lips opened as they searched for mine. She wrapped her other arm around my neck as our lips met, and her fingers combed through my hair as our tongues touched and encircled each other. We kissed with tight, fervent movements of our heads as our bodies strained together, then she pulled away from me to catch her breath as her breasts began heaving again. I felt her body with my hands as our eyes looked into each other, and I put my hands down to spread her thighs apart as I started to get between them and guide my cock into her pussy. She wriggled from under me with a lithe, nimble movement, and she doubled her legs up under her as she put her arms around my head and held it to her smooth, resilient breasts.
"Please let me do the same thing to you that you did to me."
"I want to fuck you."
Her fingers combed through my hair and she pressed my face harder against her firm breasts as her voice became pleading. "Then do it in my mouth. Please let me have it in my mouth for just a little while, then you may do anything you want. Please, darling."
I ached to spread her legs apart and drive my cock into her belly with a single, violent lunge, but her wide, dark eyes were gleaming with a need which pounded within her. I put my hands on her firm breasts and fondled them, savoring the feel of her flesh and smooth skin as I looked at her soft, red lips and imagined how they would feel around my cock. I nodded. "All right."
She got to her knees and hopped across me to the floor, then she rolled me over onto my back. I looked at her as she knelt in front of the couch; her lips were parted and her breath came in short gasps as she looked down at me and moved the tips of her fingers over me with quick, tantalizing touches. She trailed her fingertips slowly up my body to my neck, then she put her hands on both sides of my face as she covered my forehead, cheeks, lips, and chin with light kisses. She looked down at my face, smiling, then she lowered her mouth and her lips covered mine, pulling and sucking at them. The low, satisfied purr from deep in her chest suddenly became a plaintive whimper, and she wrapped her arms around my head as she drove her tongue into my mouth. Her firm breast pressed against the side of my face as she clenched my head in her arms and moved the tip of her tongue around inside my mouth, touching the sides of my mouth and the edges of my teeth. She searched and probed the inside of my mouth with her tongue for long moments as her slender arms held my head motionless and her fingers combed through my hair, then her lips moved down my chin and throat. She traced the tip of her tongue across my shoulders and chest, and the tips of her fingers moved up and down my body with feather light touches. Her lips and tongue moved down my chest and belly as her fingers danced lightly over me, touching and feeling my thighs, arms, cock, and chest. She moved back and forth across my belly, dragging the tip of her tongue across it, and the sensation of her hands, lips, and tongue made the blood begin pounding madly in my head as my cock became almost painfully hard. She moved down my body, and I began trembling uncontrollably as I felt her warm breath against the hair around the base of my cock and she cupped my throbbing cock lightly between her hands.
She slowly stroked her hands up and down my cock with a gentle pressure of her fingers, making my cock throb and tremble, then she pressed her soft lips to the head of it and kissed around it with quick, darting movements of her head. She held it with one hand as she lowered her mouth to my legs and nibbled the skin on them, and tingling sensations raced up through me from the feel of her lips on my thighs. She nibbled and kissed her way up my thighs, then a wave of almost unbearable pleasure rolled over me as she cupped my balls in her hand and pressed her lips against the base of my cock. She squeezed my balls gently as she moved around the thick base of my cock, kissing it and pinching the skin between her lips. She moved slowly up it, and the tip of her tongue began tracing a thin, damp trail of saliva from side to side on it. Every muscle in my body became taut and strained as she moved up and down my cock with the tip of her tantalizing tongue, then she pulled the foreskin down with a firm movement of her hand to make the head of my cock marble hard as she circled it with the tip of her tongue. She traced her tongue around the head of my throbbing cock several times, then every nerve in my body tingled as she opened her mouth and let it slide in.
She pressed my cock with a firm pressure between her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she moved her head slowly down on it, then she pulled her head back up with a sucking pressure in her mouth. Her tongue darted around the head of my cock as it began to slide from her mouth, and her lips clung to it firmly until the head of it finally slipped back out of her mouth. She opened her soft, red lips wide and let my cock slip into the hot, damp pressure of her mouth again, then her head began bobbing up and down as she took more of it in with each stroke. Waves of almost agonizing pleasure flowed through me as she slowly gorged her mouth with my cock and pressed my balls in her hand, and I began writhing on the couch as every muscle in my body trembled. The head of my cock began touching the back of her throat with each downward motion of her head, and I could feel a hint of pressure from the edges of her teeth on my cock as she pressed it in her mouth. She gradually accelerated the pace of her movements, and the sensations rolling over me gradually intensified into an urgent, swelling need to let the come burst out of me. The semen in my loins seemed to swell and eddy, becoming a growing knot which ached for release. Every muscle in my body became strained and taut as her head continued to bob up and down in an ever increasing tempo, relentlessly driving me toward a climax. I gripped myself in dogged determination to maintain my control, but it was gradually torn away from me by her sucking mouth and kneading hands. The ballooning flood of come seemed to grow until it felt as though all creation strained to erupt, then she gave a slight sidewards motion with her head as she slid her mouth downward on my cock and my control was abruptly ruptured. The room seemed to spin dizzily around me as the huge knot of semen broke loose and gushed upward in blessed release, and it spurted up through my cock into her mouth. She sucked and swallowed eagerly as she avidly drank it, and she massaged my balls and squeezed the base of my cock to drain all of my come into her mouth. I collapsed on the couch in a daze as the wrenching orgasm drained my strength, and she lay down on the couch by me and snuggled up against me as she curled her arm around my cheek and pillowed her head in the hollow of my shoulder.
She made a small, satisfied sound in her throat as she settled herself against me, and I slowly drifted off to sleep. I was roused later when she got up from the couch, and I felt suddenly chilly without her warm body by me. I yawned and started to sit up, then she came back in from the bedroom with a blanket under her arm. She had turned most of the lights in the room off, but a lamp on a table across the room still burned and it gave enough light for me to see her beautiful body as she crossed the room. I watched the trembling movements of her firm breasts and the sensuous, graceful sway of her hips as she approached the couch, and I felt a burning desire for her body begin to build up within me again. She spread the blanket and draped it over me, then she smiled when she saw that my eyes were open.
"I was cold," she said, raising the edge of the blanket and slipping onto the couch by me. "You were sleeping so soundly that I didn't want to wake you to go to bed, so I got a blanket to keep us warm."
I put my arms around her and looked down into her eyes. "There's other ways of keeping warm."
She slid her hand down my stomach and fondled my cock, and she shivered with anticipation as she felt it begin to stiffen. "Let's get warm that way, then," she whispered, smiling at me in invitation.
I pulled her closer to me as I ran my hands over her body, caressing and feeling her. I slipped my hand down between us to cup her pussy, and she surged toward me with her mouth open as she spread her legs apart. Our tongues met in a hot, damp battle between our lips and she squirmed against me, pressing her pussy toward me as she stroked my cock to bring it to a full erection. An urgent desire to drive my cock into her body raced through me as my cock swelled and throbbed to a trembling hard-on, and I rolled on top of her. She pushed the blanket away as she parted her legs eagerly, and she reached down with both hands to guide my cock toward her pussy as her heels pressed into the back of my legs. She surged up against me as I cupped her buttocks in both hands and drove my cock against her pussy. The head of my cock pressed against her soft vulva for an instant, then it slipped in. We both gasped in pleasure as her tight pussy parted to let the head of my cock glide in, and she began moaning as I squeezed her buttocks in my hands and undulated my hips to pump more of it into her. The ravening desires raging through me robbed me of gentleness, and I drove my cock in hard strokes until it was deeply embedded in her pussy. I released her buttocks and wrapped my arms around her as I began fucking her, with long, rapid strokes of my cock. She whimpered softly in my ear as her fingers laced through my hair and tugged at it, and she pressed her heels hard against my legs as she drove her pussy up toward me. I pulled her legs higher to increase the length of my stroke and so I could drive all of my cock into her, then my balls were touching her tight ass each time I pushed forward into her.
The wild, uncontrolled pace of my fucking began to shred my control away, and I paused to regain my control. I lay on top of her with my arms around her for a moment, then I pushed myself to a kneeling position and put my hands under her buttocks to raise her pussy to the level of my cock. She bent her legs and raised them in the air, and she put her feet against my shoulders as I began fucking her again. I looked down at her as I fucked her; her resilient breasts moved fractionally with the force of my cock driving into her, and her flat stomach was doubled up by her position under me. I slid my hands forward on her body to grip her tiny waist and feel it, and her fingernails began digging into the fabric of the couch as she braced herself to drive the mouth of her pussy at me harder.
I was suddenly seized by a desire to dog fuck her, to see my cock gliding between her softly rounded buttocks and to see her stretched out pliantly in front of me. I pulled my cock out of her and sat back on my heels as I tugged at her body to roll her over. She quickly perceived what I wanted, and she flipped over on the couch with her head pillowed on her forearms, her breasts resting against the couch, and her knees bent to hold her firm ass up for my cock. She put one hand back between her legs to help guide my cock into her pussy, then she whimpered softly as it slid in. I wrapped my hands around her waist to brace her, then I began dog fucking her with swift strokes of my cock. Her whimper became a plaintive wail as my throbbing cock surged into her, and the sensation of my cock entering her tight pussy combined with the sight of her body in front of me to quickly bring my semen into a hard knot. I slowed down a couple of times to maintain my control, then I began dog fucking her again with a gradually accelerating pace. The waves of sensation rolled rapidly over me and began building toward a climax, then I abandoned all thought of control and began fucking her with a wild, violent rhythm. She cried out in shriek after shriek as my pounding cock brought another orgasm closer and closer to her, then our bodies slammed together in the wrenching ecstasy of a simultaneous climax.
Grey dawn was touching the windowpanes when I got dressed and went to my room, and I slept until almost nine o'clock, until the ringing of the telephone woke me. It was Teresa; she had ordered breakfast for us, and I went to her room after shaving and taking a quick shower. We ate breakfast, made love again, then got ready and went to the airport. When the airplane was at enroute altitude and on the automatic pilot, I went into the passenger compartment. She slowly undressed as I dropped four of the seats into a couch, and we made love once more.
She became silent and melancholy as we approached San Francisco, and she responded with a slow, sad smile to my attempts to cheer her up. A limousine was waiting for her at the airport, and she gave me a soft, quick, parting kiss as I was securing the controls in the cockpit. I snatched at her hand as she turned toward the passenger compartment and the exit, but she pulled away from me and shook her head as she smiled sorrowfully. I got up from my seat and went back to drop the steps, and she looked very small, sad, and lonely as she walked across the cement apron toward the long, black limousine.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was a homey, appetizing fragrance of frying sausage and perking coffee coming from the kitchen when I came out of the bathroom, and the rumpled bed was empty. I snapped on the light in the bedroom, dressed quickly, stuffed a change of clothes in the handbag and went back into the bathroom for my shaving things, then zipped the bag closed. Susan was at the stove, looking very slender and gamine in tight blue jeans and an old shirt of mine. She glanced over her shoulder and flashed me a smile, then dropped the spatula and turned to the counter to pour a cup of coffee for me. She brought the mug of coffee to the breakfast bar and gave me another smile as she set it down in front of me.
"Your breakfast will be ready in a couple of minutes."
I nodded, sipping at the coffee, and grunted in satisfaction; she had the knack of making coffee good and strong without letting it get bitter. I looked at her over the rim of the mug as she finished turning the sausage patties and dropped slices of bread into the toaster. Her eyes looked large and there were small lines of fatigue at the corners of her mouth. "You didn't have to get up, honey-when I have to leave this early, you should stay in bed."
She shook her head quickly. "You have to have your breakfast, darling," she said, then she glanced over her shoulder and gave me a grin. "You have to regain your strength after a performance like last night."
The toast popped up, and she buttered it with quick swipes of a knife. I nibbled on a piece of it while she put the sausage and eggs on a plate, then I ate while she sat across the breakfast bar and chatted with me. She had cooked only enough for me, as she usually did, and she would go back to bed after I left. "So I can stay rested and ready for you when you get back," she told me at the kitchen door as she wrapped her slim arms around me with a tight pressure and held her small face up for a kiss.
I backed the car out of the garage, slammed the garage door back down, and hurriedly scrambled back into the car to get out of the slashing sheets of rain the gusty wind was whipping along in front of it. I turned the defroster and headlights on, backed into the circular driveway, then threw the lever in drive and pressed down on the accelerator. By the time I reached the expressway the defroster was beginning to blow a steady stream of hot air and the car was warming up, and I relaxed as I switched on the radio. The tinny blare of music and meaningless jabber of the disc jockey was somehow reassuring and comforting, keeping me company as I drove along the deserted freeway in the raw, cold predawn with the headlights boring through the rain and darkness and the car weaving slightly in the wind.
There was already one black limousine parked at the rental agency, and two men were sitting in the lounge with their hats pulled low on their foreheads and their collars turned up. One of them looked slightly familiar, and I suddenly remembered his face as that of one of the bodyguards at the nightclub where I had met Mr. Campanela. We exchanged a nod, and I went through the swinging doors to the service counter. The night shift was still on, and the clerk who gave me the forms and packet of flight data was yawning and red eyed. The bodyguard came through the swinging doors and leaned his elbows on the counter as I began filling out the flight plan.
"The other man will go out to the airplane with you when you go to check it."
"OK."
"He'll have to look in your bag," he said, nodding at the overnight bag I had dropped in front of the counter.
I nodded again, shrugging. "OK."
"Will we be able to drive out to the airplane?"
I looked across the counter where the clerk had sat down at a desk and propped his feet up. "Have they brought the plane out of the hangar yet?"
He shrugged, yawning. "I don't know."
"Well, get on your fucking feet and find out," I snapped.
He gave me a resentful glare and let his feet drop to the floor as he reached for the telephone on the desk. He dialed a three digit number and spoke into the telephone, then held it loosely in his hand as he looked toward me. "They're bringing it out now."
"Tell them to put it on the east hardstand."
He spoke into the telephone, got an answer, then gave me an affirmative nod and dropped the telephone back into place. I glanced at the bodyguard and nodded. "It will be out in front of the large hangar next to this building. You can drive around the rear of this building, and you'll see a motor vehicle lane out to the parking ramp-it's marked off with yellow paint."
He nodded and glanced at his watch. "Mr. Campanela will be here in about thirty minutes. When are you going out to the airplane?"
"In a couple of minutes-as soon as I'm through here," I said, motioning toward the forms.
He nodded and left, and the other man came in a few minutes later and watched me as I finished the flight plan and clearance. I gave them to the clerk, gathered up the charts and flight data, then picked up my overnight bag and went back outside. The wind was driving the rain across the ramp in hard, stinging waves, and it was frigidly cold in the open. The bodyguard lumbered awkwardly along behind me as I trotted across the ramp to the plane, and he stood with his hands in his raincoat pockets and his shoulders hunched up as we waited for the service attendant to unlock and open the door. I went up the steps and walked into the cockpit, and he looked unsurely around as I snapped on the light and put my overnight bag in the crew locker. I dug my flashlight out of my bag and separated the checklist from the flight data folder, then buttoned my raincoat all the way up.
"The other man said you had to check my bag. Go ahead and do it, then go on back into the passenger compartment and get yourself a seat. I'm going to do the preflight, and I'll be back inside in a few minutes."
"I'm supposed to check you too."
I turned and dropped the flashlight and checklist on the seat, then raised my hands as I turned back toward him. "Now I need to check the inside of the airplane," he said, frisking me rapidly.
"Go ahead, but don't touch any of the switches or controls."
I picked up the flashlight and checklist and wormed around him to get back to the door. Nearby objects were barely visible outside, and a weak, grey light from the east side of the ramp indicated that dawn was approaching. I'd had a number of recurrency flights in the Lear during the past couple of days in preparation for the trip and it was tempting to abbreviate the checklist to get back in out of the weather, but from force of habit I doggedly went down the check list item by item until it was completed. My hair was soaked and rainwater was streaming down inside the collar of my raincoat by the time I got back into the airplane, and I was shivering slightly as I stripped the raincoat off and shoved it into a locker in the passenger compartment. The bodyguard had completed checking the inside of the airplane and was sitting on one of the parallel seats.
"Bad morning outside," he commented.
I nodded. "Good time to be flying and get out of all this shit."
He pursed his lips and exhaled, looking at the cloud of vapor coming from his lips. "When will it warm up in here?"
"When I start the engines and turn the heaters on."
I went back to the cockpit and put the flashlight away, then sat down in the pilot's seat and spread the checklist out on the panel. It hadn't occurred to anyone to put the checklist sheets in glassine envelopes, and the rain had soaked into the paper sheets and made them stick together. I cursed under my breath as I carefully peeled them apart until I had the cockpit and prestart list on top, then I began going through them. The beam of a flashlight flicked on and off across the windshield and I leaned forward to wipe the condensation from it. The service attendant had towed the starter out and was looking up at the windshield from the seat of his tug with his eyes squinted against the driving rain, and I gave him the signal to hook up. A moment later the starter engine fired over with a popping roar and settled down to a steady drone, the flashlight flicked across the windshield again, and I reached out to flick the electrical and intercom systems on.
I had finished the checklist and had the engines running when the headlights of a car bored through the mist and rain toward the plane. The car swerved around uncomfortably close to the plane and five men got out of it. Four of them huddled around the fifth, the smaller, slower figure of Mr. Campanela, and herded him toward the plane. The plane shifted minutely from their weight as they climbed the steps, and I could hear a mutter of conversation as they settled down in the passenger compartment. I switched the cabin heater to full on to keep it at a bearable temperature while the door was still standing open, then turned back to my checklist. The limousine pulled away from the airplane, and in the glare from its headlights I could see the service attendant looking resentfully at the car, his expression reflecting his dissatisfaction with a motor vehicle approaching an airplane too closely. An airport truck pulled up to the side of the plane with the boxes of donuts and cannisters of coffee I had ordered in event some of the people had got up too early to eat breakfast, and the driver trotted up the steps with the containers. He stored them in the galley and came to the cockpit for me to sign the receipt as I was finishing the checklist up to taxi. I signed the receipt and flicked the seat belts light on, then turned the defroster on high to clean the windshield up as I waited for the service attendant to close the door. The red door light winked off, cleaning the panel to taxi, and I pulled my belt and shoulder harness around to fasten them. A movement behind me caught my attention; it was Robinson, with a cigarette in his mouth.
"Good morning," he said, nodding and smiling. "Can I sit up here?"
I nodded toward the copilot's seat. "Sit there, if you like. Buckle up, put your cigarette out, and don't touch any of the switches or controls."
I watched him as he stubbed the cigarette out and buckled in, then I turned the checklist to before takeoff, got on the footbrakes and released the brake lock, and turned on the outside rotors as a signal to the attendant that I was ready to taxi. He drove the tug away from the side of the plane with a jerky roar, jumped to the ground, and got his marshaling wands from under the seat of the tug. The wands flicked on and made a rolling circle of light in the grey mist in front of the plane, and I released the brakes to let the airplane roll a few feet. I stepped on the brakes again to check them as I slipped the headset on and flipped the radio to the ground control frequency. Ground control cleared me onto the taxiway, and I nudged the throttles slightly with my right hand as I released the brakes again and checked the nose gear steering. The sound of the keening engines rose an octave as they came out of idle, and I played the brakes as I let the plane ease forward toward the light of the wands. The circular motion stopped and they pointed straight ahead, and I picked up the yellow of the taxi line against the dark cement in the glare of the landing lights. The attendant gave me thumbs up as I taxied past him. I returned the salute as his pale, rain drenched face and bowed form passed the windshield, then I swung left on the taxiway and advanced the throttles another notch.
The engines took the throttle smoothly and all of , the clocks came up in green when I gave it the power check, and the tower cleared me onto the active. I retarded it to fifty percent and released the brakes, and it swung smoothly around on the pavement in line with the row of lights which faded off into the mist and gloom as I put a burst of power into the left engine, then I brought the other throttle up even I without braking to let the plane keep its momentum I for the takeoff roll. The nose lined up with the centerline, and the sound of the engines rose to a shrill crescendo as I gave it full power.
I had made a write-up on the trim tabs the day before, and I checked them carefully as I went through the cruise checklist. The write-up had been cleared on the forms, but I had encountered too many instances of pencil maintenance at civilian airports to assume that a discrepancy had been corrected. The airplane trimmed well, however, and I finished the checklist as we broke out of the clouds into the bright, clear daylight above the storm front.
"The weather is a lot different up here," Robinson said, raising his voice over the sound of the engines.
I nodded to him. "A lot of things are-that's why I like flying."
"The last time I took a trip we didn't have coffee and donuts. Whose idea was that?" .
"Mine. Part of the friendly service."
He laughed. "Would you like some coffee?"
"Yeah, if you're going back for some. You might also check and see what everyone wants for lunch. We'll be stopping in Chicago to refuel, and I'll have it delivered to the plane when we land."
Chicago was also socked in, and I had my hands full in going through the checklists and making a controlled descent without a copilot to help me. Mr. Campanela had to have a dietary lunch and it held us up for a few minutes, and we wound up behind a long line of aircraft waiting on the taxiway for a delayed takeoff clearance from the tower. A commercial aborted on the runway and caused another delay, then an inbound declared an emergency and the active was freed for a few minutes as the tower began stacking arrivals. They used the time to flush all the waiting aircraft out, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we climbed out of the traffic nightmare surrounding Chicago. When I had the airplane at altitude and on course, I put it on autopilot so I could eat my cold lunch.
We were filed into Tillbury Field north of Albany. The flip listed it with minimum nav aids, so I checked the weather at my alternates as well as the primary when enroute control handed me over to Albany approach. The weather observer at Tillbury must have been in a drunken stupor in a basement when he made his report, because I couldn't see the field at all on the downwind leg of my approach. I finally picked up the lights on final, but I was much too high and I declared a missed approach as I advanced the throttles to execute a go around. I checked my fuel and decided that I had enough to make one more approach on Tillbury before I had to commit myself to an alternate, and I circled around for a straight in approach. Transportation arrangements had been made from Tillbury to my passengers' meeting place and it would have fucked up their schedule to have to get transportation from one of the alternates, so I made the approach carefully. The runway broke out just right, but the fatigue from the long day of flying had slowed my reaction and perception enough to make me let the plane lag just a hair behind the power curve and the landing was heavy. I taxied over to the small terminal, and I could see four long, black limousines parked by the terminal with several men standing around them. The attendant opened the door and dropped the steps as I was securing the cockpit, and by the time I got back to the passenger cabin it was empty except for Robinson.
"We'll meet you here at eight o'clock day after tomorrow," he said. "Do you have anywhere to go?"
I shook my head. "I'll find a hotel or something."
"I can fix you up with some action if you like."
I shook my head again. "I'll be OK."
He grinned as he took his notebook from his pocket. "Still hung up on that young pussy? Well, I don't blame you-she's a good looking chick, even if she is a little skinny." He scribbled rapidly on a page of the notebook and jerked it out. "Here's a telephone number where you can reach me if you need to get in contact with me or if anything comes up."
I took the scrap of paper and put it in my pocket as he left. The attendant helped me secure and lock the airplane, then I gathered up my things and went into the terminal to make arrangements for service and to advise them of my departure time. By the time I got back out of the terminal the dark clouds were bulging lower, fog was rapidly settling across the runway, and it was almost dark. There was a single taxi setting at the edge of the parking lot, and the driver was dozing in the front seat. He sat up with a start when I opened the door, then turned around to look at me as I climbed into the back seat.
"Where to, mister?"
"A hotel, motel, or something-a decent one, if there's one around."
He started the engine and scratched his head as he shrugged. "There's a railroad hotel in town, but it's not too good. Other than that you'd have to go about twenty miles or so...." he paused, then his face brightened as a thought struck him. "Say, there's a woman in town who's just started taking in boarders. How long are you going to be here?"
"A couple of nights."
"You could check with her to see if she'd take you.
She probably would, because no one's staying there yet as far as I know. Her kid's in jail, and she could probably use the money, too. But if she doesn't, you could walk on down to the railroad hotel-it's just a few blocks from her house."
"OK."
It was a small New England town, with a scattering of farm houses which gradually consolidated into a dozen square blocks of residential area and a couple of blocks of business district. The taxi driver became silent after his initial flurry of conversation, and he drove the old car slowly along the road and streets with tedious, careful attention, stopping for a count of five at all stop signs and occasionally making it shudder when he clutched it too hard. He pulled up in front of a two-story frame house a couple of blocks from the business district and turned around to open the back door.
"That'll be two dollars. If she won't take care of you, just go down to the traffic light and turn to your left. The hotel's about two blocks down the street."
I thanked him, paid him and gave him a tip, then carried my bag up the walk to the house. There was a shadow of movement through the opaque glass on the front door when I knocked on it, and it slowly opened. She had that rare, perfect beauty which makes the breath catch in the throat simply from looking at her. Her naturally blonde hair was short with tiny ringlets around her ears, the sides of her face, and her forehead. She had large, blue eyes, a small nose with a cute uplift, and a softly curved heart-shaped face. She wore a light blouse and a short skirt which were neatly fitted to her full, well rounded figure. She was young, around twenty or so, but the jutting thrust of her breasts and tapered curve of her hips were those of a fully mature woman. She looked at me quizzically for an instant, then our eyes met and locked. The formal smile faded from her face as she stared into my eyes, then an expression of warm friendliness and interest came over her face as something clicked between us. There was a sound from inside the house, and I snapped my mind back to what I was doing as I blinked to stop staring at her.
"I understand you have rooms for rent."
She nodded slowly, and there was a slight touch of color in her cheeks from what she had read in my eyes as she stepped back and held the door open for me. "You'll have to talk to Barbara about it. If you want to come in, I'll go get her."
Her accent was that of New York City, rather than rural New England, and she distinctly was not a farm girl from her appearance. I nodded and stepped inside the door, and she closed it behind me. I stood and waited by the door as she went toward another closed door at the end of the short hall, and she paused at the door to look back at me. I had been watching the graceful sway of her hips and admiring the firm, well proportioned curves of her legs, and she again read my thoughts in my expression. She bit her lower lip between her teeth as she flashed me a smile, then she disappeared through the door.
She came back a few minutes later, and there was a striking resemblance between her and the woman with her, except that the second woman' was slightly older. There was a shade more maturity in her face and her figure was fractionally heavier, but she was also a woman of startling beauty. I could also detect the glimmer of response in her eyes as I smiled at her and looked at her, but she was mature enough to conceal her thoughts and feelings behind a bland smile. "Can I help you?" she asked.
"I need a room for a couple of nights."
She looked away as she thought for a moment, then she shrugged and nodded. "I hadn't planned on letting people stay for such a short time, but I suppose it will be all right. Come on in." She turned and started walking back along the hall, then turned and looked over her shoulder at me just as I looked down at her smoothly rounded hips. "I hope you don't mind if we're somewhat disorganized-taking in boarders is new to us."
I smiled back at her; if she had noticed that I had been admiring her figure, it didn't show in her expression. "That's all right with me-I'm new at being a boarder."
They both went with me to show me the room. I found out that the younger woman's name was Betty, and I assumed that she and Barbara were sisters until I made an oblique reference to it and noticed their expressions of concealed amusement. They finally told me that they were mother and daughter, which amazed me, but it also explained the fondness they showed for each other.
I found out more about them during dinner, when we got to know each other better and they loosened up. Barbara's husband had been killed four years before in Manhattan, and from what they said I concluded that he had probably been a wheel man for the syndicate. Barbara had bought the house and had exhausted her savings when she did so, then financial difficulties had started piling up when her son, Charles, had got into trouble with the police. He'd got a job in the numbers business in Buffalo through a former friend of Barbara's husband, then the police had cracked down on illegal gambling and he'd wound up in jail. Lawyer's fees and court costs had cut into Barbara's cash reserves, but her son had finally been released on parole. Then a few weeks later he had been picked up in Albany on a possession charge, and he was still in jail.
Our conversation lasted through dinner, and I went into the kitchen with them and sat on a stool as they washed the dishes. Barbara fixed another pot of coffee, and we sat in the living room and talked for another hour. They seemed to be somewhat relieved simply by confiding in someone else about their problems, but their difficulties were fresh in their mind and they both sat looking quietly down at the floor after our conversation had trailed off.
"Maybe I could do something to help him," I said after the silence had stretched out into a couple of minutes.
They both looked at me quizically. "What?" Barbara asked.
"Well, I know Ricco Botticelli and his brother-have you tried contacting them to see if they would do anything?"
There was a light of respect in Barbara's and Betty's eyes as they looked at each other, then at me. "One doesn't contact Ricco Botticelli that easy," Barbara said. "I didn't realize you were in the syndicate."
"I'm not. I'm a pilot, though, and I've worked for people all over the country. Ricco would remember me, and he owes me a couple of favors. There's other people around who might be able to do more good, though. I could see if someone could find something for your son to do in another part of the country. Getting away from here and into something else might do him more good than anything."
"The main thing is to get him out of jail," Barbara said.
"Maybe I can get everything done at once. Where's your phone?"
A woman's voice answered when I dialed the number Robinson had given me, and I held the phone and waited several minutes until Robinson answered. "This is Harrison," I said when he answered. "Do you think you might be able to get a guy out of jail in Albany and find him a job out in Reno, Phoenix, or somewhere around there?"
There was a moment's silence. "Maybe so," Robinson said. "Wait a minute." I heard him breathing into the telephone as he got his notebook and pencil out. "OK, what's his name?"
"Charles Watson. His old man worked for the organization in the city until he was aced a few years back."
Robinson grunted. "Yeah, I believe I heard of him. What's the kid in for?"
"Possession."
"Stash?"
"No-hot goods."
There was several seconds of silence, and I could hear a whisper of sound as he sub-vocalized the notes he was writing. "OK, it'll sometime tomorrow before I'll know. How can I get in touch?"
I gave him the number on the receiver and hung up as I turned back to Barbara and Betty. "He'll check on it and let us know by tomorrow."
"Who was that?" Barbara asked.
"His name is Robinson-he works for Antonio Campanela. They have connections here, so they might be able to do something about getting Charlie out of jail, and getting him a job somewhere in the West won't be any problem for them."
They were both smiling at me with a mixture of relief and appreciation. "I can't believe this is happening," Barbara said. "We've worried and tried to come up with some solution for days, and you just pick up the phone and everything's taken care of-"
"It's not a certainty. There might be some other factor we know nothing about which could fuck up everything. I don't want to be pessimistic about it, but I don't want you to think that the whole problem's solved when it might not be."
"You've given us hope, though," Betty said. "We didn't even have that before you came."
"Well, we'll know for sure tomorrow."
Despite my efforts to moderate their optimism, they both seemed to place more confidence in Robinson's ability to do something than I thought the situation warranted. As we talked about it, I concluded that their confidence seemed to stem from their past experience with syndicate operations, which was much broader than mine, and from their assessment of organizational influence in New York, which was more reliable than mine. I finally gave up trying to keep them from building their hopes too high, and listened to them as they dis cussed long-range plans of what they would do when Charles was released from jail and had another job. The topic became more or less exhausted, and when I asked Betty if she didn't have a date it seemed to make both of them uncomfortable. Betty's face flushed slightly as she looked down at the floor and murmured something about the lack of men of eligible age in the town, and Barbara came to her rescue by talking about the number of friends Barbara had in the city. I didn't press the issue, and the conversation turned to other subjects while I pondered about the apparently unusually close relationship I sensed between Barbara and Betty, and about the lack of men in their lives.
Betty said goodnight and went to bed, and Barbara and I sat and talked for a while longer. "Do you think you and Betty might move if your son gets a job somewhere else?"
She nodded. "I don't like this place-the only reason I bought this house was its price and the fact that I didn't have much money. If I had it to do over, we'd live somewhere else."
"This place doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment, does it? Particularly for Betty-young people like to have friends."
She looked down at the floor and breathed a long sigh. "Betty has had some bad experiences, and she's happy as long as we're together."
"You do seem to be fond of each other."
Her blue eyes were deep, shimmering pools as she looked at me. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing more than I said," I replied, looking directly into her eyes.
She nodded and smiled slightly. "I suppose I'm sensitive. The other people here are very curious and they're very provincial. Anything that doesn't conform to what they consider proper causes widespread consternation among them."
I shrugged. "I've found that people do what they have to do. Being critical doesn't change anything, particularly what people do. You and Betty would probably be a lot better off living in a larger place where people are less curious and critical."
"If we're to be happy together and be left alone," she agreed. She kicked her shoes off and curled her legs up under her on the couch, then she suddenly laughed softly. "Well, I suppose we are different."
"Everyone is different."
She looked directly into my eyes again, still smiling. "There are levels of difference-it might surprise you."
"I'm not easily surprised."
Her smile faded and her expression became thoughtful. "Perhaps you aren't." She looked down at the floor for a moment as she picked absently at a loose thread on the couch with her fingernail, then she looked back up at me and shrugged. "Well, you're our friend-you've certainly demonstrated that, so I suppose I can be frank with you." She settled herself more comfortably on the couch, looked down at the floor for a moment as she collected her thoughts, then she looked back up at me. "Betty's first experience with sex with a man was traumatic. To be blunt about it, she was raped by her uncle when she was fifteen. I also had a couple of bad experiences when I was young, but I also had a very deep, meaningful experience with a kind, gentle, understanding person-a woman. My husband was a cruel, ruthless man, and he brutalized both me and his children. Charles responded by becoming as cruel and ruthless as his father, and Betty responded by turning within herself. It was after his death that the situation came to a climax and the cumulative result of my experiences and Betty's experiences resulted in the relationship which we now have."
She was silent for a moment, still looking down at the floor as she plucked at the couch with her fingernails, and I stirred. "I once lived in Marseilles for a short time, and I got to know a couple of women who lived there. They were sisters, and their experiences with men had turned them against men. One of them had been raped by a male relative and the other one had contracted a venereal disease from her husband on their wedding night. They turned to each other for emotional gratification, and they were very happy together when I knew them."
"Then you do understand," she said, looking up at me.
I nodded. "Perhaps more than you think. I understand the need you and Betty feel for each other, and I also understand that neither of you are lesbians in the true sense of the word."
"Betty does occasionally feel attracted to certain men. She likes you, for example." A slow smile spread across her face and her cheeks flushed slightly. "So do I, for that matter."
I felt a heavy, throbbing within me, and a tingle run up and down my spine as the hungry, gnawing ache spread up through me from my balls. "And I felt attracted to both of you." She looked into my eyes for a moment, then her eyes dropped to the floor as the flush on her face became more pronounced. I got up from the easy chair, walked over to the couch and sat down by her, and she put her head against my chest as I put my arm around her.
"Jim, we don't know each other very well," she murmured. "Perhaps we shouldn't-"
"The only thing we shouldn't do is waste this opportunity," I said, fondling her warm, soft shoulder with my hand and pulling her closer. "When two people see something they want and it's available, they should take advantage of it."
"But it isn't fair to Betty," she whispered, shaking her head slightly. "She might think that I've deserted her for someone else, or-"
"She can join in. She likes you and she likes me, and it would be much better with three of us."
She looked up at me with her wide, blue eyes, momentarily startled, then she looked away. "I don't know. We've never done anything like that before, and it seems decadent somehow, or-"
I laughed and put both of my arms around her. "Don't be silly, honey. Neither of us will do anything that we wouldn't do at one time or another or haven't already done many times before-it's just that it'll all come at one time. Don't you think Betty would like it?"
"T suppose so."
"Then that's all we need," I said, putting my fingers under her chin and tilting her face up to mine. Her breath fanned against my cheek as she opened her lips wide and surged up against me, and her fingers laced through my hair as I cupped her firm breast in my hand and fondled it. Our tongues pushed and probed at each other, and her warm, eager body undulated slowly against mine as she pressed herself against me. My hands moved over her, caressing and touching her, and my desire to possess her beautiful body swelled within me until it was almost choking. She pulled back to catch her breath, and I looked down at her as her full breasts heaved from her rapid breathing. "Let's go upstairs and see what Betty's doing."
She smiled and nodded, and slowly got up from the couch. She led me across the living room, her small hand firmly clutching mine, and I let my other hand move slowly back and forth across her firm, smooth buttocks as we walked up the stairs. She stopped oh the landing and looked up at me as she motioned for me to bend over so she could whisper to me. "Betty sleeps without anything on. Let's go into my room and take off our clothes before we go into her room."
I nodded and she quietly opened one of the doors. I followed her through it as she snapped on the light, and she gave me a quick smile as she began unbuttoning her blouse. I fumbled at my clothes, my eyes riveted on the beautiful woman as she disrobed, and my cock slowly expanded as she dropped her clothes on the bed. My cock was standing straight out and making a bulge in the front of my pants by the time she had stripped to her bra and panties, and my eyes were moving over her smooth, white body, devouring her beauty. She smiled at me and giggled.
"Are you going to make love with your clothes on?"
Her soft voice brought my attention back to what I had been doing, and I jerked at my clothes as I began pulling them off. She helped me out of them and folded them neatly on a chair. Her eyes moved down toward my cock as I pulled my shorts off and tossed them onto the chair, and her body was a sudden blur as she flitted toward me and knelt in front of me. She took my cock in both hands and squeezed it lovingly, then she moved her head back and forth as she planted soft kisses along its swollen length. Her pink tongue flicked out as she licked around the head of it, then every muscle in my body knotted with the fiery sensation of her hot, damp mouth as she opened her lips and let my cock slide between them.
She moved her head back and forth with slow, lingering movements as she pressed my cock between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and she exerted a strong sucking pressure as she let it slide back out of her mouth. She stood up in front of me and smiled at me as she shrugged out of her bra, and my breath caught in my throat as the gleaming, curved beauty of her jutting breasts was bared. I clutched at her to feel their resilient warmness, and she turned her back to me as she pulled both of my hands around in front of her and pressed them to her breasts. She leaned against me for a moment and pressed herself to me as her fingernails moved slowly up and down my thighs with a tantalizing sensation, then she pushed her panties down over her hips and bent over to slip them off her feet. I bent over with her, my body curving over hers, and my hands continued to knead the smooth, yielding flesh of her breasts as my cock slipped between her buttocks and rested against her soft vulva. She straightened back up and pressed her thighs together on my cock, and she leaned back against me as she undulated slowly to massage my cock between her firm thighs. The sensation of my cock being massaged between her thighs and the feel of her eager body against mine was almost unbearable, and a raging desire roared through me to throw her to the floor and jam my cock deep into her pussy With a single thrust. I restrained myself and held her to me with one hand on her breasts as my other hand combed through the nest of curly hair between her thighs. I flexed my knees and stooped slightly so my cock was even with her firm buttocks, and she resettled my cock between her thighs so it would lie on her vulva with the head of it jutting out in front of the bun of crisp hair below her flat, smooth stomach. Her fingers moved over the head of my cock as she began moving back and forth again, with her firm hips pressing against my belly then moving away, and she twisted her head around to turn her lips toward mine. My tongue thrust into her mouth and she sucked at it as my hands continued to move over her. I moved one hand back and forth between her breasts, squeezing and fondling them, and my other hand moved down over her soft stomach toward her pussy again. I felt her firmly rounded thighs and the small patch of hair, and my muscles knotted and trembled as I felt the swollen head of my cock jutting out between her thighs. I moved both of my hands down to her thighs and started to spread them apart so I could get my cock into her and dog fuck her over the bed. but she pulled away from me with a quick shake of her head. Her cheeks were flushed with aroused passion and her blue eyes were gleaming with a dancing, joyous light as she looked up at me. "Let's go get Betty," she whispered. "You take her breasts, and I'll get her pussy.
I swallowed dryly and tried to control my breathing and the mad pounding of my heart as I nodded then we moved toward the bedroom door. I put my arm around her shoulders and cupped her breast with my hand, and she wrapped her fingers around my throbbing cock. We walked back out on the landing, feeling and caressing each other, then Barbara slowly pushed the door to Betty's bedroom open. The light from the landing streamed into the dark room, and Betty's softly curved body was outlined by the single sheet which lay over her. We quietly tiptoed into the room and over to the side of the bed, and I watched eagerly as Barbara took the edge of the sheet and slowly pulled it off Betty's body. She stirred restlessly and murmured in her sleep as the sheet moved downward, and she rolled slowly over on her back as my eyes devoured her beautiful body. Barbara nudged me and motioned toward the jutting twin mounds of Betty's breasts, and Barbara and I slowly slipped onto the bed with cautious movements to keep from wakening her. Betty murmured fretfully again and spread her legs apart as she tossed one forearm across her face, and I tore my eyes away from the small patch of curly hair between her thighs as Barbara nudged me again. I fastened my attention on the rosy crests which tipped her firm, full breasts and moved closer to her on my hands and knees. Barbara moved forward with a quick, fluid motion, taking Betty's thighs and spreading them apart as she lowered her lips to the clutch of blonde hair between Betty's thighs, and I opened my mouth wide to let one of the dark nipples slide into my mouth. Betty woke with a convulsive jerk and a small, muffled squeal, and I pressed her back down on the bed as I began sucking at her breast as hard as I could. Her exclamation of startled shock trailed off into a murmur of pleasure as Barbara moved her head further down between her thighs and lapped at her pussy, and Betty flexed her knees as she spread her legs apart. She lifted her head from the bed to look down at Barbara then at me, and a slow smile of understanding spread across her face as she looked at us.
I moved my mouth to her other breast and began sucking at it, and her nipples quickly became hard and firm as I massaged one breast between my hands and sucked at the other one. Slow, tense ripples of enjoyment spread through her body as she became fully awake and the stimulation of our mouths began arousing her. She spread her legs wide apart and put her feet on Barbara's shoulders as Barbara's head moved up and down, and her fingers combed into my hair as she thrust her breast up at me. The movements of her body and the tension in her muscles gradually became stronger, and her fingers moved down my body to grope for my cock and balls. She wrapped her fingers around my cock and began massaging it with a slow, firm pressure, and I dragged my fingernails along her sides to increase the sensations which were flowing through her. She began whimpering deep in her throat in an imperative, demanding tone, and she twisted her body around on the bed to move her lips toward my cock. I swung around on the bed as I took my mouth away from Betty's breasts, and I pulled at Barbara's thighs to turn her on her side. Barbara rolled over onto her side with her head still between Betty's thighs, and I pressed my lips to the patch of curly hair between Barbara's legs as Betty began licking and kissing my cock. She cupped my balls between her hands and squeezed them firmly as her lips moved back and forth along my cock, and she stuck her tongue far out to lick around the head of it as I pressed Barbara's thighs apart. Barbara raised her leg, and I ran my tongue along her vulva as my body jerked with the sensation of my cock slipping between Betty's lips. Betty pressed the head of my cock firmly in her mouth, and I could feel the soft touch of the edges of her teeth as she sucked at it. I stiffened my tongue and ran it through the crack in Barbara's vulva, and her body lurched as my tongue slipped across her clitoris. The tiny organ came erect under my lips, and I cupped Barbara's hips in my hands as I flicked the tip of my tongue back and forth across it. Her body responded with swift, tense surges against me as the fiery sensations raced through her, and I fought to maintain enough presence of mind to be able to stimulate her as the feel of Betty's mouth on my cock and her hands on my balls made my body writhe and jerk.
We lay in a triangular daisy chain for long moments, with muffled murmurs of pleasure coming from all three of us and our bodies moving in trembling enjoyment of what we were doing and what was being done to us. My initial wild reaction to the sight and feel of the naked bodies of the two beautiful women had settled down to a delicious, long lasting enjoyment, and I had a firm control over the orgasm which seethed and boiled within me as I savored the feel of Betty's hot, damp mouth moving back and forth on my cock. She gradually worked her way down on it until the head of it was touching the back of her throat, and she gripped the base of it in one hand as she moved her head back and forth in a strong, steady rhythm. I could feel the contours inside her mouth on the skin of my cock, and there was a suggestion of pressure from the edges of her teeth as her lips gripped my cock with a firm, clinging stricture. One of her hands moved up and down my thighs, pausing occasionally at my balls to squeeze them with a pressure just short of painful, and the hand gripping the base of my cock fondled and stroked it with a milking motion. The sensations rolling through me made me glow with a warm tingling as I stiffened my tongue and forced the tip of it into Barbara's pussy, and she opened her legs wider as I pressed my face further between her thighs. Her soft vulva and its thin covering of crisp hair pressed tightly against my face as I wriggled my tongue and forced it deeper into her pussy, and her smoothly rounded buttocks tensed in my hands as she responded and slowly surged toward me. I slid my tongue in and out of her pussy, and her hips undulated in rhythm with my tongue fucking her. I pulled my tongue back out of her pussy and searched for her clitoris, and she moved her body minutely to press it against my tongue. I flicked the tip of my tongue back and forth across it, and shudders of pleasure began flowing through her as her hips moved in quick, tense surges.
The sensations which battered Betty's body gradually began to overcome her control over her movements. She began twitching and trembling with spasms as a muffled moaning came from her throat, and the shudders which passed through her began to get more violent and uncontrolled. The rhythm of her mouth moving back and forth on my cock began to falter, and she made a concentrated effort several times to move her head on my cock in a coordinated ' pace. The feelings which raced through her finally became too much for her, and she pulled her mouth away from my cock and dropped her head on my thighs with a small cry. I could feel Barbara's body tighten as she increased the tempo of her tongue moving on Betty's pussy, and Betty's head began tossing wildly about as she wailed and whimpered. She finally gave a small shriek and I could feel the bed throbbing as her body gyrated in hard, thrusting lunges. Spasms seized her body as she lurched and twisted for a moment, then her body fell limp.
With Betty's orgasm accomplished, I could detect Betty's consciousness turning toward the sensations which were flowing through her own body. I slowly pulled myself around on the bed and turned her onto her back so I would be in a position to give her maximum enjoyment. I kept my mouth on her pussy as I moved, and she turned over onto her back with a long, languid sigh and placed her feet on my shoulders. My hands roamed up and down her body, squeezing and fondling her firm flesh, and I took my tongue away from her clitoris and moved it slowly up and down the inside of her thighs. I could feel the muscles in her thighs tense and jerk as the tip of my tongue moved over them, and quivers passed through her body each time my tongue moved back toward her pussy. I teased her with my tongue until her hips were thrusting off the bed to press her pussy up toward me, then I opened my mouth wide and took her entire pussy into it. I sucked her pussy as my tongue moved up and down the crack in her soft vulva, and the hot, pungent taste of her body in my mouth began to inflame my passion to an even higher level. Her buttocks tensed as I cupped them and held her up off the bed to slide my tongue back into her tight channel again, and her hips lunged up at me as I moved my head up and down to fuck her with long strokes of my tongue. I pushed more and more of my tongue into her until I was spreading her wide with the thick part of my tongue, then I kept fucking her with it until it appeared from the tension in her body that she had leveled out onto a plateau of sensation. When her body had been responding with slow, steady lunges for several moments, I pulled my tongue back out of her pussy and flicked it across her clitoris again. She immediately responded with renewed vigor, and her body began shaking and trembling in convulsions.
The initial spasms of a climax began to enter her movements, and I increased the pace of my tongue flicking across her clitoris. Slow ripples of movement began to flow through her body from her shoulders to her thighs as her pussy surged against my face with strong thrusts. I squeezed her buttocks in my hands and increased the pressure of my tongue as it swept back and forth across her clitoris, and I could feel the orgasm in her body drawing closer. There was a whisper of sound as Betty turned around on the bed and began sucking at her mother's breasts, and the additional sensation made Barbara suddenly explode into a climax. She gripped her thighs together around my head as her pussy whipped against my face with violent, spasmodic jerks, and a long, low wail was torn from her as her body throbbed in the wrenching convulsions of an orgasm. She gave a last powerful lunge, then she collapsed in a trembling, gasping sprawl of limp muscles as I licked her pussy with long strokes of my tongue.
I lay with my head between Barbara's thighs for a moment as her chest heaved with her labored breathing, then I crawled up the bed to lie between the two women. Their smooth, warm skin was satiny against my body as I slid up between them, and Barbara rolled over to toss her leg over mine and rest against me as Betty's lips searched for mine. I opened my lips wide and sucked Betty's mouth into mine, and her lips tugged and pulled at my tongue as she sucked it into her mouth. I ran the tip of my tongue around the inside of her mouth and touched the edge of her teeth with it, then she began moving her head back and forth to fuck herself in the mouth with my tongue. I put my arms around them and ran my hands up and down them, feeling and fondling the warm, firm flesh of their backs and buttocks, and they pressed closer to me as their hands moved over my body. Betty's saliva was warm and sweet in my mouth as her tongue pushed and probed at mine, and Barbara's tongue flicked in and out of my ear, causing shivers to run up and down my spine. Barbara seized my head and pulled my lips from Betty's, then she opened her mouth wide as she pushed her tongue between my lips and teeth. Our tongues began a warm, damp battle between our open lips as Betty began moving her lips along the side of my head and neck in a line of soft kisses. She pulled up pinches of skin between her lips and nibbled them softly between her teeth as she moved slowly up and down, and her tongue flicked into my ear each time she passed it.
We kissed and caressed each other for several minutes, and the hungry need within me gradually became more demanding. My fingers began to grope toward their pussies as my cock stood up straight in the air with a trembling hard erection, and my lips moved from one of them to the other in passionate kisses. Betty suddenly pulled away from me and sat up on the bed, looking down at me and her mother. "Whose idea was this?" she asked with a giggle. "There's so many of us here that I don't know what to do next."
"I know what to do," I said. "I'm so hot that I'm about to blow up, and someone's going to get my cock shoved into them."
Barbara sat up and smiled down at me. "Patience, please, patience. Give us a few minutes to get accustomed to the situation, and we'll make you feel so good that you'll think you did blow up." She glanced at her daughter. "I believe we can do that, don't you, Betty?"
"It'll be good enough to make him feel the same way you made it for me," Betty replied. "That was heavenly."
They sat on either side of me and smiled at each other lovingly as they talked. "I'm glad you liked it, darling," Barbara said softly. "I'd do anything for you-you know that."
"I know, and I'd do anything for you, Barb."
I looked up at them, and mixed with the raging passion for them that I felt I wondered about the circumstances which had changed the conventional mother-daughter relationship and love into the feelings they had for each other. I watched them as they leaned forward over me and kissed, and their heads moved from side to side with small, tense movements as their tongues probed between their open lips with slight, damp noises. Their hands rested on my chest and stomach as they leaned forward over me, and one of Barbara's hands moved upward to cup one of Betty's breasts and squeeze it gently. I toyed with the patches of curly hair between their thighs as my eyes drank in the breathtaking beauty of their passionate, loving bodies. One of Betty's hands moved upward to lace into Barbara's hair, and both of them moved their thighs apart slightly as my fingers caressed their soft vulvas. I moved my hands back and forth between their legs, feeling and stroking the soft flesh of their pussies, then they moved closer together and wrapped their arms around each other as I began slipping my fingers into their pussies. I eased the center finger of each hand into their pussies and began sliding them in and out as they surged together in a long, torrid kiss, and their hands moved over each other in slow caresses. Barbara finally pulled away from Betty as my fingers slipped back out of their pussies, and she leaned her head down to quickly kiss each of Betty's nipples. She looked down at my cock and at my face, then she smiled at Betty. "We should take care of our playmate. He's made it so good for us that we should do something for him now."
Betty wrapped her fingers around my cock and leaned over to press it against her cheek and kiss it. "What shall we do?"
"Everything we can think of," Barbara replied.
She smiled at me. "Is that all right with you?"
"Anything that will make me come is all right with me."
They smiled and giggled, then they bent over and began running their mouths and hands over my body. They sucked at my nipples and nibbled at the skin along my sides and on my belly as their hands moved up and down me in soft, tantalizing touches, and my body began quivering and trembling from the sensations they caused and from the sight of their beautiful bodies. Barbara stiffened her tongue and probed it into my navel as Betty moved on down to my thighs, and my body lurched upward from the bed as Barbara wriggled her tongue in my navel and Betty nibbled softly at the sensitive skin on the inside of my thighs. Their fingernails dug gently into my skin as they dragged them back and forth from my ankles to my armpits, and their fingers paused to touch and caress my cock and balls each time they passed them. Barbara's lips moved on down through the hair around the base of my cock and continued down my thigh, and Betty's lips moved up my other thigh to kiss and nibble at my balls. Barbara pulled one of my legs up and tucked her face under it as she tongued up and down the underside of my thigh, and Betty cupped my balls with one hand and held my cock in the other as she mouthed and kissed them. Barbara slid to the foot of the bed as she lifted my other leg, arid I flexed my knees and spread my legs apart as she kissed and caressed my buttocks and the underside of both of my thighs. Betty pulled the foreskin firmly back to make the head of my cock taut and shiny, then she stuck her tongue out and began licking it. The tip of her tongue traveled around the ridge at the head of my cock with wavering movements, and my cock trembled and throbbed as the sensation caused by her tongue made the breath catch in my throat. Barbara's tongue traveled deeper and deeper between my legs as she moved back and forth along the underside of my thighs, and I spread my legs further apart as her tongue began to approach my anus. Betty gripped my balls firmly with one hand and squeezed them as she opened her mouth wide and let the head of my cock slide between her full, red lips, and Barbara suddenly dipped her head low between my legs and flicked my anus with the tip of her tongue.
I groaned aloud from the sensations which raced through me as I bent my back and threw my feet up in the air to hold my-asshole up toward Barbara's tongue. Barbara wrapped her arms around my thighs and buried her face between my buttocks as she traced her tongue around my anus, and Betty pressed my cock between her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she moved her head up and down. My body began shaking uncontrollably as wrenching spasms jerked and tore at my muscles, and my senses reeled from the battering onslaught of the multitude of sensations. Waves of hot and cold seemed to roll over me, and every muscle in my body strained almost to the snapping point as groan after groan was torn from my throat.
Betty's mouth was a hot, damp stricture around my cock, and she exerted a strong sucking pressure on the head of my cock each time her head raised back up. Barbara had placed her hand over Betty's cupping my balls, and she was squeezing them firmly as she fucked me in the asshole with the tip of her flicking tongue. The flood of semen within me swelled and ballooned until it felt as though my insides were being forced apart, and I ground my teeth together in my effort to keep it down so I could continue to wallow in the ecstatic feelings which gripped me. They both gradually increased the pace of their stimulation, and my come was suddenly a massive swelling which I could no longer contain. An overwhelming relief seemed to spread over me as I relaxed my control and turned it loose, and I could feel the searingly hot stream of fluid coursing up through my cock and out into Betty's mouth. Barbara felt the surging convulsions of my body as I went into the throes of an orgasm, and she pushed her tongue as far as she could into my anus as her fingernails pinched at my thighs. Betty began swallowing rapidly as the come boiled out into her mouth, and my hips lurched up off the bed as I spurted it into her beautiful face. She eagerly drank the first few spurts as I groaned and writhed in the spasms of my climax, then she reached down to pat Barbara quickly on the back. There was a blur of movement as Betty let my cock slide from her mouth and dipped her head quickly under my thigh to press her tongue into my asshole, and Barbara raised her head between my legs and took my cock into her mouth as she began drinking the remainder of my come. The rest of the semen drained out of me as Barbara sucked at my cock and kneaded my balls, and my muscles relaxed in the limp numbness following a climax. Betty kept driving her tongue into my asshole and Barbara kept sucking my cock and rolling it around in her mouth as she pressed my balls, and the residual sensations of the climax became almost painfully acute. They relentlessly kept up the pressure, and the tinge of pain which had spiced my pleasure began to lance through me in sharper stabs. My fingers drew up into hard fists and my toes curled up as the sensations became almost unbearable, and it felt as though Barbara was about to suck my balls out through my cock as my cock rapidly collapsed. She took it between her fingers and kept sucking it, and my protesting murmurs suddenly became groans of near agony as the last ounce of my strength was wrenched from me. I breathed a sigh of relief and dropped my legs to the bed as they raised their heads, and I held out my arms toward them as they crawled up the bed toward me.
They lay on their stomachs on each side of me with their heads pillowed in the hollows of my shoulders. They moved closer to me with small, satisfied sounds in their throats as they slid their legs over mine and pressed their pussies against my thighs, and Barbara wrapped the fingers of her right hand around my limp cock while Betty cupped my balls with her left hand. I pressed my hands against their smooth, firm flesh and relaxed as I let the total exhaustion of the wrenching climax sweep over me, and the soft darkness of sleep descended like a warm, comforting cloud.
I woke an hour or two later and their faces were close together on my chest. They were talking softly and occasionally kissing as their hands caressed each other and moved over my body. I moved as I woke, and Barbara looked at me. "Feeling better now?"
I yawned and nodded. "I think I might even live."
"Have we pooped you out, or can you go again?" Betty asked.
"A dead man could go twice with you two. Either one of you would be enough to make a queer go straight, but both of you would turn a saint into a sex maniac."
They giggled, and a small, soft hand reached down to toy with my cock. "It doesn't feel ready to me," Barbara said.
"Christ, I can't blow it up like a balloon. Give me a couple of minutes. You two almost killed me by keeping on after I had come."
"How about a drink or some coffee?" Betty asked, glancing at me then at her mother. "We could all use something, I expect."
"Coffee sounds good," I said, sitting up stiffly and yawning again.
"I'll make it, Barb," Betty said, sliding her feet to the floor and trotting toward the door.
I watched her beautiful figure and her gently swaying hips as she left the room, then I looked back at Barbara. She was sitting with her elbows on her knees and looking at me. "What are you thinking?"
"Just wondering about Betty calling you by your first name."
"Lovers are ordinarily on a first-name basis," Barbara said with a smile, then she laughed. "I suppose we are a strange pair."
I shrugged. "You're both adults and you can do whatever you like."
"You do seem to take things as you find them," she said, nodding. "It's a shame that everyone can't be as understanding as you are. We're not lesbians, though, as you said, but we're both passionate women and we must have some sort of outlet for our feelings."
We sat in silence for a couple of moments, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She smiled up at me quickly and slid her hand along my thigh to cup my cock and balls gently. "There's been no other men or women involved?"
She shook her head quickly. "None. A few men have tried to date us and there's been a few nasty comments when they got turned down. All in all, this place has been a source of unhappiness for both of us, and we'll both be glad to leave it."
"I guess I was just lucky, then."
"That, and you're nice," she said, squeezing my cock and balls gently as she smiled up at me. "You've helped us out of a very serious situation, and you're a very understanding person."
I smiled down at her, then pulled her closer as I cupped one of her breasts and lowered my lips to hers. She opened her mouth wide, and the warm, damp pressure of her lips enfolded mine as her tongue wriggled into my mouth. Both of her hands moved to my cock and balls, and she slowly dragged the tips of her fingers deep between my legs as she pressed herself against me. Her hand moved slowly back and forth in a tantalizing rhythm, tickling the sensitive area between my legs and gently cupping my cock and balls, and I pressed my tongue deep into her mouth as I savored the resilient feel of her firm breast with my hand.
"What's this?" Betty's voice came from the door. "It's not fair for you two to get a head start on me while I'm making the coffee."
We parted and looked at Betty as she carried a coffee tray into the room, smiling at us. "I hope instant coffee will be all right. I didn't want to wait for a pot to perk."
"Instant's fine with me," I said, reaching out to take the tray from her as she slid onto the bed with it. "Coffee's coffee, and I can have perked coffee anytime, but I'll be leaving day after tomorrow."
Barbara giggled as she began spooning the instant coffee into the cups. "I believe two nights and one day will be all of us that you'll need."
We sat and sipped the coffee, and I could feel the strength gradually returning to my limbs. They both sat cross legged and faced me, and my eyes moved over their firm, jutting breasts, white, slender legs, and their soft vulvas under the thin covering of blonde hair. They chatted with each other with an easy familiarity which seemed to be a strange mix of familial and sexual banter. I refilled my cup and watched them as they joked and talked, and they gradually moved closer to each other. Betty's hand lay on Barbara's thigh for a moment, then slipped down to gently cup her vulva, and Barbara put her arm around Betty and casually fondled her breast. They put their cups back on the tray and exchanged a quick kiss, then resumed their former position. A shiver of delight suddenly passed over Betty as Barbara's fingers moved over her nipple. "Oh, that felt good, Barb," she said to her mother. "Please suck it. Suck it now and make me feel good."
Betty held her breast up toward her mother's mouth as Barbara put her arms around her and leaned down to trace the tip of her tongue around the reddish brown nipple on Betty's breast. Betty closed her eyes and tilted her head back with her mouth open as Barbara let the rapidly hardening nipple slide between her lips, and she slid her lips back and forth on it as she rapidly flicked the tip of her tongue across it. Betty slowly relaxed and lay back on the bed as Barbara bent over her and sucked at her breast, then Barbara suddenly sat up and looked at me. "Betty, we're forgetting our guest. Let's see if he's ready to go again."
Betty rolled over and smiled at me, and they moved toward me. I put the coffee cup back on the tray and set the tray on the floor, then I reached out toward them. Barbara pushed my arms down and pressed me back down on the bed. "You're our guest and we don't let our guests do any work. Just lie there and let's see what happens."
Barbara smiled down at me as she talked, pushing my hair back from my forehead and lacing her fingers into my hair, then she lowered her mouth toward mine. Her full, red mouth opened wide as she bent over, and I could see the brilliant white of her teeth and the pink of her tongue as her lips sought mine. I opened my mouth as our lips touched, and my mouth filled with the sweet taste of her saliva as her tongue slid between my lips and teeth. I could feel Betty's fingers moving up and down my chest as she leaned over me, and her lips began moving over my shoulders and chest as her jutting breasts brushed against me. Barbara's lips stiffened as they pulled and tugged at mine, and I pressed my tongue around hers into her mouth. I stiffened my tongue and ran the tip of it around inside her mouth, feeling the sides of her mouth, the edges of her teeth, and the soft, delicate flesh on the inside of her lips. Betty's lips and tongue on my chest and shoulders made goose pimples raise all over my body as shivers raced along my spine, and a warm glow began to spread up through me from my balls. Barbara suddenly pulled her mouth from mine, and she moved forward to press one of her jutting breasts between my lips as she began kissing my ear and pressing her tongue into it. I closed my mouth on her breast and began sucking at it as I flicked the tip of my tongue back and forth across her nipple, and she pressed herself down against me as her nipple rapidly hardened. I moved my hands over the two beautiful women, feeling their breasts, their thighs, and their soft pussies, and I felt my cock begin to gradually swell and stiffen as our movements on the bed became more intense and urgent.
Barbara sat up and reached down to take my cock between her fingers and feel it. She peeled the foreskin back and squeezed my cock gently and lovingly between her fingers as she smiled down at me. "I believe something is starting to happen," she said.
Betty raised her head from my chest and looked down at my cock as her small hand slid down to touch it and stroke my balls. "I believe so, too," she said. "There are definitely signs of life there."
They giggled at each other and smiled at me, then they leaned over again and Betty began dragging the tip of her tongue back and forth across my stomach as Barbara took my cock into her mouth. She pulled the foreskin back and held it between her fingers as she kissed it, then she stuck her tongue out and began licking around the head of it. Her hand moved back and forth on my balls, gently stroking and occasionally squeezing them gently, and she stiffened her tongue to flick the tip of it around the head of my cock with a quick, dancing movement.
Life began to flow back into my cock as she held it between her fingers and licked it, and it slowly stretched and stiffened. She lowered her head and let my cock slip slowly into the warm dampness of her mouth, and she rolled my cock around in her mouth with her tongue as she squeezed my balls firmly. The sensation of her hot mouth around my cock and the sight of the two beautiful women leaning over my body and titillating me made the blood rush to my head with a pounding force, and I could feel my cock beginning to swell into a full hard-on as I looked down at them. My cock lengthened until it was too long for Barbara to keep all of it in her mouth, and she held the base of it with one hand as she began moving her head up and down on as much of it as she could take. The head of my cock touched the back of her throat each time she pressed her head down, and she sucked at my cock with her tongue and lips each time she pulled her head back up. The tingling sensation in my cock seemed to spread all over me, and I began groaning and writhing on the bed as the movement of her head became faster. Betty stiffened her tongue and pressed it into my navel, and she wriggled the tip of it around in my navel as she ran her fingers up and down my chest and thighs. It felt as though every muscle in my body was stretching to the breaking point as my cock finally throbbed to a full, trembling hard-on, and Barbara let it slowly slide from her mouth with a small, damp sound as she smiled down at Betty. "It's ready, Bet. Just look at it."
Betty raised her head and looked at my cock, and she darted forward to run her lips up and down it in quick, soft kisses. She turned and smiled at me, and her lips with shining with Barbara's saliva which had been on my cock. "What shall we do now?" she asked, looking back at Barbara.
"I got it that way, and now I'm going to use it," Barbara replied.
Betty sat up and watched Barbara as she moved to straddle my cock. She positioned herself over my cock with the head of it touching the thin covering of hair over her soft vulva, and she wriggled my cock with her hand as she slowly pressed herself down on it. Betty leaned forward with her head resting on my thighs as she reached under Barbara to spread her vulva apart with her fingers and guide the head of my cock into her pussy. Barbara let more of her weight descend on my cock, and the head of it suddenly slipped into her pussy.
She gave a small cry and tilted her head back with her eyes closed, and a convulsive jerk shook every muscle in my body from the sensation of my cock sliding into her hot, tight pussy. She began moving her body up and down with slow, minute movements, and Betty put one hand on my balls and began squeezing them as she sat up to take one of Barbara's nipples into her mouth. Barbara's lips parted in ecstasy and she gave a low whimper as the sensation of Betty's mouth on her breast and the feel of my cock in her pussy raced through her. Her movements became more firm and sure as she pressed herself down harder on my cock and more of it began to slide into her. She bobbed up and down with longer and harder strokes as she became more aroused, and Betty's head moved up and down in rhythm with her as she continued to suck her mother's breast. The wide base of my cock began to enter her pussy as the head of my cock penetrated deeply into her body, then her firm buttocks settled against my thighs. She stopped moving and sat motionless for a moment, completely impaled on my throbbing cock. She put her arms around Betty's head and held her as she pressed her breast further into Betty's mouth, then she pulled Betty's head away and turned slightly as she guided her other breast into Betty's mouth. Betty opened her mouth wide to receive her mother's other breast, and she moved her head from side to side with tense movements as she sucked as hard as she could. Barbara finally opened her eyes with a sigh, and she patted Betty's shoulder as she gently pushed her from her breast. Betty let the firm, smoothly rounded mound slip from her mouth and she looked up at Barbara. Barbara smiled down at her and put her arms around Betty's head as she lowered her mouth toward Betty's. Their lips parted as they met, and I could see their tongues moving between their open lips as they kissed. They clutched at each other and their hands moved swiftly over each other in tender, passionate caresses as they kissed, then Barbara smiled down at Betty again as their lips parted. "That felt very good, Betty, and now I want to make you feel good again. Get on your hands and knees over Jim, and let him suck your breasts."
Betty straddled my chest and put her arms around my head as she lowered her breasts toward my mouth. Barbara was still sitting up on my cock and Betty was bent over me with her firm ass high in the air and her widespread buttocks and thighs inches from Barbara's mouth. I could feel Betty's nipples quickly stiffen in my mouth and hands as I sucked and caressed her breasts, and there was a sudden, convulsive jerk which wracked her entire body as Barbara leaned forward and ran her tongue through the crack in Betty's vulva.
Barbara braced herself with her hands on my chest, and she began slowly sliding her hips up and down to fuck herself on my cock as she lowered her lips between Betty's thighs and sucked at her pussy. Betty wriggled as she curved her back deeply and spread her legs further to give Barbara easier access to her pussy, and her arms clamped around my head with a vise-like force as she pressed her breasts down against my face. The posture we were in enabled each of us to receive full satisfaction from the others, and the bed trembled and shook with our movements as each of us thrust ourself at the others. I sucked at Betty's breasts as hard as I could, and she occasionally raised herself to take one breast from my mouth and slide the other in. My hands moved up and down their bodies as I fondled Betty all over and ran my fingers back and forth on Barbara's thighs. The feel of their warm bodies pressing down on me and the sensation of Barbara bouncing up and down on my trembling cock made my breath come in quick gasps as the blood pounded in my brain with a maddening force. Betty's body began to tremble and shake all over as she pressed her pussy back against Barbara's face and forced her breasts down against me until I was almost smothered in resilient, satiny flesh. Betty's whimpers gradually changed to moaning wails as the sensation of my mouth on her breasts and Barbara's tongue in her pussy brought her sensations careening to a peak, then the initial spasms of a climax began to throb through her body. She hovered on the brink of a climax for long moments as the force of the sensations in her body peaked and ebbed, then I slid my hand up her thigh to grope into her pussy with my fingers. I felt Barbara's mouth on the back of my hand as we both searched in Betty's soft pussy, then Barbara's head moved upward and I found Betty's clitoris with my finger as Barbara's tongue touched her anus. Betty gave a lurch, and the throbbing quivers of a climax began to race through her body as my finger stroked her clitoris and the tip of Barbara's tongue fucked her in the asshole. She gave a smothered cry as the convulsions wracked her body in strong, forceful waves, and her fingers pressed against my head as she forced her entire weight down on my face. Ripple after ripple spread through her body as the throes of a powerful orgasm gripped her, then every muscle in her body went limp and she slowly slid off of me and onto her side.
Barbara sat up with my cock still embedded deep in her body and looked down at Betty, who was lying on her side with her eyes closed tightly as she gasped and heaved for breath. Barbara's face was flushed and she was also panting deeply as she leaned over to run her hand tenderly along Betty's body. "Was that good, darling?" she asked as she gently squeezed one of Betty's breasts.
Betty nodded quickly, her eyes still closed and her jutting breasts heaving as she breathed deeply.
"Do you want to rest now?"
Betty nodded again and rolled slowly over on her back. Barbara patted her buttocks tenderly, smiling down at her, then she looked down at me. She slowly revolved her hips and moved my cock around in her body. "It's our turn now," she said in a soft whisper.
"You can't move fast enough to bring yourself to a climax in that position," I said. "Let's roll over."
She nodded, and I put my arms around her as I sat up. She slid her arms around my neck and we smoothly rolled over with my cock still sheathed in her hot pussy. I pulled my cock back and shoved it into her again a few times as we got settled, and she gave a long sigh as her fingers moved through my hair. "Could you suck my breasts at the same time, darling? That would make it much better for me."
I cupped her buttocks in my hands and bent my head down toward her breasts as I began fucking her. She put both of her hands under one of her breasts and held it up toward my mouth, and her body trembled all over as I ran the tip of my tongue around her nipple. She gasped and jerked as I opened my mouth wide and let her breast slide into it, then I began sucking her breast as hard as I could in rhythm to my cock sliding in and out of her pussy. Her pussy was hot and tight around my cock, and the feel of it sliding smoothly into her combined with the feel of her warm, eager body under mine threatened to overwhelm my control. I forced the consciousness of the sensations from my mind and concentrated on her pleasure to keep the swelling knot of semen from breaking loose within me, and her whimpering cries became louder and more demanding as the sensations mounted within her. She planted her heels firmly against the back of my thighs as she surged up against me, and her pussy glided smoothly up my cock to meet me each time I undulated toward her. The hair around the base of my cock and the nest of curly hair between her thighs met and parted as our bodies lurched together, and the movements of her hands on my head and shoulders became more tense and uncoordinated as my cock slammed into her. She curved her back and spread her legs wider as she held her pussy up toward me and opened it completely, and I moved my mouth to her other breast and began sucking it. When I moved to her other breast the renewed sensation made shivers race through her entire body, and she threw her feet up into the air as she spread her legs wide apart. I wrapped my arms around her body and gorged my mouth with her jutting breast as I began slamming the entire length of my cock into her as hard as I could. She gave a gasping moan as the long, hard strokes of my cock made the first trembling quivers of a climax pass through her, and her body began lurching in wild, uncoordinated movements as her head tossed from side to side. I dug my fingers into her buttocks and held her pussy up to my cock as I strained to maintain the furious pace of our fucking, and her fingernails began tearing at the bedspread as I forced her into the wracking ecstasy of an orgasm. Her muscles jerked in convulsions and ripples spread through her body as the climax exploded in her, and she gave a small shriek as her body tensed all over and began an urgent trembling. Her body was hard and unyielding under mine for a moment as her muscles became taut and strained, then she burst into an uncontrolled flurry of motion. She tossed and lunged under me as I held her tightly so I could keep my mouth on her breast and continue the steady driving of my cock deep into her body, then she fell back against the bed with her limbs limp and shaking.
I relaxed on top of her as her breasts heaved up against me with the straining of her lungs for air, and she put her trembling arms around my neck as she kissed me with quick, weak pecks on the side of my face and neck. "I wanted you to come in me," she whispered in a shaking, disappointed voice.
"I will presently."
"But I want to feel it in me now. Please do it quickly so I can feel it in me, Jim."
"I'll wait until you rest for a moment, then-"
She shook her head impatiently, cutting me off. "I want to feel it in me now, darling. Can you do it if I just lie here? I'm too exhausted to help you, but I want to feel it in me. I'll hold myself open for you so you can let it pour out into me. Please do it for me."
She protested weakly as I pulled my cock out of her, then she gave a satisfied sigh when I gently rolled her over and positioned her to dog fuck her. I pulled a couple of pillows down from the head of the bed and lifted her body as I slid them under her stomach, then I spread her legs wide apart as I slipped in between them. Her slender, curved body was slack and lifeless from fatigue, and she lay limply over the pillows with her firm, curved buttocks up in the air and her head resting on her forearms. I positioned myself between her legs and guided my cock toward her pussy, and she gave a small murmur as the head of it touched her soft, damp vulva. I spread her vulva apart with my fingers and guided the head of my cock into her pussy, and she gave a deep sigh as it slid smoothly into her. I put my hands around her tiny waist to hold her body steady, then I undulated my hips and slid more of my cock into her. She did not move, but the sensation of my cock slipping into her hot, tight pussy and the sight of her beautiful body lying passively on the bed in front of me made the semen within me begin to swell and boil upward.
I slipped more and more of my cock into her as I looked down at her, and she held herself open for me as she waited for my orgasm and the flood of come to gush out into her. I slid my hands under her thighs and raised her slightly as I looked down at my cock sliding in and out between the firm, smoothly curved buttocks, and the feeling of the hot stricture of her pussy around my cock made my muscles knot and tremble. I let her body slip back down on the pillows as I ran my hands back and forth on her, feeling her breasts, her slender back, and her firm hips, and I pressed her buttocks together to make her even tighter around my cock as it slid back and forth in her. The sight of her white, soft body on the bed in front of me and the knowledge that she was anxiously awaiting the stream of hot fluid that seethed in me gradually eroded my control, and I cupped her pelvic bones in my hands to raise her body to my cock again as I felt the climax inexorably approaching. She felt my movements quicken, and she summoned her strength to arch her back deeply and brought her pussy up to the level of my cock. The sensation of her movement and the feel of my stomach pounding into her firm buttocks as I pressed forward snapped my control, and I felt the stream of come gush upward from me. It poured out through my cock, and she gave a small cry as she felt the hot, thick fluid spurting out into her. I lurched against her as I slammed it deep into her body, and the sensation of the wrenching orgasm wracked my body with ecstatic, hammer-like blows. I held her to me and continued driving my cock into her until the last drop had spurted into her pussy, then I collapsed on top of her. She braced herself and tugged the pillows from under her, then she relaxed as she settled herself under me with a wriggle. I put my legs on either side of hers and relaxed with my stomach resting against the firm curve of her hips, then the dark cloud of sleep descended over me again.
We slept late the next morning, and the sound of , the telephone woke us. It was Robinson, who told me that he had made arrangements to have Charles released and sent to Phoenix to work as a bag man. Barbara and Betty were overjoyed when I told them, and they dragged me onto the bed to bring me to a raging climax which left me totally exhausted. I got up at noon, took a shower, shaved, then went downstairs. They fixed breakfast for me, and sex play began before I had finished eating. We ended up in a naked, writhing pile of bodies and limbs on the floor in the living room, then we all went back up to the bedroom.
Our sex play continued through most of the night. The novelty of having a man with them and their joy over Charles' release made them insatiable, and I was weak and shaking the following morning when I called a taxi to take me to the airport. Barbara managed to coax my cock into another hardon before I got dressed, and Betty slipped into her clothes to run outside and ask the taxi to wait. I finally rose to another climax in Barbara's mouth, and she helped me dress after she had sucked my cock and balls dry. I kissed both of them inside the front door, then stumbled out to the cab.
"Did you get drunk or something?" Robinson asked as I met him at the airfield. "You look like hell."
"Didn't have a drink."
"You should have come with us. We had a ball-girls and everything."
"Oh, I managed to keep myself occupied."
CHAPTER FIVE
I called Robinson as soon as I got home. He was full of questions about what had happened, but he cut himself off and said he would be out to see me. When two hours had gone by I wondered what was keeping him, because a million in cash and a million dollars worth of heroin was worth more concern than the delay indicated. Then three black limousines barreled into the circular drive in front of the house, scattering gravel and skidding as they braked to a stop, and I knew what had caused the delay. The deal had been important enough to bring Mr. Campanela out.
The others waited in the cars while the bodyguards came in to check the place over. One of the bodyguards was the man I had seen at the nightclub and at the airport, and he gave me a neutral nod of recognition before he frisked me. The other one went from room to room in the house, and Susan came out of the bedroom, yawning, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and quickly buttoning her blouse over her bare breasts when she saw that there were other men in the house. We had spent part of the last two hours in getting acquainted again, and she gave me a dazzling smile as our eyes met.
Her smile quickly changed to a resentful glare as the bodyguard looked at her and made an abortive movement toward her. She tensed and her eyes sparkled as she stared at him, daring him to try to search her, and he shrugged slightly as he turned away and went to join the other man searching the house. Susan couldn't have hidden a weapon in the skin tight jeans or thin blouse, but more importantly the bodyguard appeared uncharacteristically reluctant to risk the virtually assured explosion of temper which would have resulted from an attempt to search her. He probably didn't want to risk my displeasure, because I had suddenly become an important man to the syndicate.
Robinson and another man helped Mr. Campanela out of a limousine and walked on each side of him as he slowly made his way toward the door. The old man's cane rattled against the floor as he limped between the bodyguards standing on each side of the doorway, and Robinson quickly stepped forward to arrange the pillows on the couch. Four more men came in and closed the door behind themselves, and everyone but the bodyguards began finding seats as the old man lowered himself slowly onto the edge of the couch.
"Why don't you wait in the bedroom or somewhere, honey?" Robinson said to Susan, who was still standing in the living room and looking around at everyone.
"I'm not going to intrude on something that's not my business, but you're not going to tell me what to do in my own house," she snapped, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Several of the men frowned at her and Mr. Campanela looked at her with a hooded, unreadable expression. "Would you like something to drink, sir?" Susan asked him.
One of the other men sitting on the couch shook his head irritably. "Mr. Campanela doesn't drink anything except-" the man choked off and closed his mouth as Mr. Campanela raised his hand for silence.
"What do you have in mind, girl?" the old man whispered in his hoarse voice.
Susan flushed slightly from being the center of attention, then she raised her chin as she looked at the old man. "Well, we have cokes, coffee, wine, beer-"
"Wine," he croaked, nodding. "I'll have a glass of wine."
Susan went toward the kitchen and silence settled over the room as everyone waited for the old man to get his wine. He glanced at me and motioned toward an easy chair in front of the couch with his chin, and the man sitting in the chair got up as I walked toward it. I sat down as Susan came in with a bottle of wine and a glass. It was cheap table wine and was so cold from being in the refrigerator that beads of moisture were running down the sides of the bottle. It gurgled faintly as Susan leaned over the coffee table and poured wine into the glass, and Mr. Campanela manfully refrained from wincing as he sipped the sour, icy wine.
"Very good," he said, smacking his lips dryly and placing the glass on the coffee table. He looked up at Susan with his dark, piercing eyes. "Why don't you have all of your clothes on, girl?"
"What do you mean?" Susan asked, her face turning a deep red.
"I've heard that some women won't wear their underwear because they think it makes them as good as men if they leave it off." He motioned toward her breasts, which jutted out against her light blouse with a revealing bulge where each nipple pressed against the fabric; a resilient trembling passed over them each time she moved. "Are you one of those women?"
"No sir, I'm not a libber. I don't have my bra on because I don't wear anything that's hard to get off when Jim has just come back after a week's absence."
The old man looked up at her, his mouth open, then he suddenly began laughing. He wheezed and rattled as his face turned pink, and the other men in the room dutifully laughed after they exchanged a few startled glances. The old man choked and coughed for a moment when he stopped laughing, then he shook his head as he looked at me. "I can understand why you wanted her more than you wanted a job." He looked back up at Susan, chuckling. "Get yourself a glass and have some wine with me, little girl."
"I'll have it out in the kitchen, if you don't mind, sir. You have business to talk about."
He nodded, his thin, bloodless lips stretched in a smile. "All right, little girl."
He watched her as she left the room, her slender hips moving gracefully in the skin tight jeans, and there was a trace of amusement in his small, beady eyes as he looked at me. "If I were thirty years younger, you'd have trouble with me." The humor faded from his eyes as he kept them fixed on me. "Where is the money and the sugar?"
"In the trunk of a rental car in the garage."
"All of it?"
"All except a few dollars I took out for expenses."
He glanced at a man across the room. "Get it and put it in one of the cars. Take a guard with you and stay with it until we get back to the office."
I tossed the keys to the man and he left with one of the bodyguards. Mr. Campanela put both hands on the handle of his cane and closed his eyes for a moment in thought, then he opened them again. "Was it a setup, or were a couple of their people just trying to rip off whatever they could?"
"It wasn't a spur of the moment thing. It had been carefully planned, and I'd say the whole gang was in on it. It was undoubtedly what happened to the other flight that went to Mexico and didn't come back."
"How many men?"
"Four."
He grunted and nodded. "It was the whole gang, then. What tipped you off?"
"One of the men who brought the horse was too interested in what direction I planned to take off in. We had landed on a dirt road just outside a deserted village, and there were a lot of mesquite clumps and brush around as cover for an ambush. The whole situation made me nervous, and when he began asking about my plans for the takeoff I figured that they might have set up an ambush somewhere along the road. It turned out that I was right."
"What have you got to say, Frank?" the old man asked, looking at a man across the room. "It was your deal. Didn't you know the people you were dealing with?"
The man shrugged nervously. "The council approved it-"
"On your recommendation."
"Well, everyone's out of horse," the man said, his voice becoming plaintive. "We had that big bust in Boston, and the heat is on in New Jersey. We needed it, I thought it was a straight deal, and the price was right-"
"Too right," the old man wheezed. "A million in small bills is a lot, but it sounded a little low for four kilos of ninety percent pure."
"They said the heat was on and they had to move it before they got caught with it-"
The old man shook his head irritably, cutting him off. "I still don't think that's a reason, but that part of it is all over now, Frank. Do you have the contact located?"
"It's the Scorpions in Los Angeles, part of the same gang out of Mexico City. I called Bennie and he said it had been a couple of days since he'd seen the guy, but he thought he could find him if he looked around-"
"Get in touch with Bennie again and tell him to stay out of this. I don't want him getting heat on his operation from the Scorpions. We'll send down a couple of men to locate the contact and bring him up to talk to us. I'm not going to have a gang war started and get heat on the organization all over the country, but I'm not going to have men walking into setups either. After we talk to the contact and find out what he knows I'll get in touch with Chicago, then we'll decide what to do about the Scorpions."
"If the Scorpions set it up they'll be after him," Robinson said, nodding toward me.
"The Scorpions aren't the only ones after him," Mr. Campanela said with a slight sigh, then the old man looked down at the floor, thinking.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He looked up at me. "We'll get to that. First I want to find out about the setup. How did you manage to get out of it?"
"We had swapped the money for the horse, and the two delivery men left in their car, driving through the deserted village. I listened to them leave, and it seemed to me that the car engine switched off before they had gone out of hearing range. I told the guard I thought it was a trap, and. he walked along the road in front of the airplane to check it out. There were some empty beer bottles in the plane, so I filled them with gasoline from the drain tap in the wing tank and made wicks for them with a grease rag from the back of the plane. I had just finished making them when the guard found the men-there were two of them with Thompsons. He got both of them, but one of them got him. When the shooting started, the car came charging back out of the village and I made a lucky throw with one of the bottles. I got it through an open window and it went off inside the car, getting both of the men."
"Then you got the money back out of the car."
I nodded. "It was lucky that they had put it in the trunk. I put the money box back in the plane with the stash, then I went up the road to check the guard and see if he was wounded or dead. He was dead."
"Did you leave him on the road?"
"No. I figured it was just a matter of time until the Federales found the place, so I destroyed all the evidence I could. I stacked the bodies and guns on the car and threw more gasoline on it. I thought that would give them some problems in figuring out who was involved."
The old man looked at me for a long moment, and his rasping breathing was loud in the silence of the room. "I wish I had a few more men who were as smart about getting themselves out of trouble spots," he finally said. He coughed hollowly and closed his eyes as a shadow of pain crossed his face, then he reached for the wine glass and took a sip. "Where did you leave the airplane?"
"I flew it out of gas a few miles south of Tucson. I put it down in a valley where it wouldn't be too noticeable, then I carried the money and the package of horse a mile or so and hid them under some rocks. The highway was about five miles from where the plane went down, and I hitchhiked into Tucson and rented a car. I drove back and parked it as close to the money and stash as I could, then I carried them to the car and drove here."
"Well, you saved us a million dollars," the old man rasped. "Two million actually, because the sugar is worth more than that." He was silent again for a moment, and a hard, brittle gleam came into his eyes. "Above all, you brought back the word on what was going on. That's worth more than the money or sugar to me."
"What did you mean when you said that people are after me?"
"The Scorpions will want to ace you for what you did to their men, but by the time we get through with them they'll have forgotten all about you. The main problem is that you're in trouble with the feds on both sides of the border. We got word that the FBI is looking for the airplane and for you because the Federales tipped them off about what went on. The company that owns the airplane will want it back, but we can take care of them so that's no problem. The FBPis a problem."
"What in hell am I going to do?"
"Go under for a few months."
"What do you mean?"
"Go to Puerto Rico. We have a hideout there where you can stay until the heat is off and until we take care of what we have to do."
"Well, I guess we could use a vacation-"
"Not 'we'," one of the men said. "Just you-you're going by yourself-"
"I changed my mind about that," Mr. Campanela said, looking at the man, then glancing around the room. "The girl goes with him."
"What the fuck's going on here?" I asked. "Who's been making plans for me and straightening out my shit for me without telling me anything-"
"We have," Mr. Campanela said, a firm note in his hoarse voice. "You work for us and we look after the people who work for us. We also don't want you picked up by the FBI and interrogated about what you've been doing for the past few weeks. We talked about it before we came here, and we had agreed that you would go to Puerto Rico and the girl would be paid off and sent home. As I said, I changed my mind about that, and the girl will be going with you if you want her to."
"Ricco won't like it," Robinson said. "He has a place just a mile or so from ours, and he doesn't want anyone talking about-"
"I'll take care of Ricco," Mr. Campanela said. He glanced around the room. "Does anyone have any questions they want to ask Harrison?" Everyone shrugged or shook their head, and he looked back at me. "A car will take you down to Los Angeles, and a man will go with you and the girl to Chicago. From there you'll take another plane to Tampa, then another one to San Juan. A man will meet you in San Juan and take you to the hideout. He'll be your contact if anything comes up, and he'll bring you your money every week. You probably won't need any money because you'll have everything you need, and we can put it in a bank for you if you decide that's how you'd rather have it."
I nodded. "OK, it won't take us but a day or two to get ready-"
He shook his head. "You don't have the message yet. People are after you and they mean business. You're leaving this afternoon." He stood up, and the other men in the room got to their feet. One of the bodyguards went outside to look around and check the car, and the men began filing out the door as Mr. Campanela moved a step closer to me and held out his hand. I took it and shook it; it felt cold, dry, and lifeless. "Take care of that little girl, and I'll see you in a few months."
"I'll be looking forward to it."
He nodded and turned toward the door. The other men left with him, and the house suddenly seemed empty and deserted. I walked into the kitchen, where Susan was sitting at the table with a glass of wine in front of her.
"Did you hear? We're going to Puerto Rico."
She smiled and nodded. "It'll be nice, with beaches and everything. Do you think they have electricity there? I'd hate to be without my radio or stereo."
I laughed. "I'm sure we'll have everything we need."
"How long will it take us to get there?"
"Well, going by the route he said, it will probably take about a day and a half or so."
She began unbuttoning her blouse. "I'd better take care of you really good, then. I don't want you twitching and getting a hard-on over every chick we see on the way there."
I laughed at her comical expression, then she took my hand and pressed it against her bare, firm breasts and I felt a shiver of anticipation race through me as I put my arm around her and bent to cover her soft lips with mine.
