Judy Domonig's mind was diseased by the memories of her own first carnal ravishment. She had been taken by force, brutalized by a man, and in her warped thoughts man became the enemy, the eternal victim of her perverted rages. Judy made love often. She could give a man everything she had, a better time than other women could dream of-and her fee was always the same: death. In Crime in a Changing Society, Howard Jones writes: "The amount of anxiety evoked by crime, and especially violent crime, is such that one is tempted to feel that its roots lie deep. We are, of course, bound to be impressed by striking examples of criminal violence, do we ourselves become so violent in return. It may be because a shadowy unacknowledged side of ourselves finds criminal behavior not uncongenial, that we are so upset when it breaks through in other people." And so, lost in her own lustful criminality, Judy continued to stimulate the latent depravity in the men she met ... until one day she met her lust match....
CHAPTER ONE
Carter was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles via the coast route, Highway One, when he saw the totally naked girl sprawled out shamelessly on the beach. The time was just a little after dawn when he came upon her down there.
The coast route is not the quickest, nor is it the safest way to get to Southern California from the Bay Area. But it is by far the loveliest route, and in the summertime, the coolest. It hugs the Pacific shore for hundreds of miles, winding spectacularly through fog-swept redwood country. At some points, the road travels along cliffs hundreds of feet above the ocean; elsewhere on the route, it rides at sea-level.
There are long stretches of endless hairpin curves, and a man not fully alert at the wheel can easily go tumbling over an embankment and down a dizzying three-hundred-foot drop. But the chief inland route, U.S. 101, is swelteringly hot in the summertime, and so, despite all the hazards of fog and heights, Carter had chosen to travel via the coast route this time.
The road was practically deserted at this hour. Carter had to be in Los Angeles for business reasons by early afternoon, and just to play it absolutely safe, he had set out in the early hours of morning. He figured that he had to allow himself at least eight hours in which to make the trip down the California coast.
Now it was just past dawn, and Carter was nearing Monterey, with hours of solitary driving yet ahead of him. That was when he saw the nude girl.
The road curved in such a way that if he looked straight ahead and down, he had a good view of the beach from the seat of his car. Glancing down, he spied the bare-bodied figure on the beach, and his eyes widened a little in surprise. She was no bigger than a lizard, from this height, but Carter had unusually sharp eyes.
Naked! Yes!
The figure was that of a girl stretched out casually on a blanket. She lay on her back, stark naked, waiting for the embrace of the sun-or, perhaps, for someone else's embrace. He could see her bare breasts and even the tiny dots of her nipples. There could be no mistake about it. She was as bare as a newborn babe.
Carter slowed down.
He had always considered himself a keen and enthusiastic appreciator of womanly beauty, and something like this would be too good to miss. The only thing he liked better than looking at a woman's nude body was touching a woman's nude body. And he had made good time so far on his trip, thanks to the emptiness of the road at this hour. He could well afford to take a little time out here for some entertainment, he decided.
Guiding his car over to the shoulder of the road, Carter parked it there, very carefully, by the embankment at the edge of the cliff. When he looked down, he was able to see the fringe of white beach a few hundred feet straight below the road, and then the blue Pacific.
The girl was about thirty feet from the edge of the beach on the ocean side. The morning sun was creeping slowly up the beach toward her. Now an arm of sunlight bisected her across the hips. Before long, all of her nude body would be in the direct light of the sun.
Carter kept a pair of field glasses in the trunk of his automobile. He went around back to fetch them, and, leaning over the side of the embankment, focused them with care on the girl.
She was blonde, and she was deeply tanned all over her body, with none of the white bikini strips at breasts and hips that are so common these days. Apparently, thought Carter, the girl was in the pleasant habit of taking regular nude sun baths. That was how her skin had acquired that all-over honey-tan color.
Her body was compact and muscular. She was extremely athletic-looking but there was nothing at all masculine about her appearance: she had full, ripe breasts tipped with little dark nipples, strong thighs, a flat belly, lean attractive legs. As Carter watched her, she stretched restlessly, drew her legs up, wriggled in sheer voluptuous motion.
Muscles flickered into view under the even brownness of her skin. The nude girl rolled over onto her belly, revealing luscious, mounded buttocks. Then, as though not caring for that position, she flipped back again to resume her supine position.
Carter felt his pulse-rate increasing at a furious pace. Perspiration plastered his thin, white shirt to his back. The morning was still cool, but there was sea moisture in the air, generating sweat. He began to breathe raggedly.
The girl was splendid.
In one wild instant of desire, Carter told himself emphatically that a view through field glasses was not enough. He had to see her close-up, to feel those high-peaked breasts, to touch those taut buttocks, to know her intimately, as she deserved to be known. There was something magnetic about the sight of this magnificent creature this superb female animal, lying so unashamedly on the beach, naked, waiting for the kiss of the sun.
He glanced at his watch.
It was only a little past six in the morning. The traffic would not start to get heavy for another few hours. If he got back on the road by seven or even half-past-seven, he still would be able to reach Los Angeles in plenty of time for his appointment.
But right now, Los Angeles and his business engagement there did not matter in the slightest. All that mattered in the entire universe was this naked girl sunbathing down there on the lonely beach.
I'll go to her, Carter thought.
I'll get me a little action. Yes!
He looked around. Someone had cut steps into the side of the cliff, leading down to the beach. Carter put the field glasses back in the trunk of his car. locked everything up, combed his hair in the reflection in his windshield, and started down the steps.
It was a long trip.
There must have been a hundred steps or more, and Carter was completely soaked with sweat before he had gone half way. But every step, he knew, took him that much closer to the full-breasted, wantonly nude girl who was sprawled out on the beach.
She still had not moved. She lay stretched out gracefully, one hand resting across her eyes to shield them from the sun, the other toying with little hand-fuls of the white sand. Her breasts rose and fell gently, the pointed nipples stabbing into the sky.
Carter took extra care to make his approach a silent one. He was certain that when the girl saw him creeping up on her, she would jump to her feet in panic, quickly wrap herself in the beachrobe that lay discarded a few feet from her blanket. Perhaps she would scream-certainly she would run away from him in terror, thinking that he was a rapist.
But perhaps not. A girl who sunbathes nude on an open beach might not panic so easily. In any event, he would get a close look at her before she fled, and that was what he wanted at the moment.
He continued the descent. Three steps from the bottom, Carter missed a step, lost his footing, and went flailing downward to fall noisily the rest of the way. He landed unhurt, with a dull thump, in the sand.
He rose immediately. You clumsy idiot, he cursed himself angrily. The girl was probably fleeing in fright by now after that entrance-
No.
She was still there. She had rolled over onto her stomach and lay there looking at him, grinning pleasantly. Sunlight sparkled on the ripe mounds of her bare buttocks. She was lying with her chin propped up by her fists, with her elbows in the sand, and as she lay in that position, Carter could clearly see the upper hemispheres of her breasts all the way down to the place where the rosy aureoles began. They were lovely breasts. They were not quite the same shade of tan as the rest of her, Carter noticed now, but a lighter creamier more delicate color.
She did not seem at all embarrassed by her nudity. She lay there fully exposed without making any attempt to cover herself.
"Hello," she said. Her voice was husky and musical. "You've got to be careful coming down those steps, you know. They're pretty tricky You came damned close to having yourself a nasty spill."
Carter smiled awkwardly. Her dazzling beauty, clothed only by the sun, left him dumbfounded. He stared at the sumptuousness of her. After a moment, he said lamely, "I-I didn't mean to disturb you-"
"You aren't disturbing me. This beach isn't private, you know."
"But you're-you're-"
"Naked? What of it? It's the best way to sunbathe, isn't it? And I'm not embarrassed about it if you aren't. Come here. There's room on the blanket for the two of us."
She beckoned to him. Carter walked hesitantly toward her. The girl rolled over and sat up cross-legged, revealing the entire front of her body to him for the first time. Her breasts drew his eyes like magnets. They were big, heavy globes of flesh, but set high on her chest and close together, the way breasts ought to be. The nipples were dark and oddly small, almost virginal.
The rest of her was first-rate, too: the firm thighs, the taut belly, the hips and all the rest.
She said, "Usually there's nobody else on the beach till at least eight o'clock. Are you from around here? No, you aren't. I see that."
"I'm from San Francisco," Carter said. He felt like a sleepwalker, moving around in some unearthly dream, as he looked down at the ripe hills and valleys of her sumptuous, nude body. "I was driving down to L.A., but then I saw you on the beach-"
"I heard your car stop, and I figured it was something like that." Her blue eyes shot him a provocative glance. "Well? Aren't you going to take your clothes off and sun-bathe too? We've got the whole beach here to ourselves, you know."
It was working out much too well, Carter thought. Things like this never happened so smoothly except in dreams, and he was still was pretty damned sure he was awake. He had never been frightened of a woman before. Ordinarily, he was a healthily aggressive male who took his women where he found them and gave them as good a loving as he got from them, with no complications. But he found himself almost frightened of this bold, beautiful, eerie girl with the sleekly shining nude limbs and the tapering, supple, athletic body.
"Is it-safe here? I mean, without clothes?" he asked, haltingly.
"Of course. In this part of the woods you do as you please. Anyway, I told you nobody ever comes along at this hour."
"I did," he objected.
"You were different. You saw me from the road." She shrugged. "Look, if you don't want to sunbathe, just forget the whole idea."
"No-if you say it's all right."
"Sure it is."
Hesitantly at first, then quickly Carter stripped off his clothes and deposited them in a little heap on the sand near the blanket. The girl did not look away as he undressed, even when he got down to his shorts. Instead, she appraised his nakedness frankly and without a show of modesty. And she seemed to approve of what she saw. Carter believed in keeping his body in trim, and women found him attractive. Take a good look, girlie, he thought, exposing himself fully to her keen gaze.
"I can't stay long," he explained to her as he lay down beside her on the blanket. The sun was very warm, even this early in the morning. "I have to be in L.A. by this afternoon."
"You can leave whenever you like," the girl told him blandly.
Carter was uncomfortably aware of the warmth of the girl's naked thigh only inches from his own. He wanted to reach out, to grab her, to throw his body on top of hers and take her. But she remained cool, and in a sense distant from him emotionally, though right up against him physically. He did not touch her. Like her, he shielded his eyes from the sun. He glanced sideways at her, noting the jutting profile of her breasts. She was no older than twenty-five, he decided. He couldn't make up his mind whether he had found a kook or a treasure.
There was a long moment of silence. Then the girl said, "What's your name?"
"Joe Carter. You?"
"My name is Judy," she said. She didn't offer a last name. He didn't inquire.
"You go sunbathing every day?" he asked.
"Every day that the sun shines. I get up at five in the morning and come out here."
"And you never meet anyone else?"
"Sometimes I do," she said enigmatically. "I don't mind company. I sunbathe for a while, and then I take a swim, and then I go back home and eat breakfast around eight o'clock."
"You live by yourself?"
"Most of the time."
"What do you do?"
She shrugged, and the shrug made the deep bowls of her breasts dance voluptuously. "All sorts of things," she said. "I support myself by selling little pottery things to the tourists."
They fell silent again. The girl stretched out on her back and covered her face with the back of her arm. The conversation seemed to be at its end.
After a few moments, Carter turned his head toward her and let his eyes travel over the elegant nudity of the blonde girl.
God, she was beautiful!
Her eyes were closed, and her face was serene, and her skin seemed to gleam in the dancing sunlight. Her big breasts rose and fell evenly in rhythm with her breathing. Carter had never seen such round, perfect breasts before, and he had seen plenty of breasts. These were incredible. He was obsessed with the desire to clasp his hands to them and caress them.
But he did not. Five minutes passed, and Carter still hesitated.
Unfulfilled lust made him tense and edgy. He held a debate with himself about whether he ought to reach out to touch the girl. She ignored him. She seemed to be sleeping soundly, bathed in the warmth of the sunlight. A fantastic girl, he thought. To be able to lie here stark naked next to a complete and utter stranger, sleeping calmly in the sun....
He couldn't stand it any more.
Carter turned toward her. He let his hand reach out and hover tentatively over the steep mound of her right breast. Then he lowered the hand to cup the warm, vibrantly firm flesh.
He expected her to brush the hand away. Instead, the girl moved toward him, still keeping her eyes closed and her face expressionless, and pressed her body tightly against his.
Carter's lips automatically went to hers. They kissed violently, a torrid, lingering kiss. She kept pressing her rich, warm lips against his until he thought he would scream from the tension of wanting her as much as he did. His free hand doved down the front of her body, over the satin of her skin, and found the warmth of her thighs.
Carter was a well-bred man. He believed in asking, not taking, when he was with a woman. So he said, "Do you want to make love?"
Her eyes opened, slit-wide.
"Yes," she said huskily.
It was almost eerie to make love on that empty beach, with the surf booming only a few yards away, and the sand pipers squeaking shrilly, the gulls wheeling and cawing overhead. They did not speak after that one interchange of question and answer. Carter touched her thighs, and they moved for him, and he rolled over onto her, feeling the sand under the blanket moving against his knees and his elbows as he positioned himself.
He took her, and she took him.
They affected their union almost roughly, in quick, hungry movements. The girl moved beneath him with the easy grace of a leopard or some other big jungle cat. Carter was uncomfortably aware of the bowl of the sky above him. His back and buttocks, rising and falling above the girl, were exposed to the view of anybody who came down the road-as he had come down the road. Nothing would be visible of her except her legs, sticking out on either side of his body, and her arms, clasped around his back and the golden crown of her head. But anybody who came down that road would know that there was a couple writhing on the beach blanket.
As the frenzy of passion mounted, though, Carter stopped worrying about exposure. From the road, they would seem too tiny to matter to anybody passing by, unless that somebody were equipped, as he had been with a pair of field glasses. Besides, the girl's passions were so intense that he had no time to worry about irrelevant things like being watched from the road.
She was agile, powerful, vigorous. Her muscular legs came up and held him, and he lunged again and again to her. He shivered with pleasure at the feel of the big globes of her breasts against his chest, the rock-hard nipples drilling into his skin.
She was gasping now. Moaning. Spasming with ecstasy. Carter stayed with her as long as he could. Then the supreme moment came in a blaze of fulfillment, first for her, then for him.
And it was over.
Carter continued to cover her nakedness for a long moment until enough strength had flooded back into his sweat-flecked, wearied body to allow him to roll free. His heart was still pounding, and in his mind he was still enacting that steady movement.
Then he pulled away from her and opened his eyes.
He half expected to find that they had had an audience while making love, but the beach was still as deserted as always. The girl lay half on her side, her breasts rising and falling slowly, now, her nipples soft. He could see the marks on her golden skin where his fingers had gripped the firmness of her in the paroxysms of his lust, but the marks were quickly fading.
The girl had a mysterious half-smile of contentment on her face. And Carter noticed, for the first time, a definite appearance of cruelty about her nostrils and her slightly pouting lower lip.
They looked at each other in silence.
He studied the globes of her breasts, the firm pillars of her thighs, the flat drum of her belly. He wanted to imprint the look of this girl's nakedness on his mind, because he doubted that he was ever going to see her again, and this was something worth remembering.
After a long silence the girl said, "Let's go for a swim."
Carter frowned. The suggestion didn't enthrall him. He was tired; he had had only a few hours sleep during the night. The driving had taken something out of him, and now the interlude of passionate lovemaking had left him further depleted of energy. Besides, it was nearly seven in the morning by now. He would have to be getting back on the road again soon if he wanted to get down to Los Angeles on schedule.
But there had been something oddly commanding about the girl's tone as she said it-as though going for a swim with him was of the utmost importance for her. And in a strange way, Carter felt that he owed her the favor of his company in a swim, in return for the totally unexpected morning's pleasure that she had just given him. She hadn't had to invite him to join her here. Or to give her body to him when he reached for her.
"All right," Carter said. "But I can't stay in the water long. I have to be getting on the road again pretty soon."
"It won't be a long swim."
Carter rose, and reached down to give the girl a helping hand. But she declined the lift and came to her feet in one quick, lithe bound. Planting her feet in the sand with her legs slightly apart, she stretched, making muscles ripple on her tanned body. Her breasts quivered. Standing up, she was even more spectacular than before. Her breasts stood up and out and away from her body in a fantastic way. Her buttocks were tight, ripe globes of sensuality. She drew every muscle in her lovely body taut, and relaxed it.
Then she turned and ran toward the water.
Carter stood where he was, watching her fascinated by the motions of her nudity. She ran gracefully and swiftly, her breasts jiggling up and down, her buttocks rippling with hidden muscles. She hit the crystal water with high running strides and dove instantly, her body striking the water flatly and slipping under the surface. She swam out beyond the breakers and surfaced looking back expectantly at him as he stood gazing out from the shore.
"Well? The water's wonderful!"
"I'm coming," he called.
Carter trotted down to the water's edge, uncomfortably conscious now of his nudity, and let the little waves swirl up around his ankles. The water was icy. It was never very pleasant to swim in the Pacific, he remembered. Especially at this hour of the morning.
The girl waved impatiently to him.
Carter advanced slowly into the water. Bigger waves splashed against his knees. When the frigid water reached his loins, he shivered and flung himself recklessly forward into it.
Once he was completely submerged, he found that the cold was not so bothersome. Carter made his way through the rough water and swam easily out to where the girl waited. But by the time he had drawn near to her, he realized that he was winded. Ordinarily, Carter was a good swimmer, but he was fatigued now by the many things he had done this morning. As for the girl, she frolicked like a dolphin.
"Chase me!" she called mockingly.
She did a surface dive, and for an instant the bare gleaming mounds of her buttocks were visible above the water. Then she began to swim even farther out from shore, pausing every few moments to shout a challenge for him to come and follow her. She swam with superb skill, cutting knife-like through the cold water.
Putting on a burst of speed, Carter swam after her, only to find that she was matching his pace. By so doing, she was keeping the same distance ahead of him all the time, never letting him close the gap.
Carter began to get angry.
He saw that she was toying with him, mocking him with her skill and swiftness. She was virtually attacking his manhood by this game. What's the matter, he wondered? Didn't I love you good enough? You were thrashing around with me like you enjoyed it all right.
He wondered if perhaps in some obscure way he had failed her in the lovemaking, and so had provoked this display of scorn from her. But she had seemed to respond to him warmly enough when he was taking her, Carter told himelf.
She was getting farther ahead of him all the time. Carter sucked air into his lungs and doubled his efforts. He was able to narrow the distance that separated them. Looking ahead, he saw her, not too far away now, her body shining through the water, back and buttocks momentarily visible as she swam.
His heart thundered. Suddenly he gasped for breath, pulling in a mouthful of salt water that almost choked him. Carter heard the tinkling sound of her laughter coming from just ahead of him.
Treading water until he recovered his poise, Carter glanced back and saw that they were quite far out from shore now, as far as he had ever cared to go in ocean swimming. But he knew that something basic was at stake in this contest. He could turn and swim back to shore, sure, but that would be an admission of defeat that could burn in his breast forever.
No, he thought. I'll catch her! I'll show the naked little witch!
He raced furiously after her. It seemed that he was gaining on her again, but she was only toying with him. She let him come within a few yards, and then streaked ahead of him again.
Carter longed to catch her, to hold her water-sleeked body prisoner in his arms here in the water, perhaps even to make love again as they swam. Yes! That would show her who was virile! Seize her, pull her body up against his, wrap her legs around his own. And then a lunge, a quick movement, again and again as they bobbed on the waves, crushing her close, her breasts drilling into him even as he drilled into her ... the searing moment of mutual ecstasy....
But his strength was leaving him. Now Carter began to panic, and he realized that he no longer could afford to worry about his masculine pride. He was completely exhausted. He hardly had the strength to kick or to lift one arm above his shoulders. And they were very far from shore in the rough, chilly sea.
The girl seemed to sense this, too, because she had stopped retreating from him. Now she swam back in his direction while he treaded water and tried to catch his breath. Turning, he saw the shore a vast distance away. There was a hot band of pain across the middle of his chest, and nausea in his guts.
"Tired?" she asked as she drew near him.
"Yes," Carter gasped. "Not-not used to this much swimming, I guess."
She put her arms around him as though to support him. He felt the tips of her full round breasts grazing his skin. Her thighs twined about his body, gripping him firmly in what could have been the position of love, if only he had had the strength to love her just now. Her lips were only inches from his own. He stared into her cool blue eyes.
She smiled sweetly, "I hate men. I loathe them. I was raped when I was sixteen. I never forgot it. Men disgust me. Especially when they make love to me. That's when they make me really sick."
"Huh? What-"
"I take my revenge, though. All alone, out here, where no one can see. You're the third one so far, and you won't be the last. All men are fools. Bestial, selfish, ugly fools."
Gripping him tightly, she dragged his head below the surface. Carter flailed out wildly, but his tired body could not fight her pantherish strength. He felt her flat muscles tightening about his body, shoving him down. Her breasts pressed into him, taut globes of flesh.
He got his head above water for a moment and gulped air into his lungs.
"I didn't rape anybody!" he protested.
"All men are the same!" she hissed at him.
Her hands were on his shoulders. She pushed him down under the surface again. He felt her lithe, naked body snake around him, and he could not break her grip on him. She was holding him down. Her breasts were practically in his face.
There was a bursting sensation in his lungs. He could hear her laughing somewhere above him. He gasped for breath and drew in only water, and she laughed again and shoved him down deeper.
His brain was numb now. He had no strength left to defend himself. Her nakedness was like a cage around him.
He realized he was being punished for another man's crime long ago, and sadly wondered why. In another moment he was past the point of no return; his lungs filled with water and he began to sink, still vaguely conscious, bewildered by her sudden treachery, no longer hearing her silver laughter as he dropped down and down and down through the beckoning depths.
Judy Domanig remained where she was, treading water staring downward at the sea. There was no sign of him. She waited, her breasts heaving. There were goosepimples breaking out on her nude flesh. She put her hands on her breasts and held them, squeezed them as he had squeezed them, the one who was dead now.
She waited in case he might come floating up above the surface.
He didn't show. The water was fifty, sixty feet deep here, maybe deeper. He had plenty of room to descend. Of course, he wouldn't stay down there forever. It wasn't in the nature of human bodies to remain submerged unless they were weighted down. But there were fast currents down there, and they would take his body and whip it along the coast, sixty miles, seventy miles, far from the place where this had happened. He would be washed up on shore a few days from now, a naked, unknown man that nobody could connect with what had occurred here.
When fifteen minutes went by and there was still no sign that he was going to come to the surface, Judy began to swim toward the shore.
She was tired. Even though she took care to keep herself in magnificent physical shape, it was always a strenuous effort to drown a man. And she had done some pretty fancy swimming just before the final act. Besides, swimming in the frosty Pacific took a heavy toll on your body's energy. So she was glad to get out of the water at last.
She stroked into the shallow water and waded up out of the sea. Standing naked at the edge of the beach, she shook herself like a wet puppy dog. Her breasts jounced and jiggled, twin globes of sensuous flesh. She looked out at the ocean while the sunlight caressed her nude buttocks and back, drying her and warming her.
No sign of him. Good. Good. He had probably already been swept far down the cape and out of range. That was the one thing that worried her: that the men she killed would pop up accusingly right under her, soggy and swollen with water.
Judy turned. She presented the front of her body to the sunlight now as it came over the cliffs from the east. The warm beams stroked her breasts, fingered her nipples, explored the taut drum of her belly with its golden silken skin, then touched herself below.
Slowly, she walked up the beach toward the place where she had left her blanket and beachrobe. A great joy possessed her. The joy of killing, of knowing that another one was dead.
And first she had let him love her. Why not? She had needs, just like everybody else. Of course, it was degrading to admit it. Degrading to let a man cover your body with his and move in violent, rapid lunging. But yet it brought you pleasure, and you could wipe out the humiliation by taking his life afterward.
Basking in the sunlight, Judy stretched, smiled, presented her nakedness to the world. It was still early in the morning. She reached her arms toward the horizon. She put her hands on her bare breasts.
It felt so good to stand naked in the open air, under the sky and the sun, she thought.
But she couldn't remain much longer. There was a great deal to do, now. She ran her hands over her bare skin, brushing away the flecks of sand that had clung to her, and the salt that was drying on her. Then she picked up beachrobe and put it on. A pity to cover her nakedness with the sun so nice and warm, but this was, after all, a public beach, and the morning was moving along. Judy didn't want to attract any more attention today. She had already had all she wanted.
She belted the robe closed. Her breasts jiggled around nicely inside it. She picked up her blanket-the blanket on which she and the dead man had celebrated the rites of love only half an hour before-and shook the sand out of it. Then she folded it.
His clothing, now.
He had left everything in a neatly folded heap. Judy scooped it all up and wrapped the blanket around it. She didn't fool with the wallet that she could feel in his trousers, or with the expensive-looking wrist-watch that he had tucked into one of his shoes just before running down to the water. Robbery wasn't one of her motives.
She looked around. There was no sign of him on the beach anywhere.
Now she started up the stairs.
Up, up, up, the hundred-odd steps to the top of the cliff. She took them at a half-trot. Her vigorous young body enjoyed physical challenges of that sort. She was hardly even winded when she reached the top, although her full, firm breasts were moving fast within her beachrobe, and her forehead was dappled with sweat.
His car sat by the edge of the embankment.
Judy got in. Using his undershirt as a glove to keep her fingerprints shielded, she fumbled in his trouser pockets until she found his car keys. She turned on the ignition and started the engine. Then, glancing back, she saw that the highway was clear, and she began to drive. Her robe opened below her waist, baring her firm, pink thighs and the golden wonder of her hips, but there was nobody else in the car to see.
She drove south on the coast road for about twenty miles, and turned off by the parking lot of a roadhouse that sat perched high over a windswept cape. She put the car in the lot, carefully wiping off the steering wheel with his undershirt. Nobody was ever going to trace her to this car, she thought.
The place was deserted. Judy crossed the paved expanse of the parking lot, her sandals slapping against the asphalt, and took the little underpass that led the patrons of the roadhouse to the beach. Above her was the highway. Here, instead of steps cut into the rock, they had built a metal staircase, winding round and round as it went down the hundred and fifty feet to the beach.
Judy hurried down it, her breasts bouncing under her one garment. She kicked off her sandals at the bottom and ran across the empty beach. Near the shoreline, there was a scrambled heap of big black boulders, forming a kind of natural cave. She clambered over it and quickly thrust the dead man's bundle of clothing between two rocks, on the ocean side.
There. That would do it.
When the naked corpse drifted to shore a few days from now, and the police began their investigation, they would discover the abandoned car in the roadhouse parking lot. They would probably also find the rolled-up bundle of clothes between the two rocks. And they would conclude that this lonely wayfarer, bent on suicide, had parked his car, gone down to the beach, stripped, carefully stowed his clothing, and swam out to sea until his strength failed him. There would be no bruises on his body to indicate that he had been forced under the waves.
A clear case of suicide. And who would ever connect it with Judy Domanig, who lived by herself many miles up the road?
No one. No one at all.
Judy smiled in triumph. She opened her beach-robe and gave the ocean a good look at the front of her naked body, let the spume flick against her breasts and belly and thighs. She laughed.
Then she turned and trudged happily up the beach toward the staircase, her work accomplished.
CHAPTER TWO
Now, of course, she had to get home. Home was twenty miles away, and she wasn't carrying any money. All she had besides her own nakedness was the beachrobe that covered her, and the folded blanket over her arm. But she wasn't worried. This part of California was an informal place. She'd manage. She always had.
The one thing she didn't want to do, of course, was create any link between herself and the roadhouse where she had parked the dead man's automobile. So that meant she'd have to leg it a little. She didn't mind. She circled past the roadhouse, which would not open for business for another three and a half hours, and cut across to the eastbound road leading away from the shore. She walked for fifteen minutes. The sun grew higher and hotter in the sky. But she was naked under her robe, and that made the walking more comfortable.
When she was more than a mile from the roadhouse, she put up her thumb at a passing car.
Very few men will fail to stop to pick up a beautiful young blonde female hitchhiker who is alone and apparently wearing nothing but a short terrycloth robe. The car came to a grinding halt twenty yards up the road from her. Judy trotted toward it, breast-globes jiggling. The robe blew open, showing a lot of thigh below the belt, and the driver noticed it.
He was a man in his forties, going gray at the temples, dressed in khaki trousers and a plaid shirt. He wasn't bad-looking. He grinned at her and said, "Which way are you heading?"
"South," Judy said, though her cottage was twenty miles to the north. "I'm heading toward Redwood Canyon."
"You aren't dressed very much for traveling."
She laughed. "I was out for a morning swim, and somebody gave me a hitch up this far. But now I've got the problem of getting back."
"Well, happens I was heading north, myself. But I guess I can take you down to Redwood. Not so far out of my way. Hop in."
Judy joined him. She was fully prepared for him to make a pass at her, and if he did she knew exactly what she was going to do: a quick jab with stiffened fingers, right into his groin, to leave him gasping and writhing with pain-and then she'd make a hasty exit.
But he behaved himself. He couldn't help stealing sideways glances at her, though. He peeked at her thighs as the flapping robe exposed them. She kept the upper part of the robe in place with her hands. If he realized that she was actually naked under the robe, and not simply wearing a bathing suit, it would lead to trouble. She didn't want to provoke an incident. She had already had her incident for the day, and she was satisfied.
His jaws worked. She saw the muscles bunching. She knew that he longed to get his hands on her. But he drove along with restraint. After fifteen minutes, Judy said, "You can let me off here, thanks."
He slowed. "My pleasure."
She got out of the car and walked a couple of paces away from it. Reluctantly, he began to drive away.
"Hey," Judy called after him.
He braked and looked around. "What is it?"
"I just wanted to show you the latest model in bathing suits," she said. "Here. Take a look."
She yanked at the belt of her robe. It came open, and she drew the sides of the robe apart to give him a brief, dazzling, incandescent look at her nudity. He gaped at the splendors of breasts and belly and thighs, so golden, so naked.
Then she laughed and pulled the robe shut again.
"So long," she yelled, and ran off down the narrow dirt road and out of sight before he could get any ideas about following her.
It was about a hundred fifty yards to the cabin of Annie Caldwell and Marni Holland, two of Judy's friends. They lived in a little shack by the edge of the woods. They happened to be Lesbians, which Judy didn't hold against them, and they were also interesting and talented girls. Annie, the older one, did wood sculpture. Some of her stuff was exhibited each year in big galleries in San Francisco and New York. Marni was a writer. She didn't earn much from her short stories, because they weren't the commercial kind, but she got published in a lot of important magazines and had a good reputation.
Though they lived simply, Annie and Marni had two cars. Which was why Judy had taken this roundabout way of getting home, rather than to risk hitching all the way back up to her own cottage.
Their place was a ramshackle, unpainted cabin in a small clearing surrounded by towering Douglas firs. The two cars were parked near the front porch-a paint-flaking 1955 Oldsmobile and a dilapidated Volkswagen of uncertain vintage, maybe even older than the Olds. Judy stepped between the cars and up onto the front porch.
She looked in.
The cabin was secluded, and the girls didn't believe in excess modesty. Judy could see them in bed from where she stood peering through the dirty window. They were asleep, and the covers were thrown back enough so that she could see that they were nak-ed. Annie was a big, masculine girl in her late thirties, with enormous breasts and a body like a wrestler's. Judy stared at those two vast globes of flesh rising and falling evenly. Marni looked dwarfed next to her, though actually she was not a particularly small girl. She was dark-haired and about thirty, with delicate features, sensitive, moody eyes and a taut firm little bosom that was now exposed to the view of anybody who cared to peer through the window.
Judy knocked on the window pane. Nothing happened. She knocked again, a little louder, and this time Marni yawned and opened her eyes and sat up. She squinted to see who was there, and smiled when she recognized Judy. Slipping out of bed, she padded to the door.
"Hi," Marni said. Nude, she stepped through the door and emerged on the porch. Her hard, little breasts rose to greet the morning sunlight. Her lithe, naked body was slim and agile. "What are you doing around here so early?"
"I've been up for hours," Judy said. "Swimming, sunbathing. I thought I'd come down for a visit."
"I don't see any car."
"I didn't drive. I hitched."
"Like that?"
"Why not?"
"I bet you're naked under that robe," Marni said.
Judy laughed. "That's a bet you'd win. But if you think you're going to get me-"
"Who wants you?" Marni asked, and they both roared with laughter.
Judy had slept with Marni several times. She had also slept with Annie, and with the two of them at once. Although she didn't think of herself particularly as a Lesbian, Judy was willing to get her sexual pleasure in any handy way.
The noise of their laughter woke Annie. She came rumbling out of bed and joined them on the porch, also nude, her vast breasts and firm round belly glistening in the sunlight.
Marni explained why Judy was there. Judy stood between the two naked Lesbians, smiling pleasantly. They didn't ask her very many questions. They didn't wonder why she had gone hitching more than thirty miles down the coast at dawn with no clothes on but a beachrobe, to arrive uninvited and not knowing if anyone would be there to receive her. That was the good thing about Bohemian-type people, Judy thought. They weren't forever nagging you with logical questions. They let you alone.
And so there was no need to explain that she had murdered a strange man this morning, and had come this far to establish an alibi.
Marni said, "Come in and have breakfast with us."
"I don't want to intrude."
"Intrude all you like," Annie boomed. "We're glad to have you."
She followed the naked Lesbians into their cabin. Marni gestured to a rough bench and said, "Make yourself comfortable."
"You mind if I take off my robe?"
"Why should I mind a thing like that?"
Judy was glad to get the bulky, terrycloth garment off. She was not at all self-conscious about her nakedness, anyway. Even in front of the Lesbians. She knew that they desired her. Well, right now she didn't feel in the mood to make love with them, not after her earlier session of passion on the beach. But she might as well give them the treat of looking at her body, anyway.
Annie was getting some bacon into the pan. Her big-buttocked form lumbered around in the kitchen. Neither of the two Lesbians made any move to put anything on. With three naked women in the cabin, it had the look of a nudist camp.
Marni said, "We haven't seen you for a while."
"I've been too busy to see anybody."
"Making lots of pottery?"
"It's the tourist season," Judy said. "I've been sweating over the kiln. How's the writing going?"
"I'm working on my novel again," said Marni. "I've done another hundred pages."
"Think you'll finish this summer?"
"I hope so," Marni said. "The publisher's very eager to read it."
"I'm eager to read it too," snorted Annie from the kitchen. "It's all about me, you know! But I haven't seen a word of it."
Judy smiled. She felt very cheerful, very relaxed. She had almost forgotten about the drowned man by now. All that remained was the thrill, the secret knowledge of her deed, but the tension, the anticipation, the nervous edge before the. act-all those things were gone.
She filled her nostrils with the smell of frying bacon, filled her eyes with the bare bodies of her nude friends, and let contentment steal over her.
It was a good life, she thought. Living in these little cabins along the still-wild coast of mid-California. A handful of friends up and down the coast, sculptors, artists, poets-people who were interested in creating things, not in making money or cheating other people. Of course, no matter how comfortable her life was, how many friends she had, Judy couldn't forget the aching wounds within her ... the wounds that had driven her to murder three men in the last year and a half....
Breakfast was a treat. Judy was ravenously hungry. It was to be expected; she had been up since dawn, she had had a lot of swimming and some sex, she had killed a man, and she had hitchhiked and walked, and all that was enough to build an appetite. She shoveled the food down, and the girls provided more.
After she ate, Judy said, "I'd like to borrow your Volks to get home."
"You have to leave now?" Annie asked.
"I ought to. I've fooled around enough for the morning. Now I've got to get back and get to work."
Annie reached out and let her hand rest on Judy's nude thighs, only inches from their apex. The big hand slid up and down along Judy's silken flesh. Annie's breasts began to heave with passion. The nipples turn-ed hard. Beside her, Marni also began to show sensual arousement.
"Stay with us," Annie whispered. "Stick around for a couple of hours and we'll drive you home later."
"Three of us in bed," said Marni, gloating over the erotic voluptuousness of it. "One of us on each side of you, Judy."
Her hand clamped itself on Judy's thighs next to Annie's. Both hands moved inward.
Judy shook her head. "No. I don't mean to be a tease, but I've got to get going. I really shouldn't have stayed this long."
The hands that had been groping toward the apex of her being removed themselves. That was another good thing about people like Marni and Annie: they had respect for the wishes of other people. When you said no, they understood what you meant and didn't try to wheedle you into changing your mind.
"Okay," Marni said. "Here are the keys."
Judy said, "Why don't the two of you drive up to my place tonight? You can both stay over and in the morning you can take the car back."
The eyes of the Lesbians glistened with anticipation. "Sure," Annie said. "Great idea."
Judy stood up. They watched her keenly as she hid her rounded breasts and succulent buttocks within the shapeless folds of her robe again. Then she waved affectionately to them and left the cabin, taking a last glance at the two nude figures as she went out.
They were dolls, Judy thought. They made no demands, and they were always ready to do a friend a favor. If it ever came down to it, they'd certainly testify that she had spent the entire night with them, while a man named Joe Carter was drowning in the Pacific. Not that Judy thought it would ever get to that point. Neither of her two earlier killings had involved her with the police.
She got into the Volkswagen and started it. The elderly car sputtered into life. Judy frowned for a moment, trying to remember the H-pattern of the stick shift. It came to her, and she stepped on the clutch and put the car into gear.
As it rolled slowly away from the cabin, Marni appeared on the porch. Sunlight picked up the highlights of her small, high breasts, her deep-set navel, her sharply jutting hip-bones.
"See you tonight!" Marni called.
"So long," Judy said.
She swung the car around and headed up the bumpy dirt road in second gear. A few minutes later she was at the highway. She turned onto it and headed north at fifty miles an hour.
Going north on the coast road wasn't so bad. You were on the inside, with the cliffs against you. The southbound lane was the hellish one. That was where your wheels were sometimes within a couple of inches of hanging out over the abyss.
As she drove, her morning unrolled in reverse for her. She came to the roadhouse where she had parked the dead man's automobile and stashed his clothes. From here, she couldn't see into the parking lot, but she knew that no one had discovered the car yet. It might be a couple of days before anybody realized that the car had been abandoned in the lot.
Then, about half an hour later, Judy began coming to her own section of the highway. From the northbound lane she couldn't see the beach. But it was down there, and at dawn this morning she had been sprawled out in shameless wanton nudity on the sand, using her bare body as bait. And someone had taken that bait. It had worked out perfectly, she thought. Perfectly!
Now, passing that point, she went to the next exit and swung the Volkswagen around. A narrow road took her inland from the highway exit, and in a couple of minutes she was pulling up at her own cottage. Her place was set back a few hundred feet from the highway. But it was a short walk down to the road, and then the climb to the beach level. She did it every day when the weather permitted.
Judy parked the Vokswagen next to her own rusty little Corvair and went into her cottage. It was a three-room place, far more attractive than the shack where Marni and Annie lived. There was a real fireplace, not just an oil stove, and a picture window, and electricity, and even a telephone-all the comforts of civilization. The nearest house was half a mile away.
That was how Judy liked it. Solitary.
When she wanted company, she knew how to find it. But she had arranged her life so that unwanted company wasn't very likely to find her.
It was ten in the morning now. She had been awake since five o'clock. As she entered the cottage, her cats began to uncoil and pad toward her. Judy had three cats: a big orange torn, a skinny tiger female, and a plump female Siamese. The torn yawned at-her, then told her with a surly growl that he was interested in getting fed.
"You had your breakfast hours ago," she told him. "You moocher, you don't get anything until sundown, you know the rides."
He growled at her again. Judy knelt down and gave him a playful caress. The two female cats came over to be tickled, too.
Judy loved the cats more than she had ever loved any human being. Which was a pretty sad statement to make about a girl who was twenty-four years old.
It was time to get to work, she told herself.
She shrugged off her beachrobe. Though she sometimes worked in the nude, she decided that she had enough nudity for one morning, and she took out of a closet a pair of tight blue dungaree shorts and an old-clay stained white polo shirt. She slipped them on without bothering about underwear. The nipples of her breasts made dark little bulges against the taut white fabric.
She made a pretty fair living with her pottery. No fortune, but enough to keep afloat. Judy turned out small ceramic objects, vases and statuettes, brightly painted and highly glazed. As art, they were pretty worthless, but they were the best she could do, and the sort of things that the tourists loved to buy. She sold them to half a dozen souvenir shops between Car-mel and Sausalito. The six stores between them bought her entire output, which gave her a steady income of about $350 a month. The souvenir stores then marked the prices up around 100 per cent and sold them to the visitors from Kansas and Wisconsin who wanted to take home the handicrafts of a genuine California artist. If Judy cared to, she could have opened her own store to sell her work and that of others like her who lived along the coast. But she wasn't interested in becoming a businesswoman. She just wanted to live her own life-as far away as possible from the civilization that she hated.
She knew that she was a bitter, twisted person. She knew that a girl of her beauty and age and health ought to be in love with the world, not retreating from it in hatred and sullen resentment. But she couldn't help herself. That was how she was.
That was what the world had made her.
There was one thing more to do before she settled down with her clay for the morning. She went into the bedroom and pulled open the bottom drawer of her dresser. Inside, underneath a heap of panties, was a notebook with a black cardboard cover, the kind children use in school. She picked up a pen and opened the notebook.
It was her murder diary.
She had recorded the other two killings in it. Now, turning to a fresh page, she began to write an entry under the heading of July 7:
"At five in the morning I went down to the beach and sunbathed nude for a while. Then I had a swim and sunbathed again. A little after six I heard a car stop on the highway. A man came down the stone steps. He was about thirty-five years old, lean, rather good-looking, with dark hair and brown eyes. He saw me naked. He seemed a little unsure of himself because I was naked in front of him. I invited him to come sit down and sunbathe with me...."
Clamping her full lips tightly together in concentration, Judy wrote out a complete description of her morning's activity. The lovemaking on the blanket, the swim, the challenge to his virility in the water. And then the drowning, when his strength began to ebb. And then, coming ashore, hiding his clothes, disposing of his car.
As she wrote she relived the whole scene. Once again she was sleek and naked in the cold water with him. She had her hands on his shoulders and she was pushing him down. His face was wedged between the abundant globes of her bare, quivering breasts, and she was gasping from her exertions as he was making strange spluttering sounds-and then he was going down, down....
Oh, the keen pleasure of that! A greater delight than the explosion of sex within her! A fierce, intense ecstasy of murder!
Judy knew that she was asking for trouble by keeping the murder diary. It was a risk, having something like that in the house. But it was a risk to commit the murders, too. This was part of the thrill
-the knowledge that if the police ever came, they would certainly find her detailed confession stached away under her panties.
She needed to keep the diary. She didn't want any of the details to blur or fade. These murders were the foundations on which Judy Domanig was rebuilding her shattered life.
She finished the entry and put the diary away. Then, accompanied by her cats, she took out a fresh mound of clay and set out to do her morning's work.
She thought once again about the episode on the beach.
And remembered other episodes, darker ones, the torments that had set her on her path....
Nobody who had known Judy Domanig, age fifteen, would have ever predicted that she would turn into a human monster. She was a gentle, playful, lovable girl at that age. She seemed to have everything in the world going for her.
She was good-looking, for one thing. Her body had ripened early, before she was thirteen, and at fifteen she had a woman's easy grace and poise. Her breasts were high and full, and she was long since past the filly stage where she was ashamed of having breasts at all. She was proud of her body.
She was lively and intelligent. Her father was a professor of sociology at the University of California, and, growing up in the stimulating community at Berkeley, Judy couldn't help turning out to be an interesting and alert girl.
She had a good family life, too. Everybody about her was kind and loving.
At fifteen, she could look forward to nothing but the best in life. After high school, she'd undoubtedly go to college, right here in Berkeley. She was talking about studying biology and working in a laboratory, doing research. And no doubt she'd meet some attractive young man, perhaps a young university teacher, and they'd get married and have two or three attractive children. Life was a fine prospect for Judy at fifteen.
By the time she was sixteen, everything had changed. And life was hell.
What happened in between was very simple. Her brother Ned came home to live with the family.
Judy had never really known her oldest brother very well. He was nine years her senior, and he was a stranger to her. When she had been a little girl, Ned was always the center of attention in the family, a rangy, handsome boy with a shock of long, glossy black hair. Ned was the first child, and the other three were just afterthoughts, it sometimes seemed.
When he was fifteen, Ned got into some kind of trouble. Judy, who was only six, naturally was not given the details. But Ned left home at that point. He was sent to a boarding school in Oregon, and he returned to Berkeley only at Christmastime. He even stayed away in the summers.
When Judy was ten, she learned that her brother Ned-who now was going to college in Idaho-had gotten married. And at Christmas that year, Judy met her sister-in-law Irene, a tall, gentle, dark-haired girl who seemed already wrapped up in some mysterious inner sorrow.
Ned's comings and goings over the next few years were rarely discussed in the family. Judy was old enough now to realize that he was a black sheep, a wound to her father's soul. He had flunked out of several colleges, Judy knew. Then he went into the army, but from what she gathered he wasn't much of a success there either.
At Thanksgiving time, four months short of Judy's sixteenth birthday, Ned came home again-this time not on a visit.
"I'm divorced," he said. "And broke. I'm going to stay here for a while and rest up and figure out what the hell I want out of life."
To Judy, her brother Ned was a fascinating, romantic figure. Suffering was written in deep lines on his face. It was obvious that in his twenty-five years he had been through a great deal of torment.
Her adolescent heart went out to him. She wanted to comfort him, to give him sisterly warmth, to make him feel as though the world held at least one person who cared about him. Washed up at twenty-five, jobless, his marriage shattered, his life a succession of empty incidents, Ned really seemed to be in a bad way, and Judy was eager to help him.
The trouble was, Ned didn't seem to want to be helped.
His attitude toward Judy at first was one of irritated contempt. He fended off all attempts she made to talk to him, giving her a kind of "Go away, little girl, you bother me" scowl. Judy was depressed about that. She couldn't break through the shell of bitterness that her brother had encased himself in. He sat in his room all day, coming out only for meals. He did a lot of drinking. Mainly, he read dog-eared paperbacked books. Now and then, a friend visited him, some other man his age, bringing a bottle of liquor, and Judy would hear loud laughter coming from the room. There were never any girls.
Judy's father was openly upset about the whole thing. He couldn't very well turn Ned away from his door, but he certainly wasn't happy to have him around an untidy, unruly, embittered man-who-was-still-a-boy, lounging around his room all day and using up the family liquor supply. There were a couple of loud quarrels between father and son; then the elder Domanig simply shrugged and slipped into a mood of toleration, ignoring his son's presence.
Judy continued to try reach her brother. In her naive, girlish way, she was convinced that she could be his salvation-that she would be able to help him straighten out his messed-up life, if he would only let her spend some time talking to him.
"Go away," he said, morosely.
"Why don't we talk for a while?"
"I don't want to talk, kid. Just be a smart chick and go away."
But Ned's attitude toward his sister changed abruptly one Saturday afternoon early in December. He had been living in the house for two or three weeks, then, and his sullen mood hadn't lifted for a moment. He continued to regard his sister as nothing more than an annoying little girl who happened to live under the same roof with him. Then he got a view of her nude body, and after that everything was different.
Judy had taken a shower in the bathroom at the end of the second floor. She hadn't bothered to lock the door, because it was generally understood that this bathroom was used only by Judy, her mother, and her nine-year-old sister. The family didn't believe in locking bathroom doors, since if you slipped and broke a leg or something while taking a shower it was better to have the door unlocked so help could get to you.
After her shower, Judy started to get herself ready for her evening date. She was going to the movies with a boy named Tony Madison, the sone of one of the other professors at the university. Judy was still a virgin, of course. She was curious about sex, but not curious enough to make any actual experiments with a boy named Tony Madison, the son of one of her innocence later on-say, when she was seventeen or eighteen. She was sensible enough to realize that including in sex when she was still this young could be biting off more than she was ready to chew.
Still, she was a normal, healthy girl, which meant she petted and necked a little. She had allowed Tony Madison to open her brassiere and play with her bare breasts. That was as far as she had ever gone with any boy, and she considered it pretty daring. But it felt nice to have someone fondling her breasts, and Judy knew that she had a good pair of boobs, anyway. She didn't see any harm in letting Tony stroke them if it gave them both pleasure.
Now, nude and pink from her shower, Judy was shaving her legs in the bathroom.
And the bathroom door opened suddenly.
Her brother Ned stood there, staring hungrily at her youthful but womanly body.
He was a mess. He hadn't shaved in two or three days, and his hair was rumpled, and his eyes were bloodshot and bleary, and his shirttail was hanging out. He looked forty years old, not twenty-five. Judy could smell the liquor on his breath ten feet away.
He stood lurching in the doorway, his eyes glassy as they fixed on the ripe, pink young breasts of his sister, on her smooth belly, her flaring hips her solid columnar thighs, her firm, jutting buttocks.
Color flared in Judy's face. She didn't know what to say or do. She didn't feel ashamed of her body, but it was the understanding in the Domanig family that the male members of the family and the female members were supposed to respect each other's privacy.
Ned wasn't respecting anything, right now. He was getting a good eyeful. And Judy stood there with everything she had hanging out. There was no place to hide.
After what seemed like half an hour had gone by-it was actually no more than fifteen seconds-Judy found her tongue and said, "This bathroom's in use, Ned."
"Yeah. So I see."
"Will you excuse me?"
"You got quite a build on you, sis." He grinned at her. "I never guessed you were stacked like that. You ought to buy yourself better bras."
"Come on, Ned. Go away."
"What's a matter? Ashamed in front of your poor old brother? Hey, you're a pretty one."
"Ned!"
"Gimme a sisterly little kiss," he mumbled, stepping into the bathroom. His hands clutched at her. One of them grazed the ripe, hot mound of Judy's bare, left breast.
She looked at him in shock as she jumped back. "You must be drunk, Ned. Come on, get out of here. You've got no right-"
He pawed her again. This time he got a good grab of both her breasts. When she pushed one of his hands away from her firm, resilient flesh, he moved it down and grabbed one of her buttocks.
Judy began to get frightened. This was no way for a brother to behave toward his sister. But they hadn't grown up together; they were practically strangers. And Ned was drunk. She realized that to him at this moment, she was just a good-looking naked broad who happened to be within grabbing reach.
She pushed him, hard, away from her. He thumped against the bathroom wall. Judy grabbed up a bath towel and wrapped it around herself from breasts to thighs.
"Go on, now," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ned!"
"I never knew-that you were built like that, sis-I never knew-"
"Will you be a good guy and get out of here?" she asked, in a calmer tone now that her nudity was shielded from his bloodshot gaze. "You don't want me to yell and raise a fuss, do you? I'm sure Dad wouldn't like it if he knew what you've been doing in here."
That got to him. He shrugged and lumbered out of the bathroom.
Trembling, Judy slammed the door and locked it. She dropped her towel. Then she huddled down in a little, frightened, nude heap as the pent-up tension went shivering through her.
Nobody had ever seen her whole body naked before-nobody male, anyhow, since she had grown up. Now Ned had. He had taken a good look. And she could still feel the touch of his hands against her breasts, her buttocks. Though she had just had a shower, she felt filthy again. Virgins of not-quite-sixteen don't like the private places of their bodies handled like that.
Even so, Judy felt more sorrow than hatred toward her brother. She pitied him. He was such a wreck! To sink that low, to be reduced to getting drunk and feeling up your own sister-
She still wished she could help him.
But the bathroom episode had altered things in the house. Only Judy and her brother were aware of what had happened since she didn't want to tell her parents about it, and Ned certainly wasn't going to. But now Ned realized that his sister was a woman.
And Ned was woman-hungry.
Judy found him staring at her now instead of ignoring her. She could catch a glimpse of him, studying her profile, as though trying to match the outward appearance of her clothed body with the voluptuous reality of her bare breasts, as he remembered them. There was a curious intensity about his expression as he ogled her. It made Judy uncomfortable, because it seemed so abnormal. She had wanted to get to know her unhappy brother, yes. But she hadn't bargained for anything like this.
The tension mounted for six days.
Judy now locked the bathroom door when she took showers, and hoped that her mother wouldn't notice and ask her to explain. When she dressed and undressed in her bedroom, she nervously watched the door in case Ned should unexpectedly barge in. She avoided wearing tight-fitting sweaters around the house, because she couldn't stand the weird, intense gaze Ned turned on her.
Saturday arrived-one week since he had seen her body. Judy had another date with Tony Madison. They went to see a French film at an art theater at Telegraph and Bancroft, and then he took her for a drive up into the Berkeley hills. Tony was a good-looking, attractive boy of eighteen; he would be starting college next fall. Judy was very fond of him. She could easily see herself married to someone like Tony Madison.
Tony was tactful with her. In his parked car, he kissed her and put his hands under her sweater and cupped and caressed her bosom, unsnapping her brassiere so he could fondle the silken-smooth mounds of her bare young breasts. He made her nipples go hard and her body go hot with desire. But Tony didn't try to rush anything. He never tried to slip his hands under her skirt and grope for forbidden territory. He was a level-headed young man who knew that if he moved at a reasonable pace, Judy would eventually give him everything, without any remorse afterward.
He took her home about midnight. She was in a pleasantly excited mood, warm with desire and love. When they kissed good night outside her house, Judy was rather more passionate than she generally was. She slipped her tongue into his mouth, and pressed her body flat up against his, letting him feel the firm globes of her breasts. She was able to feel too, as they embraced, the manhood of him. It excited and frightened and fascinated her.
As she went into the house, Judy thought, maybe in another six months or so I'll let him Do It with me.
The thought delighted her. She had no fears of sex. But when she lost her virginity, she wanted it to be a beautiful and meaningful experience, something that she would remember happily for the rest of her life.
She went upstairs to her bedroom. The house was quiet. Her parents were out at a faculty party at the other end of town. Her younger sister and brother were asleep in their rooms. A light was on in Ned's room. Judy thought briefly of stopping by, saying hello to him. She had never really given up her dream of winning Ned's confidence and getting him to allow her to help him untangle the twisted strands of his life.
But she decided against visiting him now. She was in a wonderful mood after her delightful evening with Tony Madison. She didn't want to spoil it. Ned would only be surly and impolite to her.
She went straight to her bedroom, closed the door, and got undressed quickly. She glanced at her bare body in the mirror. Her nipples were still swollen. They hurt, a little, from being erect. But it was a pleasant kind of pain. She closed her eyes, and relived for a moment the happiness she had felt as Tony's hands wandered tenderly over those twin mounds of ripe, young flesh.
Then she got into her pajamas, washed up for bed, and turned out the light.
Usually Judy fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. But not tonight. She was too full of joy, of plans and dreams.
And so she was still awake, ten minutes later, when her brother Ned came tiptoeing into her room.
She heard the door creak open. She sat up, blinking in the darkness.
"Who's there? Ned, is that you?"
"Shhh," came his hoarse voice. "Don't make any noise, you hear?"
"What do you want? I've gone to sleep."
"Just be quiet." He was advancing across the room in the darkness. Judy could smell the by-now familiar scent of him, that repelling mixture of stale, sweat, cigarette smoke, and whiskey fumes. Suddenly terrified, she trembled in the darkness.
Then she felt his weight on her bed.
He pulled back the covers and dropped down heavily beside her.
"Gonna have some fun now," he muttered thickly.
"Ned, no! You're drunk, Ned!"
"Keep your mouth shut."
"Ned, I'm your sister!"
"Shut!"
"Ned-"
Suddenly his hand was at her throat. Judy froze. The words that were about to leave her mouth died back of her lips. She shivered and gasped for breath as the big, strong hand tightened.
What's he going to do, she asked herself? Oh, no, he's cracked up. He's going to kill me. This is going to be one of those cases you read about in the newspapers. Brother goes berserk, slays family....
His harsh breathing sent nauseating fumes into her face. The hand still gripped her by the throat, though not so tightly, now. But she was afraid to cry out. What good would it do? Her parents weren't home. Nobody was here to help her. And that choking hand might tighten again.
She heard Ned panting. His other hand was busy now, unbuttoning the top of her pajamas. The fingers slid onto her bare flesh, fondled the firm, up-jutting young mounds of her breasts, toyed with them, pinched the tender, little nipples.
No, she thought, quietly going crazy inside her skull. No, no, no!
The hand moved downward from her breasts after a moment, found the snap that held her pajama bottoms shut, and tugged at it.
He began to pull the garment off her.
CHAPTER THREE
Even now, eight years later, Judy could not help feeling a shiver of revulsion as she returned in memory to that shattering episode. Her flesh crawled whenever she thought about it. And she could not help thinking about it. Hardly a day passed without her reliving it. It lodged in her past like a thorn, cutting into her soul.
Sweat rolled down her smooth skin as she shared once again the plight of that virginal, adolescent girl, alone in a dark house with her drunken, half-insane older brother, unable to cry out, unable to defend herself against his bestial lusts.
With one hand remaining at her throat, Ned efficiently stripped away Judy's pajamas with the other. First, the pajama bottoms came off. She felt his hand intimately stroking her flesh, touching her thighs, moving upward and inward to her purity, exploring her in a shocking way.
Then he maneuvered her out of her already-open pajama-top, so that she was totally nude in the bed. The sheets felt cold against her bare buttocks.
He muttered, "You ever tell anybody a word of what's happening and I'll fix you good, you hear me? I'll fix you plenty good!"
Her eyes stared upward at him in mute appeal. She was adjusted to the darkness, now, and she could make out his features, twisted, rigid, the features of a madman. Or of a hopeless drunk.
He doesn't know what he's doing, Judy told herself, still trying to make excuses for her shameless brother. He's too drunk to think. He-
It didn't matter. Whatever the excuse, the fact remained that he had stripped her naked. And his hands were moving over her previously untouched body in a lasciviously lustful way.
Now he was gripping her breasts ... digging in hard ... trapping the nipples ... tickling her thighs ... rubbing against her belly. Then, reaching underneath, grasping the firm, bouncy flesh of her buttocks.
Judy felt soiled, stained, polluted.
But the real soiling was still to come.
She heard a zipper working. She did not look down to see, but she did not need to.
"No," she whimpered. "For God's sake, Ned, you can't-"
He slapped her across the mouth, so hard that she felt her lip began to puff up instantly. "I told you to shut up," he grated. "I don't want any sounds out of you, you little witch. Just lie there."
"Ned, I beg you-"
He slapped her again. Not across the mouth this time, but across the breasts. He hit the delicate globes of soft flesh with all his strength. Judy had never known such pain before. It was like getting slammed in the chest by a swinging baseball bat. She hissed in agony and doubled up, and after that she was silent.
Her brother's body was above hers, now, a dark, bulky shape in the blackness of the room. His breathing was loud and ragged. The stink of his breath made her want to throw up. She quivered with terror.
She couldn't believe that this was really happening to her.
She felt his rough, powerful hands on her thighs, now digging deep into the tender, yielding flesh, forcing her legs-
He was pressing against her.
Closer ... closer....
Then he grunted and plunged at her.
Judy thought she would go out of her mind from the pain of it. It hit her suddenly, all at once, like a firebrand being plunged against her. There was a quick, red haze of agony blazing outward from her body, so keen and so intense that she could not even think. In the moment that it happened, she did not pause to reflect that she had just lost her virginity. Her mind was blanking out under the impact of that ruthless treatment of her unready body, that demonic violation of unprepared tissues.
Her head lolled back. Her figure went limp.
Then consciousness returned, a fraction of a second later-and the waves of horror came rolling in to engulf her.
Ned was on top of her, riding her, lunging again and again, diving at her tender body. She could hear her own voice howling for mercy, as he ravished her. In the wild frenzy of the moment, Ned did not even bother to shut her up. He simply went on with the rape.
His body crushed down against the soft globes of Judy's breasts. Her legs were flung wide, straining the muscles of her thighs. And there was that red-hot pain in the most sensitive part of her body as he smashed against her.
Again!
Again!
Again!
Each new lunge brought fresh agony. Would he never finish? The rape seemingly had lasted for hours already. How long would it take? When would the pain end? When would he leave her?
Suddenly, he made a fierce grunting sound. Judy felt him clutch at her flesh, grab her buttocks and push himself down even more strenuously against her. And then there was most revolting moment of all, as his body shook with the hammer-blow jolts of his fulfillment, and she felt him quiver with her, felt the shuddering force of his ecstasy, felt herself spinning in a foul wave of lust....
And then the rape ended. But the real nightmare was only beginning.
His weight lifted from her. Judy lay like a corpse in her bed, limp, her legs still askew, her eyes closed. She made no attempt to cover her violated body. The pain was still fearful, a hot, throbbing ache, a stinging sensation, and above all the inner pain, the mental anguish of knowing that she had been raped....
... by her own brother....
He stood by the side of the bed. "If you ever say a word about this to anybody, I'll murder you," he told her. "Don't think I'm joking."
She wanted to struggle back to sanity, wanted to sit up and ask him why he had done such a terrible thing to her. But the old Judy, the calm, poised, rational, curious Judy was gone. Forever. He had murdered her with his brutal act of lust. She could not speak to him now. She could only lie there in a state of shock, her numbed brain refusing to accept the enormity of what had been done to her.
Ned went out of the room, carefully closing the door behind him.
Perhaps fifteen minutes passed. Slowly, Judy fought her way out of the thickets of hysteria. She rolled over and lay curled up tightly, sobbing furiously to herself, her knees drawn up until they practically touched the tips of her aching breasts. Then she realized that her parents might be coming home from their party at any minute. Sometimes they looked in her room to make sure that she had come home safely from her date. If they looked now, and found her lying in this telltale predicament, it would be impossible to hide from them what had taken place tonight.
And she wanted to hide it. She didn't want to brand her brother as a rapist. She didn't want to advertise herself as a girl who had been violated. The only way she could survive this horror without being forced to divulge it to the world was by swallowing it and forgetting it.
Or so she thought.
So she got up from the bed. It wasn't easy. She was shaky-legged and at the verge of collapse. The bed was a mess. She ripped the sheets off and carried them into the bathroom. She put them in the laundry hamper. Then she washed showered, still in terror.
The pain was subsiding now-the physical pain, that is. She still ached, and she knew that she would continue to, for a while. But that part of it wasn't so serious. It was the other part, the psychological part of it, going through the rest of her life as someone who has suffered an incestuous rape-that was what terrified her now.
She dried herself off. She found her pajamas and put them on. She put fresh sheets on the bed. If her mother asked any questions, she would simply say that she had spilled something on the bed, and that would explain changing the sheets.
Shaking, Judy got back into bed. She hugged her pillow. Terror still throbbed in her.
I'm not a virgin any more, she told herself.
She could still feel his weight on her, that savage treatment of a body that was not prepared for such an act, the shattering impact as her innocence was overthrown by brutal force.
It wouldn't have been so bad, Judy thought, if a stranger had raped her on the street-dragged her into an alley, pulled her panties off, taken her, and then fled. But this way-
To have Ned be the one to do it-that was the worst part of all. How could she ever face him again? Or he face her? A wedge had been driven through the family that could never be removed. The unspoken fact of his treacherous violation of her purity would always remain, the deepest stain on a soul already blemished again and again.
Judy didn't sleep much that night. Somewhere toward morning, she slipped into a light, uneasy doze, but when dawn came she was awake again.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like a wreck. Pale, bloodshot, tense. But she hadn't felt much more pain during the night, and the earlier hurt had dwindled to a dull, inconvenient ache. She dressed to go down for breakfast, wondering what was going to happen when she and Ned encountered each other.
She could have saved herself the speculation. Ned didn't show up for breakfast.
Judy faked things at the family table. She did the best acting job she possibly could, pretending that last night had been a perfectly normal Saturday night for her. She made conversation, ate a reasonably substantial meal, and passed the butter when asked.
Ned didn't appear all morning. About one in the afternoon, Judy's mother came down from his room and said, "Has anyone seen Ned today?"
"Not I, mother."
"Not I."
"Me neither."
Nobody had seen Ned. Ned was gone. He had packed his things and vanished in the night.
Judy was profoundly glad he had left, of course. And she knew why he was gone. It was good to know that even he had a conscience--that there were some deeds that were too monstrous to face the next day.
A few days later, they got a postcard from him. He was in Mexico. No explanation of his sudden departure. No word that he'd be coming back.
Judy knew why.
She was faced now with the task of putting back together the ruins of her life. That wasn't so easy, and in fact it got harder and harder as the days passed. She had thought that the shock of the rape would wear off after a little while. Instead, the inner sense of outrage became stronger and stronger.
She looked at the girls she knew, and felt sour envy because they still had their innocence and she had been stained by rape. Some day soon they would give themselves to boys they loved, and it would be a thrilling and wonderful experience. But she had nothing to look forward to except the memories of agony.
She looked at herself, and wondered if the signs of her experience had started to show. Did she look depraved, now? Was the golden glow of virgin purity gone from her face? Was it obvious to everybody who looked at her that she had unwillingly crossed the borderline into the realm of womanhood?
She had a hard time sleeping. No night was complete without its nightmare re-enactment of the rape. She felt the hands clutching her breasts, the fingers digging into her thighs as they drew at her legs, the fiery lunge of violation ... and she woke up, drenched with sweat, trembling with real terror.
The emotional effects of the rape began to become evident to her only gradually, like a bunch of boobytraps cleverly planted in her soul. She discovered, for instance, that her relationship with Tony Madison had been forever altered by what Ned had done to her.
She and Tony went out on another date the week after the rape. Judy had recovered her surface calmness, and as far as anybody else knew, all was perfectly as it should be with her. Yet inwardly, she was imprisoned in a cage of grief and bitterness.
When Tony took her up into the hills and parked the car, Judy realized that it could never be the same with him. The happy yielding of her virginity to Tony that she had dreamed about would now never take place.
They settled onto the back seat. Tony drew her close. He tried to kiss her, but Judy twisted at the last minute so that he received not her lips, but only her cheek.
She couldn't help remembering her brother's slobbering mouth pressed against hers.
Tony's hand went to her sweater, cupped her breasts from outside. It wakened memories of pain, of a drunken hand violating squeezing the twin tender mounds of sensual young flesh. Involuntarily, Judy winced.
"No, Tony. Please."
"What's the matter?"
"I just don't feel very affectionate tonight."
"You've been kind of distant all week, Judy. What's wrong? You sick or something?"
"I'm fine."
"You look so pale, so moody." She shrugged. "Just one of those spells, I guess. I'm sorry."
"If something's troubling you, you can tell me about it, Judy."
"There's nothing!" she snapped.
"If it's about me-"
"There's nothing! " she snapped.
The fact that she had lost her temper was a dead giveaway that she was lying to him, and both of them knew it. She felt abashed. It wasn't his fault she had been raped, after all. So she tried to relax.
"I'm sorry," she said, gently. "I've been awfully edgy all week. I didn't mean to yell at you. Put your arm around me and hold me close."
They sat quietly for a little while, staring out at the lights of Berkeley below them. Judy tried to force herself to relax. When he put his hand hesitantly on her sweater a second time, she did not push it away. She attempted to unbend, to get into a receptive mood.
I'll let him play with me, she thought. And then maybe if he wants to go a little farther than before, I'll let him. Maybe I'll even....
No. No, she couldn't do that.
There was no reason in the world why she shouldn't let Tony Madison have sex with her now. After all, she had no virginity left to lose, so why not make him happy? But yet she knew what she was afraid of. If he made love to her, he would find out that he wasn't the first. He'd be able to tell that her virginity was gone. He'd feel cheated and angry. It would be the end of their tender, blossoming love affair ... the end of her dream of marrying him someday.
And as she considered it, she saw that that dream was ruined anyway, no matter what she did.
If she gave herself to Tony, whether now or six months from now, or even three years from now on a wedding night, he'd discover that someone else had had her ahead of him. Which would sadden and disillusion and anger him. On the other hand, if she never gave herself to him, what kind of relationship would they have had?
She saw that she had no hope of marrying Tony. If she slept with him at all, he'd find out the shameful truth about her. And the only way she could keep that truth from him was to deny herself to him ... forever.
Round and round and round.
He gripped her breasts. He was breathing hard, full of sincere passion. His body pressed against hers Judy remembered their good-night kiss, the night of the rape, and how excited she had been to feel his taught body against the front of her. And how soon afterward had she felt another man's body in a much more intimate way!
She shivered and pulled away, shocked and dazed by the abrupt explosion into her mind of all her rape memories, as vivid as ever.
"No," she gasped. "Let go of me, Tony. I-I don't feel well. Take me home."
Looking back at her sixteen-year-old, newly de-virginized self from the age of twenty-four, Judy could see how the rape had destroyed her. It cost her a sense of her own completeness, first. Then it cost her her love for Tony, for she had to draw away from him in order to preserve her shameful secret of violation.
Poor Tony. He never did understand why we had to break up. And he was my only chance for happiness, too. Damn Ned! Damn him!
The fact that Ned had died in Mexico a year and a half after the rape, killed in some drunken barroom brawl, did not ease the weight that pressed on Judy's soul. The damage was done. The death of the miserable, tortured man who had raped her did not undo the crime. He was at peace, now. But she was condemned to go through life wearing the scars of his deed.
And so, this morning, a stranger had paid for her sufferings. Not the first to pay, either. Nor the last Judy vowed.
She busied herself at her work. Shape the ceramic pieces, apply the glaze, fire up the kiln. A busy day, a quiet day, nobody to bother her in the silence of her cottage. That was how she liked it. Just the cats padding around, minding their own business.
After she had everything in the kiln and blazing away, she fixed lunch for herself. Then she went down to the beach again to sunbathe and swim. Not nude, this time. She didn't dare. She could romp around nude on the beach only in the hours just after dawn. If she tried it here in the early afternoon, the state troopers would pounce upon her, pronto. But she had a good swim, anyway. And the sun was warm. She wondered how long it would be before the dead man's body washed up on shore. And where.
Back to her cabin, now. She took another sun-bath, this time a nude one, in the clearing behind the cottage. She sprawled out deliciously, tanning her breasts and buttocks, while her body dried in the sun. Her bikini dangled from a nearby bush, drying off also.
Still nude, Judy went back into her cottage. She took a short nap. Then she emptied out the kiln and packed up the new merchandise. She read for a while. She gave the cats dinner.
About eight o'clock, there was the sound of a car outside. Her company was arriving.
Marni and Annie, her Lesbian pals.
CHAPTER FOUR
They got out of the battered, ancient Oldsmobile and came trooping into her cottage. Annie yelled, "Hey, Judy, you here or aren't you?"
"I'm here. In back, packing up some stuff."
They came around to see her. Marni was wearing tight green pedal-pushers and a maroon sweater. Annie's fleshy body was encased in a pair of faded dungarees and a loose flannel shirt. Judy looked up from her task of wrapping up parcels of pottery.
"Hi," she said. "What's new?"
"Another suicide," said Marni. "We saw the skin-divers going to work as we drove up here."
"Where?" Judy asked.
Annie said, "Down near the roadhouse, it seems. They found some guy's clothing hidden in some rocks. And his car was parked in the roadhouse lot. They're dragging for his body right now."
Judy felt a pang of fear. Why were they telling her this? Were they playing some kind of game? Did they know that before her visit to their shack this morning she had murdered a man and made it seem like suicide?
No, she realized. They didn't suspect a thing. They were just relaying the latest bit of neighborhood gossip, that was all. It wasn't like Marni and Annie to play games of that sort.
Marni said, "It's about the fourth one this year. There's something about the coast that makes people want to drown themselves, I guess."
Annie laughed. "I tell you something, that's a tough way to die, swimming out until you sink. Takes too long. You got all that suspense wondering when you're finally gonna go under. Me, if I was killing myself, I'd just jump off that big cliff. Quick."
"Too messy," Judy said.
"And what if it doesn't kill you?" Marni wanted to know. "You fall three hundred feet, you smash your face to a pulp, you twist your neck so you head's looking the back way, and you're still alive. And you spend the rest of your life in a wheel chair screaming with pain."
Annie said, "Well, you know what the odds are? You jump three hundred feet and smash yourself up and live? It isn't very likely. Anyhow, if it does happen, all you do is take poison when you get the chance."
"Seems to me it's simpler-"
"Hey, cut it!" Judy yelled. "What kind of talk is all this, anyway?"
Marni shrugged. "Well, there was that guy who drowned himself, and-"
"Let's talk about some other subject," Judy said.
"How about the subject of booze?" Annie asked, She produced a paper bag. "We brought some wine, just in case you were running low."
"I'm not running low," Judy said. "I'm out completely. So thanks."
She took the bottle-it was a gallon of Chilean red wine, cheap and tangy-and opened it in a hurry. Five minutes later, they were sitting around in Judy's living room downing the wine and listening to the faint sounds of a San Francisco FM station trying to waft Mozart through the forest to them.
Judy felt queasy about the suicide discussion. They had found the clothes awfully fast. If they found the body too, it might still show some marks of the death struggle-bruises around the neck, where she had shoved him under the water.
To hell with worrying about that. Let them find the body. How were they possibly going to connect it with her, anyway?
She sipped her wine. The three women talked. The evening trickled away.
And then it was ten o'clock. Bedtime. Judy believed in going to sleep early, getting up early. You economized on your electricity bills that way. And you had the use of the beach in the early hours of the morning before anybody could come along and object to your nudity.
She had invited Marni and Annie up here to have sex with her, not because she was particularly inclined toward Lesbianism, but because she owed them a favor. They had let her borrow their car. In return, she was letting them borrow her body.
Judy could take the dyke stuff or leave it alone. She had had some good times in bed with other girls, true, but it didn't mean all that much to her. She still rather would have loving from a man-even though she despised men.
Her first Lesbian experience had come three years ago, when she was twenty-one and still living in San Francisco. She had gone to a coffee shop in North Beach and a beatnik chick had picked her up and taken her to her pad. And Judy had been just drunk enough not to object when the beatnik chick took Judy's sweater off and unfastened her brassiere and started kissing the tips of her breasts.
The rest had followed swiftly and pleasantly.
Since then, Judy had made it in the butch way with perhaps a dozen different girls. Some of her best friends were gay, and she enjoyed their company. And, from time to time, she let her company enjoy her.
She stood up and yawned. "How about the sack?" she suggested.
"We still got a little wine left," Annie said.
"So finish it," Judy told her. "Marni and I will meet you in the bedroom whenever you're finished boozing. Come on, Marni."
The slender girl got up and went with Judy. Annie, a big chuckle booming around in her massive body, shrugged and poured herself another glass of wine.
Of the two Lesbians, Marni was the one that Judy preferred. Annie was too big, too butch, too coarse. Almost like a man, except for her anatomy. She was a superb sculptor, but she didn't happen to be very bright.
Marni on the other hand, was delicate, sensitive moody. Very much like Judy in many ways, except that Judy had great physical strength, and Marni was softly feminine. Judy could wrestle a man to the ground if she had to. She could outswim most men, outrun them, and outdrown them, too. She had built her body painstakingly, knowing that was her only security in strength. Somehow, she managed to be muscular without looking it. But Marni was girlish in her strength.
They entered the bedroom together. Judy's bedroom was a long, practically empty room. She had no bed, only a king-sized mattress that rested directly on the floor. A couple of chairs, a painting, one of Annie's wood sculptures-that was all. Simple. Judy hated clutter.
Marni said, "I wish I could have left Annie home tonight, you know."
"That's no way to talk about your lover." Marni shrugged. "I'd rather have you all to myself, Judy."
"You already have."
"And I loved it. If I didn't have to share you-"
"You do," Judy said. "That's the way it works. I don't intend to get mixed up in any quarrel between you and Annie. You want me, you both have to have me."
Marni nodded. "Yes, You're right." She crossed the room and reached her arms toward Judy. "Kiss me," she whispered. "While we're still alone in here."
Judy accepted the slim, dark-haired Lesbian's embrace. Their bodies pressed together. Judy could feel the hard, little mounds of Marni's breasts jutting into her own. Their lips met. Marni kissed hungrily, greedily, trying to devour Judy. Her tongue plunged deep.
They clung tight for a long moment.
When they parted, Marni looked flushed and dazed with desire. Judy was calmer, although the torrid kiss had certainly awakened her own longings. Her breasts felt hot; her nipples swelled.
"Let me undress you," Marni whispered passionately.
Judy had dressed about six that evening, for the nights get cold along the coast, even in summertime. She was wearing a loose-fitting cashmere sweater and a pair of gray slacks. She hadn't bothered with a brassiere, because she hated the feel of a useless garment confining the tender hills of her breasts, but she had put a pair of bikini panties on under the slacks.
Marni pulled the sweater off and uttered a little gasp of surprise at finding Judy bare-breasted beneath-not because Judy's breasts were any mystery to her, but simply because she had expected to have to work a little harder than that to see them tonight.
"You're so lovely," Marni whispered. "How I wish you were really one of us!"
Judy smiled. The dark-haired girl moved close to her, and delicately cupped the rising mounds of Judy's breasts. Judy closed her eyes. She enjoyed Marni's feather-light caress, the fingers enveloping her nipples, trapping them, gently stimulating them....
Panting, flushed, Marni tugged at the zipper of Judy's slacks. Down it came, and the slacks followed, revealing the nearly nude body beneath, hidden only by the pink, gauzy bikini panties that rode low and provocatively on Judy's hips.
Marni reached for the panties. Judy shook her off.
"First, let's undress you," she said.
Marni grinned, and Judy went to work, peeling the garments away. In moments, Marni's breasts were bare; then her pedal-pushers followed, and at last her panties, revealing the slender nudity of her. Marni body was agile, always poised like a doe's for immediate flight. But flight was the one thing she didn't have in mind now.
She moved close again. Her bare breasts touched the warm tips of Judy's. Her hands slid under the elastic waistband of Judy's panties, drew the flimsy little garment down, down, down....
Off.
Now both girls were nude. They tumbled down together onto the mattress, already locked in a sensual embrace of deep passion.
Lips went to lips. Breasts rubbed against breasts. Ivory-smooth bellies slid against each other in wanton urgency. Legs slipped between cool, elegant thighs, which clamped tight on them.
At first, Judy had been shy and self-conscious about Lesbian loving. Not any more. It was a route to pleasure; an unconventional route, but not an unpleasant one. She could give herself up freely to people like Marni and Annie. More freely, in fact, than she could with a man. For though the sensations a man had to offer were more intense, he also tended to awaken those bitter racking memories, memories of anguish and shame and violation. Nothing about Marni linked her to the crudest moment of Judy's life.
Marni was kissing Judy's breasts now, stroking her buttocks her thighs.
Judy shivered with ecstasy. That was the wonderful thing about making love with another woman: she knew your body as though it were her own, knew where to touch you and what kind of force to exert. Men were clumsy bunglers, most of them, when it came to that sort of caress.
Judy closed her eyes. She lay back on the mattress, adjusting her legs, letting Marni run riot over the "treasures of her body. A kiss here, a caress there, the brush lips, the light flick of a tongue-
Passion mounting, gasp after gasp.
"Hey, you two, wait for me!" Annie bellowed.
Judy opened her eyes. She saw the big bull-dyke, her lips and cheeks stained purple by the cheap wine, standing over the bed, hurriedly pulling off her clothes. Annie flung garment after garment aside. Now her breasts were nude, hanging out like two basketballs somebody had glued to her chest. She was climbing out of her dungarees, now, and her panties.
Annie wasn't really a fat woman. She was just big. She didn't have puckered dimples of flab all over her hips and thighs and buttocks, the way a really fat woman would. Nor were her breasts huge, revolting, swaying slabs of dangling meat. Annie was an attractive woman. But nature had been generous in designing her. She was close to six feet tall and weighed at least two hundred pounds. Her thighs were like marble pillars, her buttocks were as big as continents, her belly was soft and rounded. All the flesh was solid and none of it was superfluous. But there was an awful lot of her.
Looking at Annie's nakedness, Judy understood why she had become a Lesbian. It would take a Paul Bunyan of a man to satisfy Annie, and Paul Bun-yans just weren't easily available. Unable to find a man who could give her the kingsize kind of loving she needed, Annie did the next best thing-turned herself into a man, essentially, and played a masculine role in sex.
With a colossal roar of delight, Annie flopped down on the mattress, landing right on top of Marni and Judy.
"Gung ho!" she roared.
"I'm smothering! Marni cried. "Help! Help! I'm choking in her boobs!"
Annie laughed. She was lying with her bosom on top of Marni's face, and those two enormous swells of flesh hid Marni's nose and mouth entirely. Marni made muffled sounds of anguish and thrashed her feet around. Still laughing, Annie reached down and put her hands on Marni's legs, giving her an intimate caress even while she flattened her face.
Suddenly Annie yelped and leaped away from Marni, clutching one hand to her enormous left breast.
Marni sat up. She was laughing now.
"You bit my knocker off!" Annie boomed.
"Just a little nibble," Marni said. "It was pure self-defense. I couldn't breathe."
"Let's get Judy," Annie suggested.
Judy had been watching the byplay between the two Lesbians with some amusement. But she stopped being amused when the two of them leaped at her at once.
Annie caught her by the shoulders, Marni by the legs. Judy struggled, half seriously, half in fun. But for all her wiry strength, she couldn't begin to budge Annie. The big woman was pressing down on the upper half of her body. Her huge breasts were soft and heavy against Judy's bosom and her lips covered Judy's.
Meanwhile Marni was busy, too. She had pulled Judy's legs around. Now she was drawing a trail of kisses down the inside of Judy's thigh ... closer and closer....
Her tongue flicked out and found the area of ecstasy.
Buried under two nude girls, stimulated at top and bottom, Judy went into a wild paroxysm of lust. Her body writhed and rippled as though a high-voltage current had been sent through it.
Yes, she thought, yes, yes ... love me, love me!
It was fantastic. She yielded utterly to the mischievous expertness of the Lesbian pair. They knew the magic places of her body, and they worked on them, driving her closer and closer to the sunburst of lustful fulfillment. Wild laughter ricocheted through the cottage.
It was a shameful three-way orgy, and Judy felt no qualms of conscience at all. Maybe respectable, conventional people would be shocked by such goings-on. But Judy felt that she had a license to engage in such wanton exploits. She had tried to be respectable and conventional, and the good people of the world had kicked her in the teeth. They had forced her away.
Forced her into unnatural lust.
Into murder, even.
So her conscience was at ease. She lay there, sweating and throbbing, letting Annie kiss her bare breasts and Marni put her mouth to the territory below. She opened her own mouth wide, filling it with the incredible abundance of Annie's breast. Her tongue flicked against a nipple of huge size, a big, jutting knob of flesh. Her lips compressed into the swollen globe of flesh.
Now the positions shifted, and Judy buried her head to Annie's lap while Annie burrowed toward the warmth of Marni, and Marni embraced them both.
Harsh passion-sounds could be heard in the room. There was the slap of flesh against bare, sweating flesh.
Breasts, buttocks, thighs, bellies, hips, haunches, flanks-all mixed up in a gyrating, endlessly reshaping kaleidoscope of lustful, female flesh. Body against body, sweat dripping, desires aflame, breasts heaving, nipples like rock-
Ecstasy!
Marni on top of Judy, driving hard, pressing toward the goal of fulfillment-
Judy with Annie, now. And then Annie with Marni. And all three, entangled, entwined, defying anatomy, bodies twisting, writhing, a devil-dance of lust, Lesbian desires maddening and inflaming them-
Somebody's breast in her mouth. Somebody's buttocks in her hands. Somebody's hips grinding against hers in sublime friction.
Judy soared higher, higher, higher.
For the second time since daybreak that day, she knew the searing fulfillment of passion. That other time, lying naked on the beach at dawn, she had given herself to a man who was in his final minutes of life, and she had taken a savage pleasure from that knowledge. Now, coupling like a maniac in this three-way Lesbian orgy, Judy derived different pleasure from knowing that here, too, she was violating all the commandments of orthodox society.
Pleasure shot through her in bolt after blazing bolt of radiant delight.
Then it was over. Gasping, moaning in exhaustion, one girl after another topple limply to the mattress and lay still, bathed in mingled sweat, groggy from the exertion of total voluptuousness.
"Oh, God," Marni moaned. "Oh, oh, what a wild one that was!"
Annie laughed. "I wish somebody took movies of us. We could make a fortune."
Judy lay silent, her head pillowed against the steep globes of Annie's mammoth breasts. She felt strangely calm with all passion burned away. In the silence of the night, she could hear the dull booming of the surf, just to the west of the cottage.
A body was tossing on that surf ... a naked man, bloated and limp, his features already unrecognizable a man who had been alive at this time last night, and who now was so much carrion, so much garbage drifting on the chilly tide....
Judy smiled. It had been a very rewarding day.
I wish I could kill them all, she thought, and reached out to touch the silkiness of Marni's lovely body as a shiver of triumph ran through her soul.
CHAPTER FIVE
When morning came, Judy was the first to awaken. She got up right at dawn, as though a switch had been turned inside her mind. It was an old habit of hers, waking up early. No matter how few hours of sleep she had had-and she had not had many, this night of Lesbian lust-she found herself awakening with the sun.
She liked those early hours of the day. The world was hers, then. Everyone else was still asleep. She could come and go as she pleased, safe in the illusion that there was no one else alive.
Slipping up from the mattress, Judy smiled down at the nude figures of Marni and Annie. They were fast asleep in each other's arms. Marni looked small and weak, cradled against the gigantic breasts of Annie.
Judy didn't have the heart to wake them so early. She gathered up her beach-robe and towel and slipped out of the cottage, nude. The dew still glistened on the grass, and patches of fog kissed the rounded tops of the hills that bordered her part of the clearing. Judy took a deep breath, making the globes of her breasts rise steeply. She stretched out in the grass, enjoying the sensual feel of the cool moisture against her bare buttocks.
Her tomcat appeared and meowed at her. Judy meowed right back. Then, slipping her beach robe on, she went down the path toward the beach. The little underpass took her to the cliff, and she scrambled down the familiar rock steps to the sand.
Throwing off her robe, Judy reveled nudely in the privacy of the beach at five in the morning. It could have been the first day of the world's creation. Sandpipers skittered along the beach, and the gray surf pounded down against the sand, but there was no sign of another human being. The sun had not yet climbed high enough in the east to get over the cliff and reach the beach.
She walked toward the water, as angry crabs scrambled out of her path. Then she began to trot, her large, firm, bare breasts jiggling nudely up and down with every step she took.
She hit the water on a dead run.
It felt great. Judy hissed in pleasure and pain as the icy chill smashed into her, numbing her, caressing with frigid fingers her nipples, her thighs, her buttocks. She shivered, but she continued to swim outward from shore, and in another few moments, she began to adapt to the severe cold. She had made herself into a tough little girl with such disciplines.
You had to be tough, Judy thought. Otherwise the world walked all over you.
Out, out, out she swam, as though bound for far Hawaii beyond the horizon. The sun was reaching her now, turning the gray sea into morning blue. The cold water was cleansing her of all of last night's sins, washing away the sweat, the Lesbian kisses, purifying her. It was her morning ritual.
Finally, she halted when she was far from land. She turned and looked inward at the sleeping shore. Treading water, she put her hands to the steep cones of her breasts, kneading them, massaging them. She spread her legs wide in the water as though yielding herself to some lover of the merman tribe. She laughed out loud, and listened to the sound of her silvery laughter echoing across the surface of the sea.
Yesterday she had done exactly these things. And an hour later, a car had appeared, a man had halted and come down to the beach to see what her nude body had to offer him....
It had offered him death.
Where are you now, Judy wondered?
Still down there? Buffeted by the currents? Nibbled by the sharks?
Washed up by the tide, lying in a broken bloated heap somewhere along the shore? Or on your way to Mexico, perhaps? Where are you? Who were you?
Whoever you are, I feel no grief for you.
She floated on her back, her breast-tips jutting up above the water, and relieved in her memory her three murders. Three dead men, paying the highest price of all for the cruelties that life had handed Judy Domanig. And there would be more, she vowed. It was a game for her. Take as many as you can, send them to the bottom of the sea ... even the score....
She was shivering now. Even she had her limits in this ice-cold sea. She began to breast-stroke rapidly toward the shore.
She scrambled up out of the water and shook herself dry. Then she ran to her blanket and stretched out, wantonly abandoning herself to the kiss of the warming sun.
It felt so good. Those fingers of flame stroking her body, probing her. Yes! Love me! she begged. Take me! And the sun invaded her nude form, bringing warmth to it.
Occasionally, Judy heard the hum of an automobile speeding by on the highway far overhead. But no one stopped, this morning. Few drivers would risk taking their eyes from the road long enough to spy a naked girl on the beach below. And so there were no interruptions.
After a while, she rolled over and presented the firm, bare cheeks of her buttocks to the sun. Then she rose, gathered up her things, and headed back toward the cottage. She remained nude as long as she dared, but as she reached the steps leading up the face of the cliff, she slipped her beachrobe on.
It gave Judy great pleasure to exhibit her naked body. Even when there was no one around to see it but the cliff and the sky and the sea. Here, she was saying. See what I am! See how beautiful! See what I could have been, if I had had a fair deal!
The terrycloth robe bundled close against the tender, sensitive dots of her nude nipples. She walked quickly to her cottage. It was half past six in the morning now, Marni and Annia were still asleep. Judy shrugged off her robe and read for a while. She fed the cats. She packed up some more of yesterday's pottery.
At a quarter to eight, she woke them.
"Come on, lazybones, up, up, up! I've been awake wake for hours already!'"
The two Lesbians yawned and stretched into wakefulness. Judy, laughing, prodded them into the shower with boisterous slaps on their bare buttocks. Then she got breakfast on the way.
"I bet you've been down for a swim already," Marni said accusingly, as they ate.
"Damn right I have," Judy said. "I was tempted to wake the two of you and bring you along. Would have done you some good."
"The Iron Maiden," Marni shuddered. "How can you be so masochistic? It's rough enough to swim in that water at any time of day-but to go down at dawn-"
"I enjoy it."
"You enjoy punishing yourself then."
"Maybe so. But at least there's something that makes me happy," Judy said.
The Lesbians left about ten o'clock that morning, Marni driving the Oldsmobile, and Annie fitting her big body behind the wheel of the Volkswagen that Judy had borrowed. Alone again, Judy settled down for her routine of the day.
She turned the radio on and got the morning news. After the usual business about Russia and China and civil rights and the San Francisco Giants, the announcer said, "Troopers are still searching the Pacific below Monterey for the body of Joseph Carter, a presumed suicide. Carter's clothing and abandoned automobile were discovered yesterday afternoon at-"
Judy smiled. Let them keep searching, she thought. Let them search all month! And then they could give the dead man a decent funeral.
Whoever he was.
She got out her clay and got started on her morning modeling. This was the middle of her busy season, while California was thronged with tourists. From November to March, Judy hardly worked at all. She lived on the proceeds of what she had earned in the summer, and spent her time reading, visiting, or just loafing. But in July, she was at the kilns every day.
And as she worked, she couldn't help letting her mind rove backward.
Remembering....
Remembering how it had been just after the rape. Judy had made a determined effort to paste the fragments of her life back together. But it hadn't worked. She couldn't do it. The rape had had too powerful an effect on her developing young personality.
The breakup with Tony Madison was inevitable. Whenever she was with him, she found herself obsessed with memories of her brother's foul deed. She couldn't let Tony touch her, kiss her, caress her in any way, for fear that it would lead to sex. And sex was the thing that she feared most of all at least it was, just then.
Such a relationship couldn't survive for long. Tony wasn't necessarily out to make her in a hurry, but he enjoyed kissing Judy, fondling her bare breasts, getting some awareness of passion. He couldn't adapt to a relationship that now wasn't allowed to go beyond the hand-holding stage any more. So he stopped seeing her.
Judy at seventeen was an emotional and psychological mess. She rarely went out with boys any more. She stayed home, reading and brooding. She went through books about sex, hoping to find one that would help her snap out of her tailspin. She read hundreds of novels, too, looking for one that could shed light on her own position.
Her parents were mystified by her transformation from a cheerful, outgoing, confident girl to a dark-souled, miserable, introverted sufferer. "What's wrong? they kept asking. "What's troubling you?"
Judy couldn't tell them. She couldn't bring herself to blurt out the truth about what had happened to her that night when her brother invaded her bedroom. It was too shameful to tell anybody ... especially her parents.
Like many people who are clutching an ugly secret inside themselves, Judy sought and found a remedy that she thought would help her come to terms with the pain.
Drinking.
She had never been a drinker before the rape. An occasional sip of wine, yes, but nothing more than that. She hated the taste of beer, and she didn't like the fuzziness that hard liquor induced in her brain. Now, though, she turned deliberately toward the bottle, hoping to wash away the anguished throb of shame in her violated body.
She was seventeen and a half when she became a drinker in a serious way. More than a year and a half had gone by since the rape, and Judy had not yet shaken off the effects at all. She still had nightmares in which Ned was on top of her, lunging himself brutally at her. She still woke up in cold sweats. She still maintained a dread of sex, with any one, in any form.
In California, as in most other states, you are supposed to be twenty-one years old before you can legally be served liquor in a bar. The chief victims of that law though, are teen-age boys. Girls are rarely challenged about their ages if they look respectable and capable of holding their liquor, and are not too conspicuously youthful. So Judy didn't find it a very difficult matter to be served in bars. The rape had aged her, anyway. She was solemn and unsmiling, now, with dark rings under her eyes, and she looked two or three years older than her actual age.
She didn't do her drinking in Berkeley, though. That neat, proper university town frowned on teenage alcoholism, and there were frequent crackdowns in the bars, aimed at keeping the kids from the university from getting publicly crocked. Judy took the bus into neighboring Oakland to tank up. Oakland adjoined Berkeley and the streets had continuous names from one town to the other, but Oakland was very different from its egghead neighbor. You could tell instantly the moment you had passed from spruced-up, lively Berkeley to seedy, rundown Oakland. There were plenty of bars in downtown Oakland that were happy to sell Judy, or anyone else, all the booze they could put away.
After a while, she began going to one particular place, just off Broadway. Some random sampling had taught her that what she liked best to drink was rye and ginger ale, and needless to say, that was what she usually ordered.
The bartenders there were a little puzzled when she first began to come in. They thought she might be a prostitute, and that scared them. But when she ignored the approaches of a couple of men, that indicated that she had simply come to drink, and they served her without question. She was an ornament to the place, one of the regulars, that moody, good-looking blonde who stopped in two or three nights a week, had a few drinks, and left alone, without ever saying a friendly word to anybody.
Judy noticed some of the other regulars too. Most of them were broken-down old men or blowsy, disreputable-looking middle-aged women. But there was one man in particular that she noticed with some interest. And he noticed her, too.
He was about forty years old well-dressed, a good-size man whose hair was just starting to thin. He was usually sitting by himself in the bar, reading a paperback book-not a cheap novel, but generally one of the high-priced works of philosophy or history or literature that you could buy in a university book store. Judy, watching him on the sly, got the impression that he must be a writer, newspaperman or a teacher; some sort of intellectual. And he seemed a lonely man, never entering the bar with anybody else.
After the second week, he began to smile at her. Judy didn't smile back. He didn't make any other overtures, though. Sometimes she would look up from her drink and see him studying her. He had soft brown eyes that seemed to be saying, "Can't we get to know each other? Maybe we can help each other in our loneliness."
She was afraid to encourage him. She sensed that he was a gentle and kindly person, perhaps somebody she could confide in, but she couldn't bring herself to make a move in his direction. She had tried that with her brother Ned, tried to help him conquer his brooding loneliness-and look what her reward for that had been.
So she kept to herself, despite the feeling that this man might give her the warmth and encouragement that she desperately needed.
Until one night, when she had very much too much to drink.
Judy wasn't sure how she happened to get drunk that night. Usually, she was very careful, drinking just enough to get mildly high, then quitting in time. All she wanted was to melt the knot of misery inside her, not to get potted. She had to go home to her parents' house at the end of the evening, after it was all over.
But this time she failed to pace herself. When she finished one drink, she ordered another. When she finished that, the third one was on its way.
It was her brother Ned's birthday, and she realized afterward that that had probably set her going. All the years that Ned had been away from home, in boarding school, in his various college, in the army, in married life, the family had carefully celebrated his birthday just as though he were at home. They weren't celebrating it this year. Ned was dead. The news of his death had come out of Mexico a few months ago and Judy's father had flown down to Juarez to claim the body. Tonight, unable to forget the date, Judy was deep in memories ... of her unhappy brother, and of the misery he had introduced into her own life. And so she drank.
She drank heavily.
And suddenly, she realized that she was getting drunk.
In fact, she was drunk.
She began to giggle. She got up from the bar stool and burst into wild laughter. She had a sudden urge to pull her clothes off, to bare her firm, young flesh to this audience of bored bartenders and soggy boozers. She clawed at her blouse, but couldn't get the buttons open. Then she staggered and dropped to her knees and fell over, her skirt flapping up around her thighs to reveal the tops of her stockings. She made a couple of efforts to get up.
The bartenders got scared. "Get her out of here fast," they said to each other. "She's crocked to the gills! We could lose our license!"
Judy laughed some more. They picked her up. Dimly, she realized that they were going to give her the heave-ho, right out into the grimy street. And there was nothing she could do about it. She'd lie there sprawled out on the sidewalk like the most disgusting sort of tramp.
Then Sir Galahad came to her rescue.
The soft-eyed man with the paperback philosophy books got up and came over as the bartenders were hustling Judy toward the door.
"Wait a second," he said. "Don't do that. She doesn't deserve to be tossed out."
"She's sloshing with the stuff, bud. We can't let her stay here. Law says, you're not supposed to serve an intoxicated person."
"But you can't just leave her on the street! She's so young-"
"That makes it worse. All we know, maybe she's underage too. Come on miss. Out with you!"
"Wait," the man said. "I'll take care of her ... Here-let me have her."
Judy was vaguely aware of an arm around her shoulders. Then she felt fresh air with raindrops slicing through it. She dragged her feet and tried to lie down on the sidewalk, but the man held her firmly and wouldn't let her stop walking.
He said, "I live right here at the corner. I'll let you lie down at my place until you feel all right again."
"Thash-very kind of you-"
She was too drunk to feel any fear. She just wanted to stretch out somewhere. Without any sensation of the passage of time, Judy found herself inside an apartment. There were books everywhere, newspapers, a typewriter. She plopped down on a bed.
Her head was beginning to clear a little, now. She realized that she had been spared a very unpleasant experience, and she was grateful to the gentle-faced man who had rescued her. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, but she had trouble focusing on him. He stood above her, all four of him.
Sweat ran in rivers down her body. Her mind was spinning.
She heard him say, "Here, let's get those shoes off you. Make you comfortable. That's better. Look at you perspire! You must have some sort of fever. I'll take that jacket off you. Easy. That's it And maybe we could button your blouse-"
Suddenly, she felt his hands where his hands had no business to be.
"Hey, cut that out," Judy mumbled.
"Forgive me," he said, and abruptly he was on top of her on the bed.
CHAPTER SIX
Looking back on the scene, Judy still tingled with bitterness at the way he had cheated her. She bad been vulnerable, helpless. And he had posed as her noble and chivalrous rescuer, valiantly coming to the aid of a lady in distress. All phony. All he wanted to do was get her to the privacy of his apartment. Well, what could you expect of a man? But the shock of it was overpowering. Judy had been filled with a warm sense of gratitude toward this kindly stranger for taking the trouble to help her. And then, with virtually no warning, his act of generosity turned into an act of erotic greed.
The liquor still held her mind wrapped in a befuddled haze. She was sober enough to know what was happening to her, but too drunk to prevent it.
He opened her blouse, first-to cool her off, so he said. But then his hands were fumbling nervously at the catch of her brassiere. He tugged the twin cups away from the luxurious mounds of her pale, young breasts. Judy felt his hands on them, kneading, squeezing, gripping them tensely.
"No-no-no-" she moaned, lying limp and dizzy on the bed in a welter of her own drunken perspiration. "Please-don't-"
"Forgive me," he kept whispering gently over and again. "You're so beautiful ... I want you so much, so very much...."
He was pulling her skirt up, now bunching it around her hips, drawing her panties down.
Judy stirred, trying to hold her legs together. But she had no power to command her body. She was as limp as spaghetti, boneless, nerveless. She lay there with her clothing heaped around her, her breasts exposed, her belly revealed, her thighs askew.
He didn't undress her further. There was no need to bother. He crouched above her, staring with glittering eyes at the treasures of her nudity.
Then he descended onto her.
In soft, moaning tones, Judy protested, and in equally soft tones, he begged her forgiveness, and all the while the rape proceeded to its conclusion. It wasn't a brutal rape, as the first one had been. It was, strangely enough, a tender rape.
He didn't try to force himself to her. Instead, he went to her thighs stroked her, touched her in secret places of desire, caressed her, explored her. He wasn't violating her. He was making love to her.
And Judy, though she was numb with shock, found herself responding.
Her booze-blearied nervous system awakened to his gentle touch. He stroked her where a woman most likes to be stroked and he kissed the tips of her breasts, and covered her body lovingly with his. And her nipples grew hard, and there was sudden warmth in her body. Her body was betraying her. Though she loathed him with all her soul, and wished that she could somehow resist his advances, she found herself throbbing strangely with desire.
"Don't be afraid," he crooned. "Oh, you're so beautiful, I love you so much...."
And he slipped to her, easily, without causing her any pain. It was altogether different from that other time. Now she was warm and ready to receive him, and when she felt him begin to take her, a curious quiver of emotion went through her, and an instant later she realized that he was with her, the union had been made.
Judy sighed. She drew her legs up in a kind of reflex action, cooperating with him, making his role more easy. His fully clothed body pressed down on hers.
He moved. Again, again, again. Judy felt a sensation within herself that she had never known before. A spasming of the muscles, an eerie contraction inside. It was unnerving, and yet pleasant. And it happened again as he moved once more. And again.
She gasped and churned beneath him. Her nipples felt red hot and hard as rock. Her entire body shook with the strange spasms of passion. Dizzy as she was from her drinking, she became even dizzier now.
Abruptly, the man on top of her grunted and gripped her with sudden fierceness. His body moved ... faster, ever faster....
Passion blazed in her. And at the highest moment, she felt the fulfillment of him.
It ended.
He lay on top of her a long moment. Judy was sobering rapidly now, the liquor burned out of her brain by the fire of sensuality. A great anger welled up in her. She knew that she had been violated again, that a man who had promised help had shamefully used her.
A rape is still a rape, no matter how tenderly the raping is done.
"Get off me," she said coldly.
He pulled away and got to his feet. Judy sat up, trembling all over. She knew that she had nothing to fear from this man, that he had already done his worst to her and would not harm her. But she wanted to get away from him quickly.
She moved to hide her nudity from his eyes. She pulled her blouse closed over her bare breasts and drew her skirt down to hide the rest of her body. He stepped back, his face flushed, his eyes bright, and adjusted his clothing.
"I'm-sorry," he whispered. "I got carried away. If you only knew how long I've been watching you-dreaming about you-"
"You make me sick," she told him. "Taking advantage of a girl who's had too much to drink!" ;, "I didn't mean it. I just wanted to help you. They were going to throw you out on the street. I was going to let you rest here, I wasn't going to lay a finger on you. But then ... when I saw you on my bed ... I've been so alone for so long...."
Judy got to her feet. She felt light-headed, as though she had just risen from a sickbed. She found her brassiere and, turning her back on him, quickly pulled it into place over her breasts. Her panties lay on the floor beside the bed. She snatched them up and popped them into her purse. She didn't want to have to lift her skirt to put them on in front of him.
She said, "I could have you put away in jail for this. It's rape, you know. And I'm underage, besides, You'd rot for it!"
He shook violently. He was really a coward, Judy saw. The kind of man who was afraid to approach a woman unless she was so dead drunk she couldn't resist him.
Judy swept past him and out into the street.
It was raining furiously out there. And she discovered that she was not as sober as she thought, either. Her stomach gave a lurch and the next thing she knew there was a yellow pool of vomit all over the street.
I've got to get out of her, she thought....
She ran. Cold, rainy winds swept at her, reached up underneath her skirt to touch her bare thighs. The warm tingle of her violated body sickened her. She reached the bus stop.
Oh, God, she thought, why did this have to happen to me? Why, why, why?
Somehow, she got into the house without having to face her parents. She undressed and flung herself under a scalding hot shower, hoping to scrub away the taint of this second rape. She could still see the sad-eyed man standing over her in his book-lined apartment, the poor creep, the fumbling, gentle rapist.
Happy birthday, Ned, she thought. Happy happy, birthday!
The episode had taught Judy a great many things, she realized, as she looked back on it.
It had taught her that men were never to be trusted-that even the ones who pretended to want to help you were really just out for what they could get.
It had taught her to be careful about liquor, because it could make her vulnerable to more advantage-taking.
It had taught her that she must make herself strong, physically as well as all other ways, so that she could fend off this world full of greedy rapists.
It had taught her, too, that sex itself could be pleasurable. For in the midst oi her humiliation and shame, she had felt spasms of ecstasy. The trick was, she thought, to control the situation yourself. Never let a man force you, and keep the upper hand ... take your pleasure from him, but don't let him trample you.
It had been a useful lesson. But, like all really useful lessons learning it had been a bitter, sorrowful experience.
The second rape hadn't demolished her the way the first one had. You can only get demolished once. But it had reinforced all the conclusions about the ugliness of life that her incident with Ned had led her to draw. She was a hater, now. She seethed with bitterness. She erected a wall between herself and the world. Nobody, not even the members of her family, could get over that wall and reach the girl inside.
Judy finished high school and went to college. But after two years, she quit. She moved across the bay to San Francisco and took a little room. Her grandfather had set up a small trust fund for her long ago, and the income from that was enough to cover her rent expenses. She made a little money doing odd jobs. She sold some of her pottery. She got along.
She was toughening herself, building that wall ever higher and higher.
She learned judo. She learned karate. No man was ever going to rape her again! She could hike twenty miles without strain. She could swim like a shark.
She dabbled in sex ... all kinds of sex....
But Judy chose her lovers carefully. Now that she had discovered that sex could be something thrilling, she let herself go to bed with men, but only men she could handle, men who were in love with her and unwilling to take advantage of her. She gave herself to them sexually, but not emotionally.
She made them see who was boss, too. She would sleep with them and then throw them out.
"All right. I've had my kicks. You're dismissed," she would tell them.
"But-Judy-"
"Out."
"I love you, Judy."
"Tell it to the Marines."
"Marry me, Judy."
"You've got a case."
"I love you!"
"Tough."
Tough. She got a reputation as being tough, tough as leather, tough as iron. How could they know that within the tough outer shell was a wounded, miserably lonely girl, who had walled herself away from a world that she feared and mistrusted?
She chewed men up and spat them out. And still, they kept on coming, because she was fantastically beautiful, and she fascinated them. Her breezy blonde good looks, her independent spirit, her lithe, athletic body, her full breasts and supple thighs-they drove men wild.
"Crawl," she told them. "Kiss my toes. Get down and grovel in the filth." Men crawled for her.
They kissed her toes ... and other things. They groveled in the filth.
Still, it was not enough for Judy. No matter how cruelly she treated the men who flocked around her, no matter what indignities she inflicted on them, she never had the feeling that she was evening the score for what had been done to her. How could she? How would it ever be possible for her to get back the stolen promise of her youth, her innocence her tenderness her life itself?
That had been taken from her in an instant of monstrous, selfish brutality. And it could never be restored. She would never again be that golden, virginal girl of sixteen with a glowing future ahead of her. She was stained, marked, scarred.
Yet the thirst for revenge remained unslaked in her. Revenge! Revenge against the entire male sex! She ached for it!
She amused herself by letting men sleep with her and fall in love with her, and then thrusting them aside. She used their bodies the way two men had used hers. She gave her thighs to them, but not her heart.
They came to her. They reached her bed full of hope and love. They caressed the satiny globes of her breasts and the silken-smooth coolness of her thighs. They slept with her and strained themselves to the breaking point to give her pleasure.
They gave her pleasure, all right. Double pleasure, at that.
First, the simple, steamy pleasure of sex the gasping, moaning, panting, spasming pleasure of her erotic fulfillment.
And then, the more complicated pleasure of spurning them-a sadistic pleasure.
"Clear out, pal. I've had what I wanted, now you can go."
How it wounded them!
She slept with other girls, too. She drifted casually into her first Lesbian relationship, found that she enjoyed it, and had others. It was fun, in an easygoing kind of way. She liked going to bed with a soft, breasty wench who was hot for her body. It made for variety, and variety was the spice of life.
Judy tried all sorts of adventures. She sampled drugs, though not the really addictive ones. She made love in combination groups. She experimented with anything that amused her. But it was a cold kind of experimentation. She had made the world her laboratory.
When she was twenty-one years old, Judy made a serious mistake. She let herself fall in love with somebody.
She hadn't intended to do any such thing. When she met Charley Donoway, she intended simply to use him the way she had used dozens of other men ... as a tool to scratch the itch of her lusts, nothing more. He was a lanky, good-looking guy in his middle twenties, who had been through an early marriage and a quick divorce, and now he ran a little bookshop in North Beach, writing poetry on the side. Pretty good poetry, too.
When he first met Judy he said, "I hear you eat men alive. I hear you're a real hellion."
"What if I am?"
"Want to try me on for size?"
"You're asking for trouble, friend."
Donoway shrugged. "Trouble is what keeps you from dying of boredom."
She went home with him. He poured some wine for her, and put a record on, some African tribal chants. Judy figured she'd let him have her, and then she'd pull him apart with scathing words, the way she did with other men. She was looking forward to the treat.
He stood over her with his hands on his hips, eyeing her. "You want something else to drink, or you want some sex?" he asked straightforwardly.
"You're pretty blunt, aren't you?"
"We didn't come here to play backgammon," he said. "At least, I didn't. Want to go to bed with me?"
"Matter of fact, I do," she drawled.
"Stand up, then. Peel. Let me get a look at that fabulous body I've heard so much about."
"People gossip about me, huh?"
"They say you're stacked as good as Sophia," he told her. "They also say you're a holy terror, a real cast-iron witch."
"One thing at a time," Judy said. "Let's see if I live up to my reputation."
She pulled her sweater off. She unhooked her brassiere and let the cups slide down. The white hills of her breasts came into view, round and high and close together, two magnificent swells of firm, vibrantly sensual flesh tipped with lust-hardened nipples.
"Well?" she said. "Were you expecting more?"
"No," he breathed. "They said you were built like that, but I didn't believe it."
"As good as Sophia?"
"I've never been this close to Sophia. And right now I don't give a damn if I never am. Come on, Judy. Oh, yes, come on!"
He whipped the rest of the clothing off her in a flash. He stripped himself a moment later, revealing a lean, hard, virile body.
They moved toward the bed.
He wasn't gentle with her, but he wasn't rough, either. He was simply masculine. He made it perfectly clear that he was running the show. Easily, confidently, he readied Judy for love. His big strong hands roved her body, arousing her, exciting her. His lips found her nipples and pressed down on them, and his tongue flicked back and forth, and his fingertips brought shivers of delight to her skin in a dozen places.
She was hot and eager for him within five minutes.
And when he took her, she could practically hear the crash of cymbals, the blare of the symphony orchestra, at the sublime moment of consummation.
Their bodies moved in perfect rhythm. He was an elegant, superlatively good lover, and every heave of his lunging body brought Judy closer and closer to a fufillment such as she had rarely had before. Gasping and panting, her body churning beneath his, she clung to him, yielded herself to him, wrapped her legs around him, dug her heels into his calves.
Higher and higher she soared, toward the absolute summit of ecstasy. Finally, she reached a point that she thought was the limit, only to find to her amazement that Donoway was still with her and ready to take her still higher yet.
Up, up, up into the stratosphere of passion. Up where the air was thin and the mind reeled. Up into a dazzling new realm of desire.
"Oh, God," she cried. "I'm going out of my mind! I can't stand it any more!"
He laughed.
And sent her whirling into a fresh tizzy of erotic excitement.
He wasn't human. He was the most fantastically gifted lover Judy had ever known. Her body throbbed and trembled in his arms. Sweat oiled her body as she lunged at him again and again. Her breasts crushed into the shield of his chest, she cried out in frenzy. At last he joined her at the summit, reaching his pleasure in quick, powerful spasms that drove her into an oblivion of ecstasy.
Afterward, she lay quietly in his arms, trying to understand what had happened to her.
She was dazed. She was a different person. She was in love. She saw a chance to repair the wounds of her soul, to begin life again after nearly five years of hell. He could help her. He was a miracle.
He said, "This is the time when you're supposed to start cutting me apart, isn't it, Judy?"
Her eyes fluttered open. She stared at him as though she had never seen him before.
'I don't want to," she said softly. "I don't see a reason in the world to insult you, Charley. I don't think I've ever been so happy before."
It was the biggest mistake she had made in her whole life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Judy's fingers dug almost savagely into the clay. She sat cross-legged at the workbench, turning out little knicknacks for tourists, while her mind roved backward in time to that hellish time three years ago....
The only time in her life she had ever been really in love.
Charley Donoway seemed to be everything she wanted. He was handsome, clever, sophisticated, virile, and strong. He was terrific in bed, and he was a real personality with force and vigor, neither a tyrant nor a sponge. With a kind of wonder, Judy realized that die had at last met the person who could help her tear down the wall she had built around herself.
"You want to move in with me?" he asked.
"That's silly question," she said.
They began keeping house together. Night after night, they rang the changes on the act of passion. She throbbed and writhed in his hands as he drove her to the ultimate in ecstasy. During the day, he was at his bookstore, and she worked at her ceramics ... and dreamed of the night that awaited her.
He didn't say anything about marriage. But Judy knew that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this man. He stood apart from all the others, all those faceless nobodies whom she had bedded with and then spurned. She was willing to crawl to him just as she had forced other men to crawl to her.
It was the happiest time she had ever known. But it didn't last.
The rude awakening came about three months after she had started living with him.
They had made love that night, and it had been as wonderful as always. Afterward, he sat up in the bed and reached across her to get his cigarettes. His arm pressed into the yielding globes of her breasts as he picked up the pack. Playful, Judy wiggled her body from side to side so her breasts rubbed against him. But he took no notice of the gesture.
He selected a cigarette from the pack and started to light it. Judy said, "Light one for me too, will you?"
Wordlessly, he put a second cigarette in his mouth. He struck the match, puffed them into glowing life, and handed one of the cigarettes to her.
Then he said, "You can start packing tomorrow morning, Judy."
She didn't understand. "Are we taking a trip?"
"You are. I'm not."
"Huh?"
"You're moving out. I've got another girl coming in here tomorrow, and there isn't room for two of you. I'm not a harem-keeper."
Judy swung around and stared at him, the big mounds of her breasts swaying and slapping together as her body pivoted suddenly. "Is this a joke of some kind?" she asked him.
"No joke. It's over, kid. That's all."
"Over-"
"Three months. Time for you to be moving along. What did you think, that this was some kind of lifetime lease you had?"
Judy felt herself crumbling apart. She sat there, naked, trembling, her body chilling after the warmth of his love. "No," she said dully. "You don't mean any of this. It was so good, five minutes ago. The two of us making it, like it was for lifetime. And now you say-no. I just don't believe it."
He smiled mirthlessly. "I understand a lot of guys told you they loved you, too. A lot of good it did them. You tossed them out. I'm tossing you out, Judy."
She gaped at him. "You can't do this to me. Please, Charley. Don't do this to me. You're everything I've got in the world. You're my whole life."
"It's a mistake to let yourself get that involved with another person," he said calmly.
"That's what I used to think too. Until you came along and I found out what love really meant. You can't throw me away, Charley. You can't!"
"I can."
She leaped from the bed and flung her arms wide, displaying her naked body to him, all of it.
"Look at me," she yelled. "You ever see a girl built like me? I'm not something you throw away. You told me yourself, you thought I was the most beautiful girl in the world."
"Cover yourself, honey. You'll catch cold. I've seen all that flesh before. Just meat, that's all it is. Big, round swinging things of meat. Come back in bed, now. You got one more night here."
"Charley, I never dreamed you'd do this to me."
He looked at her somberly. "I had a wife, once. I was nineteen years old and I thought she was the greatest girl in the world. I worshipped her. She laid six of my friends one afternoon, just because she was bored. She broke me in half, Judy. And I made up my mind, I'd never let another woman get that kind of hold on my life. Find 'em, feel 'em-you know the rest. But never love 'em. Love is dangerous. You've been fun, Judy, but now it's time for you to go. Just on general principles, I'm tossing you out. It's a hobby of mine to treat women that way. Just as you used to torture men."
"But don't you see, Charley, we're two of a kind! We've both been kicked around by life, we've been wounded by people we've trusted. We belong together. We ought to stay with each other. We-"
"No," he said. "I can't help it if you've had a tough time in life. So have I, and this is the way I make it up to myself. You go out on your pretty pink rear. Now you want to get back into bed with me, or you want to start packing right now?"
She left that night, still not believing that this was happening to her. She couldn't stay with him after what had taken place.
She packed and left at two in the morning, and found a place to sleep with one of her Lesbian friends. The next morning, she thought she might commit suicide. But she changed her mind.
She had never felt so depressed before. Not even after Ned had raped her.
She had crawled back out of five years of misery, had learned how to love a man at last, had given herself fully to Charley Donoway. And, because he bore the wounds of love too, he had kicked her in the teeth.
He couldn't see that she had suffered what he had suffered. He could only see that there was pleasure in making a girl fall in love with you and then throwing her out of your life.
There was poetic justice in that, Judy realized It was the same trick she had worked on dozens of men in the last few years. Build up their expectations get them frothing at the mouth with love for you-then give them the knife. But she had never dreamed that Charley Donoway would do that to her.
He had, though. He had played her own game on her. Maybe he had picked her out deliberately, knowing of her reputation as a heartbreaker. Maybe he had decided to teach her a little lesson.
Once more, Judy plumbed the depths of despair. She was utterly shattered, now, for she had risked her emotions, she had come out from behind her wall, and all it had gained her was the most crushing defeat.
She didn't stay with the Lesbian friend for long. She found herself a one-room place in a mangy old hotel on Market Street, and stayed there for a month, seeing nobody and trying to think things out. She laid in a stock of liquor, rarely left her room, and spent most of her time sprawled out nude in bed, drinking and thinking. She didn't take a bath for three weeks. Her flesh crawled, her silken, golden hair turned into a frizzy horror. She ate hardly anything. Her ribs began to show through, and her magnificent breasts started to droop.
Then she made up her mind what she was going to do, if she didn't simply kill herself.
Withdraw from society. Live like a hermit. Get herself a cabin somowhere in the woods near the Pacific, down below Monterey, and keep away. The world can hurt you too easily. The world can wound. Withdraw, live a quiet life, rid herself of the need for money, swim in the ocean, sunbathe ... that was the ticket.
And here I am, Judy thought.
She had occupied her cottage for two and a half years, now. She had friends up and down the coast, cabin-dwellers like herself. They were all part-time hermits and they respected each other's privacy. If you wanted to be alone for a week or a month or a year, they left you alone. If you needed help, they gave you help.
It was the ideal arrangement.
But it left Judy with plenty of time to think. She could think as she lay nude on the beach at dawn, or as she cut through the icy waters, or as she worked at her clay, or as she sprawled in her cabin on winter nights. She could think of all the miserable things the world had done to her to drive her into such solitude.
The first rape....
The "kindly" man in the bar....
Charley Donoway, who had trifled with her heart and then stabbed it in cold blood....
The more Judy brooded about these things, the more vivid her hatreds became. Withdrawing from the world wasn't enough. She wanted vengeance on it.
In her life in San Francisco, she had exacted that vengeance in a psychological way, by letting men fall in love with her and then spurning them. But even that wasn't sufficient. Now, living alone at the edge of the continent, turning into a lonely, twisted, bitter woman, Judy began to tell herself that there was nothing at all wrong with committing murder. Through the taking of life, she could repay herself for the living death that had been inflicted on her.
She nursed the idea for more than a year, toying with it, fondling it in her mind. Then she decided to put it into action.
She couldn't kill her brother Ned, because he was dead already.
She couldn't kill the soft-eyed man who had taken her home from the bar, because she didn't know his name or where to find him.
But she could kill Charley Donoway.
She hated him more than the other two. Her brother Ned had been drunk when he raped her. The man in the bar had just been a lonely, weak individual giving way to sudden temptation. But Charley Donoway had acted in cold blood, deliberately setting her up for the torment he gave her.
She'd get even with him for that.
It was all down in her little black notebook. From time to time, Judy got the book out from its hiding place under her panties, and relived the experience of that first murderous thrill.
November 8: I went into San Francisco and looked for Charley Donoway. I would rather have written to him, but I didn't think that was a good idea...."
Donoway looked at her evenly as she walked into his North Beach bookstore. It was one of those flawless days that San Francisco sometimes gets in November, the sky incredibly blue, the city's pastel hues sun-washed and brilliant, the air clear and warm.
She looked him in the eye. "Hello, Charley. Long time no see. How have you been?"
"Getting along, Judy."
"It's been better than two years. You've probably run through six more women by this time."
"Four," he said. "Is there any particular book you're looking for?"
"I didn't come here for a book," she told him. "I wanted to give you an invitation."
"Oh?"
"I'm living down on the coast, now. I've got a little cottage in a pretty secluded part of the world. A hermit kind of life, you know."
"Sounds attractive."
"It is," Judy said. "But occasionally, a girl likes company. I was wondering if you'd like to come out there for a weekend, Charley. I promise not to fall in love with you again. I won't even have sex with you if you don't want to. I'm just offering hospitality."
"You hate my guts," he said. "What's the catch?"
"No catch," she replied, smiling. She took a deep breath and let him have a good view of the jutting hillocks of her bosom. "I'm mellowing in my old age, Charley. I don't hate anybody any more. And I thought you'd like the scenery out there. You can walk along the beach ... watch the sunrise and the sunset ... it'll give you some ideas for poetry. We can talk, a little. Like old friends who have something in common. And then on Sunday night, I'll drive you back to San Francisco. I'm not angling for anything.
I'm just trying to get to know myself a little better by strolling back through my past. Will you come?"
He considered her for a long moment.
"All right," he said. "I'll come."
She knew that she had to be very cautious about the way she did things. She didn't want him to spread the word around that he was going out to Judy Domanig's place for the weekend. So she saw to it that he didn't have a chance to tell anybody. She drove him home when the bookstore closed a little later in the day, and he picked up some things for the weekend, and then she drove toward her cottage.
He hadn't had a chance to tell a soul where he was heading. He feels guilty about what he did to me, Judy thought, and so he's letting me have my way.
It was twilight when they reached the cottage. Nature was putting on a spectacular display, just as though she knew that Judy was having a poet as a weekend guest. The sun had dipped into the Pacific a little while ago. The sky was stained with pink and blue and gold. There was something dark and menacing about the gray November sea.
"Let's have a look at the water before we eat," Judy suggested. "Okay?"
"Sure," Donoway said.
She led him down the stone steps to the beach. They were all alone there. Plenty of cars were buzzing by on the coast highway, but Judy knew of places she could take him where they wouldn't be visible from up there. She would be able to kill him without being seen. But this wasn't the right moment. Not yet....
They walked along the beach. Donoway was silent, awed by the turbulent beauty of the Pacific as night approached. He stood for a long while right at the edge of the water, staring out at six thousand miles of emptiness.
Then he said, "You've got the right idea, coming out and living in a place like this. It cleanses the soul, living here."
"I wouldn't be here but for you."
"I don't know how to interpret that, Judy. You're still bitter because I threw you out?"
"I told you. I've mellowed. Let's not talk about the past, Charley. Let's just be good friends and share a quiet weekend together. Yes?"
"Yes," he agreed.
So they returned to the cottage and Judy put up dinner. Nothing fancy, because nothing fancy was called for: meatballs and spaghetti, and a salad of crisp fresh greens in oil and vinegar, and a bottle of strong red wine. They ate by dim light, with the cats prowling around on the table. Not much was said.
It was a late dinner, and it was well after nine o'clock by the time everything was cleared away. Judy turned the radio on. Soft music filtered into the cottage. Donoway walked out front and stared at the stars and the moon for a while.
Judy came up to him. "I go to bed early and get up early here. I swim every morning."
"Sounds great."
"I'd like to go to bed now."
He nodded.
"Charley, come to bed with me."
He turned to face her. "You don't have to if you don't want to, Judy. I told you, I'm not expecting any favors this weekend."
"It isn't a favor. If I didn't want to have sex with you, I wouldn't have asked. Let's, Charley. For old times' sake. We were always so good with each other, weren't we?"
"We were terrific," he said.
Until I messed up the deal by jailing in love with you, Judy thought.
They went into the cottage. He undressed her, running his hands excitingly over the firm mounds of her breasts, the taut globes of her buttocks. He had lost none of his ability to thrill her. He removed his own clothes, and they dropped down together on the mattress.
This was a man she hated with an all-consuming hatred. Yet she was able to push that hatred off into a dim compartment of her mind. All that mattered now was physical satisfaction which Charley Donoway could give her more intensely than any other man alive.
He readied her body for their love. Then he took her.
He seemed just a little unsure of himself this time. She knew why. He felt guilt for having thrown her out so brutally back then, and he wasn't sure what kind of a reception his embraces were going to get this time. Judy left no doubt on that score, though.
Writhing, churning, gasping, she accepted him with passionate eagerness.
"Charley-" she gasped. "Oh, Charley, split me in half, split me, Charley!"
He dove at her. She arched her back, rising high away from the mattress, forcing herself upward against him.
His hard, lean, agile body propelled her toward the summit of bliss. She gripped him firmly with her strong thighs, as her breasts heaved and her nipples throbbed, and pleasure went ripping through her like the blade of a knife.
Later in the night, they made love again. But this time it was Judy who was in command.
She reached out and touched Donoway. He was awake, or at least he awakened the moment her hand encountered him. Some quick motions of her fingers, and he was ready to make love.
Judy slid her leg across his body until she was over him. Then she sat up, pinning him with her nakedness. She seized him, guided him to her, lowered herself until her buttocks pressed against his thighs.
Then they began to move.
She set the rhythm. Slowly at first, then more vehemently, her body rocking up and down, the cushions of her buttocks slap-slap-slapping on him. She leaned back, making the sensation more intense, and for an instant she lost control of the situation in the fierceness of her feelings, closing her eyes and beginning to moan with pleasure. He tried to swing her over so that he would be on top. He hated this position, with the woman astride the man. Judy knew that.
That was why she had chosen it as Charley Dono-way's farewell to sex.
She was quick and strong, and she kept him from overturning her. "No," she said huskily. "Stay down there. Let me do the work."
Her plunging body rose and fell, rose and fell. He reached up, grabbed her breasts, hung onto the twin globes of full fleshy voluptuousness firmly, trapping her rockhard nipples between his fingers.
Pleasure arrived. In upward jolts for him, in spasming quivers for her. Sweat oiled their bodies. In the darkness, Judy slumped down him, making herself into a blanket of flesh. His arms tightened around her and he whispered soft words.
Then they slept again.
At dawn, Judy woke. She looked at him. He was sleeping on his back, with his mouth open a little way. It was the only time she had ever seen him look defenseless.
She nudged him with a fingertip, and he opened his eyes and blinked at her.
"The sun's rising," she told him. "Let's go down to the beach and watch it."
It could have been the first morning after the creation of the world.
The beach was empty. During the night, there had been an unusually high tide, and the encroaching water had washed the sand smooth well up the beach. Now the splayed footprints of the beach birds were the only marks that marred that smoothness.
It was too cold for swimming, too dark at this hour for sunbathing. Judy and Donoway took off their shoes and walked up the beach. They did not hold hands. There was something about the solemn majesty of the ocean this morning that did not encourage conversation.
Judy was wearing a polo shirt and a pair of frayed pedal-pushers. She had not bothered with underwear, and the pink hills of her breasts bobbled and jiggled freely inside the tight polo shirt. The brisk November wind did not bother her. She had trained herself not to pay attention to the weather.
Donoway had put on a shirt, shorts, and his slacks. He walked with his hands in his pockets, squinting his eyes against the breeze, hunching slightly forward.
They walked about two hundred yards south along the beach in silence. It was a fine morning for beachcombing at dawn. Judy thought.
A fine morning for revenge.
Here she was with the man who had done the worst injury off all to her life, in a life studded with injury. Not even Ned, cruelly stealing his sister's virginity, had been as malevolent. For Judy had been in the process of recovering from Ned's shattering deed when she met and fell in love with Charley Donoway. And Donoway, by trifling with her affections, had made certain that she would never in her life trust her emotions again. Before him, she had had a chance. Now she was sunk.
And, though he thought she had forgiven him for it, he was going to pay.
Judy felt very calm. She did not doubt that everything would go properly. So far everything had. She had brought him out here without another soul knowing where he had gone; she had had sex with him twice, in rewarding fashion, now he was down here on the beach where his life would end. It was an exhilarating feeling to know that at any moment of her choice, she could have her vengeance.
He said, "This is the most incredibly beautiful place in the world, Judy. I'm grateful to you for inviting me out here. You know, I feel that I could spend the rest of my life on this beach."
"You will," Judy said.
She came up behind him and brought the edge of her hand down against the back of his neck in a swift chopping motion. It was a perfectly timed, perfectly delivered blow. Judy had studied it with care. She knew exactly where to strike, and exactly how to pivot her body to make full use of every one of her hundred twenty pounds.
At the very least, a chop like that would stun a man into unconsciousness. At most, it would snap his spine and paralyze him. Judy's blow had an effect somewhere in between. Donoway uttered a grunting sound and fell forward on the sand.
He didn't move. But he was still breathing.
He was out cold.
Judy glanced warily around. The beach was still deserted, the highway clear. She bent forward and hooked her hands under Charley Donoway's arms. Then she dragged him fifteen feet westward across the beach toward the edge of the water, and kept on going until she was out in a depth of about a foot of surf.
The water was so fiercely cold that it seemed to be hot. It blazed like flame agarnst her legs. But Judy didn't mind that. She held Donoway suspended, face down in the water. His body was still limp, frozen by that single deadly blow. But she was prepared to take swift action if he happened to recover consciousness.
She pushed his head under the water.
She held him there, one hand on the back of his head to keep his face covered. When the waves rolled in, the water was about two feet deep. When they rolled out again, it was no more than eight or ten inches. But that was all right. It didn't require more than a few inches of water to drown a man, provided you kept his face submerged all the time. She held him down. She pushed his mouth and nose right into the sand when the water was low.
How long did it take for a man to drown?
Judy didn't know. So she decided not to take any chances. She held him under the water for ten minutes. He wasn't moving at all, now. She figured his lungs must be full of water. She straightened up and released him.
He stayed put, floating face down, drifting like a log on the water. He swirled round and round, now moving some twenty-five feet out from shore, now swinging inland again with the inrushing waves. But he did not move at all. He just hung there.
Judy smiled. She waded to the shore and stepped up on the beach. Again she looked around. Still all clear. She pulled her polo shirt over her head and let it fall to the sand. The brisk breeze whipped against the high, out-thrusting white mounds of her bare breasts. Judy unzipped her pedal-pushers, drew them down over her hips and thighs and buttocks, stepped out of them, laid them on the sand next to the polo shirt.
Stark naked, she walked toward the water.
It was a cruelly cold morning to go swimming, nude or otherwise. The air temperature was somewhere in the high forties, and the water couldn't have been much warmer than that. But this was something that Judy had to do, and she had trained herself for it, swimming in all kinds of bitter weather.
She waded out, hissing a little as the water swirled up around her. Cold tongues of ocean licked at the white globes of her nude buttocks, lewdly caressing the soft firm flesh. Water flicked against her belly. A splashing wave struck her breasts.
She didn't care.
She waded out to where Charley Donoway's body was drifting, and dug her fingers firmly into his hair. Then she slid forward into a swimming position and began crawling toward the deeper water in a one-armed stroke.
Out ... out ... out into the quiet world beyond the breakers....
A naked nymph, cutting through the gray dawn sea, towing human cargo behind her. Kick ... kick ... kick....
Her teeth were chattering. Her breasts seemed frozen Goose pimples sprang up like extra nipples on the big swells of her body. Her buttocks were corrugated by the cold. But still she swam. No bathing suit would have protected her against the chill. This was a journey that had to be made in the nude.
Grimly, she forced herself onward, growing used to the cold with each stroke.
After a while she decided she was out far enough. She pulled the body up against her and examined it. Yes, he was dead, no doubt of it. His face was not the face of a living man. He had taken on the bloated water-logged look of a corpse.
With mock tenderness, Judy hugged the corpse up against her for the last time. Take a good feel, Charley, she thought. Rub against my boobs. That's it. You could have had them in your bed every night forever, you know. Only you didn't want to.
Charley ... I loved you, Charley....
She turned him around in the water, so his head was aimed downward. Then she shoved. His soggy, water-soaked clothes weighed down, overcoming the natural buoyancy of the human body. And his chest cavity was full of water too, helping to carry him down.
Down and out of sight.
Judy knew that he wouldn't stay there. He'd come to the surface eventually, but not here. She had studied the reports of the suicides and accidental drownings along this coast, and she knew that the ocean currents would carry a body for many miles before they finally coughed it up on shore.
The job was done. Judy turned and swam for land as fast as she could, a nude sprite cutting furiously through the freezing water.
Coming up on land again was the roughest part of all. The air temperature was lower than the water temperature, and the wind blowing against her wet skin would make things even worse. She had no towel to dry herself with, either.
Naked, she sprinted up out of the water and gasped with shock as the frigid breeze enfolded her.
She fell to the sand, huddling herself up in a fetal ball, knees pressed against the lush globes of her breasts. She rolled over and over, agonized by the pain of the cold, flopping like a beached fish on the shore. Sand stuck to her wet skin. She jerked uncontrollably, trying to warm herself.
The wild spasm of chill passed after a few moments. Judy sat up, breathing hard, her breasts heaving. She was almost dry; the sharp wind had seen to that. She put her hands to the bare mounds of her breasts, cupping them, warming them. Exertion had left a spike of pain wedged into her breastbone.
Slowly, shakily, she got to her feet. She brushed the crusted sand from her naked body. She flicked it off her breasts, her belly, her buttocks. The sun was hitting the beach, now. Judy looked out toward the water, toward the empty sea, and felt the first warm rays on her buttocks and back.
No sign of the dead man out there. Good. Let him rot out there. Let the minnows eat him.
She turned and allowed the sunlight to kiss her breasts, her thighs. Then she picked up her polo shirt and slipped it on. Chastely, she found her pedal-pushers and covered her nakedness.
She trudged up the beach, clambered wearily up the hundred-odd stairs, took the underpass to her cottage. She gave the cats their breakfast. She looked around for the rest of Charley's Donoway's belongings, and found his wallet, his watch, and some keys. She would get rid of those later, driving thirty or forty miles down the road to dump them into the sea.
Stripping again, Judy took a hot shower to wash away the salt water and the sand that formed a scummy surface on her skin. The warmth of the shower melted the chill that had entered her.
After that, she prepared a hearty breakfast for herself. And then she took out the notebook she had purchased, the one she intended as her murder notebook. She turned to the first page.
Carefully she violated the innocence of the notebook with its first entry:
November 8: I went into San Francisco and looked for Charley Donoway. I would rather have written to him, but I didn't think that was a good idea....
Judy put the book away, burying it under its heap of lingerie once more and closing the drawer. As always, when she relived the killing of Charley Donoway, a tremor of satisfaction ran through her. The words in the notebook brought the event to life every time. She could feel once again the tang of the icy water against her nude body, the sting of her hand where she had chopped it into the back of his neck, the whiplash impact of the breeze on her skin after she came dripping and nude from the water.
That had been almost nine months ago. His body hadn't come to light until the spring. He had washed up on the beach somewhere around December or January, lodging in a rock crevice more than fifty miles south of the place where Judy had drowned him But nobody found him until March, and by then there wasn't much left of his body. They identified him by his dental work as Charley Donoway, the San Francisco bookstore owner who had disappeared the previous fall. Apparent suicide, that was the verdict that was recorded. What else could you call it, when a body washes up on the shore out of the sea after so many months?
So Judy had gotten away with it.
There was a thrill in that. The knowledge that she had repaid him for a crime against her soul, and had escaped punishment for her deed. She took a savage pleasure in thinking about it.
And, on the day they found Charley Donoway's body, Judy knew that she was going to kill again. She couldn't be content just with Donoway. The fever was in her blood, now.
Kill! Avenge.
She was like a spider, waiting in her seashore lair for the victims to come along. A beautiful spider. A passionate spider.
Thinking about it, about her three murders, Judy smiled. She felt no remorse. Those deaths she regarded as her due. One for each of the three calamities that had wrecked her life.
One for Ned and his rape.
One for the man in the bar.
One for Charley Donoway, who had spurned her heartfelt love.
Judy grinned in satisfaction. She gathered up the clay pieces she had fashioned, and fired the kiln. Once it was blazing away, she went down to the beach for her afternoon swim.
The weather never got really warm here, the way it did down in Los Angeles, but this was a fine, summery day anyway, with the temperature close to seventy degrees and the sun bright and hot. Clad in a skimpy bikini, Judy stepped out onto the beach.
She regretted that she couldn't swim and sunbathe nude in the afternoons. But it was too risky. The highway was busy, and sometimes-though not often-there were even other people roaming around on the beach.
Judy compromised with convention by wearing the most absolutely skimpy bikini imaginable. She had made it herself, by cutting down a standard model she had bought one day in Carmel. It was nothing more than two strips of cloth that covered the bare minimum.
The halter covered the middle and lower part of her breasts, from the nipples down. The bottom part of the bikini hid her in front and about half of her backside. But her hips were bare, and her belly down to the first golden wisps, and the hind cheeks of her buttocks. It was the kind of bikini that probably would have been banned on any public beach this side of the French Riviera. But at least Judy could say, in the not-very likely chance that anybody would complain, that she was at least covering the essentials.
She took a good, energetic swim, then sprawled out to sunbathe. The beach remained empty. She liked it that way. It was amazing how she had come to get along without the company of other people so entirely-she, who had been such a friendly, gregarious girl in her high school days.
B.R. that is.
Before Rape.
But it was true. Sometimes, she went three or four days without seeing another human being, and didn't mind it a bit. She had her cats, and her beach, and her work. And her notebook. Those things were enough for her, these days.
Judy serenely permitted the sun to bathe her. Its wonderful warmth enfolded her.
After a while, she decided that she ought to get back to her kiln. She leaped lithely to her feet and flung her beachrobe over her bikini. Then she headed back the long path to her cottage.
There was someone waiting for her.
Judy saw the automobile before she saw its owner. She didn't recognize it. It was parked outside the cottage, next to her own car, and it wasn't a car that belonged to any of her friends in the coast colony.
It was a long, sleek, late-model Buick, deep maroon in color, reeking of expensiveness.
Her heart leaped. The police, she wondered? That was what she was always afraid of ... the police descending on her out of the blue one day, saying, "We are putting you under arrest for the murder of Charles Donoway...."
But this wasn't a police car. It might belong to a plainclothes detective, of course. She couldn't be sure. Uneasily, she came around to the porch side of her cottage to see who her visitor was.
He was waiting for her on the porch.
He was about thirty years old, a tall man, good-looking, with a deep tan and a lean face with deep-cut vertical lines in the cheeks. His hair was cut in a close brush. His eyes were black and bright. He was wearing a costly-looking suit cut in what Judy guessed was the sharpest up-to-date style. He looked powerful.
He was dressed too well to be a detective, she decided. But her alarm didn't subside. Had he been inside the house? Prowling around?
Reading her notebook, maybe?
"Yes?" she said. "Are you looking for me?"
He shrugged affably and flashed a row of movie-star teeth. "That all depends," he said.
"On what?"
"On whether you can help me. My car's on the fritz and I need a mechanic. Is it all right if I use your telephone?"
Judy felt herself going wobbly-legged with relief.
"Sure," she said. "Come inside." She tried extremely hard to keep her reaction from showing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She pushed open the door of the cottage and led him in. He laughed and said, "I never even thought to see if the door was open. Or I might have just gone inside and made my phone call without waiting for you to get back."
"Been waiting long?"
"About fifteen minutes," he said. "Sitting here on the porch, playing with your cats. I knocked on your door, but there was no answer, and then I saw that furnace lit in back so I figured you'd be coming back pretty soon."
"That's not exactly a furnace," Judy said. "It's a kiln. I make ceramic pieces for a living."
"Really, now? That's interesting. I'd like to see a few of your things."
"They aren't worth bothering about. Tourist junk, that's all." She took off her beachrobe. As she dropped it on a chair she said, "You're lucky you picked my place to stop off at. Most of the cabins down this way don't have telephones. But-is something wrong?"
He was staring at her in a strangely intense way, his lips clamped tight shut.
After a moment, he snapped out of it. He said, "No, nothing's wrong. Except that's a mighty scanty bikini you've got on, miss."
She laughed, "I forgot about that. If it upsets you I'll put my robe back on."
"No. Don't do that." His eyes traveled unashamedly over her, taking in the contours of her breasts, hidden only partly by the band of cloth over her nipples, and studying the shapely lines of her thighs and buttocks. It was a frankly appraising look, a purely sexual look.
He shook his head. "That's some outfit. They let you wear it on the beach here?"
"There's nobody to say no. Actually, I think it's rather conservative. Every morning at sunrise I take a swim and I don't wear anything at all."
"I wish I had come by at sunrise, then."
"You can try again sometime," she said. "I'm always there. Practically twelve months a year.
"I'll keep that in mind." He flashed the movie-star grin again, and his glittering eyes leaped avidly from her breasts to her thighs and back again. "My name's Jim Norton, by the way."
"Judy Domanig."
"Hello, Judy."
"Hello, Jim. What's the matter with your car, anyway?"
"Generator trouble. I felt it conking out on me as I got past Monterey, and I figured I'd better not risk being on the highway when it conked out altogether. A man sitting in a stalled car can get killed on that crazy highway you got here."
A man can get killed off the highway too, Judy, thought, amiably.
He went on, "So I took the first likely-looking exit and hunted around for a house. I found yours. Wasn't anybody home, so I sat down to wait until you came back. You live here all alone, Judy?"
"All alone. Me and my cats."
"Seems like an awful waste. Girl like you, ought to be out in the world doing things, seeing people, mixing a little. It's kind of like being a hermit, living in a place like this."
"I like it," Judy said. "I tried being out in the world doing things, once. I didn't like it much. That's why I'm here."
"Not a neighbor within yelling distance, though."
"That's right."
"Seems to me it's an awfully lonely life."
"It has its advantages," Judy said evenly. "There are times when a girl likes to be by herself."
"Lived here long?"
"Coming up on three years," she said.
His eyes were still on her body. Judy wondered if it had been a mistake to take her beach-robe off and show herself to him in her bikini. After all, as he had been quick to point out, there wasn't a neighbor within yelling distance. If he got carried away by the sight of all that bare voluptuous flesh that was sticking out around the edges of those two strips of cloth-
No. She wasn't worried. He had a clean-cut, affable look. Not the dangerous type.
Besides, she could handle herself. Nobody was going to start trouble with her and come out of it all in one piece. She knew the techniques of self-defense, and she didn't necessarily fight fair. She had been raped twice in her life, and she meant to see to it that she was never raped again.
So she stood there in her bikini and pointed to the telephone. "You'd better make your call. Jim. You'll find mechanics listed in the directory. The nearest one is about twenty miles down the road. Man name of Gonzalez-he's pretty good with cars."
"What if he doesn't answer?"
"Try Sam Armistead, then. He's farther away, but maybe he's still open this late in the afternoon. You ought to reach one or the other of them. I'm going to get out of this wet bathing suit while you're phoning."
He picked up the directory. Judy went into her bedroom and closed the door. She unclipped the halter of her bikini, took it off, rolled the bottom down. Nude, she toweled the last ocean dampness away from her body. She could hear the man in the next room talking in a quiet voice to one of the garage men.
She debated what to wear, and decided on one of her shifts-a purple and blue muu-muu that she was fond of wearing. She slipped it over her head without bothering to don any underwear. Judy liked the feeling of freedom it gave her to let her breasts bobble free under her shift, to let the fresh air get up around her buttocks and her thighs.
She went back into the other room just as her visitor was hanging up the telephone.
"Well?" she said.
"Complications."
"Such as?"
"Gonzalez isn't answering his phone this month, it seems. So I phoned Armistead, and he says he can't do anything until tomorrow morning. He doesn't have the equipment handy, or something."
"Looks like you're stuck," Judy said.
Norton shrugged. "I notice you've got a car outside. If you could drive me to the nearest motel, I'd be much obliged. And then tomorrow Armistead can come and fix up my car and away I'll go."
Judy regarded him steadily. She took a deep breath, though she knew that that made the points of her breasts protrude against the thin fabric of her shift.
She said, "The nearest motel is about forty-five miles from here, Jim. It's late in the afternoon. If I drove you, it would mean a ninety-mile round trip, and that would be a strain not only on me, but on my car. So why don't you just spend the night here, and to hell with all this fencing around?"
He grinned. "I appreciate the invitation, Judy. And I won't waste any time accepting it."
"You knew I'd offer, didn't you?"
"Well-let's say I hoped you would."
"There's only one bed here," she said evenly. "And it's not even a bed, you'll notice, just sort of a mattress on the floor. I sleep there. If you happen to be a pansy and the idea of sharing a bed with a woman gives you the sickies in your gut, well, you can sleep on the couch over here. Otherwise you're welcome to share my bed."
"With or without a sword between us?"
"Without."
"You're a pretty straightforward girl, Judy. You don't kid around."
"I like living alone," she said, "but that doesn't mean I'm entirely antisocial. I happen to enjoy a good roll in the hay every now and then. You look like you're the kind of guy who can provide one. As long as luck dumped you at my place today, why not take advantage of it?"
"Why not?"
"There's one other thing you ought to be warned about, though. I get-up early. Come dawn I'm going to be down on the beach."
"Taking a nude sunbath?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll be there with you," he said. "You think I'm afraid of getting up early in the morning?"
She dropped down into the chair opposite him. Her muu-muu rode a couple of feet up her leg, showing him a considerable length of firm, tanned thigh. She didn't mind that. Neither did he, apparently. She eyed him with interest.
Handsome. Self-assured. Prosperous-looking.
She wondered what he had told the garage men. Normally, Sam Armistead was willing to drop everything and come any distance to be of service. And his well-equipped garage wouldn't be stumped by generator trouble on a new Buick. So Jim Norton had probably said, "Can you come up to Judy Domanig's place first thing in the morning to fix my car?" and Sam Armistead had said, "Sure," and that was all that had taken place. Norton looked like a clever man. And he had obviously been maneuvering from the start to get to spend the night here. Otherwise, he wouldn't have waited around for her to return from the beach, in the first place. He would have tried the door, and used the telephone, and gotten his car repaired and hit the road again.
But here he was. A guest for the night.
"Where are you from?" she asked. "What do you do, anyway?"
His. face was a flawless mask, letting nothing through that he didn't want to come through. He said, "I'm from Seattle. I run a night club there."
"I didn't know Seattle had any night clubs."
"A few. A few. I'm a half-partner in one."
"On vacation?"
"You might say that," he said. "I'm driving south. I've been traveling for a couple of days now."
"Heading for L.A.?"
"Further south than that."
"San Diego?" she asked.
"Mexico," he said. "First stop, Tiajuana. Then down to Acapulco for a little while. And over to Cuer-navaca. After that, quien sabe? I've got some friends, they live on an island off the coast of Yucatan, Co-zumel, it's called. Maybe I'll go over there. Or spend some time .in Mexico City. I don't know. I'll play it by ear."
"Sounds like you'll have a ball. How long are you planning to be down there?"
"Two months, three, maybe on through the winter. I don't know that yet."
"What about your night club?"
"That's what I've got a partner for." He flicked a quick glance at her leg. It seemed to travel right up her exposed thigh to the zone of hidden splendors beneath the shift. It was the most penetrating glance Judy had ever received. She didn't draw the shift down toward her knees, though. He said, "You ever been in Mexico?"
"No. My brother went there once, though. He got killed in a bar brawl in Juarez."
"Too bad."
"I didn't think so. He was a louse."
"He was still your brother, though."
She smiled thinly. "If he had remembered that he was my brother all the time, I wouldn't have been so glad when I heard he was dead. You can figure that one any way you care to."
"I don't care to," Norton said. "It sounds too complicated. Would you like to go to Mexico?"
"Is that an invitation to go with you?"
"It could be."
"Save it," Judy said. "Things are moving too fast. You don't know a thing about me, yet. Ask me again when you're ready to leave and then we'll see."
"It wasn't a definite invitation," he said. "Just something for you to think about."
"I'll think about it." She laughed. "The way things are going here, you'll be asking me to marry you in another hour."
"That wouldn't be wise," he said. "I've already got one wife."
"Oh. In Seattle?"
"In New York. But we're still legally tied, as of the time I set out yesterday. Does that disappoint you any, Judy?"
"Not at all. I wouldn't marry anybody. Nothing personal in it."
"You're an odd one."
"I sure am," she agreed pleasantly. "But I've got my reasons for being the way I am."
"Want to tell me about them?"
"No," she said. She stood up. In an easy, flowing motion she bent forward, caught the hem of the muu-muu and straightened up. The muu-muu traveled up the length of her body, baring her shins, her knees, her thighs, her belly. Her breasts were revealed. Then she pulled the garment over her head and tossed it away from her, letting it flutter to the floor like an autumn leaf.
She stood nude before him.
He was very still. A muscle flickered in his right cheek. He had lighted a cigarette only a moment before, bat now he crushed it out, barely touched, with a quick, short gesture of his wrist. His eyes roamed her body, from the lightly tanned breasts with their erect nipples down to the broadly feminine hips.
"Nice," he said. "Very nice. Why'd you do it?"
"The conversation was starting to bore me. I've discovered that it's a good conversation-stopper when a girl takes her clothes off all of a sudden."
"You're so right, honey."
He rose smoothly to his feet and went toward her. Judy waited calmly. He was a slick operator, she knew, and she wanted to find out what he was like in bed. This was the most direct way of finding out.
He walked forward until he was about a foot and a half away from her naked form. Then he reached out. His hands were sensitive-looking, well manicured, with long, tapering fingers. They closed around the lush globes of her breasts. He stood there for an instant, gripping her breasts as though they were handles.
Then he moved still closer, and his lips crushed down on hers.
It was a violent kiss. She knew there was violence in the man, too, locked up but not hidden very far from the surface. His lips were hard against hers, and his tongue lanced into her mouth with no hesitation. His right hand remained clinging to her breast, and the other hand slipped down her body and clapped firmly against the satiny mounds of her buttocks.
His suit was rough against her bare skin, but she didn't mind that. She kissed back, equally intensely, matching his fervor.
He let go of her. They stepped apart. His lean face was flushed, his nostrils flaring.
"Get undressed," she said.
"Just what I was planning to do."
She watched impassively, without helping, as he removed his clothing. She meant to stay cool, detached, as she gave herself to him. She was not sure yet whether she wanted to kill him or not. Probably not. It was only a couple of days since she had dragged the last lonely wayfarer under the surface of the water, and her killer instinct was not so fierce that she cared to repeat the act again so soon. It had been six months between the first murder and the second ... three months between the second one and the third....
No, she doubted that she would kill him. But it was still a possibility, if he gave her reason to do it. He was an arrogant man. Charley Donoway had been arrogant, too. Judy might find it necessary to punish this stranger's arrogance, if he treated her badly-
He was almost out of his garments, now. His body was impressive. Judy had seen a lot of men, but not many like this. He had enormously broad shoulders-that hadn't been padding in his suit that gave him that V-shaped physique-and strong, muscular thighs. His chest was covered with a thick, coarse mat of black hair. His belly was flat, and Judy suspected that she could ram her fist into it with all her might and not get much more than a grunt out of him.
And he was very, very male.
He stood there, not exactly smiling, but obviously in a smug, complacent mood, fully aware that he had the sort of body that would excite any woman. Judy didn't resent his smugness, because she shared it, having a body of irresistible beauty herself.
They were well matched, she thought. They deserved each other.
"Come here," she said.
"Uh-uh. You come to me."
"Tough guy?"
"Sort of," he said. He pointed to his body. "I call the shots."
"You proud of it?"
"I've got every reason to be," he said. "I like a woman with spirit, you understand. But she's got to remember that so long as I'm the one with her, I'm the one who's in charge."
"Okay," Judy said. "You're the one in charge."
CHAPTER NINE
She crossed the room and stood in front of him. She pressed herself close, but did not kiss him. Instead, she sank slowly to her knees before him, allowing the tips of her breasts to graze his skin enticingly on the way down.
When she was kneeling in front of him, she put her hand on him. There was more of him than one hand could contain. Instead of putting her other hand next to her first, though, she kissed.
He smiled. He stood straight and tall in front of her, letting her pay homage to him.
He enjoys this, she thought-
Abruptly, she brought her teeth into play. She had kept her lips over them while she was caressing him, but now she pulled her lips back and let her sharp, white little teeth close in on him. Slowly, she brought her jaws together, a fraction of an inch at a time. She knew that it must be painful to him. But he didn't say a word, not even a murmur.
Judy took her mouth away from him. She looked up and saw him studying her with interest.
She said, "I've got very strong jaws. One good snap-who'd be boss then?"
"I didn't think you'd do it."
"Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"
"It would be a messy bit. I'd probably bleed like a pig, and there'd be no doctor within miles. So I'd bleed to death right here."
"A pity."
"You sound pretty cool about it. Somehow I don't think you've got murder in your heart, Judy."
"You don't know me yet."
"It wouldn't add up," he said. "When they found me, they'd arrest you on a manslaughter charge. It might be the first case in California history of a man bleeding to death because a woman had bitten him there. Think of the headlines, Judy. Your nice peaceful life ruined by nosy reporters. You'd get a special chapter to yourself in the next edition of Krafft-Ebing."
She laughed. "Nobody would ever have to find you, Jim. I'd take your body down to the beach and dump you in and you'd drift away."
"But there'd be the blood all over your place," he pointed out. "And the trail of blood all the way down to the beach. Uh-uh, Judy. It wouldn't be smart."
"We'll see," she said.
And she put her mouth to him again.
He didn't flinch. For the second time, her lips engulfed him and her head moved, bringing the sweetest of sensation to him, and then, as she had done before, she bared her teeth and pressed them against his skin.
He stood calmly. Another man might have panicked after that cool discussion of murder, but not him. With folded arms, he waited for her to finish playing her games.
He's daring me to bite him, Judy thought in wonder. Daring me!
A wild impulse swept through her, and she nearly gave him the surprise of his life. It was a temptation, she knew. What better revenge could she take on the whole male sex than to deprive this confident arrogant stranger of his masculinity itself?
A snap of the jaws-
She had to get a steady grip on herself to keep from performing the grisly deed without pausing to think. But she kept control over herself. She moved her head back and released him. Then she stood up again.
"You're pretty cool," she said. "I didn't think you'd do it."
"I almost did, though. I came closer than you want to imagine."
He laughed. "But you didn't do it. You want to know how I knew?"
"How?"
"Because it wouldn't make sense to ruin me like that before I had been to bed with you. Afterward, maybe. But not before. You'd be cheating yourself."
Judy laughed. "You sure are sure of yourself, aren't you?"
"I sure am," he said.
Then he slapped her in the face.
It wasn't a love-tap. It was an open-handed wallop across the cheek and mouth that sent Judy's head spinning backward and almost knocked her off her pins. She reeled away, a step or two.
Then she got control of herself and said, "What was that for?"
"To show you that I can kid around too."
"Some joke."
"Yeah. I thought so too," he said.
He stepped toward her and brought his hand up again. Judy thought he was going to slap her in the face, and she ducked her head, but he crossed her up by hitting her across the breasts.
Wham! Wham! Two quick slaps, forehand and backhand, one for each boob. The two quivering mounds of flesh jiggled and leaped around. The pain went through her with blazing intensity.
He smiled at her. Judy leaped at him.
She was ready to break his neck. She started to chop at him, but he moved with stunning swiftness. He caught her right arm by the wrist and brought it up and around, and the next thing she knew her arm was folded neatly behind her back and he was forcing her to her knees.
"Down ... down...."
"Let go."
"You get down. Or I'll break that arm right off you, honey."
Judy hesitated. He gave the arm a little twinge, just to show her that he meant business. She wouldn't be able to swim very well with a broken arm, and she didn't feel like calling his bluff. He had called her bluff, before, when her teeth were sinking into him, but she couldn't take the chance that he would be equally polite about it all.
She dropped to her knees.
He was right behind her, still keeping his iron grip on her twisted arm. He brought his other hand around and cupped it over the soft mounds of her breasts. He played with one breast, then the other, fondling the ripe white hillocks, toying with the nipples. Despite herself, Judy was getting hot for him. Her nipples were rigid and throbbing hard.
His hand slipped lower, to the sleekness of her belly, and then even lower than that. He probed a realm of warmth, caressing her in an intimate way.
"You're a cutey, all right," he told her. "Lots of fire-that's what I like in a woman. You don't mind if I get rough with you, do you?"
"You're hurting my arm."
"If I let go, what will you do?"
"Let go and see," she said.
He laughed. He put his lips to the nape of her neck and kissed her lightly. His breath was hot against her skin. He nibbled her earlobes. He drew a line of kisses along her cheek.
Then he let go of her arm.
He did it so suddenly that Judy toppled forward and had to brace herself on her hands and knees. She spun around, ready to throw herself at him and work him over with any weapon handy, fingernails included.
But he was grinning at her. "Damn you!" she said.
"Come on. Let's fight. Let's wrestle, huh? It's a good way of warming up."
"No fair. You're bigger than I am."
"But you fight dirtier," he said. "So it all evens up. Come on!"
He seized her. She squirmed in his arm, and managed to break his grip. They writhed on the floor in what could have been an embrace of passion, except that they were locked in furious combat.
She gave it all she had. She was an unusually strong girl, and she could see that he was aware of her strength and impressed by it. Several times, he tried to force her shoulder against the floor, and each time she resisted him and managed to squirm free.
Her breasts were heaving wildly. Sweat had burst from every pore of her skin, so that she had an oiled, gleaming look. Her eyes were glazed with excitement. They locked limbs again.
Body twisted against naked body. They thump-ed around on the floor, while the cats circled them, puzzled. Judy grunted with strain. She knew how she could win the contest: by grabbing him in a most vulnerable place. But he knew that too. A naked man is always very much aware, when he fights, of what's exposed. And he was taking good care that she didn't reach him there.
Her muscles corded and tensed as she struggled with him. But he was too much for her. She load fought well, as well perhaps as any woman could have done. Yet slowly but surely, he was mastering her.
He got his arm around her waist. He held her tightly, practically cutting her in two. Inexorably, he pivoted her body, twisting her around so that her forehead was pressed against the floor and her bare, tender buttocks were upturned and exposed.
Judy sensed what he was going to do, a moment before he did it. And her face crimsoned from shame and embarrassment at the realization.
He was going to humiliate her.
He was going to celebrate his victory over her by-spanking her.
"No," she yelped.
He laughed. And then the flat of his hand descended on those two, smooth, firm cheeks. The impact was a stunning one. The solid flesh leaped and shook. He hit her buttocks again. Judy kicked her legs, but only thrashed the air. And he spanked her a third time.
Her buttocks were growing hot. They tingled with the pain of his short, sharp, powerful blows. He wasn't easing up on her, either. In a coldly dispassionate way he was spanking her with all his might.
Whack!
Whack!
Whack!
And Judy discovered a very odd and surprising thing. She was enjoying the sensation of being spanked.
She didn't like the idea of being spanked. That was humiliating to her personality. But the actual physical response, the messages being carried not through her mind but through her automatic nervous system, were pleasurable ones. There was something fiercely exciting about lying naked in the arms of a naked man, getting her buttocks tanned this way.
She was hot and throbbing. Her nipples were mounds of rock. Her throat was dry with desire. Her ears rang. Her face was flushed. And her buttocks were red, alive with pain, blazing with heat.
And still the hand descended.
"Enough!" Judy husked. "Take me now, damn you! Take me! I'm ready! Take me!"
Jim Norton laughed. Then he released her, and let her roll over, and fell on top of her.
And he lunged at her and took her. She was as ready to be had as she had ever been in her life, and when he took her she felt turned on in every molecule of her body. She knotted her legs around him and dug her fingers, into the ridged muscles of his back and held on tight, hips churning and heaving.
Higher ... higher ... the erotic frenzy threatened to consume her entirely....
Then came the sunburst of passion. For her, but not for him. She was at the absolute peak of her ecstasy, and yet she realized in awe and in wonder that he had somehow managed to contain himself. It was the most fantastic demonstration of masculine self-control that Judy had ever witnessed. It was almost like a miracle.
But she had no time to ponder it. Because through her mind there flooded fulfillment of such radiant power that all rational thought was blotted out. Time stood still. She soared into the outer reaches of the universe, lost among the stars.
When she snapped back into the right time and the right space, he was still with her, ready to take her on another adventure.
She lay limp and sweat-soaked beneath him, staring up in disbelief. He was smiling full of well-deserved pride at his own masculine powers. They were still joined.
"How did you do that?" she asked.
"Practice makes perfect," he said. "You ready for the next one?"
"I'm still a little groggy from the last round."
"Fine," he said. "I love to ball a groggy woman. Turn over."
"Huh?"
"Over."
"But-I don't-"
"Like this," he said, and seized her body by the hips and gave her a quick flip so that she lay face down on the floor. Judy thought that he was going to spank her once again.
But that wasn't what he had in mind. Not at all.
This time Judy was unprepared for his move. She felt his body pressing down on hers, and then an instant later his hands were on her buttocks, gripping the soft mounds of flesh that so recently he had been punishing with cruel blows. His fingertips dug in firmly.
And then he was against her. Pressing.
"No," she gasped in pain and sudden terror. "Don't! Don't!"
He paid no attention. His body whip-lashed forward against her, and there was an instant of almost incredible agony, like the loss of a second virginity, and then the pain was gone and in its place was pleasure of a kind that Judy had never known before.
He covered her with his body, his chest against her back, his thighs pressing to her buttocks, and he surged and surged again, and each motion brought a new pang of ecstasy to her. She trembled with the intensity of it. She shook. Torrents of perspiration rolled down her lust-dizzied body, making her bare skin gleam.
Norton reached underneath her and cupped each of his hands over one of her breasts. He filled his fingers with the overflowing generosity of her abundant bosom, digging tight, trapping the red, swollen nipples. Then his left hand withdrew from her breast and began to slide down the front of her body.
To make things a little easier for him, Judy rose on her knees in a kind of half crouch. That served a double purpose. It allowed Norton's hand to move freely underneath her body, and it also thrust her buttocks backward against him to make the sensations all the greater, all the more thrilling.
His hand found the tops of her thighs and grasped her there. All the while, he continued to assert himself in a frenzied assault on this new temple of her ecstatic sensations.
Judy thought she would go out of her mind.
She had never known a man like this before, with such incredible, demonic powers of sensuality. He hardly seemed human. Here in the space of a single hour, he had loved her right to the brink of madness, and then, with scarcely a pause, he had turned her over to attack her from another direction, all without showing any seeming signs of strain himself.
She hated him for his cold arrogance, for the serenely confident way that he had taken possession of her.
And yet-and yet-
Within the core of her hatred for him was a strange fascination that bordered on worship. In this man who had entered her life so unexpectedly, Judy sensed her own stronger self, her masculine counterpart, someone who stood apart from the world as she did.
This was a man whose slave she could let herself
Right now, gasping and softly moaning in the roes of her second ecstasy, Judy pushed the softness of her body against him, and shivered as he stimulated her in three places at once.
The ultimate surge of ecstasy was arriving now.
Yes ... yes....
NOW!
All of Judy's pent-up erotic fervor erupted in a wild, spasming, furious blaze of fulfillment. And this time, Norton joined her. He held nothing back. At the height of her own sensation, Judy was aware of his sudden, final body-splitting lunge at her, and then of the cataclysmic concluding of his passions.
She fell forward onto the floor. He slumped down on top of her.
For a long time, neither of them moved, as the afterglow of ecstasy slowly ebbed.
CHAPTER TEN
A long time afterward, Judy rose from his embrace and said. "Are you hungry?"
"It's eight hours since I had lunch."
"I'm not much of a cook. But if you'll settle for hamburgers-"
"Anything, love. Anything." He sat up and reached into his discarded jacket for his pack of cigarettes. "Just so long as it's food."
"Let me take a shower first," Judy said. "Then I'll get the eating organized. Okay?"
"Sure," he said.
She padded nude into the bathroom and turned the shower on. She was sweaty from the double session of lovemaking. She got under the needle-sharp spray and let the water cascade down over her breasts and belly.
As she soaped herself, Judy thought back over the events of the afternoon, trying to come to some terms with the upheaval in her life that this man's presence promised to cause.
Who was he? Where bound, and why? He had told her a few things about himself, speaking in an oddly offhand tone. He could just as easily have been making everything up on the spur of the moment. Judy realized that she didn't actually know a thing about him-except that he was handsome, somewhat sinister, fantastically virile, and totally without fear.
He fascinated and repelled her all at once.
Suppose, she thought, as she ran the bar of soap over the smooth, wet mounds of her jutting breasts-suppose, just suppose he asks me to go to Mexico with him. It's a possibility. He likes me. He knows that I speak his language, that I'm his kind of woman. That wrestling match we had-I gave him a damned good fight. I impressed him. I know I did.
Okay, then. Suppose he says, "Come to Tiajuana with me, babe"
Do I go? Or do I pass?
Judy didn't know. Again and again, she had resolved not to have anything to do with men except on a casual basis, never to let herself get involved. Here she was, ready to make the old mistake again, ready to give herself to this stranger who said he was Jim Norton the same way that she had given herself to Charley Donoway.
And what if the same thing happened? What if he used her, and threw her away when he got weary of her, just as Charley Donoway had done?
Judy pondered it. And decided that this time she'd be armored against such an event. She was older, wiser, tougher, schooled now in the various ways that a man can injure a woman. So long as she kept her wits about her, she'd make out all right. So long as she looked out for Number One, and never let herself get too emotionally dependent on this man, she'd avoid getting wounded.
Sure. If he says come along go with him. Why not? He's exciting. He's full of power. He's dynamic. He's sexy. He'll give you a good time.
Just remember that it won't be for keeps. That the breaking point is bound to come, sooner or later. Just be prepared for it. If you see it coming, maybe you can break with him before he breaks with you. It's easier that way.
And, Judy added, "If he treats you like, dirt, kill him.
Killing him wouldn't be a snap, she knew. A man like this was wary, strong, ferocious. Even so, he wasn't invulnerable. He had to sleep sometimes. He had to turn his back on you. She knew that she could take him, if she had to. With three murders under her belt already, she qualified as an expert.
She laughed. Here she was, not even knowing the man three hours, and already she was simultaneously figuring out a way of life that made her his mistress and a way of life that made her his executioner.
Things move fast around me, she thought. But maybe I ought to go' a little slower. Be prepared for the eventualities, but don't force anything.
Judy turned the water taps off and got out of the shower. She toweled herself dry, watching with pleasure as her bare breasts bounced around when she pulled the towel back and forth over her skin.
Draping the towel around her shoulders, but otherwise remaining nude, she went out into the adjoining room, where Jim Norton had been sprawled out on the floor smoking a cigarette. She didn't see him. Or his clothing, either. Nor was he in the kitchen or the bedroom. For one puzzled moment, Judy thought that he had taken her car and disappeared, but a glance out the window told her otherwise. Her battered car and his big sleek one still stood side by side where they had been.
Then she saw him. He had walked about twenty feet away from the house and was standing with his back to it, admiring the view.
She went out to him.
"Getting some fresh air?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. He turned, and laughed when he saw that she was nude. "You walk around out here like that all the time?"
"Why not?" she said. "Nobody's to see. I told you, this is a secluded neighborhood!"
"People sometimes wander by."
"Not often."
"I did."
Judy shrugged. "You had an emergency. Anyway, if anybody wants to wander by and see my skin, let them look. I don't give a damn. It doesn't upset me to be seen. If it upsets them to see me, let them close their eyes."
"Aren't you cold like that, though? The temperature must be fifty degrees."
"I'm used to running around naked in cold weather," she told him. "I don't like wearing clothes."
"So I see. How's dinner doing?"
"It isn't doing at all. I just got out of my shower and I didn't know where you were. So I came out to see if you were still around."
"Just surveying the view," he said. "Studying the lay of the land, so to speak."
"Okay. I'll get the hamburgers cooking. You going to stay out here?"
"For a little while."
"I'll call you when dinner's ready, then."
"Come here, first."
She went to him. He caught her by the end of her towel and pulled her up close to him. Quickly, he fondled her breasts, her buttocks, her thighs. He kissed her, a quick, hard kiss. There was nothing very passionate in what he did. It was as though he were simply testing his memory of the feel of her flesh against the real thing, as long as she happened to be standing there. Judy smiled at him, and he smiled back, not really a smile so much as a fast on-off smirk.
She went back into the house to see after dinner.
Somehow, for once, she didn't feel like remaining nude just now. She tossed down the towel, picked up the muu-muu that she had worn before. Then she went into the kitchen.
It was almost time for the hourly news broadcast. Judy switched the radio on as she began to fix dinner. Maybe they'd have another bulletin about the Joseph Carter suicide case. Maybe they'd have found the dead man's body by now, or something like that.
There wasn't any news about Carter. What Judy heard on the radio was this:
"Sacramento police report no success in the manhunt for 34-year old Lloyd Holbrook, who evidently slipped out of town early this morning after taking two lives. Holbrook, the manager of a finance agency in the capital city, reportedly slew his wife Delores, aged 27, and a man identified as Paul Kremer, 26. No apparent motive for the slaying was disclosed. Holbrook is believed to have headed south in a maroon Buick, and may be in the San Francisco area at this time. Police speculate that he is heading for Mexico, and the border patrols have been alerted. He may be armed and is considered dangerous. Holbrook is described as white, six feet, two inches tall, weight 190 pounds, dark eyes, brown hair, crew-cut, no unusual scars...."
Judy grabbed the edge of the sink for support as shock and amazement burned through her.
There was no doubt about it. Her guest was the wanted murderer!
There couldn't be any room for mistake. The man she had made love with and was now fixing dinner for, fit the description perfectly. And the maroon Buick ... yes, that fit too. It couldn't be a coincidence. There weren't two men of the same appearance driving the same kind of car-and the man who called himself Jim Norton had been so mysterious about his background, so deliberately hazy-
Of course. A double murderer, heading away from the scene of his crime. Stopping by a lonely ocean-side cottage on top of a dark cliff to have a place to hide out for the night, while the heat was on.
Everything he had told her, had been lies. The night club in Seattle, the wife in New York, all the rest-fantasies designed to still her curiosity. "He may be armed and is considered dangerous," the newscast had said. Well, he was certainly dangerous; Judy had sensed that just from making love with him. There was a power in him, a demonic force, that meant danger for anybody who got in this man's way. Armed? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. He had been pretty casual about leaving his clothes around the living room. Certainly he wasn't carrying a gun on him; she would have felt that when she embraced him. But he might have a knife somewhere in his suit. Or a gun in the glove compartment of his automobile. The newscast hadn't said how he had committed those murders. Only that two people were dead.
Judy looked uneasily toward the other room. He was still outside, evidently.
What am I going to do?
Panic hit her for a moment But only for a moment, and then she felt calm again, and even amused at the situation.
There was nothing to be afraid of, simply because she was playing hostess to a killer. In fact, she realized it might be the best thing that had happened to her in a long while.
He's a murderer, she thought. Okay. So am I. I'm ahead of him in kills, as a matter-of-fact. Three to two. So why worry? He isn't a wild beast-or if he is, he's the same kind of beast I am.
We're two of a kind.
We belong with each other.
Judy smiled. A surge of triumph filled her, as she saw the new shape of her future unroll before her. It was a future joined to this strange man, this Lloyd Holbrook. She needed him, and he needed her. They were alike, two dark souls marked for apartness.
She could be invaluable to him. She was his only way of getting safely out of California. All roads leading out of the state would certainly be monitored, with troops watching for a maroon Buick. The airports would be under surveillance. Everything.
But she had a car. Not much of a car, but it could get them to Mexico. She'd drive him. Let him hunker down in the trunk, and she'd get him through all the roadblocks safely. And after they were safe on the far side of the border, down in the land of the sun, they'd make a new life together, the two of them, both of them hard as iron, meant for each other, a perfect match....
Yes!
The more she thought about it, the more perfect it appeared to her. It thrilled her. Her body tingled, remembering the savage ferocity of Holbrook's embrace, remembering the incredible virility of the man. To have a lover like that every night-
Yes! Yes! Yes!
She moved quickly about the kitchen, getting the meal ready. The cats sat quietly, watching her. Judy felt a stab of pain as she thought about them. How would they fit into her new life? Would Holbrook want to take three cats along with him on their flight to Mexico? Probably not. There might even be difficulties, taking a cat across an international border. He might insist on leaving the animals behind.
What the devil, though. She couldn't shape her life around little animals no matter how fond she was of them. They could be given away. Her destiny was that of a free spirit, unfettered by cats.
When the hamburgs were sizzling, Judy went outside and called to him.
"Dinner's on!"
He came in. She was setting the table. He didn't attempt to help her. He just stood to one side, motionless in his masculine superiority. Judy didn't mind. She scarcely looked up at him.
"I see you decided to put some clothes on," he observed. "To be formal at dinnertime?"
"I didn't put much on," she said. "If you'll notice, I'm naked underneath the muu-muu."
"I notice. I can't help but noticing."
"But I thought I ought to cover myself chastely while we ate. I didn't want the sight of my breasts sticking out at you across the table to distract you from your appreciation of my cooking's finer features."
He laughed. "Very thoughtful of you."
"Here. You sit in this chair."
They were midway through the meal before Judy decided on the approach that she wanted to take. He didn't say much as he ate, and that was fine with her. It allowed her some breathing space to figure things out. Her forehead was throbbing with excitement. Some of her initial burst of fear had returned, now that she saw him in front of her 'again. There was such a cold, brooding strength about this man, she thought. He was more than a little frightening even when he was just quietly sitting and eating hamburgers. Odd how at first glance he seemed like a nice, Ivy-League young chap, and how as you continued to watch him, he turned into a devil.
But her mind was made up. She wasn't going to turn from her course.
"Jim?" she said suddenly.
"Mmm?"
"Jim, have you ever been in Sacramento?"
He looked at her strangely, but she could see him making an attempt to mask his feelings. "Why do you ask that, Judy?"
"You remind me of somebody else who lives in Sacramento," she said.
"Who?"
"Fellow name of Lloyd Holbrook. Runs a finance agency up there."
His lips tightened into thin white lines. A muscle writhed, suddenly uncontrollable, in one of his lean cheeks.
"Lloyd Holbrook," he said in a very quiet voice. "I remind you of a fellow named Lloyd Holbrook."
"That's right," she persisted. "You could practically be his brother."
"Very curious."
"And another thing, Jim. You and this Holbrook fellow-you both drive the same sort of car. Brand new maroon Buicks. Isn't that odd? A really funny coincidence. When I came up from the beach and saw your car parked outside my place, I thought it was Lloyd Holbrook's car. And then I saw you. But you said you were Jim Norton."
He was silent for a long moment. His eyes drilled into hers like augers. But Judy steeled herself and met his glance without flinching. She was not afraid of his eyes. She had killed people, too.
At length he said, "What kind of gimmick do you think you're working?"
"I heard the news broadcast a little while ago. It said that police are looking for a man named Lloyd Holbrook who killed two people in Sacramento. He's driving a car like yours and he's got a physical description that happens to match yours. So I was wondering, Jim. Are you really from Seattle? Do you really have a wife in New York? Is your name really Jim Norton?"
He shoveled a chunk of hamburger into his mouth, chewed it thoroughly, swallowed it. Then he said, "You're either a very brave girl or a very stupid girl, Judy. I can't make up my mind which."
"Maybe a little of both," she said. "Maybe neither. Let's level with each other, Lloyd. You are Lloyd, aren't you? You tell me why you killed those people. Then I'll tell you a few little secrets about myself. And then we'll figure out where we go from here."
He moistened his thin lips. "Why did you stir all this up? What's in it for you?"
"I'll tell you afterward. Are you Holbrook?"
"Yes. Of course. What did you think?"
"I just wanted to hear you say it yourself," she said. "Be honest with me, Lloyd. And I'll be honest with you. You'll be surprised when you learn about me."
"I suppose you're really Adolf Hitler wearing a clever, plastic disguise."
She laughed. "Not quite. Why'd you kill them, Lloyd? Murder interests me. Why did you kill your wife?"
"Several reasons. Reason number one was that I was tired of her and she wouldn't give me a divorce. Reason number two was that she had been unfaithful to me. Reason number three was that I wanted to make a clean break with the life I'd been living, and I needed her out of the way."
"And this other one, this Paul Kremer? He was her lover, I suppose?"
"No. He just happened to be a bystander. A witness. He blundered in at the critical moment, so I had to kill him too. I don't even know who he was, really. But at a time like that you don't stop to ask questions. He had to die, that was all."
"How did you kill them?"
"With a knife," he said. "The messy way. But the quiet way. A knife is quiet."
"There are quiet ways that aren't even messy," Judy remarked casually.
"Such as?"
"Finish your dinner and then I'll let you in on the scoop," she said.
He stared levelly at her. "You're a strange one, you know? Sitting here asking me a million questions. Why aren't you screaming for your life? Why aren't you trying to telephone the police?"
"How do you know I haven't?"
"I don't," he said. "I ought to be clearing out of here and not making conversation."
"Well, I haven't called the police. Take it on faith, I haven't. And after you've read something I'm going to give you to read, you'll understand why I haven't."
"Maybe I'm crazy too," he said. "But I'll stay. I'll take it on faith."
He cleaned off his plate.
Then Judy rose and went to her dresser drawer, and took out her black-covered murder notebook, and gave it to him to read.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She sat quietly, watching him leaf through the pages. He didn't skim. He read every word, carefully, sometimes going back to read a sentence twice. His expression was absolutely unreadable.
It was a strange sensation, sitting there watching someone else reading her secret book, her book of books, the book of her life. Judy knew that there had been some reason why she had kept that murder diary, and now she knew: it was so she could show it to Lloyd Holbrook.
He had finished reading about the way she killed Charley Donoway, now. He was past that account, with its flat description of the way she had rabbit-chopped him and dragged him face down into the sea. And now he was looking at her account of the second murder.
Her accidental murder, she liked to call it.
Judy let the details drift back into her mind. It had happened early in the spring, right after Charley Donoway's decomposed body had been found. Murder had been on Judy's mind, then-the pleasant temptation to try it again, to even up the score some more.
But she hadn't really planned to kill this particular man. Except that circumstances dictated it that way, and she let events break as they chose.
It had all happened early one morning. A bright, warm morning in April, and Judy came on the beach for her daily constitutional. In the nude, of course.
A swim. Cold water glancing exhilaratingly against her bare breasts, her thighs.
Then a sunbath. Stretched out nude in the brightness, drying off, letting the sunlight steal across her body and caress it. She was totally relaxed, fully exposed, shameless. It was about seven in the morning. The world was silent.
And a shadow fell across her face.
Judy's eyes flickered open. A man was standing above her. He had come up on her so silently that she had not heard him approach at all-or perhaps she had slipped into a light doze a few minutes ago; she could not be sure. Anyway, there he was.
He was about forty, maybe forty-five. Thin, medium height, graying hair. Rimless eyeglasses. He wore knee boots, khaki pants, an Eisenhower jacket. He carried some kind of satchel over his shoulder. He was staring at her in a bug-eyed way, as though absolutely flabbergasted to find a naked girl on the beach. He was flushed, excited by the sight of her bare heavy breasts, her ripe, luscious thighs, her unconcealed femaleness.
Judy wondered how long he had been standing there, ogling her.
"Hi," she said.
"Oh. You're awake."
"Looks that way. You're afraid of me, arent you?" she asked.
"I-I don't mean to intrude-your privacy-" He backed away from her, looking shy and flustered now that she had come to life.
Judy snorted. "Listen, if my privacy meant anything to me I wouldn't be stretched out here bare-rear on the beach, would I? Don't run away. Stay here and talk. It gets lonely here."
He scratched his chin nervously. "You aren't embarrassed-naked like that?"
"Nope. Is my body so ugly that you want me to cover it up?"
"No-no--"
"Okay, then. Stay here. Look all you like. Wherever you like. It's free. It'll probably do you some good. Who are you, anyway?"
He gave her a mild smile. "Emory Blaisdell," he said. "I'm from the University of California. A zoologist. I'm on a field trip, collecting shoreline crustacea. I've been walking along the beach since four in the morning. I don't know how many miles I've walked, and you're the first person I've met. And-"
"And you didn't expect to find any nude Crustacea lying around, eh?"
"No."
"You from the Berkeley campus, maybe?"
"Yes," he said. "You aren't a student there?"
"No. But-well, never mind. I had a relative who taught there for a while. You probably didn't know him. Forget it. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Is that box of yours full of crabs?"
He grinned shyly. "Yes, as a matter-of-fact. And-and-"
"Hey, you're shaking," she said.
"I can't help it."
"You feeling all right?"
"Fine," he said. "Only-only-your body-listen, my wife left me eight years ago. I-I haven't had a woman since then. And the sight of you-your body-your naked body-" He paused. "Oh, God," he blurted. "I can't control myself!"
That was when he fell on her.
It was pathetic, Judy thought. This poor, crab-hunting kook of a professor, so mild-mannered and scholarly, unable to control his sex impulses when he stumbled across a naked blonde on a deserted beach. He was really going ape all of a sudden, a total crack-up.
He was down on top of her, gasping and grunting and moaning like the madman that in effect he had just become. His hands clawed at her breasts, gripping the sensual hills of taut flesh as though his life depended on being able to cop a feel. He was trying to work his knees between her thighs.
"Please," he begged. "Please-don't fight me, don't resist-"
"Cut it out, professor. Down, boy! Down!"
But he was beyond the point of reason. He was wild, lust-maddened, determined to carry through on his sudden assault.
Judy felt his hands all over her, gripping her soft flesh ... breasts, buttocks, thighs ... they thrashed about on the sand ... his lips hunted for hers....
But she was an expert on how to handle a rapist, by this time. All these years of living by herself on the seashore, toughening herself with morning swims, building up techniques of defense-they hadn't been just amusements. She was able to defend herself.
Especially against a bespectacled, middle-aged man of no particular physical strength.
When it became apparent that Professor Blaisdell was going to cling to her until he got what he wanted from her, Judy went into action. Her slim body tensed to repel the invasion.
She parted her legs, but not for his sake. She brought her knee up sharply and gave it to him where it would produce the fastest effect. It did. He pulled back from her, crying out in sudden anguish.
Judy rammed her fist into the pit of his stomach. She caught his arm and twisted. She flipped him upward and in a short sharp pivot and threw him entirely off her, some distance away on the sand. He landed heavily. He didn't get up again. He didn't even move.
Judy rose to her feet, her breasts heaving from her exertions, her skin tingling. She walked over to him and stood above him, glowing in golden nakedness as the sunlight bathed her slender form.
"Professor?" she said. "Hey, Professor!"
No answer.
She looked down. His neck was bent at a funny angle. His head was twisted around. His glasses had come off, and one lens was broken.
His face looked strangely gray.
"Professor?"
He remained still. Judy touched his shoulder. He was motionless. She shook him a little, and his head rocked back and forth in a weird limp, see-sawing motion, as though it was likely to fall right off his head if she shook too hard.
He had broken his neck when she flipped him off her, Judy realized.
And he was dead. She had killed him without even really meaning to. It hadn't been murder, exactly; more like manslaughter. But he was dead. No jury would convict her, if she could prove the truth of what had actually been happening-that he had found her sunbathing and had attempted to force her to have sex with him.
But of course, she couldn't prove that. There were no witnesses.
And she didn't want to get involved in any police investigation, regardless of how good a case she might be able to make out. If the police dug around, they might learn that she had known the late Charley Donoway, and that could lead to some uncomfortable discoveries. So Judy realized that she was going to have to dispose of Professor Blaisdell's body, just as if she had premeditated his murder.
And she had to do it fast. It was past seven in the morning, now, and she couldn't count on many more minutes of complete solitude on the beach.
She grabbed him by the arms and dragged him toward the water. Then, just as she had done the November before with Charley Donoway, Judy waded out into the ocean and swam for the deep water, towing the corpse behind her. It was a fight to get far from shore, because his heavy boots and water-logged jacket were weighing him down. But Judy struggled nudely on, because she knew it was idiocy tQ dump him just off shore.
Out in the far sea, she let go of him and he slipped immediately below the surface. Those thick leather boots would keep him down, Judy knew. This was one body that they would never find.
She treaded water for a while, making sure he didn't reappear. He didn't. Then she swam toward shore, stepped out onto the sand, her breasts heaving as she gasped for breath. That had been work!
And she wasn't finished, yet.
She walked up the beach, scuffing out the trail that had been made when she dragged the body toward the water. Nobody else was likely to recognize that as the trail of a dragged corpse, but she knew what it was, and she felt better after she had obliterated it.
His collecting case was lying near her beach blanket. So were his shattered glasses. Judy held the case at arms length and opened it. About a dozen live crabs came quickly scrabbling out and went scuttering away across the sand toward freedom.
"You didn't even say thank you," Judy called laughingly after them.
She dropped the eyeglass frames and the broken lens into the attache case, and put her beach-robe on over her nakedness. She would dispose of the collecting case later, at a safe distance from the area. No doubt somebody would miss Professor Blaisdell sooner or later, and somebody would guess that he had drowned while on a collecting trip. She wouldn't be involved.
Poor Professor Blaisdell.
Judy hadn't really intended to kill him. But now that she had, she was able to take some satisfaction in the deed. In a way, it was as if she had killed that other gentle rapist, the one who had taken her home from the bar that night she had been so drunk seven years before. This evened the score for that one.
Two dead, now. She felt pleased with herself.
And when Joe Carter came down the pike, looking for a little action a few months later, Judy decided on the spur of the moment to make him number three.
Lloyd Holbrook closed the notebook and looked up at Judy, who was staring at him across the room in frozen intensity.
"This is quite a book," he said. "What do you do, write fiction for a living?"
"There's no fiction in that book."
"You really killed those three guys?"
She nodded. "I really did. You must have been listening to the radio a little, the last few days. Haven't you heard anything about a guy who was supposed to have drowned himself around here? A guy named Carter, they found his automobile and his clothing down the road?"
"Yeah-yeah, I think I do remember."
"He's number three in my book. It happened just the way I said. We made love on the beach, and then we went swimming and I drowned him. And drove his car down to that parking lot."
Holbrook frowned. "You're strong enough to grab a man in the water and make him drown? And that other stuff, the karate, the judo-"
"You wrestled with me," Judy reminded him. "You know for yourself how strong I am. You know I've got muscles under all this pretty flesh. And if you go swimming with me tomorrow morning, you'll find out how good a swimmer I am, too."
He was silent a long moment.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Yeah. I do believe it. You did kill them. You're the strongest girl I've ever known. And the weirdest. That bit you pulled with your teeth-sure. Sure. Okay, I take it back, Judy.
This notebook isn't fiction. I see that now."
"Thanks."
"Why'd you kill them, though?" She smiled. "You want me to tell you the whole story of my life?"
"Is that necessary?"
"To understand, yes. But I'll make it quick. You want to hear?"
"Keep it short."
"All right," Judy said. "I've had three bad breaks in my dealings, with men. Like three kicks in the teeth. When I was sixteen years old and still a virgin, my older brother raped me."
"Damn!"
"Then I went into a bar a couple of years later and had too much too drink, and a nice kindly fellow rescued me when I was about to get heaved out. He took me to his apartment and raped me too."
"Nice."
"And then a lot later I fell in love with a guy and my whole life revolved around him. And after a few months, just when I was hoping he'd ask me to marry him, he told me to pack and get out of his apartment on one night's notice. He was the first of the three men I killed. The other two were strangers."
"And that's why you kill?" Holbrook said. "To get even with the men who fouled you up?"
"That's why," Judy said.
They stared at each other. Then he said, "I never met anybody like you."
"I never met anybody like you either," she replied. "We're two of a kind, Lloyd. We're made for each other. We're both killers. We stand away from the rest of the world. We're tough. And sexy. We make a good team."
His smile was hard to interpret. "Maybe you've got something there, baby."
"Listen," she said. "Tomorrow morning, come down to the beach with me. We'll take a swim at dawn together. Then we'll clear out. In my car, because they'll he watching for yours. You can hide in the trunk when we go through the roadblocks. We'll scoot right across the border into Mexico, and no-body'll bother us ever again. We'll just have each other."
"Sounds interesting."
"I'll get you safely across. Without my help, they'll nab you. But I can swing it. I'm a pretty resourceful girl. It's all there in the notebook. You know I've got guts. And you've made me twice. You know what I've got to offer him in that department."
"Yeah," he said. "I sure do."
"Let's go to bed," Judy suggested. "It's almost ten o'clock. We'll get up at five, all right? And we can be on the road by seven, eight o'clock. I want you to love me tonight, though. Love me right now. I'm a hungry girl, Lloyd. I've got a big appetite for loving."
He stood up. "Okay," he said. "Fair enough. You took care of my appetite. Now I'll see what I can do about yours."
He went with her into the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They stripped quickly. for Judy, it was just a matter of whipping her muu-muu over her head and presenting her jiggling nudity to him. Holbrook required more time, but not much more, to get his clothing off.
Then they dropped down together on the mattress.
Although they had made love twice already that afternoon, and with great passion both times, Holbrook was ready to serve her needs again, less than five hours after the last round. That confirmed Judy's opinion that this was really an extraordinary man.
Her hand went to him, seized him and guided him toward her.
There were no fancy frills to their lovemaking this time. No biting, no spanking, no upside-down tomfoolery. Neither of them seemed to be in the mood for anything like that. His body covered hers, he slid to her, and they began to move in the rhythms of passion. Judy responded quickly, eagerly.
His long, lean body lunged against hers. He crushed down against her breasts, hammered himself against her. And pleasure was theirs. Rapidly.
It arrived in a double burst of fulfillment. He didn't try to hold himself back, this time. He just went surging ahead, pushing her to the brink of completion and then over it, all in one frenzied rush.
"Good night," she said.
"Yeah. Good night."
They rolled apart and lay side by side on the mattress. But it was a long time before Judy fell asleep. She had a great deal to think about.
The nearness of him-his big powerful body naked alongside hers. Having him like this every night. Yes. Yes! It was what she wanted.
She would not permit herself to fall in love with him. She would remember, at all times, the lessons that life had taught her. Cruel lessons. Bitter lessons. So she would go along with him for the ride, and get what happiness she could from him. When the time came for parting, she would part and never look back with regrets. When you limited your objectives that way in advance, you also limited the scope of possible pain.
To live with him in Mexico....
Nights of rapture. Days of delight. Find a seashore like this, live in a remote cliffside cabin. The Pacific washed Mexico's shores just as it did those of California.
Judy smiled. After a while, she slept.
The alarm clock in her brain woke her at five the next morning. She rolled over, ready to wake Holbrook up, assuming that, like most people, he would be sleeping. He wasn't. He was sitting up, puffing on a cigarette and watching her with interest.
"You look very young when you sleep," he said. "All the toughness goes out of your face, and you're just a pretty girl with no clothes on and big boobs lying there. You look about nineteen, asleep."
"How long have you been up?"
"Maybe fifteen minutes. One of your cats walked on my face. Woke me."
She stood up, letting the blanket drop away from her, revealing her body in all its naked glory. "Let's go down to the beach for a swim," she said. "Then we'll start packing to go."
"All right," he said.
She covered her nudity with her beach-robe, and gave him the blanket to wrap over himself. They left the cottage and made their way to the sea. Gray mists of dawn still swirled over the woods.
They clambered down the stone steps. It would be her last time on the beach, and Judy felt a little sorrowful about that.
She shrugged out of her robe and stood proudly naked on the sand. Holbrook looked a little hesitant at first about denuding himself out in the open, but after a moment, he let let the blanket drop. "Follow me!" she cried.
She ran down to the sea, sprinting with vigor that was almost immoral at such an early hour. She felt the melons of her breasts pounding up and down as she ran. She felt wonderfully alive as the sea breezes whistled around her nakedness.
Holbrook ran right behind her.
She hit the water fast, dove and swam outward. He followed her. She tried to get away from him, but this was one man she couldn't show off for. He kept pace with her, stroke for stroke, remaining just behind her and to her left, a couple of feet back of her kicking legs.
Judy tried to put on a spurt of speed. No use. She drove herself forward, giving it all she had, and hoped to open up a gap of ten to twenty yards between herself and him. But when she paused, gasping, and looked over her shoulder, he was right behind her, as always.
He grinned. "This cold water really wakes you up," he said.
Judy nodded and cut diagonally across him, moving fast, once again trying to show him that she could outswim him.
It became a contest. Back, forth, back, forth-stroke after stroke after stroke. Her slender arms bit into the water. Her breasts ached from the strain of so much swimming. Her thighs throbbed. Kick. Kick. Kick.
Serenely, as though unaware that anything out of the ordinary was going on, Holbrook swam right behind her. The corded muscles in his arms and shoulders rippled magnificently. Judy sensed that he had reserves of strength behind his reserves; that he could swim, if he had to, for twelve or fifteen hours without showing fatigue.
Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. She set a grim pace, but he matched it. She swung around, headed straight out toward sea, far out, farther than she had ever dared to go before. She knew she couldn't lose, either way. If he gave up and turned back, she was the winner of their little contest. If she got tired before he did, she knew that he would laugh in triumph and then help her get to shore. So she kept on going straight out.
He stayed with her.
And suddenly, Judy realized that she had pushed herself beyond her own limits. She was very, very tired. Her heart was pounding wildly. Her jaws throbbed. Her eyes were having trouble focusing.
She halted bobbing white and naked on the huge sea. The shore was terribly far away.
"I'm-I'm tired," she gasped. "You win!" She sucked breath into her lungs. "I quit. Lloyd, hold onto me ... help me toward shore."
He came up to her. He bobbed alongside her, seemingly unwinded, and reached out. He squeezed the firm globes of her breasts. He cupped the satiny hills of her buttocks. She stared at him in exhaustion as he toyed with her.
Then he said, "You're staying out here, Judy.
I'm going to Mexico alone."
"What?"
"You think I want to travel with a kooky killer girl? You're dangerous, baby. You might get into a killing mood any old time. I stayed up all night because I couldn't take the chance. This is the end of the line for you."
"No!"
"You got to go. You know so much about me, I got to eliminate you. Can't trust taking you with me, can't trust leaving you behind. Only one thing left."
In terror, Judy felt his hands clenching the soft flesh of her shoulders. She struggled for strength, but she had none left. In order to show her powers, she had gone right to the breaking point ... but he hadn't.
"No," she whimpered. "We belong together!"
"Afraid not," he said. "You kooky killer. It's a real pity, wasting you like this. You got a lot to be said for you. Especially in bed. But I can't take the risk. So long, beautiful."
He squeezed her breasts once more, as though saying farewell to the sensual glory of her body.
