Clive laughed and twisted, trying to avoid his sister's attack. But it was impossible. Tess dug all ten fingers into him while she laughed at his plight. And while she laughed she noticed the greater emergence of the lump at his trousers, the thrust that told her of his growing excitement. She brought her hands to his lap. She hesitated a moment, then opened the fingers of her right hand, paused again then grasped the strange shape fully.
Clive uttered a short, hot gasp. Then he clutched Tess closer to him. Then fighting for control of his voice, he said, "We'll play a better game than you do with Tommy."
"Oh goodie," she said gleefully. She released her hold upon him.
"No, you don't have to let go," he said. His tone had changed, had become softer and soothing.
"What's the game called, Clive, and how do we play it?"
"Well, it really doesn't have a name," he explained, while making an adjustment in his posture, thereby exposing himself completely. "But I suppose we could call it 'Kill The Snake.' "
CHAPTER ONE
The early summer sun always rose over the east wall of the state prison as if it were some special official looking down upon its charges. Then, either satisfied or displeased with what it saw within the high, gray walls, it rose a little higher, looked beyond the prison proper at the row of white dwellings that housed the prison officials. Here the sun seemed to pause and contemplate all those who were within the several dozen homes.
Tess Stewart had trained herself to rise early in the morning. She prided herself that she never needed an alarm clock. She was alert to the first whispering of birds and the farm animals, so when the sun peeked inside her room at the warden's house, she was not only ready, but anxious for its call.
In sleep, Tess Stewart was less beautiful than when she was awake. Although her face was smooth and absent of lines, her wide red mouth and tousled black hair gave her a tormented look. And her body accentuated that look. She slept on her side with her hands grasped together at her waist like a child seeking comfort from its own touch. The bed clothes were twisted at her feet as if they had known a mad night of love. And her shortie nightie, frail and transparent, pulled high above her hips, giving a longer line to her perfect legs, her flaring hips, small waist, and sleepy breasts which were large, nipple sleeping, and exposed from the bodice of her gown.
Tess's eyelids fluttered for a moment, then opened wide. She remained very still, looking directly out her window and into the hot orange of the sun. As if its blaze caused the heat within her, as if she wanted to determine its intensity, she moved her hands to her thighs and clasped them there, feeling heat and moisture and sexuality's anxious call. Then she smiled and broke her pose. She stretched and shifted her legs, then swung them to the floor and pushed out of bed.
Tess moved immediately to her window. She looked down on the prison trusty compound, at the neat, gray cottages that housed those prisoners who were entrusted with the servant-duties of the prison officials and their families. She smiled, thinking of some of the men who were trustees, how they had been traded partial freedom-taken outside the restrictive, prison walls-in order to provide the civilian prison personnel with gardners, house-boys, chauffeurs, and farm hands.
Tess sighed deeply and felt the morning-bloat of her breasts and the awakening of their tips. And she felt the quiver of her stomach muscles, too. It was as if they contracted because of some special adventure that await-ed them. But her thighs were already adventurous. They were moist and warm and throbbing.
The pretty girl, looking younger than her twenty-three years, turned from the window and walked to her vanity. She stared at the reflection of herself as she pulled the nightie over her head. Quickly satisfied with her nudity, she turned from the vanity, hurried across the room to a bureau, opened a drawer and took from it her morning attire. When she slipped on the narrow halter and tight shorts, she returned to the vanity and gave her hair a few quick brushes. Then she looked at herself again. She smiled. She approved of what she saw. The effects of her two-piece playsuit was more daring, more provocative, then nudity itself. It was the way she wanted it. She knew the effect it would create among the prison-trustees, those poor men who had already suffered so many years withe at the thrill or comfort of a woman's body. Tess bent, jammed the straps of straw sandals between her bare, red-painted toes, then rose and left the room.
Tess was very careful not to make any noise as she passed the room of her brother, the warden, at the end of the corridor. She completed the passage successfully, descended the carpeted stairs, crossed the foyer and exited the front door, closing it behind her very slowly and quietly.
Once down the front stairs, Tess walked around the warden's house and entered the path which led across the back of the prison officers' residences and to the trusty cottages. It was the trusty section she wanted. It was her goal, her ambition, her very strange and anxious desire.
She slowed her pace as she passed the dwelling of Lt. Burt Matthews and his wife, Lisa. Sounds issued from the open bedroom window. They were not the usual morning sounds of husband and wife awakening. They were the mixed sounds of a woman's frantic sobbing and a man's gruff accusations. Lisa continued past the house. She had no time, or interest, for the troubles of others, not even the trouble of those people who were the closest to her brother, warden of the huge state prison.
When Lisa reached the gray trusty cottages she paused. Her smile turned wicked. She glanced down the row of cottages, thinking of the occupants and their crimes, their sentences, and the damned-up sexuality that screamed for release in each of the men: There was:
Stubby Pierce, short, ugly, twenty years a convict since he had stabbed his wife to death; Flipper Charles, eight years imprisoned by society for taking indecent liberties with a thirteen year old girl; Pete Slats, a burglar who burgled jewels and sex from his victims, already five years without a woman; Hank Bower, a con man who negotiated fortunes from the husbands of the women he had seduced. And there were others. And especially, at the end cottage, there was Bob Hatter, the angry, hot new trustee who Tess Stewart devised to encounter.
She trembled as she remembered her first sight of him the preceding day, how, after seven years existence behind prison walls he had arrived at the semi-freedom of the trusty camp. She remembered his dark, angry looks, his curled and defiant lips. She recalled the sight of his slim, tight body, the way it seemed to knot and stammer for freedom-for that and the sex freedom would some day offer. He seemed like a tight spring, awaiting release. He seemed very hot and very mad. He seemed very much like the most exciting man Tess could claim for her own, very peculiar desires. She walked behind the cottages until she arrived at the one at the end.
Just before she rounded the corner of the cottages, she hesitated, trying to formulate some plan for the casual encounter she wanted with Bob Hatter. But none was necessary. She was saved from contrivance. The convict himself came hurrying from the opposite side of the cottage and very nearly knocked Tess off her feet.
"What the hell!" Hatter exploded, jumping back from the half-naked girl as if she were fire.
"Oh, I'm sorry if I frightened you," Tess said demurely, smiling brightly, hoping that it gave the new trusty confidence.
"I'm not frightened," he said. "I don't get afraid of anything."
"Good." Her smile widened.
Bob Hatter stepped back another pace and looked at all of Tess' body. She saw his eyes, very dark brown, so dark that they made his black, curly hair seem to glisten, roam from her throat to her breasts to her bare waist, to the wrinkled V of her shorts at her thighs, then lower the length of her legs to stare at her feet, at the way she purposely wriggled them from her sandals in a sign of anxious, animal want.
Tess moved forward a bit, then traded his look, caused her own eyes to explore his body. The gray prisoner uniform could not contain the bulge of his muscles, the width and breadth of shoulders and chest or the narrow, hard waist and slim hips. She brought her eyes from his body directly to his face and smiled again.
"Excuse me, I'll be going," Hatter said.
"Why?" she asked.
He seemed stunned for a moment, then answered, "For a walk. It's not against regulations, you know. That's why I got up early this morning-so I could see this place before the work details start."
"You don't have to explain to me," Tess told him.
"Oh. Well, I do to everybody else."
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in an attractive arch.
"Hell, yes," he answered. "Excuse me-I mean of course, every con knows about you."
"About me?"
"I mean, 'knows you'," he said, a slight flush pinkening his cheeks.
"What do they know about me?" she asked, pretending a pout.
He glanced away, then said, "Nothing. Just that you're the warden's sister."
"And you're Bob Hatter," she said. "See, I know about you, too."
"Do you?" he said disgustedly.
"Yes. You're twenty-eight, single; you've been inside the walls for four years, you were very, very naughty there sometimes, and everyone was very surprised that they decided to trust you to be a trusty."
"To hell with them," he said angrily. "I didn't ask to be brought here. I can take anything they can give me and then some."
"I know," she said.
"Surely. After all, I heard everything they said about you before they decided to take a chance on letting you be a trusty."
"Big deal," he grunted. "Trusty. It's still prison. And I've still got five years to go. Big deal, big favor from the big people. To hell with them."
"I presume that's meant for my brother, too," she said.
"Double for him," Hatter said. He glanced at her body again, then, half-turning, said, "Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll go on with the walk I planned."
"That sounds great" she said. "I'll go with you."
He grinned luridly, glanced at her breasts which were half-exposed from their halter, then said, "The hell you will. Good-bye."
"Bob-wait."
He turned and looked at her again.
"Let me walk with you," she asked. "Please."
"No thanks, M'am," he answered. "I've got enough trouble without adding to it."
"I won't cause you trouble. Really I won't."
"All prison-women are trouble, baby," he said with a crooked grin. "Every goddam one of them. They've all got hot pants for cons because us poor bastards ain't had any, but for crissakes, just let a con touch them and they scream bloody-murder and it's ninety days in the hole and back inside the walls. No thanks, Miss Stewart."
"But I'm not like that."
"No, you're worse. You're a con-teaser."
"I'm not," she blurted, feeling suddenly exposed.
"Well, I'm not going to find out," Hatter said. "So, if you'll-"
She moved directly in front of him .and placed her right hand on his chest. Then she said, "If you were the least, bit wise, you'd be nice to me and let me walk with you. Don't forget, I am the warden's sister. I do have influence with him-especially when they start passing out time-off for good behavior, so-"
"Good behavior," he repeated, giving a short laugh. "For crissakes, you built like that and walking with me in the woods and I'm supposed to still qualify for time off for good behavior. Miss Stewart, you're nuts." He turned to leave, heading toward the path that led through the woods at the back of the cottages.
"Bob," she called, delaying him. "I thought you weren't afraid of anyone or anything in this prison that you could take anything they can dish out."
"I can," he said sternly.
"Then take me for a walk."
He hesitated, glanced at her thighs, at the tight pinch of her shorts between them, then said, "Come on, tease. Come on, I'll take my chances."
They were silent as they followed the path that led a winding trail through pine and evergreen, birch and spruce. Tess walked next to Hatter. She was very careful not to bump her body against him or give any sign of the sexuality she felt. And what she felt was great. She thrilled at her presence next to Hatter, knowing that he was experiencing his first taste of freedom, even if it was still a limited freedom. And she sensed what her presence must cause within him. She glanced at his thighs and saw that it was true, that there was a hard bunch of clothing pressing outward, whipping from side to side as he moved. She shivered delightfully, feeling the thrill of her physical influence.
About a quarter mile into the woods the path widened then ended at an ovai clearing, one studded with early summer flowers, bushes, and the tough rye grass that covered the area like a giant blanket. It was here that Tess caused them to pause.
"Oh, it's heavenly here," she said, stretching her arms high above her head as she raised on her toes and breathed deeply.
Bob Hatter stopped short and looked at her.
Tess relaxed her body with a heady sigh, then said, "Let's sit here for a wihle."
"The ground's damp," he said.
"So, who cares. Besides, you're going to take off that awful looking shirt and spread it for me to sit on."
"Am I?"
"Of course, you're a gentleman, aren't you?"
"I'm nothing," he said.
She walked to the center of the clearing, then turned, waiting for Bob Hatter to join her. In a moment he did, stripping the shirt from his body as he moved. Tess stifled a gasp of pleasure at the sight of his naked chest, for the muscles that rippled throughout it, for the small, hard waist that looked as if it could crush the life from a woman as it jammed close to her. And Tess was not at all inattentive to the knot of his manhood which protruded brazenly, pressing against the material of his trousers as he walked toward her. She wondered if he felt a pulsation there, one that matched the throbbing she experienced at her own loins, a pulsation which might seek its nest of comfort. Then she sighed, regretting that her desires had no place for that, held no lot for culmination but thirsted instead for the thrill of mounting passion, not its end.
Hatter stooped and spread his inmate's shirt in a large square.
"Thank you," Tess said. "See, I knew you were a gentleman," He grunted, but made no reply.
Tess sat down. Then, after looking at her speculatively, Hatter seated himself, sitting apart from the shirt, apart, too, from the temptations of Tess Stewart.
Tess gave her head a little shake, shimmering her dark curls. She raised her knees and grasped them close to her breasts as she wound her arms about her knees.
"My, but it's funny," she said, after a short period of silence.
"What's funny?" Hatter asked.
"Me being here with you. It's hard to believe that you're an inmate. It's more like you were one of the guards or the prison people who work here. You don't seem like a criminal."
"I'm not," he said, smiling. "I got caught for it. Now I'm not a criminal, just a con."
"Still, you don't seem very much different from any of the officers who live in Officer's Row.
"Well, from what I hear about them," he said, "I'm glad I'm a con. Man-I hear some of them lead mighty weird lives. The 'screws' and their wives too."
"Well, I don't know anything about that," Tess said, turning her head a bit, feeling embarrassed for the things she did know about the people who worked for her brother. And she felt an accusation, and an embarrassment for it, because of her own life, because of hers and her brother's, because of their life which she knew was far from the accepted.
"Tell me," Hatter said, looking at her curiously. "What's the dope on Lt. Matthews and his wife? I hear they're mighty odd. What's their story?"
"I don't know," she answered abruptly.
"Then how about Captain Quinn and that hot looking old lady of his."
"Cora Quinn is a lovely person," Tess answered. "And Harry is very nice too."
"Bull."
"It's true though," she said. "Just because you're an inmate you've developed a perverted impression of the prison personnel."
"It's perverted, all right," he said. "Perverted because they are."
"Let's change the subject," she suggested.
"Okay. But first, how about the new sociologist that's coming to the joint. What about him? Are the cons going to get a break from this one?"
"All I know is his name. York Harvey. It sounds like a very nice name."
"Is he going to live on Officer's Row too?"
"Yes. In the little single house next to our place. My brother and he will be conferring a lot, so it's good they'll be close to each other."
"Yeah," he said. "So they can think up new ways to bug us cons."
"Stop it," Tess said. She looked crossly at him, then was silent for a few moments. But soon, she returned her eyes to his and asked, "Bob, how long has it been since you kissed a girl?"
"Too long," he said, "and stop talking about it. Man-you want to drive me right out of my skin?"
She laughed. "At least that would be novel." She looked at his bare chest, then added, "It bothers you being here with me, doesn't it? You'd like to make love to me, wouldn't you?"
"Shut up," he blurted. "Stop talking like that or the walk is over and you can wiggle your fanny back to the warden's house."
"See, I knew it bothered you," she said. She moved a little closer to him. Then she placed her hand high on his thigh-high there, near his waist-and gently kneaded the firm muscles that bulged against his trousers.
He twisted to face her directly, and Tess was very aware of how close his bare chest was to her breasts. It was as if she could feel the heat from him being conveyed to herself.
"You're a bad broad," Hatter said. "A bad, lousy, con-teasing broad. And to think you're the goddam warden's sister."
She did not answer him. But she raised her head a bit, parted her lips slightly, then brought her hand higher on his thigh until her fingers could tuck inside the waist of his trousers.
"Get out of there," Hatter ordered. His body tensed, had been put to the greatest possible test of self-control.
"No, baby," Tess purred. "Get in there, is what you mean."
With fingers that were both deft by instinct and agile from experience, she unsnapped the top button of his trousers. Then she grasped the zipper tab and lowered it. Then, after only an instant's hesitation, she reached within the gap of material and scurried her fingers about in a long and frantic caress.
When she grasped him fully and brought him out from the covering, she gasped, "Ohh, Bob-you're so-so strong-unbelievably strong."
His voice was strained as he answered, "I've had a lot of years to get that way, baby."
For a few moments they remained with their bodies apart, Tess grasping him, pressuring her fingers tightly, then relaxing, then pressuring again, as Bob Hatter remained half-turned toward her, his waist twisted, his nude torso pointing directly at her heaving breasts. Then Hatter broke their pose. He jerked his hands upward and grasped her shoulders. His fingers dug into her skin. They trembled. He squeezed hard as if he were wresting life out of an adversary.
He jerked her to him as he muttered, "I don't give a damn-not for any of them-not for you-no one-I don't give a goddamn."
Nor did Tess give a damn about anything as she felt her breasts crush against Bob Hatter's bare chest, burrow there, then crush again as he forced her downward to lengthen next to him on the ground-as she continued to hold him, marvel at his strength and size and hardness, then began a light manipulation of that strength, knowing what it caused him-the ache, the longing, the deep desire that had been for years pent-up and denied, thought about, considered, but always-forever-unreleased, unquenched, an ocean of giving forever meeting its dam of denial.
Hatter captured her mouth as if it were a raft amid an ocean's roar. Tess gave it like a mother throwing a life preserver to her only child.
Tess groaned as Hatter twisted her to her back then crushed atop her upper half as he increased the pressure of his kiss. It was a kiss like none Tess had ever received. It gulped and sucked and tore. It shot a tongue that was hard and salty with longing. It took her tongue, soft at the giving, but made hard as his own by his frantic thirst upon it, by the draw of up-and-down loving he committed to it, by the nibbling, the bites, the slightest taste of blood, by the clash of both their tongues, by their twirling, spinning, fighting mixing.
Tess released her hold upon the mighty manhood of Bob Hatter. He moaned through their mouths at the loss. But then her arms circled his neck and she urged his mouth from hers to a lower, much more delectable prize-the gift of her breasts and their hard-thrusting nipples.
There was a smacking sound as Hatter acknowledged the pressure of her arms and pulled back from her mouth. He raised for a moment, pulled her halter free of her breasts where it bunched beneath them. Then he looked at them for a moment, the merest moment before he' lunged and buried his face to them like a man bent upon ending his fortnight of starvation.
"Ohhhhhhh, yes," Tess breathed as Bob Hatter took all of one breast into his hot, wet, and starving mouth. Then she pleaded a long, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh," as he released flesh and lip-nuzzled at her breast tips, playing his tongue across them in a spanking manner, whipping them to new length, greater hardness, to the cracks and crevices of brownish-pink to which they spread as he stimulated them to a near-bursting size.
Tess clawed her fingernails down Bob's bare back to the beginning slice of his buttocks. She hesitated. Then she ripped her nails further downward until each hand finally grasped the firm flesh of his buttocks. She kneaded. She tore as he tore with his teeth at her breasts, she slowed as he turned delicately to kisses and touches at the roundness of her flesh. And then, while one hand stayed at his buttocks to give of its pressuring, she brought the other one down, around the loose flap of his trouser waist until once again she felt the hard thrust of his masculinity which was jammed between them amid the confusion of pressuring bodies, garments, and her twisting, shrieking, maddening, desirous hand upon the lustful thrust of his manly prize.
But, as suddenly as a midnight scream, Hatter pulled away from ajl the soft body. He panted and his breathing exerted in a way that rippled tension down his ribcage, in a way that stammered all of his body. He brought his right hand far back then brutally slapped Tess's hand away from its hold upon him.
"Enough," he groaned. "Leave me alone and get the hell out of here. You're a goddamn cuttin'-prison bitch that's going to put me behind those goddamn walls again."
"No," she pleaded. She did not deny his accusation. She even acknowledged, that in a way, what he said was true. And though her heart and loins wished that it were not true, that she could now, this very moment, open herself wide to his need, to his tormented and long denied manhood and capture it to herself for the virginal-like volley of his seed, she realized that at the moment she was unable to give such a gift.
But she turned to Bob Hatter and cried, "Please-I'll never tell, but please love me a little."
"A little!" he blurted. "After all these crummy years and you say love you a 'little'. Lady-Tess-Miss Stewart-you're a plain, lousy bitch-bare as Eve but with your pants buttoned tight."
"Please," she cried again.
His expression changed. It turned suddenly cruel, rather than thirsting, it looked resigned and knowledgeable about the things that tormented this odd girl-stranger who had come to him offering her body-a girl whom he had known less than an hour.
"All right, baby," he hissed. "I'll play your goddamn game. You're a cuttin' tease, okay, I'll be one too. I'll show you how a con feels about you rotten prison people-I'll make you crawl and roll-and then-then, it's going to be a goddamn con who tells the warden's sister to go to hell, because baby, I can wait-wait as long as I have to before I dip myself into the pants of somebody belonging to this cuttin' state."
He moved close again. Tess saw him leer above her Jike a sudden cloud, then she felt him tug at her tight shorts and finally strip them from her body. Then she felt a snap at the back of her halter as it was pulled free. And it was then, when she was completely naked and accessible, that she sought to again become the aggressor, to use her lustful giving as a defense against that which Bob Hatter-which every convict-sought.
As Hatter moved close, hoisted himself to his knees in order to dominate her body at the point of her breasts with his mouth, Tess lurched sideways and again grabbed at his exposed and throbbing manhood. Then she scrambled her body closer and bobbed her head in a motion of taking.
She did not achieve that which she sought. Bob Hatter struck her hard across the cheek. She reeled backwards and rolled to her back again.
"No you don't, bitch," he hollered. "A con can get that from any punk-boy he wants inside those cuttin' walls. For you, I got what a tease deserves."
He flung his body atop her, made sure she was pinned flat, then slowly rose to her side.
Tess looked up at his leering face. She saw the crisp lines of anxiety at the corners of his eyes. She saw the strain of his self-denial in the hard line of his mouth. She saw his chest heaving before it fought, and attained, calmness and evenness. And she saw, and attempted again to hold, the symbol of his passion, already risen high and throbbing, yet under the control of his will.
At first, Bob Hatter pushed her hand aside. But then, as if suddenly confident of his composure, he allowed her touch, her grasp, the strong, five-fingered hold she achieved upon him. And then he lowered to her lips.
He played his tongue along the outer outline of her lips not trying for entry, not desiring the sweetness that was within, content only to run the hard point between the line of her lips, at their ends, to prune gently at their middle, asking but not demanding more of her heat, her moisture, the salt contents of her mouth, then, when she offered it, to deny it and kiss a path to her neck and upward to her ears where he plunged hard and desperately, igniting her to a height that made her twist and turn her head in a panic, a panic that both sought more of his giving and denied the thrill it brought.
When the movement of her head, the shaking and straining from side'to side, reached a frenzy, Hatter pulled back and rested on his heels, kneeling before her, fighting for the continued control of his emotions, yet confident that his will would prevail, that he would invoke the 'right' of the oppressed against the girl, the girl who was the symbol of power and state and prison and authority.
Very slowy, as gently as a kitten, he bent to her breasts. He kissed them slowly and thoroughly. He lapped at their undersides, nuzzled his face fully to them, departed them for a moment before consuming them, snarling and blubbering as he did so, then taking first one, then the other in long, sucking pulls of his mouth, extending them and holding them until they dragged and offered only the nipple. And the nipples he battered with his tongue, beat them into submission then released the whole of her until the breast snapped back to her body like a rubber band.
Tess felt her emotions grow like a constantly pumped up balloon. Her body tingled from the convict's caresses, from his mouthing and his tonguing. She knew that his love-making was built upon resentment and hate, that it came to budding as a means of retaliation to herself, because she was a con-tease and he knew it, yet, Tess soared in want, in desire for giving to the young convict and for a few moments she even regretted the twisted path her steaming sexuality had taken so long ago.
Tess turned a bit to her side and reached for Hatter's throbbing manhood. She found it, grasped it, gasped aloud because of its heat and stretched yearning. But she held her prize for only a moment. As soon as she began a squeezing, pulling manipulation of all his strength, he again slapped her hand away from him.
"I said I was putting the tease on you, baby," he muttered cruelly.-
"But I want to-to-."
He choked her words off by burying his face to her belly. He kissed her there, hard and passionately, mouthing her flesh with his lips, whisking his tongue at her navel, lapping at all the round, firm womanliness of her until her muscles convulsed in tiny waves and she groaned deliriously, chanting the call of her feelings, beseeching her pleas for more of his giving.
"Ohhhhhh, yes," she breathed. "Yes, yes, yes-like that, harder like that, please-please, please, please-harder and harder and harder, darling."
He circled at her belly, mouthing all of the flesh of it. He studded her with the excitement of the tip of his tongue, then stomped the fullness of his lips to all the area, bringing trembles to her body like the constant waves of a spring-fed lake.
Tess twisted and caught his head with her arms. She forced him lower upon herself, sought to jam him to her thighs. Her efforts were not needed. He answered her call willingly. He dived to the softness of her thighs, kissed at the undersides, devoured the tops, tongue lashed up and down in a crazy pattern of sexual exploration, being careful all the time to make no contact with that for which she cried. It was that which he saved for the final torment of his giving.
Bob Hatter paused without raising from Tess' body. He breathed deeply, then exhaled breath like a deep sea diver. Then he rested for a moment. Then, without moving from the place where his mouth rested carefully on the lower muscle of her belly, he reached upward and caught one, large breast with his left hand. He squeezed, then pulled hard at the nipple, extending it far outward from her body. It was the signal for greater movement. He provided it. He pressured his mouth harder against her flesh, lowered, pressured again, kissed lightly, then harder still until a separation was caused, then even harder as the forbidden flesh of her bid him welcome. He explored it like a savage dog. He nuzzled. He kissed. He tongued. He ran the length and breadth of her. He left no spot untouched, then, after she had known all of his caresses, he provided the individuality of his attention. He pressured his mouth high, found the tiny hill of her sensitivity, raised a bit from it, paused, then attacked it with the lashing of his tongue; back and forth he struck, then circled, then tipped his tongue's end to the lively stimulation of the very slightest contact-one that set Tess to screaming and blubbering like an abused idiot.
"Ahhhhhhh, yes, you bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard mine. EEEEE-eeeeeeeeeee, ohh, yes, yes. Kill me and don't leave me-don't stop, don't, don't don't-not ever, not ever you perfect bastard-my bastard-mine, mine, mine."
And then the tiny senses of her genes multiplied a thousand fold, multiplied and gave birth to millions of new genes which in turn gushed a new billion of tiny pricks of sensation. And then she was riding the wave-the very highest one-to the shore, rising high to the topmost tip from which she would descend with a crash, a jolt, an end that would both shatter and satisfy.
Her body shuddered in approach. And then it changed, shuddered still, but in frustration as Bob Hatter jerked away from the tight clamp of her thighs and pushed himself upright.
"Ohhhh, no, no, no-don't leave me. Not NOW," Tess screamed.
He looked down at her, disgust lining his face. Then he said, "That's it, squirm you bitch. Now you know what it's i-like to be teased-now you know how a goddamn con can feel, so squirm and cry and claw the goddamn ground and when you go home you can tell the warden what you've been up to."
He turned and walked away.
Tess watched his back disappear up the path, then she turned and rested her forearm against her arm. And with the other hand, she did claw the ground.
CHAPTER TWO
Lt. Burt Matthews brought the back of his hand down hard and across the pretty cheek of his wife, sending her flying across the bed room until she sprawled on the bed.
Lisa felt the bed springs give under her weight. She bounced lightly and remained very still for a moment. Then she pushed upward and faced her husband. He was a big man, broad of shoulders and thick of arms with the beginning of a paunch at his waist. As Lisa looked at him, she saw that his face was very red. She was familiar with the sign. It was of anger and frustration, was made up of the complexities of a complex man.
Very slowly, Lisa settled herself on the edge of the bed. She looked up at Burt, then, in a tone that was calm and denied the slap that had just stung her cheek, she said, "Are you through now, Burt? Are you through with your great big manly display of strength on your wife? If you are, I've got things to do."
"No, I'm not through," he bellowed. "Now listen to me. If I see you cruising around these goddamn cons anymore I'm going to-to-."
"What, beat me again?" she asked. She smiled. It was a wanton smile, one that told of deep sexuality in a small, firm body.
"No, I'll do much more than that," Matthews replied. "I'm up for a promotion and I'm not going to have you queer it for me."
"Queer did you say?" she asked sarcastically.
"Shut up. And another thing, I'm not having that little bitch of a niece of yours here like you plan. One of you prowling around among these cons is enough-more than enough. It can ruin me."
"What a shame," said Lisa Matthews. "And we just can't have anything get in the way of the big man's career, now can we?"
"Shut up."
"I won't."
He jumped to the side of the bed and grabbed her blonde hair with his left hand. He jerked it backwards, straining Lisa's head back until her neck cords bloated and turned blue.
"You're going to stop this making fun of me," Matthews hollered. "You're going to stop that and you're going to stop wiggling your rear end in front of every rotten, goddamn trusty-con you come across. Do you hear?"
"I hear you, Burt," she said. "And so does everyone else in Officer's Row."
He relaxed his hold on her hair, but did not release his grip upon the long strands. Then, as if to make his point more clearly understood, he jammed his other hand inside his wife's blouse and gripped at the roundness of her large breast.
"Do you understand everything I been telling you, Lisa?" he asked.
When she did not answer him, only stared defiantly into his face, he squeezed her breast hard. "Do you understand, Lisa?"
"I understand what you're saying, Burt," she said. Her voice was strained, as if only pain could have made her say the words.
"That's better," he said. He pulled his hand away from her breast and released his grip on her hair.
Lisa pushed up from the bed and walked past him to the vanity. She looked at the reflection of herself a moment, then took a brush and began light strokes at her blonde hair, making it glisten and fall into place. She took a long time with the chore, and as she brushed she watched the image of her husband behind her. She saw him looking at her, and she knew that in spite of his anger he could not help but admire the sassy bulge of her buttocks beneath the tight fitting skirt. And she knew that through, the mirror he saw the jiggle of her breasts, the way the movement of her arm made them hop excitingly, partially exposing themselves from the low-cut blouse. She knew he felt all these things. But still, even with a woman's pride for the admiration her husband was compelled to give, she could not keep from hating him.
She watched as he smiled and moved toward her. She continued brushing her hair. When he was directly behind her, she slowed the pace of the brush and finally laid it on top of the vanity. She leaned close to the mirror, catching her husband's image in a line with hers..
Speaking into the mirror, she said, "Is there something else, Burt? I thought you were all through."
"There's something else all right," he answered. His voice was low and had lost its anger.
"What is it, Burt?"
"You know."
"Do I?"
"You should. Don't you remember how it used to be with us? How we'd just look at each other or maybe bump against each other, and that's all it would take."
Lisa turned around and faced her husband. Her green-blue eyes narrowed as if she were indeed recalling sensual things. And her breasts hoisted higher as her breathing increased.
"Do you remember, Lisa?" Burt Matthews asked.
"I remember," she said. She paused, then added, "Burt, you're a funny one. Really funny."
He brought his hand to her forearm and rested it there. "How do you mean?"
"You slap me all over the place, then the next minute you want to make Jove. You're weird."
"Yeah," he said, grinning.
"You like it don't you, Burt? You like all the beating, and that's why you like this job so much. You can beat the hell out of the inmates-get all the kicks you want, and all you get for it is a promotion."
"Cons get beat when they deserve it," he said seriously. "And as far as I'm concerned, they always deserve it."
Lisa looked into his eyes and sadly shook her head from side to side. "Someday it's going to catch up with you, Burt. Someday you just might get yours."
"I'll take my chances." He squeezed her arm, then said, "Come on, how about it? Let's make up. Right now, let's forget all our scrapping and make up."
"Just like that, eh? Forget it with a snap of the fingers, eh, Burt?"
"Sure. Come on."
She looked away from his face and smiled. Burt took a step closer to his wife and jammed his waist a bit forward, enough to know the outline of Lisa's thighs. Again, in askance, he squeezed her forearm.
Lisa felt the jam of his manhood against her thighs. She felt the tightening of his fingers on her forearm. She thought of the five years she had spent married to the thirty-three year old Lieutenant of Prison Guards and wondered why it had happened, why, when she was only nineteen she had been misled into marriage with a man who was brutal and who loved that brutality. She hated him, yet she knew that she would never leave him. She knew, too, that she would not trade her position at the trusty camp for any man. She had found far too many exciting men in the trusty compound-the inmates themselves, starved for women and receptive to anything she desired. And this is why she remained Burt Matthews' wife. This alone made her endure boredom, conceit, brutality, and abnormality. It was the price she had to pay for the thrills she found with others.
"Come on, baby," Burt asked, more urgently this time.
She brought a slow, willing expression to her face and turned to him again. "But I'm all dressed, Burt. I'm dressed and Cora Quinn is coming over for coffee.
After, all, you want me to look nice for the Captain's wife, don't you."
"You don't have to get undressed," he said.
"I don't? Well, how in the world do you expect me to-."
"Stop acting innocent," he said. "You know what I mean. You know what I like just as much as the real thing."
"Oh," she said, pretending surprise. "That again?"
"Come on."
She smiled, feeling power come to her, the power that was the knowledge of one of her husband's many sexual secrets. She stepped closer and rested one cheek against his big chest. She felt his hand drop from her forearm and circle her back. Then, in a moment, she felt his other hand move to her buttocks and clamp there.
Burt Matthews arched his hips a bit and Lisa felt the enormous growth that had come to him, felt it pressuring at her thighs, although she knew that it was not her thighs he wanted.
"Here, by the mirror again, Burt?" she asked.
"Yeah," he wheezed heavily. "By the mirror."
Lisa did not raise her mouth to be kissed. She did not expect her husband's hands to turn gentle and caressing on her back and buttocks. She knew that this would never happen. She knew that his arms would remain around her, that they were there now and would be there at the end, grasping for support, not because of love or from any wish to please her. She knew all this, and did not care.
When Burt lunged his hips forward again, Lisa answered his signal. She grasped the piercing point of his trousers and fondled there for a few minutes before finding the zipper tab and lowering it. Burt sighed heavily and increased the clamp of his hands at her back as she exposed him. His body began to shake slightly in anxiety and his breathing became exerted and uneven.
Lisa held him lightly, thinking, wondering why it should be that a man so well possessed should be so misdirected, and for a moment it seemd quite incredible to her that her husband, masculine and strong in every outward appearance, should have a quirk in his sexuality, that he should find satisfaction in many odd and out of the way paths. Burt lunged again.
Lisa tightened her hold upon him and buried her cheek a little deeper into his chest, keeping her head turned, having no desire to look either at his face or in the mirror, wanting not to see her action or its results, but only to end it, have it over and done and her husband out of the house so she could be about her own sexual business of the day.
"Come on," Burt said once again.
Like a child grasping a thrown bat to determine sides for a back lot ballgame, Lisa grasped him fully. She pressured, and released, then pressured again. Then she brought a hard, jerking action to her hand, wringing him out and back in hard short pulls of manipulation. He groaned and lurched, as if providing more of himself for her taking. But there was no more that she could do except pressure and pull and whip to and fro, around in a circle, then forward and back once more, then again and again and again.
"Ugh!" Burt moaned.
Lisa felt the tightening of skin and the jamming of agony, hurried substances of emotion gathering for attack, for release, for the venture of the cold outer world. She moved her hand more rapidly.
"Ugh, Ohhh, Ugh," Burt choked and moaned. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby," he encouraged.
At last, when it seemed to Lisa that the cramp and ache of her hand would be with her forever, there was a mighty thrusting from her husband's body. He lurched and twisted, pumped forward and back in an effort to hurry the already speeding fingers of his obedient wife.
Lisa thrashed him to his end. She splattered him with all the strength and fury of her ability, and even when she felt that sticky sign of completion, she did not let him go but continued to thrash, making a denouement of their little drama of one-sided love and sexuality.
Finally, she released him and stepped aside. She glanced at her husband's face. He was grinning in amazement at the mirror.
"My, God," he exclaimed. "Look, honey. Jeeeezzzz, but that was good. I must be the-."
Lias moved away without looking at the mirror. "Get to work Burt you'll be late." She hurried away from him and into the bath room.
When she departed the bath room, her husband was bright and smiling and had put on his uniform jacket and cap.
"Well, babe," he said. "I've got to be off to the joint."
"Yes, I know."
"So you're going to visit with Cora Quinn today, eh?"
"Yes. Cora and I are good friends."
"Well, I'm glad about that, honey. Real glad. It doesn't hurt a bit-it helps a hell of a lot-that you and the Captain's wife are buddies. Yes, Sireeeee, that won't hurt my promotion sheet a bit-not a blinking bit."
"I'm aware of that, Burt," Lisa said.
"But it's not why you're buddies with her, is it?"
"No. I like Cora. We have a lot in common."
"Well anyway, keep up the good work. And honey, remember I want you to look real sharp at the warden's party next week. I want us to make a real good impression on the new prison sociologist."
"I'll do my best," she said.
"The sociology boys are beginning to run the prisons of this country. Pretty soon officer personnel might not have any say so at all. I've got to protect myself against that. And the best way to do it is to get chummy with the new guy-what's his name-York Harvey?-and the party the old man's giving for him can mean a lot to us, so look as sharp as you can."
"You're going to be late," she reminded him.
"Oh, sure, well, bye-bye, kitten. See you tonight." (I Burt Matthews turned and exited the room. Lisa went to the window and watched as her husband climbed into the olive-drab prison car, put it in gear, then jerked it out of the drive and in the direction of the gray, high-walled state prison.
When the car was out of sight, Lisa turned from the window and walked to the small living room. She thought of the day that was before her and wondered what excitement she might make out of it. Then she smiled and considered that this was the least of her concern, that a woman in a prison compound found excitement in every corner. Then her smile widened and she thought how efficient she and most of the other prison women were at finding the right corners in a trusty camp.
Lisa stood in the middle of the living room for" a few minutes. She looked around, seeing the modest furniture that rested in a modest, cottage sized house. She wondered why she did not aspire to more material things, why she was content where she was, content even to live with a man she loathed, to suffer his vulgarity, and his beatings, content with it all because of the personal thrills she found among the convicts. Then she shrugged, deciding that it was just a peculiarity of her life and that everyone had some kind of quirk about themselves.
She walked to where the telephone rested on a table next to a big overstuffed chair. She picked the phone up, listened for the dial tone, then dialed the number of Cora Quinn, the beautiful wife of the captain of the guard.
"Hi," Liza said, after Cora answered the ring.
"Hi, yourself, and am I ever glad you called," Cora said excitedly. "I've really got something cooking for us."
"And I wonder what it could be this time," Lisa said amusedly.
"A party, baby," Cora said.
"Oh, that's nothing. I know all about the warden's party."
"That's not the one I'm talking about sweetie. I've got a con-party planned."
"You're kidding."
"I'm not. And can you guess who the guest of honor is going to be?"
"You're husband or mine," Lisa giggled girlishly.
"All right," Cora said, laughing herself. "Don't be funny. This is serious. We're going to have none other than that horrible con, Link Zora with us, baby."
"Zora!" Lisa exclaimed. "Why I thought-I thought they'd never let him out of the walls."
"That's what everybody thought. What the devil-rapist, manslaughter-there's not much that good-looking con hasn't done to people. But they're going to let him out. Something about a new order of things in the prison because of the sociology influence, you know, give every man a chance, even the worst they have."
"And Zora's the worst," Lisa breathed delightedly. "The very worst. And he's been locked up almost twelve years."
"Yeah," Cora said dreamily. "What a kick that's going to be. Guess we'll have to flip for firsts. Lisa laughed thrillingly.
"Listen," Cora said. "I'll be right over. Then we can make our plans together."
"Good. Hurry," Lisa told her.
Lisa replaced the phone on its hook then walked to the living room window. She felt a tremor of excitement course through her body, then pinpoint at her thighs, causing a pulsation there. She thought how odd it was that a simple thought-one of the raging con, Link Zora-could do this to her. It was something she never experienced with her husband, not even the short hour ago when she held him and moved him, serviced him like a servant.
Lisa hurried into the kitchen, anxious to put coffee on the stove to await the arrival of her friend, Cora Quinn. Together, Lisa knew they would determine courses that would break the dullness of prison-wife's life. She couldn't wait.
CHAPTER THREE
"I'm not sure I approve of the plan," Warden Clive Stewart said, shaking his head as he eyed the young sociologist sitting across from him.
"I can understand your conservatism," York Harvey said. "You, like most of the prison officials here, are from the old school of custody over rehabilitation. Your thinking has always been directed toward punishment of convicts, not their eventual return to society."
Warden Stewart grunted, then said, "And for damn good reasons, too. Most of these men can't change, therefore, the thing to do is to keep them away from society where they can do no harm."
York Harvey nodded, but did not answer. He looked very thoughtful. A tall man, and slim, he seemed too large for the big leather chair in which he lounged lazily. And he looked much too youthful to be sitting opposite the warden. The two men presented a contrast in appearance as much as there was a contrast of their thoughts and background. The sociologist was about twenty-eight, the warden twenty years his senior. York's hair was curly and cut in a crew clip, making him seem still a college boy. The warden's hair was gray and full. But in their eyes there was a similarity. Both of the men had eyes that held steady to the person to whom they spoke. Both pairs of eyes seemed capable of both sternness and compassion. Both men seemed dedicated to their careers.
York uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees. He stared straight ahead at the warden.
"Tell you what," York said. "Would you consider the transfer on the basis of a trial period? You know, allow Link Zora about a month as a trusty before we make the final decision. If he goofs, well, it'll be back inside the walls with him and every inmate in the place will have learned a valuable lesson. If he proves to be a good risk, really makes it as a trusty, well then, the inmates have learned something else-that there's a chance for all of them, that it's worth their effort to behave themselves and not cause troubles."
"That sounds a little better," Warden Stewart said. "But why in the hell Zora. He's the most miserable con we've got."
York smiled, then said, "That's the exact reason I selected Zora. Because he is so rotten-or has beenit's a much better test to see what a man like him might do with a little bit of freedom."
The warden sighed wearily, then pushed up from his chair. "All right, York, I'll approve his transfer to the trusty camp on that basis. We'll see what happens. Besides, I hear the grapevine already has the word out that Zora's being transferred. We can't disappoint the gossips, now can we?"
"No, sir," York said, grinning broadly and pushing up from his chair.
"Let me tell you one thing though, son," the warden said. "You're young-you're new to the prisons. Now, I'm not against change or rehabilitation and all that stuff. But just remember you've yet to see your first prison riot. You've never been held a hostage like I have. It's terrible, like nothing you can imagine. Hell, there's nothing that doesn't happen during a riot. Cells are smashed, a million dollars worth of equipment is torn apart-there're fights and knifings and murder.
And there's rape too. The most unbelievable kind. Hell, I saw a nineteen year old boy raped by a dozen cons once, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it but watch because they were holding me hostage. Remember these things, York. They're not very pretty."
"I'll remember, Sir," York said. "And thank you for approving this transfer for Link Zora. I'm sure it will work out."
"I hope so," Clive Stewart said.
York followed the warden across the room to a small, oval bar.
"Drink?" the warden asked.
"Yes, thank you," York said. "A small one. Rye. Straight."
The warden mixed the drinks, then handed York Harvey his glass.
"To your success here, Son," the warden said.
"Thank you," York answered. He raised the shot glass to his lips and downed the liquor. Then he said, "And by the way, thanks for the party you've planned."
"No thanks to it," Clive said. "I want everyone to meet you properly."
"Well, that's very nice. It's important, too. I think. You see, I believe that the kind of personnel we have reflects to a great extent on the kind of inmates we have."
"I don't quite follow that, York."
"Well, there's a kind of a paternal relationship with personnel and convicts, almost a family relationship. Just as kids pretty well reflect the attitudes of their parents, convicts reflect the attitudes of those people who are in charge of a prison."
"Oh."
"So, I'm going to be delighted to meet the others at the party. It will tell me a lot about this place. It's especially important, I feel, to meet the women who are here."
"Yes, I suppose so," the warden said. He raised his eyes and looked past the young sociologist to the stairway, then said, "Well, here's one of them now."
York turned toward the stairs. Then he smiled.
Tess Stewart stopped mid-way down the stairs and smiled at both men. The smile was sweet, and her body looked ripe and glowing where it was exposed from her usual attire of halter and shorts.
"Oh, oh-bet I'm disturbing something," she said.
"Not a bit, sweetie," Clive said.
York looked at him quickly, as if the salutation seemed odd or out of place. Then he looked back at Tess as she continued to descend the stairs.
"This is my kid sister," the warden said to York when Tess finally stopped before them.
"How do you do," York said pleasantly.
"Very well, thanks," Tess said. She extended her hand to the sociologist.
Clive put his arm around his sister's shoulder and hugged her affectionately. Then he said, "And what have you been up to all day, sweetie?"
"Not much. I was in town shopping earlier. And now I've just finished a swim."
York looked surprised and asked, "At this hour?"
"Oh, yes. I like swimming best when the sun's low. It's beautiful at that time of the day and the sun has had all day to warm the water."
"Where do you swim?" York asked.
"There's a small lake through the woods that's just heavenly."
"You mean within the trusty area?" York said, surprised, his eyebrows raising and his dark brown eyes going round.
"Of course," she answered.
Involuntarily, York's head shook slightly, as if disapproving of what Tess said.
The warden, noticing the gesture, hugged his sister to him again, then said, "I know what you're thinking, son, but there's nothing to worry about. There isn't a trusty in this place who would lay a hand on Tess. Not one. They know better than to try it. They know how I feel about my sister."
"They do?" York asked softly.
"You're damn right they do," Clive said.
York nodded and glanced at all of Tess' body, noting, it seemed, every inch of her scanty dress. Then he said, "But isn't it awfully provocative for you to be dressed like this around the inmates? Isn't it presenting them with an unfair temptation?"
The warden laughed and said, "She's a temptation, all right. And not for cons alone. She's a temptation for any man. Isn't that right Sis?"
"Oh, stop it, Clive," she kidded. "You'll make me blush."
York Harvey did not join the laughter or the light, complimentary banter. Instead, he looked first to Tess, then at Clive, then back again to the pretty girl.
"I hope you're going to like it here, York," Tess said. "And I hope you stay longer than the other Chief Sociologists did."
"I'm going to try," he said. "Try very hard." He paused, glanced at the floor, shifted his eyes to Tess' red-painted toenails, then looked up her body again until he stared evenly into her face.
"I'm sure you'll succeed," she said.
"Yes," he said rather absently. Then added, "But, as I was telling Clive, we can only expect so much of inmates, and when they're presented with undue duress or temptations-such, I might say, if you'll allow me temptations such as yourself, going about the compound half-nude and swimming alone, and so forth, well then, we're presented with a very real-."
"Hold it," the warden cut in. "Tess isn't interested in our talk, I'm sure. And really, York, don't worry yourself about the personnel here. We make out just fine."
"I'll be anxious to meet them all," he said seriously. "Very anxious."
"And you will. All in a lump next Saturday at the party."
"And I'm glad I met you," York said to Tess. He looked very serious, very preoccupied.
"I'm glad you did, too," Clive said. "Sis and I have been together for a long, long time."
"Really?" York said. "You've been together, you said?"
"Yes," Tess answered. "Since our parents died." She turned and gazed happily at her brother as she added, "Clive's been everything to me-absolutely everything and everybody."
"You see, there's almost twenty-five years between us," Clive explained. "So, I've been a father, mother, brother-everything to little Tess here. She's been at every prison I've been at."
"And neither of you have ever been married?" York asked.
"Never," Clive said, almost vehemently.
York looked at Tess again and said, "But you're at an age when most girls begin to think about marriage."
"Most girls, but not me," she answered. "I have quite enough to keep me busy taking care of Clive."
"Oh, I see," York said.
"I'm glad you do," she told him.
"Well, I'm sure we'll all have a better chance to get acquainted as time goes on," Clive said, looking at York, his words tinged with a note of dismissal.
"Yes, of course we will," York said. "And I have to be running."
"Thanks for stopping over," Clive said.
"Thank you for seeing me," York replied. "And I'll go ahead with the Link Zora thing, right?"
"Yes. We'll give it a whirl."
York nodded to both of them, then turned and long strided out of the living room. "I'll let myself out," he called.
In a moment, Clive and Tess heard the front door open, then close. They were quiet a moment, then Tess walked to the large picture window and looked out of it.
"What do you think of him?" Clive asked.
"He seems nice."
"Yes. But he's a rebel with a lot of crazy ideas." She did not answer. Her eyes followed York Harvey as he got into his car, started the motor, then pulled it away from the house and headed it toward the road that led to the prison proper.
Clive looked at her and thought how beautiful she was, how beautiful she had always been. And whenever he looked at her, especially at times like this when he was tired and burdened with decisions about his career, Clive felt great joy for his sister's presence, and fear that it might end, that she might find another with whom she would spend her life. It bothered him greatly. He wasn't young any longer. Retirement loomed on the near horizon. He wondered what it would mean to his relationship with Tess. He wondered if it might mean the end of the only true love he had ever known, for, Clive was all too well aware that prisons and prisoners were the incentive for his sister's life with him. Without them, he wondered if Tess could so easily accept life with him. Perhaps then she would find another, a husband or lover, someone who would end the only joy he had ever know-the joy that had been his sister since she was a tiny baby. He shook his head. He didn't want to think about such a possibility. Not now, not ever.
Tess had turned and was looking at him.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "Tired?"
"A little," he admitted.
"Poor baby," Tess said. She walked close to him and smiled into his face. He smiled back.
She brought both her small hands up to his cheeks and pressured them at the sides, allowing the middle finger of each hand to work up to his temples where they gently rubbed.
"Ummmmm," he said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.
"Good, isn't it?" Tess said.
"Very good. You're very good."
She brought her hands down. "Come on, sit down in the chair and I'll massage you. Then you won't be tired any longer and we can think about dinner."
He walked to a large, leather chair and seated himself in it. He leaned his head back and again closed his eyes. Then he waited for her to touch at his forehead and temples, the light, caressing movement of her fingers that always chased tiredness and worry away.
Tess perched on the arm of the chair. She turned, half-facing him, and brought her hands to the soothing manipulation at his temples.
Clive felt her touch. It not only comforted, it excited him. He opened his eyes a bit and saw the full bloat of her young breasts, the way they moved, edging always closer to exposure above her halter as she moved her fingers on his temples. And he saw the wrinkle of her belly-skin where her torso twisted towards him. He looked at the firm, hard lines and thought they were the most delectable lines of femininity he had ever seen. And he loved the way her tight shorts stuck snugly to her thighs and hips, making them seem like her flesh itself; firm, sweet, hot and tight. Clive breathed deeply and caught the full scent of her, the passionate mixture of woman and perfume. He breathed all of her in deeply and it was as if he could take her into his lungs and heart, make her a life within himself where he could keep her safe forever, out of reach of others who might someday snatch her away.
Tess manipulated her fingers at his. temples harder. She leaned forward and her large breasts nearly touched Clive's chest.
Clive shifted slightly in the chair. It was a natural movement, but it contrived to create the slightest touch of her breasts to his chest. He loved it like this, he thought, loved that moment of closeness with his sister when she was near, yet still not crushed against him. It always seemed like a promise, he decided. A promise that was always fulfilled. And sometimes, as now, he knew that the promise of his sister Tess was as exciting as the thrill of her. He wondered why. He thought about it for a few moments then decided that it had something to do with his own ego, with the conquest he felt when she deliberately offered and promised herself. That was it, he was sure. He was old, she was young. She was very beautiful and he was plain. And they were blood relatives-the partners caught within the net of the greatest taboo. And it was all of this that was so very, very exciting for him. And when he thought about it, he did not mind that Tess had other sexual interests, that she prowled among the prison trusties, flaunted her body before them, tempted all and very likely sexually accepted many. This he knew, was a small price for him to pay in order to know the fullness of her, have the constant presence of her. He knew that it could ruin him, yet he did not, could not, object. It was one of the reasons Tess was with him, was his whenever he wanted. It was an unsaid, unwritten bargain. She was his mistress and would remain his sister-mistress, as long as they had the prison and the men of the prison upon whom she could vent her desires. When he thought of it, actually put it into mental words to himself, he raged with jealousy, wanted to revenge himself upon every convict who had ever looked at Tess. But, he knew that he was helpless, that it was best that some things had never been discussed, mentioned, best if they were not even mentally reviewed. Then he wondered how Tess was with the trusties she knew. He wondered if she gave herself fully, or if she perhaps only teased-was a con-teaser. A flashing pain clipped at his heart, reminding him of the incredible circumstances, that he, warden of a large state prison, not only violated the greatest moral law there was by being in love with his sister, but that he also blinded himself to the fact that that sister-his love-was the enemy of prison people everywhere-an enemy because she fraternized-sexually mingled-with the convicts who were her brother's responsibility. His chest jammed tight and he felt its sting.
"Feel better now, Clive?" Tess asked.
"Much better. I always do when you're near."
"You're such a flatterer," she told him.
"Tess?"
"Um?"
"Why do you stay with me? Why don't you make a life of your own?"
"Do you want me to leave?"
"No."
"Well, good. You couldn't get rid of me anyway. You're my brother and I love you very much and I'm very happy with the life we have."
"But if we weren't in prison work, you wouldn't be with me, would you, Tess?" he asked seriously.
"Of course I would, silly," she said.
He knew that she lied. He was glad that she did. He hoped that she would always lie in regards to this particular, painful subject.
Tess brought her hands away from his forehead and leaned back, resting half-perched on the arm of the chair. She looked at him concernedly.
"My, but you're really grumpy today aren't you?" she said.
"No. I was. But I'm not now," he said opening his eyes and smiling at her.
"I think you're still grumpy," she said. "And little sister knows just the treatment for it."
He stiffened in his chair. He knew what she meant. It usually started this way. He wished that her approach was different. He wished that she did not so brazenly put everything into words. He wished she wouldn't use the word 'sister' or 'brother', reminding him of the awful thing he committed, the awful thing he had committed upon her since she was twelve. He wished she wouldn't. But then, he knew that if she did not, he would be unhappy and concerned at her change of pattern, that the whip of jealousy would lash his heart, making him ask questions that he did not want answered-not truthfully answered, at least.
"I said I knew just the cure, darling," Tess said, leaning forward again and looking into his eyes.
"Of course you do," he said. "You always do."
Tess laughed and pushed away from the chair. Facing her brother, she brought her hands behind her back, unhooked her halter, then pulled it from her body. Her breasts dropped nude and bounced, then jiggled as she unzipped the side of her shorts and pushed them down over her legs until she could step out of them. Then she kicked off her sandals. Then she straightened, presenting all of her young nudity for the feast of her brother's eyes.
Clive feasted upon the sight of her. Her breasts loomed large before him, their nipples like hard diamonds, erect and cracking. Her stomach was flat but rippled with muscles like the edges of an old-fashioned scrub board. Her navel, so perfectly placed in the middle of her nakedness, winked and indented, pressured as if it were the button that caused her exerted breathing. Her thighs when they were pressed together were firm twins of sensuality. Apart, there was the added excitement of her young womanhood, the V that promised both lust and comfort. Her knees were dimpled like those of a schoolgirl.
Clive pushed up from his reclining position and loosened his collar, then he lurched forward, making ready to disengage all of his clothing.
Tess restrained him. "No darling, you're tired. Let me."
Clive relaxed back into the contours of the chair. Tess brought her naked body forward. She twisted to a sitting position upon his lap. The she brought her hands up and loosened the buttons of his shirt, spreading it wide so she could play her fingers upon his bare chest for a few minutes.
As she moved and caressed, touched and stimulated his skin, Clive thought how things had really not changed very much, how Tess now, was as Tess had always been, that she was really not very much different from the little girl who so long ago used to crawl upon his lap and sit there to express her happiness or sorrow, her thoughts, dreams, hopes, ambitions and fears-all things to he who was her brother, her love, her protector and defender, advisor, confident, her only adult associate.
She reached between them to catch the zipper tab of his trousers. She lowered it teasingly slow. Then she produced that which she sought, brought it from concealment in order to know the thrill of her body.
Clive groaned softly at the thrill of her touch. He settled deeper into the chair, then held his arms outstretched for his sister to come between them.
Tess crawled more fully onto his body. She moved like a reptile, cuddling all of her body to him as she brought her face even with his. Her breasts first brushed, then crushed against his bared chest. Her knees moved outward to straddle his waist. Her hands lovingly wound around his neck. Then she brought her mouth to his.
Clive groaned and caught her tongue, at the same time snapping his hands to her buttocks. He pressured her there as he sucked and nibbled on the honey-dew giving of Tess' tongue, and as he received it, took it unto himself, Clive wondered if some of this great thrill was because of their relationship, if the thrill of breast to chest, knees clamped around waist, and mouth glued to mouth as tongues clashed, was intensified because of the sameness of their blood, if possible, just as their mouths made a tunnel for passage, the closeness of their bodies transfused the extra excitement of giving and taking because they had come from the same womb.
Clive murmured into Tess's mouth. The sounds were desperate and longing and indistinguishable, yet he knew she understood, that through the years a rapport had developed between them that made every movement, every sound, every sigh and cry and whisper a signal for sensuality.
Tess pulled her mouth away and stretched high. Then she cupped one breast and brought it to Clive's mouth. She waited an instant, then jammed it forward, giving as much as possible of its length and fullness to the moisture of her brother's gasping reception of it.
Clive nuzzled and blubbered, and as he did so he kneaded at the flesh of Tess' buttocks until they began to grind and rotate in a circle of excitement. Then he brought one hand away from her buttocks. He brought it between them. He raised it, pressured it higher, made the very slightest indentation, then retracted it and moved higher still, then still higher. Then he circled, increasing that thrill, round, and round, and round, he circled, moving her like a ball-bearing, causing her to twist and shake her head madly, to gyrate her body, to groan and moan and mutter her pleadings.
"You're so good, Clive," she whispered. "So, so, so good. You excite me-and-and take care of me, and it's so good-so, so, so good."
"You're good, baby girl," he said, answering her call, whispering the words after he released her breast and buried his face between them. "It's like always, isn't it, baby girl. Like always for us. It'll never change, tell me it won't"
"Never, never, never, never," she cried, exerting her hips faster and faster.
He moved his hand away from its caressing. When he stopped, Tess gasped, raised her hips, scurried her body about a bit, shot her hand between them, grasped him, raised him as she raised herself, then crunched downword, taking him to her, and by the taking conveying the greatest of introductory thrills.
Now, Clive's hands raised to her buttocks again to guide her, manipulate her in a tight circle as she plunged down and raised, lowered and raised, up and down, up and down, harder and faster, then still faster and faster and faster. And Clive met her downward thrust with a high arch from his own body. He met it again and again-then there could be no more lurching-no other movement that could be made that could further intensify the feelings that soared through him.
"TESS!" he groaned.
"YES! YES, yes, yes," she answered.
Their bodies crashed together a final time, ground together to squeeze that last frantic effort, that great, great benefit of thrill bequested from man to woman, from Clive to Tess, from brother to sister. They strained and squeezed and cried the blubberings of children. Then they rested, Tess atop her brother, curled to his chest in that little-girl position she had learned to attain so long ago.
CHAPTER FOUR
When the day's work details ended, Trusty Bob Hatter went immediately to the small cottage he shared with two other inmates, Pete Slats and Hank Bower.
The cottage was empty when he entered it. He looked around, then stripped his uniform from his body and stepped inside the shower. He soaped himself vigorously. He rinsed thoroughly. Then he left the shower and dressed in a clean inmate uniform. Then he went to the window and watched anxiously for the arrival of his cabin mates, especially anxious this late afternoon because of the things they had planned. Soon, his watch at the window was rewarded. Pete Slats and Hank Bower hurried up the path and entered the cabin.
"You ready, Bob?" Pete said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
"Just waiting for you," Bob answered.
"Well, come on, man-let's get with it," Bower said. "We don't want to keep the girls waiting, you know."
Slats chuckled and said, "Man-does that ever sound funny. 'Girls'. What a delicious word."
Bob Hatter began pacing the floor restlessly. Then he stopped and said, "You guys going to change or can we leave?"
"Oh, we've got to get pretty," Bower told him.
"Well, let's get cuttin'," Bob said.
"Listen to him," exclaimed Pete Slats. "Sounds anxious, doesn't he?"
"Just shut up and get moving," Hatter said, turning away and returning to the window.
The others laughed and hurried to undress, shower, and change.
Bob Hatter heard the confusion behind him. He heard it and felt the restlessness within him stir hotter and higher. He was tense and anxious for the sexual encounter that had been arranged by Pete and Hank. He wondered what it was going to be like to again hold a woman. Then he corrected his thought, remembering that he had held a woman since his release from within the walls, that he had held and kissed the warden's sister. He remembered how he had teased her, given to her what she gave to convicts-only a part, the stimulation of sex, not its fulfillment. Now, at the very moment, he wished that he had done otherwise, wished that he had forced her to relent and give of her ,lovely body. But he had not. For a moment, he cursed that resentment and hostility within him that made him deny himself. But then he thought of the consequences always presented by a con-teaser, one such as Tess Stewart, and he knew that he had been right.
"Do you think the wave in my hair is deep enough?" Hank Bower asked from where he stood by a small mirror brushing his hair.
"Deep is a very good word for what we've got waiting for us," Pete Slats said, turning his face to a curious, quizzical expression, one depicting concern for his friend's phraseology.
"You're sure this is going to be all right?" Bob Hatter asked both of them. "You're sure there's no tease in these bitches-no stool pigeon in them either?"
"Listen to him," said Slats. "Guess old Mad Hatter doesn't trust our discretion, Hank."
"It's not that," Bob protested. "I'm just not setting myself up to get tossed into the hole for nothing."
"Old buddy, of mine," Bower said. "Rest easy. You can be as sure of these babes as you can of the faithfulness of the Captain and Lieutenant of the guards, ain't that right, Pete?"
"That is a very good way of expressing it, Hank," Pete said, pretending seriousness again, but unable to restrain a deep chuckle.
"By the way, either you guys know when they're going to let old Link Zora out of those walls?" Hank asked.
"Not me," said Bob Hatter.
"It's got to be soon, the way I hear it," Pete Slats told them both. "Seems old Link is part of a new program of some kind. So, out he comes to join us in trustyland."
"What a ball that's going to be," Bower said, grinning.
"Yeah. We're going to have a real party for him. Man-that's going to be something. The grapevine says the prison chicks are working on it already. Man-."
Finally, the three inmates, showered, and dressed in neatly pressed uniforms left the cabin. They walked casually about the compound for a few minutes, giving no hint of their destination to the occasional prison guards who passed them. But, as soon as it appeared safe, they strolled to the path at the beginning of the woods, conveying from all outward appearances to any who might be watching, that they were intent on wildlife, the trees, and all the great mysteries of nature.
Once out of view and in the woods, they hurried toward nature's most distinct and urgent call-the women who awaited them.
When they passed the clearing mid-way through the woods, Bob Hatter remembered it as the place of his encounter with the warden's young sister. He remembered it without bitterness now, for others awaited him, those who would not tease or deny his right as a man-convict or not.
The inmates slowed their pace as they approached the small lake at the end of the woods.
"Ready, men?" Hank Bower asked.
"Ready, General," Pete Slats said. "Shall we attack from the flank or circle and use commando tactics?"
"I think an all out, frontal pursuit of the quarry is in order under these circumstances," Bower mused, rubbing his chin, pretending consideration of a deep, important question.
"Come on you jerks," Hatter said impatiently. "Cut the comedy."
"Listen to him," Bower said.
"Yeah," Slats agreed. "And after we arrange this little party for his benefit."
"That'll be the day," Hatter said. "Come on, let's get cuttin'."
"Right," Bower said. "And man-you're using the right word."
They moved out of the woods and paused at the edge of a small beach. They looked toward the lake, then to the side. It was there that the girls awaited them.
Bob Hatter felt a shock and a quick twist in his stomach when he saw Cora Quinn and Lisa Matthews sitting on the beach, a blanket spread beneath them, the obvious makings of a picnic in a basket container. It seemed too much like normal, he thought. Too much like life was on the outside. And the women were much too beautiful to be awaiting the arrival of prison inmates. It seemed odd and fearsome, but he could not deny himself the excitement that coursed through his body, the thrill of meeting in an ordinary way with girls to share a late afternoon.
Bower whistled softly, then waved to the girls.
"Man-I wonder if their old men know why they put in calls for us to help with the house work so often," Slats said, low and a little unbelievingly.
The men approached the girls, then paused at the edge of the beach blanket. Cora and Lisa laughed gaily, and trilled happy greetings to the three inmates. Both of the girls wore bikinis. Both of them were dripping wet, having just come from the lake.
Bob Hatter stared at them. It was very difficult for him to associate them with prison life, to realize that they were the wives of the top ranking prison officers. And it was difficult for Bob not to gleam at their near nudity, to gape open-mouthed at their large breasts which bulged from their bras, at the way the dampness had plastered the material to them so that their nipples in their full extension pressured in full, dramatic outline. And he could not refrain from staring at their long, bare legs, at the tiny V of the material at their thighs.
"Hey, look at him," laughed Pete Slats.
"Yes, I am looking at him," Lisa Matthews said seductively. "Come on, Bob, join the party." She boosted her hips a bit to the side, making a place for him next to her on the blanket.
Bob sighed and sat down next to her. Pete Slats and Hank Bower took places on either side of Cora Quinn.
For a few moments, Bob glanced from first one girl to the other, then back again, comparing them, guessing at the difference in them. Physically, there was little difference. Lisa was very blonde and blue-green eyed. Cora had auburn hair and her eyes were brown. But both of the girls had exceptional bodies, the kind that seemed to have been created for the loving of a man.
"How does it feel, Bob?" Lisa asked. She looked at him, smiled, then sneaked her hand beneath his forearm.
His body tensed as he answered, saying, "If you mean being in the trusty camp rather than inside that damn joint, well then, it feels great."
She crushed her breast against his arm, as if giving him another feeling to consider. Then she said, "I'm glad you could come, Bob. I've heard a lot about you."
He grinned, but did not answer.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing. It's just that you said that so naturally, as if I weren't a con, enemy of society and all that jazz."
"You're not my enemy," she said softly. She cuddled a little tighter against him. Bob brought his arm up and around her waist. She sighed and pressured against his chest.
"Hey, there you go," Cora Quinn shouted. "What the devil, Bob, for a minute I thought maybe you had a thing for the prison punks and didn't like us girls."
"Hardly," he answered soberly.
Bob smiled at her. Cora seemed completely free, and very anxious that they should all become engaged as quickly as possible in sexual adventures. Hank Bower and Pete Slats seemed perfectly willing to hasten any excitement she wanted. Hank had an arm around her back. It ended where his hand tucked inside the skimpy bikini bra. And Pete was boldly caressing her inner thighs. Each of the men touched and caressed independently of the other, as if it were he alone who brought the rapture of love-play to the beautiful prison captain's wife.
Cora pushed a thermos bottle toward Bob and Lisa and said, "Here, take a swig of this. It's from the best stock in the prison. Much better than that junk you bastards make up at the hospital. This is real."
"So's this," Hank Bower said. He grasped Cora to him, captured her mouth in a hard kiss, and bent her prone to the ground. She squirmed a bit as he shook his head from side to side, torturing, Bob knew, his tongue to her in a blaze of giving. But Pete Slats was not to be outdone by his friend. He bent over the long stretched girl and buried his face to her belly where he kissed her fervently.
Bob turned away and picked up the thermos bottle. He handed it to Lisa. She smiled, then raised it to her lips and took a dainty swallow of the liquor. Then she handed it to Bob. He took a long, healthy bolt of the unaccustomed drink, then put the thermos back on the blanket. He felt its heat thump in his stomach, relieving him of much of his tension. But he knew that that heat was nothing to what he experienced from the closeness of Lisa Matthews' body. He snuggled her a little closer.
Lisa kept looking at the trio of love makers, at the way they moved, Hank at Cora's mouth, Pete at her waist and thighs. Then she would glance away, only a moment later to turn and once again view the proceedings.
She looked up at Bob, smiled, then said, a note of desperation in her tone, "Cora and I don't have much time."
"And I've had too much cuttin' time-to much of it without-."
He clasped Lisa to him. Her arms shot up to his back and her mouth opened and raised to him as they rolled to the ground, stretched long and tight together.
Her tongue was like the rapid, double-time ticking of a clock. It pushed to and fro within his mouth as if it were famished for attention. Bob Hatter gave it attention. He took it hungrily, thrashed it, beat it, whipped it, then healed the wounds with long, drawing, sucking pulls between his lips.
And it seemed more than Lisa could stand. She moan-ed and groaned and twisted within the circle of his arms. She brought one hand away from his back to tear at his shirt front, open it, then dig her fingernails into his skin until blood oozed and dribbled and ran crooked trails down his body. Then her hand fought lower, demanded entrance at the bulge of his trousers, achieved it, reached and grasped and pulled him from the covering, took him out of the concealment and the misery of inattention he had already known for so many years. She held him lovingly as they kissed. She held firmly, held him with the ever increasing pressure of her fingers circling him.
And then it was more than Bob Hatter could stand. He rolled her to her back, whipped her bra from her body, and had just lowered his hand to the tie at one side of her bikini bottom when she restrained him.
"No, wait a second," she breathed heavily, raising her head and looking beyond them.
He felt the beginning crush of despair within his chest, a jam that told him he had been wrong, that they had all been wrong, that she, like Tess Stewart, like all prison women, was a tease-a cuttin' rotten tease.
But it was not this for which Lisa Matthews had delaid the progress of their love-making.
"Look," she said.
Bob raised his head and looked across the blanket.
Hank, Pete, and Cora, were already deeply involved in a mammoth act of love. They were all nude. Cora was on her hands and knees, bent deeply before Pete who was on his knees and facing her, his manhood stretched long and wanting, posed ready for her taking. And behind Cora, grasping her buttocks, Hank Bower also kneeled. He, too, was strongly masculine and point-ed straight ahead, posed for the reversed domination of a woman's body.
Bob stared and felt transfixed to the scene. He noticed that Lisa, too, was staring, and that her eyes had taken on a glazed cast, as if the scene ignited her to even greater sexuality.
In a moment the odd tableau moved into action. Cora dived forward, consumed, then shook, then bobbed to that which Pete Slats had presented. And at the same time Hank Bower jammed himself to the twinmoon prize of his naked beloved. The three of them worked like the mad people of a nightmare's fantasies. They whipped and churned, jiggled, spread, moved back, crashed forward, and whirled their desires to each other, each single person becoming an aphrodisiac for the scene, and the total scene becoming a greater aphrodisiac for each of them.
With a shudder, a short cry, and a great trembling of her naked body, Lisa Matthews turned from the epic scene and buried her face into Bob Hatter's neck.
He untied the side of her bikini and removed it from her body. Then, quickly now, he removed his own clothing. And then he knew the long ago experience of bareness upon bareness, that long ago memory that was brought to him new by the prison officer's wife.
They tongued furiously at each others body. Their hands were demons that hurt and soothed, pinched, then patted as if asking for forgiveness. Their mouths clamped and unclamped, their tongues mixed and duelled, then parted to explore at flesh; at breasts and belly, by Bob, at chest and waist and thighs by Lisa.
Their fire soared. Finally, it lapped at the sky and could go no higher.
Bob threw her to her back. She stretched on the sand, opened to him, arms high and in a wide V, feet propped, knees braced and spread, her stomach muscles in a spasm of anxiety for his thrust.
She helped him attain his goal, helped with both hands and a high hoisting of her body.
"Ummmmmmmmmm," she groaned when at last it was achieved.
Bob moved close, then apart, then close again, then closer and closer and faster and faster, and for him it was like a child's memory blooming, rising high to the reality of passion and growth and excoriating pleasure
-for him it was like nothing he had ever before experienced.
"UGH!" Lisa choked, growing to her climax. "UGH
-UGH-UGHHHHH. AHHHHH-ahhhhhhhh," she cried.
And it was the same for him. He felt the serpent liquid movement of himself, felt its issue, its drenching claim of her body and it seemed that it would never stop, not until it had quenched him, left him dry and crisp and without want. And though the flow of him did at last end, it did not diminish his movement He remained as strong and firm as at the beginning and he continued to pour his pent-up desire to the blubbering, head-shaking, twisting, churning girl.
"AHHHH, JEEEEZZZZZZZ," Lisa cried. "AGAIN! MORE! HURRY! Catch me, darliing."
He did. A new flood manufactured, posed at its dam, then gushed forth as Lisa spun into a new ecstasy of receiving. And again she hit the high treble clef of tinkling delirium-that high, high peak that split her, shook her, distended her and rocked her with feelings and sensations that seemed from another world; a world of zombies with fantastic power.
From a high, bowed arch, Lisa's body relaxed. But it was to last only a moment. Bob Hatter did not relinquish his hold upon her body, did not give up the prize he had waited so long to gain. He thrusted to her again and again, still not satisfied, still unfinished in his search for ultimate fulfillment. And he continued the pumping of his body, of his unbelievable strength and longevity, continued to manufacturer still more genes of excitement until once again they bunched, jammed and finally released to the girl who now screamed and finally slumped exhausted.
At last it was the final end for Bob Hatter. He rolled to his side and brought his forearm across his eyes, shutting out the world that had been returned to him, for he knew that it was only temporary, knew that too many things boiled inside him to preserve the new, partial freedom he had so recently gained.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tess, looking around the large living room of her brother's house, decided that prison parties were not very much different from ordinary parties. Then she asked herself how she knew this, for, she had never known any other kind. Since her earliest childhood, she had been part of a prison household alone.
She sighed and walked to one corner of the room where a bar stood, complete with decanters of various liquors, their mixes, ice buckets, and the many goodies which had been arranged for the guests. She looked at the prison trusty who stood sedately behind the bar. He was dressed in a white jacket and looked like any well-groomed servant, not a convict. Then she glanced at the other trustees who also served at the party and decided that they were beyond compare, that they were on their best behavior, had stayed away from the liquor, and acted every inch the gentlemen they weren't. She smiled, then hurried across the room to where Cora Quinn and Lisa Matthews stood talking.
"He comes out next week, baby, and we're going to have a ball," Tess heard Cora saying.
Tess slowed her pace, sensing that the conversation was of personal nature, one that she was not meant to have overheard. But, when she arrived next to the beautifully dressed women, they both turned to her and issued raves about the party, about her dress, about how divine she was looking lately.
"Well, just so long as everyone has a good time," Tess said. "That's all I'm concerned with."
"We could have a better time if you'd turn loose some of those cute little cons among your lady guests," Cora said, smirking.
"Silly," Tess said.
"That's right, you're silly," Lisa said to Cora winking broadly. "Good old, Cora, always joking."
"So what do you think of York Harvey?" Tess asked.
"He's heavenly," Lisa replied.
"A dreamboat-but mean as hell, I bet," Cora offered.
"What makes you say that?" Tess asked.
"I don't know. But I can tell. Just by looking at him."
"Well, you'd better stop looking at him, baby," Lisa said, "cause your hubby's looking at you."
Tess turned and saw Captain Quinn looking at the three of them. Then, when he was aware that they saw him, he winked broadly. Tess smiled and made another secret evaluation of the big Captain Quinn. He was odd, she decided. Very odd. There was something about him that seemed remote, as if a part of him was never present or always preoccupide with other things. And she wondered if his preoccupation might concern sex. Then she banished the thought, telling herself that she was silly, that she very likely thought this only because sex-the peculiarity of her own desires-was her own most fervent preoccupation.
But her eyes remained on Quinn for another few moments. She saw him raise his hand in a signal to a thin, slim-hipped inmate who was carrying a tray of drinks. When the inmate-servant caught the signal, he smiled shyly, then hurried across the room to the captain. Tess saw Quinn take a drink. Then she saw him stoop down and whisper into the inmate's ear. A noticeable flush came to the young boy's cheeks.
"Hey, get a load of that, will you," Cora Quinn said. "Look at my old man actually talking to that queerboy."
"Queer-boy?" Tess said, turning.
"Sure. That kid's a prison-punk, you know, a male lover for the other cons. The old timers use him like a woman."
"Cora," Lisa reprimanded.
"It's the truth," Cora said. "And don't pretend you haven't heard about it, not after all the years you've been around prisons."
"But I thought homosexuality was pretty well cleaned up in the prisons," Tess said seriously.
"Honey, you're a baby," Cora said. "Officials like to say its cleaned up, but it's not. It never will be. But I didn't mean that kind of homosexuality."
"Oh," said Tess.
"I meant the other kind. You know, where one man actually uses another one like a woman. You know?"
"Oh, yes, I see" Tess said quickly. "Now I understand you."
"How awful," Lisa exclaimed. "Such a waste."
The three women turned their eyes again to the slim-hipped boy who now bobbed his head, rolled his eyes a bit, and moved away from Captain Quinn.
"Hell, maybe my old man was propositioning the kid, eh?" Cora said.
"Cora!" Tess adominished.
"Anything's possible in a prison set-up, honey," Cora reminded her, "Yes, I suppose it is," she said. Tess said a few more words to each of the women, then departed.
Anything's possible in a prison, she thought as she moved across the room to go through the door that led to a study where she could be alone. Cora's words plagued her a bit. They reminded her of the strangeness of her brother and herself, reminded her, too, of her own very odd tastes-the sexual teasing of convicts. Then she shook her head, anxious to be rid of that thought, too.
Satisfied that all the guests were enjoying themselves, Tess sought aloneness. She didn't know why, only that she ached to be alone and quiet, away from the people and the noise and the conversations. She walked to a big chair in the corner of the study and sat down. It was dark. She liked it that way. She settled back into the chair and relaxed all of her body, making it go limp and fall into the contours of the chair. She closed her eyes.
For awhile, Tess' mind became as much a blank as possible, but then, gradually, very slowly, images began to form. At first they were the vague characters of a cartoon nature, without being or recognition, mere forms that flitted through her mind, those predecessor characters who paved the way for dreams. But dreams this night were not for Tess Stewart. Thoughts and memories prevented the sleep that made dreams possible. Instead, as often was her custom, she remembered her childhood, herself alone with no one but her brother Clive. And again, as she often did, she remembered the encounters of their bodies, remembered especially the earliest such encounter that she could remember.
* * *
Tess was twelve at the time. Clive was twenty-five years her senior. They were preparing to leave a southeastern prison where Clive had served first as a guard, then a lieutenant, and finally as a captain. When the offer of a deputy warden's job at another prison came he was overjoyed.
"We're moving up in the world, little sis," he exclaimed, after he had opened the letter and told her the great news.
"You mean we're moving?" she asked.
"Yep. To the midwest. You'll like it there. We'll be happy, little sis."
She wondered why he had said it like that. She was already happy.
For a few days there was a great deal of excitement. Boxes were filled, and there was furniture and suitcases and all sorts of luggage to be packed. She helped with most of it.
Finally, late one evening when they had finished all that had to be done, Clive groaned and collapsed into the couch, tired, but happy and satisfied that the unpleasant chores of moving were completed. Tess crawled upon his lap and cuddled close to him. It was a childish action, one she often indulged in, for the actual feeling of her brother's physical presence always reassured her and made her very happy.
Clive held her close a minute, then pushed her a bit away from him and said, "Well, it's nearly done, young lady. We'll be off on a new adventure tomorrow-you and me seeing some of the world again."
"What's an adventure?" Tess asked.
"Something exciting-something new and maybe a little mysterious."
"Oh."
Clive laughed, then said, "You sound disappointed."
Tess laughed too and said, "You're funny."
Clive did not answer. His hands which held her at the shoulders slipped downward and brushed at her tiny, budding breasts, then held her again at the hips. His expression looked different than any Tess had ever seen crease his face. He seemed very serious and very intent, and Tess sensed that his intentiveness concerned her. As if responding to it, she snuggled to his body. It was then that she noticed for the first time the lump of hardness that centered at his lap. It intrigued her. She was fascinated by the single point of firmness amid the softness of his body. As if experimenting, she boosted atop it. She felt its thrust at her buttocks, causing her to know the sensation of power, for she realized that it was the closeness of her body which caused this remarkable reaction in her brother. She thrilled at her ability to cause this even more than she did at the actual sensation it brought to her.
When Clive's fingers tightened on her buttocks, Tess asked, "Do you always get like that when I'm close to you?"
"Like how?" he asked, his voice strained. "You know, silly," she said. "All kind of-oh, you know what I mean, Clive."
"Yes, I know," he said. "And yes, I get that way when you're close to me, Tess."
Tess giggled, then said, "It seems so funny, you getting like that. Tommy Cable does, but I never thought you would, Clive."
"Tommy Cable?" Clive exclaimed. "The warden's son? What do you mean about him?"
"He gets like you do."
Clive's grip upon her tightened as if he were restraining some great emotion. And his voice trembled when he said, "How-how do you know about Tommy getting like that? He's only fourteen-and you're-what about Tommy?"
Tess boosted back so she could look into her brother's face. "When Tommy and I play, he gets like that. Especially when we wrestle. We do that a lot. He likes to wrestle almost better than anything."
"Tess-," Clive said, then stopped.
"What?" she asked, sensing some important and dramatic pronouncement.
"Well, you should-." He paused and looked away, shaking his head.
"I should what, Clive?" Tess asked, cocking her head and looking into his eyes.
"Nothing, little darling," he answered softly. "What I was going to say isn't important. Not important at all, I guess."
She giggled again and told him once more that he was funny. Then she thought of the games she played with Tommy Cable and how he got so excited and large. Then she thought what fun it would be to play the same game with Clive. Her heart thumped faster as she considered it.
Clive, too, seemed to be thinking about the games his sister played with the warden's son. Playfully, he brought a hand up from her hip and snipped his fingers at her ear.
"Hey, that hurts," she complained.
"Sure it does. And so does this," Clive said. He ticked at her other ear, then at her nose.
Tess laughed and caught his hand in hers. She brought it to her mouth and bit his finger playfully, just hard enough to return the light injury he had given her. When she released his finger from between her teeth, she turned rough and dived her fingers to his ribs where she tickled him furiously.
Clive laughed and twisted, trying to avoid her attack. But it was impossible. Tess dug all ten fingers into him while she laughed at his plight. And while she laughed she noticed the greater emergence of the lump at his trousers, the thrust that told her of his growing excitement.
Suddenly, Tess gave up the tickling and said, "I'll tickle you where I can make you laugh even harder."
"I couldn't laugh any harder," Clive said, still laughing.
Tess brought her hands to his lap. She hesitated a moment, then opened the fingers of her tight hand, paused again, then grasped the strange hardness fully. She pressured her fingers in tickling fashion, released them, then pressured again and again, and still once again before pausing. She looked into her brother's face.
Clive was not laughing. The lines of his face were hard and fierce looking. His eyes were a bit glazed and his lips were slightly parted as if he had just experienced a shock.
Tess was frightened by his expression. She felt disposed to change it as quickly as possible. She pressured her tickling fingers around him again, gripped him even tighter, then released him. Then she grabbed him again and rocked the bunched material back and forth, back and forth then around and around and around.
Clive uttered a short, hot gasp. Then he clutched Tess closer to him. Then, fighting for control of his voice, he said, "We'll play a better game than you do with Tommy."
"Oh, goodie," she said gleefully. She released her hold upon his manhood.
"No, you don't have to let go," he said. His tone had changed, had become softer and soothing.
"What's the game called, Clive?" Tess asked, straightening on his lap. "What's it called, and how do we play it."
"Well, it really doesn't have a name," he explained. "But it's ages old, and I suppose we could call it 'Kill the Snake'."
"Oh, that sounds like fun."
"It is," he assured her. "A great deal of fun. Now if you'll just let go for a second-."
Tess released him again. Clive arched, then made an adjustment-an open one-at his front. In a second the full bareness of him was exposed for his sister's amazement.
"Clive-," she said, a little uncertainly. "Clive, should I be-should we play this game?"
"Of course," he answered. "And while you're killing the snake, I'll climb the little mountains."
Nimbly, he unbuttoned her schoolgirl blouse and pulled it from her shoulders. Then he pulled the slip off her shoulders and down to her waist. He breathed deeply, then raised his hands to her small breasts. He cupped them, then dug both forefingers into the small lumps of flesh, searching, it seemed for the hidden, young girl nipples. He found them. They erected. Clive rolled them between his fingers as his breathing grew faster.
And Tess felt the greatest sensation, a kind of hot, liquidity that swept over her body and centered at her thighs. And it seemed so odd for only her breasts were receiving the attention of Clive's fingers. But that attention, so exquisitely given and so wondrous received prompted her to a new taking of his naked masculinity.
Tess followed the leading action of her brother. As he rolled her nipples between forefingers and thumbs, she rolled him, moved him from side to side, released her five fingered hold to delicately hold him as he held her. When Clive kneaded her small breasts, she, too, knead-ed. When he pulled in a lengthening motion upon her nipples, Tess also pulled and manipulated and lengthened. And finally, when Clive gave up his manual hold upon her and bent forward to kiss her breasts and capture them fully in his wet mouth, Tess also moved to give of her orality. Twisting cumbersomely, she bent and buried herself to the steaming, reaching, throbbing strength of her brother. He aided her delivery. He shifted in such a way as to be able to continue the mouthing of her young breasts as she duplicated his action.
Soon, as she felt excitement gather in tiny knots within her body, Tess felt Clive stiffen and arch a bit. She knew it was a signal; sensed with her young intelligence and intuition that it was this and that it meant a desire for greater speed and giving that would lead to some dramatic climax. But she did not speed onward. She did not give more of her young lips and bobbing head. Instead, it seemed a greater part of this new game she played with her brother to stop, give pause and delay the end she knew would come.
She raised her head and said, "Is this all there is to the game, Clive? Just this? I thought you said it was killing a snake."
He brought his mouth away from her breasts, then said, "Don't you like it, little sis? Doesn't it make you feel good?"
"Well-," she considered. "A little bit, I guess. I feel kind of-of warm and maybe a little dizzy. But, Clive, I can't see the snake."
He pulled farther back. "Now you can."
"Oh, yes, And it's not dead yet. I can tell. I know how it's supposed to look when it's dead."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Make it dead, darling," he breathed rapturously. "Kill it for me-for you-for both of us."
Tess sensed the urgency of his words. She did not again bend to face the subject of her attention. Instead, she stared directly into her brother's face and regrasped him, using every ounce of strength that was contained in her fingers. She waited and watched as Clive's mouth gasped open and his eyes rolled upward until only the whites showed. Then she jerked him hard.
As Tess moved the manhood of her brother in various designs of love's giving, she became intent upon his face, the way it strained and relaxed, the way the mouth closed and opened, moistened, dribbled then closed again, and the way his brow furrowed with lines that seemed for all the world as tight as the hold she held upon him. And she was intrigued with the strained sounds that stammered from his throat. She knew that she was causing those sounds and this fact became far more enchanting then the game she played, the sex she plied under the guise of a game.
Near the end, Clive grabbed his little sister. His left hand caught one small breast and his right struck out to her thighs, pressed between them, and jammed home.
Tess nearly screamed because of this sudden contact. But she did not, for she remembered the game they were playing and she was sure a scream was not in order, that it was out of character for gleeful play. But the sensation that poured over her body and tingled her to an unknown point, gave impetus to her hand, made it move faster, twist more frantically, pull urgently, then pause before jerking hard and long and steadily once again.
"Ugh. Ahhhhh, yes," hissed Clive. Tess played harder upon the rigidity of his body. "OOOHHHHohhhhhhh," Clive finally moaned, then gasped, then moaned again.
Tess whipped to a finish that was like sudden light. Like light, it blinded her to everything except the flood of love that poured from her brother, and, although Clive's hands which were pressed tight to her body, at breast and at thigh, did not thrust or seek any greater hold, thrill swept her young body and for a few moments she was sure she had become a part of the flood, that she was about to be carried by it to some unknown kingdom. But she was not. She was only a small girl, exhausted and leaning hard against her brother while she held the moistness and limpness she had created.
* * *
Tess stirred from the chair. She straightened, then relaxed her body and for a moment picked up her memories where she had left them. She passed quickly from that eventful day when she had fought her brother's passion to its finish. She briefly thought of all that had followed; the years of love-play before finally they united as men and women were meant to unite. And she remembered her interest in convicts, those who were a part of her brother's life and career. She remembered her encounters with them, the way she had teased but not given, the way she caused panic in those men who had been so long without female. And she recalled, as she often did lately, that Clive had been her only real lover, the only one to whom she actually gave her womanhood. With the others she gave a part of herself; her hands, her breasts, her mouth-much, but not that which she reserved for her brother alone.
Tess raised from the chair. It was dark. She felt very warm. She felt both an obligation to return to her guests, and a desire to remain apart from them for a little while. She looked toward the study door that led to a patio and decided that fresh air was what she wanted. She walked toward the door, weaving her way around furniture, familiar with every inch of the room and unneedful of lights.
She opened the door quietly, and wondered why she did so. There was no need for quiet, yet she felt compelled toward it. She stepped on to the patio and closed the door behind her. She turned and looked across the wide backyard. The moon cast a light haze over the grass and the hedges at the side, but darkened at the back of the yard where a high group of bushes bunched together.
Tess breathed deeply, then stepped down from the patio and onto the grass. It felt spongy and moist beneath her feet. A light breeze tickled the hair at her ears. It felt refreshing and cool.
Midway across the yard, Tess paused, certain that she heard voices. She looked around. There was nothing, only the night, the chirp of crickets, and the brightly lighted house behind her. She continued toward the back of the yard. When she reached the high bushes, she paused again. She listened intently, not quite sure what sound it was she expected. There was only silence. But just as she started to turn and walk back toward the house, she heard the unmistakable sound of men's voices. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked straight ahead at the bushes.
For a moment there were only the night sounds, but then she heard a voice again, and at the same time saw a movement within the bushes. She moved forward.
At the outer rim of the bushes, Tess paused. She stood very still, being careful to restrict her breathing which pushed hard in her chest, pushed, she knew, because of the excitement and mystery of the voices and movement only a few feet in front of her. Soon, she moved again, went close to the bushes and peered through several open branches. When her eyes adjusted to the half-light, she nearly recoiled from shock.
Two, single, dark forms merged to make a single outline. One form was large. The other small. Both were obviously men. The single outline they made as they merged together was that of an embrace; a passionate one, an embrace that found men's arms wrapped around men's shoulders, men's thighs glued together and men's mouthes pressed tight in a kiss.
Tess brought her fist to her mouth quickly, jammed it there to subdue the gasp that fought for outlet. But then, in a moment, her shock lessened and she brought her hand down to her side. She looked closer as the embrace ended. When the men pulled their bodies apart, she saw that the big form was that of Captain Harry Quinn. The smaller form belonged to the inmatewaiter who had so recently served the captain of the prison guards a drink: it was the queer-boy of Cora Quinn's description. Both of the men had apparently left the party in order to be alone.
In a few seconds, Tess knew that they wished to be alone for more than an embrace.
The slim-hipped boy laughed lightly and pulled back from the big captain's arms. The boy giggled. Then he giggled again as Harry Quinn reached out and yanked gently at the boy's belt. The inmate turned to his side a bit in a teasing manner, at the same time glancing over his shoulder at Captain Quinn. The moon ray caught the boys eyelashes as they fluttered. The motion was one that seemed to inflame Quinn. He reached from the boy's waist to his neck and jerked him forward. Then, with a mighty jerk, and using his other hand, he jerked again and brought the belt clear of the boy's waist.
"Ohh," the boy exclaimed, pretending dismay. "Just get, kid," Quinn said. "And you know what I mean."
"You don't have to be rough and nasty, you know," the boy said.
"I know. But I am."
The boy smiled, then finished loosening his trousers. He dropped them and stepped out of them. Then he did the same to his shorts.
Tess expected some manly sign from the boy, some show of strength that would give designation for the preliminary lustful scene she had witnessed. And she expected homosexuality to commence between the two, but until she remembered Cora Quinn's remarks about the "prison-punk", she did not truly anticipate an act of woman-like love.
Quinn and the boy embraced once again. Tess was surprised that the captain did not reach and fondle at the bareness of the boy. But the boy supplied that which she expected. He reached out and crunched his hand to the hard thrusting point of Harry Quinn's trousers. Then he ground his body close to the big man and raised his face for a new kiss. He received it. But briefly. Then Quinn spun him around and pushed him into a bent position.
"Must you be so rough?" the boy asked.
"Yes. When I'm in a hurry. And I am. So-."
"You're always so impetuous," the boy said, giggling again.
He raised for a moment, turned and moved close to Quinn, then fumbled at the front of the big man. In a second, he brought forth his manhood which, Tess decided, was in readiness much as if the Captain were anticipating a woman encounter.
The boy turned, then fell to his knees and braced himself. Quinn walked behind him. He gripped his hips, adjusted himself, then plunged to the slim-hipped boy.
Tess watched as the two labored together; Quinn holding to the boy and plunging hard, the boy circling, adding adventure to his lover's quest by a quick shifting movement of his hips. So fast and fluid was the action, that Tess forgot for a few moments that the affair was that of men, that it was one of gross abnormality. When she reminded herself that the love she watched was perverted and of a prison creation, she felt shock again, then felt shock for the shock, for, after all, she was a prison sophisticate and since earliest childhood had known of prison sex, its differences and desperation.
Finally, Quinn's strokes shortened and speeded. He gasped and lunged again and again. And the boy twisted violently, anxious and prepared to meet his lover's volley. And meet it, he did; with a cry, as Quinn exhaled a heavy stream of hot, violent breath.
Tess watched them separate. Then she turned and walked quietly to the house.
CHAPTER SIX
Cora Quinn and Lisa Matthews had organized the secret con's party well. They chose a night when both their husbands were on night duty within the prison walls. The location they selected was a desolate area in the middle of the woods just north of the trusty camp, Cora arranged for the liquor. Lisa took care of the food refreshments. Both of them were very excited at sponsoring a sinful party to welcome the notorious criminal, Link Zora, into the trusty camp. And they both realized that some of their excitement was caused by their own disloyalty to their husbands, the prison, and all of society. Their deception, by the ridiculous means of giving a party for convicts, seemed to bring them both a very maximum of thrill. And, the prospects of spending a night with Link Zora, along with the other thirsting inmates, tickled the emotions of Cora and Lisa to the highest peak they had ever known.
Cora waited at Lisa's house until it was dark. Then, together, they left the house and headed for the woods. Cora could not keep from smiling. She could not keep from thinking of this well-planned and celebrated party which would give her the revenge and secretly show her hate for her husband.
"I kind of wish we had asked Tess Stewart to the party," Lisa Matthews said as they approached the woods.
"Yeah, that would have been a real kick," Cora replied. "Hell, the warden's sister at a con's party.
Man-that'd be something. But we can't take chances. There's something strange about that little chick and she just might squeal."
"I suppose so," Lisa agreed.
They paused for a moment at the beginning of the path as soon as they entered the shelter of the woods. They looked around, then Cora nodded and they moved forward again.
"Are the boys already there?" Lisa asked.
"They should be. It's late."
"What's Link Zora like?" Lisa asked.
"Big, tough-mean as hell and strong as a bull."
"Strong as a bull?" Lisa questioned.
"Yep," Cora said. "A mean, hot bull. And locked up all this time. Man--."
Cora thought about Link Zora as they moved along the path. She remembered the stories she had heard of him, remembered how it had been said that he would never be released from the confinement of the walls. Then she recalled how all that had changed when the new sociologist, York Harvey, took up his duties at the prison. Then Link Zora became the subject of an experiment in trust. He was made a trusty. She giggled thinking about it, considering the dismay her husband, the sociologist, everyone would experience if they knew about the party the wives of two trusted prison officers' wives had planned-a party that undermined all the discipline that it took years to develop.
"I hear them," Lisa said, slowing her pace.
"They're already in the clearing. Let's go."
The girls wound their way around a few more trees and bushes and finally arrived at the edge of the clearing. They paused and looked at the men who sat in a circle, drinking, eating, laughing, talking together.
There were six inmates. All of them looked extremely happy.
Flipper Charles drank from a tin cup and stuffed sandwiches into his mouth. Bob Hatter sat quietly, obviously listening to the conversation around him without adding to it. Hank Bower and Stubby Pierce sat on opposite sides of the guest of honor, Zora, listening intently as the new trusty talked and gestured with his hands. Pete Slats sat across from them, also listening as he, too, drank from a tin cup.
"Man-look at them," Cora sighed; "And us the only gals. Hell, it's like a smorgasbord."
"Look at that Zora," Lisa said, her voice quivering. "He's fabulous."
Cora looked more closely at the inmate. He was, as her friend said, fabulous. About six and a half feet tall, and weighing at least two hundred pounds, he seemed to tower over the others. His features were handsome; dark hair, dark, darting eyes, a mammoth chest and small waist, good, solid legs, and a quickness of movement that reminded Cora of deer and their fleetness. And the scowl on his face seemed defiant and mean, as if he hated, and wanted to fight, everything and everyone in the world. That expression caused a quiver of excitement to touch at Cora's thighs, intensifying the urgent hot desire that had rumbled within her all through the day.
"Man-," she breathed again.
"Say it again," Lisa said. "He's for me."
"Maybe," Cora snapped. "We flip-remember."
"Oh, all right," Lisa answered disappointedly. "But then, I suppose there's enough of him to go around even if I lose."
"There is," Cora agreed.
Lisa pulled a coin out of the pocket of the tight shorts she wore. She flipped it in the air, then said, "You call."
"Heads."
Lisa caught the coin, then smacked it over on the back of her hand. Cora crowded close. Lisa lifted her hand from the coin.
"Heads," Cora said gleefully. "I won him."
"So, I'll take seconds. Who knows, it might even be better," Lisa said.
The girls moved forward, coming into full view of the inmates. All male eyes turned to greet them. Voices rose in greetings, too. And Cora, as she listened to them, as she called to the men herself, realized that each of the convicts viewed her hungrily, taking special note, she was sure, of the tight fit of her shorts, her long, lean and golden brown legs, her large busts that were jammed within a skimpy halter. And she knew that they looked at Lisa Matthews just as lustfully, for, Cora considered, her friend presented every bit as attractive a picture as herself. Dressed similarly, her body also thrusted from skimpy garments. It, too, looked willing and anxious for physical encounters.
The girls moved another few steps closer and Cora saw Link Zora rise as they approached. He stared at them. He did not blink. He covered every inch of their bodies with his eyes. And Cora noticed that his hands clasped and unclasped in a gesture of impatience. It tickled her breasts to further extension, made her nipples grow harder and hotter.
Zora's eyes shifted from sighting both of their bodies until they rested on Cora alone.
"Come here," he ordered in a deep, gruff voice.
She walked immediately to him as the others laughed.
"Look at her," shouted Stubby Pierce. "Obeying old Link just like we're suppose to obey her old man."
"Yeah, that's what I like about it," Zora said without taking his eyes off Cora. "I got a special thing for this chick's old man."
"Well, am I, or am I not, in the party?" Lisa asked, pretending a pout.
"You're in, baby," Hank Bower said. "And I'm going to be."
Lisa smiled and walked close to Bower. He put his arm around her and hugged her close.
Bob Hatter remained seated but looked up and grinned at the girls.
The other men made a few more remarks, made drinks, handed cups to the girls, then settled to a continuation of the refreshment part of the party.
Cora looked straight ahead for a moment. She felt a thrill at her closeness to Zora. She felt a thrill, too, for his size. Her head hardly reached his chest. He towered above her like a mountain over a small tree. And she could almost feel the heat of his body seep from his clothes and engulf her. It made her feel dizzy and hot.
"Drink," Zora ordered. He looked down at Cora and nodded to the cup she held in her hand. She lifted it and drank all its contents. The heat of the liquor that thumped at her stomach was nothing compared to the heat of her body as it mixed with that of Link Zora.
"Baby, I've got to be blunt," Zora said. "First, thanks for this party you and your pal planned. Second, you're a good looking babe and I hate your old man. Third, come on over in the bushes with me right now."
Cora looked up at him and smiled. "Are you always this blunt?"
"Always."
"Why do you hate my husband?"
"Because he's a punk-lover. He's in prison work because he loves the punks. And baby, I'll bet he neglects the hell out of you."
"He does," she said bluntly.
"Well I won't," Zora answered, grinning. Then his expression changed. He nodded toward Lisa who was very busy embracing and kissing Hank Bower. "Does your friend over there know what her old man's like?"
"Probably," Cora replied. "I've seen bruises on her body."
"She knows then," Zora laughed. Then he laughed harder as he added, "Jeeez-what a game. A party with the screws' wives. Man-."
"Yeah, isn't it a clincher," Cora said, also laughing, at the same time feeling the hot resentment of her neglect, feeling, too, a hate and disrespect for her husband that she had never known to be so strong.
"You ready or do you want more booze first?" Link Zora asked.
"I don't need booze," she answered. "And, yes, I'm ready-ready for number three on your list-the woods."
"Let's go." Zora finished his drink then threw the cup to the ground. He gripped Cora's forearm with his big, thick fingers, and led her away from the group.
Zora did not release his hold on Cora's arm until they were in another small area, less than fifty feet from the partying group.
Cora watched as Zora immediately stripped his uniform from his body. When he raised, presenting his complete nudity to her, she gasped. His strength was immense. His body rippled with muscles. His long, unused manhood seemed almost to whine in wanting. It made Cora gasp again. Then she hurried out of her halter and shorts and kicked her sandals from her feet. She turned and faced the brutal masculinity of Link Zora.
Zora reached out and gripped her at the back of the neck. He snapped her against him. Cora groaned when she felt the hot, sharp jab of him thrust against her. She raised her head and opened her mouth. Zora took it roughly, thirsting for her lips and tongue, then, when he received it, he thirsted and hungered all the more, nibbling, biting hard, drawing upon it, sucking, roughing it up like a killer.
Cora turned her mouth away from his. Then she reached between their bodies and gripped him hard. She wheezed a sigh of disbelief when she took him fully. It seemed quite impossible to her that a man could be so powerful, so hungry and desperate and so very, very anxious.
But Cora Quinn was not prepared for the next display of Link Zora's pent-up sexuality. He struck her hard across the cheek, jarring her to the earth with a sound like that of a medicine-ball thumping to a gymnasium floor.
He leered down at her a moment, then said, "This makes it better, baby. This makes it better because I'm getting back at all the bastards who've always been after me.
A bit stunned, Cora heard his words and knew that they were made up of hate. And strangely, she did not mind the slap on her cheek. If anything, she decided, it heightened her own passion, made her even more anxious for the final taking of her body by Zora. But she knew that it was a taking that would be somewhat delayed.
"You know what they do to us inside the walls, baby?" Zora asked.
She raised on one elbow, looked up at him, and as she did so she felt a new length come to her already bloating, extending nipples. And she felt the stammer of muscles at her stomach and thighs, at her buttocks, too-every place upon her body.
"Do ya know?" Zora hissed.
"No," Cora replied. She raised to her knees and lifted her eyes to his. "Why don't you show me?"
He gave a short laugh, then reached down and gripped Cora by the hair. He knotted it in his fingers, then with a mighty pull, jerked her to her feet.
Cora flew upward and against his body again. But it did not offer comfort. It did not provide respite from the vengeance and high sexuality of Link Zora.
Holding her by the hair, he shot her an arm's length away from him. Then he struck her at the side of the face again. Then he brought a backhand hard against the other cheek, snapping Cora's head from side to side as he repeated the action again and again.
And as her head snapped like that of a rag doll, Cora felt the steam of a new thrill come to her. It seemed impossible, she reasoned, but it was very definitely a thrill she was receiving, caused by the attack upon her. And then her thrill centered at another area of her body.
Link Zora quieted the smash of his big hand against Cora's checks. He stretched her head far back, bending her in an arch that bent her toward him, one that thrust her giant breasts outward. He brought his hand back, then paused. Then he slapped it hard against her left breast. It jiggled, then was quiet. But in a moment it received the fury of Zora's backhand and it bounced and jiggled and quivered again. Zora's action increased in speed. He made a double tattoo on her breasts as he struck them at the same time, going from one to the other in a long sweep of her body.
Cora did not fight for freedom. She arched deeper, presenting more of herself for the will of Zora. And his desires were mighty. Again and again he thrashed her breasts. He struck them until they first pinkened, then turned red, then blazed in a bloated, maroon-blue appearance. The nipples, battered and crushed, did not hide within their mould-homes of white flesh. Instead, in a manner that seemed as defiant as Link Zora was defiant, they extended still further in a sassy thrust that seemed to taunt and tantilize, sneer and laugh.
Soon, Zora had had enough of her breasts. He jerked her to him and recaptured her mouth. Again, he took her tongue with a vengeance that seemed capable of death. But Cora did not care. She gave it willingly, gave it as she did her breasts, her cheeks, as she would any part of herself, for her thrill was great and her excitement increased with each new touch from Zora. She stopped reasoning, even stopped thinking and became content to be maneuvered and used in any manner Zora desired.
He pulled his mouth away from hers. Then he placed both hands on her shoulders and dug his thick thumbs into the hollow of her collar bone, forcing her to her knees. When she tossed her head back and looked at him, he released the painful hold. Then he stepped closer.
Cora waited, prepared for anything, anxious for anything. When Zora stepped even closer and thrusted his mighty manhood at her, she expected, and was willing to give an act of orality. But it was not that for which Zora hungered. It was for a new and different beating of her body for which he positioned himself.
Zora bent down, brought his virility even with Cora's breasts. Then he swatted her hard, back and forth, guiding himself with his hand as he whipped himself fiercely against her, from one breast to the other, then back again, then across again, faster and faster, harder and harder, bringing all the length and strength of his manhood in long crushing blows against the bruised fullness of her breasts. Her nipples bent, then popped up again as the blow was crushed and taken away. He could not dent them. He could not subdue their firmness, their defiance and hard-pointedness.
Cora began to breath hard. Her chest felt restricted and pressing for outlet, but she knew that the outlet she sought was for a release more gigantic than any she had ever known. And she knew that it would soon be attained.
Link Zora thrashed furiously against her, swatted her maddeningly with the ever increasing strength of his manly symbol. But when he reached a point that found him moaning and groaning and steaming in anxiety, he stopped the action, and released his strong hold on Cora's hair.
She fell forward. Zora took a step backward, his massive chest exerting in dry, hard spasms of excitement. But his pause was only momentary. It was meant as the lull before the tornado-power of his fury.
He moved to Cora, bent, then gripped her by both arms and raised her to her feet. Then he relaxed his hold and looked at her. He smiled evilly.
"That's a real body, baby," he mumbled. "A real, real, pure, sweet body without a mark on it. How'd you like me to change that for you? You like to be hurt, well, baby, let me give you a little of what I've gotten from your crummy prison pimps."
Cora straightened and raised her head. She did not care what it was that Zora had in mind for her. She knew that she would welcome it, that whatever he dealt would only raise her to a higher pitch from which she could leap upward and even higher.
Zora went to the pile he had made of his clothing. From the trouser loops, he whipped out a hard, leather belt. He folded it in his hand, turned and looked at Cora. Then he walked toward her.
Cora watched Zora approach with the belt in his hand. Her eyes glued to the hard, black leather. And as she looked at it she knew that she must, and gladly would, receive it before she could receive Link Zora in a final act of excitement. She looked at the nakedness of Zora as he grew near. Again, she thrilled at the size of him and again she felt the anxious quiver of her thighs-a definite tremble of them that told her once more of her great yearning for the powerful, cruel inmate.
"Over here," Zora growled. He gripped Cora by the forearm and pushed her back to a thick tree.
Without speaking, she assumed a position of a girl at a stake and about to be burned. She stretched out her arms, then raised them so they were high above her head. She straddled her feet a bit apart. She breathed deeply, bloating her nipple-heavy breasts outward in a new offering for the vengeful convict.
Zora stopped in front of her. He glanced over all of her body. Then he said, "Where do you want it, baby? Tell me where."
"Any place-every place-all over," she whispered softly and passionately.
Zora grinned, then he unfolded the belt and let it dangle from his hand to the ground. He waited. Then he swung his arm far backward and brought it thrashing forward. It nipped at the nipple of Cora's right breast then crashed the left breast in a sharp slash. Then he nicked at the nipple of the slashed breast with
the end of the belt while it traveled across her chest and made its cut on her other breast. Then he swung it back and forth in a series of strikes that whipped harsh and hurtfully against Cora's round moulds, bruising and cutting them, slashing them, causing gouges to come to the skin as blood oozed, bubbled, then streaked her body.
Cora felt her body bleed before Zora's attack and she thrilled at it and loved him for it. For a moment, she wondered how she could endure such abuse. Then she corrected the thought for she realized that it was not abuse that she was receiving, that it was instead the greatest of attention. Her thighs quivered more rapidly and her stomach muscles began contracting. She felt at the very entrance of some great release. In a moment, the door to the tunnel of passion opened even wider.
Link Zora brought a pause to his whipping belt. He looked at the marks he had caused on Cora's body and smiled. Then he pulled the belt back and whipped it forward again. He struck her on the inner side of her right thigh.
Cora moaned and spread her legs a little farther.
Zora struck her again, then again and again, each thrash of the belt taking its bite of flesh from her thighs, each swipe of the brutal belt raising a bit, coming closer to the field of her young womanhood. And then at last, it struck her there. Slicked and burrowed into the soft, down covering of her femininity. And it hit her there again and again.
Cora groaned. Then she moaned an eerie call for more of the belt. Zora supplied it. With an underhand swipe, he brought the belt hard against her and piercing upward.
"Ahhhhhh," she cried. The sound was mournful and low, as if she had just received a man and moaned his welcome.
The belt stung her again, harder this time, but still in an upward arch that tore at her flowery field. Again she stammered a sensual call at the contact. New blood oozed and dribbled, coating the undersides of both thighs with long trails of red.
A dozen times the mad belt of Link Zora made its mark upon the womanhood of Cora. A dozen times she groaned and gasped a call of impending eruption. And a dozen times, with each lashing sting of the belt, Cora's body writhed in sexual agony, an agony that found her at the front of some great new discovery, one that would shatter and rupture her body with feeling.
Zora tossed the belt aside. He, like Cora, had been taken to a peak that demanded finish. He rushed to her, crushed his body against her, then, still standing, fighting her harder against the tree, he jammed his body hard against her, ground his knees to her thighs until they opened and lifted, then thrusted with all his massive strength until he found her anxious welcome and went to it in a blaze of giving that was so intense that it lifted the naked girl high from the ground.
Cora felt her back scrape on the tree bark. Then she felt the jam of Zora's manhood. She reached and clutched his neck as he pumped himself to her body. And she felt suspended, as indeed she was, suspended from the ground with nothing supporting her but the tree at her back and the standing, pumping strength of Zora as he pounded his titanic strength to the moist softness of her body. Zora seemed a mountain of energy to Cora. He seemed destined to remain forever undiminished. She felt all of him coming to her, leaving, coming close again, whirling within, touching all of her, then pulling back before pounding forward again and again in an unending giving of all of himself.
Cora dug her fingernails into his neck when she felt the balloon-bloating of her sensations. As it grew, as she began the mad mutterings of rapture, she dug deeper until blood appeared and trickled. She brought her face close to Zora's cheek. She held on as she approached the lift that would send her soaring. And when it came, she screamed, then clamped her even, white teeth into the meaty part of his shoulder. And through the savage hold she held, she blubbered the sounds that told of her end.
"AHHHHH. Ohhhhhh, Jeeeeeez, yes," she whispered. "Oh, Chrissss, yes, go, go, go, higher, man-higher and faster."
Zora needed no coaxing from his beautiful subject. He jammed tight, began his own yelping call as the damned up fury of his incarceration began its release. Even when it engulfed her like a mighty ocean wave, he continued his relentless jabbing, pumping, pounding, stammering, entering and withdrawing.
At last, there was no more that Zora could give. The years of his imprisonment and the strong desires that had gathered during those years, turned from roughness and hardness to the soft liquidity of sexual love.
Cora collapsed against his massive chest. He held her close to him, her legs wrapped around his waist, her head resting on his chest, their bodies still united but quiet and feeling the mixed after thrill of release, the closeness of their subdued passions.
When Cora finally stirred again, Zora laughed and lifted her fully in his arms.
"Enough?" he asked. i
"Never, never enough," she answered.
"That's what I thought," he said, laughing again. "Well, maybe we can join the party and find a cure."
"You're the only cure I need," she said, cuddling deeper into his chest.
Without regard for their nakedness, Zora turned and with Cora in his arms strode back to the clearing where they had left the others. When he reached the party place, he paused. Cora raised her head and looked around.
Zora began to laugh again. Cora followed the direction of his eyes and saw her friend, Lisa Matthews, naked, prone on the ground, sexually joined to Bob Hatter who knelt before her, and with her arms spread wide and her breasts thrusting upward. It was not this that had made Zora laugh. It was the inventiveness of Flipper Charles, Hank Bower and Pete Slats. Two of the men kneeled at one side of Lisa. The other was at her other side. And all three of them bent their mouths to her body, kissing up and down, mouthing at her breasts, nibbling at her nipples, and devouring at every place of her bare flesh that her position permitted. Since she was arching and grinding to the action of Bob Hatter, it was a cumbersome task for the men who lapped at her like kittens at a pool of milk. But Lisa Matthews appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself. Her eyes rolled. Her entire body was moist. Her nipples were taut and wet. Her hips bounced violently as they met the rhythm of Hatter's fierce pumping. And she emitted tiny sounds of pleasure.
Cora looked at her, then at the inmates who were not involved in the sexual scene. They were drinking, already quite drunk, and apparently satisfied to ignore the sexual capers of their friends and Lisa Matthews.
Cora smiled at Link Zora, then puffed a pout as she said, "Darn-that looks like fun."
"Thought you had your fun," Zora said.
"I thought I did too," she answered. "But Lisa looks so-so-engrossed that maybe you're not the big stuff I thought you were."
"I am," he said confidently. "But I'm always game for a little change."
"You are?" she said, surprised. "After all that-you mean-you could-."
"Just shut up," he said.
Zora walked across the clearing. Then he lowered Cora to the ground.
"Hey, Bower, get over here, man," Zora called to Hank Bower who raised his head from the naked body of Lisa.
"Huh, what do you want, Link?" Bower asked.
"A little help. Not much. Just enough to jazz this little chick with a new trick or two. Besides, you ain't getting nothing but a taste over there. Come on, manget."
"Sure, sure, Link," Bower said. "Anything you say boy."
Hank Bower detached himself from Lisa's churning body. He walked over to where Cora lay on the ground. He looked down at her. Then he looked questioningly at Link Zora.
"There's our dish," Zora said, nodding toward Cora. "How you gonna like that, eh?"
"Great," Bower said. "But I don't want to muscle in on your gal, Link."
"You're not," he said. Then to Cora he said, "Now, honey, if you'll just get yourself in a cramped up kind of position, if you know what I mean."
"I don't," she told him.
Zora grinned and bent down to Cora. Very gently, he moved her naked body until she was on her side, her buttocks jutting outward. He lowered himself to the ground, then curled around her body from the rear. He adjusted himself a bit, then paused.
Cora was not sure what was about to happen. But she knew that it would be exciting. She knew something else, too. Happily, she felt the thrust of Link Zora's manhood behind her, stabbing at her buttocks, and she knew that he had revived, that, in spite of the fierce love-making in which they had engaged, he was once again ready for a taking of her body. And Cora, feeling the heat that quickly gathered at her loins again, knew that she, too, was again ready-ready for Zora, ready for Bower, ready for the whole cuttin' prison full of men should they descend upon her. In a moment she felt Zora's hands spreading and moving at her back. Then she felt the spread of herself and her mind reaffirmed the thought that his love-making was going to be new and different. She breathed deeply and more quickly and waited.
"Now, Bower, if you'll just do what comes naturally from the side there, we'll give our little prison chick something she won't forget for a long, long time."
Bower lowered to the ground. He adjusted his position so that he lay long and stretched on his side horizontally to Cora's thighs. When he touched her there, she adjusted in order to receive him.
And she did. Stabbingly hard at the same time that Zora made his entrance from another sensual point of her body.
"Oh, God!" she yelled. "Oh, Jeeeeeees, you're going to kill me. You're both so-so close-so close together-you're both in-in-Oh, yesssssssssssssss."
Zora pumped from his curled position at Cora's back. When he had her solidly, he released his grip on her buttocks and raised his hands to her breasts, thereby providing the naked, churning, yelping girl with triple points of sensation; Zora behind, his manhood steaming to her, his hands grasping her breasts; Hank Bower on his side before her raised and parted thighs, thrusting with all his might to his prize.
Millions of tiny pricks of igniting force pricked Cora at every point of her body. Then they converged and exploded her. She yelped and whined and stammered, bounced madly upon the earth like one in a convulsion. And then at last, she and her twin lovers quieted.
It was a long time before Cora raised her head from where she had rested it on her crossed arms. When she did, she looked around. Bower and Zora had left her. She looked across the clearing and saw that in the center of a ring of bodies, inmates who had apparently passed out from the unaccustomed alcohol, Link Zora was busy again. Lisa Matthews was his subject. She was yelping like a dog and on her hands and knees. Zora was once again venting the fury of his manhood in a dynamic giving that Cora knew was meant more for revenge and hate, then it was for the release of his own desires.
She turned from the scene. She wondered at the strange feeling that swept over her. It was not of passion, such as she had felt earlier. It was of doom, as if the presence of Zora in the trusty camp threatened everyone-convicts and prison officials alike. She shuddered, feeling the chill of fear rake over her naked body.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tess finished brushing her hair, then stood up and inspected herself in her vanity mirror. She liked the new dress she had bought for the evening's occasion. When she thought of it, her heart fluttered like that of a schoolgirl. But she had little time to consider her feelings, the surprising impact that York Harvey's invitation for a date had caused her. Through the mirror she saw the figure of her brother enter the bed room.
"Well, what's all this?" Clive Stewart asked.
Tess turned and smiled. She hesitated for a moment, then decided to get it over with quickly.
"I've got a date," she said, hoping that the smile covered the excitement in her voice.
Clive did not answer at once. His brow wrinkled as he walked across the room and stopped in front of his sister. He surveyed the low-cut, bell-bottom dress that she wore. He glanced upward to the new hair style she had created.
When Clive made no comment, only smiled at her, Tess said, "Yes, a real, honest-to-goodness date, if you can imagine."
"With whom?" Clive asked, his words curt.
"York Harvey."
"Harvey?"
"Yes, he called and asked if I'd like to go into town with him." She glanced into her brother's eyes, then added quickly, "It's nothing special-something about a few drinks at a little club he knows."
"Oh. But why Harvey? You hardly know him. And if you've been getting bored or something, well, hell, I'd be happy to take you any place you want to go, Sis."
She smiled and raised her hand to his shoulder. "I know, Clive. And I don't even know why I accepted York's invitation. But, after all, he does work with you-for you, really-so, I'll do a little public relations for you."
"Watch those public relations," he said. His tone was sharp. "Clive!"
His expression softened. "I'm sorry, little Sis. I'm out of sorts lately."
"Really," she said concernedly. "What's wrong, Clive?"
"Just work. There's quite a bit of unrest in the cell blocks and the grapevine has it that trouble's brewing. But it's not unusual, nothing to really worry about. Convicts are always restless in the early summer."
Tess saw the tight lines of worry at the corners of her brother's eyes and felt deep concern. She felt compassion, too, and remembered that this was the quality she most often entertained for Clive.
"Well, have a good time, Sis," he said, starting to turn and leave the room.
"Clive," Tess said, stopping him. "If you-well, if for some reason you don't want me to go out with York Harvey, I won't. I can cancel the date easily enough."
"No, you go along," he said. He paused and glanced at all of her again, then added, "But you should remember, Sis, that Harvey and I are on opposing sides of prison philosophy."
"I know that," she said. "But a lot of people who work for the same prison have different views of procedure. Still, you all work together and for the same purposes."
He nodded. "That's true. And it's nothing for you to concern your pretty head about, so run along and have a good time. I have to be at the cell blocks tonight anyway."
Tess waited as he turned and started to leave the room. Then she said, "Haven't you forgotten something, Clive?"
He turned, grinned, then walked back to her. "It's not often you forget to kiss me good-bye," she said.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Just correct it," she said.
He laughed lightly and brought his hands to her shoulders. Carefully, he pulled her toward him as she lifted her mouth to his.
Tess did not immediately take his tongue. Instead, she burrowed her thighs close to the quick-growing hardness of him. For some reason, she felt intense, felt the desire to use her body as therapy for the troubles of her brother. But when Clive's tongue probed and wiggled pleadingly, Tess did take it. She drew upon it as if it were a life giving substance she needed for survival. Clive's hands moved from her shoulders to her buttocks which he grasped with a certain nervous desperation. Then he lifted one hand and brought it between them. For a few seconds, he kneaded at one breast, then he raised it and slipped it within the bodice of her dress.
"Ummmm, that feels good," Tess said. "You touch me just right."
"And you're sweet, little darling. I don't know what I'd do without you."
He lifted the fullness of her breast, weighing it and considering it, then he released it and brought his thumb and forefinger to her hard, cracking nipple. He pinched it lovingly, then he rolled it in a circle while he broke the motion from time to time by extending it in a forward pull, and backward release. Then, after their embrace and his caresses had lasted a long time, he moved to the other breast and duplicated the action committed to the first. And all the time their mouths clung and moved together, their bodies plastered tightly, and their tongues tipped and tucked, explored and adventured forth from one mouth to the other.
Finally, with a regretful sigh, Clive broke their embrace and pushed Tess an arm's length away.
"No more of that, young lady," he said. "You just might get that pretty new dress all crumpled."
"I could take it off," she offered candidly.
"No. I have to get to the cell blocks." He looked into her eyes, then added, "Have a good time, Sis."
"I will. And I'll be home early."
He smiled, turned, then walked out of the room.
Tess faced the vanity once again. She re-fluffed her hair and straightened the lines of her frock. Then she left her room, went down the stairs and through the foyer to the front porch. She would wait for York Harvey there, she had decided. On the porch it was cool and pleasant.
She seated herself in a lounge chair and was about to relax her body to its contours when a light feminine voice called to her from the side of the house.
Tess turned and saw the young girl standing there, smiling toward the porch. For a moment, Tess thought that she must be a visitor to the trusty camp, but when the girl called to her again, recognition came to Tess quickly. The girl was Joanie Hansen, the teenaged niece of Lisa Matthews."
"Well, hello there, Joanie," Tess called. "Come on up and say hello."
The girl walked to the foot of the porch steps and stopped. She was about fifteen, and very beautiful. During the year since Tess had last seen her, the child's body had bloomed to womanhood, providing a picture of vital, sexual energy. Joanie's breasts were large and had signs of growing even larger. Her waist was narrow and her hips flared sensually. Her bare legs beneath the short, schoolgirl skirt were lean, firm, and dimpled. And her buttocks jutted as sassily as the impudence of youth.
"Hi, Tess," the girl said. "I remember you."
"Well, I hardly remember you," Tess told her. "You've grown up. You're beautiful. Come on, sit down for a minute and tell me all about what you've been doing."
"I'd like to, Tess, but I can't," Joanie said. "Lisa's expecting me back. I just went for a short walk."
"Will you be here long?" Tess asked.
"A few weeks-maybe the whole summer," Joanie said.
"Good. That'll give us plenty of time to get reacquainted, won't it?"
"Yes. And I'll like that," Joanie said. "I will too," Tess offered.
"Well, I'll be over soon," Joanie said. "So, Bye, for now."
"Good-bye, Joanie."
Tess watched the girl walk back down the path and toward the home of Lisa and Burt Matthews. As she watched her, Tess felt a touch of envy for the girl. She was so young, had so much ahead of her, was so beautiful for life and all that it held, that it made Tess remember her own young girlhood; without parents, without any community association except that of the prisons where her brother had worked. And, as Tess thought of it, she felt the first signs of regret for the life she had led, especially for the incestuous side of her life.
She did not explore her thoughts further. She did not consider them at length, for as her eyes shifted from the retreating back of Joanie Hansen, Tess saw the bright red convertible with York Harvey at the wheel. It had turned from the main road and was enroute to the warden's house.
Tess sat sedately in her chair until the car pulled into her drive and halted. Then she stood up and smiled at York as he climbed out of the car.
"Hi," he called pleasantly.
"Hello, York," she answered.
When he reached the porch he climbed the stairs and stopped before her. "Well, I see you're ready."
"I certainly am," she said with a little laugh. "It's so long since I've been out of a prison compound I'm not sure I know how to act."
"You act just fine, I'm sure," he said, grinning, looking at all of her body and the attire that covered it.
She couldn't think of anything to say except, "Thank you."
York waited as Tess returned to the house for a light, summer stole. He took it from her and slipped it around her shoulders. Then he led her to the car.
It took them fifteen minutes to drive into the small, prison town. During the short trip, their conversation was casual, mostly about the prison matters that were familiar to them both. But as York braked the car in a parking lot next to a small, modest nightclub, he looked at her, started to speak, then stopped.
Tess looked at him and said, "Yes-what is it?"
"I was just thinking how restricted your life has been," he said.
"Restricted? I don't think so."
"But it is. Where have you ever lived, or with whom have you ever associated, that was not in some way connected with a prison?"
The sudden question stunned her. She answered meekly. "I've-I've never lived anyplace but in a prison."
"That's what I mean," he said. "And it's such a shame, "v
"I don't think so."
"But it is," he said softly. Then his voice brightened as he added, "Well, let's not start the night with an argument."
"No, let's not," she laughed.
The nightclub was small and intimate. The drinks were good. The music, supplied by a bouncing, swinging quartet, was on the 'beat' side, mixed with a smattering of progressive jazz. It was very, very good, better than any music Tess had ever heard.
They stayed at the club for two hours. During that time, Tess found that she considered the new prison sociologist, York Harvey, extremely attractive. He was well-informed on most any matter that could be dis cussed. He was enthusiastic and excited about his work, especially about what he hoped to do in his new assignment. And gradually, as she listened to him, as the spark of his enthusiasm ignited her thoughts too, Tess found herself concurring with his beliefs, even as she realized that they were the direct opposite of those of her brother, opposite any philosophy she had ever encountered.
It was dark and the moon had begun to rise when they left the club.
"It's early," York said. "Arc you sure you have to get home?"
"Yes, I told Clive I'd be back early."
"He does bed-check, eh?"
"No, of course not," she said, a bit curtly. "But I don't like to worry him."
"Oh, I see," he said soberly. "Well, come on, we'll take a drive anyway. We'll swing around the lake on the lone way home. Okay?"
"Fine."
After Tess had settled in the seat and York had started the car, she became terribly aware of his closeness, of his dark good looks, his strong body, and his lively, aggressive spirit. Then, when she considered how she was thinking of him, the attraction she felt for him, she reprimanded herself and thought instead of her brother, Clive, how much they meant to each other, how much they had always meant.
York brought the car away from the highway and onto a dirt road that circled the lake. The moon glistened the lake's surface into millions of diamond chips.
Tess moved forward to the edge of the seat and looked at the lake. "Oh, it's never been more beautiful." She turned and looked at York. "Could we park-park and walk down by the lake?"
"Of course," he replied.
They parked off the side of the road, then left the car and walked down a sloping embankment to the beach. They paused and looked ahead. Tess felt startled when she saw that other couples also had come to the beach. Many blankets were spread on the sand. Some held couples, others were occupied by groups of people. Everyone seemed to be laughing and having fun, enjoying the warm summer night in a setting of romance and love. But, glancing around, Tess saw that there was also much occupation with sex, obviously without love being attached to it. At one side of her there was a teenaged couple without benefit of a blanket or any covering to conceal their impassioned embrace. The girl's swimsuit top had been pulled below her breasts. The boy's head was bowed to them as he mouthed first one, then the, other, while the girl's right hand was concealed and moving rapidly within the boy's swim trunks. Tess felt a tremor of excitement at her loins, then turned from the scene. But she met another one of equal impact. Another young couple was also stretched on a brightly colored blanket. They, too, embraced, but in a different manner. The boy's trunks had been jammed downward to his knees. The girl bobbed her head there in a frantic, twisting motion as the boy clutched tightly to her head. Tess turned away from this scene, too.
"Well, let's wind our way through the bodies," York said.
He took Tess's hand and she could feel his fingers pressuring it as they walked to the edge of the water. York bent and scooped one hand beneath the water.
"It's warmer than I expected this early in the season," he said.
Tess duplicated his gesture, then said, "Yes, it is."
"Shall we walk further along the beach?" he asked. "Yes, let's."
They strolled leisurely along the beach. When they had gone only a hundred yards, Tess halted, then bent and removed her shoes, leaving her bare feet free to plant into the damp sand.
"Ah, that's better," she said.
York did not answer. But his expression seemed changed as he looked at the bareness of her legs and her toes wiggling into the sand.
They continued their walk.
At a place where the beach widened and lifted automatically to a high cliff, they slowed their pace and finally halted.
"Tired?" York asked.
"A little. Can we rest?"
"That's a good idea," he said.
He slipped off his sport jacket and spread it on the beach. Then, as soon as Tess seated herself upon it, he took a place close to her.
Tess felt the light brush of his body at her side and thrilled at the contact. She remembered the bodies of the young people they had passed on the beach, the way their arms entwined, the way their display of sex seemed so unencumbered, so natural. Then she thought of her own perverted experiences; her lust for her brother, the deviate thrill she received from convicts, from teasing them, promising the fullness of her body, then not giving it.
"You're an odd girl, Tess," York said suddenly.
She turned and looked at him. Then she smiled and said, "Well, I guess you know by now that a lot of people around the prison are saying that you think everyone's a little odd."
"I've heard that," he admitted, smiling more broadly. "And what they say doesn't bother me a bit. There are some things I'm sure I'm right about, and one is the oddness of most people."
"Most people? And I'm one of them, eh? I'm odd."
"A little."
"How?"
"Well, in the first place, your environment has been strange. Prisons-inmates-prison friends-your brother as your only real confidant. Even the age differences between the two of you are odd."
"My, you certainly do a lot of thinking about other people."
"I have to. It's my business."
"No, convicts are your business, York," Tess corrected.
"That's true. But everyone who deals with convicts are my business too. Inmates reflect their keepers in most instances. So, if I want to make better convicts, help them become responsible citizens, I have to be pretty much concerned with everyone."
"Yes, I can understand that," she said slowly.
"And I'd like you to help me, Tess."
"Me? How could I do that?"
"By letting me know if you see anything out of the ordinary among the prison personnel and their wives. I have quite a few suspicions about some of them. I'd like to know if I'm right or not."
"You mean you want me to be a 'snitch'," she said, dismayed.
"No. I want you to help me protect your brother, yourself, everyone connected with the prison including the inmates themselves."
"Why? Is there going to be trouble?"
"I don't know. None of us do. But it's always a possibility and it always will be until we get to the very root of all prison problems-the people who run them."
Tess felt the swamp of heat course through her body. She couldn't understand it, yet she sensed that it came from some subtle thrill she received by the recognition of York Harvey's enormous dedication to his job. And, the thrill she knew was such as to even tickle her sexuality.
"Will you help me to help us all?" York asked seriously.
"Yes, if I can," she answered.
"Thanks, Tess." He turned, smiled at her, and raised one hand to her shoulder where he squeezed lightly and affectionately.
An exquisitely sentimental feeling swept over Tess. She wanted to cry or shout or scream hysterically. She wanted to be held and comforted, or smashed and beaten. She wanted to have love made to her or wanted to make love. She felt like a child suddenly knowing the confidence of her parents. She felt alternately cold and hot, taut and tense, then as relaxed as a sagging bag of sugar. She felt at the same time very sure of herself and without an ounce of confidence in her being.
And she felt desperately affected by the slight, friendly touch York brought to her shoulder.
York was saying something about appreciating her help when the feeling soared and gripped her violently. She brought her hand to York's at her shoulder. She gripped it desperately. Then she turned her face to it and crushed her lips against it. She hung on tightly as a tremble raked her body.
It served as a signal to York. Tenderly, he took her in his arms. He turned her to him, then brought his mouth gently to hers.
Tess received his kiss as she had known no other. His lips were firm and warm; hers, soft and open. His lips moved between hers and snuggled there for a moment, prying but not demanding, loving, yet not expecting any sign of love in return, tasting and content with that taste without the lust of further inquiry.
Tess melted in his arms, went limp, her body becoming the immediate subject of his will. And he made it exactly that. He lengthened on the sand, pressuring her downward with him. He continued his kiss but his hands left her back. One moved to her buttocks, the other sought her breasts. For a moment, he cupped one breast, then, very deliberately, very confidently, he unbuttoned the front of her dress and exposed both her breasts.
As she felt her nipples grow taut and catch the cool, lake breeze. Tess remembered the scene of the teenaged boy kissing the breasts of the young girl. She remembered it and for a dashing second felt as young as that girl, felt as unmolested and as far away from the perverted life of incest and convict-love as that girl must have been away from such a life.
Very soon, York lowered his mouth to her breasts. He kissed them delicately, carefully, individually, and with passion that was controlled and loving. And from it Tess felt the shock of intense desire, more than she had ever known, more than she had ever thought possible. Her thighs shook madly, and she felt the moisture of desire gather. She clung to York's head as if it were necessary for survival. She pressed him close and moved his mouth from side to side against her.
York became more fevered in his mouthing and kissing of her breasts. Then, very suddenly, he left them, brought one hand to her back again and lowered the other to the bareness of her legs. He brought his hand up slowly, finger-touching at all of the skin along the path to her thighs. And then he was at her thighs. He pressed gently. Tess bid him welcome. For a long time, he merely cupped her at the front of her womanhood, but then he tenderly creased one finger down the length of her, causing her to gasp and widen herself to his touch. He embraced that wideness, pierced it, jammed back and forth to it in a simulated act of love.
"Ugh, Ugh, Ugh," Tess stuttered. Then she wheezed a passionate "Ahhhhhhhhh."
York quit the penetration of her warm and delightful body. But he did not relinquish his loving contact of her body. He changed it, turned from the stiff fingered probing of her womanhood to the delicate, light and circling movement of a higher ground-a humped and exquisitely sensitive hill of feeling that split her emotions, exposed them, raw and open, to the torment of his caresses.
Tess arched her body until she was bent like an Indian bow, supported by her heels and the back of her head alone. York found the greater presentation of her cause to increase the speed and pressure of his circling forefinger. And as he brought this greater thrill to her, Tess reached, fought her hand to his trousers where she thrashed madly and clawed her fingers around the lumped and thrusting hardness of him.
York permitted her touch as he continued to whirl his hand in an ever increasing caress of her secret hill of response. And he permitted the movement she brought to her hold, the hard jerking manipulation of his manhood. But soon, as her fingers dug for his zipper tab, York made it impossible for her to find what she desired. He neither backed away or slapped her frantic fingers from their search. He merely increased the speed and pressure of his manipulation upon her body. It was sufficient to make her hand release its hold upon him and close into a tight fist as her body churned and arched and felt growth and expansion and the blossoming of nerve ends as they gathered for release.
"K-K-K-kkkkkkkkkkkk," she gurgled. "C-A-N'-T, stop, I'm-I'm-goingggggggggg."
Her head shook from side to side. Her hips thumped up and down, then spun beneath his hand as her release continued, went on and on and on, until at last she reached that nether world of passion's crashing end, and the light, floating, return to calm and normalcy.
When her body had lost its tautness, when the quivering of her thighs and the exerted pressuring of her breasts had relaxed in the denouement of sex, she raised and again reached for the manly strength of York Harvey.
"Now you," she whispered. "Now let me do something for you."
"No," he answered softly. "Not that. Not now. When it's time for us, you'll know. We'll both know."
Tess slumped against his chest and shut her eyes, thinking of the comfort that she felt, yet wondering what it would lead to, if it might turn to torment, for York Harvey was different than any person she had ever known. She cuddled closer as a slight chill tickled the length of her body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
York Harvey sat on a stool at the end of the bar thinking of Tess Stewart. As he thought of her, he felt the rumble of sexuality within himself, a rumble that had not been quieted the previous evening on the beach. Nor would it be quieted, he thought. Not until he was ready to commit himself seriously to the charming sister of the warden. Then he felt a prick of curiosity stab at his chest. Whenever he thought of Tess in terms that brought her in relationship to the warden, York considered, he always felt the veil of some mystery that surrounded them. He wondered what it was. Then he recalled that he had felt this mystery, and his curiosity for it, grow especially strong while he had manually provided sexual love for the thirsting, teeming girl. It seemed odd. In a moment, he raised his glass and finished his highball, anxious to banish the sense of doom that had been with him since he had dated Tess.
He swung around on the bar stool and looked at the crowd. It was the usual prison-town bar, populated with a majority of women, most of whom had men who were incarcerated. Many of the women, York knew from past experience, frequented such bars in the hopes of aiding their imprisoned males: some by means of blackmail, others through the ages old methods of fraternization with prison officials. York swung back to the bar and signaled the bartender for a new drink. He liked to visit such places, he considered, liked to because it brought him within the mood of the prison itself, allowed him, for at least a little while, to feel what others felt as they waited for the release of loved ones.
The bartender served York his drink.
"You're new around here, ain't ya, buddy?" the bartender asked.
"Yes. Quite new," York replied.
"I thought so. I know when a new one comes in."
"That's very observing of you," York said.
"You work in the 'joint'?" the bartender asked.
"Yes," York admitted. "I took up duties just a few weeks ago."
"Oh, a new 'screw', eh?"
"In a way."
The bartender leaned forward, looked around, then in a confidential tone, said, "You're a little new yet, buddy, but when you get wised up to things, I can steer a little business your way. You know, nothing big, but some of the gals here like to get special messages inside, other stuff, too-you know, the things that makes life easier for their men. A lot of the 'screws' help out that wayso, when you're ready to make a little cash, let me know."
"I see," York said. His voice was calm but his body stiffened.
The bartender laughed and leaned closer. "Some of the gals, hell, they give a little something better than money to the 'screws' for their help, if you know what I mean."
"I know what you mean," York said.
"And some of them work for me on the side." He nodded toward a stairs that led to a second floor. "If you get interested later in the night, well, just let me know. Okay?"
"I'll let you know," York assured him.
The bartender grinned, then answered a call from the far end of the bar. York picked up his drink and downed a third of it. He thought about the disclosures the bartender had made.
It was nothing unusual, York reasoned. Bartering, with money and bodies, was nothing new to the women who waited for their men to finish prison sentences. It was also not unusual to find informers among such women. York thought how much he needed information about the prison, the convict-attitude, the things that were right and the things that were wrong with the structure of the prison system. When he felt a twist of passion throb at his loins, he realized that he was rationalizing his need of a woman, that he was combining his need for information with the availability of the women who were in the bar. He thought how un-sociologist-like it was. Then he dis counted that with the thought that a sociologist was first a man, and again he wondered at the self-denial he had imposed upon himself when the beautiful Tess Stewart had fought to take him, when she would have done anything he desired. He wondered about it. But not for long. The thought was interrupted by a rustle of movement next to him that was unmistakably feminine.
York turned. A young, auburn haired girl had suddenly appeared and now occupied the stool next to him. She was as pretty as a starlet and her body was tight and full and very, very seductive. Her eyes were green and her mouth was wide. She wore very little lipstick. It seemed unnecessary, for her full lips pouted prettily in a way that announced passion that was not contrived.
The girl smiled at York, then said, "Deep thinkers in bars are unusual." She shifted on the stool in a way that exposed lush, bare thighs.
York smiled back but did not comment.
The bartender, seeing the girl, hurried to serve her.
"Hi Millie," he said. "It's good to see you and what are you drinking?"
"The usual," the girl replied.
"Right," the bartender replied enthusiastically. Then he looked at York and said, ," And what about you, buddy? Ready for another?"
York raised his glass and finished the contents in a long swallow. Then he pushed the glass forward and said, "Yes, I'm ready."
The girl cocked her head sharply to the side, indicating her satisfaction for York's drinking habits. "That's the way to go," she said.
As soon as the bartender served the new drinks, declined the girl's twenty dollar bill she had pushed across the bar, declined York's five, too, with a wave of his hand and some mumbled words about the drinks being on the house, Millie-as the bartender had called her-lifted her glass, raised it to York, and, while she smiled, sipped at the contents.
York acknowledged her silent toast and drank nearly half of the tall highball.
The girl swung around and looked at the small tables placed around the dance floor behind the bar. To York, it looked very much as if she were passing a signal, or trying to catch the eye of one of the table occupants, yet there was no response from the girls and few men who occupied the tables.
York drank more of his drink. As he swallowed, he again became dramatically aware of the keenness of his passion, the sharp edge it had taken-probably the very reason he had visited the prison-town bar-since he had given thrill to Tess Stewart while he chose to deny himself a similar release. And, as he replaced the glass on the table, he realized that this was also the reason he drank an unaccustomed amount of liquor.
Millie shifted on the stool. She turned intimately close to York. Her skirt crept a few inches higher upon her naked thighs. She leaned a bit forward in a way that allowed an excellent view of her large breasts which strained for exposure from the bottom and the sides of her low-cut dress.
"Your name must be Millie," York said, feeling a little silly that this was the only introductory remark he could conceive.
"It is," she said, "And yours is York Harvey."
He felt the sweep of surprise, then said, "That's right. But how in the-"
"It's my business to know your name, chum," she said. "You see, I've got a man in that dumpy motel you're running and I kind of keep in touch with what's going on, who comes and goes, how the scene looks generally, you know."
"How does the scene look, Millie?" he asked suddenly. "Stinking," she replied as suddenly as he had inquired. "Oh. Sorry to hear that."
"I bet you are," she said, laughing. "I just bet you're sorry as all hell for the way things are."
He did not answer. He raised his glass again and took more of the liquor.
"Look," she said. "I'm not going to waste time. I'm going to level with you, York Harvey, and see how you take it." She paused.
"Yes, do that," he said. "Level with me. Tell me why you know me, why you're talking to me-tell me any damn thing you will that will help me do my job better."
She laughed again and as she held her head back York observed the sharp piercing of her dress that her hard nipples caused. They were like thumbs pushing out from velvet. And he could not help but notice the deep crevice between her moulded flesh; the valley of lust between two sensual hills.
"I intend to speak my piece-." She hesitated, then, with a new laugh said, "If that last word sounds suggestive, I mean it to be."
"How do you know me?" he asked again.
"Easy. And the reason I'm here is because your friend, the bartender, called me. I don't live far away. And, frankly, I do a little work for him-for myself, too, from time to time. He called me when you came in because any number of people around here know that I wanted to contact you-so, they've all been on the outlook for the new, great big, handsome sociologist. See?"
"Yes."
"Good. You take it very well, York."
"What do you want with me?"
"Ha-silly boy. Or, to be more explicit, how's my boy, Link Zora, doing in trustyland?"
"Zora?"
"You say it correctly, honey."
York turned away.
"Well, how's he making it, York?"
"The last report I had is that he's adjusting very well to the semi-freedom of a trusty," York said very soberly.
"Well, goodie-goodie for big Link," Millie said. Her eyes danced and her smile widened.
"I didn't know Zora had a-a-."
"Girl friend will do," she said. She leaned forward and placed her hand over York's. "And, baby, I do think it took a lot of guts for you to make a trusty out of a bastard like Link. You've got guts, baby."
"I also think Zora will make it," York replied.
"Oh, my, but you are a baby, baby," she said. "But to get to the point, when am I going to be allowed to visit him?"
"Aren't you now?" he asked, suddenly interested.
"No. The personnel office turned the request down. We're not married, and we did quite a few capers together-so, no visiting privileges."
York looked at her, then turned and stared at the bar top for a few seconds.
When he looked at her again, Millie said, "Well, baby?"
"I think it can be arranged," York replied. "I'll look into it. Visits are important to inmates."
"Especially to that one," she said.
Millie turned and faced the bar again. As she turned on the stool, one knee nicked York's thigh, stayed there a moment, then traveled on to disappear beneath the bar.
York felt amazingly atuned to the sexuality of the sensual Millie. He found himself wondering about her; questioning her age, which he guessed at twenty-five, and wondering how and why she had become connected with Zora, whether or not they remained lovers even if separated by prison walls. And he felt the quivering of responsiveness within his body and knew that his unfinished sex with Tess Stewart had taken its toll of him, that he was alert and ready for a woman-even such a woman as Millie, one who could endanger his principles and jeopordize his career. But for the moment, he did not care, could not consider these things, for the man of him tensed and strengthened in reaction to the beautiful girl.
Millie turned and looked at him again. Her expression had changed. Her mouth had moistened and she looked suddenly sexually starved, as if she were feeling all the things that also churned within York Harvey.
"Baby," she whispered. "I think you're a good one. And one favor deserves another." She paused and looked around. "Want to visit the upstairs chambers?"
"With you?" he asked.
"Naturally. There are others up there too, however."
"Will you have another drink?" York asked her, stalling, it seemed, in order to give prudence a chance to pull even with impulse.
"No," she answered, destroying the chance for prudence. "A drink I don't need, baby. Coming?"
"All right."
York left a bill on the bar top, then stepped down from the stool. He was surprised that Millie was quite tall. Sitting on the stool she had seemed smaller than what appeared to be her five feet, seven inches. But, as he walked a pace behind her toward the stairs at the far side of the room, he was not surprised by the sway of her hips, the tightness of her skirt which outlined her buttocks in extreme fashion, or the good, long, bare, golden-brown legs that carried her. York's only surprise was for himself, that he should be with a convict's girl friend and following her toward the intimacy of private rooms above the bar.
Midway up the stairs, Millie paused and looked over her shoulder. "Coming? Or did I say that already?"
"You did. And I'm right behind you."
"That's not quite how I mean it, baby. What I mean is you look hot as hell-like me-see-right?"
York did not answer. Millie smiled, turned, and continued up the stairs.
When they reached the top, Millie linked her arm in York's and led him down a long, carpeted corridor. They paused at a door, then knocked lightly and waited.
A girl, naked except for a transparent negligee, opened the door and greeted Millie with a howl and a hug.
York watched as the girls embraced. The girl seemed very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen, probably less than that, York guessed. And she, like Millie, was tall and beautifully built. There was a glazed quality to her blue eyes that made her seem sensitive to every sound, every movement, almost every thought that might occur within her presence.
Millie didn't bother introducing the girl. But she greeted York fondly. She walked to him, put her arm around his waist in a way that cuddled her massive breasts against his forearm, then called toward a door at the opposite end of the room.
"Hey, kids, we've got visitors," the girl shouted.
In a moment, three other nearly nude girls appeared, bursting out of the suddenly opened door like bitches bounding from a kennel. They greeted Millie and gathered in a circle. All the pretty, darting eyes were on York.
"Now, listen, gals," Millie explained. "My friend here is special. We have to be discreet, you see. What goes on here, remains here. Get it?"
"Got it, Millie," they shouted.
"Good. Now, you know me, no preliminaries, right to the point, so the point is that my friend here needs a little entertainment."
"I'll entertain him," a small dark girl said. She moved forward and audaciously thrust her breasts upward, trying to touch at York's chest.
He smiled at her. He did not move, neither forward nor away from the girl who was dressed only in a thin bra and bikini type under-panties. When she reached up and touched at his tie in a playful manner, he glanced away. It was then that he became fully aware of the attire of the other girls. All of them wore either negligees over nothing, or simply bra and panties. He stared at each girl individually, then held his attention to a girl with long, blond hair that reached beyond her shoulders. Her bra and panties were different. The bra was crinkly leather, narrow, but tight around her body. Her panties were leather, too. The V of them pulled tightly upward, wrinkling the leather which was delicate enough to reveal the sharp and pulsating outline of her young womanhood.
She was a dashing girl, severe of features and with a body that seemed tight as a spring ready to be released. York stared without self-consciousness. He could not understand the leather undergarments, yet he found them attractive, as if they were created and meant for this very girl.
"These gals and you have something in common, York," Millie said. "They're interested in prisons-very interested, they've all got studs in the joint."
He nodded.
"So, who's going to show my friend the ropes first?" Millie asked, looking at each of the girls.
"Since I'm closest, I'm the first," said the girl of the leather garments.
A moan of disappointment issued from the others as the girl cuddled her arm under York's, then led him to the far side of the room. York noticed that the other girls, quite casually, settled comfortably in front of the television. The girl who had opened the door, flicked on the switch then settled on the floor in front of the set as the others took places on a couch and large chair.
"We'll go in here, honey," the blonde girl told York. She pushed open another door.
The room was small and not at all unique. It contained a bed, a couple of chairs, a cabinet and desk, and one straight chair. The room was neatly decorated with good draperies and thick carpeting.
As soon as she closed the door behind her, the girl faced York and asked, "Do you like leather?", "It looks very well on you," he said.
"Thanks, precious. Do you like to wear it, I mean?"
"I don't think so."
"That's a shame," the girl said. "Doubling in leather is great. But maybe I can convince you that you do like it.".
York shrugged.
"Would you undress, darling?" York cocked his head.
"Maybe it's better if I do it for you," she said. "Here-."
She moved close. She undid his tie, his shirt, and tugged his tee-shirt out of his trousers. Then she relieved him of these garments. Then she stooped and unlaced his shoes. As she bent before him, York caught the scent of her. It was a heady combination of woman, a light perfume, and the harshness of leather. York found it very pleasant and he wondered if the several drinks he had had caused this reaction.
The girl raised from removing his shoes and sox. As she lifted upward, her large, leather-encased breasts brushed deliberately against his knees, his masculinity, and finally his chest. This, too, York decided, was a most pleasant reaction for him to experience.
"And now, the unveiling," she said.
She unhooked his belt, pulled down the zipper tab, opened wide the waistband of his trousers and let them drop to the floor. Then she tugged his shorts below his thighs, to his knees, and finally to his ankles from where he stepped out of them.
"Oh, my," she said, stepping back and candidly surveying him.
"And you-. You're going to remain like that?" York asked.
"For the moment." She stepped closer, looked at the strong extension of his manliness, then added, "Oh, my, my, my. You poor dear. It has been hard on you, hasn't it?"
York had a flashing memory of providing sex for Tess while he abstained. The thought seemed to help rationalize his presence with the strange girl.
The girl turned and hurried to the cabinet across the room. She opened the doors, then rummaged within. In a moment, she returned to York, each of her hands holding an assortment of leather items.
"Just maybe I can teach you something about 'feeling'," she said.
"I doubt it," York commented.
"Well, at least let's see."
The girl dropped the leather items to the floor, then stretched her arms above her head and raised on her tip toes.
"You can touch me for a bit," she said. "I wish you would."
Very gently, York brought both his hands to her delightful face. He touched at each side of it, letting his fingers run over the contours of her forehead, cheeks, chin, and finally her neck. Then he touched her shoulders. The bareness of them seemed a smooth, warm runway approaching the leather. When York brought his fingers to her leather bra, she shivered. Then she trembled more violently as he kneaded her breasts, plucked at her nipples which pinched the leather like tiny tents, creasing the material in taut, close-together lines. And her body stammered like a chugging engine as each of York's hands grasped her breasts more tightly and pulled them out and away from her body then circled them. But when leather did not provide the flesh touch that he wanted, when York raised a hand and moved it to enter the top of her bra, the girl stopped him.
"No-please, I can't stand it like that," she whimpered, then jabbed her breasts more rakishly forward.
Her remark caused new heat to come to York's body, new strength to come to his manhood, and a new fear to cloud his mind. But, he could not resist the reality of an exceptionally moulded girl, nude except for a leather bra and leather shorts, undulating before his touch. He gripped the leather of her "breasts harder.
Leaving the leather that covered her breasts and moving his hands to that dividing line of flesh that preceded and was above her short shorts of leather was like running from the thrill of a smooth, damp, sand beach to the excitement of a high, ocean wave.
York's hands touched her waist and her hips, then one lowered and slid upward to the crinkly, leather V between her thighs.
"Ummmmmmmm," the girl whispered.
York stepped closer and circled his other arm around her body as he bent to take her mouth in a kiss.
"Oh, no, darling," the girl said suddenly. "I can't stand that either."
"What in the hell can you stand?" York blurted, feeling the frustration of thrill denied.
"This," she smiled.
Gracefully, she lowered to the carpeted floor. She reached her right hand up to grasp York and urge him to join her. When he did, she propped her legs, grabbed and guided him until he was posed before her. York gripped at the waist band of her leather shorts and started to tug them downward. The girl stopped him.
"No-no, not like that," she protested., York leaned back on his heels. The girl looked at him, smiled, then brought .the fingers of both hands to herself and gently spread the leather shorts at the V of her womanhood. A thin, concealed line of leather opened, opened as if it was the girl herself, then was the girl herself, and York thought it the most amazing thing that leather and flesh could join in a single opening.
"Now," the girl breathed heavily. "Now you can come to me, darling."
York leaned forward, let his whole body follow the lead of the girl's guiding hand upon his manhood. When she placed him and released him, he lurched forward.
The tightness of the leather clutching at him as he moved back and forth was almost painful. But it was a pain York was willing to withstand.
And the girl could not hold back her immediate climax. She screamed and churned her body in response to York's first, long thrust. Then she wiggled and bounced furiously as he increased the speed of his movement, increased the tight encasement of himself by leather and flesh as he bloated larger, throbbed harder, and tore himself faster and faster to entrance and withdraw, back and forth, in and out, deeper and deeper.
"Eeeeeeeee," she yelped again as for a second time she knew an end.
And it was to be a finish for York too. He felt the even greater stiffening of himself, felt the faster caress of leather as he moved faster, and then he knew the torrent of his release as it was conveyed from him to the girl, through leather, through flesh, from man to woman.
The girl did not cling in a long embrace as their bodies quieted. Immediately, she rolled away from York and jumped to her feet. He, too, rose. He looked at her, then at the floor. It was then he saw the various leather items on the floor.
"What about those?" he asked "I thought they had something to do with us?"
"I forgot them, darling," she said. "Forgot all about them. But, perhaps we'll use them another time."
As if their performance had been timed-or observed-the door of the room opened and Millie entered.
She grinned at her friend, then eyed York and said, "How goes it, Chum?"
"A very interesting place you have here," he said.
"Interesting girls, too," she replied. She turned and faced the open door. Then she called, "Rae-I believe you're next-will you come in here now, please."
In a moment one of the bra and pantie clad girls entered the room. She walked directly to York, paused in front of him, glanced at his sated manhood, then nodded evilly.
"Think you can continue the entertainment?" Millie asked the girl.
"You better believe it," the girl replied, continuing to stare at York's masculinity.
"Good. As I said, this stud is a special friend so why don't you treat him in a special way, Rae?"
"It'll be special," she answered.
Millie laughed, turned and waited while the girl of the leather desires slipped on a negligee, then walked with her out of the room.
Rae, the new girl, did not delay a second. And, unlike her predecessor, she did not want the encumbrance of leather or of any garment. She twisted her hands to her back, unhooked her bra, let it fall to the floor, then straightened and cupped her breasts. Then she stepped out of her panties.
York was immediately enraptured by her body. She was tall and her body was lithe and wiry. Her breasts were large, but they were without the fiery extension of hard pressing nipples. The ends were mere red dots that seemed content to remain asleep within their creamy moulds.
The girl brought her bare body close to York's nakedness. Again she looked at his manhood, looked at it quizzically as if she were determining a course of action. Then she grinned as if inspired.
"Come on by the wall," she said. "I want you where you can't get away."
York followed her undulating hips and bouncing buttocks across the room to the opposite wall which was bare.
The girl gently pushed at his chest, urging his back to the wall. Then she stepped closer. She pressed her large breasts against his muscled chest. She reached one hand down to determine if her nearness had revived him. It had not. She lifted her face to his, pressed her lips against York's, burrowed her tongue into his mouth and whipped it back and forth and in a mad circle, constantly increasing the speed of its caress.
York gripped her at the buttocks and held her close. He felt the pulsation of her femininity pressuring and pleading at the limpness of him that earlier had been his strength. And she reached her hand to that limpness, gripped it, moved it, trying almost desperately to awaken his desire and turn it toward herself.
Soon, the girl gave up this particular quest. She smiled into York's eyes, then rose on tip toes and brought her mouth forward to his face.
She kissed his forehead and his eyes, kissed again and more fervently at his mouth as York held her close, then she gave up his mouth and kissed his neck in a long line until she reached an ear. Here she paused. Here her tongue became a madman. It darted and nicked, lolled within his ear, then plunged in and out of it at a terrifying pace and in a motion that duplicated the joining of a man and woman in a violent act of love.
York felt his body heat. He felt that tantalization of her tongue, welcomed it, wished for more of it. And she provided the answer for his wish. She left his ear, worked her tongue across his neck, paused at his other ear, plunged there for a long time, finally gave it up, worked slowly across his chest, licking at all of him, rubbing alternately dry and moist against his skin. Then she paused, looked at him, smiled again, and continued her tour. She bent and swept her tongue across the ribs at one side of him. Then she dallied across his waist, went to the other rib cage, caressed there, then bent again and hurried to his hips. She kissed him hard there, with the full impact of her mouth. Then she nibbled. Then she again let her tongue-her incessant tongue-lead her attack upon his body. She kissed and tongued her way across the hard muscled bulge below his navel, kneeling before him like a worshiper of flesh. As if this morsel of him was especially tasteful, exceptionally fine, she lingered here, moved back and forth, paused at the middle, withdrew her tongue and let her lips bite lightly, even let her teeth nick him easily.
Heat swamped York. Every nerve of his body seemed to stand on its end and wave passionately for greater and greater attention to his body.
Soon, Rae gave up the hard-muscled delight of his lower belly. She raised. York saw that her nipples had come awake, had left their shelters and extended long and hard, a bit cracked, fiery looking and throbbing and puffing.
He reached to her breasts and fondled them. He pinched at the nipples and lolled them between his fingers, feeling the round hardness of them, tweaking them lovingly, pulling them away from their base, then letting them snap back again.
Rae brushed his hands aside. "Ummm, that's fine, baby, but I have more to do. So, around and around we go."
She turned him around, made him face the wall as she crushed her body to his back, pressed her breasts to his smoothness, thrusted her hot thighs fiercely against his buttocks. For a moment, she only stood there, pulsating against him, but then, very slowly, she moved back and again, brought her darting tongue in contact with his. skin. She whipped it against his neck again, then lower and across his broad shoulders, then lower still to the small of his back where she conveyed the exquisite sensations of her tongue, pressing, moving, rolling, manipulating at him as if he were already engaged to her body and she was increasing his passion.
And then she lowered still more. On her knees again, she pressed her mouth to his firm buttocks. She kissed him there. She tongued him madly. She covered all of his flesh, and she moved between it in a line that descended downward and in separation. She paused and plunged her tongue to that separation, ran its length up and down, then bowed lower and kissed at the back of his legs until she reached his ankles. Then she ascended the same scale of sensation. When she reached his buttocks again, she again plunged frantically. And then she paused. She gripped his hips and spun him around. And at last she faced the new, massive strength she had given him.
York arched, silently urging the taking of himself. Rae chose to ignore it for the moment. She bent and kissed beneath the long, hard line of him. She tongued at the softer, rounded moulds of him that were there. Then she tongued her way down the inside of one thigh, whisked her tongue dramatically, across, up and down, back and forth, and around and around. Then she moved to the other under-thigh and duplicated the oral caresses. When she reached the place of his thrusting and throbbing manhood, she again paused. But only for a moment. Then sh; dived forward, took him, took him deeper, then even deeper until the cram of his strength caused a gurgle to issue from her throat. Then she slowly drew her head back, holding firmly while she moved, giving him the intense sensation of lips and tongue and teeth rippling against flesh. When she had drawn back to the very end, she plunged again, crammed again, gurgled more wildly, held, pressured lips and tongue and teeth, then slowly lessened her savage hold as she once more drew far back, so far that it seemed that she would lose him. But she did not. She held, then renewed her insane dive upon his I body.
York could not help but undulate before her love-making. His body twisted and turned, stammered, arched, held, relaxed, then arched again and again to meet her ever increasing pace, her faster bobbing head, the greater moistness of her giving.
At last, when her head was only a mad blur of movement, York groaned in signal of the beginning exodus of all his desire. Rae answered the call, moved faster and faster, tried to hurry his giving, did hurry it, then paused for an instant before she dived again in the final, thirsting climax of her abnormal lust.
Again, as if Rae's timing had been tuned to the girls of the other room the door opened and Millie appeared. Behind her stood the other two girls. They were all smiling.
Almost without noticing them, Rae hurried from the room. York looked at Millie and the other girls. He did not make any remark.-
"Well, baby," Rae said. "How's the work-out going?"
Suddenly, York felt violent.; He felt angry and reprimanding for himself. But because he could not accuse himself, he turned that anger into energy and new desire. He stared at Millie.
"It goes very well, I see," Millie said. "And now you've got a girl left, Chummie."
"Two left," York corrected. "You and the other one. And I'll take you as desert."
She laughed, then said, "Oh, no, baby. You couldn't do thing for me. I'm a little-well, a little unique."
"I can try," York said.
"But you're not going to get the chance, baby," Millie replied.
York nodded, then moved to where his clothes were piled. As he dressed, the other girls disappeared and he was left alone with Millie.
At the door, ready to leave, Millie detained him for a minute. She reached her hand to his arm, then said, "Thanks for the visitation privileges, chum. You can't guess how much it's going to mean to me."
"It should mean something to Link Zora, too," York said.
"Maybe. But it will mean much more to me."
York opened the door, stepped into the corridor, then waited as Millie closed the door behind him.
He did not go again to the bar. He left the place and walked to his car. He felt very heavy and depressed, and he knew that it was caused because he had substituted sexual release for the real sexual jove he had wanted to give to Tess Stewart. And he sensed that his actions had contributed to some evil doom that awaited him.
CHAPTER NINE
The sun was settling at the west end of the trusty camp when the P.A. system announced the call for huge. Link Zora. Flipper Charles was with him at the time.
"What the hell can that be?" Zora growled.
"Only one thing, old buddy-a visit."
"A visit?" Zora exclaimed. "Man-are you crazy."
In a moment, the P.A. system announcement continued, instructed Zora to go to the visiting area, that a visitor was awaiting him.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," he whistled.
"See-I told ya," Flipper Charles said proudly.
"How do you get to the goddamned place?" Zora asked.
"Ya meet visitors down by the parking lot at the picnic tables there. You can sit there, even take a little walk if you want, and if it's a chick who's visiting, I'd really recommend a walk into the woods-you know, get some strange stuff-try the civilians. Hell, you can get awful sick of the prison chicks."
"Yeah." Zora muttered.
He left Flipper Charles behind and headed in the direction of the visiting area. As always, he felt angry and jammed with frustration. It was not a sexual frustration, for the wives of prison oficers, particularly Lisa Matthews and Cora Quinn, had taken care of that for him. Zora's frustration, his anger and his menace, were inherent. It had been created by the bitterness of slums, the hard hands of orphanage attendants, the heat of crime, and finally the discipline of prison. His anger and bitterness, his ache for action and revenge, were part of his life. It was his only motivation for living."
Zora paused when he reached the outer rim of the visiting area. He saw the girl sitting at a table, obviously waiting for him.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," he breathed to himself.
With his eyes glued upon the beautiful Millie, Zora walked forward to the guard who was stationed at the area entrance.
"She's to see you, Zora," the guard said.
"Yeah. Ain't that something." Then he quickly turned to the guard and said, "How in the hell did I get visiting privileges."
"I don't know," the guard replied. "The approval came from the front office. I don't question it, so go on and have your visit."
"Yeah," Zora breathed huskily. "I'll do that."
"Walk around, do what you want," the guard said casually. "We don't have many rules for trusties."
The guard turned and walked away. Zora waited a moment, then moved forward.
Millie stood up as he approached. Her body was held in a tight dres that showed every line of her. Although she smiled, there seemed to be a certain urgency to her expression. And a slight tremble had come to her body. Her eyes traveld over all of the giant-size of Zora. They darted at his shoulders, his chest, his waist and his thighs. They hungered there.
"Hi, baby," she said when Zora stopped before her.
"How the hell did you make it, kid?" he asked. "It's great to see you."
"I pulled some strings. And it's-it's great to see you, too, Link. Really great, baby, cause I've been so damn-damn-."
"Hard up?" Link Zora finished for her, laughing.
"Yeah, hard up, if that's the way to describe it. But it's been even worse than that."
"Yeah, I bet it has," he said, grinning, glancing at her body, covering her with his eyes from head to thighs to toe.
She stepped forward and gripped his forearm. She kneaded the hard muscle of him and her eyes went misty and dreamy. Zora glanced at the guard who had walked far away. Then he quickly turned to Millie and said, "Listen-I need some things, baby. You still working out of that joint?"
"Sometimes," she said.
"Good. Now, you make the contacts and get some jazz into me, you see. Get some stupid screw paid off and have him bring me a gun-a 38, if you can swing it."
"Link-you're not starting that stuff again."
"I never quit, baby. Never will. You do it, see. And I need some cash-as much as you can get. And some juice and heroin if you can get the uncut stuff."
"Link-Link, why in the hell don't you just serve your time? Take it and get out."
"Getting out the regular way would be no kicks, baby. Now you get that stuff to me, see?"
She kneaded his arm again, then dropped her hand and said, "I'll do my best."
"Do it, period," he replied roughly.
Her eyes turned to a teasing expression, then she said, "And if I do-or rather, before I do, how about a little walk?"
He saw the blackmail glinting at him. He grinned resignedly, then said, "Come on, let's go."
With hands joined, acting like lovers on a stroll, they moved toward the wooded path. They paused as Zora looked back, then, satisfied that the guard was indifferent to their destination, they proceeded up the path, through the woods, until they finally arrived at a clearing that was a branch of a larger one. It was more concealed, being bounded by heavy trees that ringed it. The trees were very thick and heavy vines were attached to them, twisting their clawing way up to the highest branches.
With a little swing, Zora released Millie's hand. She moved ahead a few paces, then turned.
"Hi, again," she said in a low, intense tone.
"Hi, baby."
"It's been rough on me, Link," she said. "Real rough.
I don't have anybody who can do me right, baby."
"I figured that," he said.
"But now I don't have to wait any longer, do I?"
"Not if you're going to be a good gal and get that stuff I asked for."
"I'll get it, Link."
"I figured ya would, baby." He walked forward and deliberately looked down the low-cut bodice of her dress. "You haven't changed, baby."
"I have, Link," she said, breathing a bit harder. "I've changed an awful lot. When I'm working, I hate it. I have to give myself to a bunch of pigs without getting a damn thing out of it for myself."
"It's still the same way for you, eh?"
"Yeah. No body knows but me when I'm with the studs. I pretend pretty good, even tease at the beginning until I get them with some of the other gals. Then I can leave the scene."
"And that's why you came to visit me?" he asked. "That's why you visited."
"One of the reasons. The big one, I admit, 'cause, Link, there's been nobody to take care of me any more. Not since they busted you."
"You poor, cuttin' kid," he said forlornly, heavy cynicism furring the words.
"But we're together now, Link."
"Yeah."
"Ain't it great?"
"Yeah."
She walked close to him and reached her arms up and around his neck. She raised her lips, expecting his kiss.
"What the hell," he blurted. "You don't need all that love jazz, Millie. Ya never have. What are you being so goddamn phony for?"
"Cause I want you to do it to me, Link. Cause I'm dying for it."
"Then it's simple." He pulled her arms down from around his neck. He glanced behind him, then to the sides. Then he reached to the bodice of her dress and bunched it in a knot within his thick fingers.
"No, wait," Millie said huskily. "That goddamn screw will notice when we go back."
"To hell with him."
She laughed, then quickly unbuttoned the front of her dress. She slipped it from her shoulders and let it slide down her body to the ground. Then she kicked off her high-heeled shoes. Only a brief bra and panties remained. She pushed the panties from her body, then unhooked her bra, took it off, handed it to Zora and waited.
He lifted the bra and looked at it. Then he grinned.
Millie hurried close to him. Her breasts jiggled like jello and their tips were like tiny, hard, brick chips. Her navel panted. Her thighs trembled as if she were chilled. And the spot of her womanhood looked twitching and vibrant, very anxious, heavily pulsating, snapping and hungry, and forboding, too.
When Millie stopped in front of him, Zora lifted the bra he held and looked at it again. Then he knotted it into a small ball and buried it within his big fist.
Millie arched a bit, presenting her naked body to the big Zora. He looked at her, grinned, then like a lightning flash drew his fist back and struck her viciously on the breast.
"Ugh," she groaned. She bent and clutched her stomach as if the pain carried throughout her body. But the expression on her face was not of pain. It was of pleasure and intense, passionate feeling. When she raised, Zora struck her again. The blow landed at the side of her face and her head jerked to the side as if it were about to depart her body.
"Ugh, Uhhhhh," she moaned again. She bent, then quickly straightened again.
Zora waited a second, then rained a series of blows to her breasts and stomach with such speed that they were like the pellets of a hailstorm. He ended the volley with a mighty undercut that jolted between her thighs. Then he stood back and looked at the subject of his maltreatment.
Millie managed to remain upright. A lump bulged blue at the side of her face and the front of her naked body was discolored and hurt looking. But her eyes danced merrily. They were glazed, too, as if she was on the road to some frantic discovery, some unsurmountable release. She choked short, hot breaths. Her body shook.
"Enough for you, baby?" Zora asked, a note of concern in his tone.
"No-No, Link-the full treatment, that's what I want, all the way, baby-please."
He stepped close to her, took a breast in his hand and twisted it like a key turning in its lock.
"Ahhhhhhhh," she cried.
He twisted it again, in the opposite direction and harder.
"Ohhhhh, Jeeeeez, gr-greatttttt."
He released her breast, brought his fist back again, then poured it to her chest in a new, staggering blow. She groaned and fell backwards until her back struck the rough bark of a tree. She plastered herself against it. Then her hands raised until one of them clutched one of the heavy, prickly vines that wound around the trunk. She held it, then she pulled it down a bit. She looked at it. Then she gave Zora a meaningful look.
He caught the silent signal of her desires. He moved to her. He reached up and tore a thick vine from the tree. He looked at it, then glanced at his other hand where he still held her bra. Then he advanced another pace.
Millie stretched high on her toes and lifted her arms over her head. She posed like a statue. Her nipples looked injured and bent, but her breasts still puffed outward. And her stomach indented, pushed inward as if she were containing some great feeling, containing it until she was ready for its release. She spread her legs a bit apart and waited.
Zora started at her neck. He wound the thick, rough, very prickly vine around her neck, fettering it against the tree. Millie's skin rubbed raw from the pressure. Bubbles of blood oozed. The thorns of the cut her flesh as Zora pulled it tightly, brought it around her breasts, pulled harder, then looped it again around her hips. He tied it in a knot and pulled harder. Forcing Millie tighter to the tree trunk.
"Ohh, oh, ohhhhhh," she panted. "Yes, baby-tighter and tighter, baby."
He dragged a new vine from the tree. Carefully, he laced it through first one thigh, then the other, then around the tree trunk. Then he pulled hard upon it. Millie's flesh caught and puffed and bulged. It bled. Zora continued lacing the vine around the girl and the tree until at last she looked like a white-flesh part of the tree itself, grotesque pieces of a human spouting from vine and bark in a monster image.
Zora stooped and picked up a long dangling end of the vine. It ran from behind her and extended through her parted thighs.
Zora handed the end of the vine to Millie who took it with the one hand that was not bound.
"Here, baby," Zora said. "Maybe you'll need this."
He watched as she clutched it lovingly and pulled it upward until it touched at her womanhood. He saw the thorns protruding from it and wondered how she could even grip it. But then he remembered that he had gripped it, unconcerned with the prick of thorns. And that's the way it is when you're busy with other thoughts, he reminded himself.
Milliel strained her neck to the side of the tree. She bent it back until the cords of her neck bloated. Then she gasped, "Link-could you-would you-now?"
He moved close to her. He looked into her face, then gripped one of the main vines about her body. He gave it a terrifying jerk, ripping it against Millie's skin.
"Ahhhhh," she breathed pleasurably. "That too. Yes."
He pulled the vine again. "Ohhhhhhhh," Millie stuttered.
He pulled it hard once more, and as he did so, Millie pressured the vine she held upward between her thighs, then groaned a long, mournful wail, one of great feeling, one of desire and want and the terrible complexities that made hurt a part of love.
"The other too," she pleaded. "Please-now."
Zora released the vine he held and raised the other hand which held Millie's bra. He looked at it, then at the way she strained her head backward at the side of the tree, straining against the vine bindings that held her. She gasped another plea, then opened her pretty mouth wide.
Zora raised the bra, posed it at her lips a moment, then jammed it into her mouth. She groaned and choked, and her eyes rolled deliriously, showed their large whites indicating the vital pleasure she felt. Zora jammed the bra a little deeper into her mouth, stuffed it further down her throat as she gurgled and blubbered and wheezed rapturously. Then, in a series of short, pushing motions, Zora crammed more of the dry bra into her throat, and as he did so Millie yanked hard on the vine she held, thrusting it up in a grinding pull against her womanhood. When Zora crammed the bra again, she pulled the vine tighter, causing, Zora could see, driblets of blood to bubble at her thighs where the thorns pricked her harshly upon the rise of the vine.
Finally, Zora had stuffed all of the bra into Millie's throat. Her eyes rolled and she continued to choke sounds of passion from her throat. Zora stepped back and looked at her, then, in a moment, saw her began the hard yanks upon the vine again, the quick jerks that smashed the tearing thorns again and again at the place of her femininity. And the sounds she blubbered changed. They grew sharper and more intense as she jerked the vine faster and faster, more hurtfully against the sides of her thighs and at the font of her sex. And soon, her motions became so fast that her hand and the jerking vine were a montage, formed a single image of fantastic speed. The vine gouged deeply within her, creasing her as she was creased and cutting her brutally. And she continued to mumble the drv, harsh chokes of painful delight.
Her eyes suddenly stopped rolling and went wide and frightened. They found Zora and pleaded at him. He hurried forward, stood in front of her, watched her body grinding to a grueling climax, saw her eyes beg again, then he stepped forward, yanked the gag from her mouth, threw it to the ground and once again, and for the last time, smashed his big fist to the softness of her bound body.
"EEEEEeeeeee," she screamed, then yelped, "Yi, Yi, Yi, Yiiiiiii."
Then she went limp, closed her eyes and sagged against the vines that held her to the tree.
It was nearly dark by the time Millie's terrifying lust had been satisfied and she had left the trusty visiting area. Zora walked slowly back to his cabin, thinking of the girl, of the strangeness of her lust and how he had been the only one to find her key to release, how she sought him out, even now that he was a prisoner, in order to quiet the torment of her cravings.
Anger grabbed at Zora's chest again. It was the old anger, made new again by his own frustration. He stopped walking and felt the tenseness of his body. And nothing could release it, he thought. Nothing. Not Millie. Not the prison women. No one. What burned inside him was too hot and too mad for an ordinary quieting. It was almost more than he could contain. Then he wondered how much longer he could contain it, if he could continue to hold himself in check until he was ready.
Zora continued toward the trusty cabin. It was when he rounded a corner and entered the narrow walk that led to the cabins that he saw the girl. She was walking very slowly along the walk ahead of him. She glanced into the windows of each of the cabins as she passed. Then she paused and looked over her shoulder to Zora. She was not startled by his sudden presence. She seemed delighted with it. She smiled at him, then turned and continued walking at a slower pace, one that allowed her hips to sway lightly.
Zora stopped and stared at the girl. She looked about fifteen and he was sure that she was the young girl who had come to visit her aunt, Lisa Matthews. He felt his blood grow hot, and once again anger stabbed him, reminding him of all those whom he hated, all the things of the world he hated; the people, the things, all those who were not as he. But very soon, as he looked at the swinging hips of the girl, the light, small, and bouncing breasts, some of the anger in him calmed. He remembered another girl in his past, a child, one who he had violated for which he now served a prison term. And he recalled that for a little while, after he had left the girl bleeding and churning upon the ground, he had felt fulfilled, had felt quiet and peaceful because he had found a symbol for his revenge upon the world. He smiled evilly as he felt the pulsation of passion sweep him and heighten him. He stood perfectly still, enjoying the feeling, knowing that it was a sign of things to come, that he would soon be able to turn loose the awful rage within him. Zora watched the little girl until she disappeared from view, then he hurried on to his cabin.
CHAPTER TEN
Joanie Hansen waited until both her aunt and uncle were out of the house, then she showered quickly, bounded from it with all the vitality of her fifteen years and hurried to her room to dress.
Nude, she walked to the window of the bed room and looked outside. It was mid-afternoon and bright and sunny. She leaned flat against the window pane and looked far to the side in the direction of the trusty cabins. Her young breasts flattened against the window pane. She felt the titillation of them, and shivered delightedly. It felt good against the cool glass. It cooled the heat of her body. She pressed a little closer and become very conscious of the cool pressure against her nipples. She felt them grow hard and long. She strained a little tighter against the glass, then sighed, relaxed her body and moved away.
At the vanity, still without benefit of cover for her naked young body, she sat down and faced the mirror. She arched and looked critically at herself. Joanie liked the lift of her breasts. They were still young and not fully developed, yet they were larger than those of many girls she knew. They were firmer too. And the ends were hard and brown-pink and thrusted without the slightest difficulty. She could make them as strong and extended as she wanted by merely thinking of boys and men. But even without fantasies they were usually erect and alert and stood out from the creamy white roundness. Joanie, satisfied with her breast appeal, looked at her thighs. She opened them, then closed them. Then, pretending. to herself that it wasn't happening, she dropped one hand in her lap and strayed a finger to the crinkly beginning of her young womanhood. She moved it a little closer and was just ready to part her thighs again, when she suddenly withdrew her hand, scolding herself for the impulse that had taken her.
She jumped up from the vanity and went to the closet. She selected the attire she had decided upon for her stroll among the trusty cabins. The attire was simple; a tight, brief halter, and shorts that pinched all of her together in a neat little package, one that whispered of surprises.
Joanie Hansen dressed quickly, added only straw sandles to her choice. Then she hurried down the stairs and out of the house.
She paused at the walk that led to the trusty section. She wondered which cabin housed the tremendous looking man she had seen the other night. He was so big, looked so mean and strong. She sighed, thinking how much she wished to encounter him again. Then she thought a wicked thought: It really didn't matter if she saw the big man again; there were so many others to lure with her youthful body.
When Joanie had walked a dozen paces down the path, she began thinking of all the men, particularly the trusties she had seen, who intrigued her. Then she thought of boys and remembered a special one-that boy who had first known her virginity. She felt an urgent cramp at her loins when she remembered how his hands had roamed, how they had touched and separated her, how they had crept to that unknown, inner area of her, how they had become excited there, had circled and touched and caressed intensely. She sighed. Then she sighed again as she tried to feel again what she had felt at that very moment; the thrill, the mystery, the deep, deep response that made her first gasp, then holler, and finally scream. Then she sent that thought fleeing as she replaced it with a jumble of many boys she had known, all the boys who had known her on the seat of a car, at the beach, in parks and even in her own home. She liked these hurried thoughts. They made her feel important and sophisticated, a woman who had been loved by many.
She tried to count the number of times she had reacted to the boys-how many times she had actually known that horribly beautiful final thrill. She could not remember. It had always come in various degrees of intensity. She could not honestly count the most exciting episodes of her young sexual life.
As Joanie approached the first of the row of trusty cabins, she noticed a man watching her from the window. She slowed her pace and deliberately swayed her hips. The movement also had the effect of jiggling her breasts sassily. When she drew even with the man behind the window, Joanie paused, then stopped and pretended to adjust a strap on one of her sandles. She felt the material of her shorts mould her buttocks and knew that they were dramatically outlined for the silent viewer, that the crease between them dipped like a deep channel, that the roundness of them popped up at him like twin melons. And she knew that the way her halter peeked open offered him the opportunity to see the forward bulge of her breasts, perhaps the tips, too.
Joanie stole a look at the man while she was bent over. She felt stricken.
The man stood in front of his window looking at her. He leaned forward a bit. Joanie saw the flash of bareness at his thighs, then she saw his hand moving rapidly there, whisking himself back and forth in a mad rush, one that she knew had been inspired by herself, by her bent and seductive appearance.
For a moment she couldn't decide whether to raise and stand straight again, or to remain bent and busy, pretending she did not see him. But then the sight of him intrigued her. She was fascinated by his action of self love. She felt very beautiful, very desirable, so desirable and so beautiful that a man was moved to the caress of his own body by the merest sight of her. Joanie liked that.
When Joanie could tell that the man was in an agony of self-giving, that his body arched and thumped and stammered as he worked hard to end his frustration, she stood up and breathed deeply. Then she faced the man directly and watched while he whipped to his finish. Then she smiled wickedly, turned and continued down the path.
She looked into the windows of each of the cabins as she passed them. She hoped she might see one of the convicts dressing, perhaps even coming from the shower, bare and wet, without expectation of seeing a girl outside their window. Perhaps another might even be moved as the man of the first cabin had been moved, she thought hopefully. That was exciting. Then she wondered about the giant man she had seen. What if he stood at a window watching her?
It was at the recreation area that Joanie Hansen finally spotted Link Zora. Her breath caught short in her throat as she saw that he wore only trunks while he worked out with heavy weights. She slowed and watched as he lifted a heavy barbell over his head. She almost gasped aloud when she saw his stomach muscles strain and tighten. And she did emit a tiny whistle of air when she noticed the solidness of his thighs, the bulging muscles of his forearm, the wide shoulders, narrow waist, and especially the way his manhood was cupped by the tight shorts, outlining it in vivid detail.
She looked away when Zora smiled at her. She turned. Joanie was without a destination, but when she saw Zora, he whom she sought, it came to her that it would be very exciting if he forced an encounter, perhaps even forced sex upon her. Perhaps he would even rape her, she considered, feeling the moist grip of excitement at her thighs. Then, for a moment, while she thought about it, panic took her and shook her. Joanie looked around, looked at Zora again and could not keep from smiling slightly, as if proffering an invitation. Then she turned and walked away from the recreation area, across the grass to the visitors section which she skirted until she came to the path that led into the woods. She paused and glanced over her shoulder, half-hoping, half-fearing that the mammoth man was following her. She saw no sign of him and knew a knot of disappointment.
Joanie disappeared into the woods.
She paused and looked around again when she reached the clearing. There was no sound that told of a passion infested man making track to intercept her. She continued walking until she came to the beach and the lake.
The sand felt smooth beneath her sandles. She paused and removed them, then walked barefooted to the edge of the water. It was cool, made her wish to enter it. Then she did slowly wade into the lake. The buoyancy of the water was pleasurable too, made Joanie feel lifted and light as if she were dancing in a dream. She moved to where the water reached high on her thighs and remained there a few minutes. The water lapped at her and could not reach her, then a tiny wave did strike, smearing its wet mark at the exact outline of her shorts cuddled womanhood, darkening the material of the garment so that it looked like her femininity itself was exposed darkly from within. Then she turned and headed back to the shore.
Joanie walked far back on the beach to where the woods began. Again, she stood perfectly still and listened. This time her mental search was rewarded. There was a woody rustle of movement to her right. She turned quickly as her heart began to thump heavily. She peered through trees and branches and bushes trying to see the cause of the noise. Then it was not necessary. The big frame of Link Zora stepped out from behind a tree.
Joanie gasped and brought both hands upward to her breasts. As she held herself and stared at Zora, she could feel her heart thumping in her chest and the hard, sudden greater extension of her nipples.
Zora grinned. He was dressed in his gym tights and all of his bare body was bathed in sweat. It even glistened through his dark, curly hair. And his large, white teeth sliced through the darkness of his complexion and looked snapping and savage. Joanie looked at all of him and when her eyes centered at his thighs and she saw the mammoth, pushing, extension of his masculinity, she gasped again and brought one hand to her mouth. Zora walked forward. "Hi, kid." he said. Joanie froze in her tracks.
When Zora stood next to her, towering above her like a skyscraper, he nodded toward the wet spot on her thighs, then laughed and said, "Whatcha got there, kid? Passion mist?"
Joanie retreated a step. "W-Who are you? What are you doing here? How long have you been watching me?"
"For years and years, little girl," Zora replied. He reached a hand out and touched at her left breast.
Joanie snapped her body away from him. She had seen that indignant motion in a movie once and was sure she had duplicated it exactly. But she was not sure what the movie heroine had been meant to feel. She knew only what she herself felt; extreme and urgent sexual wanting.
"I'm. not afraid of you," Joanie said, shifting her shoulders a bit, snapping defensively before there was a reason for defense.
"Well I'm scared to hell of you, little girl," Zora replied, "But I'm going to try and get over it right now."
His hand shot out like a snake's head. He grasped Joanie by one shoulder and jerked her close to his body.
Joanie crushed against him and felt the sharp stab of his manhood hit high on her body. A flush of fear-desire swept her. She struggled, but Zora held her close against his body.
Quickly, the giant convict raised his free hand" to her hair, grabbed it and jerked it backwards. He leered into her face.
Joanie twisted and turned her body, but her struggle was no good against the immense strength of Zora. He strained her head back a bit further, then smashed his mouth against Joanie's.
The girl continued to fight him for a few seconds, then she relaxed her body. She was very aware of the throb of Zora's manhood, very aware, too, of his probing tongue. And she was aware of the sensations that swept her own body; the heat of all of her, the moisture at her thighs, the nipple-hard pushing of her breasts against Zora's bare body. And her sensations won out over fear. Her body went limp, her mouth opened, then she caught Zora's tongue and nibbled and drew upon it while she shook her head slightly and lovingly from side to side.
Zora gasped and jammed her closer to him. A hand shot to her buttocks and pinched all of the flesh together in a small, tight ball. The other hand moved from her hair, released the grip there, then went between them to clutch her halter, hesitate, then rip it from her body.
"Ohhh, don't," Joanie breathed, tearing her mouth away from his.
The words were a lie. Her body cuddled closer and' she felt the racing of her blood.
Zora released his grip upon her, then pushed hard against her breasts. She stumbed backwards, caught herself and straightened.
Zora moved toward her again. He paused directly in front of her. Then, as if he were performing some secret ritual, he hooked his fingers inside his tights and pushed them down and away from his body.
When he stepped out of them and faced her directly, Joanie screamed. Her eyes glared at the bull-like dimensions of his manly symbol. Then she screamed again. Now, she was not play-acting, she was not pretending at sophistication and desire. She was afraid; terribly afraid. The sudden sight of Zora's manhood was enough to jolt her to the reality of her limitations; those limitations that told her that no girl of young years could possibly subdue, or even attempt to subdue, the titanic power and lust of such a man.
"What's the matter, baby?" Zora laughed. "Ain't you ever seen a real man before?"
Joanie did not answer. But Zora's words made her instantly recall every boy she had ever handled, their strength and anxiety, their power, the steam of their desire and the flush of their release. Even with them it had sometimes been difficult-especially at the beginning, she recalled. But with the inmate! Never! It'd be impossible! Yet, with all the fear, with all the recall that caused her to realize the awful fate that might be hers with Zora, she knew a certain curiosity, desire, lust, to compete, to see if she could possible take him and quiet his angry, hot manhood.
Zora moved closer. His strength jerked closer toward her, sprinking like a bear trap, reaching out to her like an evil serpent.
And Joanie turned and started to flee.
Zora bounded upon her before she had gone a half dozen paces. Again, he gripped her hair. Then he brought his other hand to her shorts, gripped the waistband, and tore them from her body.
She whimpered as she felt the sudden coolness of the lake breeze strike at the sparseness of young womanhood. Then she cried out as Zora forced her to the ground, pinned her flat, then rose himself to again grip her hair and drag her off the beach and into the woods.
She looked up at him when he again released his hold upon her hair. He seemed as tall as the trees which surrounded them. He seemed more massive than the trees, and the branch of him that was his masculinity was rougher and harder and more fearful looking than any sight Joanie had ever seen. Yet, she did not again thrash or hurry to seek escape. She knew that it was impossible.
Zora kneeled before the child. He rested on his heels, then reached, gripped her beneath the knees and jolted them upward until they were braced. Then he looked at her. Even resting on his heels, the massive strength of him nearly touched at the font of her girlhood. He moved slightly, causing a light jab against her.
Joanie shivered and turned her head.
Zora laughed cruelly. Then he raised, touched, made a placement and thrusted forward with the fury of a bull charging a red cape.
Joanie's scream tore through the woods. Zora slapped her, spinning her head to the side. Then he drew back and jammed forward again.
Now, no scream issued from the girl. She only whimpered and cried and twisted her head from side to side in a mad, hurt effort, as if she were chasing away a very bad dream.
Zora tore himself faster and faster to the girl's body. He achieved her, relenquished her, then achieve her again. He thrusted deeply. He spun a bit. He bloated fabulously. He lurched and lusted and fettered her helpless by his massive strength, his great taking of her young body. He ravaged her with the anger and revenge and great, great hate that had been building within him all of his life. And then that anger and hate for all of mankind issued from him in a dam-breaking flood, ripping from his body to hers with the uncontrolled fury of a wild fire hose.
Jonie's eyes bulged and hurt as she received the final thrash of his body. And though fear and an unconsciousness that was meant to disguise that fear swept her with a gush, she could not deny the response her body made to the mighty Zora. She thrashed and arched, held high, relaxed, bobbed up and down, ground, tortured her body as tight as she could to him, ripped her fingernails down his hairy chest, felt blood and clutched it, felt the swollen, hurtful place of her receiving throb and undulate, felt the rapids of him rushing at every place of her, then she went limp as her eyes first rolled, then closed while she left the reality of the mighty Link Zora drawing back from her body and pushing to his feet.
He looked down at the unconscious girl. He thumped his chest and raised his head high to the sky as if he were about to chant some savage, victory call. But he did not. He only laughed. Then he hurried into his trunks and ran through the woods in the direction of the trusty compound, looking for all the world like a man bent on trouble-the trouble he could not deny himself, that which was even more important than escape, the trouble with which he could vent his fury against all of mankind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tess Stewart had just stepped from the shower, slipped into a short, terrycloth robe and knotted the belt at the side when the prison siren began its sharp and terrifying wail of trouble.
She froze in the middle of the bathroom floor. Her eyes rounded large in fright. She felt a gush of terror cramp her stomach and stab at her chest. Then she broke her pose and dashed for the stairs, desperate to descend them and find her brother.
Tess was midway down the stairs when she found Clive. She stopped and again cramped with terror. Clive Stewart, warden of the prison, waited at the foot of the stairs for Tess. A scowling convict was at each side of him. Each held one of his arms which were stretched behind him and tied.
"Don't do a thing," he quickly shouted to Tess. "Do exactly as they tell you. Don't scream-don't try to get away. They're holding us as hostages. They won't-."
"Shut your cuttin' mouth," a voice shouted from the foyer entrance.
Tess turned and saw Link Zora filling the doorway. He wore only inmate trousers. A big, black gun was stuck in the belt at his right. A homemade knife was in a crude, leather sheath at his left.
Zora walked to the foot of the stairs and grinned up at Tess. "Come on, baby, get down here. We've all got a little walk to take. And baby, I can't wait. I've heard about you. Man-I can't wait."
The convict on the warden's left darted his eyes about, then turned to Zora and said, "Come on, Link, let's get the hell out of here. Listen to that goddamn siren."
"Pretty ain't it," Zora said.
"Let's go," said the other convict. "They'll have the state troops and all the fuzz in the place down on us in a minute."
"Stop worrying," Zora said unconcernedly.
"Listen, Zora," Clive Stewart said. "You'll never get away with it. None of you will. Now, give up your arms and tell the men in the supply building to surrender, and maybe it won't go so bad for all of you."
"Listen to punkie warden," said Zora.
"Yeah, he really squeals," said one of the convicts.
"At least leave my sister alone," Clive blurted. "Leave her here-she'll stay, she won't do a thing if I tell her not to-leave her, take me hostage with the others, but leave Tess here."
Zora laughed, and in a moment it reached a high pitch that matched the terror-shriek of the prison siren. And the laugh and the siren sounds were suddenly joined by the sharp crack of gun fire coming from the direction of the prison proper.
The three convicts looked in that direction. One of them said, "Man-those studs must be having a ball."
"Yeah," Zora agreed. "But they got their signals crossed-they moved sooner than I wanted them to. Come on, let's get the hell out of here and over to the supply building. We can stand 'em off from there until they meet the condition we want."
Tess looked at them and did not move. Zora, taking three steps at a time, leaped up at her, grabbed her forearm, then pushed her brutally down the stairs. She fell on her side with a groan. Her breasts tumbled out of her robe and the skirt of it flew to her waist, exposing her long, bare legs, her hips, the pinched lines of her belly.
Zora was at her side in a second. He grabbed her hair and forced her to her feet. When Clive tried to bend forward to assist her, Zora slapped him hard across the cheek.
"Don't, Clive," Tess warned. "I'll be all right-just don't try anything."
"There-did you hear the little girl?" Zora asked Clive. "And wardie, old boy, you better believe her."
The convicts at the arms of Clive, twisted him around and pushed him toward the front door. Zora pushed Tess ahead of him.
Tess sensed a difference that had come to the whole area as soon as she stepped out of the house. There was an absence of guards and convicts. The area was deserted. Yet there was the heavy feeling of violent action being committed.
Zora and his assistants led their hostages through the deserted trusty compound, around the recreation area, diagonally across the visitors section and finally to the supply house which set just outside the prison walls at the last end.
When they paused at the supply house door, Tess saw convict faces looking from every window. And she saw the sights of rifles and pistols and one machine gun nosing from every office of the building. She had that late-TV-movie identification of an Indian captive being led to the troopers fort.
But when the door opened and she was pushed inside the room, she lost all sense of identification with anyone or anything except the terror of the moment-a convict riot and the horror of being held a hostage by such desperate, violent men.
She was not alone. In a corner of the room, Tess saw Lisa Matthews and Cora Quinn sitting on the floor, their backs flat to the cold cement wall. Lisa was dressed only in bikini panties and bra and high heeled shoes. Cora wore only a half slip. And across from them their husbands, Burt Matthews and Harry Quinn, sat in a similar position. The captain and lieutenant of the guards, however, were minus all their clothing. They looked very shaken, very, very humble. And around the hostages the convicts milled. Some remained stationed with their weapons at doors and windows. Others walked around. Tess saw one of the inmates stop in front of Burt Matthews. The convict grinned, then slapped a terrific blow across the lieutenant's face. Then the rioting convict walked over to Lisa, bent down, gripped one of her large breasts in his hand and bent down and kissed her viciously. Tess saw that Lisa did not resist the kiss. She even raised her face a little in order to receive it more fully.
"You over here," Zora shouted to Tess. He indicated a place in the center of the floor, away from the others.
When she sat down, Tess had a fleeting thought of York Harvey. She wondered if he, too, was held hostage inside the prison walls. She ached for his presence, and this realization of her need for him, her desire for him, gave her confidence. She looked around again, but saw only the leering faces of the convicts. She noticed one particularly, the new, young trusty, Bob Hatter, he of the pent-up fury, he whom she had teased upon his arrival at the trusty camp. She shuddered, thinking of the cruelty of herself and hating herself for it.
"When are they ever going to answer our message?" some unseen convict at a window asked. "Christ-I'm getting the creeps just waiting here."
"They'll answer soon enough," Zora told him. Then he laughed and added proudly, "Just think-first time in history that a prison riot has ever been led from the outside-from the goddam trusty camp. Ain't that something?"
"Yeah," agreed another unseen man. "Most trusty-pimps run. Escape."
"Either that or they team up with the goddamn screws," hollered another.
"Hey, Zora," a convict called down from a second story window. "There's some activity around the personnel office. Some of our boys are with civilians. These binoculars aren't much good but I think they're prison men."
"Don't worry about it," Zora called back. "Just keep an eye on 'em."
Two convicts, Flipper Charles and Hank Bower, walked over to Zora. They grinned around the room; looked luridly at Tess and Lisa and Cora. Then leered evilly at the warden and the other men.
"Hey, for crissakes, Zora, I'm all tensed up," Charles said.
"Me too," Bower agreed. "Tense-like I got to do something to calm me. You know, unwind the old springs."
"Well, hell, be my guests," Zora replied. He extended his hand to the girls. "Go ahead, unwind."
"Hold it a minute," a tall convict said. "I got another little idea first."
"What's that?" Zora asked.
He pointed to Captain Quinn, then said, "Well, you know how the Cap here likes the punks, eh? The way he don't do much for this little chick of his because he prefers the boys. Well, why don't we show his old lady what he does to 'em?"
"Hey, that's juicey," Bower said.
"Yeah, mean-mean as hell," Flipper Charles agreed.
"Then," the tall convict continued, "his old lady might not feel so bad about being neglected. And maybe the old Cap here will understand why the Mrs. has gotta play with the trusties so much, eh?"
"Yeah," breathed Flipper Charles. "That sounds as educational as all hell."
"It is. Absolutely. I'll do it in the name of science," the tall convict said, puffing his chest out, trying to look very noble.
"Oh, you're such a goodie-good," Bower said.
Zora turned to where Captain Harry Quinn sat nude next to his lieutenant. "Get up Quinn-get your rump up off that floor and get it over here."
Tess watched as Quinn stood up, then obediently moved to the tall convict. Tess stole a quick glance at Cora Quinn. The girl's eyes were wide with surprise, yet she did not look frightened.
The tall convict reached and grabbed a straight backed chair. He pushed it at Quinn, then said, "Brace yourself, you lousy, prison pimp of punks."
Captain Quinn glanced furtively about, then stared for a moment at his wife. Then he took the chair and did as he was instructed.
Tess felt like turning away when she saw the tall convict lower his zipper. But she did not. She was horribly surprised that the tall convict had actually mustered passion for the jutting, white buttocks of the Captain of the Guard. But he had; considerably so.
"Go ahead, tear the pimp apart, Tiger," Zora said to the convict.
The tall man approached Harry Quinn from the rear. He gripped each side of the captain's buttocks. He moved close. He paused. Then he lurched dramatically.
Harry Quinn emitted a long exhalation of breath, a wheeze that told all that he had been taken, was bent and subservient to the thrusting power of another man, was receiving that which he had so often given to the young convicts of the prison.
Tess turned from the scene of sodomy to the wife of the subject. Cora was transfixed upon the scene of her husband's use. She looked not at all embarrassed, only relieved that the truth had been given her, that she perhaps now had an excuse for her own promiscuity.
The tall convict thrashed in a fury of final strokes to the rounded presentation of Harry Quinn's body. Quinn moaned at the end and fell more forward on the chair as his violater collapsed, hugged tight a moment, then withdrew and disappeared to the side of the room.
"All right, Quinn," Zora growled. "Now you know what the other end's like. Get up and get the hell over in your corner."
Quinn started to push up from the chair. He looked dazed as he glanced around the room. When his eyes alighted on his wife, they held only a moment then turned downcast to the floor.
"Come on, get," Zora shouted.
"Wait a second," Cora Quinn suddenly shouted from across the room. "Keep the bastard just like that a minute."
All of the convicts turned toward her. Then, catching the tone of her voice, knowing that it meant hate for her husband, they burst in loud, long peals of laughter.
Cora pushed up from the floor. Dressed only in her half slip, she walked to where her husband was braced by a chair. Her breasts jiggled. But it was not a look of passion that was on her face. It was instead an expression of loathing and her own desire to vent her hate upon the man she had married.
Cora sneered into Harry's face. Then she said, "Bend again, you bastard."
He bent. She moved behind him. She looked at Zora and the other convicts, then she gave a slight laugh and looked around the room again. In a moment, she hurried behind them to where various equipment was stored. She sorted through shelves for a minute, then withdrew what appeared to be a long, iron poker with a hooked question mark on its end. She raised it before her, looked at it, grinned, then returned to where Harry Quinn was sprawled on the chair.
"You start swinging that thing, baby, and you're dead," Zora said.
"I'm swinging it, Buster," she said. "But not at you cons."
Cora walked to the bare rear of her husband. She looked at him. She raised the poker and caressed it with her other hand, weighing it, judging it. Then she posed it at the spread of his flesh. She held it there until he turned and cried at her, pleaded, begged, whimpered and blubbered like an idiot.
"Shut up and bend, bastard," she hissed.
Quinn turned. He braced himself.
Cora glanced at the convicts who watched her, then she jammed the poker hard within Quinn until it jolted to a bloody halt.
Quinn screamed madly. Cora slowly withdrew the poker then rammed it forward again. Then again. And finally again and again in a series of probings that seemed sure to split her husband down his middle. And at last, she withdrew the torturous instrument, glanced at the smear upon it, and tossed it to the side. She walked forward and looked at his face, saw that he was unconscious, then threw her head back and laughed and laughed, laughed so hard that her breasts panted and her navel winked like a seeing eye.
"I've got to hand it to you, chick," Zora said to Cora.
She turned and looked at him. Her eyes slowly narrowed in a sensual glare. Then she said, "Well-hand it to me, baby."
The convicts roared again. Zora did not. He stepped closer to the half naked girl. She put her hands on her hips and undulated her body toward him.
"Give the other boys a break honey," Zora said when the laughing had quieted.
"I'll break you all," she shouted, her voice very high and near angry hysteria.
There was a rumble of movement as several convicts hurried toward her. They paused and glanced at Zora. He shrugged and moved away.
Tess, seeing Zora come near her, scooted to the side. Again her robe crept above her thighs. She pushed it down, remembering how she had once never bothered to care whether she was exposed or not. Now she cared. Now she was even frightened at any attention that might be given her body.
Tess tried to draw the attention of her brother, made a move to push herself across the floor toward him. But he detained her, shook his head in a sign that she should remain where she was. She relaxed and stared at Cora Quinn who was hurrying out of her half slip.
Three convicts anxiously tore at their own clothing, anxious to meet nudeness at the same time that Cora achieved it. And they did. Then they paused and looked at the naked girl who faced them.
"Come on, studs," she yelled. "The only thing that will be better is if my old man wakes up. Man-I hope he does."
She lifted her arms and made a small circle, presenting her body to everyone in the room as if she were facing an audience. Then she moved to the three naked convicts. She went to the first, raised one of his hands to her breasts, pressured it there, leaned and kissed him, at the same time dropping her other hand between them to grasp hard at his reaching masculinity. After a long embrace during which her hand manipulated him, she moved to the next convict and treated him the same. And then she moved to the third. And then she departed them all and moved back to the center of the room. She lowered to her back.
"All right, you crummy studs," she shouted. "One at a time. Make it good. Just a little at a time for each of you, but babies, none of you will be sorry."
She stretched her arms out to the side, raised and braced her legs and prepared to meet the hurried assault of the first convict. He went to her. He kneeled. She arched as he plunged then continued the lurching, thumping motion of her body as he pumped himself to her body. She gurgled delightedly, but after only a half dozen strokes from his body, she forced him away from her.
"That's all for now, buddy," she called. Then she shouted, "Next-come and get it."
Reluctantly, and with great effort, Cora's first convict lover rolled away from her and walked behind the two who awaited her.
The next one moved to her front. He took her more viciously, rammed himself to her and groaned his delight with her body. And she topped his call. She screamed and hollered and mumbled words of praise for his masterful taking of her. Again, as she had with the first convict, she allowed him only the beginning of his power, only a dozen fast strokes up the road of passion before she moved to stop him, push him aside and make him wait. But he would not-could not-be delayed. He pressured against her shoulders, forced her flat to the floor and continued his mad assault, And Cora, apparent-ly resigned to his determination, did not again attempt to restrain him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and ground him to a finish, one that was for her, too.
When they separated, Cora, said, panting a bit, "This bastard cheated. But, man-who cares. Next."
The third convict hurried to her. He was a big man and rough. And he deemed to know her another way.
He grabbed her hips and twisted her around, forcing her flat on her belly. Then he jerked her hips high until she braced herself on hands and knees. He touched her, adjusted himself, then plunged forward, grinding as he moved, pressuring and wiggling and asserting his great power. Then he withdrew and plunged again, beginning the slow, long giving of himself.
Tess moved so that she could see the expression on Cora's face. It was the strangest expression she had ever seen, Tess decided. Cora's mouth hung open and her tongue peaked out from it. Her eyes were half-closed. Her brow was creased with little lines. And as she strained and shifted her hips from side to side while remaining in the tight, bent, hands-and knees position, the cords of her neck, pulled and stretched like knotted ropes. But it was her total expression that impressed Tess. Cora looked tremendously moved and thrilled, yet it was obvious that it came not from love, not even from any real sexual drive, that it came instead from hate, and Tess had the flashing thought that this lovely girl, a wife of a prison official, had somehow learned about hate from the convict-men who were specialists in it.
Cora stopped this convict before he completed the act too. Then she called for the first again. He, too, deemed to know her as she was-bent and bitchy. He roared to his finish and it marked a new end for Cora, too.
"YYYYYIIIIIIylylylylyi," she howled as she twisted her hips with all her might.
The convict, limply, withdrew from her. Cora screamed for the second convict-he who had already known her-to once again attend her. He declined her demand. But the third accepted, finished to join with her and feel the glory of his end. And he did-madly, after thrashing at her like a wild and roaring bull.
And then at last Cora Quinn had had enough. She rolled to her side and rested. Then she rose, smiled wistfully, and returned to her place on the floor next to her friend Lisa Matthews.
There were shouts of approval from all the convicts. Then, one warning voice shouted out above the others.
"Hey, Zora-somebody's coming in."
The room grew very still.
Tess felt a jab of hope and she again thought of York Harvey, thought that he perhaps had found a way to save her and the other hostages.
But it was not York who sought admission to the supply building door.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," a man stationed at one of the windows declared.
Another opened the door. In a moment, the young figure of Joanie Hansen came through the doorway. She was dressed in a torn halter and shorts. She was barefooted. She moved slowly and was bent over as if each step caused her pain, as if she were raw and hurting at the area of her thighs.
"Joanie!" her aunt, Lisa, exclaimed, as she jumped up and moved to assist the girl.
Tess looked around the room. Her brother Clive wore an expression of anger. His body was tense, as if prepared to spring. Burt Matthews wore a smug look, a I-told-you-it-would-happen kind of look. And Harry Quinn, Captain of the Guard, had been moved so that his back was braced against the wall. He was only now recovering from the brutal attack by his wife. His eyes fluttered but he still did not know consciousness. Cora Quinn looked indifferently at the bent and limping teen-ager as she proceeded into the room.
Lisa had her arm about her niece and was asking again and again, what had happened. The fifteen year old glanced up at her aunt and slowed her pace. Then she stopped in front of Link Zora and sneered upward at him.
"Hi, little girl," Zora said, his voice gruff and waiting.
"Hi, bastard," the girl replied. Then she said, "No, don't think you're so good-don't think it was just you who did all this to me. A dozen of your cute little buddies caught me when I was leaving the beach." She paused and shivered. "They had quite a time-each one thought he knew a different way to do it. And they did." She shook her head from side to side and allowed her aunt to continue to lead her across the floor. Finally, they sat down together. Lisa kept her arm around the girl and cuddled her close to the comfort of her shoulder.
The convicts forgot the girl and the hurt she had known quickly.
"Hey chums," shouted one. "The Captain's wife gave him the treatment, but what about that pimping Lt. Matthews? Ain't he going to get a reminder of what he does to us?"
Link Zora smiled and turned toward Matthews. "No, I haven't forgotten the lieutenant. On your feet, bastard."
Tess shivered when she saw the reluctance with which Burt Matthews pushed up from the floor. Mad things churned within her and she remembered words of York Harvey, those that told of his belief that convicts were only like their keepers, that there had to be responsibility and normalcy in one before there could be the same in the other. And she thought of her own abnormality, hers and her brother's, and she sadly realized that she, too, along with Clive the warden, had contributed their own misconduct to all the things that were wrong with prison systems-to the things that in a way had caused this very riot. She trembled and felt very, very guilty, but it was a guilt that held hope, too, for Tess sensed that the things she had seen had cured her, that she was now whole and capable of normal life and love and sex. She was glad.
Tess glanced up and saw Burt Matthews slowly presenting himself before Link Zora. Then she saw another convict quickly move to join Zora. She recognized the new man. It was Bob Hatter. Tess felt a new sweep of remorse for the many unfair things she had imposed upon convicts. For a moment she remembered how she had been with Hatter. Then she shook her head, anxious to shake it from her mind.
"Let me get my kicks in on this punk, eh, Link?" Bob Hatter asked his leader.
"Sure, kid. Go ahead," Zora said as he stepped back.
Burt Matthews' eyes grew round and fearful the moment before Hatter smashed his fist fully into the lieutenant's face. There was the sharp, cracking sound of chipping teeth. Then there was the sudden gush of blood as Matthews stepped backwards. Hatter took a step closer, paused, then kicked hard at the naked groin of the lieutenant. Matthews groaned and bent forward, clutching himself, looking very silly, Tess thought, as he stood naked and bent and completely defenseless before the men he had once commanded.
"How you like it, punk?" Hatter hissed. "Think you're going to beat any more cons around-eh?"
Matthews shook his head. But it was not sufficient enough admission to quiet the rage of Bob Hatter. He smashed Matthews' face again. Then again until at last it was a smear of gobbing blood, oozing, bubbling, smearing, running a ragged course down his face to his bare shoulders and chest.
When Hatter again kicked Matthews in the groin, the lieutenant fell forward, clutching at his masculinity, that which was now hurt and bruised, perhaps permanently damaged. He landed on his face, then rolled to his back and blubbered insanely.
Bob Hatter moved closer. He aimed a foot at Matthews' head, preparatory to issuing a final blow there. But before he had the opportunity to drop-kick the lieutenant to unconsciousness, Lisa Matthews jumped to her feet and ran forward.
"Wait-wait," she pleaded. "Don't do it, Hatter."
The convict turned and looked at her. So did the others.
There was a long silence, during which Tess wondered what approach Lisa Matthews would use to save her husband from a brutal blow.
It was not this that Lisa intended, however.
"Give me the pleasure," she told Hatter. "I've been taking it from this rat for years-just like you consso I think it's kind of right I get to hit back at last."
"It's right," Hatter said, moving back from the bleeding form of Burt Matthews.
Tess again looked at her brother. The warden's eyes were sad and he shook his head from side to side. Tess knew that Clive, just as she had done, was reviewing the things of his own life that had helped create the horror they were now attending.
Lisa Matthews moved in front of her husband. She looked down at his bleeding face, at the way the blood dribbled down his naked body. There was a mad, pagan look to her as she stood above the prone form. Dressed in only a bra and panties and high heeled shoes, her body heaving as she breathed hard, her beautiful legs a bit apart as if entertaining sexual thoughts-all of her mood was remindful of the gruesome entertainment once provided within the colosseums of a decadent civilization.
"Don't, Lisa-Don't," Burt mumbled through his bloody mouth.
"Too late, bastard," she rasped at him.
Very slowly, Lisa raised her right foot, the spike of the high heeled shoe aimed at the injured manhood of her husband. Then she smashed her foot down upon him and ground the shoe's heel into him.
Matthews moaned like an injured animal.
Lisa raised her foot and struck him again. Then again and again, so fast that her smashing foot resembled the relentless striking of a trip-hammer. And as she tortured his body, she raised her head high, looked to the ceiling, and parted her lips. Her eyes glazed and she looked as if she were experiencing a sexual thrill, undoubtedly the first of its kind she had ever entertained. And she jammed and pumped her foot to him. Blood oozed and smeared at his groin. He looked bloody and broken, made forever limp and useless, injured beyond repair. He looked cutoff and left not at all like a man.
Finally, Burt Matthews yelped a final time before going unconscious. But Lisa continued her attack for it had become to mean something else to her. She pumped her foot hard and as she did so, she raised one hand to her breasts. She tore the bra from her body. She grabbed one breast and kneaded it madly as she continued to thump her sharp shoe into her husband's groin. And her eyes elongated, grew sensual and wild. Moisture dribbled at the corners of her mouth. And she kneaded and kneaded as she jammed her husband's manhood into total lifelessness.
Finally, she screamed out an eerie call as her body shuddered in some awful climax. Then she stopped the action upon the unconscious body of her husband. Then she also stopped the kneading of her breast. As her breathing calmed, she turned and slowly moved away from the bloody scene. At last, she was next to her niece again. She sat down. Her body sagged. And it was the girl, Joanie, who was meant to comfort the adult. She cuddled the body of her aunt close to her and gently smoothed her hair, patted her like a child and issued soft words of understanding for the hurt that must have been known-hurt, years developed, and only now revenged.
A squeaking sound tore through the room.
"Oh, oh," a convict called out nervously. "It's the P.A. There's going to be an announcement."
"Quiet everybody," Zora ordered.
The room grew deathly still as the P.A. system squeaked some more, quieted, issued a count down to test its efficiency, then merely wheezed, preparatory to an announcement from the prison office.
Tess tensed. So did everyone else in the room, convicts and civilians alike.
Finally, a voice announced, "This is the Deputy Warden speaking. In the absence of the warden, who you hold hostage in the supply building, I am speaking in his behalf." There was a pause, then the voice continued, "But it is not I who will answer the demands you have laid down for the peaceful settlement of this dispute this unprovoked riot. York Harvey, our new sociologist, has that responsibility, so I'll turn to him to talk to you."
Tess felt a glow of warmth cascade through her body. York was all right. He was not a hostage. He was still free to aid the rescue of the hostages-free to be with her again, to learn of the love she had developed for him.
In a moment, she heard his voice. It was stern and determined.
"This is York Harvey speaking," he said. "I have read the demands you have issued for the settlement of this riot. I totally rebuke them."
There was an angry mumble of protest from the convicts around Tess and the others.
"I rebuke them because men who are incarcerated because they have hurt society, have lost the privilege of bargaining," York continued.
"Cut you, you cuttin' sociologist," Link Zora roared. Others joined his angry protest.
"But I'll tell you this," York went on. "Release your hostages-return to your cells and cabins-and I promise that I'll make a complete review of the prison personnel at this prison and make such adjustments as might be necessary."
Tess glanced at her brother. The look that greeted her was strange. The warden looked suddenly very old and very, very tired. And he .looked as if he regretted most of the years of his life.
"You have charged that there is brutality and homosexuality and all sorts of things pried upon you by the prison officials," York Harvey went on. "Well, if that's the case, I'll find it out and the adjustments will be made. Release your hostages and return to your quarters, and I'll call the Governor today and ask for a qualified committee to investigate the management of this prison."
"No!" Link Zora shouted. He leaped to a nearby window, then, angrily, as if he could be heard within the prison walls, shouted, "No. You bastards meet all our terms first-then we release them."
As if York Harvey had been mystically tuned to Zora's hot words, the announcement continued with York saying, "Now-in about three minutes, I'm leaving the office here. I'm going to walk out of these walls and to the supply building. By the time I get there, I want the hostages released and walking to meet me. Do you hear me, Zora? This is addressed to you as the leader of this riot."
Zora mumbled an obscenity. So did a few of the others. But the majority of convicts looked a little awed, a bit startled, as if they could not understand the courage of the young sociologist.
"All right, Zora, I'm starting now," York Harvey said, finishing his announcement. There was the sound of the sudden clicking off of the P.A. system.
Zora, looking black and mad, turned to his fellows and said, "That stud must be nuts. He's coming to get me? He's expecting me to release these pimps before he gets to the supply house. He's crazy! Get the rest of those guns up there by the windows. Get more ammo up there. Man-here's where we blast off."
A sour, frightened taste rose to Tess' mouth. She knew that it came from fear-that which she held for the fate of York Harvey.
"Here the jerk comes," an inmate shouted from a window. "He's just stepped outside the walls."
"Let him come," Zora snarled.
"He's walking right toward us, big as life," the inmate reported again.
"Get your sights on him, men," Zora commanded. There was the sound of movement as rifles and pistols raised and took aim.
"He's about a hundred yards away," the reporting convict told Zora.
"Keep trained on him," Zora said. "The bastard will stop before he gets much closer."
"He might not," an unseen inmate said fearfully. "Then what'll we do?"
"What comes naturally," Zora replied.
"Fifty yards," came the report. Then he began the count-down. "About forty-thirty-twenty-Jeeeez, for Crissakes, when's he going to stop?"
"He'll stop," Zora said. His voice revealed the lie of his belief.
"He's stopping," shouted the inmate.
"See-I told you," Zora said.
There was complete quiet for a moment. Then there was an angry call from York Harvey.
"All right, Zora," York shouted. "Release the hostages. The women first, then the warden, then the others. I'll wait right here until you release them."
Zora smashed his mighty fist through the pane of glass, "Cut you, Buster. I ain't releasing nobody till you tell us we've won-till you agree to our terms."
"I won't do it, Zora," York said sternly. "You heard my announcement. Do as I told you."
"I won't," Zora cried out madly.
"Then I'm coming in to get them," York said calmly.
"Come, and you'll never leave alive," Zora warned.
There was silence. Then Zora hollered to his fellowinmates, "The crazy bastard-he's coming."
"Ten yards-eight, senven, six, five-," the countdown continued, announced by a convict from a second story window.
"Open the goddam door," Zora yelled. "Let the bastard in-I'll take care of him."
The door was pulled open, and two inmates stood at either side of it.
Tess stared straight ahead. In a moment she saw York Harvey enter the room.
York glanced around at all of them. He grimaced at the damage that had been done. Then he sought her eyes, caught them, and asked the silent question-if she was all right.
She nodded. She smiled. It seemed also to tell of her love for him.
York turned to Zora. "All right, Zora, you and your men get back to the cabins. I'm taking these people out with me."
Zora snatched the big, black gun from his holster. His other hand gripped the knife.
"Drop those weapons," York commanded.
"You're crazy, man," Zora replied.
York took a step toward Zora, then another step, then still another one as Zora raised the gun and trained it at York's chest.
"Give me those; you fool," York said sharply. "Give them to me this instant."
"Never," Zora hissed. The gun jiggled slightly in his hand.
York extended his hand and walked the remaining half-dozen paces to where Link Zora stood.
York paused in front of the big man. "Give me that gun and knife. Give it to me now, then turn around and go to your cabin and stay there until I make some decisions about you. I already made a bad one. I never should have released you to become a trusty. But we all make mistakes sometimes, maybe even the likes of you. Now give me the weapons."
"I'll blow your cuttin' head off," Zora said. He steadied the gun.
"You won't, Zora. You haven't got the guts." York paused and stared into the big man's eyes. Then he shouted loudly, "Give them to me this second, goddamn it!"
A tremble coursed through Zora's body. His eyes suddenly looked frightened, as if he had been called and found out.
"Now!" York ordered.
Very slowly, Zora lowered his head and looked at the floor. Then, meekly, he handed York Harvey the gun and knife.
"All right, everyone now," York said, turning to the other inmates. "Leave your weapons here and follow your leader back to your quarters."
All inmate eyes turned to Zora. The big man raised his head, turned, then walked out of the room. In a moment, obeying York's orders, the others followed.
York watched from the window. When the convicts had complied with his instructions, he turned and hurried to Tess. He gripped her, raised her to her feet, then held her close and safe within his arms.
"Let's get out of here," he said.
"Yes," she answered happily. "The riot's over."
* * *
The lake wave struck at her back as Tess and York left the water and walked hand and hand toward the blanket that awaited them on the smooth, sand beach.
They were both smiling, both dressed in swimming togs. And both of them looked very, very happy.
When they settled on the blanket, Tess sighed, then said, "Oh, my, it's heavenly here."
"You're heavenly," York said.
She flushed, then said, "It hardly seem that it all happened-that it's over-that everything is really going to be all right."
"Lots of things happen fast," he said. "Even love."
"Yes, I know," she told him. "But I mean the other things. My brother deciding to retire-Matthews and Quinn discharged-everything, even the convicts, in better shape than they were before. It seems impossible."
"Nothing's impossible," he said.
She smiled at him and felt suddenly shy because of her light bikini swimsuit, for the way her breasts bulged from it and the way it dipped low at her front.
York Harvey did not seem the least bit shy.
He brought an arm around Tess's shoulders, pressured her close, lifted her chin with his other hand, then committed his mouth to hers. His tongue darted. But only for a moment before it was caught by Tess' pretty lips so that she could nibble and suck and draw upon it, seeking, it seemed all of him unto herself so that they could be one.
In a moment they drew closer to such a joining.
York reached behind her and unhooked the flimsy bra. He tossed it to the side and looked at her breasts as they bounced to exposure. Then, very gently, he tugged at her bikini bottom and pulled it down the long length of her perfect legs. Then he stared again. And after he had feasted a full minute, he dragged his own trunks from his body and kicked them from his feet. Then he turned toward his love.
Immediately, Tess stretched long upon the blanket. She felt about to be completed, perhaps truly created for the first time, much as if some new birth was to be given her.
York kissed her hard again. Tess returned the kiss and added a dividend. She reached and grasped his massive, loving strength. She thrilled at the throb of him. Then she knew a new and exiting feeling as he rolled her to her back and raised above her, his mouth above her breasts. Then he lowered. First, he merely kissed the roundness of her. Then he ventured further. He kissed her belly and her ribs and finally the softness of her thighs and the glory of her youthful womanhood, his love for it, his love for all of her expressed so well in this fabulous intimacy.
Tess trembled. Her belly pinched passionately inward before his glorious giving. She brought her arms to his back and gently rubbed at the small of it, then rubbed sweetily again at the rounded sides of his hips. And then she needed to do more-her feelings demanded it.
"Now me, darling," she whispered. "Now I must love you."
She urged him to his back. He went there passively. She rose above him, dangled her large breasts at his face in light, caressing movements that flicked at his lips and eyes, cheeks at his chin and ears, his mouth again, then lowered to pat across his hard, muscular chest, to know the softness of his stomach and the hard rise of it below there. And then she paused. And then she moved again. This time with kisses and tonguing, up his body, to the hard belly roll of him, to his stomach, his ribs, his chest-all the time her tongue whisking back and forth in loving giving, in passion, too, as it grew hard, went dry, then turned moist again.
Finally, she dragged her face down the full length of him. She paused at his thighs. Then she caressed him there, cupping him with her hands in order to know more of him which she could attend. And then she dived and consumed him, loved him, whipped him, caressed up and down the length of him, giving all that she could give; her lips and tongue and mouth-all-everything she felt, all that was hers that she could convey to tell him of her love, her respect, her hope for the gigantic future they could know together.
After a long time, York stopped her. He rolled her and braced her and she allowed him to do his will; to plant her feet, brace her legs, jut and part her knees, to move atop her, to lurch slightly until he attained her, then to move gently within the mystery of the girl who was now his love.
Now, there was no tease left in Tess. She knew only the glory of being taken, held, made a captive by the man he had come to love.
But if her love was sweet and gentle, the movement of her body could not be. It was lustful and hard and pulsating-yearning and demanding of his love, his giving the great length and strength of him.
"Ohhhhh," she gasped. She arched upward, jammed as close to him as she could, then relaxed, was quiet a mere, split-second, then arched again in a new speed, one that matched a growing fury from York.
The passion within her swelled until it seemed she would burst, split open, be made raw and open by the impact of all the sensations that gathered, joined force, reinforced with new strength and pushed for outlet, demanding the unlocking of all emotion, all love, the harsh rush of their joined release.
And it came. Mightily.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh," Tess cried. Her hips bounded like popcorn popping.
And the thrill split its opening within her. She shouted, cried, blubbered and groaned and moaned and issued the long call of love completed-that which had been known from the beginning of time.
York had the might of armies. He churned and plunged, hesitated a moment, shifted his assault from side to side as he plunged, kept it that way as he drew back, then committed it again and again to the receiving body of Tess.
"Yes," he answered. "Yes, dear Tess, yes, yes, yes, yes."
Their bodies collided. They fought like desperate hunters who had found their prey. They smacked together as hard as a handball. Their arms and legs entwined; they scratched and bit and drew blood from one another. And at last they descended with a crash from that high, high scale of love's highest peak. And they were quiet. They loved. They rested.
It was a long time before they moved again. When they did, it was toward each other's arms. And as York clutched her close, sheltered and comforted her body that would very soon know another, fierce sexual calling Tess thought how happy she was-how happy she would always be as long as they were together.
