She was long and lush, withthose breasts sticking out of her like wonderful fruits, and two heavy buttocks that neatly filled my hands-one cheek to one hand-and solid thighs and all the other goodies. I stood up and looked at her.
"You look like you never saw a naked girl before. You knew I was a girl, didn't you?"
I said, "You 're easy on the eyes. "
"Now stop staring and get your clothes off."
I did so. That's a command I never need to hear twice from any girl She looked me over and down at my male attributes and approved what she saw, and drew me down on the bed.
Her hands touched me and I was on fire. I. panted and grunted and she laughed, and waited for me, and without wasting much time on preliminaries I went into her.
She was moist and ready for me, and I glided easily into that wonderful female haven, and she angled up to engulf me and began to move her hips in a slow, undulating motion that drove me wild.
OPENING OF BOOK
"The only thing you can bring to the party. Francie my girl, is your guitar if you like. And of course yourself." Mel Tibbet, a beat friend of hers and explaining about the party that was being given at his beach house that evening.
"When I say bring yourself, that means just enough clothes to be decent until you arrive," he went on. "Because, you'll be shedding them fast enough," he ended.
She knew Mel was a lover of the human body, being an artist. Mel thought there wasn't anything in the world to surpass the body of a man or woman in beauty.
It didn't matter which, for he thought both were just as attractive.
In love also, for in matters of sex, Mel wasn't particular, for although he slept with women, Mel was also homosexual, and most of his affairs were with young men, the younger the better, and he loved best of all, the smooth, graceful type of boy who also resembled a maiden in line.
That was Mel, all right. Confused. He liked most of all, boys who reminded him of women, and in a pinch, girls who resembled boys.
Sort of intersex, a neuter gander, or as close to that as he could find.
One of his favorite games, especially after he was juiced up on the booze, he would strip his clothes from his heavy, stocky body and the boy and girl, if he could arrange it so they resembled each other quite a lot physically, he would turn out the lights and, all three of them being stripped nude, would laugh and shriek in anticipation glee would face the wall so their rears would face Mel who was fumbling about in the darkness, with only the pale nakedness of the two sylph-like bodies could be made out in the dark, and would make his happy way to the two figures facing the wall, and would fumble and stroke the naked buttocks of one of them, then the other, and make a guess as to whom he had before him.
The main rule of the game, was that Mel could under no circumstances reach around the front of the naked figure he chose and in that way make positive identification of the person he was about to violate from behind.
By now, Mel's manhood would be in full turgid excitement brought on by this weird guessing game, and he would eagerly plunge his turgid excitement into the sexually unkown figure before him, like the beasts in the field and perverts, he would work his erotic will upon the unknown person.
After his lewd, unnatural rooting was done and he had found his release, Mel could then have the lights turned on by the other person, who all the while Mel was depravedly busy upon the companion, the unused companion would stroke and fondle Mel's pistoning body but carefully so Mel would have no idea who he was assaulting from behind and who was so mysteriously and excitingly toying with him.
Until the lights went on.
Then, only then would Mel see who he had so lasciviously taken like an animal, and only then could he see if it was the boy or the girl who so closely resembled each other physically and couldn't be told apart in the dark.
But it didn't matter, for the perverted game so excited Mel, that by now he was newly aroused and his sexual powers fully recuperated, so he was able to repeat his weird sex attack and lewdly penetrate the untouched (for that evening) partner, whichever wasn't had in the dark, and sate himself upon the second person.
Later, they would all retire to his bed, and all still completely naked, would indulge in the lewdest orgies, and the vilest sexual acts, for they were all depraved, no matter what their ages, and they wouldn't indulge in these weirdo practices if they weren't as depraved as Mel was, for it was common knowledge, Mel's little fish games.
Mel prided himself upon the pornographic research he did. Most of all, he was an authority on historic orgiastic experiences especially the ancient Roman emperors who were no slouches in the matter of depraity, and the ancient, disgusting fertility and sex rights.
Mel knew his orgies all right.
So that's the way the wind blows. Everybody who was perverted or kooky in one way or another, loved to attend Mel's parties, for the surprises and there would be surprises, would be on the titillating and orgiastic side.
Francie, on the other hand, though she liked and admired Mel, was more straight in the matter of her sexual customs (with a bit of lesbianism thrown in, now and then.)
She knew Mel and his peculiarities, but she liked him-and was laid by him a few times when he was on a straight man-woman fling.
But Francie was a kindhearted girl and if some fellow or girl felt like indulging in sex, and if she was in the mood, which she generally was, she put out for her partner.
This was deeply appreciated, and Francie was well liked for her good heart, as well as her really stocked body and singing talents.
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
Anne was one of my pieces, one of the many girls whose pants I got into, and I was very fond of.
She turned out to be realted to me, my cousin.
Maybe you're saying, "So he screwed his cousin? So what? Doesn't everybody indulge in incest?"
Or maybe you're saying, "He did that disgusting thing! I don't want to hear any more!"
Well, perhaps you don't want to listen, but I've got to explain. It's all got to come spouting out of me sometime, and it may as well happen now. If you don't want to listen, go away somewhere, and pee in your hat. This is the thing that happened to me, and I've got to tell the story.
The first thing you ought to know is that we didn't grow up together, Anne and me. Right away that changes the picture a little, doesn't it? Because as anybody ought to know, when you grow up all your life with a girl, you don't have real sexual desire for her. Not when you've seen her from the babyhood stage and up, not when you've taken baths with her, watched her get her first bra. I know, there are some horny guys who still go after their sisters, or nieces or even brothers, under those conditions, but I'm not that type at all. What happened to me was an accident, in a way; and I tell you that not to justify myself but just to make it clear at the outset that the story isn't as horrible as you may have thought. I'm not a pervert. If I had had free choice and full understanding of what was going on, I would never have done it.
You know the story of Oedipus, don't you? Sure you do. If you've heard the name of Freud, you know all about Oedipus.
Oedipus didn't want to give it to his mother. The prophecy had said he would, and he went so far as to leave home so it wouldn't come true. What he didn't know was that he was leaving the home of his foster parents and going to the city of his real parents, and then all the trouble started.
I feel a real kinship with old Oed. What he went through with his mater, I went through with my cousin. It wasn't any picnic for either of us, believe me. Oedipus got out of it okay, more or less, if you don't count the scars on his soul and the fact that he put his eyes out in thought at what he had done.
Let me start at the beginning, though, and fill you in on the background. Before you start judging me or judging Anne, you ought to have some of the facts.
My name is Bob Harper. A good, simple name-nothing fancy. I was born in Hartford and I was twenty some odd years when all this happened. My mother was a secretary. I grew up with her, and she passed on when I was twenty. My parents were divorced when I was around six or seven, and my father headed for the West Coast. I forgot all about him fast, and can't remember a single thing about him from the days when he was living with my mother.
There was also my mother's brother who had married when I was a young kid and had a little girl, Anne. My uncle didn't get along with my family so he pulled up stakes and screwed out to California. I don't remember her, either. There were some photos of her in an album, and I would look at them from time to time. They showed a skinny little dark-haired girl in frilly dresses.
"I would say, "Who's that, Mom?"
And she would say, "that's your cousin, Bob."
And I would shrug. The whole idea of having a relative was unreal to me. Other kids had nieces, cousins, and sisters and brothers, and even fathers; but I just had my mother.
One of the photos in that album was a real lulu, from the point of view of prophecy. It had been taken at the beach, during happier times for the Harper family, and it showed Anne and me romping around in the nude-the two of us, holding hands and facing the camera, wearing nothing but a big smile. The date stamped on the back of the picture told me that I had been four when it was snapped, and Anne two. Very, very innocent, two babes in the skin.
Later on, when I was about ten and for two or three years afterward, I spent a lot of time studying that picture, even using a magnifying glass. I had a sister-less boy's curiosity about what little girls looked like naked, you see, I would peer at her sex parts endlessly. Of course, a two year old girl doesn't show very much of anything, but I didn't have anything better to satisfy my curiosity, not then. And there I was at ten already getting interested in my cousin's naked body, not knowing the dirty trick fate had in store for me. By the time I had completely forgotten her in the flesh, you understand. We never heard from her or my uncle after the breakaway.
I grew up. In Hartford. I grew tall and skinny, and then I filled out; and I began to realize I was going to be pretty good-looking. I entered high school and started taking out girls, and before long I had acquired a pretty good idea of female and male anatomy without needing to stare at that faded photo any more.
I got my knowledge piecemeal over a couple of years. When I was fourteen, a girl named Doris let me look at her breasts. She was thirteen, but well developed for her age, and when she took her blouse off and then started to unhook her bra, I flipped.
They were nice boobs. They were big and round for a thirteen year old, and the nipples were very pink and when she giggled her breasts swung from side to side. She walked all around the room, letting me see them all ways.
"Let me hold them," I said.
"No. That's naughty."
And she put her clothes back on again. That night I thought I would go wild with sex; I felt real pain. Doris had excited me terrifically. Well, fourteen-year-old boys have a pretty good way of easing their frustrations, and I went to the bathroom. And at least I could now say that I had seen a girl's breasts.
Doris must have figured she had gone too far, because she never let me get alone with her again. But that didn't matter, because next year I started dating Ruth and she had even bigger breasts and she let me play as well as look. I used to strip her to the waist and lie there holding and squeezing the titties and then I learned how to take her boobs to my lips and kiss the nipples. That warmed her up tremendously, and one date she gave me a memorable time. I had been fooling with her breasts and suddenly she started fooling with my parts. I closed my eyes and imagined all kinds of pleasant things and she really went to town, and I felt good all over as I felt my male spear go all out beneath her hot hand, and when I quivered and spasmed, she watched my physical reaction with clinical curiosity.
Ruth and I might have gone on to wonderful things, but her family moved out of town. At this point I was still technically a virgin, I guess. The next girl was Betty, who let me find out what the female anatomy looked like below the waist. By now that faded photo of the little girl was awfully unimportant to me.
I would go over to Betty's when her folks were out. We would take off all our clothes. Then we would hug and kiss and feel each other and press up together on the sofa. What we did wasn't really sex, not in the grownup way. Betty was terribly afraid of getting pregnant. And, she said, she was "saving herself for the night I get married."
With Betty I never went home from her place unsatisfied, at least she would do everything but the main thing, starting with what Ruth did to me, then we would try it mutually to completion, and I would press myself on her belly and she would work me off on her body, and also I would climb on her from her rear and I would do it like the beasts in the fields and from that, we graduated to mutual kissing of our bodies. Anything but the sex act. But I was happy with crumbs.
Then I was sixteen and I looked nineteen or twenty and when I had the dough I would go to watch the strippers. People who don't know my town think of it as a strait-laced, puritan town, and in many ways I guess it is. But it has strippers and B-girls.
I met Elaine at one of those joints. And Elaine made me.
She was a stripper. She was about nineteen, which seemed old and worldy-wise to sixteen-year-old me. Now that I look back, I see that she was just a kid. Every night at this little place she would strip down to pasties and a G-string and dance, shaking her cute breasts and wiggling her fanny at the customers, and I fell in love with her.
She also doubled as a B-girl, and I finally got up nerve to buy her some drinks. We would talk, and I began to think of her as a very unusual person. She read books, and so did I. It was that kind of romance.
After a long time, I downed a couple of whiskies for courage and asked, "Could I take you home tonight, Elaine?"
"I'd love it, Bob," she said.
"What time are you through here?"
She told me.
I phoned home and told Mom I was sleeping over at a friend's house. Then I sat around in that dingy joint waiting. I picked her up at the side door, and I found a cruising cab. I only had five bucks on me, so if she had lived way out of town the cab ride would have ended pretty embarrassingly. But she lived nearby-a block and a quarter by car-in a rooming house.
We kissed in the vestibule and her lips were hot and soft and warm and then she asked, "Would you like to come up for a little while?"
"I'd love to, "I said.
We went upstairs. She had a little shabby place. She fixed drinks for us, and then we kissed some more. Then she volunteered to do her act for me-only this time there were no pasties, no G-string in the way. In a little while she was naked and I went to her, cupped one hand over the swell of hernicely rounded left breast, put the other on the smooth, velvety roundness of her but tocks, and we went to bed.
I hadn't realized sex-real sex-could be that good. I thought my adventures with Ruth and Betty had taught me what it was like, but they hadn't meant a thing. To fool around like that wasn't a bit like having Elaine's soft, hot, thighs wrapped around me, like having her warm body pushing and thrusting against my own, her big tipped breasts crushing into my chest, her hips moving, her face distorted from excitement. And the soft moist warmth of her, the gentle inward quivering, the lovely velvet snare of her womanhood enveloping my manhood, the spasms of pleasure, and then the grand finale, with both of us heaving and panting and the ultimate moment of sizzling pleasure-as my gushing completion triggered her own release and she moaned as my jetting spurts of fire caused her core to quiver and pulsate. When it was over, I used her for a mattress; she held me tight, and I lay there until I got back to normal.
We had a little love affair. It lasted some weeks and she taught me more about sex than most men probably learn in three years, or three hundred. Then one night there was this big, greasy guy around thirty waiting to take her home. She gave me an apologetic little smile, and that was that. I never screwed with her again. About a year later, I heard she had gotten married to a dentist, no less.
Elaine. I still have a warm spot in my heart for her.
After that there were plenty of girls. I knew how to find them, I knew how to get their clothes off, I knew how to make them say yes, and I knew how to get into them. I did all right.
Around this time, I graduated from high school with pretty good grades, especially in the sciences. For a while I thought of going to college and becoming an engineer; but we didn't have die money, and there weren't any scholarships to be had. So I got a job as a technician with an electronics company.
When I was twenty my mother passed on quickly, of pneumonia. I sold most of the furniture, put all the belongings into wooden crates, and moved into a one-room flat near the place where I worked. Two years went by and then I got drafted. The Navy heard I had technical skills, and sent me to a training school and the result was I came out knowing a hell of lot more about electronics than when I went in. Even though I hadn't been to college I could hold my own with plenty of engineers. All I needed were some evening courses in theory and I'd be able to get a good job making an engineer's salary which is in five figures instead of a technician's salary which is in four figures and not very good ones.
I got out of the Navy when I was twenty-four. I was six feet one, weighted one-eighty-five, was footloose and fancy free. For a couple of months I took it easy, getting back to civilian life. Then I began to think solidly about what I was going to do with myself.
I wanted to go into electronics.
Okay.
But my town wasn't the place to do it. I wanted to head for one of the really exciting parts of the country, where new labs were springing up to do government peace work. I stuidied the magazines and saw that a lot of these companies were in the south and a lot of them were in California. Choosing between them was easy. I wanted the West Coast.
So I was western-bound to seek fame and fortune. Not the first young man to go west, either. I bought a one-way ticket and hopped the jet for Los Angeles. I left at noon-was in LA. around one o'clock, local time. By half past three, after a couple of telephone calls, I had rented a one-room apartment for fifty bucks a month, including gas and light. By four o'clock, I had an appointment for a job interview the following morning at a company called Intra Sonic, which I had picked out.
Things were taking shape.
How did I spend the first night L.A.? I spent it at the movies. I saw a double bill of sex movies, something from Europe in which girls kept going for moonlight swims, and something made right here, starring a lot of Hollywood strippers. I came out of that movie feeling as worked up as that night about ten years before when Doris had let me look but not feel. Outside the theater, a homo tried to pick me up, but I wasn't quite that much worked up.
I went home to my lonely little apartment and leafed through a technical magazine, to brush up in case they asked me tough questions the next day. Then I turned out the light and went to sleep. It was only ten o'clock, local time, but I was still living on Eastern time inwardly, an in my home town it was one in the morning. I wanted to be awake for my job interview.
I was up early the next morning. I went out to the office. It was a smallish place, a bunch of green two-story buildings behind a low fence. It looked clean and neat, though-a good place to work. A guard at the gate looked at me and I said, "I'm looking for the Personnel Director."
"Right over there."
I went in for my job interview.
Now you have almost all of the background information you need to understand how I got into the fix I got into-all but one item. And here the long arm of coincidence enters the picture. The whole thing may seem pretty improbable to you. Believe me, it seemed probable to me, too. I bet it seemed improbable to Oedipus when they told him that the old guy he had killed on the road was his old man, and that the dame he had married was his mother.
The first person I saw in the personnel office was a girl, a very pretty girl. She had dark, nice hair. Real full breasts pushed out the front of her white blouse. Her plaid skirt clung tightly to her wide hips and full buttocks, and from the way I saw her juicy buttocks moving under that skirt, I knew that she wasn't the type who wore girdles.
She gave me a dazzling, "Good morning."
"Hello," I said, thrown off balance by the beauty of her. In my state of horniness I was easily thrown off balance that way. "I'm Bob Harper. I have an interview with the personnel director."
She looked down her list. "Yes, that's right. He'll see you in a moment. I'm his secretary, Anne Clayton. Won't you have a seat?"
I had a seat. And I watched her seat. She moved about the outer office prettily, gracefully. Things began to happen to my libido. I wanted desperately to talk to her, to start angling for a date. But I kept quiet. I figured this might be part of the interview, a subtle way of seeing what kind of guy I was. Maybe they didn't want the sort of guy who made passes at secretaries five minutes after he stepped through the door.
In a little while they buzzed for me, and I went into the personnel office. He was young, and crisp-looking, but friendly. We talked for awhile, and he asked me some questions about my background, then threw some quick technical questions at me. I fielded them neatly enough, so he hired me He shook my hand, welcomed me aboard.
I went outside. The secretary smiled again and said, "You'll like it here, Mr. Harper."
"I'm sure I will."
"Here's a booklet outlining employee fringe benefits, pension plans, and such. The management here is quite liberal, you'll find."
She looked me over, giving me the eye. I gave her the same. Already, we were drawn toward each other. And who was she? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Sure. Anne Clayton was my niece. And I had fallen for her, all unknown. The mills of the Gods were beginning to turn, and soon would grind us both exceedingly fine. But not that kind of fine. Pulverizing fine.
CHAPTER TWO
I was quite busy with my new organization, so I didn't see her again for some time.
The job turned out to be tougher than I expected. The firm was in the thick of the latest scientific research, and even the college boys in the lab were hard put to understand what they were doing most of the time. I was stumped. But no one was rushing me. Two hours a day I got patient instruction from one of the, top men in the lab, and the rest of the time I did shop work that made me feel useful and gave me a sense of what was going on. I could see that it would be a few months before I really phased into the operation, but they were determined to give me every break.
In private life, things got going a lot faster. I made friends with a couple of guys in the shop named Will Pearson and Eddie Fresney; and they showed me around the city the first weekend and got me organized that way. Then I swung a loan, and put down a small budle for a used car in fair-to-middling condition. It needed some work, but I didn't mind. Pearson and I spent two evenings on it and got it to run as good as new.
Then there was the matter of nooky. Every red-blooded American boy needs somebody to go to bed with more or less frequently. I found it-fast.
I found it right in my own rooming house.
Her name was Francie. She lived one flight down, right below me. She was on the third floor, I was on the fourth.
The first couple of days I lived there, I saw her coming and going, I smiled, she smiled back, and that was it. She looked a bit older than me. But she was good looking. Her hair was a soft shade, and she kept it cut short, kind of boyishly. She was tall, around five feet nine, and dressed informally, usually in a pair of faded jeans and a plaid shirt with the tails out.
I wondered vaguely about making a pass at her. But for the first few days, I was too busy with the job and with the after-hours studying I had to do and with fixing up the car. Besides, I was still daydreaming a little about Anne. So Francie came to me.
It was my fifth night in town. It was mid-June, and the weather was cool and smoggy. I had come home around six that night and I had taken a shower. I was just about to go out to a pizza joint on the corner for my dinner when somebody knocked on my door.
Francie.
She was wearing her shirt and her jeans. She grinned at me and said, "Hi. I'm Francie Patricks. From the floor below."
"Bob Harper," I said. "Glad to know you, Francie."
"Figured I'd come around and be neighborly."
"I was figuring on getting to know you pretty soon anyway."
I knew what she meant about people her age in the building. I had moved into a nest of Senior Citizens. The average age of the residents in the fleatrap must have been close to 80.
She said, "You have dinner yet?"
"I was just going out."
"Don't. Come on down to my place. I've got some vittles up."
"Well-"
"Come on," she said. "Don't be bashful."
I went down. Her room was just like mine, except that she had installed a hot-place in one corner, and there was a small refrigerator in another. She was all set for cooking in.
The room was full of guitars and such. And books. She opened a can of soup, put some spaghetti up to cook, and said to me, "What do you do, Bob?"
"I'm in electronics. You?"
"I sing folksongs. At night clubs and parties. It's my living."
"I never heard you singing from upstairs."
"I never sing except for pay," she said. "I'm bored sick of singing. Especially folksongs."
"Then why don't you quit it?"
"It's a living."
She cooked a pretty fair meal, and opened a bottle of Chianti to go with it. Then after dinner she broke her own rule first thing, and sang without pay. Only not folksongs-she sang dirty songs. The kind of stuff teenage boys sing when no adults are around. She didn't blush; she looked me straight in the eye, and she reeled off more four-letter words than I ever heard in the service. It was an amazing performance, a really blistering bunch of songs.
"You like?" she said.
"Great. That the kind of stuff you sing in your night clubs?"
"I wish. They'd toss me in the jug so fast if I did. You want to hear one of my night club songs?"
"If you feel like singing."
"I'll give you a sample."
She sang a standard folksong. I liked the way she sang. I told her so.
She shrugged. "The public loves it. The fat jerks who come to the night clubs on the expense accounts love that kind of song. There they sit, worrying about the Dow-Jones Average. I'm sick of it. But it's a living." She put down the instrument. "There's some more wine. Let's kill it before it turns."
We killed the wine and then we settled down on her bed for a little serious wrestling. She was straight-forward enough and I didn't have any doubts I would get some action out of her tonight. I didn't doubt it after she sang those horny songs. She struck me as the type of girl who honestly liked loving and who had long since outgrown all the jazz about being coy and refusing her body.
She let me fool around with her form for a little while, and then I got her clothes off. I made two interesting discoveries.
Discovery number one was that she didn't believe in wearing underwear.
Discovery number two was that she had one hell of a spectacular body, full and jiggling.
I hadn't suspected the second, though it had something to do with the first. I had figured she was kind of small chested, as a matter-of-fact. But that was simply because she didn't wear a bra and did wear loose untucked shirts. So her breasts just sat there on her chest without being outlined by her clothing.
There were these two big, round, taut globes of good honest woman boob, high and firm and close together, with nice sized dark nipples standing up. My eyes widened as I saw those two fantastic breasts, and she grinned at me. And then when the jeans came off I saw the rest of the body, and I wondered why in hell she hid it under such crummy clothing.
She was long and lush, with those breasts sticking out of her like wonderful fruits, and two heavy buttocks that neatly filled my hands-one cheek to one hand-and solid thighs and all the other goodies. I stood up and looked at her.
"You look like you never saw a naked girl before. You knew I was a girl, didn't you? You aren't surprised that I don't have a-"
I said, "You're easy on the eyes."
I stopped.
She read my mind and finished the sentence for me. "You never expected a girl who looked like such a slob to have such a body, huh?"
Color crept into my face. "Well, yes. How was I to know you had a figure like this?"
"It's a camouflage," she said. "Keeps the wrong people away. Now stop staring and get your clothes off."
I did so. That's a command I never need to hear twice from any girl. She looked me over and down at my male attributes and approved of what she saw and drew me down on the bed.
Her hands touched me and I was on fire. I panted and grunted and she laughed, and waited for me, and without wasting much time on preliminaries I went into her. She wasn't the kind of girl who needed to be teased for an hour and a half first. She was moist and ready for me, and I glided easily into that wonderful female haven, and she angled up to engulf me and began to move her hips in a slow, undulating motion that drove me wild.
I slipped my hands underneath her body, cupping her buttocks, and lifted her and she arched her back; and I went deep, deep, hot, tight and it was tremendous; and she was gasping, and I was gasping and her big breasts were going bounce-jiggle-bounce with every thrust of my body and ever push of hers; and there came a moment when she grinned at me and said in a husky little voice, "I'm going to-"
She did. She didn't finish the sentence, because the next second she was there. With a real explosion. The bed heaved and the floor complained and I saw stars, and we slammed around for a long time and came crashing back down to earth together in one simultaneous, dizzy drop as I joined her for the ride, and I let go with everything, and I spurted and jetted finish-fire, and she accepted all I offered and she held me even after I was finished.
After it was over, I kissed her breasts and she stroked my arms, and then she said, "Pass me the weeds, will you?"
We puffed away for a while without saying much. Words get pretty useless when two people who go to bed together for the first time made a success of it. What were we supposed to do, congratulate each other on the high quality of our sexual abilities?
Then she stubbed her cigarette out half-smoked and picked up one of the guitars.
"I'm going to sing," she said.
She played, instead; sad, haunting melodies, very soft, very delicate. She sat crosslegged and naked and exposed on the floor, cradling the guitar on her firm thighs and leaning forward to pluck the strings, her big boobs softly swaying as she moved. She played for about half an hour without saying a word, and I sat on the bed smoking and listening to her, enjoying the music and fascinated by the snake-like weaving motions of her naked body as she played, her dark patch of venus quite openly exposed to my eyes. Finally she looked up at me. "You like that kind of music?"
"It's beautiful. What is it?"
"Elizabethan. It's the kind of music I really like to play."
"You ever perform it?"
"Never."
"Why not?"
"Nobody wants to hear it except in the little coffee-houses. I don't want to make that scene."
"You could give a concert," I said. "People would pay to hear you play like that."
She shook her head. "It wouldn't go over. Anyway, I'm not sure I want to try. I like to keep this stuff all to myself."
"You played it for me."
"That's different."
She put the guitar down and stretched out full length on the floor.
"Come here," she said.
I went to her. She was a big girl, and I went down to her and she gobbled me up. For the second time that night our bodies joined and we went through the routine of love. Later we literally devoured each other. She wanted to kiss and love every part of me, and I returned the sexual favors.
Later that night I put my clothes on and left. Francie, still naked, walked me to the door. I grasped her big round naked breasts, and squeezed them for a moment, and then left.
A strange girl, I thought.
But a great piece.
I had a perfect shack-up.
The next evening, I got home and she was just going out, wearing her sloppy joes, with a guitar.
"Hello," I said.
She smiled and kept going.
For the next couple of days, I couldn't even find her. She was out singing, I figured. The third night, when I went down, I heard voices inside, and went back to my own room.
The fourth night ditto.
On the fifth, she came upstairs, got me, brought me down for dinner, and we went laying again. Not a word about what she had been doing all week.
It was getting very clear to me that I couldn't count on her for consistent screwing. She just wasn't that kind of girl. She was a drifter, and she might choose to float my way a couple of days a week, then not leave for a month.
So I started looking around again.
All the trouble I later had would have been avoided if she had shown more interest in me. I would have spent all my time with her, would have comfortable nested on those big hot melon-like breasts, and would have gotten all the nooky I needed. But since she was so undependable, I started looking around.
Anne Clayton, I thought f her as, then. It was now about two weeks since I had gone to work at Intra Sonic, and I hadn't seen her in all that time. But this day I made it by business to head over to Personnel at the start of my lunch hour, hoping that like most of the clerical staff she ate from one to two, like I did.
I was right. She was there.
She smiled at me and then looked a little doubtful, and said, "Harper, isn't it? Bob Harper."
I said, "You've got quite a memory."
"It's what I'm paid for," she said. "Among other things. Can I help you, Bob?"
"I just came for a visit."
"To see me?"
"Yes." I scanned her fingers. No wedding rings, no engagement rings. Still hope. "You have a minute?" I asked.
"Sure. Something about the job trobling you?"
"No, it's fine."
"What is it, then?"
I looked her straight in those lovely eyes and grinned. "I think you're beautiful," I said.
I waited for the reaction. Some women might laugh and tell me not to soft-soap them, other women might get annoyed and send me packing.
She said, "Really?"
"Right."
"Okay, so you think I'm beautiful. That's very sweet of you. Any other compliments?"
"None that would be really proper just yet," I said. "But I have a question."
"Yes?"
"Are you busy tonight?"
"Yes."
"Busy-busy? Can't be broken?"
"No."
'I sighed. "Tomorrow night?"
"I'm free," she said.
"Care to have dinner with me? Take in a movie, maybe?"
Her fine hefty breasts were rising and falling steadily under her white silk blouse. She was beautiful, all right. I was drawn to her with a force I couldn't resist. And, though I didn't know it yet, she was drawn to me by the same force. They say opposites attract, likes repel, but it isn't always true. Here we were, related, though not knowing. And we were attracted.
Her lips turned up in a warm smile and she said, "Okay. It's a date and I was happy as a kid's dog chasing a stick.
CHAPTER THREE
Anne was no puritan, I found out in a hurry, but she wasn't a slut either. She believed in a certain orderly procession of things. If a girl liked a guy, she gave him one step at a time, and watched how he behaved, and if she still liked him on the next-to-last step, she went all the way. That was her philosophy.
I thought it was pretty nice. It's tough on a girl's self-respect if she puts out on the first time a guy asks her, and tough on everybody if she never comes across. She believed in a happy medium.
Of course, I didn't know any of these things as I set out in my heap for her place on the evening of our date. She lived a good distance from me on one of the hilly streets out almost at the edge of town. It was a long bus-ride home for her every day from the job.
It was a street of narrow, houses. There were hardly any cars parked on it, so I pulled up at the curb and got out, right in front of the house with the number she had given me.
A pudgy, big boobed woman of about fifty answered my ring and beamed pleasantly at me. "Are you Bob?" she asked.
I told her yes.
"Anne will be right down," she said. "Would you like to come in and wait?"
"That would be fine," I agreed.
She led me into a sitting-room and I sat. A moment later, Anne appeared, coming downstairs in a flounce of loveliness.
She looked terrific.
I felt a pang of something very much like love. "Been waiting long?" she asked. "Nope. The car's right outside."
"Where are we going?"
"Eastern Sands," I said. "Ever been there?"
"No," she said. "But I've heard a lot about it!"
She looked impressed. Eddie Fresney had tipped me off to the place. It's a downtown restaurant, very much favored by tourists, and one of the best restaurants in the city as well as one of the most colorful. He thought it was an ideall place to take a girl on a first date, even lent me some money to see me through the evening. I might add that everybody in the shop was fascinated with the idea of my dating Anne Clayton. Evidently she was very popular among the company's top echelon, and no mere worker had ever gotten to first base with her.
As we got into the car, I said, "Was that your mother?"
"No. That was the landlady, Mrs. Gordon. She's very sweet. I rent two rooms upstairs from her."
"You're all alone in the world, then?"
She shook her head. "My father lives across the Bay. I don't see him much. And I never knew mother."
"Yeah," I said. "It's a lonely life in a broken home."
At this point you're probably wondering why I didn't turn to her and tell her I was her cousin.
After all, it seems so obvious, especially since I gave you all the facts a little while ago. Things are always obvious when you have the facts. It should have hit me right in the eye, shouldn't it? Here was this girl, Anne-same name as my cousin-and she was the right age and her parents had split when she was a baby. Of course she was my cousin!
Of course. But you have to realize that I hadn't thought about that or her family in many years. They weren't in the front of my mind at all. It didn't even occur to me that this girl's name was the same as my cousin's. You know, when you move across country, you don't expect the second girl you meet to be your relation. The thought never crossed my mind.
We let the subject drop.
We talked about trivial things instead. Then we reached the restaurant, I turned the car over to the doorman, and we went inside.
It was crowded, but they took us right to our table, and we had a fabulous dinner. I didn't have a hell of a lot of experience ordering things in fancy restaurants, but I think I bluffed my way pretty well. As for Anne, she handled herself with a poise and confidence that told me she had been in plenty of places like this before, maybe even this one a few times. The idea depressed me a little. I could picture her hobnobbing with the smooth-talking expense-account boys who ran the company, a bunch of youngish sharpies who made more money in a year than I had in my whole life so far. I felt a little out of my depth competing. But so far she didn't give any indication that I wasn't matching up.
Dinner set me back a little more than I was expecting, but I rode with the blow. What the hell, I thought. It's worth it.
We stepped out into the lovely evening and she said, "That was wonderful, Bob. It was a great idea coming here."
I beamed and slipped my hand into hers.
Going to the movies seemed a somehow impersonal and cold thing to do now, so we went dancing instead. We went to one of the big hotels and glided back and forth over the floor for a couple of hours, and soon we were cheek to cheek. Her face was so soft, so cool, so sweet. Her ear was against my lips and I took a little nibble of her earlob and she giggled. As we danced I felt the firm rounds of her hefty breasts against my chest, and her thighs moving like pistons and I began to excite myself.
Then it was eleven o'clock, and tomorrow was a working day-it was time to head back.
And I began to wonder about how the evening would end.
Would she invite me up to her place? Her landlady might not like that. Anne might not even want to. Should I push the issue?
I decided not to. Considering that she lived in rented rooms, I wasn't going to score except at my place or in the car-and neither of those situations was going to come to pass tonight. And I was afraid of spoiling everything by looking too eager at the start. I could tell I had made an impression. And the clinging, languorous way she danced against me told me that this was no frigid doll; she knew the need of the female body. Sooner or later she would let me gratify them for her-no sense pushing it.
So I parked in front of the house and we got out and went into the darkened vestibule. And then she turned to me in the darkness and my arms went out to her and hers to me and our bodies pressed together.
It was a passionate kiss. She kissed me with her lips and with her tongue, with her lush breasts and sweet thighs. She put her soft body right up against mine, and I moved forward, letting her know that I desired her but could wait. Her tongue met mine, then slipped deep into my mouth, playfully withdrew and I followed it into hers. Our bodies were tight. My male excitement grew and prodded her middle.
Then the embrace broke and her eyes were sparkling into mine and she was smiling, and she whispered, "Good night, Bob. I had a wonderful time."
"And there'll be a lot of other wonderful evenings to come, I hope."
"Me too," she said.
She smiled again, a warm, inviting smile, and then she was gone. I practically floated out the door and down to my car. I was in love, I knew.
And she was in love with me, I felt.
I started the car, then looked up at the house. A light was on, on the second floor. The blinds were drawn, but I saw a shadow moving around behind them; and as she got between the lamp and the blinds, I saw her profile, her big utting breasts sharply exaggerated by a trick of the light, and I knew she was naked up there already. Excited passion came over me and I gripped the wheel hard. It was almost like nausea. The image of her burned in my imagination; I saw high, pointed breasts and soft round belly and full, tender buttocks and I bit my lip. I was wild for her.
The only thing that kept me from going out of my mind altogether was the knowledge that before very much longer I was going to get her.
When I got home I was so sexually excited that I did what I had to do, like an adolescent kid and plenty of married guys who aren't getting it often, I resorted to self gratification, and as myself manipulations became more and more intense, I stiffened and my body exploded with an ecstatic slam of continuous release. When I was finished, I felt sort of ashamed, but the pressure was off at least.
The next day I stayed away from Personnel all day. I didn't want Anne to get the idea I was haunting her. Believe me, it was a struggle. I wanted to go over and just look at her, feast my eyes.
But I didn't.
That night was a long one. I was keyed up and edgy, and I didn't have any plans. I half-hoped Francie would be available, but I half-hoped she wouldn't; because my mind was full of sweet Anne and it seemed almost depraved to screw someone else. By nine o'clock Francie didn't show. I was biting my nails from tension.
I went downstairs.
I stood outside her door.
I started to knock. Then, before touching my knuckles down, I stopped to listen. I heard her voice.
"Oh, yes," she was purring. "Yes, do that again. Don't stop....please don't stop...." Then I heard another voice. A woman's and I knew they were pulling the lesbian bit. I heard and could imagine the two naked women thrashing and twitching in close naked embrace, in mutual lesbian satisfactory pleasure.
It was a long night.
Lunchtime the next day, I dropped over to Personnel to see Anne and try to make another date. She gave me a big hello, and in short order I learned that she was free on Saturday-and that she'd love to see me again. We talked a little bit about what we would do, and she said, "Have you ever been to Rogan Woods?"
"What's that?"
"It's a forest grove on the other side of town. A beautiful place. Let's spend the afternoon there. Then we can figure out what to do in the evening."
It sounded great to me. I sensed a promise in her words, and that night I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I felt like a kid again, on the eve of his first big date; and in a sense that's what this was, because I had never known a girl who had meant this much to me before. I noticed my malehood roused in stark turgid excitement at the thought of her.
I pulled up outside her place at noon sharp the next day and honked. She appeared almost immediately. She was a dream. She wore a tight white blouse and a pair of snug pedal-pushers that outlined the contours of her hips, thighs, and buttocks in a way that left me trembling with lust. She held the picnic basket she had promised to pack. She grinned at me and hopped in.
"Hi," she said. She extended her neck like a turtle coming out of its shell, and I made the right guess and kissed her. It wasn't a sizzling kiss like our goodnight on Wednesday, just a cheery hello from a guy to his gal as they set out for a happy Saturday of picnicking.
Not that the day looked too promising-it was dark and cloudy-but as we drove on the sun appeared, I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw clouds behind me, and I realized that a great gray rain cloud hands over the coast a lot, but not inland.
Sure enough, by the time we drove on the atmosphere had changed for the better.
She directed me to the park. I drove and the road narrowed. Then we started to climb up a high road that went from one wild turn to another, and all the time huge tour buses would come slamming around the bends from the other direction, roaring past. I began to wonder if we would ever get there.
We did. And it was worth it.
After all the climbing we had done, we were back down in a valley-low, moist, and cool. And there was the grove.
"The trees are big," I said.
"You're right," she said. "But not like the redwood that get thick at the base. They grow taller than this kind."
"You sound like an expert."
"Everybody on the west coast knows all about the redwoods," she said.
"Do they have some of the other kind here?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You've got to go inland for them. These tall ones, they grow along the coast, where it's cool and rainy. You find the big ones at Yosemite. That's where they have the tree you can drive through."
"Have you seen them?"
"Couple of years back."
"What are they like?"
"Big," she said. "Big as a house. You've got to see them."
"Maybe some weekend we can drive down there and have a look," I said hopefully. "I've never been to any of the national parks."
"I'd love to go with you," she said.
So already we were setting up weekend trips. Great, I told myself.
Hand in hand, we wandered through the grove. It went on quite a way. The grove was fairly crowded with tourists who had come in the buses, mostly old women from the midwest and little boys and girls from New York; but as we walked on, we soon began getting away from the crowd. In a few minutes we were completely alone, a couple of miles into the park, not another person around.
"We can have our picnic here," she said. "Maybe it's against the rules, but we're so far away they'll never find us. We just have to be careful not to make a mess."
I walked over and had a look at a bubbling brook that ran nearby. Then I came back. She was leaning against her, flattening herself against the tree. She giggled. The cool moist smell of the forest floor was in my nostrils. Everygreen needles and cones crunched gently underfoot. I put my arms around her and she gave me her soft sweet lips.
Our kiss was like the first one, only hotter. She pressed her lush body tight against me, moving it from side to side urgently, and her sweet loins ground against mine, maddening me. Still I kept easy. We were alone in the forest and it wouldn't have been too hard for me to get her slacks off and ram into her right there. I didn't want to, though. It was picturesque, yes, but I didn't want our first lovemaking to be spoiled by some cluck of a schoolteacher from the farm coming upon us, or two goggling kids, or a park trooper. And I didn't want her to lie there getting redwood neddles in the pink, tender delights of those buttocks that I hadn't even seen yet.
So I fought back the temptation to try to lay her there. Instead, I cautiously worked my hand up between our bodies and cupped it over her full breast. She didn't push me away. I felt the fabric of her bra, but it was nothing but a cloth cup-no padding, no boning to provide support, because no support was needed. I could feel the ripe, full, firm boob inside. I head it for a long moment, and ran my other hand down to her delectable belly and then around to her buttocks. Her hand reached down and grasped me through my pants and fondled the enlarged spear pressing through the cloth.
We were both panting when we broke apart.
There was lust in her eyes, and I knew beyond a doubt that she wanted me to slip it to her as much as I wanted to do it.
But we were going to have to wait.
We sat down on the bank of the little stream and had our picnic. She had done a good job. The basket contained chicken salad sandwiches and sliced egg sandwiches and tuna fish sandwiches, assorted fruit, a thermos bottle of lemonade and all kinds of other things. We couldn't even begin to finish it all.
"What kind of appetite did you think I had?"
"I didn't know. I figured better too much than too little. You're a man, a big one. I didn't want to starve you."
"We could camp out all weekend on this."
"Maybe we will," she said.
She was only joking of course. But the hint in her voice made me excited.
When we had finally given up, we carefully repacked the picnic box, then gathered up all the rubbish and put it in a bag she had brought along. Then we walked ahead a little way into the woods again.
We kissed and petted again.
And I held both her nice juicy breasts in my hands. My eager fingers opened her blouse, she herself loosened her bra, and I slipped my hands in. I still couldn't actually see her bare breasts but I held the sweet things. They were soft and cool to the touch, except for the nipples, which were hard and hot. Her breasts almost filled my hands. I have big hands.
She was flushed and excited when we came up from our kiss. Gently, she took my hands from her breasts, and with a kind of delicate modesty turned her back to adjust her clothes.
"We'd better start back," she said. "It's getting late. We wouldn't want to be stranded here when it gets dark."
"I could think of worse things."
"I could think of more comfortable places to be stranded," she said.
We started back. My body was singing. I figured it was possible that I would score tonight, and the thought almost frightened me. I wanted it to be perfect, the best she had ever had. I was certain she had had it before, but I wanted tonight to obliterate all of her memories of other men's sex attachments.
And suppose it didn't happen?
I would crack up, I figured. If I didn't make her tonight, I would go ape. Either that or sit outside Francie's door until she came home, and take out on Francie's willing nakedness, the lusts Anne had inspired, or if not that, back to self satisfaction.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we reached the entrance to the park. We dumped our trash in the trash basket and left. Then it was back, up the winding road, down the other side, and through the sunny suburbs back to town.
As we drove, she said to me, "You like seafood?"
"Yes."
So we went to a seafood spot. I parked and we walked down to the water front. It was about five thirty. Despite our big lunch we were hungry again, and I bought her a shrimp cocktail at a sidewalk stand and had one myself. The shrimps weren't the kind I was used to; they were tiny, and you got a slew of them in your dish. Then we walked on, and I bought her a funny hat at one of the souvenir stands, and we watched the fishing boats docking, and then, around six, we went into one of the restaurants and each had a lobster.
And then suddenly it was nighttime.
We came out and walked hand in hand back up the steep hill to her car. She said, "What would you like to do next?"
"I don't know. What would you like to do?"
"Whatever you'd like to do," she returned.
I grabbed it and grimly decided to run with it. My heart pounding, I said, "I don't know. How about coming up to my place for awhile?"
"All right," she said.
And I knew beyond a doubt that tonight we would connect sexually. I would get in her.
CHAPTER FOUR
First off, I stopped in a liquor store and got a bottle, and then we continued on to my humble abode. I was damned glad that I had tidied the place up a little that morning, in half-expectation of something like this.
As we went in, I had a kind of waking nightmare; Francie would choose tonight to come visiting. But I brushed the idea away. Francie always performed on weekend nights-she wouldn't be home till two or three in the morning, and by that time it wouldn't matter if she showed up. Maybe she was with a lezzie girl friend or a boy. "Enter, my pad," I said.
She stepped in, looked around, smiled. "It's nice." she said. "It's clean and cozy. I like it."
"I hoped you would. But it isn't always' neat. I fixed it up this morning."
"Because you knew I was coming?" she said mischievously.
"Because I was hoping you would."
She kicked off her shoes and started wandering around the room, looking at the books, mostly technical. Without her shoes she was maybe five feet four or five, and she looked petite, yet curvaceous. I came up behind her, put my hands lightly over each of her jutting breasts, and kissed the smooth column of her neck.
"How about a drink? A highball?" I asked.
"Love it."
"Coming right up."
I wrestled the cork out of the bottle and mixed a drink for each of us. Then we squatted down crosslegged in the middle of the floor and grinned at each other and clinked glasses.
"To-us," I said.
I put the glass to my lips. She finished her glass first, and I pured refills.
I turned the radio on to music.
"I love music," she said. She was leaning back against me, her head in my lap, her cheek near my male excitement which pulsated and her voice was dreamy.
"I'm kind of simple about music."
"Just listen," she said.
I listened. While I listened I sipped and stroked her hair, and told myself that I was falling in love for the very first time, that all the other girls had been nothing. After a while, I reached down and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, then the next button, then the rest.
The blouse drooped open. The cones of her bra showed through. I ran my fingertips lightly over the upper curves of her breasts, visible above it.
She half-turned to me.
Then I unsnapped her bra.
This time, when it fell away from her breasts, she let me remove it altogether, along with her blouse. She wore only the tight slacks, now, her upper body was bared to me.
The sight of her, naked breasts, hit me. She was gorgeous. She was terrific. She was a symphony in flesh.
Her breasts weren't monstrous like Francie's but they were of a good size, pear-shaped. They were very firm and delightful. The nipples and surrounding areas were large and pinkish, puckered at the tips, and standing.
She leaned back against me, and I put a hand over one of her breasts, covering the large tip a moment, then letting it protrude between my fingers. Her nipple was very hard. She stroked my arm gently as I cupped the big boob.
Beautiful' breasts. I toyed with them. Then I went to work on the slacks. I was already tapering off on the booze, both for her and for me. I wanted to be sober enough to appreciate it, and I wanted her to be sober so I didn't have to think she had been too drunk to defend her body.
The slacks had a zipper on the side, and a button. I had trouble with them.
She helped me.
I felt a terrific surge of desire. It's one thing when a girl lies there and passively lets you undress her, but it's ten times as interesting when she makes some little gesture that shows you she wants you to.
Then I placed my fingers into the waistband. She lifted her buttocks and started to wriggle, and I drew the pants down over the swelling flare of her hips, and I realized her panties were coming too. I took them both down, and soon her thighs with her dark mound of femininity were coming into view and her knees and then she was gaily kicking pants and panties high into the air and off.
She was naked, delightfully so.
Lush boobs, firm satiny thighs, full buttocks with little dimples where they began to swell, soft round belly-she lay there smiling at me. She didn't pretend to be modest. She was telling me frankly that she wanted me to slip it in her.
"Anne?" I whispered, standing above her and looking down at her voluptuous nakedness.
"Mmm?"
"I want to tell you something before we begin."
"Mmmmmm?"
"I love you, Anne."
She smiled up at me. "I love you too," she whispered huskily.
The hell of it was that I meant it. Oh, sure, you're supposed to tell a girl you love her just before and even during your performance. It's expected. It's a kind of S.O.P., and many a girl won't put out unless the magic phrase is uttered. But that wasn't the case here. I didn't have to tell her, and she knew it. It was just that-well-that I loved her, and wanted to tell her.
She rose to her knees and started to undress me. She took off my shirt. Then she tugged at my belt, and took off my pants and shorts in one swoop, the way I had done with her, her face almost touching my stark turgid spear as it jutted out in pulsating flaming attention.
She was still kneeling in front of me, and I saw her looking at me in a way that I immediately understood. But she must have changed her mind, because she didn't do it. It was her innate tact again-she didn't want to do that act yet, something that some people still think is a criminal offense. That would come later on when we were no longer strangers to each other's needs.
I knelt next to her.
I kissed her breasts, taking the nipples into my mouth. I ran my fingers over her body as though giving homage to her loveliness. The room was silent but for the distant music and I felt almost as though some kind of sweet ceremony was taking place.
And so I ran my hands over her full-busted, taut-buttocked, soft belly and mound of venus, this lusty lass who happened to be my cousin, though I couldn't have imagined it then and even if I did, I still would have done it.
My fingers trembled a little as I drew closer to the core of her. And got there, and found it ready and palpitating for me, moist with want of my maleness. And probed, and caressed.
She shivered. "Bob-oh, I want you so much, Bob, so very much-"
I tried to hold back, tried to delay the consummation, but there was no checking the raging demands of desire that were rising high within me. This wasn't going to be one of those slow, lingering build-ups. It wouldn't have been possible to wait.
She knew what was going on inside me. Pretty much the same thing was going on inside her, too. She took hold of me and guided me to the seat of warmth, and it was too much, the thrill. I couldn't hold back and I reached my peak as I plunged partially into her and my flow jetted and pulsated till I calmed a own. But I didn't withdraw when I was finished, and soon my passions built up right in her body and I continued on my task much easier with her moist readiness and her own.
I pressed down in her, feeling the hard points of her breasts against my chest, and the softness of her round belly against mine; and I made the pumping motions with my hips and she replied with the same; and easily and steadily I joined my body deep into hers; and inch by wonderful inch I took possession of my cousin's body.
I was just a guy, and she was just a female and our bodies had cunningly been designed differently to allow for an interesting meshing of our intimate parts, and we were meshing. As was intended, on "high". At that moment we felt we were obeying the basic commandment of nature.
The second time I was ready, she was also, and we made it together in a spouting, spasmodic mutual release.
We went up the ladder together, step by step.
Faster and faster I spurted and flared my climax.
I opened my eyes and when we were at it later in the night, and saw her beautiful face twisted and distorted by the power of the sensations she was feeling, and then I was feeling some pretty powerful sensations myself, and I closed my eyes and clung tight to her. I cupped one naked breast for a moment, then caught a sensuous buttock, flattening both my hands out on the floor at her sides to support myself.
I lifted myself up, so that my chest just grazed the tips of her breasts, while keeping the action going below the waist. She grinned and pulled me down again. Her lips encircled mine, her tongue rammed its way into my mouth-the taste of her was sweeter than honey.
We couldn't keep the pace going much longer, though. I felt the fireworks starting to go off and I gritted my teeth and knotted every muscle in my body and held on for that critical second, and then she cried out, a joyful cry, an loud "Oh!" of wonder and happiness, and once again her please came up from out of her and overwhelmed her.
She turned to jelly while it was happening. Her body shook convulsively and she throbbed and quivered. I hung on tight.
Then once more came the slamming thrust of my own fulfillment and she shrieked with joy at the filling of the hot spurts of reaction.
Then we were lying limply, me on top of her.
Our bodies were still joined. She smiled sleepily at me and said, "I love you, Bob."
"I love you. More than I could ever say."
"It was so good, dear, so complete. I felt so safe in your arms, so warm, so secure-"
"It'll always be that way, Anne. That's a guaranteee."
"Bob?"
"Yes?"
"Kiss my breasts again. I like that."
All passion was spent, now, and there was nothing amorous in the way I leaned over and tenderly kissed each pink nipple. The nipples were soft and puckered now, which meant that she had been completely satisfied, at least for now. That was a good thing to know. Sometimes a woman can't hide the fact that she's still unsatisfied, even though she'd like to give the impression that she is. But she didn't need to pretend. She'd twice experienced a total fulfillment, and don't think I wasn't pleased about it. How often does that happen the first time between a man and a woman?
But we were special, of course.
We were of the same blood and relations.
Only we didn't know that yet. So I ascribed our extra-special compatibility to pure good luck, and let it go at that.
After a long while we drew apart. I rose, smiled down at her.
"Drink?"
"Please."
We were both fully sober. The searing intensity of our lovemaking had burned any alcohol right out of our symstems. I mixed another for her, one for myself. We grinned and sipped it.
She got to her feet. Lithe and lovely, a vision of delightful nakedness, she walked to the window and looked out at the silent street. The sweet globes of her buttocks grew tight as she bent forward.
I came up behind her. Happy "
"Very."
"So am I," I said.
She turned and looked me levelly in the eye. "I want to get one thing clear. This wasn't my first time with a man."
"I want to keep the record straight, Bob. I've slept with other men. I imagine you guessed that anyway. I don't seem inexperienced, do I?"
"Not really," I admitted. "But why bring the past up at all?"
"So I can tell you that all the other men are like shadows now. I can hardly remember what they were like, after tonight. It's never been-this good for me before, Bob. That's the truth."
"Nor for me," I said. I couldn't resist a smile of triumph. I had had my wish. I had made her forget all her past lovers. I had made this the night she lost her virginity all over again, in a way. And I was glad of that. The reason all men want to marry virgins so badly-and make no mistake about it-is that they're afraid of comparison with those who have slipped the meant into the girl before. I admit it freely. But here Anne was telling me that the predecessors didn't compare with me.
I came up to her and took her naked breasts in my hands, and she pressed against me. I was happy, the happiest ever. I was starting to see myself a married man, living in some nice suburban pad with her, raising children who would have my muscles or her beauty, depending on their sex.
For certainly she was quite beautiful.
Why didn't I spot the resemblance, then?
Because I wasn't looking for it, and because the face you see in the mirror is not the face other people see-it's the mirror image, which can be quite a different matter entirely.
I don't know what I would have done if, ten minutes after making love to her, I had suddenly realized that she was my cousin.
I didn't know.
I feasted my eyes on the loveliness of thighs and haunches, breasts and buttocks, belly and thighs. I held her in my arms a dozen times, playing with her nakedness.
Then, nearly dawn, she said, "I think I ought to start going home."
"Stay here."
"I couldn't, Bob. My landlady wouldn't understand. She's almost like a mother to me. I try to pretend I'm a good girl, and she goes along with the pretense. I never have men in my room and I never stay out all night."
"Aren't you kind of old for that jazz?"
"While I live there, I'll live her way."
I smiled and chucked her under the chin. "Anything you say, honey."
We began to get dressed. Hiding her body from me with clothes seemed almost a sin. But at last she was dressed, and the high thrusts of her saucy breasts were encased in two layers of cloth, and the dimpled rounds of her lush round buttocks now were tightly wrapped in cloth.
On the way home, I said, "Mind a personal question? How old are you, Anne?"
"Nearly 24. And you?"
"I'll be 26 in six months. How come a girl like you is still single at that advanced age?"
"Because I never met anybody that I wanted to wake up next to every day for the rest of my life."
"A good reason. Think you'll ever meet such a man?"
"I might."
"Soon?"
"Possibly."
We were both grinning. It was too early for either of us to talk about marriage, but it was certainly in the air. Even though our first date had been only four days ago. We went together so perfectly that it seemed a foregone conclusion to me, and I think to her, that we would get married someday.
I stopped in front of her house. We went up the stairs together, and we kissed passionately, and when we parted she said, "I've got a date with an office wheel Monday. Do you want me to break it?"
"That's up to you."
"No, you. Just say the word."
"What do you want to do on that date?"
"I want to spend it with you. And Sunday and Tuesday and Wednesday and all the rest. What about you?"
"Likewise."
"Then I'll break the date," she said.
We kissed again, and she started to slip into the shadows. The last thing she said to me was, "This has been the happiest day of my life."
I could have said mine too.
Funny. Suppose you had come up and whispered to me that on account of this day, I'd sufer shame, and that the smartest move would be to get rolling, far away out of California and forget about her.
I would have looked at you as if you were some kind of a nut.
CHAPTER FIVE
We dated often after that. I would meet her after work every day and drive her home, and we would plan how we would spend our evening.
No matter what we did, though, our evenings always included one vital ingredient:
We screwed, again and again.
We had a terrific physical desire for each other, and we didn't let anything come between us and the gratification of that desire. We gave ourselves up to pleasures.
Monday night she came to my room. It was hot and wild. We spent hours exploring each other's bodies minutely, testing to see what was stimulating and where. We did all kinds of things, we experimented and pleased ourselves. Some would call our acts perversions, but not when we meant so much to each other. We were proud of our bodies and what we did with them.
Tuesday we made it in the park. Honestly-just like a couple of teen-agers. We wanted to try it outdoors, and we went to the park.
There was hardly any moon that night, and we found a quiet corner in a clump of trees and settled down on the soft fragrant ground.
I put my hand under her dress and found the soft delight of her thighs, and moved up into her femininity.
She had skipped the panties tonight.
"Surprised?" she asked.
"I bet it's cooler this way," I said.
"Yes and no," she laughed. "Right now I feel hot."
I pushed the dress up over her hips, and there was the lovely nakedness of her lush body. We joined sexually and it was wonderful all the way, and when my time arrived, she kissed me as I reached my finish, and she joined me with hers, and the hot spurts of pleasure caused her as much ecstasy as my doing it, for me. When it was over we lay on our backs in the darkness and rested.
The next time we did it in the car.
We were in the car and I started it and put my right hand on her belly, feeling the firm suppleness of it, and I said, "I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait till we get back."
"Why wait?" she said. I agreed.
We found a dead-end street with only a couple of houses on it, pulled up, in the darkest part, and got into the back seat, and turned to each other.
She laughed. "You know how long it is since I made it in a car, Bob? Years."
I smiled, but I wasn't really amused. For all my talk about not caring about her past, I didn't like to think that she had been having other guys slip it into her in other cars. There's something seamy about putting out for a guy in a car. I didn't mind getting it from her myself this way, just once, for the hell of it. But I didn't like to think of her as the kind of girl who screwed in cars often.
I pushed that out of my mind. She leaned back and assumed the position-one leg on the back seat and the other draped up over the front seat. I slid easily between her soft silky thighs, and pushed up her skirt. Once again the little imp had left her panties home, and I slid into her easily and quickly and I pistoned back and forth, over and over, and wham-I was there, and she squealed as the hot gush jetted in the sheath of femininity, it seemed for the longest time, to her joy and mine.
The next night it was back at my place, where we didn't have to worry about cops, here we could lock the door and have all the privacy anyone would ever need, where we could undress and go at it body to naked body, the right way.
That was how we did it on Thursday. We had a light snack in a diner, and then she came up to my room.
In a flash she was naked, and there she stood, shapely and naked and voluptuous. I went over to her and put my hands on her bare breasts; she put her tongue in my mouth and I cupped the taut-stretched, globular rounds of her saucy buttocks. She took my clothes off and I sprawled out on the bed and she crawled all over me, and I felt sudden fire as her lips reached me, and I gasped and shivered and rose to her. We tried it that way and as she worshipped my sex, I twisted her body about without losing contact and her body pressed my face, and as I reached for her, her silky thighs entrapped my head to body, we drew from each other the ecstatic release, and we continued till we were breathing normally, wherein we parted, and embraced the usual way.
It was a long night of breasts and buttocks, of thighs, of sweet-smelling femininity. I begged her to stay right on through the night, but she wouldn't.
"I've got to leave," she insisted.
So at two in the morning I drove her home. I was dead tired and had to keep fighting to stay awake. All I wanted was to curl up with my face against her lovely full breasts and sleep for about a week.
The following night had one extra complication. I took her home and kissed her goodnight and watched her go inside, and then drove back to my place with my mind all full of pleasant, sleepy thoughts. The feel of Anne's body was still with me, the texture of her full sized breasts was vivid in my memory, the sweet scent of her.
I parked my car and went upstairs and there was Francie camped out in front of my door.
"Hello," she said.
I said without enthusiasm, "Long time no see."
She nodded. "That's why I came around. For a little visit. You mind?"
"Well, I'm pretty beat-"
She grinned. "You ought to be. I heard the mattress pounding. I'll just stay a little while, okay?"
There was no saying no. I opened the door and we went in. She draped her long, voluptuous body over an overstuffed armchair. She was wearing her usual outfit. The shirt was open two or three buttons at the throat, and whenever she shifted position I could see the heavy plumps of her breasts inside, but right now, the sight did nothing to me.
"Who's the girl friend?" she asked.
"Someone who works at my place."
"Is it serious?"
"So far." I resented discussing her with Francie. But Francie didn't seem to take the hint. She reached out, caught a booze-bottle, and helped herself to a good swig.
She said, "Going to marry her, Bob?"
"Can't say."
"You know. You just aren't saying."
I shrugged. "I've only known her a couple of weeks. It's too soon to be sure. But I like her. I enjoy being with her. You might almost say I'm in love with her, as a matter-of-fact."
She nodded. Just then she reminded me of some big cat, a tricky one, noiseless and sleek and always ready to pounce. She finished the drink and then looked up at me.
"Can we still be friends even with her in the picture?" she asked.
"Of course."
"Friends of the oppsoite sex sometimes get friendly," she said. "I came up here tonight to be friendly. Can I get a little something, or are you saving it all for your new chick?"
"I'd rather not, tonight."
"Not tonight, or not ever?"
"Certainly not tonight. I don't know about ever."
"Never tie yourself up with one person. Sexual chains lead to heartbreak."
"I'm doing what I want most in the world to do," I told her. "I'm sorry, Francie. We had some fun together, and I won't forget you. But for the time being-"
"Sure," she said, nodding. "I understand. You've had a belated rush of morals to the head and you want to stay chaste for her. Well, I won't argue." She smiled. "I was in a lonely mood tonight, and I guess I'll stay lonely. Sorry to have kept you up."
"Look, Francie-"
"That's okay," she said airily. "Don't apologize. I know how it is. All right. I'll go. Can I have one kiss, anyway-for old times' sake?"
I felt like a louse. The girl was obviously depressed-she had come up here for a little nooky and cheer, and I was handing her a lot of high-minded crud about how I was in love with another woman and had to renounce other women. But, I felt so strongly about Anne that I didn't want Francie one bit, then.
But she had a little surprise for me.
I said, "Okay. A goodnight kiss."
She slid out of the armchair and came toward me. It started as an innocent kiss, a chaste good night. But it mushroomed fast. She put her lips to mine, and the next moment she was pressing tight-and her tongue was in my mouth and she was panting hard and gripping me tight. Then she ran her hand quickly down the front of her shirt, the remaining buttons opened, and there were her big boobs, two round, heavy masses of firm flesh. And I came alive.
I didn't want it to happen. I was beat-and I wasn't interested in her any more. My mind was full of Anne, or so I thought.
But then my hands were on her breasts and I was feeling her nipples like little nubs against my hands and suddenly I was a stud all over again and my malehood was pushing against her middle.
After that she could do what she wanted with me. And she did. She pulled her slacks down over her hips and thighs. There she was naked, and she turned to the side, giving me a view of the lush dimpled heaviness of her hefty buttocks; and I hopped out of my clothes.
Francie flopped back on my bed. Her knees went up in the air and her thighs opened wide for me.
My lance plunged into the moist hotness of her.
She must have been awfully aroused. She reached up for me and engulfed me completely with a kind of real frenzied urgency, and her hand cupped that intimate part of me that wasn't engulfed by her.
Our bodies joined, and as I plowed into her I thought of Anne, and how only two or three hours ago I had been doing the same thing with her.
But I couldn't help myself. I was Francie's lust slave. She had hypnotized me with those two hefty boobs of hers, and I was unable to resist. Down she drew me, into that bottomless moist silky chasm. , Our connected bodies writhed on the bed and her lust rose like swirling tongues of flame in a fireplace, and we both were caught up in it.
I hated myself for every moment of it, but I gave her a good going, all the same. I was fully awake, fully alive, alert to her carnal want. She demanded, and I gave, and soon there was the pounding, throbbing climax-first for her, then or me-and then still for her after I had given my all in a fiery burst of spasmodic completion, and I grunted and carried things on until the last whimpered moan escaped her lips and she lay back, satisfied, fulfilled.
I withdrew from her, and propped myself up on one elbow and looked at her. She was a big girl-stretched out like this she looked like the kind of girls you see only on barber shop calendars, with breasts like watermelons and long, full, rounded legs. She smiled at me. I said, "That wasn't right, Francie."
"I'm sorry. I needed you, Bob. I've been having a pretty rough time of it, and I was aroused. Your girl friend would forgive you. There was nothing personal in it for you. You were just helping out a friend, lending her your sex parts for a little while."
"Yeah," I said. "You put it so nicely."
"Will you forgive me, Bob? Someday you may need it just as bad, and I'll be here to give myself to you."
I wanted to drop it. If I had been tired before Francie showed up, I was dead beat now. My bit with Francie had been one of those fluke outlays of energy that you sometimes can muster when you least expect it, a last gasp. Now I had it.
I lay back on the pillow.
I started to say something, but I fell asleep right in the middle of the first word.
When a couple of hundred years had gone by, somebody shook my shoulder. I opened one eye and saw a huge round naked breast dandling near my face, swaying from side to side in slow rhythm.
Francie.
I came awake fast.
"What time is it?" I asked Francie.
"Eight-fifteen," she said. "In the morning. Time for you to get to work."
I rubbed my eyes. I still felt tired, though not with that end-of-the-rope exhaustion of late last night. Francie was stark naked crouching on the bed in front of me. I sat up and she got off the bed and walked to the window, throwing open the blinds. I looked at the giant globes of her buttocks, the firm-fleshed, big soft nakedness of her form.
I remembered the night before, now-How I had had a ball with Anne. And then how I had come home bushed, only to be tricked into a lay with Francie.
"Did you sleep here?" I asked.
She nodded. "You were restless. Tossing and turning."
"I thought I slept deeply," I said.
I got out of bed. Francie was wandering around the room naked. I looked down at my male reaction, and to my disgust, I saw that I wanted her. She saw it too, and she was smiling as the turgid spear jutted lewdly like a flaming branch.
So that was how much love was worth, I thought bitterly. You meet a girl and you tell her all kinds of crap. And you tell yourself that the sun rises and sets on her, and her alone. Then another babe coming along and throws her bare boobs at you, and slip it right into her despite your fancy words. And the morning after, you feel guilty, but you're still in the mood for a jab.
"What time do you have to be at work?" she asked. "Around nine. Why?"
She pointed at my obvious sexual excitement. "I thought I could take advantage of your condition. But there isn't time. I wouldn't want you to be late. Save it for her. What's her name, anyway?"
"Anne."
"Save that siff for Anne. I'll see you around, Bob. Give her my best."
She dressed, and I heaved a sigh of relief. She then waved to me, and headed for the door. I didn't make the mistake of offering to kiss her goodbye this time.
I got dressed and went to the bathroom for a shower, and a shave. Then I made it to the place on the corner for some juice, toast, and a cup of coffee, and then it was into the heap and off for the freeway and work. I felt like a real louse.
It wasn't as though I was married to Anne or anything. But in my mind I had been telling myself that this was for real. And yet I hadn't resisted Francie's body. That told me a lot about my strength of character. It told me that I didn't have very much, at least when it came to women. Which was something I already knew. The lure of the female has always fascinated me. And I've never spent too much time worrying, before.
Still and all, if I wanted to go with Anne, I would have to. She didn't deserve this.
I felt so guilty that I kept away from her all day. I didn't go near the personnel office at lunch time. As five o'clock approached. I started chewing my nails a little, since I had agreed to pick her up as usual.
I couldn't face her-I felt miserable.
But I forced myself to go over there. I was sure that she would be able to read the truth on my puss. She would take one look at me and say, "Did you really have to do it with that girl last night? Didn't I give you enough? Oh, Bob, I'm so disappointed." And similar stuff, until I promised to be a good boy.
I was wrong, though.
She wasn't a mind-reader. She looked troubled, though. The moment I saw her, I saw that something was wrong.
I took her in my arms outside the personnel office, and she kissed me; but it was a tentative, distant kiss. Her eyes were worried.
"Something wrong?" I asked, forgetting about Franice.
She nodded. "I got a phone call an hour ago. My father's had a heart attack."
"Gee. I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "Is he bad?"
"He's not going to have to go to the hospital, or anything like that," she said. "But this will be a real blow to him. He's always prided himself on his perfect health. He's never been willing to admit he's getting old. And now, out of the blue-"
"Is he elderly?" I asked, still not knowing.
"He's in his early fifties," she said, as we started to walk to the car. "Bob, listen, I hate to break our date for tonight, but I've got to go out there to him. He asked for me. I haven't spoken to him in months. We don't get along, too well. But tonight-"
"Sure," I said. She didn't know it, but after last night I was privately glad to get some rest. "Where does he live?"
She told me, about thirty miles out. Her lips curled bitterly. "He has a mistress to take care of him. That's the sort of man he is. But now that he's had an illness maybe he'll stop studding around and act his age. He's really a disgusting man. I know it isn't right to speak that way about your own father, but-"
"What time are you going there?"
"I guess around seven. I figured I'd have a snack first, then hop a bus across."
"Let me drive you." I said.
"Don't put yourself to any trouble."
"It won't be," I insisted. "Let's grab something to eat, and then we can go out there. It's a nice night for driving."
If I had known what I was letting myself in for, I would have kept my mouth shut, gone home, and gotten a badly needed evening of rest. But I've got a talent for trouble.
I got into a doozy this time.
We drove toward town and stopped in a road-house for a light dinner. She was worried about her old man, and I got the impression that she felt plenty guilty for having moved out on him, leaving him on his own.
"But I couldn't stay with him any more," she said. "Women, one after the other. His women running around the house stark naked-they didn't even close the bedroom door at night-the drinking, the obscene noises of their rooting. I had to get away."
"How old were you when you moved out?"
"Eighteen."
"He didn't stop you?"
"He didn't care. All he said was he figured I'd make out okay. He never worried much about me. I was always in the way-he was glad to see me leave."
"And you've been on your own since then?"
She nodded. "It's been an interesting life. But lonely at times. Until I met you. Now it's all going to change."
She was right. It was all right.
But, as we drove toward the old man and my first meeting with him, neither of us had any inkling of what was going to develop, the cousin screwing cousin incestuous bit.
CHAPTER SIX
We arrived at the place, and it was a nice, moderately big house on a street of neat, moderately nice houses. Each house was set on a nice plot of its own, maybe as much as three quarters of an acre of land, which immediately maked this off as one of higher-bracket suburban areas. I figured the houses there must run a bundle.
"What does your father do?" I asked as we pulled into the driveway. I noted a big luxuriant, expensive car sitting in the open garage.
"He's in Insurance," she said. "He does well at it. He is a damn good salesman, at least, and he's good at selling himself to women."
"He must do well," I said.
"Well enough-enough to buy him the fanciest women money can buy."
We went in. The front door was open. She pressed the button, and chimes sounded as we entered.
The house looked as expensive on the inside as on the outside; wall-to-wall carpeting, and no cheap stuff either; expensive-looking furniture; painting; a sprawling hi-fi set; a very expensive dame, who came out to greet us.
She was about thirty-five. Her face and lush figure looked to be around twenty-three, but her eyes were a lot older. She was tall, which didn't stop her from teetering around on rhinestone-studded platform pumps, and the big bouffant hairdo beside. I disliked her at once. She looked like one of those vampirish females who live from one beauty parlor appointment to the next. The huge pile of hair was the thing that did it, I think.
Of course, the figure was something very special. She was wearing an informal lounging outfit, capri pants and a kind of tight pullover, and I was treated to a stunning set of plump, shapely, out jutting breasts and a flamboyantly curved pair of hips. She walked with a wiggle. She talked with a purr. She glanced at Anne offhandedly, then gave me a complete head-to-toe scrutiny, pausing at my midsection for so long that I was sure I must have left my pants open.
Then she said, "Hello, Anne. Who's your friend?"
"His name is Bob. How's my father?"
"He's doing fine. The doctor says he'll be up and around in a few days. Disappointed?"
The two women exchanged mean glances. Then the beehive-head minced over to me, giving it plenty of wiggle, and said, "Anne hates my guts, so she won't even introduce me. My name's Rhoda. That's the first name, I mean. Rhoda Harris."
"Isn't that just the cutest?" Anne asked me, with a cutting edge on her voice. "Dad thinks it's tremendous. He's already got his next two or three humps lined up, and you ought to hear their names."
She hissed something at Anne that didn't sound printable. Sparks were crackling through the air-in another second there'd be a real clash. I wondered whether I would see handfuls of that platinum fuzzball of Rhoda's being torn out as Anne got to work on her.
"easy, girls," I said warningly. "Cool it."
Anne nodded. "You're right. I'm going to see my father. Bob, come meet him."
Rhoda Harris said, "You better ask the doctor if he can have two visitors at once, first. The doctor may not like the idea."
Anne nodded and went into the bedroom.
That left me alone with the nympho sex-cat.
She leaned against a table and took a deep breath, pushing her pushy breasts upward and outward. I could see the little rises of the nipples thrusting against the smooth satin of her pullover.
She said, "Who are you?"
"A guy named Bob."
"I can figure that. How do you know Anne?"
"We work at the same place." She edged back to show off her boobs a little better. "Screwing with Anne?" she asked bluntly. "What of it?"
"Just wondering. She'd be a nice kid if she wasn't such a witch."
"That's a matter of opinion," I said.
"I guess it is. Is she trying to run your life the way she used to run her father's? She really gave it to him, you know. Disapproved of his taste in women and everything."
"Listen," I said, "I don't like this conversation."
She smiled. "I'm sorry. I don't want to get you riled up. I like you, Bob. Maybe we can meet for a drink sometime or other."
"Maybe."
She chose that moment to knock an ashtray off the table. She swung around quickly and bent to pick it up. She bent from the hips, and the capri pants pulled tight over her really full buttocks. The view was impressive. She held it for a moment, long enough for me to take in the scene, and then straightened up.
All right, I thought. So Rhoda Harris was making a sex play for me. And so she had a nice juicy backside. She was still the mistress of Anne's father, and at the moment I didn't need that at all.
Anne came back into the room. She glanced sharply from Rhoda to me, and from me to Rhoda, as though she expected the woman to be half-naked by this time and pulling me into her pudding.
Then she said, "The doctor says it's okay. Come meet my father, Bob."
"I wouldn't want to put a strain on him," I said, since I wasn't particularly interested in meeting him.
"He won't be strained. Come on in and say hello. He'd like to meet you."
I got the idea that Anne felt nervous about leaving me alone with that sex vamp and that was why she wanted to haul me into the sick man's room. But I couldn't very well refuse.
Rhoda shot me a hot look as I went out.
We crossed through the house and entered a downstairs bedroom no bigger than the infield of a ball stadium. Her father was esconced in a huge triplex bed, with his body propped up on pillows.
He was a big man.
Even lying down, he looked it. His shoulders were broader than mine; and his arms, lying at his sides on top of the covers, were thick and enormously long. Judging from his torso alone, I guessed his height at about six feet two or three. I later saw that I wasn't so far from wrong.
He looked younger than his age. His hair was dark and thick, and his face was smooth. He looked like a powerful man in more than the physical sense, a man who lived all the way, who knew how to make other people hop to his bidding. But right then he looked like a very sick man. The attack had hit him hard and his color was off, with the mouth drawn open for air. That was the only visible sign of his affliction; but it was enough, because it jarred with the robust appearance of his body.
And when he spoke, it was quite weak. Even his tongue was partly affected, so his words were thick with weakness.
"Hello, young fellow," he said. His voice was deep, even when sick.
Anne said, "Dad, this is a friend of mine from the office. He drove me over here. Bob Harper. Bob, this is my father, Leo Clayton."
I donned a saying-hello-to-your-girl's-dad smile and said, "Glad to know you, Mr. Clayton. I was sorry to hear of your-illness."
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Be up and around in a day or so," he said fuzzily. He made a sweeping gesture to tell me how unimportant his attack was. But he gestured weakly. The left hand didn't budge. "What did you say your name was?" he asked, talking as though he had marbles in his mouth.
"Harper. Bob Harper."
He frowned, but the frown passed away quickly enough. Naturally, I had no way of knowing what thought was passing through his mind as he heard my name. I might have had an attack myself if I knew.
'You from the area?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No, sir. Back east. I just moved out here a few weeks ago."
"Where from?"
I told him.
Again the frown. This time he looked sort of pale, and his arm came to his face and massaged the slack cheek in a tense, scrubbing gesture.
"Seeing a lot of Anne?" he asked. "Some."
"She's a good girl, Anne. But bossy. Shell try to run your life, like any woman. Women always run men's lives if they get a half chance. You-"
"Dad, don't get all worked up," she said. She glanced at the doctpr, who was standing quietly in the corner of the room, writing out some kind of prescription or something.
Her father settled back against the pillows. I studied him. He was a strong man, a hard man, that was obvious. He probably resented bitterly the illness that had laid him low. Most likely he wanted to kick, to break things. He was big and domineering-a hard man to like, but harder not to respect. I was not inclined to think much of him, considering the tough time he had given Anne all her life. But I could see that he really cared for her, in his own odd way.
The doctor said, "Time for your injection, Mr. Clayton, and then I'll be leaving."
I didn't want to be around to see this once-powerful man getting needled in the rear like a sick baby. So I mumbled some excuse and went outside. Anne stayed behind to discuss her father's care with the doctor.
The hot bodied Rhoda Harris was sitting in the living room, with an ice bucket and some mixings.
"Well?" she asked. "How is he now?"
"He looks rough," I said.
"Crap. Do they recover from that kind of thing?"
"Sometimes," I said. "How long have you been living with him?"
"A year. And I don't feel like moving on. You think this is going to hurt his sex powers?" she asked anxiously.
I shrugged. "I'm not a doctor. Depends on what his illness is, anyway. Some men have six kids even though they're sick. He looks strong as an ox-I bet he'll be good as new in a couple of months."
"I hope so," she said, stirring her drink. "I depend on him. I've never known anyone like him. In bed, I mean. He's a horse, a bull. He's the kind of man I need. I'm hard to satisfy in bed, you know. I'm not one of these women, you touch her breasts and the legs spread. I need a real jabbing and Leo give it to me. I'd hate to have him put out of commission. Like a drink?"
I did and I told her. I could see she had had more than one herself already. She mixed a double for me and freshened her own. Her way of refreshing it was to add about four ounces of booze and a new ice cube.
She went to work on the new drink and tossed out more intimate sexual details of her relations with Leo Clayton. It made me queasy just to listen to her. She didn't hold any details back. Well, I could see her point of view. She had obviously been getting something special, and how her stud was faced with the possibility of being a useless invalid. Poor Rhoda Harris would have to find herself somebody else to keep her body happy.
From the way she was looking at me, I got the idea she wouldn't mind trying me to see if I could fill Leo Clayton's shorts.
About fifteen minutes later, Anne came out. She looked concerned.
"He's resting now," she said. "The doctor gave him a sedative. Bob, this is going to be rough on him. He's very bitter about it. He's never been sick a day in his life, and now he's flat on his back and can't do a thing about it."
"Is he bad?" I asked.
"For the time being."
"What's the chance of recovery?" Rhoda asked.
Anne shrugged. "Can't tell. The doctor says there's been tissue damage, and sometimes it heals, sometimes it doesn't. He'll have to live a new wav of life. The doctor says that if he recovers at all, it won't be for some time. And there'll probably always be traces of the attack-a possibility of always being careful."
I didn't see any tears in Anne's eyes. She wasn't soft-hearted. He was her father, and so she would take care of him; but there wasn't much love in her for him, and she obviously didn't pity him a hell of a lot. I got the impression she saw the attack as his just desserts.
She turned to me and said apologetically, "Bob, I'm going to stay here at least for the weekend. I'm sorry, but I feel I ought to be with him."
"Of course."
"I know we were going to spend the weekend together, but then this came up-"
"There'll be plenty of time later."
Rhoda Harris stirred uneasily. "Hey, what about me, then?"
"What about you?" Anne asked coldly.
"The two of us under the same roof?"
"I'm staying here to take care of my father," Anne said. "You can stay here or not, as you choose."
"There'll be trouble."
"You keep out of my way and I'll keep out of yours," Anne added. "There's no need for friction. It's a big enough house."
Rhoda made a wry face. I could see she wasn't looking forward to having the girl with them.
Well, that was a problem for the two of them to solve, and I only hoped they wouldn't tear out each other's hair while solving it. I decided it was time for my exit. Anne was preoccupied with her dad, and there wasn't much I could do hanging around here. I would go home, read for a while, go to bed early.
"Well," I said, "I guess I'll be skipping out. I'll come over here tomorrow afternoon, okay.
Anne? To spend a couple of hours."
"Fine," she said.
I started toward the door. Rhoda got to her feet and said, "I'm taking off too. I'll drive into the city and see a movie while you're playing nurse."
"Do what you like."
"You want me to pick up some groceries or somethin?" Rhoda asked, in a gesture toward peace.
Anne stared at her. "You think you're taking the car?" she asked.
Anne stared at her. "You think you're taking the car?" she asked.
"Why not?"
"You leave the car here," Anne said. "I might have to get something in a hurry from the drugstore."
"Drugstores deliver stuff," Rhoda said.
"I know," Anne said. "All the same, if you want to get to town, take a cab."
For a moment I thought war would erupt. Then Rhoda turned sweetly toward me and said, "Can I get a lift with you, Bob? I can always take a cab back."
I blinked. All of a sudden I was in the middle. I looked at Anne, but her face showed nothing.
I blinked. All of a sudden I was in the middle. I looked at Anne, but her face showed nothing.
"I guess I can manage it," I said hesitantly.
"Thanks. I'll go get ready. Be with you in a minute."
Rhoda ran upstairs. Anne turned to me and said, "I could kill her."
"She isn't worth getting worked up over, dear."
"She's a gold-digger and a witch and a nympho tramp."
"Those aren't incitements to murder," I said. "She made your father happy. What do you care? Live and let live, Anne."
"It isn't so easy. Oh, Bob, I'm sorry all this mess had to come up. I wanted to spend everv minute of the weekend with you-in your arms-"
I smiled. "The worst will be over for your father in a couple of days. As soon as hes recovering, we can see each other and make up for lost time."
"You bet."
We embraced then. I felt the hard tips of her big soft breasts against me, and there was a terrific surge of desire inside me. I felt annoyed at her father for getting his heart attack and robbing me of my weekend's sex pleasure.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she whispered.
"You bet," I said.
I kissed her lips and started for the door. "Tell Rhoda I'll start the car and wait out front for her."
"Okay."
I backed out of the driveway and waited in front of the house. A couple of minutes later, Rhoda appeared, still in the pullover and capri pants-not exactly move-going togs, but that was her choice. She crossed the walk, switching her hips from side to side, and got into the car. Her perfume began to invade the car. She leaned back, draping one arm over the seat.
I glanced at her. Those pants were so tight over her they were practically about to split. The pullover was the same. They fit her like skin.
I got moving.
As we headed for town, I said, "Where to?"
"Oh, anywhere. You know any good movies in town?"
"Well, now-"
"That's okay. I don't feel like seeing a movie. I'll just shop for awhile."
"It's nine o'clock. The stores are closed."
"Oh, yes," she said. "Well, maybe I'll have a couple of drinks and head back. Anything to get away from Miss Primness. I hate her!"
"She's not prim," I said.
"You should know. Been making it with her?"
"My concern."
"Okay," she said. "I say it's ten to one you have. So now I've got one more thing to hate her for."
"What's that?"
"Sleeping with you."
"Look," I said, "what makes you so sure-"
"Don't play innocent. You aren't the kind of man who dates a girl just to kiss and neck. You've been making it with her. I know your type. It's the same type as Leo Clayton-you even look a little like him. He's bigger than you are, but you've got the same neck. Size eighteen, I bet. Like a stud. In every way." She leaned close to me and nibbled my ear. The car swerved and almost hit another one. There was a wild wail of horns. "Watch that," I said.
"Don't you like me? Don't you think I'm sexy?" I didn't reply.
I was right in the middle of town, now. I knew that she was going to make a play for me, and I told myself that I was going to turn her down flat. She was hot and desirable-yes, of course. But she was selfish and mean and lazy, and she just wanted to use me. I wasn't going to be used. It was bad enough last night with Francie-I wouldn't let this one seduce me. I had to have some shred of honor; there was Anne, tending her sick dad, and wouldn't it be stomach-turning if I ran off and slept with her father's jab in the meanwhile?
I was puffed up with righteousness. When Rhoda made her pitch, I was going to tell her exactly where she could go, and what she could shove there. Sure.
And then she said, "You know where I want you to take me?"
"Where?"
"Your place," she said.
I glared; I remembered my fancy resolutions of about three minutes earlier.
And then I took her to my place like she suggested and I couldn't refuse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Yeah. I'm a bum.
You know. You say you're going to be a boy scout, but when the chips are down you fade. With some guys it's booze. They're never going to touch another drop, they tell you. Until they see that neon sign that says drinks, and they make a bee-line. With other guys it's the ponies. They drop a couple of C-notes, and then they swear off, until they start thinking about that sure thing next week at the track, and they figure they can recoup their earlier losses. Still other guys, it's the market. They can't stay away from the ticker tape.
With me it was women.
Just a guy who couldn't say no. Especially with something built like Rhoda Harris sitting next to me whispering "Yes!"
So I took her to my pad.
Such that it was. She prowled the one room, giving it a once-over and probably coming to the quick conclusion that I wasn't up to much financially, which was a fact. Then she turned to me and pressed against me.
She kissed like real hot. I don't mean that there was anything cold and calculating about her kiss. I mean that it was an expert job; she knew when to use her tongue and when to use her lips, and what to do with her hands while our mouths were joined, and how to move her body. It was a pretty jazzy kind of kiss, I'll tell you.
Then we started to undress. We didn't waste much time getting to it, because it was late and she had a long trip back ahead of her. I got the pullover off her, and there was a little nothing bra underneath, and when I unhooked it her huge breasts tumbled free. Big boobs, bigger than Francie's and soft, silky, loose and bobbly.
Then the tight pants. She hadn't bothered with panties, of course. They would have made little ridges under the pants, and she wouldn't have wanted that. So under the tight pants was nothing but her full body.
She was built. I mean solidly and juicily. Although she was narrow at the waist, she was heavy curved and jiggly. Her big soft breasts swayed and quivered. She was built on a lush scale.
She stood stark naked in the middle of the room, showing me everything she had. And she had!
"You like?" she asked.
"I've seen worse."
"That the best you can say?"
"I'm not the kind who runs off at the mouth," I said. "I like it, Rhoda. Like wow!"
"It's all real, too."
"Yeah," I said. "So I see."
She glanced at me. "How about you? Are you as built as you look?"
"I like to think so."
"Show me, man."
I did that. I climbed out of my clothes in a flash, walked stark naked toward her, and she nodded.
"Yeah, you'll pass," she said in a quiet voice. "You're just like Leo, do you know that? The two of you make a pair. A couple of real bulls."
"But I'm way younger than he is. I bet I can do things he's forgotten how."
"Don't be so sure."
Then she came toward me.
I felt just a twinge of guilt as her juicy body touched mine. I thought of Anne, tending her sick sire while Rhoda and I played the hot game. I addmited to myself that I was a faithless louse, and what could I do about it? Then I took her in my arms.
Her full yielding breasts filled my hands nicely. They were nice to hold. I moved them from side to side and up and down, rolling them around, and she made little gasping sounds of pleasure. She snuggled her belly against my stark jutting malehood and forced me back against the bed, and down. Her lips were cool against me as her tongue playfully licked out. She ran her cheek against the mat of hair on my chest, then moved lower. I caught my breath sharply as she took me in a strange way of loving.
For a long while her lips moved and I closed my eyes and stroked her hair as quivers of ecstasy went through me. Then she began to crawl down my body toward my feet, and I opened my eyes and saw the taut globes of her huge buttocks just in front of me.
I leaned forward a little-she made a little sighing sound as I found her.
We held that position for a while. She was an expert at it. After a while I pulled myself up and around, so that she was crouching on the bed with her back to me. I felt her hot full buttocks move from side to side against my belly in a gesture of need.
"Take me, stud," she whispered.
I moved forward and upward and in the same time I put my hands underneath her to grasp the swinging rounds of her dangling smooth breasts. She backed up, wriggling and twisting, driving me closer yet. A deep-throated moan burst from her lips as I went for broke, deep into the moist hotness.
Our bodies were joined, now. Her skin was warm with excitement. We moved in unison, while I squeezed her bare breasts and caressed the nipples.
And she talked.
I won't try to set down the things that she said. They didn't make any sense, anyway. She was just talking gibberish. It was one long stream of passion words, as though somebody had put a coin into a jukebox and it was spouting a geyser of gab. She seemed to get a kind of pleasure out of dirty words. Once or twice before I had run across girls with the compulsion to talk vulgar as they got excited, but never like this nympho.
Then it reached a crescendo. She ripped off a short grumbling squeal, and then yelled, "Now! Give me everything you've got, Bob! I'm-I'm almost there-"
I gave her all. It was all.
I gave it so much I thought I was going to hurt her, but she only cried out more excitedly and pressed her soft juggly buttocks harder against my body. The excitement took hold of me, and I felt my peak rising.
Then hers hit her. She quivered and shook in her passion, and threw herself down flat on her face on the bed. To stay with her, I had to lie down on top of her, covering her with my own body, and as my weight came down she wriggled and jerked spasmodically. I couldn\ take it any more-I bit down on the soft flesh of her shoulder and grabbed her big soft breasts and clung to her and there was the tremendous impact of my fulfillment and hers, at one and the same time in a series of tremendous pleasure releases.
I carried her right up the mountainside. But when she reached the top she wasn't satisfied.
She rolled over, her eyes gleaming, her mouth red and moist, her breasts jiggling up and down.
"Now the regular way!" she gasped.
Usually I appreciate a little rest between sessions. Say, fifteen minutes, half an hour. But she was showing no mercy. And there was something contagious about her excitement. She seemed wild with lust.
I understood.
I remembered now that she said she needed a lot of satisfying, that she wasn't like most girls. So the whole first time had been just to get her ready. Although she had a climax, it had been only a halfway kind of release, it got her ready for the main one.
Okay, I thought. If Leo Clayton could take her on, so could I. But now I began to see how Leo had come to have his illness.
She waited and this time I took her the normal way. She arched her back underneath me, and I appreciated that. I showed my appreciation in the best way I knew.
She liked what I gave her.
We went on enjoying each other for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. My brain felt clear and I was in full charge of my physical end of it, and I figured I could go on till the end of time, if I had to. But I knew I wouldn't have to-she was showing all the signs of getting near a really big peak.
Suddenly she cried out.
And then the floodgates burst.
It was like being attached to a tornado. She ran berserk underneath me. Her soft hotness throbbed and thruashed around. I was right with her, filling my hands with the plump mounds of her huge breasts. She wrapped her legs around me in a hot grip and squeezed. I grunted and hugged her just as hard, and then I felt the pounding, insistent pulse of her fulfillment, and I relaxed my control and let it happen for me in her also.
For a long while the only sound in the room was harsh breathing.
Then I rolled away from her. I reached for the lamp but she said, "No, don't turn it on. My eyes are always sensitive afterward."
"All right."
"I could use a cig."
"Right," I told her. I found them on the bureau and lit up one for each of us, and put one of them between her lips. She smiled.
"That was fine," she said.
"As good as old Leo?"
"Better. You're absolutely tremendous, you know that, man?"
"Flattery will get you nowhere."
"I know. You're stuck on that witch Anne, aren't you?"
"Let's not talk about her," I said. I didn't want her name on Rhoda's lips, not while this wanton piece was lying naked on my bed.
She sighed. "Life's murder sometimes. If you only had his money, or he had your virility-"
"He does, I thought."
"He used to. What' good's a man with a heart attack?"
"Hell get better."
"Maybe. Maybe. But then he'll be careful. What good's a careful man in bed? It won't work out. No lousy good at all." She stubbed out her cigarette. "Come here. Give me a kiss."
I walked across the darkened room and leaned down. I put my hands on her big loose breasts, jiggling the heavy globes of flesh around. She turned her lips upward toward me, and at the same time I felt her hands sliding along my thighs and she found me at a most intimate spot.
Her hands were skillful.
We kissed for a long moment. When she was through with me, my desire had practically returned, and then she put her head down to me and in another thirty seconds she grinned, "Let's fire off another salvo," she whispered.
We did. No fireworks, this time. It was all calm, gentle, easy. I was pretty well beat anyway. We moved along together to a calm, gentle, easy but great finish.
Then we lay in the dark and smoked again. She took my hand and put it on her big loose breasts, but if she had any hopes of getting a fourth time out of me, she was doomed to disappointment.
After a while she said, "It's midnight. I'd better be getting back."
"Good thought."
"I'd stay the night, but Anne would tell her father I stayed away."
"So what?"
"He's jealous as the devil. I can't afford to stir him up. Just in case he does recover and gets back to normal, I want to keep living with him."
"Okay," I said. "Want me to drive you back?"
"No. She'd recognize your car."
"I could drop you a couple of blocks away," I said. "That's better than you having to take the bus or a cab at this hour of night."
"Wouldn't it be too much trouble?"
"It's only sleep," I said. "Tomorrow's Saturday anyhow. Get dressed."
She slipped that plush body of hers back into pants and pullover, and in quick time we were ready to go. I felt pretty beat, and there was a nagging sense of guilt about the whole thing. Hell, I didn't even like the girl-as a person, that is. Sexually she was wonderful; but as a human being she was as selfish as they come, lazy, spoiled, grasping.
I felt lousy about having screwed her. What the hell, thought, I thought. Water tinder the bridge. I couldn't undo what had been done. I couldn't change my makeup.
As I headed toward her master's abode, though, I wondered whether things would change if I married Anne, as I had been so seriously considering just a few days ago. What kind of husband would I make to her? Would I make every piece of tail who came my way? Could I be the head of a family without learning to control my wild sex desires?
I hadn't even known Anne more than a couple of weeks, and already I felt myself in love with her. But I had slept with Francie since starting to go with Anne. I had slept with Rhoda, the big sex-bomb.
And I knew that both times could have been avoided. It would have been so simple.
"Look, Francie," I could have said, "I'm tired and I'm in love with someone else, so why don't we just forget it, huh?" So easy.
And I could have stopped the car on main street and said to Rhoda, "Okay, this is where I'm dumping you. Have a good time at the movies."
I didn't cool it that way, though. Both girls waved the female bait at me, and I bit.
Would it always be so?
I didn't doubt that girls would go on being interested in sleeping with me after I married Anne. If I married her. Girls had always been more than willing to climb onto me, and I saw no reason why that situation should change. But I would have to change. I had no right to marry a nice girl and keep horsing around.
But how could I refuse?
Take Rhoda. She disgusted me as a person. Yet, all she had to do was pull down her tight pants and I would slip it into her, right there in the car. When it came to stuff, I had no willpower-I was a love slave to my desires. It would mean an awful life for Anne if I married her and kept on the way I was.
"Why so quiet?" Rhoda asked me.
"Thinking."
"Serious thoughts?"
"Nothing much," I said.
"Want me to tell you what you're thinking?"
"No."
"I'll tell you anyway. You're thinking you shouldn't have taken me to your place."
"Maybe so," I admitted.
"You're worried about your Anne. You think you should have been faithful to your sweetheart."
"Cut it out, now."
"Let me tell you something, Bob. That girl's had as many guys as I have. Or more. Right now she's playing the sweet nurse bit, but don't let yourself get fooled into thinking she's an an-gel."
"You want to get out and walk from here?" I asked. "I'm just warning you."
"Anne's no virgin," I said. "I know that. Let's not talk about it any more."
"You love her, don't you?"
"Let's not talk about her any more," I repeated in a tone that made her clam up.
Neither of us said anything until we were nearing the area. Then, as we wound through the quiet streets, I said, "Let me know when we're a block away."
"Two more streets, then."
I crossed the street and pulled up at the curb. "Okay. Out."
"Will I see you again?"
"Possibly."
"I mean in bed?"
I shrugged. "Who knows? I try to be decent. It isn't easy. You go back to Leo Clayton. He'll take care of you, Rhoda."
"If he can."
"You'll find someone else if not," I said. "Come on, take off." I was getting tired now.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. You weren't in such a hurry to get rid of me a couple of hours ago."
She got out. As she walked away she gave me an extra-special wiggle treatment with her full tight buttocks. I glared at her for a second, then swung the car around and headed back the way I came.
I felt lousy inside.
The taste of her was on me, the smell of her in my nostrils. We had been intimate, really intimate. We had done some things I hadn't even done with Anne. I regretted it all now. This woman had a weapon to destroy me, I realized. She could tell my girl all about her adventures tonight. She could describe me in detail.
I began to sweat. She was perfectly capable of such a thing. She would tell Anne just how many times we laid, tell her the positions, the sounds I had made. Anne wouldn't be able to doubt her.
And she would come to hate me, because she would see me for what I was-a stud without morals, a horny Cat. Could I have done anything more repugnant to my girl than to sleep with her father's shack job?
Not actually.
Ann hated Rhoda. And she would hate me for having let myself screw the woman.
I was in a really lousy mood as I pulled the car into a parking space and got out. Glancing up, I saw that the light was on in Francie's room, even though it was very late. I was so keyed-up and worried that I half thought of calling Anne.
I let myself into my room. The scent of Rhoda's perfume invaded everything. I could still se her sitting her, with those high, full plump breasts showing, and the lush curves of her buttocks on display.
Scowling, I got undressed, tossed my clothes in the corner, and got into bed.
I closed my eyes. But I was too tired to sleep.
Instead, I fell into a kind of groggy half-doze. I was still in it, neither asleep nor awake, when the telephone woke me wide awake.
I looked automatically at my watch. It said the time was ten past fou.
I grabbed up the receiver.
"Hello," I mumbled.
"Bob, this is Anne."
I was instantly awake. Anne's voice sounded as cold as ice. This was it, I thought-the finish. Rhoda had told her everything, and now she was calling up to give me hell and break it off. What do you say in a case like that?
I asked her in as normal tone of voice as I possible could.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was such a ridiculous thing to come out with.
I almost fractured myself laughing. Here I was figuring to get my ass burned for sleeping with Rhoda Harris, and Anne wanted to know how my mother had earned her living. She asked what my mother had done for a living.
At half past four in the morning, yet.
I said, "Is this some kind of joke, honey?"
"I have to know. Was she a secretary, Bob?"
"Yes. Yes, she was. But-"
"In Hartford?"
"Yes," I agreed, still mystified. "If you'll only tell me what this is all about-"
"Tell me her name, Bob," she said in that same strange tone of voice. It sounded as though the call was coming from a million miles away.
"Her name?"
"I've got to know it, Bob! Please!"
I frowned. "Her name was Joyce Harper. She passed on a few years ago."
There was a long silence at the other end of the wire.
"Anne?" I said. "Would you mind telling me how come you feel like asking questions in the middle of the night?"
"I-I can't tell you over the phone," she said. "I've got to see you."
"Right now?"
"It's vital."
I shook my head groggily. "Can't you at least give me a hint, Lisa?"
It's got to be face to face. Meet me-" She hesitated a moment. "Meet me in the Center Street Annex. About an hour from now. Okay?"
"If you say so, Anne. Who'll take care of your father, though?"
"Rhoda's here in case anything happens. This is more important. I've got to see you, Bob. You don't know how awful this is."
"But I-"
I was talking to a hung up phone. Shaking my head, I put the receiver down. I was puzzled silly. Did this have some connection with my session with Rhoda, I wondered? No, it didn't seem to. Why would Anne give a damn about my mother's name? And how had she known that Mom was a secretary?
I felt worried. But I didn't know what to worry about. Why had she been so damned evasive on the phone? Why couldn't she just come right out and tell me whatever she had to tell me?
Strange were the ways of the female gender. Mine not to ask why, I figured.
I ahuled myself out of the sack and started to get dressed. There went my Saturday of sleep, I thought bitterly. I had never been so tired in my life. Three rounds in the hay with sexy Rhoda then an hour of driving, and then an hour of lousy half-sleep interrupted by a vital phone call-I was so tired I felt rotten. My throat was hoarse, my eyelids throbbed, my brain felt like it had been sandpapered. I just wanted to curl up somewhere and go to sleep. But no. Anne had deep secrets to tell.
I shuffled out of the house and down into the pre-dawn darkness. It was a cold, damp night. Fog had wrapped itself around the city, and wisps of it drifted past me. Far to the east, the first faint streaks of dawn were trying to cut through the foggy darkness.
I was so tired I couldn't even drive right. I tried to go from first gear to second without hitting the clutch. The horrid screeching of the ground gears snapped me awake for a minute, and I shifted the right way. But then a minute later I came to a red light and breaked the car to a half without clutching. Of course, I stalled. The dashboard light winked mockingly at me and I stared back at it, wondering what the hell I had done wrong. After a moment it dawned on me. I started the car again and this time managed to get it going and keep it going without any more nonsense.
Center Street, at a little past five in the morning, was almost deserted. A couple of forlorn figures were sleping on the benches. There was no sign of Anne. I went across the street and found an all-night eatery.
I went in.
The waitress on duty was around my age, tired-looking but still nice. We were the only people in the place, and she looked at me hopefully, as though maybe there was a bed in the back room and she wouldn't mind if I gave her a quick tumble.
But I wasn't having it.
"Coffee," I said. "Black."
"Coming up." Her uniform was pretty thin and I could see nice full, pear-shaped boobs underneath it. At another time I probably would have taken her up on her unspoken offer. Not now, though. I wasn't in the mood. I was as much out of the mood as a living human man stud can get.
She kept on looking at me hopefully. She didn't stop until I got to the bottom of the coffee cup, put the tariffon the counter, and walked out.
Still no Anne. And not much sigh of dawn yet either. The mist was heavier.
I settled down on a bench to wait.
Ten minutes later I saw the familiar expensive sedan making its way along the north side of the street. Leo Clayton's car, I figured. I elbowed up, and started to walk as fast as I could.
She got out of the car. Even by the poor light of the streetlamps, I could see how awful she looked. She came running to me, and I took her in my arms.
She was shaking.
"Bob," she murmured. "Oh, Bob-"
"Tell me," I whispered.
I took her hand and held it. Looking at the fingers I was startled to see that she had bitten her nails to the quick, every one of them. She had had such beautiful nails, long and polished. Now her fingers looked short and stubby, and she hadn't even filed her chewed-up nails. Something was way off.
We sat down on the nearest bench. Her eyes were red and raw-looking from crying. Her cheeks looked hollow, and she kept nibbling at her under lip.
"Now," I said, "explain the mystery."
"It's horrible," she said. "Hardly know how to tell you-"
"I'm going to blow my stack in a second if you don't cut the suspense routine, Anne."
"All right. All right." She took a deep breath. "Your mother's name was Joyce Martins, and she married a man named Dick Harper. They lived in Hartford and had a child. She worked as a secretary; he had a job with an advertising outfit. He had a brother who had a girl. When he had been married six or seven years, he quarrelled badly and got divorced. He took the little girl and went west. His wife Clare stayed in Hartford and took her brother-in-law's boy, and supported herself by working as a secretary. Am I right so far?"
"Where did you get all this info?"
"Wait," she said. She wasn't looking at me now, but was staring off toward trees and neon lights in the middle of the block. In the same million-miles away voice she went on., "While you were growing up in Hartford, you never heard from your uncle, after your father died. You practically forgot they existed. Maybe you did forget. But they were still alive. They settled on the West Coast.
A sudden suspicion wandered through my mind. But no, I thought. It was too fantastic.
My flesh began to crawl.
She went inexorably on. "Your cousin grew up, started dating boys, all the rest. As for my father, your uncle, he got into a little legal trouble in Frisco, so he came to Los Angeles and went into the present business, and changed his name to-"
"No, Anne! You don't mean it!"
"-to Leo Clayton. He's my father."
I felt as though someone had rammed a file into me and hit me with a piledriver at the same time. I was weak and dizzy with shock and amazement and disbelief. And an image went searing through my brain.
Myself naked, and Anne naked. And the two of us joined in the bond of love. And my body moving on top of hers, my buttocks rising and falling, and her knees at either side of my body as I reached my peak in her.
My close cousin.
I had slept with a member of my family.
I was in love with my own blood.
"No," I said, shaking all over. "This can't be true, Anne. It's impossible. It-"
"What was your cousin's name, Bob?" I was floundering, now. I was drowning in my own amazement. "A-Anne," I said.
"My name. And my cousin's name happened to be Bob. Anne and Bob. Isn't that nice? Isn't that lovely? Anne and Bob, first cousins. It's too much Bob."
"When did you find out?" I asked her.
She gripped the bench with both hands. "About half an hour before I called you. The sedation wore off my father, and he woke up. He asked me what your name was again, and I said Bob Harper. And did you look familiar to me , he asked? No, I said, I couldn't place you. He asked if I had slept with you."
"What did you tell him?" I asked.
"That I had," she answered. "I didn't see any point in lying. I said yes, we were sleeping with each other, had been for a while."
"And then?-"
"And then he made a little unhappy sound. Then he started to tell me a little story He let me in on the news that my name wasn't Clayton, after all, that it had really been Harper, but it had been changed when I was a little girl. He told me about our families from Hartford, the first cousin named Bob that was your age. He pointed out how much you looked like a younger version of him-alike enough to be definitely related."
"No," I said over and over, as though saying it often enough would make the whole unhappy mess unhappen. "It isn't so!"
"Yes," Anne said. "He noticed the resemblance the moment you came in the door. And then when you told him your name, he wanted to flip. But he couldn't say anything, not then. And then he was put under sedatives. But he brought it up as soon as he woke."
"What did you say?" I asked hoarsely.
"I told him it was all just a coincidence," she said, "that you must be some other Bob Harper. And he made me call you. He told me your mother's first name and the she had been a secretary, and he made me phone up at four in the morning and ask you. And you said-"
"My mother's name and the whole bit."
"Yes. So you see, Bob-"
"I see. I see more than I ever wanted to see in my life. I see that I'm of your blood. I see that you're my Cousin. I see that both our lives are messed up."
I put my head in my hands and moaned. I was shattered, really fractured. My mind went back over the nights Anne and I had spent together-the times in my room, the trip to the woods, the time in the car, the time in the park. Her naked voluptuous body joined to mine. Her sweet breasts in my hands. Her buttocks and thighs, her loins responding to my touch, her body warming mine, her womanhood opening to me, hot and wonderful.
My own cousin.
My beloved.
I was overwhelmed.
"What are we going to do?" I asked. "What the hell are we going to do?"
"I've thought about it," she said. "There's only one thing we can possible do. Forget each other."
"No. I can't."
"It has to be," she said firmly. "What we've done, it's against most of the laws of society. First cousins sleeping together-no, it has to stop. We've got to drop out of each other's lives completely. We have to wipe out of our minds everything that passed between us."
"I couldn't do that, Anne."
"You have to. Forget every kiss, forget the times we made love, forget how good it was. Otherwise we'll be outcast to a lot of society."
I looked at her in the early light of the new day. As tired as she looked, as haggard, she wa day. As tired as she looked, as haggard, she was still beautiful to me. Very much so.
But she was my cousin, and the laws of many states said I couldn't have her. We could live together in the same apartment as brother and sister and no one in the world could raise any objection. But if I approached her as man to woman, if I touched her breasts, if I lowered my manhood into hers and took her sexually-no, that was forbidden, unnatural, evil to many.
Why?
We had met as strangers. We had fallen in love. So what that we had shared the same parents? Why the taboo? What did it all mean? Why should we have to give each other up now?
"Anne, I love you. I can't forget you."
"I love you too, Bob. More than I ever dreamed I could love a man."
"Then why break it off?" I demanded. "If we love each other-"
"No. It's not right."
"No one would know about it. Your name is Clayton, my name is Harper. We come from opposite ends of the nation. No one could possibly know that-"
"My father knows, Bob. Your uncle."
"What of it?"
"You're being foolish. Do you think he'd stand by and let us have a carnal affair? Or even get married? He won't agree, Bob, and he'd be perfectly right to stop us. No, Bob. We've got to break up."
"Suppose he died," I persisted. "He's the only one who knows. If he died-"
"He's alive, Bob. And he's your uncle as well as my father. Don't talk that way."
"I can't think of him as my relation, not after the way he deserted your family. And you don't have much of a debt to him either, the way I look at it."
"Regardless, he's alive."
I nodded. He was alive. I found myself wishing he would pass on before morning, and then I pulled up short in horror. She was right; he was my relation, and I had no right to wish his death, any more than he had any right to feel sexual lust for my first cousin.
"So that's the finish, is it?" I asked.
"I'm afraid so."
"Just like that. I had big plans for us, Anne."
"They'll have to be forgotten. We can't see each other any more. After I get into the car and drive away, you'll never see me again. I'm going to quit my job and find a new one. Maybe I'll go to a different state."
"I won't see you ever again? Not even as a relative? When your father dies, I'll be alone in the world except for you. A man's entitled to see his cousin once in a while."
She shook her head. "This is a special case. If we saw each other, we'd be tempted. We'll never really learn to think of ourselves as relatives. There'll always be the pull of the flesh. So I think this had better be good-bye for keeps, Bob."
"Must it be?"
"It has to be. Be realistic. The odds are against us. So long as one other person knows-and someone does know-we don't stand a chance.
Face it like a man. Just wipe me from your mind. You've been to bed with plenty of girls before me, and there'll be plenty afterward. There was nothing special about me."
"There was," I said. "Very special. I loved you."
"That has to be over now."
She stood up, and drew her jacket tight at the throat. I could see the curves of her full breasts, the contours of her hips and thighs, and there was a tight band of pain across my throat and belly, for I knew her intimately.
"One last kiss?" I asked softly.
She hesitated. "Okay. One last one, Bob-a goodbye kiss."
I drew her toward me, put my arms around her.
She gave me her cheek.
"No," I said. "Don't start being related until after this kiss. This is our goodbye kiss."
"It'll be harder for both of us, Bob."
"Please," I whispered.
She held back a moment, then turned to me and gave me her lips and her mouth.
It was a torrid kiss. Gradually she put her whole being behind it, and her loins pressed against mine, and her big breasts jabbed into my body, and our tongues met. I ached for her. Cousin or not, I wanted her. Right there in the street, even.
But the kiss ended. She pulled away from me, looking shaken up, and I knew the kiss had stirred things inside her that she had vowed never to let stir again.
"Goodbye, Bob."
"Anne. I love you, Anne-some places, they allow....."
"You loved me," she corrected. "I loved you.
Goodbye, Bob."
"Goodbye," I said.
I watched her walk away. This mist gradually closed in around her, and she got into the car, and a moment later I heard that big powerful engine rumble into life. I stood there staring until she drove away.
Then I went back to my own car. I turned it on and sat behind the wheel for a long time without trying to go anywhere.
I felt lousy.
I felt cheated.
My life had fallen apart in one hour flat, which was close to the record for the course. It wasn't even six in the morning yet.
And Anne and I were finished. I would never see her again. I don't know why-
Never see my beloved.
My own blood.
It was just seeping into me now, taking full hold. I kept seeing her naked body before my eyes, kept visualizing the pointiness of her nipples, the curve of her buttocks. You aren't supposed to think of your own cousin in those terms, but this was a special case.
And I'd have to forget her.
I put the car into gear, and moved out into the street, driving in a strange dream-like way without really knowing what I was doing. It was a miracle that I got home alive. I parked the car from memory alone and got out. I felt a little dizzy. The sun was coming up now.
Anne, I thought desperately. Honey, I love you so, it isn't so, I'm not related to you, I don't have any relatives at all!
But it was so. If I had never paid that visit to Leo Clayton's sickbed, we might never have learned the truth. But I had gone, and he had recognized my name and my physique, and now the story was out.
I bit down hard on my lip as the vision of her nakedness crept into my mind again.
Forget her, I thought. You've got to.
I went into the house. I felt terrible alone, cut off from the entire world. I had to talk to someone. I had to spill the whole monstrous story out, or it would well up inside my brain and destroy me.
I shot upstairs like a bullet. I knocked on Francie's door. It was time for her debt to me to be paid.
CHAPTER NINE
I knocked at her door, waited, knocked again. For a while there was no sound from inside. Then I heard Francie say sleepily, "Who is it?"
"Bob Harper."
Another long pause, then, her voice, "Is something the matter, Bob?"
"Yes," I said. "I've got to talk to somebody, Francie. It's important."
"All right."
I heard bare feet padding across the floor. Then the door opened and a tired-looking Francie peered out at me. She was stark naked. I stared at the heavy round of her full hefty breasts, and the nipples looked up at me like two big red eyes. Her short hair, was rumpled from sleep.
"Come in," she said.
As I closed the door behind me, she sank down heavily on the edge of her bed and sat there, shoulders slumped, heavy breasts drooping forward. She didn't look more than half awake even now.
"I'm sorry to come bothering you," I said.
"What time is it?"
"Around six in the morning."
"Golly. A girl never gets any rest around here."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I just want someone to talk to. You can't imagine what I just got hit with. The worst possible news in the world."
"You were called up."
"I'd be glad to trade this for a draft call. No-"I said, "this is ten times worse, Francie. A hundred times worse."
"What happened?"
"You know the girl I was going with? Anne-the one I was so much in love with?"
She nodded. "Something happen to her?"
I shook my head. "No. It happened to me. I just found out something about her. I found out that she's really my first cousin."
Francie looked up eyes popping. "Huh?"
I repeated it.
She let out her breath in a long, slow whistle of disbelief. After a moment she rose and slowly crossed the room to the sink. Turning on the cold water, she bent over and splashed it in her face. I sat there, studying the supple lines of her back and the way her hips widened into her belly and I looked at her as remotely as remotely as though she were a stone marble statue in the museum.
She straightened after a moment and dried her face. She seemed completely awake now.
"Tell me the story," she said. "How could a thing like that have happened?"
I told her. I started at the beginning and went right through to the things Anne had told me an hour ago, and Francie listened to the recital without interrupting once. Finally I fell silent.
Francie murmured, "Nobody deserves a kick in the teeth from Fate like that. Nobody I'm sorry for you, Bob. But you can many if you like. It's been done."
"I held her in my arms," I said tonelessly, and pointed toward the ceiling. "Right up there. I kissed her all over. I touched her. I slept with her. And now-"
"You've got to start forgetting her," she said.
"How?"
"I can't tell you that. It'll take time-gradually it'll fade, the wound will heal. You'll find someone else to love. So will he."
"I want her," I said. "No substitutes."
"You could have her, if you want limitations."
"Why the hell not?" I asked. "Who's to stop us if we went away somewheres and got married? Her father-my father's brother-he wouldn't come after us. And there's no one else."
"You shouldn't-"
"Why not?"
"Anything could happen-there are laws."
"Such as?"
"Suppose you had a child," Francie said quietly.
I shrugged. "The kinds of Egypt married into their families all the time. There's been plenty of royal inbreeding in the world. What the hell, there's no insanity in our family. We're a healthy bunch. If we had kids they'd be as strong as I am, as good-looking as Anne-"
"You're talking foolishly, Bob. You shouldn't marry her-not your own first cousin-no matter how much you think you love her."
I looked down at the floor. After a long moment I said, "You're right, I suppose. But It's so hard to admit it, Francie. So very hard."
"You'll get over it," she said.
"But what do I do in the meanwhile?"
"Try to forget."
I shook my head and thumbed my weary eyeballs. "I can't, I can't. Oh, dammit I'm so tired, Francie, I just want to get some rest."
"Get undressed. Come to bed."
"I don't feel like a lay now."
"I didn't say anything about that, Bob. Just come to bed. You need someone; you don't want to be alone now. Just sleep here. When you wake, you'll feel a damned lot better, believe me."
She came over to me. I stood there like a puppet with strings cut while she undressed me. Despite the fact that she was naked, despite the fact that in another moment I was stark naked too, I felt no desire for her. I was drained of lust. I just wanted to curl up somewhere and pass out.
She took me by the hand and led me to the narrow bed. She switched off the light. We got into bed together. She stroked my hair, and pressed my head against her bare breasts. The big plump hillocks were so soft, so warm, so sweet-smelling.
"Sleep," she murmured. "It's the best remedy for any trouble."
I nodded and closed my eyes. I burrowed up against her breasts, burying my face in the valley between those two huge, fleshy rounds. She continued to stroke my hair, slow and easy, slow and easy.
I dropped off into sleep.
It was a sleep full of bad dreams-but at least it was sleep.
I awoke many hours later. At first I didn't know where I was or who I was sleeping with. Then I reached out and my hand closed over a breast-a big soft bare breast, firm but resilient, filling my entire hand. Her breast.
I remembered.
I remembered the painful scene with my cousin, and I remembered coming here to be comforted by Francie. All the sorrows of the world descended on me again. I felt the blackness of depression. Her nakedness moved against mine. Suddenly despair gave way to turgid lust. I was alone in the world, and wanted desperately to be part of someone else. I couldn't have the person I wanted, but there was a substitute right there. I brought my other hand down on her body and, without opening my eyes, began to stir her. One of her breasts was near my lips, and I nibbled on it.
"Yes," she whispered. "Go ahead, if that's what you want. I want you to be contented." i turned to her. Her nakedness was soft and warm beneath mine. I felt her hand grasping me, guiding me into her. I slid into her.
Our bodies moved slowly in the age old rhythm. I still hadn't opened my eyes; I was reaching out in blind lustfulness, in animal-like need for physical comfort and she comforted me with her moist sheath. Everything was soft and warm and slippery, and it was good, so very good. I moved up and down, up and down, and the placid bulk of her nakedness was there to receive me, riding with every thrust, answering with one of her own. Soon I felt the tingling excitement, the twitch of sensation. I knew that she wasn't ready yet, but in my present state of confusion and despair, I couldn't stop to consider her feelings. "I can't hold back," I said. "Right now."
"All right. Go ahead. I don't care."
"Maybe I can wait-"
"No. Goon. You finish."
She was smarter than I was; I couldn't wait. My need was too compelling. It swelled and swelled, then it burst, in a frenzy of sudden action. She held me tight while I was having my finish. Her warm arms were clasped around my back, and I felt the double bulk of her breasts cushioning me, and for just a moment the world was good again as I spasmed and my reaction was happening.
Then, when it was over, I rested for a little while, pillowing against her breasts without separating our bodies. I waited until I had my balance again, then I started to glide back and forth, still in her.
"You don't have to," she said.
"I want tto." she said.
"You need your rest," she said.
"I believe in giving as good as I get," I insisted.
So I moved, and she moved with me and this time I was able to bring her climax with mine. I felt good about that. The first time, I had simply been using her. She had made herself a convenient receptacle where I could eposit my need. But I don't like using women that way. So the second time around, I made up for it.
Again we rested for a while, I began to feel a little better about things.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Around two in the afternoon."
"So we've slept away the whole day."
"You needed it," she said softly.
I realized that for the last few hours, at least, she hadn't been sleeping. She had just been lying there holding me, keeping me warm, fending off loneliness for me while I slept. That was damned good of her. I thought.
"We might as well get up," I said.
"If you want."
We got out of bed. She slipped a robe on and went down the hall to take a shower.
Leaving me alone was a mistake. The moment the door closed, the darkness closed in on me again. I thought of Anne, off there taking care of her sick father, my sick uncle who had thrown the monkey wrench in to the works. What was she thinking about today? Did she miss me as much as I missed her? Maybe Rhoda Harris had told her all about last night's exploits with me. In that case she might not regret a thing. She might even be glad to have gotten rid of me before it was too deep.
A few moments later Francie came back into the room. She peeled off the bathrobe and tossed it to me with a cheerful grin.
"Here," she said. "Your turn. Nice fresh shower will freshen you up."
I took the robe from her. She looked pink and well-scrubbed, and a few droplets of water still gleamed on her naked body. I slipped on therobe. It fit me pretty well, though it ended near my knees. It was still moist from her body, and there was a kind of sensuous thrill about that.
"I'll fix breakfast while you're showering," she told me, still naked.
She was right that the shower made me feel better. I stood under water as cold as I could stand it, and the blade of icy water surgically slashed away the unhappiness of last night, the bitter shock. I was almost in a good mood when I got out. But it didn't last long-there was always the memory of my love sliding back into my mind, and the clammy fist of lovesickness tightening around my heart.
I pushed open the door. There was the smell of cooking food on the hotplate. She handed me a glass of orange juice.
"You need it," she said, and served breakfast-all the comforts of home. She was really going out of her way to make me feel in a better state of mind.
But I realized I was imposing. I had barged in on her at six in the morning, and it was mid-afternoon and I was still there. I couldn't do that. I had to get away, to go off somewhere by myself and think things through. It was too easy to slip into a dependency on this robust, good-natured girl.
Francie said, "After you've eaten, maybe we can go for a drive somewhere."
"No," I said. "You've got your own life to live. I've taken up enough of your time today."
"Don't be a jerk."
"I mean it," I insisted. "I've got to figure everything out by myself. You've been great, Francie. But I can't sit around here letting you cheer me up."
She tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't be talked. I told her that she would have to let me go off on my own, and after a while she gave in. So I kissed her, in a warm kind of way, and got dressed, and went upstairs to my own apartment.
I shaved and changed my clothes. I didn't want to stay around the apartment. There was too many memories; memories of Rhoda Harris lying on her belly with her big bare buttocks wriggling in the air, memories of Francie, and above all, memories of my cousin Anne. Anne naked, her eyes sparkling, her body alive with desire. Her tingling in my arms. Her gasping with pleasure, her pistoning her loins and hips, Anne with her dark hair tumbling over my face, Anne with her fully lovely breasts firm against my hands.
Anne.
Anne. My love. Why can't I? Memories of her everywhere. She haunted me.
I got the devil out of the building and started walking toward Main Street, where there would be some sign of life on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't know what to do with myself, now that I was alone. I didn't know where the hell I was heading today. Just walking.
I crossed town, where the excitement was, passed the big, solid-looking city buildings, and cut up the crossway and down the other side. When I got to Main I found a bar and stopped in for some quick refreshment. You sometimes meet interesting people in bars, and right now I wanted to meet lots of people.
No luck. I had a double martini on the rocks and sat hunched by myself drinking it. The television set was on and everybody in the bar was all wrapped up in the ball game. The score was tied, last of the ninth, two out, two on, and you'd think that game was the most important thing in the world.
"What's the score?" I asked the bartender.
"2-0 L.A. He's pitching a no-hitter in the sixth."
I nodded without even asking who "he" was, finished my drink, and cleared out.
What did all those baseball fans care about my troubles? Had they ever fallen in love with their own blood? Probably not. And all they gave a damn about was a bunch of highly-paid, overage adolescents who spent their working days slamming a hard ball around.
I walked three blocks. I found myself in front of a movie theater. Without even looking at the titles on the marquee, I put down my money and walked in.
The first picture was a detective movie. I didn't pay any attention to it. I just sat there letting the action and sound flicker past my eyes. In a way it was soothing, like being hypnotized. But one of the characters in the film had a beautiful niece, and every time she wandered into the plot I felt a little jab of anguish deep down in my gut.
The second picture was a western. I watched about an hour of it, gave up in disgust, and went outside. Night was starting to fall. I passed a newsstand at the corner and the headline announced, "METS 4, L.A. 3." So much for what's-his-name and his no-hitter. I was glad that all those eager barflies had had their fun spoiled.
I walked on.
I felt hungry and lonely.
Anne, I thought. Anne, where are you? Honey, what are you thinking about? Darling, do you miss me? Why can't we-?
She had said we must not see each other again. Would she back down? Maybe my uncle would die. Then nobody in the world would stand between us. Which is worse, I wondered-to sleep with your cousin, or to wish for her father to go?
But he wasn't really much of a father, I thought, except for the accident of having given her life; he hadn't raised her; he hadn't taught her how to see things and how to throw a football; he had run away and left her and blotted them from his mind for almost twenty years. Was that a father? Did they owe him any love and respect? For what-having had her mother?
And was Anne really my cousin? Sure, in the sense that we had the same relatives. But we hadn't been raised together-we weren't kid in that sense. We had met as strangers. We had embraced as lovers. It could have gone on that way, and no one would have been the wiser.
Anne, I thought again, wanting her.
This day wasn't turning out to be a success after all. I should have stayed with Francie, I realized. She was good, she was pleasant. Instead, I was out here wandering on my own, getting bluer and bluer with each passing moment, and doing myself no good at all.
I stopped in another bar. I put away two more doubles.
They didn't help. Not one goddamn bit.
A girl tried to pick me up. I'm being charitable when I call her a girl. She was about forty and hadn't been in her prime since Ike was in his first term. Her hair was a phony blonde, her eyelashes were long and fake; her lipstick was smeared.
"Give you a good time," she whined. "Beat it."
"You don't have to be that way about it!" she said indignantly. "You lousy queer!"
She walked away. I felt sorry for her. I shouldn't have been so blunt. She was a human being, wasn't she? She had troubles of her own. I could have refused politely and not hurt her.
I had another double.
I was starting to get maudlin, now. Another minute and I'd be weeping. I wanted my cuz.
Suddenly, feeling very lonely and more than a little drunk, I got the bright idea of calling Anne and trying to talk her into changing her mind about our breaking up. I figured that maybe in the twelve hours or so since I had seen her, she had come to miss me, and she would agree. It wasn't a smart thing to call, of course. I couldn't have hoped to get anywhere. But I was too drunk to think that out. I dropped nickels in the slot and dialed her father's number.
The phone rang at the other end. Once, twice, three times.
I came to my senses. I realized I was a damn fool for calling-I had no business bothering her.
She had been right that we had to stay away from each other, and I was making it harder for both of us this way.
But I couldn't put down the phone. The hope of hearing her voice again triumphed over common sense in me.
Four rings. Five.
Then someone picked up.
"Hello?" the voice said.
I sighed in relief. It wasn't Anne who had answered the phone.
"Hello, Rhoda," I said. "Bob on this end of the old wire. How ya been?"
CHAPTER TEN
She sure hadn't been expecting to hear from me, that's for sure.
She seemed surprised that I called.
We exchanged some jabber and then she said, "You and Anne have a fight or something?"
"Why?"
"She's been acting peculiar all day. Won't talk to anybody. In a real blue mood. I mentioned your name and she almost hit me."
I said, "We brock up."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"When did all this happen? It was past two in the morning when I left you."
She called me at four," I said. "We met downtown and talked it all over. We aren't going out with each other any more."
"How do you like that?' Rhoda asked. "So why'd you call up then?"
"To talk to you," I lied glibly.
"Oh. Uh-huh. Well, you got me."
"What are you doing today?"
Nothing much. Hanging around."
"Meet me in town?" I don't know why I said it, except that I was tired of being alone. "You really want me to?"
"Yes."
"Okay," she said. "I'll take a cab in. Where are you, anyway?"
I told her. She said, "Okay. Give me around an hour, okay?"
"Agreed."
"You sure you don't want to talk to Anne?"
"Positive," I said. I paused a moment, then added, "How's her father?"
"The same. No change. The doctor's been here a few times. They don't know if he'll ever get out of bed again. Well look-I'll see you soon, okay?"
"Right," I said, and put down the phone.
I was glad I hadn't had to talk to Anne. That was dumb, calling up like that. But I wondered what was the sense of seeing Rhoda. Here I had turned down the kind offer of a good girl like Francie to spend the day with her, and instead I was spending it with someone I did give a damn about, someone who was good for nothing except a jabbing.
Well, I was set now.
I wandered around a little while longer. Then I went over to the place where she was supposed to meet me and waited for her.
She showed up a little ahead of time. She was dressed simply, just an ordinary blouse and skirt. But she was wearing those silly platform pumps again, and the glittering beehive of her hair stood up like a helmet.
She slipped her hand through mine. "What are you going to do, lover?"
"I don't know. Let's go out on the town. I'm in a lousy mood."
"On account of Anne?"
"Right," I said.
She grinned, "I'll help you forget her. What kind of place you want to go to?"
"A place where I'll have a good time."
"I know some pretty hot places," she said. "Want to try one of them?"
"The hotter the better," I said.
She laughed. "You don't know what you're letting yourself in for," she said.
We got onto a bus and headed up the shore to the Bohemian section of Los Angeles, like Greenwich Village, only a whole lot shabbier and sandier. Rhoda was taking me to some sort of beat's joint. Well, in my present mood that was perfectly okay.
It was a dingy basement place on some dingy back street way the hell and gone down the coast. By the dim light of a few dim bulbs I saw travel posters and abstract art on the grimy walls. The other patrons were fifty-fifty divided into two groups; half beard-and-blue-jeans beatniks, and half dressed-to-the-teeth slummers with loot.
"You come here often?" I asked her.
"With Leo, yes. He liked the act here."
"What kind is it?"
"You'll see."
A girl came over to take our orders. She looked like she was in her teens. She wore no makeup and she wore no bra. Her young pointed breasts were visibly moving and hobbling around under her sweater, and I could see the little nubs of her nipples as they wobbled about.
"What'll you have?" she asked, as though she didn't give a damn if we had anything.
I looked at Rhoda. She said, "Wine. A bottle of white. We sat there drinking it.
"Want to tell me about what went wrong with you and Anne?" she asked me.
"No. I don't."
"Get it out of your system?"
"No," I said. "I don't feel like talking about it, understand?"
"Okay. Okay."
"What time does the show start?"
"First show's at ten thirty."
I looked at my watch. Quarter to ten. I fidgeted. I didn't really want to be here, in this dim smoky dump; I wanted to be with Anne, alone on a desert island somewhere where the world couldn't wag fingers of scorn at us for our love.
I drank wine.
I watched the minutes tick away.
I played footsie with Rhoda, and she played footsie in return, and she winked at me and grinned and otherwise acted like she owned me and mine.
Then at ten thirty sharp the dim lights went out altogether, and a spotlight went on at one end of the long room. The show as about to start.
I wasn't really prepared for the sort of show it was. I mean, I didn't think they had things like this in our great land. Three people came out and stood blinking into the spotlight-two girls and a guy.
The guy was a bruiser stud. And I mean really built. He was a big, handsome rugged guy about six feet two with a body rippling with muscles. His tanned hairy skin looked as though it had been pumped up. It gleamed in the spotlight as he stood there, flashing dazzling white smile at the audience and waiting patiently. He looked spectacular, a real kind ofthe gym.
The girl to him left was pretty. She was a red head, about medium height, and kind of young, maybe only nineteen or twenty. She was really built. She wore a rhinestone-studded bikini that just barely held back the overflowing abundance of her overflowing breasts. Her thighs were big and solid, and her buttocks, almost completely bare where the bikini bottom slanted up sharply, were plump and pink and squeezable and full.
The girl on the other side of the big hunk looked like she was oriental. She was slim and willowly, very petite, like a little porcelain doll. She, too, wore only a bikini, and it was easy to see she wasn't hiding much. Her breasts were not as big as the other girl, her limbs thin. But she had a kind of pixy beauty about her that contrasted nicely with the lavish fleshiness of the other girl.
Big, medium, small. The three bares, maybe.
The round robin of sex was about to hold a session of the beat.
The three of them stood there, nodding politely to the scatter of applause. For a moment I thought they were dancers or acrobats or something.
Then there was the sputter of a sound system coming to life, and music filtered into the room. Chamber music, a string quartet; it was delicate, refined music, maybe Bach or Beethoven. In view of what was going to happen in another minute, the music was weirdly out of place, and whoever thought up that little touch must have been a very peculiar kind of guy.
The two girls turned to the big hulk.
I blinked. I had expected the show to be raw, but not this raw. He grinned broadly as he stood there in all his massive masculinity. He had a pretty fantistic kind of body, too. With one big hand he reached out and pulled the red head's halter off. Her heavy breasts tumbled loosely into the open; the big nipples standing up. Then he took the halter off. Her heavy breasts tumbled loosely into the open, the big nipples standing up. Then he took the halter off the little orimental girl, and her smaller pointed breasts were bare. Then off came the bikini bottoms. All three were stark naked.
I held my breath and gripped my wine glass tightly.
The big guy took a stand at one side of the stage, firm as an oak, with his legs a little apart. The little girl went to the other side of the stage, came running across, and left the ground in a running leap.
He caught her.
She landed on him like coming down on a spike. He held her, her shapely legs encircled his body, and he laughed in animal pleasure as she started to move in place. At the same time the other girl came over and knelt in front of them. While he took the smaller one, she cupped and carressed him with her fingers. After a few minutes of that, he caught her by the hair, lifted her to her feet, and started to play with her big breasts. She went around behind him and pressed her belly against his jabbing buttocks, moving her loins from side to side.
Then the girl on top of him started to gasp and moan, and to move faster and faster. The threesome formed a strange tableau as they went into high speed. Suddenly he dumped the petite girl off and, turning, pounced on the other one. She lay spread-eagled beneath him, her pale softness vivid .against the bulky hardness of him. The other girl, not yet satisfied, threw herself on the top of the heap. All three scrambled around madly, arms and legs and breasts and buttocks sticking out here and there as they kissed, loved and grasped in a wild melee of sex orgy.
Then somehow he was back with the little one, but his busy hands were showing the red head a good time. I heard him bellow with pleasure after ten minutes went by as he reached his peak with tiny. He rolled off, and with a big grin stretched out on his back, sprawled naked and sated.
The little girl now crept over his prone body, looking like a child against his hugeness. She crouched on all fours on his belly. I watched as she put her lips to him and restored his vitality.
In an astonishingly short time he was ready to go at them again.
And so were they.
Again they tangled, and it was hard to tell who was doing what to whom. The scene became torridly steamy. I saw him switching back and forth from one girl to another, giving an incredible display of virility as he brought first one, then the other to a climax and left her gasping with pleasure. He took them in every position under the sun, frontways, backways, sideways, upside down-Fantastic. This time his release was with the voluptuous red head.
After the act had been going on maybe twenty-five minutes, he showed some sign of needing a rest. I don't know how many times he had had each girl by now, but even he was getting to need a breather. But there wasn't any intermission. Oh, no-you bet your life there wasn't. The big lout just ambled limply over to the side of the stage and sat down to rest, while the two women carried on their session without him.
They knew all the lesbian tricks. They hugged each other, and then the small one took one of red's big breasts in her mouth, while red carressed the petite girls' sweet buttocks. Their bodies head to body and they started to move, back and forth, in an exciting friction that must have been almost as good as the real thing to them. I had never seen a lesbo act before. It was a wild thing to watch-two women with handfuls of each other's breasts and bodies and then worshipping each other's bodies, face to feet, and busy kisses sending darts of fire through quivering bodies. Gasps of pleasure were bursting from their lips.
Now they were both groaning in ecstasy. "Oh-ah, oh-ah, and all that, and their bodies were all knotted up, small against full bodied, voluptuousness against slender, east against west, and I stole a glance at Rhoda and saw her watching in fascination, her hot eyes wide.
I nudged her. "How long does this show go on?"
"Couple of hours."
"They can't hold out that long!"
"The audience helps them," she said.
I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but I found out soon enough. The lesbian routine ended with both girls exhausted and resting out on stage. Now the big stud and ready for another round, but both girls shook him off. He looked toward the audience.
And a girl got up from one of the tables and came toward him, undressing as she went.
She was a chubby full-bodied kid in her late teens, one of the beatniks. Off came her sweater and jeans, and there was nothing on underneath, and she flattened herself against the giant stud lout and gave herself to him and he entered her right in front of everybody. He took her standing up, lifting her off the ground and wrapping her plump legs around his nakedness, and I watched as her full buttocks rose and fell rhythmically, pointed right at me.
Then a tall fellow with a beard came out of the audience and picked up the girl. She had regained her excitement, it seemed, and soon there were two couples humping away at it on stage.
Which left one girl, the voluptuous, somewhat out of things.
But she would get back into things.
Now there was what looked like a full-scale orgy under way on stage. Three couples were writhing in complete nakedness. And I looked around me and saw others going at it right where they were at their tables.
Rhoda reached for me.
I felt her hands clutching me. She wriggled around the table, unzipped my pants. Her eyes looked wild in the darkness; her face was flushed.
The spotlight went out.
The room was dark. It was every man and woman for himself now, it was the wildest.
Rhoda settled down in my exposed lap and covered her skirt over us. She had nothing underneath. I felt the warmth of her naked thighs and buttocks as she pressed downward, imprisoning my manhood within herself. Eagerly, I found the buttons of her blouse and opened them. Not bra, either. The ripe hills of her huge boobs rose to my touch.
I pistoned my hips upward, going into her as deep as I could. She began to pant. As she threshed around wildly, she knocked the wine bottle to the floor-it was empty.
I buried my face in her breasts and moved the lower half of my body upward at her with growing urgency. I felt her quivering, throbbing, palpitating hotly trapping me.
I began to make little grunting sounds, so did she. We were both caught up in the wild fervor of the moment, carried away.
It was real wild.
I caught my breath and closed my eyes and felt my release sweep over me, and in the same moment it hit her too, and we throbbed in unison, and there was the long indrawn sigh of completion for us.
Then I held her tight, while my body ebbed back to normal, and my now limp malehood slid from her.
Now that it was over, I looked around. My eyes were accustomed to the darkness. I saw couples everywhere-on the floor, on tabletops, in the seats. A spectacular display of all kinds of sex. Next table over, a wild-eyed girl with gigantic breasts was hugging a beefy fellow with a mustache. Beyond diem, two plump teenagers were imitating what they saw all around. Beyond them, a well-dressed woman was lifting her skirt to reveal the pale big globes of her buttocks to anyone and everyone.
I shrugged Rhoda off my lap.
"Come on," I said. "Let's beat it."
"But-"
"Let's go. Fast."
We made our way over the thrashing couples, reached the door, burst into the fresh air. Rhoda led me through the long basement passageway and out into the street. I staggered toward a lamppost and grabbed it, holding on tight while sandy returned.
"Wowee, wowee," I said.
"Some place, huh?"
"I never dreamed it would be like that."
"I said it was raw."
"That can mean a lot of things. Is it always like that?"
"Never really so wild. Tonight was a doozie."
"Yeah," I said. "You can't find stuff like that in Europe, I bet."
"Forget it," I said. "I'd just as soon not know, if it's okay with you."
"Whatever you like.
I felt dazed. To think that things like that were going on right here in California, that the police didn't know that the most sordid kind of sex was practiced in public-
I felt very far from Anne at that moment. There was a kind of purity about her that made a place like that alien to her. She would never have gone there. She would never have been carried away by such a frenzy. Anne would not-
Stop thinking about her.
As easy as turning off the moon. She filled my mind. I wanted her body. But I had Rhoda instead. "Where to now?" she asked. "That's it. I've had it."
"But it's still early."
"Sorry," I said. "Enough's enough." My mind was full of the image of churning bodies, heaving thighs, swaying breasts, males exposed, perversions.
"What's the matter?" she asked mockingly. "Too raw for you?"
"Possibly."
"You didn't strike me as the prissy type last night," she said. "That was different."
"Let's go to your place," she said. "I don't want to go back yet."
"No."
"I want to."
I shook my head. But it was a losing battle-she wanted me, and I didn't know how to say no.
So we went.
We closed the door and we stripped down naked, and we climbed on the bed. I let her take the lead. She crawled all over me, her lips moving constantly all over me. It wasn't long before I was ready. I cupped her huge breasts and pulled her toward me. She straddled me and I took her. Round two of, the night, I thought.
But not the last round. Oh, no, not so. Not with this insatiable nympho. She saw to it that I stayed ready for action all night. Again and again we threw our bodies at and in each other. She didn't satisfy easily; one culmination was just the prelude to the next. I began to feel groggy from too much of it. Her nude breasts and buttocks became so much meaningless meat to me.
Finally she let me be. It was almost dawn, and the room was a mess. She pillowed my head on her lush breasts and I closed my eyes.
And dreamed of my lost love, my cousin, my beloved.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I got through the week, but it was rough.
Anne didn't show up for work on Monday. Not that I dared to go over to Personnel myself. I was trying hard to keep our agreement not to see each other. But my friend, Eddie Fresney, went over there to straighten out something about his tax forms and when he came back he said to me, "Hey, your girl Anne isn't in today."
"Yeah?"
"They told me she was sick," he grinned and leered at me. "Morning sickness?"
I exploded. I wheeled on him and grabbed his collar, bunching it tight so his face flushed.
"Shut your lousy filthy mouth!" I barked at him. "I ever hear you make a crack like that again, I'll knock your head off, you punk!"
Fresney goggled at me. "Let-me-go. Come on, let-go."
I let him go. "You hear what I said?"
"Sure," he said hoarsely, rubbing his throat. "Sure. Gee, Bob, I was only kidding."
"That's a hell of a subject to kid around about!"
"Man, you're touch today."
"I'm in a lousy mood. Don't bug me, you hear? Just don't bug me."
So he went away and didn't bug me. Nobody else did either. Word got around that I was keyed up and snarling at people, and so people stayed away from me. I felt bad about having grabbed Fresney by the throat that way. It wasn't his fault, I told myself. How was he supposed to know he had hit me on a bad subject? He was just being smutty in a good natured way, no offense meant. He never dreamed I would haul off on him like that.
Anne didn't come to work on Tuesday.
Wednesday neither.
On Thrusday, I got up guts enough to walk over to Personnel and ask for her. There was a new secretary there, a mousy little plump girl who looked at me as though I were a stick of wood, and said, "Yes?"
"I'm looking for Anne Clayton," I said. "The secretary here."
"I'm sorry. There's no Anne Clayton here."
"She was the secretary here."
"She left last week," the girl said primly. "I'm the new secretary. Is there something I can do for you?"
"No," I said.
I started to turn away. A voice from behind me said, "Harper. Harper, hold on."
I looked around. The Personnel Manager was waving me back into the office.
"Would you step into my office for a moment, Harper?"
I followed him in. He settled down behind his desk, a neat, dapper, executive-looking man. "You're looking for Anne?" he asked. "Yes, sir."
"I figured you of all people would have known where she was," he said.
"You mean you don't know?"
"All I know is that she phoned up Monday morning and said she was quitting. Didn't give notice or anything. That's very unusual for a girl like her, you know. She has a powerful sense of responsibility. She wouldn't be the sort to leave us in the lurch like this without some extraordinary reason."
"Well, sir, her father had a heart attack on Friday," I said. "He's pretty badly ill."
"And she's taking care of him?"
"Yes, sir."
"But that still doesn't explain why she'd quit without notice, without offering an explanation." He gave me the eagle eye and said, "She isn't in any sort of trouble, is she, Harper?"
"Trouble?"
"You know what kind."
"I'm afraid I don't."
His cheeks quirked. "Don't you know what it means to say a girl is in trouble, Harper?"
I looked him straight in the eye. "Yes, sir."
"And you and Anne were dating. We all knew that.""
"That's right."
"And if I ask you whether she's in trouble-whether you got her in trouble-"
I shrugged. "I know where you're heading. The answer is no. So far as I know, nothing like that happened."
"She's a very wonderful girl, Harper. I'd hate to see her in trouble."
"I think you ought to know that we broke up," I said. "On Saturday-so I don't know any more about what's going on than you do. I think she may have quit so she wouldn't have to see me again. Is there anything else, you want to see me about?"
He sighed. "No."
I walked out.
I was annoyed by the way everybody assumed I had knocked Anne up. And his interest seemed more than just a business interest. It occurred to me that maybe he had had ideas about her. Most likely had dated her, and probably even had slipped it to her. It wasn't unheard of for young executives to sleep with their secretaries, after all. And then an uncouth young technician-me-comes along and takes her away and she falls in love with him. All of a sudden it's p-f-f-f-t, and she is gone. I couldn't blame him for being curious, under those circumstances.
The long week dragged on.
I was living a hermit's life. I didn't dare call Rhoda Harris, because I was afraid of getting Anne on the phone by accident. And for some reason, Francie was avoiding me. I gathered that she was busy with someone else. Some nights I heard laughter from below, and I knew she was having friends.
I felt kind of left out of things.
I didn't even see friends from work. I would come home and have a lonely sandwich on the corner, then go up to my room and read or drink until around ten o'clock, and then I would get into bed and ross and turn for a while, and finally drop off to sleep. That week I did a lot of reading and a lot of drinking and a lot of sleeping. Alone. It was the lousiest week of my whole life.
Then Saturday came, and I didn't know what to do with myself for the whole weekend. I missed having the job to go to. At least that kept me busy from nine to five. But now I had a whole Saturday, and Sunday too.
I sat down and had along talk with myself.
I told myself that it was time for me to stop horsing around. I had to forget Anne and find myself another girl. Either that or blast off completely, and I didn't want that to happen. There was no sense mooning about Anne. It was absolutely impossible for me ever to have her again. I just had to forget her.
Easy to say.
I horsed away half of Saturday by going through my electronics magazines and clipping out articles I wanted to keep, throwing the rest away. Then I went down to Francie's place, but she wasn't home. So I went out of the joint.
I took another long walk.
I ended up in the downtown section around a quarter past six. I had some beers and one of those foot-long frankfurters, and then I killed some time listening to a political speech gassed away on a street corner, and then I picked up a girl.
She was listening to the speech too. It was a real fiery speech, all about how we should pull out of the United Nations and drop atom bombs on the Soviet Union right away. Everybody seemed to be cheering and applauding. But I saw this girl cheering all the wrong things, and booing when the rest were applauding, and since I felt pretty much the same way about the things the speaker was saying, I smiled at her and she smiled back.
She was around twenty or so, I figured. Cute. Short, with an upturned nose and a sunny smile and a sunny smile and blue eyes and straw-colored hair, cut short. Her jacket and open and I saw two nice breasts pushing against her sweater. We started to talk, and pretty soon we lost interest in the speech, and I said, "Let's go get a drink somewhere," and she said, "That's a good idea."
So we had a drink, and then we had dinner together at a little hamburger joint. Her name was Leonore and she came from Toledo and she went to college here in California. She was a pacifist and she had been on Freedom Rides and she had picketed the Un-American Affairs Committee and sent letters to the Capitol demanding the end of bomb tests-a really active doll.
We talked, and I came on like a columnist for the New York Times, and pretty soon she was seeing me as a very wise observer of the political scene, which I wasn't. But I was a few years older than she was, and that in itself impressed her more than anything. You know how it is when you're 20. Anyone else under 25 is just one of your equals Anybody over 35 is a member of the older generation, so of course can't understand a thing about the way the world is really like. But anybody 25 and 35 is young enough to be modern but old enough to be experienced in the ways of the world, and that was the age-group that got the most respect.
So we talked politics, which was a brand new line for me. And then after a while I was able to say, "Why don't we go up to my place and finish the discussion?"
"'All right."
"And we'll pick up a bottle of some refreshments on the way."
"Fine," she said.
"We got a fifth of gin and some bottles of tonic and went to my place. At first she was all seriousness, but as the gin and tonic went to work on her she began to loosen up. For a while she was sitting with her knees in the air, her skirt dropping away to show me her nice thighs, and then a little while later I had the skirt off her-and the slip and the blouse and the bra too.
She looked like a scared little kid. But she soon perked up. She had good breasts-not monstrous, but well shaped-and a nice body, with flaring hips and sweet biteable buttocks.
"As I took my clothes off she said, "I really don't do very much of this sort of thing, you know."
I smiled at her as though to say, "Yes, my child, I understand perfectly. You're Not-That-Sort-of-Girl-At-All-but you'll make an exception just this once because you like my politics and because you've had too much to drink."
In my condition of loneliness I wasn't too fussy. So I settled down on the bed with her and touched her thighs, spreading them a little. The pale whiteness of her sweet body gleamed at me.
I gently pushed my pulsating tool into her moist warmth.
She made a little sighing sound, half fear, half pleasure. She didn't seem to be a virgin, but she hadn't had a hell of a lot of experience either. I didn't try to enter her all the way. I could tell she wasn't built for the full treatment.
Shy and inexperienced, she was-but an ice cube, she wasn't. In a little while she was gasping and wriggling up against me, trying to take more of me than she could, and then she came to a nice hot climax. I rode with her a way, led her to a second finish, and had my own. That second one surprised her. I don't think she expected it. Most likely the two or three college boys who comprised her sex experience up till now hadn't been able to bring that deal off. So I had shown her something important tonight-that she was more sexy than she realized.
Now that I had had her, though, I quickly got tired of her. She wanted to stay the night, to do it again and again. But I wiggled out.
"I'll drive you back to the campus," I said.
We had some drinks for the road. Then she dressed, and I dressed, and we headed out into the night. I drove her over to her pad, let her off in a street near the campus, and she kissed me goodnight and goodbye and marched away.
And so it was.
It hadn't been such a bad evening. My loneliness was gone, at least for a moment or two, and so was the sexual tension that had been building up in me. And I had pleasant thoughts of soft pink buttocks and near sweet pointed breasts, and of a girl gasping in new pleasures. No, not a bad evening at all.
But not much of a subsitute for my love.
A few more days slipped by. Crummy days. I didn't know how to get from one hour to the next.
Sunday night I saw Francie for the first time in a long time. We sat around talking for awhile. But she wasn't in the mood for nooky-wrong time of the month-so I went to bed alone. She was going out of town for a week or two, she told me-she had an engagement to sing folk songs in a Frisco night club. I told her I'd miss her, which wasn't any baloney, and she kissed my cheek and smiled at me.
Monday. Here.
Tuesday. It went.
Wednesday. The day passes.
Hollow days, meaningless days, miserable days.
I had the phone number, but I didn't feel like dialing it. She was too young for me, too sweet, too innocent. I had had my night of fun, and so had she, but we weren't meant for each other. Hell, I didn't even have a college degree. There was no future for her with me, and I didn't want to waste her time. If I needed stuff, I could get all I wanted elsewhere.
With Rhoda Harris.
I thought of calling her also. But there was always the fear that Anne would answer the phone, and that the not yet healed wound would reopen. I didn't dare talk to Anne, because it would set me back in my attempt to forget her. Not that I was getting anywhere, anyhow; I don't think a very long time went by without my thinking of Anne, over and over.
On Thursday I decided to call Rhoda. I was feeling pretty low, and I figured she probably was too, what with Leo Clayton's being so ill. As for the problem of Anne's answering the phone, I figured out an easy solution. If she answered, I would simply hang up. I could try again a little later and hope for Rhoda.
I dialed the number.
The phone rang three times. Then someone picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
Anne's voice, it was, soft and husky. Not the brassy strident tone that meant Rhoda.
I thought about my nice easy solution. Just put the phone down and call again late.
Nice and easy.
Sweat broke out all over me.
"Hello, Anne," I said. "I didn't mean to disturb you or anything-"
"Bob?" she asked. "Yes."
A moment of silence. Then I said, "How have you been?"
"All right."
"And your father?"
"He's getting better. Slowly. They think he'll be pretty much normal again in a couple of months if he keeps on gaining this fast."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"Yeah," I added in the silence.
Another sticky silence.
Then I said, "everybody misses you at work in the worst way. They always ask for you."
"I miss the place too."
"Your boss asked after you. He couldn't understand you quitting without notice."
"What did you tell him?"
"That your father had a heart attack."
"That's all?"
"That's all," I said. "He thought maybe I got you pregnant and that's why you left."
"He was always a nosy guy," she said. "But I do miss working there."
"You could come back. They'd be glad to take you back, you know."
"No. No, I couldn't do that."
"Sure you could."
"It wouldn't be wise."
Still another long, long pause, neither of us wanting to say goodbye. Again I broke it. "Anne, I miss you so much."
"I'm sure you do, Bob."
"Don't you miss me?"
"Of course I do."
"Then why are we torutring ourselves this way?"
"Bob, please-"
"It doesn't have to be a hell on earth for us.
We could make each other so happy-"
"We can't, Bob."
"Don't say that!"
"It's better this way."
I took a deep breath. "Anne, meet me in town tonight. Let's have dinner together. For old time's sake if nothing else."
"You've got to forget it."
"Damnit, I can't!" I blurted. "I love you, Anne! I'll love you always! Please meet me."
"No."
"Just for a little while. That can't hurt, can it? We'll just sit across a dinner table from each other. We're closely related, you keep telling me. Can't I have dinner with my own cousin and find out how my uncle is? What's wrong with that?"
"You know," she said.
"It's been rough, Anne. I've been a wreck. Nothing makes me feel happy and more. Booze, sex-it's all meaningless without you. Listen, you can't turn me down. If you ever loved me, you'll meet me tonight for dinner, for a little while."
Once again, a long loud silence.
Then for the first time in our conversation it was Anne who broke the silence.
"Where would you want to eat, Bob?"
My heart leaped, and I said, "Eastern Sands, I guess, okay? For old times' sake. We both liked at joint, didn't we?"
"What time?"
"Eight?"
"All right," she said softly. "The night nurse will be here at seven. I'll leave when she comes. But just for dinner, Bob. Nothing afterward. I'll go right home."
"It'll be good enough just to see you again, nothing more," I said.
"We're making a big mistake tonight."
"We aren't," I insisted.
She sighed. "I'll see you at eight," she said. "In front of the place."
I put down the phone. I realized I was trembling all over, and in a cold sweat.
But I was going to see her again.
I was going to see her once more!
I grabbed up the phone, dialed the restaurant, reserved a table for two, the best one they had. Then I got out of my clothes in a hurry and headed down the hall to the shower. I scrubbed myself as hard as I knew how trying to scrub away last week's sex orgy, trying to wash away Rhoda and Leonore, trying to scrub away everything that had come after Anne. I shaved again, even though I had shaved that morning as usual. I wanted to look and be my best.
Excitement pounded through me. After almost two weeks I was going to see my dear again. The darkness was starting to lift. This was just the beginning. If she had agreed to see me, that meant she was wavering. Maybe I could break down the icy wall of her resolve, and win her back.
I'll try.
It was crazy to think about winning an incestuous love. But it was a crazy situation.
I didn't stop to think about where it might end.
I could only think that in another hour I would be seeing Anne, my love and desire.
No one eke would do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We met in front of the restaurant. I got there first.
She looked great. Even if it hadn't been ten or twelve days since I last saw her, I would have thought that. She was wearing one of her best dresses, and her hair had a sparkling, lustrous shine to it. Her eyes were bright, and she was smiling a little nervously.
I had reached the restaurant early, about twenty minutes of eight.
But Anne was early too. She got there about five minutes after me. That was a good sign, and important omen. She was just as impatient to see me again as I was to see her.
But our hellos were restrained, even chaste. She came up to me as I stood outside the restaurant, and as I went toward her she held out her hand.
I took it, squeezed it. The nails were still short, and filed smooth.
I head her small, lovely hand in mine.
"Anne," I said. "Anne, it's been so damn long."
"I know, Bob. How have you been?"
"Not so hot. You?"
"I missed you."
We didn't kiss. We didn't even hug, though it would certainly have been all right for us to hug and kiss. An ordinary pair of cousins, that is to say. Not a pair like us.
We went in. The maitre de showed us to our table-in the corner, a good table. The waiter came over, smiled at us as though we were visiting royalty, asked us if we would care for cocktails.
We did. She had a manhattan, I had a rye and soda. We sat there sipping our drinks and looking across the table at each other.
Just looking.
She looked so beautiful I wanted to drop. She had lost some weight, and her eyes were red; but she had the same slim delicate loveliness, the same fresh youthful look, every feature perfectly shaped.
It was hard to get a conversation going, after the days of being apart. We were both awkward and hesitant.
"How is your father?" I asked. "Really."
"I told you. They think hell get on his feet and be like new soon."
"How is he taking it all?"
"Pretty miserably. He can't get used to the idea of being sick, even for a while."
"And Rhoda?" I asked.
"What about her?"
"How is she managing?"
"She goes into his bedroom now," Anne said with an expression of disgust on her face. "He asked the doctor and the doctor said it was out of the question for a while, but soon enough. A couple of animals, that's all they are, even if he is my own father."
"You sound like such a puritan," I said. "It was okay for you to do it, but not them?"
She shrugged. "They make the whole thing seem so beast-like. They don't even love each other. It's pure animal lust and nothing more."
I didn't press the point since I had had more than my share of pure animal lust myself-including some with Rhoda Harris. I said, "The fact that he's on his way to recovery means they will soon."
"How should I know?" Anne snapped. "I don't keep tabs on them."
Then the tension left her face, and she smiled. "I'm sorry, Bob," she said in a softer voice. "I didn't mean to bark at you. It's just that-well, I've been pretty overwrought since that night."
"So have I."
"It's been awful, hasn't it?"
"IT's been worse than that," I said. "At least you earn it when you go to hell. But we didn't do anything to deserve that happened to us."
The conversation trickled off. We were having real trouble finding things to say to each other. I knew why I was having trouble, at least. It was because I couldn't say the things I really wanted to say.
What I really wanted to tell her was, Come home with me tonight, Anne. To hell with the taboos of a phony society-we've been apart long enough.
But I couldn't say that. And anything else I might have said was meaningless.
She wasn't talking much either. I wondered if the same thoughts were going through her head as through mine. Maybe she was fighting back temptation, too. Maybe she wanted me as much as I wanted her, but didn't dare say it, for fear of restarting what was better off left alone-
We didn't talk much and we didn't eat much. But we did a lot of looking at each other.
We were through with dessert about a quarter past nine, and we stepped outside. It was a good sort of west coast summer evening, cool but not particularly breezy, and there was hardly any smog.
"Well," she said, "I guess I'll be heading home now, I guess."
"No."
"We were just meeting for dinner."
"It's early," I insisted. "Don't run away just yet. I won't bite you."
"Where do you want to go, then?"
I hesitated. I couldn't come out with the truth; that I wanted her to come home with me. Instead I said, "Let's go for a ride on the shore."
She giggled.
"I'm a tourist," I said. "I'm new here. I've lever been there. Have you?"
"Oh, sure. Lots of times."
"T thought only tourists went."
She shrugged. "I went with tourists, sometimes. They don't matter. If you'd like to go, I'll go with you."
"Your car or mine?" I asked.
"Mine," she said. "It looks better for the neighborhood, I think."
We went over to the big heap. I felt a little annoyed about going in her car. I hate to have women drive me. It's kind of a downgrace of my manhood, I guess.
But she had an instinctive understanding of the situation. Without a word she handed me the keys as we approached the car. I opened it and we got in.
I had never driven this car before. Of course, it was just like my own, so far as the operations of driving went, except that my car had a stick shift and this was automatic. But I had never experienced that feeling of power before, the idea that if I turned the car and rammed it into the side of the nearest building, the building would fall down in a heap.
I drove along the coast and we found a parking space to a restaurant.
We went in.
The lobby was crowded.
The place had a good view of the surrounding countryside on a cloudless night, when the air is good. The place was so crowded we had to wait a while to get in. But then we were lucky and got ourselves a window table. We could see much of the coast, sparkling lights strewn as far as the eye could reach.
Anne ordered cognac. I had the same. The cognac came in beautiful, tapering, little glasses. We held them up, looked at the lovely brandy, started to touch glasses.
Then we drew back. We both realized at the same moment that we had nothing to drink to, no future that we could toast.
We drank quietly and looked out at the view.
We had refills. The place was getting more crowded by the minute and I had qualms about taking up a precious window seat much longer. There were real lovers waiting, people who could dream about the future instead of just about the past, and I felt guilty making them wait.
"Let's go," I said softly. "All right."
We went out, into the street. Across to her car. I drove the big car back down the hill, back to Eastern Sands, where my car was parked in the parking lot of the restaurant.
We both got out.
I handed her the keys. "Well," I said lamely, "I guess that's it for tonight." She smiled. I saw tears in her eyes. "Bob-"
"It was a swell evening, wasn't it, Anne?"
"It was so good to see you again."
"Same here. We won't wait so long till the next time, will we?"
"No. We won't."
"Well-"
"Goodnight, Bob."
"Goodnight, Anne."
I held her hand for a moment, then let go and turned away so she wouldn't see the tears in my own eyes . It had been a good evening. But I hadn't kissed her at all. I hadn't told her how much I loved her. It had been a completely chaste evening. We had hardly said anything at all to each other. Our real feelings had been left unspoken.
I walked away, got in my car, turned it on. I let the motor idle for a while, then started off toward home. I was in a relaxed, somewhat unhappy mood. Seeing Anne again reminded me of what I don't have, and now I was going home, alone, to my lonely bed. Not even Francie in town. I would sleep alone tonight.
I drove along ten blocks or so. Then, as I stopped for a traffic light, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her about four cars back of me.
Anne?
But this wasn't the way back to her father's place.
I shook my head. There were plenty of similar cars like hers in L.A. It wasn't Anne behind me, couldn't possibly be. A coincidence.
I drove on. The neighborhood got shabbier as I approached home, and the traffic got lighter, and the car continued to tail me.
Could it be her?
My heart pounded. Cold sweat made my hands slippery on the wheel. I got to my block, and the car was still behind me. I parked.
I got out.
She got out.
I walked to the entrance of the house and waited for her. She came up to me, looking very pale, very tense, very frightened.
"You came," I said.
"I couldn't keep away from you."
"Anne-"
"Let's go upstairs."
"Anne, I love you so."
"It's a mistake. We shouldn't be doing this, Bob. I know it's wrong even while I'm doing it. But I couldn't stay away."
"I love you, Anne."
I wrapped her cold hand in mine and we went in, and upstairs. We entered my little room.
I closed the door, locked it.
We turned to each other. My arms went around her shoulders-I drew her against me and my lips met hers and we kissed. Not a family type kiss at all-oh, no. Our bodies pressed tight, her mouth opened wide to me, and my tongue dove deep within.
We stood that way for a long while. I snaked my hand down between our bodies to cup her breast, and I felt the pounding of her heart.
She was trembling.
"I'm scared, Bob."
"There's nothing to worry about. We love each other, and that's all that counts, Anne."
She shook her head. "No. We're defying the whole world. We're defying laws and things."
"This is love. And I love you and you love me. That's what matters. The only thing that matters."
She looked up at me, her eyes wide, fearful. I kissed the tears away. She smiled.
There was some gin left, from the night of the girl, Leonore. "How about a drink?" I suggested.
"I think I could use one."
We had one. And then another.
And then I began to take her clothes off, slowly, lingeringly, lovingly, as though this were the first time for either of us.
I unbuttoned her dress, she stepped out of it, and I hung it carefully in the closet. It was her good dress-I didn't want to mess it up.
Then we drew her slip over her head and folded it across the back of a chair. Bra and panties and stockings were still on her. I put my arms around her sweet waist and flattened my hands on her back, just where her buttocks began to swell. She responded, letting her body go limp against me, letting me support her body with my arms.
I kissed her closed eyes. She sighed, smiled a little as the fear receded. I kissed her jaw, her throat. I nibbled the lobes of her ears. She let her head fall back.
I kissed her shoulder and worked slowly downward to the first rise of her breasts. With my right hand I numbly unhooked her bra, slipped the straps off her arms, and it fell to the floor. It was so simple. She was naked to the waist, now, her beautiful breasts bare. For the first time since that terrible morning in the park, I held her in my arms and could caress her sweet body.
I put my lips between her naked breasts, slipping my hands up her sides until they cupped the fullnesses on either side, pressing her mounds against my cheeks. Her fingers curled around the back of my head, moving through my hair. I could still feel the thumping of her heart, but now it seemed to me that it was thumping out of rising excitement, rather than out of fear.
I took her panties off.
Now she wore nothing but a garter-belt and stockings. I knelt before her, kissing the sweet round of her warm belly, kissing the soft flesh along the inside of each thigh, then suddenly burying my head in the womanhood of her. She gasped and sighed as I caressed her, my hands gripping her bare buttocks, the fingertips digging into the firm satiny flesh, her thighs partea for me.
Then I stood back. She looked so desirable in those stockings and garterbelt that I thought I would explode from sheer want. I began to undress also.
She helped me.
With the two of us at work on the project, we had all my clothes off fast. She pressed her nakedness against mine and then drew her hands over me, touching each part of my body as though it was brand new to her. She lingered below my belly for a long while.
I hen it was time to finish undressing her.
I unclipped the garters and drew the nylons gently down her perfect legs. Only the garter belt stood in the way of total nudity, now; and in another instant it no longer was on her.
We stood by the side of the bed stark naked, body to body, her hot soft breasts touching my chest, the nipples hard as rock. I lifted her chin, smiled down at her.
"I love you," I said.
"We shouldn't. We're related."
"You wouldn't have come here if you were afraid. Tell me you love me."
"Bob-""
"Tell me."
"I love you, Bob."
She was smiling, now. The clouds were breaking up. I slipped one arm around her shoulders, put the other under her soft buttocks, and swung er up on the bed. She lay there, resting on her elbows, looking at me with an invitation in her eyes, her legs parted for me. I went to her.
She whispered, "This is wrong, Bob."
"People in love make up their own rules, Anne. It's only a sin to other people. The real sin would be to deny ourselves this."
I cupped her full breasts. I squeezed gently, feeling the nipples grow even harder. Then I moved up and down her body, covering it with kisses, not missing a single luscious part of her. When I had finished with the front of her, I flipped her over, and put my lips first to one dimpled buttock, then the other. She laughed.
It was her old laugh, her pleasure-laugh. The laugh I hadn't heard in a long time.
I was above her. She came to a sitting position, and stroked my chest, and then moved Tower. Her small fingers seemed even smaller by contrast with my body.
I was in stark readiness. I couldn't hold back much longer.
But I wanted this to be really good, for her. I didn't want her to regret at all her sudden decision to follow me here.
I told myself that this was my cousin, almost my sister, that I was committing one of mankind's oldest taboos to some people, that common sense argued that I shouldn't touch her.
To hell with that.
"I love you, Bob," she whispered. "Do you want me?"
"Yes! Yes, I want you! Do it to me."
"When? Tell me when?"
"Now! I can't wait any more, Bob! I'm burning up! Oh, slip it into me!"
I nodded. My own breathing was coming in gusty gasps. I brought myself close to her, my turgid spear poised there, the fiery pulsating tip parted her core and the two hot objects connected.
Anne gave a long, low moan as our bodies came together deeper to make the coupling complete. Whatever we had done before, we could be absolved of, for we had acted in ignorance. But not now. Now, for the first time, we were openly and shamelessly committing a sort of incest in full knowledge of the fact of our relationship.
It was a point of no return.
She was gripping me tightly. I plunged forward again and again, faster and faster.
"I love you," she whispered. "Oh, my darling."
"I love you, Anne."
She drove against me, faster and faster, keeping my rhythm. We panted and pounded. I had never known excitement like this-the excitement of the forbidden, the excitement of gratification after long abstinence. It was overpowering, the greatest.
Her breasts filled ray hands. Her body plunged and bucked beneath mine, our connected organs were a delight.
For a moment sanity returned to me and I felt fear for what we were doing. Then I brushed the fear aside. I cupped her buttocks and she arched her back, and I drove all the way in her. In the same moment her entire body quivered violently, and she sobbed and clawed my back with her fingers, and in one long surge of passion I gave vent to my fulfillment as she was engulfed by hers, and she was immediately engulfed by the hot gush of our release.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She didn't go home after that. She stayed with me.
We had sex relations again and again, until it was nearly dawn. Our bodies clashed and grappled as we strained to the utmost to make up for all the wasted time.
It was quite a session.
Nothing we had done before matched it in any way. We tried every position we knew, and maybe a couple that had never been tried before. We went at it with a kind of deadly seriousness and at the same time in a real spirit of fun. It was a ball from beginning to end.
Then, around half past four in the morning, we both began to run out of power. I was flat on my face on the floor, half asleep and half awake; and she was lying limply on the bed, on her back with her legs apart and dangling over the edge.
I got up and walked over to her. I leaned down and put one hand on each firm thigh, pushing them apart a little. She opened her eyes. Hi," she said. "Coming back for more?"
I shrugged. "I wish I could."
"Poor old man. Nine or ten times is the limit for you, is it?" She laughed. "We'll have to get you a monkey gland operation. At your age you should be good for a least ten or more a night."
"You hope."
I ran my hands up and down her thighs, then to her belly, then to the sleek globes of her breasts. But it was no use. I had nad it for the time. And so had she, I was willing to bet. A woman's tissues are pretty delicate, and she had given them a workout. She wasn't saying anything, but I was sure she was swollen and raw after our lusting, and wouldn't mind a rest.
She sat up, then stood. "I'd better be going now," she said.
"Let's curl up and go to sleep."
"No. I want to be back before morning."
"You aren't living with that landlady now," I pointed out.
"All the same. I want to be there to give my dad his breakfast." She stroked my manhood affectionately. "Don't worry. I'll be back. Every thing's going to be all right."
I watched her dress. Every motion was so graceful, so beautiful. I would have rather watched her undressing than dressing, but either way the effect was a delight.
She came over to me and kissed me.
"Love me?" she asked.
"Silly question. You love me?"
'Always."
We grinned at each other. Then she left.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction. The night had turned out better than I had dared to dream. Not only had I seen her again, but I had brought her home with me and we had made love and it had been wonderful.
Only now I began to feel depressed. Part of it was the natural backwash from my earlier elation. First you go up, then you come down-it's inevitable. But I was also troubled about the shape of the future.
Where were we going to?
It was all right to have a rollicking night in bed, as we had just done, maybe. But I had to take the long view, to look at the big picture. People who are as much in love as we were normally get married eventually have children. That's the standard thing to do, too.
But where did that leave us? I know cousins marry, but she was against it.
We couldn't have children. At least it seemed like a risky thing to do, in view of the blood tit between us. I had to be realistic about the situation. To have children would make the whole crazy relationship even uglier than it already was.
Could we marry and not have kids?
Well, sure. There were many ways. I knew a fellow who had himself sterilized surgically so he wouldn't have to worry about making his wife pregnant anymore, after their fifth one. The operation cost him less than a hundred bucks, didn't hurt at ail, and was no more complicated than getting tonsils taken out. Quick, safe, elficient. Snip, snip, no more kids.
I could have myself sterilized too, and then there'd be no fear of making her pregnant. But that would deprive her of the pleasures of being a mother. And I knew that would hurt her. She was such a warm, outgoing person that she would want to have children.
Well, I thought, even that could be worked out. We could have artificial insemination-she would be made pregnant, but not by me, and nobody would be the wiser for it. It was one way out. But somehow that seemed lousy to me. The whole business seesed crummy. I didn't want to get sterilized. I didn't want Anne to undergo artificial insemination.
I wanted her to bear my children.
But that was not right.
Round and round and round. My head began to ache. I saw that her original idea had been the best-for us to part and never see each other again.
But that was impossible too.
What do you do when you find yourself caught between two conflicting and opposite impossibilities?
You go to sleep. At least, that's what I chose to do. It was the coward's way out, but I didn't have any other ideas at the moment.
I wasn't good for very much at work the next day. My alarm went off as usual at a quarter to eight, and I had had exactly three hours of sleep. Coming on top of that wild night, I felt drained and exhausted. When I looked at myself in the mirror I could see exactly how peaked I really was.
I debated calling in sick, and decided not to. It was Friday, and the place frowned on their help calling in sick just before the weekend. They were known to send doctors around to investigate, sometimes. I didn't want that. The best I could say was that I had had a big night the night before, and the medic wouldn't buy that, at all.
I didn't want to lose my job. I liked it too much.
So, groggy or not, I went to work. I wasn't good for much that day, but at least I was there. I picked up my paycheck, anyway; so it was worthwhile to have gone in.
I got home around a quarter of six, still feeling sleepy. I opened the door and thought for a moment that I was having an hallucination.
There was a naked girl in my room.
I blinked and looked again.
She was still there.
It was Anne.
"Surprise!" she laughed.
She was standing by the window. Her clothes had been neatly folded on the chair. I stood there gaping at her, feasting my eyes on those high, full breasts, on the gentle sweep of her belly, the outcurve of hip, the twin white columns of thighs, and the dark thatch in between.
Then I went to her and folded her in my arms. Her supple body was soft and pliable against me. I crushed her against my body, hugging her hungrily until it occurred to me that I might be pressing the tender swells of her breasts against the buttons of my jacket, and I released her and stepped back to take her all in with one glance.
" How did you get in?" I asked.
"Wasn't hard. I used a pass key. Old building like this, all the locks are pretty much the same."
"You monkey," I said. My pulse rate was climbing at the sight of her impish nakedness. "But suppose I had brought some of my pals home with me?"
"Then they would have had a free show," she said simply. "They wouldn't have minded."
"No, I guess not. How long have you been here?"
"Since five-thirty."
"Wiating for me. All ready for action."
"Uh-huh. Action first, then dinner, then more action," she said. "I love you, you lug."
"I love you," I echoed.
She came to me.
Her body clung to mine for a moment. Then she got my jacket off and my tie and my shirt and everything else-I was naked inside of a minute flat. She grabbed me by the wrist, tugged me toward the bed.
"I'm paitnent, aren't you?" I said.
"I haven't had you for twelve whole hours, darling. Do you realize that?"
"Closer to fourteen hours by now."
"That makes it all the worse. Come here."
She drew me down. I kissed her cheek lightly, then put my face against her hair and inhaled. She didn't need to wear any perfume. Her own was the best there was.
She grasped me to her, burying my head in the valley of her full breasts, moaning for me to do more. My lips sought each hard nipple, kissed their sweet firmness, nipping at them until throaty animal sounds were coming from her mouth.
"Bob, oh, my, that's the best feeling in the world-oh, yes, don't stop!"
My hand sought the firm roundness of her leg, found it, continued up over creamy thighs to the junction of her legs. A finger wandered in her. Her thighs were warm against each side of me.
She spread-eagled and opened the gates to me, opened them wide. I was starkly eager, in turgid excitement.
I took her and I heard music in my brain, drums and trumpets beating out a rhythm of pleasure.
Her nakedness writhed against mine. She leaped as though an electric current were passing through her. Again and again I plunged and thrust my fiery manhood, she answered with plunges and thrusts of her own moist femininity; and then came the upwelling moment of completion, the warm radiant burst of pleasure as I released to her and she sobbed and I gasped and we gave ourselves up to it blindly, wildly.
For a long time afterward, we rested side by side on the narrow bed. Then she turned to me and said, "We ought to go out and eat now."
"Mmmm," I said sleepily.
"I'm hungry, Bob."
"Mmmm."
She got up. I watched her tiptoe across the room to the sink and wash up. Then she looked around for her clothes. She went over to the chair and reached into the pile of clothes for her garter belt. As she pulled it out, she accidentally knocked her blouse off.
She bent over to pick it up.
Saucily, she held the pose for my benefit. It was a mistake, so far as our going out to eat right now was concerned. I stared at her buttocks-fully round, tightly packed, undeniably feminine buttocks. Two swelling mounds of flesh sprouting from her back. I stared. Right cheek, left cheek. There was a metallic taste in my mouth as I ogled the two taut globes.
"You know something?" I said. "I'm hungry too. But for something else."
I left the bed and came toward her with lance upraised.
She started to straighten up. I pressed up against her, and she giggled. I cupped my hands over her dangling breasts and slid in between her buttocks, the curvy white flesh cool against my thighs and belly. I felt the yielding firmness give slightly, and then she backed up, spearing herself on me as I wanted her to do, in this odd manner.
Leaning forward, she braced herself on the chair. I squeezed her breasts and took her like the beasts in the fields. The novelty of the position made it an exciting one for both of us. It was a while before we got to dinner.
We ate at an Italian place on the corner. We washed it down with a bottle of good wine, none of your cheap stuff but honest imported wine In a straw wrapper.
Then it was back to my room.
And back to our favorite way of working off our meanl.
We were hungry for each other, and it was a continuation of Thursday night. Our bodies sought one another as though sex were being prohibited by law the middle of next week. Our attempts were inexhaustible. I didn't know I could manage it that many times. It was a voyage of self discovery for both of us.
Of course, there was something panicky about the way we were making love, though neither of us would openly acknowledge this. We were throwing ourselves at each other because we knew a shadow hung over us, because we knew that some societies frowned upon our relationship, because we wanted to get in as much loving as we could before reality intervened and drove us apart.
Around ten that night, she said goodbye and drove off for home to tend her father. I hit the pillow gratefully. Twelve hours of sleep and I felt ike a new man, a happy one in one way.
But a worried one. Naturally I was delighted that Anne had come back to me. The long-term outlook, though, wasn't a bright one. We were both deliberately pretending there was no tomorrow, only today.
But tomorrow always comes. That's the hell of the situation of course.
For the time being, w didn't let such things get in the way of our sex relationships. We spent Saturday in a quiet, friendly way. It was bright and sunny, and we drove out to a park and wandered around, hand in hand, looking at the flowers and laughing at nothing at all. We visited an aquarium and peered at the fish, and they peered back at us. We looked at stuffed animals in a museum. We hiked across to the art museum and saw the works of art.
Then when our feet ached from all the hiking around, we stretched out in the grass and kicked our shoes off and relaxed, like a couple of school kids with a bad case of puppy love. After awhile, we felt like getting on the move again, so we went over to another park, strolled around admiring its formal beauty, and had tea in a teahouse. Our waitress was a delicate little Oriental girl who looked like she was made of porcelain. But then I was reminded of that equally graceful, fragile, doll-like girl at the night club Rhoda Harris had taken me to, the hot little gal who had thrown herself in a running leap at that big stud, and I felt a little uncomfortable.
We drove back toward the city late in the day, relaxed and happy. We went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, to stay in the mood.
"I'm tired of always eating in restaurants," she said. "I wish I could cook for you."
"I wish so too."
"If only you could come out to our place-"
"Why not?"
"Father would see you. He'd hit the roof if he knew I still going out with you."
"He's bedridden. You could keep me out of sight and he'd never know."
She shook her head. "He has to know about everyone who comes into the house. I couldn't hide the facts from him. No, you can't come out there. And there's no place where I can cook in your room."
"I guess well have to go on eating at restaurants, " I said.
"I guess so."
But I knew what was in the back of her mind. She was unhappy that we weren't able to set up housekeeping together. I knew she wanted something permanent, not this floating business of going back and forth in a car, and making love in a furnished room.
I wanted something better for us, too.
Could we have it?
She wondered too.
Saturday night after dinner, we laid again in my place. It was a more sober, restrained session than on Thursday or Friday, because the impetus of having each other again was starting to wear off a little. Not that we were losing interest; just that we were tapering off a utile, like honeymooners on the third or fourth day. Even so, it was a pretty wild night.
Sundy we went for a picnic at the park again. We walked along the beach, and then drove over to the seashore and some sight seeing, and went to an amusement house. And then back to my place for the usual hot stuff lay jobs.
She had a little surprise for me Sunday night.
After dinner she announced, "I'm going to stay overnight. If you want me to."
"Of course I want you to! But how-"
She grinned. "The nurse doesn't need me around. Dad's improving by leaps and bounds. I simply said I wouldn't be back tonight. So that's that."
So she stayed.
It was the first time we had slept together in the real meaning of the word, lying all night in each other's arms. The bed was narrow, and so our bodies were never far apart. I cupped her soft warm naked breasts and slipped my knee way between her thighs, and we hugged and kissed. Now and then our bodies came together and we raced uphill toward the summit of pleasure.
It was a wonderful night. Calm and relaxed and easy, the two of us turning to each other every few hours for sex, and rest in between.
Then the alarm went off. Monday morning.
I opened my eyes. She smiled at me.
"Good morning," she said.
"Hi," I said. 'You know, that's a great sight to see first thing in the morning."
"What i?"
"You is."
"I love you."
"I ditto you."
Then she pulled surprise number two. "Hurry up and get shaved and dressed," she said. "We're going to work together this morning."
"Huh?"
"I'm going to ask for my job back," she said. "Dad's getting better, and there's no reason to stay away from you any more, so why not go back?"
"Why not?"
"You bet. Why not?"
There wasn't any problem of taking her back. They were glad to have her and Miss Whosis, who had replaced her, was transferred into someone else's office.
Now began the happiest period of my life. She moved into my room. We bought a little hotplate and a refrigerator, just like Francie had, and she cooked for me. I introduced Francie to her, and the two girls got along just fine. Of course, I didn't tell Anne that I had been occasionally screwing with her new friend. Not that I really thought Anne would be upset by that fact.
Every day we drove to work together, and ever night we came home. Three or four times a week, she would take the bus out to visit her father. Naturally I couldn't come alone. Naturally, too, Anne didn't tell him where she was living.
Everything was smooth and wonderful. We never missed a night of making hay in bed. I would turn out the light and there would be her soft, beautiful nakedness waiting for me. Never a night when she wasn't in the modd, never a night when she turned her back on me and told me to go to sleep.
It was wonderful.
But we were living in a fool's paradise, a dream world of pure fantasy. We were riding high, but riding for a fall. We tried to pretend otherwise, but now and again I would soberly wonder when trouble would come.
We were performing a tightrope act, really. But we weren't thinking about the other end of the tightrope, which was shrouded in mist. We were just blindly going forward and hoping for the best.
Trouble was due.
And when it came, we had to really pay the piper.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For a while, we were rolling along real fine.
Anne had been shacking with me for over a month and a half, and we hadn't had a moment's disharmony. We made love every night.
Think about that statement a little. If you know anything at all about feminine biology, you'll suspect something odd. Making love every night for six weeks? That meant the girl was extremely irregular, or else-You guessed it. Or else.
As I said, we were living in a fool's paradise, and I didn't even bother to think about little details like biology. I noticed Anne getting moody and preoccupied, obviously worrying about something; but I didn't know what in particular might be bugging her.
I went along serenely with my eyes tight closed to the possibility of you know what.
And one day Anne dropped her boom.
It was a windy day in late summer, and there was the threat of rain overhead as we drove home from the office. She had not said anything all the way. She was sitting at the far end of the seat, against the door. I wondered if I had B.O. or something.
I said, finally, "What's the matter, honey?"
"Nothing."
"Something's eating you. Tell me all about it. Get it off your chest."
"I'm just feeling blue, Bob."
"You've been feeling blue all week. Come on, now. Speak out."
"All right," she said. "Since you want to know-I'm pregnant, Bob."
I was so rocked I almost lost control of the car. It swerved about three feet to the left, and another car in that lane honked angrily at me. I got myself together, changed lanes, and pulled off on the shoulder before I did some damage.
"A baby?" I repeated.
"That's right." Her voice was bitter. "A little bundle of joy. A gift from heaven."
"How long have you known?"
"I've suspected for almost a month. I had the test on Friday and got the answer on Monday. '"
"When's it due?"
"Early March, most likely. I'm in my third month right now."
I was trembling all over. "This is going to be my baby?" I blurted.
She glared at me. "Who else do you think the father would be?"
"I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I didn't mean-"
"Okay. Forget it."
"A baby," I said, feeling numb. "What are we going to do?"
"I wish I knew."
"There are doctors who'll take care of it," I said. "I'll find one somewhere. A good doctor. Plenty of good doctors do things like that. It'll cost five or six hundred bucks, maybe, but-"
"No."
"It's the only way, Anne."
"I'm not going to murder my child. I wouldn't be able to live with myself afterward."
"But it's our baby. And we're closely related. You know we can't bring a child into the world, Anne. It-we're not married and we're...."
"You should have thought of that when you talked me into seeing you again,' ' she said. "I knew this would happen. That's why I wanted you to get out of my life. But then you called me that night-"
"You voluntarily followed me home," I pointed out.
"All right. So it's my fault too!"
"Sweetheart-look, there's no sense snapping at each other like this. We both have been damned foolish, and now we're going to pay the price for it. Unless we get the baby adopted."
"No! I won't do it!"
"You've got to."
"I'm afraid," she whimpered. "Oh, Bob. hold me. I know we shouldn't have the baby, but I want to have it. The operation-we were so wrong."
"We'll marry and leave for parts unknown."
"Oh, I don't know. I'm all mixed up, Bob. I want a baby so badly-I want your baby-but I know I shouldn't have your baby-"
She started to weep. I had never seen her cry before. I held her tight, stroking her, soothing her.
After a while she said, in a stranger voice, "Start the car. Let's get home."
We didn't say much the rest of the trip. But I kept thinking over and over again that she had no choice in the matter; we couldn't bring this child into our home.
It highlighted the craziness of our whole love affair. Anne needed to bear children, and wanted to bear my children, but she couldn't Better that we had never met, I thought, then to get into a fix like this.
And we had to do something fast. She wasn't far along in her pregnancy. I didn't know a hell of a lot about abortions; but one thing I did know was the longer you waited , the mo re dangerous it got, so that was out. I can tell yu that I wasn't going to risk her life. I had to talk her into marrying me, family or no family.
And I had to talk Anne into it, too. I had to get her to forget the taboos and marry me and leave for the east coast. Because Anne was dead set on having that baby and I knew that like I knew her body.
"We shouldn't," I would tell her. "Suppose someone found out about us. What if someone we know saw you when you were carrying it?"
"No one will find out."
"We'll have to fill out documents listing our parents," I said. "How can we get around that?"
"My father's name was Leo Clayton," she said. "Yours was Dick Harper. What's wrong with that? Why can't we use those names?"
I shook my head. "What we'll do is what I've been trying to tell you right along. We'll move somewhere far away. To Mexico, or to New York, or to Canada. Your father can get along without me. We'll go where he can never find us, and we'll get married-legally-and we'll forget that we're first cousins. It's only by a fluke that we found out, anyway."
"This is idiotic, Anne. You've got to reasonable about this."
"Were you reasonable? I said then that I was sorry. "When I first told you how we were related, you were the one who wanted to make a go of it!"
"That was different-no child was involved."
"So all you have to do is forget the incest taboo. Cousins marry. You don't like it but it could be worse. What if you were my sister? I imagine sisters and brothers have been known to live together. How about the Egyptiah Pharoahs?" She folded her arms defensively across her belly, as though protecting it. "Well a child is involved. My child. Our child. And I'm taking an entirely different attitude. You're right Bob. Even though our blood is close, it's the only way."
She was hesitant, but I would talk her into it. I wanted her to agree enthusiastically.
I let the matter drop for the time being.
A couple of days went by. We hardly spoke of her pregnancy. She didn't look pregnant yet. Her belly had its gentle curve; but there was no swelling yet, no sign of the inch-long creature sprouting within her, her child, our child, the offspring of our incestuous love.
Finally I got her to agree. I spent time and research showing and proving to her that only in some states it was considered incest for first cousins to marry. There were plenty of other states to go to.
We tried to get back to normal. Anne held me tight in bed, pressed herself to me. I took her breasts in my mouth, and started to draw on them, and then stopped, linking that in another six months someone else would be suckling there. I held her body and cupped her buttocks and opened her thighs and plunged to the depths of her. Ironically, I no longer had to worry about getting her pregnant. We could enjoy our love-making to the hilt, because she could only get pregnant once at a time.
But the fun was gone from our sex for the time. There was too much fear in it for me, fear of what the future held for us now. I spilled my release in her as a purely physical act.
Time was wasting. Day by day, that baby was growing. I wondered when she would agree. I didn't want to lose Anne and the baby. I had to convince her to.
After a time, she began to see things my way and she agreed to marry me in a month's time. It still wouldn't show until then, the pregnancy.
So it was settled. I finally broke her hesitancy down about the first cousin incest bit, and she would in time, see it like other people do. In the meantime, I had her go to doctors and keep to his instructions. She still worked at her old job.
We told a few close friends. "End of her third."
"She's coming along." I went home reeling cheerful again. All the way home from work I rehearsed things bout what we would do, our plans for the future.
I would say nothing. She wasn't home when I got there.
The room was empty. I frowned. I had told her I was making a brief stop after work, and she had driven my car home while I took the bus. She was supposed to be here. But she wasn't.
She must be out shopping, I figured. I had a drink and was about finished with it when she returned with an armload of groceries.
We kissed as I helped her with the bundles.
She did finally get to cook for me, and she did a damn good job with the goodies. Almost as good with her cooking as she was in bed.
She was good in everything.
I just didn't dig the girl. The incest bit. All right, cousins, but there are plenty of first cousins who do marry. All the time. I just don't know why she made a federal case out of it. If it would make her happier, we'd marry and move to a state where there was no stigma attached to cousins marrying. I know they did wed, now and then, and plenty of cousins had sex relations. And plenty of brothers and sisters and parents and children. Let's face it. It was far from a perfect world, and there was an awful lot of stinky relationships going on in this crummy world of ours.
We sat down to dinner when it was ready, and it was good.
She finally had her dearest wish come true. She cooked a home cooked meal, and damn good too.
We were gay and lighthearted, and I felt it was a preview of things to come.
It was charming and the greatest, and I was buying the whole bit.
I tried to make it good, because I wanted to sell her the idea of being my wife.
I knew I'd have my work cut out for me. convincing her to say yes.
But it was all in vain, no soap, more, later.
After we ate, we went back to our old standby, sex.
At least she was agreeable to that.
We undressed and came to each other, naked.
We embraced, her hot naked body very desirable to me, her full breasts and soft hot loins causing my malehood to stiffen in anticipation, which prodded her lower body.
She sighed with the feel of it, and she reached down and grasped my male excitement, fondling and toying with it as I returned the compliment with her own sweet charms. The feathery touch of her warm soft palm upon my tender intimacies was a wonder to the sensations, and my male spear began to become very turgid and aroused. The hot packed feel caused her to moan in anticipation and her womanhood beneath my busy working hand became very moist in her yearning and readiness. Her legs parted by their own volition and I put my arm about her waist to keep her quivering body from staggering.
I knew she was as ready as she'd ever be, and my own readiness was quite obvious to the world, so I walked her to the bed, lay her on it where she sprawled back and parted her legs wide, while at the same time raising her knees in a position whcih could be considered lewd, but not to us.
I positioned myself between her outspread thighs and as I hovered over her, Anne reached out, took me and placed it to her, entering the tip of intense manhood in her.
I took the ball from there. With one neat motion, I sank hlfway into her, wherein she raised her lower body upwards to me, impaling me to the hilt, in a sinking ecstatic thrilling motion, imprisoning me in a hot silky moist sheath.
We pounded away, my body slapping against her soft breasts and her delightful belly.
Again and again and again. It was the best ever for us both. The burning sweet thrill of it.
When I was ready, and when I stiffened the instant before my finish, she also was there, our lower bodies pressed together, our pubic mounds intertwined, I suddenly felt my body dissolve in a flashing series of white hot ecstatic spurts of reaction, which raced and pulsated in her loins, to the outcrying keening of her own climactic release, and she kissed me fiercely as I flared away my spasms of release, her arms and legs hotly wrapped about my naked busy body and she kept me in that tender trap until I had nothing more to offer her.
When I tried to raise my sated body from her limp delight, she refused to let me raise off her, keeping me in position upon her, my now useless sex still within her.
She sighed with contented satisfaction, for now she had nothing more to fear from pregnancy.
Our child was formed and developing.
It was for the best. I had to work upon my beloved to get her away from the idea of incentuous forbidden sinning.
It was hard and slow work. But I felt I was winning her over. I just about had her convinced that she should marry me, and it wasn't such an overwhelming shame.
In fact, it was more common than she thought.
Be that as it may, for the time being, we'd enjoy our pleasures of the present.
And enjoy them we did. That little devil was a hellcat in matters of sex and passion.
First off, we had seconds. Right where we were, me still buried within her.
She began to kiss me more and more passionately, and her sweet little cat-tongue worked into my mouth and began to duel with mine. I tell you that it was damn good to understate.
My sexual excitement began to throb and pulsate, coming to turgid life, right where we last left off, still lurking happily within her femininity.
She felt the warm throbbing of me in her, and the physical build up in her, and, still kissing and tongue-dueling me, her hands got busy. One hand went around me and began to toy and knead the tender inner parts, the other hand meanwhile, crept in between our closely packed bodies and found that inimate part of me that was exposed, and happily cupped and manipulated that lucky organ of pleasure.
By now, I'm here to tell you my male spear was quite ready for its business and with the good fortune of being a choice location. It was already in where it most desired to be.
All I had to do was to put the rest of me to work, mostly my lower body which began to whipsaw and piston away on her like a happy machine shop.
She kept me company, push for push. In fact, she was often ahead of me, and in fact, she beat me to the draw twice, before I was ready to reach the end of my journey for my second time.
Just as I stiffened and my release came again, believe it or not, that hot bodied little wanton joined me once again and we took the journey to ecstasy together, in mutual love and release.
After we were finished, the saucy minx let me recuperate for a while.
However, I don't mean she left me alone. The little imp let me lie there gathering my strength, but she kept her little hands busy on me.
It was hard getting asleep, I tell you.
Later that night, I couldn't tell you how much later, I was awakened by a delightful sensation, which became very intense as I fully awoke.
I opened my glims and saw her lovely body bent over mine, her head hunched over my middle and she was worshipping my manhood in a most wonderful way.
I let her continue for a short while, while I lovingly patted her buttocks which was facing me, and, after a time, I raised her body so I could worship her body as she was, mine.
In this way, we gave each other a deep and outgoing love and pleasure, one of which we had not the slightest feeling of shame, because our deep love and affection for each other, body and soul.
There was nothing we were doing of which to be ashamed of. On the contrary, I recommend that some of our feelings for each other should rub off upon other couples, the unhappy ones. If they loved more and had less stupid shame and ignorance for each other, there would be a lot more happy people on this tired old globe.
But back to us. When I realized I wouldn't be able to keep my control much longer, I tried to let her know without breaking our delightful contact.
She got the message, but she didn't want to part, so still in mutual worship of each other, we once again exploded our peak, and it was extended, intense, prolonged.
The next morning, we awoke, and I was happy to exclaim that I convinced Anne that she should marry me.
She realized the sense of my arguments, that plus the deep love we had for each other. We took our showers-together-and dressed to prepare for our future life together.
I quit my job and we packed and said our few meager farewells, to her father-who was on the road to recovery, to Rhoda's erotic joy, and we hopped into my heap and set out for the east coast, where we wanted to settle down, marry and raise our family.
Which wouldn't be too long now, with our first young one on the way. The first one, I repeat.
Our journey east was a sort of honeymoon before the wedding, which we decided we would have just as soon as ww'd decided what our new location, where we'd marry and sink our new roots. A new town or city where I would change our name and start afresh.
In time, after we did just this, marry, and raise our family, Anne found that the taboos she had against our marrying, was mostly of her own making, not through any fault of hers, just circumstances.
But she sees the light and she is now experiencing the happiness she so well deserves.
She's crazy about our little girl, Susan, who's now three and Petey who's just rounded out his first year on this world.
