"Come on, Amy, give it to me!" the boy pleaded. "For Christ's sake, who are you saving it for? You're eighteen. Old enough for this sort of thing." He tried to jam a knee between beautiful white legs, protected, more or less, by a thigh-length mini.
Amy Fortune, managing to smile and keep the knee out at the same time, listened to Eddie Sala's passionate pleas, and wondered why they had so little effect on her. Maybe because she'd heard them too many times before, from too many boys, And even if she was eighteen, she didn't feel like a woman. She felt like what she was a college girl, who was too sheltered and uncertain to plan her next move, especially her next sexual move. "Well? Well?"
She smiled in the darkness, shaking her head and realizing he couldn't detect it. "I'm sorry, Eddie. You're a nice boy and I like you a lot. I just can't. I-I'm not ready. Don't you see?"
Sala groaned and pounded the sports coupe's steering wheel. "All I can see is I've got the biggest hard-on of my life and you won't do anything about it. Shit, if it were anyone else, I'd ..." He left the threat unfinished.
Amy laughed. Even if they were parked in a wooded area far from the nearest house, miles from town and the safety of Davis University's campus, she felt secure. She was Amy Fortune, wasn't she? Judge Fortune's youngest daughter? Who else would dare think what Eddie was thinking? "But since I'm me, you won't. I think I love you, Eddie."
"Then how about showing it? Just this once, let yourself go. I have something to use. Here, let me show you." Eddie grabbed for his wallet.
"Eddie, please. I don't want to see it. Keep it for someone else." Amy shivered inside her thin blouse. The blouse was open to the waist and her bra hung across the car seat. The panties she'd worn from her sorority house were still around her trim hips. She didn't intend removing them, no matter how much he cajoled or wheedled.
Sala replaced the wallet in a hip pocket. "You're something," he sighed. "You're really something. An honest-to-goodness virgin. There aren't supposed to be any of those around anymore." A dark-haired boy of medium height, he looked much darker in the faint light from the car's dashboard. Sala's chin-length hair shook to emphasize his unhappiness.
Amy heard a cricket chirp in the grass outside, and tried not to compare the chirping with Eddie's muttering. He'd cared enough to ask her out, she argued. She should care enough not to leave him with a . . . problem. "If you have a handkerchief, I'll beat you off. But only once. Then we'll have to go. It's getting late."
Sala's scorn was a fearsome thing. "Beat me off! Jesus, no. With a handkerchief? What's the matter? Afraid you'll get some on you?"
She flushed, and was glad he couldn't see. "I'm sorry, Eddie. That's all I can do. I'm not one of your put-out artists. You knew that when you took me out."
"Yeah, but I-" Sala flung out his hands. "Okay, it's better than nothing. But let me warm you up again first. Maybe you'll put more on it." He lunged, before she could move away, locking her in a tight, almost strangling embrace. The kiss he burned on her lips quickly turned to a skillful exploration of her mouth. With a tongue renewed by rest, he resumed a rhythmic stroking of her palate which made the girl in his arms tremble uncontrollably.
Amy nearly surrendered to the sweet sensation this time, only raising her guard again when Eddie closed rough hands on her breasts. "Eddie!" she protested, tearing her mouth off his. "I don't need warming up. I'm already so-so-"
"Hot?" Sala burrowed a hand under her dress and past the edge of her panties. He made a sound of pleased astonishment at what he found there. "You're right, dollface!" he crowed. "You're the wettest little cherry bomb since Eve did her thing in the garden. Know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put you on the back seat and suck you dry. Yeah. If old Eddie can't get it the regular way, he'll get it any way he can."
Amy shuddered. She'd heard of fellows giving 'head' to their favorite girls, but she couldn't imagine someone doing that for her. "No. That's the most indecent thing I ever heard. I'll beat you off, nothing more. Take it or leave it."
Sala snorted and slapped his forehead. "Indecent? Dollface, you're eating stuff, and don't you forget it." He swooped down on her breasts and tried to take a nipple into his mouth, chuckling when she fended him off. "So are these. I could make you beg me to put it in if you'd only let me. I'd show you what titties are for."
"You're disgusting. I don't enjoy being-being sucked on like a piece of candy."
Sala swore and grabbed her hand. "Then give me a good hand-job, and make it fast." He hunched down under the coupe's wheel and, with a couple of lunges, made his genital area more available for her. "Go to it. Or do I have to show you about hand-jobs, too?"
Amy leaned closer and braced herself against the seat back. She didn't have to be shown about hand-jobs. She knew how boys wanted their pricks manipulated. To remain a virgin and still stay high on the sorority's date list, she'd had to learn. Carefully, she lowered Eddie's fly and reached inside for his. . . cock. His erection was so huge she had trouble extracting it. When he was free, she grasped the shaft with her left hand and with her right began to move the foreskin slowly back and forth.
"That's it, Amy, baby!" Sala said between clenched teeth. "I've got to hand it to you, dollface. You know how to handle a guy's prick. Now if I could just teach you how to take it the-"
"The handkerchief," she commanded. "Give it to me now."
He reached into a back pocket for the handkerchief and tossed it at her. "Careful you don't wipe any on that pretty face," he joked. "Causes warts, you know."
She ignored the crude humor and began to masturbate him in deliberate fashion, all the while maintaining a tight grip around the penile shaft. After a few minutes, she felt Eddie quiver with impending orgasm. He writhed under the wheel, legs thrashing over the shift. Then he began to pant, the husky intake and exhalation of air filling the car and drowning out the sound of her own rapid breathing.
"Harder!" he begged, seizing her right hand.
Amy covered the organ's head with the handkerchief and finished him in three vigorous swipes before losing the shaft. Through the handkerchief's fabric, she felt the molten drops of hot cum burst from the uretha's entrance. Yes, she knew exactly what was happening, and why. As soon as his erection subsided, Eddie would be docile and easy to control. He'd kiss her and tell her he didn't know what came over him. Then he'd drive her in and bid her goodnight at the sorority house door. The ritual never varied.
"Terrific," Eddie grunted, pushing her away and rising to a sitting position again. He put his penis away and tossed the handkerchief out the window. Only when he was ready to drive again did he lean close to her and brush her cheek with his lips. "Okay?" he inquired. "You're not. .. ?"
"I'm fine, Eddie," she assured him, having donned her bra and blouse again. "Please take me in. It's almost one a.m."
He patted her shoulder. "I didn't mean some of the things I said. You know how it is when a guy-"
"I know."
Sala put a hand on the coupe's ignition, then hesitated. "Listen, if you're still-"
"Eddie, I said I'm fine!" she flared. "Don't you hear well?"
He cranked the car and headed them back out to the main road. Conversation between the pair wasn't. They listened to an all-night rock station instead, exchanging occasional glances at one another. The twenty-minute drive back to the Davis campus seemed to take an hour. When Sala braked in front of the sorority house, Amy wasn't sorry. She'd seen enough of him for one evening.
"Tomorrow night?" he asked.
She considered. "I don't think so, Eddie. I want to go home this weekend. There are some things I need for finals. Maybe we can get together again before vacation."
Under the light of an outside pole, he grinned at her. "I hope so. What kind of a vacation would I have without Amy Fortune?"
She accepted his goodnight kiss and reached for the door handle. Going up the sorority house steps, she had to force herself to look back and wave. Even if she was still intact, somehow she felt soiled and used by Eddie Sala. She didn't think she'd ever go out with him again.
In her room, she locked the door and began to undress, removing each garment with special care in front of a full-length mirror. If there was vanity in the way she perused her soft curves and smooth legs, the vanity was justified. Amy knew she was a beautiful girl. No one had to tell her. She'd even sent her photo and measurements, together with a recommendation from a friend of her mother's, a one-time professional model, to an agency in New York, although she didn't expect a reply, much less an offer.
Pirouetting, she examined her physical assets with a critical eye. Dark brown, shoulder-length hair complemented a creamy complexion. The face was interesting, if a trifle wary. The belly was flat, the breasts high and firm, if unspectacular. Her legs were her chief feature. Long and perfectly molded, they lent her an air of proud dignity which drew admiring male glances wherever she went.
A key rattled in the door. Amy spun to snatch up her bra and panties, succeeding in putting them on before Mary Helen, her roommate, came inside. The modesty was a carryover from a restrictive upbringing and not characteristic of the relationship she and Mary Helen enjoyed. Usually, they undressed in front of one another without a trace of self-consciousness. Tonight, thanks to Eddie, Amy didn't want Mary Helen to see her nude.
The latter opened the door, saw what had been taking place, and smiled. "Taking inventory, honey?" she teased, tossing honey-blonde hair.
Amy laughed and drew away her bra, blushing in spite of herself. "In a way. I want to know if there's enough of me. Do you think I'm ready for the world?"
Mary Helen, a year older and with vastly more experience, eyed the younger girl in near-envy. "If I were a man, I'd say yes. Since I'm your roommate and a catty person, I say no. You're just not there yet." She winked. "That's a lie and we both know it. If you're not there, love, no one is. Have a hard time with Eddie?"
Amy made a face. "How did you know? A real hard time, in more ways than one."
Mary Helen laughed. "Let me translate that. Eddie wanted to, you didn't want to. So you compromised. He went away satisfied and you came in wound up like a spring. Why don't you quit fighting it?"
"Why don't you mind your own business?"
Amy retorted. But it was all in good fun. She was a virgin, Mary Helen wasn't. They'd traded jibes this way from pledge ship on and both were used to it by now.
"I'll sleep well tonight, honey, while you're tossing on your pretty backside. Think about it."
Amy turned and walked to her closet, tingling inside. Mary Helen had driven away before eight with a football player named Chris Ethridge. Ethridge was said to have enough determination and skill to enjoy, on the first date, any girl he took out. "Does that mean what I think it does?"
Mary Helen began shrugging out of a dress that, to judge from the wrinkles, she'd already been out of at least once tonight. "If you think Chris and I. . . yes. I let him. He was good and I'm not sorry. I feel great. We were careful, so I won't have to worry. Do you want the details, dear?"
Amy shook her head. "No." But after the lights were out and she could hear Mary Helen's deep breathing across the room, she found that she was curious about the details. Not enough to wake her friend and ask her, of course. Enough to lie awake and conjure up delicious images of a naked Mary Helen writhing on a car seat underneath a muscular football player named Chris Ethridge. When the mental images became too bright, Amy applied the point of one finger to an area just above her own clitoris. By stroking the area through three consecutive orgasms, she was able to calm her fevered body.
She slept.
CHAPTER TWO
On Wednesday, between her biology final and a break for lunch, Amy drove to the campus post office to pick up her morning's mail. Along with a letter from home and a notice from the business office about a past-due account, she found a very thin, very important-looking letter with a metered airmail stamp. The outside of the envelope bore the inscription, DAVID ENLOWE MODELING AGENCY, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y.
In no particular state of excitement, she tore open the letter and read. After the opening line, nonchalance turned to disbelief, disbelief to delight: Dear Miss Fortune: You will be pleased, I'm sure, to learn that the agency's co-director and I have decided to give you a tryout as part of our summer promotional campaign. Your photo and resume impressed me personally and the agency in general.
However, I must caution you. You come at your own risk. The agency will reimburse you for traveling and living expenses, but we can make you no offer until we see you in person and photograph you on our sets.
Do we understand one another?
If you're interested, fly up on June 11th and arrange to be in our suites on the morning of the twelfth. Tell our receptionist who you are, show her this letter, and ask for Miss Gabriel.
Sincerely, Wanda Gabriel for David Enlowe Agency Amy read the letter twice, three times, finally realized she'd been practically rushed by a major modeling agency. There was no offer, true enough. Only the possibility of one. Still, she had trouble keeping her feet on the ground. Stuffing the letter into her purse, she rushed out to jump into her Celica-the car had been an early graduation present from a doting father-and drove off in search of someone, anyone, to share the news.
Davis University enrolled 16,000 students, most of them strangers to her. Nonetheless, she spotted, at the corner of Memorial Drive and College Boulevard, a professor who'd signed her application for a degree. Impulsively, she pulled to the curb and hailed him. "Dr. Borchardt! Do you have a minute? I have something to tell you! It's very important!"
Borchardt, a tall, blond man with steel-rimmed glasses and a slight stoop, appeared more startled than pleased to see her. His usually pallid face was a bright red today, caused, no doubt, by too many hours in an afternoon sun. He stopped dead still, peered at her, then ambled to the curb. "Miss Fortune? It is you, isn't it?"
"Yes," she smiled, "and I'm going to New York to model. Isn't that exciting?" Amy waved the letter under his nose.
"If it's true," Borchardt allowed, hiccupping. "Remember, all that glitters ..."
"If you'll get in, I'll let you read it," Amy proposed, because she hated to see him standing in a hot sun. But she regretted the invitation as soon as it was out. Borchardt raised his head and gave her a whiff of the alcohol on his breath. She hadn't even known he drank.
"My curiosity's up," the professor chuckled, and went around the Celica's rear end to climb in the passenger side. He settled into a bucket seat which could barely contain him and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. "The letter, please."
Amy gave it to him and waited for his reaction. Not, she reminded herself, that it necessarily be a sober one. She waited a minute. "Well?"
Borchardt sighed and hiccupped again. "It looks genuine. And I know how most girls would jump at an opportunity to model. Even you. I wish you luck, my dear. When they see you, though, I don't think you'll need it. The luck, I mean. You're the fairest on the campus, in my opinion. I see them all, you know."
Amy glowed, forgetting about the whiskey on Borchardt's breath. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll remember what you said when I get to New York. Can I take you anywhere now?"
Borchardt stared out through the import's windshield, although he seemed to look sidelong at her legs, too. "Yes. Take me by my office, if it doesn't put you out. I have some finals to score."
She tucked the letter into her handbag and sent them darting up the street, taking a right at the library and braking two blocks later in front of the School of Education. When Borchardt stepped out, he hesitated, wavered a little, then smiled ruefully at her.
"I seem to be a little woozy on my feet. I wonder if you'd help me inside and up the stairs. I'd be a grateful man, Miss Fortune."
Without considering the consequences, Amy shut off the Celica's ignition and got out to place a palm under one of Borchardt's elbows. The elbow seemed steadier than it should have been, but she said nothing. With finals on and most students indoors, there were few people watching. No one paid them any mind. She helped Borchardt through the glass door and into an elevator, usually crammed with riders but today standing open and silent. Borchardt patted her arm when the door slid shut.
"You're a credit to your sex, my dear. There should be more young people like you."
Amy noticed that his face was no longer quite so ruddy or his eyes quite so runny, but the respect she had for him drowned out the warning signals in her brain. She'd been in James Borchardt's office many times, and never had he behaved outrageously toward her. Even as she followed him inside and watched as he closed the door, Amy felt no apprehension. She trusted him.
Borchardt sat down on the desk edge and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "There's sherry in the far cabinet," he mumbled. "We can celebrate your good luck."
To refuse would have been rude, so she nodded yes. Borchardt came down off the desk edge and glided to the filing cabinet. The gray steel structure seemed to double as a liquor cache. Amy's eyes widened when she saw the extent-and variety-of its contents. There was Scotch and bourbon, a little gin and vodka, even a fifth of tequila. But Borchardt came back with two small tumblers and a bottle of sherry. He poured for both of them and stood smiling into her eyes while she sipped it.
Amy began to wonder. .. and worry. Doctor Borchardt was a married man, but right now he wasn't acting like one. He had a reputation as a teetotaler, but maintained a miser's hoard of spirits. Plainly everything in the adult world wasn't as it appeared. "Have you given your last final?" she asked, to cover her nervousness.
Borchardt nodded. "When I finish with the scoring, I'll leave for Europe on sabbatical. Probably spend most of it at the University of Glasgow."
"How nice for you," Amy said, and meant it.
Borchardt's gaze fell to her breasts and beyond. He licked his lips. In a single swallow, he drained his glass and put it down. When he looked at her, his eyes glistened with a strange fire. "You're very beautiful, child," he said huskily, advancing upon her a step. "If I had a daughter, I'd want her to look exactly like you."
"Thank you," the girl said, wanting to leave, yet frozen to the spot. Her hand with the sherry trembled so that she had to steady it with the other. She asked herself if Borchardt had locked the door. She didn't think so, but she wasn't at all sure.
The professor paused in front of her and took the sherry from her hand. Guiding the hand carefully, he placed it over a swelling prominence below his waist. "There," he said, smiling. "Now you know why I asked you up here."
Amy was stunned. She tried to jerk the hand away, but he wouldn't let her. "Doctor Borchardt!" she protested, and felt her face turn a deep, burning red. The swelling was discernible now as a full-fledged hard-on. The sheer size of it amazed her. Excited her, too, but she struggled to keep excitement off her face.
"Kiss me," he commanded, bending his head to allow it.
"I don't want-I don't think ..." She trailed off in confusion.
"Miss Fortune!" Borchardt exclaimed in open hurt. "Didn't I do you a favor just last week, on that exam paper?"
"Yes, and I-"
"And didn't I guide you through your studies, warning you away from certain courses, recommending certain instructors, praising you when you deserved it, chastising you when you'd earned it?"
Slowly, Amy nodded. "Yes. You've done all those things. And I'm grateful. Really I am."
"Then kiss me."
She stood on tiptoe and pressed soft lips to his hard ones. Because he released her hand and crushed her in his arms, the kiss lasted a minute, then two. Finally, she wasn't kissing him out of obligation. She was kissing him out of need. Knotting his hands in her hair, he turned her face to one side and wormed his tongue between her lips. When he began stroking the roof of her mouth in strong, even swipes, she moaned, going limp inside.
Borchardt moved his hands to her shoulders, gently kneading the flesh there, and then to her breasts, covering each one with such light pressure that she was hardly aware of it. Coordinating a subtle palm action with a rhythmic suckling of her palate, he succeeded in awaking a crying need in her.
Amy shuddered at the quick, sure way she'd been aroused. An Eddie or a Chris might have overwhelmed her with a peremptory approach. Jim Borchardt, with his older vantage point and his polished skills, broke down her defenses as easily as he might have broken down an unprepared student. Still, she feared him, feared his motives. He wasn't drunk, he just wasn't the Jim Borchardt she knew. "Please!" she breathed, when he broke to catch his breath. "I-I don't want this."
Borchardt chuckled. Grasping her by the arm, he tweaked the points of her breasts until they strained against her bra cups. "Of course you do, child. You're going out to face an uncertain world, and I'm going to give you a proper send-off. Anyone tough enough for the New York fashion scene is tough enough to handle herself here in my office. How about it?"
She stared at him, shocked. 'Wo. Please, Doctor, I mean it. I-I'm not the girl you may think I am. I'm . . . still intact."
"No!" Borchardt echoed.
Amy bowed her head. "It's true. You'd think that being in college, with dates almost every night, with roommates who don't pull any punches about what they do and with whom . . . but it hasn't happened. I'm still a virgin. Try to believe me."
"I do believe you," he assured her, stroking her hair. "I'm just surprised, that's all. You're such a healthy, such a vital person, I naturally assumed ..." Borchardt's eyes narrowed. "Surely you aren't afraid. You must know about contraception and how to protect yourself. You-"
"I know." Amy clipped the words because she detected, or thought she detected, scorn. "I just haven't... I haven't met the one I want to give myself to." She flushed. "It sounds corny, I know, but that's the way I feel. Thank you for the sherry. Now I'll just be on my-" She gasped. Borchardt had covered her mouth with his again. He was kissing her now with a tenderness which made her head spin. She slipped trembling arms around his neck and kissed him back.
When he started on her blouse's buttons, she didn't try to stop him. Nor did she protest when he drew it away and reached behind her to unhook her bra. Dropping both garments on the desk, he began to fondle her breasts in time with his kissing, squeezing their roseate tips until they thrust straight out in tingling acknowledgment. At the same time, he jammed a knee between hers until she felt the hardness against her crotch.
Amy moaned into his mouth, but whether the moan expressed fear or anticipation, even she herself wasn't certain. She only knew that he'd reached her, that in some older-man fashion he'd evoked a response no one else ever had before. She wanted to savor the response, yet keep it in check.
Borchardt seemed aware of no such restriction. He wandered away from her mouth and trailed hot kisses down her throat. When he reached her breasts, he first drank the moisture between them, lapping away with his tongue at the beads of perspiration. Then he kissed his way around each full mound, gradually reaching the nipple area. Closing cautious lips around the left tit, he nibbled and sucked it to greater engorgement.
Amy, beginning to cream, felt the knee between her legs force them farther apart. She relaxed as much as she dared the counter-pressure of thighs that seemed to have a resistance of their own. Years of instinctive tensing were hard to break. Perhaps impossible to break.
Borchardt moved to the nipple of her right breast and suckled like a baby, holding her under the armpits as though he feared she might escape. When the right tit reached a bursting point, he opened his mouth farther and gobbled it up, raking the turgid point across his palate. The rough projections made the nipple's erectile powers redouble. Returning to its fellow, he outdid his previous performance, punctuating the accomplishment with a few additional hitches of his knee.
Amy quivered on the very brink of orgasm. Her panties were so wet she wondered if he could feel them through two layers of fabric. Just when she thought she'd climax in his arms, without his having ever removed her skirt or panties, he stopped and raised the one, removing his knee to allow it. When he hooked strong thumbs inside her panties' waistband and began to tug them off her hips, she lost her inertia and began to struggle with him, passion yielding to panic. "No! I don't want this, Doctor! Believe me, I don't! Please let me go!"
Rather than reply, Borchardt lifted her off the floor and set her on the desk edge. Pushing her down flat, he rolled the panties off her slim thighs and down her legs. Then, while she lay stiff-legged, uncertain whether to scream, fight him, or just lie there, he spread her legs apart and lowered his head to an unaccustomed task. "Doctor!"
"You can't stop me. Relax and try to enjoy it." Borchardt's admonition seemed to come from far away, because he'd already buried his face in her cunt. Beginning with a few brief swirls around the tender skin of her inner thighs, he tongued his way past the outer lips to the delicate folds of flesh immediately below her clitoris. Deftly, teasingly, he circled the little organ, never crossing the head, yet never straying far from this center of feminine feeling.
Amy opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The sensations down below were too acute, too electrifying for words to express. She clenched her fists and curled her toes in silent appreciation. If she'd been hot with shame when he started, now she was warm with wonder. So this was what Eddie and the others had meant when they'd threatened To "eat her up." All of a sudden she wanted to be eaten. She wanted to know what she'd missed.
As though he divined the fact, Borchardt began to nibble at her labia, gnawing the slippery flesh until it filled with blood. When she thought she'd die from excitement, he suddenly took her clit between his teeth and sucked it as he would a cream-filled chocolate.
"Yes, yes!" the girl sobbed, pounding him with her fists. "Do that. Please do that for me."
Borchardt paused to position his palms under each of her buttocks, then he resumed the tongue-and-teeth play, intensifying the caress with a rhythmic squeezing of her buttocks. He seemed to be enjoying the seduction almost as much as she, because his breath was coming in noisy pants.
For Amy an orgasm began which was to continue unabated for more than a minute, a paroxysm of feeling with peaks and dips like a stockbroker's chart. She whimpered and she cried. She dug sharp nails into Borchardt's shoulders and thrashed about so violently he had trouble holding her. Then she arched her back, threw back her head and let the finish toss her as it would. Afterwards, she felt spent, completely drained of feeling.
When she raised her head, Borchardt had stood up, a foolish smile on his face. Amy saw in alarm that he was unbuttoning his trousers, preparing to . . . "No!" she bleated, because she had no intention of giving her virginity to Jim Borchardt, no matter how good his "head" was. "I didn't promise you that."
A sulky, almost dogged look came across his face. "I could force you."
She smiled up at him to conceal her fright. "But you won't. It would destroy my memories of you. You don't want that, do you?" Amy held her breath.
Slowly, reluctantly, Borchardt shook his head. The gleam of conquest left his eyes. He turned away. "Get your clothes and get out."
She was only too happy to leave.
CHAPTER THREE
"Daddy, be reasonable!" Amy wailed, remembering to keep her voice down, so the words wouldn't get beyond her father's paneled office. "This is an opportunity I'll never have again. Never. If you don't let me take it, I'll-I'll hate you." She knew she could never hate the handsome man on the other side of the desk, no matter how hard she tried. He'd given her everything a restless girl could want, including lots of love to compensate for a missing mother.
Tyler Fortune shook his gray-and-silver head. A thickening man in his early fifties, he'd been appointed early to the bench, on the basis of a successful law practice and an equally successful term as a prosecutor. "I'm sorry, Amelia, but I won't hear of it. You should have consulted with me first. No daughter of mine's running off to New York to be a fashion model. Not when she's never even been out of the state alone."
"An agency model," she corrected. "They last longer and the work's not so strenuous."
Her father shrugged. "Whatever. The point is, I want you at home until you decide what you want to do with your life. Now let's talk about something else. Finding a husband for you doesn't have to be at the top of our list, but let's consider it, too, shall we?" He smiled at her.
Amy shook a fist at him. "Still the chauvinist. I expected better of you. Very well. I'll have to put on the gloves."
Tyler Fortune looked interested. "Put on the gloves? That's not an expression I've ever heard you use before, kitten."
"That's because I'm not your 'kitten' anymore," she retorted, not meaning to hurt him but wanting, this once, to assert the independence he'd always dangled just out of reach, like water for a thirsty man. "Daddy, I want this," she pleaded. "I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life before. Please let me go. If I'm accepted, I can earn my own money. If I'm not, why, where's the harm? At least I'll know I couldn't make it. If I stay at home for another summer, I may never know. Don't you see?"
Tyler Fortune's face softened. "I think I do. You want to try something for yourself. Something only you can do, that no one else can do for you."
"That's it!" she said eagerly, leaning forward.
"You do see."
He chuckled. "Yes, but I'm still not happy about it. With your mother gone, I'd like to keep you with me for a few more years. What's the matter? Aren't I enough for you anymore? Why do you want to leave your old dad?"
Amy jumped up to run around the desk and plant a kiss on his cheek. To hug him, too, and rumple his hair. "You'll always be enough for me, Daddy. I love you so much it hurts to think of leaving you. But I can't be a little girl always, can I? Don't I have the right to grow up?"
"I suppose so," Tyler Fortune sighed. "Heavens, you certainly don't look like a little girl anymore," he added, eyeing her almost-ripe figure. "I bet those young bucks at the university can hardly keep their hands off you. Do they?"
"Daddy!" she scolded, blushing. "You promised not to ever pry into my personal life."
"So I did, so I did. Well, I trust you to behave yourself in New York, too. You'll get propositions aplenty, none of them worth the breath it takes to turn them down. Do we understand one another, kitten?" Chin thrust out in mock-belligerent fashion, he leaned close to look into her eyes.
Amy nodded, hoping her own gaze didn't waver.
"Fine. Now when do you expect to leave, assuming I don't change my mind and you don't change yours?"
"On the afternoon of the 11th. They expect me up there on the morning of the 12th."
Tyler Fortune looked relieved. "That leaves us almost a week together. You'll fly?"
She hesitated, wanting to take her car, realizing she'd jeopardize the whole venture if she insisted. "I'll fly. Unless you think I can-"
"I don't. How about a wardrobe? You'll need more than the baggage limit if you expect to hack it up there. Shall I ship your things up by rail?"
Amy smiled, trailing cool lingers through his hair. "I was hoping that, under the circumstances . . . well, my wardrobe's a little dated, Daddy. I'll need fresh new things. Can't you . . . ?" She coaxed him with a kiss.
Her father winced. "That's what I was afraid of. 'Earn your own money,' you said. Will $1,000 keep you from going bare?"
"It's a start. If I pay you back before the 4th, will you let me take my car?"
"I'll think about it," Tyler Fortune promised. "Show me a State of New York driver's license, and we'll do business." He glanced at his watch. "Past your lunch hour, isn't it? Why don't you go home and make yourself some sandwiches? Start dinner, too, if you can't find anything else to do. I should be along about four or so. I have a preliminary hearing and a conference with county probation officers. Try to get along without me."
Amy got up to retrieve her handbag. She blew him a kiss from the door and left the chamber. Outside she passed the desk and clacking typewriter of her father's secretary, a svelte redhead named Barbara. The latter looked up to smile. Amy smiled back. "Congratulate me. I'm going to New York to model. Daddy's just given me permission."
Barbara, who was twenty-eight and quite a stunner in her own right, inclined her head. "Congratulations. I should be envious and I am. But at least" She winked. "I'll have your father all to myself."
Amy laughed, because she couldn't imagine her father, who was fifty-four, dallying with a girl half his age, widower or not. Oh, he had an occasional dinner date with a widow friend or made up a less frequent threesome with married friends, but affairs? No. He didn't have them. Amy was sure of it. She hurried on to her car.
As she pressed the key into the Celica's ignition, she realized that her gloves still lay on her father's desk where she'd left them. Annoyed, she climbed out to fetch them, loathing the feel of sweaty palms on a warm steering wheel. But upstairs she discovered a sign hanging on the hall door outside her father's chambers. The sign said, "Do Not Disturb-The Judge Is In Conference." Puzzled, because the conference rooms were on the next floor, Amy tried the door. Surprisingly, the door wasn't locked. On tiptoes, because she really did want her gloves back, and with a minimum of inconvenience to anyone, she went inside. The room-really Barbara's office-was empty and dark. Light came through the transom from her father's private chamber. Amy, her curiosity up, put an ear to the door, which she had no intention of entering. She expected to hear two or more male voices discussing a weighty judicial problem. Instead, she heard a man's low drawl and a woman's throaty laugh.
The shock of knowing her father, her own dear father, was involved with his secretary, cut to the quick. Amy felt the tears come to her eyes, and fought them back, realizing why she felt the way she felt. Once upon a time her father had belonged to only her. Now she was sharing him with another woman. With a-a strumpet.
She whirled and marched to the door, intending to storm from the building and drive away with tires screaming-the stereotyped reaction of all scorned women. Common sense and curiosity prevailed. She wasn't a scorned woman, Amy reminded herself. She was a daughter, not a wife. Her father could be permitted a fling or two, provided he didn't make a fool of himself. She could understand it without condoning it.
As she stepped quietly into the hall, however, a malicious idea came. She went back inside and locked the door. Then she carried Barbara's swivel chair to the transom and climbed up to peep through the half-washed glass. She saw her father, his shirt open at the collar, his tie on the desk in front of him, sitting in the straight-backed chair where she herself had been sitting ten minutes before. Tyler Fortune looked relaxed and contented, probably because Barbara, still fully dressed, sat in his lap.
Amy braced herself against the door jamb and shrank lower until only her eye would have been visible to the pair inside. She watched as Barbara slipped her arms around Tyler Fortune's neck. He kissed her on the lips, then began nuzzling her throat as Barbara laughingly held him off. When he returned to her lips, she left off playing and kissed him back. Soon the two, their arms clasping one another, were maintaining the longest embrace Amy had ever seen. The quiver of throat muscles and the play of fingers attested to more than mere lip contact. Her father was Frenching Barbara, and vice versa.
The girl outside began to tremble from excitement. She had to stop and steady herself. We've seen enough! she thought. He's my father, and we've no right to watch. But she found that she couldn't tear herself away. Whatever happened next, she had to know. For her own peace of mind, she had to know.
Tyler Fortune's right hand had covered Barbara's left breast. The girl twisted in his lap to make the breast more accessible. He used his left hand to cover the right breast and began to manipulate them through her dress front, apparently in time with his Frenching. Barbara tried to get closer to him, even kicking off her shoes and locking her legs inside his.
After a few minutes, the pair broke and looked at one another. Some kind of nonverbal message was exchanged. Tyler Fortune began on the buttons of Barbara's blouse, brown fingers racing from hole to hole. He tugged the garment from inside her skirt and lifted it off, she raising her arms to facilitate it. So fast Amy could only gape in astonishment, he unhooked Barbara's bra and laid it on the desk, atop the blouse. A pleased smile on his face, he began to play with the girl's tits, tweaking and plucking their points until even Amy outside could see their considerable engorgement.
Barbara, for her part, dropped a casual hand to Tyler's crotch and began to fondle him there, making no great manipulative effort, simply taking hold of him. He made a remark which she found funny, but Amy couldn't pick it up. Her eyes widened when she saw her father lean forward and kiss one of Barbara's big boobs. The kiss lasted so long, Amy realized it was no kiss at all-he was sucking like a baby.
After similar attention to the other breast, her father reached under Barbara's short skirt and groped until he found what he sought. For fifteen minutes he devoted serious attention to the structures under there, accompanying his caresses with more suckling. Barbara's pretty face lost its jaunty look. Now it was glazed and taut. She began to squirm around on Tyler's lap in a way that made her excitement plain, even halting her jacking.
Amy, trying not to remember that the man inside the room was her own father, realized how little, how deplorably little she knew about adult sexuality. A young woman could find an older man attractive, and a man "past" the peak of sexual activity could be capable of a powerful, sustained response. The realization was made more pungent by the circumstances. If she were caught, she'd be punished severely, and probably disinherited. There were two older children for Tyler Fortune to leave his estate to, both boys.
Barbara got up briefly to take off her panties, then sat back down again. This time Tyler Frenched her while he fingered the structures so obsessive to a man. Barbara's moans of pleasure penetrated the door and transom to Amy's fascinated ears. The latter felt her own juices start to flow when Barbara, almost smothering her partner, thrashed out what must have been only the first of many climaxes.
As soon as she'd finished, Tyler pushed Barbara off his lap and stood up to undress. Amy, out of respect for her father, almost got down from the chair. Sheer excitement and a sense of daring kept her rooted to the spot. She saw Tyler take off his shirt and step out of his trousers. When he dropped his shorts, Amy nearly fainted. Her father owned the largest sexual organ in the world. She was sure of it. Tyler Fortune, whatever his other qualities, was a gray-haired stallion.
He sat back down and Barbara, who had finished undressing, too, lowered herself carefully on his huge penis. She seemed to be saying something, only the words didn't carry. Then she was securely seated, a leg on either side of her partner's. In rough concert, they began to move, she bouncing up and down in his lap, he twirling her from side to side as though ... as though, Amy thought in amusement, she were a milk churn. The comparison was both apt and ludicrous. But in less than a minute, Tyler Fortune brought his secretary to orgasm, judging from the change of expression on Barbara's face. A dreamy smile changed to tight-lidded concentration as she clawed visible marks in her partner's shoulders and uttered sharp sounds that carried through the walls.
The pair wasn't finished. As Amy began to climb down, sure that she was in jeopardy, her father commenced a vigorous counter-assault that held her spellbound. In thrust after thrust, he tried to get inside his partner, lunging half out of the chair with each stroke. Barbara, hanging on for dear life, raised her legs until she lay almost on her back, her head touching Tyler's knees. Mouth gaping, she began making cries that sent the flesh crawling on Amy's neck. Barbara seemed totally freaked-out, the way kids once freaked-out on drugs.
And still her partner labored. He battered her to another climax, and another, until he himself came, falling back with a groan when he'd spent himself inside her. If the two had employed a contraceptive device, Amy didn't know what it was. While there was still time, she got down off the chair, wiped away her footprints, and replaced the chair behind Barbara's desk. As she inched out into the hall, closing the door behind her, the lock from the other room began to turn.
Amy, her gloves forgotten, fled the Huntington County courthouse while there was still time.
CHAPTER FOUR
The plane's P.A. system crackled on: "We will be landing at Kennedy International Airport in five minutes. If you fasten your seat belt now, you will have a safer landing. Please observe the 'No Smoking' signs until you are inside the terminal. Thank you for flying the friendly skies of United."
Amy Fortune closed her eyes and took a deep breath, gathering her courage. It wasn't that she'd never traveled alone before. She'd just never traveled fifteen hundred miles alone before. And she'd never landed at the world's glamorous metropolis at eight-fifteen on a hot June evening.
Before the 707 set down, she tried again to peer through the window. Smog and gathering dusk made the effort even less rewarding than before. There were millions of lights flung out below, however, and not even bad air could blot them out. The lights seemed to cover the entire Atlantic seaboard, and according to a passenger on the other side of the aisle, did. Amy shut out the man's chatter and tried to concentrate on her next move.
She held a handbag in her arms and a flight bag under the seat. Inside the 707's cargo hold were a weekender and a pullman, both belonging to her. Assuming she lost none of it, and she realized the chances were excellent, she'd still need a porter and a taxi. Amy knew about big-city cab strikes, too, especially the wild-cat variety. She hoped Gotham's hacks were still running.
The plane circled twice and landed with scarcely a bump. After an uneasy five minutes when a door jammed, the passengers were allowed to unload. With the others, Amy trooped down the steps into a soft New York twilight, discovering herself lost in a sea of concrete ramps and whining jets, some jumbo-sized. New York was hotter than she expected. Feeling small and all alone, she boarded an airport bus which trundled them almost a mile to the terminal. Inside, she managed to assemble her missing luggage and have it trucked to a waiting cab. Just before nine, she took unreluctant leave of Kennedy International. "Take me to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, please," she instructed the hack's Brooklyn-born driver, and settled back for a fifteen-minute drive.
The ride consumed almost an hour and earned Amy's respect for New York distances. For her father's foresight, too, in having selected a hotel near the David Enlowe Modeling Agency. By ten p.m., an hour later than she expected, she was settled into an eighth-floor single, with a splendid view of Madison Avenue's neon. The room would be her headquarters until she was offered a contract, after which she'd try to find a suitable apartment, with or without a roommate.
If she was offered a contract, Amy corrected, standing before a mirror to see if her face reflected the uncertainty inside her, the homesickness. The face contained a set kind of wariness. There was uncertainty, but no fear. For now she was okay.
Reassured, she went to pick up the phone and dial for an outside line. Tyler Fortune had requested a call as soon as she arrived. He'd get one. Carefully, she picked out the area code and the familiar number back home in Huntington. After a long time-really two minutes or less-a faraway ringing began. On the third ring, someone picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"It's me, Daddy. I'm here. I-I think I'm going to love it."
"Hogwash!" Tyler Fortune scoffed, snorting over the long-distance lines. "You're so homesick it's dripping off your voice. But you can't come home, kitten. Not until you get it out of your system. If I'm to underwrite your independence, you're going to be independent. Do we understand one another, Miss F.?"
Amy smiled at the opposite wall, hating yet admiring her father for being so blunt. "Don't worry, your honor, sir. I'm staying. I want to make it. And when I come home, you may not recognize me." She held her breath.
"And what does that mean?" Tyler Fortune demanded.
"Anything I want it to," she teased.
"Now listen, Amelia. You're not a woman of the world yet, so don't start living like one. I expect you to be the girl-the young lady-you were in Huntington. For your mother's memory and for me. You won't smoke or drink, you won't stay out late, and above all, you won't get into any kind of, shall we say, trouble. The trouble I'm thinking of has nothing to do with police blotters."
"Daddy!" she entreated. "Have you forgotten? I'm your daughter. I know how to handle myself."
Her father was briefly silent, as though he'd forgotten, or perhaps because he was flustered. "I know, you feel grown-up, kitten, but inside you may not be quite so mature yet. For your own sake, be careful. That's all I ask. I love you very much, you know, and I want to see you happy."
"I love you, too," Amy assured him, sobering. "I'll remember everything you're telling me, Daddy. And I'll try to do all the things you asked. Within reason." She crossed her fingers after this last statement.
"How's the weather up there?"
"Hot. My air-conditioning's almost pooped. If it goes, I'll have to ask for another room." That's the spirit. Get what you're paying for and pay for what you're getting. Well, kitten, if you have nothing more to tell me . . ."
Amy, in a sudden spirit of daring, decided to bait her father. "How's Barbara, Daddy?"
"Barbara? She's fine. Why do you ask about her?"
"Oh, no special reason. You two just seem to .. . hit it off together. I was wondering if maybe . . . you know. I mean, there's no reason why you couldn't. Do we understand one another, Daddy?"
"You're rude, presumptuous and impertinent, young lady!" Tyler Fortune barked. "There isn't anything between my secretary and me, and never will be. I wouldn't consider marrying her. Does that answer your question?"
Amy was astonished, both by the vehemence of the denial and its untruth. Hurt, too, because once she'd thought her father incapable of lying. She'd never feel the same about him again. "Yes. I'm sorry, Daddy. I respect your privacy. I won't ever pry again."
"That's better," her father grunted, his voice falling to its normal pitch and recovering its accustomed timbre. "Give me a goodnight kiss and hang up. This call is costing me a week of brown-bag lunches."
Amy puckered her lips, touched them to the phone, and transmitted the appropriate sounds. "Goodnight, Daddy. Have a good week. Write me if you can. Room 832, the Ritz-Carlton, New York." She broke the connection.
After showering and changing to a cool summer knit, she elevatored downstairs to eat a late dinner. The Ritz-Carlton's dining room was almost empty. Amy, conscious of the scrutiny of more footloose men than she would see in a week in Huntington, ordered and ate a salad, a vegetable, a small steak and lemon chiffon pie. After finishing her coffee, she noticed that one man's scrutiny was bolder than any of the others. When she got up to pay, he got up, too, and followed her to the cashier's cage. Frightened-and ashamed of it-she left the dining room, ran into the nearest elevator, and pressed the button for the eighth floor.
Rather than going out again and risking another blow to her confidence, she locked herself in her room. She had the entire summer to solve the mystery of New York men, Amy reasoned, but only one night to rebuild her confidence. Confidence, she'd learned, was success' mainspring.
As she unlocked the weekender, something fell out. A book. Puzzled, because she hadn't remembered packing any books, Amy picked it up. The title was starkly blunt: A Young Woman's Guide To Contraception. She smiled. The smile turned to giggles and the giggles to helpless laughter. Her father. The old fake wasn't quite the Puritan he pretended to be. He wanted her to protect herself, and he'd even armed her with the means to do it. Obliquely, of course.
She lay down, adjusted the light and began to read. On page 16 she learned something she'd already suspected: Sexual pleasure in and of itself is no longer a male prerogative. Women can have it, too, and should. Nor is sex the exclusive domain of marriage. Sexual activity usually begins many years before marriage is contemplated.
The latter, in fact, may never occur at all and is no longer cause for social opprobrium. . . .
Amy wondered if her father had read this passage. . . . Having established that sex is a natural and pleasurable part of the growing-up process, with the extent and range of activity up to the individual herself, we want to devote ourselves to the ways in which a girl can protect herself from undesirable consequences of sexual activity. The one undesirable consequence that most concerns the girl herself is pregnancy. It is the aim of this book to explain the ways in which pregnancy can be prevented, safely and with a minimum of inconvenience.
She turned to Chapter Two and discovered that: The condom is still the cheapest and most reliable contraceptive device by far, and has the further advantages of preventing venereal disease and deadening male sensitivity-a frequent problem in burgeoning young relationships. The condom, or "rubber," as it's commonly called, is available behind the counter or on the shelves at most drug stores. For those who hesitate to advertise their intentions, there are coin dispensers in filling station restrooms.
A few precautions are in order. To be effective, the condom must be applied before the man's penis is introduced into the woman's vagina. Too many young couples discover, to their eventual grief, that pausing before orgasm has occurred, isn't enough. Enough sperm may have seeped into the young man's pre-ejaculate to cause pregnancy. Nor is there any hit-or-miss to application. The condom should be rolled on carefully, with the aid of a lubricant if possible, although most prophylactics are packaged with a lubricant, beginning at the penile head and proceeding up the shaft as far as possible. Room should be allowed at the tip for the semen ejaculation. Otherwise, the condom may burst at the moment it's needed most.
Amy shivered, although the room's air-conditioning left a great deal to be desired. For a girl alone at night in a strange city, a bursting condom wasn't the most pleasant of bedtime preoccupations. She read on: The condom's major drawback is that it must be removed soon after ejaculation. The reasons are obvious. At the first loss of erection, the condom may slip off the penile shaft, making contraception a precarious thing at best. . . .
Amy, who'd learned enough about condoms and their use, moved on to Chapter Three, where douching was the subject: By far and away the least reliable contraceptive measure, douching, nonetheless, retains a kind of negative importance. Negative because any efficacy it may have results as a consequence of its being used after an act of intercourse rather than before. Naturally, the benefits are less. A young lady relying on douching as a preventive may be due a nine-pound, four-ounce surprise. The procedure should be used only in conjunction with other, more proven methods. However, if it's employed at all, speed is of the essence. . . .
The reference to speed made Amy hasten on to Chapter Five, which was all about The Pill: Too much has been written about "The Pill" to even summarize in this chapter. Suffice it to say that the oral contraceptive pill, in its different forms and under its many brands, constitutes the only significant contraceptive break-through in modern times. Despite the risks, some of which are grave, millions of women continue to use them in the almost certain knowledge that pregnancy will be thwarted, no matter how many acts of intercourse are completed. The failure rate is negligible and results usually because of human carelessness.
Unfortunately for the young, "The Pill" is available only by prescription and only on the recommendation of licensed physicians. However, many college clinics and most family planning centers will prescribe oral contraceptives upon assurances that marriage is a possibility. .. .
Amy tried to imagine herself, a small-town judge's daughter, queuing up outside a "family planning center" for a month's supply of birth control pills. She couldn't. But less than two months before, she wouldn't have been able to imagine herself alone in New York City, seeking a modeling career for herself. Yet, here she was. And here she hoped to stay.
Aside from an unsightly rash afflicting the face and chest of some users, the risks appear twofold. Women using oral contraceptives for any length of time report weight increases varying from individual to individual. The chances of acquiring cancer also seem somewhat greater for users than non-users. A woman considering "The Pill" as her major means of contraception would do well to also consider these possibilities.
Chapter Seven of A Young Woman's Guide to Contraception dealt with miscellaneous birth-control methods:
Diaphragms for unmarried women are usually impractical, for the reason that they must be expertly fitted by a trained physician, and how many girls would ask? The procedure consists of measuring the cervix' diameter and fitting a cap over the opening, preventing the passage of sperm. Proponents claim a high rate of effectiveness and only one drawback: the cover may pop off without its wearer's knowledge. Surprises, it is said, come in many packages. . . .
Intrauterine devices (IUDS), on the other hand, offer a measure of security as well as simplicity of operation. Consisting of chrome or plastic rings-inert, to assure against a chemical reaction-implanted in the walls of the uterus, IUDS have been used since the beginning of time. No one is quite sure how they work, only that they do-most of the time. However, they must be inserted by someone qualified. Removal is difficult. A woman hoping to someday be a mother would be wise to avoid IUDS.
On the patent medicine shelves of most pharmacies are various creams, sprays and tablets, all with some sperm-killing action, none more reliable than a prayer. Some of the spermicidal's, particularly the foam sprays, have been massively advertised, without, in any way, improving their effectiveness. Save your money.
A young couple in the throes of sexual desire have been known to use many objects and/or sub stances to accomplish contraception. A few work. Most don't. Saran wrap is a good makeshift condom. A toy balloon isn't. A mild douching solution does kill sperm. Coke-and-gin or coke-and-any thing doesn't. Use of the latter may result in dangerous infection.
One specific birth-control procedure deserves special mention. It has to do with a young man's withdrawing his penis from his partner's vagina before he's ejaculated. This method is known as coitus interruptus. Coitus interruptus has resulted in more pregnancies than all the world's X-rated films combined. . . .
Amy's chin nodded as she digested this bit of wisdom. More pregnancies than all the world's X-rated films combined. More pregnancies . . .
She slept, the book falling forward to the floor.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Turn, please. Slowly. We want to see all of you, not just your strong points."
Amy did as she was ordered, concealing her resentment behind a smile. For the first time in her life, she understood how cattle must feel. She'd had her hair done and purchased a new outfit at McCutcheon and Company, so she knew she made a good impression, not only for Wanda Gabriel, in whose office she stood, but for the small retinue of lookers-on present-two photographers and the agency's assistant director, a slim, brooding young man named Bruce. David Enlowe, Amy had learned, was dead. Killed three years before in a skiing accident in Vermont. His picture hung on the wall.
Wanda Gabriel, seated beside a huge, slab desk which seemed to double as a conference table, was a former model herself, a strikingly beautiful woman with shoulder-length black hair and a creamy complexion. Wanda was a has-been at thirty-too old for ad agencies obsessed with their clients' quest for an ever-young, ever-vital market.
"The breasts are good. So are the hips. Keep them slim. Otherwise. . ." Wanda gave an expressive shrug. Russ, the short, dark photographer who'd been sizing up the new girl in half-bored, half-insolent fashion, nodded. Terry, whose blond hair showed no recent efforts with a comb, sucked on a cigarette and tried to stare through her.
Amy turned to let them see her profile, partly because the profile was a fine one, partly to conceal her growing uneasiness. She told herself that she had no cause to be alarmed. The fear and the awe-both were natural now that she was actually here in the offices of David Enlowe Agency. So the clothes of most of the girls she'd seen were a great deal more expensive than her own. So they seemed to have more poise. So what?
Wanda Gabriel pressed a desk dispenser for one of her special brand of low-tar menthols. With a desk lighter, she lit it, placing it delicately to her lips. "All right, dear, so far, good," she said, puffing. "You have tons to learn and so little time in which to learn it, but I think you can model for us. We're willing to give you a chance." She glanced at the photographers, Russ Cameron and Terry Hillyard, native New Yorkers both. "That's all, fellows. You've seen her and that should be enough. When I think she's ready for a practice shooting, I'll let you know."
The two nodded and walked out, although Cameron looked back from the door, his cryptic gaze lingering on the newcomer.
Amy noticed the peremptory, almost autocratic way Wanda Gabriel ran things, and wondered. Bruce, who was combing his wavy, brown hair, seemed pleased by the dismissal. A slender man with a face remarkably free of lines and wrinkles, he bent an occasional glance her way, smiling all the while. The smile troubled Amy.
Wanda smiled, stubbing out the cigarette and placing her fingertips together. She studied the younger girl for a minute. "I know you're curious as to how we operate, Miss Fortune. At first glance, it may seem that we're coming apart at the seams, what with everyone running to and fro. The girls you saw arriving and leaving when you came in are on their way to and from assignments. We find the jobs, we take a percentage of their earnings. The percentage, of course, varies from girl to girl-a sliding scale. For a top girl, one who might earn $500 a day, it's ten percent. For someone like yourself, who's just starting out, it may be as high as fifty percent. Am I going too fast for you?"
Amy shook her head. From the corner of her eye, she saw Bruce flick an imaginary speck from his snugly fitting, double-breasted jacket.
"A few of our girls, possibly five percent, model for the fashion trade exclusively. They're well paid. So well paid, you may never run into them. Their attorneys handle business matters with the agency. The rest aren't so fortunate. They must come to work like ordinary mortals and let us see their faces, figures and all the rest." Wanda inclined her head. "This latter group, honey, will include yourself. Bruce, tell Miss Fortune what kind of work she may expect with the David Enlowe Agency."
Bruce cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his high-backed chair. "Certainly. Most of our connections are with the advertising trade. People move products, you know, and attractive people move products faster. You'll probably start there. If you're lucky, you'll move on to magazine illustrating." He leaned forward and flashed perfect white teeth in a smile. "I can even see you doing a cover or two. Eventually, if you're interested, there's nude modeling, which we handle under an optional contract."
Amy thought Bruce owned a pleasant, almost musical voice. But she didn't like the way his hands fluttered when he talked. And she didn't think she'd ever be interested in nude modeling, optional contract or no optional contract. Tyler Fortune would smash the paneling in his office. "I see."
Wanda Gabriel went to her dispenser for another cigarette and lit it. "Most of the actual shooting is done elsewhere. However, we maintain two studios of our own, for obvious reasons. Occasionally, an advertising agency will use our studios, for which we charge extra. Russ or Terry will test you here before we make up our minds about you." Wanda smiled again. "And you about us. Before we sign a contract, let's get to know one another, shall we?"
Amy agreed that a trial period for compatibility purposes made sense, as long as the trial period extended to no more than a few days and left her solvent. She had no intentions of starving in Gotham. "How long?"
Wanda's shoulders lifted. "Two days. Three at the most. We have other girls-new, like yourself-and I'll try to work you in ahead of them. Let's say I have that much confidence in you."
Amy felt grateful. Puzzled, too, since she really wasn't entitled to any special favors. "Thank you, but I-"
"I'm the director, Miss Fortune," Wanda reminded, a hard set coming to a mouth previously girlishly soft. "I crack the whip, and the agency jumps." She smote the desk top with a flattened palm, making the room's two remaining occupants jump. "Right, Bruce?"
"Right," her assistant mumbled, staring at his feet. A nerve twitched out of control in Bruce McClard's right cheek. He seemed unaware of it.
"And now, Bruce, Miss Fortune and I would like to be alone. I have some things to tell her, woman-to-woman. Go to your office."
"Yes, Miss Gabriel," McClard agreed, and scrambled up to run, not walk from the room, closing the door so quietly he must have had months or years of practice.
Wanda's brown eyes twinkled, but the hardness hadn't left her mouth. "There's something I should tell you about Bruce. He's two months out of Bellevue's psychiatric wing. His girlfriend jumped off the Narrows Bridge and he went right out of his mind. He's almost cured, but not quite. But enough of him. Come over here where I can see you better."
Face burning, Amy got up to cross the room. The trip seemed to take five minutes, although actually it was only five seconds. She sat down in the chair vacated by Bruce. The seat was still warm. "I didn't know. . . I'm afraid I don't understand," she gulped.
Wanda laughed. "How a man can be disturbed and yet be a good judge of modeling ability? Darling, it's very simple. Once he learns how to judge flesh, he never forgets it." She leaned nearer and lightly squeezed the younger girl's arm. "Don't be ashamed to ask questions. That's how we learn. Now tell me about yourself."
Amy found the squeeze both reassuring and disquieting. She settled back and found her voice. "I was still going to college. I'm just over eighteen. I've never been to New York before. And my father's a judge." She smiled apologetically. "If it matters."
Wanda looked impressed. "A judge! Honey, I would never have taken you for a judge's daughter. Never. Does he have white hair and a robe?"
Amy shook her head. "No robe. He's not white-haired, either. If you met him, you'd probably like him."
Wanda's laugh seemed heartier than it should have been. In fact, she was a full half-minute recovering her breath. "I'm sure I would, darling, I'm sure I would. Maybe someday I'll have the pleasure. You have lots of boyfriends back home, I suppose."
Amy hesitated. "Casual boyfriends. No steadies."
"Oh?" The other woman's eyes narrowed. "You object to a protracted relationship with the same man?"
Amy nodded, coloring. "Protracted relationship," coming from Wanda Gabriel's lips, sounded terribly stiff, as though Wanda herself objected to same. "I want to know myself better before I . .. get in too deep. I've always been cautious that way."
Wanda's cheeks dimpled into a smile. "At your age, honey, it's a good way to be." She gestured at a bar on the other side of the room. "Why don't you let me fix you a drink?"
Amy saw no graceful way to refuse, so she nodded yes, and watched as the other woman rose, crossed the room and mixed a pair of tonics, returning to hand one to the newcomer. Wanda sat back down and the two began to drink. Amy saw from a quick check of her watch that lunch for her would be late or not at all; it was a quarter past eleven already. She wondered if Wanda drank in lieu of eating, or perhaps to give herself courage to face down the rest of the staff whenever they crossed her.
Whatever her faults, Wanda Gabriel was a fascinating conversationalist. She seemed able to talk knowledgeably on every imaginable subject, including sex. Whether it was her audience or the alcohol freeing her of her inhibitions, she began to tell Amy how she felt about love and men and all the things that went with them. From what she said, it was clear that Wanda's estimate of the male gender had recently plummeted.
As she talked, she grew less and less inhibited, occasionally pulling up the long skirt of her outfit and assuming positions that showed Amy more and more of her legs and thighs. She caught the younger woman looking a few times, and smiled. Then, quite unexpectedly, she lifted her skirt high enough to expose her thighs to the border of her panties-if she'd been wearing any. "Do you think I have nice legs, honey?" she inquired.
Amelia put down her glass, made her eyes focus, and looked more closely. Wanda's legs were long and beautifully tapered. Most men would probably have considered them flawless. Women, too. The limbs were round and firm and very nicely shaped. Amy was surprised that looking at another girl's legs could stir her so. "I suppose . . . they're very lovely," she replied, trembling.
Wanda let the skirt drop back down, then ran both hands down the front of her blouse, smoothing the fabric so that it stretched tighter. "Do you like me... just a little?"
Amy colored, but she gave an honest answer. "You're helping me get started in-yes, I like you."
Wanda moved her chair nearer the other girl's. She held her almost empty glass in one hand and gently stroked Amy's hair with the other. Her eyes glowed with some inner fire. "I'm glad you like me, darling. Because I like you . . . very much."
Amy felt a strange constriction inside her stomach at the way Wanda breathed the words-low and husky with meaning. She watched as Gabriel drained her glass, set it on the desk, then turned to face her. Wanda's eyes were heavy-lidded, her lips moist and parted. Amy could see just a hint of her small, even teeth.
"Yes, indeed. You get to me, honey, and I'm going to let you know it."
Amy tensed. She'd never known a woman to look at her this way before, to speak in the soft, caressing tones Wanda was using. Through the thinness of the blouse the older woman wore, she detected the sweetness of a strange perfume, a subtle and exotic bouquet which blended with heated woman-scent.
Taking Amy by the shoulders and helping her from the chair, Wanda steered her toward a couch beside the door, pushing her down with gentle firmness. Cupping a hand behind Amy's head and placing the other behind her waist, she lowered the girl to a horizontal position.
The latter felt very small and helpless lying there with her breasts partly in and out of her bra and her skirt hiked up almost to her waist. Her nylon-clad legs and abbreviated white panties were exposed. She stared up and saw Wanda, eyes akindle, breath ragged, hovering over her. A terrible weakness assailed Amy as she watched Wanda's face come closer.
"Have you ever had a girl make love to you, honey?"
"No!"
"Would you like me to make love to you?"
"No. I-wantto go."
"Why not?"
"It's-it's indecent!"
"How do you know, darling, if you've never tried it?"
Before Amy could reply, she felt the other woman's lips on hers. The lips were soft and warm and tasted of gin. Amy tried to resist, but she felt her own lips softening, opening to accept the eager tongue, savoring the honey moistness of another woman's mouth.
She moaned. Beneath her dress, she felt her breasts swelling, engorging with a fearful urgency. Wanda's tongue was like nothing she'd ever known before, a busy appendage which flayed her senses, exciting her to a frightening degree. She found the strength, somehow, to tear her mouth free and fill her lungs with much needed air. Her mind was quaking and the insides of her thighs had moistened with awakening desire. She watched as Wanda lowered her head and, with the merest flick of a finger, brushed aside the straps from Amy's shoulders, working the dress down until the younger woman's breasts were bared.
Amy felt the heat of Wanda's lips scorch the flesh of her throat and shoulders and burn then-way to her breasts. She stiffened for an instant, then relaxed as Wanda's tongue brushed over her nipples, gobbling one of the aroused points and pulling hard at it. "What are you doing?" she gasped. "No, you mustn't!" She put her hands on the other woman's shoulders and tried to push her away.
"Don't fight it, darling. Don't fight me," Wanda said with quiet insistence. "You need this. You're so tense and uptight it's probably affected your digestion. Let some of it out before you explode. This isn't Huntington, it's big, bright New York City."
Amy blinked up into Wanda's almost hypnotic gaze, fighting both fear and desire. She began shaking her head from side to side, trying to wriggle free of the loathsome embrace. But Wanda was in complete control now, and lowered her head again to fasten her lips on one of Amy's straining nipples.
Amy had no recollection later as to when Wanda peeled her panties down her legs and tossed them aside. She knew only that she was being swept along by a powerful current of emotion against which she was waging a hopeless battle. She felt Wanda's fingers stealing slowly up her stockinged thighs onto the smooth, satiny flesh. Moving through the heavy, silk brush that covered her damp pussy, the hands began to knead the sensitive flesh with knowing skill.
The last bulwark of Amy's resistance broke. She let her thighs open a fraction, giving Wanda clear access to the intimate flesh between them. The older woman drew back and moved a little lower, the better to coax apart the tip of Amy's vulva. Like a delicate flower wet with heavy dew, the intricate fold of inner lip burst into bloom, the long, deep divide sighing into view under the artful petting of Wanda's fingers.
Through eyes that were half-shut and glazed with passion, Amy watched Wanda's head, a disheveled remains of a once-perfect hair-do, dip between her legs. Her own body went taut as a bow string. "No!" she gasped.
Wanda ignored the protest. She parted the labia and pressed inside.
Amy stiffened. Possibly because it was her first lesbian experience, possibly because she was lonely and a little frightened by New York's hugeness, she thrilled to sensations that she'd never known before-indescribable ecstasy as Wanda's tongue moved back and forth the whole shuddering length of her labia. Only Jim Borchardt had come close to duplicating these wonderful sensations, and then only for a few, brief seconds on the sharp edge of a desk.
Because saying no had become irrelevant, she spread her legs wide, closed her eyes and threw back her head. Wanda found and began tonguing her clitoris, sending violent waves of pleasure surging through her. Amy, even though she'd never given herself to another woman before, knew she was being done by an expert. Wanda, despite her obvious attraction to-and probable affinity for men, was an accomplished lez.
As the feeling grew stronger, Amy knew her climax couldn't be far distant. She lay there, gulping the cool room air, flailing futilely, reaching down now and then to seize Wanda by the hair and force the devouring mouth into an even deeper embrace. As Wanda lapped faster and faster on her, Amy went completely limp. Her body was hers and then it wasn't, because a time-bomb had gone off inside her belly. A thousand and one living fragments sprayed through her body, almost bursting her clitoris, filling Wanda's mouth with a flood of thick, hot juices.
The brunette stayed with her mouth pressed tightly to Amy's labia until the orgasm began to abate. Then she drew back and moved up so that she could lie side-by-side with the younger woman. "Now wasn't that better than anything a man could give you? Wasn't it?"
Amy bit her lip. "I-I don't know. I'm . . . still a virgin."
Wanda raised her head to stare. "A virgin!" she echoed. "You don't mean it!"
"It's-true."
Wanda patted her arm, chuckling. "Nevermind. I was there once myself. You'll be all right, honey. I'll see to it, personally."
Amy wondered what that meant. For now she was afraid to ask. because tax laws favored the rich over the poor, the educated over the uneducated, the corporation over the individual. When she descended, the flag was still flying, although police were on their way.
In the agency's offices on Wednesday, she noticed more bustle, more attractive young people-male and female, all with capped teeth and clean hair-going to and fro. In near-panic, Amy stood near the entrance and watched them for a few minutes, wondering why she was there, why she thought she could model, too. She who had no experience, other than the usual college modeling shows, and little drive. But she took out a compact to check her appearance, and was reassured. Amy Fortune's face-and the rest of her as well-was definitely a salable commodity.
She walked into Wanda Gabriel's office to announce herself. Wanda's smile seemed warmer than ever, possibly because she, Wanda, hadn't seen her in two days.
"There you are," the agency's director laughed. "I was afraid you might have gotten on a plane for home, but I see you're still with us. Congratulations. The first two days in New York are the worst. After that, you either leave or adjust. Do you still think you can model for us?"
Amy nodded. "I want to be a model. I'm willing to work."
"That's always a good sign." Wanda pressed a
CHAPTER SIX
Tuesday Amy spent, at Wanda Gabriel's request, shopping for suitable sports wear. In New York, even a pair of shorts was a serious purchase. No one wanted to be out of style; a model couldn't afford to be. But her clothes budget was running dangerously low when she'd finished. Rather than ask her father for more, Amy resolved to stretch the remaining funds as far as they would go.
In the afternoon, until her strength gave out, she toured points of fame in the city, finding the subway system of greater interest than Greenwich Village, where the runaway freaks from Iowa and other states seemed to outnumber the home-grown variety. On the Staten Island ferry, she lost her handbag and purse. Miraculously, the handbag turned up before she disembarked. Nothing was missing, which would have given her father cause for a summer's musing.
In the Statue of Liberty, she watched as a band of protesters hoisted the skull-and-crossbones flag of piracy-the country's real flag, they insisted, button on her intercom station, and talked into the speaker. "Russ, will you find Terry and bring him in here? Miss Fortune is ready for a trial shooting." To the younger woman, Wanda explained, "Terry will handle the technical aspects of your first shooting-lighting, film speed and all the rest. Russ will then pose you to his liking and make your file photo. That's the one we send around to potential clients. Quite a few of them will find your face interesting, and some may even request you by name. If and when they do, why, you're on your way. I must warn you, though. Don't expect too much too soon. These things take time."
Amy was intrigued, both at the division of labor and the likelihood of success. Everything seemed madness and confusion at the David Enlowe Agency, but the wheels ground smoothly after all. "Sort of a screen test?"
Wanda winked. "Exactly. Except you don't have to do a reading."
"But I can still fail."
The older woman leaned forward to rake her with a practiced eye. "Only if you wreck Russ' camera and remind him of his ex-wife. Otherwise, we'll have you in our files by two p.m. and on the desk of a good prospect by ten a.m. tomorrow. That's a promise, honey."
"And a contract? I'll have to sign a model release, won't I? Will I need a lawyer?" Amy heard herself in wonder.
Wanda looked at her with new respect. "I'm prepared to offer a 60-40 agency agreement-the same one we offer all our new girls. The agreement contains a standard model release clause. And, no, you won't need a lawyer. Not unless you don't trust us."
Amy relaxed, smiling, "I trust you."
"Fine." A certain, calculating look returned to Wanda Gabriel's eyes. "We can look forward to a long, mutually satisfying relationship then, can't we?"
Before Amy could open her mouth to say yes, no or maybe, the door opened and Russ Cameron entered, followed by Terry Hillyard. If she found Cameron's disconcerting scrutiny uncomfortable on their one prior meeting, she found it unsettling now. Nor had Terry Hillyard's cool stare abated. He'd trimmed his mustache, however, which could have meant anything or nothing.
Wanda tapped a pencil in Amy's direction. "Here she is, boys. Don't be easy on her-I think she's going to work out just fine."
Amy was led from the office and down the hall into a studio which was small but well-equipped. Very little contractual shooting was done on the premises of the agency, Hillyard explained. The studio was maintained for emergency use and to enable the agency to pose its models to best advantage for file purposes.
"Lock the door," Hillyard told Cameron, who grinned at the blond as though they shared some delicious secret. Russ sprang to do as he'd been asked.
Amy wondered why the studio door had to be locked and why the two should find the fact so amusing. Rather than betray her bewilderment, she sat down in a folding chair on a set with a white-sheet backdrop.
Cameron returned from locking the door and glanced at Hillyard, who was fussing with a camera mount. The one rubbed his hands together, the other nodded. As one, they advanced on the unsuspecting girl, who jumped up when she divined what was coming but jumped too late. Hillyard, smirking, pinned her arms to her side. Cameron, cackling, raised her dress to get at her panties.
"No!" Amy shrieked, and kicked at Russ' arm with the sharp heel of her pump. The heel connected with tender skin, driving Cameron backwards cursing. "Take your hands off me, both of you!"
"It's only your initiation!" Hillyard yelled, struggling to hold her. "Christ, all the girls lose their underpants before we shoot them! You won't be any exception! Hold still, damn it!"
She freed one of her arms and smacked Terry a roundhouse clop which sent him staggering forward until he lost his balance and fell sprawling. When the two men scrambled to their feet, she'd gone inside her handbag for protection: an aerosol spray containing a powerful irritant guaranteed to produce painful burns and stains, purchased less than an hour before at a novelty counter downstairs. Amy pointed the spray at Russ Cameron, who backed away, shaking his head.
"Uh-uh!" he pleaded. "Point that thing somewhere else. I've seen what they can do. It's not very pretty. We meant no harm, Terry and I. We always do that to the new ones. It's sort of a custom." Cameron looked at Hillyard. "I guess the custom stops right here, huh?"
Terry scratched his head. "Unless you've got a better idea, I move for a truce. Gabriel will have our hides if we ruin her outfit. But if we rushed her from two sides ..." Hillyard's eyes narrowed to slits, to frighten the "victim."
"Hold on, old buddy," Russ cautioned. "If we rush her from two sides, how do we know who'll get the paint bomb treatment and who won't?"
"Easy," his friend said cheerfully, abandoning the scare tactics. "You'll rush her first."
Amy listened, white-faced, not believing that Wanda would knowingly send her into this. But how could Wanda not know everything that went on in the agency? "If-if you aren't going to shoot me, I'm leaving," she announced, and started for the door.
"A truce," Cameron proposed, stepping in front of her. "You step behind the screen, take off the panties and hand them to us. Then we shoot as if nothing had ever happened. That way you save your dignity and we save face. Fair enough, isn't it?"
She hesitated, realizing she didn't have to, wanting nonetheless to win their respect. If all the other girls submitted, why shouldn't she? "If I do, will you promise to make me-make me-"
"Well make you look like Suzy Parker and the Hope diamond," Terry Hillyard assured her. He winked. "It's all a matter of lighting and finding the perfect angle. We're pros, Russ and I. Trust us, baby."
Amy put down her handbag and stepped behind a screen before she lost her nerve. Peeling the panties down her slim thighs, she shook her skirt back down her legs and came out smiling. "Here you are, gentlemen, if I may use the term in connection with you two. Will there be anything else?"
The pair, to her disgust, played catch with her underpants until again she threatened to go. Then they sobered and set about posing her in various attitudes, taking turns behind the camera and exchanging remonstrance's about f-settings, back light and other technical aspects. The shooting consumed nearly an hour and made her aware, in a way she hadn't been before, of the drudgery aspects of modeling.
"Russ here will take you to lunch," Hillyard suggested when they were finished. "When he brings you back, your proofs should be ready."
Stiff from the sitting, Amy picked up her handbag and shook her head. "Thanks, but I'll take myself to lunch. Good-day, fellows."
She had the satisfaction of seeing the two exchange crestfallen glances as she went out the door.
"Marvelous!" Wanda exclaimed, putting down one proof and picking up the next. "Each one seems to be better than the last. I really don't know which should go into our files. Congratulations again, darling." The agency's director handed a proof to her assistant, who examined it in silence. "Congratulate Miss Fortune, Bruce, honey. She deserves it."
McClard bent a smoky look on the new girl and murmured his appreciation of her assets.
Wanda smiled at Amy. "Bruce doesn't gush to people's faces, dear, only behind their backs. He'll be raving about you as soon as you walk out the door."
Amy smiled politely, but she itched to see her name on a contract before another minute passed.
"Now where did I put it? The contract, I mean." Wanda began rummaging through the inches-deep clutter on a desk which contained three telephones and almost thirty square feet of working space. "Here we are. 'A Contract For Personal Services Between The David Enlowe Modeling Agency and Florence Amelia Fortune.' " She passed the document to the younger girl and watched, smiling, as she read swiftly through it. "I think you'll find that everything is as it should be."
To Amy, everything seemed to be in order, although there were numerous paragraphs with fine print. She took the pen Wanda pressed into her hand and signed her name in a neat, clear script: Florence Amelia Fortune. Then she relinquished the contract.
When she raised her eyes, Bruce McClard was watching her. On his face was an expression she'd never seen on a man's face before: a look of mingled hope and sadness, of curiosity tinged with hostility. She colored and he looked away. Wanda, busy locking the contract away, hadn't noticed.
"There's champagne and ice on the bar, if you're interested."
Amy took her gaze off Bruce and put it on the woman both of them feared, for different reasons. She feared Wanda because she remembered the thrill of being touched by her, the revulsion/fascination. Bruce feared her because she reminded him of what he could never be-a normal, functioning man. Both of them would have died rather than admit the fear. "I . . . don't want any, thanks."
Wanda raised a brow in the amused, sardonic way she had. "Oh? An abstainer?"
"In . . .away."
"Then if neither of you has anything else to add, I think we can break up our little meeting."
Amy reached the door at the same instant Bruce did. Their hands met. In reflex, she jerked the hand back, rubbing it, and saw the hurt on his face. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he stopped the words with a glare.
Wanda Gabriel, from her desk's Vantage point, laughed softly. "If you'll stay behind, I'll explain certain things to you."
"I-I have an apartment to find."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amy realized, as soon as she closed and locked the door, that someone was inside the apartment. It was a feeling, not a certainty. She could neither see, hear, nor smell anyone. But someone was there. If not close at hand, then present in the next room. Heart thudding, she stood for a minute in absolute darkness, trying to decide what to do. If she ran out and fetched the building superintendent, the intruder-assuming there was one-would be gone before they came back. She'd look and feel foolish. But if she walked calmly to the phone . . .
Amy realized that she'd need a light to even find the phone, much less dial the nearest precinct station. With a shaky hand, she tripped a light switch, flooding the apartment's cozy living room with brightness. She saw no one. Warily, she started toward the bedroom. When she opened the door, most, if not all, of her misgivings vanished. Terry Hillyard, complete with a wide grin, lay sprawled across the covers of her Hollywood-style bed. He raised an arm in mocking salute.
"You weren't home, so I took the liberty. What's for dinner?"
Amy didn't know whether to stamp her feet or run. "J'm not on the menu, if that's what you're thinking!" she snapped, and marched back out to the living room. Terry sprang off the bed to follow her.
"Hey, that's no way to treat a guest, is it?" he protested, grabbing her arm. He covered her right breast with a palm and yanked her around to face him. "And I'm more than just an ordinary guest, aren't I, lovey?" He squeezed the fullsome mound while his other hand kneaded the small of her back. The hand that caressed her breast halted its manipulations long enough to begin on the buttons of her blouse.
Amy trembled from head to toe. She was confused. Terry was part of the agency and so was she. But she knew she couldn't be intimate with him. She also realized that she couldn't resist. Not literally resist. She wasn't strong enough. Terry's fingers were moving like a hundred tarantulas, pulling the blouse from her skirt and finishing with the buttons. His hand slid up her back and fumbled with the catch to her bra. She felt the garment loosen its hold on her breasts, then Terry lifted it away, running a hot, sweaty palm over her nipples. She looked fearfully down at his groin. A long, hard erection pressed against the front of his trousers. "No!" she said, trying to fend him off.
"You'll have to leave, Terry. I mean it." Her voice cracked and she knew she sounded like a panicky little girl.
"Sure you do," he chuckled, continuing to undress her. He got her skirt off before she was even aware of it, tossing the garment on the nearest chair. Then his hand disappeared between her thighs, worming past the edge of her panties, discovering the warmth of her cunt. Amy cried out, trying to back away. He held her in so firm a grasp she couldn't get free of him.
"Let go of me!" she whimpered. "If you don't stop, I'll scream and bring everyone on the floor."
Terry shook his head. "No. You won't. Because then you'd have to explain how I got here." He jerked more strongly at the panties and she heard them tearing. His hands crawled underneath them and dug at her tensed buttocks. Amy jerked, slamming her mound against Terry's stiff prick. Laughing, he hugged her to him, thrusting at the soft crevice between her legs.
"Please let me go!" she begged. "I can't do what you want me to do! I can't! Don't you understand? I'm a virgin!"
"You're a lying little tease!" he declared, momentarily flustered. His hands stopped their devastating play.
"I wouldn't lie to you," Amy assured him, both relieved and disappointed at the prospect of saving her honor for another day.
Terry came at her again, new determination on his face. "I'll buy that. I mean, stranger things have happened than young women coming to New York to lose their virginity. I'm glad you saved it, lovey, because I'm a man who appreciates the best." He grinned, stalking her as she retreated to the sofa and collapsed there.
Amy heard more tearing and the panties fell away from her hips and thighs in shreds. Now she was totally bare, totally vulnerable. She tried to cover her nakedness with outstretched hands which were inadequate for the task. "You fool! You'll make me pregnant! I don't want to be pregnant!"
"Who said anything about making you pregnant?" Hillyard retorted. He unzipped his pants and brought an awesome erection into view. "Like him, lovey?" he inquired, twitching the thing a few times for her. "I hope so, because he's the only one I've got." Terry stepped out of his pants and sent the shorts after them. Then he began lowering himself onto her, a lean, tanned contrast to her trembling whiteness.
Amy cupped her hands over her cunt and tried to escape into the sofa's fabric. She wished that she could push right through it and vanish into the walls. Unfortunately, there was no escape. Shuddering, she imagined that she could already feel Terry's huge member tearing its way into her, destroying her purity for all time.
He climbed onto the sofa and positioned his knees between hers, aiming between her thighs.
"Don't!" she cried, taking hold of him.
Terry wrenched free of her and aimed again. "Consider yourself deflowered," he said, grasping her around the waist and lunging forward. With, it seemed to her, absolute disregard for her feelings; he stabbed his penis at her. Amy shuddered as the thick rod of flesh swelled past her thighs. It's hard, bulging surface encountered the constricted lips of her labia and, for a moment, was stymied. By squeezing her legs together, she was able to prevent intromission. "Christ!" he groaned. "Let me have it! I'll try not to hurt you."
Amy made the barrier more impenetrable and saved her breath for keeping it that way.
Hillyard began to pant as he squeezed his hands between her legs and tried to pry them apart. He partially succeeded. Amy gasped as she felt his hot glans pressing into the moist aperture near the mouth of her vagina. She tried to wriggle backward. Terry hadn't actually penetrated far enough to break the hymen, but he was close. Too close. She knew he could ejaculate at any moment, spraying her exposed genitals with a shower of sperm. A sorority sister had once gotten pregnant this way, or so the rumor had gone. "Wait!" she heard herself say, in a strangled voice which seemed to belong to someone else. "The bedroom. Take me in there and I'll . . . I'll give you what you want." She wouldn't. She was only fighting for time. But he didn't know that.
Hillyard, as though he smelled the treachery, stood up with reluctance. Stooping, he gathered her in his arms and almost ran into the bedroom with her, dumping her in the middle of the bed without bothering to roll back the covers. "Okay, doll, we're here. Now ante up, or else."
Amy pushed the hair out of her eyes and stared at him, chilled at the words. If anything, Terry's huge erection was even huger. He'd lost none of it between the living room and the bed. The organ's bulbous head was a fiery red, pulsating now with frustrated desire. Its dangling testicles seemed to throb with angry life, thwarted until now in their generative purpose. "Let's wait-until another time," she suggested, pleading with her eyes.
Hillyard laughed and the laugh's harshness matched the harshness on his face. He pushed her across the bed and crawled up to join her.
"I am a virgin, Terry!" she insisted, the words tumbling over one another. "If you don't believe me, just use your finger. The little one."
He grinned. "Oh, I will, lovey, I will. I'll use every one of them and my thumb, too. Then I'll use my whacker to make sure." While she writhed underneath him, he pinned her legs to the covers and ran a cautious finger across her clitoris.
Amy jumped. "Don't! Don't touch me there!" Terry applied the finger in deft, circular motions which made her twitch in unconscious appreciation. She hadn't realized that her clitoris was so sensitive. Nor could she acknowledge it even now. But what he was doing felt wonderful. Amy told herself that she was only allowing the intimacy for the agency's sake, but she found herself becoming excited. She couldn't remain the cool virgin with Terry's finger sliding back and forth along her congested flesh. Her clitoris was going wild, relaying ecstasy spasms which rippled through her vagina in ever-growing waves. Her cunt was becoming wet as the fluids surged down her canal toward the point of stimulation. She spread her legs and wasn't aware that she'd spread them.
Muttering approval, Terry fingered her more rapidly.
Amy's teeth began to chatter. "I-wish-you'd- stop!" she whimpered, her instinctive fear resurfacing. "If you I'll stop, I won't tell anyone you were here. I promise."
Hillyard gazed at her in some surprise, easing up somewhat. "Hey, you're really uptight, aren't you? Well, don't be. When this is over, you'll thank me. Yeah, baby, you'll thank me." Maintaining a steady line of talk, he managed to force his hand deeper into her moistening cunt.
Amy paled as his finger probed between the vaginal lips, searching for the vestibule. She sighed when he found it, then winced as the tip of his finger curled and pushed inward. Because her mind still screamed no, her cunny clutched the invading finger tightly, like a powerful band of rubber. She stiffened to form more resistance, to prove she meant it.
"Sweet pussy," Terry whispered, taking a different tack. "Sweet, glorious pussy. Give your sweet, glorious pussy to me, lovey."
A thrill shot through her. She was tempted, finally, to open herself to him. She overcame the impulse only with an effort, telling herself she couldn't jeopardize her whole life for a horny Terry Hillyard. Where was the percentage? Amy was wise enough to realize that desire could cause all judgment to crumble. If she relaxed for a moment, she'd find Terry between her legs, his huge penis driving deep into her unviolated cunny. "Terry, let's-let's stop and talk about it."
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. You'll try to talk me out of it. You can't."
She groaned as his finger continued its inward progress. The nail raked painfully across the sensitive tissue and hung poised at the very edge of her hymen. She was quaking inside, on the verge of surrender, but the vestibule still tightly gripped Terry's finger. And her cunt was becoming wetter, the labia moving in response to Hillyard's skilled fingering.
"Hot-damn!" he crowed. "I believe you are cherry, sugar. I haven't had my finger in a box this tight since Russ slammed the darkroom door on me. I beat something out of him, you can lay good money on that."
"Terry, no, no!" Amy cried, realizing that she was about to succumb to the pressure. The delicious sensations were spreading throughout her body. A fever had begun in her brain which drowned out all reason. She actually found herself wanting to be forced. To freely consent, no. To be forced, yes. Having the decision not of her choosing would let her live with her conscience.
Sensing that she was near collapse, Hillyard withdrew his finger. The instant he did so, Amy's composure returned. She tried to sit up, but Terry pushed her back onto the bed. Amy, blinking up at him, realized she'd made a mistake in letting him go so far so fast. She'd been a fool in letting him undress her and a worse fool for permitting him to take advantage of it. The sexual side of herself that she was only beginning to know had almost taken charge.
Terry was pulling at her legs and trying to get between them. Amy pushed his hands away, holding her legs together so that his eager penis pressed, not inside her vagina, but against her soft belly.
"Come on, doll, let's finish it!" he urged, his face working. "You know you want me inside you. I can see it on your face. Don't be a cock-tease."
She felt strong enough to resist him now. His very impatience was on her side. "I'm not a cock-tease, Terry," she said earnestly. "I just don't want it tonight. But I'll beat you off if you like."
"Crap on that!" he fumed, and his expression told her how near she was to a physical beating.
"Terry!"
He was between her thighs and she couldn't close them. Amy was still sitting, clinging to his torso for support, when he drove his penis toward the tangled mass of hair beneath her belly. A shriek escaped her lips as his hot glans made contact with her vulva. Reacting by reflex, she grasped his organ in both her hands and jerked it higher on her belly, away from his preferred target.
Hillyard groaned as she struggled with his throbbing shaft. He tried to tear it loose from her, but she held him too tightly. He looked concerned, then defeated, ejaculating with no further warning. Amy was more relieved than disgusted when a shower of semen erupted to land wetly against her belly and trickle down her legs. Terry panted out his release and sneered at her when there was no more.
"Christ, but you're a frigging saint," he complained, rolling away to land on his feet. "This time we do it your way. Next time ..."
Amy shivered, wanting to cover herself now that he had no further need of her. If she had her way, there'd be no next time. Even so, she thrilled at having come into such close physical contact with a man. The possible consequences .. . She sprang up to run into the bathroom. With soap and water, she scrubbed away the drying semen and toweled herself dry. Then she slipped into a bathrobe and returned to the bedroom. Terry was fully dressed and preparing to leave. He looked more cheerful now, however, and actually smiled at her.
"I have to run now, sweetheart," he said, patting her arm. "A moonlighting job, you know. But I'll be back. Yes, sir. Old Terry knows Grade-A stuff when he sees it. He'll be back. You be thinking about what I said now, you hear?" Hillyard winked and tweaked her cheek.
Amy summoned a brave smile as she followed him to the door and let him out. But she seethed inside, and not only for being labeled "Grade-A stuff." He'd come back only if she invited him. Otherwise, there'd be a hair-pulling scene the likes of which the West Side would never see again. Next time she'd fight Terry Hillyard rather than be humiliated again. Or else throw herself at Russ Cameron and watch the two men fight over her.
After eating a TV dinner, she felt better. Enough so to sit in front of the color console and watch three hours of programs. Wanda had said to get plenty of sleep, but Wanda wasn't here. Wanda . .. Amy, dreamily reliving the one encounter with Wanda Gabriel, asked herself if she'd really been loved so expertly, so sweetly by another woman. The experience now seemed remote and far away, as though it might have happened in another time and place, to someone else. Not to Amy Fortune. But she knew she had been loved by Wanda. And Wanda would want her again, soon. She could tell by the possessive gleam in the older woman's eye when Wanda told her about the BriteWhite toothpaste commercial.
Amy wondered how she'd be able to say no. She wasn't a lesbian and never would be. She didn't love Wanda Gabriel, couldn't love her. Only in a relationship of trust and mutual giving could she bestow her love. So far she'd met no one she could trust, no one who wanted to give.
New York was a cold, terrifying place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Russ Cameron, after a minute's searching of his pockets, produced a key to his walk-up apartment. Weaving a bit on his feet, he managed to stab the little piece of metal into the receptacle designed for it. "Wha' d'ya know!" he exclaimed, slurring the words for his companion's benefit. "It fits!" He reached behind him to nudge her. "Did you hear that, lamb chop? It fits!"
"I heard you," Amy smiled. But she glanced involuntarily over her shoulder while she said it. Russ' neighborhood wasn't the best in New York. In fact, she'd seen more rough characters between the car and the steps to fill a summer's quota of nightmares. She really shouldn't even have agreed to come in. But she had, and she would.
Her head buzzed from too many Daiquiris and too many martinis consumed in too many Greenwich Village dives, that was one reason. From nine o'clock, when he'd picked her up at her apartment, until now, a quarter past eleven, she and Russ had toured an endless string of look-alike coffee shops, tea shops, cafes, rock joints and night clubs with look-alike patrons who smoked marijuana, talked arty and snubbed strangers. For her, the effect had been numbing. She drank to conceal her embarrassment.
Russ led her inside and turned on a light, illuminating a bachelor flat which was furnished but not much more. " 'Ere we are, yer ladyship," he grinned at her. "It ain't much, but everything works. Oh, it's not a Park Avenue penthouse, granted. My ex-wife sees to that. Like?"
Amy had heard that Russ was recently divorced, but this was her first proof. Somehow it made him more attractive to her. She nodded. "But don't fix me a drink. One more, and I'll pass out on your rug. I know you wouldn't like that."
Cameron smirked, coming near to put his arms around her waist. "Don't be too sure." He bent to her lips for a brief kiss, then tipped her chin up to his. "What's this I hear about your being . . . ?"
She flushed. The word, it seemed, had gotten around. "It's true. But I'm getting a little sick and tired . . ."
"I don't blame you!" he exclaimed. "There's really only one way to scotch the rumors, you know." Russ winked. "As a good date, I'm willing to show you, of course."
"I'm sure you are." Amy didn't like what his hands were doing to her. He was massaging the muscles in her shoulders, moving his hands around and bringing his fingers ever closer to her breasts. "Every man I've met in New York has been generous that way. Know what I mean?" She steeled herself and let the hands rove, realizing very well that the inch would soon turn into a yard, the yard into a furlong, the furlong to a mile.
Russ laughed and began undoing the buttons of her jacket. "I know what you mean, but I'm not one of those jerks. I'm different. I get what I want."
Amy stood stiffly, not resisting his efforts at removing the jacket. He lifted it away and dropped it on the chair behind him. Smiling, very much at ease, he turned back to cup her breasts in his hands, tenderly at first, then with less gentleness. Without warning, he suddenly tore at the front of her blouse. Buttons flew in all directions and she sprang back a step, aghast. "What are you doing?" she cried.
Cameron chuckled, relishing the look on her face. "I wanted to see if you're really drunk. I want you sober for this, not pickled out of your head. I see your faculties are all there."
"My faculties are fine," Amy informed him, retreating toward a battered stereo.
"Then consider the deck cleared," he returned, stalking her until she came up short against the stereo and had nowhere else to go. Then he shot out a hand and grabbed her bra where the cups joined. With a snap of his wrists, he made them fall apart. Amy's breasts protruded from her chest in time with her ragged breathing. She tried to cover them with her hands as the straps and cups slid down her arms.
"R-Russ!" she stammered, backing away. "You didn't have to do that!"
He shrugged. "Maybe I'm not the real me tonight. On the other hand ..." Cameron grinned. ". . . maybe I am." He reached down to stroke her thigh, squeezing through skirt and girdle. Amy tossed the hand away, but her heart really wasn't in it. She'd been fighting it so long. Now she was tired of fighting. Anyway, Russ Cameron was a handsome young man, a pleasant young man. She could do worse than let herself be caught tonight. Still, her habit was to resist.
"If I said yes, would you-would you ..." She couldn't bring herself to finish it, although the objection had to do with certain precautions.
"I will," Russ promised, even if he had no idea what she was talking about.
Amy passed a nervous hand across her face. "Russ, believe me, I do like you. I do. But I'm still not sure. I-I don't think I'm ready."
"I'll get you ready," he declared, and plucked her off the stereo. The violence in him made her remember the scene with Terry, the near-rape. She began to resist, flailing at him with futile hands as he unzipped her skirt and yanked it down her legs. Clad only in girdle and pantyhose, Amy felt ridiculous. Panting from his exertions, Russ struggled with the paneled girdle while she tried to stay inside it. Her last bulwark against penetration began to creep down her hips and thighs.
Cameron's cling-knit sports shirt was drenched in perspiration by the time he rolled the cumbersome thing away from her genitals.
He pushed her into an armchair and stood back to admire his work. Cameron's blood-shot eyes widened. "Wow! You're an eyeful, lamb chop. You're eatin' stuff, and I do mean AAA."
Amy went hot, twisting so that he had less of a view of her cunt-the tangle of fine hair and the delicately out-puckered lips. "D-don't!" she quavered, when he made as though to get on his knees.
Russ laughed and began coming out of his clothes, peeling the sports shirt over his head and shrugging out of his trousers. Naked, he looked much taller than his five-feet-nine. More imposing, too, with a powerful physique and an inclination, if the gleam in his eye meant anything, to use it on her. His thick penis was fully and beautifully erect, so engorged with blood that further erection was impossible. "Okay. We'll save the advanced lessons for next time. Tonight it's C for cherry-poppin'. Baby, it's cherry-poppin' time."
Amy shook her head, drawing back farther into the chair. Her heart thudded so that she could hardly hear her own voice. "No."
Cameron frowned, his mind working. "Then I'll take you where you are," he said. "Cherries have been lost in chairs before." He grabbed her legs and tried to yank her out, feet first. She resisted with such determination that her pantyhose shredded into confetti-like strands.
"That's it," Amy taunted him, the tears welling to her eyes. "Rape me. The way Terry tried to do. I thought you were better than he is. Now I see you're no different."
Russ smiled away the comparison. "Men are men, honey. Women should be glad of it. I'll make you glad. Just give me half a chance." He sat on the chair arm and blocked her escape, driving his tongue deep into her mouth when she opened it to say something else. She tasted the hot saltiness of him and closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the huge penis waving across her belly.
She gasped when he seized her right breast and pulled it toward his mouth, releasing his tongue long enough to aim it for the nipple's aureola. Amy went rigid as his stiffened lips sucked the little tit in. He sucked some more and half the breast shaft disappeared into his mouth. The stimulation was too much to resist. The protesting flesh came alive with sensation, erecting like a tiny phallus. She had only a few seconds in which to adjust herself to it before he wormed a hand between her thighs. In concert with his suckling of her breast, he began to finger her.
Amy emitted an involuntary sigh of pleasure. The mouth on her breast and the hand on her clitoris were pleasant, a devastating combination. No one had ever combined the two quite as well as Russ Cameron was doing now. She closed her eyes and relaxed, all her resistance running out like air from a punctured balloon. She didn't want to see what he was doing, but she liked it so much she wanted it to never end. Wriggling about for a more comfortable position, she let Russ suckle to his heart's content.
"You're doing swell," Cameron said softly, pausing to move from one breast to the other. "Just lie still and let the inner you take charge. Everything's gonna be fine. Yeah, fine."
The soothing voice and the knowing hand had its effect. She lurched and strained against his hand, climaxing with her whole body. The spasms lasted for less than a minute, however, and left her with a still-tense feeling. There was more to come, she hoped. There had to be more. She opened her eyes and gazed at him, thanking him for this first, preliminary release.
"See?" Russ crowed, removing his finger from her clitoris. "You do turn on when the mood's right and the guy's right. Now don't try to get up. We're going to have ourselves a real session, you and me."
Still leaning over her, he reapplied a thumb to the tingling shaft of her clitoris. The index finger he hooked between her buttocks, forcing the tip of it into the anus proper.
"Russ!" Amy protested, not liking this new, possibly perverse variation. "No. I don't want that. Take it out." When he ignored her, she tried to twist away from him, succeeding only in helping him make the contact tighter, more exciting to her.
Cameron chuckled and drove the index finger a little farther into the strange hole, all the time maintaining a steady friction against her clitoris.
The twin caresses rekindled her fires and made her even less confident that she could resist him if and when he tried to put his penis inside her. The buzzing in her ears hadn't subsided, but now it was caused by sexual hunger.
"Oh, make me cum again!" she cried, when the pressures began to build inside her again. The finger in her rectum now seemed perfectly at home there.
"I'll make you cum all over yourself," Cameron promised. But he eased off the chair arm and onto his knees, tugging her buttocks until she was half-in, half-out of the chair, aiming his thick penis toward her glistening labia. Too late Amy realized what he was up to.
"Russ, no!" she begged. "Do me some more with just your finger!"
Cameron shook his head. "No way, kitten. It's all or nothing. And it's now, whether you're ready or not. Got the picture?"
She drew her knees up against her chest and tried to position her heels over her vulva. Russ foiled this maneuver by standing up and jerking her legs over the arm of the chair. Amy tried to kick free, but Russ hooked his arms behind her knees. Grinning in triumph, he lifted her buttocks high in the air until her vaginal canal was on a level with his stiff penis.
Amy's strangled cries of protest stuck in her throat. The moment held a fearful kind of fascination for her. Without any protection whatever, other than Russ' possible intentions of withdrawing before ejaculation, she was about to be penetrated. Violated. Despoiled. She recalled all the words she'd ever heard for physical defloration. "Don't-hurt-me!" she groaned.
Cameron laughed and eased his throbbing phallus toward her distended lips. A twice-swollen clitoris helped him find the way. A small trickle of lubricant gave silent proof of her advanced state of arousal. He leaned close to her, placed his glans against the vestibule and prepared to thrust inside.
The increasing pressure almost made her panic. She had to stifle a scream, an urge to slash at him with her nails to make him stop. Steeling herself instead, she braced for the long-dreaded loss of her virginity. Russ waited a minute to see what she'd do, then lunged ahead in one hard thrust.
Amy shrieked out an instinctive reaction to pain when the rigid penis shattered forever her hymen's virginal state. Then she bit back further exclamations. The pain was intense, but not excruciating. After a few seconds, she was more aware of the exquisite sensations caused by a large male organ present where none had ever been before.
"Knew-you'd-like-it!" Cameron grunted, bringing her hips about him for a snugger fit. He managed to insert almost to the hilt before withdrawing for another thrust. The initial strokes were short and choppy; he was plumbing her depths to make sure she could take him. Reassured on that score, he made his lunges wilder and more abandoned, until he was slamming at her in jackhammer fashion.
Amy gritted her teeth and lay so that he could reach her better. Russ surprised her by yanking himself out and tugging her from the chair onto the carpet. She landed on her buttocks with a soft thump. "Put it back!" she ordered, angry with him. "If you don't put it back, I'll-I'll tell Wanda you raped me."
"Screw her!" Cameron growled. "A stinking bitch who goes both ways! Why would she care? Oh, I'll put it back all right. Sure. Here it comes, ready or not." He pointed his penis back inside her oozing box and wriggled until they were in a tighter embrace than ever. "Like that, baby?" he hissed in her ear. "That's one boss hunk of meat, huh?"
"I like it!" she sobbed, drumming her heels on the carpet. "Fuck me! Please, Russ, fuck me until you can't fuck me anymore!"
"I'll fuck your brains out!" he promised. With each reckless thrust, he threatened to break himself off at the groin or rip her open. Perhaps both. The beads of perspiration on his face and the glazed look in his eyes bore witness to his labors.
Amy felt the sensations mount until her whole body throbbed in fiery appreciation of his efforts. A flush emanated from her face and spread across her chest. The nipples of both breasts were icy tips of sexual need, raking intermittently through the tangled hair on his chest as he slammed into her. She wondered now why she'd waited so long to lose it, why she'd been so preoccupied with venereal disease and pregnancy. On campus there must have been dozens of stalwart young men who could make her feel this way. She'd been a fool. A romantic fool.
"Almost-there!" Cameron panted. He slowed to a rhythmic pounding which enabled him to maintain control and still speed her to another climax. Sheets of perspiration poured off his chest and dripped onto her heaving breasts. His testicles slapped against her thighs with a report not unlike billiard balls striking a table.
Amy felt the lips of her cunt almost flower at the climactic instant. She struggled to get more of him inside her. "I'm-cumming!" she gasped. "Oh, put it in me! Please put all of it in me!"
Russ tried, literally, to ram his testicles into her vagina. Not being able to do that, he had to content himself with stuffing his bloated shaft inside her box and leaving it there. She exploded with a thunderous orgasm just as he ejaculated. The two mauled and pummeled one another to a sweaty, phrenetic finish, her own excretions co-mingling with his ejaculate.
Afterwards, they could only lie in silent exhaustion, too wrung out for words. Then the chilling prospect of becoming pregnant from this night's happening made Amy raise her head and stare at him. "You didn't use anything!" she accused, her voice rising hysterically with each syllable. "I trusted you and you didn't use anything!"
Chuckling, Cameron pulled her down beside him again. "You can relax, kitten. I never use anything. You see . . . I'm clinically sterile. That's one of the reasons me and my old lady split. She wanted kids and I couldn't give them to her. So it follows I can't give them to you, either. Satisfied?"
She still had misgivings, but for now she banished them, nestling in the hollow of his shoulder. Russ Cameron didn't love her and probably never would. Nonetheless, he'd taken her virginity. For this, she'd always remember him. His face, his smile, his form, his . . . prick. Especially his prick. She could never think of them as penises again. Never.
Cameron sighed and turned so that she could see something: he had a new, more powerful erection. "Doesn't that beat all? Last night I couldn't get it up. Now I can't get it down. Any ideas?"
She shook her head. Deflorated or not, she hadn't yet reached the point where she could say, coolly: "Let's fuck."
He grinned and pushed her onto her back. "That's okay, lamb chop. I've got a few of my own."
CHAPTER NINE
On Friday morning, as Amy left one of the RCA Building's elevators for the agency's thirty-fifth floor, she spied Terry Hillyard down the corridor. Hillyard was better dressed than' usual this morning. His hair, a shaggy tangle which defied combing, seemed neater. The mustache, too. He smiled and beckoned as though he wanted to speak to her. Amy, remembering Russ Cameron's inspired lovemaking, pretended not to see him. She hurried on to Wanda Gabriel's suite, where she hoped for word on the BriteWhite commercial.
"Amy!" Terry yelled, running after her. "Hold up! I've something to tell you!"
Before he could overtake her, she ran into the office and slammed the door, discovering Wanda inside conversing on the telephone. The latter looked up, motioned for quiet and continued talking to someone who was very important, judging from Wanda's serious expression. Amy sat down, anticipating that Terry would barge in on her heels, endangering both their futures. But no one else came through the door. Whatever he had to tell her he'd tell her another time.
Wanda hung up and smiled at her. "Know who that was, darling? The producer of the BriteWhite toothpaste commercial. He's impressed with your audition and thinks you're the best alternate."
Amy slumped in her chair, sick with disappointment. "So I don't get the commercial? I'm only the best alternate? That's the crudest thing I ever heard. If I'd known, I wouldn't even have come down. I'd have gotten on the next plane for home." She realized, as soon as the words were out, that she'd said too much. Far too much.
Wanda's dark eyes flashed cold fire. "That's ingratitude with a capital I, Fortune. Being the best alternate means you'll shoot the commercial as soon as the other girl's finished. You'll be paid a good fee. Not as much as hers, but good. If the BriteWhite people decide to scrap hers, they'll use yours instead. You might end up with more residuals than she ever heard of. Next time please connect your brain before engaging your mouth."
"B-but the chances," Amy stammered. "It doesn't happen very often, does it?"
"About half the time," Wanda assured her. "Sometimes they discover on a television monitor that her hair is wrong. Or her face. Maybe her expression is too wooden. Advertisers can be very capricious, honey. They can afford to. There're millions involved."
Amy brushed the hair from her eyes and sat forward in the chair. "Then when do I-?"
"I was about to tell you, if you'll just give me the chance. The commercial will be filmed at two p.m. in the studios of Leeming and Strauss Associates. That's on the ninth floor of the British Empire Building. If you think you can find a suitable outfit..." Wanda inclined her head in the half-gracious, half-sneering way everyone feared. ". . . why, we might call you television model by nightfall. Still want to take that plane ride?"
Amy almost fanned herself in excitement. "What kind of outfit?"
"I could let you go unprepared, your attitude is so rotten. All right, they want you in tennis togs. Short skirt and all the rest. Don't forget a racket. I imagine the balls-" Wanda rolled her eyes heavenward, as though the term held unpleasant connotations, "-are unimportant. Shall I write everything on a memo?"
Amy shook her head, flushing. "That won't be necessary. And thank you ever so much, Miss Gabriel."
The older woman's brows shot up. "Miss Gabriel? What kind of an address is that? Darling, don't we have an arrangement? Don't we?" Wanda summoned a smile which made her seem twice as beautiful, twice as petulant.
Amy hesitated, realizing how much hung here. In a word, everything. "No. And I'm sorry I ever gave you the impression. I'm sorry I let you do those-those things to me. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed or anything. I'm proud of my body and the way it makes me feel. But I don't want to feel those things with a woman, ever again. I mean it. Something has happened to change my whole outlook on life. I can't tell you what it is, but it's happened." Amy gulped and stared at her hands. "If it means I don't get the commercial, if it means I'm through, then so be it."
Hurt, for an instant, shone in Wanda's clear eyes. Anger, too. But she quickly concealed both. "I think I understand, darling, and I won't hold it against you. Nothing has changed. Heavens, there must be hundreds of girls ..." Wanda's eyes narrowed. "You've lost your virginity, is that it? Don't be afraid to tell me. I lost mine once, too, only it was nothing more than a physical defloration. An older woman had already taught me the truth about myself. Have you?"
Amy realized she had nothing to gain by lying. She nodded yes. "Last night," she added, not able to resist telling the rest of it.
Wanda looked concerned. "A pick-up, I suppose. A man on the make. Sometimes I use them myself." She saw the fleeting expression of bewilderment on the younger girl's face, and laughed. "Does that surprise you? Yes, I like to be penetrated, too, on occasion. A pick-up can be terrific, if you're careful. But you can also catch the most dreadful diseases from men you've never seen before. I hope you didn't."
Amy avoided Wanda's gaze. "He . . . wasn't a pick-up. I knew him."
The other woman's intuition was almost a visible thing. Wanda's mouth fell open. "Russ? You slept with Russ Cameron?"
Amy felt defiant rather than defensive. "Yes. What of it?"
The director of David Enlowe Modeling Agency threw up her hands. "Nothing of it. You don't have to bite my head off. I've had Russ a few times myself, and he's not so much. Good but not great. Adequate, I'd say. But he is sterile, they tell me, and I suppose that was an advantage."
Amy was silent, but her face burned. So even ice-cold Wanda Gabriel had had the man who took her virginity. How humiliating! She'd make Russ pay for this, one way or another. Possibly by throwing herself at Terry Hillyard or some other man. "He told me."
Wanda smiled. "I'm sure it was a charming experience, dear. It must have made quite an impression on a girl with so little basis for comparison. But how can you be certain? Why don't you come over here and-"
"No!" Amy was astonished herself at the fierceness of her turndown. She stood up and swung her handbag like a weapon. "I think I'll run out to buy that outfit now, if you don't mind."
Halfway down the corridor, she could still hear Wanda Gabriel's tinkling laughter.
"No, no, Miss Phillips!" the director exclaimed. "Put some feeling into your words. Some animation. You've just come in from off the tennis court, see, and you want all these millions of people to know what white teeth you have. So show them. Smile, but make it natural." The director, who had a balding head and a loud Hawaiian sports shirt, nodded when the girl in front of the camera did as he instructed. "That's better. But the eyes should sparkle more. Now brush your hair to one side, look serious and tell the people why your teeth are so white. Tell them you use BriteWhite toothpaste, a fluoride formula with special brighteners added. Keep your voice calm and matter-of-fact. Don't gush."
Amy, stationed near the director in her own short-skirted tennis outfit, watched in fascination. Except for a scarcity of lookers-on, she might have been standing on a Hollywood set. There was a stage with a profusion of lights shining down, curtains for a backdrop, and to her left, a motion picture camera. In addition to the director and herself, a cameraman, a make-up man, a lighting expert and a marketing representative from the BriteWhite company looked on. The actual filming hadn't begun yet, however. They were still in the middle of dry takes.
Underneath the lights, holding a tennis racket as though she'd swung one all her life, was a beautiful girl named Marilyn Phillips. She was about twenty-four and had auburn hair and magnificent legs. Her complexion was the creamiest Amy had ever seen. Marilyn's lack of a tan, in fact, was probably her only drawback. Even her voice, a deep, husky contralto, seemed perfect for convincing television viewers that she did indeed use BriteWhite toothpaste, and that it made her teeth a brighter, whiter white.
The director listened as she delivered the commercial's brief pitch-"A friend turned me on to BriteWhite toothpaste. Before then, I'd been brushing with ordinary toothpaste and a patented polish. After a week with BriteWhite, I no longer needed the polish. Still skeptical? Don't be. The brighteners in BriteWhite are a special blend available in no other brand, effective, yet safe for your teeth. Ask your dentist. Then pick up a week's supply of BriteWhite. You'll be glad you did!" Then he turned to the cameraman and snapped his fingers. "Let's put it on film, Larry. Take one."
Marilyn exited to their left with her racket and re-entered from the stage's right, as she was supposed to. Holding the racket in her right hand, in clear but not obvious view of the camera, she smiled and brushed her long hair from her eyes with her left hand. In reasonably good diction, with natural eye movements and facial changes, she recited her lines for the microphones to record. To Amy, who was beginning to feel hopeless all over again, the commercial was flawless. The director seemed to feel otherwise. He ordered three more takes before telling the cameraman to, "Shut it off, Larry. I think we have it."
Amy, starting for the door with tears in her eyes, heard BriteWhite's marketing man call her back.
"Is anything wrong, Miss?" he inquired, a graying executive-type who eyed her from inside a tailored Kuppenheimer which had one, perhaps two wrinkles.
She shook her head, blinking to hold back the tears. "But you don't need me now. The director said. .."
BriteWhite's man chuckled and patted her shoulder. "He's satisfied with the other girl's delivery. Now we want to see and hear yours." He winked. "Who knows? I may like it better. I carry a little weight with my company's board of directors, you know. If I tell them Miss Phillips isn't the BriteWhite girl, they'll believe me. That's not a promise, understand, just a possibility."
Amy smiled up at him, respecting a man who could give her sympathy and encouragement when he had nothing to gain from it. But then he probably had grandchildren, not to mention a mistress or two. "Do you really think I have a chance?"
"I'm sure of it," he declared, and led her back to the set.
After a short recess, she was placed in front of the camera and asked to read the BriteWhite message from a prompting card held aloft by the director. Amy read it too fast and was accused by the director of being nervous. She confessed as much and was excused for an hour. She spent the hour in a hair salon on Fifth Avenue, returning at half-past three with more confidence in herself.
While the make-up man applied the essential dull ants to her cheeks, chin and brows, she noticed that someone else had joined the lookers-on: Terry Hillyard. Rather than being pleased, Amy was annoyed. She resolved to do the commercial so well that even Terry would be impressed. If he cornered her afterward, she'd hit him with Russ Cameron and watch the jealousy on his face.
"Make your entrance, Miss Fortune!" the director bawled. He turned to glare at her. "This is a take, so try not to ruin it."
Amy grabbed her tennis racket and disappeared behind the stage. She made what she felt was a perfect entrance, paused in front of the camera, smiled and brushed the hair from her eyes, remembering to hold the racket easily, not stiffly. "A friend turned me on to BriteWhite toothpaste," she began. "Before then I'd been brushing with an ordinary toothpaste and a patented polish. After a week with BriteWhite ..." Amy faltered. Someone had bumped a footlight. She'd been temporarily dazzled and hadn't been able to see the prompting card.
"Cut!" the director yelled, and vented his displeasure on the lighting man.
Amy, shaken, blew two more takes with inappropriate facial expressions before finally completing one to her satisfaction, the director's satisfaction, the BriteWhite man's satisfaction, even Terry Hillyard's satisfaction. The latter applauded as she came down off the stage.
"You swing a mean racket, lovey," he chuckled.
"I didn't know you had an athletic streak."
She shook off the hand he meant to be congratulatory and started toward a dressing room.
"Hey, is that any way to treat a cheering section?" Hillyard protested.
"If you're still here in five minutes, I'll talk to you," Amy flung over her shoulder. Going inside and slamming the door, she turned the five into fifteen, certain that he'd still be there when she came out. He was. Dressed in skirt and blouse again, she gave him an icy stare and strode toward the studio exit.
Terry caught up with her at the door. "You can't snub me like this," he grumbled, keeping step with her down the hall. "I'm not dirt, by God. Okay, so I broke into your place once. That's no reason to-"
"Oh, shut up!" she said cheerfully, smiling up at him. "If youll stop feeling sorry for yourself, I might stop feeling sorry for you." Now that her first assignment was behind her, she felt less put-out with him. Her fee, so the BriteWhite contract said, came to $1,000, even if her version of the commercial was never aired. The agency would keep $400, but the rest was still more than she could have earned at home.
Terry grinned, throwing a friendly arm across her shoulder. "Does that mean I can see you back to the agency? I have a car down below, triple-parked." He leaned close to whisper the rest of it: "I have a proposition for you, but I can't unload it up here."
Amy's suspicion was instinctive. "Proposition? Keep it."
Hillyard laughed. "Do I detect a note of curiosity? Sure I do. To hear it, you'll have to get in the car with me, sweetheart."
She got into his car because there was no cab handy and New York traffic frightened her. Also, because she was interested in his proposition, even if she had a fair idea already what was on his mind. The three-year-old Chrysler was about what she expected a $15,000-a-year photographer to drive. "Okay, let's hear it."
"A friend of mine's leaving for Europe in the morning. He's got a place up in the Catskills and he left me the keys. It's not a lodge, mind you, just a comfortable cabin. And it's only a couple of hours out of town. I thought that you and I . . . well, you don't want to spend the weekend in the city, do you?"
Amy decided this was as good a time as any to unload her bombshell. "You're sweet, Terry, honey. And I would like to see your friend's cabin. But if you're thinking about what I think you're thinking, I have to warn you. Russ has already talked me out of it."
Hillyard swore, braking so suddenly, the car behind bumped them. "The bastard!" he breathed, taking quick, unhappy glances at her. He shrugged and put the car in motion again. "What the hell. The offer still stands."
"Then I accept."
CHAPTER TEN
As afternoon turned to evening, Amy finished packing a weekender with the things she figured she'd need for two days in the mountains: a sweater, insect repellant, enough hosiery and lingerie for three changing's. She placed the case near the door and went to make herself a sandwich. Before she could finish eating it, someone knocked. Amy patted her hair and went to open it, discovering none other than Terry himself on the other side. Amy stuffed in the last of the sandwich and watched his expression change from interested to greedy. Hastily, she backed away from him.
Hillyard gestured at the bag. "Is that the only one?"
She nodded. "Will I be needing much?"
He grinned and shook his head. "Not if I have anything to do with it. Let's ride, huh?"
She locked the apartment and followed him downstairs to his car. With a red June sun staining the West Side crimson, they set out together. Terry headed them across the Hudson River and up the New York State Thru way. Within half an hour, the scenery changed from grimy industrial to pastoral. Flatlands gave way to hills, the hills to loftier reaches. As the sun set, Amy found herself awaiting the storied Catskills with almost as much eagerness as Terry himself.
At an exit many miles from the city, Hillyard left the Thruway for a state highway with much less traffic. The state highway he abandoned half an hour later for a winding mountain road with more twists and turns than a roller coaster. Amy lost all sense of direction and, except for occasional sneaks at the luminous dial of her watch, all sense of time. Conversation between them fell to silence as Terry concentrated on his driving.
At a quarter past nine, as she opened her mouth to say she didn't appreciate the joke, he whipped them around a curve and over a narrow, one-lane bridge. The Chrysler's headlights stabbed through the darkness of a clearing until they came upon a small house. The house . . . Amy looked closer and smiled. The cabin really was made of cut and squared logs. "That's it?"
"That's it, baby," Terry said, and cut the car's ignition. He switched off the lights and groped for her in the darkness. "A little kiss to start us off right?"
She was astonished at the passion in his voice, but she slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him warmly, pressing her lips to his until he was crushing her in his arms.
"I want it!" Hillyard panted, mauling her breasts with hands that didn't seem to know where the catches were. "Russ had you first, damn him, but I'll have you now!"
Amy thought he would have, too, if she hadn't shrugged free of him and escaped out the door. "You're going to take me inside first," she insisted, and ran for the house. He overtook her on the steps and the two grappled with one another until she succeeded in taking the key away from him and inserting it. The heavy wooden door swung open with a spine-tingling creak. She reached inside for a light switch, and couldn't find one. A horrible suspicion hit her. "Let me guess. Your friend's cabin doesn't have utilities."
Terry chuckled and pushed her through the door. "How did you know? Wait here. I have lanterns in the trunk. Battery and gas. Provisions, too. Oh, we're gonna have ourselves a weekend, BriteWhite person." He turned and sped out the door, tripping on the steps and falling headlong in the darkness. Cursing, Hillyard picked himself up and limped on to the car, returning with a battery-operated lantern before she had time to be afraid.
"Over here," she said, blinking into the lantern's reassuring glow.
Terry adjusted the lantern for a gentle, dispersed illumination, and set it on a table. A rough table, like most of the cabin's furniture. But there was warmth as well, in a rustic kind of way. Simple, flowered curtains hung at the windows. In the far corner was a bed with a quilted cover. In the near, a sink with an outside drain and a wood range. Amy decided she liked it. She glanced back at Terry and gasped. He stood, literally, over her, and if his thoughts had to do with the sink or the range, Amy couldn't tell it. "You-you don't waste time ... do you?" she whispered.
Hillyard shook his head. "There's no time to be wasted. Stand up. I want to undress you."
Pride, or its remnant, made her slap his hand away. "I can undress myself, thank you. And stop giving me orders."
Terry yanked her up and held her an inch off the floor before putting her down. "When I tell you to do something, from now on do it. Understand?"
Amy remembered where she was-or rather, where she wasn't-and nodded.
He began with her blouse. Unlike their one previous encounter, this time he was gentle, apparently savoring the spectacle of each button being unfastened. He pushed the blouse off her shoulders, kissing her neck before proceeding. With the blouse out of the way, Terry let his lips play along the upper edges of her bra, pausing between her breasts to slide his wet tongue into the moist valley.
For Amy, keyed up after a two-hour drive, it was difficult not to be stirred. Hillyard reached behind her to unhook the bra, then let the cups slide away from her breasts in a slow unveiling whose very purpose was his own arousal. "You've got better boobs than the other one, BriteWhite," he joked, tweaking one of them. "Her teeth were whiter, though. Sorry about that."
He began kissing the nipples, applying little or no suction but rather covering each one with his mouth long enough to warm the cool flesh. Amy scarcely felt the pressure of Terry's lips, but the buds became taut and rigid when he touched his tongue to them. She breathed a sigh of appreciation when he stiffened his tongue and tried to drive both nipples into the breast proper. "Yes. Yes, I like that."
Terry looked up and smiled, too full of tit to say anything. When he tired of suckling, he pushed her into a chair, knelt before her and removed her shoes, kissing the toes of each foot. Amy began to tremble as he unzipped her skirt and tugged it from beneath her buttocks. She'd traded pantyhose for panties, and only the latter remained. Since they were sheer and flesh-colored, they made her appear as though she were already nude.
Hillyard stood up and stepped back, still smiling. "Promenade for me."
She stared at him. "What?"
"You heard me. Walk around the room a few times and let me feast my tired eyes. It's been a long week."
Amy decided to be gracious and do as he asked, no matter how silly it made her feel. She got up and paraded back and forth, finding no shame in the parading because of their prior contact. Terry watched her move with thoughtful eyes. There wasn't, as yet, deep lust on his face. He was simply appreciating the smooth perfection of her youthful body. Amy made her hips sway and her buttocks jiggle to see how he'd react.
"Corhe here," he ordered, his voice suddenly thick.
She went to stand before him. Amazing her, Hillyard fell to his knees again, pressing a kiss on her navel, then running his tongue along the legbands of her panties until he almost poked it through the outer edges of her moistening labia. She wondered at the change in him, wondered how much Russ Cameron had to do with it.
Terry raised a hand, as though he understood her bewilderment but wanted no questions. He continued to nibble at the sensitive flesh of inner thigh until every nerve ending down there awoke to the need in her. Then her began removing her panties, rolling them down her hips and leaving them there for the moment. Her pubic hair was still partially covered and the panties clung to the swell of her buttocks.
Amy gasped when he turned her around and ran his tongue through the top of her anal crevice. Terry tugged the panties down farther and began to kiss the firm mounds of her buttocks until they were wet with his saliva. Only when she was trembling uncontrollably did he rise and push her toward the bed. She walked that way with the feeling that none of this was real, none of it was happening to her. The discrepancy between New York City and this lonely, deserted cabin was too great. Somewhere between the chair and the bed, the panties fell to her feet. Amy stepped out of them and left them where they lay. . She got on the bed and lay watching him as he undressed. There was still no urgency about his actions, although his fingers fumbled with each button. When he wriggled out of his slacks and dropped his shorts, she saw a straining hard-on which seemed even larger in the low-ceilinged room. The erection was possibly the best he'd ever had.
He glanced up and saw the intent look on her face. Hillyard grinned. "He's yours, BriteWhite. All yours. From now until Sunday night, to play with as you like."
Lingering modesty made her turn her head away when he climbed into bed with her. Terry positioned himself beside her hips and repeated his earlier caresses, trailing hot kisses across her breasts, belly and buttocks. Amy began shaking with sexual need. For overnight improvement-actually it was four nights-no one in her imagination could surpass this blond brute. He was a brute no longer. Not yet, anyway.'
When he tapped her thigh with a forefinger, she opened wide for him. Hillyard kissed along the borders of her cunt hair until the dusky triangle was damp from his mouthing. Then he went deeper. Amy expelled a long, shuddering sigh when he touched his lips to her labia. The sigh became a gasp as he rammed his stiff tongue against a clitoris which had become sharply engorged, pressing through its hood. "Yes!" she breathed. "Do that!"
Terry's tongue flicked back and forth against the supersensitive flesh. She tried to urge him on, but he was proceeding at his own pace. Her clitoris came alive with a rush of sensation as he continued to tongue her. The little organ swelled to twice its usual size, even struggled to escape its cover of skin. Hillyard seized it between his teeth and began to suck it.
Amy whimpered and brought her trembling thighs closer about the devouring mouth. Terry redoubled his efforts and she soon reached a thunderous climax, a devastating release which left her momentarily spent but not exhausted. The orgasm was one of the most satisfying that she'd ever experienced, and for more than a minute she gushed hot fluids into his oral cavity.
Hillyard raised his head to look at her, licking his lips. "Like it?"
"I-loved it," she admitted, but she hoped he wouldn't ask her to reciprocate. Her level of sexual sophistication wasn't sufficient as yet to permit taking a male organ into her mouth.
"I'm glad," he said. " 'Cause there's more. Lots more." Terry crawled out from between her legs and stretched out beside her, bumping her with his stiff prick. "Touch it," he encouraged, and showed her how he wanted to be caressed by rolling the points of her breasts between his fingers.
She reached out and took his gigantic penis in her hand, applying the same kind of firm, yet gentle, squeezes. Terry's hard-on became a harder-on. She continued the fondling until he grabbed her hand and removed it, apparently to prevent an early climax.
"There's something else I want. . . before we finish." Hillyard got back between her thighs and placed his long penis across her belly. Its huge, congested head reached beyond her navel. Wriggling closer, he slid the thing higher up her body, higher and higher, until he was almost squatting on her belly.
Amy kept her fascinated gaze on it until the prick slipped into the valley between her breasts. Once a ritual like this would have outraged and offended her. Now she was thrilled and excited. Watching the big shaft throb hotly in its strange resting place, she lost her fear of it. Terry could do whatever he wanted with her.
He pressed her breasts around his prick and let it rest there for a minute, baking in the moist warmth. Then he withdrew it as though from a vaginal sheath, re-inserting it a few times. The stimulation was so great he had to leave off. Before leaving her breasts, however, he rubbed the hot, pulsing glans against the swollen nipple of each breast. Amy, on impulse, seized him in her hands and returned him to the valley of her breasts. When he withdrew, she saw a crystal-clear drop of ejaculate poised at the tip of his prick.
Hillyard groaned. "Careful, baby. I'm full to overflowing." His face went rigid for a few seconds, then he relaxed. "Okay. Now I'm fit to handle again. Just be careful."
She didn't want to handle him again. She wanted him inside her. Amy stretched out flat and opened her thighs so he'd understand. "You be careful," she smiled, and made her breasts shake lasciviously. But she tensed inside. If he wasn't willing to take precautions, they'd end up fighting again. This time, with no one around to hear, he'd surely rape her.
Terry rolled off the bed and snatched his pants off the floor. He found his wallet and extracted a cellophane-wrapped object from inside. "For you I'll put a bucket under Henry," he cracked, and turned so that she could watch him while he did it. The condom was pre-rolled and lubricated-ready for instant use. Hillyard pushed it up the end of his prick and rolled until he ran out of rubber. Assuming a look of droll concern, he waggled the thing a few times for her. "Shall I try for two?" he asked her.
She shook her head, smiling. "One's enough. Just-just put it in me!"
"Just try to stop me!" he retorted, and made a flying leap for the bed. She greeted him with wide open thighs and helped him guide his rubber-covered penis at her slit. With a mighty thrust that made her bleat, he took possession of her, wriggling until she'd taken as much as she could.
Amy whimpered out her satisfaction. She didn't feel the slightest discomfort, although her cervix had been jarred when his glans made contact. Once he'd fully penetrated her, Terry returned to an unhurried style of lovemaking which featured very slow, very precise thrusts. He seemed intent on discovering her true depth and adjusting himself to it.
"I've never laid the BriteWhite girl before," he teased, gazing down at her.
She felt the sensations multiply until her whole body was a vaginal sheath writhing in response to a churning phallus. "Fuck me!" she sobbed, drumming her heels on the covers. "Fuck me harder!"
"Okay, baby, but remember, you asked for this," he warned, and began to slam away at her in a frenzied, lustful fashion which made the bed shake and her cunt shiver. The minutes turned to fifteen, the fifteen to thirty. She lost count of the orgasms she experienced; they came one after the other, a few frantic minutes apart. She lifted her buttocks from the bed and met Hillyard's lunges before sinking back down and letting his flesh blend steamily with her own.
Finally Terry grunted out the end of forty minutes' strenuous exertion. But rather than go into a spasmodic pounding of her genitals, he fed his prick into her vagina until his testicles pressed snugly against the labia's outer lips. Holding it there, he filled the condom with all the white-hot semen it could hold, withdrawing before he went limp and lost the ticklish load.
Amy fell asleep almost as soon as he left her body.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She awoke to tine smell and sound of frying bacon. The tangy scent coaxed her from a deep sleep and made her raise her head in bewilderment. Amy hadn't the vaguest idea where she was. But then she saw Terry, in bathrobe and slippers, standing over the wood stove. Terry's back was to her and he seemed wholly intent on his task.
Amy groaned softly and let her head sink back down. She remembered. Her cunt ached and so did her head. Not even chirping birds outside her window-not in almost a week had she heard a live songbird-could take away the guilt. Thanks to Russ Cameron and the BriteWhite people, she'd come a long way in two nights, maybe farther than she should.
He turned around and grinned at her. "Morning, kitten. There's a pump and a basin outside, if you want to wash up. Breakfast will be served as soon as I figure out a way to toast the bread."
She didn't feel like getting up. Not just yet, anyway. So she pretended she hadn't heard, closing her eyes and turning her head to the wall. But then she detected stealthy feet crossing the cabin's hardwood floor. A hand grasped her shoulder, through the covers-the shoulder was bare because she was bare. A chuckle came from close at hand.
"Okay, kitten, let's get up. If you aren't out of there at the count of three ..." Hillyard began to count: "One, two, three. . . ." With one vigorous pull, he yanked the covers off her, exposing her to his lecherous gaze. "Wow!" he chortled. "Amazing what a night's rest can do for a girl! I think I'll serve myself breakfast right now!" He shrugged out of the robe and kicked away the slippers.
"Terry!" Amy wailed, rolling into a frightened ball. "Not like this! Not before breakfast! It's-it's indecent!"
"Says you," he laughed, and made her look at him, at his morning-after hard-on. "See?" he smiled. "Things could get a lot more interesting than you realized. How about it?"
She tried to lock her thighs against his invading hand, but the harder she tried, the more excited she became. Her body, fresh and rested after ten hours rest, simply wouldn't do her bidding. When he lost his balance and fell on top of her, she had to scramble out of the way to keep from getting hurt. Now he was in bed with her and the battle was lost.
Terry turned on his side so that he was facing her. His prick bumped invitingly along her thigh.
"Give me a yes or a no."
Amy faced him. She feigned reluctance, but she knew he saw through it. "Yes, damn you. Let's get it over with." His demands, she thought, would take all the enjoyment out of her weekend. He was treating her like one of his whores rather than Amy Fortune, the next (maybe) BriteWhite girl. She hooked her right thigh over his left hip and waited for him to proceed.
Terry placed his prick inside her vestibule and let just the head caress her clitoris for a few moments. He watched her face intently. Amy, quivering at the contact, brought her ^thighs together, squeezing him farther inside her as it were. Hillyard, sucking in his breath, let himself be drawn into the oozing warmth of her cunt.
"What a breakfast," he muttered, and rolled her onto her back to get at her better.
She realized, when his thrusts became too hurried and too vigorous, that she wouldn't climax. He was proceeding too fast and with too little concern for her readiness. She needed time to respond, and he wouldn't give it to her. Amy felt her annoyance turn to fury when he gasped out a quick finish and wriggled out of her.
"Better stand up," he advised, rolling away to land on his feet. "I didn't use anything that time."
"You bastard!" she wept, ashamed to let him see her tears but unable to hold them back.
"We'll make it up," Hillyard chuckled, and dashed back to his bacon. He picked up the robe en route.
When his back was to her again, she got out of bed, gathered up her clothes and slipped out the cabin's back door to put them on. She reflected, while dousing her face with ice-cold water, that the wilderness wasn't all she'd been led to expect.
Later that day, Terry introduced her to trout fishing, Catskill style. Beside a swift-flowing stream high above the cabin, he spread a blanket, helped her tie a fly to one of the two casting outfits he'd brought with him, and sank down with her to wet them. In absolute silence, they fished until an afternoon sun lost its burn and merely warmed their respective backs.
Amy was still angry with him for using her, but she decided to apologize first. "I'm sorry I called you a bastard," she said, clearing her throat and switching her rod to another hand. "Even if you were."
Terry, who had the beginning of a glorious sunburn, glanced sideways at her. "Okay," he shrugged. "I accept your apology, even if I didn't ask for it. I don't care how bitchy you are as long as you stay away from Russ Cameron-in my opinion, the real bastard."
They enjoyed a good laugh, then he put down his rod and pushed her onto her back. "I said we'd make it up, and I meant it. I'm gonna eat you right into a fit. Then I'm gonna screw you silly."
She thrilled to the promise in his words, the menace, even if she doubted that he could eat her into a fit.
Hillyard stooped and pulled her skirt up around her waist, lifting her buttocks long enough to take off her panties. Then he spread her thighs and buried his sunburned face between them. Even before he reached his target, he began making smacking sounds.
"No!" Amy gasped, not believing that he'd actually do it. But he parted the lips of her cunt with his fingers and thrust his tongue into the opening. She went rigid. The sensations of a rough tongue sliding across her moist labia were more pleasurable than anything she'd ever experienced before. When he touched her clitoris, she thought she'd die. "Don't stop!" she sobbed. "Please don't stop!"
Terry seemed to have no intention of stopping. He worked his hands up under her buttocks and gripped one in each palm, applying a squeezing motion each time he jabbed his tongue into her clitoris. There was genuine artistry to his sucking this time, a dedication which had been absent the first time, probably because of the urgency of four nights' deprivation. He alternated the jabbing with a clockwise swirling which touched every sensitive structure within reach.
Amy began to twitch in time with his squeezing of her buttocks. Her excitement rose to a plateau which he'd keep her on for a few minutes before skillfully raising her to a higher one. She forgot about Russ Cameron, she forgot about the BriteWhite commercial, she forgot about everything except the man who, in almost a literal sense, was trying to return to the place of his creation. "Yes!" she moaned. "Yes, yes, yes!"
Terry took away one of his hands and brought it up between her thigh and his head. Then he applied just the shaft of his index finger to a place immediately above her clitoris. He rubbed with the finger and speared with his tongue. The combined effect was electrifying.
Amy whimpered and gave herself up to a soul-wrenching climax. The spasms began in her genitals, spread to her breasts, exploded finally in her brain. In wave after wave, they drummed a message of ecstasy to her cerebellum. A roaring began in her ears which drowned out the chirping of the birds overhead and the striking of an occasional trout.
Terry seemed to know when she'd finished. He took his mouth away and raised his head to grin at her. "If you liked it, say so. Don't be bashful."
"I liked it," she murmured, lids lowered on flushed cheeks. "You'll-you'll never know how much."
"In that case, you won't mind giving a fellow fisherman a little skull pussy."
Amy stared at him, alarmed. "Does that-does that mean what I think it does?"
"Baby, you're gonna give old Terry the hottest suck he ever had," Hillyard declared, working the fastener of his zipper. "If you don't, I'm gonna throw you in the middle of the stream and hide your clothes. By the time you drag yourself out, assuming you do, I'll be packed and halfway back to the big city." He glowered at her, waiting.
She wiped a thin bead of perspiration from her upper lip. "Let me . . . think about it for a minute. It's-it's so sudden."
Terry looked plaintive. "I want to be sucked now, not next week. Make up your mind." While he talked, his hands were busy with belt and trousers. He dropped the latter, then unsnapped his shorts, letting them fall atop his pants. A huge hard-on poked up from its undergrowth of hair. "So come down from the pedestal. The best way to do it is on your knees."
For Amy, the choice was agonizing. The prospect of falling to her knees on the banks of a trout stream high in the Catskills, of taking a man's sexual organ into her mouth and stimulating it to orgasm, seemed preposterous. Obscene, even. "I don't believe ... I don't think ..." She covered her face with her hands. "Oh, my God, what will you think of me after I've . . ."
Hillyard laughed. "I'll think you're not a baby anymore. What the hell, it's no big thing. Unless you're scared to death of it. Come on. I'll show you what to do-and how to do it."
She scrambled to her feet and went to stand in front of him, avoiding his eyes.
"Kneel please," he instructed, and then snorted. "Don't, for Christ's sake, look so hang-dog. If I wanted a whore, I'd go out and buy one. You're no whore. Sucking me off won't make you one."
Trembling, she knelt.
"Lean forward, open your mouth and take just the tip between your lips." Hillyard's breath whistled through his teeth. "That's it!" he groaned. "You're doing great. Just keep it up. Keep it up!"
With her eyes tightly shut, she drank in more and more of him until she'd taken all she could. The taste of a penis, now that she'd gotten over her initial shock, wasn't entirely unpleasant. There was a saltiness, to be sure, but the shaft and foreskin itself were smooth. While he made choking sounds above her, she explored the organ's head with her tongue and lips, even nibbled gently at the sensitive skin.
"Finish me!" Terry begged, locking his hands in her hair. "If I have to wait any longer, I'll rip Henry apart!"
Recalling what happened during actual intercourse, Amy tightened her lips about him and began simulating coital movements, remembering to cover her teeth with her lips, so she wouldn't hurt him. Hillyard began to pant in time with her bobbing. This close to the taste and smell of him, she fancied that she was climaxing all over again. In fact, when he ejaculated into her mouth, when the hot semen began to spurt so fast she had to drink it or choke, she did climax again, collapsing on the blanket in front of him.
Afterwards, he held her with new respect, kissing and stroking her hair, whispering endearments she'd never expected to hear from him. Within a few minutes, he took her hand and placed it on his prick. She was neither surprised nor appalled to find he had a new hard-on. "We won't have to use anything this time," he promised, rolling her onto her back. "All of my wigglies are swimming around in your stomach by now. Wild, huh?"
Pinioned under the hot, perspiring weight of him, she felt wild. Rather than enter her at once, however, he returned to her lips, kissing them from the front, from the corners, every way she'd ever been kissed before. Her eyes, too, and nose, throat and earlobes. The latter he bit until she was ready to kneel down for him again, to scream her readiness for anything he might have in mind. Then he found her mouth once more and slipped his tongue between her lips. She was only too happy to admit his probing member.
While exploring the roof of her mouth with slow, sweeping motions, his hands were busy elsewhere. One supported her back, kneading the firm flesh below her shoulders. The other he wormed between her thighs and over her damp pubic hair, back and forth, until she almost screamed for contact with her clitoris. As if in answer, he inserted a finger into her labia and worked it in circles, stroking her clitoris with each delightful revolution. He left off Frenching her.
Amy growled out her pleasure. "Harder!" she requested. "Do it harder."
He resumed tonguing the roof of her mouth, coordinating the action with a slow, deliberate massaging of the entire clitoral area. A fire began to grow inside her, a fire she hadn't experienced before this afternoon, through no fault of her own. The conflagration smoldered and grew, finally burst into full flame.
"Now!" she groaned, tearing her mouth away. "Take me now!"
Before doing so, he got up and dragged her and the blanket farther away from the rushing stream. "Just in case," he said, nodding wisely. "I'd go through purgatory for you, but not a trout, stream. I never learned how to swim. Did you?" Hillyard seemed to ask the question in all seriousness, although he was on his knees in front of her and licking his lips, as though he couldn't wait to get a stiff prick in her hot pussy.
Amy smiled and shook her head. When he leaned forward and placed the tip of his penis between the congested lips of her labia, she closed her eyes, fearing she'd faint from the constriction around her heart, the fever in her brain. But she didn't. She was taken so gently, so skillfully, the possibility vanished. She arched her back, the better to help him. Inch by delicious inch, Terry took possession of her, balancing himself between her legs on hands and knees.
"The legs," he said, pausing. "Do something with them."
"Like what?"
"Wrap them around my waist and lock them at the ankle," he suggested. "That way, if we go into the drink, we go together."
She complied. As soon as she had, he began to move. Not with haste or urgency, as though someone might interrupt them. No one would. With art and tenderness, as though until now he'd been practicing and would proceed to show her the results. She gave herself up to a skillful exploration of her genital region which acquainted her, for the first time, with the meaning of the word fuck. This time Terry did more than plumb her depths. He awoke her cunt's perimeters in a way he hadn't succeeded in doing before, causing her to respond totally and without reserve. When he lunged, she lunged with him. When he twisted, she twisted, too, without having to think about it.
Finally, she was rent by an explosion which racked her from head to toe. She climaxed, literally, with her whole body, requiring a few seconds in which to recover. He gave them to her, then they went at it again. Her next orgasm was more intense, with spasms that lasted longer and drained away still more of her stamina. And yet he wasn't finished. Twice more he made her cum, before ejaculating himself, panting out a finish which, by some expert feat of control, he stretched into a full minute.
But in the way she'd come to expect of him he managed to spoil it, spotting a fish on his line before he'd even gone limp inside her. "Hey, look at that, BriteWhite! He'll go five pounds if he'll go an ounce! Let go, huh?"
She let go of him in more ways than one.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On Monday morning, as she started into Wanda Gabriel's suite to inquire about a new assignment and to follow up on the BriteWhite commercial, Amy heard loud, profane arguing. She took her hand off the doorknob and listened. From what she could gather, Wanda and Bruce were flaying one another over an operational difference.
"You self-centered snot, I won't listen to bullshit like that on a headache like this," Wanda was saying. "Why don't you get out of my office before I get sick all over you? I'm tired of you and your problems."
"I'm not a 'self-centered snot!' " Bruce replied with unexpected heat. "If I have 'problems,' it's because I feel more deeply than you do. Think about that for a minute, if you're capable of thinking."
"Oh, I am, Bruce, honey, I am. When the mood strikes me, I can think myself into a fit. I could probably even think myself into a strait-jacket."
"Shut up!"
"If you insist. But do me the same courtesy. And then get out."
"I'm not getting out. I'm staying until you agree to bring the file photos up to date. A new shooting with faster film. We're losing clients because our file pix are out of date, and you know it. Some don't do justice to our best models. The girls who've had their noses bobbed, for instance. Our files still have the old noses."
Amy marveled at McClard's effrontery, if effrontery it was. Perhaps it wasn't that, but pure desperation, born of impatience at the way Wanda was running-or mis-running-the agency. Whatever the reason, she'd never heard Bruce face down Wanda this way.
"Operating revenue is up twenty percent over last year, and you speak to me of file photos! You-you confused, wheedling excuse for a human being, get out! Do you hear me? Get out!"
"All right, you bloody bitch, I'm going!" Amy heard Bruce snarl. "But you haven't heard the last of it. I'm going to see our lawyer and find out what the partnership agreement says about dissolution." Heavy footsteps stamped toward the door.
Amy moved away from the door, but not before McClard yanked it open, saw her heading down the hall, and realized what she'd been doing.
"Hey!" he called sharply, closing the door after him.
She looked back, embarrassed.
"We don't eavesdrop on one another at this agency," he told her, and for once the authority came through. Bruce's manner this morning was like any other executive's. He was cross and ornery, and not afraid to show it. "Now, I'd like an apology. Make it fast, please. I'm in a hurry."
"I'm sorry," Amy murmured, tingling at the menace in his voice. She found herself admiring the wavy-haired man with the tight mouth, even if there was an air of tragedy about him. Superficially, he looked normal. He neither frothed at the mouth nor twitched. "I won't do it again, ever. I promise."
McClard nodded. "Okay." The hardness left his eyes and his shoulders relaxed. "You were going in to see Wan-to see Miss Gabriel about an assignment. Right?"
Amy confessed that she was.
"Then let's go into my office. I think I may have something for you myself."
Still tingling, she followed him into his office down the hall, a much smaller suite than Wanda's, indicating that the partnership possibly wasn't fifty-fifty. She sat down in a chair beside his desk and watched as he searched through the clutter for a folder containing, he said, a request from The Burroughs Corporation for an attractive young girl to illustrate the brochure for a new office adder.
Bruce found the folder, glanced up at her and smiled, experienced gaze traveling up and down her ripening form. "I think you qualify."
Amy smiled back at him, pleased that he could find her attractive, even if he couldn't find her sexually desirable. "Will I have to audition?"
McClard handed the letter across for her to read. "More than likely. If the competition is beginning to get to you, Miss Fortune, please remember it won't be so bad in a year or two. A couple of magazine covers, a few product testimonials, and you'll be on your way to a name. Then well tear up your contract and start over."
She basked in the encouragement. Wanda was prone to stressing the hard work involved in modeling. Bruce was all but promising better things. After reading the letter, Amy put it back on his desk. "You'll recommend me?"
He shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to a break. Maybe this is yours. The fee will be very substantial, I can tell you. They'll want to haggle when they discover you're inexperienced, but I think I can get you $5,000. You'll keep 60 percent, of course, same as for the BriteWhite shooting. I've heard nothing on that one, incidentally. It may be a week or two."
Amy, gazing into Bruce's deep-set, almost cavernous blue eyes, suddenly had an idea. A terrible, wonderful idea. She'd nurse McClard back to his full mental health. He was being generous to her; she'd be generous to him. A mental collapse shouldn't relegate him to a life of emptiness. He deserved more than pity. If he'd been able to respond to a woman once, she could make him respond again. She knew she could. Love, everyone said, was the great healer. All she needed was the time and the place. His office? Amy glanced around. Maybe. There was a couch and a lock on the door. But he'd be suspicious of too direct an approach. He'd probably feel she was trying to exploit him for her own ends. "Mr. McClard," she began, already envisioning Bruce and herself cozying up in her living room, "I have something to-"
"Bruce," he corrected. "Call me Bruce. Christ, is seven years so much?"
"Bruce, I-I have something to ask you," she said, brushing the hair from her eyes and looking away from him. "It's a request, really. Only I don't know how to say it."
McClard, busy returning the letter to its folder, smiled. "Just come out and say it. That's the best way."
She took a deep breath. "Being new in the city, I still don't know the better places to eat, to shop. How to keep from being overcharged, what to do if a man follows me late at night. I was wondering if ... oh, just forget I asked." Amy reached down to pick up her handbag.
Bruce leaned forward, a flattered look on his face. "You were wondering if what?"
She hesitated, straightening without having picked up the handbag. "I was wondering ... if you'd have dinner at my apartment tonight. No one else, just you and me. I could make your favorite dish and you could tell me all about New York City." Amy held her breath.
McClard's expression changed from interested to hostile. The haunted look she'd noticed about him returned to age him right before her eyes. He shook his head. "No. I can't. I won't. I assume you're trying to help, but I don't want your help. Take your pity somewhere else. I'm fully capable of taking care of myself."
She held up her hand. "Please. I just want you to teach me how to survive in this town. You've spent all your life here. You-you must know a great deal."
Bruce's color had heightened until now he was plainly near an exploding point. He reached up, before replying, and loosened his collar, tugging the tie out a couple of inches. "This is fantastic," he muttered, and whether he meant fantastically funny or fantastically sad, she couldn't say. He stared hard at her. "You do mean it, though. Yes, you do. I can see from ... I can usually tell when people are patronizing, when they're trying to-excuse me-trying to screw me. You're not trying to screw me. And yet..." McClard shrugged. "My favorite dish is beef Stroganoff. And you can expect me at eight. That's a promise. I never go back on a promise."
She got up to go before he could change his mind. "Fine. I'll expect you then." Retrieving the handbag, she managed to reach the door before he appended a warning: "Not a word to anyone, okay? I mean, I have a-" McClard stopped. "Rats. That's too wild to finish. Just get out."
When he knocked at eight, she went to the door in old slippers and apron, fearing a cocktail dress or other brief attire would only send him bolting for the elevator. But Bruce himself was well-dressed for the evening. Expensively dressed. Amy smiled a greeting and let him inside. But she didn't lock the door, nor did she try to help him off with his coat.
"Nice place," he noted, glancing about. His voice was a little tight, but otherwise he seemed calm, although he kept searching her face for she knew not what.
"The table's set," she told him, and led the way.
They ate the Stroganoff and a salad, completing the meal with a white wine she'd purchased especially for the occasion. During that time she brushed his shoulder once with her breasts and touched his hand several times, neither advertent. Bruce started at the one, paid the others no mind.
Amy got up several times to fetch additional servings and then to clear the table, and was positive that he stared covertly at her from behind her back. Her sympathy grew. She wouldn't ask him, but she could imagine the circumstances which made him crack: a relationship with a girl who refused to share him with others, a string of casual conquests, a tearful confrontation, a vengeful suicide, a reaction of guilt and shock. She probably couldn't help him in a single night, but she had to try. With the wine, she had to try.
After several glasses, they moved to the couch in the living room. For almost an hour he answered her questions about New York. The answers were polite, but there was a wariness about him, an aloofness. Then he began to relax with her. To test him, Amy put her hand on his thigh and moved it back and forth. Surprising her, Bruce took her other hand. He was trembling violently, however, and she knew he was forcing a response. When he looked at her-if he looked at her at all-lie was frightened.
After a few minutes, she leaned forward, inviting his kiss. McClard hesitated. She leaned farther, and he touched her lips with his. Their first kiss was hardly more than the eighth grade variety. Not so the second. There was a pressing and a parting of lips. Finally, his arms went around her, his hands began to rove, and he touched her breasts through her blouse, lightly. Then he touched her thighs, the way an uncertain schoolboy would.
When he seemed disinclined to go any further, she stood up, holding his hand and drawing him up with her. She started toward the bedroom, and felt resistance. Bruce was hanging back. The uncomfortable comparison with a patient being taken somewhere he feared to go was so strong, Amy almost burst out laughing. She restrained herself in time.
But as soon as she stopped, he moved forward on his own, flushing. He seemed determined to prove something to himself, if not to her. "I know what you have in mind!" he said hoarsely. "For you, I'll-I'll even try it. Just don't hurry me."
Electrified, she asked him to help remove her blouse. He worked the buttons more nimbly than she would have thought, and was at her bra hooks in no time. Bruce removed blouse and bra, and she turned around. His face was white. His eyes glittered and his hands trembled. He saw that she'd noticed the trembling, and managed to still it. He began to stare at her naked breasts, and it was as if his gaze were a physical thing, the stare was so strong. Amy began to feel warm. She began to experience the excitement of a woman being adored.
"Now my skirt," she suggested, watching him for signs of nervousness.
He stooped to unzip her. The skirt fell around her feet. She stepped out of it and saw his eyes fasten on her panties, on the soft bulge of pubic hair. Bruce was breathing now in short pants. When his hands crept to the elastic top of her panties, they made her jump, they were so icy cold. He pulled them down and she kicked them away. Then he was looking at her genitals, staring at them with an unblinking, fixed gaze.
He dropped to his knees, and she thought he was about to kiss her there. Instead, he showered brief kisses on the tops of her thighs, gradually stealing toward the pubic area. "Smooth," he whispered, stroking her with a tentative finger. "Velvet smooth. Almost forgot...
Bruce's pencil mustache, short though it was in comparison with Terry Hillyard's bushy one, tickled and made her giggle. McClard stopped abruptly, glaring at her, and she knew she was on the verge of losing him. "Do it again," Amy murmured. "I love the-the feel of you."
He blinked and then smiled-a gleaming, purposeful smile. The trapped look left his face and he resumed kissing her thighs. One hand crept around, as though it had a mind of its own, and began to caress her buttocks, fingers digging into the sponginess.
After a few more minutes, she stopped him, and couldn't have explained why, except that things were racing along at too fast a clip. He might soon begin to feel pressure, a need to perform, and that might frighten him and lead to devastating failure. She couldn't risk it. "You're still dressed," she reminded him.
Bruce got up off his knees and she began to undress him. He allowed her to remove his jacket, tie clasp and tie, but when she started unbuttoning his shirt, his hands covered hers and made her pause. A frightened, hunted look had returned to his face, as though this reminded him of his lost love and what he'd driven her to.
"Would you rather do it yourself?" He didn't answer, so she proceeded. His hands fell away and she took off his shirt. He was wearing a jockey shirt underneath. When she pulled it over his head, McClard's eyes closed tightly, the way his mouth was.
Amy looked at him, and saw the perspiration on his forehead. She hoped she wasn't driving him into a state of anxiety and relapse. If he turned violent... to soothe him, she brushed a hand through the thick tangle of hair covering his chest. There was a small tattoo on McClard's arm, but no hospital markings. Perhaps they'd been removed.
Encouraged, she knelt and unbuckled his belt to draw down his trousers. Bruce's legs were hard and firm, with a rich growth of light-brown hair. The thighs showed the trimming effects of regular exercise. She unsnapped his shorts and let them fall to his feet. Then she viewed, in some curiosity, his sexual apparatus, wondering what effects electric shock treatment might have had on this critical part of him. The testicles and scrotal sac looked normal enough, but whether from shock treatment or simply disuse, the penis seemed to be on the smallish side. Thick, but short.
"It's too goddamn small, isn't it?" Bruce rasped in a tone of sullen hopelessness. "That's why I haven't..."
Smiling, she shook her head. "I'm not an expert, but I don't think so." She realized that she hadn't kissed and caressed him while she removed his clothing. She'd been so engrossed in the task, so intent on observing his reaction, that she'd stripped him as quickly as possible. For Bruce, the ordeal had been a little unnerving. Amy rose now, stroked his hand and urged him to look at her. "Don't be afraid. Just look at me."
He looked at her. On his face was a curious mixture of desire and loathing, of eagerness and fear.
"Bruce, honey, you're not afraid of me, are you?" she smiled.
McClard shook his head, but only after great reluctance.
She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him, closing her eyes and pretending it was Russ or Terry. Bruce's lips weren't hard like the others, but they held a peculiar charm of their own. Amy tried to imagine that no other woman had ever kissed him the way she was kissing him now. When he returned the kiss, she opened her lips and fed him the tip of her tongue.
Bruce's head jerked and then he was actually touching her tongue with his. His arms went around her for a close, a snug embrace. They kissed for a long time, until she no longer had to pretend. Bruce was Bruce, and he couldn't be anyone else.
Amy felt one of his arms leave her. The arm landed on her knee and began creeping up her thigh. She opened her mouth farther and waited, confident that he'd reach her genitals and that they'd end up on the bed within a few minutes, making passionate love. She left off stroking his hair and shoulders and went in search of his penis, praying that he'd be firm and hard. Just as she reached him, Bruce jerked away, pushing her roughly from him.
"No!" he groaned. "I can't do it. I thought I could, but I can't."
"But you're-you're hard!" she stammered, bewildered. "Doesn't that-doesn't that prove something?"
"It proves I was a fool to come here!" McClard snarled, face aflame. He looked around for his clothes and began putting them on a great deal faster than she'd taken them off. "A trusting ass of a fool. You never wanted to know about the city, you wanted to make sport of me. Well, you've had your fun, by God. Now it's over."
Amy jumped up and seized him by the arm. "Bruce, no!" she wailed. "You're wrong! I didn't want to humiliate you, honest! I thought we-we might be good for one another. I thought I could help you!"
"I don't want your help!" he shouted at her. "I'm happy the way I am!" He struggled to peel her hand off his arm without hurting her.
"You're miserable the way you are," she accused. "If you weren't such a coward, I could-I could make you a man again. But, no, not you. You're totally lacking in courage."
McClard tried to wither her with a stare. His face worked, betraying the inner torment. "I have as much courage as you or anyone else!" he snapped. "I'm just not ready to start fucking again, that's all. Let's leave it there, huh? I suppose it's asking too much of you to keep your trap shut about this."
"Only if you come back tomorrow night," she fired back at him, unwilling to accept defeat.
"What?" Bruce's mouth fell open. He dropped the shirt he'd been trying to get back into.
"You'll come back and try again ... or I'll tell anyone who'll listen."
McClard's shoulders sagged. "You're worse than that Gabriel bitch, Fortune. I had you figured all wrong. Okay, I'll show. What have I got to lose? You've already raked my pride through the fire."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amy auditioned on Tuesday afternoon for the Burroughs' brochure. An official from the company's marketing division professed to be pleased with both the way she modeled and her attitude. While she waited in a visitors' lounge, he conferred with other executives who would make the actual decision. For an hour she sat there. When it seemed that she'd been forgotten, someone was sent to tell her the welcome news: she was now the "Model 211J Electric Office Adder Girl."
Rather than thrilling her, the news was a letdown. The failure with Bruce still vexed her. He and she had been so near. Just a few inches from a brand-new life for him. Possibly for her as well.
Wearing a wooden smile, she thanked her latest benefactor and listened to a shooting schedule. Then she walked slowly from The Burroughs' Corporation suites, elevatored down to the Manhattan streets, and encabbed for the agency.
Bruce wasn't in his office when she checked, nor had anyone seen him. Concerned, Amy walked into Wanda Gabriel's office and asked. She wasn't worried that she might betray her interest. Wanda would never believe she could have a romantic interest in "our joke," as Gabriel dryly put it.
"Bruce?" Wanda shrugged and put down a color glossy of one of the agency's newest girls. "Brucie never came in this morning, dear. He's having one of his moods, I suppose. I called his apartment before noon, but I couldn't raise him, Is it anything urgent?"
Amy hesitated. "I just wanted to tell him-I got the Burroughs assignment. They want to start shooting on Thursday and think they'll be finished by Monday."
Wanda smiled. "Good for you. You're turning into one of our hottest new properties. Keep it up. We're all proud of you, even Bruce."
Amy turned and walked out so she wouldn't have to answer any more questions from a woman who set her increasingly on edge. Before she could reach an elevator, she ran into Russ Cameron. The latter trapped her between a potted plant and a water cooler, and demanded to know how she was spending her time these days. Amy, when she looked into Russ' smiling eyes, had to fight a rush of feeling for him. Russ, after all, had no "problem." Russ had been the one who took her virginity. "I'm into social work now," she said seriously, making sure he didn't lay a hand on her breasts or thighs.
Cameron's face showed his puzzlement. "Social work? You? What a waste. Explains why I can't reach you on the phone anymore. I tried all weekend and got nothing but blisters on my dialing finger. I couldn't locate one Terry Hillyard, either. I wonder if there's a connection. Care to have a go at it?" Russ grinned.
"No," she said, and dodged around the potted plant. Before he could catch her, she fled into an elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.
Depression greeted her when she closed her apartment door. She'd failed with Bruce and there was no point in denying it. He was impotent, guilt-ridden, and probably on the verge of another nervous breakdown. She'd been a fool to think she could cure him. He didn't want to be cured. Amy was so sure that she'd never see Bruce outside her door again that she tried to lose herself in house-cleaning tasks, intending to go out to dinner when she finished.
As she fussed with her hair in front of a vanity mirror, someone knocked. Feeling that it was Russ or Terry, she kept perfectly still, hoping that he or they would think she wasn't in, and go away. The knocker refused to fall for any such ploy. After a minute, she got up and opened the door, recoiling over who she found on the other side. "Bruce!"
Bruce McClard stood on the other side, but his clothes were disheveled and his hair a mess. Eyes that usually were clear now were bloodshot. A morning's growth of stubble-or what passed for stubble-adorned his cheeks. He held on to the jamb for support and peered vacantly at her.
"You're drunk!" Amy accused, recoiling a step.
McClard shook his head. "Been drinkin'," he mumbled, chin wobbling. "Not drunk. ..."
She tugged him into the apartment and toward the bathroom, where she pushed him into the shower, clothes and all. Leaving the wet things where they fell, she undressed him as soon as he was sober, toweled him dry, and while he cursed her, shaved him with her own razor. Then she led him off to a dry bed, shoving him under the covers over Bruce's strenuous protests. After fetching him some coffee, she sat down beside the bed to watch him drink it. "Why did you come back?"
He didn't seem to know himself. Sipping the hot, black Java, giving off an occasional shiver at the bedroom's air-conditioning, McClard could only manage a shrug.
"I think you want to be cured," she said, partly because she wanted to believe it.
Bruce sighed and put down the coffee cup. "I do. Believe me, I do. I'm sick of people laughing. Not behind my back-to my face. Christ, I'll do anything you suggest. I'm-I'm desperate."
Amy experienced savage joy, then the caution born of experience. "Maybe what you really need is a psychiatrist," she said. "Maybe . . . maybe I'm not enough."
He reached out to seize her by the arm. "I've tried shrinks! They only made me feel worse, with their moralizing and their Freudian garbage. I want to try you. You said you wanted to help me. Prove it."
Amy decided to. Drawing back a few feet, she undressed for him, making sure he missed nothing. Then she got into bed with him, noticing in amusement that he'd closed his eyes. But at least his teeth weren't chattering anymore. She began to think of him in a different way. This was a man about to be reborn, a man about to reclaim his masculinity. She was his seductress. She must take the lead and maintain it until he no longer needed her guidance.
To be the very first sexual partner in a man's life had once been her fondest dream, until the realities of growing up had ground the dream into a car's back seat. Now the possibility returned to warm itself into her heart and mind. As she pressed her naked body to his, against a solid male form which no longer shrank in revulsion, it also warmed its way into her crotch. He was larger than herself, yet so much more vulnerable, so much more wide-open a target for failure.
Amy pushed the covers down until she could examine him for a possible erection. She concealed her panic. He wasn't even half'-hard yet. No matter. She'd make him hard. "Open your eyes," she commanded, because as a first step in seducing him she had to have his full and undivided attention.
Bruce opened his eyes and blinked up at her.
Amy spoke softly, explaining that he should relax and give in to the warm, pleasant sensations of being touched. She began stroking his body-his arms and sides, his chest and belly-and heard him gasp as she approached his genitals. She fondled him briefly there, but still there was no sign of life in his penis.
She left them for the moment and went on to his legs, stroking upward from the ankles to the knees, from the knees to the thighs. Again she heard a sharp expulsion of breath when her fingers raked through his pubic hair. Amy looked closely, and smiled. This time there was unmistakable movement in the penis. Bruce's copulatory organ stirred, emerging half an inch or so from its foreskin. When she glanced at his face, he was staring at her breasts, swaying a few inches from his eyes as she bent over him.
Amy changed positions so that she could kiss him. Stretching out on top of him, she pressed her breasts against his chest and felt the breath rushing out of him. Remembering how much of this would be new to him, she proceeded with care, planting soft kisses on his eyes, forehead, the bridge of his nose. Then she kissed him on the lips and was pleased to have him suddenly put his arms around her neck and kiss her back. And with no small amount of skill, proving that someone had taught him something.
When she opened her mouth and tapped his lips with her tongue, he parted them at once. She began to tongue him, stroking his belly and creeping ever nearer to his thickening phallus. While they kissed, she felt one of Bruce's hands move around between them. Gingerly, almost shyly, he found one of her breasts and squeezed. Rather than stop to congratulate him, Amy continued Frenching him until he was Frenching her in return. Now both of his hands covered her breasts. Strong thumbs tried to press the nipples into the aureolas. For the first time, she experienced true sexual excitement. There was no moistening about her labia, however. He hadn't even touched her there.
She took her mouth away from his and whispered in his ear, "Now it's your turn."
Bruce came up on an elbow. For a moment he stared at her, then he looked down at himself, at his penis. A face which had begun to show anticipation, which had begun to show confidence, lost all of the one and almost all of the other. "It's too small, isn't it?"
Amy, wanting to be truthful, leaned close to examine him. The erection was at least four, possibly five inches and quite firm to title touch. The organ's seeming stubbiness came not so much from its lack of length as its unusual circumference. Bruce McClard, when all was said and done, owned a short, thick penis, not a long, thin one, the way most men yearned to be. She groped for the words. "No. Size really doesn't matter. You have enough ... to satisfy any woman. You have enough."
"You mean it?"
"I mean it."
A look of determination replaced the hopelessness on his face. He reached out and trailed hesitant fingers through her pubic hair. The fingers trembled, but he didn't take them away.
"Yes," Amy sighed, and opened her legs so he could get to her better. "Do whatever you want. Touch me where you will. And don't be afraid. We have lots of time. We have all night." To show him how she wanted to be caressed, she took just the head of his penis between her fingers and rubbed a few times.
Bruce jumped, snatching his hand back from her as though she'd burned him. "Don't!" he groaned.
Amy apologized, feeling foolish. "But that's what I want you to do," she urged, stroking his face and hair to soothe him.
McClard, to her consternation, began to shake. He'd broken out in a cold sweat. "I-I don't think I can. You'll remind me of Shannon . . . the last time we made love. The way she looked when they dragged her out of the water."
"I won't remind you of anyone," she assured him. "I'll be just me. Don't think of anything except me. I want you as much as you want me." Amy realized the anguish he was feeling. Shannon, whoever-she-was, had been the last woman to touch him, the last woman to be touched by him. In his mind's eye, poor Bruce was still seeing Shannon. Maybe he'd always see her, unless he willed otherwise.
As if he'd read her mind, McClard reached out and took her by the hand, returning the hand to his swollen member. "Show me!" he ordered, in a choked tone not unlike a strangling man's.
She worked the foreskin of his penis a few times before feeling his fingers ease through her labia's outer lips. In slow motion, he began to imitate her jacking actions.
"Deeper," she said. "Leave a finger outside and move it higher. You remember where a woman's clitoris is, don't you? Find it, but be gentle. I won't hurt you if you don't hurt me. And try to relax. If we fail the first time, we won't let it bother us. There's always next time."
In a grim kind of silence, they excited one another to a point where she was moist and ready. She wanted him inside her. The question was, could he make entrance without losing his erection? If he proved impotent at the moment of penetration, Bruce might become hysterical and beat her half to death. She was taking perhaps the chance of her life.
"I'm ready now," she murmured in his ear. "Do you think you can . . . ?"
McClard's teeth grated as he struggled to contain his anxiety. He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. "Inside you," he gulped. "You want me to put my . . . my peter inside you.
Christ. That's asking a lot. I don't even know if I can get it in. I'm not even sure I can find the way."
"But you can try," she said. "I'll help you." She spread her legs, hooked them at the knee, and wriggled until he was trapped between them. He could either take her like a man, or crawl over her, retrieve his clothes from the dryer, and walk out of her life forever. Amy held her breath, staking her whole future here.
Bruce fell to his knees and crawled until his stubby penis collided with her pubic mound, bringing him up short. The erection held, however. McClard's teeth began to chatter again. "I tell you, I can't do it!" he moaned. "Assuming I ever get it in, we're still no better off. I don't have enough prick to get the job done."
She took him in her hands and pointed him inside the vestibule, seizing him around the waist so that as she sank backwards again, he was slowly fed into the warmth. Bruce, as she hoped, emitted an involuntary sigh of pleasure. "See?" Amy said, patting his bare back. "You're inside me and nothing dreadful's happened. I feel pretty nice, huh?"
McClard stopped gritting his teeth and began making short, exploratory thrusts. "Yeah," he puffed, not having found a rhythm yet. "Nice."
"You can move sideways, too," Amy instructed, feeling amazingly like a courtesan, even if she was so young, and a recent virgin, and he twenty-eight years old. She raised her legs and wrapped them around Bruce's waist. Now he couldn't escape if he wanted to, and she had the feeling he no longer wanted to.
He gradually assumed a rhythm and a pattern-in and out half a dozen times, then a circular, screwing motion. He did remember. His breathing, too, because the respiration of a man in the throes of advanced sexual desire-deep, labored pants followed by quick intakes of fresh air. Finally he sobbed low in his throat, lunged as far inside her as he could, and ejaculated-great, wrenching gobs of cum which must have nearly turned him inside out. "Fuck-again!" he yelled.
Amy, joining in his triumph, pummeled his back until her fists were numb. She hadn't climaxed, but she hadn't expected to. "You're cured!" she cried in his ear, and then bit the ear until the blood came. "I've cured you!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On Wednesday evening, Bruce came to her apartment without being invited. He knocked with a masculine hand and stood outside smiling at her when she opened the door. "Hello. I was passing by and . . . Mind if I come in?"
Amy's face betrayed her gladness at seeing him there. When he left the night before, she hadn't been sure he'd ever be back again. She showed him inside and helped him off with his coat, finding herself unable to resist trailing her fingers through his hair.
Bruce hesitated for less than a split-second before crushing her in his arms and mauling her against his chest. "I think I'm falling in love with you," he muttered in her ear. "If you laugh ..."
"I'm not laughing," she assured him, thrilling to the words. "I-I think I love you, too." Neither Russ nor Terry, she recalled, had ever told her they loved her. For them, it was sex first and last.
Bruce pushed her away from him and gazed into her eyes. "But it's impossible, isn't it? I mean, we can't tell anyone. Imagine what people would say. Me, an ex-mental case" McClard's mouth twisted, "thinking he's in love with a straight. They'd laugh us out of town. I'd have to sell my share of the agency."
Amy stared at him, chilled. "You would? Then let's not tell anyone just yet. Let's keep it between ourselves. Kiss me." She closed her eyes and waited. The kiss he pressed on her lips was firm yet gentle. He stirred her tonight the way Russ and Terry would, but without the undue roughness. Bruce was a man all right.
When she opened her eyes, he'd taken a fifth of Ballantine's out of his coat pocket. "I know you don't keep any of this around," he grinned, "so I brought my own. Just show me to the ice."
Amy showed him. She said she had to shower, and did, coming out wrapped in a towel. Bruce had prepared two Scotches-on-the-rocks, and though she'd never cared for the taste of Scotch, she drank it down quickly. She felt exhausted from an afternoon auditioning for a cereal commercial, but she helped him undress and led him to the bed, not planning to have sex with him but not planning to refuse if he suggested it. But as soon as they lay down, her eyes closed. Amy felt him stroke her breasts and thighs, her arms, sides and belly. She told herself she'd rest for a few minutes and then take a more active part.
She fell asleep. When she awoke, the clock on the wall in front of the bed read a quarter past ten. She'd slept for almost two hours. Amy didn't move as she awoke, simply opened her eyes and tried to remember where she was. Then she turned her head, looking for Bruce, and saw that he was down at the foot of the bed. He'd parted her legs, and his face was about an inch from her vagina. He was examining her, sniffing her, touching her very lightly around the mons and labia. He was doing something he hadn't been able to do in six months-he was examining a woman's private parts to his heart's content.
It made her ache for him. She had no trouble imagining how terribly barren and empty his life would have been without her, the months or years of psychoanalysis before he could have functioned again. Amy sighed and spread her legs even farther v so he could reach her better. "Bruce, honey, touch me there. Put your fingers in me as far as you can. Don't be afraid. I want you in there."
At her first movement, he'd started guiltily and tried to rise. But when he heard her reassurances, he sank back down and began to play. She helped him, instructing him as to where to place his fingers and the exact amount of pressure to apply. Soon, he was fingering her with enthusiasm. Soon, too, she was feeling a heat, a mounting need for him.
When the heat grew too great, she tried to stop him. She protested, "Let me touch you!" but the words were weak, smothered in gasps and lacking conviction. Inexperienced though he was, Bruce read the signs correctly and intensified rather than halted his exploration. With her help, he'd found the shaft of her clitoris. His fingers played around it with improved skill. Looking down at him Amy was again swept by the perverse pleasure of having been the first woman to make heterosexual love to him. She reached for his head and stroked it, moaning, "Faster! Do it faster! Ahhh! Yes, darling, that's what I like!"
Bruce changed positions. Now his free hand went underneath her buttocks, squeezing and probing until he found her anus. He jabbed in a thumb at the very instant she began to cum. She climaxed hard, and continued to climax as his fingers worked on and on, tirelessly.
She finally had to pull his hand away. For the moment she was weak, drained and satiated. She drew him to her for a long, open-mouthed kiss, and felt for his cock while they were kissing. The organ was up hard and oozing pre-coital fluid. Amy fondled it around the base and shaft, careful to keep away from the sensitive head. Bruce had enough problems without her having to add control to them. If he came prematurely, before the new response patterns had time to imprint themselves on his psychic self, it could re-establish a dangerous pattern of self-rejection, of self-induced failure. But he seemed ready, so she continued to stroke, while also tonguing the roof of his mouth.
Suddenly, he was moving his hips in the unmistakable rhythms of intercourse. Amy, feeling reckless, struggled to get on top of him, hoping to get his prick inside her before he lost his erection. She moved too soon. In a series of spasms which made his teeth chatter, Bruce spent himself before he could penetrate her. She felt the warm ejaculate on her thigh. Then she heard his sobbing. "Bruce, no!" she cried, moving to comfort him. "It doesn't matter! Do you hear? It doesn't matter! Well try again in an hour!"
She was able to console him enough to calm him, but not enough to make him look her in the eye. Finally, Bruce rolled off the bed, landed on his feet and looked for his pants. "I think I need another drink," he mumbled, shame still heavy on him. "Shall I fix you one?"
"Yes," she said, willing to do anything to please him, to restore his confidence, to bring back his manhood. Amy decided that she'd have a better chance of salvaging him if she put her clothes back on and joined him in the living room. A covered girl, she'd always heard, was more interesting to a man than a nude one.
Drinks in their hands, they sat and watched television until eleven o'clock. Her head began to buzz and her chin to nod. The latter snapped up when she felt Bruce's hand on her bare knee. She stared at the hand and decided it had a nice fleshiness even if it wasn't tough and sinewy like some men's. The hand crept up her leg like any other male hand would under similar circumstances. Amy said nothing, waiting.
"Gonna fuck you now," Bruce whispered in her ear. "Do it right... or not at all."
She nodded, smiling and closing her eyes, expecting to be kissed sloppily by a man who was probably too drunk by now to know what he was doing, or to whom. Instead, Bruce bruised her lips with his, almost driving his teeth through them. He was less forceful now. When he fastened his hands on her shoulders and sank to the couch with her, she sank with him. She had to. Rolling atop her, he used his tongue to pry her teeth apart. Then he slowly tongued her to quivering helplessness, until she was kissing him back in sheer gratitude. Working a knee between her legs, he left off Frenching her and began trailing hot kisses down her throat, across the patch of tender skin above her blouse, over each fullsome mound thrusting up at him.
"Open it!" she begged, forgetting to be passive and let him seduce her at his own pace. "Open it now!"
He fumbled with the blouse's buttons, but it was no longer an inexpert kind of fumbling. There was a confidence about him now, an eagerness. Reaching inside and underneath her, he managed to unhook her bra without turning her over. Drawing the halter away, he bared her breasts and closed his palms over both. Returning to her lips, he augmented his kissing with skillful fondling of her tits and a knee in her moistening crotch.
Amy let the sensations take hold and begin a hectic tattoo in her brain. The pounding she heard in her ears was her own heart. Only Wanda Gabriel standing beside them could have made her stop, and she was rapidly forgetting about Wanda. When Bruce thrust a hand inside her skirt's waistband, she heard a moan, and realized it was her own. Then she felt cautious fingers enter her cunt, search higher for a swelling projection and commence a furious play. Instinctively, she opened wider for the fingers.
Bruce returned to her breasts, this time with his mouth. Rolling the nipples between his lips, he made their points engorge to tight points of ardent desire. Then he tongued the nipples until they were no longer cool but simmering from the heat of his mouth. As a final fill-up, he took each breast into his mouth and raked its nipple across the horny projections of his palate.
Amy shuddered and climaxed with her whole body. Rather than exhausting her, the orgasm, once she recovered from its tremors, left her refreshed and more eager than ever. "Inside me!" she gasped when breath would permit. "I want you inside me!"
"No orders!" he rasped, yanking the skirt down her hips. "I'll-be the man." He laid her skirt across the bra and peeled her panties off her thighs, again without disturbing her from a supine position. Rising to his feet, he began to undress, removing his shirt to expose a chest covered with a thin tangle of hair. For a man in the modeling trade, Bruce's upper pectoral muscles were astonishingly well developed.
Amy remembered that he'd once been a model himself, specializing in male sports wear. She studied his penis, a thick, if somewhat stubby phallus with enough erectile power to penetrate almost any woman. A thick penis, she hoped, was almost as useful as a long one. "I like your prick," she said earnestly, looking up at him. "It's a lovely prick, a beautiful prick."
McClard flinched, reading patronizing intent into the words when there wasn't any. "It does what pricks are supposed to do," he said grimly, coming near and kneeling beside her.
She reached up to touch the cock's bright red head. "I want you to prove that to me and I want you to do it right now."
Bruce compressed his lips into a tight, hard line, betraying the tension he was under. "I will," he promised. After palming her cunt a few, experimental times, he placed his knees inside hers and leaned forward. Supporting himself on one hand, he used the other to insert his prick between her labia's slippery folds. She helped him by wriggling her pelvis from side to side. Bruce grunted and held onto her shoulders like any other man. When he'd entered as far as he could-as far as he could hope to, considering his prick's length-he lowered until their chests were touching.
Amy turned her head until Bruce's lay in the hollow of her shoulder. For half a minute they breathed into one another's hair while their perspiration intermingled and trickled into the couch. Then she bit him gently on the earlobe.
"You can fuck me now, honey," she whispered. "You can fuck me for as long as you want."
He began to move, to drive himself inside her. But his thrusting was no aimless thrashing. There was real art this time to the way Bruce made her body his body, genuine finesse to his side-to-side maneuvers. Without speeding his own climax, he hastened her toward another orgasm by applying a stiff forefinger to the shaft of her clitoris. She came, and found that the emotional excitement of having him inside her made the orgasm more intense. And still he labored, pausing now and then to catch his breath.
"Gotta-cum-now!" he panted, when she was near a third. Locking his hands in her hair, he began to pound at her in awesome fashion, the way a Russ or a Terry would.
She found the rhythm and arrived with him at a wrenching climax which nearly turned her inside out. Bruce groaned and spent himself inside her in four, savage bursts. But he continued to slam into her until the spasms trailed off for both, leaving them weak and sated. Then they fell apart in weary acknowledgment.
Afterwards, Amy snuggled up to him and trailed fingers through his hair, wanting to broach a certain subject to him, fearing he'd cut her off if she did. Finally, she gathered the courage and murmured into his ear, "Your parents, Bruce. Do they know . . . ?"
McClard laughed without humor. "No. Wanda told them I went away to a sanatorium for a rest.
But I never mention Shannon anymore. And they read the papers. I think it's safe to say they know."
She hesitated, realizing she might be moving too far too fast. "Then can't you?"
"Can't I what?"
"Can't you take a new girl home for them to meet?"
Bruce raised his head to stare at her. "I could take you. There's no reason why I can't." His eyes gleamed. The idea seemed to have taken hold. "Yes, by God, I will! I'll take you this weekend. Home with me to Darien, Connecticut. If you're interested, that is."
"I am!" she said eagerly, thrilled at the possibilities. Marriage, for instance. If Bruce was cured, there wasn't any reason why he couldn't marry her. Then she'd have a share of the agency. She and Bruce could tell Wanda Gabriel where to go and how to get there.
McClard's face turned wary, as though he divined where her thoughts had led her. "Don't get your hopes up," he warned. "I like sex again. I know now why I turned off. Marriage I'm not so sure of. I'll have to think about it for a while."
Amy hugged the one man she'd come to feel real affection for in this cold, aloof city. "Think about it for as long as you want. I'll still be waiting."
After fixing him a nightcap, she saw Bruce out and went straight to the telephone to call her father. If she didn't tell someone, her new-found bliss would make her physically I'll. The phone rang for a long time in faraway Huntington before anyone picked it up. Amy realized guiltily that it was midnight there. Tyler Fortune wasn't accustomed to working so late.
"Hello?" the someone rasped.
"It's me, Daddy. I'm sorry I woke you. You see, I just had to tell . . . Daddy, I'm in love!"
Her father was briefly, predictably silent. "You're sure about this, kitten?"
"I'm positive," Amy assured him.
"A nice young man, I hope."
"His father's a city councilman in Darien, Connecticut. He's a Yale man and part owner of the agency where I work. You'll like Bruce, Daddy. He's a former model himself and he's helped me more than I can say."
"A former how-much?"
Amy bit her lip. "Model, Daddy. But don't get the wrong impression. He's . . . everything a man should be."
Tyler Fortune yawned from one thousand miles away. "I should hope so. Well, bring your young man home with you for the Fourth, kitten. If he's shaped up, that is. In the meantime, be careful."
"I'm always careful, Daddy. And I love you very much. Goodbye." Amy put down the phone before she said too much.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Amy had hoped to keep Bruce a secret, at least for a while. Fate intervened. She and Bruce overslept, first of all, causing her to report later than Wanda Gabriel's nine a.m. clock-in. Furthermore, they elevatored up to the agency together without bothering to separate, she with an arm hooked in his, he carrying her umbrella. They seemed to need one another this morning, sensing a crisis, both of them.
The crisis began with the discovery of Wanda in Bruce's office, calmly going through the latter's desk drawers. Wanda looked up and smiled when she saw them enter together, having no suspicion, as yet, that anything out of the ordinary was going on. "Good morning, children. Bruce, honey, I've never known you to be late for work until Tuesday. I had to find a certain letter, and it was buried in your desk. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," McClard replied, although he'd paled and his voice cracked.
"We have something to tell you," Amy said, determined to force the issue here and now. She saw Bruce start and wheel to gape at her.
Wanda, smiling, looked at the younger woman. "Yes, dear, what is it?"
Amy took the deepest breath of her life. "Bruce and I-we love one another. We may even-we may even be married. I hope you won't try to interfere."
The silence which prevailed in the room for the next three seconds was the most profound that any of them had ever heard. Wanda, her mouth falling open, looked from one to the other-from the ashen-faced McClard to the equally nervous Amy Fortune. Wanda's mouth began to twitch at the corners. "This is some kind of joke, isn't it? But where's the punch line? I don't get it."
McClard regained some of his composure and shook his head. "It's no joke. Miss Fortune told it the way it is, only she told it too soon. I love her, but I don't know if I want to be married."
Wanda's expression changed from amused to dazed to furious. Then she relaxed and began to laugh. The laugh gradually assumed hysterical qualities. Wanda Gabriel rocked back and forth in Bruce's padded armchair and gave herself up to uncontrolled mirth. She laughed until the tears came to her eyes and she had to stop to catch her breath. "This-this is the most idiotic thing I ever heard!" she gasped, rolling helplessly in the chair.
"It's-it's not real!"
Bruce watched her in stoic calm, but his eyes had acquired a dangerous glint and he'd clenched his fists, probably without being aware of it. "Why is it so idiotic? There's nothing idiotic about love. Love happens to everyone sooner or later even you."
Amy, conscious of rising panic, realized this situation would get much worse before it got better.
Wanda wiped her eyes and smiled up at Bruce. "Because the girl you "love" happens to be more, much more, than you can handle. Russ and Terry both tell me that, although I had occasion to know otherwise. One occasion, no more. And you-" Wanda smiled pityingly. "I've been watching you. You're sane, but just barely. Everything is still there, but it isn't working. You'll probably never be a mart again. Now be so courageous as to admit as much and apologize to Miss Fortune for wasting her time."
Amy felt her face go hot when Wanda mentioned their one encounter. Bruce's reproachful glance made the shame so much deeper. "She trapped me!" she protested. "I-I didn't know what I was doing! Bruce, please believe me! It's important to me that you believe in me!"
"I believe you," he said, and turned to glare at the cause of their mutual discomfort. "You warped, perverted bitch, why don't you decide what you want to be and be it? Why try to corrupt someone who never did anything to you?"
Wanda laughed. "Why don't you? And I'm still waiting to hear your apology to Miss Fortune."
McClard took a step toward the woman behind the desk, raising a fist. "Get out of my chair. Get out of my office. Don't ever come in here again without an invitation. Do you hear me? Get up!"
Wanda's smile faded to a look of thoughtful quiet. There was a cruel cast to the look which she seemed unaware of. "I think you mean it. Yes, I think little Brucie is serious. He wants to be a man again. He thinks he can be a man again. Only he can't. Not without a good shrink to lead him every step of the way. Oh, he could be married, true enough. Marriage, after all, is only a ceremony. When the ceremony is over, a relationship must follow. Poor Brucie is utterly incapable of the relationship. He simply isn't equipped to handle his, shall we say, masculine responsibilities."
"I'm going to throw you out!" McClard grated, his once-handsome face a livid shade of red. "I'm going to drag you out of that chair and throw you out bodily. I don't care what the help thinks. I'll give you another minute, no more."
Wanda, a small, tight smile on her lips, turned her gaze on Amy. "Amy, darling, look at me. Forget about Bruce for a minute and look at me."
The latter, although she recognized a cobra when she saw one, stared in dread fascination at the woman on the other side of Bruce's desk. "I'm . . . listening."
"Assuming you're serious, too, and not following a whim, have you any idea what it would be like to marry a man who's impotent? Have you?"
Slowly, Amy shook her head.
"I'm going to tell you. If you're lucky enough to keep it from your family and friends until after the ceremony, they won't laugh at you while you're pledging your vows. But they will find out, sooner or later. Then what they don't say will hurt more than what they do. They'll avoid you, ostracize you leave you off their guest lists. You'll have spare time aplenty. You'll-"
"The minute's up," McClard announced, and started around the desk to carry out his threat. He grabbed Wanda by the shoulder and tried to haul her up out of the chair. Gabriel, gripping the desk edge and planting her feet wide, managed to stay put.
"Your husband, on the other hand, will now have someone else to blame his troubles on. He'll blame them on you. He'll be beastly to you in a thousand different ways. He'll almost force you into an affair. Then he'll hit you over the head with it. Maybe he'll even commit suicide, to make you feel guilty. How would you like to have that on your conscience? Think you're strong enough? Or would you crack up, too, and have to be signed into a hospital?"
Bruce, abandoning more gentle tactics, suddenly seized his tormentress by the hair. "Lying bitch!" he stormed. "Speak for yourself! How beastly have you been lately? Or do you prefer your beasts be the live-in variety?"
Wanda's chuckle turned to a shriek as McClard lifted her by the hair. The long, dark tresses were plainly her own. "Let go, Bruce!" she begged, flailing at him. "I'll leave on my feet if you'll just let go!"
He released her-too soon as it turned out-and stood back panting, his face still an angry shade of red. "Filthy cunt!" he spat, glaring at her. "Filthy, stinking cunt!"
Wanda raised her arms in dramatic fashion and caught Amy's eye. "Hear, hear," she said. "Your fianc' has an unhealthy-no, an abnormal-^view of our sexual organs. An auspicious beginning, huh?"
Amy, feeling curiously detached and yet a part of this mad scene, wanted to wring her hands and hadn't the strength to. "He doesn't mean me" she asserted, because she had to believe Bruce reserved his vile epithet for Wanda alone. "He means-"
"I mean her!" McClard shouted, and tried to knot his hands in Gabriel's hair again. "For the last time, you cheap whore, get out of my office!" he panted. "I have fists and I'm close to using them. I'll break your nose in so many places they can't count them."
Wanda, perhaps because of the mention of fists, twisted out of his grasp and spun away to put a roll-about bar between them. "I think you would, tightpants. If you do, I'll have your share of the agency. Then I'll have your heart cut out and mashed underneath a hundred subway trains. I have syndicate connections, you know."
"Please give us a chance!" Amy pleaded. "I want this and so does Bruce. You don't know it won't work. You don't know."
"I know when a man can't fuck, he's not a man!" Wanda snapped. "Bruce can't fuck."
"He ... he can!" Amy whispered, and hoped she put enough conviction on the words. Her reward was in seeing a measure of tranquility, of confidence, return to Bruce McClard's harried features.
"Bah! He had one small hard-on and he was able to put it between your legs. What does that prove? He was probably sick to his stomach the whole time."
"No! He-he loved every minute of it. Last night he made love to me . . . again and again. I didn't have to ask him. He . . . wasn't faking it. And I didn't dream it. I know I didn't."
Wanda looked scornfully at her and then at Bruce. "Prove it. Prove it to me and I'll give you my blessing." She saw the expressions on their faces and laughed. "Just what I thought. You won't. Or can't."
Amy found Bruce's eye and saw the desperation there. The anger, too. Wanda, she feared, didn't realize the depth of his hatred. "I'm willing ... if you are," she told him from halfway across the room.
McClard smacked a fist into a palm. "Create a spectacle for this creature's enjoyment? No. Never.
I'll break her neck first."
For Amy, the idea had taken hold and couldn't be shaken loose. She saw Wanda's smiling face out of the corner of her eye, and longed to hurt her, longed to prove that she could make a man or any man, even Bruce. "Shell never believe us if we don't. Well have no life together. Shell see to that. Let's make her believe."
Bruce stared at her. A nerve twitched high in his cheek, proving how agitated he was. "How can I claim to love you if I ... if I let you perform like an animal?"
She tossed her hair. "Not like animals. Like a man and a woman. You know you can. I know you can. Let's."
McClard's gaze roved around the room and lighted on the couch near the door. Slowly, he began removing his jacket. "Okay, if there's no other way. But after last night, I'm not sure ...."
Amy felt she could get him ready no matter how tired he was. Aware of Wanda's skeptical gaze, she began to undress, too, removing her blouse and laying it across a chair back, unhooking her bra and laying it atop the blouse. Bruce, who'd disrobed to his undershirt, went to lock the door. For now, she paid him no mind. Unzipping her skirt, she let it fall to the floor and stepped out of it. Now she was clad only in half-slip and panties. Steeling herself, she took off the half-slip and hooked her fingers in the panties' waistband.
"I'll do that." Bruce's voice was harsh, a whiplash spurring her-and himself-on. "Let's give Mata Hari her money's worth."
Amy, shivering, looked at him. She was afraid now, and not only because he might fail to function and make fools of both of them. She dreaded being exposed to Wanda Gabriel's lusting gaze again. If Bruce's nerve failed him and he fled the room, only heaven knew what would happen to her. But the man she loved had stripped to his Jockey shorts and was coming toward her. He had- Amy caught her breath. He had a vigorous erection or she wasn't the BriteWhite toothpaste girl.
McClard smiled grimly. "Yeah, I've got it up all right. I'm gonna show our bug-eyed visitor I know what to do with it." He took her by the hand and led her toward the couch, sitting down beside her before taking her in his arms. "Face the camera, please," he chuckled, to help her-and himself-relax. He bent to her lips.
She closed her eyes and savored his kiss. Bruce was more careful about personal hygiene than most men she knew. His mouth tasted fresh and clean. After a minute, she parted her lips and felt him go rigid in her arms. His arms became steel manacles about her shoulders. He slipped in a tongue and began to rake it savagely across her palate, exciting himself as much as her.
From across the room, Wanda made a sound of excitement, or possibly disbelief. "I see it, but I'm not sure I believe it," she remarked. "Not yet, anyway."
Bruce tightened his embrace until Amy had to tear her mouth free and protest. "You're hurting me!"
He muttered an apology and covered her breasts with his palms, roughly mauling. In concert with his kissing, he began to knead their sensitive surfaces, rolling the nipples between thumb and forefinger. There was no faking in his eagerness, nor in his rapid breathing. When he felt that she was ready-and some mysterious sixth sense seemed to guide him in this-he pushed her flat on the couch and peeled the panties down her thighs.
Amy helped him by raising her hips to enable him to slide them over her ankles and off her feet. Totally nude, she heard Wanda Gabriel's sharp intake of breath. "Now you," she commanded, because she had to know if Bruce could or couldn't carry out his part.
McClard stood up and unsnapped his shorts. When they fell to his feet, both women stifled exclamations. Bruce owned easily the best hard-on of his life, and whether it was from determination or the exhibitionist in him didn't seem to matter. He tensed when Amy reached up to grasp him, but otherwise his reaction was normal: his hard-on became a harder-on.
Wanda Gabriel applauded, but her praise was more nearly a jeer. "You aren't well-hung, Brucie, darling, but at least you're hung. So far, good. I'm not impressed, but then I wasn't born last week."
Bruce ground his teeth, as though to shut out the insinuating drawl, the verbal assault on his new-found masculinity. He lay down on the couch beside his partner, and in plain view of their audience, began to explore the lips and folds of her genitalia. There was little finesse to his actions; the urgency was too great. He poked and stroked with little concern for gentleness, with little remembrance of what she'd taught him.
No matter. Amy felt her excitement quicken and her pulse began to race. The stimulation from Bruce's fingers was part of it. Wanda's hot gaze was the rest. She moistened soon enough for the insertion of a finger, then two. Finally Bruce was able to squeeze in all the fingers of his right hand. He grunted in satisfaction and pushed her onto her back, positioning her limbs and torso to his satisfaction.
Kneeling between her thighs, balancing himself on knees and a hand, he guided his turgid prick through the steaming vestibule to a glove-tight resting place. Pausing only to wriggle for a better purchase, he began to move. More specifically, he began to simulate a human jackhammer. Rather than start easy and finish fast, McClard started fast and maintained the pace for five dizzying minutes. His previous night's output seemed only to have provided him the control he might otherwise have lacked. His orgasm began from deep inside him and brought an agonized expression to his face as he gave her the issue of a night's recuperation.
Amy began to climax when he commenced his final thrusts. The spasms had only begun to take hold when he started out of her. "No!" she cried, and held him inside her long enough to finish.
Then she released him, and while he was crawling away, turned to watch the effect on Wanda of this whirlwind performance.
Wanda Gabriel's face was a deathly pale. Conflicting emotions of dismay, envy and hatred vied with one another. For a few seconds she had no words with which to describe her feelings. "Well, children, you've convinced me," she managed, although her smile was no smile at all. "If you decide to marry, I'll turn out the office for you. I'll even throw a-"
"No!" Bruce spat, already slipping back into his clothes. "We want no favors from you. Nothing. Just leave us alone. That's favor enough."
"You're an ungrateful sonofabitch!" Wanda snapped, getting up out of her chair. "You'd think we weren't even partners in a very profitable business. Have you forgotten what I've done for this agency?"
Amy, getting back into her own clothing, began to worry all over again. Their joining, hers and Bruce's, seemed to have solved nothing.
McClard laughed shortly. "As soon as I get hold of my lawyer, Mata, the agency's dissolved. We'll break it up and divide the assets and the models. I want to operate as a proprietor from now on. I can't stomach you anymore-dead, drunk or sober."
Amy, her eyes on the top button of her blouse, wasn't sure later what happened next. She looked up to see Wanda, an eight-inch chrome-plated letter-opener in her hand, advancing on a stubborn Bruce McClard who wouldn't give way. When less than a foot separated them, Wanda's hand flashed. McClard, a look of horror replacing the contempt on his face, sank slowly to the floor, clutching his heart.
"Dead?" Gabriel taunted. "Yes, Bruce, darling-dead!" Amy fainted.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When she regained consciousness, Amy found herself lying on the couch again. The room was filled with people of every description, all talking at once. The stench of cigarette smoke was in the air. Also, the stench of something else-death.
"His pulse is fading!" a male voice said. The voice sounded like Russ Cameron's and it came from inside a knot of people gathered about an object on the floor.
"He won't make it!" someone else predicted.
"What can be keeping that ambulance?" wailed a female voice.
Amy raised her head. "Bruce!" she called weakly. "Bruce, please say you're all right!" A strong male hand clasped hers. A face bent over her. The face belonged to Terry Hillyard. Terry, searching her face before he spoke, looked dazed himself, as though he understood absolutely nothing of what might have gone on in this room.
"Bruce is dying," he said. "I'm sorry. Wanda, the bitch ..." Hillyard shrugged. "She stabbed him straight and deep. If he weren't so strong, he'd be dead now."
Amy experienced sudden panic at mention of Wanda Gabriel. She started up. "Where-?"
Terry patted her shoulder and pushed her back down. "When you fainted, Gabriel ran out the door. Everyone saw the blood on her hands and . . . believe me, you're not a suspect, honey. And don't worry. The police will pick her up before she gets to the rest of us. It's all over now. Just try to rest. You've had a hell of a shock."
For Amy, it was all over. The end of a modeling career, the end of her first real romance, the end of all her girlish illusions about life and the people in it, people who could make it a nightmare. She closed her eyes and tried to blot out the clamor in the room, especially her memories of the preceding ten minutes. But she heard the wail of an ambulance on the street down below, and realized the nightmare was still continuing. The tragedy had yet to run its course.
After what seemed like hours, there was a commotion in the hall outside. "Make way!" someone yelled. "You'll have to give us room!"
Elbowing their way inside, an ambulance crew entered and loaded Bruce onto a wheeled stretcher. Amy, although she didn't want to look, found herself looking anyway. McClard, his eyes closed, a spreading stain of crimson around the heart area, looked dead already. She stared until they wheeled him out, then reached up to tug Hillyard's sleeve. "I want to go to the hospital! Please, Terry, I have to know!"
He looked strangely at her, but nodded. "I'll take you if you can stay on your feet."
They talked little on the way to St. Clare's Hospital, Terry failing to ask about the relationship between herself and Bruce, Amy seeing no reason to tell him. But the hospital's emergency room had no one named Bruce McClard when they arrived. No one, that is, who was living.
"DOA," a spokesman explained. "If you're next of kin, check with the morgue."
Not even Terry Hillyard's arm around her shoulder could keep Amy from crying herself into insensibility. The only thing she heard was Hillyard saying, "My car's outside. I'll take her home before the sedative knocks her out." He must have, because that was the last thing she remembered.
She slept the afternoon and night away and part of the next day. When she awoke, there was a bowl of cold soup on the tray beside her bed and Terry was gone. Someone, however, was knocking on the door. Amy dragged herself out of bed and went to answer it. Only when her hand had thrown the bolt did she wonder. She wondered if Wanda Gabriel was still on the loose and if a knife blade would be her reward when she threw open the door. Terrified, she let the door open of its own accord. Standing outside was a stolid-faced man in a wrinkled gray suit. He bowed slightly.
"Lieutenant O'Herly, ma'am. If you're Miss Amelia Fortune, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
Amy nodded. "I am. You can come in."
O'Herly came in, hat in hand, and took a seat in chair she gave him. He carried a notebook with loose-leaf filler. Flipping it open, he took out a ball-point pen, cleared his throat and looked at her. "You're under contract to the David Enlowe Modeling Agency, are you not?"
"Yes. That is, I-I was."
"And you were in the office of Mr. Bruce McClard, deceased, when Mr. McClard was attacked by the agency's co-owner, a Miss Wanda Gabriel?"
Amy swallowed away her nausea. "I was."
"Did you see the actual attack?"
She bowed her head. If she lived to be a hundred, she'd never forget Wanda's swift lunge, the gloating, hating expression on the woman's face, the horror, the anguish on Bruce's. Amy raised her head and looked at O'Herly. If he felt sympathy, she couldn't tell it. "I-I saw the knife."
The detective's pen froze. He frowned. "Knife?
Are you sure it was a knife?"
"A letter-opener," she corrected, flushing. "A big one. It belonged to Bruce-Ho Mr. McClard."
O'Herly recorded the fact. "Can you give any reason for the attack?"
Amy wondered how much she should tell and how much she should hold back. Was she obligated to protect Bruce, and indirectly, herself? "There was an argument. A disagreement. Wanda-Miss Gabriel picked up the letter-opener and stabbed Mr. McClard."
O'Herly stopped writing and looked at her. "Did you make any effort to intervene-try to grab her arm or anything of that nature?"
Amy bit her lip, remembering that she'd made little or no effort to save poor Bruce's life. She'd been petrified with fear. "I-I was too far away. It happened so fast. I screamed and then . . . then I guess I fainted."
O'Herly nodded. "So the report said. Was there any kind of, shall we say, relationship between yourself and the deceased?"
Amy hesitated for a second before indicating in the affirmative. "That-that was the main reason for the argument. But the stabbing came after Mr. McClard threatened to dissolve the agency. To dissolve the partnership between himself and Miss Gabriel."
"I see." O'Herly's brow was no longer furrowed. He wrote busily for a minute before glancing up again. "Ordinarily we'd have to hold you as a material witness, Miss Fortune. You're the only one who saw exactly what happened. Other employees of the agency can corroborate most of what you've said, but not all. However, the Gabriel woman has indicated that she will enter a guilty plea at her arraignment this afternoon. If she does, why, it won't be necessary for you to testify. Well just ask you to keep in touch, in case she changes her plea."
Amy leaned forward. "Arraignment?"
The detective smiled a small, cold smile. "Yes. We've had her in custody since six o'clock last night. A cruiser out here on the West Side noticed a woman with dark stains on her hands walking rapidly toward your building. They brought her in and she admitted almost everything. It's possible she was coming to ask your forgiveness. Or maybe she had another reason. Well never know."
Amy shivered. Wanda ask her forgiveness? Never.
O'Herly snapped his notebook shut and got up to go, pressing his hat down low over bushy brows. "Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Fortune. I'm sorry to have bothered you."
Long after the man was gone, she sat staring at the place where he'd been.
In mid-afternoon, she made a decision. She'd leave New York and return home. A modeling career now, in light of all that had happened, was no longer possible. Possible but no longer attractive. She couldn't stand before another camera, ever, without being reminded of Bruce, whom she'd made into a man and who had died, in a roundabout way, for her. The memories were too painful.
She called her father, using his office number, and heard Barbara answer the phone in faraway, safe Huntington. "Let me speak to my father, please." She waited until the familiar rasp penetrated her eardrum. "Daddy? Daddy, hold on to your chair. I'm coming home."
There was a moment's silence. "You're what?"
"I told you, I'm coming home."
"But I thought you had an assignment!" Tyler Fortune protested. "Two assignments. I thought you'd met a young man you could care for. I thought you were going to bring him home for the Fourth. I thought-"
"Everything's changed, Daddy. Everything. Bruce and I . . . won't be seeing each other anymore. I'll explain when I get there. The assignments I told you about are few and far between. They're hard work, too. The competition's murder." Amy winced in spite of herself at the word choice. "But if you don't want me home ..."
"Oh, I want you all right," her father declared. "I want you here by Sunday if possible. That's when Barbara and I announce our engagement. Remember her? The one I said there was nothing between?" Tyler Fortune chuckled. "Sorry, kitten. A man has to lie sometimes to protect the ones he loves. I wasn't sure then. I'm sure now."
"Congratulations, Daddy. I'll hang up for now. Packing, you know." Amy reflected, while breaking the connection, that her father, if he spent the rest of his life on the bench, would never hear a lie to top the one she'd tell him when she got home. Never.
