What am I doing in this man's bed? It's the first time I've ever let a white man pick me up. Well, it's because it's nice here ... because by letting him pick me up I could escape from that run-down tenement! And all I've got to do is give him what he wants! He's got an image of what I'm like in bed. And all I got to do is make it happen for him! He thinks I'm wild ... untamed ... well, I'll show him how wild and untamed I can be!
INTRODUCTION by Seymour de Huhn, Ph. D.
A prostitute is one who submits him-or herself to unworthy purposes for pay. Prostitution takes many forms. But the goal of every prostitute is the money his or her indecency can bring. The money, plain and simple? No, never money alone; rather the security that money buys. The instinct for comfort, basic to most men and women, is the end toward which one directs one's efforts.
We all submit our talents to those who will pay for them. For money, an artist of much promise will design advertisements for The New Yorker. We all know this man: a talented student at one of the best art schools. Wins second prize, out of five hundred entries, in the spring competition prior to his graduation. Gets honorable mention for the scholarship he applies for. Decides to go to Europe anyway, be a bohemian, sketch and paint. See the world, gain experience, live free for a while. It's a good beginning. So he does, and enjoys life, and one day decides that if he's going to be an artist after all, he's got to get back and go to work. He finds a garret in the East Village and starves and is eaten by bugs more than he ever was in Greece, and one day a friend offers him a chance to make a little cash designing a spread for an ad in Popular Photography. He needs the money; it won't take much time, so he concurs. They like what he does, and before the year's up he has moved out of the East Village over to the respectable part around Washington Square because he likes the downtown area. He doesn't want to move out. Then he meets a girl (who is different from the others), lives with her for a while, and buys an MG.
They decide to get married. Why not? All this time, he's doing designs, becoming better known in advertising, is taken into the company as a junior vice president, has become respectable. He meets a friend from the old days. They talk. The artist describes his new life: the wife is pregnant, they have a very good doctor; her health is important after all. The friend from the old days says very little, and later they have a few beers and the old friend calls the artist a prostitute. The artist doesn't say anything. It is too late to explain how little time there is now to paint, and maybe it isn't important to paint pictures nowadays anyway, he says, half out loud.
There are more obvious cases. On an average clean, neat suburban street, an attractive young woman of possibly twenty-three loads her two children, Kathy and Nick, aged eighteen months and almost three, into her station wagon. They drive to the supermarket a mile away. The young woman-call her Mary-buys vegetables and cans of soup and detergents and beer, a couple of roasts and six steaks and some hamburger for the kids, and three women's magazines for when the kids are asleep. She waves to friends, smiles at the check-out clerk, cashes a check for the bill plus a few dollars to have on hand-naturally, they trust her at the market. The boy loads her groceries into the back of the wagon and she drives home to her three-bedroom house with the large tree-covered back yard, where the kids can play and she doesn't have to worry about them. Her husband comes home, mixes a couple of martinis for each of them. They relax and feed the kids and themselves and he sits down and reads the paper. She reads her magazines. He takes a shower. She slips out of her clothes and looks at herself naked in the mirror, and admits to herself she is still very attractive. She slips into a sheer, lace-trimmed negligee and lies down. He comes out of the shower, already in his pajamas, and lies down and kisses her on her cheek and turns around and in five seconds he is asleep. He works very hard, she thinks, as she looks at the back of his head which is beginning to bald: only naturally, since she is twelve years younger than her husband. They've been married four years. They met when she was in her second year of college. She didn't much like college, so when he asked her to marry him, she agreed. He was already well established in the law firm, and last year they had made him a junior partner. Well and good. She read her magazines. In one there was an article about prostitution. It defined a prostitute as one who gives up one's human desires to the first person who comes along, who could pay the price-the first customer. She thinks to herself: My God!
We know Mary. She lives next door. Possibly we know Naomi, too. Naomi lives in Betty Petterson's novel, Luck Changer. Naomi is closer to what we mean when we say prostitute in its daily context. Naomi is a whore. She hangs around bars, sometimes. She lets herself get picked up, sometimes. Men take her home and they pay her, usually. Naomi is a prostitute. But does she have the talent of an artist? Is she demeaning that talent? Not in the earlier sense, no. Naomi has no talents, except her ability to make love-or rather, her ability to render men sensually ecstatic. And this ability is for sale. It has nothing to do with love. Her body is her talent. She has a commodity for sale: sensuality. The commodity can be packaged and labeled and advertised and tried and tried again, as long as there is money to pay for it-and as long as there are customers.
So Naomi sells what she's got. Yet what does she sell it for? Does she, like Mary, sell herself for a life of absolute security, of freedom from care, of isolation from danger-a life with nothing to worry about except cancer? No, this kind of life is unavailable to her. Naomi can never have security from the daily ravages of man, or of woman, because Naomi is black, and blacks can never be secure in a white man's world. Naomi tries, God knows. She first appears in the novel in the apartment of a white man, Randy. Randy had picked her up at a bar. It's unusual for Naomi to let herself be taken around by a white man, but for some reason this evening was different. One senses that Naomi is trying to break out of her earlier life-the twin ghettoes of her house and her mind. So she accepts this offer from the pale-pink white man and she behaves for him according to her talents. Beforehand, she is prepared to hate him for his inadequacies, his white man's weaknesses. He already despises her for being black, for being for hire; he is a little afraid of her, too, since he has read about the fabled Negro sexual prowess. In the passion of their love, however, each discovers in the other, for a moment, the instrument of absolute sensuality, each mistakes it for love, and they decide to live together-she is Randy's official mistress.
Environment and biology collude to destroy any attempt at happiness for Randy and Naomi, however. Naomi has become a prostitute-for reasons far more complex than a wish to enjoy the money which the fruits of her body could garner. Naomi also wants to give love. Her problem, however, is her inability to distinguish between her desire to give love, and the idiom she confuses for love, her sex-machine body. When she fornicates it is in the belief that she is giving love. Her confusion, which becomes an integral segment of her post-coital exhaustion, usually comes to the surface as anger, or, when she controls it, irritation. It is difficult for her to analyze, out of the confused mass of her experience, the cause for this lack of complete satisfaction. She senses she is a lost woman, but never does she begin to consider the nature of her lostness. At best, she blames the color of her skin the sorrows to which her sex, rather than her race, is heir.
But she has tried life, and sex with black men, too. Prior to Randy it was her world. There had been Line, jet-black and proud of his heritage, a Black Muslim, to whom she had been engaged. They were to have been married, until she met Randy. At one point, she blames her many sorrows on having run away from her race, from the man who loved her. But in actuality there would have been little difference between a marriage of Line and Naomi, and the one of Mary, described earlier: in both, the women would be received like chattel. For Line, Naomi is all sex, all excitement, all beauty. Their relationship, the several times we see it either in the progress of the novel or in Naomi's memory, is physical, never more or less. In much the same way, our hypothetical but all-too-real Mary was property to her husband-a thing rather than a human being. She was for him a breeder, a mother to his children, a shopper for his food, a washer of his clothes, a chauffeur of his automobiles, a wife who functioned best as an income-tax deduction. Neither Naomi nor Mary are women who know love; both are mere objects for their husbands. For if love is to be a real thing, a man and a woman must function together as two subjects. When their relation is that of a person and a thing, as a subject and an object, then there can be little hope for love. And the object of a man's lust, the bit of property on which he exerts his sexual urges, is a prostitute.
Now there are, as we have already noted, several kinds of prostitutes. Some kinds society despises, some kinds it condones, and some kinds it encourages. Naomi's ill luck was to be in the first category. Randy's society, his friends and acquaintances, his entire world, despised Naomi. Curiously, it is also Naomi's brand of prostitution which they most completely enjoy. But enjoyment of this sort may never take place in public. Naomi is to be despised by them for two basic reasons: she is a common whore; but more important, she is a black whore. Yet, black lust is precisely the kind of activity which these white respectable folk are most capable of perverting. In a scene which paints the depravity not of the prostitute, so-called, but of the blue-bloods and Brahmins who bring about the prostitute's fall, the inverted principle of honorable prostitution is portrayed at its starkest. For Naomi is certainly not the kind-hearted prostitute out of a Damon Runyon story; yet in comparison to the men whose moral deterioration knows few limits she is saintly and pure.
Respectable prostitutes, a breed of women more despicable and deadening than a half-dozen Nao-mis, are everywhere in this country. They have sold a birthright into which they had not yet grown at the time of the sale-their imagination, their potential as human beings. (It becomes necessary to add here: not only women are guilty of this form of prostitution. But I am stressing women here because Luck Changer is a novel about a woman, by a woman. Men no less than women sell out at a time of life when they still could revolutionize the tiny bits of world they live in. But, in the manner of
Betty Petterson, it is necessary to fight one battle at a time. And Naomi's battle is a difficult one.) But society itself has little desire to fight respectable prostitution-respectable prostitution has so long been encouraged by western society that it has become an integral part of the world which produced it. Only when prostitution, which is branded as a "bad thing," comes into the open in the person of a woman who openly sells her body, does society react. And in its reaction, it shows its own perversity.
It is important to note here that western Christian society is one of the very few which have in fact labeled prostitution this "bad thing." Many Oriental and African societies have recognized certain physical drives in humans to be potentially separate from love, marriage and procreation. In these societies, prostitution is elevated from the gutter to professional status. Women who are members of the profession are respected, and, according to their talents, honored. In these cases there is nothing despicable about open prostitution. However, when a society recognizes sexual drives as important and creates institutions to cope with these drives, institutions which are respectable, then the practitioners within the institutions themselves become decent members of society, alongside, let us say, dancers who also use their bodies to important, and creates institutions to cope with pleasure. The important measure is to avoid making the talents of the individual in question objects to be used and then discarded. When a woman is a thing, she is a prostitute. When an artist begins to sell his abilities to powers which destroy the principles he once stood for, he is a prostitute. When Naomi looks for a better life with Randy and sells herself to his whims and desires, even if she enjoys her work, she is a prostitute. When she attempts to return to Line because she senses a need to accept the fashionable ideas of black power and strength, she is again prostituting her need and desire for love to the momentary sexual act. Only when she meets her toad prince, does she ... But this is giving away the novel, taking away the reader's enjoyment in discovery.
This, then, is the story of a girl's search for love, without the realization of what she is searching for to act as her guide. She looks for love in sex, and is disappointed; although she finds her momentary pleasures, the goal of love is not reached. Men treat her, not as herself, Naomi, in search of love, but as a thing to be used. She becomes a prostitute without believing herself to be any such type; she grows to conscious awareness of herself as a prostitute only when she stops sleeping with black men-with those who enjoy her and what she enjoys. Her object-nature stands in relief only when she becomes the whore of a white man-she becomes conspicuous as one of those whom society despises because it has created her, a sensual voluptuous thing. Naomi's search begins in ignorance, passes through a state of discovery, and she becomes dissatisfied with herself-with what she has become. But as the search continues, and she attempts to return to the world she had known, she realizes it no longer exists, because she is different. She has lived through experiences which have made her conscious of the prostituted nature of her previous existence in the ghetto. Since she cannot move backward, she must go on; and the process of moving forward brings the novel to its conclusion.
More than the story of a prostitute who learns to see the nature of love, Luck Changer delineates the perversions of a society which could not live without its Naomis. But when it has them, after it has finished using them, it must destroy them in order to try to cleanse itself of the dirt and the disgrace its Naomis have uncovered.
-Seymour de Hukn, Ph.D.
CHAPTER ONE
He leaned against the door and watched Naomi as she moved about his apartment, familiarizing herself with the surroundings. Her bronzed skin contrasted with the decor. And then he laughed as she playfully plumped herself down into the deep, over-sized chair. She was still feeling the effects of a little too much alcohol, and the slur in her voice showed it.
"Nice place you got here. Must cost a lot of bread," she said, and her dark eyes twinkled mischievously. He answered with a shrug, unable to take his eyes off the tan show of her thighs that peeked from under the hiked-up skirt.
"Bread ... you know ... money ... dough! Guess you're not as hep as I thought you were," Naomi giggled again. Then she swung her legs up over the chair, and he averted his eyes at the sight of more tawny flesh.
"Oh yeah," he finally answered, "Money ... I guess it is a little expensive ... but I learned a long time ago that you pay for what you get...."
Naomi closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the chair. "Pay for what you get? You're right, Mister, so right! But that's why you brought me here, wasn't it? To get what you paid for! And that's why I let you pick me up! Bet it was the first time you were ever in a place on the South Side! Bet you were just slumming! Thought you'd change your luck!"
Head still tilted back, she opened her eyes slightly and studied him through the tiny slits. Sure, I know what you're thinking. Girls like me are different from white girls! Especially in bed! Bet you think that's all we do ... that's all we talk about ... making love! We all got a reputation as hot-pants broads ... like we can't live without it. Like we invented it! And that's why you came down to my side of the town ... to see if it's really true! Probably got yourself some nice frigid white girl who thinks she's doing you a favor every time she spreads her legs! Well, Mister, you're in for quite a surprise! A girl's a girl, no matter what her color. But I'm gonna give it to you like you never had it before! That's what you want and that's what you're gonna get! I'm going to show you what a woman's for!
Naomi opened her eyes all the way and smiled at him. A secret smile. "Where is it, Mister?" she asked brazenly.
"Where's what? And why don't you call me Randy? Make it a little more informal."
She nodded in agreement ... "that would be nice ... a little more informal ... Randy."
She said his name as if she were tasting it. And then she smiled, for it tasted good. Had a nice ring to it. A nice feel to it.
"Now tell me again, where is what?" he asked as he came away from the door and stood in the center of the room with his arms folded across his chest.
"The bedroom!"
Naomi said the words with her eyes locked hard on his face. And her lips curled in a tiny grin when she saw the muscles quiver in his cheek.
What's the matter, white boy ... am I too fast for you? Too quick? Isn't that what you expected from a girl like me!
Nervously, he pointed down a hall off the left side of the living room. "It's in there. But ... but...."
Naomi stood up, straightening her skirt down over her long tapering legs. Then she looked at him. "No buts, Randy, isn't that why you brought me here? It better be, because that's why I came here! To use your bedroom!" She felt warm inside as nervous embarrassment flickered across his face, and then as his eyes were unable to meet hers, she wanted to laugh.
You men! All the same ... lots of big talk until the chips are on the table! Or the chippies are on the sheets! Just like little boys! Well, little boy, you'd better grow up fast ... cause you're gonna get your first lesson!
Weaving slightly because of the liquor, Naomi followed his directions and moved down the hall toward the bedroom. She was aware that he hadn't followed her, but she no longer cared. She pushed her way through the door, and her eyes opened wide at the sight of the over-sized bed.
"Whee!" she laughed happily. "What a playground!"
She undressed quickly, peeling off her blouse over her long tawny arms, and then stepped out of her skirt. Still standing by the door, she reached behind her back and unhooked her brassiere, letting her full breasts fall free. Then, hooking her thumbs into the elastic band of her garter belt and-panties, she worked them down over her thighs and legs. Naked now, she turned on the soft light above the night stand before getting into the bed. Its illumination seemed to change the light brown of her flesh into streaks of gold. Then she pulled down the covers and oozed herself onto the white sheets. Stretched out full length and with her hands behind her head, she stared at the ceiling.
Why am I doing this? What am I doing in this man's bed? It's the first time I ever let a white man pick me up like this! I know he don't know that, but it's true! But why? She sat up and hugged her breasts with her long arms and looked around the room. The luxurious surroundings of the deep carpeting and the expensive furniture made her clutch herself tighter in delight.
This is why. Because it's nice here. And clean. Makes a person feel like a human being. Because I'm tired of looking at crummy furniture and dirty walls! Because by letting him pick me up I could escape from that run-down tenement! He doesn't know anything about things like that ... people like him never do ... not that it's his fault, but he can give me what I want! And all I've got to do is give him me what I want! And all he wants is me! He's got an image of what I'm like in bed. And all I got to do is make it happen for him! He thinks I'm wild ... untamed ... well, I'll show him how wild and untamed I can be!
Naomi stretched out on the bed as she heard Randy coming into the room. She closed her eyes, but she heard his breath escaping in soft rasps as he stood beside her staring down at her lush, tan body. Anticipating the hungry look on his face, Naomi moved her body seductively. She wanted him to want her. To be mad for her. To devour her with his eyes.
A mixture of emotions flooded Randy's mind as he gazed down at the gorgeous girl against the white sheets. Black women had always possessed a certain animal quality for Randy, and Naomi was no exception. Her slightly flared nostrils made Randy think of a tigress waiting for him, a hungry tigress ready to devour him. How many times had he looked at pretty black girls and felt an itch in his crotch-a longing to fuck? Now this beautiful bronze creature was all his!
His eyes roamed over her body,-taking in her heavy, pointed breasts capped with pinkish-brown nipples. He let his eyes move down to the tan of her crotch and he stared hard at the curly black hair that crested the thin, pink lips of her cunt. Randy's breath caught in his throat as he saw her spread her thighs slightly and arch her body so that the pink inner-flesh of her vagina was thrust at his eager eyes. My God, he thought, she wants it as badly as I do!
He'd never seen a girl like Naomi before. Her tawny skin seemed to ripple with a vibrant being he'd only dreamed of in a girl. The whites of her lovely eyes, sparkling ivory teeth, pink, darting tongue-all contrasted with her tan skin to emphasize her beauty. He could feel his cock straining against his shorts, pleading to be free to ravage the brown body before him. So black men are supposed to be real studs, Randy thought! Well, he'd give her something to compare them with, by god! He quickly pulled off his clothes and stood over her nude body.
Naomi watched him undress, his pink skin both fascinating and repelling her. His odor, like wash soap, permeated her nostrils and Naomi wondered what it would be like having a white man make love to her. She looked up at his white, pinkish cock with its bulbous red tip and almost had to suppress a giggle. It was the same shape as the Negro cock, but it looked so funny-so tender and delicate. The blue veins were emphasized along the shaft, and they throbbed as Naomi watched, but she couldn't believe that this pink stick could give her any pleasure. Somewhere along the line some black woman in her family had taken on a pink prick like this. That's why I'm the color I am today, Naomi said to herself. I wonder how she felt when she saw that pink cock? Did she love the man? Or did she just want to be fucked? Naomi watched Randy's hands move towards her body.
His tongue darted out of his mouth and licked his lips as he ran his hands over her tan tits, his fingers kneading the large nipples until they popped up taut and erect. The texture of her skin fascinated him, thrilled his fingers to the touch. It seemed like every pore was open, yet the texture was fine and smooth, like an expensive velvet. He saw a light brown arm dart out to his groin and then looked down to see her bronze fingers wrapped around his surging cock. She pulled the foreskin back and then popped it over the head with a thrilling movement of her swift, educated fingers.
Randy thought he would explode! It seemed that everything he had heard about Negro girls was true! Her hot hand felt like an electric machine milking his cock as he stood there above her playing with her hard nipples. His balls were throbbing and Randy vowed she would not find him wanting!
Naomi had to hold back a smile and a giggle. Whitey was ready. Was he ever ready! He believed the myth about Negro sexual prowess, and Naomi was going to leave him a living witness to just how great a colored girl could be. Lubricating fluids were oozing from his hard cock and Naomi felt her hand become wet and sticky. She could smell sex, that basic, musty odor that made human beings become animals for a brief span. It excited her, and Naomi marveled at that. Until that moment everything had been mechanical to her. She was here to fuck this white man silly, but suddenly she felt desire boiling in her own loins.
Randy pulled his hands from her heaving breasts and lowered them to her crotch. Firmly, he spread her legs apart so that her whole cunt spun its web before his hungry eyes. He let his finger slide down between the wet lips of her pussy and the touch of that warm inner flesh sent a shudder racing through him. He pulled his finger up and down the slit, teasing the already erect bud of her clitoris each time he passed. Then he savagely sunk his middle finger deep inside her cunt.
"Aauugghh!" she moaned as it worked into her innermost depths. She squeezed his cock in return, and she raised her body and leaned out so that her lips touched the head of his cock. Her tongue lashed out and swiped across the bright-pink meat of his prick. Her other hand snaked up between his legs and grasped his balls to work them as she licked and teased the length of his shaft with her demanding tongue and hungry lips. Naomi pursed her mouth into an O and slowly pulled his hard cock inside to cover it with the wet warmth of her cheeks.
"Oooohhh!" Randy gasped. She's sucking my cock! Good God! No girl's ever done that to me before. He stood there, his cock sunk deep in her throat, and watched her lips nibble at the heavy pubic hair at the base as she tried to completely devour him. Her soft, black hair cascaded down her face and flew freely in the air as she bobbed in and out to eat his prick with her hungry mouth. Randy finger-fucked her and rubbed her clitoris with his thumb, but he felt his body weakening and knew that he would soon be beyond the point of no return in her mouth. Then she'd have a trophy to tell people about-a white man who'd shot his load when she first started kissing it. No! By God, she was going to be fucked!
He pulled away from her, his cock coming out of her sucking mouth with a loud plopping sound as he broke the suction. She tried to follow him, but Randy held her to the bed and climbed between her legs. The sight of her dark skin against his white excited him and drove him to jam his prick deep up in her belly, but Randy held back. This girl would have a story to tell, all right, but it would be about a white man who fucked her until she couldn't stand it any more. He spread the lips of her cunt with his fingers and began fondling her clitoris between the thumb and forefinger of one hand while he finger-fucked her hard with his middle digit of the other hand.
"Oooh! Man, you're driving me crazy! Fuck me! Fuck me!" she moaned. Get that little pink cock up inside me before I go out of my mind, she said to herself! Come on, Whitey, fuck this colored girl. That's what you brought me here for-now give it to me! Those fingers are driving me crazy!"
Randy watched her moan and groan as he played with her, her breasts heaving up from her chest and perspiration breaking out to glisten on her bronze brow. He was working her cunt with everything he had, and he knew he had her where he wanted her.
She was a hot bitch, and she'd break long before he did!
Suddenly their eyes met and a realization broke in their minds. Naomi saw the difference in their color melt before her eyes. Randy wasn't Whitey any longer. He was a man-and she was a woman! Randy knew it as if he had been struck by a sharp knife cutting through his conscience. This was more than a Negress, more than a girl to be fucked. This was something special, something that had never happened before in his life.
Naomi's hands shot up and grabbed his cock and pulled him to her.
"Fuck me, Randy. I mean really fuck me!"
Her legs opened wider and her knees flew up in the air so that they came down against her chest. She arched her body so that her cunt gaped at him, and then she pulled his cock down so that the tip rested inside the hot lips of her brown slit. Randy braced his knees on the bed and fell against her, ramming his cock its full length up inside her belly. He felt his heavy, throbbing balls bounce against her firm ass as he began pumping his cock to her like a hard piston. The warm, moist flesh of her vagina wrapped around his cock and held it firmly as it slid in and out.
"Aahh!" she groaned through clenched teeth as she felt him race through her cuntal passage and the head of his cock lodge itself against her uterus. It had never been like this before, and Naomi was frightened. What they were doing transcended sex, went beyond anything she had ever experienced before. She couldn't understand it. The whole thing was beyond her power to reason. But Naomi's mind knew one thing: she wouldn't let him go. She flexed her cunt muscles and gripped his cock with all of her force. Then she pulled her head up between her widespread legs and reached up with her hands to grab his hair and pull his mouth down against hers. Their tongues met in fire and passion, and their lips and teeth ground together.
An almost mystic quality gripped them both. They let themselves go like they never had before. Randy's body beat against her open crotch, their pubic mounds grinding together and matted hair tangled in knots, and Naomi thrust up to meet his hard lunge.
What's happening to me, Naomi cried inside? It's always been so mechanical and now I'm lost-gone-on the wildest trip any girl ever took! She became an animal, dug her nails into his back with one hand and reached around her ass with her other to grab his flailing balls and grip them tight.
Randy had been holding on by a fine line, and when he felt her hand grab his balls he lost all control. He felt the head of his cock swell up, and then begin to shoot hot spurts of come deep inside her. Naomi's hand milked his balls, pumping every last drop far up her vagina as she began to enter the spasms of her own orgasm. Her ankles wrapped around Randy's neck and gripped his mouth against hers. Naomi's body became a quivering mass beneath him.
"Aaaiiieee!" she screamed as her climax gripped her and threw her body into small convulsions.
Their muscles strained as their bodies locked in a final earth-shaking embrace, and then they both turned to molten liquid. Naomi felt her consciousness slip away from her slowly. Never before had there been one like this. Never before had she so completely given herself to anyone! She felt her body melt back into the mattress, every muscle gone, every ounce drained from her. That sweet, pink cock filling her cunt. The warm juice running down her leg. Those heavy balls resting on her ass. This was all Naomi could sense, and she fell down into a deep, peaceful slumber, a smile of completion-surrender-making her face radiantly beautiful.
CHAPTER TWO
Leaning on his elbow, Randy looked down at the sleeping Naomi. There was a serene smile on her face and her breathing was soft and shallow. His eyes roamed over her spent body and once again he felt the flicker of desire licking at his being. Gently he reached for her and gently he stroked her breasts; she moaned quietly in her sleep. Then his fingers patted softly at her hair and she purred genuine contentment.
"Beautiful! Never saw a body like hers! And a face to go with it. And she gave it all to me ... with no holding back! That's never happened to me before. Never!"
Randy continued to study her, and as he did, his mind recreated his relations with other women. Cold women. Demanding women. Selfish women. For the first time, he had tasted the fruits of complete sharing, and it had left him amazed and enthralled. And captivated.
Never had a woman like her before! And she did it because she wanted to. I don't promise her a thing ... she was the way she was because of her own desires! And maybe because of me! But I don't care why she did it! All I know is that she was wonderful!
Quietly, so as not to disturb Naomi, he eased himself out of the bed. In the bathroom, he showered quickly, and then dressed. And all the while, his thoughts were of the sleeping girl in his bed.
"Maybe all colored girls are like her ... I don't know ... I only know what she was like! And that I need a woman like her ... I need Naomi!
Surprised because of the confession, he studied his reflection in the mirror, whispering "I want her ... not just for one night ... but for more than that! I need her!"
And he did need her. For Randy Harcourt had never had a good relationship with a woman. There were times when he thought he did, only to discover later that he was being used or that his attraction was because of his wealth. But no girl had ever desired him because of himself. And he hungered for it. That was the reason that he had gone to the south side bar that night. Loneliness, coupled with disappointment because of a broken romance, had made him seek the company of strangers to help him forget. Naomi had seen the empty expression of his face as he sat at the bar. And partly out of compassion and partly out of her own loneliness, she had joined him. Obviously enjoying each other's company, they had ignored the belligerent stares of the other customers of seeing the white man and the black girl together. And while they had talked and laughed, Randy had become more and more aware of her beauty. And of her sensu-ousness, of the aroma of sex which seemed to exude from her body. And as the hours passed, the tongue of desire had licked at him and he became conscious of his yearning for her. Courage, brought on by alcohol, had enabled him to make the invitation.
"How about going to my apartment?" he had said with false bravado. Naomi had looked at him before answering, cocking her head to one side as if studying him. And she had seen a lonely man. A nice man. A man completely different from any she had ever known. Obviously well-off. Well-mannered, considerate and gracious of her. She too, had felt the physical attraction. And though she felt that he had wanted her because of his belief of the sexual prowess of colored girls, she didn't care. She was as tired of her life as Randy was of his. Of the drabness and the sameness and the hopelessness. And so she had agreed to his proposition.
"Okay," she had answered. "I'll go with you to your apartment ... and you won't be disappointed!"
And he wasn't....
As he stood there combing his hair and looking into the mirror, he no longer wanted a one-night stand with Naomi. He no longer looked on her as a fast roll in the hay. He now looked on her as a girl who was appealing and attractive. A girl whose sexual appetite matched his. A girl that he could ... that he could ... but he couldn't bring himself to say the word love....
But I want her, he told himself. I want her here!
With me! Not just for one night ... but for more than that! I want to spoil her and make her laugh and do all the other things that men do for women!
But he knew it wasn't that simple. He realized the difference between them and the obstacles that it created. And so his mind searched for a solution. An answer. And finally he found one.
He went back into the bedroom and sat down in a chair opposite her. While she continued to sleep he studied her. And the more he watched, the more convinced he was of the solution.
"If she'll only say yes," he whispered to himself. "I've got to make her say yes!"
And it was then that Naomi woke up. Her dark eyes fluttered open and she smiled a lazy smile at the sight of Randy in the chair opposite her. Then she sat up and stretched her arms over her head and the movement accentuated the lift of her breasts and the sensuousness of her body. And Randy licked his lips in nervous anticipation.
"Naomi," he began nervously, "there's something-something I want to ask you."
She didn't know why, but she was afraid of what he was going to ask. Afraid that he wanted her to go. Afraid that he had realized that he made a social mistake. And so her body tensed and she shivered in anticipation of his words.
"What is it ... Randy?" she asked huskily. "What do you want to ask me?"
He got out of the chair and came over to the bed. Nervously, he took her hand in his and began to stroke it gently. It was then that Naomi realized she was naked, and something made her pull the sheet up over her body. Somehow it didn't seem right that she should flaunt herself at him any longer.
"Go ahead," she urged. "Say it ... tell me whatever you want to tell me."
"Naomi...." he began nervously ... "I want you to ... to ... stay here!"
The meaning of his words pricked into her consciousness and she licked her lips. "You mean ... you mean ... live here? Live with you?"
His answer was a quick, nervous nod of his head.
And then the meaning became clear to her. "You mean be your ... your mistress ... don't you?" she said in a loud voice.
The word sounded dirty, the way she used it, and he quickly shook his head. "Don't say it like that!" he ordered. "It's not like that at all!"
"How is it then?" she laughed. "How is it?"
His lips clenched in a tight line before he answered. "I need you, Naomi!" he said hurriedly. "You're so ... you're so ... warm. I never had a woman like you before!"
I'll bet you haven't, mister! Because I never gave myself to a man like that before! And I never felt that way before. I don't know what it is you've got, but I always knew with the right man I could really let myself go! So maybe you are the right man!
She looked around the room again. At the lux-uriousness of it. At the warmth and comfort. And then she remembered the shabbiness of her own home and she shuddered. She had always dreamed of living like this. Secure. Comfortable. But it had always been just a dream. She had given up the idea that it would ever happen years ago. But it was happening! He was offering it to her! All of this ... the security ... the comfortableness ... clothes ... everything ... it could all be hers for just one thing. Her body.
And what was so bad about that? He had thrilled her as no man had ever thrilled her before. Had awakened her flesh with delights that she had only sensed, but had never known. So why not? Anyway she looked at it, it was a good bargain! A good deal!
"All right," she said in a low voice. "I'll live here with you! I'll be your ... your mistress! And just to show you that it isn't all one-sided, I'll live up to my part of the bargain right now...!"
Then slowly she edged the sheet down and offered her body to him.
Hungrily, his eyes ate her flesh. Then, with a soft cry, he reached for her. His hands felt good upon her breasts, his fingers squeezing her hardening nipples until her face winced with pleasure and a moan escaped her lips.
The musky odor of his after-shave lotion filled her nostrils, stimulating her more. It had a rich, suggestive odor that caused her to snuggle closer as the excitement of forbidden naughtiness rippled through her.
Writhing beneath him, her body out of control, her fingers ran over the body of her lover as she pressed herself to him. She could hear his breathing becoming heavier in her ear as his hands came between them to clasp and massage her breasts while reaching down with his right hand to the mound of her dampening pubic hair at her crotch. Her legs spread willingly and shivered as his gentle fingers worked themselves inside the pink edges of her swelling cunt lips. She murmured incoherently as his fingers slipped in and out of the lubricated labia.
Her legs jack-knifed around the invading hand spurring the sweating body atop her to pursue his task more feverishly. Three fingers were pushing into the hungry, pink folds with a soft, sucking noise and a soft moan of pleasure purred from Naomi's lips.
In another moment of feverish struggle, he was stripped naked and his bare, moist flesh pressed into hers. She was glad and pulled him tightly between her open thighs, her knees drawing to the deep cushions of her breasts.
Eyes and teeth clenched as she writhed beneath his fingers, driven by uncontrollable passion, she whispered fiercely, "Give it to me, man! Now-now!"
Randy was kneading her breasts more vigorously, the swollen tits throbbing with his caresses. She snuggled beneath, grinding her pelvis into his hard, expanding cock. His fingers rotated over the mounds of her vagina, creeping back to its entrance.
Excitement left her cunt, and the crevice of her buttocks was soaked. Closing her thighs about the probing hand she resigned herself to the rolling sensations of pleasure coursing through her body. His fingers rotated within the wet valley of her pussy until she thought she would go out of her mind.
The odor of their combined sexes and the spilling juices of her hot pussy left Randy crazed. In the shadowy room with only the sound of their heavy panting and his groans intermittent with her soft mewlings he found himself fervently applying all his masculinity to the task of making love to this golden goddess beneath him.
Whimpering with her own razor-sharp need, she made her hungry cunt suck at his flesh, her legs quivering against the pulsating swells of her breasts.
In answer, his hot, stiff prick lunged into the greedy cunt, pushing deep and hard through the tender folds of flesh.
"Eeeuuunnnhhh!" she cried with the impalement, her long, slender fingers clawing at his back.
The sudden entry of his hard male flesh slithering deep up inside her caused her to cringe. Then she was with him again, her throbbing pussy meeting his every twist and thrust.
He penetrated her so deeply on the first thrust their short pubic hair twisted and tangled together as he ground his pelvis tightly down into her loins. The soft skin of his testicles brushed teasingly against the now widely exposed lips of her soft sensitive anus nestled just below their wet coupling. Without waiting he began sliding in and out of her with long desperate thrusts. She arched her back, unable to hold herself back. Her blood pounded through her veins like hot, molten lead, and she could feel every tiny ripple of skin around his warm, lunging penis as it raced madly in and out between her spread thighs. She jerked her legs from her tits and wrapped them around his waist, her heels beating on the hollowing cheeks of his buttocks like a drum. And then, almost as suddenly as it began, she began a roller coaster ride of orgasms, one right after another until she felt his cock begin jerking deep down inside her womb and the warm hot spurts of his sperm flooded inside her with the hard-driving force of his spending passion.
"God, Naomi, that was beautiful," he gasped into her ear, his body still quivering on top of her. Then he was still.
She vaguely remembered her own soft cry of ecstasy at the summit of their union, the force of his driving cock barreling into her narrow channel gushing its burning load of come into her belly. Her body still held him clenched to her cunt as if to milk the already deflated prick and shrunken balls that swung free against her rounded buttocks.
With the sound of rubbery, wet suction, he pulled his spent cock from her still-clinging cunt. He fell wearily upon her gasping, moaning body, content with the soft caress of firm breasts and wet pubic mound digging into his hot flesh.
The odor of their sexual sweat and male, female scents mingled with the fragrance of his expensive cologne and her cheap department store perfume. It was the last thing Naomi noticed as she went into a blissful slumber with him. Somehow it was comforting.
CHAPTER THREE
"You mean you're going to move in with that ... that ... white man!"
"That's right, Ma!" Naomi said over her shoulder as she reached into the closet and pulled the dresses off their hangers. Then she hurriedly packed them into the suitcase on the small bed.
"But why! Why?" her mother insisted from the door.
"Why! To get away from this! That's why!" Now seated on the bed, Naomi cried out the words, looking contemptuously around the small room. Her mother's eyes followed hers, taking in the peeling wallpaper, the dingy-scarred furniture, and the cardboard that was used to cover up the broken window panes.
"I want to live nice for a change! Have nice things. Feel warm and clean ... and ... and ... wanted!"
"That's not why he's doing it and you know it, Naomi!" her mother said with a sad shake of her head. "It's just that you're a ... a ... mulatto ... and you know what white men think of mulatto girls! Do you think he'd have made the offer if you were darker? You know he wouldn't!"
"I don't care! I don't care why he's doing it!" Naomi shouted. "I only know he's doing it ... and that's all that matters to me!"
Her mother came over to the bed and forced Naomi to look into her face. She tried to look away, but the strong hand under her chin prevented it-the skin rough with the labor of years of scrubbing floors to feed them scratched Naomi's face poignantly.
"You're no better than a whore ... a prostitute, if you go through with this, Naomi! You're selling your body for some nice clothes and a decent place to live!"
"I don't care! I don't care!" Naomi screamed. "It's the only chance I'll ever have to get out of this! To live a better life! And I'm going to take it!"
Her mother's hand snaked out and slapped against the naked cheek, leaving the stain of her finger marks against Naomi's flesh. Naomi clutched at the hurt and began to cry hysterically.
"But I didn't raise you to be a whore!" the older woman said in a loud voice. "You're a good girl! And now yOu're going to ruin your life....
"I gave you religion. Worked hard every day of my life to feed and clothe you after your Daddy died. Tried to show you how to get satisfaction out of your life between God and hard work.
"Naomi, there ain't no more out there for a Negro girl, no matter how light-skinned she is. No matter how pretty she is! Don't you know by now that there's no place out their for a black woman beyond hate, abuse, hard work, and being used for the white man's own ends. No one outside the boundaries of the black people give a damn about you, Naomi! Even with a few drops of white man's blood and light skin, you've got none of the rights or future that your white cousins do. You're a nigger to them. A nigger! And you always will be. Ain't no one going to make you white or privileged not ever, so long as there's one ounce of black man's blood in you!"
Naomi threw herself down on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. "I don't care what you say!" she sobbed. "I'm going to do it no matter what! I want to do it. I have to do it! Can't you understand, I have to do it?"
"Have to do what?" the deep voice queried from the door.
Her mother turned to look at the intruder.
But Naomi didn't have to look. She knew from the sound of the voice who it was. It was Lincoln Potter, the man she had planned to marry.
CHAPTER FOUR
"What did you call her a whore for?" he asked her mother as he stood in the doorway, dark and glowering. "Nobody can speak that way about the girl I'm going to marry!"
The small, round woman looked at her daughter and then at the man in the doorway. Looking back at Naomi, her face darkened with anger and she pushed past him and left the room.
"Ask her why I called her a whore!" she snapped at him over her shoulder. "Ask her!"
Lincoln waited until the heavy sound of her mother's footsteps had faded down the hall before he spoke. Then he said the words in a low deadly tone.
"You haven't taken any money from a man for ... for anything, have you?"
Naomi knuckled the tears out of her eyes and sat up on the edge of the bed. "No, Line, I haven't taken any money from any man," she told him wearily.
"Then what's this all about?" he demanded.
Naomi looked at him and then shook her head in slow resignation. How do I tell him the truth without hurting him! Line's a good man ... but it just isn't enough. Not anymore! But how do I make him understand that it's not his fault?" That it's not anyone's fault. How do I make him know that?
It was then that he became aware of the suitcases on her bed, and his reaction was quick and painful. "You going away?" he asked with a hurt expression.
"Yes, I'm going away," Naomi answered in a tired voice.
"Where? Where you going?" he demanded.
"Just away, Line. Just away." She couldn't say more than that, and she hoped he would accept the limited explanation. But he didn't.
"Where you going? I want to know where you're going? We're supposed to be getting married in three months, and I've got a right to know where you're going!"
Naomi got up from the bed and went over to the dressing table and began to put on her lipstick.
Angrily he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "Never mind that now! he snarled at her. "You're gonna be my wife, and I want to know what you're up to!"
Somehow the touch of his huge hand on her shoulder made her shudder. Somehow it repulsed her. And when she blurted out the words-it was because she wanted to hurt him.
"I'm not going to be your wife! Not in three months ... not ever!"
The shock of her words pinched his face into lines of agony and his hand dropped limply to his side.
"What do you mean you're not going to marry me? What's wrong, Naomi? Tell me what's wrong!"
The image of Randy Harcourt shattered into her consciousness. And of his offer. The clothes. The apartment. Everything. And when she responded, it was a wry smile.
"Nothing's wrong, Line. For the first time in my life, everything's right!"
He shook his head in confusion.
"What do you mean by that?" he said in a shaky tone. "Tell me what you mean by that?"
Neither of them had heard the return of her mother and they greeted the words from the door with shocked expressions.
"She means she's gonna live with a white man! That's what she means! She's just sold herself to him!"
Line paled at the words and quickly turned to Naomi for verification.
"Is that right, Naomi? You're gonna live with a white man?"
Naomi bowed her head and nodded.
Why does it sound so rotten when they say it like that? So dirty! It's not like that at all! I haven't changed ... I'm still a good girl. Can't they see that?
In his anger, Line grabbed her shoulders and began to shake her. "Why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? I love you! I want to marry you! What's he offering you besides shame and hate from whites and blacks alike?"
Once again she flinched under his touch and then she shook free from his grasp. Once again she wanted to hurt him.
"He's offering everything, everything you can't!" she cried. "I don't want to live like this anymore! I want nice things ... good things! And you can't give them to me! You'll never be able to give them to me!"
From the look on his face, she knew that she had hurt him. And now she wished that she could take back the words. But it was too late. And when he finally spoke, it was as if he were trying to get even with her.
"And that's why you're selling yourself to some white man?"
"Don't say that!" she screamed at him. "Don't say that I'm selling myself. I'm not! I'm not!"
"You are! Your mother's right. You're no better than a whore! You're worse than a whore! Because at least a whore is honest about what she's doing!"
His rage and his hurt suddenly erupted into blind fury and he slapped her hard on her face. There was a stunned silence because of what he had done, and then, with a cry, Naomi's mother ran from the room. Line stood facing Naomi, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
He was a tall, muscular man, a hard worker who could bring himself no higher than the other Negro boys he graduated from high school with, even in a northern, supposedly liberal, state like Massachusetts. There were just some things that a black boy couldn't change, some levels he couldn't hope to attain, not because he wasn't capable of doing better or the white man loved him less. It just wasn't expected of him to do better, and anyone who broke that mold could well plan on being a "bad Negro," a trouble-maker.
Line knew where he stood. He'd always known. With athletic prowess he'd be cheered on and petted even by the whites, but he couldn't sit with them at the victory dinners held in Boston's better night clubs. When an injury had come to his knee, ending his hopes of becoming a part of the Celtic team, he'd had to retire alone to the silent streets and lonely, rushing crowds to find a job that "suited his talents." Menial labor with no hope of promotion or improvement in any way-that was his lot in life.
The only thing that had ever offered him hope was something that frightened Naomi. She'd have no part of it. God had done nothing to make her mother's life any easier. Why should the religion of Allah do any more for Line? He'd been with the Muslims for three years now. He wasn't an unknown in the group, and had a part in the building movement that was catching up the black countryside. A part of the more active members like Harlem's notorious Mau Maus, his life was occupied with the status of the Negro, not with keeping in one piece and spoiling a wife. The fears, bloodshed, and police battles that went with his life, no matter how non-violent the Muslims were supposed to be-the whites wouldn't stand by for any of their efforts, peaceable or otherwise, on behalf of a minority group-were not a life that Naomi wanted to face. She would flee first to a less hostile world to try to find the gifts she wanted of life. To have them bloodstained and soaked in tears were not worth having at all.
Indignant and hurt at being struck by him, she no longer cared about his feelings. She only knew that she wanted to lash back at him. To hurt him as he had hurt her. To get even.
Deliberately and provocatively, she undressed in front of him. Her hard eyes never left his face as she removed her clothing. And she smiled with satisfaction as she saw the flicker of desire build within him.
Now completely nude, she plunged the knife of vengeance in and twisted it.
Flaunting her body at him with an upward thrust of her breasts and a gyration of her pelvis, she said, "Maybe I'm a whore, and maybe I'm not, but you'll never find out again! Take a good look at me, Line..a good look ... cause it's the last look you're ever gonna get! Wanna feel! Wanna touch? Go ahead, because it's the last time you're going to do it! Unless you got the price!"
Her laugh was bitter as she watched him quiver with anger.
"Even a Muslim will never get the price," she taunted him. "I'm going over to where the money is. Why waste your blood and sweat on something that'll never come to a nigger boy!"
His open-handed blow across her face sent her head-long across the bed. Then with a sigh of regret his hand dropped limply to his side.
Without saying a word, he turned on his heels and walked out of the room. The hysterical laughter followed him down the dark, crowding hall and out the front door.
Still laughing, Naomi looked at the watch on the dresser.
"An hour before I meet Randy. Just thirty more minutes, and then I'll be out of this forever!"
She was still laughing as she began to dress. It wasn't until after she'd finished and had lifted her suitcases from the bed that she stopped.
Then she looked around the room for one last time, and the laughter turned to tears. She ran down the dank, narrow hall and out of the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Should I put on my bra, or shouldn't I?" Naomi mused as she examined herself in the mirror in the dressing room. "Really don't need it with this dress, but that salesgirl would flip if I came out without it!" She laughed.
And then with a shrug, she bent over and scooped her breasts into the lace brassiere before hooking it behind her back. Now clad in bra and half-slip, she struggled into the expensive dress and tugged the zipper up its full length.
Padding the wrinkles over her thighs and legs, she straightened the garment before walking into the showroom. Randy, seated in a chair, was talking to the salesgirl who hovered nervously over him while they waited for her to return.
Naomi minced her way toward him and then pirouetted seductively.
"Do you like it, Randy?" she asked. "How do I look?"
His eyes feasted over her body and he laughed happily.
"Great! Like a million dollars! But do you like it?"
Do I like it! What kind of a question is that to ask? I never had a dress like this before in my life! Not one that fits this way, nor one that costs so much! And to him it's like a game ... clothing me ... dressing me. I love it! Oh, how I love it!
"I like it, Randy," she said in a low voice, trying not to show her eagerness. "I like it very much!"
"And how about those others?" he asked, pointing to the rack wherjj the salesgirl had hung the dresses she had tried on previously. "Do you like them, too?"
Turning to the salesgirl, Randy clapped his hands excitedly and said, "Then we'll take them all. Just wrap them up and we'll take them with us. Everyone of them!"
The salesgirl smiled a pasted-on smile and removed the dresses from the rack. Then she turned to Naomi and said, "If you take that one off, I'll have it wrapped, too."
"No!" Randy interrupted, "I want her to wear that one ... she looks great in it!"
The salesgirl looked at him with obvious disdain.
"But she hasn't got the accessories to go with it. You know ... shoes, gloves, handbag, ... A woman's only partially dressed if she doesn't have the accessories."
"Then get them for her!" he ordered. "If that's what she needs, get them!"
Naomi saw the quivering of the muscles in the salesgirl's cheek and she realized that the girl was about to say something. From the look on her face it was something unpleasant. But then she obviously thought better of it and, turning sharply on her heel, she strode briskly away from them and went toward the shoe department. Naomi saw her whisper something to the clerk on duty, and then the two of them glanced back into the dress department with contemptuous looks.
She doesn't like me. I know she doesn't. It's not that she doesn't like me, it's that she doesn't like me here with Randy! I could tell it from the way she's treated me ... like I don't belong here. And I know the only reason she waited on me was because of Randy.
The hurt welled up into her throat and Naomi fought to keep the tears from appearing in her eyes. Her back stiffened with pride as Randy looked at her and then she turned away from him, pretending to busy herself by examining some other dresses.
"What's the matter, Naomi?" he asked in a low voice. "What's wrong?"
"N ... nothing!" Nothing's wrong, Randy."
"You can't kid me, Naomi ... I know when something's bothering you. Now tell me what it is!"
She shook her head with pretended emphasis.
"Really, there's nothing wrong! Guess I'm just tired. That's all. Tired. Let's not wait for the other things. Let's go home right now!"
He studied her with a tilt to his head and agreed to her request when he saw the look in her face.
"All right, Naomi, we'll go home now," he said in a soft voice.
And then, after giving instructions to the salesgirl as to where to send the clothes, he took her by the elbow and they walked out of the store. It seemed to Naomi as if he were deliberately holding her close. Deliberately flaunting her to the customers and the sales personnel of the exclusive dress shop.
"Are you sure you want to go right home?" he asked as he held the door open for her.
"Yes. That's where I want to go. To the apartment!"
Then, head held high, she walked out into the street.
Of course, that's where I want to go. That's the only place in the world I'm safe. Even though it was sweet of him to take me shopping, he doesn't know what everybody's thinking when they see me with him. But I know! They can't hide their looks from me! That's why I want to go back to the apartment ... that's where I'm safe from them! There, he can hold me and make me feel wanted and nobody can say a word! Nobody can give me those dirty looks! That's where he can take away all the hurt! Oh, hurry, Randy. Let's hurry!
As she sat stiffly at his side in the taxi, her hand clenched tightly about his, she knew there was only one way to wash away that hurt. That was to make love. For then she would feel wanted again.
As soon as the door closed behind them, she threw herself into Randy's arms. Her mouth hungrily sought his and her lips bruised him with desperation.
"Take me! Take me!" she pleaded with him, her face now buried in his chest.
Eagerly he pulled her into his arms, his hands went over her body, nursing her yearning and need into desire. She tensed at the touch of his hands on her breasts and his fingers on her nipples. And then as he caressed her, she began to undress in clumsy impatience.
With her eyes closed tightly, her trembling fingers fumbled with her zippers and buttons, and, still hugging him close, she awkwardly worked her way out of her clothes.
Standing in her bra and half-slip, she clutched him to her. Her body rubbed his and she thrilled to the sensations that began to awaken.
Her eyes were closed and she felt him pull her down to the deep carpeting. Then she reached for him, and she thrilled to the feel and touch of his body. Her fingers were all thumbs as she sought to undress him, and she heard him laugh as he helped her.
"Hurry! Please hurry. I need you ... I need you now!" Naomi pleaded.
And then she felt him crouching over her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she pulled him closer. Somehow he worked her under-garments free of her waist and hips and she tugged it off her thighs with long thrusts of her legs and feet. Her breasts were free as he plucked the brassiere from her body. She squirmed and writhed under him at the feel of his mouth on her breasts and her nipples quickly erected into small mountains.
"Want me! Oh, please want me!" she said desperately into his throat.
And his answer was to stroke and play and toy with her body.
She quivered and moaned with each touch and she clung to him as if afraid of separation.
Deeper and deeper her desire mounted. Higher and higher, her sensations climbed. And now there was no stopping. Her tawny flesh shivered with each touch ... with each stroke ... and she gasped in delight at the pleasure.
She had never wanted him so much as she did at this moment. Every movement showed it. Every response made him aware of it. And he reacted quick-
She could feel the reaction between her fingers. Feel the pulsing and the throbbing. And with the velvet touch in her hand, she lost all control.
"Now! Don't wait. Do it now!"
He took her into his arms as his loins rammed into her cunt.
She felt as if a hot poker was ripping her apart and the shock of it tore a gasp from her throat. Quivering and shaking with frenzied delight, she lunged forward as if to suck him into her being. Her hips and buttocks gyrated in slow undulations under him and with her hands on him, she forced his movements to match hers.
And then the passion swept over and freed her.
She lost all control and her body became a wild thing. Lunging and pressing and tearing and smothering him. Her breathing became quick and heavy and her fingers racked long, red trails down his back. Her white teeth clawed at his shoulder with each shudder of pain and delight. And then there were no limits to the twisting and writhing and pumping of her body....
And then in one awful moment of heat and pain and agony, the sun exploded deep within her being!
"Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" She screamed into his throat. "Make me know it! OH, MAKE ME KNOW IT!"
He increased the cadence and the ferociousness of his movements and each twinge brought the after-shock of delight. His driving prick cut into her sensitive flesh, bringing pain and bliss that drove her frantic.
Her demanding cunt gnawed at him until the last drop of come exploded its molten sperm within her belly. Panting, she sucked dry his rigid cock and left his balls deflated, clamoring their lost fertility dance against her up-turned buttocks.
Their mixed love juices flowed with sticky warm wetness around his shrunken cock, down the crevice of her buttocks and over his testicles as they rubbed rhythmically against her tightly puckered anus.
When he finally withdrew himself noisily from her satiated pussy, she demanded, "It was good, wasn't it?"
Her eyes probed for his in the darkness.
"Say it was good!" she gasped. "Tell me it was good!"
He's got to tell me it was. He's got to! It's the only way I have of knowing that everything is all right. That I belong here! What else have I got that he wants ... nothing! This is the only thing I can offer him ... my body ... myself!-That's why he's got to tell me it was good! That's why he's got to say it was all right!
"It was good, Naomi. It was better than good!" he whispered huskily with his head cushioned on her breasts. "It was wonderful!"
Her eyes closed in satisfaction and relief. And at that moment the hurt vanished. For at that moment she knew complete acceptance.
He lifted his face from her breasts and smiled weakly at her.
"You're amazing!" he said in a limp voice. "You're wild! You're the wildest woman I've ever known! Don't ever ... ever take it away from me!"
"I won't," she answered. "I won't!"
Then she cradled his head back on her breasts and there was a smile of satisfaction on her face. She held him that way, her hands gently stroking and soothing him. And then, when she became aware of the beginnings of his response, her hands reached for his again. He moaned as se touched him and she could feel his body quiver with the delight.
"I'll never take it away from you, Randy," she said as his mouth sought hers. "Never! Never!"
CHAPTER SIX
"What's keeping that damn waiter!" Randy said, exasperated, looking around the half-empty restaurant. "If we don't get served soon, we're going to be late for that party!"
Nervously, Naomi tapped a cigarette on her fingernail and then followed his glance around the room. She had always wanted to dine in the famous evening spot and when Randy had asked her where she would like to eat that evening, she had quickly named the big Boston restaurant. But now she regretted it.
She had regretted it the moment they had walked in and the maitre d' had come over to them. She could tell from the way he looked at her that she didn't belong. In his disdain and his almost insulting manner, it was apparent. And the only reason he had seated them was because of Randy. Randy with his big, fat checkbook and his influential name. Poor, innocent Randy. He hadn't noticed anything wrong. But Naomi had noticed.
She had noticed the isolated table the maitre d' had given them. Had noticed the stony, insulting glances of the other diners. Had noticed the almost insolent manner of the waiters who served them. And had noticed how other diners were being seated away from their area.
It was as if they were surrounded by a fence of leprosy.
Randy nervously played with a pack of matches and made small talk. Occasionally, he would glance at his wrist watch and then off in the direction of the kitchen. Finally he couldn't stand it any longer and began to get up from the table.
"I'm going to find out what's keeping that waiter. We've been here for almost an hour now and he still hasn't brought the rest of our dinner. Something's wrong and I'm going to find out what it is!"
Naomi put her hand on his wrist and stopped him.
"Don't you know what's wrong, Randy?" she asked in a low voice. He shook his head.
"No. All I know is we're going to be late for that party unless I find out what's wrong!"
Naomi took a deep breath and gave him the answer.
"I'm what's wrong, Randy! Me!"
"You! What do you mean ... you?"
A wave of her hand took in the entire room.
"They don't want me here. The only reason they let us in is because of you. Can't you see what they're thinking from the looks on their faces! I'm not good enough for them!"
Then her voice dropped to a low whisper.
"They only think I'm good for one thing ... and you know what that is. That's the only reason I'm with you as far as they're concerned!"
There was sadness in her face as she looked up at him.
Anger squeezed his lips into a thin hard line.
"Well. I'm not going to let them get away with that. If I have to, I'll force you down their throats!" he breathed vehemently.
Naomi's eyes squeezed closed in despair. She said the words to the white tablecloth in front of her.
"But I don't want to be forced down anyone's throat, Randy. I just want to be treated like any one else ... like a human being!"
But he wouldn't listen, and shaking her hand from his wrist, he rose to his feet and belligerently strode over to the maitre d'. From the angry expression on his face, Naomi could tell what he was saying. There was no argument from the man ... he merely shrugged insolently and nodded. Then he walked toward the kitchen as Randy returned to the table.
Don't make it happen that way, Randy. Please don't make it happen that way! You can't change them-nothing can change them. To people like that, I'm a whore! If not a whore, then a mistress. They think that the only reason you're with me is because I'm beautiful, and good in bed. Can't you see that, Randy! So don't look at them. Don't react to them! Make believe they don't even exist. Make believe we're all alone in this restaurant! Make believe there's just you and me!
But Randy couldn't do it. He settled back into the chair, surrounding himself in a cloud of anger. He was stiff with silence, rarely speaking to her as the rest of their dinner was served to them. They ate hurriedly, not even tasting the food. They had one motive ... to finish and to leave. And finally their dinner was done.
"Come on, Naomi, let's go," Randy said rising and pulling her chair back slowly. "We're going to be late for that party, so let's get out of here."
Naomi preceded him to the door with downcast eyes. It was as if she couldn't look at a single person in the face. For to do so would have caused her to crumble into a thousand pieces.
And so her rule became silence. The wall of self-preservation went up and as they drove uptown toward the exclusive penthouse area, she retreated further and further into her own thoughts.
Maybe this is wrong. I can't fight back. I don't want to fight back! I just want what he has to offer! But I didn't know what I'd have to accept to get it. I didn't know about being snubbed. Being looked down upon and condemned! And I don't know how much longer I can take it!
"We're here!" Randy said as he pulled the convertible sharply to the curb in front of the exclusive apartment house. A smiling doorman came over to the car and opened the door on Naomi's side. She saw the smile disappear when he looked at her and she could feel him stiffen as he helped her out of the car. He was about to say something, but Randy's presence at her side silenced him.
Naomi bit down on her lip to hold back the anger and then, head held high, she walked defiantly into the lobby of the apartment house. Randy took her arm and guided her to the bank of elevators at the other end. She could feel the looks of the loungers in the lobby as the two of them walked through. And her head went a little higher and the look of defiance on her face turned to a look of anger. Then they were in the elevator and zooming up toward the penthouse party.
The door to the penthouse was opened wide and they walked in. Standing on a small landing, they looked down into the lavish living room at the milling throng of well-groomed guests.
The purpose of the affair was charity. Objects of art, paintings, statues, drawings, prints, and the proceeds were to be used to erect a new wing for a children's hospital. And so, the invited guests had been chosen with great care-by the size of their bank accounts. As a result, the men and women were well-groomed and well-heeled. Naomi, in a white gown which contrasted with the golden hue of her flesh, was the equal of any woman in the room as far as clothes and looks, and Randy's income matched that of any of the men.
Arm in arm, they walked down the staircase and into the milling throng of people. Though they had been unnoticed on the landing, their appearance now stirred the throng into a buzz of excitement. Naomi sensed it as Randy steered her into the bar at the far end of the room. She could see it in the looks on their faces as they walked past. Hear it in the hand-covered whispers that accompanied them as they walked. And so she looked straight ahead. Her face was expressionless as they finally seated themselves on the bar stools. But even there she was aware of what was happening. The reactions were like darts sticking into her back. And at each sound, each look, she tensed and flinched and tightened.
"Make it two straight Scotches," Randy said to the bartender, indicating Naomi and himself. He nodded and quickly placed the glasses in front of them. Naomi reached out with both hands and clutched the liquor to her breasts. Then, closing her eyes, she drank deeply.
Maybe if I drink enough, I won't see what's happening ... won't feel what's happening! Sure, that's the answer! Drown it all in alcohol, and maybe it will go away! And then, even if it doesn't, who cares?
And so she finished the drink in two deep swallows and then pushed the empty glass toward the bartender. He looked at her and shrugged. Then, once again he poured her drink.
"Better leave that bottle, Mister," Naomi ordered. "Looks like I'm going to be in for a long night!"
The bartender shrugged and with slow deliberation placed the bottle down in front of her. She drank quickly from the glass and then filled it again. On the stool next to her, Randy watched her nervously. He put his hand over the bottle when she poured her fourth drink.
"Don't you think you'd better slow down, Naomi?" he whispered in a low voice. "I'd hate to have to carry you out of here!"
Slowly she turned her head and stared at him with her deep dark eyes.
"If you're so worried about me," she responded, "then you'd better talk to your friends! I don't think you scored any points by bringing me here!"
Randy looked at her as if she had slapped his face.
"It's not my fault, Naomi ... It's not my fault! You wanted to see how the other half lives. You wanted to come here, not me! So don't take it out on me!"
Naomi downed another drink before answering. Suddenly she wanted to be alone. By herself. The only company she wanted was the bottle of Scotch.
"Look," she said, "why don't you just let me sit here at the bar? You go talk to your friends. It'll be better that way. At least we won't be able to fight. I don't want to fight with you, Randy!"
He looked at her to see if she meant what she had said, and then, getting up from the stool, patted her on the arm and left. Naomi didn't even watch him go. Suddenly she had lost all interest in him. Now she had but one concern. To consume as much Scotch as she could in a short period of time.
Behind her, the auction began. She could hear the sounds of bidding and then the accompanying applause as item after item was sold under the auctioneer's gavel. But she had no interest in the proceedings. Her sole interest was the lowering level of Scotch in the bottle on the bar in front of her....
So that was where life began and ended, possessions and prestige for the white man, Naomi thought. Everything that a check book or credit card could buy and pride and honor in the elite Society.
Ofay bastards! I'm part of life too! A black woman is still a human being, with the same needs and desires as you!
Her glassy eyes hot with the anger of unshed tears, she scanned the waxy-faced men and women, Boston's "upper crust," members of the old "400." Their painted-on and molded smiles, stiff mannerisms, and the hollow laughter.
Here to do your duty. Give to the poor, the under-priveleged. Have a drink while you're at it. "Hobnob" with the other "old families" and write off the rest of your poor countrymen with a check book stub-tax deductible! We're tax deductible! How about that, Naomi silently asked the assembled crowd.
The poor niggers you can't soil yourself with the sight of-down in the filthy slum alleys of Roxbury and Dorchester. Down in "old Southie" where you're all afraid to go because of "those people"-God know you try to help them financially, but know them? ... associate with them? ... "My deah, it just isn't done! It's not proper!"
The gavel resounded upon the podium. And two white women, their hair in blue waves styled by a famous Boston beautician, jewels flashing at their ears, throats, and fingers, pudgy from self-indulgence, delicately clasped long-stemmed crystal with pink ladies. Their steel-grey eyes averted hers as they moved their glasses to shield rapidly moving lips lest Naomi guess what they were saying. Another woman moved toward them and they vaguely motioned toward Naomi with their prim heads and flourished pink ladies. The woman's opaque black eyes flashed at her briefly and turned with a slow sneering grin emerging on her thin lips as she clucked with her friends.
Naomi returned to the bottle-the only thing in the room that didn't stare back with a haughty sniff and hissing criticism.
A hundred years ago they would have had her on the auction stand, admiring her contours and strength, wondering what type of work they could give her to keep the master of the house from using her in bed. Frigid white bitches!
Her thoughts turned to Line and his Muslim friends. Things weren't much better in the white man's world today. People like Martin Luther King and her mother made her sick! Peaceful marches for civil rights. Damn it! After one hundred years of supremacy and holding down the peaceful, striving nigger-Hell! The whites didn't give one shit for the "Uncle Tom" efforts of that fool black preacher.
Maybe Line and his friends were right. Marches like the one in Selma told the whites the black man was aware of his flagrant neglect of duties a century yet unfufilled. Could she have joined their efforts? Hell! It wasn't worth her sweat and tears. Naomi knew those ofays wouldn't change any!
Line and his friends knew too. That's why the Mau Maus, the Panthers, and other strictly black separatist, "hate the white" movements were springing up across the country.
What could they do though? In ten, twenty, fifty years? Naomi would be a broken old woman by then, with sandpaper hands and hard leathery knees from scrubbing floors like her mother before her. Her flesh would sag, too worn and tired to enjoy the things she wanted, the luxuries of life that those creamy-skinned bitches had at the flutter of a blue eye, the toss of a blonde curl, the show of a white thigh.
Fuck them all! I hate them! Naomi cried out silently to that empty bottle, the last drops in her glass. Not a goddamned one of them cares! Where's Randy? Where are my friends?
Naomi saw her eyes reflected in the amber glass of the bottle and knew she was-as she had always been-alone.
She looked from the bottle to the empty glass in her trembling fingers. Her eyes slowly climbed upward, looking across the bar pleadingly at the bartender.
He shook his head as he removed the empty bottle from the bar.
"I think you've had enough, Miss," he said. "I'm cutting you off."
Bleary-eyed, she looked at him again. Then she shrugged indifferently. It didn't really matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
"Should I find the young man who was with you?" the bartender asked with concern.
Naomi thought about it. Should he get Randy?
No! Randy won't do me any good now ... not the way I feel. Woozy. Awful woozy.
So she shook her head in answer.
"No," she sighed. "Just tell me where I can lie down for a while. If I can get some rest, I'll be all right."
"Just go down there, Miss," he advised. "The first door on the left. When I see the man you came in with, I'll tell him where you are."
Naomi nodded her thanks at him and then eased her way off the bar stool. Following his directions, she pushed her way through the corridor. Though she could hear the murmur of voices in her wake, she was now impervious to anything that was said. Weaving slightly, she walked to the door that the bartender had indicated and went into the room. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it to get her bearings. She was in a library and she shook her head in disgust.
"Don't wanna read ... wanna sleep!"
But it was too late for her to find another room. The heavy whirling nausea effect of the alcohol spun through her head and she hurriedly wobbled to a chair in front of the large picture window that looked out over the city. With a sigh of deep relief, she plumped herself down into the deep leather-bound cushions. Leaning her head back and groaning with discomfort, she closed her eyes.
Somehow her feet found the hassock and she straightened out her lithe, limp torso. Trying to make herself comfortable between hassock and chair, her back to the rest of the room, Naomi squirmed until the over-sized cushions embraced her and became a haven. Soon the quiet sound of her shallow breathing filled the room....
CHAPTER SEVEN
The voices behind her jolted Naomi out of her slumber. Some men had come into the library to get away from the activity of the auction. They stood behind Naomi's chair, oblivious to her presence, and nursed their drinks that they had brought with them.
"Quite an affair!" came a thin nasal voice. "Looks like they're going to make enough to get that hospital wing built."
"Yeah," a deep, husky voice joined in, "One thing about this crowd, they sure know how to spend money."
"You can say that again!" someone slurred, clinking the ice in his glass. "S ... sometimes I think it's the only thing we know how to do!"
He was laughing at his own inability to sputter out his 'words'.
But Naomi could hear his long-drawn draught from the glass pressed to his lips, punctuated by the loud swallow and choke as he found strength to continue the conversation.
"When you come right down to it," intoned the nasal voice with authority, "I guess we're pretty boring people. We never did do anything very exciting except make and spend money."
Naomi was partially awake now, and with half an ear she listened to the conversation. For a moment she half-considered making her presence known. And then because of her semi-drunken condition, decided against it, trying to relax deeper into the oblivion of the cushions.
The words that followed jolted her out of her relaxed and contented stupor. And she turned her dark head to better catch the context of their talk.
"Except for that Randy Harcourt." The deep intonations and dropping of the r's from his words told Naomi the second man was speaking. "He sure knows how to do more than make and spend money."
Naomi could hear his words grow louder as he approached and leaned against the back of her chair.
"Howwah 'bout that!" exclaimed the third men, slurping at his ice for the last drops of liquor. "W-wonder where he dug that broad up!"
He was laughing hilariously at his own words for some reason Naomi couldn't fathom through her own melting euphoria.
"He's sure got a lot of nerve bringing her here though," the authoritative nasal twang injected, ignoring his companion's laughter.
His feet stomped across the thickly carpeted floor, coming to Naomi in muted drum beats as they paced impatiently across the length of the room.
She shrunk deeper into her haven.
"I thought my wife would flip!" he continued.
"Mine, too!" chorused the New England accent, eager to be a part of every word.
"Looks to me like every woman in the room hated her guts...." the first man informed them, slightly breathless with his pacing...."and every man would be glad to change places with Randy!" intoned the happy third voice.
Naomi's fingers tensed in her palms, leaving small white streaks.
"Well, you know what they say about girls like her ... and I'm not denying that I'd like to find out if it's true or not!" twanged the authoritative-speaker.
"Me, too!" agreed the anxious Yankee above Naomi, his hands wringing his bourbon glass precariously on the chair's back over her wary eyes. "If she's anything like she looks, they'd have to carry me out of he-ah!"
"Guesh we'll never find out," responded the mellowing drunk. "Someday we'll have to ash Randy how it really ish!"
"Oh, just like any other black whore!" the authority sang out in an imitation of Randy's response while the others cat-called.
This was the moment when Naomi made her presence known. She struggled out of the deep chair, then came around the other side, leaning on the back of the chair provocatively when the little man fled his post.
She watched him, somewhat amused, the little man with the deep Bostonian drawl. Why she was doing this, she didn't know. But she was going to show these ofay bastards her worth in one way or another. Alcohol ... anger ... just not caring anymore? Whatever was spurring her on, she just had to show them in one way or another.
Thrusting her hips forward, she asked the surprised men, "Why go to Randy to find out? Why not find out for yourselves?"
The three men looked at each other then at Naomi.
Her mouth turned to a sarcastic grin as she watched them lick their lips nervously.
"What's the matter, boys, afraid to find out? Afraid it won't be true? Or are you afraid you aren't men enough!" she shouted.
Their faces paled and their eyes nervously scanning her and her immediate surroundings, Naomi could read the greed and lust in their looks and it delighted her.
Ofay bastards! Nothing but animals when the doors were closed to Society's leers. Animals! Interested in their own guts and loins. They didn't give a damn what that charity auction was all about outside those doors.
"Wanna try?" she dared them.
Their silence was their answer. And then the tall man went over to the door and locked it. He turned to the other two men and the three of them grouped themselves around Naomi in a small semicircle, waiting expectantly for her next move.
She held up her hands trafhc-cop-like to ward them off, and then laughed a dirty laugh.
"Whoa, fellows," she said, stepping back cautiously to grip her haven-chair, "There's one problem. I've got a boy friend up here and I don't think he'd like sharing me!"
The short blonde man answered hurriedly. As if in an effort to shake away her fears, he half-smiled, his eyes surveying her length.
"You don't have to worry about Randy," he said quickly. "He left about a half hour ago!"
"Left?" she queried, her voice betraying her doubt.
"Yeah," twanged the tall man. "When he couldn't find you, he left. Guess he went to look for you."
Somehow Randy's apparent abandoning her caused a quiver of anger to shake through Naomi.
The nerve of him! Leaving me like this! He's got his nerve, she thought angrily. Well, I'll show him ... if that's the way he wants to play the game, two can play at it!
Then she turned and looked at the three men who still waited expectantly. Their faces were hungry, lips parted as if breathing in anticipation before the lunge upon their prey, beads of sweat lined their foreheads.
"Well, fellows, willing to try me?"
The three glanced at each other once more, nod-make the first move. ding their heads and anxious to see who would make the first move. "Who's first?" she cried.
Again they looked at her, then to their hesitant feet, shrugging with embarrassment. Naomi sensed their discomfort and took command.
"Tell you how we're going to do it, fellows. Since this is an auction for charity, we're going to raise some money. I'm up for sale. First crack goes to the highest bidder!"
They looked at her in disbelief. But none of them made a move, the incongruity of her statement shocked them into immobility.
Damned ofays! If you can't steal it, rape it, or take it by force-then you don't want it. Won't even buy the joys of the flesh honestly, make fair sport of it. It was fun when you thought you'd take it by the use of your strength over mine. Steal it, plunder, assault, violate, kill,-But don't use fair means of getting your prey or dealing with it! Those are your standards, eh, ofays?
"What's the matter, fellas?" she asked gaily, "Don't you believe in charity?"
She looked into the face of each one, shaking her head in apparent disappointment at their silence. Then she snapped her fingers when a solution suddenly came to her.
"I've got it," she laughed. "You boys just want to see the merchandise before you start bidding. Can't blame you for that!"
At first they didn't understand what she meant. But comprehension came when the white gown suddenly tumbled from her body and she stood in front of them clad in nothing but a half-bra and garter belt.
Quickly they looked at her in wide-eyed amaze-merit as she unhooked her brassiere and then thumbed her panties past her hips and down her legs. Now nude, she stood in the middle of the semicircle and pirouetted slowly.
"Like it, fellas?" she taunted. "How do you like the merchandise? Now, who'll start the bidding? First sample goes to the highest bidder!"
She stopped turning and thrust her pelvis and her breasts out at them invitingly.
The men licked their lips and were unable to take their gluttonous eyes from the golden flesh of her body.
"I'll go a thousand!" the drunken man stuttered, trying to suck strength from his melting ice cubes in the glass that trembled in his hand.
Naomi grinned, her eyes mere slits, as she watched them call out their bids. The tall man lost the authority in his voice, and had to wrench the tightly knotted tie at his throat to let his thin, quavering tones escape. And the little man with the Yankee habit of dropping his r's and adding them where the 'y' didn't belong, was vibrating with excitement as he clamored his bids and clapped with nervous eagerness, obviously sure that this was some magnificent alcoholic euphoria from which he'd awaken too soon. The older man, eyes glazed with inebriation and self-induced limbo, watched with half distrust, wary that she would retreat or disappear before he could spit out his bid.
Around and around flowed their voices, muddled by intoxication and the craving of lust. Naomi, concentrating on the scene before her, intent to prove to these whites and her own Randy who had deserted her in her moment of need, was caught up in the whirl of furor of their competition for her.
"Two thousand!" cried the tall man in a nervous voice.
But it was the short blonde man whose bid was the highest.
Naomi looked at him, a gay laugh in her eyes, and then took him by the hand. Raising high over his head in a victory salute, she smiled.
"The winner!" she called excitedly. "And a man after my own heart. Any man who'll spend money like you do, I like! And I'm going to prove it to you!"
The implication was obvious and he grinned weakly at her.
Still holding his hand, Naomi turned to the other two men.
"You want to watch?" It's okay with me! But if you've got weak hearts, maybe you'd better read some of those books for a while!"
She indicated the library shelves with a toss of her head, and, then ignoring them, she led their friend over to the large sofa.
He followed her meekly.
"Got any preference?" she queried coyly.
The man swallowed and shook his head.
"I don't think I know what you mean," he whispered.
Naomi threw back her head and laughed deep in her throat.
"Oh, you do have a lot to learn, don't you! And I'm just the girl to teach you!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Time for your first lesson, mister! Now you're going to find out what it's like. If it's true what they say about girls like me!"
Naomi drew the man to her and her mouth worked against his, plying at his lips with the arrow of her tongue. She could feel him shudder as her tongue made its way into his mouth and worked about his warm, wet cavity.
"Like that?" she snarled, drawing her head away. "Why that's only a small taste of what you can have!"
Her hands were at the buttons of his shirt and pulling loose his tie. She was angry. Filled with contempt and loathing for not only these three white animals, but for herself. She had to show them. Had to get even. When she got through with them, they'd know she existed, and what her worth was! They'd know what they bid for. With her it would be unlike anything they'd ever known be-fore. She'd make them know it! She'd wring them out and hang them out to dry!
In a few moments the small blonde man was naked. Pink and quaking before her, he was pudgy with what seemed to Naomi was baby fat. Despite his thirty-odd years, his body glowed and took on the form of an over-grown toddler. His excitement and shining blue eyes didn't help his image, and Naomi found amusement bubbling within her.
Ignoring his protests, she had managed to get him to stark nudity. Now her patient, enforced smile faded. He just stood there grinning shyly at her, waiting to see what would happen.
Stupid ofay! You're so sure of what you want until it's there on a silver platter, served to you with all the trimmings. Then you don't know what to do with it! Look at it, eat it, or play with it. Do I have to show you?
She reached for him, drawing his head to hers and pressing her open mouth to his while she crushed her breasts and pelvis against his bare flesh, gyrating her hips and shoulders so that he could feel her voluptuous contours. Her tongue explored the depths of his mouth and her thighs splayed against one of his legs so that he could feel the soft muff of pubic hair and the moistening lips of her cunt.
His eyes clenched shut and a shiver ran across his back at the velvet-like touch of her groin, the silken softness of her full breasts and rigid nipples.
Naomi played with him. Toyed with him. And the feeling of satisfaction grew within her. Not because of his quick reactions, but because of the con-trol she knew she held over him. The domination. And she wanted to control and dominate these men. Master them!
His hands slid between them to crush her breasts, mold them in his fingers and squeeze her nipples to erectness. His breathing was deep and rapid as his mouth attacked hers and devoured her flesh. One hand strayed down to her groin to probe between the hot labia of her now sucking pussy.
Her own fingers kneaded the quaking flesh of his prick into the thick, frantically pulsating entity she desired at her abdomen. Her slender fingers plied the loose foreskin along the stubby shaft while the blue vein which coursed its side grew and darkened until it was a heavy pulsing vessel cresting the fiery head of his pale, sensitive cock.
Then they reached down into the hollow beneath his splayed ass cheeks to cup the deflated, limp sacs of purplish flesh sparsely covered with pubic hair. Between thumb and forefinger she squeezed and prodded the twin balls, inciting them to fill with the thick, sticky essence of life.
Amid the coarse, scratching, black, pubic hair she drew the testicles to turgid fullness, tracing the burgeoning vein that ran from his dampening crevice over the flaccid mounds of his balls.
He was almost ready!
Her lips despised the blood-tinted, waxy skin of the white man. The odor of cigar smoke lingered in his clothes and had transferred in a stale cloud about the bareness of his flesh. Even his expensive masculine colognes didn't cover the fetid odor of strong tobaccos. His skin, pudgy-soft like a child's, knew nothing of the sweat of real labor, and she doubted, from the slowly emitting masculine odor of sex, that he had known much of the feats of that labor to any admirable degree.
She sucked his tongue into her hot mouth and ground her wet, boiling labia onto his screwing fingers. Tightly, she thrust her body into his, all the while massaging that ruby, shielded head into blind fury and its balls into fervid life.
His fingers scratched within her in his nervous excitement and her cunt burned with the hot itch of desire. Why the hell didn't he do something! Damn it, man! Use your prick, will you!
His lips had found her throbbing breasts and were nibbling at her hard knobbed nipples, making them raw with his grating teeth and her own seething desire.
She cruelly twisted his balls and cock with a pressure designed to bring him to the urgency of his quest. His stiff cock was on fire in her taunting clutch, and her sucking pussy dripped on his furtive fingers, inciting them to riot in her gyrating loins.
The little man moaned, his breath hot on her tits.
Naomi took the sound as a signal to her, and abruptly pulled away.
Without looking at him, she sank to the sofa. Stretching out seductively upon the length of the cushions, she snarled at him.
"Okay, high bidder, you paid for it ... take it!"
With a savage cry, he fell across her body. His hands and fingers pushed and bruised her bronze flesh, molding and shaping her breasts and nipples.
The pain clawed into her throat and she winced and then her breathing came heavier as he continued to work the expanse of her torso, his palms electrified at the touch of her abdomen, cunt and thighs.
There was no delight ... no passion. There was only lust in this male animal atop her, eyes glazed with gluttony as he devoured her body with his hands, mouth, and total being. She gave herself to the greed and was caught up with the gnawing need of lust masticating her own loins, drooling at her cunt.
"Come on, high bidder!" she screamed. "Fuck me! Nowl"
Although his penis was hard, and throbbed in readiness, he had continued to explore her body, ever different in the changing light of the shadowy library as two dim forms crossed and recrossed in the path of the light beyond, impatient with their own needs.
It was as if he had not one passionate female under his hands and lips but five, each a tantalizingly different color.
Now her full, firm breasts rose up in the crisscross of soft shadows like dark, sullen hills, their nipples black like tiny cinders, hard and resilient as rubber. Her black, soft-clefted mound of pubic hair was wet with the sweat and desire of her loins. The thin, moist trench of her vagina welcomed his prying nose as he sniffed at the sweet scent of her sex, the sweat of her female parts, and the love juices that welled from her cunt. Her soft, expensive perfumes were lost in the hypnotic, powerful odor of their combined sexes furtively striving in coition.
"Now!" she demanded, her thighs spread wide beneath him.
He rammed his torrid, heavy cock into her. Like a flaming sword, it split the length of her uterus with its force and fury.
"Aaaggghhh!" her breath pierced the stagnant air with its cry.
Like piston gone mad, it plummeted her womb.
And she strove with it to keep the hard ridges of its barreling length within her.
He twisted and pounded above her, forcing his prick to ravage the depths of her cunt, deep into her belly. Again and again, he drove into her, his blue eyes unseeing, only her image like an imprint on his madness remained. His fingers were yet electrified at the plundering, manipulating ravishing of her breasts and nipples.
Naomi's legs locked around his heaving bulk, whipping her heels at his back, her nails clawing his flesh as she sought to pull him into her. The ramrod of his prick was caught in the tense muscles of her channel, sucking it deeper as her hips and thighs writhed and contorted beneath his thrusts.
His pungent odors were suffociating her, and his soft fat kept slipping at her grasp. Her mouth ajar with panting moans and mewlings, she could taste his salty sweat and spit as he thrashed his head above her savagely-beaten tits and sputtered his mad gutteral curses at the pain and blissful torture of the strangled prick in her belly.
Suddenly it began fitful spastic jerkings and she knew the time had come. She was exploding in her own womb, gushing forth the come of her own climax.
In long, hard drives he pounded into her.
"I'm come-coining!" he rasped.
And with a careening, searing lunge he speared her womb, his cock gushing forth in long, torrid spumes of sperm. Erupting with fury and passion, the jet-like streams of white, sticky come cascaded into her womb, flooding her belly and channel, drowning his jerking cock.
Her buttocks were wet with the hot, spilling fluid. Their short pubic hair was matted with liquid as their groins merged and ground together once more. His balls, wet and shrinking, slapped against the upturned cheeks of her ass with the rhythm of their final climax and orgasm.
When he was milked dry, his balls hanging limply in his groin, she surrendered his equally depleted and flaccid prick. It withdrew wetly, almost bubbling with the memory of its spent enthusiasm.
The man rolled backward, exhausted. Crawling from her sweat-beaded body, he tumbled over on the floor to lie in a weary heap of sweaty, lust-satiated languor.
Naomi didn't watch to see if he would fall asleep from the exertion of his sexual endeavors. She heaved a sigh and stretched her aching limbs, mustering the energy to accept the next man.
He had already stripped down to his well-muscled frame. She smiled wanly. Maybe this was one ofay she wouldn't have to prime and nurture into readiness for the act of intercourse.
Maybe. He swayed hesitantly as he approached her outstretched, proffered form. It was that drunk! So he was the one who had second try. Come on, whitey! Steady boy!
He nearly tumbled onto her as he drooped above drinking in the voluptuous womanly curves and hollows of her flesh. His eyes were staring as if in hypnotic trance and a lop-sided grin displayed his full set of teeth interspersed with a couple of shining gold crowns.
"Well, man?" she whispered as she offered her arms to embrace him to her rapidly pulsating breasts, still feeling the effects of her last adventure.
His head came down to hers to taste her lips, her mouth, her nose, her eyes.
The stench of liquor filled her nostrils and throat with nausea. She could taste the strong flavor of whiskey on his lips. She wanted to vomit!
His lips at first were tender, his hands gentle on her face and head as he moved his large frame awkwardly onto the couch, to kneel over her. He seemed to be searching. Searching for what? The frigid, white pussy he had married?
This man had determination and purpose in his striving at her nipples, his mouth bruising hers as his whiskey-soaked tongue choked her throat. No follower like that last one. But goddamn! Does he have to be so-!
Suddenly his fists were pelting her cherry-tipped breasts with clawing blows. His mouth was eating at hers, his teeth chewing her lips.
Naomi writhed beneath him, trying to find a way to counter his ferocity. Her hands pushed his shoulders up, away from her body and she looked at him sternly and squarely for a long moment until his panting body stilled, and his gaze met hers.
His eyes gave recognition. I'm different, Naomi breathed silently. Whoever she is, I'm not her. I'm just a black whore to use and discard like those jellied rubber diaphragms you used in college. Worth no more, worth no less. That's me! Naomi Douglas, nigger girl. One black pussy like any other. Meant to be screwed, fondled, plundered, ... Fucked and forgotten, that's the keyword with a nigger cunt. Fuck her and forget her. She's just one step above an artificial job, a dildo. Damn it! Do it and get it over with, you bastard!
"Always wanted to try a black one," he breathed the words in her face. "Never thought I'd get myself a combination white/black though. How 'bout that. You honey-skinned bitch. You're mulatto, aren't you?"
"You paid for a screw-job, mister, not conversation!"
Naomi was furious. She wished it was all over and she were back at the apartment safe in Randy's loving arms. Bastard! He went off and left me too! The tears bit into her eyes as she thought about it. Damned whites! Don't give a shit about anyone but themselves!
"Well, baby," the man said, his leathery, tanned face mature and weathered with years of athletic outdoor activity, leaned towards her, "Show me!"
She surveyed his well-muscled and sunburned body. The muscles were tensed for action. Drunk or not, he could handle anything she gave him. She was sure of that. And the look in his eyes, the crouch of his body told her he was no novice.
"Come on, female," his thick tongue taunted her. "Show me that a black pussy's any better than a white one. Show me there's more difference than amber curls and pink labia to your red ones and black pubic hair. Is that all? Or were you niggers made for loving?"
Hot with fury she scrambled beneath him and snatched at his cock. Her nimble fingers gave the loose foreskin more than the usual prodding and she worked the half-taut organ until it was hot, the tiny hole at its emblazoned crest frothy with come.
She didn't wait for his smile of half-approving satisfaction. Diving into his limp balls, she fingered and nudged them to ripe, succulent plums, turgid with the sweet juices of life-giving sperm. Pummeling them with the pent-up fury of her hatred, she caused their purple flesh to turn hot and red with soreness. She wanted him to itch, burn, sweat unmercifully.
Her teeth gnawed at his male nipples through the mesh of grey-red fur on his chest. Softly grating, titillating them until they were red, swollen thumbs, raw with desire and itching passion.
His heart was pounding loudly and she could feel the rush of his pulse at his groin as his male organs picked up the tempo of savage lust. With a cry of hunger, the man reached for her.
Dodging his grasp, she looked up at him with severity.
"Thought you wanted me to show you!" she rebuked him, her sensitive fingertips still busy at their tasks, inciting the nerves of his flesh to a riot of tingling, charging friction that made his internal organs surge with feverish desire.
"Baby, you have shown me! Now I want what I paid for. I want to screw you. You got me hot and I need a female cunt," he told her, panting. "You've got talent, woman. But now I'm itching to get into you! It's been too long. And I aim to get what I pay for!"
He didn't waste any more breath on words, but reached for her.
Naomi was dragged over into position by his hot, anxious arms. Like a pointer dog at a showing with its master, she was nudged, poked, and blocked into a kneeling position.
Damn it! An animal! I can get into position without that kind of treatment! She yelled silently at him, flinching as he stroked her smooth hips and patted her breasts like she was a pet dog or cat.
"This is the way I like it," he breathed behind her.
She could smell the heavy odor of his whiskey breath, mixed with the smell of his freely-flowing sweat. His overpowering masculine odor and the stench of liquor left her weak, her head throbbing with crushing fumes.
His strong hands caressed her silken curves and finally clutched at her tits as if they were about to milk the teats of cow. She'd never been so heated with fury. So insulted at the touch of a male. He was trying to humiliate her, punish her for what his white bitch did to him. Pussy-whipped coward! Train her-not mel I know what I'm made for. I know how to make a man happy! Haven't I shown you?
"Gonna taste a nigger cunt!" came his exalted cry.
His ringers teased her breasts, frolicked with them, and molded them until they were bruised and bleeding. And his turgid prick probed blindly at the crevice of her wet ass.
Then he was spreading her legs apart until she nearly fell over the side of the sofa. He let her slide into a crouch on the thick carpet and poised himself behind her.
She could feel his fingers slipping between her labia. For half an instant there was a cold breeze on the hot, wet insides of her cunt as the labia slid around the fingers, closing off the air of the room.
Three blunt fingers swirled in the rosy warm flesh of her pussy, plucking the delicate, tensed thread of her clitoris. They crushed it with their toying, pushing onward down the passageway as far as they could to the opening of her womb.
Deep and hard they screwed into her. Punishing her with his fucking fingers, his thrusts made her body jar and sway with their action.
"Nnnaaannnggghhh!" Naomi protested.
He panted with a mocking grin above her. A nigger cunt. It pleased him.
"Thought you liked Negroes!" whined a voice, on the floor close by.
"Shut up!" hissed a voice. "He does ... in their place!"
"Ohhh," the first voice seemed satisfied and mumbled off into sleep.
Vaguely in her tormented rocking position, Naomi could make out the tall man massaging his swollen cock through the open fly front of his trousers.
Then her eyes jammed shut and pain cut through her body as the fingers were replaced by one of the biggest cocks her vagina had ever taken on. It must be massive, was the thought that seared her brain as her mouth contorted with an emerging cry.
"Yyyeeeiii!"
The man groaned and bellowed with his own pain and exertion.
"Hhhaaannnuuunnnggghhh!"
The huge, hard-ridged prick was fully into her. She could feel every crease and swell in its volume and length, so tightly was it jammed into her.
He began the long thrusts into her, pulling long and hard, ramming sharply and profoundly till she thought her uterus would burst with its massiveness. Its hardness ground within her, leaving raw the sensitive flesh it had fathomed.
Gripping her ripe, hanging breasts and pinching her nipples, he tugged and manipulated them as he rode her buttocks with the frenzy of a bronco gone mad.
The passion of her own body and furor of her hate and anger spurred her to keep up with him, even to surpass him. She would show him yet who was master!
Together they rode the pulsating, savage rhythm of their lust-borne orgasm. Gyrating, writhing, pounding against each other with the arcs and dives of their fertility rite, they went with the violence of the storm that wracked their loins. Their groins locked tight in the masticating joining of their organs, chewing, sucking, and pulverizing into the tender flesh of the other.
As suddenly as his needs took hold of him, came the explosion of his coming. Meeting hers with the impact of a bursting dam, his fluids rushed forth to flood and drown all in their path.
Again and again the dam broke within her, the force of its flow breaking her frozen arch of orgasm with its explosive thrust. The white, hot come filled her to over-flowing, dripping down the groins of both of them. The sticky sperm oozed slowly down her crotch and was like glue on her thighs.
His heavy balls slapped against her buttocks in the savage tempo of his orgasm. And finally exhausted of ammunition, his prick shrunken and limp in her pussy, they withdrew. With a loud pop, he pulled out his cock, and it hung deflated and wet in his groin.
Naomi heard him stumble off to collapse in a nearby chair. She waited to be sure he was gone before allowing herself to slump to the floor. She wouldn't show how tired she was. She would make them know she was better than them any day! There wasn't a white cock that could knock her out! Her body could take them all on and still come out on top while she left them writhing and tormented with exhaustion and satiation. Yes! Naomi Douglas, nigger or not, mulatto and just all-female, knew how to give it to a man and make him know it!
The third man was standing over her, furtively working the protruding flesh of his groin.
"Give it here, mister," she told him. "I'll fix it for you."
He hesitated, looking at her with a scathing eye.
Here was a man who hated black people. Really hated them! She knew that look. More than one white man had it. No wonder he was low bidder. He wanted a female cunt, but he hated to stoop to a black one.
The others were bad, Naomi thought, looking over her shoulder at the prostrate little blond on the floor and across to the sprawling drunk on the chair. Each had his own hang-up about Negroes.
The little one didn't particularly notice, except that he was a follower. If the others didn't like niggers, he wasn't about to jeopardize himself. And if everyone was out to have a good time, why he'd be the first to plunge in. He didn't want to look scared or green. To buy a female pussy for a screw was the game. To him he couldn't give a damn what color it was unless someone else complained first.
The world was filled with followers. That was why just a few nigger-haters could control an apathetic mass who couldn't give a damn about anything but their own position in society. Sometimes she wondered who was worse, the nigger-hater or the man who didn't care so long as his opinion or actions didn't scorch his butt.
The second man knew exactly what he wanted. No follower, he. And be the cunt white or black, all he wanted was for it to do the art it was created to perform-and to do it well.
The words of the third man remained with her. "In their place." Sure he liked Negroes so long as they remembered who was boss and didn't get in his way. A cunt was a cunt, be it white or black, so long as it did its duty. And God help the scapegoats of society if this man was rubbed wrong and he felt the need to lay punishment where he wouldn't be criticized for it.
Yeah, she thought. I'm a good nigger ... in my place!
But this one. She looked up at the face filled with loathing as if she were a deformed freak, a carrier of a dread disease. All because of the dark pigmentation in her skin. This was the man to fear.
Here was a leader of riots. A Ku Klux Klan inciter of hatred, violence, murder or bloodshed. Here was the type of man that prolonged the suppression of the black man, the Indian, and other minority-groups. Here was a man who brought destruction, fear, hate, and death to men, women, and children of all races because of his prejudices. Yes, brought anguish even to his own people mentally through guilt and empathetic suffering for the supressed and hurt, and, physically as well when the hurt, sufficiently stirred, retaliate and sometimes inflict punishment on other innocents rather than the real transgressors.
The cause of hate and sorrow. That's you, mister, Naomi said silently looking up into those cold eyes. I've seen you so many times in stores, on the streets, in private citizen "do-gooder" groups that burn homes on the fringes of white neighborhoods, assault women and children, lest they think they can live in a comfortable neighborhood, a decent home like their white counterparts. Yes, I know you. You not only inhabit the South, but you're in the west, mid-west, and even the "liberal,"
"unprejudiced" northeastern states.
Right here in New England-Boston. A place where freedom was born for a new world and slaves were smuggled to freedom in Canada. Hi, Mister nigger-hater. So you've bought my dark little pussy. Let me show you what it's like.
"No!" he warned her off abruptly as she came towards him.
Naomi looked at him questioningly.
He eyed her nervously, still clutching his aching cock.
"You're paying for action, aren't you?" she asked.
"My own kind, not yours," he muttered. "I'm paying, and I'll tell you what to do and how to do it."
The girl shrugged.
He regarded her a long moment, indecisive as to what to do with her, not wishing to lose face, but not wanting to contaminate himself either.
Naomi knew! From childhood he'd probably been taught like so many others not to use the same drinking fountain or toilet as a Negro. He still wasn't sure why, nor had his predecessors been sure why. Just in case, that's all. You never can tell what kind of disease they might carry. Dirty people, you know. Terribly unclean. And promiscuous! Why they probably had just every social disease known to man! She could hear the nasal lilt of one of society's grande dames explaining the problem as it had most likely been presented to this man.
Well? She waited expectantly as he debated how to take her on.
She sat before him, her golden torso posed in a delicate silhouette of feminine curves. Her eyes could see the frantically massaging fingers and the furtive action beneath his pant front.
Then he decided.
"On your knees," he directed, motioning with his free hand.
What's the matter, mister? Afraid of me? You're not touching the merchandise. It's bought and paid for, isn't it? She taunted him silently, her eyes intent on his.
"Shouldn't you take off your things?" she asked.
"Shut up!" he ordered. "I'll do the talking, I'm paying. You're just ... just ... it won't be necessary," he finished nervously.
Somehow he couldn't tell this female, no matter how black she was, what her station in life was. Somehow as she sat there, her lush swells and contours so honey-gold, the words wouldn't come. And yet he couldn't touch her. On general principle, it wasn't possible. After all, any white who'd mate with a black to produce mulatto off-spring like her ...!
Then, suddenly, he reached down and, tangling his hand in her long, dark hair, he jerked her head towards his groin. At the same time she could feel him shuffling forward slightly on her torso until the thin, fleshless bones of his thighs cut through the thin material of his trousers excruciatingly in the firm, fullness of her breasts. She groaned in pain as they were smashed cruelly into her chest from his weight and found her eyes looking straight up into his monstrous, exposed penis. Huge and white, it reared out over her breasts toward her face with the naked blue veins criss-crossing obscenely underneath it.
"Like it, nigger?" he rasped at her. "Like that! It's beautiful, isn't it. Isn't it?"
He rammed it into her face, cupped in his long bony hand.
Naomi swung her head backwards to avoid his onslaught, a feeling of horror and nausea overwhelming her.
She could smell him so strongly now. All her senses reeled, but seemed sharply, bitingly aware of his presence in sight, sound, and smell. He was all cock, huge and hairy, sickeningly white and horribly etched with those blue-tinged veins that showed so grossly under transparent, colorless skin. His balls were purple, dripping twins of wrinkled and seemingly lifeless sacks. His whole groin was a mass of coarse, grey pubic hair covering milky, sharply-defined contours of flesh stretched like dried leather across a framework of knobby, gnarled twigs.
He hadn't washed recently. That was all she could think of. She could smell the intense, lingering odor of dried sweat and come about his loins and emanating from his armpits. It was musty and choking, a twisting, strangling fume that gnawed at her intestines as it filtered through her pinched and paling nostrils. There was even the dank, wretched odor of a recent and prolonged attack of diarrhea.
The fetid stench filled her lungs and throat with dry, bitter loathing. God! She would vomit!
His breathing was loud and filled with intermittent snorts as if he were having trouble catching his breath after a long run. And she could hear the rumbling of gas in his belly.
Take back your money! She wanted to scream. Take back your money!
His claw-like grasp gripped the thick tresses of her head and swung her face upward to look into the cold eyes of hate.
"You like it! Don't you?" he yelled at her. "Isn't a black bastard in the world who has a better prick than that! Just feel it. Nice, huh? No black leather. That's real white flesh, bitch."
He rubbed the length of his long stinking cock against her cheek, across her lips, and under her eyes and nose.
"Kiss it, black whore!" he bellowed. "You'll never get a better opportunity at a prick as nice as this. Kiss til"
With trembling lips she let it touch her. Repulsed and horrified, she allowed her lips to graze its surface.
"Yeah, one of the best," he said lovingly as he stroked it with his long fingers. "Knows how to treat a lady. A lady. But you aren't a lady, are you? Just a common nigger whore. Easily bought. Easily sold. Just live for a fuck, don't you? Especially from a white cock.
"Everyone knows that. You niggers can't find what you need from your own men. Have to come to the white man for real loving, for a good screw. Isn't that so? Isn't that so?"
Oh, God! What did he want? What did he want? Naomi closed her eyes, and in the darkness she piteously sought comfort and understanding. Why can't he take what the others wanted, and go?
"But I can't do that," he was telling her. "You nigger bitches! All you want out of life is a white prick. Well, maybe the others will chance it, but not me. With the filth and scum of the back alleys and your grubby living, your whoring, and men chasing. God only knows what diseases you carry!"
Disease? I'm clean, she hollered back at him with her eyes. I bathe every day. I have a regular physical check-up. And I'm no common street pick-up. You'll find no social diseases with me!
"But seeing as you want my lovely body, my handsome cock," he smiled cruelly as he rasped the words at her, "I tell you what I'm going to do...."
"Don't bother!" Naomi told him drawing back. "Take your money and go. I don't need it, or want it. And I don't want your cock."
He looked at her stunned for a moment. Then he chuckled deep in his throat.
"Not want my cock-that's a laugh!"
"There's a hundred bigger and better," she hissed at him. "And there's real men behind them, not over-grown, sniveling pussies like you that need money and a whore's cunt to make him feel big!"
His eyes were wide with fire.
"Goddamned fucking bitch!" he yelled, and struck a blow across her face with a resounding crack. "I'll teach you your place! You're nothing but a black whore, and don't you forget it!"
Naomi looked at him through narrow slits. She hated him. Hated everything he stood for. But her heart wasn't with it. It was clamoring to escape the prison of her breast. Clamoring to be free. To run from this room and all the fear and anger, the deep-seeded hatred that permeated and filled the shadowed, shrinking chamber.
"You'll do as I tell you and learn your place!" he was fuming at her.
Naomi still leaned away from him, ready to spring to her feet and run. Fear and hate fought together within her and made her heart pound louder and faster in her breast.
Without warning, his belt slid from his trouser waist and he held it, buckle-end hanging from his hand, ready to snap out at her. The silver caught a gleam of light and magnified itself to her eyes. She could hear his laughter as he slowly swung it back and forth and she could feel the bite of its knife-like metal in her skin before it came.
As she crouched there, her feet flat beneath her buttocks, her palms to the floor in readiness she saw the flick of his wrist. The belt sang through the air.
She leaped back.
He gave a half laugh, half disappointed groan. And the belt split the air again with its arc. She was close to a wall. Too close!
"Aaannnhhh!" she screamed, as she thumped against the wall and the whip met its mark.
A red welt formed across her breasts, and she saw blood ooze from the broken, jagged wound where the buckle had cut its mark.
The other two men were on their feet. Before they could say anything, the tall man waved them out. With a hasty scrawl of their pens in leather-bound check books Naomi saw two white check forms flutter her way. And they were going through the door.
The second man hesitated in the doorway for a moment, looking back at Naomi with regret.
"It's none of your damned business," the last man told him. "You've had yours. She's only getting what she asked for. Besides, she's just a black whore."
"None of my business," the man's voice almost whispered.
Then he shrugged and turned.
"See you at the bar," he called over his shoulder and shut the door.
"Want more?" the man asked, turning to Naomi.
Her shoulders hunched protectively around her breasts, her hands gently holding the ravaged nipples protectively, she shook her head.
"N ... no," she whispered.--He pointed to the floor at his feet.
Naomi looked at it, then at the belt.
He raised the weapon once more.
Slowly she arose. Aching in every limb, the burning rip in her sensitive flesh at her tits, all rebelled with her pounding heart. But she made her way across the room to stand before him.
He pointed at the floor once more.
She knew her place, and got to her knees.
Then he was presenting his swollen, massive member again.
"Suck it, bitch!" he snarled down at her, a vicious gleam of hate in his eyes.
Her head was forced up harder and she almost became sick as he pressed his cock hard against her tightly clenched lips. She could feel the warm, sticky fluid that had seeped from the tip of his excitement. It was covering her lips and she smelled the hot, pungent odor of it. His other hand dropped and reached down under his buttocks and his fingernails dug harshly into her left breast.
Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to cry out, to let out the hurt verbally and with weeping. But she couldn't. She had to remain firm as possible. He couldn't make her crumble! She had to be strong!
"Open your mouth, and wide," he grinned evilly as he spat the words down at her.
His nails dug hard into her breast and her mouth gaped open at the pain. He jerked her head forward again until it felt as though he was ripping the hair from her head by the roots. And then ... the monstrous cock filled her mouth, almost choking her as it pressed against her soft palate and gorged all the way back to her tonsils. She gagged, and her stomach heaved; she groaned, her eyes closed, with the horrible thing throbbing urgently in her mouth.
"Suck! Lick!" he grunted, twinging his finger more cruelly into her hair and jerking her head u and down.
Helplessly, her mouth moved up and down on the great prick.
... Oh God, the thoughts ran through her torture mind, perhaps if I make him have an orgasm, he'll leave it at that and let me go.
Suck ... suck ... lick ... lick! Harder! Please come! Please come ... and let me go. The words raced like wildfire through her pained and humiliated thoughts as she sucked like a hungry child feeding at its mother's breast to end her misery.
As she sucked, the huge cock pulsed in the soft wetness of her slaving mouth. There was a stale, musty taste on her tongue and the back of her throat.
Oh how long? How much longer? Her mind chanted over and over again, her head hurting with the constant pull on her hair as he pumped it up and down. She wanted with all her soul for it to end, and yet she didn't. The horrible, obscene thought of his lewd sperm cascading down her throat and into her stomach sickened her and she vowed she would jerk her mouth away at the last minute to avoid this ultimate humiliation. She just couldn't let him have the satisfaction of looking down on her helpless face while he throbbed his viscous, wet sperm down into her mouth ... she just couldn't bear it to give this dirty, lecherous man that final stroke of pleasure.
But the passion-crazed man was not to be denied, and he fucked in and out of her mouth like an avenging angel of doom, spitting obscenities down at the top of her bobbing head as though she were a slave.
"Suck, suck it, bitch! Use your tongue-swirl it around! There-like that! That's it. Lick harder. I'll teach you yet, you black whore!"
Furiously, harder and harder, she worked at her task. Her tongue aching, wanting to fall out as if the threads that held it in place were torn and broken. Her jaw was splitting at the massiveness of his ugly prick. God! Make it end! Make him come before I collapse and die of pain and hurt of humiliation and exhaustion. God! Make it end!
"I'm-I'm commming, I'm commming!" he called; it seemed like centuries before the cry came.
Before Naomi could jerk her head away she felt the huge pulsating cock fucking into her mouth, expanding like a giant balloon and his steel-like hands clamping vice-like on either side of her head, freezing her in that position. And then it exploded, the hot, sticky sperm filling her mouth in great powerful spurts that bloated her cheeks out wide as though her mouth were filled with air. She had to swallow to keep from choking as more and more of the lewd orgasm of the groaning man above her cascaded hotly into her mouth. Her Adam's apple raced crazily up and down her tender throat in a crazy rhythm of desperate gasping sounds that thundered wetly through the room as though nothing else in the world existed.
And for Naomi, it didn't. She slumped limply beneath him, barely able to hold her sitting position when it was all over, feeling his long, thin penis deflating slowly in her mouth. She swallowed once more in order to breathe, and then felt his body lifting from her tortured chest. The prick slipped wetly from her lips, leaving a thin trail of sticky sperm following it across the fullness of her naked, bruised and bleeding breasts.
She heard him chuckle once and then collapse to the floor close to her, his breath coming in short gasps.
Her head hanging on her breasts, her quaking arms and palms on the floor to support her trembling body as it slumped nearly to a prostrate position, she watched the man steadily. Her breasts heaved from her exertion. Her body was wracked with pain. But she would not let him see it.
She would watch him, prostrated from her efforts. He would leave before she could collapse. I'll not let him see me defeated, she told herself, her slender fingers straining at the carpet for support.
He didn't get up for what seemed a very long time.
Finally she dragged herself to her feet and moved to the chair to collect her clothes.
She looked back with loathing at the moaning, limp figure on the floor. And then she looked at the white gown Randy had bought for her, and clutched it tightly in her hands. That beautiful white gown! She drew it to her sore and puffed lips.
The man behind her was struggling to his feet. He tripped once, sliding across his belt, but ignored it and went out, slamming the door behind him.
Naomi looked at the floor where he had lain.
There lay a white slip of paper. Another check. And not more than three feet from it that silver buckled belt.
It had tripped him, Naomi mused with a vague smile. His whip had tripped him!
She felt the smooth satin of her gown in her fingers and at her cheeks: like the satin edge of her crib blanket as a child. But that was torn and ragged with age and use.
Holding out the gown, she took a good look at it. Everything she'd ever wanted! All the good things of life that a white man's money can buy and no black person can come close to without pain and misery.
The light struck the silver buckle again.
Hate and fear. That's what came with wanting what others had without trying. She slaved for it, and what did it get her? Nigger bitch! Whore! Black pussy!
The gown slid from her grasp to the floor and she kicked it away vehemently.
The tears came, the cry of hurt and suffering. She fell back into the haven of the deep-cushioned chair, her vision blurred, and wept.
CHAPTER NINE
Wearily she took out the key to the apartment and gently opened the door. Then she stepped inside and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. Her sore and aching body twinged with each step and with each movement. The ache and throb between her thighs and at her breasts was a constant reminder of what had happened. With a sigh of despair, she pushed away from the wall and made her way into the darkened living room.
Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she became aware of the silhouetted figure sitting mutely in the chair watching her.
"Randy?" she called softly.
His answer was to reach up and turn on the lamp at the side of his chair. The look in his face told her of his disgust and shame.
"I just got a call, Naomi," he told her in a low threatening voice. "A call from three men ... They told me what happened in the library!"
She covered her face with her hands as if to hide from him. But his words tore away the protection.
"Why did you do it? What made you do it, Naomi?" he snapped at her.
She stood there mutely in front of him, unable to answer. Unable to say the words that would make sense to him.
How do I tell him the truth? How do I tell him so that he will understand why I did it? How do I make him believe me!
Randy lashed out at her with angry words when she didn't answer. Words that were designed to hurt and to rip and tear.
"It's true!" he growled. "It's true! You are nothing but a ... a whore! That's the only thing you're good for!"
"No! No!" she sobbed hysterically, throwing herself on her knees at his feet. "Don't say that! Don't say that! Don't say that!"
He wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was his pride. He leaned back into the chair and lashed her again with his words.
"Then why did you do it! What were you trying to prove? Don't you get enough from me? Don't I satisfy you?"
Naomi lifted her tear-stained face and shouted the words back at him.
"Yes, oh yes! But that's the only way I know. The only way I can ... get acceptance. With my body! At least they want me in bed! At least you want me in bed! Don't you see that? Can't you understand that?"
He looked down at her and studied the acid lines of agony that were etched into the bronzed face, and then he slowly nodded with understanding.
"Don't you see?" she begged with poignant tear-filled eyes. "No one wants me! You can give me money, a beautiful place to live in, lovely clothes and fine jewelry. But that won't get anyone to love me or care about me!"
"Yes, Naomi. I understand. And I care very much about you," he said in low, muted tones.
"No one wants me!" she cried. "All they want is my body. And to have them accept me even on those terms...."
"Naomi," Randy whispered gently. "I understand your feeling, though I know it will never happen that way! You'll never buy acceptance with your body! They will take what you give, then leave you. Those men don't give a damn about you now that they've had their fun!"
The sorrowful expression in her eyes made him agonize for her and he had to force himself to continue to look into her face.
"Why did you leave me there alone?" her voice choked on sobs that would not be stilled. "I was all alone when they came in, when they...."
Randy nodded at her pathetic expression. How could he console her?
"No one loves or wants a black girl," she breathed, looking at the floor. "Naomi," his voice caressed her.
She whirled her face upward to look at him squarely.
"Then what am I going to do!" she demanded, sobbing. "Help me! Please help me!"
But he had no way of helping her, and he knew it. Nothing but time would change people's feelings and their beliefs and attitudes.
His heart went out to the beautiful, golden-skinned girl kneeling helplessly at his feet but there was nothing he could do for her.
What she wanted was normal. What she wanted was right. But he knew he was as helpless to achieve it as she was. And so he ached for her.
Tenderly, he pulled Naomi onto his lap and tried to stroke away the pain with the gentleness and softness of his touch. She buried her face into his shoulder and allowed him to soothe away the ache. They sat there in the darkness and let the warmth of their feelings for each other wrap and protect them in the cotton batting of togetherness. And it wasn't until the first fingers of dawn poked into the room that Naomi stirred.
Lifting her face from his shoulder, she pleaded desperately, "Love me, Randy. Please love me!"
There was a hungry longing in her tone, and he knew that she was achingly lonely, searching for that oasis of being wanted.
With a soft cry, his mouth pressed gently against hers and their lips rocked in a tender kiss. Moments passed and the moisture of their tongues began to wash sensation into their feelings.
She pressed her body to his, and his hands clasped the warm softness of her breasts. The moment of hurt passed when the demanding need within her made her crush deeper into his hands-deeper into the soothing, gentle tenderness of his love.
CHAPTER TEN
Naomi saw the familiar car sitting by the curb, but because of her apprehension at what she was about to do, she passed it off as inconsequential.
"Sure looks like Line's car," she murmured to herself as she walked up to the path that led to the porch of the rundown tenement. "Wonder what he's doing here? Oh, well, probably just stopped in to see how Ma is. Same as I'm doing. Nothing to be concerned about."
But deep down inside, she knew she was lying to herself. She was apprehensive of seeing her mother again. For she recalled what had happened the day she had left. The angry tirade, the accusations, and name-calling. And though, in a sense, she could understand her mother's anger at what she had done, she couldn't understand why the older woman wouldn't see her point of view. After all, there was so little for her here.
Now, several months later, this was the first time she had made any effort to contact her mother. She didn't know what she was going to say or do, but because of her loneliness and desperation over what was happening, she had to turn to the only person she felt she could turn to, her mother.
And in a sense, she was also going to try to soothe her own conscience.
"Hi! Anybody home?" Naomi called through the open front door.
And though nobody answered, she could hear the sounds of movements in the parlor. So she called again.
"Anybody home?"
She stepped around the broken toys and rubbish in the hallway to cross into her mother's apartment. The sound of neighbor children yelling and the familiar smell of frying grits and pork reminded her of childhood's daily meals. She hadn't had such fare since she'd moved across town to Randy's. Maybe it was something she wanted to get away from, though her mouth momentarily watered at the pungent sweet scent so close she could almost see the big black frying pan filled with what Line affectionately called "soul food."
She shrugged off the thought and pushed into the apartment, though there had been no answer. The familiar ugliness of the surroundings made her cringe. The greasy smell of the kitchen penetrated the walls and permeated the rooms, together with the stench of fly-ridden, forgotten garbage left in the alleys outside the open windows. The plaster was chipped and the boards behind peeped through here and there. There was still not enough money for the necessary paint job to hide the scars of age, use, and the abuse of many people's children.
Comparing it to Randy's beautiful and luxurious apartment uptown only made it seem worse than it really was, and she walked as if afraid some of the dirt and grime would rub off on the new white cotton suit that she had just purchased. She moved cautiously down the hall, her nose wrinkled in displeasure at the stale aroma of too many people living too many years too close together. The tenement had been old when they moved into it as a little girl.
There had always been talk of how they would move into a nicer neighborhood, and yet, it had never happened. Then, when her father had died, even the talk had stopped. It was then that she knew that the only way she could ever get out of the environment was by her own efforts.
Which was exactly what she had done.
And now, as she stood in front of the closed French doors to the parlor, she wondered why her mother couldn't understand that.
Slowly she raised her hand to knock, all thoughts erased as the fear of facing her mother again took hold of her.
"Mom?" she called in a soft whisper. "You in there?"
This time there was a response.
Cold. Lifeless. In a low tone. But Naomi shook it off and pretended it was something else. Something warm and pleasant.
"Yes, I'm in here, Naomi. Come in."
Wondering why her mother hadn't answered her knock at the front door, but happy that at least she had recognized her voice, Naomi walked into the living room.
Line Potter was there, his face eager and expectant at the sight of her. He hurried forward from the sofa to greet her.
"Naomi!" he exclaimed excitedly. "It's so good to see you again! I've been so worried about you. Where you been? What you been doing?"
"Yes, Naomi," she heard the voice from the rocking chair by the window call. "Where have you been and what you been doing?"
Naomi looked over Line's shoulder into her mother's set and stern face. With a cry, she ran to her and bent to kiss the old woman.
And her mother turned her cheek.
Panic welled up within Naomi at the rebuff.
"Aren't you glad to ... to see me, Ma?" she stammered.
The woman shrugged with obvious indifference. "That all depends."
"I'm glad to see you, Naomi," she heard Line say and, in an effort to escape the penetrating gaze of her mother, she turned to look at him.
"I've been awfully worried about you."
"That's why he's here," her mother interrupted. "He thought maybe I could help him find you, convince you to go back to him."
Naomi looked from one to the other, wanting to fling herself at either of them because of her loneliness and her need. And yet, because of some unknown presence in the air, she was unable to.
"What do you want from me, Line?" she finally asked in a low and careful tone.
"I want you to come back to me," he whispered, and she could sense that he hoped the sound of his words hadn't carried to her mother.
"Why? Is it because you love me or ... or is it just because you want me?"
The question was designed to embarrass him, for Line's desire was written all over his face.
"Yes," he answered truthfully. "And I want to marry you."
Naomi closed her eyes. She hadn't wanted him to say that, and yet she knew it was the truth. Unfortunately, she also knew that she was going to have to hurt him, and she didn't want to do that.
"I ... I can't marry you, Line."
"Why not?" he demanded.
"Because of what it would be like. I can't live like this anymore."
With a wave of her hand, she indicated the cheapness and dirtiness of the apartment.
"And that's what it would be like married to you. This is how we'd live."
"No," he protested. "It won't be like this. I'll make it different."
She went on, knowing that each word, each sound was causing him to suffer.
"How will you change it, Line? On what? On what you make? You know you can't."
Her hands ran down the clean, well-designed skirt of her dress and she turned to face him.
"Can you afford to buy me clothes like this? Pay my bills? Give me the things I want?"
"But I love you," he said hopelessly, as if that would answer everything, solve all their problems. "That isn't enough, Line."
From the pained expression on his face, she knew that she had hurt him deeply. And though she didn't want to, Naomi felt she had no choice. And in an effort to put an end to it once and for all, she continued on. Her words were like continuous spear-thrusts into his already suffering carcass.
"No, Line, your loving me isn't enough. A lot of men love me, or can love me. And they can afford to love me. You can't. That's unfortunate, but true."
He stood silent now, unable to respond and unable to hide his feelings. And though she wanted to do something. Say something. To balm the hurt and pain from him, Naomi forced herself to stand stiff and straight in front of him. Apparently unmoved and untouched.
"I think you'd better go now, Line," her mother quietly interrupted. "Can't you see that you're not going to change her mind? Can't you see that she doesn't want you any more?"
Though the words sounded harsh and cruel, Naomi realized that the only reason the older woman was saying them was to save him from more hurt. And even though Line walked from the room with slow and defeated footsteps, she could sense the mood of disapproval in the person who sat stiff and still in the chair behind her.
It wasn't until she heard the quiet closing of the front door that Naomi finally turned to face her mother.
"Well, Ma, how've you been?"
"Hhhmmmppphhh!" was the disinterested reply. "You didn't come here to ask me about my health, Naomi. So now tell me why you did come here."
Naomi looked at the older woman and, with a smile, she shook her head.
"Can't fool you, can I, Ma?"
"You never could before, so I don't think you can now."
Then as Naomi tried to gather her courage to say the words, a heavy silence spread between the mother and daughter. A silence that was finally broken by the impatient tongue of the older woman.
"Out with it, Naomi. Tell me the truth."
She told her mother. At least she told a part of it.
"I came to give you some money, Ma. Figured things might not be going too well for you now that I wasn't home to help out, so I want to make things a little easier."
Her mother watched her open the purse and take out a wallet. She showed no surprise at the amount of money in the billfold and there was absolutely no response when Naomi handed her the two one-hundred-dollar bills. Holding them limply in her fingers, she studied her daughter without even looking at the money.
Naomi felt as if she were being undressed by the way her mother's eyes were examining the expensive clothes, the fashionable hair-do, the costly accessories. And when she finally spoke, it was in a low, soft tone.
"Where did you get this money, Naomi?" she asked quietly, holding up the two bills.
"Working, Ma. I got them working for them," Naomi answered quickly.
"What kind of work?" her mother insisted.
"What difference does it make, Ma?"
The first pangs of panic welled up in her, showed in her cry.
"What difference does it make?" she repeated. "I got it by working for it. That's where I got it! And you need the money, so what difference can it make?"
"Don't lie to me, Naomi."
"I'm not lying."
"Then tell me what your work is," the tone was deadly.
It was important that she accept the money. Why did Naomi have to plead with her? "What kind of work?"
"C ... can't tell you," the girl whispered, sagging with defeat.
The woman was almost triumphant. She let the money flutter to the floor while they both watched. Like dried leaves, the hundred-dollar bills floated to the carpet. When the woman looked up, there was a contemptuous sneer on her face.
"If you won't tell me what kind of work you're doing, then I'll tell you. I'll tell you how you got this money!"
"No, Ma! No!"
She was screaming and her hands clenched over her ears to shut out the sound. Her mother ignored her.
"You got it from that white man you're living with. That man who's paying you for your body. Naomi, you're nothing but a prostitute. A whore!"
"Oh, Ma, Ma! Don't say that! Don't call me that!"
"Why not? It's the truth, isn't it?"
Naomi began to sob. Deep, soul-wracking sobs that shook her body with their intensity. She fell hysterically to her knees and buried her face in her mother's lap, her arms clutching around the other's legs. Then she felt the body stiffen under her touch and with tears streaming down her brown cheeks she faced the angry tenseness of her mother's eyes.
"That's the truth, isn't it? You're nothing but a whore!"
Why couldn't she understand? Naomi wouldn't have come back if it hadn't been for the charity affair. Even Randy hadn't been able to erase and balm the hurt and scars of what those three men had done to her. Naomi needed her mother, the comfort and security of her understanding and love. Her loneliness and fright had brought her back to the world she detested. And it was only on return there that she realized she could never leave Randy's world. Never again could she find shreds of hope and life that had secured her through childhood. Even here there was no real acceptance, but it was the one part of life she needed most.
She had sought it in her mother. And now there was an empty void where love had been.
"Whore!"
"Ma. Please let me come home. Just for a few days."
"No! Not until you change. Change the way you're living!"
"I ... I can't."
"Why not?"
Didn't she see? Didn't she know the difference? What was there here for Naomi after living with Randy?
"Then get out! Take your dirty money and get out!"
She didn't understand. For some reason she couldn't. So Naomi pulled herself to her feet and with her eyes on her feet made the slow, trance-like walk out of the room, down the hall and out the door.
To need her mother so badly. To be spurned and sent away without love or sympathy. Without acceptance even as a daughter, the flesh and blood, the love-fruit of her own womb.
God! She felt so alone!
Outside, in the glaring sunlight, she felt the ache and loneliness like a pounding wave upon her skull, pushing her down. The sun hurt her eyes and she tried to avert her eyes from it.
"Naomi! Naomi!"
She turned, knowing the deep voice was Line's.
"Can I drive you somewhere?" he asked, his tones trying to conceal the almost pleading nature of his question.
Her fingers carefully checked her eyelids lest the welling tears were flowing unfelt. Somehow at this moment she didn't want to be alone.
"Okay, Line," she sighed, "Just to the nearest bus stop would be fine."
He opened the door for her and she slid into his car.
They rode through the streets of gray, battered buildings with their broken windows, worn paint, spilling rubbish, and missing steps. Children played in the streets, grubby, soiled with worn Salvation Army clothes and shoes from a church box of used clothing given by white folks who never saw the recipients. Never knew how their odds and ends fit the dark-skinned child of the slums, skinny and lost, fighting every moment of his life for some hope of a better life.
A group of teen-age boys, not more than fourteen or fifteen years old, stood on the street corner. Beyond the leather jackets, tight jeans, and flashing switch blades Naomi could see the hungry look in their faces. The faces feared by those outside their world, beyond their own turf. In their dark eyes was loneliness, suspicion, fear, all that a black child of the ghettoes was reared on because the gates to his prison were sealed by invisible hands of prejudice and hate.
Two young girls walked by to the obscene whistles and cat-calls of the boys. They hesitated.
Naomi's fists clenched as she looked back over her shoulder to see what they would do. What she had done at their age.
Fear in their eyes and loneliness that etched its scars in their faces and actions, the girls stood warily as the boys surrounded them. And Naomi saw a black hand go out to stroke one rounded buttock. Another to clasp a trembling breast.
Line turned a corner and she turned away, the scene still with her. Knowing all that preceded, all that would follow. Unless ... unless what, Naomi? Unless the white man changes and these kids have hope of something better? Don't kid yourself!
They approached the bus stop. And Line slowed the car.
"Please, Naomi," he whispered, his facial muscles tight with hurt and longing. "Don't leave me. Not just yet."
Naomi heaved a sigh. She ached with the scars of all that forbade her happiness and security.
"All right, Line," she returned, her vocal cords strained and taut.
His foot pressed the gas peddle and the car shot off down the road to the open highway racing towards the one place that had brought them solitude and comfort when they were going together.
The Blue Hills were lovely. Soft, gentle slopes shaded with pine and spruce. The pungent fragrance of evergreen and a soft breeze to carry them to a fantasy world of nature where no man could touch them with prejudice, hate, or fear.
They left the car in roadside parking area with picnic tables close by and walked through the woods, drinking in the fresh clean air and the scent of balsam. Pine needles crackled under their feet and pine cones danced off their shuffling toes.
Finally they found a quiet spot with a bed of moss to sink down onto, soft and resilient to the touch.
"Naomi," Line began.
Don't spoil it! her eyes cried out to him. Don't talk. It's pleasant here. Don't bring in life, people, dreams. Let's be quiet and let nature take hold of us with her tranquillity and lack of pretense. I don't want to know I'm alive. I only want to know the woods, the birds, the chipmunks, and breezes exist-not us. Here there's happiness and hope. With us, there's nothing!
"I love you," he whispered. "Won't you give me another chance?"
"It's too late, Line. Please forget."
"Forget? Forget that I love you? That you promised to marry me?"
"It's over. It's been over for a long time!"
"I want you, Naomi. I need you!"
His arms went out to embrace her. And she looked up at him, his strong, muscular, mahogany handsomeness. But there was nothing. No emotion. No longing. No desire to have him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Line's mouth was on hers, hard and demanding. Trying to drain her strength. Trying to draw out the woman he'd lost.
His tongue scoured her mouth with longing. And his hands worked feverishly at her breasts. He wanted her. Wanted her badly. It was in his fingertips and his lips as he sucked her into him. Crushed her to him.
One more time, she thought. Just one more time. And she let him work at the buttons of her dress, peeling it from her tawny shoulders. Let him undo the clasps of her brassiere and felt her abundant full breasts fall free.
He gnawed at her strawberry tipped mounds of flesh, kneaded their softness and smelled their sweet perfumes.
She stretched out beneath him as he pulled her panties from the honey-skinned curves of her hips and thighs. And she winced when his fingers probed at the soft warmth of her pubic mound, his head still nestled in her breasts.
His hands coursed her body charged with the heat of desire, the electricity of lust. With that black, coarsely curled head of hair digging into her tits, his big hands leathery with the hard labor of menial tasks masticating her pussy, she wanted to scream. To beat wildly upon his big, muscled shoulders and force him away. Away!
This big, black brute of her own people. What had he to give her! Rough hands and dirty poverty. Love in a squeaking bed in a grease permeated room. The sound of many other old brass beds squealing and banging through the thin walls of a shabby tenement. Sirens blaring in the night and nigger children! Black babies to grow up scared and hurt, calloused with the toil of menial labor and the insults and abuse of haughty colorless bastards who stood guard between these innocent children and the good things of life, the hope and the promise of security, comfort, and happiness.
No! No! I don't want that! Naomi's heart cried out. No more rubbish-filled slums. No lying awake nights to hear others make love in a battered old bed or let them hear me. No more sorrow and abuse. No more black babies to grow into delinquents and prostitutes filled with fear and hate. To grow into men and women like her parents, thanking a heartless God for the gifts of filth, hate, poverty, and slum living. For the callouses and scars of menial labor and the hope of nothing better, no comforts, no security. To grow into men like Line who think they can whip a world into recognizing the worth of a down-trodden, despised people.
I don't want babies to grow up in a world of hate! I don't want to bring life into this vacuum! This world of no hope, no love, no comfort, no peace, no joy, no meaning, no acceptance-!
"No! No!" she cried pushing Line from her body. "No! No!"
Naomi scrambled to her feet, pulling on her panties and bra, oblivious to the stunned and shaken man at her feet.
I feel nothing for you. Nothing! She wanted to cry out to him. There's only hopelessness, resignation, in your arms. No love. No desire. For you can give me nothing but more of what I've escaped from. More pain, needing, and loneliness.
She had her dress on and was turning away, running to the car.
"Please. Please, take me to a bus stop! Please!" she cried over her shoulder.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"And the stories I've heard about her! If only half of them are true, she's got a reputation that belongs in Confidential!"
"I heard what happened at the charity auction. Imagine selling your body like that! And there were three men involved. Nobody knows who they were. But they weren't to blame. How could a man resist a woman who offers herself like that!"
"Yes, I don't see how Randy stands it! Besides, what is he doing living with a ... with a whore! Doesn't he know what she's doing to his reputation!"
Naomi, holding two liquor glasses in her hands, leaned against the wall for support as the voices of the women from the dressing room tore at her in-sides. On her way to the kitchen with the glasses to wash she had heard the chatter of the women issuing through the partly opened door. The realization that she was the subject of their discussion had caused her to linger within range of their words.
Now she wished she hadn't. She wished she'd kept right on going. It was easier to suspect what was being said about oneself than to know for a fact the hate and ill feelings expressed behind one's back.
She had begged Randy not to have this party. Knowing what would happen, trying to explain to him, didn't persuade him. He was so sure his friends would accept her. Poor Randy didn't realize that they'd only accepted the invitation to come and look, come and stare at the mulatto body that had blinded him to reason and sanity. And he wouldn't believe how many have gone in to look at our bed. To see where the action takes place. See where I earn my keep! When will he learn he can't force me down their throats? In their filthy minds I come from a world apart and can be nothing but scum, dirt off the streets.
The three girls emerged from the dressing room to stare with surprise at Naomi. They managed weak smiles before turning and moving off to the living room. Their whispers drifted back to her.
"Suppose she heard?"
"So what? She's probably used to hearing things like that. Probably hears worse!"
"Of course, especially when they're true!"
Blindly, Naomi sought the faraway sanction of the kitchen. She was rinsing the glasses when Randy found her.
"Hey! How long does it take to rinse a couple of glasses?"
His hands snaked about her waist and came up to cup her rich, high breasts, pulling her back against him. She quivered at his touch, her nipples quickly hardening to his gently squeezing fingers.
"Like that, don't you?" he whispered sucking at her ear.
She gyrated her buttocks into his groin in answer.
"Hey! You know what that does to me!" he warned.
"And that's exactly why I did it" she said, vnpA ing the remnants of her tears away. "I want you. Now!"
"But our guests!"
Naomi whirled into his arms, crushing her body to his. "Send them home!"
"They'll be insulted. It's early yet. We can't shoo our friends off just like that."
"Your friends, Randy. They don't like or want me. And they never will."
"Stop that!" he admonished her. "Come on! The party's just getting started."
He broke away from her and held out his hand. She took it and went back with him.
They watched the guests frolicking until someone put on some sensual pseudo-African, savage rite music. The stereo blared out with the exotic rhythm with the heart-vibrating tempo of drums gyrating beneath the strains.
"Hey," someone shouted. "What kind of music is that ... Nobody can dance to that!"
"I can," interrupted a tall man with a reddish crew-cut, leaping to the center of the room. "All I need is a partner. Who's game?"
The girls looked laughingly from one to the other.
"Not me. Can't dance to that."
"Me either. Not my beat!"
"Nor mine. That's ... that's for savages. Primitives to dance to."
"Yeah. Like in Africa!"
The room exploded into silence and every face turned to look at Naomi's reaction. The heat of anger and embarrassment rose in her throat.
"Forget it, Honey," Randy whispered. "She didn't mean it!"
Angrily she shrugged him off. Didn't mean it! You may be blind, Randy, but it isn't my body that blinds you. She fumed within.
She stalked over the sprawled legs upon the floor and reached the man who waited expectantly, smiling.
"I'll dance with you," she said huskily. "That's my kind of music!"
From the look on his face, Naomi knew that the record choice had been intentional. He had deliberately provoked the incident. Wanted it to happen!
So you want to see a savage! Want to see how she dances, eh?
Naomi kicked off her shoes and slinked close to him, slowly, sensually. Her hips rotated provocatively and her whole body took up the rhythm, her full breasts swaying and rippling with the motion.
He followed her every move as she kept the tempo of the drums, the sway of the lust-inspiring strains. Her hands went to his hips and he clasped hers. She came closer, edging up to him, her voluptuous curves gyrating and writhing in his clutch.
Provocatively, she grazed his body with her hard-tipped breasts, ground her pelvis up to his. Thrusting out her breasts until the nipples strained their indentations in the material of her dress. The suggestive twisting and contorting made her seem naked. Seductively the motions seemed to strip her naked before their eyes and it seemed as if she was starkly, lewdly bare, nude to their view as she performed a savage fertility rite with the panting, sweating man before her.
Someone screamed as she tugged the zipper at the top of her dress revealing the over-flowing golden skin of her breasts in the half-bra she was wearing.
Then suddenly the music ended.
In the silence, Naomi seemed to awaken from her trance-like state as she looked in horror at the open bosom of her dress. Then she looked up at the smiling face of the red-haired man. Deliberately, she pulled her dress down all the way so that the top hung over her waist like an apron.
"This what you wanted to see!" she screamed. "Are they like you imagined? Did you expect them to be bigger than this? Smaller? Do they satisfy you?"
She ripped the brassiere from her succulent breasts, letting them hang free. Then she turned, blinded with tears, and fled the room.
Behind the slammed bedroom door, in the haven of their big double bed, she tried to turn off the hate and anger. Tried to hide from the shame and horror that was too close.
Randy came to gently stroke her shoulder, to comfort her.
"Send them away," she begged. "Love me. Help me!"
"I can't, Naomi," he tried to make her understand. "They didn't mean to hurt you. You know you didn't have to retaliate like that."
Silence.
"You'll feel better in a little while," he said, patting her. "It won't be long, and the party will be over."
Oh, Randy! She wanted to shout at the closing door. Don't you see? But you can't turn away your friends. I'm not worth insulting your friends no matter how much they hurt and humiliate me!
She threw herself into the cold, yielding softness of the pillow and sobbed out her heart.
How long had she lain there like that before she realized that warm hands were caressing her back. Randy? Have you come back?
"Randy?"
The hands were gentle and loving, knowing every sensitive hollow and swell of her womanhood. They felt comforting.
Slowly, carefully, they stripped her dress off. Edging it carefully over her hips and thighs.
"Randy?" she whispered, lifting her thighs to aid him.
The flimsy nylon wisp of her panties melted over her buttocks and slipped easily off her slim ankles. And the sensitive fingers were reaching between her relaxed and open thighs, probing for the moist, hot lips of her pussy.
Naomi rolled onto her back to embrace him and pull him to her. Opening her eyes in the shadowy gloom of the night light, she recognized the smiling face and reddish hair.
"You!" she cried sitting bolt upright.
"Who'd you want?" he chuckled, proud of himself. "One white cock's as good as another so long as you get it, isn't it? You were responding."
"Get out!" she yelled.
"But we were just getting started," he pouted. "Always wanted to see how you girls reacted. Heard you were regular nymphomaniacs. Now I know!"
"GET OUT OF HERE!" she bellowed.
"Now, baby," he smiled indifferently. "You like my lily white body and you know it. You want my prick in you. Admit it!"
He was so confident. So goddamned sure she was mad about white skin! So fucking positive she lived for a white cock to fill her. That was all she wanted or needed. Ofay bastard!
"You get your goddamned butt out of here, or so help me-!" she breathed hotly at him.
He shook his head as if the words weren't registering. As if she didn't know what she was saying.
"GET OUT OF HERE, BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
She threw a heavy ash tray from the bed stand to punctuate her order. He dodged. And it crashed to the floor.
"GET OUT!" she shrieked, leaping from the bed and grabbing another weapon.
He was at the door, unlocking it and racing out, as Naomi, unmindful of her nakedness, stormed after him, brandishing her weapon. She heaved it after him, tears of rage pouring down her cheeks.
"Naomi!" Randy cried, racing to her and attempting to wrap her in his jacket. "What's gotten into you?"
"Me? Never mind what's gotten into me!" she shouted, pointing at the staring faces. "Ask them! What's the matter with them and that ... bastard that just tried to make love to me!"
"Make love...." Randy asked increduously. "And you let him?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" she told him stomping a bare foot. "It was dark and I was crying into the pillow. I thought it was you until-!"
It was all too impossible. He would never believe it. And those ofay faces, everyone of them, was intent on her explanation, ready to snicker and guffaw at her un-likely side of the story.
In a blind fury of tears she ran back into the bedroom, Randy's jacket flying from her shoulders, no longer caring about her nakedness. She had done all they expected of her. Fallen neatly into their set traps. She'd proven all they'd wanted her to. Just a black whore. That was all she was!
She was gathering her clothes when Randy came in.
"I sent them all home," he told her lamely. She didn't answer.
"And I socked that fellow, the one ... ," he stut-tered watching her as she sobbed quietly. "I hit him when he said that was all one could expect from a girl like you."
"It doesn't matter what they think," she said horsely. "What matters is if you believe me."
"I ... I believe you, Naomi," he told her after an agonizing silence in which she saw his face tighten with the nervous twitch of muscles that accompanied his strained moments of indecision.
"I think I'd better go now," Naomi told him returning to her packing.
"Go? Where? Why?"
"It isn't working out, Randy," she sighed. "We have nothing but trouble when it comes to the two of us outside this apartment with other people. You can't have me and your friends too. They won't have it, and I can't change the color of my skin to help you. It's better that I leave you in peace with your friends."
"But I want you," he protested. "It doesn't matter what they think."
"Are you sure, Randy? Are you sure what they think doesn't matter?"
"Yes," he whispered.
"Then prove it. Prove to me that you want me! You always seem to take your friends' side in situations like the one tonight. If you really care, if you really want me, prove it!"
There was only one way he knew. Only one way to show he cared.
He took her into the protection of his embrace and pressed his hungry mouth to hers, drew her body into his.
Maybe this is all we have. All we'll ever have, Naomi thought as she surrendered to his love. Mom is right. I'm using my body. Selling it for what I can gain. For the one thing I want and need so much. Acceptance. But if this is the only way he'll have me ... If this is the way he wants me....
God! I want to be loved. To be needed. Somehow. In some way. To be accepted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The rain outside the window beat down like a funeral dirge, the lights of the city blurred in the heavy sheets that poured against the window panes.
In the soft light of the living room, Naomi stared with unseeing eyes at the same page she'd been holding the book open to for an hour. Even the popular tunes of the FM station on the stereo weren't piercing her vacuum of loneliness.
For two weeks now, Randy had left her alone at the apartment when social and business duties called him elsewhere. For her own protection he had left her in the solitude of his rooms so that she wouldn't have to endure the glares and whispers of Boston society.
It had only served to magnify her emptiness and desolation.
On nights like this when Randy was called away to business meetings, her aloneness became more acute. Left for hours with only a mechanical voice from the radio or stereo to talk to her. Or only a book to hold in her hands. The fact that she was alone and friendless until Randy returned to take her in his arms and love her into the oblivion of slumber became sharper in her senses.
"Two hours," she whispered to herself. "Two hours till he comes. He said it would be midnight when he got back. That's so far off."
Even the weather seemed to be against her. So damp and dreary.
"Rain makes me so cold and lonely," she breathed, shivering and curling tighter upon the couch.
The phone jingled beneath the lamp beside her.
Randy! She thought excitedly. I'll bet it's Randy calling to say he'll be home early. He's coming home early to me!
She lifted the receiver to her ear.
But it wasn't Randy's voice that greeted her. It was a woman's.
"Hello," the voice said sweetly. "I'd like to speak to Randy Harcourt, please."
"He's not here," Naomi told her. "He's gone out."
"Gone out? Where?" the woman sounded surprised.
"To a business meeting," Naomi answered.
"That's strange. He was supposed to come to my party tonight," the woman continued.
She obviously thought she was talking to Randy's maid.
"Would you please give him a message when he comes in?"
Anger burned in Naomi's throat. Randy had lied to her. There was no business meeting. And he'd said nothing about this party.
"No. I'm not going to deliver any damned messages!" she cried slamming the receiver back into its cradle.
"I'm no maid! That isn't my job!"
So Randy was too ashamed of me to let people know I'm still here, she thought angrily. They think I'm a maid! And he has to lie now about parties and social engagements.
Angrily she whipped herself into the bedroom to get her raincoat.
If he can go out and have a good time, then so can I. I'll just go visit some of my friends!
The thought of Line and her old friends down at Roxie's bar came to her. Yes, she had some friends who weren't ashamed of her. She'd go see them and have a really good time.
Slamming the aprtment door behind her, she didn't feel so bad any more. She rode the elevator down to the first floor and crossed the lobby, ignoring the looks of other residents and their callers.
As she stepped out into the rain things didn't seem so bad. She had a place to go. People to see. Somehow she wasn't so lonely and despondent anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Naomi floated into Roxie's Bar as if washed off the street by the wind and rain. Her presence seemed to punctuate the pleasant rumble of conversation within a period. Bartender and customers alike turned to look her over as she stood near the door. Then with shrugs of contempt, they turned and ignored her. Their snubs were too obvious to be snubs. They were more like insults.
Standing there, Naomi's eyes darted off the hunched backs of the customers slouched over the bar stools. She knew most of them, because this used to be one of her favorite hangouts.
Nervously, she weighed her choice, stay or go. Memory of the telephone call and of the empty apartment tilted the scales in favor of staying.
Jutting her chin out defiantly, she walked toward the empty seat at the end of the bar.
"How's it going, Mac?" she asked of the bartender when he finally came over to her. "Long time no see."
He shrugged indifferently, his hands on his side of the bar as he waited for her to order. The look on his brown face was nondescript. Emotionless. Like she was a stranger instead of a customer for the past five years.
"I'll have the usual, Mac," Naomi finally said.
"What's that?" he asked.
"You ought to know! I've been ordering it long enough."
He shook his head.
"Customers come and go. Some you remember, and some you don't. Especially those who think they're too good for old friends!"
It was an inference and she knew there was nothing she could do about it except to either ignore it or go to another bar. She chose to ignore it.
"Scotch and water," she said in a low tone.
She watched him walk to the end of the bar and prepare the drink. Someone leaned across to him and said something that caused him to laugh. They both looked down at her. And she knew what they were talking about.
They don't want me here. I'm not one of them anymore. It hurts their pride to think I'm shacking up with a white man. So they're going to give me the treatment. As if I'd broken some major code or something! Well, they won't break me. I know what I am. They can think what they want.
The bartender brought back her drink and slopped it carelessly on the bar before her.
"That'll be seventy-five cents!" he said looking her in the face. Naomi looked at him in surprise.
"What's the matter. Can't I run a tab here like I always do?"
He shook his head.
"That's only for regular customers and people I trust. If you don't like our rules, why don't you go someplace else!"
Naomi's pride kept her glued to the seat. Slowly and deliberately she found a dollar bill in her handbag, then slapped it on the bar in front of him.
"Keep the change," she said sarcastically.
He rang the amount on the cash register and brought back the silver quarter and plunked it down in front of her.
"I don't want money like that," his words came slowly. "It smells bad."
He turned his back on her and walked away.
Naomi clutched her raincoat tightly about her, shivering with anger and walked out.
Turning blindly down the street she nearly collided with Line.
"Hello, Naomi."
"Why, Hi, Line. How are you. It's been a long time."
He ignored her words.
"What are you doing down here with us poor folk? Slumming?"
"Why shouldn't I come down and visit?" she said gaily, ignoring the insult. "My friends live here."
"Friends? You ain't got any friends." he snarled with an abrupt laugh. "The only friend you got must've deserted you or you wouldn't be here. What'sa matter. Not treatin' you good no more?"
She flicked open her raincoat under the flashing neon sign.
"What does it look like?"
She displayed her new red outfit of expensive shantung.
"And I've got a whole closet full of clothes like this, Line. This happens to be the cheapest of them. Wore it special to come down here in."
The muscles of his cheeks quivered. And she felt a smile of satisfaction spreading on her own lips.
"What did you come down here for, Naomi? Not to see old friends. You ain't got any here now."
She looked up at him, her chin thrust forward.
"Either your ofay isn't treatin' you right, or you've come looking for a man. Isn't what you thought he'd be? Come back for some real loving like you used to get from me?" he sneered.
"You wouldn't begin to know what real loving is, Line," she seethed. "I never got a taste of it until I found Randy. You're still in nursery school compared to his techniques. You couldn't begin to catch up!"
"No?" he breathed regarding her slyly in the cold liquid blue of the flashing sign.
Naomi returned his look firmly and smiled.
"No. Now I've got to run along before he misses me. Be seeing you ... maybe."
And she turned on her heel and clacked off into the darkness of the rain-soaked night. A feeling of satisfaction went with her. Guess I've shown him, she thought to herself. Maybe I'll see him again? Ha! I should give a damn.
There were rapid heavy footsteps behind her.
Why did her heart skip a beat? There was nothing to fear. She'd shown that over-sized nigger baby she didn't need him. All she wanted was Randy. Love and Randy. But he wasn't home. He was at a party or somewhere. Somewhere she couldn't go.
The footsteps approached quickly, steadily. Clap. Clap. Slap into a puddle. They kept coming. Intent and purposeful.
In the steady drizzle the street lights blurred. An early drunk staggered against a telephone pole and some ragged old man pawed in a garbage pail for scraps outside a bar and grill. Distantly she heard the sound of laughter. Somewhere something funny was being said. People were amused. But they were too far away to hear her. Too far away to know her need. And they wouldn't help or understand her if she could find them in one of those dimly lit-blue-fumed rooms with cigarettes burning over half-empty bottles of gin and whisky.
The footsteps stamped abreast of her and she could hear the heavy breathing of an angered man.
She looked up and saw Line regarding her hotly from the corner of his eye. One strong hand gripped her arm and pulled her along with him down the street and into an alley way.
"Wh ... what, Line!" she cried, pulling back. "Stop! Let go!"
But her protests and resistance went unheeded.
"Line! Let me go. I'll scream!"
"Scream, baby," he hissed. "Who's gonna help? Who's gonna give a damn?"
"HELP!" she cried. "Someone, HELP!"
There were only the drunk and garbage scrounger to hear. The first was oblivious to his surroundings and the old man looked up vaguely from his ash can. Naomi waved to him and cried once more and he just waved back.
Line laughed, "Your friend really cared."
"Line, be reasonable!" she hollered beating his chest and arms with her fists as her feet dragged the ground.
He picked her up bodily, turning off into the narrow alley while she screamed.
One or two people appeared at the door of an old cellar apartment behind a rubbish heap, but withdrew in spite of Naomi's pleas. They knew better than to get mixed up in someone else's trouble. It meant police, newspaper reporters, inquisitive "do-gooders" and other trouble makers.
When Line finally put her down, Naomi found herself in a dirty store room with one naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She could hear the clatter of falling pins and rumbling bowling balls on the other side of one thin wall. On the other side of the room she could hear laughter, chatter, and calling voices above the thunder of a juke box and the wail of mumbled words from a popular protest singer.
She carefully surveyed the crowded room of boxes, mice, and filth. There were only two doors of escape and Line was carefully testing the locks, depositing their keys in his hip pocket.
"So you think I'm just kid stuff, huh?" he queried, turning to her.
Naomi didn't answer. She just watched him as he slowly came towards her, almost dragging his feet as he caught her eyes' fall to them. A grin etched his dark face as he saw her squirm against a tall pile of boxes watching the steady approach of his huge, motorcycle-booted feet.
"Think I don't know how to make love!" his voice echoed deeply through the passage of boxes he passed.
Naomi inched her way backward through the wooden cases, tripping among the small broken cardboard containers strewn under her feet.
"Ha! Ha!" he laughed boisterously at her.
"Line!" she screamed stopping to stare at him. "Goddamn it! What do you want?"
"Me?" he asked increduously, pausing only a moment. "Since when did you give a shit about what I want? What your mother wants? What your friends want?"
"I'm talking about here and now, Line!" she shouted. "Not what you think about the past."
"Think? Know!" he shouted. "You haven't given a damn about anyone but Naomi Douglas since you found you could get a few goodies by screwing with an ofay. Isn't that so? Since you've been fucking with that white bastard and getting fancy clothes and jewelry, you've forgotten who raised and fed you, slaved to give you whatever was available for a nigger kid! You've ignored and denied your old friends because they weren't good enough for you. Couldn't give you what your ofay cock's wallet could, huh?"
"No, Line. No!"
"Yes! Naomi, you haven't given a shit for anyone except those who could give you the white man's luxuries for the use of your little mulatto pussy!"
"Line, please!" she begged as he came full upon her.
"Slut, Whore!" he shouted at her, his heavy, massive brown hand swung down and cracked against her jaw, snapping her head to one side.
"Bitch! Fucking black bitch!" he rasped, watching her clasp the throbbing jaw. "When I get through with you, you'll know who can screw."
Naomi stared at him defiantly, her shoulders squared, and let her hand drop from the pulsating fire of her jaw. She only hoped he could not hear the pounding fear of her heart.
He viewed her coolly. His eyes were burning coals, spitting out all the unspoken words that said he despised everything she stood for.
"Well, whore?" he demanded. "Don't you know how to undress? You like to make love so much! Get that hungry little cunt of yours filled with a prick. Then strip, nigger baby. STRIP!"
"No, Line!" she whispered hoarsely. "You got it all wrong!"
"Me? Unh-unnh, baby. You that's got it wrong," his words seared her. "We tried to treat you like a lady, but you didn't want it. Wanted to be a whore. So's now we gonna treat you like one. Got the picture? You think you're a lady from the upper crust of Boston Society now and was nothing but a nigger girl before? I got news for you, doll. You was never nothin' but a black pussy to be fucked and handled. 'N yawh worse now, bitch. 'Cause now you can be bought and sold like a two-cent lollipop to be sucked, eaten, and forgotten. Like that, huh?"
"Line," her voice trembled.
"No, Naomi. You can't talk to me anymore. Can't twist me around your li'l fingah! Now I'm takin' what's rightfully mine. Takin' what was promised and then snatched back."
"Please," Naomi pleaded. "Line, PLEASE!"
"Oh, ho, looka the Boston bitch o' Society shake and grovel! She's askeered. O what, babe? You seen a prick befo'. You had one fill your hot little cunt. You ain't no virgin. Why you was took early. Seen them pluck your cherry myself and tasted it not long after. "Membeh, huh?"
"Line, it's not right. Not this way. Please-!"
"Not this way?" he belched furiously. "Then how? Offered you marriage. Legal and propah! Security, a home-me to watch over you. And you chose to sell your pussy to an ofay with some dough and a title in uptown social circles. If I can't have you legal and nice, and I can't buy you like the cheap prostitute that you are, how should I take you?"
Naomi swallowed loudly. How in hell did she ever get into this mess, she wondered? What did I do? First Randy deserts me in the library. Then he goes off to have a good time and leaves me home miserable and alone. Now Line. Only Line is going to hurt me, himself, if he can. He's going to hurt me bad because he's loved me and I couldn't love him back. Why didn't he understand? Why the hell couldn't anyone understand!
"Start stripping or I'll do it myself!" he ordered.
"Line, don't you love me anymore? Don't you care?"
"You should talk of love and caring! You who's nothin' but a prostitute, a cunt to be picked up off the streets and-!"
"Line! Stop! Stop! I can't stand your accusations!"
"There's more than accusations, baby," he snorted and waited no longer.
His huge hands began to tear at her. Ripping the expensive cloth from her bosom, down over her hips. Mad with fury, his strength was multiplied.
Naomi struggled against his force, but that great dark paw slashed at her face again and left it raw and bleeding. His claws raked at her slip and brassiere, wrenching them from her rich, lustrous breasts. And Naomi found herself collapsing weakly from fear and exhaustion under his brute force as he shredded the thin wisp of nylon bikini panties from her hips.
She lay there naked in the bright puddle of her clothes, blood drying at her lower lip and down her chin. Her honey-gold flesh rippled with chill shivers from her nudeness and the fear that sounded frantically in her breast.
Lust drooling from his mouth, and loathing and hatred in his black orbs, he came down atop her. His black muscled bulk like a monstrous shadow engulfing her.
"Aaannnggghhh!" Naomi shrieked.
But his mouth came down over hers, muting and choking her so that her cry was lost in the prison of his arms and flesh.
His mouth levered open her lips, their teeth gnashing with the fury of their struggle. And the warm wet invasion of his tongue bathed her mouth and pressed at her tonsils.
Her jaws ached with his bruising hold and in answer to her efforts to clamp her teeth upon his tender organ his teeth cut into the fragile skin of her lips.
"Mmmpppfff! Mmmpppfff!" she mumbled against him, pushing at his vast shoulders with all her might.
He was pleased with her struggle. Glad at her pain. He was going to make her know all the pain and humiliation she'd caused him. She would suffer for abandoning of her mother, her friends, the man she was to have married. In the manner in which she had denied herself, chosen to forsake her friends, he would make her pay a small token for lack of love, lack of humanity, her own egoism and self-preservation at the cost of loved ones.
Naomi Douglas was about to learn what it meant to be a lost and fallen woman. About to know what became of a woman who sacrificed friends and loyalty for her own enrichment. She would know the cost of selling her Negro-nurtured body to a white man for less than a black soul's worth.
Animal-like claws ravaged the rich swells of her soft, tawny breasts. They pawed and raked at her soft, silken flesh, leaving it with the dark prints of blood vessels crushed and broken under the pressure of merciless fingers.
Naomi panted with pain and exhaustion under the onslaught. Her breasts heaved in the vise-like grip of his fists and her lungs fought for oxygen in the suffocating mastication of his mouth, her throat giving sharp, rasping rattles as she strained for fresh air.
Her fists and legs flailed vainly, pinned beneath Line's heavy weight. And her mind began to reel, her senses intermittently sharp with pain and numb with gray oblivion.
Line finally released her mouth and she gasped, coughing and sputtering for the oxygen that would restore her fading senses. But he didn't wait for her to regain her powers of defense. Satisfaction at her state of fragility drove him on, and he fell to her breasts once more, his hands manipulating and crushing the sensitive flesh into golden marble streaked with black and blue swirls of merging bruises. His teeth chewed upon her swollen nipples, leaving them torn and masticated, a bleeding pulp of brown-crested thumbs.
All the while, his knees were gnawing at her groin, the force of his weight pushing his worn chino knees between the spreading thighs. He could feel the burning labia through the thin pant material as it oozed its hot fluids to soak his knees.
Naomi labored in the musty air, her mouth wide open and noisily rasping. She became aware of the excruiciating torture of her breasts and nipples. And she could see his coarsely-curled head pounding at them with the maniacal energy.
She tried to move and realized that her almost numb crotch was being crushed by his legs. Oh God! She wanted to scream. Would anyone hear above the rumbling thunder and crashes of the bowling alley? The strains of Line's favorite "soul music" drifted through the other wall. It was his world now. Not hers. He held rule and she was helpless to his will.
He lifted his head to look at her and she dreaded the sight of madness in his face. He wrenched at the throbbing mounds of flesh in his fists and seemed to enjoy her contorted face of torment.
"So I can't screw, eh?" he breathed hoarsely. "I'll show you!"
Naomi felt her body tossed over onto her stomach as though she were a rag doll, not the flesh and blood entity of a human being.
God! Rape. He's going to rape me! Her mind wailed in the darkening fog of her senses. Rape me!
"Always wanted to fuck you in the ass. Now I'm going to do it."
"Line," she implored him. "Please, no. It'll hurt. Hurt bad!"
His laugh of pleasure at her torment washed her with a wave of helplessness. Suddenly her entire body, every muscle and ligament, melted to liquid and she nearly disintegrated into prostration upon the floor.
The wet veil of tears blurred her vision and she resigned herself to his will. His thighs moved forward slightly and she felt the huge, pulsating head of his cock pressed tightly between the cheeks of her ass. She automatically tightened her buttocks in a hopeless attempt to keep him from entering her there, but his thumbs on either side of her anus pressed harshly outward and opened the whole of her back passage to the mercy of his unnatural de-sires. He pressed the slippery, lubricated head of his cock tightly against the tiny, puckered entrance and pressed forward, gently at first.
He'd waited too long, he mused, thinking of the soiled wet splotch on his fly front as he'd unzip-pered his trousers and pulled out the pulsing, ballooning flesh of his prick.
Nudging it tenderly between his fingers to ease the ache of waiting and watch it grow for a moment, he remembered the times when he could take her willingly, when she'd come, wanting him. But that was over now. Finished!
He thrust sharply into the tiny opening of her anus, unmercifully, careless of the tiny fragileness of the passage.
"Aaaggghhh!" she screamed as she suddenly felt the tight, unyielding muscles of her anus being forced slowly outward from the force of his relentless pressure. Her face twisted tightly in pain and she groaned like a wounded banshee down into the frothy ring of her expensive clothing. She clenched the pool of shantung to her face, muffling the desperate cry of impalement on the end of a giant spear shaft.
The scent of her Chanel flooded her nostrils from the swath of red at her face, and she realized for the first time, that she had blocked out the pungent animal odor of his male sweat and desire. Nausea welled in the pit of her stomach from the mixed fragrances of male and female bodies locked in sexual exertion and the artificial veil of her feminine perfumes.
Her body pitched forward with the lunging drive of the male at her buttocks. There was a slight pop as the tight outer ring of her anus suddenly gave way and the head of his throbbing member slipped inside. She groaned again and then the momentary pain of his initial entry passed and her rectum relaxed and opened to receive him.
He grunted behind her as the tight un-used flesh clamped around his cock like a vice, but did not ease off on the pressure he was exerting against her. He jerked forward with short, hard strokes, digging deeper and deeper into her belly until Naomi's whole behind felt stretched and distended beyond all hope of ever recovering. She felt as though her whole insides were being pushed up hard into her throat. There seemed no way in the world she could escape the cruel and relentless instrument skewering its way deep into her bowels.
His hands curved around her trembling belly and she could feel his fingers pulling the hot, wet lips of her cunt open beneath her. He thrust forward with his fingers, sinking three of them deep inside her. She moaned again, her loins feeling completely filled with the hard, thick cock tunneling into her rectum from behind and his probing fingers sunk deep in her vagina.
There was a sudden gasp from his lips and she felt his pelvis smack hard into the flaccid cheeks of her buttocks, pushing them up and out. She whimpered and felt her entire body jerk and writhe for a moment in protest and then relax in helpless acceptance as the whole of his pulsating prick lay buried deep in the confines of her widely stretched rectum. He stood still for a moment to give her time to ad-just to the unnatural invasion of her back passage, and then began a series of slow, short strokes in and out of her, his fingers probing deep in her cunt, keeping time to his cock gliding smoothly in and out of her rectum.
And then to her surprise, the driving rod and the searching caress of his fingers probing into her vagina soon aroused her in a strange masochistic way, and she began eagerly rocking her hips in the air behind her, propelled by the suddenly mounting urgency of her own passage.
No! She fought the swelling fire that caught at her loins. Mustn't. Can't. Please!
But it was there. She could feel the old familiar fire building again deep inside her belly and she rocked and rotated wildly below him. The round magnificence of her buttocks hollowing and clenching around the hardness of his cock with each hard, brutal stroke he rammed into her kindled the flames still higher.
She could hear him clucking behind her in lewd delight as he watched his thick rod of flesh disappearing deep down inside the smooth hairless mouth of her rectum, and then gasping crazily to himself as he jerked out again. The tight, pink flesh flowed with it with a wet sucking noise, clasping to it as though it didn't want to let go.
His naked lust incited her more, and she began to move in earnest now, the licking flames of her own desire almost ready to erupt. She could feel he was close to coming.
He was growing inside her, stretching the already taut walls of her rectum wider and wider until they became a boiling, liquid mass of flesh. God, she would explode. She couldn't stand it much longer.
Her eyes were dilated and bulged wide as she humped under him. The tightness of her asshole clasping and unclasping around him like a sucking fish as he fucked into her now with all his lustful might.
Then he came!
Just as the rising tide of her own passion spilled out deep inside her, she could feel the hot spurts of his sperm emptying deep inside her rectum until it felt as though he were filling her whole body with the hot, sticky fluid. Her full, rounded breasts danced between her shoulders, hardening as her kneeling form felt him break through her belly and he jumped his come into them.
She could taste it on the end of her tongue, and swirled her taste buds lasciviously around inside her mouth, savoring with delight the delicious and pungent tang.
Behind her Line cried out, his thick pulsating member spurting one last thick jet of his sperm deep into her channel, flooding her ass. With a wild cry, her whole body contracted in the final burst of her own orgasm.
Her eyes closed, and she collapsed amid her soft garments and the strewn cardboard as he withdrew with a wet sucking sound, as though he were pulling a body from quicksand. A thin string of sperm followed the tip of his cock, still connecting it to the stretched hole of her anus, an obscene reminder of the savagely crude coupling they had just gone through.
Naomi lay in a limp heap on the floor, unable to move, weary and hating herself for being caught up in the vulgar lust of his rape. Why, oh, why had ... Randy! God! Forgive me. Hate me!
Line's big body slumped beside her, one big hand on her bare and quivering shoulder.
"I'm sorry. Allah! I'm sorry, Naomi," he whispered, his breath hot on her tear-stained cheeks.
Her eyes burned and her nostrils flared at the smell of his sweat-stinking body. She looked at him briefly, her pupils hot daggers as they peered into his beaded face. His brow was furrowed with sadness and regret and the lines etched at the downward droop of his mouth were mere tracings of the gullies of unhappiness that would be ploughed there by the trials of life.
His sight repulsed her.
"Don't touch me," she spat. "Don't you ever dare touch me again!"
"Naomi, I love you," he beseeched her. "I wanted you so bad!"
"Animal. You're nothing but an animal!"
"I want to marry you, Naomi. Take care of you!"
She dragged herself to her feet. Her whole body torn with the pain of his viscious rape. Slowly, trembling with hate and shame at the wanton torment of her flesh, she dressed, pulling on the torn remnants of her attire.
He watched her, his throat constricted with guilt and remorse. Then he rose, slipping his wet and deflated prick into his pants and zippering them closed with an ominous metallic clicking.
She paused briefly at the sound and then finished her dressing, pulling her coat tightly about her. She shivered, even in the warmth of the close quarters, with the thoughts of what had just happened, what lay back at the apartment, and the unknown of what lay ahead.
"Just let me take you somewhere, at least," Line said gently, trying to make things right.
She thought of the apartment. It was a haven when Randy was there to shield her in his arms and love her. She nodded and let him lead her out the door back into the grimy wetness of the black stench-filled alley.
It was still raining. The lights shone dimly and reflected in the slick mud puddles of the street. Walking along in the darkness behind Line, Naomi still felt a sense of hopelessness.
In the front seat of his car she watched the tumble-down slums rising like ghostly silhouettes careen past her vision as Line raced like a madman through the streets, guilt tearing at his gut.
She wished he'd crash. Suddenly she wished that they'd smash somewhere, somehow. It was all so futile.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Quietly Naomi let herself into the apartment, wincing in pain as she pulled her aching body through the door. It was dark, and she stumbled as she reached for the light switch on the wall. The voice from the living room stopped her before she could turn on the switch.
"Is that you, Naomi?" Randy called and she heard him get up from the chair by the window.
"Yes," she answered in a weak tremor. "It's me."
"Come in here. The living room. There's something I want to tell you."
Naomi wondered what he wanted to talk about as she moved slowly toward the other room. She blinked in surprise at the bright light that bathed her in its illumination and though she tried to avert her face, she wasn't quick enough.
"I want to tell you about tonight. Where I was," he said as he came toward her.
An arm's length away from her, he stopped.
"Your face! What's happened to your face!"
Gingerly she felt the bruise that puffed out her chin. Her crusted, swollen lips were stiff. Dropping her hand to her side, she straightened up as she looked at him. His obvious concern sent a warmth through her.
"What happened to you? Who did that?"
Her answer was a slow shake of her head.
"I can't tell you that, Randy," she whispered.
"Why not?" he demanded. "Why can't you tell me? Why won't you tell me?"
Then she shuddered as she saw his eyes drop from her face to her open rain coat. To the red dress.
Quickly he came over to her and spread the rain coat apart so that he could examine her. With embarrassment she tried to clutch the torn material about her. But she was aware of the impossibility of concealing herself completely. Aware that the rents and tears in the cloth permitted her bronzed flesh to show through.
"You've ... you've been with a man, haven't you?"
She answered automatically, "Yes."
"Someone you knew!"
It was an accusation, not a question.
Naomi agreed with a slow nod of her head. She was too tired to talk.
"It was that-that Line, wasn't it? Not a stranger! Not someone new! But your old boy friend!"
This time Naomi didn't even nod. She merely stood limply in front of him.
Quickly he pulled the rain coat from her and forced her hands away from the ragged dress. The fact that she was no longer wearing a brassiere, the ravages of passion on her body, everything-pointed to an uncontrollable liaison. The evidence was there. Now all that remained was the verdict. It came quickly.
"You gave yourself to him!" his loud voice was a condemnation instead of an accusation. "After all I've done for you. All I've given you. You went back. Back to him!"
She wanted to deny it. She wanted to shout and to plead her innocence, but she realized that a denial was unacceptable.
"It's true. It's true! You're nothing but a tramp! A slut! Available to anyone who wants you! You're nothing but a cheap, common whore!"
His face was distorted with anger and her eyes closed with the ferocity of his attack.
The verdict was there.
"Get out! Get out! I've paid for your services. Now get out!"
Naomi opened her eyes and looked at him. He was still an arm's length away and he was pointing a finger first at her and then at the door. Instinctively she knew there would be no changing his feelings. His mind was made up.
He thinks I don't know what he's doing. What he's saying. It's the only way he has to get rid of me. And that's what he wants to do. Get rid of me! I'm too much trouble. I've caused too many problems, so he has to get rid of me! Then he can still hold his head high. Make it look like it was my fault that it's all over. And then some day in some locker room, he'll be able to boast about the hot-pants colored broad he shacked up with. But he's worse than me. He was all right when he got what he wanted. Now that the price is too high to pay, he doesn't want it any more! So he's making it look like it's my fault!
Suddenly her body stiffened and was rigid. She looked at him defiantly.
"I'll go, Randy," she said quietly. "I'll go as soon as I change my clothes."
"No! No!" he yelled. "Those aren't your clothes! I paid for them. They belong to me! You get out of here, just the way you came in-with nothingl"
Naomi looked at him contemptuously and then silently turned and walked out the door.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The wind and rain swirled Naomi's opened raincoat about her like bat wings as she walked head down through the darkened Back Bay streets. The rain splashed against her flesh through the tears in her dress, but she walked unmindful of the discomfort. Her face was pinched and drawn, oblivious to the small puddles she splashed through, so intent was she on her thoughts.
Now what? Go home? To what? With my mother hating me as a prostitute! I'd only bring her shame and misery. Back to Line? After what he did to me. After what he thinks! No! Randy? He might change his mind in a couple of days. But it would always be there. The fear. Knowing he'd throw me out when things got too tough. That he didn't really care. So then, there's nothing. Absolutely nothing!
The rain beat down harder and she seemed to be walking aimlessly. With no direction. No purpose. She was going. Just going. Any place. No place.
Maybe they're right. Maybe I really am ... a prostitute! Ready to sell myself, she pondered. I don't feel anything when they use me, take me. I just wanted to be loved and wanted, if only for those moments. Those short moments of love in a man's arms. Loved for myself. Is it wrong to want nice things? To, most of all, want to be cared about, needed, and wanted? And this is the only way they'll have me. With my body.
Ohhh! she groaned inwardly. So lost. So alone!
Her eyes penetrated the darkness around her, relieved only vaguely with rain blurred street lights. She heard a sound behind her, the low hum of a car motor, and she turned to see a dark silhouette inching along the curb, following her.
It had, apparently, been following her for quite some time. Ignoring it and hurrying along in the night turning corners sharply didn't shake it. So she stopped.
The car pulled to a stop at her side. The mist-covered window rolled down and a man stuck his head out to call.
"Pretty wet out there, Miss."
Naomi ignored him, aware of the intent behind the remark.
"Going any place in particular? Want a lift?" he shouted.
She was about to turn away. Where to?
With a sway of her hips she walked over to the car and put her hand on the door, looking at the man. He was an old man, fat and disgusting.
"What do you want, man?"
As if she didn't know!
"Hi," he greeted her nervously.
Then his eyes opened wide as he saw the torn dress and her bare honey flesh gleaming through.
"Looks like you had some trouble!"
"Might say that, mister. Might," her words trailed off.
"Looks like you could use some help," he said suggestively.
"What have you got in mind?"
He licked his lips with anticipation.
"Well," he drawled boldly. "First thing would be to get you out of the rain."
Silence.
"Then you could dry off until the rain stopped. After that, I could take you home," he told her hopefully.
"Haven't got a home!" she responded.
There was a gleam in his eyes when he finally answered, "Then you could stay with me for a while?"
Naomi straightened up and looked the car over. Big. Expensive. A man of means. Just how much?
"Can you afford me, Mister?"
His eyes roamed her body, her breasts and thighs.
"I don't come cheap!"
"If the merchandise is worth it, I'm willing to pay the price."
Deliberately, she pulled open her dress to bare her whole body to him. Her luscious gold skin glistened where the rain struck it. And she could hear him suck in his breath at the sight.
"Worth it?" she snarled. "Feel! See for sure."
His fingers gingerly reached through the window and trembled at her smooth softness. "How high?"
"My own apartment, clothes, money ... the works!"
"Okay," he told her. "Get in. I'll take you to my place for tonight. It's too late to do anything else anyway. Besides, I want to-to test the merchandise before I pay for it!"
Naomi gathered her raincoat and dress around her and moved to the other side of the car. There was a pretended eagerness as she slid onto the seat next to him. Quickly, he pulled away from the curb and headed down the rain-swept street.
In the darkness of the car he couldn't see her face, couldn't see the flooding tears that sheened her face.
After a little while he stopped, drawing into a vacant parking lot.
"Come on, Baby," he said hoarsely. "Let's have a sample right away. Let's see if it's really true what they say about girls like you!"
She'd sold herself, and now she was the itchy pants nigger slut again in the arms of a white man. She hated him. Hated herself.
At first she wanted to resist. To fight him off. Just to show him she was no different from a white woman. But then desolation and need wrung her barren, dry of all hope, all reason. And her legs spread willingly.
His mouth and hands were hot on her, crushing her body into his. Her body quivered with his gentle touch. And amid the strangling waves of re-morse, guilt, hate, and loneliness, rose the hunger and need that found its mate only in her loins, at the mercy of a male.
"More. More!" she beseeched him, tugging at his clothes.
"You're good. So good!" his words were lost in his maddening crush to her mouth. "God, so good."
His moans were echoing in her throat.
You're damned right I'm good, ofay! Her anger cried out in the echoing silence of her mind. I'd better be good! I've got to be good!
That's all I've got left now ... All!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It sure wasn't like Randy's apartment. This man might have money, but he had no taste in style nor was there evidence that he aided the maid in trying to keep the place presentable. He hurried about cleaning ashtrays and picking up clothes while she watched.
"You don't intend to keep me in a place like this, do you?" she demanded.
"Well, no," he stammered. "If I like what you can do, you can have what you want. But there's nothing I can do about it tonight."
"I'm game," she told him standing near the bed, her coat and dress hanging loosely about her bruised and voluptuous flesh.
He took so long. He just stood there! Looking at her through the tatters of her clothes.
"Okay," she spit the word. "Haven't you ever paid fifty bucks for a lay before?"
"Sure. Sure!"
He came to her slowly, relishing the sight of her.
His eyes tenderly caressed her rich breasts and rounded hips, the flat abdomen and dark muff of pubic hair at her crotch. "You're beautiful," he said.
"That's my name," Naomi threw at him. "Naomi. Ma said that was why they picked it. Means ... I'm not making conversation for dough. You want action or talk at fifty a night?"
"Fits you," he told her. "Naomi's a lovely name. You're lovely. But wasn't Naomi a wanderer, a-."
"Don't pay much attention to the Bible anymore, mister. Now make up your mind. The body, or chatter."
She ripped the remnants of her garments from her body and stood there waiting. The inane drone of his voice was driving her crazy. She hoped he'd get down to the basics of her cunt soon, because she just couldn't stand to talk anymore. Nothing to discuss. Nothing made sense. Only the joining of two bodies searching for love and union apart from a savage world.
That was her only hope now. So long as she could find shelter in the arms of a man. Oblivion in the coupling of their bodies rocked by the sweet lullaby of momentary love and need.
She stepped towards him, her heart imploring, please-please take me. Drive out the desolation and longing for even a little while. Fill me with the object of your loving. Make me know nothing else but the sweet bliss of union in your arms.
"God, I want you!" he breathed taking her to him.
Then take me. Damn it! Take me! She leaned into him with her pleading, thumping heart calling out to him.
Like a blind man reading braille, he reached up and touched her, his fingers running like gentle spiders over her body, as though he had to find and know every hair, every pore, savor every curve and hollow, every drop of perspiration, memorize her body, so he could store it in the shrine of his mind. So light were his fingers she could scarcely feel them, like cobwebs blown across her skin, but at the same time they were warm, their touch like a shock of electricity which coursed through her limbs and made her feel almost alive. She closed her eyes, breathing heavily, trembling uncontrollably. She heard the muted sound of pattering rain in the streets outside.
Then just as she thought she could no longer stand his teasing fingers, she felt his warm lips on her stomach and then lower down at the juncture of her thighs. She put her hands on the back of his head and pressed it against her, murmuring: "Yes, yes. Oh, yes. Kiss me there."
His lips found the ridges of pink flesh embedded in the encircling hedge of silky, black curls and his tongue the soft cleft between, which he licked and sucked deeply, tasting the salty-sweet liquor of her loins like a leech. Her head fell forward, her raven tresses-curtaining her quivering breasts and, moaning softly, she rocked and swayed as the agony of pleasure burned brighter within her until the final ecstasy made her whole body leap and shiver in a paroxysm of bliss, and she doubled over and fell on top of him, her still contracting pelvis rolling on his shoulder.
He put his arms around her buttocks and lifted her gently to the bed. Her long, ebony tresses spread on the stark white of the pillow and the stark sheets embraced her golden contours like a soft jeweler's velvet cushion for a rare and precious diamond.
He lay down beside her whispering, "Naomi, Naomi. You're so beautiful," and he put his mouth on hers, pulling her into him.
She let her body respond, though every impulse told her she couldn't stand him. This was her last chance. So lost that in desperation she had to take the only love, the only abandonment that came her way. Her body was eager and searching as her lips and tongue tried to soothe the hurt within.
His chest pressed against her tender breasts, his hands cradling her head, she moved her body, so that their bellies and thighs rubbed against each other. When she felt his hand searching her flesh, the sweet longing of lust began to kindle at her loins.
He gently kneaded the pliant mounds of her tits and stirred their nipples to hard rubbery crests. His lips browsed in the damp female hollows of her neck, armpits, down to the valley between her breasts. The salty moisture was good and he licked it slowly, savoring each drop. Tantalizingly he sucked the tangy, soft breast while she strained against him.
His warm fingers were scratching at her thighs and she splayed them willingly to his frantic plying.
His tubby hands worked feverishly at the soft, velvety pussy. Under his prodding the gully of her slit moistened and became slick, lubricating with the oily nectars of love. Rough fingernails taunted and agravated the sensitive clitoris of her flooding pussy into a taut pink string that vibrated the gnawing vibrations of love through her groin.
Then his head dropped and the sudden wetness of his slavering lips locking onto her throbbing and exposed clitoris froze her body as it was.
A sharp new sensation rippled through her, and she felt all the tingling carnal passions that she had built up over all the years before suddenly and without warning, rushing up from her legs and belly and gurgling from her mouth in an uncontrollable torrent of pleading cries.
"Oooh, God! Oooh, God!" she groaned over and over without ceasing as the tiny bud of her clitoris sprang into life that she never knew it possessed. He nibbled and sucked at it mercilessly in the sudden crazed passion that had overcome him.
Her head rolled from side to side on the soft pillow, tangling the shining tresses of her hair. Her fingers clawed and tantalized his flesh, knowing every delicious weakness of the male body, until the stirring at her cunt became almost intolerable with its bliss. Nothing mattered now but the delicious rape of the mouth that was making wet sucking sounds down between her open and defenseless legs. All the sorrow and hurt, the shame and repulsion that had brought her here were as evasive as fleecy summer clouds caught on a sea breeze as the passion of their desires grew and took hold of them like wildfire. There was nothing she could do but buck and churn beneath that probing tongue that was burning fire into her young and starving pussy.
And then, when she thought it would never end, he twisted around again, dropping heavily between her legs. He grasped her behind the knees and lifted her thighs high on either side of him.
She heard the harsh metallic urgency of his zipper as he squirmed on the bed below her. Her delicate, anxious hands aided him swiftly, the pressing fire of her pussy making their haste imperative. Then he was naked.
Naomi was beside herself. She had never felt so open and ready in her life. Perhaps her need had not yet ever been so great as at this moment when desperation had driven her to sell herself to a most un-likely and undesirable prospect.
Her pelvis rotated in small hungry circles as he knelt between her open thighs, holding her legs in the air. He smiled down at her.
"You're hot, baby. I'm gonna like this."
"Hurry, mister," she implored, her pelvis making larger circles now. "Fuck me! Fuck me or I'll die!"
Without hesitation he pulled her under him, the roughness of his movements lost to her urgent need. His hand directed his huge throbbing cock to the wet, quivering lips of her cunt, pausing for the slightest of movements to part the thin, raven pubic hair, and then plunging forward to rip without stopping through the thin, tight channel of her uterus.
"Aaaggghhh!" she screamed, as the hot, blinding pain seared deep into her belly.
Her arms jerked up involuntarily and she clung to him with all her strength as though she meant to hold him forever. Her contorted face and clenched eyes eased with the relaxing of her tight uterine muscles and acceptance of his swollen cock into the fiery confines of her womb.
"Love me! Love me!" she cried. "Make it hurt! Make me feel it, man!" she cried out.
As he began the sliding of his prick deep into her belly and slowly withdrawing it again, she joined his efforts, the sensations of her body merging into one great mass of indescribable joy.
"Ooohhh, yesss," she hissed as they rotated together and he ground his long, hard pole into her in mighty thrusts.
He groaned as he felt the muscles deep inside her belly answering the pulsating throbs of his steel-hardened cock. The tight, wet walls of her cunt contracted around his turgid staff as though frightened of losing it. He could hold himself back no longer and began the slow teasing grinding in and out between her thighs in earnest.
The tightness of her clasping around him like soft warm butter, the walls of her cunt held to him in an animalistic desperation as he withdrew slowly and then thrust forward again to sink his massive cock deep down inside her.
Her pelvis began a faster rotation now, her buttocks gyrating and writhing down into the soft mattress with a sudden abandon that took him by surprise. Mewling sounds of passion and lust rolled from her lips in waves of sound that he could not understand but that his body reacted to in the age-old rhythm of intercourse that was as old as man himself. He levered up on his toes and dropped his hands down under them to cup the quivering mounds of her buttocks so that he could fuck deeper down into her.
"Aaahhh! Ooohhh!" Naomi groaned and twisted her body like a tortured snake beneath him.
Thrusting her loins up at him as he pounded down into her to take the whole of his expanding cock far down inside the warm hot sheath of her pussy.
Naomi rocked in a dream world of obscene and uncontrolled lust under his driving body. She could feel the soft slap of his balls against the tightly clenched cheeks of her buttocks and the strength of his hands as they kneaded and tore at her tender flesh like the talons of a giant striking bird. She struggled like a demon to open her thighs wider, to take him further into her belly, but she couldn't. He was sunk as far into her as he could go, but she wanted more.
"Fuck harder. Fuck harder!" she begged as she felt him thrust his massive hardness into her with longer and longer strokes.
A strange, dancing delight of fire was building far down in her quivering belly that drove her churning torso on and on in its wild quest for the luscious sensation building and building in every pore of her sweating body.
Her muscles contracted tightly around his plunging cock and she cried out wildly as her dam broke from the depths of her womb, spilling forth the nectars of her love. Soon his strong rhythmic dives set off another explosion of delight. Her buttocks rotated against the yielding mattress like a helpless ship caught in the vicious waves of a driving storm. She arched her back like a bow, her breasts pointing upward, trembling and swirling in the jerking circles of her quickened movements to meet the mounting urgency she could feel pulsating through the head of his pulsing rod sunk so deep inside her hungry cunt.
The giant explosion ripped her belly apart. Hot, white jets of his sperm erupted and flooded into her, filling her womb with a warmth and sensation of comfort and satiation. She could feel it racing around in the fathomed flood-gates of love's dam. She jerked her legs uncontrollably out in the air on either side of his spasmodically, grinding hips and a great flash of erotic fire leaped up inside her and exploded in a volcanic eruption of her own orgasm.
Aaaah! Aaaah!" she moaned whipping at his shoulders and bent torso pumping wildly into her loins. The muscles of her hips and belly contracted in rolling waves of spasm, the pulsating walls of her hot, sperm filled pussy sucking the last drops from his still spurting cock, until finally, weak and exhausted, they stopped and fell limply into the soft embrace of the mattress.
They lay for some time, panting and gasping, the smell of their wet orgasm and the odor of perspiration overpowering the closed atmosphere of the musty room.
His heavy frame was warm upon her naked flesh and the memory of sweet oblivion in their coition helped to lull the growing awareness within her.
The sound of the rain beating on the window and the tempo of his heart beat on the soft swell of her breast gave dull continuing relief after their union.
Naomi let herself drift off to sleep, feeling the relief of momentary need and friendship.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"You lied to me, Naomi," the man said looking down at her in the bed.
She looked up at the fat old man as he paced the room. What was he talking about, she tensed in wonder, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she lifted herself to look at him in the half-light of the room. The rain had stopped and the gray light of morning was starting to fill the room.
"You're no prostitute, and you charged me fifty bucks. You cheated me!"
"Cheated you? How?" she finally asked. "And what makes you say I'm not a hooker?"
"Because you didn't give a damn whether you satisfied me or not. Your only concern was with yourself. With your enjoyment. And there isn't a whore in the world that operates that way. I oughta know, I've been to bed with most of them!"
Naomi lay stiff and silent as before. Not because she was afraid of him, but because she knew it was true. She hadn't thought of him at all during the act, she had been completely absorbed with her own completion and satisfaction.
More, she would find it difficult to become a lay for money without the attitude of the man being satisfied rather than being concerned first with herself. She knew the only reason she was here was because of her anger and frustration with Randy. And it would take more than that to create the right attitude for living as a whore.
She knew then that she could never really sell her body. Share it with someone, yes. But she couldn't let him buy it.
In a tired voice she told him, "You're right. And you can have your fifty back if you want. Maybe I did cheat you."
He sat down beside her, surveying her torso tentatively. His stubby fingers traced the bronze contours of her full breasts and the dark ruby nipples. She shivered at the tingling sensation he caused.
"You've got a body that was made for loving, Naomi. Do you know that?"
She shrugged indifferently, aware of the chills that his touch were bringing back to life.
"Why did you do it?" he asked. "Lead me on like you did. Do what you did to me in the car?"
He watched a blush tinge her face in the dim light and finally asked, "You were getting even with someone, weren't you?"
She looked at him in surprise, "How did you know that?"
He shrugged as if it were unimportant.
"Should have figured it out when I saw your ripped dress. And then when you came into the apartment. Prostitutes don't act like you do. You were getting even with someone, weren't you? What's the matter, did you have a light with your boy friend?"
Suddenly he wasn't a round, fat, ugly old man anymore. She was still having trouble answering, but she felt his interest in her somehow not just as a body, but as a person.
"How come you know so much about prostitutes, man?"
He laughed, "Holden, Honey. Holden Sherwin, not man or mister. How come I know about hookers? Look at me. Do you think I could get a woman unless I didn't pay for it? I'm old and fat and ugly. No young beautiful thing is gonna go for someone like me. Especially ... especially someone who looks like you."
A sudden wave of compassion for him drowned Naomi. For she understood the agony that he lived with. In a sense she could relate it to her own. At that moment she ceased to think of him as anything but a man, a good man, and a friend. One who hadn't really used her but who had no other recourse to the satisfying of his needs.
"Don't you have anyone?" she whispered sympathetically.
"Like my wife?" was the hurt answer as he reached into the drawer of the bedside stand to pull out the portrait of a young and beautiful woman in, perhaps, her late thirties.
Though there was a hardness about her mouth and eyes, there was also an undeniable sensuality in her face.
"With a wife like that, why do you need someone like me ... or a ... hooker?"
He turned to stare at the photograph, and she could see the hurt and loathing in his eyes.
"Verna's only interested in one thing from me. My money. She tricked me into marrying her, even though I can't prove it. And as soon as she had that ring on her, that was it. We live in the same house, and yet we don't. If you know what I mean. The only time I ever see her is when she needs some more money. But she won't divorce me. She's told me that.
"Won't even settle for money. Says why should she settle for a piece of the estate when she can get the whole thing when I pop off. So I pay for some woman to pretend that for one night she loves me. Because everybody needs to be loved, even if you have to pretend. That's why I keep this crummy apartment to get away from Verna and not be reminded of my money. Can you understand, Naomi?" he concluded desperately, as if it were very important she did.
She nodded slowly, "I think so, Holden. That's why you wanted me to become your mistress, wasn't it? So you could have me all the time and not have to pretend. I'd be with you all the time so it wouldn't be like I was prostitute, like you were really paying for my love. That's it, isn't it?"
He nodded imperceptibly and then rose, his face white with anger. Turning so she couldn't see, his fists clenching and unclenching furiously, suddenly he smashed the picture of his wife against the side of the dresser.
"I--I'm sorry, Naomi," he mumbled incoherently. "I shouldn't have lost my temper. It was silly of me."
She studied him, noting how much older and more tired he seemed. Here was someone alone like herself.
"No, it wasn't silly, Holden," she comforted him, patting the mattress at her side. "Now why don't you come back here. Where ... where you belong."
"Where I belong?" he asked regarding her suspiciously, as if he didn't believe what he heard.
Naomi nodded, "Where you belong. Like you said, I lied to you. Cheated you. I was only thinking of myself. Now-now I want to make it up to you!"
Gratitude filled his face and she greeted him warmly with a tight embrace of her arms when he returned to her on the bed.
"Besides," she continued, holding him tight to her naked breasts, "if I'm going to be-your mistress, I've got to find out what you like ... and how you like it!"
In answer, he cupped her head in his hands and crushed her mouth to his. For a long time they ravaged the succulent love juices of the other's mouth, sucking and draining the goodness of their sharing in need.
His breath came heavy and labored and he moved to her breasts to manipulate and caress their softness into hard fullness, nibbling the thick crests into maroon spikes of rubbery substance.
Naomi let him course the reaches of her torso, sucking her salty crevices and swells. Enjoying and fondling all her female treasures as he made his way into the boiling wet trench of her cunt. She grew hot and passionate in the knowing tracery of his sensitive fingertips. The molten, bubbling ardor in the pit of her womb began its strange provocative beat, swelling and magnifying until her whole being was writhing and gyrating in his arms, charged with the magnetic omnipotence of ancient, primitive lust.
"No. No," she swallowed hard trembling and contorting below the devouring, love-starved adoration of her lover. "Please. Let me make you happy this time. Let me try, learn. Please! I want to give this time, not share!"
His hungry lips continued on at her nipples, slathering them with the nectars of his worship. And his fingers were still plying at her pussy.
"Let me! Please, I'll show you I can make a man happy!" she gasped into the wispy gray-white hair. "I want to love you!"
Their eyes met with wonder and then her thundering heart seemed to quell as she stroked the sad, lined cheeks, kissing the furrows of age and suffering.
At her gentle nudging he lay upon the mattress while she crawled over him. Quietly and pliantly, he lay there submitting to her tender ministrations while she eagerly perused his face watching for signs that she was accomplishing her purpose.
For the first time in her life she wanted to give. Wanted to make someone happy, not for what they could give her, but for what joy they would recieve. His happiness would be hers this time. Though he didn't know it, or yet trust her caring, for she was paid loving. She was going to try to prove to him and to herself that she could give as well as take loving. That she, too, could bring the happiness and security of caring to another as lonely as she.
Soft, tender lips of amber she placed on his and let him feel her luscious, taut breasts and pointed nipples on his chest, as she explored his mouth with the warmth of her giving. Her tongue was hot and filling in the empty void of his aching throat.
Her body pressed his with intent and soothing female silkiness.
Holden moaned softly at the sight and touch of her pliant tits and soft, warm pussy. His fingers searched her longingly, but that haunted look that only loneliness and lack of love can know was still there.
Naomi's gestures became more furtive, more insistent. Her tapered fingers rubbed through the silver hair of his chest and pinched his male nipples with a tenderness she didn't know she possessed. Gentle kisses made them taut and burgeoning thumbs of walnut against the shining fur and snowy skin.
She could feel his legs jerking spastically at her moistening cunt. He was hot, and she realized it was time to fulfill her intent or lose her willing subject to complete his own needs.
I just have to prove to him-to myself-I can do it, she brooded desperately. Got to show it's in me to give. Started out wanting love and acceptance and here I am gaining acceptance by making love to someone else rather than the reverse. How ironic.
How strange! A nigger girl bringing love and happiness to a rejected ofay! Just doesn't make sense!
The odor of their sweat and the scent of passion rose again in the closed, musty room. It was suffocating, but Naomi was too anxious about her efforts to care.
She held the milky-white cock in her grasp like a pagan priestess with her cobra, wriggling and flaring its ruby head with pride and disdain commanding her homage and obedience. Milk-white etched with the royal blue of veins lacing the transparent thinness of his skin, it rose cloaked in a heavy ridged and wrinkled mantle that fell to a sable cushioned groin.
With delicate striving, she smoothed the wrinkled mantle of the rising prick, up and down the shaft of its being. Slowly, enticingly, she drew the loose foreskin of his flesh back and forth along the ballooning entity of his cock, watching the long blue vein that traversed its being swell, and pulsate as it coursed up to the flaming crown.
"Ooohhh!" Holden trembled ecstatically.
There was the half gleam of pleasure in her eyes at his reaction. But his pale face, dove-gray with a thick stubble of unchecked beard, registered no fulfillment of his real need. So she summoned all the prowess her years had garnered in the search for her forbidden fruit.
Tucked in her coppery palm were his balls. She had slid them carefully from the nest of their coarse textured pubic hair in his groin. Her carefully-manicured nails grazed the surface of the flaccid, parchment-aged sacs of indigo. Titillating them with cunning and skill, Naomi mused at how different were these dark balls from those massive testicles of leather at Line's crotch and how more mottled a purple were the younger, sweeter sacs of Randy ... But, she looked up into Holden's mature, disconsolate visage and knew that was where the greater difference lay. All these, balls and prick, objects of love, were a means to the end every man and woman needed. They were secondary and yet the manner by which, through all eternity, two individuals could be joined together as one in the fulfillment of the more poignant emotional and spiritual desires.
So she cradled the blue testicles in her palm, massaging and drawing them to fullness, turgid twin pouches in which the substance of life sprung from a fathomless well and inched its way up into the great flesh of its companion prick.
Naomi stroked them into fullness and when the first drop of froth oozed forth upon the crest of his prick, she tasted it thoughtfully as a connoisseur savoring the nectars of the gods.
Her mouth fitted over the vastly expanded prick and she felt it pulsate in her sensitive cavity with the tense excitement of its burgeoning magnitude and power.
In the hollow of her tongue she rolled the rubbery cock, its wrinkles taut with the swelling of its volume. The heat of her own mouth combined with his torrid, sweating prick's own emanating waves to make her sensitive internal flesh a boiling mass of molten living matter.
Voraciously, her taste buds swirled about the quaking prick, her teeth daintily nibbling at the ever-increasing mass of raw, frothing flesh. It filled her small mouth ludicrously, her eyes bulging with fantastic delight and abandon at the bobbing human sausage within her.
"Aaauuunnnggghhh!" moaned the man on the pillow, his white face contorted with the delirium of his ravishing.
Naomi sucked harder and faster, her teeth taunting the bursting seams of his prick. One fist still clenched and unclenched around his raging balls as it titillated them to produce their sperm at a faster rate.
"Ooohhh, God! God! Naomi! Naomi!" Holden wailed. "Can't stand it. Can't., .come ... comm-minng!"
His cock drove in and out of her mouth ferociously, in long steady drives. In and out. In and out. His hands clawed at her head, guiding her action as his prick fucked her orally, frantically and continuously. Her head followed his lead for what seemed an eon while the raw, throbbing prick raped her with such a force that her jaw seemed to break and her tongue was nearly wrenched from her throat.
With a sudden shattering quake that ripped at their two enmeshed torsos, he exploded. The rich, abundant cream of love and being choked and filled her as she fought frantically to consume every precious drop. Nearly strangling on the pumping throttle of his prick, Naomi gluttonously devoured the fountain cascading its nectars into her throat and belly.
Even when his deflated cock finally sputtered to a halt and lay tranquil in the confines of her wet, gasping oral cunt, Naomi was milking his shrinking balls for the last dribble of come. And when she had partaken, only then did she release the hot, wet prick.
Gently she laid the spent and flaccid member to its hollow in the wet, rough nest of its groin. She patted it gently, fondly, and then looked up to see the panting man on the pillow.
He had given a mighty cry when he finally had come, and now the lines of his face were relaxed and smooth. Under the gray fuzz of his beard, she saw a pink flush spreading. And when he looked into her eyes she caught the radiance of mutual trust.
"You were good, Naomi," he breathed softly. "Damned good!"
And she believed him. Coming down into the circle of his trusting arms, she believed him. His happiness, his satiation and content, was hers.
"So this is where I belong," he mused thoughtfully. "For the first time in my life, I believe that. And I like it."
She regarded him solemnly, her glance probing long and hard for the answer, for the truth of his contentment, and hers. And she found it with a cry of gladness.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"Naomi, have you decided?" Holden asked as the warm sunlight began to fill their room. "Decided?"
"Will you stay with me?"
"If you still want me," she assured him. "So long as I satisfy you, I shall be glad to be ... be your mistress."
"Naomi," intoned the happy voice. "Satisfied? I've never had anybody take care of me like you just did."
Her smile flooded her face, a feeling of contentment and a sense of accomplishment that she had never known before burned with pride inside.
"Then, I meant what I said. I'm yours."
"Oh, Naomi," he cried with sudden emotion and happiness, crushing her to him.
After a moment he drew her away to question seriously "Are you really sure, honey. You're young and beautiful. I can't kid myself with my ugliness and fat. Besides I'm old enough to be your father."
How could she tell him? He had been like a haven in her storm. He was an anchor of security when all else had failed and abandoned her. Both knew the agony of desolation, and it bound them together.
She wanted him not for what he could give her materially, but for the spiritual and emotional gifts and solace that their kindred souls had so long quested and found in each other. Looking deep into his eyes she tried to muster the verbal meaning that she felt, to tell him. But he knew already. Perhaps that was it. He knew. She didn't have to struggle with words.
Her arms embraced him and her lips and body tried to express herself in the only way she knew how. He was warm and yielding and they melted together in the sympathy and understanding of giving.
Suddenly she was aware of an abrupt stiffness in his body. A stiffness born of fear and surprise. She followed his eyes, and saw that he was staring toward the door. Naomi turned her head to see what he was looking at.
And looked into the cruel angry face of Verna!
Naomi smothered a cry of fright and quickly buried her face into Holden's chest. His arms went about her protectively.
"How sweet," the hard voice from the door hissed. "How sweet and touching!"
Naomi forced herself to look back at the other woman. And it was then she saw the gun gripped tightly in her fist.
"What are you doing here, Verna?" Holden asked carefully.
It was obvious he didn't want to provoke or upset the angry woman any further.
"What do you think I'm doing here! Protecting my interests, that's what ... I'm doing...!"
Naomi started to get out of the bed but a wave of the gun kept her pinned to the mattress.
"Don't move, bitch," Verna ordered. "I wanna be sure and get a good picture of my husband in bed with his whore-lover!"
"Picture?" Naomi heard him question. "Do you mean a photograph? Something you can use as evidence in a court? Are you going to divorce me? You don't need the picture. I'll give you whatever you want-as much as you want!"
"Not that kind of picture, stupid," the woman snarled. "I meant an image in my brain. Of course I'm not going to divorce you. Why should I, when I can wait and get everything? No, I just want a picture of the two of you so I can always remember how you looked when I kill her!"
"Kill her!"
Naomi waited breathlessly, afraid to move.
"Yes, kill her! And there isn't a court in the land that'll convict me. I was protecting my home and my marriage. That's what I'll tell them. And you think they won't believe me. Especially when they find out what she is-a damn whore!"
"Don't do it, Verna," he pleaded.
But the savage laughter from the figure by the door told her the answer.
"Why not? The whole thing is perfect. Too per-feet. It took me months to find this little love nest of yours. Private detectives cost me plenty. And if you think I'm gonna throw this opportunity away, you're even more stupid than I think you are!"
Then with slow deliberateness, she raised the pistol and pointed it at Naomi.
"Don't do it!" Holden shouted and then he lunged forward just as she pulled the trigger.
His hands were thrust forward in front of him as if he were trying to ward off the bullets and Naomi saw the rigid sudden recoil of his body as the slugs tore into him. He had deliberately moved in front of her to protect her from Verna, and in so doing had moved into the path of fire.
"Ohhh, God!" Naomi shrieked at the realization.
Suddenly she found herself scrambling on her hands and knees toward his slumping body. And she cradled him in her arms, oblivious to the bright crimson bath of his blood against her honey-colored skin.
He stiffened for one final moment and fell limp in her arms. Though she knew he was dead, she continued to rock him back and forth in the cradle of her embrace. And while she did, her tears flooded down onto his upturned silent face.
"That's right, bitch," she was aware of Verna cursing at her. "Cry. Why shouldn't you, you've just lost your meal ticket. I heard what he offered you. Apartment. Clothes. Everything. No wonder you're crying. So would I, if I was going to lose something like that!"
But Naomi wasn't crying because of the loss of her material luxuries. Not even for herself, at all.
For the first time she was weeping for someone else.
For the still, silent form in her arms. For he was the only man who had been good to her. The only man who had really wanted to give to her. The only one who hadn't used her.
Someone who had cared. Someone good had wanted her. Wanted her for herself.
And now he was gone.
He'd never know what she had to offer him. Never know the joys and pleasures that she'd wanted to give to him. He'd freed her and now she couldn't repay him-in the only way she knew how.
With her love!
Filled for just a few moments. Their aching voids had been filled such a short time!
Slowly she lifted her tear-sheened face and looked at Verna.
"Shoot me," she said in a hard voice. "You'd better kill me while you still have a chance. Because if you don't I'm going to kill you!"
She started to get up and the force of the bullets drove her back to a sitting position on the bed. There was a soft happy smile on her face as her body began to fold and crumple. Then she fell across him and in a last feeble effort embraced him.
"Stupid fools," Verna cursed down at them contemptuously. "What did she think I was going to do, let her walk out of here and tell the police that I shot him down in cold blood? This way, they'll believe my story about being the wronged woman-with a good lawyer, I'll have no trouble getting away with it!"
She chuckled for a moment, thinking of her plan, imagining her tearful, choking story in court and the sympathetic jurors wringing their hands over her plight. They would think of that mulatto whore and senile old man the young wife had devoted herself to.
And she began to laugh hysterically. How wonderful! How stupidly moronic and sniveling of those people! But that's how they'd be especially with a filthy, money-hungry black bitch in the picture. How nicely it all worked out. How nicely!
The contempt was still in her face as she continued to stare down at them and then, because of the expression on Naomi's face, Verna had to turn away.
A woman always knows when she's looking at another woman who has loved and who has been loved ... in return.
