Sally watched Vertolli's eyes focus on her legs. "
"I'd pay plenty to get you to tear up the contract," she said.
His eyes widened. He reached over slowly and cupped her knee with his hand, expecting her to push it away. She didn't. He felt himself coming alive.
"You're suggesting that ... "
"I'm not suggesting anything," Sally broke in. "I'm saying point blank that if you'll cancel the fight, I'll go to bed with you."
Vertolli was studying her proposition. It wasn't often that a fifty-five-year-old man got a crack at a young, shapely and desirable girl like Sally Wright. He cleared his throat, becoming bolder now and extending his hand up her leg until he was able to grip the warm, naked flesh just above her nylons.
"I stand to make fifty grand out of this fight. That's a helluva lotta dough, Sally, to give up for one roll in the hay. Even though I'll admit you might be worth it."
"Who said anything about one roll in the hay?" Sally said. "I was thinking more in terms of, say, a roll as often as you want it for the next six or eight months."
He looked up at her, his hand craving to move a few inches higher on her legs. He resisted the temptation, mainly because he didn't know how Sally would react. She was offering him her body in exchange for what she wanted, but he didn't know just how far she'd let him go without giving her Sam's contract and letting her destroy it....
CHAPTER ONE
Sally Wright crumpled into the large upholstered chair in the living room of her plush apartment, lit a cigarette and blew a long stream of smoke from her beet-red lips. She relaxed her head against the back of the chair and cocked one leg over the arm and stared off into space.
Statistically, she was quite a woman for her twenty-four years. She possessed the peaches-and-cream complexion that every man dreams about. She tipped the scales at one hundred and twelve pounds, wore a size nine dress, size ten nylons, measured twenty-three inches in the waist and thirty-eight inches in the hips.
Also statistically, she stood five-feet-six inches and wore a size forty-two bra. The reason for the size forty-two bra was obvious. When she wore a bra, and she didn't always, she needed a size forty-two to contain her giant cone-shaped, red-tipped breasts which extended straight out from her chest without the slightest trace of a sag.
Sally wasn't wearing a bra at that very moment.
In fact, she wasn't wearing anything.
Except a pair of gold mist brocade shoes with five-inch spike heels.
She drew her arms over her breasts and ran her long red fingernails through her dazzling blonde hair and sighed.
Soft music sifted from the radio across the room. The music made Sally slightly drowsy even though thirty minutes from now she had a hot date with Sam Sanders, a big, handsome man of thirty-two Sally had dated for nearly four years.
Sally had one big weakness, if it was a weakness.
Sex.
She liked sex better than anything else.
She liked to be taken violently.
And Sam Sanders was more capable of violently taking her than any man who had ever seduced her. He was a violent man.
The music on the radio suddenly faded away, and an announcer's voice interrupted the program:
"Radio listeners," the voice echoed from the radio, "we interrupt this program of dinner music to bring you a special bulletin. Pete Vertolli, the fight promoter, has just announced that. Sacky Crane, the savage young heavyweight, will fight Sam Sanders for the third time in a fifteen-round match on June the seventeenth."
The dinner music resumed, but Sally was completely unaware of it now. Her face was flushed with anger. She buried her face in her hands and mumbled aloud:
"Sam! Oh, Sam! Why ... "
She jumped up out of the chair, ran across the room and snapped off the radio, a fresh glow of anger bathing her face. She crushed out her cigarette into an ashtray, returned to the chair and collapsed down into it. Sally lapsed into meditation:
Sam, why did you do it? she thought. Crane will beat hell out of you ... tear you to pieces just as he did in the other two fights.
She pounded her fist on the arm of the chair. She paused.
Sam! Sam! I know another fight with Sacky Crane is all you've thought about for months and months, but I don't want you to get hurt again. Besides, you promised me you'd never fight again.
She rose from the chair, wandered to the bedroom, stood in front of the mirror and gazed listlessly at the reflection of her proud, free breasts. Finally, she drew a pair of lilac nylon panties over her buttocks and fastened a matching bra around her that left the upper half of her breasts exposed. She stepped into a sheer lilac half-slip and drew a gold metallic sheath over her head. The sheath struck her two inches above her shapely knees, left her bosom oozing over the rounded neckline and her back bare to within inches of the rise of her buttocks.
Sally lit a cigarette and stood there staring at herself in the mirror.
The doorbell rang.
Sally turned slowly away from the mirror, left the bedroom and went to the door and opened it.
Sam Sanders was standing in front of her, his big broad shoulders almost blocking the entrance.
"Hello, baby!" Sam greeted her, a big grin glazing his face and still showing the effects of his last battle with Crane.
There was no smile on Sally's face. She felt like doing anything except smiling.
"Come in, Sam," she said.
Sam stepped into the living room, dropped his hat on a chair, pulled Sally to him and kissed her, simultaneously driving her big breasts into his big chest. He knew right off that Sally was burning. Anytime she gave him the cool treatment when he kissed her, Sally was bitter. Sam was well aware right now that she knew about the contract to fight Crane.
Sam released her and drew back away from her.
"Say, baby, that was a pretty icy kiss," he said, faking complete ignorance. "Ready for the dance?"
He paused and stood there looking at her.
"I'm a little late," he continued, "but I was tied up this afternoon."
"Yeah, I know, you bastard!" Sally snapped, her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. "You're going to fight Crane again."
"It'll be all right, baby. You know damn well I've always wanted another crack at that sonofabitch."
"I know."
She turned away from him, picked up a cigarette and stood there in silence, gazing blankly at the floor. Suddenly, she looked up at Sam again as she said:
"Sam, I don't want you to fight Crane, or anyone else, and you know it as well as I do. Please, Sam, call off the fight! Do this one thing for me."
She rushed to him.
"Sally, you know boxers don't chicken out on fights. Honest, baby, I was sincere when I told you I was through with the fight racket."
Sam paused and came face to face with her.
"You know what the newspapers have been saying," he continued. "They've been pushing another fight between Crane and me. If I'd turned down the offer to fight Crane again, everybody would have said I was a coward. You don't want people calling me a coward ... do you, baby? Do you want people to call Sam Sanders a coward?"
He put his arm around Sally.
"Of course not, Sam," she replied. "But, Idon't want you to fight any more, either."
The more she thought about Sam fighting Crane again, the angrier she became.
"God, baby, you're pretty when you get mad," Sam said, deciding to turn on the charm.
His hands flashed to her breasts, his fingers fondling the softness rising about the neckline of the sheath.
She pushed his hands away.
"Don't try to soft soap me, Sam. You know better than that. I'm not in the mood."
"Well, you are pretty. A real sexy dish. You like me to tell you, you're pretty, don't you?"
She exhaled a long stream of smoke.
"Sam, don't fight Crane again!" she pleaded. "He'll make ribbons out of you! I don't give a goddamn what people say or think."
"Old Sam can take care of himself, baby. You know I was winning in both of those other fights with Crane until he landed a lucky punch."
"Yeah, you were winning! Like hell you were. That bum had you staggering all over the ring! Your face was a bloody mess, Sam, and you know it!"
"It'll be different this time," Sam countered.
She caught hold of his arms.
"No, Sam, it'll be the same old story. I can see you now ... helpless and badly beaten, holding onto the ropes, trying desperately to find the strength to keep on fighting ... and, suddenly, it'll happen. Crane will land one last bombardment of blows, and you'll crumple to the canvas, your face slashed all to pieces and your eyes cut and black and swollen shut. Don't kid yourself, Sam." Sam grinned.
"I tell you, Sally, it'll be different this time. A helluva lot different."
Sally turned away from Sam and started to walk away. She suddenly spun around toward him again and faced him squarely.
"Sam, I'm not asking you not to fight Crane again! I'm telling you! I don't want you to enter the damn ring again!"
Sam became angry.
"Well, I am going to fight Crane again! I'm going to beat that no good, dirty sonofabitch to a pulp! That's a promise!"
She saw the determination in his eyes.
"Then, you refuse to call off the fight?"
"It isn't a question of calling it off. I couldn't call it off if I wanted to. The contract's been signed and it can't be broken."
Sally dug her teeth into her lips.
"Then ... then ... "
"I give you my word, Sally," he interrupted. "When this one's in the record books-win, lose or draw-I'm through. I'll tell that to the newspapers and to Crane and everyone else before I step into that ring."
Sam moved to Sally, placed his arms around her and tightly crushed her to him.
"Marry me, baby. Marry me now-tonight." He hesitated. "I've already got the license."
Sally displayed little reaction to his proposal. She felt his hands relax slightly, and she pulled away from him and walked slowly to the coffee table in front of the divan.
He watched the movement of her body and saw the rise of her thighs as her short sheath drew up over the backs of her legs. He knew very well what was beneath that sheath. Sally was all woman. He'd had many women, but none had ever even approached satisfying him like Sally did. She knew what a man wanted and how he wanted it. She was raw sex in capital letters. He felt desire rising rapidly within him as he surveyed her body.
Sally crushed out her cigarette.
"No, Sam," she mumbled finally. "I love you very much, but I won't marry you until you hang up those boxing gloves ... forever."
Sam forced a smile.
"You're just torn up about this whole thing, Sally. You're making a mountain out of nothing. Come on, let's get married."
"I'm sorry, Sam." She picked up his hat and handed it to him. "You'd better go, Sam."
"But the dance, baby," he said, his hand gripping the hat lightly, "we were going to take in the dance. Remember?"
"I remember. But I'm not going, Sam. I don't feel like going ... to a dance or anywhere else."
Sam put his arm around her again.
"Sally, don't be like this...."
She began to guide him toward the door.
"Goodnight, Sam."
"Maybe you'd like to stay here tonight," he suggested, extending his hand around her body, beneath her arm and cupping her right breast, tightly. "We'll forget the dance and get out a bottle of booze and have a little party."
"Goodnight, Sam," she repeated.
"Don't send me away, Sally," he pleaded. "God, don't send me away. I need it tonight, baby. I need a big dose of you. A big dose."
Sally pondered over his words. She realized she needed a big dose of Sam, too, but she was determined not to give in to him. She wasn't going to give him the one thing he craved even though she craved him as badly as he craved her. She felt a raw, penetrating ache deep within her thighs.
For an instant she was tempted to lead Sam into the bedroom and let him strip her and make love to her.
Once.
Twice.
All night.
Still, she fought off the desire. She simply was not going to give in. She knew once she felt Sam's brawny body against hers, she'd do anything he asked her to do. She'd be begging him to fight Crane instead of pleading with him to cancel the fight.
"Goodnight, Sam," she said again, still fighting off the desire to change her mind.
"Well, if that's the way you want it," Sam said.
He kissed her on the lips, hoping she'd respond by sliding her tongue into his mouth as she did so many times, but he found her cool and unre-ceptive to his kiss.
"Goodnight, baby," he said. "I hope you'll feel better in the morning."
"Goodnight."
He went out the door, and Sally closed it behind him. She leaned against the door with her back to it, stood there in silence for several moments, and shook her head.
"Oh, Sam, you crazy bastard anyway!" she thought aloud.
She wandered to the big upholstered chair, drew another cigarette to her lips and sank into the chair. She became increasingly restless, put out her cigarette, got up and began to pace back and forth across the floor. She lit another cigarette and nervously smoked it. The gnawing ache within her erupted again and again. She wandered to the window and looked out into the night. The lights of New York glittered in the early summer darkness.
The ache magnified and she now felt it raging within her. She lapsed into meditation as she stared at the twinkling lights.
June the seventeenth ... only three weeks away. Sam Sanders, I'll make you a bet right now, she thought. I'll bet you never climb into that ring against Sacky Crane or anybody else. I've got something you want, and you're not going to get it again until you retire from the ring. That may be tomorrow or a month from now. Maybe six months or a year, but sooner or later....
Something interrupted her thinking.
The ache.
It was there raising the very devil inside of her.
She needed a man. Any man.
She moved across the room to the telephone and picked it up. Sam ... she had to have somebody, and Sam was the most capable and avertable man she knew. She began to dial and paused. No, she wasn't going to yield to Sam. She put the phone down and walked away.
The ache sprang up with fresh fury, branching out and saturating her body like a fire igniting and then bursting wildly into a full-blown blaze.
Sally was desperate. She wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and drew out a bottle of whiskey. She reached for the bottle of ginger ale and put it back. She opened the whiskey and took a long satisfying drink.
The liquor jolted her, burning her throat and sinking deep into her belly.
It did something else.
It fanned her desire for a man even more.
She took another drink, put the bottle away and returned to the living room. She began to smoke a cigarette and turned on the radio.
The voice was clear and penetrating:...." Pete Vertolli says the third Crane-Sanders battle will be the greatest fight he's ever promoted...."
Sally cut the radio off.
"Damn that Vertolli!"
She slumped into a chair, drew the sheath up over her thighs and stared at the ceiling. The thought suddenly came to her:
Vertolli ... that's who I want to see ... Pete Vertolli.
A thin smile creased her lips. She vowed right then that she'd drop around the first thing the next morning and have a little chat with Mr. Pete Vertolli. She believed she had something that just might interest Vertolli.
Her body.
In exchange for Sam's contract to fight Crane. No man had ever been able to resist her body. No matter what the price.
Sally smiled confidently. As she did so, she felt the reminder of her immediate problem. The ache.
The problem of satisfying it.
It was grinding away like a machine and it had to be satisfied. Not tomorrow. Tonight.
Sally rose from the chair, went into the bedroom, applied fresh lipstick and mascara. She fastened a pair of long rhinestone earrings to her ears.
She returned to the living room, snapped off the light, and closed the door behind her as she stepped into the hallway.
She had one thing on her mind.
She was going out and get herself laid.
But good.
CHAPTER TWO
Sally moved lazily along in the bright lights along Broadway, ignoring the stares of first one man and then another. She wanted a man, all right, but she figured she could at least be a little choosy and that she could do better in a first-class bar rather than let some man pick her up on the street.
She passed two men standing on the sidewalk talking. Both stared holes through her.
"It oughtta be a helluva fight," one of the men was saying, "as long as it lasts."
"Yeah," the other agreed, "but that Sanders will get his block knocked off in the end."
"Poor old Sam," Sally mumbled, moving beyond earshot of the men and realizing their eyes were following every step she took.
She turned into a bar and walked past one booth after another until she was near the opposite end of the bar from the entrance. She sat down in a booth, taking inventory of the parade of male eyes that watched her sit down.
A waiter drew up beside her.
"What'll it be, miss?"
"A double shot of Scotch-on-the-rocks," she replied, crossing her legs toward the bar and pulling her sheath high over her knees until she exposed a streak of white thigh. She lit a cigarette and waited impatiently until the waiter delivered her drink.
Now she was sitting there smoking and sipping her drink and waiting for action, thinking all of the time that she hated to do this to Sam but she was determined to have her way.
A skinny guy of maybe forty lingered near her booth and looked down at her. Sally took one quick glance at him and decided instantly that he wasn't for her.
The man continued to stare.
"What the hell are you looking at?" she snapped.
"You, doll," he shot back.
"Well, now that you've had your look, disappear," Sally said in no uncertain terms.
The man grinned a little grin and passed on.
Sally put out her cigarette and lit another one. She took another long sip of her drink and relaxed her head against the back of the booth, thrusting her heaving breasts upward and outward until they almost popped out of the sheath.
She couldn't get Sam out of her thoughts and was so preoccupied that she failed to be aware of the presence of a handsome man who was standing very close to her.
"Lonesome, miss?" he asked.
Sally whirled her head around and looked up at him. He was tall and well-dressed in a lightweight blue tropical suit. He was smiling expectantly. She quickly concluded that this gentleman would fill the bill.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I asked if you were lonesome," the man said.
She liked his voice.
"Yes, I'd have to admit I'm lonesome," she replied simply, noting that he was all eyes for her breasts.
Seeming to search for words, he said:
"Perhaps I could remedy that situation."
"Won't you sit down?" Sally asked.
He slid into the booth on the side of the small table opposite her.
"I had a drink. Some place. I guess I left it at the bar. I sort of forgot what I was doing or even where I was when I saw you sitting over here."
He motioned for the waiter.
"You will have another drink, won't you?"
"Yes."
The waiter soon returned with the fresh drinks.
"I'm sorry, but I should've introduced myself," the man said, staring directly at Sally. "I'm William T. Shannon. Everybody calls me-you guessed it-Bill."
"Sally ... Sally Wright."
Bill stiffened slightly.
"That name rings a little bell." He hesitated. "Sally Wright. Your picture was in the paper.
Right?"
He was at least pretending to be thinking. "Yes."
"Weren't you some fighter's girl friend?" He fumbled for the answer to his own question. "Sanders ... Sam Sanders?"
Sally wondered whether or not she should tell him the truth. After all, she never expected to see Bill Shannon again after this one night. Still, she concluded that lying would serve no real purpose.
"My picture was in the paper. With Sam Sanders."
"I thought so. I have a habit of making a mental note of beautiful girls' pictures. Especially blondes."
She laughed aloud. She felt his knees brushing hers and then felt his knees tighten around her legs. She put out her cigarette, inserted another between her lips and waited until he touched a match to it. Their lips were only inches apart.
"What's your fee?" Bill asked, anxious now to get down to business.
Sally was stunned momentarily by his mention of money.
"You imply that you think I'm a whore," Sally replied, her legs caught in a tight vise now beneath the table.
"Well, most girls a man meets in a bar want something to take them to bed," Bill countered, desire steadily mounting within him now.
"I'm not interested in money," Sally said assuringly. "I guess you might say I'm out on the town. Do you have a place where we can go?"
"My apartment," Bill answered. "And I have plenty of liquor."
"Then what are we waiting for," she said anxiously, making a statement rather than asking a question.
"Let's go," Bill suggested, sliding into the aisle.
She drained her glass, joined him, wound her arm around his, and they headed for the door.
William T. Shannon opened the door to his apartment and turned on the light as he escorted Sally into the living room. The apartment was a plush one with fine furniture and everything in its proper place. He momentarily left her, walked across the room and turned on the hi-fi set. Strains of soft music filled the room.
He opened a small cabinet filled with liquor.
"Anything particularly?"
Sally moved closer to him.
"Straight whiskey," she answered, her thoughts concentrating for the moment upon Sam. "I feel like getting drunk. Very drunk. Very quickly."
The thought of two-timing Sam was deep within her now. She was thinking this was the first time she'd ever been with another man alone since she regarded herself as Sam's sweetheart.
Bill poured two stiff drinks, handed one to Sally, put his arm around her and guided her to the divan.
The urge to get some quick action out of Bill Shannon was forming in her thighs and spreading over her body. She crossed her legs recklessly and made damn certain plenty of bare flesh was exposed.
Bill circled his arm around her shoulders, cupped one breast with his hand and then sought the big globe of bare flesh beneath the sheath.
She drew her lips very close to his.
"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me hard."
He didn't need a second invitation. His lips meshed into hers, and he felt her tongue drive into his mouth. He was kissing her hard just as she'd suggested, just as he wanted to kiss her. His hand left the softness of her breast and found the zipper at the back of the sheath.
She drew her lips away.
"Take it off, dammit!" she said, beginning to feel drunk. "Take all of my clothes off!"
She jumped up, pulling him with her.
Not that he needed much pulling.
Bill worked the tight sheath off of her shoulders, inching it down below her breasts, down over her buttocks and off. He removed her half-slip, and she was standing there clad only in her bra, panties and spike heels. His hands caught hold of the bra and drew it away from her body.
Her luscious breasts stood out like two dazzling sentinels, each tipped with a proud and erect nipple. His lips went directly to her breasts, kissing first one and then the other.
Sally quivered with the touch of his lips.
"I can see already that you're a helluva breast man."
"That's right," Bill sighed. "And I've never seen a more perfect pair than yours. God, I've never seen such large ones. And I've seen plenty."
"I'll bet you have," she laughed, picking up her glass and taking another long drink of whiskey. "Now, why don't you take off my panties?"
"I haven't quite recovered from what I've seen already," he said, gasping. "There's a helluva lot of merchandise stacked up there."
Again, she laughed.
"Come on, big boy, let's get on with the show."
He reached for her panties, hooking his hands beneath the band and quickly rolling them down and letting them fall down her legs to the floor.
She was becoming increasingly impatient.
"Now, strip off your clothes and give me what I came up here for."
He backed away from her, his eyes sweeping up and down her nude body.
"Just what did you come up here for, Sally?"
She giggled.
"As if you didn't know."
"Then, why don't you take off my clothes?" he suggested.
"I will!" Sally returned, already trying to anticipate just how ready this handsome hunk of man was for her.
She removed his coat, and her hands went immediately to his belt and loosened it quickly.
"And I won't waste as much time as you did stripping me," she vowed, sliding his pants down his legs.
She was instantly aware that he was certainly ready for her. Quite ready.
She took off his shirt and undershirt, and he grabbed hold of her and drove her hard breasts into his bare chest and kissed her.
Hard.
Again, her tongue flicked wildly into his mouth, and she became a writhing, twisting, grinding bundle of naked flesh in his arms. She felt his knee separating her thighs, and a fresh wave of desire ripped through her.
Sally backed slightly away from him, unsnapped his shorts and let them fall down his legs.
It was bare flesh against bare flesh all the way now as he crushed her to him once more.
"Oh, God!" she moaned. "Take me into the bedroom, Bill!"
He noted the anxiety in her voice, kicked off his shoes, picked her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom, rolling her into the center of the large bed. He heard her spike heels hit the floor.
His breath was coming in short jerks as he backed away from her only to be restrained by her arms.
She pulled him over onto the bed and down upon her.
"Don't wait any longer!" Sally screamed. "And make it good, Bill. Real good!"
Bill lunged forward, and her legs circled his body and sought everything he had.
Everything.
And more.
Her thighs rose high, and her buttocks arched from the bed.
His lips clung to her breast, and she reacted wildly, her piston-like motion clashing with his as she struggled for the deepest penetration possible.
"More!" Sally yelled. "More, Bill!"
There was no more. He had given all. All that was humanly possible.
He felt her entire body quiver and knew that now was the time.
The exact moment.
And together, they reached the climax. The inevitable climax.
Seconds later, her legs collapsed, releasing the strangle hold on him.
He became limp against her. Totally and pleasantly exhausted. Spent. This was the wildest woman in bed he'd ever encountered.
The wildest he had ever dreamed of encountering.
Sally Wright was superb. Only one thing entered Bill's thoughts. To try to find the strength to do it again. Sally was breathing slow and easy. It had been good for her, too.
The second time was even better. For both of them. And the third.
Sally looked over at Bill now as he lay beside her. Bill Shannon was either asleep or so physically exhausted he couldn't move.
She stared at the ceiling, making a mental comparison of Bill with those who had preceded him.
Bill Shannon undoubtedly was the best. The best of all. Except one. Sam Sanders.
Her lips said Sam, but no sound came out. Sam....
CHAPTER THREE
Sam Sanders paused in the shadows along Forty-second Street not far from Broadway. Somewhere in the distance a clock was striking.
Sam counted the strokes ... eight ... nine ... ten ... eleven ... twelve.
Midnight.
Sam was unable to conceal the fact that he was lonely. This was the first night in a long while he hadn't been with Sally.
He moved on, ignoring the people milling around and passing him on the street. Presently, he stopped again, this time outside a small office. He looked through the window at the man seated behind a desk and went inside.
"Hello, Pete," Sam said.
Pete Vertolli glanced up. He was a little man with a big, black cigar clenched between his teeth. "Howdy, Sam."
"I was surprised as hell to see you here at this time of the night," Sam said, leaning on Vertolli's desk in front of him.
"Well, I work late sometimes," Vertolli explained, burying his teeth deeper into the cigar and talking out of the corner of his mouth. "Particularly right after I get a big fight lined up."
He looked at Sam and asked:
"What's on your mind?"
"I thought I'd pick up my copy of the contract since I was in the neighborhood."
Vertolli opened the desk drawer and drew out a neatly folded paper.
"There you are, Sam-signed, sealed and delivered," Vertolli said, handing the paper to Sam. "What'd Sally have to say about the fight with Crane?"
"She raised the devil. Doesn't want me to go through with it. Says I'll get the hell beat out of me."
"Dames are always like that," Vertolli observed. "The damn dames are stupid. They want to blow the dough, but most of them don't want fighters to fight to get it."
"I suppose you're right, Pete," Sam agreed. He paused and lit a cigarette. "Well, be seeing you, Pete."
"Sure, Sam."
Sam spun around and walked out the door, closing it behind him. He walked and walked, his mind on only one thing.
Sally.
He couldn't erase Sally from his thoughts. He had known several women in his life, known them intimately, but none had ever been able to satisfy him like Sally. He hadn't been joking when he asked Sally to marry him. He was in love with her.
Sam hesitated now outside the hotel where he had roomed for the past two and a half years. It wasn't a large hotel by the standards of the Astor or the Waldorf-Astoria, but it wasn't a small hotel, either. It was neat and clean and roomy and air-conditioned. Sure, his room cost him forty-five bucks a week, but he could afford it. And it was worth it. He got clean sheets every day, fresh towels and complete maid service.
For a moment, he debated walking on, then changed his mind. What the hell. It was getting close to one o'clock. Sally had probably gone to bed, and he figured he might as well hit the hay himself.
And by himself.
He moved through the lobby toward the elevator, waved at the night clerk as he passed the desk, entered the elevator and pressed the button for the eighteenth floor.
His room seemed a little warm and sultry. Sam turned on the air-conditioning, moved to the dresser and poured himself an inch of bourbon and drank it.
There was one thing about a hotel room that always impressed itself upon Sam Sanders. When he was lonely for Sally and hadn't had enough of her that night, he wanted a woman. A lonely hotel room just naturally spurred his desire for a woman.
He wanted a woman right now.
Sally, of course, but Sally wasn't available.
Sam looked down at the bed, walked to it and sat down. He debated very seriously calling the bellboy and putting in an order for a girl.
Not that the bellboy was always able to fill the order. Often, he wasn't. Still, on occasions, he'd been able to accommodate Sam.
For a five-dollar bill.
Sam shrugged his big shoulders. To hell with it, he concluded. A smile came over his lips as he thought about his situation and of Sally's situation. He wanted what Sally had and would offer him except that she was peeved at him, and Sally wanted what he had to offer her.
Without a doubt.
Still, because of a little misunderstanding, both of them were going to bed with a painful ache in their groins.
Sam removed his shirt and flipped it over the back of a chair and sat there reminiscing about Sally. He couldn't stop thinking about Sally.
His meditation was suddenly interrupted by a light knock at the door. He glanced over at the door and realized that he hadn't locked it.
"Come in."
A symmetrically proportioned girl entered the room. She wasn't tall and she wasn't short. Just about average in height. Her hair was dark brown with a slight reddish tint to it. She was neat, and her eyes were shadowed in a greenish, purple cast.
The girl blew cigarette smoke from ripe, red lips coated with too much lipstick. Earrings dangled over her shoulders, and she wore a huge ring on the finger that held the cigarette. She had a lengthy, filmy housecoat tossed over her shoulders and it left little to the imagination as to what was beneath that housecoat. Bright manicured toenails glistened from her high-heel shoes.
"Hello, handsome," the girl said in a sultry voice. "Lonesome, aren't you?"
Before he had an opportunity to answer her, she closed the door and turned the night latch.
He watched the to-and-fro movement of her hips as she walked across the room to the dresser and gripped the bottle of bourbon.
"May I?" she asked.
"Help yourself," Sam replied.
She poured a stiff drink into a glass and downed it, quickly.
"Aren't you lonely, handsome?" . Sam took a deep breath.
"How'd you guess it?" he asked.
"I know," the girl answered, striding toward him.
As she took each step, the housecoat parted down the front and left her nude thighs on sexy display. She sat down on the bed beside him.
Passion swept through Sam like a bolt of lightning.
"Where'd you come from, anyway?" Sam wanted to know, not that he particularly gave a damn.
"Down the hall," the girl cooed. "We're neighbors. I saw you come in. I've seen you come in several times."
Sam grew a little pale as unchecked passion continued to grind through his body.
"What's your name?"
"Lola."
"Lola what?"
"Just Lola." She drew closer to him and ran her long fingers through his hair. "Does it matter about my name?"
He felt the bulge of her breasts against his arm. His breath came quick.
"No. I guess you see a lot of men when they come in."
"Maybe," Lola purred. "Right now, though, I'm thinking only of you, handsome."
She pressed her cheek against his.
He caught a whiff of her intoxicating perfume. The urge within him was growing stronger.
It had reached the boiling point.
Lola crossed her legs and let the housecoat slide away from them, baring her thighs to the spot where they joined.
"You like what you see, don't you, handsome?" Lola asked.
She worked the housecoat off of one shoulder and slowly inched it down until she knew he could view the sudden rise of one breast.
And down farther until one nude nipple bounced from beneath the sheer garment.
"And you like that, too, don't you, handsome?" She laughed aloud as she watched the wave of desire trickle into his eyes. "Let's get the business arrangement out of the way and have some fun."
Sam came face to face with her.
"How much?"
"Pretty damn cheap since we're neighbors, handsome," Lola returned, "Say, thirty dollars. And all the whiskey I can drink while I'm here."
"Thirty bucks for one roll in the hay?" Sam asked.
Again she let out a chuckle.
"I like you," she said, extending her arm around his neck and pressing her cheek against his. "Thirty bucks for the night. As often and as long as you're able. You see, I happen to enjoy myself. Every damn minute of it."
Sally entered his thoughts for one brief moment. For the first time during the night, he found himself at least a little angry at Sally. He looked directly at Lola.
"It's a deal. Thirty bucks and plenty of whiskey."
His hand moved toward the neckline of the housecoat, but she caught hold of it before it reached its target.
"Let's see the dough first," Lola said. "After that, I'm all yours. Any way you want me." Sam grinned.
"You're a real pro, aren't you, Lola?"
"Lola looks out for Lola," she admitted. "No one else is going to look out for me."
He drew his wallet from the inner pocket of his coat and removed a twenty and a ten and handed the two bills to Lola.
"Undress me now," Sam said.
Lola removed one of her spike heels, inserted the money into it and returned it to her foot. Without saying a word, she placed her arms around Sam's neck, pulled him to her and ground her lips into his, driving her tongue into his mouth and kissing him hard.
Sam's legs grew weak as their tongues lashed in silent violence, and his hands engulfed her body. He felt her unbutton his shirt and her right hand unzip his trousers and disappear inside.
"Mram ... mm...." Lola groaned, gripping him tightly. She pulled her lips away. "Come on, let's get your clothes off, handsome."
She removed his tie, his shirt and undershirt, admiring his muscles.
"What a helluva hunk of man you are." She let out a little sigh. "God, I don't even know your name."
"Sam."
"All right, Sam, stand up," she ordered. Sam rose to his feet.
She knelt down and removed his shoes and socks. Without raising up, she grabbed him by the belt, unfastened it and yanked his pants down his legs and off. His shorts followed the same course, and he was standing there as naked as the day he was born.
Lola examined him with her eyes, touched him.
"It's a crime to take money from a guy like you," she cooed.
"I intend to get my money's worth," Sam responded, growing impatient now with all of the preliminary gestures.
He was craving action. He was ready for action. As ready as he'd ever been in his life.
"If you don't, it's your own damn fault," she insisted.
Sam reached out with his big hand and swept her to him again. With a single motion, he unfastened " the one button that held the housecoat together just below her breasts and removed the housecoat.
She wore no bra, and her big breasts sprung free. They were quite a work of art. Tremendously large, sprawling enticingly over her chest and out. Far out.
Only her pink panties protected her nakedness now.
Sam pulled Lola to him, kissed her and felt her rigid nipples dancing to life and digging into his chest.
He wanted to see more. He inserted his thumbs beneath the elastic band of the pink panties. Gradually, he rolled them away from her buttocks, down her legs and swished them off. Her hips and thighs were flawless just as he had imagined.
Sam was making a quick mental comparison of Lola's breasts with Sally's. They were certainly just as perfectly shaped even though they didn't appear quite as large. He reached out with both hands and cupped the cone-shaped flesh and felt his legs buckling under the spell of his fierce desire to take this woman. This whore. Sure, he knew she was just another whore, but there were traces of class running through this whore.
She was sizing him up, too, staring at his nudity, during his brief meditative moment. He was a real stud, the kind of a man a woman would pay plenty to have seduce her. Lola concluded right then that she really was going to enjoy every second that Sam Sanders was possessing her.
Every second and every time.
"Well, what the hell are you waiting for, Sam?" she asked, a trace of anxiety in her voice.
Sam didn't answer. He merely lifted her into his arms, buried his face in her breasts. His strong hand gripped the pillowy flesh of her buttocks as he carried her the short distance to the bed and sat her down, easily, in the center of it.
Her arms circled his body and crushed him against her.
"Take me, Sam!" she begged loudly. "Take me! Now!"
Sam wasn't one to waste time when a beautiful girl was begging him for action. Even though she was a whore. He dug his fingers into her breasts, and he felt her body sizzle beneath his strong caresses.
He suddenly touched her. Deeply. Directly. With one deadly thrust forward, and her arms tightened around his neck, her nails digging into his back and her legs surrounding him and picking up the rhythmic momentum.
Their bodies exploded together moments later, and it was over. He rolled off of her, and they lay on their sides, staring at one another.
Neither of them spoke a word for long moments.
"You know, for the first time in my life I feel like an honest-to-God woman," Lola said, breaking the silence. "I never felt like this before, believe me, Sam. I've been shacking up with men for God knows how long, but I never gave a damn about a second round with the same guy. Until now."
Sam grinned sheepishly.
"You mean you're ready for an encore?"
"Hell, yes, I'm ready," Lola beamed. "I really mean it now when I say as often and as long as you're able."
He was staring at her again. He was thinking that it had been good for him, too. Real good. Lola was probably the best he'd had.
Aside from Sally.
Sally was the greatest.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pete Vertolli was sitting in his little office. There was a smile on his face, and as usual his long, black cigar protruded from his lips.
He heard the door open and glanced up.
A shapely girl was closing the door behind her. Vertolli watched the sweeping motion of the girl's hips as she walked toward him.
The girl was Sally Wright.
She paused in front of Vertolli's desk, stood there waiting for recognition.
"Hello, Sally," Vertolli said, shifting his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "What's cooking?"
A serious wrinkle creased her forehead. "Mr. Vertolli, I'm here to talk to you about Sam."
"What about Sam?" Vertolli asked.
"I don't want Sam to fight this ... this Sacky Crane again," she replied, facing Vertolli directly. "In fact, I don't want him to fight anyone."
Vertolli's eyes were concentrating now on the big bulges formed in the skin-tight lavender sheath by Sally's breasts. He was trying to vision just how those breasts would look in the nude, and he felt a little ripple of desire penetrate his body.
"So you don't want Sam to fight any more?"
"That's right."
Vertolli grinned.
"You know about fight contracts, Sally. This one has been signed."
"I know that," Sally acknowledged. "But couldn't you cancel the damn fight? Prizefights have been cancelled, you know!"
He watched Sally light a cigarette and inhale the smoke.
"Sally, this fight'll be the biggest drawing card during my career as a promoter. Everybody, and I mean everybody, wants to see Sam fight Crane again."
She leaned forward, resting her elbow on the desk.
"Please, Mr. Vertolli. You know damn well that Sam Sanders is past his prime...."
Vertolli could view the deep valley between her breasts now. Another wave of passion burst through his loins.
"Sally, you're wasting your time trying to get me to cancel this fight," he said, adjusting the cigar in his mouth. "You're a ... a fool to try to get Sam to wiggle out of the fight."
Sally drew back, walked around the desk, pulled herself up on it and sat down inches from Vertolli. She crossed her legs, the hem line of the sheath pulling high above her knees. She watched Vertolli's eyes focus on her legs.
"I'd pay plenty to get you to tear up the contract."
His eyes widened. He reached over slowly and cupped her knee with his hand, expecting her to push it away. She didn't. He felt himself coming alive.
"You're suggesting that ... "
"I'm not suggesting anything," Sally broke in. "I'm saying point blank that if you'll cancel the fight, I'll go to bed with you."
"Sam wouldn't like that," Vertolli argued.
"To hell with Sam," Sally snapped, "If Sam can't get himself out of his jams, then I'll have to go to bat for him the best way I know how."
"You really love Sam, don't you?"
"Hell, yes, I love him. He's a damn fool, but I love him none the less."
Vertolli was studying her proposition. It wasn't often that a fifty-five-year-old man got a crack at a young, shapely and desirable girl like Sally Wright. He cleared his throat, becoming bolder now and extending his hand up her leg until he was able to grip the warm, naked flesh just above her nylons.
"I stand to make fifty grand out of this fight. That's a helluva lotta dough, Sally, to give up for one roll in the hay. Even though I'll admit you might be worth it."
"Who said anything about one roll in the hay?" Sally said. She drew hard on her cigarette. "I was thinking more in terms of, say, a roll as often as you want it for the next six or eight months."
Sally's proposition sounded good to Vertolli. He hadn't had a roll with a young filly for God knows how long, and his mouth was actually watering as he thought of the prospects. Just her mere presence and the nearness of her legs had spurred his manhood like it hadn't been stimulated for ages. Still, he was reluctant to throw fifty grand to the wind for a few shack jobs.
Even with a dish like Sally Wright.
He looked up at her, his hand craving to move a few inches higher on her legs. He resisted the temptation, mainly because he didn't know how Sally would react. She was offering him her body in exchange for what she wanted, but he didn't know just how far she'd let him go without giving her Sam's contract and letting her destroy it. He decided to proceed with caution.
"How about showing me the merchandise I'd be getting if I did decide to accept your little proposition?"
She smiled, feeling embarrassed at his proposal.
"In broad daylight? In here?"
Vertolli chewed hard on his cigar. Little beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.
"What about the back room? It's mostly a storage room. There's not even any windows."
She slid down from the desk, pushing his hand away.
"Let's go." She stopped and turned around toward him. "And bring the contract with you."
"We can get the contract out ... if we need it," Vertolli said.
"Bring the contract with you, Mr. Vertolli!" Sally insisted. "Or ... "
"All right," he agreed. "But that doesn't mean I'm accepting your offer. Not yet, at least."
Sally watched him remove the contract from a drawer. She turned and took a few steps to the door leading to the back room.
Vertolli met her at the door, opened it, circled her waist with his arm and escorted her into the small adjoining room. He closed the door behind them.
Sally spun around and faced him. She heard him locking the door.
"So you want to see what you'd be getting, Mr. Vertolli?" She paused. "Well, I'm going to show you, but you can only look. Mustn't touch."
He laughed, his eyes moving up and down over her body.
She quickly slipped out of her sheath and draped it over the back of a chair.
His eyes grew large as he zeroed them in on the high rise of her breasts swelling generously over the top of her bra.
So far, so good, he thought, feeling a little cheap for practically forcing Sally to strip for him when he knew damn well all of the time he wouldn't trade that contract with Sam Sanders for Sally Wright and a dozen girls like her. Vertolli was a man who placed the value of money high above everything else.
Even seductive girls.
Sally removed her half-slip.
"Now, do you have any preference as to what comes off next?" she asked, standing there in orchid panties and bra, nylons and spike heels.
Vertolli shrugged his shoulders.
"No," he grunted. "Just strip."
She was wearing a bra that hooked in front, and her hands caught hold of the hook and unfastened it. She looked up at Vertolli and smiled as he stood nervously some five or six feet away from her.
She was slowly withdrawing the bra. Slowly opening it an inch or two at a time. Then it was off, and she hung it over the chair with her sheath and slip. Her nude breasts jutted out, high and firm. They were tilted incredibly.
"What do you think of these?" she asked Vertolli.
"God."
He was able to say nothing more. "Wouldn't you like to give me the contract now?" Sally wanted to know.
He nodded negatively and smiled.
"Let's see the rest. Off with the panties."
She saw the excitement in Vertolli's eyes.
"You bastard, you!" she spat.
Her hands moved to her panties, catching them by the band and drawing them down her legs until she was able to step out of them. Now she was standing in front of him entirely nude except for the nylons and heels.
The sweat on Vertolli's forehead magnified and began to trickle down his face.
Sally moved to within inches of him, so close that her breasts were almost in his face.
"Well, what's the decision? Do I pass the test?"
"You're all sex, Sally," Vertolli replied. "There is no doubt about that."
"Then ... "
She hesitated, reached for the paper in his hand, but he drew it back.
"How about a little sample of the real thing?" he asked, eyeing her thighs.
"You're not going to get that until the bargain's sealed," Sally insisted, knowing it would be difficult enough to let this vulture of a man have her even if she got what she wanted.
"Well, let's put it this way, Sally," Vertolli said. "You know damn well I want you. But not fifty grand worth. No woman is worth fifty thousand dollars. Couldn't we forget the contract and make a little deal for a couple of hundred?"
Disappointment curled through her. Still, she wasn't ready to give up. She grabbed his hand and raked it over her breasts.
"That's nice, Sally. Damn nice." Vertolli felt the nipples grow erect beneath his squeezing touch. "A couple of hundred dollars, Sally?"
"No!" she snapped. "I'm only interested in bargaining for that contract, Mr. Vertolli. I'm not interested in selling what I've got except for that contract!"
"Then I guess it's no deal," Vertolli said with a note of finality.
She shoved his hand away from her.
"You had no intention of dealing for the contract when we came in here, you ... dirty bastard! You just wanted to see me nude!" She started to dress. "What would Sam say ifhe knew you'd pulled this?"
"You won't tell him, Sally," Vertolli said confidently. "Not in a thousand years you wouldn't tell him."
She was putting on her sheath with her back to Vertolli. The show was over.
Sally heard him unlock the door and leave the room. She zipped up the sheath, picked up her handbag and walked out the door.
Vertolli was seated at his desk again.
Sally glanced briefly at him as she passed his desk, went out the door without saying a word and started to walk on down Forty-second Street.
As she reached the corner, she paused against a building and stood there for long moments, unaware of the come-hither glances of the men among the surging crowd. She had hit a dead end, not knowing which way to turn next.
She thought of Sam. He seemed to be her only hope. Yet, she already knew how he felt. Still....
She started to walk again, this time with more determination. She walked two blocks, another, turned to the right and walked three more blocks. She hesitated outside of a large building, a gymnasium where she knew Sam Sanders always did his training for his fights.
Sally climbed the steps and entered the lobby.
She moved to the door that led to the gymnasium floor, opened it and stepped inside. A half dozen men and two or three boys were occupied in various types of physical exercise.
And then she saw Sam, pounding away on a punching bag in one corner of the vast room. The sound of her high heels clicking against the floor penetrated the comparative stillness as she headed toward Sam. She drew up to within a yard of him before he saw her.
"Well, hello, baby," Sam said, grabbing the punching bag and bringing its motion to a standstill. "Are you feeling better today?"
Sally was in no mood to exchange pleasantries.
"Sam, you know why I'm here."
Sam walked closer to her.
"I guess you're here to try to get me not to fight." He let out a big sigh. "You never give up, do you, Sally?"
"God, if you only knew how I don't give up," she said. "Not when I know something is wrong, and it's the wrong thing for you when you keep on fighting after you're through. You never were a real fighter, and you know it. You don't have the savage heart of a fighter. You're just skilled in the funda mentals of boxing, and that's all."
Sam backed away from her, took a shot at the punching bag with his right fist.
"I've beaten plenty of guys with my knowledge of funda mentals ... right, baby?"
"Yes," she admitted, "but you've never beaten Crane or guys like Crane."
"That's why I want to try just this one more time."
"Dammit, Sam!" Sally snapped, becoming angry. "I didn't come here to argue with you. I just came here to make one more appeal to you not to go through with this ... this damn fight." Sam grinned sarcastically.
"You're wasting your time, Sally. I'm gonna beat the hell out of that bum just one time."
"Wasting my time!" she countered. "That's what everyone says!" She lit a cigarette. "Everyone says I'm wasting my time. Maybe I'm wasting my time worrying about you at all!"
Sally stormed away from him, leaving him standing there alone. As she reached the opposite side of the floor, she heard the rhythmic sound of Sam pounding his fists once more against the punching bag.
Outside, she hailed a passing taxicab and climbed in.
As the cab sped through the streets, the cab driver turned around toward Sally.
"Dat's gonna be a helluva fight at da Garden in June." He picked up a newspaper from the front seat and handed it to Sally. "Maybe you'd like to read about it. It's all over the sports pages."
Sally made no comment. The last thing she wanted to read about was that fight. Still, almost automatically, she was searching for the sports section. Her eyes scanned the pages quickly and then fell on the headlines.
She began to read the fine print:
Crane told reporters he's going to give Sanders the worst beating of his life. Crane said that of all of the men he's ever fought in the ring that he has a personal dislike only of Sam Sanders.
Sally inhaled her cigarette. She felt completely demoralized. She stared at Crane's picture and then at the one of Sam. Finally, her eyes returned once more to the photograph of Crane. Suddenly, she became excited.
She leaned toward the cab driver, crossing her legs and letting the sheath pull high over her knees. Excitement was sweeping through her body.
"You know what I'm going to do?" she said, directing her remark to the driver.
The cabbie whirled his head around, his eyes picking up the shapeliness of her knees and the swell of her thighs, instantly.
"I wouldn't know, lady."
"I'm going to pay a little visit to Mr. Sacky Crane! I'm going to make a deal with him!"
The cabbie's eyes wandered from her legs to the twin peaks of her breasts. He could see the tight crease between them and the impression of her nipples as she leaned far forward toward him.
"You could sure as hell make a deal with me, cutie."
"You're not Sacky Crane."
"What's Crane got that I ain't got?" She ignored his question.
"I'm in a helluva hurry! Get me home! He doesn't know it yet, but I've got a date with Sacky Crane! I'm going to make him the greatest proposition he'll ever get in his life!" She put out her cigarette and fumbled for another. "Come on, get this damn cab to moving!"
The cabbie's eyes shifted from Sally's charms to the street ahead. He took a deep breath.
"It should happen to me," he moaned. "Such a thing should happen to me."
CHAPTER FIVE
Sacky Crane was stripped to his waist, wearing only a pair of trunks, socks and tennis shoes. He inserted his hands into his boxing gloves and waited while a skinny little man with thick eyebrows tied them. The man disappeared, and Sacky tore into the punching bag in front of him with both fists.
For a moment, he imagined that the bag was Sam Sanders' head, and he battered it with fresh fury. Suddenly, he was no longer concentrating on the bag. Instead, his eyes were glued on a pair of shapely legs not too far away from him.
Sacky's eyes studied the legs for brief moments and gradually raised upward, hesitating on the outline of the buttocks. He saw the figure shift toward him, and he noted the flat belly and then the sudden swell of the breasts. The girl was only an arm's length from him now, and his attention was focused on the big mounds of naked flesh that spilled over the low neckline of the skintight gold sheath.
He reluctantly tore his eyes away from the breasts and came face to face with her.
"Well ... if my eyes aren't deceiving me, it's Sally Wright." He grinned sarcastically. "I knew as soon as I hit the breast work," he added crudely.
"Yes, I'm Sally Wright." Crane drew closer to her.
"And what brings a pretty dame like you to a joint like this?"
Sally took a couple of steps toward him, moving seductively so that every curve of her body strained against the sheath, "I'll get right to the point, Mr. Crane."
"Can the formal stuff, you gorgeous female. Just call me Sacky like everyone else."
"All right, Sacky," she said. "How about calling off the fight with Sam?"
Crane staggered slightly with surprise. Momentarily, he was unable to speak, then said, "You're kiddin', doll. Of course, you're kiddin'."
"I'm serious, Sacky," she said, lighting a cigarette. "I don't want Sam to fight you-or anyone else. I want him to give up boxing. For good."
"Sam Sanders'll quit after this fight. He won't have any other choice. He won't be in no shape ever to climb into the ring again when I get through with him."
"Please, Sacky," she pleaded. "Cancel the fight. You're a champion. Nobody would criticize a champion if he found a reason to ask that the fight be canceled."
"Nobody except a million or two people." Crane looked into her eyes. "Did Sanders send you here, doll?"-
"No, of course not. I came strictly on my own. Hell, Sam wants this fight with you the worst way."
Crane's eyes shifted toward the floor, roaming up and down Sally's legs. Finally, he looked up at her again.
"Look, doll, I wouldn't pass up this opportunity to give Sam Sanders another good mauling for anything on earth." He extended his hand beneath her chin and looked straight at her. "You won't have to worry after this fight's over. I'll see to it personally that this is Sander's last fight." Sally felt defeated.
Crane placed his hand beneath her arm and his thumb rested against the fullness of her breast. A flirty, sarcastic grin smothered his face.
"What're you thinking, Sacky?" Sally asked.
"I'm thinking exactly what you think I'm thinking, doll," he answered. "You're quite a dish. You do things to me. Inside."
Sally smiled, remaining very close to Crane.
"I guess I don't have to guess what you're thinking, all right. It's written all over your face."
She decided to try another approach and said:
"You know, there's something about you, Sacky. Something I never saw in you before. I could go for a fighter with determination and confidence like you."
Crane twisted his head around, taking inventory of the surroundings. Nobody was paying any attention to them. Quickly, he took Sally into his arms and kissed her.
Hard.
Sally relaxed in his arms and was submitting willingly to Crane's kiss. She was thinking that he was playing right into her hands.
It wasn't a long kiss.
Just long enough for Sally to be convinced she had something Crane wanted and long enough for Crane to be convinced he could get it.
Sally drew her lips away from his.
"How did you like that, Sacky?"
"The sample was okay," Crane replied. "What about stepping out with me, doll?"
"When?"
"Tonight."
She didn't answer immediately. She knew damn well she was going, but she didn't want to appear too anxious. She decided to tease Crane a little. "To do what?"
"Oh, we'll have dinner together," Crane returned. "A few drinks and eventually we'll wind up in my apartment where you'll get the best lay of your life."
"God, you're a bold bastard, aren't you, Sacky?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I'm pretty cocky, all right. I always figure a guy might just as well find out about a girl before he takes her out rather than take her out and then be disappointed."
Still, she didn't say she would. And she didn't say she wouldn't.
Crane stood there, grinning like a torn cat.
"What about it, Sally? Dinner, drinks and the works. The full treatment."
She pondered over his words.
"On one condition," she said finally.
"Just name it, doll."
"That you agree not to come to my apartment to pick me up," she explained. "I'll meet you at ... at the Cosmopolitan Restaurant."
Crane shrugged his shoulders.
"Anything you say. What about seven o'clock? I'll make a reservation for dinner."
"Seven o'clock is fine for me."
Crane's face possessed that sarcastic grin again.
"What's so amusing?" Sally wanted to know.
"I was just thinking," he returned. "What about this? It's adding insult to injury for Sanders. Not only will I beat his brains out in the ring, but I'm in the process of stealing his girl, too."
She laughed aloud.
"It's Sam's own fault. Both ways. Hell, he had his chance."
She reached up and gave him a quick kiss on the lips and said:
"Seven at the Cosmopolitan."
"I can hardly wait," Sacky replied.
Sally smiled and turned to leave. As she reached the door, she turned her head around and took a parting glance at Crane. He was still watching her.
If Sacky Crane only knew what I know, she was thinking.
She paused in the lobby, lit a cigarette, stood there in silent moments of meditation. Her eyes fell on a telephone booth. She quickly found a dime in her purse, stepped into the booth, searched through the directory for a number and dialed it.
She waited impatiently.
"I'd like to speak with Sam Sanders. It's very important."
Long, silent moments passed. She finally heard Sam's voice.
"Sam, this is Sally." She paused. "I've been thinking, Sam. I'm sorry as hell we've been quarreling. I realize now how badly you want this fight with Crane. It's silly for us to quarrel."
"I'm sorry, too, Sally," Sam said.
"I know you are," Sally said. "Suppose we have dinner together tonight and get back in the old groove."
"You've certainly got a groove I like to get into," Sam laughed. "Maybe you'd like to have dinner at your apartment."
"No, let's eat out tonight ... maybe at the Cosmopolitan." She became very excited as she spoke. "Yes, the Cosmopolitan. We can find a little booth and talk things over. How does that sound?"
"Great, Sally."
Sally realized that Sam was excited, too.
"Suppose I meet you at the Cosmopolitan. Then you won't have to come all the way over here."
"Well, if you want it that way."
"Yes, I do," Sally insisted. "I'll meet you at the restaurant. At seven. Sharp."
"At seven. Sharp."
"Fine, Sam. Be seeing you, darling. Goodbye, Sam...."
"Goodbye ... "
Sally hung up the receiver. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. For a moment, she relaxed her head against the side of the booth, thinking that her plan was working out very well so far. Finally, she opened the door of the booth, swung her legs around and got up.
She walked to the gymnasium door and went outside. A well-dressed man of about forty-five was standing on the steps leading down to the sidewalk. As Sally moved down the steps, the man whirled around abruptly and crashed headlong into her.
"Pardon me, miss," the man said. "I'm very sorry."
"It's all right," Sally said. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
"I was the one who wasn't watching," the man said apologetically.
Then she realized that the man was doing his best to make conversation. She quickly concluded that he had bumped purposely into her.
"You're Sam Sanders' girl, aren't you?" the man asked. "I saw you in the phone booth. I'm a good friend of Sam's."
"You are?"
"Yes." He adjusted his tie. "Could I give you a lift someplace? My car's right over there by the curb."
Sally was silently sizing him up. He was nobody she'd ever seen previously, and she knew quite a few of Sam's friends. Particularly, Sam's good friends.
"You say you're a good friend of Sam's?"
"That's right."
"I was going home," Sally said, deciding to see what his reaction would be merely to taking her home and not possibly to some bar for a few drinks.
"Come on," he said. "Maybe you'd like to have a drink or two before you go home. I'd like to talk to you about a little matter. A little proposition."
He took her arm and guided her down the steps, then turned loose of her. She stopped in her tracks.
"I've been propositioned before, and I'm not interested. I'll grab a cab. Thanks, anyway."
She started to walk away from him, but his hand caught hold of her arm.
"Look, baby, I'm not trying to get in your panties," the man said, changing character completely now. "The proposition I have in mind involves Sam Sanders and this fight with Sacky Crane. Now, are you interested?"
"Turn loose of me," Sally ordered.
"I've been talking to Pete Vertolli," the man grinned. "He says you don't want Sanders to fight Crane. Right?"
"That's right."
"Maybe I've got a little proposition that does interest you after all," he continued. "You tried to get Vertolli to call off the fight. Maybe I can help."
She weighed his words. She would do anything to prevent the fight. Maybe the guy could help her.
"All right, you can drive me home, and we'll talk."
They crossed the street. The man held the door while Sally got into his car, his eyes on her legs as she slid onto the seat.
He was driving slowly despite the heavy traffic. His eyes fell on her legs again, concentrating on the long smooth expanse of nylon above her knees.
"This fight between Sanders and Crane is going to be a helluva bloody battle. And Sanders is going to shed all of the blood, believe me, baby."
"I know that," Sally agreed. "Everybody knows. Everybody except Sam. The damn fool!" She shifted her body around until she was facing him more directly, crossing her legs and drawing her sheath even higher above her knees. "But this fight just may not come off."
"Don't kid yourself, baby!" the man shot back. "They'll fight all right. The big thing that should interest you is a short fight so that Sam doesn't get beat up too much. Just say, for example, if it ended in the first round like the Liston-Patterson farce. Crane couldn't do too much damage to Sam in such a short time."
"Yes, but Sam's not that bad. He'll go six or seven rounds like he did in the other fights with Crane."
"That's where you come in, baby," the man said. "You see to it that Sam doesn't come up for the second round, and I'll make it worth your trouble. Say, five grand ... "
Sally was biting her lips.
"You're a gambler," she said.
"Gambler? That's a pretty dirty word, baby. A helluva dirty word. Let's just say that I have a hobby. Sure, I bet on all the big fights."
"What you want me to do is get Sam to throw the fight. In the first round."
The man's eyes surveyed the street ahead, then leveled to the steep rise of Sally's breasts.
"He wouldn't be throwing the fight. That'd be dishonest. He's going to lose anyway. You already know that. What's so wrong whether he loses it in the first round or maybe the sixth or seventh round?"
"I see what you mean," Sally said. "There wouldn't be much difference, would there?"
"Not a bit, and it would make a helluva difference in Sam's physical condition at the end."
"That's right. I never thought of it that way." She hesitated and squarely faced the man. "But I don't know how in the devil I could ever persuade Sam to do it. He's stubborn as hell, and he honest to God thinks he can whip Crane."
"Look, baby, you've got something Sam wants. Something he craves. Something he can't get along without. Take it away from him. Dangle it in front of him until his guts ache, but keep your legs closed. If I was in Sam's shoes and in that situation, I'd show up for the fight and there'd be only two blows. The one when Crane slugged me and the one when I hit the canvas."
Sally laughed aloud.
"You don't know me. I need it as bad as Sam does," Sally said. The man smiled.
"In that case, I'll be glad to accommodate you until you bring Sam around. I could go for a big piece of you, baby." Sally laughed again.
"Take me home," she said. "I live in the lower end of Manhattan."
The man turned to the right and headed for Lower Manhattan.
CHAPTER SIX
The Cosmopolitan Restaurant is a swank eating establisliment, drawing some of the city's most elite customers. It was Saturday night, and this was undoubtedly the restaurant's busiest night.
Sacky Crane, all decked out in his swankiest outfit, drew the door open and went inside. A hostess greeted him just inside the door.
"Yes, we have your reservation for two," said the hostess, a tall, shapely brunette with a slit skirt, big breasts and toeless and heelless high spike shoes. "Would you care to sit down and wait for the lady?"
"I'll wait over here in the corner if you don't mind," Crane answered politely.
He wandered to the corner and relaxed there, his eyes combing the vast dining room and taking inventory of the diners.
Crane was so preoccupied with scanning the crowd that he didn't see Sam Sanders enter.
Sam glanced around quickly, saw nobody he knew and sat down in a leatherette chair within view of the door. Minutes passed. He was thinking that he was glad to have things apparently straightened out with Sally.
Sam suddenly saw her and went to her. For a moment he stood there in silence, stunned by her beauty. She was wearing black rayon velvet with a jeweled neckline. The sheath snugly fit her around the neck just beneath her chin, but the triangular cut-out, surrounded by dozens of sparkling rhine-stones, was filled with the bulging nude flesh of her breasts. The sleeves were so sheer they left her arms virtually bare, and the sheath was so tight in the hips that Sam wondered how she managed to get into it.
"God, what a woman!" Sam moaned. "Hello, Sally."
"Hello, Sam. I'm glad you like my dress."
Sam lightly put his arm about her waist and guided her toward the hostess. While Sam was talking to the hostess, Sally turned around and came face to face with Crane, who had spotted her as she looked toward him. Sally nodded for Crane to join them, and she saw the disappointment on his face as he saw Sam at her side.
Sam started to escort Sally to the table to which they were being taken by the hostess.
Crane quickly caught up with them, ignored Sam entirely and took Sally by the arm.
Sam instantly whirled around, unchecked anger sweeping his face.
"Get the hell away from my girl, Crane!" he warned in a low voice through clenched teeth.
"Sally knows what she wants-a real champion," Crane countered. "Not just a washed up boxer who never had any business in the fight racket in the first place."
His voice was filled with sheer confidence, not a trace of anger.
Fresh anger struck Sam like a dagger plunging into his heart. He shoved Sally out of the way, came up simultaneously with his right fist and landed a terrific blow that just missed Crane's ducking face and caught him in the right shoulder.
Crane laughed aloud.
"You never were a fighter, Sanders!" he yelled. "And you never will be!"
Sam charged into Crane and this time ran headlong into a counter blow from Crane which caught him on the side of the face. The two boxers began to exchange brutal blows.
The crowd gathered quickly around. Chairs and tables were shoved in every direction. A woman screamed. The crowd roared, some pulling for Sam and some for Crane.
Fear gripped Sally as the two men continued to pound each other. She didn't want Sam to get hurt but she didn't want him to win either. She figured that if Sam got roughed up in this fight that she knew was certain to come once she made dates with both men at the same time and at the same place he might listen to her and find a way to get out of battling Crane in the ring.
Restaurant personnel attempted to break up the fight but both Sam and Crane pushed them out of the way.
Crane drove wicked blows into Sam's body but they didn't seem to faze him like he knew they would if Crane were wearing boxing gloves. Sam thought he was the better fighter with bare fists, and he uncorked a lethal, fierce punch with all of the fury in his body.
Crane staggered.
Sam ripped into Crane with another devastating blow that rocked Crane.
A half dozen uniformed policemen, followed by reporters and photographers, burst into the restaurant.
Just as Sam was about to finish off Crane, the policemen grabbed both Sam and Crane. Crane was dazed.
The policemen told the crowd to break up and most of them moved away.
Flashbulbs were popping from photographers' cameras and reporters were bombarding both Sam and Crane with questions but were getting no answers.
"What was this all about?" one policeman asked Sam.
"Crane was making a play for my girl," Sam returned.
Sally lingered a few feet away from them, listening to every word.
Crane stepped forward and said:
"Sally Wright may be Sanders' girl, but I had a date with her."
"Sally wouldn't go out with a no-good bastard like you, Crane!" Sam shouted, still unable to control himself.
Crane started to surge forward toward Sam but the policemen restrained him.
"We could run both of you in for disturbing the peace," one policeman said. "Both of you better square things with the restaurant or you'll be in trouble."
"Okay," Sam said.
"All right," Crane agreed.
The reporters were still trying to corner the two fighters.
"Now I suggest that both of you get out of here and go separate ways outside," the policeman continued. "If there's any more trouble, we'll toss both of you in jail."
Sam and Crane both nodded.
Crane turned to leave but was stopped by on-rushing reporters and photographers.
"How about a shot of you and Sanders and the girl, all three together, Crane?" a photographer yelled.
"You can get a shot of Sanders and me in the ring June seventeenth," Crane retorted. "That is, if you're fast enough. We won't be in there long."
Sally joined Sam. Photographers' flashbulbs crackled and lit up their faces. Reporters gathered around them.
"You guys don't waste any time getting to the scene of things, do you?" Sam said.
"What started the fight between you and Crane?" one reporter asked.
"The bum made a play for Sally," Sam answered.
"If the cops hadn't stepped in, could you've knocked him out?" the reporter wanted to know.
"Hell, yes," Sam replied confidently. "I had him on the ropes. He was groggy as the devil. This is only a sample of what I'll do to Crane when we tangle June seventeenth. You can write that down. That's a promise."
"But, Sam," Sally interrupted, putting her arm through his, "there's no reason for you to fight Crane now. You had him licked tonight, Sam. You've already proven you can whip him."
Sam's face rippled with determination.
"Yeah, but I'm going to beat him up good in the Garden. Wait until I get that dirty bum in the ring," he said.
Disappointment flooded Sally's face.
"Sam, promise me you won't ... "
"Forget it, Sally," Sam interrupted. "It's no use. I'm going to murder that guy in front of thousands-not just with a comparative handful looking on. Crane'll get the bloodiest beating a boxer's ever taken in the history of boxing."
The reporters were taking down every word Sam was saying.
"What round are you going to finish him off?" a reporter asked.
"It won't last past the seventh or eighth," Sam predicted. "The end may come even sooner than that."
A reporter turned toward Sally and asked: "Did you have a date with both of these guys tonight?"
"Well, sorta," Sally returned. "Have you ever dated Crane?"
"No."
"Would you date him again if he asked you?" Sally drew a cigarette to her lips and lit it. "You guys ask too damn many questions," she replied.
The reporters smiled.
"You've been going with Sam a long time, Miss Wright," one of them said. "Are you going to marry him?"
Sally silently debated the question before replying.
"I can't answer that. Not right now," she said.
The reporters soon rushed out of the restaurant. Sam looked in Crane's direction and saw him leaving with two of the reporters who'd been talking to Sacky.
Sam and Sally were virtually alone now. He started to guide Sally toward the door.
"I can see through everything now, Sally," he said in a low voice. "You did all of this on purpose, didn't you?"
"Did what on purpose, Sam?"
"You made a date with both of us so that we'd get in one helluva fight, didn't you?"
They left the restaurant and walked down the street. Sam hesitated in the darkness.
"Answer me, Sally!" Sam said angrily.
"I don't want to quarrel, Sam."
"You wanted us to get into a fight in the restaurant because you thought I'd give up if Crane gave me a good beating, didn't you?"
He backed her against the building.
Sally didn't answer.
The anger within Sam increased.
"Or was it you thought one of us would get hurt and the fight'd have to be called off as a result?"
Sally still remained silent.
He started slightly shaking her.
"Answer me, Sally!" He paused. "All right, then-don't answer me!" He bit his lip. "Youmade a fool of yourself, Sally, and you made a fool of me. That was a helluva thing to do."
Sally stood there in silence.
Her plan had failed completely, had had exactly the opposite effect she had intended. She had merely increased the bitterness between Sam and Crane. She realized now that nothing she could do would prevent the big fight in the Garden. She thought of the gambler. His words came back to her: ... "Dangle it in front of him until his guts ache, but keep your legs closed ... "
This seemed to be the only solution ... convince Sam he's going to lose whether the fight goes one round or fifteen rounds and make him agree to see to it that it ends quickly. And make him promise he'll never fight again.
She drew Sam close to her and could see the anger and the pain in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Sam. I made a mistake, but I was doing it for you."
"I guess so," Sam said.
Pete Vertolli tapped Sam on the shoulder.
"Hello, Sam," Vertolli said.
He ignored Sally.
"Hello, Pete."
"I just came from the Cosmo," Vertolli said. "What happened? What really happened?"
"Crane and I got in a fight," Sam answered.
"Goddammit, I know you got in a fight!" Vertolli exclaimed. "What I wantta know is whether either of you got hurt."
"I'm not hurt," Sam said. "Crane ... he got shook up a little. A little cut on his face. Nothing serious. We're both okay."
Vertolli beamed.
"This will be a helluva boost for the gate at the Garden. It's great publicity. This fight oughtta draw a half million bucks, now."
"Yeah," Sam said.
"Well, I'll see you around, Sam."
"Yeah."
Vertolli disappeared. Sally pulled Sam to her. "Like I said, Sam, I'm sorry." He shook his head. "It's okay, baby."
"Kiss me," Sally begged. "Kiss me hard." His lips ground into hers. Sally had only one thing on her mind: ... "Dangle it in front of him until his guts ache but keep your legs closed...." She drew away from him. "Are you hungry, Sam?" she asked. "No, are you?"
He brushed her nose with his, felt her hard breasts digging into his chest.
"No. Let's go to my apartment. You've got something I have to have."
She gave him a quick, wet kiss.
"Let's go."
They moved to the curb and hailed a passing cab.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sam felt a big burst of desire crashing through his body the moment he stepped inside Sally's apartment. He had completely erased Crane and the restaurant brawl from his thoughts.
He wanted another kind of action now.
Action with Sally.
Sally emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of drinks. Sam stood watching her. He concluded once more that she must've been poured into that sheath with the peek-a-boo triangle cut-out in the neckline, baring a generous portion of her nude breasts. Her shapely legs tapered gently into her spike-heel shoes. Her skirt tightly hugged her buttocks. Wickedly. The hem hit her a good two inches above her knees.
"You're beautiful tonight, Sally," Sam said. "Funny how so damn much can happen in twenty-four hours. Last night you kicked me out, I had a helluva fist fight with Sacky Crane, and now we're together again. It seems like a hundred years since last night."
He had also had a tremendous tumble in the hay with a beautiful girl named Lola but he wasn't about to mention this little experience to Sally.
"I know," Sally said, setting the tray of drinks on the coffee table in front of the long divan and moving in Sam's direction. "I missed you last night, too. I admit that, but we're going to make up for lost time. Right now."
She removed his coat, put her arms around his waist and pressed his body against hers.
"Why don't you spend the night with me?" she asked.
Sam leaned forward slightly and kissed the bare, bulging flesh that oozed through the cut-out triangle in her sheath.
"Why not?" he agreed.
She loosened his tie, flung it aside, took off his shirt and undershirt and kissed him a dozen times over his chest, each kiss leaving the imprint of her lips in lipstick on his bare flesh. She loosened his belt, unzipped his trousers and sent them falling to the floor.
"Look, if I'm going to run around here in my birthday clothes," Sam said, "you're going to get out of your duds, too."
She laughed lightly.
"You know where the zipper is, big boy. If you want my clothes off, all you have to do is take them off. When I'm with you, I feel much more at ease when I don't have a damn stitch on."
Her words were wasted. He had already located the zipper without too much trouble and was removing the sheath. He lifted it over her head and off and her breasts sprung free. "No bra," he laughed.
"The dress was so damn tight I didn't need one," she explained.
He cupped her breasts with his hands and was shaken by overwhelming desire.
"You should never wear one. It's a shame to hide such beauty."
"Thank you."
She drew her arms around his neck and crushed her lips to his.
Her tongue darted against his, sending a tingling sensation through him. They kissed for long moments, their bodies twisting painfully in a display of wild, raw embrace.
The telephone rang.
Neither of them made any move to answer it.
It rang again and again.
Sam finally drew away from her.
"The phone's ringing," he said.
She was aware of it now.
"Dammit!" she swore just above her breath.
She broke into a run across the room.
Sam watched the movement of her breasts and the motion of her buttocks spilling from her flimsy panties as she hurried away from him. He stood there waiting, lust grinding through him like a forest fire fanning out over dry timber.
Sally picked up the receiver.
"Hello." She picked up a cigarette and lit it. "Yes, this is Sally Wright." She hesitated. "Oh...."
She remembered the man's voice, that of the gambler.
"I was wondering if you'd given some thought to my little proposition this afternoon," the voice continued. "I want to know as soon as possible where I stand on this thing."
Sally searched for words. She didn't want to say anything that would cause Sam to become suspicious.
"I haven't had time yet to check into it."
"Sanders is there, isn't he?" the gambler asked.
"Yes."
"When can I call you back?"
"I don't know ... exactly," Sally answered.
"After midnight? Perhaps one o'clock?"
"No."
"What the hell's the guy doing? Spending the whole night with you?"
"Yes, that's right."
Sam wandered over to the coffee table, picked up one of the glasses, took a healthy gulp from it and sat down on the divan. He was listening closely to what Sally was saying.
"Could I call you in the morning? Say, about ten?" the gambler wanted to know.
Sally noted the anxiety in his voice.
"That would be fine."
"Will you try to get him to promise you tonight?"
"Yes, I'll try," she returned, being fully conscious of the difficulty she was going to experience in getting Sam to agree to such a proposal.
"You shouldn't have any trouble, baby," the gambler asserted. "Just remember what I said-dangle it in front of him, but don't give it to him until he agrees."
"All right." She inhaled her cigarette, hard. "Goodbye."
"One other thing, baby," the gambler said, his voice somewhat more harsh now. "I'm going to shoot the works on this fight, and I could get tough as hell with you if you try to doublecross me. Don't tell a damn soul about this ... about me. I wouldn't want to have to cut up that pretty face!"
Sally felt her knees buckle beneath her. She felt weak. Her face became pale. She had suddenly become stricken with fear.
"Don't worry about it," she said.
"I'm not going to worry about it," the gambler said. "Play it straight, baby, and you won't be hurt!"
"Goodbye."
She heard him hang up the receiver. For a moment, she stood speechless and motionless. Then, she realized that Sam was waiting for her. She pushed the telephone away and turned around and looked toward Sam.
Sam put his glass down and watched the rhythmic sway of her hips as she angled toward him.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"A damn salesman," Sally replied, sliding onto the divan beside him.
She picked up a glass and gulped down the whiskey and felt the soothing relief as the liquor belted into her belly.
"What would a salesman be trying to sell you at ten o'clock at night?" Sam asked.
She sought a quick answer.
"Dance lessons. Some damn dance studio in Brooklyn," she lied.
Her hands grabbed Sam's shorts. She was actually in no mood to continute with the preliminaries of a night-long session of hot love-making but she wanted to shut Sam up.
"Let's pick up where we left off, Sam," she said, unsnapping his shorts and drawing them down his legs. She quickly concluded that she may've lost her sexual desire but that Sam was still ready for action.
Very much ready for action.
She put her arm around him and gently guided him until his head was in her lap. He was looking up at her with his feet flat on the divan and his knees high in the air.
She bent forward, thrusting her breasts into his face.
"Kiss them, Sam. Kiss them good."
He sensed that there was little excitement in her voice, but he buried his face in the big mounds of flesh hovering over him, kissed the tip of first one breast and then the other. His lips instantly grew hot with the contact and he began to pepper her body with hundreds of tiny kisses, each one aimed at a strategic point.
The fear that had engulfed Sally was disappearing and being replaced by spasms of ecstasy shooting through her body with reckless abandon. In brief seconds, she was filled with uncontrollable desire and she knew it was probably going to be a helluva night for her.
It was going to be hard for her to get herself as worked up as she was now and then call the whole thing off when Sam refused to lose to Crane in the opening round.
And she knew he would refuse. Perhaps not in the end, but until she had become a physical wreck fighting off desire to go all the way with Sam, letting that desire wither away and then building it up to the fever pitch again.
He was massaging her breasts with his lips, his hands and his face.
"Oooooo ... ooo," Sally cooed, running her hand through his hair. "That feels so good."
She felt his hand working toward her thighs. And finding them.
"Take them off, Sam. Take off my panties," she cried.
He raised up, removed her panties, rolled her nylons down her legs and took off her shoes and nylons.
They were now both nude.
Sally picked up the bottle of whiskey, ignoring the glass, tilted it to her lips and guzzled the liquor.
"I feel like getting good and drunk tonight," she said, recalling the gambler's parting words.
She staggered slightly and collapsed into Sam's arms.
"Carry me into the bedroom!" she said.
He ran his hand under her legs and lifted her high. She pressed his head to her breasts and forced one of them into his mouth and his tongue formed a tight suction that sent a ripple of pleasure through her.
They reached the bedroom, Sam's lips still clinging tightly to her. He stretched her out on the bed and saw her legs relax and spread apart. He was burning up inside. His legs ached and his breath was quick and short. His arms wound around her neck, and he started to drive forward when he felt her legs suddenly close and cross each other.
"No!" Sally said. "No!"
He was stunned at this sudden reversal.
"What the hell do you mean by no!"
"I mean you're not going to get it right now, Sam," she answered.
He was unable to believe his ears. Still, Sally was lying beneath him and he had heard what she'd said.
"This is a helluva place to stop," he mumbled. "What have I done to deserve this?"
She pulled him off of her.
"Light a couple of cigarettes and let's talk."
He hesitated at first but finally reached to the night stand, picked up two cigarettes, lit them and handed one to Sally. Both of them were on their backs, staring up at the ceiling.
"All right, let's have it," Sam said. "What's the matter with you or what's the matter with me?"
"The fight, Sam."
"That fight at the restaurant wasn't my fault, Sally," Sam insisted. "You caused that fight. You...."
"Hell, I'm not talking about that fight, Sam. I'm talking about the fight in the Garden."
"What about it?"
"Well, I've given in to the fact that the fight's going to come off," Sally explained. "Now what I want you to promise me is that you'll lose in the first round. At least, not come up for the second round."
"You want me to lose, don't you?"
"You're going to lose anyway, and you might just as well lose in the first round as to prolong things and get the devil beat out of you."
Sam turned his head toward her.
"Sally, I'm not going to lose this one to Crane. I have more confidence this time than I've ever had going into a fight. I'm going to win this one and then quit. Quit for good. You know it's better to quit a winner than to quit a loser."
"Let's not kid ourselves, Sam," Sally reasoned. "You've got about as much chance as a snowball in hell of beating Crane and you know it. You just don't want to admit it. Crane is six years younger than you. He weighs a little more and he has a longer reach."
Sam put out his cigarette, turned and ran his cheek over her stomach.
"I can beat Crane," he said with finality. He kissed her smooth, flat flesh and then moved lower to her thighs. "Get hot again, Sally. Get hot as hell like you were when we came into the bedroom and leave the fight to old Sam."
Sally felt the heat begin to rise again in her legs and her thighs. She wanted Sam, but she was determined she was going to have her way. She didn't give a damn about the money the gambler had promised. Sam Sanders was providing her with everything she needed or even wanted ... a swank apartment and all of the trimmings, money and liquor.
And love.
The best love she'd ever known.
She merely had been convinced that Sam couldn't get beat up too badly during a couple or three minutes in the ring with Crane. She thought about the previous fights with Crane. After the first he nursed head wounds for weeks. After the second he spent a couple of days in the hospital. . "Either you agree," Sally said, "or you're wasting your time playing around tonight, Sam. I mean every word I say."
His lips deserted her thighs and he leaned over her, coming face to face with her. He detected the seriousness in her eyes.
"You really do mean it, don't you?"
"Yes."
She was almost overcome by the desire within her body. She wanted him to make the promise and to take her in his arms again and make love to her.
Wild love.
Like Sam knew how to make. Like he was ready to make right now.
"I'll get you hot," Sam vowed.
He drew his legs up under him, knelt over her and gently kissed the nipples of each breast.
"You like that, don't you?" he asked, feeling her squirm.
"You know I like that," she replied, almost ready to say to hell with the gambler, the promise and everything else and open her thighs to him.
He was moving lower now, sprinkling kisses and pausing along the way.
Down. Over her belly. Lower to the impression left by the elastic band of her panties.
Lower.
Until he was right on target.
Sally felt a warm, electric shock stir through her.
"Promise me, Sam! Promise me you'll see to it that the fight ends in the first round!"
"I can get what I want anyway," Sam moaned. "I'll have you down on your hands and knees begging for it!"
She knew he was right if he kept on doing to her what he was doing now. Her lips quivered; her body trembled. She searched for the strength to force him to stop.
"Stop, Sam! Stop!"
"You don't want me to stop!"
Her hips were arched high, making it easier for him. Her heavy breathing penetrated the stillness.
"Goddammit, stop, Sam!" she screamed.
She knew he wasn't going to stop, that he was going to torment her until he got what he wanted.
Suddenly, the ecstasy within her was unbearable. She either had to stop him or yield to him. The gambler's words rang through her ears: ... "Dangle it in front of him until his guts ache ... "
Her hips sank to the bed. She raised her head, reached down and grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled hard.
"Stop, Sam!"
Sam yielded and spun around toward her. "You little bitch, you!"
"I'm sorry, Sam," she apologized. "I had to stop you. I couldn't stand it."
He was crawling from the bed.
Sally raised up on her elbow and saw his huge form moving through the bedroom door.
"Sam, where are you going? What are you going to do?"
Sam did not answer.
Sally crumpled onto her pillow in silence, hoping Sam would return. Moments later, she heard him unlock the door to the hallway. The door slammed.
"Sam!" she yelled, but she knew he was gone.
She buried her head in her pillow and began to sob.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two days passed. Sally relaxed in the living room of her apartment. She was sitting in a chair, her body clearly out-lined beneath a red velvet jump-in with short sleeves and a scalloped neckline that hid her breasts entirely but which so tightly fit her it left little to the imagination.
She wore matching red velvet spike-heel shoes.
She had not seen Sam since she sent him away for the second straight night. Nor had she talked with him over the telephone. She hadn't tried to call him and he hadn't called her.
Sally got up, walked to the table, picked up a cigarette and lit it. She moved to the window and looked outside into the darkness that enveloped the city.
She was thinking of the gambler. He had called her as he had promised and she had finally agreed to let him come to her apartment to discuss Sam.
Tonight.
Sally didn't even know the gambler's name, where he lived or how to get hold of him. If she wanted to get hold of him. Obviously, he had gotten her telephone number out of the directory.
She looked at her watch. It was twenty minutes until eight, twenty minutes until the stranger was scheduled to arrive.
She began to pace the floor, walking back and forth slowly, smoking one cigarette after another. The imprint of her buttocks was vividly out-lined against the tight jump-in as she put one foot in front of the other. She couldn't get Sam out of her thoughts.
Except when she thought of the stranger. She concluded one thing: He was no friend of Sam's. Sam wouldn't have anything to do with a character like the one she was waiting for right now.
Minutes passed. A familiar ache was beginning to gnaw through her body. She walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, poured herself a stiff drink and downed it.
She returned to the living room, picked up a newspaper and slumped into a chair. She had read the account of the restaurant brawl several times and was now reading it again. It said:
Crane said that Sam Sanders is afraid of him in the ring and that he jumped on him in the restaurant in an effort to avoid meeting him in the ring. Crane told reporters Sanders got the best of him last night only because he had the advantage of knowing he was going to attack him.
That's not true, Sacky Crane, and you know it! Sally thought angrily. Sam's not afraid of you. He's not afraid of anyone. That's his trouble!
She dropped the newspaper and jumped up. Sam's voice came back to her: ... "You wanted us to get in a fight, Sally. You thought one of us would get hurt and the fight would have to be called off ... "
The doorbell rang.
Excitement swayed through her. Perhaps it'd be Sam and not the stranger. Sam! Sam! His name was on her lips. She hurried to the door, opened it and drew back in bitter disappointment.
The stranger was standing in front of her.
"Hello, Miss Wright," he said, a thin smile on his face.
"Hello. Come in."
He stepped into the room, and Sally closed the door behind him.
"Won't you sit down?" Sally asked. "Maybe you'd like a drink of Scotch."
"If you don't mind," the stranger said, moving to the divan and sitting down.
Sally started toward the kitchen.
He closely watched her, his lusty eyes picking up the rhythmic sway of her hips as she moved across the room.
She returned moments later carrying a tray with two drinks on it, offered one to him and took the other herself. She sat down in a chair several feet from him.
"So you haven't had any success with Sanders?" he asked, saying it almost as if it were a conclusion.
"None whatsoever."
"You did what I told you to do and he still turned you down?"
"That's right," Sally returned. "God, I'll say I did. He went as far as he could go short of actual contact, and then I turned him away. I felt sorry for him and sorry for myself. We both wanted it so badly. I haven't heard from him since he stormed out of here mad as the devil."
A tingling sensation was grinding through her body. The sensation of want. Raw desire. She sipped her drink.
"Where do we go from here?" she asked.
The gambler was all eyes now for Sally's breasts. The jump-in completely covered them but left little doubt as to their magnitude and texture.
"Are you certain Sanders is in love with you?"
"Yes," Sally answered. "He's asked me to marry him several times. As recent as less than a week ago. He understands that I'll marry him as soon as he's through fighting."
"The fight is still over two weeks away. Just stick by your guns, and Sanders'll come around. A guy can get pretty damn hungry for a woman in two weeks."
The desire for a man was beginning to get the best of Sally.
"It isn't always easy for a girl to stick by her guns. I get pretty damn hungry for a man, too."
He watched her cross her legs, light a cigarette and exhale the smoke. Only her ankles were bare, but he had already drawn a pretty real conclusion about her legs.
"Like right now, for example?"
"Why don't you come over here and find out?" Sally said.
"I will," he returned, starting to get up. He hesitated. "On second thought, why don't you come over to the divan with me? It's easier to-shall we say-maneuver from a divan than from a chair."
She hesitated for brief seconds before she said:
"All right."
She got up.
He was swayed again by the suggestive motion of her hips as she walked toward him.
She sat down an arm's length from him. Purposely. She wanted him to make the next move. She always got a thrill out of the man making the first big advance toward a session in bed.
He wasn't long making it. Without saying a word, he got up, poured himself another drink and sat down only inches away from her.
Outside in the darkness, Sam Sanders walked slowly to the window of Sally's apartment and paused. He bent over and peered through the small opening beneath the shade. He had a good view of the divan, and he drew back in disbelief as his eyes had come quickly into visual contact with the stranger sitting on the divan beside Sally.
The gambler placed his arm around Sally and drew her cheek against his. His hand wound over her shoulder and down until he was able to gently cup her breast. Boundless ecstasy fanned out over his body.
"It isn't easy to maneuver even here on the divan because of this tight garb you're wearing," the gambler said.
"Why the hell don't you take it off?" Sally wanted to know. "It does come off, you know."
Sam could hear every word they were saying. He buried his face in his hands. He was quite aware that Sally needed all of the sex she could get but it hadn't dawned on him until now that she might be seeking to elsewhere satisfy her needs.
The gambler, a bit cautious when it came to mixing business with pleasure, nevertheless reached for the zipper at the back of the jump-in. He drew it down to the small of her back as she leaned forward.
"Why don't you tell me your name?" Sally asked.
"I never tell strange girls my name," the gambler replied. "If it will make you feel better, why don't you just call me...." He hesitated, trying to think of a ficticious name.
"Jimmy, maybe...." she suggested.
"Yes ... Jimmy. That's good enough."
"All right, Jimmy."
Sam watched closely. If anyone had told him that this was happening, he wouldn't've believed them. Now he was seeing with his own eyes.
Jimmy removed Sally's arms from the sleeves of the jump-in and slowly peeled away the velvet from the slope of her breasts.
"Great God!" he moaned, watching her nude and lovely breasts thrust out with their new-found freedom. "There's a helluva lot of woman up there."
Sally laughed aloud.
Sam was on the verge of nausea, but he had to agree with the stranger. There was a helluva lot of woman up there. His woman! He knew that Sally always liked for him to squeeze her breasts but it seemed so unreal for her to be letting another man do it.
Jimmy wasn't just squeezing now. He was exploring. With his lips. His lips were all over the two giant cones of flesh and the nipples were highly aroused.
"You've found something you like, haven't you?" Sally purred, removing his coat and unfastening his tie.
"I'll say I have."
She pushed him away long enough to take off his undershirt.
"Now stand up," she said.
Jimmy stood up, his knees weak beneath him.
Sally loosened his belt and drew his pants down his legs. She yanked his shorts down, and Sally knew for certain that Jimmy's mind was entirely on sex and no longer occupied with his mission of trying to find a way to persuade Sam to take a quick dive in the forthcoming fight. Jimmy wanted her. But definitely. She leaned over and kissed him where he wanted to be kissed.
Sam's legs felt weak, too, but not for the same reason. Bitterness raced through his mind. Bitterness toward Sally. He was really going to whip hell out of Sacky Crane. It was a way to get even with Sally. Fight Crane and win.
Sam gained some degree of satisfaction out of knowing that Sally wasn't really hot for this ... this character who was on the verge of making love to her. She was just desperate and had grabbed the first man who came along. She didn't even know his name and this was obviously the first time she had been with him. Intimately, at least.
Yes, this was one consolation.
Jimmy took Sally into his arms, leaned back against the back of the divan and kissed her. Her tongue was like a hot poker in his mouth.
When at last he withdrew, he said:
"You know what I'm going to do now, you gorgeous devil?"
"I wouldn't know for sure," Sally said, "but I have a good idea what you're eventually going to do."
"I'm going to take off the lower part of this ... this play suit or whatever you call it," Jimmy said, grabbing the sash that bound it at the waist, "and find out what's under it."
"You're in for a surprise, buster," Sally laughed.
Sam continued to watch. And meditate.
No, Sally, he thought, tell the bastard to get his damn hands off of you. Tell him you're reserving the rest of it for old Sam.
He knew it was no use; Sally wanted it, had to have it and was going to get it.
Jimmy worked the jump-in down. Down over her belly, her buttocks and her thighs.
"I see what you mean by a surprise."
There wasn't a thing beneath that jump-in.
Except Sally.
She rose to a standing position beside him, wearing nothing now except the spike heels with her red-tipped toenails peeking out at the toes.
Sam's heart sank, the disappointment within him becoming unbearable. He tried to walk away, but his feet didn't move. He had to see if Sally was actually going through with it.
He watched Sally work her body into the curves of Jimmy's body as she'd done with him more times than he could remember, driving her breasts into his chest. Sam could see her body quiver as she kissed Jimmy.
Sam knew Sally like a book. He knew she was almost ready to explode, to collapse in this strange man's arms and tell him to take her into the bedroom.
A deep, throaty sound echoed from Sally's throat.
"Oh, God, Jimmy," she said, collapsing limply into Jimmy's arms. "Carry me into the bedroom! Hurry!"
He carried her into the bedroom, fondling her breasts as he followed her instructions to hurry.
Sam could stand it no longer. And he had seen all he was going to see. The bedroom was out of his view. It didn't matter, anyway. He knew what would be happening within seconds after Sally hit that bed. And in a bed that he was paying for.
Sam turned away from the window. He felt increasingly weak. Weak over what he had just witnessed. Weak from the desire to take Sally to bed again. Seven nights had passed since he and Sally had made it together. It seemed like ages.
He began to walk with no real destination in mind. Just walk. Into the darkness. He needed a woman. Badly. The thought completely occupied his mind. Suddenly, his walk gained momentum. He had a real destination in his thoughts. The hotel. Lola. He disappeared into the black night.
Sally was breathing with difficulty, her hips arched high and her legs wound tightly around Jimmy's body. Even during this moment of sublime intimacy she was thinking that Jimmy in no way compared with Sam. Still, she could gain some degree of satisfaction from any man.
Jimmy's lips found hers as they reached the peak.
Sally squirmed and twisted.
"Now!" she mumbled. "Now, Jimmy!"
Moments later it was over.
After a relaxing lull, he moved away from her, rolled over on his back and stared off into space.
Neither of them spoke a word for long moments. Sally felt sort of cheated. Like she had expected more but didn't get it.
Jimmy had had all the woman he could take for one night. Sally had been that good. That satisfying. He was thoroughly satisfied.
Sexually.
Now his thoughts had returned to something else.
Business.
He had had his pleasure and was ready to get back to what he labeled as his real purpose in visiting Sally Wright. To get Sam Sanders to lose that fight. In the opening round.
"What are you thinking?" Sally asked, turning on her side and facing him.
Jimmy didn't answer. He was climbing from the bed.
"What are you going to do?" Sally wanted to know, rather surprised that he had made no comment about their love-making. Men usually told her how much they liked her after it was all over.
Still, he said nothing. He walked into the living room, dressed 'quickly, took a drink of whiskey, lit a cigar and returned to the bedroom.
He looked down on the bed at Sally.
"Sally," he said, "I want you to have Sam Sanders in the bag no later than a week from tonight. That's giving you plenty of time. More time than I had budgeted. The fight will still be a week away and I'll have time to maneuver."
Sally raised up, her thoughts filled with the belief that she'd never be able to get Sam to agree to such a proposal.
"How do I go about it?"
"That's your problem," Jimmy shot back.
"But if I can't ... "
He leaned down over her, grabbed her by the arm and twisted it, slightly.
"You can! You will!" He released her arm and ran his hand over her taut breasts. "If you fail, I'll see to it that these are cut down to half their normal size. You'll be so disfigured no man will want to look at you!"
"My God, there's a limit ... "
Sally's voice trailed off. She knew it was no use to argue with him. He was not only a gambler, but he was a gangster as well. A ruthless gangster who'd stop at nothing.
"You're a real character," she continued. "One minute you're gentle and human. The next minute you're a maniac."
He laughed.
"Perhaps, but I always get what I want." He looked squarely into her eyes. "You'll get the same kind of treatment if you make the mistake of going to the police or of telling anyone else about me."
Sally felt as if she were going to faint. She was glad she had the support of the bed beneath her.
Jimmy turned to leave. At the door, he whirled around and faced her again.
"I'm not alone in my business undertakings. Don't get any ideas. You could go to the cops and they'd arrest me, but you'd get yours just the same. Remember that, you gorgeous bitch!"
Sally spun from the bed but Jimmy was gone. She listened as he went out the living room door and slammed it behind him. His warning rang in her ears:...." You'd get yours just the same...." She returned to the bed and fell across it.
CHAPTER NINE
Sam Sanders was unmercifully battering the big man who was in the ring with him. He knew he was getting close to the point where he could knock out his sparring partner.
"Take it easy," the sparring partner pleaded, his face a bloody mess. "What are you trying to do, kill me?"
Sam sent a hard blow to the man's chin.
"I keep imagining that you're Sacky Crane."
Pete Vertolli drew up close to the ring, where a handful of scattered persons were watching Sam in action.
"Sam!" Vertolli yelled. "Somebody in the office says there's a phone call for you!"
"Who is it?" Sam replied, connecting with a vicious punch into his opponent's midsection.
"I don't know," Vertolli answered.
"Find out, Pete," Sam said, continuing to belt the staggering bull in the ring with him.
Vertolli mumbled, "It's probably that dizzy dame again," and disappeared.
Sam caught his opponent with a sharp uppercut, ducked a half-hearted counter punch and suddenly broke loose with a flurry of right jabs that sent the big man reeling against the ropes and down to the canvas.
The sparring partner made a feeble effort to climb to his feet, getting halfway up.
"That's enough," Sam barked. "I've had enough for today myself."
Sam moved to the opposite side of the ring, leaned into the ropes and relaxed there in meditation. Sweat was pouring off of his body. Sally's escapade five days earlier was still fresh in his mind even though he had tried desperately to forget it.
Sally wouldn't let him forget it. She had tried to call him every day four straight days, and he had refused to talk to her. She had left word at his hotel for him to call her, but he had ignored the requests.
Vertolli came charging back across the huge floor, puffing on his cigar. He stood beneath Sam.
"It was Sally, Sam."
"Yeah," Sam acknowledged. "Well, to hell with Sally. I don't want to talk to her or any other females until this fight is over with."
"I talked to her," Vertolli said, looking up. "I told her you couldn't come to the phone. She insisted that it was very, very important."
"Thanks."
"Boy, Sam, the papers are still buzzing over that shindig you and Crane put on at the Cosmo the other night," Vertolli grinned, changing the subject. "It must've been a helluva fight. We've gotten a million dollars worth of publicity out of it. If you think Crane hated your guts before that fight, you ought to see him now."
"I know," Sam returned, still wondering what it was that was so important on Sally's mind. "I don't have any love for Crane, either. And you can tell him I said so."
He climbed down out of the ring.
Vertolli looked directly at Sam.
"Tell me the truth, Sam. Did you start that brawl?"
"Yeah, I started it. Crane made a pass at Sally. I lost my head." Sam paused and looked squarely at Vertolli. "You peeved about it, Pete?"
"Why the hell should I be?" Vertolli replied. "The Garden's damn near a sellout as a result of it."
"Well, I gotta get outta these gloves and shower and clean up," Sam said, turning to head for the showers. "I'll be seeing you around, Pete."
"Okay, Sam."
Darkness was beginning to cast its spell over the city as Sam made his way along Broadway past Forty-sixth Street and toward his hotel. He had just gone through a big, thick steak. Sam liked steaks rare. Very rare. That one he had just finished was the best, and Sam felt good.
Very good.
And very much in the mood for a woman.
Sam hadn't had a woman since that night he'd stood outside Sally's apartment. Afterwards, he had returned to his hotel and had paid a friendly little return visit to Lola's room.
He brushed past a news stand on the corner.
The tough-appearing little man behind the makeshift counter was yelling:
"Sanders' blonde girl friend tells ALL about restaurant brawl with Crane!"
Sam's eyes picked up the headlines of the early edition of the News. It said:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Blonde Bares All About Brawl Between Two Boxers!
He picked up a copy and tossed down a dime, moved across the sidewalk and leaned against a building. He looked again at the black headlines and the picture of Sally on the front page. His eyes picked up the fine print beneath the picture: Story on page eighty-seven. Quickly, he fumbled through the paper to page eighty-seven.
He began to read the story:
The fight in the restaurant between Sam Sanders and Sacky Crane was all my fault. I purposely made a date with Crane to meet me there. Crane asked me to have dinner with him, and I agreed.
Then I made a similar date with Sam. Both dates were at exactly the same time and at exactly the same place-the Cosmopolitan at seven o'clock. Why did I do it? Because I had a silly notion that if they fought at the restaurant, it would result in cancellation of their fight June seventeenth. Instead, it has only made both of them more anxious to get at each other's throat in the ring.
All of it was my own idea. Sam had nothing to do with it. When I arrived at the restaurant, Sam and Crane were both there. I led Crane on, winked at him, motioned for him to take my arm while Sam held my other arm.
Sam told Crane to get away from me, and Crane started ribbing Sam about his ability as a boxer. Then the fight started. I know now that it was a crazy thing to do, but I was desperate to find a way to get Sam to give up his boxing career. I love the guy, and I hope to marry him. But not until he's through completely with fighting.
A thin smile came onto Sam's lips. He stared at the last few words again: ... "I love the guy and I hope to marry him. But not until he's through completely with fighting ... "
Sam scanned the remainder of the story, mostly background on the brawl and the Garden fight ahead. Finally, he rolled up the paper, inserted it into his side pocket and began to walk lazily on down the street.
Sally ... she was constantly on his mind. The mental blow he had received when he caught her with the stranger in her apartment was becoming less important now. Hell, he had done a little running around himself since he'd been going with Sally. His sessions with Lola involved only one of several girls.
He couldn't recall all of them but the better ones flashed into his thoughts.
Stella ... she was a redheaded beauty even if she was slightly on the coarse side. She was about five-feet-five inches tall in her spike heels, weighed about one hundred and nine and in her mid-twenties. She liked sweaters and skirts. A sweater did things to her forty-inch breasts, standing way out and high. Her skirt was like rubber, moulding firmly around her buttocks and clearly outlining the rolled edge of her panties.
Dimples ... Sam met her at the stage entrance of a burlesque theater, and he never knew her by any other name. She didn't get her nickname from the dimples in the cheeks ox her face but in the cheeks of you know where. She made the men in the audience drool when she peeled on the stage, and she made Sam drool the one time he got her alone. In his hotel room a couple of years ago. She had powerful legs and knew how to use them when she got a man in bed with her. And Sam knew damn well she'd had plenty of experience.
Virginia ... Sam had picked her up during a light rain one night on Forty-second Street. She was a big-breasted dishwater blonde, and her wet cotton dress clung to her curves like tissue paper. Sam knew instantly she wasn't wearing a thing beneath that dress, and he quickly concluded that once he got her in his room she'd want to take it off and hang It up to dry. He picked her up, and it turned out that he was right on all scores. There wasn't anything beneath that dress except bare thighs, buttocks, hips and breasts. All symmetrically proportioned. And the first thing Virginia did when she got in Sam's room was take a big slug of pure whiskey and hang up that dress to dry. And while it was drying, she and Sam romped on the bed.
Norma ... she was a husky bitch who took it off in a carnival sideshow. She drank much too much and used every word that doesn't appear in most dictionaries. Sam always figured that the less said about Norma the better.
Gloria ... she was a society doll who let only her friends go to bed with her. Strange thing about Gloria was that she had very few enemies amongst the male set. For a month or more, Sam became so involved with her he almost forgot all about Sally. She was a rather tall girl with a narrow waist, wide hips and long legs. And big breasts with rosebud nipples that extended at least four inches from her chest. She smoked cigarettes through a long holder. Her big weakness, second only to sex, was money. She certainly could and would show a man a good time, but she liked a little of the green stuff in return.
Marcelle ... she was a real sizzler, a mere nineteen and had the legs of a chorus girl and the poise of a ballet dancer. She had long black hair that came almost to her shoulders and what she wouldn't do in a bedroom couldn't be done. The first thing she thought of when a man rolled off of her was to ask him to do it again. She could handle more liquor than any girl Sam had ever known. There was only one trouble with Marcelle as far as Sam was concerned. She was as flat upstairs as a pancake and had to resort to falsies to fill out the upper portion of a dress.
Sylvia ... Sam had a glorious one-night stand with Sylvia. He met her in Grand Central Station and had the opportunity to talk to her when she asked him where there was a hotel not too far away in which she could spend the night. A hotel not too expensive but still not too cheap. So, naturally, Sam referred her to his hotel. To make it easy for her to find, he hopped in a cab with her and took her there. An hour later he hopped into bed with her. She was quite a dish ... silver platinum hair, silver-lacquered fingernails nearly an inch long and, according to her figures, she was twenty-two inches in the waist, thirty-eight inches in the hips and had forty-one inches of bosom. And Sam found out for himself that her measurements were accurate. She drained every ounce of strength from Sam's body and the following morning she caught a train for the west coast. What a night that was!
Myrna ... she came fully equipped, but she was a whore all the way. She shacked up with men for the money but preferred girls when it came to satisfying her sexual desires. Like several of the others, Myrna was only a one-night stand.
Then, of course, there was Lola, the well-stacked neighborly type who lived down the hall. She was a lot of woman, and she was usually available.
Yes, Sam had had his share of women. Sally or no Sally. So it wasn't surprising that he blew hot and cold when he pondered over Sally's moments of duplicity slightly less than a week ago.
Still, he couldn't help but wonder whether this was a more or less regular thing with Sally. Taking on other guys when Sam's back was turned. He wondered whether she was really in love with him or just pretending to be to nail down the security of Sam footing her bills.
Sam paused to look in the window of one of those little shops specializing in such things as bras of every description, foam rubber pads to add inches to a girl's rear end, black lace hose, baby doll pajamas, scanty panties of every shape and color and related items.
One bra in particular caught his eye. It was a black job with a distinct pocket for each breast and cut-outs at the ends to permit the nipples to stare nudely through. The panties on display were little more than mere bands. One pair was called fish net. Another was designed to hide very little and had the words "For My Sugar Daddy" written in contrasting black script against the sheer red nylon.
Sam smiled and walked on. His imagination had run wild while he looked at the display of bikini, pin-up type creations, and he needed a woman worse than ever.
And one thing was certain: He was going to have a woman before the night was over.
He continued to walk in the direction of his hotel.
CHAPTER TEN
Sally Wright opened a new full quart of whiskey, poured herself a couple of inches of the liquor into a glass and drank it. Straight. The whiskey burned her throat and hit her belly like a stick of exploding dynamite.
She began to strip off her clothes, removing her clinging green jersey sheath and her half-slip. She folded them neatly over the back of a chair and took off her garter belt, rolled her nylons down her legs, stepped out of her extremely high spike heels, removed the nylons and stepped back into the heels.
She unsnapped her bra, pulled it away from her king-size breasts and draped it over the chair. She removed her panties and was entirely naked except for the spike heels. She glanced at herself in the mirror, and her almost shoulder length rhinestone earrings sparkled in the reflection.
She drew closer to the mirror, applied a thick, fresh coat of lipstick, extending it slightly over the normal lines of her lips, and darkened her eyebrows, lashes and eyelids with pale blue mascara.
Sally picked up a box, opened it and drew out an extremely sheer royal blue gown and slipped into it. The gown extended almost to the floor. It was completely sleeveless, baring her long, lovely arms, opened down the front and was forced out from her body by the large conical mounds of her breasts.
She lit a cigarette and was ready now to greet Sam Sanders.
In his hotel room!
Sooner or later, Sam would return to his room and Sally was going to dazzle her seductive body in front of him until he got down on his knees and begged her to give everything that was beneath that filmy gown to him. She was going to dangle it in front of him until he ached all over with frenzied desire. Until he was ready to rape hell out of her if necessary and then at the opportune second was going to tell him to go to the devil unless he was willing to promise he'd bow out of the fight with Crane in the first round.
She checked the door and made certain it was locked but could be unlocked with the key from the outside. She picked up an ashtray and a package of cigarettes and moved over to the bed and stretched out the full length of it on her stomach.
This was going to be the showdown with Sam. She had only forty-eight hours at the most to meet the gambler's ultimatum. He had phoned her a dozen times in the last five days-and nights-pressing her for action and telling her in no uncertain language what was going to happen if she failed. She was in a helluva mess, and she knew it.
Sally decided suddenly she would give Sam a real surprise. She would turn out the lights. Not only that, but she would unscrew the bulb in the lamp controlled by the switch at the door. She got up and did just that and returned to the bed. The room was in almost total darkness.
Instead of stretching out on her stomach facing the door this time, she took a normal position on the bed, her head on the pillow, her face toward the ceiling and her legs stretched out the length of the bed. The gown was open in front.
She lay there a long while or what seemed like a long while, not knowing how long. She wondered what she would do if this didn't work with Sam. Go to the police? No, she didn't dare. Tell Sam the whole story? That wouldn't accomplish anything, either. Sam would have nothing to do with gamblers, and he'd want to stick with Crane as long as possible.
She smoked one cigarette after another. Then, without warning, she heard a key being inserted into the door. Seconds later, she heard the doorknob move. She raised her knees and let them fall away in opposite directions, letting the gown slide down her bare legs.
The door opened. She knew immediately the man entering was Sam, catching a silhouette of him in the reflection from the light in the hallway.
Sam snapped the light switch. Nothing happened.
"Damn!" he swore.
He made his way across the room to the floor lamp by the chair near the window. He tried the switch several times before he finally caught hold of the loose bulb and twisted it.
He had his back to the bed, but his eyes picked up the bottle of whiskey on the dresser and then the girl's clothes in the chair. He stepped back in surprise, whirled around and looked toward the bed. His eyes traveled quickly from the legs tapering off into the spike heels, to the open stance of her knees and to her breasts and face.
Sally let out a little giggle.
"Hello, Sam!" she said.
"Sally! How in the hell did you get in here?"
She took a long drag on her cigarette.
"Oh, I have ways. Are you surprised?"
He moved closer to the bed, feeling a strong desire pumping through his body.
"Surprised? That's not the word for it."
He sat down on the edge of the bed, lust racing through him in leaps and bounds. He reached over and ran his hand over her legs and thighs.
She rolled over until she was against him.
"Have you missed me a little bit?" she asked.
"I've missed you a whole lot," Sam answered, sweeping the gown from her body and taking her into his arms. He meshed his lips hard into hers, and her tongue slipped into his mouth, setting him on fire.
"It's been a long time, Sally," Sam said when they grew tired of kissing and both of them wanted to go on to bigger and better things.
"It was your fault, Sam," Sally suggested, tugging at his clothes. "I did my best to get in touch with you. Finally, I decided I'd just come over here and wait for you." She paused and began removing his clothes. "Come on, dammit, let's not waste any more time. Like you say, it's been long enough as it is."
She slid from the bed and started taking off his pants. She knew in a moment that he was never more ready for her than he was right now.
Sam knelt down to remove his shoes and socks, his eyes parallel with her thighs. Almost automatically, he reached over and kissed her and saw her body quiver.
"You like that, don't you, Sally?"
"It certainly raises holy hell inside of me," she admitted as he stood up beside her again. "Now for the big moment." She unsnapped his shorts and let them fall down his legs. "What a man!" she said.
His powerful arms swept her off the floor. For a moment he just stood there, massaging her breasts with his lips.
"God!" she groaned, thinking she couldn't go through with what she planned to do. "I need a drink ... first."
"I'm off the booze until after the fight," Sam said. "And if I can't drink, you're not gonna drink, baby. Besides, you don't need a drink. You're hot as a pistol already."
She felt a burning sensation ripple through her thighs.
"I'm hot as a pistol all right, but I still need a drink."
He looked into her eyes, finally turned around and carried her to the dresser.
Sally picked up the bottle, tilted it to her lips and swallowed hard. Again. And again. The whiskey slightly choked her and she set the bottle down.
Sam stood there, grinning and holding her.
"Well, now what the hell are you waiting for, Sam?" Sally asked, almost out of her mind under the impact of his continual stroking and probing with his hand. "I'm ready, Sam! My God, don't wait any longer!"
Sam wasn't about to wait any longer. He went stumbling to the bed with her, a rekindled wave of desire sapping his strength. He leveled her body out on the bed, reached down and removed her spike heels.
Sally realized the time was drawing very near when she was going to have to deny him again, to fight off his advances. The thought depressed her. She wanted it as badly as he did. Perhaps even worse. If that was possible.
Sam collapsed on the bed with her, covering her mouth with his and feeling her warm, penetrating tongue. The tips of her breasts were like two sharp spikes driving into his chest, but he didn't mind.
Not a bit.
Suddenly, just as he lunged forward, he felt her legs close. Tight. And he felt her relaxed body become tense beneath him. He yanked his lips away from hers and quickly came face to face with her.
"What gives now, baby? One second you can't get it fast enough and the next you apparently don't want it at all!"
Sally noted the anger in his voice. Of course, she knew he had a legitimate right to be angry.
You just don't lead a horse to water and then suddenly deny it, but this was as difficult on her as it was on Sam.
"Say something, Sally!" Sam yelled, shaking her. "Or is it that you've got a guilty conscience!"
"There's not too much to say, I guess, Sam," Sally said finally. "Except that I told you before that you didn't get any more of this until you promised me you would throw in the towel in the fight in the first round."
"Oh, so that's it," Sam said, climbing off of her and rolling to the opposite side of the bed.
"That's it."
She turned on her side, facing him and wondering what he meant when he referred to her having a guilty conscience.
"Sam," she said, "this means a lot to me. A helluva lot. And it's for your own good, too."
"What's so goddamn important whether I lose in the first round ... if I conceded that I'm going to lose, which I'm not?" Sam asked. "Why not the second or the third round? It would look a lot better in the eyes of the public."
Sally searched for words to answer him. She knew his theory made sense.
"It's just that ... that I think if you stay with Crane for three or four rounds, he'll have enough time to really beat your brains out, Sam. That's all."
"Is that really all?"
"Yes," she lied. "Sam, I love you, and you know it. I don't want you to get hurt. I wake up in the night thinking you're really going to get murdered in this fight."
"Old Sam can take care of himself, baby. Besides, we stand to knock off forty or fifty grand in this fight."
"I'm not asking you any more to try to get out of fighting, Sam," Sally said in a pleading voice. "You'll get the same money whether it lasts one round or fifteen. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, that's right, but I'd kick myself to hell and back if I laid down in the first round when I know I can win the fight. You're asking me to lose, Sally. Now, if you were asking me to knock Crane out in the first, I'd do my damnedest, but nobody has ever gotten Crane quickly. He's only lost six fights, and every one of them went the distance."
Sam reached over and touched her, and her flesh seemed to come alive under his touch.
"Leave the fight to me, baby," he said, "and let old Sam have what he wants. And let old Sam give you what you want."
"No," she said, shaking her head.
She watched fresh anger bathe his face.
"What are you doing? Saving it all for that bastard you had in your apartment the other night?"
Sally froze. She had no immediate answer. She wondered how Sam knew.
"What are you talking about?" she asked as if she didn't know.
"You know damn well what I'm talking about!" He cleared his throat. "That burly looking guy with the heavy eyebrows. Do I need to go on with the description?"
She was debating in her mind telling Sam all about Jimmy, how she met him, what he wants out of her.
"I don't give a damn about that guy. I was lonesome, and he was available. It's as simple as that."
"You may not give a damn about him, but he got what I can't get," Sam reasoned. "I'll bet you didn't get him all worked up and then close the door. Be honest now, Sally. He went all the way, didn't he?"
"Yes."
She was still trying to make up her mind whether to tell Sam who Jimmy really is although she knew this was no excuse for letting him make love to her. Finally, she said:
"Sam, that man is a big gambler. He told me that if you came up for the second round, he'd disfigure me."
Sam spun out of the bed and stood there gazing down at Sally's nudity.
"He's what?" he asked.
"A gambler."
"Sally, why didn't you tell me about this the moment you were approached?" Sam asked. "What is this guy's name?"
"I don't know," she answered, feeling relieved now that she had told Sam. "He told me to call him Jimmy, but that's not his real name."
"Let's get dressed and go to the police," Sam suggested.
Sally rolled across the bed and got up.
"No," she said, putting her arms around Sam's neck. "Sam, this guy means business. He told me if the police found out about this, they might arrest him, all right, but that I'd still get what was coming to me. My face and breasts. So that you nor any other man would ever look at me again."
Anger blazed across Sam's face.
"The sonofabitch! He'd better stay away from you!" Sam exploded.
She released her tight grip, walked to the night stand, picked up a cigarette, lit it and turned around to face Sam.
"Now you understand why I got you all worked up and then wouldn't let you go all the way, Sam. I thought it was a way to force you to throw the fight quickly. I thought you'd agree in order to get what you wanted."
"What are we going to do, Sally?" Sam wanted to know, desire knifing through his body as he began to concentrate on getting Sally back into bed with him.
"I know what I'm going to do," she replied, stepping into her spike heels, "that is, if you're interested."
He watched the graceful movement of her hips and thighs as she walked to the bedroom door, hesitated, turned around toward him and looked down at him.
"And from what I see, I think you are very much interested."
Sam stood there, half debating what to do about the mysterious man Sally knew only as Jimmy and half debating whether to forget the whole damn mess for the night and concentrate entirely on Sally's charms.
Sally returned momentarily, her cigarette in one hand and the bottle of whiskey in the other.
"I'm going to get pleasantly drunk," she announced, taking a long drink of the liquor, "and take you to bed with me." She giggled lightly, having plainly already forgotten Jimmy for the moment. "And there won't be any of that damn foolishness this time. Interested?"
Sam was interested all right. More than interested. He didn't answer her brief question. Instead, he went to her and took her into his arms and waited while she consumed another stiff drink.
She tilted the bottle toward his lips. He took it and set it down, nodding his head negatively.
"I don't need that," he said. "I just need a helluva chunk of you."
She laughed aloud, the whiskey beginning to take hold of her. "Then why don't you take it?"
"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Sam said, his voice fading away and his lips catching hers.
He felt her tongue driving into his mouth and the hard tips of her breasts digging deeply into his chest.
With unheralded and silent agreement, they stumbled to the bed together, their lips firmly meshed and the curves of her body blended tightly into his. They fell across the bed, her hand guiding him spontaneously and instantly to her without any hesitation.
She became a wildcat beneath him, driving her long fingernails into his back and her anxious legs circling his body and her hipg rising higher and higher, searching for everything he had to offer her.
And even more.
She let out a loud, wild scream.
Both of them had exactly what they wanted for the moment, and neither of them gave a passing thought to the threat that was J!mmy.
Not now.
Not all night.
Tomorrow, though, they were going to have to do something about this threat to their future security.
Tomorrow....
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sally Wright felt better than she had felt in nearly two weeks. True, she wasn't going to be able to keep Sam from fighting Sacky Crane and she still faced the problem of Jimmy, but Sam knew all about it now and Sam would come up with a solution.
She and Sam had had a wonderful night together. It had ended an hour earlier, and she and Sam had had breakfast together. The cab had let Sam out at the gymnasium where he was doing his training, and she was going home to make up for lost sleep.
Then she and Sam were going to pick up again that night where they left off shortly after daybreak that morning, exactly a week before Sam's big fight with Crane.
The cab pulled up in front of Sally's apartment house, and the driver turned around to catch a fleeting glimpse of her thighs as she slid her legs around to climb out.
Sally not only felt sleepy as she entered the building but also was nursing a pretty fair hangover. She knew she drank too much and that she and Sam had been in and out of bed too many times for one night, but it had been a lot of fun.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind her. Without bothering to go into the bedroom, she peeled off her sheath, the half-slip, her bra and garter belt. She removed the rhinestone earrings, then her panties and nylons and stepped back into her spike heels and walked to the bedroom.
"Good morning, Miss Wright."
Sally spun around and came face to face with a man she had never seen before. Fear gripped her, immediately.
"What are you doing here, and who the hell are you?"
Her voice trembled. She was so stunned that she completely forgot about the fact that she was nude.
The man was leaning against the window, a confident grin on his face. He was tall and skinny and about thirty-two or-three.
"Let's just say that I'm one of Jimmy's boys, Miss Wright."
"What do you want?" Sally asked, picking up a robe and slipping into it.
"The boss is burning because you're not playing ball with us. You weren't supposed to tell anyone about our little deal, Miss Wright. Remember?"
"I haven't told a soul," she lied. "I just haven't been able to get Sam to come around. Not yet."
"You're lying, Miss Wright. You did tell Sanders."
Sally shook her head.
"That's not true!" she said.
"No?" the man said, picking up a small case, opening it and setting it on the bed.
He twisted a knob, and the tape recorder began to play. The words came from the tape:...." You may not give a damn about him, but he got what I can't get. I'll bet you didn't get him all worked up and then close the door. Be honest now, Sally. He went all the way, didn't he? ... "
Sally realized now that the man had a tape recording of all that she and Sam had said during the night: ... "Yes. Sam, that man is a big gambler. He told me that if you came up for the second round, he'd disfigure me."
"He's what?"
"A gambler."
"Sally, why didn't you tell me about this the moment you were approached? What's this guy's name?"
"I don't know. He told me to call him Jimmy, but that's not his real name."
"Let's get dressed and go to the police...."
The man snapped off the tape recorder.
"I assume you've heard enough, Miss Wright," he said.
Sally was brimming with anger. She removed one of her spike heels, ran toward the man and drew the shoe high over her head and struck down at his head, but he merely grabbed her arm and twisted it, hard.
"That'll be enough of that!" he ordered. "Now, you get dressed. You're coming with me. Orders from the boss."
"I won't go!"
He increased the pressure on her arm and said: "Get dressed, or, by God, you'll go the way you are!"
Sally realized it was no use, that she couldn't overpower this big brute of a man. She momentarily regained her composure.
"If you don't get out of here immediately, I'll scream."
The man inserted his hand into his coat pocket and produced a small gun.
"If you do, I'll kill you!" he said, leveling the gun directly at her. "Now get dressed, and let's be on our way."
She stared into the man's eyes, and she quickly concluded that he meant business.
"All right," she said. "Turn loose of my arm."
He released her arm.
"I'll dress and be with you in just a minute," Sally said.
She started toward the living room, planning to retrieve her clothes.
The man followed her.
She turned around and said:
"If you don't mind, I can dress alone."
"Oh, but I do mind," he grinned. "I'm not going to let you out of my sight. You might try to use the phone or run out the door." He gave her a little push with the tape recorder case in his hand. "Besides, you're a shapely little chick and I might just see something I'd take a liking to."
She moved across the room, and he was close at her heels. She debated silently about just how she would dress in front of him. She reached for her panties, deciding to put them on first, but his hand caught her arm as she bent forward.
"Take off the robe first," he ordered. "Or do you want me to take it off for you?"
She removed the robe with her back to him.
"Now, turn around."
Sally knew she might just as well do whatever he asked. He had a gun, and he looked like he'd use it if she crossed him in any way. Slowly, she turned around and faced him. He was only a couple of yards from her, and his eyes were running up and down her body.
"Very nice," he said, desire shooting through him. "Very nice, indeed." He remembered that Jimmy had warned him about making any advances toward Sally. "I wonder what it'd be like to cuddle up close to that on a cold winter night."
"You'll never know, you bastard!" Sally snapped, becoming impatient now. "Now, can I dress?"
"Sure. Put on your panties. Leave the big headlights until the last."
Again, she picked up her panties and started to insert her legs into them.
The man moved forward until he was standing directly in front of her, a gnawing ache concentrated in his groin.
"On second thought, I don't see any reason to be so damn hasty about dressing," he said, grabbing her arm. "Leave the panties off, and let's go back into the bedroom for a little while."
"No!" she countered. "I wouldn't let you touch me if you were the last man on earth."
"You don't have any choice, chick," he insisted. "Either you give it to me willingly, or I'll get a little rough and take it anyway. You can't ever tell ... you might even enjoy it." He cupped her right breast with his hand. "God, what a handful of stuff that is."
Sally drew her arm over her eyes. She wanted to scream, but she didn't dare. She felt his hand leave her breast and catch her by the arm.
"The bedroom," he mumbled. "Another ten or fifteen minutes won't matter. Jimmy doesn't know what time you came home. He'll just think I'm still waiting for you."
He began to guide her toward the bedroom.
Sally decided she might just as well cooperate with him. He was big and powerful and ruthless, and he possessed that gun. She walked into the bedroom, his hand grasping her arm all of the way.
"Now, strip me, beautiful," he said, "and stretch out on the bed."
She was nauseated by his voice. He was crude, not nearly so polished as Jimmy. She removed his coat, started to unbutton his shirt, noting he wasn't wearing a tie.
"Take off my pants next," he said. "You might as well find out right now what's in store for you."
Sally removed his pants.
"Now the shorts."
She took off his shorts. She shifted her eyes toward the floor.
"I can't go through with this," she moaned, realizing for the first time just what was in store for her.
"Oh, you'll go through with it, all right, chick," he said. "The gun says you will, and the gun says you won't say a damn word to anybody about it afterwards. Like I said, you might just as well come across willingly."
"This is rape."
"Rape? That's a nasty word, but if you want to call it that, go ahead," he laughed.
She removed his shirt and undershirt without another word, convinced he had her where he wanted her and that there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
"Take my shoes and socks off," he ordered. "I believe in real comfort when I take a gal to bed with me."
She knelt down and removed his shoes and socks. As she raised up, she saw him reassuring himself of the whereabouts and accessibility of the sawed off little gun he carried.
He whirled around and grabbed her.
"Like I said, chick, you might as well make up your mind to enjoy this. It'll be easier for both of us."
"Let's get it over with," she said, wondering where he planned to take her afterwards.
This was the first time any man had ever forced her to submit to him. She had often wondered whether a girl could realize any satisfaction when she was raped. Now she was about to find out.
The man took her into his arms and kissed her, hard. Only seconds passed before he drew his lips away.
"Put some feeling into it, chick. You're like a limp dishrag."
"I can't get excited about anything I don't want to do," Sally said, reaching to the night stand, picking up a cigarette and lighting it. "Especially when it comes to ... "
"I'll get you hot as a pistol!" he interrupted, lowering his lips to her breasts and taking first one and then the other into his mouth.
She felt nothing. Not a damn thing. No trace of an ache in her thighs. All she wanted was to get it over with.
"Let's go over on the bed," she suggested.
He didn't have to be told twice.
"I knew that would get you hot, chick."
He wrapped his arms around her and drove her the short distance to the bed, practically pushing her down onto it and crumpled over her like a big buzzard bearing down on a lifeless animal.
Suddenly, he lunged forward, driving quickly and hard.
Anger flooded Sally's face. She raked her fingernails across his chest as he sought her lips and felt him wince with pain.
He slapped her sharply across her face. "Easy with the cat claws, you little bitch!" he said.
She relaxed until it was all over. Never once did she feel anything exciting in the arms of this man. It had been purely mechanical as far as she was concerned. Like he'd said, she'd played the part of a limp dishrag.
He rolled off of her, breathing slow and easy.
"You know, you're good stuff, chick," he said. "I'll bet you'd be real good if you went for a guy."
"What now?" Sally asked, ignoring his remarks.
"We're right back where we were when we came in here," the man answered. "You're coming with me."
"Where are you going to take me?"
"To the boss. And I don't want no trouble out of you going out of here. Just take my arm like you were my girl friend, and you won't get hurt."
He climbed off the bed.
"Come on, chick," he said. "Get your duds on. I mean it this time."
Sally raised up, pulled herself to the edge of the bed and got up.
The man was dressing quickly now. He had what he wanted, and he was anxious to carry out his orders. He inserted his arms into his coat and stood by the bedroom door.
"All right, get going, Miss Wright."
"You won't get away with this," she said, inserting her feet into her spike heels and turning toward the living room to get her clothes.
He followed close behind her, stood near her while she dressed.
"Let's go, and not a peep out of you."
He opened the door and held it while she stepped into the hallway.
She heard the door lock as he closed it behind them.
"My arm," he reminded her.
Sally took his arm, and they walked out of the building, got into the man's car, and he drove away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
About forty-five minutes later, the man pulled the car to a standstill in a wooded area just off a small, winding road. He looked over at Sally.
"We're lost," he said. "Do you know where we are, chick?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," Sally answered, exhaling a stream of smoke. "The last I knew we crossed the George Washington Bridge. I wouldn't have recognized that except that I saw the sign."
"Do you think we're in New Jersey or still in New York State?" the man inquired.
"Beats me. I've never had occasion to come across the bridge before."
"Good," the man said. "Actually, we're not lost. I was just testing you to see if you knew. If you did, I was going to have to blindfold you and make you lay down the rest of the way. The boss said to make damn certain you wouldn't be able to find the place where I'm taking you again."
"You needn't worry,"-Sally assured him. "I couldn't find it again if my life depended upon it."
The man put the car into gear and drove away, returning to the small, winding road. He turned at the next crossroad and entered an even more isolated area.
Sally was silent now and had remained that way most of the time since they had left Manhattan. The man beside her had occasionally attempted to engage her in conversation, but each time she cut him off with abrupt answers.
Occasionally, too, he had become more interested in her legs than his driving. She had taken constant precaution not to encourage him by keeping the hem of her sheath as low as possible since she didn't want him to get any more ideas about another session in bed with her. During the long ride, she had resigned herself to the fact that she likely would be subjected to some rough treatment when she came face to face with Jimmy.
"It won't be long now," the man said, turning the vehicle off of the bumpy, winding road and heading in another direction up a long grade that led to a hill. He drove up over the hill and started down into a sort of valley where there was only an occasional house.
"There's our destination ... right over there."
Sally looked in the direction in which the man was pointing. She saw a large white house, almost a mansion, partially hidden by a clump of big trees and surrounded by a large, white fence.
The man pressed a button on the dashboard, and a big gate opened, leading to the white house. The gate closed behind them after the car cleared it.
When they reached the front door, the man rang the bell. A butler opened the door and escorted them inside.
"The boss is waiting for you in the library," the butler said.
Sally looked around the spacious living room. All of the furniture was Colonial, and everything was in its proper place. She lost little time arriving at the conclusion that this was a millionaire's home.
The man gripped Sally's arm and directed her to the opposite end of the room and opened the French doors wide enough for them to get through. Four men sat around a big, swanky table.
"Here's the dame, boss," the man said and then disappeared through the doors and closed them behind him.
Sally scanned the faces of the men seated around the table. She recognized only one of them. Jimmy. He was seated at the head of the table. One of the men was short and fat. Another was of average build and had a mustache. The third total stranger was a huge monster who looked like he might be fresh out of Sing-Sing.
The short, fat man was staring holes through her, his eyes finally settling on the taut peaks of her breasts.
"Quite a dame, all right, boss," he said. "Sure as hell fully equipped. Look at those gams and the knockers!"
"Shut up!" Jimmy ordered. He turned to Sally. "If you follow instructions, you won't get hurt, Miss Wright."
Sally saw the mischievous look in his eyes and wished that she could turn and run.
"All right, boys," Jimmy said. "Shall we deal with Miss Wright just as she is or in the raw?"
The men stared at one another and then at Sally.
"In the raw, boss," the short, fat man beamed. "Hell, yes," the man with the mustache agreed.
"I'd like to find out for myself if everything under that dress is real."
Sally's knees became weak. She felt sweat popping out on her forehead.
"What about you?" Jimmy asked, nodding to the man who looked like a monster from outer space.
"You know me, boss," the monster shot back. "I like to see a dame cool and naked. Real naked."
Jimmy stood up, grinning.
"Right down here, Miss Wright," he motioned, pointing to his chair.
Sally walked slowly to the end of the table, fear stirring through her with every step. When she reached him, Jimmy took her hand.
"Right up on the table," Jimmy said.
"Why?" Sally asked.
"Up on the table," Jimmy prompted. "We took a legitimate vote, and it was unanimous."
"I'd rather sit down in achair," Sally suggested.
The monster raised his hand.
"Up on the table, Miss Wright," he groaned.
Sally heard a clicking sound and saw the monster raise a knife with a long, shiny blade in front of him. She reluctantly stepped into Jimmy's chair and onto the table, her sheath drawing far over her knees.
One of the men whistled.
Jimmy sat back down and lit a cigarette.
"Now, we want you to strip off all your clothes, Miss Wright."
"No!" Sally said, her eyes picking up the monster running his thumb over the sharp blade of the knife.
"Strip!" Jimmy repeated angrily. "Or would you prefer to have that gorilla over there cut them off with the knife?"
Sally's eyes shifted from the face of one of the men to another. Each wore a grim but anxious expression. Sally slowly and reluctantly lifted the sheath over her head, neatly folded it and laid it down on the table. Then she hesitated.
"Off with it!" Jimmy ordered.
Sally removed the half-slip, taking her time in folding it and putting it with the dress. She looked at each man. The monster looked as if he might jump up on the table and rape her right there in front of everybody.
"The panties, Miss Wright," the monster directed.
She ignored his remark, unfastened her garter belt and took hold of her nylons.
"Hell with the hose!" the monster snapped. "Leave 'em on. Just take off the panties!"
He made certain that Sally was still aware of the knife in his hand.
Sally closed her eyes, mechanically reached down and rolled her panties down her legs and stepped out of them.
"Great God!" the man with the mustache yelled.
"Man, what I couldn't do with that!" the short, fat man exclaimed.
"Now for the part I like best," the monster said. "Let's see the titties."
Jimmy whirled around toward the monster.
"Cut that kind of talk in front of a lady! You should say you'd like to see Miss Wright's mammary glands."
"But that ain't what I call 'em, boss," the monster said. "Especially when they're as big as hers."
The men all laughed aloud.
Sally reached for the snap of the bra and paused.
"Come on, baby," the monster said in eager anticipation, again caressing the blade of the knife.
She unsnapped the bra in front and slowly drew it away from her breasts.
The monster stared.
The short, fat man stared.
The man with the mustache stared.
Jimmy wasn't so wild-eyed. Having hadprevious experience with Sally, he knew what to expect. He still got a degree of satisfaction in letting his eyes feast on Sally's charms once more.
"Biggest I ever saw!" the monster grinned. "I've got a hunch Miss Wright and I are gonna take a little trip to heaven a little later today."
Sally shuddered inside.
"Now, let's get down to the business end of things, Miss Wright," Jimmy said. He nodded toward the man with the mustache. "Explain the situation to Miss Wright."
Sally was aware of the fact the men were very careful never to call each other by their names. They didn't use nicknames. They didn't use anything. They just nodded to one another.
The man with the mustache puffed hard on his cigarette.
"Well, Miss Wright, this is the deal." His face was grim and very determined. "We've been very patient with you. Now, our patience is exhausted. So we've brought you here to give you the word face to face."
"Give Miss Wright a cigarette," Jimmy suggested.
The short, fat man pulled out a package of cigarettes and motioned to Sally.
She moved to the other side of the table near the fat man, reached down and took a cigarette.
As she did so, he ran the back of his hand across the erect tips of her breasts and moaned aloud.
"Thank you for nothing," Sally said.
She lit the cigarette and focused her eyes once more on the man with the mustache.
"Like I was saying, Miss Wright," the man with the mustache continued, "we thought we'd lay it right on the line, personally. We've put a hundred grand apiece on Sam Sanders losing that fight in the first round. We've got pretty fair odds on a bet like that. Everybody knows Sanders will lose the fight, but nobody thinks he can't last at least a few rounds. Except us. We know he's going to go down in the first round, Miss Wright."
"Look, Sam isn't going to lay down for anybody," Sally interrupted. "Not even me."
"We're leaving that squarely up to you, Miss Wright," the man with the mustache insisted.
"I'm willing for him to lose right off," Sally explained. "But Sam's a stubborn bastard. He honestly thinks he can whip Crane, and nothing I do or nothing anybody else does is going to change his mind."
"You've already told him about me," Jimmy intervened. "Now you can tell him exactly what's going to happen to you if he doesn't play ball with us."
He nodded to the monster and said:
"Give Miss Wright a little sample."
The monster climbed up into his chair, the knife poised directly in front of him.
Sally backed to the opposite side of the table.
The monster moved onto the table and to the opposite side, the knife clenched tightly in his fist.
Sally screamed, "No! God, no!"
The monster hesitated.
"I'm not going to hurt you, yet, Miss Wright. Only if Sanders doublecrosses us in that fight."
He made a cross in the air directly in front of her face without touching her.
"That's one of the things that'll happen to you. The other...."
He caught hold of one breast in his hand and touched it gently with the point of the knife.
Sally screamed again, feeling the prickly point of the knife.
"It'd be a damn shame for us to have to cut those up!" the monster warned. He drew the knife away.
Sally felt relief tear through her body as the monster backed away from her.
"Do you understand, Miss Wright?" the monster asked. "Sanders doesn't come out for the second round or you get this knife."
Sally nodded. She understood clearly.
"I'll try," she mumbled. "I'll try anything. Everything."
"You must do more than just try," Jimmy said. "You must be successful. Sanders will do this for you. How you accomplish your assignment is up to you. Afterwards, if we win, you'll receive in the mail even more than I originally agreed upon. We'll send you ten grand. You'll never see or hear of us again. If you fail, you and the gorilla will have a little date one dark night soon after the fight."
Sally bit her lips, walked across the table and started to pick up her clothes. She turned toward Jimmy.
"Now, can I dress and get the hell out of here?"
"Not just yet," Jimmy said. "With business out of the way, the boys and I wantta have a little fun, first. Later, we'll see that you get back to your apartment okay."
He turned to the short, fat man and said: "Bring out the whiskey. I have a hunch Miss Wright would like to have a good stiff drink."
"Who goes first, boss?" the monster wanted to know.
"The boss always gets first crack, silly," the man with the mustache said.
Jimmy beamed and said, "That's right."
The fat man returned with the whiskey. "You want a drink, Miss Wright?"
"I could drink the whole damn bottle and never feel it," she replied, anticipating what was ahead and knowing there wasn't a thing she could do to prevent it.
She took the bottle and tilted it to her lips and swallowed long and hard, hoping she could get good and drunk very quickly for the ensuing ordeal. The booze ripped into her guts and jolted her. She took another drink. A third and fourth until she had consumed nearly a fourth of the fresh fifth. The liquor quickly took hold of her. She knew she might just as well cooperate with them and get it over with.
She whirled around toward Jimmy. She could see two Jimmys now. She was well fortified to take on four guys in succession.
"All right, Jimmy!" she said. "Where the hell's the bedroom?"
Jimmy got out of his chair, took her hand and helped her down from the table, guided her toward the end of the room opposite the entrance with the French doors.
"Save some for me, boss!" the monster yelled.
"There's enough for everybody!" Sally shouted back with a drunken laugh.
She and Jimmy went through a small door at the end of the long library and stepped into a small room containing only a large bed, a nightstand and an upholstered chair. The nightstand contained a new bottle of whiskey and two packages of cigarettes.
Sally promptly sprawled out on the bed.
Jimmy undressed himself, tossing his clothes onto the chair. He rolled onto the bed beside her, buried his face in her breasts and lifted himself on top of her.
After it was over, Jimmy disappeared, not bothering to dress but taking his clothes with him.
One down and three to go, Sally thought. She continued to lie on the bed but picked up the bottle of liquor, broke it open and took a drink.
The door opened, and the man with the mustache entered.
"Guess I'm next," he grinned, beginning to remove his clothes. "It's been more than a week since...."
"Since you made a woman?" Sally prompted. "Yes."
He was nude, now.
Sally thought she could stomach this one a little easier than the two remaining men and allowed him the privilege of a few moments of preliminaries, not that she could've stopped him if she'd wanted to.
About fifteen minutes elapsed before the short, fat man came into the little room. He was a nauseating looking character with a grin a foot wide on his face.
"Not often I get a dish like you, you pretty doll," he said, taking off his clothes.
"I'll bet you're telling the truth, too," Sally agreed sarcastically.
It turned out just about like Sally had expected. This guy didn't have much to offer and was about as romantic as dirty dishwater. She was glad to see him open the door and disappear.
The monster came next. He had his clothes half off when he entered and wasted little time stripping off the rest of them. He slid onto the bed beside her, all two hundred pounds of him, mostly beef and muscle.
She caught a whiff of his breath and knew that he had been drinking heavily. She decided to try to pry as much information out of him as possible. She touched him where he wanted to be touched and said:
"You know, I could go for a big, strong guy like you, handsome. What's your name?"
His huge hands almost covered her breasts, and he was squirming for position now.
"The boss don't let us tell our names to anyone. "
"I might just come out and see you again sometime," she said, driving her breasts deep into his chest. "Whose place is this, and where is it?"
The monster nodded his head. "Can't tell you, Miss Wright. The boss ... he'd kill me."
His hips were like pistons, and he was having a ball.
Less than five minutes later, the monster began to dress-the only one of the four who remained in the room to put on his clothes. He glanced over at Sally.
"Maybe you and I could get together soon in a hotel in the city," he suggested.
Sally, feeling more like a whore now than Sam Sanders' girl, pondered momentarily over his proposal. She turned around and sat on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor and lit a cigarette.
"I'd like to get together with you again, but why worry about a hotel room when I've got a comfy little apartment in Manhattan. My name's in the phone book."
The monster's eyes sparkled.
"What about tomorrow night?" he asked.
"Tomorrow night? Let's see ... okay, tomorrow night. Say, about eight?"
"Eight o'clock, and I'll sure as hell be there," the monster beamed. "With an armload of booze."
"Good."
He leaned over and kissed her, and she responded by driving her tongue through his lips, stimulating his desire to come to her apartment in anticipation of more of the same.
"Goodbye, handsome," Sally said, blowing a kiss at him. "Until tomorrow night."
He was gone and she was glad. She was glad it was all over. Going to bed with these four men had been all cut and dried. She experienced no sensation whatsoever from any of them.
Neither had she been able to get any information out of any of them. Still, she regarded the monster as her ace in the hole for breaking up this gang of gamblers. She had definite plans for the monster.
Jimmy entered the room and tossed her clothes to her.
"Get dressed, Miss Wright. My man's waiting to take you home." He started to leave, whirled around toward her again. "You'd damn sure better come through with Sanders! That's a final warning! The gorilla knows how to use that knife!" Jimmy disappeared.
Sally jumped up and quickly started to dress. She was anxious to get home.
Jimmy's parting words rang through her ears:...." The gorilla knows how to use that knife! ... "
She worked the sheath down over her body and ran from the little room. Dusk was beginning to gather outside, and she had an important date with Sam Sanders.
Probably the most important date of her life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The full impact of Sally's ordeal didn't really hit her hard until later that night after the whiskey had worn off and she was sitting in a restaurant with Sam explaining to him all that had happened to her during the day.
"And that's the way it all turned out," Sally was saying. "It was a real gang proposition. All four of them. One after the other. As soon as one of them finished, another one came in and hit the sack with me."
"The bastards!" Sam swore, taking a drink of ice water as they sat opposite each other at a secluded table in a corner of the restaurant. "The dirty bastards!"
"Unless we can come up with some solution," Sally said, "you have no choice, Sam. You'll just have to lose to Crane in the first round."
"Well, we'll come up with the answer. I'm not going to lose to Crane for a bunch of damn gamblers. In the first round or any other round. I'm more determined than ever now to beat Crane's brains out."
Sam silently sat there, his eyes on Sally's dress but his mind on the four men who were foolish enough to think he'd throw a fight to help them pick up a bundle of dough.
"You have no idea where this house is located, Sally?"
"No," she replied, freshening her lipstick. "All I know is that it's about an hour and a half drive from here and you go over the George Washington Bridge."
"That means it's about an hour and ten minutes from the bridge," Sam calculated. "That's right."
"You don't know where you left the highway after crossing the bridge?"
"No," Sally returned. "We stayed on the highway leading to the bridge for a little while and then took an exit to the right off of it."
"You didn't get any street names or the names of any towns you passed through?"
"No. I looked for street signs in the area where the house is located, but there weren't even any highway signs. It was on a narrow, twisting road. Sort of out in the country."
She opened her purse for a cigarette, and her eyes fell on a piece of paper.
"Sam," she said, "I did get the license number on that car that took me out there and brought me back."
She handed him the slip of paper. He glanced at it and said:
"Well, what are we waiting for? Maybe we've got the solution right here on this piece of paper. Come on, let's go."
"Where are we going, Sam?"
"To the cops, of course," he replied, starting to get up.
Sally caught his hand.
"Sam, I'm afraid," she said. "They told me if I went to the police, they'd get me. I'm scared as the devil."
Now Sam had momentarily forgotten about the four men and was concentrating on Sally. From his standing position, he could view the deep valley between her breasts, rising and falling as she breathed. She was wearing a jet black jersey sheath that clung tightly to her body and accented her fair skin. The sheath was cut daringly low in front, exposing the upper third of the soft flesh of her breasts, and dipped almost to the rise of her buttocks in front.
Sally looked up at him.
"What are you thinking, Sam?" she asked.
"That I'd like to get that dress off of you."
She giggled lightly.
"Didn't you get enough last night?"
"I never get enough ... of you, Sally."
She smiled.
"Do you want it at my place, or yours, tonight?"
"Makes no difference just so I get it," he answered, taking her by the arm and urging her to get up. "Let's go to your apartment. Just for a change in scenery."
"Okay."
Sam flipped a couple of one-dollar bills on the table as a tip for the waiter, and they started toward the door.
"I've got an idea about this license number," he said. "We can work it out together at the apartment and have our little fun, too."
She turned around and winked at him. He paid the check, and they went out into the summer night.
Twenty minutes later, Sam and Sally stepped inside her apartment. She locked the door with the night latch, turned around and put her arms around Sam's neck.
"I love you, Sam," she said, kissing him on the lips.
"And I love you, Sally," Sam returned, bumping his nose against hers. "Stick with me through this one fight and we'll have a pile of dough and I'll say goodbye to the ring and we'll settle down happily ever after."
"I'll buy that," Sally agreed. "Now, why don't you make that telephone call while I get out of these damn tight clothes? I've got a little treat for you."
"Okay."
As she walked toward the bedroom, he could see the perfect image of her buttocks out-lined against the sheath which pulled up over the backs of her knees with every step she took. He felt a tingling surge of excitement charge through him.
When she was out of sight, Sam picked up the telephone and dialed a number. He waited.
"Officer O'Brien, please."
Again he waited, this time whistling lightly until he heard the officer's voice.
"Shorty, this is Sam. I'd like to ask a favor of you."
"Anything, Sam," the officer said.
Sam produced the slip of paper containing the license number.
"Can you find out who owns a car with the license number RE six-six-oh-oh-nine?"
"New York State?"
"I'm not sure," Sam replied, hesitating. He looked toward the bedroom. "Sally, was it New York State?"
Sally peeked around the corner of the bedroom door.
"Hell, I don't know, Sam," she replied.
"What color was the plate?"
"I don't remember," Sally answered. "All I got was the number."
Sam turned back to the phone and said:
"I don't know, Shorty. Could be New York or New Jersey or even Connecticut. I'm not familiar with the plates outside of New York."
"It's not a Connecticut number, and I don't think it's New Jersey," the officer said. "I'll check New York. It'll take a little while. I'll call you back in a couple of hours."
Sam gave the officer Sally's phone number.
"Thanks, Shorty. It's very important."
"Okay, Sam."
Sam hung up the receiver and turned around toward the bedroom. What he saw was enough to make a sane man go out of his head. Sally was standing just inside the living room, leaning against the wall. Her blonde hair was like silk. Her lips were beet red, and her eyes were lined with blue mascara.
She was wearing black baby doll pajamas that struck her a couple of inches below the spot where her thighs joined and coal black five-inch spike-heel slippers without heels or toes. Nothing else. No bra. No panties. The baby dolls were so sheer Sam was certain he could read a newspaper through the thin nylon. He could have gripped the entire garment in his hand without a trace of it showing. From her ears dangled two large gold-colored hoop earrings. In her hand, she carried a long sparkling cigarette holder.
"God!" Sam mumbled.
"You like, Sam?"
"Do I ... "
"I always say it takes a little variety to keep a love match from getting boring," Sally purred in her most sultry voice.
She started toward him now, inserting the cigarette holder between her lips. As she drew close to him, she thrust her lips upward and said:
"Cigarette me, big boy."
Sam pulled out a cigarette, inserted it into the holder and touched a match to it as she sucked hard.
Sally let the smoke drift through her nostrils.
Sam was spellbound. He hadn't realized until now just how sexy Sally really could be. He'd seen her nude many times, but the addition of that flimsy little bit of black nothing over her body did things to him.
"What's the matter, Sam?" Sally cooed. "Have I got you all worked up?"
"God!"
That was all he could say.
"Why don't you put on your birthday clothes and let's go over to the divan and do something about it? No sense in a man torturing himself when everything he wants is right here for the taking."
He knelt down, removed his shoes and socks and straightened up again. He took off his coat, shirt and undershirt and faced her squarely.
"Why don't you take the rest off?"
"I will," Sally returned. "I certainly will."
With that, she drew close to him, continuing to suck on her cigarette, and loosened his belt. Quickly, she removed his trousers and with a twist of her fingers released his shorts and sent them tumbling down his legs.
"Why, Sam," she said, "I certainly have got you all worked up, haven't I?"
He made no comment, merely picked her up into his arms.
"Now, I'm going to get you all worked up, but quick," he vowed. "The divan or directly into the bedroom? The choice is all yours, gorgeous."
"Let's start on the divan and wind up in the bedroom a little later," she suggested, not really caring one way or the other.
Sam carried her to the divan and sat down with her. She was lying on her back with her head in his lap. He worked her baby dolls off of her arms, pulled them from beneath her body. Her taut breasts stared straight up at him. He raised her knees high into the air, leaving her spike heels flat on the divan.
Slowly, Sam bent over her and began to massage her breasts with his lips.
"That feels soooo ... ooo good," she moaned.
He found her lips and drowned out her words, his tongue lashing vehemently against hers. His hand was simultaneously stroking her thighs, and he felt the rise within her.
She twisted and squirmed.
"Darling," she said slightly above a whisper, "let's go into the bedroom now."
He lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom and let her down on the bed. Quickly, he was with her and met her arched hips with a fury.
Exactly as she liked him to approach her.
Together, they took a trip to the moon, going all the way on the wings of a love each of them knew was going to continue forever after. The volcanic climax erupted with the precision of a minute mechanism in an expensive watch.
It was as if it had been the first time.
For both of them.
Neither of them said a word for a long time after it was over. Sally lay there beside him thinking how this served to wipe out all of the unpleasant memories of what had happened to her during the afternoon.
Sam felt like he could conquer the world now, not stopping merely with the likes of Sacky Crane.
This had been such a satisfying experience that it had drained all energy from both of them. They were totally and pleasantly exhausted.
"It was terrific tonight, wasn't it, Sam?" Sally asked, breaking the silence.
"That's putting it mildly," Sam replied.
Suddenly, the telephone rang. The sound quickly erased the world of dreams from their thoughts and reminded them that they still had to face a serious threat to their security.
"I'll get it," Sam volunteered, rolling out of the bed. "It's probably Shorty O'Brien."
Sam hurried to the telephone.
"Hello. Yes, this is Sam." He paused and listened. "I guess that takes care of that. Look, Shorty, could you meet me at Sally's apartment tomorrow night about six-thirty? I think it'll be well worth your time, but don't mention it to anyone." He listened. "Okay, tomorrow night at six-thirty."
Sam hung up and returned to the bedroom. He looked down at Sally and said:
"The license plates on that car ... they had been stolen from the original owner."
Sally was gripped with fear. She climbed from the bed and fell into Sam's arms.
"We're right back where we started, Sam. What are we going to do?"
He held her nude body tightly against his.
"Looks like our best bet is that thug who's going to visit you tomorrow night. He just may be our ace in the hole."
"If he shows up," Sally said. "If he only shows up...."
Tomorrow night was nearly twenty-four hours away, and Sam Sanders wasn't one to worry today about something that wouldn't happen until tomorrow. Right now, he had something else on his mind.
He came face to face with Sally and was quickly aware that she had something else on her mind, too.
Each of them was thinking the same thing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sally stared into the mirror. She was debating what she was going to wear. So far, she had reached only one conclusion. She was going to wear her five-inch spike-heel cocktail shoes, and they glittered with green, gold and blue as she stepped, bare-legged, into them.
The mirror's reflection picked up her body, nude except for the shoes. Sally was preparing to entertain the monster very royally tonight, and she wanted to entertain him in her bedtime best.
With very little or nothing covering her most seductive charms.
She finally decided on a flesh-colored bikini set. The nylon bra was little more than a band that hid nothing except her nipples, and she wrapped it around her bosom. She pulled the flimsy nylon panties over her legs and up around her hips. She completed her preparation for the monster by inserting her arms into a sheer, black sleeveless robe of nylon that left nothing to the imagination as to what was beneath it.
Sally picked up her watch and glanced at it. It was almost eight o'clock. She applied a heavy coat of lipstick and darkened her eyes with royal blue mascara. She was ready now, took a reassuring look at herself in the mirror and then went into the living room to await the monster's arrival.
She sat down on the divan and glanced over at the kitchen door. It was closed. The coffee table in front of her held two bottles of whiskey. Nothing but the best for the monster. Sally lit a cigarette.
She felt a little nervous and tried to relax.
The doorbell rang.
Sally jumped up and went to the door, opened it. The monster was standing in front of her.
"Howdy, Miss Wright," he said, drawing back slightly as his eyes picked up the curves of her body through the sheer robe. The robe was parted from the floor to her thighs, gently revealing her long, nude leg tapering off into the spike heel.
"Come in." Her voice was sultry.
The monster stepped into the apartment. He looked around the living room.
"Quite a joint you got here, Miss Wright." She smiled.
"Won't you sit down and make yourself comfortable?"
He started to sit down in a chair while Sally walked to the divan. She turned around toward him.
"Over here on the divan ... by me," she said, sitting down.
The monster moved to the divan and sat down beside her. He eyed the liquor.
"Lotsa booze and a beautiful dame. That's right down my alley, Miss Wright."
"Why don't you call me Sally?"
"Okay, Miss ... I mean, Sally."
She crossed her legs, letting the robe fall away from them, and took a hard puff on her cigarette.
"Why don't you pour us a couple of drinks?"
He began to pour two drinks.
"You mean you drink this stuff straight, Sally?"
"When I'm with a nice man and I want to get drunk with him." She took the drink and began to sip it. "I think you ought to tell me your name. After all...."
He hesitated briefly.
"It's Henry. The boss and the boys call me Hank."
She deliberately placed her arm around his neck and drew his head against her shoulder. "What's your last name, Henry?" He was embarrassed.
"Ah, Sally," he said, "the boss says not to tell my name to anybody. The boys and I ... we all use phony names. Just call me Hank." He began to gulp the whiskey. "You know, the boss don't know where I am now. I told him I had to go visit my sick brother for a few days and that I'd be back the day of the fight. I thought maybe you and I could shack up a few days."
"Maybe," she returned. "Of course, you understand I'm not in the habit of shacking up with strange men."
"I don't feel like we're strangers, Sally. You invited me to your apartment."
"But I don't even know your full name."
He looked directly at her and felt pangs of desire sift through his loins and mushroom all over his body.
"It's Henry Simpson, Sally. Henry Simpson." The liquor was beginning to take hold of him, now.
"You mustn't tell anyone I told you, Sally," he said.
He put his hand on her knee, and his body began to ache with mounting ecstasy.
"Who are your other friends, Hank?" Sally asked.
His hand crept upward to the soft flesh of her thighs.
"Guys I've known four or five years. We have a kind of partnership. We make big money."
"How?"
"Gambling. On football games and boxing, mostly." He took a big slug of the liquor. "God, we've struck it rich betting on fights. We knocked off a couple of hundred grand on that first Liston-Patterson fight. If we'd've known Sonny was gonna take care of Patterson in the first round, we coulda made a million. A million bucks, Sally!"
His voice tingled with excitement.
"Where do you live?"
"In Chicago. We're only here until after the fight."
He was staring wildly now at the big cones of flesh bound only by the narrow band of nylon and could see the perfect imprints of her nipples.
He suddenly took her into his arms and kissed her.
She had no feeling at all for this big, clumsy clown but wanted to make it look good until she had pried all of the information possible out of him. So she promptly sent her tongue darting between his lips and held the kiss for a long time.
His huge hand toyed with the flesh swelling above and below the band only slightly covering the center of her breasts.
"Why don't you take off the gear, Sally?"
"Why don't you take it off, Hank?"
A big smile came over his face. He removed the sheer robe, unfastened the bra and drew it away from her breasts.
"God, Sally! If the boss thinks I'd ever cut these up, he's screwy!" He kissed each one, gently. "Of course, the boss is the boss, but I'd sure hate like hell to touch these with that knife."
Sally remembered that she must find out whether the monster was carrying any weapons with him. This was the last request from Sam and Officer O'Brien.
"Have you got the knife with you now, Hank?"
"Sure, I always carry the knife," the monster replied, "and I carry a gun, too. In my coat."
"Is the gun loaded?"
"Damn right, it's loaded."
He continued to fondle her breasts, massaging them with his hands. "Hank ... "
"Yes."
"What's your boss's real name? It isn't Jimmy, is it?"
"Naw, it ain't Jimmy, Sally," he returned, "but that's information I can't give out to anybody."
"Not even to me?"
She opened his trousers and touched him, hoping in this moment of weakness he'd let his tongue slip with the answer to her question.
Instead, he let out a little sigh and his breath became short and jerky.
"Not even to you, Sally. Not to anyone."
Sally bit her lips, eyed the whiskey.
"Wouldn't you like another drink?"
"Not me. I'm ready for a little action in the bedroom. We can drink some more between rounds." He laughed aloud. "Reminds me of the fight next Tuesday night. There ain't gonna be any between rounds in that one. There ain't gonna be but the first round, and that's when Sanders is gonna be hearing the birdies chirp. Right, Sally?"
"That's right, Hank. Old Sam's gonna be a dead pigeon before the crowd gets settled in their seats."
Simpson was tiring of the chatter and getting anxious, now. His hands flashed to Sally's bikini panties.
Sally caught his hands and pushed them away.
"I never let a man strip me from the waist down until he takes off his own clothes," she said, laughing, thinking this was the best way of separating Simpson from his gun and his knife.
He chuckled half drunkenly.
"I guess I can't take a girl to bed with all my clothes on, can I?"
"That's right."
He jumped up, quickly removed his clothes without the least trace of hesitation and returned to the divan entirely nude. Again, his hands sought her panties.
And, again, she pushed him away.
"Let's save the good part for a little later. I need to play around a little longer."
"I can't wait, Sally!" he said loudly, almost begging. "Don't make me wait any longer!"
"Tell me one more thing, first," she said.
"I'll tell you anything, but don't make me wait!"
"All right, that's a bargain. What's the name of your boss, and what's the address of that big mansion in the country?"
Simpson stiffened.
"Oh, so that's it! You wantta run to the damn cops! That's why you invited me to your apartment!" His face was drawn and ugly, now. "You thought you could squeeze a lot of information out of me! Well, it didn't work, Miss Wright. I'm not telling you a damn thing!" He thrust his arms tightly around her and held her.
"I'm gonna rape hell outta you and then blow out of here!" he continued.
Sally began to struggle in his arms but he was much too powerful.
He ripped her panties away with one sweep of his hand, lifted her into his arms and broke into a run for the bedroom.
Sally screamed.
The kitchen door swung open, and Sam and Officer O'Brien burst into the living room just before the monster and Sally disappeared into the bedroom.
"Stop, Simpson!" Officer O'Brien ordered, his gun poised directly in front of him.
Simpson stopped and whirled around, still clinging tightly to Sally. He looked over at Sam and saw him removing the gun and the knife from his clothes.
"Put the girl down, Simpson!" O'Brien demanded.
Simpson put Sally down but kept her in front of him, his big hands and arms holding her against him. He violently shook her.
"You little bitch!" he said.
Then he directly faced O'Brien and said:
"I'm going out of here, and you can't stop me with that gun or you'll rip Miss Wright's guts out!"
"Don't move!" O'Brien ordered. "You're ahead taller than the girl, and I can blow it right off your body without touching her!"
Sam took the knife and the gun to the kitchen and returned immediately, picked up Simpson's clothes and he and the officer started toward them.
"Don't come any closer or I'll strangle her to death!" Simpson warned.
"Turn the girl loose!" O'Brien shouted. "Now! Or I'll shoot!"
O'Brien and Sam were walking closer as they argued. Less than half the length of the room separated them, now.
Sally's body grew suddenly limp in Simpson's arms. She no longer was standing on her feet. She was dead weight against him. Her head was slumped to one side, and half of Simpson's chest and his shoulders and head were in direct range of the end of the officer's gun.
Sam broke toward Sally.
Simpson turned loose of her. As he did so, she straightened up and began to laugh aloud. She had done an excellent job of faking that she had fainted.
Simpson looked in every direction as Sam grabbed him and the officer moved in and rammed the gun into the monster's ribs.
"You got nothing on me," Simpson said boldly. "You can't arrest a man without a charge, copper!"
"The charge for the present is attempted rape," O'Brien said. "I've got a hunch we'll find some other things when we fingerprint you and check the files." He turned toward Sally. "Good work, Miss Wright. Thanks for everything. We've got one of those hoodlums now, and we've got ways of extracting the other information from him."
The officer turned toward Sam and said:
"You don't have to worry, Sam. Until after the fight, we won't do a thing about this guy. We'll just let him cool his heels in jail on the attempted rape charge, and we won't give a thing to the papers. We've already discussed what to do the night of the fight. So just go in there and knock that Crane silly."
"Thanks, Shorty," Sam said.
"Get your clothes on," O'Brien told Simpson. "We've got a little place all reserved for you."
Sally looked down at her nude body.
"God, I guess I'd better get some clothes on myself before I get arrested for indecent exposure."
The officer laughed aloud, continuing to hold the gun on Simpson while he dressed.
"You're all right, Miss Wright," he grinned. "If I was a few years younger and wasn't married, I might try to give old Sam there a run for his money."
Sally, feeling a bit embarrassed now that it was all over, ducked into the bedroom.
"Okay, Sam, if you'll bring the gun and the knife and help me out to the patrol wagon with this bum, I'll be much obliged," O'Brien said, snapping handcuffs around Simpson's wrists.
"Sure, Shorty," Sam replied. "I'll be back shortly, Sally."
Simpson cast a dirty look at Sam.
"Have fun with that bitch while you can because we'll get her! You can be damn certain of that!"
"Where you're going, you won't get anybody, Simpson," O'Brien said, pushing the monster toward the door.
Sam and the officer escorted the prisoner out of the apartment.
Sally, still nude except for her spike heels, emerged from the bedroom. She walked to the divan, collapsed onto it, poured herself a stiff drink and lit a cigarette. She felt real proud of herself in being able to assist in the capture of one of the four gamblers.
Sam returned moments later.
"Lock the door, Sam," Sally said. "And leave your clothes on the chair. You're going to take up where that monster left off. That bastard actually had me all steamed up inside."
"Well, I'll see what I can do to take that steam out of you," Sam shot back, discarding the last of his clothes. He started toward her. "I think I've got just the prescription for cooling off girls with hot pants."
"Don't sit down," she said. "Pick me up and carry me into the bedroom."
Sam took her into his arms, began to nibble at the dark-circled tips of her breasts on the way to the bedroom.
"This is my last night of this before the fight," he mumbled, "We'll make up for lost time after the fight's over."
"Like hell we will!" Sally snapped. "We'll make up for it tonight! And again after the fight's over!"
Sam wasn't one to disagree with a proposition like that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The night of June seventeenth was a warm, early summer night. The exterior of Madison Square Garden was aglow with sparkling lights and milling people. And long lines of spectators waiting to get inside to witness the advertised brawl between the champion, Sacky Crane, and the challenger, Sam Sanders.
Inside, Sally Wright had been one of the early arrivals and had two seats reserved for her. One was near the entrance so that she could spot the three gamblers when they arrived. The other was in the front row along the side of the ring.
She was now sitting in her seat near the entrance watching desperately for the appearance of the three men. She had talked by telephone with Jimmy only hours earlier and assured him for the fourth time in five days that Sam had promised he'd make a helluva fight out of it for a couple of minutes and then get in the way of one of Crane's lethal fists and bow out of the fight as gracefully as possible.
She continued to stare nonchalantly toward the entrance. Minutes passed and then she saw them ... Jimmy, the man with the mustache and the fat one, all chewing on big cigars. She was so preoccupied that she was unaware of the rousing applause that echoed from the crowd as Sam made his way down the aisle and climbed into the ring.
As soon as they had gotten past her, Sally slid from the seat and followed them. Her assignment was to find out where they were sitting and then go directly to her seat at ringside. She bobbed in and out of the spectators still filing into the Garden. Suddenly, she saw them pause, turn into an aisle, talk to one another for a moment and then sit down in three seats together with Jimmy on the aisle.
Sally carefully made her way over exactly the same route until she was only a few feet from them. She continued on down the aisle until she was next to Jimmy and looked down at him.
Jimmy glanced up.
"Well, you follow instructions very well, Miss Wright," he said in a low voice. "Are you positive everything's going to go off as scheduled?"
"Positive," she replied. "You don't have a thing to worry about."
"That's fine because now you don't have a thing to worry about," Jimmy said.
The other two gamblers nodded agreement.
Sally noted the vacant fourth seat in the row.
"Where's the gorilla?"
"He went to see his sick brother for a few days," Jimmy explained. "He was supposed to be back by fight time, but I'm afraid he's gonna miss the fight. It ain't gonna last that long. Guess he got sidetracked by some dame. He's quite a ladies' man although you wouldn't think so to look at him."
"Yeah," Sally agreed, not even aware of what Jimmy had said.
She was too busy memorizing the letter of the aisle and the seat numbers where the three men were sitting. She glanced up at the sign on the wall behind them: Section F.
Another roar went up from the crowd, some applauding and some booing, as Sacky Crane walked down the aisle and climbed into the ring. The announcer's voice rang out over the public address system.
"Well, I'd better find my seat," Sally said. "The fight's going to start soon."
"Yeah," Jimmy agreed, "and in about six or seven minutes from now, it'll be over. It'll all be over." He put his hand on her leg. "We'll take care of you, doll."
"Okay," Sally said, "and if you get any free time after this is all over, drop around."
"I'll do that."
She moved quickly away from them, looked at her ringside ticket and realized for the first time that it was in Section G and not far from where the gamblers were sitting.
The crowd was in an uproar, yelling wildly. Sally spotted her seat and stepped past the man on the aisle and into the second seat.
She took quick inventory of the two men seated on either side of her and focused her eyes on the center of the ring. She crossed her legs, her glittering sheath drawing inches above her knees.
"Well, Mr. O'Brien, I almost didn't recognize you in those clothes," she said to the man on her right without looking directly at him.
"I'm here," O'Brien said. "The guy on your left is with me. He's Murphy."
"Hello. Everything set?"
"Yes," Sally answered in a low voice. "The three men are seated in Section F, seats one, two, and three in row four. Four rows from the front, one aisle over from the one where you're sitting."
"We'll leave immediately after the fight starts," O'Brien said.
"Isn't it going to be a little rough for the two of you against three?" Sally asked.
"There's more of us ... five altogether," Murphy explained. "The others are waiting to join us as soon as we get up."
"Be careful," Sally warned. "They can be mean as the devil, and they'll go insane if the fight doesn't end in the first round."
"Within a minute after the fight starts, they'll be gone," Murphy said.
O'Brien looked apologetically at Sally.
"I'm sorry you won't be able to see much of Sam's fight, Miss Wright. But we need you for evidence. You're all we've got. A squad car will be stationed right in front of the Garden in the no-parking zone waiting for you."
"That's all right, Mr. O'Brien," Sally said, realizing the fight was only seconds away from starting. "I'm a little nervous, but I'm glad to help. A little nervous? I'm nervous as hell."
The bell sounded for the start of the fight. Sam and Crane stormed to the center of the ring and began displaying their fancy footwork, feeling each other out.
O'Brien and Murphy got up and moved into the aisle.
Sally tried to follow them out of the corner of her eye, but they disappeared from her view. Crane pumped a hard left into Sam's body. He shot a hard blow to Sam's face. Sam charged into Crane with three quick jabs, and Crane came back with a series of body punches.
"Come on, Sam!" Sally screamed. "Murder the guy!"
A man sitting behind Sally appeared fascinated by her efforts to reach Sam's ears with her voice.
"A dame's callin' ya, Sanders!" he shouted. "Or can't ya hear 'er fer dem boidies what's chirpin' in yer ears?"
Crane stormed into Sam with fresh fury. The crowd was going wild. Crane uncorked a hard right to Sam's mid-section, sending him reeling across the ring. Sam regained his composure quickly, fought back with a couple of harmless blows.
"Sam!" Sally yelled. "It's me ... Sally! I'm pulling for you with all my heart!"
Three more plainclothesmen joined O'Brien and Murphy at the back of Section F. Two of them remained halfway up the aisle, and the other three, including Murphy and O'Brien, walked slowly on down the aisle to row four. The crowd was screaming, and everybody was on their feet. The officers moved in behind the three men, whose minds were on nothing, except the fight and the quick knockout they needed to strike it rich, and stuck guns in their backs.
"Don't move!" the officers warned simultaneously. "Put your hands in the air!"
"What is this?" Jimmy asked, too surprised to become angry so quickly, and raised his hands high.
"All three of you are under arrest," O'Brien, the officer in the middle, said. "Step out in the aisle one at a time and walk up the aisle and don't look back."
The three gamblers followed the officers' instructions except that Jimmy turned around to Murphy and remarked:
"You've got nothing on us. We're clean."
"We'll discuss that later," Murphy said. "Just keep moving!"
The bell sounded, ending the first round.
Spectators in the immediate area craned their necks witnessing the arrests. Sally whirled around as the round ended and caught a glimpse of the officers with the gamblers. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
The buzzer echoed over the arena. Ten seconds later, Sam and Crane tore headlong into each other again. Sam connected with a punishing blow to Crane's face, and the crowd broke into a loud frenzy.
Sally jumped out of her seat. "Get him, Sam!" she yelled.
Crane, angered by the jolting blow landed by Sam, crashed both fists into Sam's mid-section again and followed with a series of pulverizing punches that knocked Sam to the canvas. He returned to his corner.
The referee began to count, " ... One ... two ... three ... four...."
"Sam! Sam!" Sally screamed, her thighs showing as she jumped up and down. "Get up, Sam!"
The referee continued, " ... seven ... eight ... nine...."
Sam pulled himself to his feet.
"Get mad, Sam!" Sally yelled. "That's what you need to do ... get mad-like you did in the restaurant!"
The loud-mouthed man behind Sally, trying for a better view of her legs, said:
"Sanders ain't no fighter, ma'am."
Crane crashed into Sam again. Blood was oozing from Sam's'face.
"Get mad, Sam!" Sally repeated. "Tear Crane to pieces!"
"What'sa matter, miss," the loud-mouthed man asked, "you in love with dat bum or somethin'?"
"Sure, I'm in love with the big lug," Sally replied. "And he's in love with me, too."
"Oh, now, I remember ... you're da dame what started all that fuss in da restaurant, ain't you?" the man behind recalled.
"Yeah, I'm the dame, all right," Sally admitted.
Sam jabbed blindly at Crane, missing two punches. More blood was coming from his face now. One eye was swollen, and there was a small cut above it.
"Sam!" Sally shouted. "Do something! I love you, Sam! Can't you hear me?"
Neither Sam nor scarcely anyone else could hear her above the constant roar of the crowd.
The bell ended the second round. This was the cue for Sally to leave. She turned around toward the man behind her and said:
"Listen, mister, you know what's the matter with Sam Sanders?"
"Yeah, I told ya once," the man said back to her. "He ain't no fighter ... never has been."
"Maybe not, mister," Sally said, starting to leave, "but the real trouble is that Sam Sanders is hen-pecked. He's a woman's man. In short, he's a sissy!"
The man smiled.
"Yeah ... yeah, you're right, miss! Sanders is a sissy! He ain't no fighter ... that's what I been tellin' ya all along. The guy's hen-pecked. He ain't nothin' but a damn sissy!"
"Well, why don't you let the crowd in on your little secret?" Sally asked, turning up the aisle to head for the exit.
As she reached the top of the aisle, she turned around and looked down. The bell sounded for the start of the third round.
The loud-mouth had turned around, stood up, and was yelling at the top of his lungs:
"Sam Sanders is a sissy! Sam Sanders is a ' sissy!"
He began to sing the words and the crowd joined in.
Someone in the crowd screamed:
"Put on your lace panties, Sanders, and go back to your girl!"
Sally smiled, walked toward the exit and went outside. The squad car was waiting for her exactly where the officers said it would be.
"I'm Sally Wright," she told the officer at the wheel.
"Climb in, lady," he said.
Sally stepped into the car, the hem of her sheath riding well above her knees as she did so. She noted that the officer's eyes were following the movement of her legs. She lit a cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke as the car pulled away from the curb and shot into the flow of traffic.
"Haven't you got a radio?" she asked.
"Yeah," the officer replied, whirling around for a glimpse of her legs and then lifting his eyes up her body to her breasts.
"Turn it on, and pick up the fight."
The officer flipped on the radio, waited, twisted the dial.
The fight announcer's voice came in loud and clear:
"We're in the fourth round, and Sam Sanders seems to be-getting his second wind. He doesn't seem as tired as he appeared in the previous round."
"Atta boy, Sam!" Sally said, leaning forward and propping her elbows on the front seat.
She could hear the crowd's chant in the background:
"You're a sissy, Sanders! Go home to your girl! Did your girl tell you how to fight Crane?"
"Sanders pumps a hard right into Crane's face, sends the champion staggering across the ring," the radio announcer said. "Sanders is battering-Crane with terrific punches. Sanders has Crane actually staggering now."
The officer braked the vehicle to a sudden standstill.
"Here we are, lady," he said. "They're waiting for you inside."
"Give him hell, Sam!" Sally shouted. "You're going to win!"
She heard the bell close out the fourth round.
The officer turned the radio off. He got out and opened the door for Sally.
She swung her legs around, much to the delight of the uniformed man holding the door, and climbed out.
Moments later, she was escorted into a very large room, where O'Brien and Murphy and three or four officers in uniform met her at the door and accompanied her to a row of seats near the front and running parallel to a stage-like platform with extremely bright lights. The remainder of the room was in virtual darkness.
"Sit down, Miss Wright," O'Brien said. "We're going to bring a line of prisoners onto the platform. Look at them and indicate the ones you recognize."
Sally sat down, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.
O'Brien sat down beside her. "Bring 'em in," he said.
"I'm so damn nervous I'm about to go out of my mind," Sally told O'Brien. "Not about this ... the fight. I'm afraid it'll turn out like Sam's other fights with Crane."
"Some of the boys are listening to it," O'Brien informed her. "We'll find out how it's going in a few minutes."
A line of prisoners filed onto the platform-men of all ages, shapes and sizes.
Sally began to scan the faces.
"Do you see anybody you've seen before, Miss Wright?" O'Brien asked.
Her eyes paused on the fourth man from the left.
"That little fat one," she said, "the fourth from the left. He's one of the three men you arrested at the Garden."
"Take away the fourth man from the left," O'Brien ordered.
Two policemen appeared on the platform and escorted the short, fat man away.
Then Sally identified the other three-the slender one with the mustache, Jimmy and the monster. Without hesitation, she had picked all four of them out of the line-up.
As she and O'Brien went down a hallway toward another room, she heard the radio blaring away about the fight: ... "The eighth round is drawing to a close.
Sanders pumps three solid blows into Crane's body...."
They were out of range of the radio now, and Sally felt good. The fight was still going on.
They entered a small room, O'Brien closing the door behind them. He took her arm and escorted her across the room and through another door.
The four gamblers were seated around a large table, each one handcuffed and guarded byapolice-man.
Sally stared at each one of them and got a dirty look from each one in return.
A police captain sat at one end of the table.
"These are the four men you identified, Miss Wright," he said. "We're going to throw the book at them."
Jimmy pounded his fists on the table.
"You haven't got a damn thing on us!" he snarled. "You're being taken for a ride by that ... that double-crossing whore!"
"We won't have that kind of language in here," the police captain said. He turned toward Sally. "These are the four men who criminally assaulted you, Miss Wright?"
"Yes," Sally returned, "they raped me."
The telephone rang, and the captain answered it.
"A fifth one? Bring him in."
"There's no doubt in your mind but that these are the four men, Miss Wright?" another officer asked.
"Not a bit," Sally answered. "They made me get up on a table and remove my clothes, threatened me with a knife and said they would disfigure me if I didn't see to it that Sam Sanders lost the fight in the first round. Then they took me into a little room, and each one of them...." she hesitated " ... raped me."
The door opened, and two policemen entered, accompanied by the tall, skinny man who had surprised her in her apartment, raped her and forced her to go with him to Jimmy's country mansion.
"Have you ever seen that man before, Miss Wright?" the captain wanted to know.
Sally turned around.
"Yes, he's the one who raped and kidnapped me."
"Okay," the captain said, "book all five of them." He motioned toward the men at the table. "Book them on charges of rape, assault with intent to do bodily harm, accessories to kidnapping and attempting to fix the outcome of a heavyweight fight. There may be other charges. If so, we'll add those later." He glanced toward the fifth man. "Book him on charges of breaking and entering, assault with intent to do bodily harm, rape and kidnapping."
Jimmy jumped to his feet.
"My lawyer will make monkeys out of you bastards!" he shouted. His eyes picked up Sally. "You bitch! You little bitch! We'll cut those ... "
"Lock 'em up!" the captain interrupted. "We'll put 'em through the mill in the morning."
The officers whisked the five men away.
Sally collapsed into a chair. It had been a nerve-wracking experience. Now, it was over, or at least the worst part of it, and she found herself really trembling for the first time. All of the tension that had built up inside of her had come to the surface.
Only she and O'Brien remained in the room. O'Brien moved to her chair and ran his fingers through her hair.
"Let's go find out about the fight," he suggested. She spun around toward him.
"God, I'd completely forgotten about the fight!" she said, jumping up, her breasts rising and falling as she breathed hard. "Sam! Oh, Sam!"
O'Brien took her arm.
"Come on," he said.
He led her down the hallway until they could hear the radio announcer's voice, much more subdued now, penetrating the wall beside them. O'Brien opened a door to a deserted room filled only with smoke and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette and cigar butts.
"And another heavyweight fight is history," the radio announcer said. "The broadcast of this fight has been brought to you...."
"It's over!" Sally said, her voice filled with excitement. "It's all over, but who won?"
"I don't know, Miss Wright," O'Brien replied, "but we'll find out. And a squad car will take you wherever you want to go."
Sally followed O'Brien out the door and down the long, deserted hallway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Reporters and photographers were gathered around Sam Sanders in his dressing room. Flashbulbs kept bursting around him. His eye was swollen almost shut, and there were traces of blood on his face.
"I've just realized my greatest ambition in the ring," Sam said, wiping his face with a towel.
"I've beaten Sacky Crane."
"When are you gonna fight again, Sam?" a reporter asked.
"That's the end," Sam replied. "I'm through-through forever. I'll never enter a ring to fight again."
"What are your plans, Sam?" another reporter chimed in.
"I have no immediate future plans," Sam answered, "except that I'm going to get married."
"Who's the lucky dame?"
"Sally Wright," Sam replied, looking off into space and wondering how Sally came out with the hoodlums. Not once did it dawn upon him that possibly all plans went astray and that the thugs might be carrying out their threats at this very moment.
"When's the big date?"
Sam shrugged his husky shoulders.
"Soon. You never know about a woman."
He tossed a towel over his shoulders and headed for the showers. He felt great, a little sore, but still great. After his shower, he shaved and dressed quickly.
Ten minutes later, he strode out of the dressing room looking like the heavyweight champion he was. The crowd was gone now, and the Garden looked like a huge empty shell.
Winning the championship, one he would never defend, was secondary in his thoughts as he hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to the Waldorf.
Three other things were foremost in Sam's mind.
Food, whiskey and sex.
Not necessarily in that order.
He had gone nearly a week without liquor and sex, and he was going to make up for it. He was going to celebrate. Tonight. What there was left of the night. At the Waldorf. With Sally.
The cab stopped in front of the hotel. Sam hurried unnoticed into the lobby, bought a newspaper and scanned the headlines:
SANDERS WINS HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BLONDE HELPS CAPTURE GAMBLERS
Sam smiled. It was all rather ironical. In the picture on the left, he was delivering the blast that knocked Crane out in the fourteenth round. In the picture at the right, Sally was shown discussing her experiences with the gamblers with the district attorney.
Now he was on his way to join Sally.
For a night of pleasure in the seclusion of a hotel room where nobody could find them.
Sam stuffed the newspaper beneath his arm, went to the elevator, waited impatiently while he rose upward past floor after floor.
He glanced at his watch as he stepped from the elevator. It was a few minutes after midnight. He removed his key, unlocked the door to the suite he'd reserved, not for one night but for two nights, and stepped inside.
Sally rushed from the bedroom. She was wearing a black lace sheath with an inset bust line that curved low across her breasts and left a large portion of them bulging over the top.
"Sam! Sam!" she shouted, ignoring the fact that it was after midnight and never showing more excitement than right now. "We did it! Everything! You won the fight! I got those hoodlums tucked safely away in jail!"
He opened his arms and met her in the center of the plush room and swept her against him, meshing his lips into hers and feeling her tongue quickly penetrate his mouth. They held the kiss for a long while, and Sam began to come alive with the impact of her luscious breasts throbbing against his chest.
"It's been a day of surprises all right," Sam said when at long last he pulled his lips away from hers.
"And what now?" she asked. "Let's break open a bottle of booze," Sam suggested.
"And then what?"
He inserted his hands beneath her arms and lifted her off of the floor. He was eye to eye level with her.
"Let's call downstairs and have them bring up a couple of big steaks."
"Who the hell's hungry?" Sally wanted to know. "For food, that is."
He returned her feet to the floor.
"I am, baby. I'm so hungry my guts ache."
"Perhaps your guts ache from lack of something else," she said, eyeing him lustfully. "Why don't we have the steaks brought in after the first round?"
Sam stood there looking at her, his eyes raking over every inch of her body, her legs, her thighs, her buttocks, her breasts. Fierce desire raced through him. He was thinking like she was thinking now. To hell with the steaks. He wanted to take her now. Right now. Wild and crazy. Just like she liked it. And just like he liked it. "Okay," he agreed. Sally didn't say a word.
Still, Sam could see the anxiety sifting through her eyes.
"We're going to stay right here tonight and all day tomorrow and tomorrow night, and nobody's going to bother us except to bring in food and booze."
"I'll get the whiskey," she said, turning away from him and walking toward the bedroom.
He watched every step she took, noting the impression of her buttocks against the tight sheath and the shapeliness of her legs as she moved. Sally was red hot sex all the way, and Sam liked her that way.
Only seconds passed before she returned carrying an unopened fifth of Scotch. She paused at the coffee table flanking the divan long enough to set it down and light a cigarette.
"I thought maybe you'd take off the dress while you were in the bedroom," Sam said mischievously.
"Me take it off?" she countered, going into the bathroom and returning with two glasses. "You are going to take it off! And damn soon."
He laughed aloud and said:
"From the tone of your voice, I take it you intend to get laid. Damn soon."
"You could live to be a thousand years old and never be more right," she grinned, joining him once more in the center of the room. She wound her arms around him and kissed him lightly on the nose. "Oh, Sam! Come on, take off your coat, and let's go over on the divan."
He removed his coat and draped it over the back of a chair.
"The tie, too," Sally suggested. He took off his tie.
Sally caught him by the hand and led him to the divan, and they sat down together. She poured two drinks and handed one to him.
"Let's get drunk," she said.
"That's what I intend to do." He took her hand and noted the large, sparkling ring on her finger.
"That reminds me," he said, getting up.
He went to his coat and removed a tiny, gift-wrapped package, took it to her and sat down beside her.
She looked curiously at him.
"Open it," Sam urged, extending his arm around her shoulders and inserting his hand beneath the neckline of the sheath and cupping her warm, firm breast.
Sally crossed her legs, the sheath riding high over her knees and revealing the soft flesh above her nylons. She opened the package slowly and lifted the lid of the small box. A glittering diamond engagement ring met her eyes.
"Sam!" she exclaimed, stunned by the size of the diamond. She slipped it on her finger, and it fit perfectly. "It's beautiful." She kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks. I waited a long time for this."
"You wouldn't've had to wait so long if you hadn't been so damn stubborn about the fight," he told her. "I had it with me that night the fight was announced."
"I'm sorry about that, Sam. Honest I am. I just didn't want to see you get hurt."
He exerted pressure on her breast, squeezing gently but firmly, massaging the nipple with his thumb. He felt a tremendous quiver in her body.
"What about the day after tomorrow?" he asked. She was sipping her drink and twisted her head around until she was face to face with him. "What about the day after tomorrow?"
"For getting married?"
She was stunned by the nearness of the date and could not speak immediately. Finally, she said:
"I'd like that. Simple and quick."
She put her arm around him and kissed him. Hard. Loud groans echoed from her throat as he continued to fondle the rigid nipple and his tongue lashed into the deep areas of her mouth.
His hand suddenly released her breast and sought and found the zipper of her sheath and ran it down her back. The neckline of the sheath fell forward, and her heaving breasts were like two large melons bulging from the confines of a sheer black bra. Ripe and ready.
She twisted her lips free of his and thrust her breasts upward into his face.
"Take it off, and kiss them! Kiss them hard!"
Sam unsnapped her bra and peeled it away from her body, watched her breasts spring free.
She directed his face against her and felt his lips absorbing as much of her breast as was humanly possible. The contact swelled the desire within her to unbearable heights.
"You're going to get it tonight like you've never gotten it before," he mumbled, shifting to the opposite breast.
Sally reacted by unzipping his trousers. Her hand disappeared, and she was boldly touching him. Even more boldly.
"I know now what you meant when you said that I'm going to get it tonight like I've never gotten it before."
A cold sweat broke out all over his body.
"I love you, Sally," he groaned, lapsing into a kind of delirium.
"Bite them!" Sally demanded. "Sink your teeth into them!"
He bit down. Not hard enough to draw the blood but hard enough to give Sally the tingling sensation she was seeking, and he knew the instant it burst through her body.
She withdrew her hand and began to tug at his pants.
"Stand up," she said.
Sam pulled reluctantly away from her breasts and stood up.
She quickly released his trousers and unfastened his shorts and drew them down his legs together with a single motion. She knelt down in front of him, removed his shoes and socks and tenderly kissed him.
Tenderly but boldly.
"This is the first time I've ever undressed you ... first," she laughed, standing up and taking off his shirt and undershirt.
He was now nude and reached down and lifted the sheath up over her head and off. He released her half-slip, let it fall and watched her step out of it. His hands grabbed the elastic band of her panties and worked them slowly down off of her buttocks and down her legs.
Now, it was his turn to kneel down, and he did so, slowly, pausing slightly to grip the soft flesh of her buttocks. He inserted his hand between her thighs and rolled one nylon and then the other down her legs, took them off and returned her spike heels to her feet.
As he started to rise, his eyes were suddenly level with her thighs, and she drew near to him without stepping out of her tracks. His hands cupped her buttocks, and he kissed her.
Just as boldly and tenderly as she had kissed him.
He felt a sizzling spasm of lust strike her thighs and looked up at her.
"You like that, don't you?" he asked.
Her breath came in short, jerky contractions.
"God, yes!" She lifted the bottle to her lips and gulped hard and long, felt the whiskey sear her parched throat and lash deep into her belly. "But I'd like something else better." She urged him up with her, parted his legs with her knee and drove her body between them. "Take me, Sam! Show me you're the champ in the bedroom as well aa the ring!"
She was already guiding him, directing him, but her actions were slightly premature. He wanted to get her into the bedroom even though he wasn't certain his legs would carry him the short distance to the bedroom with her in his arms. He was going to have to try, for Sally had already collapsed in his arms.
With all of the strength he could muster, Sam lifted her into his arms and went staggering toward the other room, nuzzling her hot breasts as he moved. He collapsed on the bed with her.
On top of her.
Sally reached up and anxiously guided him, her legs parting and then folding around him like a pair of scissors.
"All at once, Sam!"
He lunged into her with one magnificent burst and felt her quiver. And she became a writhing, twisting, driving bundle of explosive flesh beneath him.
She let out a little groan, and Sam knew he was there. He was keeping his promise. He was giving it to her like she'd never had it before.
With him or anyone else.
And he resolved silently that he was going to keep right on giving it to her just that way through the long years of wedded life that were ahead.
