"What the hell makes you think I'm fooling?" Zack sent back, and he feinted, sent the whip out hard and let it wrap twice about her left ankle. When he jerked, she almost toppled. Then the whip unwound and she staggered back into balance. Zack cut her across the black seat of her pants and took a rebound cut across the face.
Now there was noise, voices, cries, little inhalations as he tested Harriet and was tested. Miraculously, there appeared white scuff marks over the stinging places where her whip touched. He had one sensible thought-rush in and toss the big woman to her back and put a twist on her leg that would finish it all. But the fire and the danger and the contest were getting to him, and he was beginning to get the hang of the short bullwhip.
He aimed at her legs and her buttocks because she was a woman with deeply sensitive places where tumors and spastic shocks could develop, but as she began to cut him more often than he cut her, Zack lost a little of his caution. His whip popped with Wagon Train precision now and he could bite her backhand or forehand. They still circled, moved under the trees, squatting, bending and lurching.
"Oh christ, Zack!" Mary's cry came. "Rip her butt off!"
CHAPTER ONE
The Jackson estate was a picturesque dog, and Zack Farley had no real expectations of selling it to Mrs. James Borden. Or anyone else. But when people asked about country places with atmosphere, the Jackson Estate was part of the tour. And when the prospective clients were svelte and lush and possessed of the wild eyes of Angela Borden, the office turned them over to Zack. He had signed many a bored and adventurous young matron who had really asked to see property as a way of killing a dull afternoon. There were better real estate salesmen than Zack, but his six-two, one hundred and seventy pounds of red-brown charm worked with the susceptible ones. The thing, Grimes, the office manager couldn't understand was sexual susceptibility came in leans and fats and olds as well as youngs. But even Grimes had been able to read the signs with Angela Borden, which were as plain as Braille to any man who could see, smell and imagine things.
She stood now on the edge of the dank and sour smelling pool gathered below the decrepit water wheel which had once turned the grist mill old man Jackson had made his money operating. Zack, expecting the finely dressed beauty to turn up her nose and retreat, was suddenly aware of her cold beauty turning to fire. She stood on the greensward, her eyes s burrowing down into the ugly water. Here and there, an unparticular water bug skimmed the brown-black surface. Around the perimeter, the broken and crumbling stones made a picturesque but foul border to the fermenting pond.
Angela Borden stared and as she stared, her body began to change shape before Zack's eyes. Her thinly clad hips, flaring in perfect symmetry began to kink and as her pert rump pushed back her bold, barely restrained breasts thrust out in the forest green silk. Now her chin drew down intently and her arms seemed to poise as if she were going to do a Hollywood version of a two-gun quick draw. For the barest moment, Zack thought she was going to dive head first into the stinking pond, then she turned slowly and looked at him without smiling. Her face was tense, almost plaster stiff in some deep, inner tension.
"I'll buy it," she said in throaty tones. "I must have it!"
Stunned, Zack opened his mouth to protest. Then his business sense clamped hard on his better judgement and he tried to understand the sudden eagerness of Angela Borden.
"You'll never lose a nickel on it," he lied. "Even though it will take fifty thousand to put it in livable shape."
"Will you go in with me?" she asked, her eyes suddenly like fire.
"What?"
"There. In this pool. Will you go in with me?"
Again Zack's mouth opened to protest, then he saw that she was serious. He also saw that two abrupt points had popped out in the center of her breast rolls and the sight made him tense inside.
"Now?"
"Now," she whispered.
Six percent of eighty thousand dollars was forty-eight hundred dollars and that split, which was his deal with Gaylord Realty, was not hay. He also knew she meant to go in a hell of a lot less clothed than she was, standing on the edge of the stone apron. But the stench of the fetid water made him look once before he grinned.
"Okay," he said. "It may stain us both the color of a coffee bean, but if you can take it I can too."
"Oh god," she breathed but not at him.
She peeled the long fox fur-piece from her neck and hurled it to the deep grass. He thought she was going to dive in, clothes and all, but she merely teetered on the edge, her hands going to the high piled coiffure that poised her mass of raven black hair atop her round head. She wasn't looking at him then. Her eyes were deep into the dank pool as she let her hair shake loose in thick cascades of wavy gleaming ebony. When her hands went around to the zipper down her back, he knew she wasn't kidding. He watched her as he slipped off his suit coat, still disbelieving this fastidiously beautiful woman intended to plunge into the stinking millpond.
Then she dropped her dress and Zack would have followed her into hell fire. The thin black net of her brassiere was a mere shadow snugging around the bold firmness of her fantastic breasts. Startling enough in her gown, they were almost frightening in the near raw. He could see the maroon areolas, the berry black nipples and from two yards, the pulse of flesh was a visible thing over and above the jiggle and bounce her movements caused. She didn't look at him then. He let his eyes wander down the flat belly, as muscular as that of a dancer, then sex exploded in his head. At first he thought the bottom vee of the lace panties was doubled, but it was Angela Borden, her boldly hirsute veil promising more than smooth pink skin could ever offer.
His fingers tangled stupidly with his tie as she kicked out of her pumps and raised each tapered leg to peel down the broad mesh of her hosiery. He thought dumbly they must be some form of elastic at tops because she had not worn a garter belt. The sharp but plump bend of her thinly clad buttocks raked his body with shivers. Then she turned her back to him and dove off the stone apron. He shouted a warning, but it was too late. He had never known how deep the pool was but when she came up half out in the black, very roiled water, he breathed in relief.
"Come on," she said, blowing water from her full, petulant lips. "It is wonderful!"
Zack went down to his shorts, aware that she was treading water while she watched. And there was no hiding what her near disrobing had done to him. Before he dove, he smiled, and there was no return of merriment. She was as serious as if life and death depended upon his haste in plunging into the acrid water. For a moment, he stood poised, a little proud of the figure he made. Then he dove after her and the tepid, stinking water hurt his eyes and flavored his lips with funk. When he came shaking his head and blowing to the surface, Angela Borden's blue-black eyes and vivid mouth were only inches from his own.
"Hi," he said through ill-tasting bubbles.
"Hi," she said as wetly. Then her right hand came up out of the water holding the thinly dripping string of black nylon that had been her plumply filled panties. She hurled them up and back over her head. For a moment, she smiled with ripping intent. Then she bobbed under and her hair was no blacker than the water.
Zack treaded with quiet power, then he felt his shorts being pulled and jerked down. He made more powerful arm swirls as his legs were momentarily leashed by his shorts, then his legs were free but when Angela Borden came to the surface again, she had atrophied his movements with another handful of his person. He kicked back and glided over her, and she turned on her back and clamped her legs around his lean waist.
"You are out of your damned mind," he whispered down into her open lips. "And I'm going out of mine!"
Zack and hysteria took her at the same moment. They went under together, kicked back to the surface, then his toe found the soft slush of the muddy bottom and he put wild, unreasonable power in the arch of his strong body as he claimed the love she offered.
* * *
At the far side, the water was only about four feet deep, but Angela refused to find bottom. Her legs, still clamped around Zack's let her float under his body. He clung to the stone wall with one hand and curled the other under her back. Her head seemed to float on the murky surface, her hair showing here and there in the stagnant water. Released from unreasonable passion, Zack could smell the rank water and feel the near slime of the dead liquid. He was recovering but slowly, because in all his life he had never had a woman demand so much: never had he given so much because from the first delicate touch, he had let the foul water and ugly stench turn into desire.
Now he looked down at the placid face, eyes closed in afterglow, and he could not help feeling she belonged in this sink of filth. The pond, the broken wall and the shaggy shroud of oaks growing around the area seemed suddenly eerie and mystic. The white face, disconnected to the brutally sensual body out of sight in the murky water was nearly supernatural in beauty and passion. Once he tried to draw himself up, but Angela merely lay in languid clinging, as if she had returned to her natural world and resented his cultivated sense of fastidious distaste for the odorous water.
"You don't understand, do you baby?" she spoke without opening her eyes, nor even her slack lips very much.
"Maybe I don't have to understand," he replied.
"Tired?"
"Haven't I a right to be tired?" She laughed mirthlessly. "Would you laugh if I said something?"
"No, Angela."
"Angela," she echoed. "The angel. My mother was stupid. I was only five years old when I dreamed I was an octopus. Legs, soft clinging legs, and a pulpy body, floating in the water among the waving seaweed and the grasping, biting organisms. All my life, I've longed for the water, the cool, caressing fingers of water. It kisses and presses me, and my body feels light as feathers, released from the weight and cares of living. Be tired, my darling, but stay with me."
"This water-"
"I know, baby. But it is a long story. I just don't want to talk now. I want to float and feel you and let my dreams become real."
"The sun will be behind the trees in a few minutes," he said.
Her laughter was bell-like and quick. "All right. Get out first. I want to see you, Zack Farley. May I?"
Zack floated loose from her suddenly relaxed arms and legs. He kicked slowly, then swiftly and the surge of power sent him to the stone wall. He put his hands up and with an easy burst of energy, catapulted himself up on the wall. Then she stood up, his toes curled around the edge of the stone wall. Angela lay on her back, her arms and hands appearing once in a while as she kept herself afloat on the black water. Her eyes were wide, staring up at the prominence and boldly masculine shape of his nakedness. Zack, looking down, could see only her face and the occasional flash of white skin as her arms and legs moved languorously in the discolored water.
"Zack?"
!Yes?", "Now," she spoke up to him. "In the water. Please!"
"What?"
"Go! In the water. Out over me! Of god, do it and don't be so goddamned much of a puritan!"
For a moment, Zack did not understand, then he did. He thought about picking up a displaced wall stone and smashing it down on her face. He thought about turning and walking away. He thought about all the weird and sex-mad women he had ever known. Then he thought about the two thousand-four hundred dollar commission and he relaxed the great inner muscles of his torso.
As the stream of steaming fluid hit the murky water, Angela turned over and her feet kicked. She floated forward, her bare, bowed back under the impact of amber anointment. Zack stared, disgusted at his own degradation of propriety, then fascinated by the thing he did. And when his relief died out to a natural nothing, Angela slowly rolled over and her face came up, sucking in a massive breath. Zack abruptly had no strength in his knees and he sagged to a nude seat on the harsh grasses. He stared like an idiot as Angela slowly paddled about in the water, her eyes fixed on the strangely alien bubbles on the water's surface. Then she kicked out on her back and he could hear the moans of illicit ecstasy escape her lips. She swam weakly to the far side of the pond and hung there, one hand high on the wall as she regained her senses.
"Help me, Zack," she called when her efforts to climb up on the wall failed.
He got up and walked around the pond. Then he leaned over and gave her his hand. When she came out of the water, it started with him all over again.
She let him hold her nude wet body to his and she even permitted him the luxurious pleasure of writhing against the warmth of her but when he tried to take her down on the grass, she became suddenly stronger.
"No, baby," she whispered. "No more. Not this way. If you must, we'll go back in the water. But not out here-not this way!"
To prove her willingness, she let him capture her mouth and she kissed with the open-lipped abandon that matched the smoldering fire in her eyes. Her body in his hands was pliant, responsive, but after a minute or two of intense embrace, she hadn't shown any sign of sinking to the grass.
"Okay," he laughed. "You're so beautiful I go goofy. We need a towel or a cozy fire!"
When he released her, Angela stepped back and surveyed the broad rolling orchard, unkempt and grassed. Then her eyes went back to the fetid pool and for a moment, Zack had the unreasonable urge to hurl her back in the dark water and follow her lush body into passion. Then a sudden chill came over him and he thought she had forgotten he was there. She reached up and back and wrung the water out of her thick hair, and except for the brassiere, Zack would have thought they "were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, only there was nothing naive nor wondering about Angela. Nor had there been anything naive about her desire down there in the water.
"You really want to buy this old place?" he asked.
"Of course! Oh Zack, you just don't understand, do you?"
"I'm trying. All I understand is that you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and I don't know how it happened to me!"
Her laughter was almost derisive. "It wouldn't make any difference to me if you'd been fat and fifty, black or white, young or old! I'm glad you were-what you are, but it is the water, not you. Make you feel bad, baby?"
She tested her body and decided she was dry enough to dress. Zack picked up his slacks, gave the dark water one look in regret over his shorts, then stepped into his trousers. He could smell the stagnant film the water had left on his tanned skin and his hair seemed almost stiff. Somewhere he had read about this strange phobia, this inexplicable fetish for water, always contaminated, generally malodorous. It has a lot to do with what she had demanded while he stood up there on the edge of the pool.
"Do you have to understand, Zack?"
"I'd like to."
"Urolagnia," she murmured, pulling on her stockings. "That's what my psychiatrist calls it."
"I'll look it up the next time I happen to go to the public library," he laughed. "Hey, it's almost four!"
He was still trying to settle his tie when she swept up the fox fur and started slowly toward the ramshackle three story house where his convertible was parked. Zack started to follow her, then stopped and looked back at the pool. For some reason, he didn't want to leave, but he didn't analyze his feelings.
"Nuts," he muttered. "But oh boy, what a lovely nut!"
CHAPTER TWO
Since her husband's death, Angela had learned to ignore the officious crew of attorneys and bookkeepers who managed her financial affairs, and if they cried about her purchase of the Jackson Estate, she didn't really care. None of them knew one single thing about the wealth of strange passions Angela cultivated behind her smoky black eyes and chic exterior appearance. But she had known from the first ten seconds that the old house and the mill and the rambling grounds had to be it. The past few hours with Zack Farley had proved it to her.
Inside the door of her luxurious seventh floor apartment, she dropped her gloves and hat for Ramon to pick up and went directly to her bedroom. There she flicked on the intercom and when Elda, her cook answered the buzz, Angela made it brief.
"I don't wish to be disturbed, Elda. Tell Ramon I'll make my own drink."
Then she turned and stood in the quiet, her nostrils flaring with the sweet perfume of memory. She unpinned her hair and dragged the thick, slightly stiff strands around, inhaling the odor of the pond. Her body glowed as if from fever as she remembered Zack's huge strength and easy acceptance of her demands. She supposed that to him, it had been a careless, slightly distasteful romp in dirty water with a beautiful and jaded widow whom he could not afford to refuse. Her eyelids fluttered and her petulant mouth moved in exquisite anticipation. She would change Zack's opinions before very long.
Enveloped in the sweet trance her plans induced, Angela began to undress. That she had rumpled and soiled two hundred dollars worth of dress, destroyed a twenty dollar hairdo and lost her panties in the lovely black water was of no import.
He would, she supposed, go home and shower to rid himself of the nearly tangible film left by the water as it had dried. Nude, Angela had no such intentions. She looked at herself in the broad floor to ceiling mirror and the stringiness of her hair gave her the look of the water nymph she wanted to be. For a moment, she was tempted to dress again and go back out to the thrilling pit of black water. The trembling these thoughts brought on was a delicious spasm and she petted herself with open, caressive palms, lifting first at her glowing belly, then smoothing up to adore the pulsing shapes of her big breasts. But her thoughts were not of male hands, nor male kisses. She thought about the way the rancid water titillated her flesh, crept into each sensitive and responsive delicacy, cooling and firing and teasing her into wild passion she could not control. She needed a man only when the water had worked its marvelous magic with her voluptuous body.
Now she curled up on the big bed and began to dream. She would have to fix up the old house, even the decrepit old mill because the sensualists she played with were sophisticated and used to nice things. She would turn it all over to Zack because he seemed not only big and handsome and virile, but strangely capable and knowing. She would let him remodel the old estate, all except the lovely deep and sweetly black pond. That had to remain intact. In all the years Angela had drenched her sex in liquid, the mill pond had been the ultimate. Even now, she seemed intoxicated, drunk with memory.
* * *
James Borden had never understood, and in the beginning, neither had Angela. She had married the rich and industrious Jimmie like any other deb of her social standing would marry a very eligible young bachelor. They had been as deliriously happy and intimate and passionate as two people could be. They had laughed and loved their way through a month of honeymooning, each savoring sex with insatiable appetite for more. During that lovely period, Angela had almost forgotten the peculiar dreams, the haunting, inexplicable instincts she had nurtured during her adolescent years. Being married was not like dreams. There was always Jimmie, the smooth words, the strong body and the undeniable sharing of every moment. Everything was new, including Angela's discovery that she was unreasonably passionate at some times, and strangely reserved at others.
They had been married only six months when it became apparent that Jimmie, rich and influential, had a great deal to do. He could not help his involvement with business, but he was involved and Angela found that most of her life had to be spent alone. Or nearly so, because like Jimmie, she moved in a sophisticated social strata and this took up some of the slack hours. The many hours which were not spent at bridge, or socials or parties were a bore. Until some of the old dreams and thoughts crept back into her being.
She had been Mrs. James Borden exactly eight months when the first slip occurred. It had happened so swiftly, so incongruously Angela had barely realized she had let another man make love to her. It had been a very rainy day, one of hundreds Seattle enjoyed nearly all the year around, with decent spaces for drying out the deluges during which the country basked in greenery and warmth. They had lived in Briarcliff in those days, and behind the exclusive subdivision the pine trees came right down to the road. Clad in boots and slicker, her hair, worn bobbed closer in those days, wet and comforting in the warm rain, Angela had gone for one of her wet strolls in the woods behind Briarcliff.
She saw the telephone service truck parked on the road and later, she thought this was the beginning of her excitement. Then she had come across the broad path cut through the woods and there was a brand new telephone pole implanted in the path. The young man in rough clothes, a ridiculously loaded belt slung low on one hip, was checking some sort of a diagram on a clip board. The second thing she noticed was his high, laced boots under the bag of his trousers. He was wearing a half slicker, a twisted rain hat and the warmest, most devastating smile she had ever seen. He was at least a foot taller than Jimmie, and half again as broad.
"Hi," he had said. "Out for a stroll, a shower or the first crocus?"
"My gosh, you people work fast. I was through here four or five days ago and there was nothing!"
"You weren't here either," he said. "I scouted this line."
"I just walk in the rain," Angela had admitted.
"A water nymph," he had said with a low, intimate laugh. "You ought to wear a hat. You know, pneumonia or something."
"I'd walk naked if I could get away with it!" she had blurted.
"I happen to know you and I are the only ones in this whole woods," he had suggested, stepping closer.
Then she had smelled the wet of his slicker and the dampness of the leather belt around his waist. Her eyes had followed the bright rawhide criss-cross of his boot lacings. She had seen the water dripping from his big rough hands, beading on the sandy hair and dropping to the ground because his hands were suddenly shaking.
"Oh no," she had said then.
"You are sure pretty," he had decided. "My name is Tom."
"I'd better get on."
There had been a sudden additional fury to the downpour then, and it was like a great misty curtain, shutting out the world. She had turned, but he caught her hand. "Hey, wait!"
"Let me go!"
His laughter had made her think he was just adventuresome, taking a chance that a pretty girl in the rain might give him a kiss. He was big and when he pulled her up for that illicit kiss, she felt the roughness of his clothes and the strength in his arms. She let him steal his kiss because she had neither the strength nor the will to fight him off, but when he released her wet warm lips, the smile was gone from his handsome face.
He unbuttoned the top button of her slicKer and she just let him. He went a bit farther, hesitantly, then eagerly as she made no protest. She knew she was doing wrong and she knew she was being cheap and easy, but his hands and his wetness and the rain seemed to strike her immobile. She still remembered the feel of rain on her half bared breasts as he stepped back and took off his slicker. He spread it warm side up and she just melted down on it without speaking. He unbuckled the belt load of tools and methodically piled them by the fresh pole so the rain couldn't fall into the leather pockets. Then he unbuckled a more significant belt and sank down at her side.
"This is ridiculous!" Angela had gasped, but it was anything but that. He had been very rough, then very gentle and all around them the rain peppered down, wetting the bare places his hands made of her thighs and belly. Once, in a moment of critical passion, she had thrown her arms out, getting her hands muddy where the work crew had scuffed the ground. Afterward, he had reared up and away and Angela remembered lying there, exposed, exhausted and grateful for the rain that poured down on her flushed flesh.
The rest of it had faded into memory after ten years but it had been the conscious beginning of her love for watery sex. It had been a year or two later when the shape and color and heat of water had taken on an erotic personality. During that period, Angela had failed miserably to explain her strange impulses to Jimmie. It had been in those years Angela had sought out and cultivated her present group of friends. And when a heart attack had taken Jimmie, Angela had surrendered without reservation to every bizarre form of sex her crowd could offer.
Thinking now, about what she would have Zack do with the big estate, Angela quivered with impatient desire. It had to be soon.
When she became nervous in her nude squirming, Angela got up and went through her dressing room to her bathroom. It was almost as large as the bedroom and had been built at a tremendous cost. It had taken a ten year lease to soothe the indignity expressed by the apartment house owners, and it had taken almost a month to create.
Only a select few of Angela's friends had ever seen the Roman bath, built up from the floor to a depth of nearly three feet. At each corner of the nine by nine foot pool, cast in magnificent replica of traditional Italian sculpture, stood grotesquely perfect male figures. On all of them, the fig leaf and modesty had been omitted, and it was from these statues came the hot, cold or teoid water as Angela desired. They stood in flawless white on the monstrous amber and cream tile form and they were as nearly life-size as the ceiling would permit. The rest of the luxurious bath was a galaxy of gleaming fixtures and statuary, less in size but deliciously erotic. Even the floor tile was a wandering mosaic of suggestive shapes and colors.
There were no windows as such, the single exterior exposure had been turned into a deep tropical garden, open at the top to give light and air. The floor of the garden was covered with rock shapes that in their positioning also had some erotic form, neither defined nor outlined but deeply sensual in shape and intent.
Now Angela went to the wall panel that controlled the lights. She stood trembling, her hand darkening down the splendid bath until hidden fixtures cast a cavern-like glow over the whole. She set the air conditioner to produce warm, heavily humid air and the cavern effect deepened. Then she went to the row of gold plated fixtures that controlled the flow of water from her four sentinels of the bath.
As the streams of tepid water poured lustily forth, Angela whimpered in private ecstasy. The lights created a secret hollowness in the room and the damp air weighed heavily on her bare flesh. The steady plash of the four converging streams was like music to her, and she mounted the slow steps and walked into the still nearly empty bath. She sat down precisely under the four strong streams, leaned back on her arms and gasped with pleasure as the water beat and splashed on her body from breasts to thighs.
Little by Little, the water rose around the splay of her buttocks, filled up between her out-thrust legs, crept delightfully in the nooks and crannies of her quivering body. She sat so for many minutes, her mind raging through the wild mixture of past memories and future plans.
Gradually her body began to react to the nearly lewd streams of water and the agility of her sensual thoughts. She suddenly changed her position as the screaming tingle of her nerves caused her almost a painful moment. She sat there, bowed over, her head down so that the streams of water beat at her hair, dragging it in ebony lines down over her face and breasts. When the moment of ecstasy became vital, she threw her head back and opened her mouth. Her orgasm occurred almost in simultaneous spasms with the coughing, choking sensation of near drowning.
Later when the bath was over two feet deep, she turned over and floated easily, her perfect body spraddled out, her arms and legs moving barely enough to keep her head and buttocks above the surface. She stayed in the friendly water until her fingers began to show the soft white corrugations of water reaction. The tiny controls behind a small tile grill had already taken over, cutting off the supply of fresh water and starting the small pumps that recirculated the water through the nearly rampant statuary.
Angela rolled and paddled and luxuriated in the gentle, nearly human trickles, and her mind soared out to the Jackson Estate where the pond was real and odor of water was rank with stagnation. And where Zack, or any one of a dozen eager, erotically inspired young men could provide the caressive streams in a properly obscene manner. She had at last found a place, a grotto in which to worship at the fonts of exotic satiation.
CHAPTER THREE
It was almost seven when Zack reached his apartment. There had been some paper work, including Angela's check for the eight-thousand dollar deposit, and old Grimes had insisted upon buying Zack a pair of double Scotches for peddling the Jackson place. Helen was already half sauced, he noticed as his wife looked up from her paperback book.
"Where the hell have you been, baby?" she demanded.
"I sold the Jackson place," he announced, grinning. "We eat for another month!"
Helen came to her feet, smiling suddenly and the embrace she gave him was the one she usually reserved for his announcements of sales made. For a brief instant, Zack' compared Helen's lean body, her nearly boyish bottom and very girlish small breasts with the hot, pulsating torso he had adored that afternoon, then he kissed Helen and let her special brand of sex burn through his memory.
"Honest, baby?" she breathed.
"Honest. Mrs. Rich-bitch Borden."
The laughter faded from Helen's face and she pulled free of his arms. Like a darting snake, her hand went to the front of his trousers and there was no evading her fingers. Her sniff told him she smelled the pond. Then her lifting, exploring fingers slashed painfully and she snarled like a challenged cat.
"You dirty bastard," she rasped. "And lost your shorts doing it! Look at that! What the hell did she have, a meat grinder?"
"No. Eighty thousand dollars. Aw Helen, you know I love you! I mean, so this is the kind of a sales talk those dames want. It doesn't mean a damned thing to me and you know it."
Rearranging his clothes, he watched her pour herself a very stiff drink. Then her head turned and she glared at him from under shadowy lids. He nodded and she poured him a drink. Scotch, no ice. She thrust the short glass at him, then stood whipping him with a baleful fury.
"Go shower. You smell like a swamp."
"Smile first."
Her broad full mouth relaxed a little. "You big beautiful he-whore," she said from deep in her throat, "I hope she appreciated my husband! I hope you knocked her up, too!"
"I doubt it," he said, remembering certain watery sensations. "You can buy that knit suit, now."
"Big deal. Oh, go shower, Zack! I don't know why I should give a damn this time, after the dozen other times you've pulled the same crap. So I'll buy the knit dress."
In the shower, Zack worried. They had been married four years and they had a pretty good working tolerance about sex. Like this evening. She pretended she had been outraged by his obvious sexual deviation, but she would have been a good deal more outraged if he had come home and told her he'd missed a big commission because he had refused to take Angela Borden seriously. He had no real idea that Helen paid the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker-or the landlord with anything but cash; on the other hand, with a woman like Helen, with her tastes in sexual adventure, he'd never miss what she dispensed to other men. It was a tacit, sophisticated understanding that they kept their outside loves outside, and Zack worried.
If he took Angela Borden up on her offer, things would change.
The shower was warm and soothing and Zack soaped himself with his usual vigor. He tried to bask in the luxury and all he could think of was the cold, ink-black water with the foul smell and the insanely beautiful body floating breast up under his chest. It was sex like he had never before experienced. Angela had been neither romantic nor kittenish. She had been a whipping, twisting fury with magnificent dedication and flesh heat even the pond water could not chill. He was sure he had loved women with more physical dexterity, more sweetly personal intimacy, but thinking about it as he dried himself, the twinge of masculine response told him Angela had left her mark. Not Angela. The setting, the ugly water and the woodsy background. There had even been something sensual about feeling the slimy mud with his digging toes, and resting his hand on the moss grown stones of the pool edge. And it had been fun, hideously soul-wrenching fun complying with Angela's demand that he defile the water even more than it was. He could see the smooth round of her back and the splash and bubble, and Zack cursed what he had to hide by wrapping his towel tightly around his lean hips.
He had to tell Helen because if he took the job Angela had offered him, his whole life would change. His hours would be different, his schedule different. There would be no way to hide it from Helen, and at that moment, Zack didn't want to hide anything from his wife.
He shaved and brushed his half wavy hair but he made no effort to dress. This was another facet to the Farley's way of life. No matter how tired, how exhausted he was, Helen seemed to have some special need to love him following one of his business liaisons'. It seemed to be her way to restate her bodily claim to Zack, and it was inevitably good because Helen had power. When he went back into the living room, she was sprawled out on the sofa, her slender body clad only in brief, lace-trimmed panties. Her thin shoulders, hunched up on her elbows caused her back to arch beautifully. It also caused her little apple-sized breasts to hang slightly, the long, deeply maroon nipples pointing straight down in rigid quivering.
She saw the way the towel was bulged and her eyes narrowed.
"Was it that good, Zack? I mean, you generally need some help!"
Slowly he peeled off the damp towel. He stretched in his hands, a full four feet of heavy turkish cloth. He snapped it like a shoeshine rag, then whipped it out and down. The crack of the blow was sharp and Helen let a little scream of pain escape her lips. Then as he raised the flesh bruising blows down on her, she bowed up and up until her body was raised high to the brutal whipping. Knowingly, Zack beat the panties down, inch by inch until they caught below the twin out-thrust of her bottom. The white flesh turned pink, then deepened as the repeated lashing piled bruise on bruise.
Helen was throwing her head now, the thick, mouse-blonde hair swirling as she began the familiar throes of her private ecstasy.
"Zack! No! Stop, Zack!" she cried and he let the towel go out far enough to curl around her waist and bite into her sucked in belly. "Oh god, Zack. Zack! Oh, you're killing me! Killing me!"
Now he hauled the towel back and doubled it to make a limber but heavy club. He stepped close and began to knock her down. He struck her forearm, causing her to fold and twist and with methodical planning, Zack beat her down and off the sofa. When she fell out on her back, chest heaving, breasts pumped full of passion blood, he struck her knees apart, and then with one extra long, downward blow, knocked the wind out of her flat torso. When he fell over on her, Helen's arms could barely lift to hug his shoulders. Shuddering words of ecstasy bubbled from her mouth and when Zack found her, nothing Angela Borden had done to him had the slightest effect upon his lust.
* * *
In the end it was gentle surrender, soft kisses and quiet words of adoration. Zack rolled aside and reached to get the discarded towel. Helen gasped and giggled when he tossed the damp cloth onto her stomach. With lazv but calculated motions, she repaired herself. For several minutes, they lay on the rug, side by side, loving each other in the silence and inactivity of passion's afterglow.
"All right," she finally spoke. "Tell mama the rest of it, Zack baby."
"You knew there was more, huh?"
Her laughter was almost maternal. "Of course, baby. You just couldn't forget her, huh? She must have been a real she-bear!"
"Not that," Zack replied, hoisting himself to one elbow. "It is something else. Honey, I make what a year? Maybe ten, twelve thousand good years, huh?"
"Go on."
"Mrs. Borden. She bought that old beat-up layout today. You wouldn't keep chickens in it now. She wants me to supervise the remodeling. Grimes told her I had two years of architecture and had done some remodeling plans for some other clients. She wants me to redo the Jackson place-the way she wants it done."
"There are a thousand architects going hungry in Seattle!"
"I know."
"What's her pitch, Zack? I mean, why you? Oh, I know you are enough to drive some women half out of their mind-me, for instance. But what's with this Borden bitch? Hasn't she got a husband?"
"Died three years ago-leaving her two million, the bank says."
Helen sat up swiftly. "Two million?"
"Offered me five hundred a week to remodel the estate."
Helen rolled to her feet, slim, vibrant vision. The pink and near-scarlet marks were beginning to fade on her flawless skin. She kicked Zack with a round heel. "Call her up and tell her you take the job. How the hell much can one old widow take from me, anyway?"
"She's not old. Twenty-eight, her application said."
"So she's thirty-five, then! What she look like, Zack?"
"Lysistrata."
Helen thought about that and Zack could see the dollar signs rolling around his wife's brain. She went into the bathroom, and when she came back, her slender body was close-wrapped in Japanese silk.
"You hooked for her, baby?" she asked, making them both a drink.
"Hell no! But she's mean with her-ways."
"Why the hell don't you level with me, you big ape?"
So Zack told her about the pool. He told everything, half hoping she would go into spasms of revolt and make him give it all up. "I'm supposed to meet her out there in the morning so she can tell me what she has in mind. I think I know what she has in mind, at least for tomorrow morning. But, goddamn, it is a lot of money!"
"She know you are married?"
"Not unless Grimes told her. No, I don't think she does."
"In the water? If it is as ucky as you say, she could get at least ten varieties of crud doing it in the water that way!" Helen gasped.
"To tell you the truth, baby, she generates enough heat to sterilize not only the instruments but the pan they soak in!"
"I wonder what she wants that place for. Orgies-in the pond? I mean, she must be queer as a peach orchard bore!"
Zack laughed and spatted her pert bottom. "She likes dirty water-you like a towel, or a belt, or daddy-O's hand, don't you?"
"It isn't the same. I only like it when my husband does it."
"How do you know that, my sly sweet?"
"Never mind, buster. You are not the first man I ever had-only my first husband. Zack, do you want to take the job?"
"I think I do. Not for her, either. I've a hunch she has a whole stable full of studs. She just latched onto me today because I was handy. She took one look at that dirty pond and went in, bingo. With workers around during the day, I doubt that she ever goes for me again."
"You want to bet?"
"Grimes is going to be mad."
"So let him pop with five hundred a week."
"Yeah, it's a lot of money, isn't it?"
Helen drifted toward the kitchen door. "And, my pretty husband, we can probably make it much more than that if we play our cards right. Hash and poached eggs for dinner, baby?"
"If that's all we can afford," he laughed.
"It is. We are going to spend some money for a gimmick or two, my beardless Neptune!"
"Save a few bucks for the doctor," he called after her. "I feel a strain coming on!"
* * *
By not looking at Angela Borden any more than was absolutely necessary, Zack managed to concentrate on the plot thumb tacked to the field board. She had almost been disinterested in the big old house except for normal refurbishing of the rooms. One wall had to come out and a set of Gothic doors had to be cut from the resulting big chamber to the back lawn. Some fixtures had to be changed and the bathrooms had to be completely modernized. The kitchen would be replaced by a package unit, calculated to make the hired cook happy. These alterations, plus some furnishing suggestions she made aloud seemed to spend in the order of fifty thousand dollars as Zack counted it. And another ten thousand on the grounds.
Following her arbitrary finger, Zack realized she had planned the system of hedges and shrubbery so that the area around the old house and the mill-site was totally screened from any direction. The mill pond was even screened from the house, unless you looked out of the third floor windows at the back. And Angela had already decided that was to be her private sitting room. Now, Zack squatted on a slight rise and watched her stroll down to the edge of her beloved pool.
She was an excitingly dirty delicacy. From where he was, her flesh colored stretch pants were nearly invisible, and they fitted her flared bottom and strong thighs like a second skin. Her blouse was scarlet jersey, wrapped tightly from waist to careless collar, cut deep over the magnificent cleavage. Today, she wore no brassiere, and Zack could see no appreciable difference in the thrust and bounce of her boldly tipped breasts. Her hair was blacker than ever, rolled high in a soft swirl. She stood now in a lazy slouch, looking down into the ugly water.
"Down here, Zack," she said waving up at him.
Wary, Zack tucked the board under his long right arm and went down to where she stood. Her face seemed pensive, as if she were thinking a long way ahead, or a long way back into memory.
"What makes the water so lovely and black, Zack?"
"Oak leaves. The tannic acid in them cause discoloration."
"Then if we drain it and clean out the bottom, the water will turn black if we leave it alone?"
"In about a month, plus or minus. There are some chemicals that will retard it, however."
"Don't be silly! I want it just like it is! Where does the water come from?"
"Used to be a stream, but the irrigation up above your place is taking it all now. I suppose this is partly rain water and partly seepage. The water table here is pretty high."
"Build a pumping unit, Zack. We must be sure there is always just this much water in the pool. And de-rat that old mill. Clean out the place and we'll set it up with lounges and tables, like a summer house. But don't disturb a stone of this wall! Don't change anything, except maybe to get rid of some of those thorny brambles and the thistles. Oh yes. I want a nine foot mesh fence with barbed wire put up all around my property. All around. With an automatic lock on the front gate. That will keep the people out and the dogs in. All around the property, Zack."
"You'll never get your money out of this place," he said.
"Oh yes I will! Better put two kennels and a fenced run up there behind those pine trees."
"You keep dogs?"
Angela turned and smiled, her eyes lidded low, showing the blue smoke of her meticulous makeup. "Great Danes. Two. Males. You don't mind, architect?"
"You're the boss, Angela."
"I know," she replied. Her hands tugged her jersey shirt up and Zack quivered with excited shock as her mammary globes bounced free and softly firm. "Well?" she laughed at him.
"Very well," Zack said heavily. "Go ahead. I brought some towels in the back of my car, today. I'll be right back."
Her laughter followed him in rippling merriment. By the time he walked to the car, his gait was a bit awkward. No woman had ever gotten to him so swiftly and so violently as did Angela Borden. Back at the edge of the pool, he looked down into the water at the beautiful head which seemed to float unattached on the surface of the inky water. At his feet, her stretch pants and jersey were neatly piled on the high-heeled sandals. Zack put the towels down and began to undress, but this time, he removed his shorts as well as his trousers.
He dove in and the cold shock of the odorous water had no deteriorating effect on his masculinity. He swam toward her and she suddenly turned, her feet thrust up out of the water as she prepared a soft, snug harbor for his charging strength.
"Oh!" she gasped wetly.
"Well, you said build a pumping unit," he chuckled.
"Out of iron, too! Oh, you big beautiful brute you!"
CHAPTER FOUR
After a week of hectic, high priced labor, the quiet of Sunday afternoon was painful to Zack. Helen hadn't been able to understand his drawings of the house remodeling, but following him around the ripped and battered building, she began to see what marvelous things Angela Borden had planned for her country house.
"Oh boy. What you can do with money! Okay, now take me down and show me your pool, baby."
Zack felt a little uncomfortable. Helen had insisted upon seeing the place. He talked constantly about it at home, and his interest was genuine, over and above the thirty or forty minutes he spent with Angela each evening after the workmen had left the estate. Helen thought he had only once more fallen victim to Angela's unholy yen for sex in the pond. The other days had been casually mentioned as uneventful. By the simple expediency of hosing himself down at the spigot the plasterers were using to mix mortar, he had learned to get rid of the strong swamp smell a few minutes in the pond caused. Thursday, it had been overcast and cool. He had not wanted to stand under the cold hose and wash down. Helen had sniffed and pouted, but she had not raged. He had that night, wetted his bath towel a little extra and when she had finally collapsed into passionate surrender, he had thought she was placated.
"Oh god! Not in that?" Helen gasped.
"It isn't as bad as it looks, the first time. Want to go for a dip?"
Her shudder was eloquently negative. "She must be a filthy bitch! Oh Zack, are you sure you want to go on with this?"
"Hell, what can happen to me now?" he laughed.
"That old stone mill. What are you supposed to do with that?"
He told her what was planned, to make a quaint and interesting summer house, with a built in wet bar and dressing rooms. "Actually, this pond is going to be the estate swimming pool, baby."
"You mean to say she has friends who will put even a little toe in that slop?"
Zack was serious for a moment. "I think she has. I think this entire place is being set up as grand central orgy depot. She's spending money like it was going out of style and she's insisted upon hiring twice the workmen you'd normally hire to do this job. It has to be finished in thirty days."
"And what happens to you when it is finished?"
"She hasn't said, yet. But she has something in mind."
Helen pressed her lips together and stared at the mill. "That tower, or what's left of it. What are you going to do with it?"
"Seal it off. The only way up there without a ladder is a set of crumbling stone steps. It is dangerous. There's no real use for the tower, anyway."
"Except to see almost every square foot of this pussy plantation! Zack, does it give you any ideas?"
"No. And I don't like the one it is giving you, either!"
"I was a pretty damned good amateur movie buff in college," she murmured. "Why not, Zack? She'll throw you out when she's through with you-or tired of you. Maybe Grimes will take you back, maybe he won't. I could buy us an awful lot of insurance from that little old tower up there! All you'd have to do would be to get me up there and) get back down without being seen. You know, genius, like a trap door or a special little ladder from that landing."
"There will be two, hundred pound Great Danes roaming the grounds at all times, dopey. And blackmail is a jailhouse deal!"
"I've a hunch neither of those Danes will have enough muscle to scratch fleas if I read Angela Borden, loud and clear! And I don't intend to get caught."
Zack thought about it. "Some one would spot your blonde head behind a camera and what would you have to say?"
"Take me up there, Zack. I want to look at it."
It was a steep four-story climb and Zack had been up there before. But peering out of the small windows on each of the four sides of the tower, he began to realize how acute had been his conniving wife's perception. There was hardly a bit of the house and grounds not visible from the old tower. And the rafters supporting the slate roof were high enough so that any one, lying, say, on a sheet of plywood across the beams, could angle down at the murky pond and the surrounding ground. It was his job to seal off the tower, but he could do the sealing by installing a strong door and a lock to which he could easily retain a key.
"Perfect," Helen grunted. "A good zoom lens on an electrically driven eight millimeter box and we're in business. Fix it, husband!"
"And who will process your little gems of pornography-if you shoot any?"
She laughed. "Buster, you got us into this-you find a guy with a processing set-up!"
"You're out of your goddamned mind, baby."
She turned and put her arms up around his neck and her kiss was a nibble and a wet tongue. "Want to go for a swim, baby?"
"It makes you stink like a sewer rat," he warned her.
"If you go up on the knoll and cut two or three of those willow branches, I won't worry about the smell, daddy!"
It came on hard and fast then and Zack breathed through suddenly flared nostrils. He dug his big fingers into the softness of her buttocks and kissed her brutally. "Get going then," he husked.
* * *
They came back the following Sunday to try the small, slightly casual platform Zack had placed on the tower beams. The casings were in for the new door, but the cement anchoring the new wood to the old stone was still green. But Helen, clad in denims and a plaid shirt, scrambled up the short, handmade ladder Zack had brought and she cooed like a happy dove as she tested the various angles she could use to cover the pool below and much of the grounds. She petted the brand new Bolex as if it were a kitten.
"Right on the nose, baby," she spoke down to Zack. "I'll bring a sandwich, some Kleenex to keep dry with and a sack of film."
"And some tranquilizers," Zack added. "You are going to be so fuzzed up after an afternoon up here a regiment couldn't handle you."
"Help me down, you lucky boy," she laughed. "When, baby?"
"She's got a house warming planned two weeks from today. There will still be a lot of details to finish off, but the plumbing and the paint and the service units will be ready. I'm going to drain the pond tomorrow and clean out the bottom. Then well fill it and let the water black up. I got a bag of stuff that will speed up the color. She insists the water be black."
"It's black, all right. I could smell it in my hair all week."
"Want to try it again?"
"Nope. Those willow switches cut the hell out of me. I'm big for towels, baby. God, I'm so excited I can't wait two weeks!"
"You going to take pictures or lay up there and play bingo?"
Her eyes were smoky, unfathomable. "Well, isn't it about time I had some fun on Angela's time?"
"What if she invites me to the party? I can't refuse, you know. And she doesn't know about you."
Helen giggled. "Then you remember I'm up here and give me some good camera angles! You know, hoist the babes so I can get something more than open mouths and starry eyeballs!"
"What will you do if Angela wants to show some one the view from the tower?"
"Tell her you left the key in your other pants."
"You're bound and determined to get us in the clink, aren't you?"
"I'm going to make us rich, baby, and you can bet your butt on that! Listen, you'd better find us a boy for developing the film."
Zack pushed her toward the stairs. "I already have," he said.
She looked up at him over her shoulder. "So. You've been thinking too, huh?"
"I do it once in awhile, even though my wife doesn't think I do. You're going to miss some choice stuff by not being able to shoot what goes on down here."
Helen stood, her hands akimbo, surveying the work done in the lower portion of the mill. A bar had been built out from one wall and there was a big new refrigerator. The stark modern shape of wiring and plumbing against the old stone was a bit shocking, but it showed the layout. The floor had been hard-plastered and coated for vinyl tile. Through a door that had once led to the grist mill, the stark unpainted shape of dressing rooms with plastic doors showed hard and efficient.
Zack heard his wife sigh. "Well, I'll just have to settle for what I can shoot out of the crow's nest, daddy."
Somehow, Zack didn't share her confidence.
* * *
Zack worked harder for two straight weeks than he had ever worked in his life. Money, he thought, was a marvelous catalyst. He already understood the formula for evasions and excuses. It meant waving your hand and telling a contractor to do it, never mind how much it cost. And toward the final week, Angela added her own disturbing shape and brittle commands to the picture. But they didn't have a chance at the pond. Lights now burned into the near midnight hours as the painters and finishers and the decorators struggled to keep Angela happy.
To keep her happy, every feasibly complete portion of the job had to be clear of rubbish, tools and scaffolds. Then, in two big panel trucks, the caterers moved in. With them, a car arrived carrying three servants. Two were Filipino houseboys. The other was a maid/cook. Zack, wandering through the strangely bright and lovely old house, sensed that these three had worked a long time for Angela. He stood watching her instruct them in where and how things were to be done. When she was through, she sauntered over to where he stood, studying a careless seam in the flocked wallpaper of the huge room designated as the party room.
"You're the greatest," Angela said. "I won a thousand dollars by being ready today."
"Oh? A betting babe, huh?" Zack laughed.
"I've a few friends-you'll meet them this weekend, Zack, who spend their out of bed time betting me I can't do this or that."
"This is going to be a bash, I take it?"
Angela lit a cigarette. "I've never fooled you about this place, have I?"
"No. I'm invited?"
"Oh my god, yes! And if I ever decide to fire you, the bunch of bastards you'll meet this weekend will keep you busy for the next five years remodeling their various summer, winter and assignation houses! Though I'm not planning on firing you, Zack."
"What is there for me to do?"
"Just be around when you're needed, honey."
"The party. Do I play or wait for you?"
Her laughter was bell-clear and high. "Baby, at my parties, everybody plays! Did you check the pond? It didn't look very dark yesterday."
"It's dark this afternoon. Angela, you are the strangest, most enigmatic woman I ever knew. You aren't hot for me, are you?"
"No. You for me?"
"No."
"Well, I never once thought you didn't know what you were doing. You're just a little rich for my blood, that's all. Incidentally, I did go by the library. I know what an urolagniac is now."
"So?"
"But you go farther than that."
Angela got up and came close, her hand trailing down his shirt front. "You don't start labeling people, you don't become confused. I'm queer, Zack. And everybody you'll meet this weekend is queer, one way or another. If this shocks you, take it easy. You happen to be queer too. Know that?"
He grinned. "Like how?"
"Ask yourself that question next Monday morning, baby. It will be real easy to answer then."
"The trouble is that I don't have enough money to afford being queer," he said.
Her hands pressed, then moved away. "You're on your way, man."
"Want to walk down and check the pond with me?" he asked abruptly.
She trembled visibly. "Love to. But I have a little problem today, Zack," she spoke with less enthusiasm.
"Going to louse up your weekend?"
She laughed. "Hell no! With the kind of pinwheels turning the way they're going to turn here, no gal ever needs to lose a step. Anyway, it will be pretty good by tomorrow."
"Mind if I go home and check my mail? And pack a bag for two days?"
"Go, baby. I'll see to it that Ramon gets the place set up."
* * *
Helen stood by the front window, her slim body arched while she aimed the new camera out and down into the street. She turned her happy face and grinned at Zack, then cuddled the expensive unit while he cuddled her.
"Practicing?"
"It's slick," she agreed. "I can follow cars or people and the zoom lever is real easy to control. I blew one roll of film. Nine times I ran it through. I can change reels or turn one in less than a minute. Oh Zack, I'm so excited! What are you doing home so early?"
"Maybe I need some time with my wife?"
"Hah! Did you get fired?"
"I'm supposed to be checking my mail and packing a bag."
Helen broke away from his arm and went to the table, now loaded with accessories, stacks of boxed color film and something new.
"What are the binoculars for?" he asked.
"To check a scene before I shoot," she said levelly.
"I'm supposed to go back later. The guests will start arriving about five. The dogs arrived just before I left."
Helen frowned. "How am I going to get up in the tower in the morning if you are already there?"
"I thought you had it all figured out, general?"
"Will the dogs be loose on the grounds at night?"
"I don't think so. They are definitely not watchdogs!"
"Then it is easy," she said, nodding her blonde head. "I'll just take a cab out about five in the morning. With your key to the front gate I'll let myself in. Then I'll skirt the fence and go up into the tower. I'll lock myself in, get set up and wait. When the party moves inside at sundown, I'll sneak down and out of the grounds."
"How will you get home? There'll be no cruising cabs there."
Her smile was sly and provocative. "I'll hitchhike, maybe."
"In those denims?"
"They fit pretty good, baby."
"Sounds lousy, general."
"Zack, maybe I won't leave at all-until it's all over."
"No food, no plumbing, no nothing, And if it turned cold, you'd freeze in that stone tower," he muttered.
"Not if I had some help, baby."
"I say, forget the whole thing," Zack voiced his inner feelings.
"Not on your life, toots!"
So he put his head close to hers and began to think. In the end, he decided it could be done, particularly since there were to be at least a dozen or so house guests besides the 'drop-ins'. No one would know, except possibly Angela, that the quick sight of a slim blonde girl was not ordinary. And Zack thought he could keep an eye on Angela.
"Put the equipment in the convertible," he decided. "I'll get it into the mill. But don't be later than five-thirty in the morning because the Filipino may be an early riser."
"Okay. Take a shower now, baby?"
Her mouth throbbed under his kiss and Zack was suddenly happy that Angela hadn't taken him up on his proposal to check the pond.
CHAPTER FIVE
Harriet Fraser tapped the thirteen card bridge hand into a neat pile and with very little effort, tore the cards completely through the middle.
"To hell with it," she said to the other three women. "None of us came up here to play bridge and you all know it."
Angela sucked in a big breath, lifting her breasts in the deccolete blouse so that they seemed ready to pop out of the brocaded garment. Cora Smithers tossed in her hand, her eyes hot on the shape of Angela, her slim, nearly mannish body suddenly trembling. Mrs. Amy Hornsby alone failed to react to Harriet's words because her gaze was for Ramon, clinking glasses and ice behind the short bar.
"Ramon?" Angela called. "Yessim?"
"Drinks now."
"Yessim."
The short, remarkably handsome Filipino needed no orders. He stoically began to service the four glasses as he had off and on for two years. Angela paid no attention to her flawless manservant. She looked at the tremendous woman who had announced the end of bridge. Without heels, Harriet was six feet tall. She carried her one hundred and seventy pounds On fine, strong legs that swelled into a plump bottom that might have been grotesque on a smaller frame. She was dark and her features were nearly coarse, and she never wore a brassiere because her broad nearly circular breast shapes were as hard as rocks. Now, Harriet was leaning forward, her neat but masculine hand resting on Cora Smithers' wrist.
"Let's go get dressed, honey."
"Okay Angela?" Cora asked the hostess.
"Anything," Angela admitted.
"Not anything," Harriet laughed. "No men.
Unless you call that deadpan little monkey over there a man."
"You let him alone," Amy Hornsby snapped. "He's sweet!"
Harriet got to her feet and her towering size dwarfed Cora. The latter brushed her straight, close-cropped hair back from her high forehead and slid her arm around Harriet's waist. Arm in arm, the two went off into Angela's bedroom, but it was Cora who opened the door and willed the bigger woman through the door first. Angela gathered the cards and made a partial deck of those Harriet's power had not halved. When she looked up, Amy was slumped slightly, her face showing the weight of her thirty-five years of untrammeled lust.
She was a slightly thick remnant of a once beautiful woman. She wore big, sack-like brassieres and unless she was careful, her stomach showed a sharp out-curve from rich living and heavy drink. She had high meaty hips and reasonably good legs. Angela could remember what a beauty Amy had been the day she had married Joe Hornsby. In ten years, they had both gone their separate ways without separate papers. Joe was in love with young, firm and foolish girls and Amy was in love with Ramon.
The Filipino brought the drinks on a silver tray, setting them out in the proper order. For a brief moment, Angela thought Amy was going to seize the slight figure in starched and sparkling white. Then Ramon turned, smiled softly at Amy and went back to the bar.
"The new place," Amy spoke tensely. "You are going to take him along?"
"Quit worrying, Amy. He'll be there. Handy. Unless Joe decides to kill him someday."
"Joe will keep his opinions to himself. He's chasing a sixteen year old girl who works in the office telephone exchange. Angela, I wish to god you'd let me have Ramon! Please!"
"It's better this way, Amy," Angela laughed. "You come here and he's waiting. You go home and he cleans up my apartment and sees to it Elda doesn't poison me. Further, Joe doesn't get all shook up about it. Well, I guess I'll go in and see what the girls are up to. Or into!"
Angela got up and moved toward her bedroom. At the door, she looked back. Amy had turned in her chair, her knees and very good legs stretched apart and out toward Ramon. The Filipino stood at the bar, his pink tongue flicking hungrily over his dark purple lips. They would go to his room, Angela knew, which was all right with her.
* * *
She was careful about opening the door, and her suspicions were correct. For a moment, Angela's blood refused to run through her veins. Harriet stood by the leather wardrobe, her magnificent body half clad in the coal black leather suit she loved so much. The short, tight breeches, made to fit down to the legs of her tall, stilt-heeled boots was not yet laced up the front. The close fitting leather jacket was also open in front, standing out in stiff lapels from which dangled the strong rawhide laces. On the floor, the long, terribly expensive boots lay in a promising pile, one six inch, pencil sharp heel protruding in exotic beauty. Crouched between Harriet's bare feet, Cora Smithers hugged her small round head close to the big woman's abdomen, barely hiding the full curly tufting that matched Harriet's long, deep black hair. It was either just before or just after a violently sensual kiss and Angela backed out, her breath suddenly shrieking through her nostrils. The bowed and trembling shape of Cora's nude body had been a shock, and no matter what she knew about the Lesbian, no matter how many times she witnessed the fury of Cora's passion, the sight still made Angela pleasantly sick and terribly nervous. Now she stood in the hall, waiting.
When she opened the door again, Cora was standing away from Harriet, her own slim legs stuffed into a suit of finely stitched leather. Her small very sharp breasts jiggled tightly. Her back was rippled with lean strength and in the leather breeches, she seemed very strong and wiry.
"Amy coming?" Harriet asked, beginning to lace her belly into the short breeches.
"You know she doesn't like leather," Angela replied.
"Unless it grows on a Filiwop's back," Cora laughed. "Come on, Angie. It's your stuff so get into some of it!"
"The new place," Angela said, stripping off her brocaded blouse. "We'll be able to wear our suits all day. There's an orchard and the old mill and the big pond and lots of garden. Oh, I can hardly wait for Zack to finish it!"
She went to the wardrobe and while her fingers ran over the dozen exotic costumes, each hung on separate hangers, she sensed Cora behind her. Then the two sharp tips of the Lesbian's breasts stung into Angela's back, and the slender fingers crept around her ribcage and cupped finnly under the thick pulsing shapes. Cora's lips kissed at the base of Angela's neck, then the heat of rushing breath flooded her back.
"You're driving me out of my mind!" Cora husked. "I want to make love to you so bad I can hardly stand it! Oh Angie, don't I do anything at all for you?"
"You make me itch with those fingernails," Angela replied. "Maybe-when I get out on my new place. In the pond, maybe."
"Why not in there?" Cora asked, pointing to the open door of the splendid bath. "Oh anywhere!"
Cora's left arm cinched tightly around Angela's waist and her thin right hand slipped down, dug under the waist of the tailored toreadors and made Angela gasp with the bold, curling demand of adept fingers. Angela kinked in shock, then tried to like the sensation of being caressed intimately by the trembling Lesbian. Nothing happened. Nothing would have happened if it had been a man, Zack or any other man.
"I-I just can't, Cora," Angela murmured. "Please understand!"
"I know. It has to be in the water. It has to be dirty and wet and smell like pee! Oh baby, what I couldn't do for you-if you'd only relax!"
"Let's get dressed," Angela husked. "I'm sorry!"
Cora jerked her hand up out of Angela's toreadors and stepped back, a tiny whimper of distress escaping her thin lips. "Get out, then," she pleaded. "Leave me with Harriet! Oh, the things I do to myself over a cold blooded dry-bottomed bitch!"
Angela laughed and strolled out past Harriet, now nearly laced into her suit. "Unlace it, moose," she laughed. "Cora just hit the panic button! I'm going to get a drink. Maybe three or four!"
* * *
Ramon Rosas was as tall as Amy but his lean, jungle-bred body seemed almost childish beside her fleshy maturity. They stood in the middle of their discarded clothes, his brown body smashed in furious eagerness against her white, untanned contours. Their mouths fought in wet, nibbling passion and then Amy began to sag, her legs shaking in sudden weakness.
In Ramon's small, meticulously clean room, it was only a step to his bed and as they fell, Ramon miraculously turned her under his taut searching body.
"Oh my god, my god!" Amy cried, hurting her hip joints with the force of throwing her legs out. "Oh Ramon, my pretty pretty baby!"
"Not baby," he grunted and the whip of his small rump brought another cry of pleasure from Amy. Her arms relaxed around his muscular shoulders, dropped away and flopped out as if she desired to be crucified on the bounding bed. Ramon gathered his passion, and like a string between two tie points, vibrated his Oriental lust in pure uncaring haste. From his open mouth a drop of saliva dripped to Amy's pulpy breasts. His head dropped lower and lower and at some instantaneous climax, his purple lips found her flesh in firm inhalation. Amy shook, and her legs kicked in spasms of ecstasy. She tried to press flatter on the bed with her outstretched arms and thrown back head and this lifted her broad hips in supplication. Obscene endearments bubbled from her mouth and then began to fade as her senses reeled. The minute hand on her expensive watch had moved barely three tiny dots since Ramon's white trousers had dropped to the floor and through her screeching desire, she knew from the moment of atrophied vibration that he was through.
Now the veins in her neck swelled with impatient eagerness. Ramon seemed to rest only a few seconds. Then he pushed and slid back. Amy lifted her hips as he was no longer a warm, corded shape over her partially satiated body. Then he was a shape, a wet, kissing and seeking shape below the line of vision set by the rolls of her heaving chest. Amy wanted to put one hand down on the shining black of his bobbing head but she knew it wasn't necessary. Ramon knew what she liked and she could imagine the loveliness and pursing of his greedy lips because she could feel every tremor, every urging down there where sensation was a dragging, beating thing.
"Oh god, my baby," she whimpered and nearly fainted.
* * *
Playing solitaire with three-quarters of a card deck was a little stupid but Angela didn't know what else to do. She sat at the walnut game table, her naked breasts a haunting, bobbing set of beauties under her vision. Her time would come later.
She could not hear what was going on in her bedroom but she knew very well what 'magnificent twisting and thrashing and moaning was being shared by Cora and Harriet. She also knew what Ramon and Amy were doing because Ramon had told her some time ago. He had even offered to apply his particular technique if Angela so chose. She tried to make head or tails of the solitaire game and it came out funny. She got up and poured herself another drink.
It was time for a change and she cursed Zack Farley's slowness, even as she loved his efficiency. Zack was an enigma to Angela. He was a big, virile man, full of laughter, full of adventure and possessed of muscle like any passionate woman could dream of. But there was some secret, unspoken something behind him, she knew. Always some peculiar reserve, as if he knew something no one else knew. He was a sexual giant and the kind of a man who made a woman feel like a woman. But he was reserved, privately sure of himself.
If she quivered, he held her tightly. If she opened a button he popped one of his own. His hand in hers was a living, gripping promise and he was rough and brutal and tender when the fury was done.
Angela mussed the undersized deck of cards and sat back in the deeply upholstered game chair. Deep inside from whence sprung her perverted passions, she felt a sickening desire for a man of her own. One who understood the strange impulses, the unspeakable desires she felt. It was one thing to cultivate a strong, handsome young male who would shrug and pour his body fluids down on her writhing body; it was another thing to have a man like Zack to do the same thing with lust and love in his heart for the woman who so loved his libations. It could be Zack, it could be the man in the moon. Angela loved her breasts and wondered what strange quirk of fate had made her the darling of a double dozen of Seattle's sexual misfits.
She looked toward her bedroom, knowing full well Harriet and Cora would come out when their kissing and tonguing was done. She looked toward the kitchen, knowing equally well that Amy could take only a few minutes of the rapacious Ramon. Then she thought about the cool, black and malodorous waters of her dear pond and the juices of her surging desire made her worry about the scarlet lame of her expensive toreadors.
Angela got up and went to the window, her eyes staring out into the drizzle in complete unseeing. All she could see was the sweet black water and the flash of rampant maleness directing its fluid passion down on the waiting, throbbing lust of her own lush body.
"Patience, Angie," she admonished herself. "Patience does it!"
CHAPTER SIX
Angela lay back in the chaise lounge and controlled the diminishing nausea in her nervous stomach. Part of it was the kind of a curse no woman with any amount of money could completely evade, and part of it was the tremendous excitement generated over the past five weeks. She had spent one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that excitement but it was going to be worth it.
Even Ramon, his darkly handsome face drawn in a broad smile, was feeling the tension. He was putting away the last of her 'goodies', arrived in a special delivery truck just after Zack had departed.
"No, Ramon," she said. "Put the boots along the other end of the wardrobe. Leave the white kid out toward the front."
"Yessim," he agreed, his small brown hands caressing the expensive, hip-length boots as he arranged them on the floor rack. "Big bash, huh?"
"Yes. One big, never-ending bash."
"Nice place," he said. "No nosey neighbor. No snoop cop."
"Does Garcia understand about the mill?"
"Yessim. Put stock in morning, clean up at night. No fuss in daytime. Me kill ignorant Igorrote he make mistake!"
"Mrs. Hornsby and her husband will be here, Ramon."
The Filipino turned, his face drawn into a broad, lascivious smile. "Yessim. Thank you, ma'am."
"And-I invited Mary Amiel for Mr. Hornsby," Angela added.
Ramon licked his lips, the swift near-red of his tongue flowing over his slightly purple lips in smooth wet eagerness. "Yessim!"
Angela turned, letting her dressing robe slack enough to expose the deeply soft-white cavern between her thick breasts. She even moved some secret muscles to make her flesh jiggle under his gaze. It wasn't a teasing thing. It was an affectionate reminder that the houseboy was part of her plans. He stood now in something less than an attitude of service, his tight white trousers drawn extra snug over his nearly feminine hips, his head lowered and forward in animal concentration on the expanse of her languid shape. Then he snapped back to normal and finished packing away her leather things.
The special wardrobe was almost half filled with exotic tones of kid and Llama skin. Bright brass eyelets, long, cruelly strong lacings and bold buckles hung in significant promise of constriction. There were shiny black things too. Tailored breast sections, long sleeved and almost barbarically military in form. There were hoods, with eye holes which seemed mystic even in limp hanging. To one side were deep drawers, holding gauntlets, some with vicious brass studding and others with certain, significant fingers missing. There were whips and quirts and phallically thick and blunted clubs. It represented another one hundred thousand dollars worth of James Borden's fortune, but Angela had long ago ceased to count the money her strange passions cost.
"Is the other material put away in the proper guest rooms?"
"Yessim."
"The dogs. Did they do a good job with them, Ramon?"
"Yessim! No toenails. Wash clean and slicky spruce up!"
Angela turned and looked out the window toward the mill. Even without knowing how sweetly black and acrid the water was, it seemed like some Medieval greensward and the stone structure was very like a castle. With only half-closed eyes, Angela could imagine armored knights riding down across the rolling slope, sparkling with knotted gauntlets, polished helmets and long, cruel lances. It was an amusing picture. She would have to have Zack commission a stone cutter to carve in flowing Old English the name Camelot on the front gate.
"Yessim?" Ramon asked as the last of her things were put away.
"Nothing more, Ramon. Check the kitchen. Our guests will be arriving about five or so. Yes, I guess that is all."
He hesitated, his eyes again sweeping her voluptuous body. His tongue again flicked out and the mauve tint of his lips deepened.
"No, Ramon. Save it for Mrs. Hornsby." Y-yessim!
* * *
By ripping out the one wall, Zack had reduced the eighteen rooms to seventeen. One other room on the second floor had been converted into a huge, lavishly equipped bathroom making four in the upper section of the house. Most of the furnishings were new, but Angela had sent certain things down from her huge apartment in the city, and each object had a secret significance to her. The alabaster statuary at the head of the stairs to the second floor was her favorite. The exquisitely formed cluster of nude lovers, indulging among themselves in static strain every erotica the imaginative sculpturer could produce.
It matched the sundry art work, some modern, some traditional the decorator had hung in horrified obedience to Angela's dictate. It all escaped being pornography simply because of its excellent rendition.
Dressed now in the long, straight monk's habit made of royal purple, Angela sauntered through her new palace of passion, checking for details. Only the tips of her white kid boots revealed the sweetly tight and rigidly constricting leather garments she wore under the robe. The habit hood lay in deep folds about her throat, and the black of her thick hair showed cosmetic sparkles of tiny gilt. Her perfectly manicured hands showed clusters of brilliant rings which would have to be removed to accept the long, white gloves looped over the deep side pocket in the habit.
The tenseness had left Angela. She was no longer afraid her friends would not like her house and the delicacies she had prepared for them. The grip of her leather bodice, cut low under the loose bulk of her breasts seemed to support her ego as well as her torso. There was a gap between the bodice and the thigh high tops of the boots and this let the bob and round of her rump billow the purple velvet, and it was tacit testimony to the fact that she was not quite well.
Then she heard the buzzer go in the kitchen downstairs, and Angela Borden went down the carpeted stairs and into the grand room. She guessed it would be Harriet and Samuel Fraser, because they were the eager type and young enough to make the most of it.
She met them in the entry and it was the Frasers. Harriet was her usually well-groomed Amazonian self, and she stood now, staring around the splendor while Sam not only shook Angela's outstretched hand but half crawled up her sleeve.
"Wow," Harriet said in her deep, nearly masculine voice. "You blew the bit on this one, Angie!"
"What a beautiful costume," Sam murmured. "Where's the bar?"
Angela laughed and told them to follow Ramon to the room she had set aside for them.
"You follow the guy," Sam told his big wife. "I've a nose for juniper juice. But don't follow him too closely. I hear he chews it into lettuce leaves in ten minutes."
"You crude ass," Harriet scoffed, then followed Ramon.
He was crude, a husky, florid faced man who drank too much and used coarse language and was a perfect boor, until he shed his clothes and donned his beloved silks and frilly gowns. Then he became a slightly thick, beautifully made up and perfectly poised transvestite and with his masculinity went his thirst. Angela noted the size of the bag Sam had brought. It would contain his latest creations, his high heeled pumps, his wigs and a soft, spicily colored mass of lingerie. And a make-up kit a Hollywood starlet would relish.
She had barely shown Sam the bar with Garcia standing cool and ready behind the polished walnut when the buzzer sounded again. She checked the tiny gold watch pinned to her high breast. It was five-thirty. The married ones always came first and stayed the longest. Angela began to glow with happiness. Whatever it had cost, it was worth every penny of it.
* * *
Zack arrived at seven and from the near dozen cars parked in the circular driveway, he knew the party was well started. None the less, he took the heavy bag of photo equipment and headed around the house toward the mill. The rear garden was full of people and he kept the shrubbery to his left as he hurried. It was going to be dark in a few minutes. At the edge of the pond area, he hesitated, peering out at the broad pool to be sure no one had ventured this far. Then he hastened around the stone apron and into the mill. He went up the clean but decrepit steps two at a time. He unlocked the tower room and looked toward the house. It was the first time he had seen from there at night and the brilliant spread of the garden lights was carnival in tone. He could see the people, and they were gaily colored little shapes with dark and light spots where heads and bare shoulders intermingled. He controlled his eagerness, despite the fact that he had the feeling this was going to be the most memorable weekend he had ever spent. If Angela's tastes were any indication of the sexual temperament of her weird friends.
He hoisted the bag of equipment up on the plywood laid across the beams. Then he walked around the ten by ten floor, looking up to see if any portion of the bag was visible. Only, he thought, if some one stepped up on the window ledges. The handmade ladder leaned unobtrusively against the wall. Everything was fine except that as the sun dropped behind the hills, the breeze turned very cool. He hoped Helen had enough sense to wear some warm clothing. Then he thought she might generate enough body heat watching the party to keep the tower toasty warm for some time. He locked the door and went down into the 'clubroom'. At the foot of the stairs, he turned on the lights, his sense of responsibility causing him to think in terms of a last minute checkup.
"Well, look at what came down out of the castle attic!" the slight, boldly female girl said from the entry to the dressing rooms.
"Hi. I'm Zack Farley. Just giving everything a last minute check. Care for a drink? The bar is stocked."
"I'm Mary. Mary Amiel," she said pleasantly. She seemed to wait while he surveyed her slim, overly breasty body in gold lame toreadors and an embroidered blouse. She looked almost like Helen, except for the fantastically outlandish shape of her breasts under the blouse. "So you are Zack?"
"God's gift to broken down estates," he laughed.
"And a fairly divine gift to women, so I've heard," she added.
"Come off it," Zack grumbled. "What are you drinking?"
"What did you carry upstairs in the bag?"
"Oh. Some top floods for the pond. The electricians will hook them up on Monday. Incidentally, don't venture up there without help. There's three of four steps missing on the second turn around."
He went to the bar and was aware that she followed him. When he turned, she was sitting on one of the high wicker stools. Her breasts pushed out and lay with slightly flat bottoms on the bartop. "Cliff hangers, aren't they?" she giggled. "Forty-two, twenty-one, thirty-four. Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"Who said that?"
"Bourbon," she said. "On the rocks. A double. I just got here a half hour ago and the others are way ahead of me. You?"
"We'll catch up together."
"Pour three. Joe will be here as soon as he gets his breath."
"Joe?"
She pointed to the dressing rooms and Zack saw the man, his shirt disheveled, his hair mussed, half-staggering out of one cubicle. He was about thirty-five, Zack thought, and he looked drugged.
Joe blinked at sight of Zack, then made a reassuring gesture toward his trouser front. "Christ that's a bright light," he muttered.
"Joe, meet the famous Zack," Mary laughed. "Zack, this is Joe Hornsby. I just put that kink in his back but he's a nice looking guy when he straightens up."
Zack grinned. "I thought you'd only been here a half hour?"
From the circle of Joe's arm, Mary shook herself and made a big kissing shape. "Two times eight minutes is sixteen and it took us some time to find this lovely little old place, Zack."
"Quit telling him all our secrets until we know him better," Hornsby chucked. "Here's to the Black Water Nymph!"
Mary turned and peered out the door at the dark pond. "God, I wouldn't go into that water for a million. It looks positively nasty!"
"Nasty is as nasty does," Hornsby said.
So Zack knew what kind of a party it was going to be.
* * *
They had two drinks, then Mary, still tucked in the heavy arm of Joe Hornsby did a funny little shuddering dance. "Zack, turn out the lights and go on up to the house, will you? We'll be along in a few minutes."
"Eight?" Zack asked.
"Ten this time. Go on, man!"
For a moment, Zack saw how Joe was pushing up to her back. He was breathing loudly too, and it had happened so suddenly, Zack was surprised. He moved out from behind the bar and went to the door. Mary had swung around and crawled under the two arm embrace, her own hands clutching convulsively in the back of Joe's expensive sport jacket. Zack had the feeling they had already forgotten him. For a moment, he debated turning out the light and waiting, then he turned out the light and walked on up toward the house. His shirt collar was wet with perspiration and the breeze chilled through his slacks.
He swung uphill on the way to the back garden and both dogs were still in the runs. Then he went down to the garden and it was wild. He stood staring at the people, knowing only the animated figure in the long purple robe.
There were at least a dozen smartly clad women and an equal number of casually dressed men. They were drinking and talking and laughing, and Zack took a minute to identify the peculiar feeling he had about the way they were grouped. Here, two men, there three women, and another table was mixed in reasonably equal portions of both sexes. But there were two or three very short haired, very raw-boned women, and Zack marked them for Lesbians. Of the men, one had a shrill, high laugh and another was standing with his hip kinked up to support his hand, another was standing far too close to a big beefy young man with unruly hair. There were short expanses of trim legs and neat ankles, great expanses of bare shoulders and up-pressed flesh rolls. Nothing seemed to be happening, but the garble of voices was tense, anticipatory, he thought. Then Angela saw him and came forward, her body rolling under the swaying purple velvet. She was beautiful and very sexy as she stretched out her be-jeweled hand to him.
"Everybody!" she cried loudly. "This is Zack. Zack Farley. He's the man responsible for every stick, every stone and all the nice things you see around you. This is really his party because without him, we'd have had to throw this affair in a tent! Be nice to him. Zack, you'll have to learn their names by yourself."
There was a moment of appraisal, then several of the people raised their drinks.
"To Zack," a pleasantly plump woman in a flowing amber gown offered. She nodded her head, barely dipping the luxurious coiffure piled in blonde waves over her perfectly made-up face. "You may call me Sammie."
"Cute name for a cute girl," Zack laughed. Her giggle had a sudden hoarseness to it and Zack took a second look. Then the garden was full of toasts and the people came to him in ones and twos. All except the handsome woman who kept saying sotto voiced things to Ramon as he worked nervously over the huge buffet. Then it got cool and Angela started to herd her friends inside the house. Zack went too, suddenly aware that the thick, very warm shape against his arm belonged to Mary Amiel. Joe Hornsby was nowhere to be seen.
"Crazy, huh?" Mary asked up at Zack. "Where's Joe?"
She thumbed toward the mill. "I knocked him out. It's the only way to keep him off my back while I have some fun. That's his wife kitten-kissing around the Filipino. By morning, they'll both be flat on their back, snoring their sins away. You're cute, Zack."
"Isn't everybody?" he asked, looking around the merry crowd.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By eleven, the liquor turned them all loose. First it showed in the careless talk, then the casual and unhidden play of hands. The hi-fi, piped to every room in the house produced faint music and a steady bass throb behind the laughter and shrill voices. Then a shoulder strap went down on a woman Zack knew as Cora and she pretended to protest when a man named George went to work on the other strap. In five minutes, the voice sounds changed and another wildly swinging, black tipped breasts caused a squeal of admiration. Then three men began a special hullabaloo and it was over Mary Amiel.
"Show 'em a real set, Mary!" one demanded.
For a moment, Zack was privately miffed, then he remembered that Angela had said everybody played at her parties. Hip to hip with a lean, scarlet haired woman named Signe, Zack let his arm tighten around her waist as Mary threw her arms out to ward away the encouraging men.
"Okay!" she shouted. "But the first bastard who bites gets a kick in the knockers!"
She stripped open her embroidered blouse and dragged the cloth apart. Zack felt Signe stiffen in jealously as the twin melons, tipped brightly with pink popped out and seemed to sway in firm blinding bulbs of jiggling loveliness. The men shouted, then like naughty schoolboys, lined up to stoop and kiss each glowing pink button. Mary stood, her shoulders squared back to hold up the unbelievable shapes, and one by one, the men pecked or slobbered or nibbled at the marvelous display.
"Well?" the vibrating woman in his arm said to Zack.
"Very well, but I'll pass," Zack decided.
"She's really a nasty little troppol."
"Trollop," Zack corrected her.
"So'm ginned, baby! You want to take me upstairs somewhere?" she asked. "My husband is about to stick his nose in Kraig's fly, anyway. You any idea what's like being married to a fag?"
"Not really."
"Neither is he for really," she giggled. "C'mon, Zackie. I got a thing for you, sweetie."
For a second, Zack wondered what Helen was doing, then the heat of the slim body, the insufferably powerful aphrodasiac of her perfume came up to him and he led her to the hall where the stairs began.
Out of the noise and the crowd, he looked at the svelte body weaving up the stairs ahead of him. The vee of her gown was cut so deeply in back the tiny pad of flesh beginning the separation of her rather long buttocks was visible. The pale green of her gown was perfect compliment to the few delightfully rusty freckles showing on the ripples of her back.
He let it get to him, and toward the last few steps, he reached out to test the pert roundness of the rolling rump shapes. She looked back and giggled, and he had to help her as she stumbled.
"Jees," she mumbled, looking at the lewd figures carved in vivid passion at the head of the stairs. "Longest screwing match I ever saw! Been going on for three whole damned years, Zackie. You got that kind of muscle, baby?"
She laughed and went on down the hall. Zack hoped she knew which room was hers, and she apparently remembered. Inside, he pushed the knob lock. Faggot or not, her husband might resent whatever was going to happen now.
She was nice to kiss, her arms and hips and mouth coming to him with deliberate lethargy. As his lips let her tongue push in, he felt the slow subtle wave of her back and then the low, definite whip of her hips in a delightfully up motion against his abrupt lust. His memory made him push his broad palms down and he gathered the long firm buttocks in close grip. Now they moved and twitched in rhythm to her mobile lips and Zack lifted her against him and moved to one of the twin beds. The booze already had made him heady and now he let the sweet intoxication of Signe finish his drunkenness. As they sank to the bed, she squirmed out of his arms and threw herself out away from him. On one knee, he peeled out of his jacket and jerked his tie loose. He stared down at the quietly relaxed form and the pulse at the base of her throat matched his. Once started, he just denuded himself because he didn't know where to stop. He bounced the bed with his undressing, and when he reached for her, she put out a hand and threw his fingers away from her side zipper.
"No," she murmured without looking at him.
Zack blinked. He crouched in massive nakedness, his blood beating furiously, his strong legs quivering with impatience.
"No what?" he demanded. "Just-no!" she exclaimed without looking at him.
Furious, Zack flipped her and his hand peeled her gown down then he turned her again. Instantly, he understood. She wailed and tried to straighten her hair but it was too late. Like some foiled beast, Zack hooked his fingers in the top of her gown and unhooked it from her other shoulder in one revealing yank. Her breasts were made with taped shapes that pushed the pectoral muscles up in bottomless bulging. He jerked the dress down a little farther and then his eyes popped and narrowed in a split second.
"Please no, Zack!"
He laughed at the slim, terribly effeminate shape on the bed which was no longer female. A near blush heated Zack's face as he saw himself standing nude and passionate over the miserable body, now twisting away in strange shame.
"So your husband is a fag," he growled.
"Go Zack! Leave me alone! I never meant to let you go-so far! I'm not a fag! I'm not a queer! I just dress in drag and-"
"-and play the teasing game," Zack snarled.
"Oh, no one ever understands me! I'm not a homosexual!"
"You weren't," Zack corrected the wailing transvestite. "But you just got converted, baby!"
At the door, Zack stopped to look back at the quiet body of the man he had known as Signe. He lay in quivering dejection, or so it looked. And with the slender smoothness of his body turned on one hip so his oddly taped breasts and male evidence were hidden, he looked as much like a woman as Zack had ever seen.
"You okay?" Zack asked.
"I'm going to die!" came the throaty insistence. "You filthy rapist! You horrible beast!"
Suddenly it was funny to Zack. His belly felt drawn out, his back was tired. He had put his pants and his shirt back on, but the rest of his clothes he carried over one arm. Now he cracked the lock by turning the knob.
"Take a hot bath and dope it with hair cream," he said lightly. "And the next time, sex it up with a lightweight."
"Get out, get out, get out!"
"I'm out," Zack laughed. "You just have a good memory!"
In the hallway, he leaned against the wall, shaking his head to dispel the dream-like fantasy of the past thirty minutes. From downstairs, light laughter and some voices told him the party was still going. He didn't know what had come over him: the strange perversion of Angela's world seemed to have seeped into his skin and tainted his reason. Then he tried to remember what he had done to 'Signe' and it was an ugly, if ecstatic memory of nearly insane passion and brutal lust. Everybody plays, Angela had said. Zack went downstairs, skirted the main room and went to the small bedroom adjoining the servants' quarters he had chosen for himself. Lazily, he showered and changed to lighter slacks and a clean shirt. That he left his shorts off was indicative of his mental gymnastics. It was two in the morning when he went out and down the hallway toward the party.
Only the hard-core drinkers were left. The bar was no longer attended by Ramon, but then, Mrs. Hornsby was also in absence. Two well liquored men and three women sat in a loose circle around a cocktail table littered with half-drinks, ashtrays full of butts and drying fragments of hors d'oeuvres from the buffet. Mary was one of the women and Joe Hornsby was one of the men. Mary sat on the floor, her back to a sofa. Her monsterous breasts were still free, but the blouse covered the outside rolls of the delectable shapes.
"Zackie!" she chirped. "Lookee the pretty man, Nell! Hey, he lost his slick look, didn't he?"
The woman named Nell was very drunk. She lay half against the broad soft arm of a sofa, her dress high over long tapered legs in loose wrinkles. She tried to focus her eyes on Zack, blinked hard, then waved limply at him.
"Man's a man," she decided. "Some short, some long, some fat and some dumb. What's he, Mary?"
"You know something? I got to find that out! You care, Joe?"
Hornsby snorted and went back to sleep. Mary squirmed erect and wobbled toward Zack. He caught her as she collapsed, tucked her under one arm and dragged her toward the bar. He was feeling good now, and the squirming, pawing girl on his hip felt better. There was no doubt about her sex. It bobbled and swung under her shoulders. Zack draped her over the closest barstool.
"Balance," he said. "I have to have a drink."
"Nail me to the stool then," she mumbled.
"Where is everybody?"
She giggled and the mirth made her bounce. "Stacked, smacked, packed and jacked. Hey, you got any idea where a girl could sleep, say if she was boozed and tired, baby?"
"Virgin or non-virgin?"
"Oh-ho! Always fine print in the stinking contract! The only virginity I have left is my right nostril and if you are for that, Zackie, then you are no man for Mary!"
"You intrigue me," Zack admitted, sampling his drink.
"No. You do it to me. I got no poop left in the popper."
So Zack hauled her down to his little room, and he forgot that Helen would be creeping through the wet grass in less than four hours.
* * *
The key worked perfectly in the big lock and the gates swung without a sound. Helen carried her two blankets and the big thermos through, then closed the wrought iron portals without making more than a tiny clang. She walked along the driveway until she came to the last one of the many cars stacked bumper to bumper in the lazy circle. It was all just as she remembered it, and just as Zack had sketched it out for her. For a moment, she stood shivering until she came to the high mesh fence. A little farther on, she could look up and see the house, a gray shape above her, silhouetted against the black sky. There were some little glow places coming through windows, but there was no sound. Satisfied, she went on toward the hill which then dipped down into the short swale where the mill and the pond were. By the time she reached the edge of the black flat mirror, she was so excited she could hardly walk. In memory and scorn, she squatted on the edge of the stones and helped Zack foul up the water. Then she went into the rumpus room and felt her way to the steps leading up to her nest. The key to the new door worked perfectly too.
Barring rare chance, she would be left alone for two days. Helen put the ladder in position and felt for the bag of equipment. All she took out in the dark was the pair of ten-fifty binoculars. With one of her blankets wrapped squaw-fashion around her trembling shoulders, Helen searched the grounds with the nighttinted glasses. Nothing.
When the first bare gray of dawn began to make shapes in the overcast sky, she surveyed the grounds again. There appeared a light at one end of the big house when her watch said six-thirty. She saw a little man in a white jacket bustling around the garden patio. By then, Helen was ready to scream.
She loved Zack and she had never once disliked their life together. She didn't require very much money and she had never dreamed of being as rich as Angela Borden, nor even as beautiful. But this wild, scheming plan had blossomed in her mind without warning. Every step, every twisting path of progression had become suddenly clear. Now, huddled behind the stone window casing, she realized that she did not care if her blackmail plans never produced a dime. The important thing to Helen was the weird and wonderful thrill she anticipated by being where she could see, and perhaps hear, some of the wildly sexual things Zack's words about the Borden woman's way of life had indicated. There was even some strange thrill in being where she was, secretly hidden in a place where she could watch and throb and think.
None the less, she got her fine camera from the equipment bag and set the feel of it in her hands. There was plenty of time to scramble up on the platform after some one started toward the pond. Looking down, its inky darkness made Helen shiver. She remembered the two times Zack had told her in half apologetic tones what had transpired with Angela Borden in that foul mess. It made things happen just to think about it and Helen let her right hand pass down over her denimed thigh to rub close to the waiting sensation. She ignored the cramp in her knees and the chill around her ankles. The dawn was thickening now and she began to see the smaller details.
Then she saw them coming from the house. For a moment, panic touched Helen as she acknowledged the lack of sufficient light to use her new camera. She grabbed her binoculars and furiously focused them on the oncoming trio.
The bold black-haired woman would have to be Angela Borden. Helen scanned the two young men, and some tiny flick of relief passed over her as she saw that neither of them was Zack. They strode along, a pace or two behind the woman, their mouths moving. The black-haired beauty was clad in a striped shift, not long, not high, and not loose enough to hide the brutal sexuality of her body. In one hand she carried a small bag.
"Damn, damn, damn, damn!" Helen muttered. Then she sighted her camera down on the pond and the light level indicator came up twenty percent below ability. "Screw a dirty bitch who wakes up early!"
They passed below her and entered the mill. Helen hastened to the door and put her ear to the thick pine. Once she heard a chair scrape and the suspense, the unknowing made her furious. She thought about cracking the lock knob from her side and easing the door open. Then she remembered what Zack had said about the draft created when the tower door was opened. Helen crouched, listened and strained. There was no sound. She tried to imagine what a lush, bold-bodied woman and two stalwart young men could be doing in the rumpus room at eight o'clock in the morning, and the early hour, plus Helen's own tastes made this difficult to picture.
Once more, Helen read her light and it was better. She huddled by the stone casing, her heart beating out every passing second. Split degree by split degree, her light meter gained and she waited, hoping they would wait another few minutes. In the last analysis, she could only shoot what was there to shoot, and Helen knew she would have other chances. It was only that her own excitement demanded she record every single episode within her range.
And when the light meter said she was in business, her nervousness screeched to a new high because there was no sound nor any movement around the ugly pond. Helen moved to the door again and despite Zack's warning, cracked the lock and then the door. As if from come deep cavern, Helen heard the woman's voice.
"-big idiot, that's enough or you'll be limper than a dead eel when we hit the water. You ready, Kraig?"
"As I'll ever be, Angiet"
Helen steadied herself and leaped for the window casing. She juggled the camera and aimed it downward. Just set, she gasped with personal shock as a lush and nude body ran out over the stone apron and dove in a long, swift arc into the gulping waters of the pool. A moment later, a second body, less round, less softly white but terribly exciting, followed the first. Helen tripped the electric trigger and her left hand moved down, scrambled the zipper of her denims and pushed fingers digging into the delicacies that had burned her since the alarm had gone off at four that morning.
"Oh, goddamn you!" she murmured, but it was to shapes, not people. And she forgot that her husband was barely two hundred yards away, sleeping off, God knew, what kind of a night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The old house was not soundproof and something awakened Zack before he was through sleeping. For a moment, the strange ceiling and walls confused him, then he sat up in bed, remembering. Mary lay in a round tight ball beside him, her body and most of her head covered with well-clutched sheet and blanket. Zack wasn't sure why he had brought her to his room because neither of them had done more than crawl in bed and collapse. He retrieved his watch from the nightstand and discovered it was almost nine. He tested the fur on his teeth and the throb in his head, then he laughed to himself.
"What's so damned funny?" Mary's voice came from the covers.
"Thought you were dead," he said, rolling over to cuddle against the intriguing shape of her curled back and bottom. The hot softness of her finished awakening his blood and he spooned tightly against her, waiting for her to react.
"Wow," she grunted. "I thought that looked pretty good last night! Oh! Take it easy, man!"
Zack's head whirled as emotion fought the lethargy of quick awakening. It seemed to him he was lusting into a tangled cloud of billowing flesh. His arm over her pressed down into the folded heat of huge breasts and curled torso and he strained to the velvet kiss with bludgeoning force. Mary turned her head and reached straight back over her shoulder to hook her hand over the top of his dishelved head. For the longest moment, they lay locked in motionless ecstasy, then she did some struggling twist and popped out of bed, leaving him atrophied with desire, a huge naked man with no woman.
"Come back here!" he laughed, but she backed out of reach and stood trembling against the wall. Her blonde hair was down and it hung just to her slim square shoulders. Zack stared at the monsterous pink-tipped bowls of creamy flesh, then down at the smooth hips and perfectly tapered legs. He tried to reach her again and failed.
"Hey," he complained.
"Save it," she said. "It always makes me sick in the morning."
"I'm already sick!" he laughed rolling over on his back to stretch himself up in a way that always made Helen go mad.
"All you have to do is go out there and whistle," she told him. "Oh boy," she murmured and went toward the adjoining bathroom.
Zack relaxed, suddenly realizing he didn't care. The sun beating in from the east reminded him that Helen was up there in the tower, playing I-spy with her camera. The house was full of weird and wonderful people and if Mary had stayed with him, he would have wound up flat on his back and ready for another hour or two of sleep. He heard her gargling and carrying on in the bathroom, and he rolled out of bed to slip into his wrinkled slacks.
"Coffee?" he called.
Her answer sounded about like 'yub-blub' so he went to the hall door and looked out. From the kitchen came smells he identified as coffee, sausage, hot grease and humanity. Also, there were voices from the front of the house. Zack went to the kitchen and Elda, the harried colored cook gave him one of the several pyrex coffee pots and the necessary china. When he came back to his room, Mary was just settling her gold lame pants around her waist. She had to look down between the rolling nudity of her breasts: it would have taken a giraffe to look over them.
"Used your junk in there," she said. "You mad at me?"
"Hell no. It was just an early morning idea anyway. All men get them. But you were kind of late backing out, baby."
"It's going to be a long, wild day," she apologized. "You never attended one of Angela's parties before?"
"Nope. But I like her style. One sugar, please."
"Okay. Last night was just a warm up, Zack. Did you nail Signe? His name is really Bill Signet. I saw him go for you-being the only one of the crowd who didn't know he is a transie."
"She-he, kept talking about her husband."
"Abel? They have been 'married' for years. They go everywhere together, like man and wife. Except to parties. Abel goes for boys and Signe goes for play-acting. If you nailed him, you got a virgin, I bet!"
"How do you tell?" Zack laughed. "You're a strange one, Mary."
She shook her head. "I'm a whore, Zack. Angela pays me to attend her parties, for goofs like Hornsby and some others. You are a whore too, baby. If you hadn't come to this party, she'd have hired a couple of straight muscle men for the affair. There will be a few show up toward the afternoon anyway. See, the hard core bunch are staying nights. The rest come on for kicks and go home when they have hit the limit. You don't know about it, huh?"
"Maybe Angela is going to be mad about you and me winding up in the same bed?"
Mary laughed and took another gulp of the steaming coffee. "She didn't even remember we were in the house. About ten, last night, she and her whip-and bootie group went up to her room. That's a crew!"
"Leather lovers?"
"Among other things. That pool is part of it"
"I already know about that pond," Zack told her.
"That's what you think, baby. Wait until it warms up this afternoon. You'll get an education, but quick!"
"More coffee?"
Mary shook her head and stood up, shaking her hair prettily, and thusly the sensually sluggish weight of her breasts. "I look okay, Zack?"
"Wild! You going out that way?"
Her smile was slow but knowing. "Certainly. From now on, the show is on the road. And I'm hired for these. Wait till you see all the things this bunch can think of to do with them. You coming?"
"In a few minutes. I'll shower and shave first."
"See you later, baby?"
"It's a date!"
For a moment, Zack considered going up and grabbing his wife by the nape of the neck and hustling them both out of the grounds. Then the clinging odor of Mary's perfume assailed his nostrils and he decided to leave Helen where she was.
* * *
She had turned the film after the first twenty-five feet, but after that, Helen had forgotten everything she knew about movie filming. At the beginning, she had been sensible enough to know that all she was getting were flashes of agile bodies, flailing about in the dark water. She had watched Angela swim out, looking back at the two young men who had followed her into the water. Now and then a bold, dark-tipped breast, or a vividly rounded buttock arched up out of the water, but for a few minutes it was laughter and splashing and shouts of protest about the cold.
Angela had gone under and from her height, Helen had been able to follow the powerful underwater strokes as the graceful woman swam to the far side of the pond. The two young men had hung in the water talking together in low tones. Then they had split up and slowly breast-stroked after Angela. When they got to her, they split up and made for the stone wall. Through with film changing, Helen waited, not knowing what to expect. She covered men as they hoisted themselves to the wall, and her blood hammered as they sat for a few seconds, fully exposed to her down pointed camera. Then the darker of the two stood up and walked to where he could look down at Angela.
She was turned now on her back, floating in perfect silhouette against the murky water. Her breasts seemed float into obloid freedom and her strong thighs played frog-like in lazy treading motions.
Helen saw it coming by the oddly male arch the young man assumed and then her amazement turned to disgust and finally to strange excitement. Her finger, curled around the camera trigger, ached with pressure as if to insure the continuance of the tell-tale whirr. As his relief was accomplished, the young man dove off the stone, well over the gleaming bubbles lighted by the rising sun. Then his legs kicked and he launched his body forward at Angela. As they met, arms and legs entangling in obvious embrace, the second young man went into the same arch and Helen saw how the laughing lovers in the water were splashed and whipped by the steaming stream. Then the second young man stood watching what his ablution had begun. It was hard and twisting in the water. They went under and bobbed to the surface, and when they came up the third or fourth time, the motions of their close-pressed bodies was imperceptible, even if Helen had been able to focus her wide, dry eyes better.
The man on the edge of the pond finally turned and walked around the pool toward the mill. It was then that the clicking, empty sound told Helen she had run out of film. Still not tearing her eyes from the unfinished passion in the pond, she fumbled new film into the camera, threaded it after the second try and slammed the camera cover closed just as the two below began to thrash in magnificent climax. Suddenly the young man slid back into the water away from Angela. She let him go and turned over to swim slowly toward the mill landing. Helen took a few feet on Angela as she climbed up on the apron, splashing the water from her perfect body with swift palms. Helen waited because the young man had to come up in seconds. He did, on his back, his powerful arms working in a slow backstroke, and Helen could see why Angela had chosen this mighty lover for the exquisite finish of her morning bath.
When the three of them disappeared below her, Helen sat in sensual shock, her body trembling with the obscene memory of Angela and her men. Helen wondered what she would have done if one of the men had been Zack. She turned her camera in nerveless fingers and began to whimper in personal agony. And she was locked in a stone tower with nothing more responsive than a camera. She cursed softly.
She was alone now, but the binoculars showed her a few lazy people having desultory breakfast in the back garden. She saw a young blonde girl with the most bare and most massive breasts she had ever seen. She saw Angela, dressed now in a jersey play-suit and she thought she recognized one of the young men. Then another man came out of the house and Helen almost climbed through the binoculars as she recognized Zack, in a fresh shirt and neat gray slacks. She thought he looked more than once toward her perch in the tower, but Helen thought a lot of quick things, none of which were very logical. She was severely caught between the desire to run down and haul her pretty husband home to their apartment and the wet towel, and the crawling completely compelling desire to know what could happen in the hours to come. So she waited.
* * *
"Well, Zack!" Angela laughed. "You look just too great this morning. Quiet night, baby?"
"Moderate. Some party you throw. You look fresh and ready."
"Always, dear. I've already had my morning dip in the pond and I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed."
"In the pond?" Zack echoed. "This cold, cold morning?"
"Not cold, baby. Very warm. Mike and Kraig went in with me."
"Two for tea, huh?"
"I got them first thing this morning," she admitted. "And it isn't tea, smarty."
"What's the program today?"
"No program, Zack. Just a party."
"I'd better put away a breakfast then, because a guy could fade out like last summer's rose at this kind of a brawl!"
They were all out of bed by eleven, but some of them looked like they should have stayed in bed. One or two headed directly for the bar. Joe Hornsby headed directly for Mary Amiel. The only concession she had made to her bare upper half was a loosely caped towel and she had two laughing, admiring men when Hornsby joined them. That reminded Zack and he checked for Mrs. Hornsby. She was not in sight, but Ramon also had the look of a man shorn of his metabolism.
Signe was back in drag, his mock breasts tucked into a halter, his reluctant hips encased in flowered trunks. The wig was flawless, and in sympathy, Zack smiled when Signe looked his way. To his surprise, the transvestite smiled back. He even patted the simpering Abel, who in a gracious minute, turned and looked at Zack. Resolved to stay clear of that pair, Zack turned his attention to the other guests. In the daylight, they were a pretty ordinary group, except that there was now a relaxed freedom, an undercurrent of intimacy he had not noticed the night before.
Zack thought a man could get about any kind of a thing going he could imagine, and perhaps some things that defied imagination. With the possible exception of Mary and Joe Hornsby, no two of the group seemed attached. The lesbians, devoid of undergarments now, lolled and talked to men as well as the younger, prettier women. No one was doing anything but talk, as if they were waiting for some starting gun to send them off on another sex-race. Zack supposed they, like himself, had merely adopted a lethargy to rest the nerves and sharpen the anticipation. Then he turned and looked at the tower. With pure deliberate deviltry, he turned to mask his movement and waved. Then he remembered he had promised to feed Helen if he could manage and he sauntered off toward the kitchen to forage.
He buttered two sugary pastries and wrapped them in a napkin, then casually strolled out across the yard.
"Zack?" Angela called from the terrace.
"Going down and check the water level," he called back.
"Don't stay. We got a thing at one, baby."
He nodded and rolled on, his mind toying with the nature of Angela's thing. Once he looked back to be sure no one was following him. As he approached the pond, he looked up and saw just the barest flash of blonde hair at the west window.
Inside, he noted the water spots on the rumpus room floor. He also noted three damp and crumpled towels. On an inspiration, he picked up the wettest one then made his way up the narrow stone steps.
"You big dirty son of a bitch," Helen grated as he stepped through the door. "You took your damned time! Or wouldn't she let you out of bed this morning?"
"Whom might you be referring to?" he asked, setting the pastries on the top of the short ladder.
"Any one of the nine sluts I can see from here!"
"Seven. Two are men in women's clothes.
"Ugh! Well, they were sure men who went swimming and watering with your precious Angela this morning!"
"Had fun, huh?"
Nervousness and rage made her turn and cover her face with both hands. Zack swung the wet towel and it cracked hard across her back. Helen jerked up, turned her face and he snapped a welt across her shoulder. As he repeated the brutal flailing blows, Helen began to sag until her denimed knees were on the stone floor. She settled one shoulder against the wall and he began to whip her legs.
It came on him when the whimpers of pain and excitement escaped her lips. He moved forward, doubled the towel and clubbed it down. Once, Helen raised her hand, then he beat it down again. Almost as if she were hypnotised, Helen began to fumble at her denims. The heavy smack and plop of the towel speeded and she was no longer able to withstand his mock fury. She tumbled over, her faded blues dragged down around her bare thighs and with a sudden gasp of surrender, Zack fell on his wife like a soft giant crab.
"Oh god, Zack," she husked. "I love you so!"
"Want to go home?" he asked through the onrush of passion her body under him caused.
"No, no, no!"
"Baby, baby," he murmured, then he had nothing more to say as she met his lunge with the agile demanding whip of her hips.
* * *
With only part of his senses left, Zack rested against the stone wall and watched his pantsless wife wolf the buttered goodies. Her bottom showed the red marks, her knees were scuffed. Her hair had tumbled out of its careless wind and her mouth was a sensuous greedy thing with the cake.
"Even money you forgot your diaphragm," he said.
"Oh my god!"
"I'll go down to the bar and get you a bottle of club soda."
"Oh dear, oh dear! Hurry up, too!" Then she laughed. "I haven't douched with soda since I was in high school."
Zack looked out and down toward the pool. "This is a high, a very high school, baby. Take notes because I'll ask questions!"
CHAPTER NINE
Harriet Fraser pulled the ripcord. For a moment, Zack could not recognize the big woman. Then the bold contours of her breasts bound tightly in the shiny black leather and the generous flow of her equally bound hips told him who it was. Standing in her high-heeled boots, laced from instep to where her strong thigh meshed with the outcurve of her torso, she was taller than any man in the garden. Flesh showed only through the taut lacings and where her elbow length gauntlets met the sleeves of the stitched bodice. Her head was completely hooded. From the top of the hood projected two sharp brasshorns. They matched the sharply studded collar under her hood drape and the bristling brass cactus of her broad white leather belt. But it was the brass-ringed gauntlets that drew Zack's eyes, and the long threetongued whip that dangled carelessly from her wrist gave the ruthless knuckles a sinister meaning.
"Well?" she demanded in a strong, slightly muffled voice.
No one but Zack seemed surprised. Several of the guests moved swiftly back, and just in time because the whip flicked out at an evasive sun-suited rump and no one laughed. Harriet stepped forward toward the yard gate and directly in front of Zack, she stopped.
"I'll expect you out there," she said pointing toward the orchard, "-in ten minutes, boy."
Then she went on and Zack followed the magnificent figure with some admiration in his eyes. When he looked back, Angela was beckoning to him from the door to the house. Zack shrugged and went to his employer's side.
"Up in my room, baby. I can outfit you the way she wants you. There'll be six or seven of us, so don't feel conspicuous."
"That babe could go bear hunting with a switch," Zack observed. "She for real with that whip?"
"She's for real. Come on, sweetie."
A nearly forgotten memory leaped forward and Zack shuddered. Her name had been Louise or Lois or something similar, and she had been a Junior in college with him. Her costume hadn't been as elaborate as Harriet Fraser's, but it had been leather, laced, crisscrossed with brass studding and her whip had been one with nine lashes. She had nearly skinned Zack, and five months later they had expelled her from college for cutting the bottom out of a youth while he was strapped to a door casing equipped with strong hooks. Her other bad habit had been more intimate, once her subject had been whipped to half-death. Between her tongue and her whip, she had made herself quite a reputation among the boys who played the erotic games. Once had cured Zack. He didn't want to take a second cure now.
"I pass," he said to Angela.
"Oh? Yellow, Zack?"
"No. Man, that's all."
"Come on. I'll get you dressed up so you can prove it to Harriet. And some others."
"Okay then. But she gets it if she begins to think pink with that whip."
Angela put her hand to the door knob of her private room. "You do what you have to do, baby," her words came soft and vibrant. "She asked for you."
"Angela, this could be-bad trouble," Zack warned her. "I've known a she-satan or two in my time."
"Shush, baby. Most of us have been through it a hundred times!"
* * *
Zack stared at the people in Angela's huge bedroom.
Mary was there, Hornsby close by her. There were two women and two other men. All were in various stages of dress and undress, tugging, lacing, grunting into the wildest collection of leather uniforms ever imagined. They looked at Zack and Angela, and only Mary smiled. She was fitting a tan suede corset under her mammoth breasts. Her legs were already laced up to the pert down-curve of her bare bottom. As Zack looked, she donned a short skirt that covered her exposed sex parts and bottom and would, unless she ran or twisted or stooped. Angela went to the dressing room and came back with a beautifully tanned leather suit of scarlet dyed leather. Yellow rawhide laces hung from various fitting darts.
"Try this, baby," Angela said. "I'll try to find a pair of boots to fit. Like tens?"
"Eleven," Zack murmured as he took the soft leather in his hands. "All of this stuff belongs to you?"
Angela smiled. "Only because I'm the only one who can afford to buy it. Yes. It is all mine. And Harriet belongs to me, too."
"Mayday," Zack chuckled. "Send the Marines!"
None of the other three men seemed abashed at displaying their masculine parts, so Zack shrugged and began to undress. The stocky brunette named Cora raised her head to look when he stripped off his trousers, then she went back to lacing her long boots.
"The red boots are too small. Here's a pair of black ones. Make you look cute in twotone," Angela laughed. "Here's a hood and some gloves to match. Hurry up, huh?"
"What about you?"
Angela raised the edge of her purple habit. Her neat white boots, tipped up on ludicrously high heels were laced precisely up her shins. "I've been ready for an hour," she husked. "Hurry!"
Once more, Zack felt the peculiar excitement he had felt above his original revulsion with Angela at the pool. He returned words from the others, and struggled into the scarlet leather, tingling with the weird sensation of raw leather on his skin. The garment was in two pieces and the short trousers were cut for action. Even as he laced the sides, from mid-thigh to the waist, he was self-conscious about the way he hung and bobbed from the crotchless garment. In haste, he slipped the pull-over short over his head and was grateful that the fringed skirt came well down over his maleness. Then he looked at Mary, standing now in nearly immobile construction, only her breasts exposed and the feel of the leather plus the impact of her imprisonment made him realize the shortness of his shirt.
Then he saw Angela, coming out of her dressing room and her body was perfectly molded in soft white kid from the top of her head to the tips of her boots. At breast and hip and buttocks, long hand-edged buttonholes, large enough to get a big male hand through, slashed the kidskin. The crotch of her svelte suit was formed by a flap that came under from behind and buckled into gold fittings at her belly. Again Zack felt his shirt was too short.
"Let it go, baby," Angela laughed through the mouth button-hole. "This is like a nudist camp-the first day is the rough one!"
He held up his gauntlet. "No knucks? How do I beat that whip?"
Angela pointed to the wardrobe. "Along the back wall. Choose your own weapon."
Then he saw what Joe Hornsby had dragged from the wardrobe. It was a thin little switch-like thong, barely suitable for chastising a sick kitten. He saw Mike take out a heavier quirt. George Brent, the only one of them Zack hadn't talked to, took out a short thick club on a long wrist thong and whapped it against his solid thigh. When Zack went to the wardrobe hangar, the only thing he could see was a bullwhip. Every other torturous device seemed to pale in his memory of Harriet Fraser's three-thonged killer. The bullwhip was short, thick butted and beautifully plaited. It was perhaps six or seven feet long, had three tiny separate poppers on the tip and each was lead beaded. Zack shuddered at the viciousness of it.
"You weren't kidding, huh?" Angela asked. "Come on, everybody. Let's get going. Harriet will be frothing at the mouth."
"Oh dear," Nell gasped through her hood. "She'll just beat us and beat us and beat us!"
It sounded like a hope to Zack.
* * *
Zack felt stifled, bound, awkward in the extra high cuban heels of the black boots and he felt half sick at the spectacle they all made. But he also belt a singing, surging sensation in his belly and the drag of the heavy whip in his hand was good. The smell of leather was an exhilarating perfume. Walking across the grass, among eight other equally bizarre figures, he felt also the isolation, the sensation of being deep in the womb of some fierce, unnamed beast. It was a sensual aloneness, a secretive nearly inhuman suspension from all that was real. Even the very real whiteness of Mary Amiel's bare breasts was unreal. He wondered if she could take a whipping over the sensitive, nearly bursting contours of her flesh.
Then he saw Harriet, standing almost at the very top of the slope. At her feet, the two big Danes lay, their tongues lolled out, their nearly black eyes turned down at the oncoming adventurers. Evidently, Harriet had gone to the kennels and released the dogs. Now the others stopped, some thirty feet from Harriet. Not knowing the game, Zack stopped too, waiting.
"You. Red Devil," Harriet called. "Come here to me!"
"Do as she says," Angela husked.
Dragging his bullwhip, Zack stepped slowly forward. Almost instantly, both Great Danes came to their feet, heads low, tongues slowed in that cautious animal waiting. Zack didn't think they were vicious, merely some part of this weird game. Ten feet from Harriet, he stopped.
"Kneel before me, miserable man," the Satanish hood commanded. "On your knees!"
"Up your gazatz!" Zack snarled.
He wasn't prepared for her sudden fury, and the triple lash of her whip stung through his shirt. Twisting, he let his own whip whistle out and bite at the taut thigh Harriet braced to the grass. Both dogs made silly, ineffectual yelps and backed away. Then to Zack's surprise, he was engaged in a cruel, very deadly whip duel with a massive amazon and her agile, flisking whip. Behind him, he could sense the gathering, circling spectators. He heard low murmurs, grunts of eagerness. He circled and Harriet circled. Zack was more than a little concerned that while Harriet was completely clad, his own mid-person was singularly susceptible to a flicking lash or a winding whip end.
"You miserable fool!" Harriet laughed.
"What the hell makes you think I'm fooling?" Zack sent back, and he feinted, sent the whip out hard and let it wrap twice about her left ankle. When he jerked, she almost toppled. Then the whip unwound and she staggered back into balance. Zack cut her across the black seat of her pants and took a rebound cut across the face.
Now there was noise, voices, cries, little inhalations as he tested Harriet and was tested. Miraculously, there appeared white scuff marks over the stinging places where her whip touched. He had one sensible thought-rush in and toss the big woman to her back and put a twist on her leg that would finish it all. But the fire and the danger and the contest were getting to him, and he was beginning to get the hang of the short bullwhip.
He aimed at her legs and her buttocks because she was a woman with deeply sensitive places where tumors and spastic shocks could develop, but as she began to cut him more often than he cut her, Zack lost a little of his caution. His whip popped with Wagon Train precision now and he could bite her backhand or forehand. They still circled, moved under the trees, squatting, bending and lurching.
"Oh christ, Zack!" Mary's cry came. "Rip her butt off!"
Then Mary screamed because with a sudden change of direction, Harriet cut triple welts across the bounding fullness of Mary's breasts. In the brief moment of exposure, Zack lay out and cut, and a shaggy ribbon of black leather went flying off into the grass. The white of Harriet's buttock turned suddenly red. She straightened up, spat a curse from under her hood and lunged, straight into the backhand cut Zack lay along her belly.
He could neither think nor plan. He saw only the vicious shape, still flinging the whip at him, sinking to spread knees. He lopped his whip out and across the bowed back. Crablike, he moved and again be brought the whip down over Harriet's back. He cut her buttocks, until she twisted and threw her whip high. Then to his amazement, she spun around and leaped for him. He stepped back, tripped over a clump of thick grass and the next moment, Harriett was clamped around him in alien eagerness.
Ready to hack the back of her neck in defense, Zack suddenly realized she was not fighting. A buckle popped at her waist and she rolled under him. Turning his head, he stared at the spectators who were crouched, watching through black eyeholes. Then he felt Harriet's gloved hands at his groin. He lay heavily and the flood of desire couldn't be stopped. Again he turned to look at the others and Angela's laughter came high and harsh.
"Take her, man!" she cried. "You earned her!"
* * *
Helen almost shrieked with hate as the leather-clad figures closed tightly around the two bodies on the grass. Saliva dripped from her slack mouth, sweat dampened her from crotch to throat. Now she fumbled the camera open and fitted the third roll of film she had shot since the big woman had walked majestically up the hill in her lovely leather suit. Once, in the heat of the fight, Helen had put down the camera and snatched up the binoculars, unable to resist full absorption of the exquisite sight. She had winced, gasped, twisted and throbbed with every blow of the flicking whips. She had snatched up the camera again as it appeared the male figure was going to win, and she had had wild, unaided orgasm when the buxom woman in black had sagged to her knees. Now, Helen searched the group, praying they would move so she could photograph the victor claiming his spoils, and they didn't move. They were frozen in their voyeuristic enjoyment. Helen was limp in hers.
Then they were moving at last and Helen bore down on the two intertwined bodies on the grass. Through her view-finder, she could see the small flashes of bare skin between their hips. She could see how the vanquished woman in black petted the hooded head above hers and the scarlet suit seemed to sway in soothing gentle caress. The others moved up under the orchard trees and the two huge dogs stood staring at the two passionate lovers.
Soggy with emotion, Helen filmed. Then the scarlet suit began to hump and rise and there was a briefly lewd flash of the lust he had used in finishing his victorious battle. As he came to his feet he did a peculiar, shoulder-stretching movement. Helen gasped.
"Why you big mother-loving fink!" Helen spat. "I'll kill you!"
Then she burst into tears, her nerves and her emotions battered into trembling surrender. Once more, she could feel the cut of the whips and the strain of pain and struggle. No wonder she had felt each blow the man had inflicted upon his foe. The broad back and stalwart legs, the loose jointed fling of arms and the forward thrust of the head had all been vaguely but unidentifiably familiar.
In time, she might have guessed, Helen thought, but that big muscle-freeing shrug could only have been done by Zack. She had seen him do it a thousand times, and it always preceded his demand for another beer.
"Rat, rat, rat!" Helen muttered. "That piece will cost you a mink stole, and some earrings!"
And, she decided, a bullwhip with soft silk lashes.
CHAPTER TEN
Angela reached up and fumbled the collar of her hood loose, her fingers listless as she unfastened the buckles. Her blood drummed in protest, her eyes ached from watching. Now she stripped off the white hood and stared resentfully as Zack leaned down to help the big woman up from the grass. They were talking and laughing together, and Harriet made a lewd performance out of pulling her crotch strap back into place. Despite the long red pull-over shirt, it was easy to imagine why Zack's contour was boldly mountainous in front. Then Angela heard Joe Hornsby yelp and she turned to see him half doubled from a vicious blow Mary Amiel had delivered to his groin with the squirt she now flicked in threat.
Angela looked at Cora Smithers, and though she was permitting Mike to hug her with obvious intent, she too was watching Zack.
It was all suddenly very ugly and Angela didn't know why. For some reason, her mind flipped back to that first day with Zack, the day she had resolved to buy the Jackson Estate and make it into her own private kind of Eden. That day, she had even been able to see this one, her band of leather clad exotics wandering under the trees, tasting the flick of whips and the wildness of their strange passions. She had been able to see this very party, the big house filled with erotica, warmed by lust and soothed by satiation, reinspired by all the desires she had cultivated in her friends.
Harriet should have won the whip duel. Her experienced whip hand should have cut Zack down, left him groveling on the grass while the others played their sensual games, with each other, perhaps with the dogs and with pure abandonment. But Zack had beaten the big domineering bitch and had claimed his prize with bold indifference to the others. Bold indifference to Angela and she didn't know why this angered her. She looked again and it was obvious that the other three women in the orchard were intent upon the handsome figure in scarlet leather. Even Mary, who was paid to give her body where ever it was wanted, had slashed out at Joe when his desire for her kiss interrupted her interest in Zack.
"He's mine," Angela said aloud.
"What, Angie?" George Agar asked from behind her.
"Shut up," Angela snapped. "Let's go back to the house."
"I thought we were going to take a swim in your pond?"
She ignored him as Harriet hooked one arm with Zack's and started down toward the others. Angela waited until they were close, then fixed her eyes on the dark apertures in Zack's hood.
"Well, well," she said bitterly. "You play rough, don't you?"
"Rough playmates," Zack laughed. "Well, what now?"
"What else can there possibly be?" Harriet asked.
They bunched then, laughing and commenting about the fight and the unexpectedly graphic victory. Angela suddenly turned on her stilt heels and started toward the house. She heard the murmurs of curiosity behind her but was too disturbed, too confused to answer their amazement at her abrupt departure. As she approached the garden gate, the laughter and sound of merriment from the other guests made her cringe with distaste. She paused, stripping off her long white gauntlets, glancing back to see if the other glamorously clad adventurers were following. Satisfied that they were, she went on through the terrace, speaking shortly to a few irregulars who had dropped in since noon.
At the second floor, she stopped and stared at the obscene statuary and this only irritated her more. After another flight she entered her own room and the piles of clothing, the temporary mess was like a new spur. Angela hurled her hood and gloves to the floor and no stood looking at herself in the broad mirror.
Her long ebony hair hung in a thick veil over her white clad shoulders, framing the nearly perfect face in soft appeal. Her breasts fought the constricting leather, fitted to lift and thicken their natural solidity. Her waist, laced in furious gripping was barely two hands around and no amount of pressure could reduce the sensual flair of her hips until they tapered of their own free grace into straight smooth legs. Angela fought the lacings at her throat and slowly opened the bodice of her costume, savoring the bulge and press of her cleavage with narissistic adoration.
She was beautiful, rich and hardly over thirty, and she had sampled passion in a hundred different ways. She was also a woman, she thought, and it was her right to fall in love if she chose. It was her own fault: she had him to herself once, and it had been her own words that had set him off. Everybody plays. He had played. They said it had been the shy and whimpering Signe last evening, and Garcia had been sure Mary had spent the night in Zack's bed, and this afternoon it had been Harriet, the big domineering sex-pot who loved to see men cringe under her curses and her whip but who caved like a simpering bride when a real man beat her at her own game.
"Well, what now?" he had asked.
Angela hurried out of her room and down the stairs, skirting the accelerating party to make her way to Zack's room. He was a deliciously fastidious man and once he divested himself of the red leather, he would come down for a shower. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Angela began to strip the soft, clinging kid from her trembling body. 'What now?' was going to be Angela Borden.
* * *
At the gate, Zack remembered. He looked back and the dogs were not in sight. They intrigued his imagination, but some quirk of temper on Angela's part had terminated the hillside party before they had done much more than sniff and stare and flop around in lazy nonentity. Then Harriet's hand on his arm hauled him forward to meet three or four new people.
"Hey, Betty, look what I found-" Harriet cried to a tall, smoke-eyed woman in a straight orange shift. "Zack, this is Betty. That's her current long-Tom in the plaid jacket. She wears one out every two weeks."
"I've heard about you already, Zack," the lean blonde laughed. "Save some for me, huh?"
Zack said something, tried to match wit for wit, and as the rest of the leather clad group entered the garden, the party took on a sudden looseness. He was conscious of the fact that he could neither move fast nor sit down, the red leather shirt being the only cover he had. Mary was displaying the triple red welts across her breasts and some others were exploring the deliberate voids in the leather suits on the women. They had all removed their hoods because Garcia was preparing drinks at the bar with both busy hands. Zack thought he saw a chance to slip away, and he was just inside the house when Harriet captured him again.
"Where are you going, Zack?"
"To get a pair of damned pants, that's where!"
Her laughter was deep and throaty and close to his face. She was a bit coarse to be pretty, but she was sensuous and she was a memory. She had opened three of the buckles that held her leather bodice closed and swell of her upper breasts looked as hard as a man's biceps.
"Take me with you," she suggested. "I don't think we quite finished our fight, out there, do you baby? I mean, well, with all those eyes on a girl, she can't keep her mind on her business. You are the greatest, Zack, and I want to go along."
She pushed close and her trailing right hand went to the shortness of his leather jerkin. Her leather clad fingers were warm, demanding and Zack let his arms close around her body. Her mouth was level with his and as their lips came together, she let him feel the heat of her tongue, then closed her teeth on his as he followed with a deep plunging kiss. She held him with hand and mouth for a moment, and Zack pushed her toward the hall leading to his room.
He opened the door for her, then bumped hard into her when she stopped. Angela was sitting up in Zack's bed, her body exposed to the delicate fold of torso and thigh. The pile of white kid leather on the floor told the story instantly, and Zack read the fury in his Employer's blue-black eyes. Five weeks of Angela, plus the sudden manner in which she had terminated the orchard party, told him he was in trouble. And when Angela saw how Harriet's hand had left him, the flush of rage and frustration gave Zack the shivers. Harriet recoiled a step, then before he could stop her, she had accepted the challenge of Angela's anger and leaped across the bed at the nude and scrambling Angela.
The smack of flesh on leather mingled with the snarling cat-sounds the two women emitted. Fascinated, Zack closed the door and stayed out of the way. Harriett out-weighed Angela by fifty pounds but the latter's fury seemed to make up for it. She was all knees and clamped fists, then elbows and clawing hands. Harriet tried to close her strong arms around the thrashing nude body, but they tumbled to the floor, fell apart then tangled again. Now the sounds were grunts and gasps and gutteral curses, and it was obvious Harriet was going to win this fight. Everything she clutched or struck was bare flesh; her own body protected by the black leather suit. Except for her flowing hair and when Angela tore at it, Harriet knocked her loose with vicious belly punches.
What Harriet had begun, the sight of the two splendid bodies squirming and straining on the floor finished for Zack. He knew they were hurting each other and he knew he should stop the melee, but as he leaned against the wall, his shirt magically displaced by the animal reaction to what he saw, Zack knew he was going to let them fight. Not for long, because Harriet was gradually winning, her weight and strength crowding Angela down into squirming, struggling frustration. The sound of sobs came from under the tangle and it was Angela. Her hands clawed, released and then began to push at Harriet. As suddenly as it had begun, it ended and Angela went limp.
Harriet moved, her hands suddenly gentle as she straightened and eased the nude body under her.
"Get out," she said over her shoulder to Zack. "Get out!"
Zack laughed. "Hold what you have," he said, and in one quick leap, grabbed a pair of slacks and a shirt from the closet. As he went out the door, he saw Harriet's head lower and there was no contest to the kiss she implanted on Angela's left breast. Zack went down the hall to find a place where he could change his clothes.
* * *
The party had deteriorated into a loose, sensual laziness when Zack rejoined the others. Only half of the guests were in the garden, the others having wandered-or rushed off, in twos and threes to further their own excitement. Mary Amiel was the only one left wearing leather, and so much of her showed the suede was merely decorative. Zack winked at her, and she came up behind him as he was getting a drink from Ramon.
"You're an indecent hussy," Zack laughed and put the cold glass to one bobbing breast. "But cute."
"I've about had this bunch of dingoes," she said in low tones. "How about you and me taking a walk, baby?"
"Where is everybody?"
"Oh, the swishers are all upstairs trading off, and two or three people left. I suppose the next thing Angela will suggest is that we all go down and take a swim in that funky hole by the mill?"
"You know, I doubt that," Zack observed.
"What did you do, leave her on her back gasping? I knew she had a real thing on when she stomped off after watching you give that over-grown sadist whatfor." Mary giggled. "I'd have given anything for a movie of that. All of it!"
Zack suddenly remembered Helen. Hungry Helen, she'd be by now.
"That reminds me," he said. "Why don't you go change while I run down and check the pumping unit at the pond? You know, I do work for a living."
"And how," she admitted. "Okay. It's a date. Now don't let one of these she-sharks grab you. You owe me something, you know."
Zack had no trouble finding some sandwiches from the kitchen. Elda was too busy to see him wrap the food in foil and make his way out the kitchen door. He skirted the normal path to the mill and arrived in the rumpus room without meeting any one. He started up the stairs then remembered he did not have his keys. They were in his trousers still lying on the floor of Angela's leather room. At the top of the stairs, he knocked.
"It's Zack," he said in a husky whisper.
He heard Helen trip the inside lock knob, then she swung the door open. She spit, but he was too quick. He closed the door and waved the foil wrapped sandwiches.
"Be nice or I'll give to the lion in the next cage."
"I hate your guts! If you've got any left after that little deal up there in the grass!"
"Oh for christ's sake! How you doing, baby?"
She let him take her in his arms and she lay against his chest, trembling with emotion. "Oh Zack, let's get out of here!"
"I'm about of the same mind myself," he admitted. "This bunch is a little rough for me. Eat the sandwiches while I think."
"What's to think? Let's just pack up this equipment and walk out. Please, Zack! I know-you can't help it much when you're with Angela and her tribe. But let's just go."
"And blow the whole bit? Five bills a week isn't hay. All we have to do is get you out to the road. I can go back and pretend I've got the belly-ache, or a dozen things. Once this party is over, things will settle down, I think."
"It's three-thirty now," Helen observed. I--I guess we can hold out till dark. Boy, I was hungry!"
"You have anything worth your time?"
"Angela and her two boys in for an early morning swim. But almost everything happened under water-and the water is black, so you can't see. Heck, that bit of yours up on the grass isn't even worth talking about. I couldn't see much-except at the end, and the fight wasn't the kind of a thing we could make a dime with."
"Tell you what. I'll try to bust out about seven. By then, people are beginning to slow down-getting up steam for the rest of the evening. You be ready to go. We'll drop down by the fence and you can walk down the road a little and wait for me. I'll be there as quick as I can."
Helen tipped the last of her coffee out of the thermos bottle. She was sitting in a corner, her length folded up in abject lethargy. Zack decided her marvelous scheme to make them rich had backfired. Plus the fact that she admitted her frustrated excitement at having watched him vanquish the big woman up on the grass. For himself, one more evening and a following day seemed as grotesque as climbing the Matterhorn in bedroom slippers.
It wasn't a question of having more sex than he could stand-it was the inane manner in which it occurred. "They just walk around and drink and all of a sudden, some one wants to go to bed, or into the weeds or under a bush. Hell, they are all switch-hitters, too. They go for anything, no matter how way-out it is."
"Seven o'clock then?"
"Be ready, baby. I'll go back now and plant the stomach ache."
"Zack?"
She sprang into his arms and they clung together, lips and bodies pressing, each trembling body talking to the other.
"Be ready," Zack said again.
She let him go reluctantly. "I'm always ready, baby!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He had been gone thirty minutes when Helen saw the two women coming down from the orchard. Helen recognized Angela immediately, her lush body clad in slacks and blouse. The other woman was tremendous, and only after a second look, did Helen decide she must be the huge horsey amazon Zack had tackled earlier. The two women walked hand in hand, laughing and talking. The big woman was dressed in leather breeches and a short motorcycle jacket. The expanse of bare flesh ran from chin to belt and Helen snatched up her camera to take a few feet directly into the faces of the pair as they came down out of the trees. They paused at the edge of the pool, and from her perch, Helen could only catch the sound of voices, not their words.
Then they seemed to be arguing. Helen could hear the strident note of words, then she saw the wave and emphasis of hands. Evidently the big woman did not share Angela's enthusiasm for the ugly water. There were more words. Then Angela began to undress. She ripped off her blouse and tossed it to the stones. The other woman laughed and the sound came rough and course, with more words. Angela seemed determined. Now her slacks slipped down and she kicked them, and her high-heeled pumps off. Helen could not stem her own gasp of admiration for the woman's fleshy beauty. The out-curves of breast and buttock were perfect from the high angle of Helen's camera. She stood poised on the stone wall, suddenly threw her arms up and dove smoothly into the inky water. The splash was white froth for a moment, then it settled as if the water were heavy. Angela swam around in a slow circle and now Helen could hear her plainly.
"Please, Harriet! It's wonderful. It makes your body feel soft and" silky and wrapped in velvet. It's not dirty, honestly it isn't. It is just colored-I had Zack color it because it makes you feel secret and shrouded when it's black! Come on, baby, just try it!"
The gesture of refusal from the woman called Harriet was also one of revulsion. "Oh god it stinks!" her voice came harshly.
Suddenly Angela laughed and kicked forward. Like a darting snake, her hand went out and up, hooking around the leather clad ankle, twisting and pulling. On the high heels, Harriet could not hold her balance. She spun, teetered then toppled, aided by Angela's demanding hand. There was a scream, not loud, but terrifying, then a mighty splash as the big woman tumbled head first into the water. Laughing gleefully, Angela kicked away, sputtering the splashed water from her face.
As an excellent swimmer, Helen knew instantly the big woman, weighted by her leather clothing was in dire trouble. Harriet could not swim. Her arms and legs thrashed furiously and she went down a deep second time before Angela seemed to realize her friend was drowning. Then to Helen's surprise, Angela treaded water, staring intently. Caught between the shock of seeing a woman drown and the compelling whir of her camera, Helen seemed atrophied.
Only when Angela swam slowly toward Harriet did Helen realize she was witnessing murder. The gasping woman was more than the victim of a practical joke. She was the victim of a scheming killer. For a bare instant, Helen thought of diving out of the four-story tower, then she clung to the camera and prayed that the film would not run out. Down below, the bubbling cries from Harriet's choking throat were joined by a low, rippling laughter from Angela. And as the thrashing subsided slightly, Angela kicked close and put one hand on top of Harriet's head. She shoved downward and held the woman well out of sight for several seconds.
Angela kicked out on her back and began to tread water a few feet away. Helen pulled the zoom lens back to accommodate Angela and the slightly rippled place where the death struggles of Harriet were roiling the black water. Then the water was still. Angela swam lazily to the stone wall, pulled herself up, a sleek, gleaming murderess. She studied the place where Harriet had gone down, then rolled over and picked up her slacks. She pulled them on over her wet legs and hips, then stared down for nearly a minute. In that minute, Helen ran out of film and went through the now nearly mechanical motions of reloading her camera. She had just drawn a new focus on Angela when the latter turned and emitted a loud, piercing scream. Then she broke into a run up the grass, her shouts and cries echoing back to Helen in mock distress.
* * *
Zack found Harriet's body simply because he thought quickly and wasn't appalled by the black water. Helen swept the excited people on the edge of the pond and she caught the full impact of the seeming tradgedy as the other men hauled Harriet's limp body over the rim of the pond. Angela was in apparent hysterics, her bared breasts and shoulders cuddled in the arms of a man Helen had not seen before. The babble of voices was loud. Some of her composure returned, Helen filmed the entire episode. A young man who had accompanied Angela in her early morning swim ran off toward the house.
Immediately, the pretty girl in the suede leather suit who wore no top followed. One by one, the guests who were only partially clad, a woman or two in tears, and a man followed. Helen covered them all, then her camera wandered back to a stocky red-haired woman who was kneeling beside the dead woman in abject weeping. Helen put the last of her footage on Zack, working like a lifeguard to pump life into the dead woman.
Methodically now, Helen began to think in terms of her camera. She had graphic evidence of murder, pure deliberate murder. She had the lead in, the killing and the after scenes, including the positive wait Angela had spent making sure her victim had surely drowned. She also had a full dress parade of the guests, not a few of whom were weird curiosities at best.
On her own, she wondered if it might have been possible for her to save the woman, and Helen doubted this. The dive from the tower was at least thirty-five feet-higher than she had ever attempted in her life. To unlock the door and run down the steps would have taken the same amount of time Angela had used to sink Harriet. And then there was the chance that the cool she-killer would have tried to make it a double killing. Helen stilled her trembling hands and added one more factor to her reasoning. Harriet had known Zack's passion, had laughed and joked with him afterward. With lopsided logic, Helen told herself she had only gotten rid of Harriet as a challenge to Zack's affections, but when the law saw her film of Angela Borden, plunging her 'friend' under water for the third time, Helen would be rid of an even larger threat to her security.
With cold deliberation, Helen filmed the arrival of the police and the ambulance men. She shot the efficient clearing of guests from the pond area and she sparingly scened the hour of gruesome cleanup, with a last parting shot at the ambulance as it hauled the body away.
Then she made one more shot. It was beginning to dusk a bit, and with dramatic intention, Helen turned the camera down at the little pile of flowered cloth, lying alone and unheeded on the stones. It was Angela Borden's blouse, crumpled right where she had stripped it off before she dove in the black water with murder in her diabolic brain. Then Helen fell back and relaxed into shuddering sobs. It had been a rough afternoon.
She could only imagine what was going on up in the house, but by the time darkness settled over the pond, Helen was reasonably sure the guests had all departed. She had heard autos start, heard the race of engines. Once she had heard a police siren and she had supposed it to be some more investigators coming to ask questions. She packed her equipment, setting the heavy bag by the door so Zack could take it when he came. If he came.
She had the only proof that it hadn't been an accident. There were no signs, except the obvious looks of the guests, that anything had been amiss at the estate party. Zack would come as soon as he could. All of a sudden, Helen wanted to get away from the place. The ominous blackness of the water below was a frightening thing. And as the sun's last light died out in the West, the cold came on, adding shivers to the still quivering nerves in her back.
Her mind was full of questions and they went around and around. The two women had come down to the pool in what seemed to be the best of spirits, even intimate spirits. Earlier that afternoon, they had both been in the leather clad party that had cavorted so freely under the trees. Zack had the dubious honor of being the last man to make love to Harriet, while Angela looked on.
Then it hit Helen with all the impact of an intuitive flash.
She remembered how Angela had jerked off the white hood, shook her head to free her thick hair and stomped off toward the house. It had been obvious her departure had surprised the others because they had been slow to follow, murmuring among themselves as they moved from the scene of the whip fight. They too, must have suspected that Angela's desertion had been due to jealousy. And just as their passions were extreme, so had Angela's jealously been extreme. She had deliberately coaxed the big woman to the water and drowned her in repayment of her public affair with Zack Farley.
It wasn't the future that began to worry Helen. She started making pictures now of Zack, the big sympathetic puppy dog, alone in the big house with the distraught Angela who wasn't distraught at all. She would weep and Zack would hold her and pet her and she would make very sure he petted some very exciting surfaces. She would plead not to be left alone in her hour of agony and Zack was a sucker for tears. He might even take her up and put her to bed and Helen writhed with fury. If Angela had murdered for Zack, then she would go to any lengths to cinch his devotion. Sex in the black water, on the grass, or under any other impromptu circumstances was one thing. Sex in a bed, with a soft, weeping bitch and a bank account in six zeros was something else.
At seven-thirty, Helen made up her mind.
* * *
She put everything but the equipment bag up on the platform out of casual sight. Then she unsnapped the door, welcoming the rush of warmer air from the rumpus room below.
Shouldering the camera bag, she slowly felt her way down the inky stairwell. She tried to remember where the broken places were, and she could not quite anticipate them. Once she stumbled and nearly fell. She hung close to the rough stone wall and gasped herself back into partial composure. It seemed a hundred miles down.
At the bottom finally, she stood on shaky legs staring at the less black arch of the entry. Reshouldering the camera bag, she walked out, suddenly wishing for a restroom. There were two, she thought, back in the area Zack had made into dressing rooms, but Helen didn't have the courage to go back into the dank darkness. She stepped off the stone walk and set the camera bag on the ground. Then with all the aplomb of a camper hiking in the woods, she unbuckled her denims, hooked them down with her thumbs and squatted. She was that way when the growling, snorting weight of a mammoth animal hit her. She screamed once, tried to fight off the beast, then the constricting shape of her denims hobbled her and she fell over buried under a furious, multi-fanged attack. Paralyzed with terror, Helen ducked her head and covered her face and throat with her arms.
There were two of them. They bit her and tore at her and then when she thought she was surely going to be killed, a new and even more terrifying thing rubbed hot and indicative on her bare bottom. She tried to squirm away and the rampant male seemed to clamp onto her with his bony, awkward forelegs. She screamed again, and a crushing set of jaws clamped onto her shoulder, broke the skin, then shook her slim body as if it were a straw pillow. At the same moment, a ripping tearing intruder perforated her body and Helen passed out in pain and terror.
* * *
At the pond, Zack risked using the flashlight. He found her by the entry, and for a moment, he couldn't believe his eyes. He saw the equipment bag, and he saw the bare flesh with great bloody marks over the slimly firm contours. His nostrils picked up the foul musky odor. Helen's shirt was torn and under the beam of the flashlight, the unmistakable marks were those of sharp, ripping teeth.
"Those goddamned dogs!" he gasped.
He put the light on the stones and gently gathered his wife into his arms. A hand to her throat told him she was still alive. The pulse was steady.
"Baby, baby!" he breathed.
She had obviously decided he wasn't coming and had tried to leave. The dogs had caught her. He did note with his hand that her belt was unbuckled. This puzzled Zack but he had no time for questions. He stepped into the arch and found the light switch. Then he went back and picked Helen up. He carried her in and stretched her torn and battered body on a lounge. She was dirty and bloody, but his fingers and eyes found no serious damage to the unconscious form. From the bar, Zack took a bottle of bourbon and thought not much of the first slosh managed to trickle down her throat, the second try was met by a frantic swallowing as Helen squirmed back into life.
She snapped into his embrace like a released spring. Zack cursed his own stupid cupidity. She wasn't as lush as Angela, she was not as pretty as Mary. She wasn't as wild as a half-hundred women he could remember, but she was Helen and she was his. The things they did outside each other's arms had never mattered very much because in each other's arms, like now, their bodies talked sweet things no words could ever convey.
"Baby, baby," Zack whispered. "Are you all right?"
After a few seconds of shivering sniffs, Helen shuddered.
"So I have pups," she whimpered. "Where in god's name did they come from?"
"A she-bitches nightmare," Zack growled. "They got you?"
"Ooh! Did they get me! I never saw them coming. I was just about to pee. I guess I did anyway. Oh Zack, take me home!"
"You saw this afternoon?"
"I've got footage on every bit of it, baby," she said, with some returned spirit. "It was murder, Zack!"
Zack gasped. For the past two hours, he had petted and cuddled the nearly hysterical Angela, comforting her abject despair over not having been able to save the heavy, frantic Harriet. He had answered a million questions about the party, the people and the property, he had been genuinely sympathetic-to a point he might never explain to Helen, and now she had said it was murder. "Murder?"
"Angela pulled her in-and pushed her under!"
"You are sure?"
"My butt hurts," Helen said. "Take me home, Zack. Am I scarred up very badly?"
"Some, baby. You'll heal, though. Any inside pains?"
"Boy, you ever see what a Great Dane packs around in the artillery department? Make you blush with inadequacy!"
"Want to go to a hospital for a check-up?"
"Take me home, darling. I'll be all right."
"Tomorrow, I'll kill both those dogs," Zack promised her.
"Tomorrow, you will sit home, drink beer, hold my hand and be grateful your wife is only a little bit jealous! Oh Zack, I'm going to hang Angela Borden!"
"Take it easy, Helen! Murder! I can't believe it!"
"Was she good, Zack?"
"Who?"
"The dead woman. Harriet?"
"Goddamned if I can remember. Can you walk?"
"Just give me a little hand, baby."
She walked like she was riding a poker, so Zack put his big hand under her small tight bottom and helped her out into the night. He carried the camera bag in one hand and Helen giggled irrelevantly at the grumbling he did about people who kept male dogs for any reason. Then he thought about the succulent Angela and the very dead Harriet.
"You sure, baby?"
"Tripped her and pushed her under. Know why?"
"God no!"
"Forget it, sweetheart," she said enigmatically.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thirty minutes after they were home, Helen went into shock spasms and Zack called for a doctor and an ambulance. By dint of pure power and necessity, he managed to quiet her long enough to implant a bold, brief and false accounting of her injuries so no immediate connection with the tragedy at the country house would be made.
"Zack, Zack! I don't want to talk about it!" Helen wailed.
"Don't then, but listen to what I tell you in case you do talk! Remember, we were cooking up a blackmail scheme and no matter what happened, that fact is still with us. Now. Can you hear me?"
He felt terribly sorry for the whole miserable affair and he hurt everywhere her soft white skin was broken or scarred. But his mind was clear and Zack thought he knew exactly what had to be done. The first thing was to get his badly mauled wife into a hospital bed, and the second thing was keep their secret until it was time to use it properly.
"I'm so sick, baby!" she murmured.
"I know, baby. Don't try to talk. Just listen, one little old minute before the doctor gets here. Okay?"
She nodded, then winced as the pain bit her again.
"I was working. If you have to tell them where, tell them. You were alone and you went for a walk-out Fremont Boulevard. It was getting dark when an animal, you didn't see what kind, jumped you. Maybe a dog, maybe anything. You didn't see. Got that?"
"Y-yes," she said, not daring to nod again.
"You passed out. But when you came to, you managed to get back here. You were hurt and sick and you took off your clothes and went to bed. When I came home, I found you this way and called the doctor. No more, no less, baby. At least until I get to talk to you when you're feeling better."
"Zack, I want to be with you!"
"A day or two will put you back on your feet. In the meantime, I've a lot of things to do. Please, baby, don't worry. Just rest!"
"That bitch, that horrible woman!"
"Easy does it, sugar. We'll take care of her!"
* * *
The doctor was horrified and he promptly gave the nearly unconscious Helen a series of shots, one of which he guaranteed would stop the pain. Then two husky young men loaded her onto a gurney and Zack followed the screaming siren to the hospital. It was typical he thought, that they asked far more questions about his financial condition than they did about what had happened to his wife. Except for a police team that showed up because of Zack's story about his wife having apparently been attacked by a big dog.
When Helen was finally treated and tucked away, the police officers asked Zack to accompany them to headquarters. While he was seeing to the last minute arrangements, they had radioed their report.
"You were at the Borden house today where that woman drowned, weren't you?"
Zack had known the question was coming, but the stern-faced detective across the battle-scarred desk wasn't very friendly about it. He thumbed through a sheaf of papers, then fixed boring blue eyes on Zack.
"Yes. I work for Mrs. James Borden," he admitted.
"That didn't look like much of a work crew to the investigating officers," the detective remarked with strong inference.
"It was a house warming party. I was invited because I did the remodeling job, and Mrs. Borden is also a friend."
"Tell me about it," the man asked in a less brittle voice. '
"I don't know what really happened. When I got home, my wife was hysterical, in a good deal of pain and not too coherent."
The detective smiled mirthlessly. "I am not too concerned about your wife. Tell me about the party at Mrs. Borden's place."
"What's to tell? Harriet Fraser fell into deep water and didn't know how to swim. There was no way to help her. You see, the work on the mill pond is not finished. No one should have even tried to swim in it. It is quite isolated from the house and even a strong swimmer like Mrs. Borden could do very little with a woman as large as Mrs. Fraser."
The detective threw two sheets of typewritten paper out on the desk. "So we were told. Now. The County Coroner's man has added a thing or two to the picture. Like her leather clothing. Like several peculiar holes in the leather which matched some very peculiar scars on her body. She was cut, bruised and bounced around long before she drowned."
"Oh?"
The detective ignored that. "This list of guests. Two known homosexuals, one prostitute, two or three other shady personalities and a woman dressed in an extremely vicious uniform we police attribute to fetishists of, shall we say, odd tastes? Tell me about the party, Mr. Farley."
"They were all strangers to me, I assure you. I spent most of my time fixing light switches, tightening faucets and seeing to it that the new place was in working order. Workmen nowadays don't do a very thorough job. I'm afraid I can't help you very much."
"Was your wife at that party, Mr. Farley?"
Zack managed a most disgusted look at the stern officer. "Man, no one takes a sandwich to a banquet, do they?"
It went on for another thirty minutes and Zack thought he'd held his own. After they told him he could go, Zack called the hospital and a solicitous nurse told him Helen was doing nicely. Then Zack went back to his apartment. As nearly as he could tell, he had about ten days work to do in two. The camera bag was where he had tossed it when he had staggered in, half-carrying Helen. He took it back down to his car and headed across town to see his friend with the processing laboratory.
* * *
The bejeweled clock on the night stand said nine when Angela awakened from the deep sleep she had induced with two sleeping pills. She turned in her bed, momentarily surprised that Zack was not beside her. She was sure he had been there when she had drifted off into slumber. Then the whole horrible memory came back to her and she sat up, clutching her heart as it rose in her throat.
Panic was a new emotion to Angela and she fought it with all of her being. She had always hated Harriet. And her transvestite husband. Sammy was shaped like a man and he thought like a woman. Harriet had been an equally perverted mixture of male and female. In leather, among a mixed crowd, Harriet reverted to a huge, cruelly dominating animal, demanding servitude from men and ignoring women. She raged and tore flesh with her whip, sating her sadistic sex with the snap of the lash and the color of blood. With women, Harriet had turned soft, fondling and kissing and plunging ecstatically into the lesbian acts.
In Angela's crowd, the word pervert was taboo, but she used it thinking about Harriet. Like yesterday. She had forced Zack to accept her bloodthirsty challenge, then folded up like a wounded kitten when a man beat her at her cruel game. Still under the spell of Zack's masculinity, she had entered the little room and turned savage in a split second, and when her savagery and strength had won, she had succumbed to the shameless exploitation of Angela's limp body with all the passion and ferocity of a confirmed lesbian. And under the spell of that nasty moment, she had ignored Zack and followed Angela to the pond, her insatiable yen for consummate erotica more than she could control.
Angela tried to remember if she had planned to kill Harriet when she had invited her down to the pond. Not really, she told herself, because she knew Harriet could not swim and she had no way of being sure the big woman would even come close to the edge. No, it had been an accident, Angela assured herself. Then she closed her eyes and deliciously recalled the feelings she had known as she had watched her precious black water choke and strangle the gasping woman. And at the precise moment when Angela had been compelled to put her hand on Harriet's head and thrust her under, it had happened with belly wrenching ecstasy, as if the lovely water had penetrated and caressed her for giving it the flesh of Harriet Fraser.
"Zack!" Angela cried. "Where are you, Zack dear?"
Her voice echoed in the room. The loneliness came back in hideous force and Angela quivered with strange desire. He had to be somewhere. He wouldn't leave her at a time like this. He was sensitive and sweet and gentle and he had probably guessed why she had killed Harriet. And would kill Mary Amiel, or Cora or any other woman who opened her legs and arms to him.
"Zack!"
At the intercom, she cursed the lazy voice of Elda in the kitchen. "Mr. Farley. Find him and have him come up to my room!"
For a moment Elda's answer staggered Angela with inside hurt. She turned and looked at her nakedness in the mirror, disbelieving that a man, particularly Zack, could get up from her bed and leave her house. Leave her to face the morning alone and frightened. There could be no reason, except that he had rejected her. For a moment, the same blinding hatred, the scarlet rage of yesterday flooded her brain. The guests had left after the police finished their questioning. Which one of the filthy, whore-breasted sluts had Zack followed?
* * *
She donned everything but the boots and the hood. The light cloth coat covered Angela from throat to knees. She felt strong then, the perfectly fitted leather suit seemed to hold her in soft support, and the old familiar feeling of goodness, the secret warmth of being insulated from every wounding thorn the world could offer came over Angela. In the sweet black water, she felt free and floating and part of the languid fluid. In leather, she felt contained, excited. Now she went to the wardrobe and took out a short, thick-butted whip. Delightfully, she flicked the nine lashes, feeling the leaded tips as they popped and dangled. She coiled the whip and stuffed it in one of her largest handbags. Then she went downstairs.
"Ramon?"
Elda appeared at the service hall, her face screwed up with personal doubt. "He has gone to town, too, Mrs. Borden. Last night. After you retired. Garcia is here, however."
"I'll be back later," Angela snapped. "If the police call."
"Yes ma'am."
It took Angela thirty-five minutes to find Mary Amiel's apartment. It was old and cheap, none of which Angela had ever thought about during the occasions she had to call the big-bosomed prostitute on the telephone. Angela studied the street and saw no sign of Zack's convertible, but then, it was almost noon and would have left by now. She got out of her Cadillac and went to the foyer of the West Roy Street apartment. It was number 214. Angela went up the stairs rather than wait for the clanking old elevator. She was surprised when she tried the knob and found the door unlocked. On muted feet, she stepped into the small, cheaply furnished apartment.
She knew instantly that Mary was in the bedroom. The place smelled of sour beer and cigarette smoke and Angela had an ugly vision of the lewd and lascivious party that had probably gone on the whole night long. She took the whip out of her handbag, slipped out of her coat and tip-toed across to the bedroom door. Her thighs were tight, her breasts throbbed in building fury. She could feel every square inch of the softly tanned leather, caressing her skin, sending tingles of excitement deep into her voluptuous body. The agony of rage was delicious to Angela. Her hand gripping the whip butt shook with eagerness. Then she stepped into the bedroom.
Mary was naked and sprawled, just as Angela had thought but her whip was singing through the air before she realized the man was Joseph Hornsby, not Zack Farley. Her surprise merely colored her rage, and her flush of chagrin turned to scarlet fury. Violence, so newly understood as a sweet sensual thing burst forth and Angela thrilled as the brutal lashes cut ribbons of red across the two startled lovers. Mary screamed in pain. Joe tried to roll away from his passionate embrace and Angela caught him full across the rampant groin with the cat 'o nine-tails. He jerked in shock, then howled in serious pain.
But it was Mary Angela went after. She whipped the screams from Mary's lips, cut the bounding globes of her breasts and belabored the bowed back and naked buttocks. Mary seemed to curl and fall, then she was huddled on the floor and Angela's lips showed flecks of hysterical madness as she turned the quivering white flesh to striped horror. Once, she heard Joe Hornsby protest and with a back-handed stroke, sent him into cringing pain with the blood wet lashes.
"No! You'll kill her, Angie!" Joe cried, and she sent him back to his corner howling and holding his deeply marked face.
Now the fire of sadistic passion turned Angela back to Mary. She hesitated between blows, picking the white, untouched places. Mary had quit screaming. Her head was tucked down between her knees, and only bubbling sobs mingled with the whisk and crack of the whip. So deep was Angela's fascination at the cruelty she wrought that she only sensed Joe's frantic escape. How long afterward the slam of the front door told her he had managed to scramble into his clothes she did not know. Angela only stopped her mad blows when Mary tumbled over in limp unconsciousness. Then in final surging climax, Angela cut deep and torturously into the upraised softness of Mary's breasts.
* * *
She had been wrong about Mary and Zack, but she was not wrong about Amy Hornsby and Ramon Rosas. Angela did not know why she felt anger about Ramon, unless it was the intuition that Ramon, like Zack, had deserted her when she most needed support. And the fact that Joe, his hide scuffed and cut from her fury in Mary's apartment, had not gone home. Again, Angela tried the service entrance to Amy's deceptively placid home and found it open. She ignored the cook whom she had seen many times and charged through the house, shedding her coat and her purse as the new, ecstatic rage drummed sweetly in her brain. She burst into Amy's private sitting room like Satana.
For a second, the incongruity of the setting caused a snarl of laughter to escape Angela's lips. Ramon, naked as a plucked brown bird was curled up on Amy's copious lap. She had pulled her brassiere high and Ramon's face was nuzzled into the mass of white, pulpy esh. His right leg was held up with corded awkwardness and Amy was playing with her lean dusky doll so intently she barely stopped at Angela's rude entrance. Suddenly, Amy lost all control and Ramon tumbled off her lap to the floor.
"No!" Amy cried, leaping erect to face Angela like a mother hen. "He's mine and you can't ever have him back! You get out of here, Angie Borden and take that nasty whip with you!"
Angela stepped forward and caught Ramon across the buttocks as he scuttled under the bed. Again she lashed his thin legs, and his yelp was high and sharp as he jerked his feet out of sight.
"You filthy old bitch," Angela screamed and let the whip butt slip through her hand, grasping the lashes. With brutal deadly intent, Angela swung the weighted butt and the thud of leather on soft flesh was followed by a piercing, anguished scream as Amy clutched between her thighs and sank to the floor in terrible agony.
Angela suddenly burst into tears of frustration and went out. She blindly collected her coat and her bag and stumbled out into the yard. She had hurt them all, and Zack was somewhere, laughing at her. She suddenly realized that he was probably at home and she had been wrong from the very first. This renewed her unreasonable rage; she aimed her Cadillac for the address Zack had once given her, a long six weeks before.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Greg was a nice kid and a good technician. He was lean and red-haired and a good sport. He stood now beside the projector, his hair standing straight up, his back bowed over in an amazed crouch as the six-by six screen showed just how Angela Borden finished off Harriet Fraser. There was a funny side to it because just one reel back, Greg had been panting and leering and fidgeting with aroused desire. He was cold now, Zack thought, and scared.
"Good christ, Zack!" the words came harsh and brittle. "She murdered that big dame!"
"Yep."
"Who took these sequences, Zack?"
"Automatic camera."
"Come off it! These were hand held and no machine can work a zoom lens like this one was worked! Who shot the footage?"
"Small elf," Zack offered, his mind on what came next.
"Screw you, boy. I want out!"
"You're out," Zack assured him. "But there is a little work to do first."
"Like?"
"Like editing into one reel only the shots involving those two women. From the time they were picked up coming into the pond area up to the shots of the woman being loaded into the ambulance. And this we do with no fingerprints on the film or the reel."
"Blackmail, Zack?" Greg breathed. "Police."
"The paper says that Borden dame has money she hasn't counted yet."
"I thought you wanted out?"
Greg cut the projector power and snapped on the light in his damp and dingy shop. He stared at the white screen, so recently adorned with rolling breasts, bare underbodies and murder.
"Level with me, Zack. You know I'm no donkey."
"Okay. You saw what kind of a party it was?"
"Yeah man!"
"Mrs. Borden is-a bit kooky, huh? She asked me to hire a guy to shoot the hot scenes by the pond. You know-stag stuff for a rainy night. So I did. He was a pretty sharp shooter. But like you, he hit the panic button when he covered that killing. I paid him off, and it is my guess that he is now two days and three thousand miles away getting drunk to quiet his nerves. Okay?"
"Good as any story, you lying fink."
They laughed together for a moment. "Well, I didn't shoot it because I'm in it after she put up the phony holler for help. And everyone who attended that party is in it toward the end. I'd suggest you go for my story about the photographer and get your butt busy editing that film!"
"You're really going to the cops with it?"
"Hell no! I'm going to send it to them in a plain brown-paper wrapper! I'm interested in them catching a big-titted killer, not in being a hero. In fact, my noble public spirit is going to cost me a damned fortune, Greg. You are right-we could make that woman pay through the nose like a lightning struck slot machine! But murder is a dirty word and it outs, man, it outs!"
"We couldn't pin her butt to the cross for a few bucks, then send a print to the cops?"
"No," Zack said, remembering the way Helen had squirmed and gasped in agony, "We could not!"
"What are you going to do with the earlier footage?"
"You have a friend in Denver or Peoria who buys dirty film?"
"Yeah-for fifty lousy bucks a hundred feet!"
"Five hundred feet is two and a half bills. You can get drunk and I can pay off some hospital bills."
"I hate a righteous son of a bitch who condemns me to being a poor man for the rest of my life," Greg grumbled.
"Edit, man. I'm going home and get some sleep!"
* * *
Zack stared at Angela, his mind doing flip flops.
"How did you get in here?" he asked stupidly.
Angela waved around the bedroom and the movement made her nakedness a sensual, animated bit of beauty. "Your building manager seems used to taking a five dollar bill for letting women into your apartment, stud!"
Zack looked at the white leather costume draped over Helen's boudoir chair. He saw the whip lying across their bed. He also saw how the tips of Angela's breasts were stiffened in private emotion. She was shaking with some unknown sensation, and Zack didn't believe it possible for her to have invaded the apartment without realizing a woman lived there permanently.
"You flatter me," he said with a painful smile. "I threw her out after you hired me. After all, a guy has only so much steam and you puncture a boiler with real finesse."
"Oh god Zack!" she wailed and threw herself into his arms. "I woke up this morning and you were gone and I thought terrible things! I thought about Mary, I thought about-oh, make love to me, darling, and tell me you understand!"
"Of course I understand," he lied.
"I love you, Zack! I have from the first moment you ever smiled at me! I know I'm a dirty, filthy, perverted bitch and I know you don't understand what I've been thinking, but I love you and everything I've done was for you. Just for you!"
"Easy," he said down into her hair. His hands flat on her bare back, the weight and softness of her nudity pressed to his body seemed a thing apart from her insane actions of one day ago. He could smell her and feel her and she was a bold, voluptuous thing of pure sex in his arms. Even her kiss was exciting and Zack hated himself for trying to accept the animalistic appeal she hurled at him.
"I love you so," she whimpered. "Can I stay here with you?"
"Of course, baby," he said, hoping Helen would understand if she ever even dreamed another woman had been in her bed. "But I'd have come to you tomorrow morning."
"I wanted to come to you, sweetheart," she said. "I love you!"
* * *
Zack felt like the executioner whom history declared had raped Joan of Arc an hour before the torch ended her mad career. He had already condemned Angela to some ignoble end because of his own deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong. An hour before, the graphic film had confirmed every word Helen had said about how Harriet had died. There was no doubt, no real escape from the demands of justice. Further, there were still some tiny stains from the wounds on Helen's back and they seemed embossed on the sheets as testimony to the sensuality behind the presence of two massive dogs who knew what a stooped and naked posterior could mean. He looked at Angela with quizical eyes and the impact of her beauty and the totality of her sex hurt him.
Up to then, Zack had never really thought about his own part in the bizarre concoction of sensuality and abandonment. Now he visually sucked in the loveliness squirming impatiently on his wife's bed and he still couldn't see himself too plainly. He had dipped his pen in the ink of her perversity, telling himself that the money was more important to him and to Helen than any fidelity of body could be. He had helped Angela in her mad journey into pure, unspeakable filth and part of Harriet's miserable demise was his responsibility.
"Well, gee," Angela said with almost girlish pique. "You sure don't shape up big for it."
Zack looked down his muscular belly at the disappointing object of her pointing finger. "I've kind of got the shakes, baby."
"Shake it over here, Zackie! I'll fix it."
"Maybe I've got a habit on that damned pond, too!"
"Oh god, Zack, say you have!"
As he lowered himself to the bed, his ego mounted and then he was lost to sensibility in her eager arms. It was the first time he had ever held her without the cold, nearly slimy barrier of water between them and he was shocked into alertness by the heat and softness of her body.
Then abruptly, Angela was a woman he had never known before. No vestige of the sophisticated, impersonal sensualist remained as she snuggled into his embrace and whimpered softly against his chest. Her hands went to Zack as she had never seen a man before and the feather touch of her fingers as she massaged his waist and flanks was wildly delicious. He released his embrace enough to let her worm her hands down between them, and as she found his strength, her head turned up for his kiss. On her face was a rapt expression, as if some life-long realization had occurred to her. Yet the skill of her caress and the brutally hard tips of her breasts told him how far from innocence her mind had fled. It was Angela, the throbbing, demanding sexpot in his arms. But she had abandoned her leather and the water for the not so mundane passion of two nude, hot-blooded bodies on a bed. And Zack could not help wanting every minute of it.
"Oh Zack, I love you so! I-I want to do everything, be everything for you!"
"I know, baby," he replied stupidly.
Then he knew what she wanted to do, what she was going to do and he released his arms as she writhed down his body, her lips leaving hot moist places at chest and belly and finally where his lust was mounted high on tensed muscles, straining to her kiss. He thought the fire was going to sear him forever, and then the gentleness left Angela and she attacked him as if her life depended upon it.
Her fingers dug into his thighs, pulled at the rock hard muscles of his buttocks and the wet sounds she made were mingled with the gurgling desire in her throat. Through the minute of beginning, Zack stared down at the twisting beating head and the whole picture seemed exquisitely ugly, then she did some clever thing and he fell back, suspended between pure sensation and desire for more.
* * *
Zack lay flat on his back, his belly still rising and falling from the devastating exhaustion of her caress. Angela lay out on one hip, her shoulders supported on one arm so her pulsating breasts rested lightly on his thigh. When he opened his eyes, she was looking at him with soft query.
"You're married, aren't you, Zack?" she asked suddenly.
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Please, darling. I was here an hour or two before you found me. I don't care. I've got to have you!"
She ducked her head and kissed several times, slowly now and without any intent to fire his passion again. Then she crawled up and settled herself on his chest, her hair a thick, nose-titillating thing under his chin.
"Divorce her. Or just leave her," Angela amended it. "I never want you to see her again, my love."
"Things sound easy to you because you have enough money to do anything you choose," Zack said. "It's not that easy."
"You are married, then?"
"Yes. We have parted company-she thinks temporarily. But if she thought it was permanent, she could take me to the cleaners and I've worked hard for what I've accumulated the last four or five years."
Angela's laugh was scornful and merry. She rolled over him and off the .bed, coming to her feet, breasts thrown out in classic relief, her hips held in pert promise by the arch in her back. She smiled seductively at Zack's appreciative grin, then she went to her handbag. He caught just a momentary flash of the whip butt, and in realization of what it was, he tied in the discarded leather suit on the floor. She had been up to something, something that required her laced leather and a cruelly lashed whip. But when she turned, her hand held a most unfeminine wallet and a check book.
She sat down and curled her tapered legs under her in a most unbusiness-like fashion. "You're so silly, darling," she laughed. "How much can she take from you? One thousand, five thousand, maybe ten thousand dollars? Look what mama has, baby!"
She opened the wallet and snatched out all the bills. They fluttered down on Zack's bare belly like lettuce leaves and without counting, he knew there would be fifteen or sixteen hundred dollars in big bills and two or three forlorn ones with a five. Angela dropped the wallet to the floor and opened the checkbook. She flipped through the stubs, found the last one and held the checkbook so her thumbnail underlined the balance. It was seven thousand plus.
"That's my month's spending money," she giggled. "Poor James. Used to get up at five in the morning to be on the telephone when the New York Exchange opened. Have you a pen handy?"
Stupified, Zack nodded toward his dresser. She got off the bed and went to the dresser. Her back to him and the impact of her lean waist and boldly flared hips made his pulse quicken. And when she began to write, the tiny effort set her twin, close pressed buttocks to jiggling just enough to upset Zack's physical calm. She ripped the check out and turned, saw how he was beginning to be, and smiled mysteriously.
"Money has that kind of an effect on you, baby?" she laughed.
"Hell no. But when you write it out with that lovely rear end darned near in my face anything's likely to happen-to you!"
Her eyes fluttered in instant excitement. Her chin raised and the delicate contours of her nostrils widened as her full lips parted in some inner suffering-or desire. She folded the check in her fingers and reached behind her. As Zack watched, she turned slowly and the check was tucked neatly in the high press of her bottom. It made Zack's ears buzz with sudden blood pressure.
"Well, then, come get it baby," her plea came to him.
Zack slithered to the floor with all the speed and grace of the animal he had suddenly become. As he reached for her, she came up on her bare feet and as his arms closed around her torso, she threw her hips and her head back to meet him.
"Oh god," she husked as his arms dragged her up against the curl of his body. "My god, Zack!"
He stood holding her, letting the demand of his body build in tumultuous, near bursting desire. Her arms moved out and she leaned on the dresser. The improbability of the situation came to Zack, but the moment of delicious holding, the pure ecstasy of anticipation blanked out his logic.
"Zack! Do something, for god's sake!" she cried impatiently.
"You are very sure-of what you want me to do?"
"Oh Zack, I don't care what you do to me! Just do it!"
He hurled her around and toward the bed, and he had enough sense to pick the check out of it's neat holder as she spun for the bed. She bumped the bed with her knees, fell forward on her hands, then scrambled up on the bed that way.
For a blinding moment, Zack stared at the magnificently exposed contours and coloring of her underbody, then he made silent apology to Helen and went over Angela like a raging animal.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Angela had been afraid to stay the night. It was one of the first occasions of her life that she had retreated from passion, but it was also the first time in her life she had gone so far, at least in the direction she and Zack had taken. And she had left, knowing if she had stayed that neither she nor Zack could have avoided another of the sweet, searingly hot caresses. But she was satisfied that Zack understood, if there had been any understanding left in his exhausted brain and body. She tingled, but she felt wonderful. The death of Harriet Fraser had not been in vain because Zack was hers.
Mary Amiel didn't matter and neither did the Hornsbys. Ramon was even less of a concern to Angela. If it came to some kind of a legal thing, one of her smooth talking attorneys would take care of it in two jiffies. She glanced over the back seat to where her leather suit and the bull whip lay. She felt free in the coat, her mauled and caressed body glowed with marvelous sensation. She even whistled, her mind clearer than it had been for many days.
She let herself through the front gate and drove up to the house. There were no lights so she assumed all of the servants had gone to bed. Even Ramon, because he had worked for her too long to take her furious lashing as dismissal, or even serious censure. At the front porch of her lovely big house where she and Zack would live a life of wild passion and everlasting love, Angela hesitated. It was a beautiful night, warm for late Spring and between rains. The moon peeked out from behind scudding clouds and Angela suddenly did not want to go to bed. She felt too good to end this marvelous night.
She unbuttoned her coat and strolled around the house to the garden. Then in sudden inspiration, she removed her coat and stepped naked into the moonlight. Now she could see the rolling grass and the orchard where Harriet had sealed her own fate. Angela patted her tummy and inhaled, more to stretch the passion drugged muscles of her body than to supply herself with oxygen. Then she walked toward the mill pond. It would be chill, but she felt the need for some powerful shock, some physical impact which would bring her back to reality and let her sleep.
The old mill had a spooky look in the moonlight. The gray stones threw strange highlights, and as she approached the pond, the reflection in the mirror smooth and very black water was eerie. She stood for a moment, caressing her hips and torso with anticipatory hands. Then with a little yelp of pleasure, she ran directly for the pond and arched out in a long flash of curves and taut muscles. The shock made her shout, half under and half above the water and she whipped into powerful strokes, suddenly galvanized into furious energy by the caress of the water and the bite of the cold. She kicked and liked the way her hips responded to the movement and she rolled over and under like a seal, kissing the water back as it loved her skin.
She was surprised by the quickness of her breath. Her laughter was directed at herself and Zack. They had used up a full battalion of Marine muscle in about three hours. Angela blew bubbles in the dank water and headed for the rim of the pond. The area in front of the mill was bathed in moonlight, causing the arched door to look like a deep, mysterious cavern. Angela slashed the water from her body then went into the mill. She turned on the lights, went to the linen locker and took out two huge beach towels. One she used to dry herself, the other she draped around her bare body to ward off the chill. Then she turned out the lights and started for the house. She had just passed out of the archway when they hit her, snarling, tearing and clawing with their neatly trimmed toes.
"Duke! Prince!" she screamed, then one of them tore her throat.
A massive set of crushing jaws closed over her upper arm, shook her off of her feet and down. The towel dropped; another mangling set of teeth tore at her right breast. Angela screamed, and the pain was almost unbearable, then as more teeth tore at her and she was seemingly smothered by straining, steel-corded bodies, she thought it didn't matter how it hurt, she was going to die.
* * *
Zack piled the money on the cashier's desk and took the receipt the prim, unsmiling clerk handed to him. Then he nodded and went to Helen, waiting by the heavy glass doors leading out of the hospital. Under her arm were two newspapers, and the wrap of thick black type showed the word, "Death" and the rest of it was about Angela Borden, socialite and heiress to the Borden fortune. And about two hungry, half forgotten dogs who had turned her estate into a bloody carnage.
In the car, Zack turned to his slightly pale wife and patted her lean thigh. She put one hand over his and nodded, so he headed for their apartment.
"Well, now what?" she asked.
Zack thumbed over the back seat at the camera bag on the car floor. There was still enough stiffness in Helen's back to make her look with an awkward twisting.
"What is that, baby?"
"Everything."
"E-everything?"
"Camera, attachments, film, guarantee and the sack it came in."
"What are we going to do? Take some pictures?"
"We've already taken them, baby."
He thought she understood by the way she looked down into her lap and said nothing. He drove with apparent aimlessness but he was gradually making his way toward the waterfront. At ten in the morning, the trucks scurrying from pier to warehouse and from dock to freeway made haste impossible. Zack pushed north, wending his way to the less congested piers. When he turned out a long, semi-deserted dock, Helen put a staying hand on his arm.
"You sure we should, Zack?"
"Who cares about Harriet now?" he asked. "So she accidentally drowned and Sam Fraser can have all of her clothes cut down to fit his fat rear end and go on being a transie to his heart's content. It was different as long as Angela was alive. She was a murderess. And, I happen to think she would have killed again if she'd ever thought it would help her do anything-or get anything. But that is all over now."
"Are you-very sure, Zack?"
He nodded emphatically. "I'm sure. I'll pull up there. You toss it-bag and all!"
She opened the door, twisted back and picked up the bag.
"It's such a good camera, Zack. And I never did get to see the job I did!"
"You did a good job, baby. Throw it!"
Helen threw it and the splash came a second later. Zack put the car in gear and made a short hard turn on the pier end. When he looked at his wife, she was smiling proudly at him, and behind her gaze was a smoky, insinuating challenge he knew very well. He was sure that the first thing she'd want when they got to the apartment was for him to take a shower. Somehow, it had never occurred to either of them that a lot of time would be saved if he just wet one in the basin and set to it the only way she really liked it.
