At night, in the secrecy of her bedroom, she would then try to re-love her girl friend's stories. She would close her eyes and pretend that it was she whom the boys were fondling, but just when it would start to feel real good, she would slip away into a dream-tossed sleep. In the morning, the frustration and the needs of her young body would return. Those same needs were present now. She wanted Lou inside of her, but wanting and having were in two different worlds.
Frustrated and near tears, she flung herself across the length of the living room divan. The protruding hardness of the divan's springs pressed at the naked insides of her thighs. She shuddered.
"If only I wouldn't think about sex so much...."
But escape was impossible. She was a slave to sex and today was the worst. Throughout the afternoon, her mind had been preoccupied by sexual daydreams, and now that Lou was overdue coming home from the office, her desire was at a frenzy.
She buried her face in the toss pillows and tried not to think about sex, but it was everywhere. Without even pretending, the hardness of the divan beneath her body was the hardness of Lou.
Suddenly, and without any conscious effort, Joy now moved against that hardness. Her toes curled and she strained her lithe, tapering limbs to press still harder. The tide of passion had been growing in her body all day and now it was out of control. She was no longer simply rubbing her pelvis against the divan. Now it was something more vigorous, more wild. Her hot young buttocks raised and lowered themselves with a rapid pumping motion that was as old as time....
CHAPTER ONE
Joy was naked when the phone rang. That would be Lou, she thought, saying he had to work overtime again. It never failed. She picked up the phone.
"Honey, I hate to tell you this but ... "
"Bastard!"
"Honey, these contracts have got to get out tonight."
"What about me, Lou? Maybe your wife would like to get out tonight, too."
"I know it, babe, only Wilson is crying his heart out over those contracts ... look, it won't be that late. We could still go out for dinner and maybe take in a movie. How about it?"
Joy realized that it was futile to argue with Lou. Competing with Lou's advertising agency was worse than competing with another woman. Besides, maybe she was being slightly unreasonable.
"How late will you be?"
"I dunno for sure, but it shouldn't be too long."
"What if I get hot?"
"Huh?"
"You heard me. I just climbed out of the tub and I'm naked, and I said 'What if I get hot?' "
"Then turn on the fan."
"Bastard!"
"My friends call me Mr. Bastard."
"I'm not your friend ... I'm your wife, and just for that I'll call the janitor and tell him I've got a leaky faucet."
"He's too old to cause me any worry. Now if he were a young janitor...."
"Maybe I can make him young, Lou. I'll let him kiss my nipples and rub his hands all over me and...."
"For chrissakes!"
"But I'm hot," she pouted.
"So I'll get there as soon as I can."
"An hour?"
"No more than two."
"Promise?"
"Scout's honor," Lou said.
"And if you aren't here," she answered, "that janitor is going to get more than a leaky faucet." She grinned and cradled the phone. Then her hands cradled something else-her breasts. They were tingling with desire, lush and provocative, begging to be fondled and sucked, and if Lou didn't soon do something about them....
She closed her mind to the nagging desire and went to the bathroom. She combed out her long dark hair, fluffing it the way Lou liked it. When she was done, she sprayed more of Lou's favorite cologne over her body. When he finally did arrive, he was going to be in for a surprise. She was going to remain naked, and that was the way he would find her: hot, naked, and willing. The hell with the dinner and the hell with the movie.
She took a final appraisal of her make-up, and it was as Lou would have liked it. Her blue-green eyes were high-lighted with just the right amount of pencil. Her lipstick-a bright cherry-red-made her full mouth seem all the more sensual. Then her eyes strayed lower....
She pulled herself away from the mirror. Mirrors did crazy things to her-they always had. When she would see her ruby-tipped breasts jiggle in front of a mirror, it was all she could do to keep from grabbing them and squeezing the hell out of them. Even as a teenager, Joy had been sexually aroused by mirrors, but those were years that she preferred not to remember.
Her Indiana parents had been unreasonably strict with her. She had never been permitted to go out with boys like other girls, so most of her experiences were lived secondhandedly by listening to the stories of others.
Some of the girls at school were quite frank in their confessions. They told Joy how boys took you to a movie show in town and how they put their hands under your sweater and inside your bra. They even told her how good it felt.
Joy was always a good listener. Just hearing about these things excited her, and she religiously memorized every lurid detail they described.
At night, in the secrecy of her bedroom, she would then try to relive her girl friend's stories. She would close her eyes and pretend that it was she whom the boys were fondling, but just when it would start to feel real good, she would slip away into a dream-tossed sleep. In the morning, the frustration and the needs of her young body would return. Those same needs were present now. She wanted Lou inside of her, but wanting and having were in two different worlds.
Frustrated and near tears, she flung herself across the length of the living room divan. The protruding hardness of the divan's springs pressed at the naked insides of her thighs. She shuddered.
"If only I wouldn't think about sex so much...."
But escape was impossible. She was a slave to sex and today was the worst. Throughout the afternoon, her mind had been preoccupied by sexual daydreams, and now that Lou was overdue coming home from the office, her desire was at a frenzy.
She buried her face in the toss pillows and tried not to think about sex, but it was everywhere. Without even pretending, the hardness of the divan beneath her body was the hardness of Lou.
Suddenly, and without any conscious effort, Joy now moved against that hardness. Her toes curled and she strained her lithe, tapering limbs to press still harder. The tide of passion had been growing in her body all day and now it was out of control. She was no longer simply rubbing her pelvis against the divan. Now it was something more vigorous, more wild. Her hot young buttocks raised and lowered themselves with a rapid pumping motion that was as old as time.
Suddenly, she caught herself and stopped. I never needed it so badly in all my life, she thought, growing limp and clenching her fists. If Lou were here right now....
She clutched herself between her legs. If that damned guy doesn't come soon, I will.
Then startled by the response her hands were bringing her, she withdrew them and went to the kitchen to mix a drink. She supposed that it was wrong for a young housewife to pad around her apartment without any clothes on, but living on the eighth floor of an apartment building, one didn't have to worry about Peeping Toms. Besides, it would serve Lou right if someone did see her.
After she had mixed herself a drink, she returned to the divan and stared idly off at space. With very little effort, she could still daydream sexual fantasies like she had as a teen-ager. She did it constantly, sort of rehashing her childhood and pretending how it might have been. It was cheating on Lou, in a way, because when she daydreamed, it was forever about boys, and she was always permitting them to do things to her. But it helped to pass the lonely hours when Lou was at the office, and the daydreams made her all the hotter when he did arrive.
Tonight, for instance, she imagined herself at a drive-in movie. She couldn't make out the boy's face, but that wasn't important.
She had worn a pair of tight-fitting short-shorts to emphasize the exciting mole of her young behind. And let's see-she'd have worn a tight sweater and the hell with the bra. The boy would be a little bashful, so she'd kind of have to encourage him, sort of shove her magnificent boobies right in his face.
And now ... well, he'd kind of slip his arm around her and she would draw in close. Naturally, her sweater would be low-cut, and he'd see the swell of her breasts and so he'd kind of start squirming and she'd know he was getting excited.
Then his fingers would start roaming, only she'd pretend like she was real interested in the movie. Suddenly, his hot hands would reach her nipples and that would drive her almost out of her mind. She'd pull the sweater up and press her budding breasts into his mouth-Joy caught herself and blotted out the picture-dream she had been enjoying. She had never been so hot in all her life. If Lou were here right now, she would do anything he wanted-yes, even kiss him down there. She had always been reluctant to do it before, and Lou-considerate as he was-had never forced her.
Tonight, though, he wouldn't have to force her.
She gulped her drink down. Small beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead. Impatience swelled to anger.
But Lou did not arrive.
Not at eight o'clock. Not at nine.
She was accustomed to Lou's having to stay over at the office, the endless board meetings, and the end-of-the-month market analysis that had to be finished, but the knowledge offered her little consolation tonight. Tonight she was hot.
Tonight she wanted Lou and, perhaps, more desperately than ever before. But wanting, she reminded herself, was not having.
Groaning out loud, she suppressed the urge to fondle herself and went to the kitchen to mix another drink.
The drinks failed to dull her need for sex, but they succeeded in making her desperately sleepy. When Lou still had not arrived at ten-thirty, Joy brought a coat from the closet, draped it around herself and lay down on the divan to wait for him....
Something awoke her. She sat up stiffly erect and blinked her eyes at the surrounding darkness. Fumbling for the end table, she switched on a lamp. The resulting brightness caused her to turn away.
Squinting her eyes, she saw Lou's clothes. His suit coat was flung carelessly over a hard-backed chair, and his tie and shirt, as usual, hung from a nearby door knob.
Lou had left a note propped on top of the TV. Groggy and stiff, Joy moved across the room to read it:
Doll, You looked so comfortable that I decided not to wake you. See you in the morning.
Joy balled up the note and threw it to the floor. Damn him! Why hadn't he woke her?
She kicked at a scatter rug, but her anger was short-lived. At least Lou was home, which was better than a lot of husbands. True, she was disappointed because he had not attempted to rouse her, but he was probably quite tired himself.
But maybe she could liven him up.
She knew exactly how, too.
She started back for the bedroom, but her instinct for neatness told her that she could not leave the living room in such a state.
She gathered Lou's clothes together and it seemed like she was always picking up after him. He's like a little boy, she thought, except in one place.
She hung his coat in the closet. The shirt-that would go into the clothes hamper for dirty clothes.
Suddenly, she saw it.
She balled the shirt tightly in her hands.
She brought it to the light.
There was no mistake.
There was lipstick, a large ugly smear of it, on the collar of Lou's shirt!
Jealousy sent a cold lump plummeting to the pit of her stomach. In blind despair, Joy could only think of one thing: The bastard is screwing another woman!
CHAPTER TWO
Joy did not wake Lou, nor did she even attempt to sleep in the same bed with him. She wasn't sure what this cheating of Lou's meant to her marriage, but for the present, she wanted to be as far away from him as possible.
After a fitful cry, she stretched out on the divan, covered herself, and escaped to her make-believe world of dream and sexual fantasy.
It was a wild dream ... wilder than she had ever experienced....
She was only fourteen years old in the dream, but sun-kissed and lovely, at the age when a young girl sprouts the first blossoms of promised womanhood.
Joy had sprouted aplenty. Her young breasts pushed out and strained against the thin fabric of her peasant blouse. It was the kind of a blouse that her parents had always forbidden her to wear-low-cut and revealing, so that the boys could see the exciting shadow that divided her boobies.
Today, however, and in the dream, her parents didn't seem to care what she wore. As she walked slowly out into the open fields and the wind billowed her black skirt high above her knees, her parents waved at her and smiled.
She felt happy all over. She wanted to sing to the summer sky and dance gaily on the wind. But most of all, she wished for a boy....
And then he was beside her, taller than she, but smiling and attractive and talking, talking as though he had known her for ages and ages.
His name was Tommy and as they marched hand in hand across the sun-swept fields, Joy felt a delicious tingle beginning in her stomach, spreading rapidly to what she called her secret place. They reached the crest of a small hill.
"Let's rest awhile, huh?" Joy said, suddenly pulling him down.
He came beside her. She could tell that he liked her. She saw the way his eyes nervously swept the open front of her blouse, so she pretended not to notice his stare.
"I'll bet you can see almost five miles from here, can't you?"
Tommy lifted his eyes from the bulging ripeness of Joy's bosom.
"Maybe further than that if we go to a place I know."
"Where?"
"A place."
"Can'tcha tell me?"
He studied the jet-black of her hair and watched how the breeze swept it back and forth over her bare shoulders.
"I never took nobody there before."
"Is it a secret, or something?"
"No."
"Then why can't you take me there?"
"I didn't say I couldn't."
"Well, will you?"
"Sure ... if you want to." She stood to her feet. Tommy was quickly up and beside her.
"Is it far?"
"Not really."
"You know what?"
"What?"
"I don't care how far it is. Idon't even care if it's so far we have to stay there the whole night."
The boy grinned at her and she ran ahead in the direction that he had pointed out.
When she reached another small hill, she paused so that Tommy would catch up to her. As she stood there letting her lungs fill with the magic of summer, a sudden gust of wind caught her skirt and carried it upwards to her waist.
She made only a token resistance to bring her skirt down. She saw the color rise in Tommy's cheeks. He had seen the hidden goldness of her parted thighs and, for an instant, maybe more. She had worn thin cotton panties, but she knew by the look on Tommy's face that they did not conceal very much.
He swept along beside her, and this time he broached their youthful shyness by placing his arm around her narrow waist.
She felt good all over. She was glad that summer was here, glad that Tommy was walking along beside her, glad that she could now do all the things that she had ever wanted.
They quickened their steps and presently the ground rose, they spotted a steep summit, and on top of it, a large deserted barn.
"That's it," Tommy announced.
Through awed eyes, Joy scanned the sagging red barn. The shingles flopped at the mercy of the wind and it leaned precariously close to the summit's edge.
"It looks scarey."
"Not inside, it doesn't."
Joy trembled, but Tommy's warm, gentle smile quickly dispelled her fears. With Tommy here, she was afraid of nothing.
She took him by the hand and they climbed the rest of the summit. When they reached the top, Joy sat heavily on an old tree stump.
Tommy was standing over her. So completely still was he, that she thought something was wrong. And then she saw why he was so quiet. Tommy was looking down the loose front of her blouse, getting a perfect view of her enchanting breasts.
To know that he was looking, visually exploring the parts of her that bulged out of her bra, excited her to no end. She had the biggest ones of anyone in her class. All the boys wanted to feel them, but it was Tommy alone who would soon have the chance.
Realizing that he was still gazing there, she bent forward in a mock attempt to tie her shoe. Her blouse fell all the way open. Now, Tommy could see even more.
Her bra was loose-fitting. The maidenly pink of her nipples rose over the top of the bra. She heard Tommy gasp and when she finally came off the stump and stood up, she noted with amusement that Tommy's forehead was damp with perspiration. She had always wondered whether or not she could arouse a boy. Now she was finding out.
"You ready?" he asked.
"If you are."
"Let's go!"
She met his smile with one of her own. Her heart skipped, and clasping his hand tight and with meaning, she urged him out of the bright sunlight and into the shadow of the barn.
"Who does it belong to?" she asked, surveying the broken siding and the dark interior.
"Not to anybody, I guess." He guided her inside.
She was assailed by the smell of freshly-cut hay and if nobody used this barn, then how come....
"Are you sure it's all right for us to be in here?" He nodded.
She was still uncertain, but Tommy's finger was prodding her gently in the back, and she moved ahead into the creaky darkness.
"There's where we're going." Tommy was pointing to a ladder that ascended to the hayloft. "There's more light up there, in case you're scared."
"Who said I was scared?" she snapped at him.
"Well, nobody, but ... "
She went directly to the ladder.
Tommy was quickly after her.
"You can see miles and miles from up there." He was almost close enough to her to kiss her. "You go first. Okay?"
Joy knew why Tommy wanted her to climb the ladder first. He wanted to see miles and miles under her skirt. He thought she did not know-but she knew. Only it was more fun to pretend that she didn't.
Quickly, she started up the vertical ladder. When she reached the sixth rung, she deliberately paused and looked over her shoulder.
Tommy was gawking, all right. In the position that she was in, Tommy was able to see her panties and how the elastic grooved its way into the soft flesh of her buttocks and ... hell, he could see almost everything!
Her heart beat louder and she climbed the rest of the way up the ladder. When she reached the loft, she stood at the opening and waited for Tommy.
He paused on the ladder, stealing another hurried glimpse under Joy's skirt, and then he boosted himself over the ledge and onto the loft.
It was true-what Tommy had said-you could see for miles and miles. In the distance, they could see the town and the multicolored roof tops, hear the bells and the incessant moan of the wind.
"I never saw anything like it in the whole world," she said, crowding her head into the small opening beside Tommy.
"I told you, you could see far." He slipped his arm around her waist.
"If you had a telescope, I betcha you could even see inside people's houses."
"It would be more fun at night, though. You could see what they were doing." His hand moved upward.
Joy pretended not to notice the timorous, gradual movement of his hand. He was not touching her breast yet-and she knew how much he wanted to-but he didn't have far to go.
"We sure are all alone," she said, knowing that this would encourage him.
And it did.
His hand found the gentle slope of her breast. He cupped it ever so gently, holding it as though it were prize china, perhaps afraid that to squeeze it was to alarm her.
Joy continued her passive stare at the landscape, only she wished that Tommy would do more, maybe at least try to put his hand under her blouse. But when it became apparent that he was not, that he was too bashful, she pondered and thought of another idea.
"I'm getting all stiff, bending over like that." She straightened up and pointed to the heaps of straw. "Let's pull some of it over by the window."
He agreed and jumped to his feet.
They worked like beavers, carrying armful after armful of the yellow stuff to the window, and when it was decided that the heap was high enough, they made a running leap for it.
When Joy landed, her skirt rode up somewhere near the edge of her panties, but she made no move to pull it down. Her legs were parted slightly, and Tommy sat at her feet, a straw clenched in his mouth, his eyes boldly staring at everything Joy so readily revealed.
The gold of the straw framed her dark hair in flowing ringlets, and she, too, had placed a piece of straw in her mouth..
"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said suddenly.
"Do you want me to?"
"You can if you want."
And he wanted!
He crept beside her, put his arm around her and found her mouth with his own. She did not wait for the slow movement of Tommy's hands.
Instead, she seized them and pressed them hotly against the outside of her blouse.
Her mouth went open and Tommy caught on. Their tongues met, and a whole new range of sensations raced through Joy's body.
She pulled Tommy over on top of her. She locked her arms around him and then began a gentle up-and-down motion with her hips. He responded with a like motion of his own. She felt the hardness of him, a hardness that she had caused, and only she could satisfy.
She encouraged him to put his hands under her skirt, to feel the insides of her legs and the warm waiting fruit beneath the cloth of her panties.
And while he explored, she explored.
She opened his denims and felt him throb to the caress of her hand.
He, in turn, ventured into the top of her blouse to feel the heated hardness of her eager nipples. She arched her back, forcing more and more of her breasts into his greedy hands.
"Does that feel good?" he asked.
"It feels wonderful, Tommy. Does what I'm doing feel good?"
He groaned.
"We could take our clothes off and it would be easier," she suggested. "Everything?"
"Sure. Why not? There's nobody around but us."
"I don't care."
She sat up and slipped the straw-covered peasant blouse over her head. Next came the skirt. She unfastened it at the side, raised her behind, and pushed off her skirt.
He, meanwhile, had climbed out of his denims and stood over her in just a T-shirt and jockeys. At the moment, the supporter was obviously too small.
"I thought you said 'everything'."
"I did."
"Well, you didn't take your panties or that other thing off."
She lay back in the straw and drew her legs up.
"Why don't you take them off?"
And then the dream went crazy.
Tommy, the boy in the dream, was pulling her panties down, clumsily unfastening her bra and staring in disbelief at the loveliness of her young body.
"Am I pretty?"
"God! Are you ever!"
"Did you ever see a girl ... I mean, with all her clothes off?"
"Just once ... my older sister ... I didn't know she was in the bathroom ... but she's not near as pretty as you are, Joy."
"Aren't you going to take the rest of your clothes off?"
"Sure."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
In a daze, still gaping at her, he numbly removed his jockey.
He was like a young colt, she thought. He came down and crouched on all fours. His youth throbbed mere inches away from her face. Suddenly, she wanted to hold it, to caress it, to feel it jerk and pulsate in the palm of her hand, to finally enter and disappear in the place it was meant to be.
"Lay on top of me, Tommy." He did.
The blood pounded at her temples. She squirmed and wiggled.
"Do you want to, Tommy?"
"What?"
"You know."
"Do it?"
"Uh, huh."
"Gosh, Joy! D'ya mean it?"
"Ohh, yes! Quick, Tommy! Put it in. Quick!"
He did.
In the crazy dream it didn't hurt. Not even a little. In fact, it felt more wonderful than she had even dreamed.
"Ohhh, Tommy!"
He sank deeper and deeper.
"Faster, Tommy! Ohhh, hard! Real hard! Give it to me. Ohhh, Tommy!"
She lurched up as far as she could. His thrust sent her down. But she pumped and they dueled, she, with her virginal legs locked around his waist, he, with eyes rolling dizzily to the back of his head.
"Tommy, I'm ... Tommy, I'm com ... ohhh, Tommy!"
CHAPTER THREE
Joy awoke and found herself having intercourse with air. She pounded her fists against the divan. It was only a dream, but never had she experienced one so vivid.
She lay there with her heart throbbing, her legs wet, and tried to recapture the electrifying beauty of the dream, but as consciousness returned, the dream faded and died.
She sat up and stretched, but she felt horrible. Her mouth was dry, her head boomed, and a night on the divan had hardly been restful.
Blinking her eyes against the harsh sunlight, she stumbled to the kitchen and found another of Lou's notes. All it said was that he would phone her later in the day.
Well, the cheating bastard needn't bother. In fact, she didn't give a damn if he ever called. Two can play that game, she thought. If Lou was going to spread his goodies around in other beds, she-dammit-would spread hers all over New York.
With her anger returning, now that she was fully awake, she went to the bedroom and threw open the drapes. She stood naked before the window. The sun played over the ripe, lush curves of her body. Let the whole wide world see me, she thought bitterly. I hope they do.
But nobody could possibly see anything, she reasoned. Their apartment was on the eighth floor, the building across the street was at least three hundred feet away, and Joy's rebellious exhibition was presumably unseen.
With rising bitterness, Joy hated herself for having been a virgin when Lou married her. Even during their three-year marriage, she had remained faithful to him-but what for? What good did it do? While she sat here pathetically twiddling her thumbs, Lou was feeding the meat to one of those big-titted office bitches.
Well, all that was going to change.
From now on, she thought with determined resolution, anybody who wants me can have me. She did not care if they were young, wild, high school boys or old men. If Lou could give it away, so could she.
And there was plenty to give away.
She was only twenty-two, her body was ripe and hot, and maybe she had not really lived before, but from now on she was going to ride to the moon.
Always before, her thirty-eight-inch bust had been a source of embarrassment. No more. From now on-she cupped the hot, ivory globes in her hands-she would wear tight sweaters, revealing low-cut blouses, anything to show herself off.
Without dressing, she padded to the kitchen and poured herself a double-sized shot glass of bourbon. Joy was unaccustomed to drinking it straight, but she was so angry that she swallowed the bourbon in one swift defiant gulp.
Her throat was on fire. In a rush, the hotness spread to her stomach and coursed still lower to what Lou laughingly called his secret treasure'.
"Buddy," she said out loud, "from now on you're going to share that secret treasure!"
Then she had a second drink and it intensified her wrath. There must be hundreds of men, she mused, who would give their right arm for the chance to take her to bed and fondle her.
Only ... they wouldn't have to give away their right arms.
She would do it for nothing....
Joy had refreshed herself with a cold shower.
Now, minutes later, she stood outside the tub and teasingly drew the towel between her legs. She had already decided who she would give her body to, and it might be fun-contributing to the delinquency of a minor-because the delivery boy at Nuzzo Grocery was certainly no more than seventeen.
Every time that Joy had been in the grocery, the youth had been close at hand and licking his chops. His furtive, dark-eyed glances had annoyed her before, but now....
She wondered if the boy had ever had a girl before. Maybe he was cherry. Maybe he did not know anything. Maybe.....
Her thoughts ran away with her.
If the boy was shy and inexperienced, she would show him how. In fact, she would show him everything, and with that thought pressed to her mind, she went to her dresser to select a pair of panties and a fresh bra.
Hell! Why wear any? She would just slip into a tight-fitting sheath. The green one? Did she dare? It was at least two sizes too small, something she had bought at a sale and could not exchange. It had been too tight and too short, but without any underclothes....
She brought it from the closet, studied it momentarily, then sought to put it on.
It was a battle, getting into it, and when it was finally on, Joy was certain that a cough or unexpected movement would rip it right off her body.
She appraised herself in the mirror that hung from the bedroom door. She was a sight. The dress left nothing to the imagination. Even someone with poor eyesight could make out the protruding design of her nipples. In this, she would drive that Dago delivery boy half out of his mind. Maybe they would both go crazy, and as she rotated slowly before the mirror, she saw that the sheath clung to her buttocks making the separate halves clearly visible.
She combed out her dark hair so that it hung loosely at her shoulders and added lipstick to heighten the lushness of her mouth.
Swinging boldly to the telephone, she called Ruzzo's Grocery and gave the old man who owned the place her order. In broken English, he promised to have the boy deliver the groceries in about fifteen minutes. That was fine, Joy said, and hung up.
Hurriedly, she sprayed herself with cologne, dabbed more of its intoxicating scent in her hair, and then took one last look at herself in the bedroom mirror.
She looked good enough to eat and the thought brought a laugh. The dress hugged her like a second skin, was at least three inches above her knees, and in her rebellion, she secretly wished that Lou could suffer the humiliation of having to watch her.
"I'm going to let a young boy seduce me, Lou," she said, addressing a photograph of him that set on the dresser. "Futhermore, you bastard, I'm going to enjoy it."
In fifteen minutes, and as promised, the boy arrived. His dark eyes swept up and down Joy's body and he came close to dropping the groceries.
"You can bring 'em into the kitchen."
She smiled, walked ahead of him, and her walk was pure hell. She lent accent to each step, knowing what it was doing to her buttocks, knowing what it must be doing to the boy.
She was at his side when he lowered the sacks onto the table. It was no accident that her breast touched the boy's forearm.
The boy was electrified. His young face flushed and Joy felt a tingle of anticipation run through her limbs.
"I'll get my purse," she said, and disappeared into the bedroom. He wanted her, all right, but maybe he was too young. Still-and she had noticed how tight his jeans were-he might possess a boyish face, but he was most certainly a man in the place that counted.
She returned to the kitchen and wrote out a check. She was conscious that he was ogling her and she dallied over the check as long as she could.
"Would you like a little drink before you go back to the store?" She threw her shoulders back, forcing her breasts out in the youth's face.
"I don't know, ma'am ... I mean...." he faltered. He could not take his eyes away from her breasts. Obviously, nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
She removed the bourbon from the refrigerator.
"It's all right," she said, attempting to dispel his uneasiness. "If you won't tell, I won't."
The boy offered a weak smile.
"Futhermore, my husband is five miles away and at work, there's nobody else here but us, so you have to have at least one drink." She pivoted from the sink and gave him her most coaxing smile. "Besides," she lied, "it's my birthday."
"Happy birthday," he mumbled.
"You do drink, don't you?"
"Well, yes, but...."
"Then that settles it," she said, uncorking the bottle, "and since this is a special occassion, it calls for special glasses."
The glasses were a part of the plan, a spur-of-the-moment idea that was bound to have its calculated effect. They were on the uppermost shelf of her cupboards and when she stretched to reach them, her dress....
She slid a chair over to the cupboards.
"Not the best place in the world to store your glasses," she said, climbing onto the the chair, "but at least they don't get broken up here."
She stretched up on her tiptoes and leaned as far forward as she dared. She could feel the sheath sliding its way up her thighs and wondered if the young boy realized that she wore nothing beneath it.
With the goblets at last in her hands, she looked over her shoulders at the delivery boy. There was no mistaking the bulge in his jeans, either.
She extended the goblets.
"Would you like to help me down?"
"Sure." He almost fell on his face coming to her aid.
He clasped her tightly around the waist, but with surprising grace and strength, he lifted her gently from the chair and eased her to the floor. In the transfer, Joy made certain that her body slid against the lean hardness of him.
Let him get a good feel, she thought, and now with her feet on the floor, she felt the surgings of lust that was pressed between her legs.
She remained in his arms. "You're strong!" she exclaimed. The boy glowed.
Joy unwrapped herself from the boys arms and went to the sink with the goblets.
"What's your name?"
"Dominic, ma'am."
Her back was turned to the boy.
"Mine is Joy, Dominic. The ma'am is reserved for people who don't like me."
She came to him with the drinks. Her breasts, threatening to burst through the sheath, were nearly touching his shirt front.
"Why don't we go into the living room?" she suggested.
The youth's eyes darkened.
Joy led the way. She waited until the boy had seated himself on the divan and then she found another chair that would offer him the most favorable view.
She sat down in as careless a manner as she could devise, letting the sheath ride high on the beautiful tan of her exposed thighs. Crossing her legs as slowly as possible, she gave Dominic a glimpse that was certain to tell him that she wore no panties. The sheath dropped away from the underside of her thigh, and this was the way she sat, almost fully exposed, nonchalantly sipping her drink, silently watching the boy's inflamed gaze.
Maneuvering her sheath a little higher, Joy said:
"Do you have a girl, Dominic?"
"A chick?"
"Is that what they call them?" Dominic nodded.
Joy tried to picture Dominic with a girl. Did they have sexual relations? Suddenly, she was hot. Very hot.
"Would you like another drink, Dominic?" She stood in front of him, letting the sun pour through the flimsy fabric of the dress. Dominic could see everything if he looked.
He looked.
"I don't know about the drink," he said, still trying to get the pitch.
"One more won't hurt you," she said, taking it and refilling the glass.
"It ain't that I'm afraid of the drink ... it's old man Nuzzo. If I ain't back there pretty soon...."
"So, tell him you had trouble, couldn't find the address, or something."
Dominic accepted the suggestion with glee.
"Hey, you know, lady ... you're all right."
She sat beside him. She was close enough that her warm thigh pressed against his.
"But not as all right as your chick, huh, Dominic?"
He took a large swallow of his drink.
"Like grapefruits and grapes ... there ain't no comparison."
"Which means?"
He searched for words.
"Like you're in the big leagues and she ... "
"You're still not making sense." She wore more of a grin than a smile. She knew exactly what he was trying to say.
"D'ya want me to spell it out?" He gulped at his drink.
"Well, if it's so terrible you can't say it ... "
"You got knockers, Joy. King sized, juicy. Now, go ahead and tell me I'm a smart punk."
"You said it."
"You ain't mad?"
"I'm flattered." She played nervously with the hem of her sheath. "Any girl would be flattered to hear a boy say something like that."
"Well, it's the truth," he said, staring at the provocative mounds so close to his touch. "And you think I'm in the big leagues, huh?"
"But natch!"
She placed her arm along the top edge of the divan and leaned against him. Her breasts were pushed against his arm.
"How about you, Dominic? Are you in the big leagues?"
He kissed her so quickly, it amazed her, but now that it had begun to happen, Joy gave him no opportunity to retreat.
Her lips parted and she let him taste the titillating probe of her tongue. Her arms went around his neck. She ground her breasts against his shirt front, and as she did so, her nipples hardened and were ready.
There was nothing subtle about him. The wall of shyness dissolved away and his hands sought the hollow of her thighs.
She welcomed his hand, spreading her legs to accommodate him, letting him feel the moist warmth of her, the wordless telegram that told him she was his.
He went wild!
He pushed her over on her back and his youthful hands were everywhere. Whatever he lacked in experience, he more than made up for with his youthful fire.
And Joy saw to it that the fire did not die.
She pulled the sheath dress up to her waist, seized Dominic's hand, and guided it to what Lou called his secret treasure ... But, Lou, my dearest darling bastard, she thought to herself, the secret treasure is secret no more.
Dominic was on her like a madman. His free hand struggled down the front of her dress. He was rough, but Joy did not care. She wanted Dominic to despoil her, to degrade her, to dirty her husband's most treasured possession-the body of his wife.
Dominic cupped one of the hot melons, fingered the nipple and brought it to swift attention.
"God, but they're big!"
"You like?"
"I love." He spoke with clenched teeth.
"I like 'em to be kissed, Dominic. I go crazy when someone does that."
He tore at the dress. His hot mouth encircled one of her globes. Joy moaned. It felt wonderful and she could not have stopped him now even if she had wanted to. And she certainly did not want to.
Her inhibitions vanished, control was impossible. She was all animal now. She needed to be ravished. She needed it now.
Without shame, she reached for his fly. Her eager hand found what it was looking for, too. In fact, she found more than what she was looking for. But so much the better, she thought.
Her hand swept back and forth over him and he throbbed like a new heart. Joy didn't care what happened now. The hell with Lou and the hell with everything!
Dominic was no less insane, either. His fingers poked feverishly between Joy's legs and brought the pitch higher and higher. Without conscious effort, Joy shoved herself against the pressure of the boys hand. Simultaneously, they had reached the land of no return.
Joy stumbled off the divan and led Dominic to the bedroom. She raised the dress over her head and flung it to the floor.
Barefoot, stark naked, she moved to him, took the Fatal Apple in her hand and whispered:
"Now, it's my turn to deliver the groceries."
CHAPTER FOUR
Dominic came at her like an express train. He had a million hands. The hands swept across the lush crevice of her quivering behind, travelled upward past her tapering waist, and never stopped until they reached the velvety warmth of Joy's incredible breasts.
She was frantic with desire.
Dominic was worse.
His nails dug into the soft flesh of her buttocks and sent her sprawling against him. His maleness lodged maddeningly between her legs and his hot mouth covered her with a world of kisses.
The kisses were everywhere. They landed on the hollow of her throat, on the ticklish depths of her ears, and then descended to the exciting pink of her nipples. He fed on her breast like a starving infant. His darting tongue brought chills and thrills that Joy never knew existed.
"Take me, Dominic," she moaned deep in her throat. "Do it to me ... now!"
She tumbled backwards to the bed. Wantonly, her smooth golden legs spread to receive him. He came at her, an uncontrollable flood of flesh and muscle. His dark eyes burned intensely. His expression was wild.
"Give it to me," Joy pleaded. "Hurry!"
He mounted himself between her legs. She reached forth to guide him, but the curly-haired boy needed no guide. He seized the hot whiteness of her buttocks for leverage and plunged himself so suddenly and forcibly inside her, that she screamed out in pain.
But the pain was good.
Like heaven.
She clasped her legs high around his waist and locked them into place. The unison was perfect. When Dominic shoved down, Joy shoved up.
"Deeper," she sobbed. Dominic complied.
He pounded harder. And harder. And harder.
Joy tore at the bedding. Wave after wave of ecstasy spread through her. It was insane. Delirious.
"Dominic ... now ... now...."
He was with her.
Joy shuddered; the boy shuddered, then the spasmodic twitching, thrashing, biting of two insane animals ... and then nothing.
She wanted more. A lot more. But Dominic was limp and exhausted.
"Ruzzo is going to blow his top," Dominic said, after he had dressed and slicked down his hair.
"Why shouldn't he? You blew yours."
He was about to answer, but the phone rang.
They exchanged startled glances. Dominic started to leave, but Joy motioned to him to wait.
She ran into the front room and picked up the receiver.
"Hello," she said. "Hello, bitch."
Joy turned suddenly cold. Had she heard correctly?
"What did you say?"
"Hello, bitch."
"Who is this?"
A horrible laugh carried through the receiver and suddenly the line was dead. "Hello?"
Joy cradled the phone. She stared blankly at space. Then she ran for the bedroom.
"You'd better leave, Dominic." She put a robe around her.
"Something wrong?"
"I dunno. Just leave, will you?"
"I'm going, I'm going."
She saw him to the door, put on the night latch, and sat down to worry about the anonymous telephone call. It could have been a wrong number, she realized, or just some hair-brained crackpot, but never had she heard so sinister a laugh.
She sat there for several minutes, believing that it might ring again, but when it did not, she was positive that it was a wrong number.
Some of her composure returned and she went to the kitchen and made a fresh drink. The delivery boy had been good for her, but maybe too good. She was still hot! In fact, if Dominic were here right now....
The phone rang. She hesitated, then picked up the kitchen extension. It was Lou.
"Baby, I'm going to be a little late tonight. That McGuire is flying in tonight from L.A. and I have to meet him. Do you mind?"
Joy wanted to tell him what a bastard she knew he was, and she was even going to ask Lou what motel he was taking his bitch girl friend to. Instead, she merely asked:
"What time will you be home?"
He was not certain.
"Wasn't tonight the night you were taking me to the movies?"
"I know, honey, but this McGuire is big potatoes...."
And big tits, Joy thought.
"Honey, this one time ... just this once, why don't you take in the movie by yourself?"
"Maybe I will." She sighed resignedly.
"And if I can get away early, I'll phone. Okay?"
With no change in her tone, Joy agreed and hung up.
She was not too surprised over his call. Lately, she reflected, he had been staying over at work more and more. Until last night, she had accepted his explanations, the pressure of business, the chance for a promotion and a promised two weeks' vacation in Hawaii, but now she knew the bitter truth. Lou was screwing other women. He had hot pants.
"And so do I," she said out loud. It took a young delivery boy to tickle that desire to life, and now that her sleeping Cinderella had awakened from its slumber and tasted forbidden gruit, there must be more.
Determined more than ever to give away her body, to accept in return, a man's, she hurried to the bedroom to dress.
It was warm enough for shorts, but since she might go to a movie later, slacks, she decided, would be more appropriate.
From under a stack of forgotten clothes, she drew out a pair of pale yellow slacks. Lou had flatly refused to let her wear them on the street, saying they were too tight. Right now, she did not give a damn what Lou thought. He probably would not approve of this, either, she thought, selecting a yellow nylon blouse, but from now on it would be fun to defy him.
Washing and putting on clean pants and bra, she donned the blouse and snuggled into the slacks. Gold lounging shoes set off all her youthful abundance-that and a last-second dash of fiery-red lipstick.
She was unlocking the door when the phone rang. She had a notion to leave it ring, but at the last minute, charged back and lifted the receiver.
"Mrs. Harmon?"
Joy's hand froze to the receiver. It was the voice of the anonymous caller. "Who is this?" Laughter. And then:
"You have a particularly beautiful rear, Mrs. Harmon."
Joy squeezed the phone so hard her knuckles grew white.
"I might add, Mrs. Harmon, that you also have the biggest tits in New York."
Joy crashed the phone to the cradle. Her hands were like ice. Of all the stinking perverts....
The phone jangled again.
Should she answer it?
Another jangle.
She picked it up.
"You're rude, Mrs. Harmon, and any woman who can wiggle her bare ass the way you can, shouldn't be rude." He gave her a vicious laugh.
"Maybe you'd like to tell that to the police," Joy suggested.
"And maybe you'd like to go...." He finished the sentence with a four letter phrase, one that was as old as time.
Joy immediately hung up.
Obviously, the caller had tried to excite her with his dirty talk. She had heard of sex fiends that thrilled themselves in this manner, and sometimes, the women they talked to.
But it didn't excite Joy.
It frightened her.
What frightened her most was: The man knew her name:
CHAPTER FIVE
Darkness and gloom sent Joy running from her apartment. She locked the door, and five minutes later, she boarded the eighth avenue subway train.
She disembarked from the train at Times Square, and when she climbed the stairs and reached the bright afternoon sunshine, the crowded Manhattan streets, she felt immediately relieved.
She perused the gaily ornamented windows, the midtown novelty and souvenir shops, felt the approving glances of the men she passed, and all thoughts of the anonymous threatening phone calls quickly dissolved in the lazy warmth of New York streets.
Joy knew she looked ripe and ready.
And she was!
She had never felt the need of love so keenly in her whole life. If a young man would at this very minute ask to take her to bed, Joy did not feel that she could possibly refuse. She wanted love badly and if Lou could no longer give it to her, then she would get it from someone else.
Her snug-fitting slacks were a way to the means, too.
When she entered a crowded bookstore near Forty-fourth Street, a short pot-bellied man in his late forties rubbed against her buttocks and made skimpy apologies for the narrow aisleways.
At Forty-fifth Street, a police officer pushing her back against the oncoming traffic, made certain that he pushed her in the right places. His meaty hands cupped both of her breasts.
Later, when she subwayed to Macy's and boarded an escalator, two men clamored behind her to more closely observe what the yellow slacks were doing to her buttocks.
I hope they get the hots, Joy thought. I hope they get them the way I've got them!
She reached the second floor, then the third. She came off the escalator and that was when she heard the shrill, high-pitched female voice she knew so well.
"Joy! Joy!"
"Nancy ... Nancy Ryerson!" Joy gave a startled look at her Indiana school chum. She had not changed a bit: Hair still a stringy blonde, chest flat, mouth as loud as ever.
"Sonofabitch, if I ain't glad to see you. What are you doin' in New York, anyway?"
"I live here. You?"
"Same ... Christ, how long has it been?"
"Almost five years, at least." Nancy switched her gum to the other side of her jaw.
"Man, you look as hot as a two-bit whore. 'Course, when you get right down to cases, that's what we are anyway...." She guffawed. "Whatcha been doin' with yourself?"
And in a crowded lunchroom nearby, Joy told her. Married three years, husband, Lou, an up-and-coming ad man, and they lived in a handsome, furnished apartment riot far from Columbus Circle.
"Dearie, you got it made in the shade," Nancy said, dabbing pie crust from the cheap polka-dotted frock she wore. "Joe-that's my better half-he ain't got the brains he was born with. He pushes a hack and when he ain't doin' that, he's either trying to lay some high school broad or nickle-and-diming down at the poolroom."
She added that they lived in a Bronx tenement, there were two boys-both still in diapers-and life, as far as she was concerned, was just one big bowl of garbage.
"'Course Joe ain't the only piece of meat in the world," Nancy went on, "and once in a while, whenever I can get someone to look after the kids-well, I have my little fun, too, you know."
Joy did not say anything. Back in Compton High, rumor had it that Nancy Ryerson was queer, that she was more interested in girls than boys. But if Nancy was now married....
"Hey! You'll never guess who else from our class is here in.New York."
"Who?"
"D'ya remember Ray Forest?"
"The football player?"
"But who else? And if my memory serves me correct, Ray was always trying to make a quarterback sneak straight into your pants, only you...."
"I didn't like him."
"You didn't have to like him to enjoy him," Nancy said.
"What's he doing in New York?"
"I heard he was a cop, or something, and if I know Ray, he's probably copping a feel." She went into hysterics. Then, after her laughter had died, Nancy asked, "How 'bout you and I, Joy? Why don't we take in the town some night?"
Joy agreed that it was a good idea.
"'Course, me-I get around in other ways. I mean, if a guy don't mind these barren plains," Nancy said, indicating her flat chest, "and he wants to toss the sausage around, who am I to complain? But you ... man, not a care in the world."
Joy suddenly felt like confiding in Nancy. She told her girl friend about Lou, about his fooling around.
"I don't know what to do, Nancy? If I ask him about it, I'm sure he'd lie and deny it, and I don't want a divorce. The hell of it is, I thought everything was so perfect between us and now...."
"Baby, if I had the kind of machinery that you've got, I'd know exactly what to do about it. If this Lou of yours wants to play the field, then-dammit-I'd start rubbing bellies myself."
Joy began to inform her girl friend that this was a course she had already started, but Nancy cut her off.
"You know, God never made bigger apples than that pair you've got. If I was a Lesbian, I'd make a play for you myself."
"You nut," Joy laughed uneasily.
"You know," Nancy started, her eyes suddenly brightening, "I've got an idea. Why don't you let me fix up a double date? I've got a friend who's got a friend-if you know what I mean-and if I can get a babysitter ... honey, this guy is built like a horse. At least, that's what my friend tells me, and we could rent a hotel room or something ... how 'bout it, Joy? Maybe it's just what you need."
Joy hesitated. Nancy's choice for a blind date might not appeal to her.
"Look, honey. When this gorgeous hunk of man crawls on top of you and pours you the potatoes ... honey, you're gonna throw rocks at that old man of yours. How 'bout it?" Joy fidgeted.
"Maybe I could phone you."
"Fine," Nancy said excitedly, "only if I set up this twin-lay, don't back out and screw me up ... not that I couldn't take care of the both of them...." She broke into outrageous laughter. "I'll give you my number."
Joy accepted the phone number, they exchanged pleasant goodbyes, but as they parted, Joy was quite certain she would never use the number. Nancy somehow depressed her and she was certain that her boy friends would be no different.
Bored, now that nothing really exciting had materialized, she wandered vacantly into a neighborhood movie house. She found a seat at the rear of the theatre and when her eyes finally became accustomed to the darkness, she was surprised to see how many youngsters were seated around her.
But they didn't act like youngsters!
They slouched low in their seats, talked loudly, and fondled one anothers bodies as though this were a class in Comparative Anatomy. None of them were beyond their teens, and the pair seated next to Joy could not have been more than fourteen years old.
The girls blonde pony tail was tied with a narrow red ribbon. She wore a black jacket over a monogrammed polo shirt, and her skirt-which seemed to belong more to her boy friend than to her-was pleated and very dark.
"I hope it don'train," a boy behind Joy said. "I ain't got my rubbers."
"So who needs rubbers?" His girl friend laughed coarsely.
The sick joke caught the laughter of the others and it was impossible to hear the lines of the movie. But the see-nothing, hear-nothing ushers did nothing to quiet them. Evidently, the manager recognized the kids as his bread-and-butter and whatever they did was all right with him.
Joy gave up trying to watch the movie. What the boy and girl next to her were doing was more interesting, anyway. They seemed oblivious to her presence, or simply did not give a damn.
The young girl evidenced all the signs of being quite hot. She was molded against the boy, letting him fumble under her polo shirt. Suddenly, she slumped deeper into the seat and put her knees upon the seat in front of her. Her pleated skirt fanned out and slid down her thighs, but she made no effort to retrieve it.
The boy did not overlook the sudden exhibition. It stimulated him even more. One of his hands came from under her polo shirt and moved slyly between her legs. Joy heard the girl's moan. The youngster was obviously enjoying every minute of it.
She showed it by drawing her legs wider apart. Joy was so embarrassed by the spectacle that she wanted to move. But she didn't. Something about what they were doing also excited her. She couldn't move. She couldn't even breathe. Damn, if the boy wasn't going to try and take her right here in the theatre!
Joy was fascinated.
The girl was breathing more rapidly now.
The boy's one hand was obviously inside the girl's panties-if she wore any. The longer Joy watched, the hotter her own desire grew. She felt as though this were personally happening to her.
"Harry!" the girl gasped. She was trying to pry the boy's hand from between her child-like thighs.
"What's wrong?" He was irritated.
"Harry, I'm ready to flip."
"So we flip together."
"Not here!"....
"Like who gives a damn?"
He swept her out of the seat to straddle his lap. He kissed her, and all during the kiss, he kept up the steady massage of her breasts.
Gasping in disbelief, Joy witnessed the girl's panties being slid down to her knees. They had evidently done it in the theatre before, because each of them attained the proper position and state of undress with a minimum of attention.
Joy was burning up. She heard the sound of a zipper-the boy's pants. She looked away briefly, and when she looked back, she knew that the boy had entered his girl friend. She heard him groan, saw the humping upward motion of his hips, and heard the scratch of nails against leather-the young girl clawing the boy's jacket.
The girl joined the rhythm, raising and lowering herself, wiggling to feel the full benefit of him, and then moaning quietly herself.
Joy was nearly out' of her mind with desire. She felt like a sexually aroused cheerleader.
Finally, in a profound sweat, her legs moist, Joy stumbled out of her seat and fled from the theatre.
She ran for three blocks and then, exhausted, paused to catch her breath. Almost instantly, a late model car pulled over to the curb and a middle-aged man, ruddy-complexioned and slightly tipsy, asked Joy if she wanted a lift.
Joy eagerly accepted the stranger's offer. After the car skidded from the curb, Joy thought she must be out of her mind. To get into a car with a perfect stranger ... but how do you reason with the quivering madness between your thighs?
Joy struggled to blot away her fears and turned to concentrate on the stranger. He was probably wondering what kind of a pot of gold he had fallen into. He declared that his name was John, did not bother to offer his last name, and finally said:
"How far are you going?"
Joy was glad that he was partially drunk. She pressed her firm breasts against him and said:
"As far as I can go!" With that, she immediately opened his pants and began to fondle him.
Drunk or sober, John was thunderstruck.
He wheeled the car over to the curb and almost hit a telephone pole. He kissed Joy and she never ceased the mad fondling of him.
He tried to stop her. Tried like crazy. But all at once, it was too late.
"You bastard!" she screamed at him, flung the door open and broke from the car.
He was still thunderstruck, shouting at her, still trying to figure out what had happened, when Joy rounded a corner and disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER SIX
Lou was in the kitchen eating a chicken sandwich, when Joy returned to the apartment. She did not speak to him, but went directly to the bedroom and climbed out of her clothes before Lou made some smart comment.
Wearing a housecoat and slippers, she came into the kitchen and got down a highball glass.
"How was the movie?"
"Lousy," Joy answered. She thought she could catch Lou in a lie. "You're home early, aren't you?"
Lou took a large bite of his sandwich.
"Slightly. McGuire came in on an earlier flight."
More lies, Joy thought. She opened the refrigerator and brought out a tray of ice cubes. Lou came off his chair, approached her from behind, and gently squeezed her buttocks.
"You mad about something?"
"No," she said, but she dared not look at Lou. He was taller and more broad-shouldered than most of the white-collar boys who worked the ad agencies, and his warm smile was disconcertingly contagious. Joy did not care to smile.
"You act kind of cold," he said, still massaging her rump. "I don't feel well."
"I was kind of hoping you did," Lou replied. "I invited McGuire up to have a nightcap with us."
"Tonight?" She frowned at the clock. "It's after ten now."
"So what's another hour or so? McGuire is the big boy from our Los Angeles bureau, and your precious Lou was bestowed with the personal honor of meeting him, hosting him, and otherwise showing him the town."
Joy was not impressed. She dropped an ice cube into her glass.
"Joy, I've been hovering for a shot at that new Los Angeles agency that we're opening next month, and McGuire, according to the grapevine, wants to promote somebody out of our New York office." He pulled a kitchen stool over to the sink top where Joy was mixing her drink. He ran his hand under her housecoat. He stroked the area between her thighs. "Baby, I've got the inside track, and if I can get this McGuire to taking a shine toward me, I'm in!" When he said 'in', his fingers stole inside Joy's panties.
She wiggled away.
"That tickles."
"What tickles?"
" 'What you' re doing."
"What am I doing?"
"You know damn well what you're doing," she said acidly, moving away, "and I'm just not in the mood for it."
Lou shrugged, but a few seconds later, unmindful of her wishes, he again began exploring the pillowy warmth of her behind. He did it mechanically, perhaps like a man vacantly rubbing a mosquito bite.
Joy added ginger ale to her drink and ignored Lou's hand. If he wanted to get himself all steamed up-let him. He was not getting any and that was that. Probably, she mused, the bitch that he had been keeping company with had turned him down tonight, and Joy certainly was not going to become a willing substitute.
She took her drink and went to the living room. Lou followed her.
Joy claimed a chair near the stereo. Lou turned down some lights, stacked toss pillows on the floor, and in Hindu fashion, sat to face her.
Joy avoided his baby-like smile and misty blue eyes. Let him use his charm on one of his girl friends. However, her coldness failed to deter Lou.
"If you'd open your legs, the scenery would certainly improve. Especially, from where I'm sitting."
She gave Lou a half-amused smile. Maybe it would be fun, she considered, to work Lou up and then deny him her body. Maybe she would even tell Lou to get his tail from his new girl friend. She dwelled briefly on the idea, and with Lou's hands now coaxing at her knees, Joy saw the humor of giving him a good case of the cramps. She was skilled at it-so skilled, in fact, that this was how she had maneuvered Lou into marrying her.
Remembering, now, how she had inadvertently teased Lou into a nerve-wracked bundle of frustrations, she eased her legs slightly apart.
"If I was a nose and throat specialist, I'd say: 'Now open wider, please'." Joy ignored the remark.
"Still feeling bad?" She nodded.
He slipped his hands between her parted legs and felt the warmth of her thighs.
"You feel all right to me." He laughed playfully and before she could stop him, Lou was fingering the warm flesh beneath he panties.
A quiver of excitement ran through her loins. She summoned the will power to draw his hand away.
"I know what you need to make you feel better," he said, irritated that she had pushed his hand away. "You need a good hot lay!"
"I don't," she snapped her reply.
"The hell you don't. You need a good screwing and you're damned well going to get it!" He threw the housecoat up over the ivory flesh of her thighs.
"Lou!" She smoothed down the housecoat.
He leaped from the floor and pulled her to her feet. He tore the housecoat off and drew her into an embrace.
"C'mon, baby. Admit it. You want it as much as I do."
Her mind said no, but when Lou slipped his hands beyond the waistband of her panties and began to desperately caress her curving, quivering buttocks, her body responded with yes.
She hated herself-hated herself because she was capable of such instant passion. In mere seconds, the touch of Lou's hands had washed away all the cold resolutions and good intentions she had clung to. Her resentment faded and her desires inflamed.
His hands were drawing the panties down her legs now and the agony of what she wanted was not to be denied. She was eager now, breathing rapidly, wanting him to touch her there, to fondle her, to do everything!
She opened her stance to make it easier for him, and his fingers tiptoed up and down the insides of her quivering thighs to release wave after wave of consuming desire.
When his fingers finally teased upward to their goal, Joy sucked in her breath. She thrust her pelvis downward to complete the union.
"Ohhh, Lou!" she gasped.
Lou was as caught up in the tide of passion as she was. His trouser front told her that. So did the half glazed expression in his eyes. And Joy could not wait.
She frantically began to undress Lou. When the task was done, she stepped proudly back for him to gaze at her. She was his golden-skinned, quivering love slave, his to consume, his to penetrate, to ravish and to rape.
Lou liked to stand and gaze at her body. And there was plenty to admire. The cherry nipples stood erect and seemed to beg for the touch of his hot tongue. The trembling hills and dales of her body awaited the weight of his own.
Lou's fists tightened. His expression was grim. Suddenly, he fell at her feet and encircled her fevered thighs.
In a flood of tormenting passion, his mouth rained a series of kisses along the insides of her legs. They were tongue kisses, nipping kisses, kisses of hurt and kisses of pleasure.
Joy could scarcely breathe. She felt Lou draw her legs apart.
"Ohhh, Lou!"
His mouth was frantic. Higher and higher went the kisses, closer and closer....
Joy screamed, then moaned, then gasped. And then ... a knock at the door!
Lou and Joy both gasped.
"Sonofabitch!" they said in perfect unison.
CHAPTER SEVEN
While Lou climbed into his clothing and admitted Tim McGuire to their apartment, Joy gathered up her underthings and scampered to the bathroom.
She bathed her face in cold water and leaned against the sink to regain control of herself. Another time, another day and she would have been furious over the interruption. This time, however, she was thankful. Joy's emotions had swept her to near oblivion.
If Lou thought he could go out and lay around with other women and then come home to juice her up, he was going to be sadly mistaken. The next time-if there was a next time-she would not let things get that much out of control.
He had had her for the last time, she decided.
And let him-the bastard-figure out why.
When, several minutes later, Joy returned to the living room, Lou and Tim McGuire were chatting amicably and downing their first round of highballs.
Lou greeted her with a secret smile. He glanced appreciatively at the snug-fitting silver shift that she had changed into, and then commenced with the introductions.
"Not only a beautiful apartment," McGuire said, gesturing with his highball glass, "but also...." his eyes swept up and down Joy's body, " ... a very beautiful wife."
Joy flushed at the compliment. Never before, she thought, meeting Tim McGuire's steady gaze, had a man's glance been so bold, so exciting. Strangely, McGuire was not handsome, being at least fifteen years older than Lou, of much slighter build and even a little pudgy. But the definitive quality of his gaze, the ability-with a certain infectious smile-to convey what he was thinking-and he was thinking of sex-made Joy feel as though she was being raped and, futhermore, enjoying it.
"No offense intended," McGuire added, referring to his compliment, "but I have always maintained that beauty should be unashamedly and openly admired." His gaze was directed at the long slit at the side of Joy's shift.
Joy felt an additional flush of embarrassment. McGuire's meaning was unmistakable. The slit in. her shift had revealed a generous portion of bare thigh and Tim McGuire liked what he saw.
He saw other things, too. His grayish eyes flirted with the lush erectness of her boobies, visually undressed her, leaving her not only speechless, but also unexplainably excited.
Joy seated herself primly next to Lou on the divan. She pulled down on the hem of her shift, covering as much of her bare legs, as was possible, but to the avid eye, there was still plenty to. see.
Meanwhile, Lou engaged Tim in a discussion of the latest advertising trends, but even as Tim interjected his occassional comments, his glance always settled back to the underside of Joy's dress.
She could read his mind. He was fervently hoping that she would cross her legs and that he would then get a better glimpse of her marvelous thighs. His licking glances were bold and daring, and the tremor of excitement that was building in Joy's loins astonished her.
What was the matter with her? Did she have no control at all? Did a man only have to look at her to make her hot?
"And as for being a bachelor," McGuire answered after Lou had broached him on the subject of marriage, "I'm going to die a bachelor."
He took a long swallow of his drink.
"In the first place, I doubt whether any woman would have me." His narrow eyes shone with mischief. "She'd probably say I was a damned sex fiend, because, when you get right down to cases-" his eyes searched out Joy's, "I am. I'm one of those characters who would say the hell with the housecleaning and the hell with the supper-'Sweetheart, let's spend the day in bed'. Now tell me, Lou," but he was gazing at Joy, "what kind of a woman wants to put up with that kind of a man?"
Lou shrugged Tim's question off with a wave of his empty glass.
Joy felt like answering: I'd love a man like that. Lou was so different. He respected a clean house-in fact, he demanded it. And as far as sex was concerned, Lou ran in cycles. Either he wanted it constantly, or else he did not want it at all-and no small wonder, she thought, considering the many apparent girl friends he had.
"How about another round of drinks?" Lou suggested suddenly.
"Eat, drink and feel Mary, huh?" Tim laughed heartily.
"Why not?" Joy said, bravely returning his gaze. She rose and went to the kitchen. Lou was quickly beside her.
"Be nice to him, huh, honey?" he whispered. "He's a big man with our company and you know what that means."
Joy gave Lou a dirty look.
"Would you like me to screw him?"
"For chrissakes, be sensible," Lou said. "I only said ... "
She spun her back to him.
"I know what you said."
"Now, what the hell has got into you?"
"Nothing!"
"So why the sudden freeze?"
"Don't worry your little head about it." Again, she was picturing Lou plunging himself between the outstretched legs of his faceless girl friend.
"You're angry."
Joy did not answer.
Eventually, Lou gave her a quizzical glance and returned to the living room and Tim McGuire.
Joy finished mixing the drinks. She made her own double strength. Lou wanted her to be nice to Tim McGuire. He didn't know just how nice she had suddenly planned to be.
Delivering Tim his drink, their hands touched. In the brief encounter, Joy let the man feel the full warmth of her radiant smile.
She returned to the divan with the other drinks, but she didn't cheat Timoutofthe view he had so eagerly awaited. She crossed one shapely leg high and slowly over the other. She saw the knowledgeable smile cross Tim's face, and she knew of his instant awareness.
From that moment on, Joy grew increasingly careless about the position of her legs. Bitterly reminded of Lou's cheating, she didn't care how much of her body that Tim McGuire saw and admired. It was just too bad that she had worn panties.
Joy joined in the banter of light jokes, laughing when they laughed, drinking when they drank, but never for a minute did she escape the lustful intensity of Tim McGuire's continued stare.
She parted her legs more brazenly and thought if Lou were not here right now....
She blotted the thought out of her mind.
She knew damned well what would happen!
She would take Tim McGuire to bed and to hell with everything. Would they be good in bed? Probably like two wild cats, she told herself, and then breaking her thought, she asked Lou to make her another drink.
When Lou left the room, Joy felt more wanton than ever. She sank deeper into the divan, allowing her shift to ride above and beyond the frill of her white panties.
Her legs spread. She offered a wanton display of herself, wanting Tim to look, needing him to look.
Tim was entranced.
Shifting, spreading her legs more brazenly, the light from a nearby pole lamp not only illuminated and sharply defined her pubic hair, but even lit the elliptical outline of that which made her a woman.
She was woman in the lowest basic denominator. Exposing herself. Letting Lou's best friend see between her legs.
Letting him get hot.
She was shameless. Intentions were obvious.
Tim knew it. She knew it.
But suddenly, Lou returned with fresh drinks, and Joy hastily pulled down her dress and closed her legs.
"God help tomorrow morning," Lou said, passing the drinks around.
"The hell with tomorrow morning," Tim said.
"I agree," Joy filled in, noticing how thick her speech had become. "Let's have a blast!" And a blast it was.
Lou turned on the record player, opened a fresh bottle of bourbon, jokes grew bolder and inhibitions vanished.
"What do you give the prostitute who has everything?" Tim cast an appraising glance at Joy's boobies.
Joy felt silly.
"I dunno. What do you give the prostitute who has everything?"
"Penicillin, sweetheart."
A round of laughter followed. Lou, especially desirous of pleasing Tim, positively roared. His exaggerated laughter only intensified Joy's loathing. Lou was veing absolutely servantile to Tim McGuire, anticipating the man's every wish, and then breaking his rear end to provide it.
Before Tim's glass was empty, Lou was upon him with another. When Tim pulled out a cigarette, Lou would jump forth with a match. The whole display sickened Joy. Lou had done everything to amuse Tim but offer the man his wife for a bed companion. That part of it, Joy decided happily, would be of her own doing.
Disgusted, Joy got up and went into the kitchen. She spilled her drink into the sink and made a fresh one. She was startled to see Tim joining her at the sink.
"I think you're lovely," he whispered into her ear.
"Lou ... "
"He's in the bathroom."
Joy darted a look over Tim's shoulder. On a lightning impulse, she squeezed to her tiptoes and kissed Tim on the mouth. His hand brushed her breasts. Then Joy heard Lou flush the toilet basin. Tim heard it, too, and he turned and walked slowly back to the living room.
When Joy joined the two men, Lou put on a hot record-a Louis Armstrong ditty-and suggested that Joy do a dance for them.
"This kid swings like an exploding hurricane lamp," Lou bragged to Tim. "C'mon, Joy. Show 'em the Jerk."
Ordinarily, Joy would have been reluctant to put on such a display, but the way her feelings had changed about Lou, uninhibited after so many drinks, she needed little coaxing.
Joy swayed to her feet and picked up the beat. She would have preferred a dress that allowed her body more freedom. This one was too tight, but the men did not care. It only further enhanced the lush curves of her sensuous young body.
Surprised by how dizzy she felt, Joy shook off the haze and whirled into the Jerk. This was the same dance that Lou had previously described as positively vulgar, but now-and because a possible job promotion hung in the balance-Lou applauded her animal gyrations with all the wild enthusiasm he could possibly muster.
And Joy gave it everything she had! She wanted it to be vulgar. She wanted the dance to be as suggestive and as dirty as she could make it. And she succeeded.
She rotated and pumped her hips as though a man were inside her. She swung to the left and swiveled to the right, and when she was directly in front of Tim, she pumped her pelvis right in his face.
Tim looked ready to reach out and grab her. Joy ate it up. She shook her shoulders and her thrashing, pulsating breasts threatened to slip out of her loose-fitting bra.
Tim bit down hard on his lip and Joy thrust everything she had at the man. In the background, Lou hollered:
"Take it off! Take it off!"
Joy was an animal now.
Faster and faster went the beat of the music, and Joy matched its rhythm with her wild dance of the black jungle. She arched and withdrew her buttocks until they were as tight as a bowstring. Then she released them and pushed her hips outward toward Tim. Her movements all but spelled out an upright position of the sexual act.
Joy did not care what they thought. In her coma-like frenzy, then was the sexual act.
She was convinced of this. And this she was pumping harder, working toward the climax, toward the explosive end, and then it was coming and she was coming, and with a mighty final thrust, a gasp that left her choking and unable to breath, she clasped her hands behind her head and threw her body at Tim's face.
There was applause, uproarious laughter, the clamor for more, but Joy was damp and exhausted, and sagged tiredly to the divan.
"Joy, that was terrific. If it had lasted one minute longer, that husband of yours would have lost a wife."
Lou, who could find no wrong in anything Tim said or did, laughed and shouted for more.
But Joy had had enough."
"How come you didn't take it off?" Lou asked.
Joy looked sourly at Lou. Did he truly want her to take her clothes off so that Tim could see her body? Was she being traded for a better job?
"When I take my clothes off, Lou, it won't be to dance." She gave Tim a deliberately sultry glance.
Then, Lou put on a slow dreamy dance number. She expected Lou to then coax Tim into dancing with her, but she was wrong. Instead, it was Lou who danced with her.
From the moment Joy reluctantly joined herself against Lou's chest, it was obvious that Lou was not only drunk, but also excited. Her wicked rendition of the Jerk had had its visible effect on her husband, and that effect was now pressed insistantly between her legs.
Lou held her close-too close-and she would have preferred to dance with Tim. She gazed longingly at him whenever the chance presented itself, but Lou held her so tightly that she could hardly express her own movements.
Sober, Lou was only a mediocre dancer, but drunk, his steps were almost too confused to follow. It was groping more than dancing and stumbling more than anything rhythmatic. Joy wished that the dance were over and when Lou's hands sagged to squeeze the softness of her behind, she was too pinned in his drunken grasp to do anything about it.
Then, she felt Lou pulling her skirt up. She thought she was dreaming. Was Lou trying to make a public exhibition of her?
She squirmed in his grasp.
"Lou...."
"Don't fight it. It feels good and you know it."
Suddenly, Joy stopped struggling. If Lou wanted to show off her rear end, if he was that stupid, then why should she care? Besides, she was curious to know what he was up to.
The dress went higher and higher. Lou had gathered it almost to her waist. It was mad!
Tim looked like a young kid with his eye to a keyhole. His mouth was agap, his face was damp, but he was enjoying the show to the fullest.
So was Lou.
When they danced back into Tim's range, Lou slipped his hands roughly inside Joy's panties and possessively pinched the cheeks of her buttocks, as though saying to Tim: Look what I've got, buddy. Wouldn't you love to have some of that?
And Joy hated Lou for that.
It was not fair to excite Tim that way-not unless there was a planned relief for that excitement. Was that what Lou had in mind? Was it planned that she should end up in bed with the both of them?
Curious, Joy decided to go along with the game-whatever the game was.
But the rules were wild. The dress went up. The pants went down.
No rhythm.
No dance.
Only a drunken mingling of two bodies, one helplessly trapped in the throes of the other.
The third time they danced (if it was to be called this) past Tim, the generous display of Joy's lush buttocks was too much to bear. The man's extraordinary self-control petered out and died. He reached out and caressingly glided his hand between Joy's beautiful sculptured thighs.
A surge of hot desire coursed through Joy's loins. Her heart pounded. She could hardly wait until Lou again danced her near Tim. Would he dare repeat the act?
Tim surprised her by doing even more.
Jumping up, he exclaimed:
"Hey! You guys have heard of three on a horse and three in a bed ... this is going to be three in a dance!"
Joy had no idea what Tim was going to do, but suddenly she found out.
Tim circled Lou and her with his arms, then laughing, rocking precariously in what was a comedy rather than an orgy, they moved drunkenly across the room.
But the comedy wore off.
The name of the game was: Anything Goes!
The resulting stir of excitement that gripped Joy's ripe, eager body was impossible to measure. Her dress was trapped above the swelling of her hips and her panties were somewhere on the other side of the room. Sandwiched as she was between the two men, she nearly swooned.
Lou, too, loved the crazy comeraderie. He laughed when Tim laughed, pressed against Joy's body when Tim did, and if there was a jealous ounce of manhood in Lou's heart, he concealed it to himself.
For the first time in her young life, Joy found herself wondering what it would be like to go to bed with two men at the same time.
Would it be good?
Obviously, both men could not enter her at the same time, but-and it was a stimulating thought-both men could fondle her at the same time. Or else one man could kiss her body while the other man....
Good Lord!
It was crazy. So crazy that she must not allow herself to even think about it, but ... she couldn't stop from thinking about it!
Would she let Tim do it to her first? And while Tim was shoving himself back and forth between the yawning spread of her legs, would Lou play with her nipples? She liked to have someone play with her nipples ... God! Was she out of her mind?
But it was happening.
Happening now.
Lou had his pants open and had forced his hand between their bodies to search out the wooded forest with its trail to hell. The massage of his hand was violent and rough.
Tim, meanwhile, had also unzippered himself. It was sexual pandemonium with Lou pressing her from the front and Tim's swollen hardness prodding her from the rear.
In unspeakable ecstasy, with a quivering of body and mind that she could not have possibly described, Joy shuddered and dug her nails into Lou's back. She was hopelessly pinned by the forward thrust of two men at the same time.
But when it felt the best, when she was nearly swooning with desire....
It ended.
Not simply the dance, but everything.
She found herself being dragged off to abed-room. She heard Lou's hasty apologies to Tim, heard Lou invite Tim to spend the night. She heard Tim mumbling an acceptance and being led into the guest bedroom.
She felt a wave of disappointment, but suddenly the lights went out, and Lou came to her-a half-crazed drunken savage.
He descended on her like an animal. He bypassed all the exciting preliminaries-not even a kiss.
She hid her loathing. She responded mechanically, shoving her body upwards to make the penetration deeper, and to hasten the act's conconclusion. But tonight, there was nothing exciting about the sex act with Lou-not until she imagined that it was Tim who was on top of her, and then the thrills could not be counted. But Lou was cheated. She did not plan it that way, and it happened so suddenly....
"Lou! Quick! Get Off! I'm going to throw up!"
She darted for the bathroom.
Lou, unfortunately, never did finish what he had started.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The insistent jangle of the telephone disturbed Joy from her nauseous sleep. She turned to nudge Lou, then realized that he had already left for work. She told herself the telephone would stop ringing eventually, but it kept right on ringing. She struggled up to a sitting position. Her head felt terrible. Her stomach felt even worse.
Cursing, Joy crawled from the bed, put on a robe, and stumbled down the hallway to answer it. It was Lou.
"I swear, Joy, sometimes I don't think dynamite could wake you up."
"Why don't you go pleasantly to hell?"
"Still on your high-horse, huh?"
"I'm not on anything, but do you have to start yapping right off the bat?"
"I'm sorry, sleepy head, but it's almost noon."
Joy moaned. Her head was killing her.
"Lis'n, is Tim still there?"
"Who?"
"Tim. I didn't wake him this morning. There wasn't any sense in all of us getting up with the rooster."
"Wait a minute and I'll go see."
"Don't wake him up if he's sleeping. When he does get up, though, I want you to be sure and tell him I'm down at the office. I'll be here until four and then I'm catching a plane to Chicago. It's a business trip and I ought to be back by tomorrow night."
More lies, Joy thought.
"What about a suitcase?"
He explained that he didn't need one. He could pick up a couple of shirts downtown and if there was anything else that he needed, he could get it after he arrived in Chicago.
"Anything else, Mr. Harmon?" she asked icily, certain it was a lie now.
"Yeah. When Tim wakes up, fix 'em some breakfast. Okay?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Harmon!"
"What you need, baby, is a good screw!"
"I had that last night, thank you."
"And you were cold fish, too."
"Ditto."
"For chrissakes, what the hell is the matter with you? Here I am on the brink of getting the most important promotion of my life and ... "
"How does he like his eggs?"
"Now how in the hell would I know?"
"My, my, Mr. Harmon. I thought you knew everything!"
Lou immediately told Joy to go pound salt in a most unflattering place. She returned the compliment, and this ended their brisk telephone conversation.
The Chicago story stunk. He was probably spending the night with one of the office bitches, she thought. Well, she couldn't care less. Her concern right now was her head.
She put on a pot of coffee, showered, swallowed four aspirins and two glasses of tomato juice, applied make-up and a hair brush, and when she was finished, she felt almost human.
She looked in on Tim, but he was still sleeping. Now, with fresh coffee assailing her nostrils, she got down clean cups and saucers.
"Send for the militia. I think I'm dying."
Joy whirled. Tim was humorously framed in the doorway dressed in a baggy pair of Lou's pajamas. He was holding his head with both hands and squinting his eyes.
"Hangover?" Joy smiled.
"Worse than that. My head feels like a secondhand condrum."
"Welcome to the club," Joy laughed.
Groaning, Tim turned and stumbled back to the bathroom. Joy poured the coffee. How much did Tim remember of last night? she wondered. In her shame, she hoped that he didn't remember anything. It had been a mistake, she told herself. The result of too many drinks and too little shame.
Tim was again in the doorway.
"There ought to be a law against sunny mornings." He squinted his eyes and fell heavily into a kitchen chair.
Joy drew the kitchen drapes and pushed Tim his black coffee. He made a face.
"You wanna kill me ... haven't you got any bourbon left?"
"Bourbon?"
Tim gave her a feeble nod.
"Best remedy this side of the Mayo Clinic."
Joy extended him an odd smile. To her amazement, Tim consumed four fingers of one hundred proof bourbon without water or contorted expression. He smacked his lips.
"Better than adrenalin, Joy." He brought the black coffee to his mouth. "You know, I might pull through at that."
"I can call off the militia?"
"Yeah. But that was a close one." He blinked and groped for a cigarette. "How many gallons did we consume?"
"I don't know how much any of us drank," she laughed. "You know, I don't even remember going to bed."
Still groggy, Tim wanted to know where Lou was.
"Lou? He left hours ago. He's at the office."
"He's crazy. A one hundred per cent lunatic."
"I guess he had some accounts to work on."
"Accounts? Boy, I've heard of ambition, but after a wing-ding like that one ... whew!" He shook his head. "That Lou of yours must have a cast-iron constitution. With ambition like that, if he doesn't go straight to the top, my name isn't Tim McGuire."
Lou was probably already on top, Joy thought, that is, on top of the office bitch, whoever she was.
"He loves his work," Joy lied. "So do I, but if I had a beautiful young wife like you at home...." He stopped. "Am Italking too much?"
"Not at all." Joy tried to monitor Tim's innermost thoughts.
"You are very pretty, you know."
"Some more coffee?" Joy felt her face warm.
"Please."
She went to the coffee pot, and she was trembling as she poured the coffee. Did a man's compliment do this to her? Or was it, perhaps, the still fresh memory of last night, of Tim caressing the soft, pillowy flesh of her buttocks? A few minutes ago, she had felt ashamed of all that-now, and simply being with him again, the shame was gone. Why? She set the coffee down before him, but she was still trembling.
"You may be pretty," Tim grinned, "but you're as nervous as a virgin on her wedding night."
Joy returned a weak smile. Flustered, she started to sit down, but Tim seized her wrist.
"Regrets about last night make you nervous?"
"I have no regrets."
He released her with a smile, and only after she had sat down did it dawn on her what her answer must have meant to him. If she had no regrets, then it could be taken to mean that she liked it.
Had she? She sipped at her coffee and Tim sipped at his. Joy sensed that he was trying to see inside her robe, but she was not certain whether she welcomed his avid interest or not.
"Maybe I'm the one who needs the bourbon pick-me-up." Last night she didn't give a damn about anything. Drink had helped her forget, for a short while, the sordid truth about Lou's cheating.
"At least you wouldn't look so depressed. Why don't you try a little nip?"
Joy pondered the suggestion. Then she remembered Lou's alleged trip to Chicago.
"Dammit!" she said, feeling a tinge of wickedness, "I think I will." She got another glass from the cupboard.
Tim watched her eagerly swirl the brown liquid around in the tumbler, momentarily, then suddenly gulp it down.
She was aware of his amused stare, and not to be outdone by him, hoping to find solace in the bourbon's effect, she downed another.
The result on an empty stomach was immediate. She was instantly warmed, minutes later-giddy, and after a third drink, the problem of a dissolving marriage no longer existed.
"Aren't you glad you took some of Dr. McGuire's secret herb tonic?" He playfully slapped her on the rump.
"You quack." She felt silly.
"Not very complimentary."
"You're still a quack." She giggled.
"Very well. If I'm a quack, then I suggest we play doctor." He pulled her down on his lap.
"And how do you play doctor?" she asked in mocked innocence.
"It's simple!" He began to unbutton her robe. "You remove all your clothes, and then I examine you-and if you're really interested, then you can examine me."
She laughed and climbed off of Tim's lap. She decided that she liked him. She could like anyone who could make her laugh-especially now.
"Tim, you're a loveable nut."
"A nutty nut," he said with a grin, "but, you know, a person has to cut up once in a while. Gets rid of the tension. Everything."
She matched his warm smile and sat down at the table to face him. She had not bothered to fasten the two top buttons of her robe. Besides, not that much showed, and even if it did, so what?
"Tim, the world needs more people like you."
"Why?" His hand had eased under the table and rested on her knee.
"You have such a delightful easy outlook on life."
His hand moved another inch.
"Well, anybody who takes life seriously is a fool. You're only here a given number of years, so you might as well enjoy it."
The hand now unbuttoned another fastener.
"I guess you're right." She stared vacantly at her coffee cup. She was aware of the advance of Tim's hand, but she pretended not to notice it.
"I know I'm right!" he said, now moving his hand to the warm inside of her thigh.
She quivered. She had to keep the conversation going, because if she let it cease, she felt certain that Tim would withdraw his hand.
"You aren't even listening to me," Joy suddenly heard Tim say.
"I'm sorry. I was thinking about something that happened a long time ago."
"Would I be interested?" His fondling had become rapidly more intimate.
"I doubt it," she said, trying to guard her emotions and her sanity. "Tell me about it."
But Joy could not tell Tim about anything. It was useless to pretend that his hands didn't exist. They did exist! His fingers had entered the seat of her love, and all she could do was to let out an ecstasy-filled moan.
"Sure you won't play doctor with me?" he asked.
"Ohhh, Tim, I'll play anything you want." He came around the table and pulled her to her feet.
"First," he said matter-of-factly, "we have to remove all your clothing. Purely routine." Two blushing lovlies leaped forth from her robe, and Tim fingered her nipples.
A delicious wave of anticipation washed over her. She wanted to seize his hands and press them fiercely against her breasts. She wanted to rub her naked body all over him.
However, Tim was not to be rushed. He played the game of doctor strictly to the book. Methodically, professionally aloof, he undid another button.
"You can't afford to overlook the slightest symptom." He undid the last button and let the robe fall to the floor.
Joy was on fire.
He posed his chin in his hand and gave her his most professional scrutiny.
"Rather interesting anterior vena cava," he said, pursing his lips and continuing his imitation of a young intern. "Distended navel with extreme articulation of the labis majora."
Joy did not know whether to laugh or scream. Raging desires were all but consuming her.
"And now that we've seen the lateral and anterior sections," he said, turning her around, "suppose we have a look at the patient's posterior."
She stood naked for his inspection.
His hands flowed over her warm buttocks.
"Most, most interesting," he said, still aping the Dr. Kildare bit. "Pleasant protrusion."
Joy whirled and grasped Tim between his legs. She grinned.
"You have a slight protrusion yourself, Doctor."
Tim swept her hand aside. His hands went to the hotness of her breasts.
"Mammary glands seem to be in exceptional condition."
Joy felt like ramming one of her huge breasts right into Tim's mouth.
"Good skin texture," he rambled on, "with excellent resiliency."
Joy had had enough. She was out of her mind. She spun out of his grasp, seized his pajama bottoms, and gave a vicious yank.
His maleness sprang at her like a new diving board.
"You're a helluva, doctor," she said, remembering an old, old joke. She took a firm grip on his rigidity. "You've got a thermometer, but it doesn't even have numbers on it!"
CHAPTER NINE
Their love-making was a giant flopperoo.
Tim McGuire had laid an egg.
He had committed man's most unpardonable of sins-that of reaching a premature climax. Joy had groaned desperately for release, but Tim was as impotent as a newborn baby.
"A schoolboy could have done better," Tim said after he had dressed.
"It was my fault, too." It was the only thing she could think of to say that would assuage his feeling of guilt.
"Now you're being sweet."
"No, I'm not. I'll bet it happens to a lot of couples the first time. Besides, maybe you'll get aroused again."
"Sure," he said bitterly. "Maybe it'll snow in July, too."
"Feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Just stupid and amateurish."
"Don't." She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze. "Just having you around was nice."
Tim smiled gratefully, but his guilt was not to be placated by tender words. He insisted that inasmuch as he had been such a dismal failure as a lover, the least he owed her was a midday lunch. Would she go?
"I'd love to."
Tim was happy. He would be back for her in about an hour-he wanted to jump down to his hotel for a change of clothes, and also to see about renting a car.
"Shall I dress?" she asked. "You can't go nude, sweetheart."
"Silly. I mean ... "
"I know what you mean." He gave her a playful punch on her forearm. "Just throw on anything that's comfortable."
"It's warm out ... would shorts be all right?" Tim said that shorts would be fine. " ... and who knows," he said, giving her breasts a mischievous glance, "maybe it will snow in July!"
Tim picked her up at one-thirty. In a change of plans, they drove out to Coney Island. Tim was sweet. He lavished her with hot dogs, kewpie dolls, and a hundred crazy souvenirs. He kissed her in The Tunnel of Love, shared her giggling in the corridors of the Fun House, and held hands with her on the sand-swept pier that led to the sea.
"I haven't had this much fun in years," he said.
"It's been a riot, Tim." She squeezed his hand. "I've enjoyed every minute of it."
They sat down at the end of the pier and let their legs dangle over the edge. Joy leaned her head back to let the sun caress her body. Her breasts jutted forth. Tim gazed at her.
"You look too lovely for words, Joy." He put his hands to her sun-warmed thighs.
"I don't know if I'm equal to the compliment."
"You are."
"Tim, what's the real reason you never got married?"
"What brought that on?"
She looked at his eyes-gay, yet sad, a man whose outward merriment seemed only to cloak an inward loneliness.
"I don't know what made me ask, but ... haven't you ever been in love?"
His smile was reminiscent.
"That was a long way back."
"What was she like?"
"You wouldn't be interested."
"Please tell me."
He did finally tell her-later in the afternoon at a drive-in restaurant, where they had stopped for coffee.
"I suppose I would have called her a young goddess," he began. "I was at that impressionable age-twenty-two-when any girl is a goddess."
This one's name, he related, was Peggy. She was a sweet eighteen-year-old. He said she wore innocence like a second skin.
"I even had to battle to kiss her good night."
"And then ...?"
He glanced off into the distance.
"All that sweetness and innocence got the best of me. As they say with their Hollywood hokum-I fell in love."
He explained that they became engaged, set a wedding date, and he thought he was King.
"We had a whole year to wait before the wedding, but I got a job with one of the New York ad agencies and started saving my money. On weekends I'd drive up to Jersey, pick her up, and we'd go to a drive-in movie. I always told myself that if I couldn't make her at a drive-in, I wouldn't make her at all-that is, until after we were married.
"Well, old Tim sure deserved an E for effort. I used every approach in the book: Try it before you buy it-darling, you know I love you, you and-couldn't we just this one time? I even tried that old chestnut: If you love me, prove it. But it was no soap. Oh, she'd give in a little, kind of let me play with her boobies, and sometimes I'd get her breathing heavily and I'd think this was it-but always at the last minute, she'd pull herself together and put the brakes on."
"You still haven't told me why you didn't marry her."
"How could I?"
"How could you?"
"Yes. How could I? On the day we were supposed to get married, I found out she was four months pregnant!"
"But ... "
"Not me, Joy. I never even saw the color of her panties, and from what I heard about her afterwards, I doubt if she wore panties. Half of Jersey City screwed her, but that's an old story, isn't it?"
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It was better to find it out then, than later."
"But all girls aren't like she was."
"Nobody said they were, Joy. But who wants to spend the rest of their life guessing which is which? This way, it's better. You take them out, have a good time, maybe take them to bed and have a still better time, and when it's over, it's over! Whether they cheat or not is of no importance. You just don't get that involved."
"Love 'em and leave 'em, huh?"
"Isn't it better that way? No regrets, no hard feelings."
"Aren't the nights sometimes bitter and lonely, Tim?"
"I have my work, the agency ... "
"But is that enough?"
He looked at her very seriously. He held both of her hands.
"No ... I suppose it isn't, but we're not going to cry about it, are we?"
Suddenly, she felt a very close kinship to Tim. She knew it wasn't love, not even sexual attraction, yet there was something-a compassion, the need to express her favors, to have him know how much she respected and admired him.
"Tim?"
"Yes."
"Please don't think me foolish, but ... Tim, would you take me to bed?"
Tim gaped at her. His eyes clouded with anxiety.
"Would you, Tim?"
"I don't know what to say. The fastest copy writer in the game and I'm speechless."
"You don't have to say anything, Tim-just 'yes'."
"You know, if I live to be a thousand, I'll still never understand the ways and wiles of the female animal. But when a gold miner discovers gold, he doesn't question how it got there-he simply considers himself lucky to have it."
"Will you, Tim?"
"Do I look like the kind of a guy who turns his back on gold?"
The motel that Tim picked out was on the edge of the city. After he had registered, Joy ran from the car and joined Tim as he unlocked the door of their motel suite.
He closed the door and took her in his arms. His face was nuzzled in her hair and their bodies fused as one.
"Hold me close," she whispered.
"I am."
"Tim ... Tim, do you think I'm a bitch?"
"Joy!"
"But it's the truth, isn't it? While the cat is away, the mice will play, and...."
He mashed his mouth to hers. When he broke from the kiss, he said:
"I don't know why you're here, sweets, and furthermore, I don't want to know, but if you're going to feel guilty about it-Joy, we can leave right now, and Scout's honor, no hard feelings."
Joy trembled and looked up into his kind, gray eyes. She thought of Lou, of Chicago, of another woman, and then she said:
"Lock the door, Tim."
He kissed her long and passionately.
When she could breathe, she said:
"The door!"
Tim locked it.
"How do you like the layout?" he asked, unfastening his tie. "Air conditioning, television. They even have a telephone in case you want to call for help."
Tim pulled his pants and shorts off and looked proudly at himself.
"Maybe you'll need help-" He made a sexy gesture, "-but I won't!"
Joy was pleasantly surprised by Tim's quick erection.
"See," she said, "it did snow in July!"
"Hurry. We got a blizzard!"
Smiling, Joy began to strip. She never removed her glance from Tim's swollen hardness. Just looking at him excited her. This was going to be a blast. Two blasts!
Quickly, she grasped the bottom of her sweater and pulled it over her head. Tim watched her from the edge of the bed. She stood before him in shorts and bra. Her hands were fetchingly placed on her hips. Her stomach was drawn in, her breasts thrust out, and Tim could not resist the temptation of bending toward her to plant a short kiss in the hollow of her stomach.
Joy shivered. She reached behind her to unclasp her bra. Tim looked ready to spring. He licked his lips. Then the bra was off and there were two other things to lick. Joy came a step closer.
She bent over Tim. Her hands were at the zipper of her shorts. Suddenly, just when Tim was about to encircle one of the appetizing globes with his mouth, Joy made a convulsive jerk with her shoulders. Her hot breasts bob-bled in Tim's face. He reached up to grab her. Joy bounded backwards and laughed. Tim flung a pillow at her.
"Teaser!" he shouted.
She stuck her tongue out at him. Tim threw another pillow at her. Joy gathered the pillows and flung them back. Then she threw something else at him: her panties.
Tim seized them and waved them in the air.
"Truce ... truce."
"What are your terms of surrender?"
He came off the bed and swept her passionately into his arms.
"I'm not the one who is surrendering, darling ... you are. In fact, you might say this was the invasion."
Tim led her to the other side of the room. Joy wondered what he was up to. Then Tim showed her.
"Ever watch anybody else do it?" he asked.
Joy was ashamed to admit it, but she told Tim that she always had wanted to watch another couple going to town.
"Well, what you're about to see isn't quite the same thing, but watch."
Suddenly, Tim locked her in a hot embrace. His hands dug into her squirming buttocks.
"Now, look there."
Joy's eyes followed Tim's pointed finger. They were standing in front of a full-length mirror that Joy hadn't even noticed.
"Keep watching," Tim whispered in her ear.
At first, Joy thought the idea was silly, but when she continued to watch, it began to arouse her.
"I never did anything like this before," she said weakly.
"It's out of this world." He nibbled at her ear. "Watch."
She did, and the sensation was breath-taking. It was like Tim described. It was as though another couple were in the room watching her and Tim make love.
"Tim," she moaned, "do it ... "
His tongue explored the ticklish insides of her ear. His hands roamed up and down her trembling flanks.
"In time, sweets ... in time."
"Ohhh, Tim ... what you're doing ... "
She looked down to see where his hands had suddenly ventured.
"The mirror ... the mirror!" Tim shouted.
She turned sideways. The sights and sensations drove her crazy. Tim's fingers brushed the shivering white of her buttocks, alternately caressing, then squeezing, loving, then hurting, but hurting so good!
With her eyes still riveted to the mirror, she saw herself clasp Tim around the neck and wantonly jerk her body back and forth against Tim's. If he didn't do it to her soon ... but this time Tim was in no rush. Yet she was!
"Tim ... "
His maleness was pressed between her legs. She was wild. The feeling was heavenly. She couldn't even stand still. She wiggled against him.
"Tim ... do it! Do it ... now!" They fell to the carpet. "This is it, sweets."
She was starving for him. She clasped his lean hard buttocks. Tim yielded. He pressed forth.
Suddenly, the terrible waiting was over. "Ohhh ... Tim ... it feels so good!" She was ready to faint.
They went at each other in seeming anger. Wild animals. They bit, they nipped, they parted and they merged. Two ham radio operators. He, the sender, she, the receiver.
"Tim ... Tim...." She was telegraphing the message that her time was near. "Tim?"
"Let it happen, baby. Let it happen."
Joy raved. She raked his bare back with her nails. She screamed something. Tim answered with all he had.
"Tim!" she gasped. "Tim...."
The explosion.
A burst of fireworks went off before her eyes. She moaned. Tim moaned. She felt him jerk spasmodically, and the thrills that gripped her were beyond description. Then they collapsed and lay still.
For a long while, neither of them spoke. It was as though the world had died, as though only he and she were left.
Finally, rolling over on his side and cupping her face in his hands, he said:
"Was it better this time, Joy? Was it?"
"Oh, Tim, it was wonderful." A sigh escaped from her mouth. "Nothing was ever so wonderful in the whole world."
Tim was glad. He carried her back to the bed, gently set her down, then with a tender kiss, he turned and padded to the bathroom.
He had only been gone a second, the water was running in the sink, when she heard the telephone!
"Tim?"
He leaned out of the doorway.
"Tim ... the telephone!"
"Yeah ... it rings. Isn't that something?"
"But...."
"It's probably the motel manager wanting to know when we're checking out. Tell him we're leaving in a few minutes."
Joy picked up the phone, then said:
"Hello?"
"Hello, bitch ... or should I say, Mrs. Harmon?"
Joy's eyes rolled. She reached out for the wall. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER TEN
Tim was bent over her with a damp wash cloth.
"What happened?" he asked. From the pillow on which her head rested, Joy turned to look at the phone. "Tim ... it was him."
"Who?"
She told Tim about the anonymous phone caller.
"Don't you see?" she said. "He must've followed us here."
"But why? Who in the hell is he?"
Joy thought briefly. She said:
"Tim, I don't know. I don't know who would do it, or why, but suddenly I'm scared."
Tim stroked the coldness in her arms.
"You're like ice."
"Tim, would Lou ... would Lou do something like this?"
"Why?"
"I don't know but...." She sat up and fell into his arms.
"That doesn't even sound a little bit like Lou."
"Isn't it possible that he's having somebody follow me? Isn't it?"
"Joy, that doesn't even begin to make sense. If Lou suspected that you were ... well, playing around, and he hired a private detective to follow you ... Joy, the detective wouldn't pull a stunt like calling you up and swearing at you."
"Then what is it?"
He held her tenderly and looked off into space.
"I don't know, sweets. I just don't know."
She lay in the warm consolation of his arms for a minute, and then she said:
"Tim ... take me home."
"Joy, if you're frightened, I could stay with you tonight."
She declined his offer. She didn't know what was happening, but if this was some kind of a weird trick of Lou's....
"I'll be all right. Just take me home."
It was nearly five-thirty when Tim dropped her off at the apartment. He explained that he would be in New York for a few more days before he returned to Los Angeles, that maybe he would phone, and that if there was trouble ... he gave her the number of his hotel.
When Joy was safely inside her apartment, she made certain that the night latch was secured and that each of the windows was locked. She turned on all the lights in the apartment, poured herself a tall drink and then sat down to take stock of the situation.
New York had never felt so lonely. She was worried. Her life was a mess. Her marriage was even worse. Now, as if things were not bad enough, a stranger's shadow had entered her life.
But who was he? For an hour, she nagged herself with that question, but when the hour was up, she still had no answer. Yet-and the conviction was inescapeable-she had the intense feeling that the anonymous phone caller was strangely linked to Lou's cheating. But how? What, was the link?
She didn't know. And why, she wondered, was she afraid? If Lou had cheated, why shouldn't she also cheat? For that one, Joy had the answer. She had cheated, but it didn't help! Facts were facts. Joy was just a fast roll in the hay. Nothing more. Not to Lou, not to anyone.
Suddenly, Joy's mind was made up. She reached for her purse and found Nancy's phone number. She dialed.
The frizzly-haired blonde answered the phone on the second ring.
"Nancy, this is Joy-Joy Harmon."
"Hey! How 'bout that? I was thinking of you."
"You were?"
"Yeah. I was laying in the sack, swilling a brew ... hey, guess what I got on?"
Joy said she had no idea.
"I'm lewdly nude," Nancy said. "This place is so stinking hot that even the flies are sweating."
Joy heard a baby crying in the background.
"Nancy, the reason I phoned, you're going to think I'm crazy ... but do you know anything about private detective agencies, or how they work?"
"Am I hearing you right, or is it the beer?"
"You heard me correctly. Nancy, I've got trouble. Lots of it."
"Lou?"
"Lou, everything." Nancy was silent. Then:
"That's pretty good. With all the public dick that's floating around, you want a private dick." The vulgar joke was ill-timed. "Nancy, I'm serious."
"I know you are, kid, and if I could help you ... but what do I know about private detective agencies? Probably the phone book would be your answer."
"I'll try it."
"Can you tell me about it?"
"I don't want to talk about it over the phone, Nancy. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"Okay."
Joy hung up, then got out the phone book. She scanned the classified section. She had only begun to run her finger down the listing of private detective agencies when she saw the name, Ray Forest.
Could this be the same Ray Forest from back in Indiana, the one whom Nancy had said was some kind of a cop?
She dialed the number. Several rings-no answer. Several more-still none. She hung up. He had probably gone home for the day. Looking at the advertisement again, she noticed that a residential listing was also included.
She tried it and got an answer on the first ring.
"Is Mr. Ray Forest there?"
"Speaking."
"Ray ... I mean ... are you by any chance the same Ray Forest I went to school with?"
"Now that's a question that requires a little thought. Course, if I knew who you were...."
"I'm sorry. It was stupid of me, really. My maiden name was Joy Baker and I went to Compton high school back in Indiana, and ... "
"You sonofagun!"
"It is you!"
"Of course it's me. What a surprise. Where are you?"
In short choppy sentences that scarcely hid her nervousness, Joy explained that she lived in New York, was married, and had recently lunched with their mutual friend, Nancy Ryerson.
When there was an awkward lull in the conversation, Joy said:
"Ray, I've got to see you."
"Socially, or otherwise?"
"Otherwise," she answered, not missing the significance of his inquiry.
"You did say otherwise, didn't you?"
"Yes, Ray."
"Dammit!"
"Ray, it's rather pressing. How soon can I see you?"
He was silent, then:
"How does tomorrow afternoon sound ... say about three?"
"You can't make it sooner?"
"Hardly ... unless ... Joy, why not have dinner with me? I know of a little roadhouse near Jones Beach, it's fairly private and the steaks they serve are a chef's delight. If you've got problems, you can unload them while we're munching on the steaks. How does it sound?"
Joy didn't want to give Ray any false illusions about herself, but she was desperate to discuss her problem with someone.
"Where shall we meet?" she asked.
Ray designated a corner in Radio City, they agreed on a time, and Joy hung up so that she could hurry and dress.
Midway in the process of putting on clean panties, the phone rang. It was Tim McGuire, calling to see if she was all right and who was also interested in a night out on the town.
Joy apologized for not being able to accept his offer, said she was fine, but thought she would retire early.
"Can I call you tomorrow?"
"If you like."
"Good night, Joy."
"Good night, Tim."
He was sweet, she thought. It was too bad that Tim had never found a girl that he was certain he could trust. He was not only good in bed. He was good, period.
She finished dressing, wrapped a cape over her shoulders, checked her purse to make certain she had her key, was about to leave, and then the phone rang.
"Hello."
"Hello, bitch."
Terror struck her throat. She held her breath.
"I know you're there, bitch. Don't you want to talk to me? Wouldn't you like to tell me about your fun-fun you had at the motel?" He laughed hideously.
"Who are you and what do you want?" "Oh, you'd be surprised at the things Iwant, bitch. By the way, bitch ... you don't mind if I call you bitch, do you? You are a bitch, you know, and as long as we're calling a spade a spade, suppose we call you a bitch?" He roared like some creation of a third-rate monster film.
He rattled on some more, but this time she had no intention of hanging up. If she could keep him talking, perhaps she would recognize something in his voice that would tell her who he was. However, the voice was as alien as it was errie, and Joy was still very much puzzled as to his identity.
"Does he have a big one, Joy?"
Silence.
"And did it feel real good when he put it in?" She was speechless.
"I think you and I ought to have some fun-fun, too. That would be nice, bitch. Ohhh, I'd love that very much. You can't tell, bitch, but I might be even bigger than your other boy friends."
More sickening laughter.
"I have to go now," the voice said, "but I'll be in touch, bitch. You and I are going to have our little fun-fun, see? You're going to itch for it and I'm going to come up to your place and take all your clothes off and then ... guess what I'm going to do?"
"You make me sick!"
"You know what I'm going to do, bitch ... when I've got you stripped naked, I'm going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss that little strawberry mark on the cheek of your butt!"
His ugly laughter was still ringing when Joy tremblingly cradled the receiver and began to cry. His words had been more frightening than a triggered hand grenade. She had such a mark! It was in the exact place he had described!
How could he possibly have known?
Again and again, Joy dug at the question, but the answer eluded her. There were only three men who had ever seen her completely nude. Two of them, the delivery boy and Tim McGuire had been in her presence when the strange caller had phoned, so they were eliminated.
The only other man who had seen the strawberry mark was her husband Lou. Did he have something to do with this? If not, then there had to be some fourth person.
But who? And how did he know? Time broke in on her thoughts. She was suddenly aware that unless she hurried, that she would be late for her meeting with Ray Forest.
She locked the apartment and started for the elevator, but suddenly a shadow merged in behind her. She spun around but caught the scream before it escaped from her mouth. It was Dominic, the young delivery boy from Nuzzo's.
"I was just going to see if you needed some groceries," he said, offering her a wink.
"Not today, sonny."
It was the wrong thing to say. The hands which had been stuffed in his back pockets, came suddenly out to seize her arm.
"What's with the 'sonny' stuff?"
His roughness angered Joy. She jerked her arm free and fled for the elevator.
Undaunted, and not to be left stupidly behind, Dominic came swiftly after her. His calloused hand seized her by the wrist before she could push the elevator button.
"You don't want to play no more, huh?"
"Look, Dominic, what happened the other day ... it was like an accident, see? I mean, it happened, it was fun, but now it's over. You catch?"
His piercing dark eyes narrowed to slits. The pain of his grip brought tears to her eyes.
"You married dames are all alike. What'sa matter? You find someone with a bigger one than mine?"
Joy gathered her strength and twisted out of his grip. She hadn't wanted to be unpleasant with Dominic, but she was in no mood to be treated like this by some teen-age toughie.
"Get lost, sonny. When you grow up, give me a call."
"You whore...." He made a lunge for her.
Joy was prepared for it. She swung her handbag and caught him full in the face. The force of the blow sent him reeling against the wall. He was more startled than hurt, but before he could regain himself, the elevator doors swung open, and an elderly couple stepped out, and Joy slipped in.
Dominic made a sudden dive at the doors. He was too late, the opening was too small, and in that frozen instant before the closing doors cut him from sight, Joy flashed him her most contemptuous smile.
He was a punk, she thought, as the elevator delivered her to the ground level. Maybe she had not handled the situation as tactfully as she might have, but she had more to worry about than Dominic's offended feelings. She had been insane to let the boy make love to her, but she was fully capable of handling whatever situation might now arise.
As far as the sex pervert who was making lewd phone calls to her, she would simply have her phone number changed. That, then, would take care of all her problems.
All except the problem of Lou.
What would she do about Lou?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ray Forest had changed so much in appearance, Joy scarcely recognized him. He had to blow the horn of his powder-blue convertible twice before she jerked to attention, smiled warily, and climbed inside.
"Joy, you look positively scandalous!" His eyes drank in the generous area of bosom that the dress revealed.
Joy smiled demurely and brought the ends of the cape together. Something had told her not to wear this dress. Ray Forest might have changed in appearance, but he certainly had not changed in other ways.
"It's nice to see you again, Ray," she said politely.
"And it's going to be even nicer," he said, his voice laden with mysterious promise. "Talk about a small world ... "
Leaning back in her seat, Joy stole furtive glances at the young detective. The physical change in him continued to engross her. Back in high school, Ray had been the boisterously clumsy ape on the Compton football squad. His assets had included a crew cut, lots of touchdowns, a loud mouth, and a particularly dirty mind. However, the Ray Forest now guiding the sleek convertible over a New York freeway looked as debonair as a wealthy New England yachtsman.
"Are you married, Ray?"
"Been too busy making money."
Secretly, Joy wondered what else Ray had been making. Unless he had changed drastically, Ray still craved girls like they were going out of style. Back in high school, it was said that Ray would purposely get himself benched during a big football game, just so that he could look into the grandstands and see up the girl's dresses. Joy knew this was true, because Ray had frequently attempted a similar thing in her English classes.
Ray's eyes were riveted on the road, and he seemed unaware that the wind had carried Joy's full skirt billowing over her stocking tops. Even when a particularly strong gust sent her skirt soaring to reveal her nearly transparent panties, Ray took no notice. Had he changed? The Ray Forest whom Joy remembered back in Compton high would not have missed such a ravishing sight. She didn't want him to look, but by the same token, she was strangely disturbed that he hadn't looked.
When, after nearly an hour's drive, they finally reached the Jones Beach Inn that Ray had spoken about, he was surprisingly gallant in assisting her from the car.
Quite without knowing why-perhaps to convince herself that she was still sexually attractive to Ray Forest-Joy was deliberately careless in alighting from the detective's car. The white dress slid above her gartered stocking tops to reveal the inviting whites of her thighs. This time, Ray took notice. In that brief lapse of seconds, Joy was quite certain that Ray not only looked, but actually stared.
Regaining his composure, he retrieved his plaid sports coat from the back of the car, exchanged smiles with her, and they started towards the inn.
The place was out of a story book. Landscaped like a pirate's getaway. The inn lay in the center of a sprawling Spanish garden overlooking the sea. It was surrounded by tropical trees and shrubbery, and as Joy scampered along at Ray's side, she could hear the roar of breakers crashing against the cliffs a hundred feet below. It was so picturesque that Joy imagined that she could even taste the sea and feel its spray. Suddenly, Ray guided her over the last few stone steps and they were at the oak-paneled door of the inn.
A white jacketed host approached them.
"Good evening, Mr. Forest. Table for two?"
Ray nodded, and Joy was taken aback by Ray Forest's new-found worldliness. She pressed more closely to him and presently they were escorted past the dinner guests and swept to a remote corner behind the main dining room. Their table was partially concealed by a heavy velvet drape, making it-or so it seemed-a private room.
"Do you like it here?" Ray asked when their cocktails arrived.
"I love it." Her gaze fell on the quaint Early American decor, then settled slowly back to the face of the handsome ex-football player. Had he brought other girls here? She supposed so.
"Shall we get down to your problem?" he asked, suddenly interrupting her thoughts.
Ray's face was momentarily lost in the flickering candle light.
"I don't know where to begin."
"The beginning is always a good place."
Joy took a steadying swallow from her cocktail. Averting Ray's searching glance, she haltingly explained that the problem concerned her husband of three years, Lou Harmon. He was cheating-another woman-perhaps several.
"It's not an easy thing to accept, Ray. I'm not even sure I want to accept it, but facts are facts."
She agreed to a second cocktail, and feeling more relaxed, she added:
"Sexually, Lou and I always hit it off pretty good together. Whenever he wanted it, I never turned him down ... even if I didn't feel like it. But lately...." She lowered her eyes. " ... it's Ray who doesn't feel like it. Says he's too tired. Says I'm a sex fiend."
"You're certain that he's cheating?"
There was little doubt of it, Joy explained. She told Ray about the many nights that Lou didn't get in until after midnight, explained how exhausted he was, and finished by describing the lipstick stain she had found on Lou's shirt.
"It follows the familiar pattern, all right," Ray said a little sadly. Then: "What do you want me to do about it, Joy?"
She clenched the cocktail glass so tightly she thought it would break.
"Ray, I want to know who this bitch is? I want to know when they're doing it, how they're doing it ... every damn thing you can learn about them."
"Are you planning to divorce him?"
Again, she lowered her eyes.
"I don't know, Ray. To tell the truth, I don't know what I'm going to do." i "The reason I ask," Ray began, "is that it makes a difference in just what kind of an investigation I conduct."
"A difference?"
Ray explained New York's archaic divorce laws.
"You have to have incontravertible evidence of adultery. Do you know what I mean by incontravertible evidence?"
She shook her head.
"Pictures," he said. "Pictures depicting an errant husband in bed with another woman. The pictures have to either show the accused in flagrante delicto ... the act of intercourse ... or at least show the couple in a state of undress, leaving us little, if any, doubt."
"How would you get pictures like that?"
"That's my problem, but if you want pictures...."
"Get them, Ray!" She balled her hand into a fist. "Get me all the goddamned pictures you can." She would have said more, but suddenly the waiter arrived with their dinners.
Joy was hungry when they had entered the inn, but now that hunger was gone. Visualizing Lou taking off some bitches' clothes, feeling her up and doing all kinds of things to her, had taken the charm off the entire evening.
Ray sensed her indifference. He clasped her hand.
"That steak isn't going to get eaten by itself." He encouraged her with an affectionate smile.
Joy managed to return the smile. Ray was being awfully nice. She owed him something more than simply acting like a moody clown. Regardless of her own personal hurt, she was determined not to let the thought of Lou spoil her evening.
She dived into the steak with new found relish and it was just as tasty as Ray had promised. When dinner was concluded, they settled back to enjoy another round of cocktails. The added drinks made Joy feel more carefree.
Ray welcomed the change in her. He became less aloof, joked lightly with her and proposed silly little toasts about nothing. When she removed the cape that she had worn throughout the dinner, Ray became eagerly fascinated by the curvaceous promise of her revealed bosom.
"Love that girl, love that dress," he sighed. "Is it too low?"
"Surely, you don't expect an honest answer to that question, do you?" She blushed.
"Knowing you, the answer is no."
He continued his appraisal of her breasts.
"You know, Joy, if I couldn't have recognized you there on Sixth Avenue by no other means ... Joy, you're as big as you ever were."
The drinks made it easier for Joy to accept his compliment. He wasn't being fresh-just blushingly frank.
"I was always too large ... even as a kid."
"I didn't say you were too large."
"Maybe not. But strict parents and a large bust are a frustrating combination for a fourteen-year-old girl. I wasn't even allowed out on dates."
Ray bent forward. His glance lowered to the exciting cleft of Joy's breasts.
"You missed a lot of good times," Ray said with a sigh of reminiscence.
"I know I did."
"But don't you ever stop to wonder about it, all the boys who wanted to take you out, and everything?"
"Now I do," she said. "When Lou married me, I was a virgin, but if I had known he was going to cheat and Mom and Dad weren't so strict...."
"What would you have done?" He mocked her with his smile.
"I wouldn't have been a virgin."
"Would you have gone out with me?"
"With everybody."
"Especially with me?" She laughed.
"Yes, Ray. Especially with you." They ordered more drinks and Ray squirmed closer.
"Where would we have gone?"
"Gone?"
"On our make-believe date. A show, the beach, a dance?"
"Drive-ins are always fun." She gave him a knowing wink.
Ray slapped the table.
"Dammit! Wish we could do it all over again."
"So do I."
"You know ... and this isn't the liquor talking ... but back there at Compton High, I wanted to get into your pants so badly I couldn't sleep nights just from thinking about it."
His sudden crudity of speech embarrassed her.
"We're adults, now, so don't take offense to that."
"I'm not offended. Besides, I kind of knew how you felt."
"You did?"
"Sure. A girl can tell."
"How?"
"She just can, that's all. I mean, a girl can see where a boy is looking."
"I was that obvious?"
"Painfully so. Don't you remember dropping pencils in English class?"
"And I thought I was being clever."
"You were ... for a while."
"Aren't you going to ask me what I saw?"
"My underpants ... if you were lucky."
"Yes, but there was one day...."
"Don't tell me I wasn't wearing any. I always wore panties."
"Not this day, you didn't."
"And I say you're wrong."
"Shall we re-enact the crime?"
"You nut!"
Ray laughed. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was staring at her breasts, nor that he enjoyed what he saw.
Joy was flattered.
"You know, Joy," he said, smiling wistfully at her half-exposed breasts, "I used to drool like a sick puppy just thinking of those."
"Now I feel self-conscious."
"Don't. You have something special there, something to be proud of."
"And a husband who cheats and isn't the least bit interested."
"He's an idiot."
"Thank you, Ray." She sensed his excitement. She also sensed her own, and it prompted her to ask Ray if he would like to dance.
"You just want to change the subject."
"Shouldn't we?" she asked.
"You don't like discussing your figure?"
"That's not the point."
"Nevertheless, you're going to hear me out. Night time," he went on, "was always the worst. I could almost see you there in the room with me. It was crazy. I'd lay there in bed and pretend you were with me. I'd see you there, naked and hot and waiting to be kissed ... "
"Ray!"
He realized that he had said too much. "I'm sorry."
"The dance?"
"Of course." He took her by the hand and led her to the darkened two-by-four dancing space. "Now you know how you used to make me feel."
She felt the maleness of him challenge the space between her thighs.
"How it used to be ... or how it still is?"
He gave her a wise smile, but said no more. Instead, he drew her body in close and commenced to dance. He danced well, but closer than Joy felt was proper in a public place. Yet, she felt no will to resist him. Instead, she found herself helping him. She pressed her hot breasts to his coat front and matched him in the slow sensuous rhythm of the dance. She realized that the pressure she was exerting against Ray's chest was forcing her breasts up and out of the confines of her strapless bra, but a spurt of recklessness had taken hold of her and the exhibition became fun.
Tall as he was, Ray could not help but see the rosy beginnings of her nipples. Joy felt him surge against her. She felt aroused and, too late, she realized that she had consumed more drink than was wise.
She tried to fight what was happening to her body, but Ray kept sliding his maleness into the pocket between her thighs, and Joy's resistance was fast disappearing. She didn't want to respond, but she was. Her mind said no, but her body ached for yes.
But then the song ended, the dance ended, and for the moment, at least, Joy escaped the savage onslaught of her driving passions.
Later, when they were back in the convertible and wheeling toward Manhattan, Ray was apologetic. The rush of cold night air had had a sobering effect on him.
"I made kind of an ass of myself back there, didn't I?"
She concealed her awareness.
"How so?"
"I mean the way I talked ... I mean, about your boob ... your breasts. One doesn't usually discuss a client's bust measurements, you know."
Hoping to alter the seriousness with which he spoke, she said:
"I'm more than just a client, Ray! Besides, what's wrong with expressing yourself?"
"Nothing, I suppose, providing that it's in good taste. And I wasn't."
"I haven't complained, have I?"
"No, but you did ask me to take you home."
There was no answer for that, but suddenly, Joy realized that she had been abrupt, if not completely cold. It was no wonder that Ray thought as he did. She had all but ruined his entire evening.
Snuggling closer to him, she said:
"Forget it, Ray. I have."
He put his arm around her and squeezed her in profound admiration.
"It's too bad that Lou can't realize how fortunate he is. You're a rather wonderful creature, Joy. Something special."
It was nice to hear, but mentioning Lou brought her problem back in all of its sickening clarity. Without wanting to think of Lou, she found herself asking Ray how he hoped to get the pictures, how pictures are taken with infra-red film, how a miniature camera works-question after question, questions without end.
Ray expertly described the infra-red sensitivity of infra-red film, but the specialized knowledge required to understand it left Joy very much in the dark.
"When you pop the flash bulb ... and this is an infra-red bulb we're talking about ... the film registers the light, but the human eye barely perceives it."
What he was saying was still a mystery to Joy, but Ray was so eager to describe the tools of his trade, that Joy felt obligated to listen. He explained how they bugged telephones, set up hidden microphones, tailed persons without their knowledge, and generally went about the dangerous task of tracking down an errant husband.
"If you aren't in a big rush, we could stop off at my place for a few minutes, and I can show you exactly how we'll go about catching that husband of yours. Would you have a few minutes?"
Joy had no intention of denying Ray the opportunity of showing off his equipment. He was as enthusiastic as a young boy. Besides, she was interested in how Ray would trap Lou!
"I've got loads of minutes,"-she told him. "Lou is supposed to be in Chicago right now, so I can get home at any time I damned please."
Ray looked playfully at her breasts.
"You might not get home."
"Do I look worried?" Joy felt wicked.
His eyes saw the ripe fullness that bulged out of the top of her dress.
"You don't look worried at all," Ray said, "but damn if you don't look delicious."
"Silly! Delicious means something you eat."
"That's what I mean," Ray said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ray's apartment was located in the shadows 104 of Madison Avenue, an impressive red-bricked building that boasted a doorman, a subterranean garage, and a self-service elevator which zipped them to the fourteenth floor in a seeming fourteen seconds.
Ray unlocked his suite and flicked on the lights. Joy gasped at the rush of elegance. Ray's surprising success was greater than she could have possibly believed.
"You like?" Ray said, closing the door.
"Ohhh, Ray! It's beautiful!" Her eyes were caught up in a galaxy of lavishness. The curving fifteen-foot divan must have cost over a thousand dollars, she thought. It was flanked on both ends by glass tables with ornate gold legs. Priceless matching lamps adorned each table.
"Did you say you were a prostitute, or a private detective?"
Ray laughed and helped her off with her cape.
" 'Martini, Bloody Mary, Whiskey Sour ... what'll it be?"
Joy chose the Whiskey Sour. Ray excused himself and went to the kitchen. Joy moved to the divan and the plush wall-to-wall carpeting silenced even the sound of her footsteps. She had no idea that private detectives could afford such luxury. She had always imagined that, contrary to TV shows, private detectives lived in third-rate hotels and thrived on a steady diet of cheap gin and two-dollar whores.
Ray was certainly something more-and all this from snooping into other people's bedrooms. What a delightful way to make a living, she thought, and then Ray returned with their drinks.
Joy reached for her Whiskey Sour. Still awed by Ray's riches, she stood to admire the hand-painted originals that hung above the built-in stereo cabinet.
"You've done remarkably well, Ray."
He took it modestly.
"Some of it was pure luck."
"You call this luck?"
"In the particular case I'm thinking of, it was a sheer stroke of the gods." He led her back to the divan. "About a year ago," he related, "a middle-aged woman entered my office and asked me to check tabs on her husband. It seemed fairly routine. The woman agreed to my fee of three hundred dollars, and I went to work on it.
"As far as these investigations go, this one was no more difficult than any of the others. I tailed her husband, discovered that he was going beddy-bye with this young chick, got my moving pictures, and that was that.
"The woman got her divorce-but this is where the gods dropped the gold nugget. Unknown to me, at the time I took her case, was the fact that her husband was a wealthy shoe manufacturer."
"His wife didn't tell you?"
"She said he was in business, but that was all. Anyway, I was a little disappointed to learn the truth ... what I mean is, you charge your clients according to what the traffic will bear. In her case, I might have got a couple of grand.
"But ... and this was the big surprise ... the old girl got such a handsome court settlement ... something like two million bucks ... that she decided I deserved a little bonus. This," Ray said, gesturing toward the elaborate furnishings, "is that bonus: Ten thousand dollars worth!"
Joy was amazed. In five years, Ray Forest had leaped from being a burly, sweaty-faced braggart to a suave and very successful private detective.
"How did you ever get into this business, Ray?"
That, too, was a stroke of luck, he said. Once in New York, he had answered an advertisement requesting a young man for confidential inquiries. Ray had supposed that it was some sort of credit bureau in need of a door pounder.
"Only it was the real thing. This old boy had a detective agency and he wanted somebody to learn the ropes while he sucked away at the port wine. Once upon a time, he was one of the sharpest hawks in the game, but when I came to work with him, it was all downhill."
"What happened?"
"Once a wino, always a wino. Jake-that was his name-got more interested in looking at dirty pictures than taking 'em, so I was doing all the work and the old wino was getting all the credit."
"So you quit and went into business for yourself."
"Not quite."
Lou explained that one night the police woke him up and dragged him downtown. When he got there, Jake was also there.
"They'd caught Jake in the office, taking nude pictures of some fifteen-year-old girl. Can you imagine? Top dog in his day, and here he was getting his rocks off taking dirty pictures of a girl that wasn't dry behind the ears. Goes to show you what that wine can do."
"Is he in jail now?"
"No. We were able to get the girl's parents to squash the charges, but as far as the agency was concerned, Jake was washed up. Through."
"And you were in charge."
"That's the story. He lugged his camera equipment off and I got the business."
"And do you take fifteen-year-old girls in the back room?"
Ray smiled good-naturedly.
"I go for the bigger ones."
"Shall I scream?"
"Not till I get the camera out." He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Speaking of cameras, would you like to see those films?"
"What films?"
"The ones I just finished telling you about ... the shoe manufacturer. That way, you'll see exactly how I operate and sort of get an idea how I'll go about trapping your husband."
"I'd love to see them."
Ray stood up.
"Maybe I ought to warn you, though. If you're squeemish about such things...."
"Squeemish?"
"That's right. The judge who sat in on my client's divorce proceedings said it was the filthiest documentary that he had ever witnessed during his years on the bench. Do you still feel like you'd care to see it?"
Joy looked squarely at Ray.
"I'm not a little girl, you know!"
A grin eased into Ray's lean, tanned face.
He gazed boldly at the luscious thrust of her breasts.
"Who the hell said you were little?"
Joy laughed, and at the detective's urging, she went to the kitchen to freshen their drinks. Ray, meanwhile, prepared the movie projector and set up a portable screen.
When she returned to the living room several minutes later, Ray had switched off all but one of the lamps.
"I hope I didn't make them too strong," she said, setting the tray down.
"You'll need strong drinks to look at these movies," Ray hinted.
"Are they that bad?"
"You'll find out in a minute." He sat down beside her on the divan and picked up the remote control switch that operated the projector. "You ready?"
"Ready as ever."
Suddenly, the room was pitched into darkness. Ray moved closer.
"You'll remember that Mr. K-which is what I'll call him from this point on-was a shoe manufacturer. He also had his own retail outlets here in New York. One of his larger outlets was a store in Queens. We noticed very early in the investigation that Mr. K. took a most profound interest in this one particular store. The reason, I learned, was one of his part-time salesgirls. She was just sixteen tiny years-old."
"You mean...."
"Exactly. He liked 'em young and ripe and ready. This girl that you're going to see filled all the requirements."
"That's preposterous, though. What would a sixteen-year-old girl want with an old man?"
"Money, gifts, the flattery of knowing that the old buck wanted her so badly."
"It's incredible."
"So was the innocent sixteen-year-old, once she got her clothes off. Now watch." Ray turned on the projector.
"Here you'll see the girl leaving the shoe store. It's ten o'clock, and supposedly, the youngster is on her way home. We learned later, by the way, that the girl had been telling her parents that she was staying overnight with a girl friend."
Joy leaned forward.
"This portion of the film was taken with a camera employing a high-powered telescopic lens. The resolution is not too sharp, but when you appreciate the fact we were using souped-up film and available light ... there she goes now!"
Joy saw the young girl turn the corner. A street light illuminated her cheap trench coat and the familiar bobby sox.
"Up ahead, parked at the curb, you'll notice a dark Cadillac. This is Mr. K. Now watch ... there. See how she glances up and down the street first ... now the mad dash for the car."
Joy took a quick sip from her drink. Suddenly, the black Cadillac swerved into the traffic.
"For these flicks," Ray droned on, "we have a cushioned miniature movie camera which is mounted directly to the windshield."
In the continuing sequences of the movie, Joy watched the old man and the teen-ager finally reach their destination-a motel on the outskirts of town.
"It almost makes you sick at your stomach, just watching," Joy said.
"You haven't seen anything yet. Look ... he's kissing her."
Joy fastened her eyes to the screen and wondered what the old bastard was doing with his hands. Probably had them half inside the poor girl's panties.
"She doesn't seem to mind what he's doing to her," Joy commented.
"Why should she? Like I said before, she was probably flattered by all that attention from an older married man. Besides, maybe it felt good."
Joy giggled.
"Here you see Mr. K. leaving his car and entering the office of the motel to register. The girl, you'll notice, has remained in the car." There was a pause, and then Mr. K.-portly and gray-haired-was coming quickly away from the office. He was beckoning to the young girl in the car.
"He's signed up and has signaled the girl ... there you see her climbing out of the car and running to his side."
"How old did you say she was?"
"Sixteen, but you never saw such a hot sixteen-year-old in your entire life. Watch this."
Mr. K. had taken the girl by the hand and was leading her up the walk to a door marked "24". Joy watched the old man insert the key in the lock. Suddenly, evidently so hot and excited that he couldn't wait, the old man leaned against the girl, kissed her and felt her up.
Without realizing it, Joy had hunched forward to get a closer view of the rapidly unfolding drama. Her eyes were so completely fastened to the screen that she never felt the pressure of Ray's arm as it slipped around her waist.
She strained her eyes to delineate the teenager's facial features, but the scene was too dimly lit. However, Joy did see the man putting his hand under the girl's skirt. The girl began to wiggle.
"He could go to prison for this," Joy said.
"He almost did," Ray answered. "But this kid ... notice how badly she wants it. Look how she's rubbing herself against him."
Joy felt her cheeks color. Wasn't this the same way that she had rubbed herself against Ray when they had danced back at the inn? Was Ray throwing a hint at her?
Suddenly, Ray stopped the forward motion of the projector.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I figured that maybe you didn't want to see any more."
But Joy did want to see more! Still, she didn't want to appear overly anxious.
"I can take it, or leave it," she said, hoping to convince Ray of her neutrality.
"It gets pretty hot from this point on."
Joy shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, I've seen this much, so you might as well show me the rest."
"Okay," Ray said, and re-started the projector. There was a switch in the scene. The man and the young girl had now entered the motel and closed the outside door.
"Whenever you make love, Joy, always be sure to lower the blinds."
"Even when you live on the eighth floor of a large apartment building?" Joy quipped.
"That's different, but Mr. K. could've made things much more difficult for me if he had taken a double look at those Venetian blinds. The slats were tilted to the floor instead of the ceiling.
"I was able to get up on a ladder and aim the camera between the slats. The horizontal line that you'll occassionally notice is a slat from the blinds."
"Didn't they even turn the lights out?"
"Well, half the fun of sex is seeing what you're getting. Then, too, they had no idea that I was perched out side their window with a miniature movie camera."
Joy was excited. The young girl and the old man were removing their coats.
"Now you'll get a sharp view of the teenager's face. You'll notice that she is quite young, and also quite pretty."
Joy could hardly have disagreed with Ray's opinion. The youngster was provocatively posed against the corner of the dresser. The old man was temporarily out of the camera's range, perhaps removing his clothes. The teen-ager had both of her hands resting on the dresser, her shoulders were swept back, and even with the sloppy, ill-fitting sweater she wore, her young breasts were very much in evidence. She had long hair that bounced at her shoulders, and startlingly bright eyes.
Suddenly, the girl moved away from the dresser. She wiggled her butt with every step. Then she flopped to the bed and drew one of her loafers up under her. The effect was calculated to reveal what was under her short plaid skirt. It was a clever scheme and the girl must have learned it when she was only twelve.
Her skirt flew back to the elastic edging of her panties. Her legs were white and soft-looking. Suddenly, she stuck her tongue out-evidently a mischievous dare to the man in the room with her.
Now the man was back in camera range. He was approaching the young girl. With a giggle, the girl leaped from the bed and dodged away.
"She wants to tease him a little," Ray interjected. "Watch how she holds him off."
"I wish I could hear what they were saying."
"There ... she's made him sit down on the bed and she's standing up in front of him. See the pained expression on his face? He wants to get down to brass cracks, but the girl is in no particular rush."
Up until now, Joy hadn't paid much attention to the man. Now, however, he was full face to the camera and Joy saw that he was somewhere in his late forties. He was short, wore glasses, and had thinning dark hair.
Joy turned her attention back to the young girl. The teen-ager had clasped her hands behind her head and was doing a slow rotating motion with her hips.
"Watch this," Ray whispered.
Suddenly, the girl removed her hands from the back of her head and pressed them to her breasts. She began to play with the outside of her sweater, rubbing the spot where the nipples should be. The man on the bed squirmed.
Suddenly, Joy realized that she, too, was squirming. Her hands were clammy. A bead of moistness trembled from her upper lip. She gripped Ray's hand.
Meanwhile, the young girl on the screen was teasing her nipples to new hardness. She wiggled her buttocks like someone had dropped a hot potato into her panties. The man on the bed was wiggling too-only it wasn't a hot potato that caused it.
"Watch how she shakes her fanny at him," Ray said, squeezing her hand.
It was wild. Her little butt undulated like it was on fire. Her short skirt bounced up and down her legs, her jiggling breasts threatened to jump out of her sweater, and now the man was coming off the bed. They were in front of the camera and the man embraced her.
"He's got her now," Ray's voice expressed a measure of victory. "Watch his hand."
Joy did and it was insane. The man's hand slipped from the girl's waist and crept slowly to her undulating backside. The touch of his hand inflamed the young girl. She shivered.
"Watch ... there ... see how he's sliding her skirt up her backside?" Ray squirmed. Obviously, Ray was also excited. "Watch that hand." Suddenly, Ray squeezed Joy's right thigh.
Joy, however, was too rapt in the screen orgy to notice Ray's hand. She was more intently interested in the hand on the screen, a hand that had now slipped into the waistband of the youngster's panties. He began a slow, sensuous circular motion of the young girl's bare buttocks. Unable to control herself, the teen-ager responded with a similar motion in the opposite direction. Round and round went the girl's behind, the man's hand, and without conscious effort, Joy found herself responding. Ray's hand had strayed under her dress and the effect was immediate and pleasant.
"Did you ever see anything so hot?" Ray whispered. "And look at the beautiful legs she has."
Joy was so entranced she scarcely heard Ray's words. The man had slid the panties down the youngster's smooth, trembling buttocks.
"Watch what the old bastard is doing with his other hand."
Joy didn't have to be told what to watch. The man had reached under the girl's sweater and was cupping the budding youth of her naked breast. The girl had not even wore a bra. Joy was so excited she could hardly breathe.
"I had a zoom lens on the earners," Ray was saying, "and now we come in for a close-up of the girl's face. Watch her expression. Man, is she hot!"
Joy could imagine the youngster letting out a passionate moan. Her eyes were rolling to the back of her head. Her mouth was open. Her fists were clenched.
"What's he waiting for?" Joy said out loud, but instantly ashamed that she had said it.
"She'll get it. Watch...." Ray's hand now stole further under Joy's dress and reached the warmth of her thighs. By now, though, Joy was so hot herself that she didn't care what Ray did with his hands. Just watching the swooning expression that had come into the teenager's face was enough to send her into orbit.
The girl on the screen was so hot that she was nearly ready to beg for it. She seized the edge of her sweater and pulled it roughly over her head. In equal haste, she unzipped her skirt and let it drop to the floor.
"She's beautiful," Joy gasped.
The teen-ager stood proudly before the older man. Her ripe breasts-by no means small-stood up bold and erect. Her nipples were taut, ready for the man's mouth. She stepped out of her cotton panties, kicked off the anklets and loafers and fell across the bed.
Joy was swept up in a whirlwind of passion. She suddenly wished that she were a part of the movie. The man was hurriedly undressing and the girl was sprawled on the bed, legs spread, an eager, impatient look on her face.
Joy couldn't remove her eyes from the girl's luscious cherry-tipped breasts. They were not mammoth, but they were a mouthful. The nipples were small, but hard and erect. She was playing with those nipples, making them still harder.
Unconsciously, Joy's hands suddenly went to her own breasts. The feeling was good, but the touch of Ray's fingers under the darkness of her dress was even better. She spread her legs to make it easier for him.
"This is wild," she whispered.
"And getting wilder," Ray answered. His hands found the elastic edging of Joy's panties.
On the portable movie screen, the girl was still laying there in all her splendid wonderment. Suddenly, she made a thrust with her pelvis. Joy gasped and clutched her breasts. She didn't believe it possible that so young a girl could have such a richly, exciting body. Her hips had a provocative swell and the copious abundance of dark hair curled at the divide of her body looked as soft as corn silk.
It was crazy, but Joy wished that she could reach out and fondle the corn silk. She wanted to feel the girl's fervor, the excitement, touch the hot boobies, touch everything....
"Watch him tear his trousers off," Ray whispered, delving his hand unconsciously toward Joy's moist panties. "This is way out. She's an expert. She's done this before ... you can tell, and not just with him."
It seemed to be the truth. She was practiced at the art of sex. The man beside her was no less skilled himself. While the youngster fondled him, he had found an enjoyable activity of his own. He squeezed her naked melons and brought a wave of heated anxiety to the youngster's face. Her breasts seemed to grow under the constant massaging that the man was applying. They were actually getting bigger. But so was something else.
Joy could take no more. When she had agreed to come up to Ray's apartment, she had no notion of going to bed with him. Now, she thought, it was practically an overwhelming necessity. The hot film and Ray's tantalizing hands had aroused her to a pitch of madness. She wanted to touch Ray, feel him where the young girl was feeling the man on the screen. How she suppressed that mad urge was not completely clear to her, but she couldn't contain herself much longer.
The man on the screen, meanwhile, was going wild. So was the girl. They explored each other's bodies as though-for the each of them-this was their final escapade with sex. His mouth sought her young breasts and his hands sought the quivering, hungry pocket between her thighs.
The youngster was insanely hot. She thrashed and pitched her legs, her eyes were closed, and when she rolled over on her side, Joy saw the uncontrollable twitchings of the young girl's ripe behind.
It was more than Joy could stand. The man was driving the poor young girl crazy with desire. Why didn't he do it to her. What was he waiting for?
Joy was so angry she felt like jumping into the screen and forcing the man between the girl's outstretched thighs, making him give it to her and give all he had.
Suddenly, her wish came true. The moment that Joy had so hungrily awaited for was now happening before her very eyes.
The man mounted the young girl. He stroked her face tenderly. His hands caressed the dainty loveliness of the girl's neck. He offered her a regretful smile. Then he was ready.
The girl was no virgin. She accepted him with a knowledgeable sigh, accepted him to the hilt and pumped and wiggled her passion-filled body for more.
Her small hands clawed at the back of her lover. She met his thrust with a thrust of her own. She was delirious, out of her mind, and he was nothing less, himself.
Joy was speechless. Ray's hand was inside her panties. She didn't know whether Ray was conscious of what he was doing or not, but in the hot darkness that swam before her eyes, Joy no longer cared. She moved her hips as the girl on the screen moved hers, thrusting when she thrust, withdrawing when the girl did. It was slow at first, but as the girl on the screen became swept away, moved faster and faster, Joy joined her.
The young girl on the screen was nearing her climax. Joy could tell. Their bodies were going wild, pounding savagely at each other, and suddenly, Joy lost all control.
She needed the same thing the teen-ager was getting, and she needed it now. Her hand went for the zipper of Ray's pants. Ray was ready.
She pulled him to the floor. Ray needed no massaging, no fondling. Neither did she. No words were spoken between them. None had to be. Before the flickering light of the movie screen, they tore off their clothes and rushed into each other's arms.
"Give it to me, Ray...."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Joy had sexual intercourse on the furry softness of a two-thousand-dollar Turkish carpet.
They did it in front of the movie screen. Ray never even bothered to turn off the projector. Whatever the teen-age girl did to the old man, Joy in turn did to Ray. It was mad!
Ray was good to her and good for her. He knew she was too hot to wait very long. He drew her legs apart and the waiting was over.
"Ohhh, Ray...." The thrill of him inside her was beyond the scope of description. She raised herself to meet him, not only taking, but also giving.
The cinema teen-ager was doing the same thing, spreading her young thighs, pumping wildly to the man atop her. In short, it was an unbridled sexual madness without equal. They matched each other, movement for movement, touch for touch. The kisses, the fondling, the wild abandon of thrashing limbs was the rhythm of hell.
"More, Ray," Joy pleaded and raked his back.
Now she had all of it. She clutched, screamed, moaned, and then she was beyond the sound barrier, soaring to the gates of heaven.
"Ohhh, Ray ... Ray ... I'm...."
He choked her off with a kiss, they blew up together, and then limp and exhausted, they collapsed to the warm, moist carpet.
Joy let out a tumultuous sigh. It had been more beautiful and wonderful than she had dreamed possible. She should be satisfied, she told herself, but even with the perspiration still gathered on her tummy from one orgy, the craving for another had already begun.
"Can you, Ray? Can you do it again?"
He raised himself slowly to one elbow and gazed at the pleading expression that was written on Joy's face.
"That's what I like about brunettes." He grinned. "They've got good staying power."
She gripped his forearms tightly.
"Please, Ray?"
"Like in about twenty minutes. Okay?"
But Joy couldn't wait. She had seen how the teen-ager had urged her older partner on to a second round, and feeling no shame, Joy bent to imitate the teen-ager.
A million thrills ran through Joy's loins. The tiger just had to come back to life! It had to! Ray said it was hopeless. Joy disagreed. Nothing was hopeless, she said, and set out to prove it.
And then it was happening-the pulse of life was returning. The tiger was alive, growling, up on two feet, then three, finally, wonderfully-it was full-grown and up on all four.
Ray throbbed like a young stud. He clasped Joy's hips and lifted her into place. Her knees settled on both sides of his face. Joy grew giddy with desire. Then Ray's probing tongue reached the velvet mine shaft that men had frequently committed mayhem over.
Joy swooned. So did Ray.
Suddenly, Ray lifted her from the floor and carried her into the kitchen. He set her down on the kitchen table and drew her legs apart.
"On the kitchen table?" Joy asked incredulously.
He nodded, but he didn't explain why. Demonstrations are always better. Ray demonstrated. He stood up and gripped the sides of the table. Now, he explained, he was able to attain the leverage that had been so difficult on the living room floor.
He entered and Joy thought she would split in two.
It was wonderful, glorious, excruciating.
"Ohhh, my God ... ohhh, Ray...."
He thundered at her like a wild bull. He rammed her with everything he had. The force of him almost knocked her off the table, but she grasped the sides and held on.
And then it burst on them both!
With a mighty heave, his body convulsed, hers convulsed, and they were joined together in the indescribeable spasm of mutual orgasm.
Later, after they had gone to the bathroom, soaped and scrubbed each other's naked bodies to new freshness, they dressed and sat on the floor before the front room's electric fireplace.
What followed, was foolishly romantic. Ray dropped tiny cheese crackers into her mouth, turned on the stereo, and at irregular intervals, he bent forward and planted silly kisses on her nose and forehead. The love after sex was almost as gratifying as that which had preceded it.
"I'm a helluva client, I suppose," Joy said.
"Meaning?"
"Well, here I am hiring you to catch a cheating husband, and what I'm doing is nothing better."
"Recriminations?"
"I can't help it, Ray ... it's just the way I feel."
"Didn't you enjoy it?"
She took an affectionate grip of his hand.
"You know I enjoyed it, but two wrongs don't make a right, do they?"
"Maybe not," Ray said, "but feeling guilty about what we just did isn't going to prevent Lou from cheating, either. What do you suppose he's doing tonight?"
"Probably the same thing we're doing," she answered without any reservations.
"So quit feeling so sorry for yourself. One more word out of you and I'll cut off the supply of cheese crackers."
Joy offered Ray a grateful smile. He was trying his best to keep her from slipping back into her depression. He knew and thrived on the value of a smile.
"Maybe," Ray said, "as long as you've brought it up, you ought to fill me in a little more on that husband of yours." He told her that he would need a snapshot, the address of his office, any other pertinent information that she had to offer.
Joy found a snapshot of Lou in her purse, filled in the other blank spaces, they had coffee, and then it was regretfully 'good night'.
Ray wanted to drive her home, but Joy begged off, insisted that she could readily hail a taxi.
"You're not leaving without a hearty smile," Ray warned.
She gave it to him, a smile that said the evening had been fun after all, no regrets, no recriminations.
"You know, Ray, I never even asked you what your fee would be."
"Is two-fifty too much?"
"It sounds fair enough," she answered. Then, and to prove that there were no regrets, she winked and said, "That little play session was what they call the 'retainer fee'."
"I think I'm getting screwed."
"We both got screwed!" Joy laughed.
When Joy reached the street, she was immediately sorry that she hadn't let Ray drive her home. There were no taxicabs in sight.
Futhermore, it might be a long wait before one did appear. The only remaining choice was the subway.
She had to wait nearly twenty minutes for a train, the trip lasted ten more minutes, and by the time she reached her street, it was nearly three in the morning.
She had another block to walk and she was exhausted. It had been a long, long day. In less than twenty-four hours, Joy reflected sadly, she had been little better than a common harlot. She had had intercourse with three different men for a total of five times.
No wonder I ache, she mused. But how did professional whores do it all night long with dozens of men? They must be perpetually raw inside, she thought. And even for money, it would be a drag. In her own case, sleep was going to seem like Heaven. She would sleep until noon-maybe longer.
Anxious to reach that bed, she quickened her staccato-like steps. The doorway was in sight, and so rapt was she in reaching it, that she never saw the youths-not until it was too late.
They were hidden in the shadows between two apartment buildings. They came at her so quietly and quickly that she never even had a chance.
One of them seized her from behind. She started to scream, but an angry hand clamped down on her mouth. She swung out at space with her purse and heard a hollow laugh.
She jerked her face around, screamed, and then something smashed her across the head. The lights blinked and then there was just darkness, darkness, darkness....
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joy's head ballooned. She thought it was ready to burst. She blinked her eyes but they refused to focus. From somewhere in the distant beyond, she heard voices. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the film lifted and she saw the sea of anxious faces.
"Hey! Check that, boys. The fairy princess is coming out of her beauty sleep. Wake up, little whore!" A hand slapped her in the face.
Tears stung at her eyes. She was notable to clearly discern her assailant's face, but the voice was revoltingly familiar. It was a voice that she would never forget! It belong to Dominic. Dominic who loved. Dominic who hated.
"C'mon, little whore. Wake up. You've got work to do." They chorused in laughter.
Joy tried to blink away the nightmare, but it was here to stay. She coughed on cigarette smoke that one of the youths had blown in her face. She felt someone lifting her dress.
"And look at all those delicious goodies," one of them shouted gleefully.
"I get the cherry!"
"Shut up, punk! Cherries you get in the fourth grade. Fairy princess, here, ain't even got the crate it came in." More laughter.
Joy was fully conscious now. In one swift, panic-filled glance, she saw that she was lying on a dirty cot in the middle of a decrepid shack. From the broken window pane and with dawn's beginning, Joy realized that she was in some kind of a crude junkyard. Beyond the broken glass, she saw a mountain of wrecked autos, scrap iron and rubble.
Dominic dropped her skirt.
"Davy's Junkyard welcomes you, fairy princess ... only don't look for Davy. Him and a bottle of port wine are going steady right now and, unfortunately, Davy won't be around to coitus interruptus, if you get what I mean."
Joy gazed questioningly at each of the youths.
"You little bastards can go to jail for a stunt like this. I hope you realize that."
Dominic whistled.
"Jail, little whore, ain't a word that us fellows like. It just ain't friendly and we aim to be real friendly. What's more, fairy princess, maybe some of us are bastards, but this ain't no time to get pyrotechnical. You dig, chick?"
"I ought to dig you right in the balls!" She pulled her foot back, prepared to drive her high-heeled shoe into the groin of the first boy who made a move.
"You know," Dominic said, with a dark-eyed smirk, "for a fairy princess, you got a pretty foul mouth."
"Maybe she wants it rough like," one of the youths suggested.
"My friend Gino may have a point, lady. I mean you are cordially invited to a little screwing party and you're the guest of honor. Course, if you want to bang the war drums, there's five of us and only one of you. Any way you add it up, sister ... you lose."
She wanted to claw their eyes out, yet she had to keep her wits. Maybe there was still a chance to reason with them.
"Dominic, you don't want to get into trouble. Let me go and I'm perfectly willing to forget everything."
Dominic let loose with a vulgar laugh.
"I'm getting into you, lady ... not trouble. You're going to take care of us. You understand?"
"I won't!"
"Do you strip, or do we rip 'em off?"
Joy spit in Dominic's face.
"Okay, whore. You asked for it!"
They rushed her. Joy kicked and screamed, but she was instantly overwhelmed. Two of them pinioned her arms, a third sat on her ankles, and Dominic and another boy-one much younger-began tearing the clothes from her body.
"Wop bastards!"
Dominic's hand ripped her across the mouth. Warm blood trickled into her mouth. Tears stung at her eyes. She wanted to resist, but the battle was over.
In mere seconds, like vultures tearing away at the outer covering of fallen carrion, they tore off Joy's clothes and stared hungrily at the captured prey.
"Man! Look at them grapefruits!"
"Hey, lady! We're hungry. You gonna breast feed us?"
"I get the left one."
"Like hell, Gino! Your mouth is too small!"
Joy tried to close her mind and body to the terrible thing that was happening to her, but it was impossible. Their hands were everywhere. Grubby hands that violated the most intimate parts of her body, hands that brought revulsion and tears and pain, but not that which she wanted most-darkness.
"Ain't no use to cry, lady. If you're gonna get gang-banged, you might as well lay back and enjoy it."
More laughter.
"Who's first?"
"Me, Gino."
"Your rear end sucks wind," Dominic shouted. "I think Fritz oughta be first. He's the cherry. How 'bout it, Fritz?"
The boy named Fritz suddenly paled. He was no more than fourteen-years-old, and now he backed away.
"I don't have to be first."
"Nobody said you had to be! What'samatter? You getting cold balls? Or are you 'fraid?"
"I ain't afraid of nothing!" he shouted.
"Then c'mon and lay her. You fruit out on us now and I'll bust you wide open."
"C'mon, Fritz. Show her the liverworst!"
They clapped in unison.
"Fritz gonna blitz! Fritz gonna blitz!"
The small frail boy came at her then.
And then another boy ... and another ... and then blackness and nothing....
When she came slowly to consciousness, they were gone. A bright sunlight was finding its way through the cobwebbed window.
She sobbed. The terrible nightmare was over. Or was it? Would they return? Would the degrading ordeal repeat itself? She prayed that it would not.
She lay there for many minutes in the languid stupor of semi-consciousness and slowly regained her strength. She was aware of her nakedness, her pain, but of more importance, she was now certain that the youthful rapists were gone and would not return.
After a while, she tried to move. New pain racked her body and, for a second, she thought she would blot out. Somehow, she managed to hang on. Slowly-so slowly that it seemed like ages-she fought to bring herself up to a sitting position. Her body was covered with bruises and angry welts. There wasn't a place on her body that was free of ache.
After several more minutes of rest, she staggered to her feet. Her clothes were in tatters. She had to have something to put on. If someone-a man-came in here and found her this way....
She sagged against a wall of the lean-to and began to sob. She cried for several minutes before she re-composed herself. Tears were not the answer. She had to get out of here, had to have clothes. But where?
Suddenly, her worried glance caught sight of the greasy coveralls hanging from a cabinet door on the other side of the shack.
With a supreme effort, she stumbled across the room and climbed into the coveralls. She rolled the pant legs to a shorter length, found a pair of dirty boots to substitute for her high-heeled shoes, and as ridiculous as it looked, it would serve to get her home.
Picking up her purse and stuffing it inside the coveralls, she stole out of the junkyard's back entrance, cut through someone's yard, and made her way to the street.
It was a twenty-block walk to her apartment and each step was like a knife burning its way up the center of her body. She fought back the tears and prayed that she had the strength to make it. She was oblivious to the stares of the obviously curious, and some thirty minutes later, so weak that she could hardly move, she unlocked her apartment and stumbled inside.
She still had enough possession of her faculties to know that she had to get rid of the coveralls. Lou must not see them. In fact, Lou must not learn about anything.
She burned the coveralls and boots in the apartment's incinerator. She soaked herself in a tepid tub for thirty minutes, toweled, and climbed into a pair of pajamas. The pajamas would cover her bruises and conceal them from Lou's eyes, and the way things were going between them, she was certain that Lou wouldn't be trying to remove those pajamas.
She threw back the sheets and crawled into bed. This time, she did not have to count sheep.
But if she had counted ... it would've been men!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sound of Lou's voice awoke Joy from her drug-like sleep. "Honey?"
She pulled the covers up to her chin. "In here, Lou."
More lights switched on. Lou was framed in the doorway of the bedroom.
"What are you doing in bed so early?"
"I didn't feel too well."
Lou set down his attache case. He came to the bed. His cold hand reached her forehead.
"What hurts?"
"My stomach," she lied. "I guess it was something I ate."
"You don't have a fever," he noted.
"I'll probably feel better in the morning."
Lou sat down on the edge of the bed.
"I was kind of planning to take you out to dinner. That's why I rushed here direct from the airport."
"I'm sorry, Lou. I couldn't eat a thing."
"Can I get you anything at all?"
"Thanks, no. The best thing I can do is rest." She added, "If you're hungry, there's some cold cuts in the kitchen. If you'd rather, you can go out and eat."
"I don't like leaving you here all alone."
The lying bastard! Who was he kidding? Ten minutes after he left the apartment, Lou would have his hot hands roaming over some bitch's hind-end.
"Why worry your pretty little head about me?" Joy countered.
"That was loaded with sarcasm."
"I'm sorry, Lou. I simply don't feel well, and I'm definitely in no mood for an argument."
Lou came off the bed like a thunderbolt.
"Joy, what in the hell has happened to us?"
"Nothing has happened."
"The hell it hasn't. These last few days, you've treated me like I had the black plague."
"And you wouldn't know why."
"Now what's that suppose to mean?" Suddenly, Joy wondered if she had said too much.
"I don't want to discuss it any longer."
"You don't want to talk about anything, do you?"
"Dammit, Lou. I told you once ... I don't feel well."
Lou stormed out of the room without another word. Seconds later, she heard him angrily slam the front door.
"Good riddance!"
But the thought was scarcely true, because long after Lou had left, she lay there in the darkness and cried....
Morning was no less depressing. A curtain of fog hung over the city and a curtain of gloom hung over Joy Harmon.
She awoke stiffly from a dream-laced sleep and padded groggily to the bathroom. Her mouth tasted like a ball of cotton. She found herself wishing that she were dead.
A cold shower revived her body, but it did nothing for reviving her spirit. Lou hadn't returned to the apartment until well after midnight, and even then, he had spent the night on the divan. Her marriage was washed up-it was only a matter of time and legal technicalities.
Trying to forget her problems, she went to the kitchen and forced down a light breakfast. After a second cup of coffee, she tried reaching Ray Forest, but his secretary said that he was out for the day. Joy tried the detective's home phone, but there was no answer.
She drank two more cups of coffee, but there was no escape from boredom or loneliness. It was the apartment, she told herself. Everything in it reminded her of Lou and their crumbling marriage. Right now she didn't need any reminders. She needed escape.
On an impulse, she phoned Nancy Ryerson and told her how things were going and described how wretched she felt.
"You need a man," Nancy suggested.
"Like I need a hole in the head."
"So go out and get drunk. That's one way to forget."
Joy answered that maybe that was a good idea. She hung up, stacked the dishes in the sink, and donned a raincoat. She opened the door just as the man with the craggy face was about to knock. He was white-haired and hatless. He hugged a brief case to his rain-spattered jacket and the sudden opening of the door brought a surprised smile to his thin, wrinkled face.
"Miss Harmon?"
She looked at him oddly. His voice sounded familiar, yet she was quite certain that she had never seen him before.
"It's Mrs. Harmon," Joy corrected.
A mysterious grin spread across the old man's face. His teeth were yellowed and broken.
"If I could step inside for just a minute ... "
"I was just leaving," Joy said, suspecting a salesman.
"But this will only take a minute of your time, Mrs. Harmon." He maneuvered himself inside the apartment and began to unzip his brief case.
His brazen entry angered Joy. She didn't want to buy anything, nor was she prepared to listen to any long-winded sales pitch.
"Really, Mr...."
"Jacobs," he filled in, "and the product that I am selling is something that you can't afford to be without."
Joy impatiently shifted her stance. She was not going to unbelt her raincoat and sit down. That would only encourage him.
"You'll forgive me if I say this, Mrs. Harmon, but scanning your living room walls, it occurs to me how badly they need some pictures." He opened his briefcase. "I have some landscapes here that should be ideal. They're suitable for framing ... "
"I'm really not interested." She recognized his voice but was still unable to place it.
"You'll be interested in these," he persisted.
Reluctantly, Joy found the portfolio of pictures in her hands.
"We're planning to redecorate the apartment, Mr. Jacobs, so we wouldn't possibly be interested at this time in ... "
Suddenly, Joy's hands began to tremble. Her eyes bulged. The pictures! The pictures were of her!
Pictures of Joy and the delivery boy in naked embraces, and others of her and Tim McGuire. In one of the several dozen photographs, Tim McGuire was lying on top of her and kissing her breasts.
Her face colored. She choked:
"Where? How?"
The man shook with ugly laughter.
"You should learn to lower your shades, Mrs. Harmon...."
"But ... "
"No, Mrs. Harmon; I didn't scale the wall eight floors and hang outside your window to take these. These photos were taken from my apartment across the street." He emitted a cruel laugh. "With a 500 millimeter telescopic lens, anything is possible. Course the quality is top-notch, but ... well, how do you like the photos, bitch?"
The moment he uttered the profanity, Joy knew who he was. This was the anonymous phone caller, the one whose filthy tongue still echoed in her ears.
Blind with rage, Joy tore the pictures into a thousand pieces.
The old man simply sat there and grinned.
"Too bad you can't do that with the negatives, Mrs. Harmon."
Joy balled up her fists. She wanted to smash his teeth in.
"What is it you want?" If it's money ... "
"Just like a bitch ... all they think of is money." He let his eyes roam over her body. "And there are so many better things in life." He zipped up his brief case and stood up. "You're coming over to my apartment tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock."
"I'll do nothing of the kind."
"I think you will."
"How would you like it if I called the police?" Joy asked.
"Be my guest," he said, gesturing toward the telephone. "I imagine that they'll be quite interested in the pictures. Let's see ... contributing to the delinquency of a minor, adultery, cunnilingus ... ever been arrested on a morals charge?" He grinned. "You cruddy bastard!"
"You've got a lot of nerve calling me names, bitch. Maybe you'd rather I show the pictures to your husband."
Joy was silent.
"But if you keep our little appointment ... do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Harmon?" She was speechless.
"Three o'clock, Mrs. Harmon." He put his hand on the door knob. "It's suite number eight forty-one, directly across the street." He opened the door. "Bye, bye, Mrs. Harmon ... or should I have said, Mrs. Tits?" He was still laughing when the door closed quietly behind him.
Joy sagged to the floor and picked up the torn pieces of the photographs. They were horrible. They made her want to vomit. If Lou saw them. She burned them and flushed the ashes down the toilet. What did the fiend possibly want of her tomorrow at three o'clock? If it was money, he would have asked for it now. If it was something more revolting-intercourse with her-why would he wait until tomorrow?
Joy was miserable. Her life was complicated enough already-and now this. Worst of all, there was no one she could confide in without incriminating herself. Nancy had the only sane idea: She had said get drunk and forget everything.
Minutes later, she let herself be swallowed up in the rush of Fifth Avenue shoppers. She was in a daze. She felt no rain, no nothing.
She stopped in a mid-town bar and ordered a drink. She had to think of something, some way to get those negatives. If that gray-haired bastard showed the pictures to Lou, or worse yet, the police, how would she explain it?
Swiftly, she realized that there was no satisfactory explanation for what she had done. She had wantonly parlayed Lou's indiscretions into a self-depravity from which there was no escape. It was possible she might even go to jail.
Gulping down her drink, she now ordered another. How many women had this creep blackmailed? And why had he followed her and Tim McGuire when they went to the motel? She was certain that the bastard wasn't working for Lou, but who did he represent? And if she didn't keep her appointment with this cruddy bastard tomorrow, then what?
Seeking solace in drink, she ordered one after another until she no longer cared. She knew she was becoming drunk, but what did it matter?
She was vaguely conscious of stumbling from one bar to another, conscious of groping hands and sensual stares, of pig eyes and pressing male bodies, of blackness and night....
She was in a taxicab-or so it seemed-and the man in the front seat was saying:
"Where to, lady?"
She tried to focus her eyes.
"Take me to hell. D'ya know where that is?"
"Lady, I ain't got all night. You wanna go somewhere, I'll take you. If not ... "
"I wanna ride to the moon, Mac. I wanna sail over the treetops and spit on the pigs and...."
"Maybe we oughta go home, huh? Where d'ya live, lady?"
"I don't wanna go home. I wanna good time. I wanna screw...."
And then the cab was moving....
She blacked out briefly and when she came to, they seemed to be parked in an alleyway. It was dark and she felt the cab driver's hands prowling under her blouse. She was too stupidly drunk to resist him. She closed her eyes and let it happen. He was coughing and wheezing, maybe half-dead, but before he left this world, he was going to have her body. She heard him groping in the dark, opening his clothes, and then ripping at hers.
He was rough. His hands tore at the elastic of her panties and pushed her back to the cold leather of the rear seat. She felt the stubble of his beard on her naked breasts, and then groaned to the hairy weight of him as he crawled heavily between her legs.
In her drunken depravity, she cared for nothing. The sex act was purely mechanical. She spread her legs, yielded to his clumsy efforts to enter and, finally, because it was expected of her, she groped and helped him along.
She felt no pleasure in the act. She was too drunk to respond or feel anything. When he gasped and squeezed and wheezed, she knew it was over, and she was neither glad nor disappointed.
She then became ill. The cabbie had to swing the door open and push her out. She fell to her knees and retched violently. The cabbie threw her purse at her, doors slammed, and Joy regained her feet in time to see the tail lights of the taxi disappear into the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Joy spent the better part of the next day recovering from a frightening hangover. Lou had not been home when she stumbled in drunk, which was, at least, one thing to be thankful for. If Lou had seen her in this condition ... but she didn't allow herself to dwell on it. Besides, Lou probably didn't give a damn what she did. He was having his good times, so why should he worry about her?
At one o'clock, or a little after, the phone rang. It was the creep from across the street.
"Just thought I'd remind you about our little fun-fun, Mrs. Harmon. You haven't forgotten, have you?"
"I didn't forget," she said coldly.
"That's nice, Mrs. Harmon. I wouldn't want you to forget. We're going to have so much fun-fun ... are you still there, Mrs. Harmon?"
"I'm listening." She felt sick at her stomach.
"I'll see you, then, Mrs. Harmon. Three o'clock." He cackled and hung up.
In despair, Joy slumped in a chair and tried to think. What was she going to do about this idiot? He was dangerous to her welfare and dangerous to himself. He sounded like he ought to be in some kind of a mental institution. More likely, though, it would be her who would end up in the looney-bin, unless she thought of something-and soon.
Promptly at three o'clock, as ordered, Joy stood at his door and rapped. If the old bastard wanted to have sexual intercourse with her, no matter how much the act revolted her, she was committed to answer his wishes. Whatever the price, she had to get those negatives.
He opened the door after the second knock. He wore the same perpetual, nauseous grin.
"I'm glad you had the good sense to come, Mrs. Harmon. Come in."
Joy nervously came inside and sat down. The room was a mess. Everywhere she looked, she saw cameras, scenery drops, tripods and developing equipment. One camera was mounted on a tripod in front of the window. There was a long barrel attached to the lens of the camera and Joy assumed that this was the mechanism which had enabled the bastard to get his much-magnified photographs.
"Now for the fun-fun," the old man said. He rubbed his hands together. "Take all your clothes off."
This was what Joy had come to expect, but she was not going to submit to his wishes without at least a token resistance.
"Are you out of your mind, Mr. Jacoby?"
"The name is Jacobs, and I am not out of my mind! Are you going to take off your clothes?"
"I don't have much time," she said, removing her coat.
"I wouldn't say that, Mrs. Harmon. I'd say you had all the time in the world ... that is, unless you'd rather I mailed an anonymous set of those pictures to the police."
"Bastard!"
"Mr. Jacobs, if you please."
With a sigh, Joy reached over her head and opened the fastener of her dress. She glided the dress shamelessly from her body and let it fall to the floor.
The creep never batted an eyelash. He hovered nearby, his blue-veined hands stuffed into his worn vest, and Joy noticed that his fly was open.
"Don't stop now. The fun-fun is just beginning."
Angry and disgusted with herself, she kicked off her shoes and pelled down her hose. The act, the sudden display of bare flesh, was not without its effects. The old man was fingering himself, grinning at her with his yellow teeth, oblivious to the spittle that dripped from the corners of his mouth.
For a moment, Joy thought that the old bastard would reach out and touch her, but he stood perfectly still. His eyes fell on the thin gauze of her panties. He grinned and waited. Beads of sweat gathered in the dark pockets under his eyes. His hands shook.
Joy wanted to get it over with. She hooked her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her panties and slid them down the flanks of her gorgeous thighs, down to the slim whites of her trim ankles-and now she was Eve.
Joy waited fretfully for him to make the move that she was convinced was due, the move of his wrinkled, vein-covered hands dirtying her, soiling her, and bringing depravity on top of depravity. But the fetid-smelling old man was as motionless as death. He simply stood there and gazed.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she cried. "If you're going to do something ... do it!"
The grin faded like he had been struck with a wet towel. He turned abruptly and went to the closet. Now, Joy was more puzzled and frightened than when she had arrived. Seconds later, the old man returned and flung a faded silken kimono at her feet.
"Put that on," he ordered.
"But...."
"Put it on!" he snapped.
She did as he ordered. Suddenly, he turned and began positioning one of the giant studio cameras.
"What are you doing?"
"Just relax, Mrs. Harmon. All we're going to do is take a few harmless photographs."
"You go to hell! You've taken all the pictures of me you're going to take!"
He ignored her and switched on a pair of 1,000-watt floodlights.
"You don't seem to grasp the situation, Mrs. Harmon. You don't have any choice. If you don't do exactly as I wish ... do I make myself clear, Mrs. Harmon?"
Joy hung her head in despair. She could kill him at this minute. If she had had a gun, she would have squeezed the trigger right in his face and blown his brains into the street below.
"All we're going to do," he droned on, "is take a few smile-at-the-birdie shots, so why get all uppity about it?"
"Haven't you taken enough of your dirty, lousy pictures?"
"Never, never, never. I'm like a coin collector, Mrs. Harmon. Only I collect pictures of pretty girls, and as long as they don't mind being photographed ... you did say that you don't mind, didn't you, Mrs. Harmon?" He laughed.
Joy felt like calling him every dirty name that she knew, but in the end, there was nothing that she could do but helplessly acquiesce to the pervert's demands.
The next hour was an unforgettable nightmare. Joy was forced to hold every depraved pose known to the criminal mind. It was horrible.
When he clicked the shutter of the earners, he gasped and went running off to the bathroom. Inadvertently, he had satisfied himself.
With a tired sigh, one of relief, Joy realized that the photo session was over. She began to dress, thinking as she did, that she had been foolish to let him take more pictures. She was trapped by his little blackmail scheme. As long as either of them lived, she was at the mercy of his perverted desires. There was nothing she could do, except go to the police. She would never do that.
When he emerged from the bathroom, Joy was fully dressed. He was carrying a bottle of wine.
"You're not leaving without a drink?"
"Thank you, no. I don't care for wine."
He poured himself a glassful of red Port.
"They say it stimulates your sex glands."
"You think you're pretty clever, don't you?"
"I get by," he said, somewhat amused. "You were never much of a problem, you know. I mean, after I took those first few pictures, it was a simple matter to check your suite number, get your name off the mailboxes and the phone book did the rest."
"Is following me to a motel part of your hobby?"
"I used to be pretty good at it." He lifted the wine to his cracked lips and let it gurgle down his throat.
Then it hit her!
The wine, the cameras, the fact that his name was Jacobs, and the glowing knowledge that Ray Forest had once been partners with a man he called Jake.
"Have you taken any more pictures lately, Mr. Jacobs, of fifteen-year-old girls? Nude ones, maybe?"
He choked on the wine. The glass tumbler hit the floor and broke.
"What are you talking about?"
"You cruddy two-bit bastard! I know all about you. So you're going to send my photos to the police department, huh? Go ahead. You already have one morals charge against you. One more and you're up the river for keeps."
He was numbed. His face was white.
Joy opened the door.
"You give those photographs to the police, or my husband, and you've had it, Buster! If I go to jail, pig, your goddamned bony ass is going there, too!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After Joy stormed out of Mr. Jacob's apartment, she went downtown and bought a new hat. The purchase was a measure of the elation she felt. She had told the old bastard off in proper terms. There'd be no more trouble from him and she convinced herself that this was the turning point, that from now on, things would get decidedly better.
It was a mistaken notion. Things grew worse.
To bide her time, she spent her evenings either going to the movies or to a library to read. However, after three weeks, movies and books grew tedious and unrewarding. Life was standing still, she told herself. Lou was out having a good time and she, on the other hand, was withering away to die.
Sick of it all, Joy went to a dance hall and allowed herself to be picked up by two off-duty truck drivers. Maybe sex was not the answer to her growing loneliness, but she was tired of living in a vacuum and waiting for the inevitable end of her marriage. Tonight, just this once, she was going to live it up. If the truck drivers wanted to take her to bed-well, what the hell was wrong with that?
Their names, she learned, were Stan and Mike. She made it as easy for them as possible. Both of them had arrived at the dance hall, stag. She danced with each of them, provocatively pressing herself against them, and when they later suggested going to an all-night cheat spot, she accompanied them without qualm or care.
At the cheap spot they drove to, she permitted herself to get quickly stoned. She told dirty jokes that she knew would arouse their passions and when they played with her legs under the table, she giggled and encouraged them to continue. And they did.
They obviously thought that they had struck gold and, after several more rounds of drinks Mike, the shorter of the pair, suggested that they buy a bottle and leave.
Joy conveniently agreed.
Mike's flat-a stinking sleeping room on the top floor of a box car tenement-overlooked the East river.
They drank from a single tumbler, and after that, Joy let them undress her and push her down on the bed. They took turns. Mike was first and Stan looked on in drunken amazement.
Joy abandoned herself to whatever they wanted, hoping that these two men could somehow deliver her from the depression she felt. But there was nothing. Neither of them delivered her from anything.
She felt no sexual thrill and her climax-that was a joke-was entirely pretended.
When they were finished, she lied and told them how good it had felt and promised to meet them the very next night. They were still congratulating themselves when she smiled and disappeared.
She took a deep breath of fresh air when she reached the street. She felt like she had just crawled out of a sewer. She knew she would not see them again, but where did she go from here? She couldn't go on this way. Life had to change and the only way it would change was when Ray Forest got her the pictures of Lou. And she had waited long enough. If Ray could not get the pictures, then she would hire herself a detective who could. She would tell him this, too, and there was no better time than the present.
She found a drugstore open, took the phone number from her purse, and called his home. Ray answered on the fifth ring. "Ray, this is Joy."
"For chrissakes! Do you know what the hell time it is?"
"Yes, Ray. It's three o'clock in the morning, but about Lou ... Ray, didn't you get those pictures yet?"
"Well, if you'd stay home once in a while, you'd know. I've been trying to reach you for three days. I've got everything ... pictures, movies, tape recordings."
Joy knew she should feel a certain secret victory. This was what she had waited for, but now that she knew for sure, it seemed like the whole world had slipped from under her.
"Are you still there?" Ray asked.
"Yes, Ray." She tried to mask her hurt.
"Can you come to my office tomorrow?"
"I want to see them tonight, Ray. Now!"
"Do you realize...."
"I don't care what time it is. I have a right to see them and...."
"Where are you?" Joy told him.
"What the hell is Lou going to think?"
"Does it really make any difference?"
"Stay where you are. I'll be there right away."
Thirty minutes later, they were in Ray's apartment. He helped her off with her coat and asked her if she would care for a drink.
"I think I've had enough for one night."
"Coffee, then?"
"Sounds yummy."
Ray waved her to a seat and disappeared into the kitchen. While he was gone, Joy slipped into the bathroom to freshen up. She sprinkled her face with cold water, added fresh make-up, and when she emerged from the bathroom minutes later, she had regained some of her earlier femininity. Ray's arrival with a tray of coffee was simultaneous.
They sat on the divan, but Ray was disturbingly quiet. Joy blamed herself. He was probably angry over being woke up in the middle of the night.
"If you want to give me those pictures now," Joy said, feeling a little guilty for the intrusion, "I'll let you crawl back into bed. I feel awful about getting you up this way."
"No sweat," he said curtly.
But he was different. Joy knew it and he knew it. In their last meeting they had stretched out on this beautiful carpet and made love and whispered words of tenderness, but now-
"Joy, these pictures ... they're going to be a shock. They always are, but especially so with these."
"I think I can take it. Can I see them now?"
"Finish your coffee. I'll set up the projector."
Ray proceeded with the task of readying the film for exhibition, and Joy trembled and told herself it didn't matter, that now she would be rid of Lou, that life would start anew.
There was only one thing wrong. She still loved Lou. Despite all her sexual escapades of the last few weeks, Lou was still the only man she loved, or ever would love. Only it was love without return. A husband in name only.
A life of nothing.
Ray did nothing to soften what was to come. He was almost abrupt in his manner, and Joy thought: The hell with him, too!
Ray switched off the lights and started the projector. He narrated the film in a soft, business-like tone that was so formal she scarcely recognized it.
"Here you see Lou getting off the plane. This portion of the film was taken on the night he returned from Chicago. There you see him climbing into a taxi. I followed him to your apartment and waited outside."
Joy remembered that night all too well. She had remained in bed, insisting that she was sick and Lou had stampeded angrily out of the apartment.
"We pick him up here just a few minutes later as he leaves your apartment. He got himself another taxi and now you see him entering a restaurant on Fourth Avenue. Please notice, if you will, that your husband is alone.
"From the restaurant, your husband went directly to his office. We don't have a film of what took place within the building, but a cleaning lady liked the looks of a twenty-dollar bill and told me that he worked at the typewriter until after midnight. There was no one else there with him besides the cleaning lady.
"Now these," Ray continued, "are where the fun begins. I had your husband's phone monitored and learned he had made reservations at a Long Island motel for the following evening, and as far as we were concerned, this put him right behind the proverbial eight ball.
"Here he is arriving at the motel. Take notice, if you will, at the large cluster of cars in the motel's parking lot."
Joy gazed at the movie screen. Judging from the large number of cars present, immoral relationships must be as common as house flies.
"Once Lou was inside the motel, I crept up to the window and set up the movie camera. In a way of speaking, you could say that this was the moment of truth."
Joy took a deep breath to prepare herself for the worst. The room was hushed, the projector hummed and the orgy began....
Except it was not an orgy. For a moment, Joy thought that Ray had the wrong film. All she witnessed was a roomful of conversing businessmen.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" Ray observed. "That's J.J. Wright on the left ... from the Baltimore agency, and over there on the right with the drink in his hand is Hank Salsbury from the Miami office, and standing with that other group of men is your husband Lou."
Joy listened dumbfoundedly to Ray's explanation.
"These men, Joy, are all executives connected in one way or another to your husband's firm. They had flown in from all over the country for this Director's meeting, so instead of seeing female figures, all we saw was sales figures."
Ray turned off the projector and switched on a lamp.
"As a matter-of-fact, Joy, not a goddamned thing took place in three entire weeks! Lou never even looked at another woman. That ad agency is his whole life."
Joy didn't know what to say.
"On Tuesday night last week, for instance, Lou researched at the library until it closed. From there he went back to the office and worked until three in the morning. The following night, he spoke at a staff sales meeting at the Hotel Waldorf. On Thursday, he entertained two clients who had flown in from Boston. On Friday ... or have you had enough?"
"I don't understand."
"There's nothing to understand, Joy. You thought Lou was screwing around, but you were wrong. It's as simple as that."
"But the lipstick on his shirt...."
"Well what about it? What did happen? Did one of those cute office girls lean across his shoulder and do it by accident, or was Lou really screwing somebody?"
"I don't know what to say."
"Well, I do," Ray answered. "Any man who fools around, unless he's either drunk or an idiot, is not going to carry the evidence home with him. Lou may not be a Boy Scout, but my opinion is that he didn't do a goddamned thing." He paused. "How about you, Joy? Can you say the same thing about yourself?"
She felt her face color.
Ray had immediate misgivings for the remark.
"I didn't have to say that, did I?" He held her hand.
"I guess I had it coming." She started to rise.
"Joy, try to understand that a lot of my cases turn out this way. The job of a detective is to either prove a suspicion or else disprove it. If Lou had been screwing around, I would have found it out. He just wasn't, that's all."
Joy put on her coat.
"I'll drop you off. All right?"
"Thanks, Ray, but no. I need the walk, and about the fee...."
"We'll worry about that later, huh?"
"Whatever you say."
They moved to the door.
"You are going home, aren't you?"
"I think so."
"Have any idea how you're going to explain where you've been?"
"I'll think of something." Tears gathered in her eyes. "Ray, I've been such an awful fool."
He gave her an affectionate squeeze.
"You're nuts about that guy of yours, aren't you?"
"I always was. I just thought that he ... oh, Ray, how could I have been so wrong?"
"Everybody makes mistakes, kid. Besides, you can still patch things up."
"How?"
"You won't get mad?"
"No, Ray. How can I straighten things out?"
"Easy. It's an old Hindu method and it never fails. Just go home and...." He paused. His eyes shone. "Go home and screw the hell out of him, Joy!"
"But...."
"He's a helluva good man, Joy."
"You don't have to convince me, Ray. I just hope that it's not too late."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The nearly two-mile walk provided Joy with needed time to think. She knew where she had gone wrong. She had let herself be tricked by unfounded suspicions and she could imagine exactly how a psychiatrist might have explained her actions.
Because her parents had never allowed her the dating freedom of other teen-agers, even after her marriage to Lou, she had subconsciously dwelled on all that she had missed.
When she had discovered the lipstick on Lou's shirt, her subconscious mind had urged her to believe the very worst of her husband-not because it was so-but because if she wished to believe that Lou was cheating, it then provided her with an excuse to do the same, to try and re-capture that which had been denied her in her teens.
If she now told Lou of her fling with other men, she could confidently predict that that would be the end of the marriage. Lou would walk out on her. Yet if she did not tell him, she would have to spend the rest of her married life living the guilt, worrying that sooner or later he would somehow find out.
She had to gamble, she thought. She had to tell him the whole truth and hope desperately that he would forgive and start anew.
Lou was up and waiting for her when she entered the apartment. She took one glimpse of the horrible grimace he wore and knew that it was a losing battle. Lou was not in a forgiving mood.
"You're almost in time for breakfast. You should have made a whole night of it."
She came timidly forward.
"I'm sorry, Lou. I got lonesome and I went out."
"Just like that?" He snapped his fingers."
"Lou ... about us...." Tears gathered in her eyes. "Oh, Lou!" She ran into his arms. "Lou," she sobbed, "I've been such a terrible idiot."
He held her, still not speaking.
"Lou, I thought ... I thought...."
And then she spilled it out. Her suspicions about his cheating, the Italian delivery boy, Tim McGuire and finally, the private detective, Ray Forest.
"Lou, I was no better than a common whore. I know that now, but knowing it doesn't help. Lou...?"
His face was an expressionless mask. He had listened to the entire confession without so much as uttering a word. His face was devoid of expression; he didn't even flex a muscle.
Suddenly, he rose and went to the closet. He put on his top coat, never looked at her, turned and went out the door.
Never, she thought, had the closing of a door been so final, so echoing in despair. She felt lost and alone, and for many minutes she sat silently staring at the door, hoping by some magic that it would open and in would come Lou.
But it was an empty hope. Lou did not come back. Not in one hour and not in two. She had to face it. He was gone for keeps. She had lost him, and neither tears nor prayers would bring him back. She was still sobbing when sleep and blackness closed over her....
"Get up!"
Joy forced her eyes open.
"Lou!" Her heart skipped. "I didn't hear you come in. I thought...." She ran for his arms, but he held her off.
"Maybe I'm crazy for coming back. Maybe the whole world is crazy, but ... Joy, you thought I was cheating, didn't you? I was gone so much of the time that I convinced you I had another woman. Wanna know something? I did."
Joy was suddenly startled.
"Not the kind you go to bed with," Lou went on, "but one that was worse than that. What I'm trying to tell you is that the agency was my other woman. I lived it, breathed it ... Joy, you'd ceased to exist. You were just a name. And McGuire ... I practically pushed you into bed with him, so I can't blame anybody for that."
Joy fell into his arms.
"Oh, Ray!"
"I walked all morning, thinking about it. Joy, I've neglected you like crazy, haven't I?"
"Lou, that still doesn't ... "
"Excuse you? No, it doesn't, but if I'd been here more of the evening, taken you out, showered you with a little attention once in a while ... Joy, don't you see? None of this might ever have happened?"
Joy tumbled into his arms and cried. What husband could have been so all-forgiving? "Oh, Lou...."
"We'll give it a try. If we still love each other, we owe ourselves the chance." He kissed her long and hot on the mouth.
When they parted, her eyes shone brightly with tears.
"Lou, could we ... could we go somewhere for a few days, just sort of get away?"
He smiled and cupped her chin.
"Better than that. We're going to Hawaii. I told 'em this morning that I was taking thirty days, and if they didn't like it, they could get themselves another boy."
"Oh, Lou!"
"We leave on the four o'clock plane. Can you be ready?"
"Can I!" She hugged him.
"Maybe we can catch up on our sex life. It's about time, isn't it?"
"Will I get one of those Hawaiian lays?" Joy asked, grinning.
"Silly. A lei is something you wear around your neck."
Joy quickly removed all her clothes, pushed Lou back on the divan and straddled his shoulders.
"That's where I thought you wore a Hawaiian lei." She gave him a devilish grin. "You're supposed to say 'Aloha'." Joy wiggled herself on Lou's chest. "Aloha!"
Lou's eyes swept the golden fleeced temple of love now before him.
